The Last Dingo Summer

by Jackie French

  ‘They might want to talk to both of us.’

  ‘I suppose.’ Nancy switched the kettle on again in a resigned fashion while Michael opened the back door.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Good morning — no, afternoon, isn’t it?’ Detective Sergeant Rodrigues glanced at his watch. ‘I hope we’re not disturbing you.’

  Will Ryan followed him, looking almost as tired as Nancy.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Michael politely. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Yes, please. Two sugars,’ said Will Ryan, making known his displeasure that his superior had ordered this further visit.

  Michael spooned in the coffee granules.

  ‘How can we help you?’ Nancy sat, her body sagging onto her arms on the kitchen table.

  ‘There was a prowler at Jed’s place the night before last,’ said Constable Ryan.

  Michael put the jug down. ‘What? Is she okay?’

  ‘Yes, fine. Whoever it was ran off when he saw that she and Scarlett were awake. Jed called triple zero, but there was no sign of a car as I drove out that way. I don’t suppose you heard a car? About two-thirty, it would have been.’

  Michael shook his head. ‘I was sound asleep. Nancy?’

  ‘No. I’d better call Jed.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Later.’ She might have just put Mattie down for her sleep. ‘You said Scarlett was with her? I didn’t know she was coming down.’

  Will Ryan nodded. ‘Just for a few days.’

  ‘She should be at uni,’ said Nancy, looking even more worried.

  ‘She said she’s heading back there soon. A friend of Jed’s is going to stay.’

  ‘Julieanne maybe, or Carol. I’m glad she and Mattie won’t be there alone.’

  ‘You’re fond of Jed?’ asked Detective Sergeant Rodrigues.

  Will Ryan shot him a look of incredulity.

  ‘Very,’ said Michael. ‘She lived with us when she first came here and volunteered at River View until Mattie was born.’

  ‘Volunteered? She didn’t work?’

  ‘She worked extremely hard,’ said Nancy evenly. ‘You tend to work hard looking after kids.’

  ‘I’m sorry, of course you do. She didn’t need a wage though?’

  ‘She did at first, but then her great-grandfather left her enough money to live on.’

  ‘She’s wealthy?’ The detective looked surprised. He glanced at Will Ryan, as if to say, ‘Why didn’t you tell me this?’

  ‘It depends how you define wealth.’ Nancy’s voice was cold. ‘Most of her money is locked up in projects for other people — the Whole Australia Factory, the Blue Belle Café, keeping Scarlett at university.’

  ‘If anything happened to Jed, who would benefit?’ The detective’s voice was casual.

  ‘Her daughter, with a lump sum for Scarlett and an allowance until she is twenty-five, and the right to live in the flat in Sydney as long as she wishes, and at Dribble until Mattie is twenty-one or until she decides to live there herself. Mattie would also inherit Jed’s directorship at Thompson’s Industries when she turns twenty-one. Nancy and I would be the trustees and Mattie’s guardians.’

  ‘Not her grandparents?’

  Michael shrugged. ‘Jed made a will when she first inherited, long before she decided to get married. She had to make a new one then, but she didn’t change executors. Maybe she assumed Blue and Joseph would play a major role in Mattie’s life anyway. Most of her income comes from our family company and I’m on the board with her, so it probably made sense that I’d look after her finances.’

  Detective Sergeant Rodrigues nodded noncommittally. ‘What if the daughter dies?’

  ‘Her name is Mattie,’ said Will Ryan.

  Nancy gave him a grateful glance. ‘If anything happened to Mattie before she was twenty-one, Scarlett would get Dribble, the flat in Sydney, the lump sum and the allowance. The tenants of the Blue Belle and the factory would get their buildings. The rest would go to charities for the care of homeless children or those who needed therapy at our discretion.’

  ‘You seem to know all the details,’ said Detective Rodrigues.

  ‘Of course we do. Jed discussed it all with us before she made her wills.’

  ‘Look,’ said Michael, seriously worried now. ‘You don’t think someone is trying to hurt Jed? I thought that was all over with Merv gone.’

  ‘You’re relieved about that?’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘I see. Just going back to the day of the fire. You’re sure you didn’t see or hear anyone?’

  ‘No. We were here the whole time, Nancy and me and our sons. Not even a phone call. The phone line was down, though we didn’t realise that till that night when we tried to ring out. It was back on the next morning though.’

  ‘I did hear something,’ said Nancy suddenly.

  Michael looked at her in surprise. ‘What? You didn’t ever say anything before.’

  ‘No one asked,’ said Nancy impatiently. She looked at the detective. ‘You asked if we’d seen anyone. You didn’t ask about hearing them.’

  Detective Rodrigues looked like he was carefully holding on to his patience. ‘What did you hear then?’

  ‘Chainsaws in the distance, on and off most of that afternoon.’

  ‘What about you, Mr Thompson?’

  He shook his head. ‘Nancy can hear like a bat. All I heard was the wind. But it makes sense. The tanker crew would have had to cut their way through fallen branches, even trees, on their way back from Rocky Valley.’

  Detective Sergeant Rodrigues stared at him. ‘The tanker Sam McAlpine was on? None of the crew mentioned it. They said they drove straight to Dribble.’

  ‘They probably didn’t think it needed mentioning,’ said Will Ryan.

  Michael shrugged. ‘They drove straight there, sure, but almost certainly had to stop to clear the track a few times. I wouldn’t have bothered to mention it either.’

  Constable Ryan was writing quickly in his notebook. The detective waited till he looked up, then stood. ‘Thank you, Mr Thompson, Mrs Thompson. You’ve been extremely helpful. Thank you for your help with that other business too.’

  ‘The one we are not going to mention,’ said Nancy flatly.

  ‘Yes, that one,’ said Detective Sergeant Rodrigues. ‘Though that girl staying with the McAlpines has been asking questions.’

  Nancy gave a wry smile. ‘I know. And not getting any answers. Or not the kind she’s looking for.’

  Will Ryan looked uncomfortable, as if secrecy did not sit well with him. But all he said was, ‘Thank you for the coffee.’

  Michael saw them to the door, then looked back at Nancy. ‘The chainsaws. Do you think that mattered?’

  ‘Who knows?’ replied Nancy, her face strangely blank. She shoved a stray strand of hair away from her face. ‘If you don’t mind, I think I might miss the swim. Could you pick up the boys? I’m going to call Blue. I need to get that girl to stop asking questions.’

  Michael considered his wife. ‘What are you going to tell her?’ he asked at last.

  Nancy shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s time she heard the truth.’

  Michael crossed the kitchen and hugged her.

  Chapter 48

  For sale: Two black sheep, one with a white star, the other with white feet. Cross breeds, suit spinner and and & weaver. $8 for the two or $15 de-livered.

  Wanted: Typesitter. Must have good eyesite and be able to spill.

  FISH

  ‘Pick you up at the Blue Belle in two hours,’ said Gran, applying bright red lipstick to match her boots.

  Fish nodded. She had no wish to join the great-aunts and Gran at the CWA, nor to spend another afternoon sketching back at Moura. She liked Jed, and Scarlett too, but it wasn’t like they were her own age, and anyone her age around here was at school during the week.

  Perhaps it was time to see if Gran was right and Mum would just pretend nothing had happened if she returned home. But how would that even be po
ssible if they had no idea where Dad was?

  An hour later she had browsed Lee’s Emporium, a not-quite department store, but made up of several shops strung together. Strange to think that withered old woman from another land had created all this. She had also studied the new releases at the bookshop (free Gibber’s Creek Centenary tea towel with every purchase and a notice board that advertised lost dogs and a medieval string quartet) and had spent some of the fifty dollars Great-Uncle Joseph had given her on Ruth Park’s Swords and Crowns and Rings, mostly because it was big and so would give her lots of reading time.

  Now she sat in the Blue Belle in the scent of baking melting moments and the river song of gossip, an iced coffee and a slice of lemon poppyseed cake in front of her, two chapters into her book, which was fabulous, much better than she had expected. Cushie Moy was excellent . . .

  Around her, women in moleskins, jeans and boots, flares and sandals, or maxi sundresses, relaxed in the post-school pause before hauling the kids home for dinner. The kids drank milkshakes or played the old multi-age game of throw and catch in the courtyard. Fish propped up her book and had reached for another forkful of cake when the door tinkled.

  Detective Sergeant Rodrigues and Constable Ryan. Fish put the book down, alert. Were they going to interview the strange-looking young woman who ran the place, or the bloke who blinked too much and seemed to be her boyfriend? But instead the police sat at the only vacant table, next to hers. The detective nodded to her politely while Constable Ryan went up to place their order — two teas and two toasted cheese and ham sandwiches. Late lunch, she thought.

  ‘Good book?’ asked Detective Sergeant Rodrigues, not quite casually enough.

  ‘Yes,’ Fish said cautiously.

  He smiled as Constable Ryan sat down again. ‘I hear you’ve been asking about missing people.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Found any?’ he asked softly.

  ‘Lots,’ she said honestly. ‘But not ones killed by a murderer. How did you know I was asking?’

  Detective Rodrigues glanced at Constable Ryan, who gave a slight shrug. ‘I hear pretty much everything that happens round here.’ He nodded to the detective. ‘And then I pass it on.’

  ‘Because you’re an excellent policeman?’

  ‘Because I grew up here and everyone knows me.’ He glanced at the detective as if for permission. Detective Sergeant Rodrigues nodded. ‘If you really want to know the answers,’ Constable Ryan said in a low voice, ‘ask Mrs Thompson.’

  ‘Nancy? But I’ve already asked her!’

  ‘Ask her again. Say that we suggested it.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘To stop you raking up things that need to stay buried,’ said Constable Ryan, so quietly that his lips hardly moved. ‘Tell her that too.’

  ‘But if there’s a psychopath loose . . .’ She stopped, seeing a woman in a tattered Akubra looking at her.

  Detective Rodrigues sighed. ‘There’s no psychopath, love. But every place has secrets. You haven’t stumbled on any that are too bad yet, the kind someone might hurt you to keep buried. But if you keep on like this, you might.’

  ‘What secrets?’

  ‘No idea. Probably not even police-type secrets. Someone had an affair, or a kid’s real mum is the woman he thinks is his older sister. Sometimes people have a right to keep things to themselves.’

  ‘But someone murdered Merv.’

  ‘That’s right. Thanks, love,’ Detective Rodrigues said to the woman waiting tables as she put down the two cups of tea, the teapot, pot of hot water and sandwiches, each with a carved radish on the side. ‘The inquest is next week,’ he added. ‘I told the coroner I’d have the case cut and dried by then.’

  Excitement tickled. ‘Then you know who did it?’

  The detective nodded. ‘I think maybe I do. Should have it wrapped up by this time tomorrow, I reckon. You talk to Mrs Thompson.’ He turned back and bit into his ham and cheese sandwich.

  Constable Ryan still gazed at her with concern. ‘Talk to Mrs Thompson. It’s time you stopped asking questions.’

  Chapter 49

  Litters to the Editor

  Dear Madam,

  I would like to complain about the weather forcast, which has predicted ‘scattered showers about the ranges’ four times in the last three months, but we haven’t seen a droop of it. Exactly which ranges are they talking about?

  Yours faithfully,

  ‘Old Timer’, Rocky Valley

  FISH

  Fish wasn’t surprised to see Nancy at the café door at four-thirty, not Gran. Nancy looked even more tired. Her hair was a mess, and she hadn’t even changed out of her boots or put lipstick on to come to town, like the Greats always did.

  Nancy waited till Fish paid the bill. ‘Car’s out the front,’ she said briefly. ‘I called in at the CWA rooms and told your gran I’d pick you up. They’re going to visit Sam on the way home.’

  Fish waited till they were seated in Nancy’s ute, a bag of chook food in the back, a box of groceries at her feet: frozen cheesecake, a frozen chicken, frozen peas and carrots, Gravox. ‘The detective asked you . . . ?’

  ‘No.’ She glanced at Fish. ‘I did try to tell you not to go upsetting people.’

  ‘I’m good at upsetting people,’ said Fish bitterly.

  ‘No great harm done. Yet.’ Nancy passed a cattle truck, manure splashing out behind onto the ute as she did. ‘Hendersons are selling their stock too. Good.’

  ‘Why good?’

  ‘Because it’s not going to rain for three years,’ said Nancy grimly.

  ‘Will you be okay?’

  ‘We’re only keeping enough to ensure that the bloodlines survive. We’ve got silage buried — that’s fermented feed. It’s enough to keep the rest of the sheep alive with the green pick in the channels. They never entirely lose their grass. But it’s going to be bad.’

  ‘And everyone else?’

  Nancy shrugged. ‘Most of the district has been selling their stock since I warned them at Christmas. But animals will die. Roos, wombats, emus. Some idiots will keep hoping it’ll rain tomorrow and let their beasts starve to death. And you get very, very tired of thirty-second showers and no baths. But we’ll be okay. Jim’s investing what we get for the stock. We don’t have a mortgage or much of a wages bill. We won’t even have any costs for River View soon.’ She grinned suddenly. ‘And the boys aren’t going to boarding school, even if Jim has pink kittens. Or not unless they want to, if they can’t do a subject here. We can afford boarding school if we have to.’

  They passed the turn-off to Moura and then Drinkwater homestead, its English trees a too-vivid green now Fish’s eyes had adapted to the olive blues and reds of eucalypts. ‘You haven’t said how you know it won’t rain.’

  ‘No, I haven’t, have I?’

  ‘And you’re not going to tell me.’

  Nancy laughed. ‘Only if you intend to stay here.’ She glanced at Fish, her expression suddenly serious. ‘There are things you can learn from books and things people can teach you. But there’s other stuff that belongs to the land. You’d need to know this land for years to understand what I was trying to teach you. Do you see what I’m getting at?’

  ‘I think so. All the trees looked the same to me when I arrived. Just gum trees. Now I can see different kinds.’

  ‘If it’s taken you this long to see the difference between a red gum and a stringybark, it might take you even more than a couple of years to notice the changes in where the ants have built their nests or the way the gully gums have lost half their leaves already. Gully gums are good at lightening their load before a drought.’

  ‘I’m not staying,’ said Fish. ‘I like it here,’ she added hurriedly. ‘I hope I come back to visit, often maybe. But I’m more into people, who they are, what they make, how to put that on paper or canvas. I’d rather read a book than the land.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Nancy looked only very slightly put out that someone might prefer paper to g
ully gums, whatever a gully gum was. ‘Right, here we are.’ She turned off onto the track to the billabong.

  ‘Why here?’ demanded Fish as they bumped along the track.

  ‘I’m not taking you home because the boys will be there and they’re too young for this. No one to overhear down here. No interruptions.’

  Nancy put on the handbrake. Outside, the billabong shimmered grey in the afternoon light. Trees dropped leaves, some kind of trees . . . Fish felt no need to know exactly which.

  Nancy put down the window and breathed deeply. ‘Smell that? Rotting leaves and yabby shells. People have camped here for tens of thousands of years. This place used to be like a grocer’s shop. Yabbies in the billabong and freshwater mussels or fish in the river, so many ducks or swans you just had to stay quiet in the water till they landed, then swim underneath and grab their legs. Ten minutes, and then dinner. The billabong used to be covered in waterlilies too. You could eat every bit of those lilies, crunch the stems or bake the roots. Gran showed me how to make cakes from the pollen. Except I always burned them,’ she admitted.

  ‘Why aren’t there lilies here now?’

  ‘Don’t know. They washed away in the ’69 flood. Floods had happened before, of course, but this time the lilies just didn’t return. Herbicides in the water, maybe. Waterlilies vanished all over the place in the 70s. Maybe they just grew tired of stupid people who didn’t appreciate them.’

  ‘I thought you knew everything about the land.’

  ‘Not when it involves herbicides,’ said Nancy grimly. ‘Too many idiots in this country with no idea what they’re doing. Half the country’s eroding away because it’s overstocked already. It’ll be worse before the drought is over.’ Nancy’s anger seemed to fill the car.

  Fish shivered. ‘You were going to tell me who put the bodies under the church.’

  Nancy looked back at her. She blinked, as if she had forgotten what she’d promised. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who then?’ demanded Fish.

  Nancy gave a strange smile. ‘I did.’