Flames

by Robbie Arnott

  For the first and last time, I heard Smoky speak. Total whore.

  I let them come to me, rubbing hands over my body, my shirt, my tits, my groin, lips whacking at my skin, tongues worming at my ears and mouth. I looked up at the pointy lights of the stars, blocking it all out, as I asked them both: And what do you do to sluts?

  Smoky didn’t answer, but Moustache’s excitement intensified. He lifted his head, thinking of something to say, something from a porno or the slimy bin of his imagination, but for the first time that night he was lost for words. It didn’t matter. While he was rummaging around for dirty talk he didn’t see my fist clench and slam up into his jeans, although he certainly felt it, as surely as I felt a testicle squash between two of my knuckles. He gasped, hot wind and pain, and Smoky looked up in time to see my right elbow cannoning into his stomach. Air blasted from his mouth, and his torso bent forward at a right angle.

  The impact of elbow to breadbasket felt good—a solid, satisfying thunk. Smoky was moaning and rolling as I surged to my feet. Moustache was on his knees, clutching his broken ball, mouthing something at me. I leaned in, trying to catch the word, but through his gritted agony I couldn’t make it out. Was it bitch? Whore? Slut? Cunt? Fucking slut cunt? It didn’t matter; he was one-nutted while I was standing tall.

  I thought about saying something. I thought about kicking him in the jaw, hard enough to send the orange slug on his lip somersaulting into the river. But through the gin fog I held my nerve, and my principles: you don’t boot a boy when he’s down. I straightened my coat and left them there. When I reached the Lancer I drove to a sheltered spot on the edge of town. There I climbed into the back seat, pulled my coat over my body and let sleep suck me deep into the faded seat covers.

  I wasn’t always like this. You might find it hard to believe, but I used to be normal. Average childhood, business degree, the beginnings of a corporate career—I was your regular middle-class everychick. I used to flash eyes, say please, laugh, even dance (only to disco). I wasn’t exactly a ray of sunshine, but I had fun, and those around me knew I was having it. There were parties, there were after-work drinks, there were friends and breakfast dates and a plan for a responsible and comfortable life. There was even a fiancé—a real shiny angel of a man. What can I say? People change. Careers fizzle. Lives twist and stall. Fiancés fuck blond HR consultants who specialise in the field of change management. Gin sneaks into your coffee, first in drops, then in waves. So I don’t feel bad when I hurt a few feelings, bruise a few heads, crack a few bones. I don’t feel much at all.

  I woke up with sore knuckles and a head more or less in the same state it was every morning. Ice had grown in a thick white sheet over the windows and mirrors, and I was shivering under my coat. I switched on the engine and blasted heat from the musty air-conditioning vents towards the windscreen. Then I lurched outside, was greeted with an open-handed slap by the winter air, grabbed a scraper from the boot and chiselled away enough ice to let me see the road.

  I got the hell out of Tunbridge.

  Melaleuca. I knew of it, vaguely. Tiny place in the deep southwest, only accessible by boat, light aircraft or a serious hike. I remembered a history teacher banging on about it in school, something about it being one of the most isolated places on earth. If Charlotte wanted to hide without leaving the island, she couldn’t have found anywhere better.

  The remaining ice slowly melted and slid off the windscreen as I headed further down the Midlands. I knew a pilot in the capital who owed me a favour—she’d take me to Melaleuca. But before I called her I wanted to make sure Charlotte had made it there. The last thing I wanted to do was fly to the end of the earth and find nothing but a few lonely wombats. The most obvious course of action was to scope out Franklin. Nobody had told the cops anything when they’d investigated, but small towns have a habit of keeping quiet.

  The Midlands droned on, denuded hill after denuded hill, until I rolled into sprawling suburbs around noon. Here’s a list of the places I’d choose to visit before the capital: hell, anywhere tropical, the Mariana Trench, a deeper pit of hell, my mother’s house. I’d once built a life there, but now it held nothing for me but grime, anger, and the taste of dust and sick. For all its size and opportunity all it contained was people, and the associated greed, horror and dirt of people, in greater numbers than anywhere else within a thousand kilometres. After I dropkicked my corporate career to the kerb I’d stayed there for another decade, ten years of sleuthing, drinking and fucking my life up, before I finally got together with the Lancer and left the capital and its people behind.

  And in case you hadn’t guessed, yeah—it was pretty. The place was lousy with harbours and views and mountains and sunsets. It was enough to put a woman off her gin.

  I pushed through the outer suburbs, weaving between the traffic, ignoring the docks and yachts and throngs of tourists disembarking from their cruises. Snow winked down from the looming mountain. Sunlight played across the winter water. Awful. But I made it; soon I was pushing up onto the Southern Outlet and rolling further south. As I curled inland my phone rang. I glanced at the screen and saw the flashing green name of Graham Malik. I picked up.

  Graham.

  Yeah. How’s the search going? He sounded anxious. I could hear it in the trip of his consonants.

  Good. I kept my tone flat. Got a bit out of those goons who’d gone after her in Tunbridge. How’s Patricia?

  Bovine, mate. She’s gone full cow. Now she wants the Range Rover. Anyway. A breath, and a pause. About the father.

  Like a jolt of electricity I felt it: my twinge. It rocketed through me, bouncing my skin and flailing my limbs. My hands slapped against the wheel and I nearly crashed into the metal safety barrier that hugged the highway. Then it was gone, as quickly as it arrived. I found my voice. What about him?

  I did a bit of digging. I’m not the best digger—you know that—but I’m not bad. And I couldn’t find anything. He’s got a driver’s licence, but that’s it. No birth certificate, no listed parents or siblings, no work history. I even checked the immigration and citizenship records—nothing there either. I haven’t even found his maiden name.

  What?

  McAllister was the mother’s name. He took it when they married.

  So it’s a forged identity. I didn’t get what he was aiming at, but the muscle memory of the twinge was still numbing my fingers. He’s not the first person to do it.

  Graham panted on. Yeah, I know. But…I dunno, mate. There’s another thing. Nobody’s seen him since about the same time his daughter went AWOL. I don’t think he snatched her or anything—people have seen her travelling alone—but it feels off. This guy has been a part of the community for years now. Nobody’s ever questioned who he is or where he’s from. Ask anyone who’s met him and they say how good a bloke he is, but if you pay attention, they can’t say anything concrete about him. They just say he looks ordinary, acts normal, and that they can’t imagine why a policeman would be interested in him. Then their eyes glaze over and they start talking about the footy or the weather.

  The world around me was turning greener; the road was curving and narrowing. I still couldn’t see his point. So I should be careful because people like him?

  No. I’m just telling you what I dug up. Petulance entered his voice. I didn’t have to call you. I’ve got shit going on, you know.

  I know. Sorry.

  Yeah, well. Anyway. He relaxed—people didn’t apologise to him very often. Something’s off with this. Just keep it in mind.

  Okay. I will. Thank you.

  You’re welcome. I’ve gotta go get a few boxes before Patricia changes the locks.

  All right, Graham. Good luck.

  You too. He hung up, and I tossed the phone onto the passenger seat as my guts went subterranean. Graham was right: there was something off about the father. I couldn’t put it together in my head, but there was something more to it than a fake identity. Graham’s instincts were rarely wrong, and I believe
d his anxieties even more than I believed his tips. And even if I thought he was full of shit, there was my twinge—that alone was enough proof that something was wrong with Charlotte’s father.

  But there wasn’t much I could about it right now. I filed it away and tried to focus on the road.

  An hour later, and the Lancer and I were in Franklin. I’m not the best detective in the world, but I know how to find the right people to answer my questions. I nosed around town for a bit, getting a feel for the locals, the work, the attitudes. Pretty soon I didn’t need anyone to tell me that my answers lay at the docks. There was no airfield, so if Charlotte had gone to Melaleuca from here, it was surely by boat.

  Two wharfies directed me to a yacht that had paint peeling off it in wide, curling strips. It seemed abandoned, but the sails looked recently patched, so I hammered on the door of the cabin. A few minutes later something that looked like an old sailor yanked open the portal and stumbled out to meet me. Staring through a mess of grey whiskers was a suspicious glare. I tried on a smile. Afternoon. I’m hoping you can help me.

  Unlikely. His voice, coughed-up and throaty, was as rough as his craft. I clenched my smile and pushed on.

  Do you know a girl named Charlotte McAllister? I held out the photo her brother had given me.

  He kept looking at me, ignoring the picture as he spat an orb of grey-green mucus into the river. Don’t know any girls.

  I dropped the smile. No girls that wanted to get to Melaleuca?

  He leered. Why would a pretty girl want to go there?

  So she’s pretty.

  His eyelids narrowed in anger. He was about to retreat into his cabin when I said, softly, I’m not a cop. I’m just someone her family has hired to find her. They’re worried. I spread my palms flat and wide. A supplicant’s stance. I can help her.

  The girl needs no help. He held onto the door handle, but he didn’t go inside.

  I’m sure she doesn’t. But she might need a friend. I pulled a couple of fifties from my pocket. Every now and then, we all need friends.

  He glanced at the money. He glanced up at my face. Then he dragged his fingers through his beard, heaved air into his lungs and told me everything he knew.

  The sound of the Jabiru’s engine churned through my ears as the verdant wilds of the southwest sprawled out beneath me. After speaking to the sailor I’d driven back to the capital and arranged to meet Cindy, the pilot I knew. A few years back she’d been involved with a man who liked bouncing her head off the fridge as foreplay. Most girls would’ve left, but Cindy didn’t. Instead, she called me.

  I persuaded the boyfriend to leave her alone—not without one or two instances of dislocated kneecaps, I should admit. Afterwards I hadn’t let her pay me. I’d seen it as a civic duty. And another, shadier part of me had seen her single-engine Jabiru as a favour I might one day need. So when I’d called her—driving while using my phone, twice in one day—she’d dropped everything and fired up the propeller. By the time I arrived she was waiting on the runway.

  We buzzed on, covering forests, streams, mountains. Roads had disappeared from view an hour after take-off. Now, thirty minutes from the landing strip at Melaleuca, there were trees in every direction, except for the west, where on the horizon I could see only the shining blue haze of the Great Southern Ocean. The Jabiru’s engine was too loud to allow talking, so we just stared at the view. Cindy gripped the stick, and I tried to figure out what I’d say to Charlotte when I found her.

  Before our eyes a river bled out into a huge estuary, the great blue-brown bay of Bathurst Harbour, big enough to hold a city. On one edge lay a few huts and the white scar of a rudimentary landing strip. Mountains of glinting white rock ringed the flatlands in from the north. It was spectacular, I suppose, in the way that nature often is, but my attention was gripped by something else: a huge, jet-black, still-smoking field of burnt heathland. I saw Cindy gasp: Oh my god. The farm. Before I could ask we were descending, bumping and lurching through the air in a frenzied dive before landing roughly on the white strip of soil.

  Cindy switched the engines off and went straight for the huts. I’ve got to call the ranger, she said. I followed her, but instead of moving towards the buildings I was drawn to the field of burning earth. In a few minutes my boots were toeing at the charcoal and wisps of smoke were snaking into my nostrils. It must have stretched for ten, twenty kilometres, all ash and blackness, but the surrounding area was still green. In the distance I could see the black bones of a shed, standing small and frail in the wind.

  The unharmed borders of the field gave me hope: if the surrounding forests had survived the fire, there was a good chance the girl had, too. I turned back to the landing strip and huts, ready to begin my search—but a person was already walking towards me. It wasn’t Cindy, and it wasn’t Charlotte McAllister.

  The man was approaching from the edge of the heathland, carrying a large backpack. As he came closer I could tell that he was of average height, average size: his posture held a relaxed, average kind of demeanour. Beyond this I find it hard to describe him. Even now, after all I’ve seen this man do, after all I know he’s capable of, I can’t put my finger on his features. I could say that he had a short, light-brown beard, but that might not be true; it might have been a moustache, and that moustache might have been black. Or he might have been clean-shaven, even after emerging from the bush. His hair was long, or it was shoulder-length, or neat and short, or his head was glistening with baldness. His eyes were definitely blue when they weren’t green or grey, and his teeth were white and straight except when they were yellow and bent. His nose: a small, delicate thing that was somehow also large and hooked. His skin was brown when it wasn’t white or grey. It was so distracting that I didn’t notice the rollicking, electrifying twinge that was shaking me from head to toe.

  I stood still, burnt vegetation crackling under my boots. When he was within a few feet of me he stopped, his eyes roving over the smoking field. He spoke, in a voice that was rich-bold-quiet-calm. Bad sight.

  I folded my arms. In a certain light I’m quite appealing.

  He smiled. His eyes lifted from the black landscape and settled on my face. These eyes—shifting, unknowable points of whiteness and iris and heat—froze me to the ground. I had questions for him; I had plenty; but I couldn’t get them out. My thoughts started spinning, and my tongue turned fat and numb. He stared on, and though his body didn’t move he came closer to me. It felt like his eyes were touching my own, sharing fluid, bumping pupils, until finally I heaved myself out of this funk and half-shouted: Who are you?

  His eyes finally slid off mine, and I felt a rushing, deeply physical sense of relief as he said: I think you know. He inhaled, rubbed his face, turned around and began slowly trudging in the direction he had come from.

  After he’d walked thirty or so metres whatever had been pinning me to the spot let go. I shook off the lethargy and began following him, fists tight, ready to beat the answers out of him if I had to; but as I neared him he stopped, and I stopped too, not of my own accord. My feet, again, snapped still. He spoke without turning, in a voice I can’t remember but with words I won’t forget. Stay away from my daughter.

  With that he walked on, trudging across the plain. I thought about going after him again, but what was the point? The sight of his shrinking back, changing colour and shape before my eyes even from this distance, drew a curtain of exhaustion over me. I blinked, swayed on my feet, realised how tired I was. How steadily my hangover was hammering at my temples. How far away I was from home. I wondered what my neighbour’s tom was doing, if it was on my couch, picking at the ham I’d probably left out. I was hollowed out and hungry. I would’ve killed for a decent sandwich, but food wasn’t the answer; it never was. I reached into the folds of my coat, fumbling for the bottle I knew wasn’t there. I’d come too far on a bad case. I’d been hit on by creeps and bewitched by a bushwalker, and I hadn’t found the McAllister girl. The dim peal of failure rang between my
ears. The only thing that would make me feel better was a tall glass of my burning best friend, and I was all out of gin.

  FEATHER

  The following entries are taken from the diary of Allen Gibson, manager of the Melaleuca Farm Estate.

  ONE

  Something is killing the wombats. We found the first corpse three weeks ago. Since then there have been nine more, and the rate is increasing. Their deaths have clearly come about through some kind of unnatural molestation. Something has torn at their throats and underbellies, leaving violet holes in their fur, and in every case their eyes have been plucked clean from their sockets. The nature of these injuries points to the culprit being some kind of bird—each wound I have found could only have been caused by the stab of a beak or bill—but there are no birds here that could inflict such horrendous wounds on a creature as powerful as a wombat. Perhaps a wedge-tailed eagle could do it, if starving and desperate, but it is highly unlikely. And in any case, an eagle would feast upon a dead wombat until it was too heavy to fly. It would never leave its kill to be found by a farmer.

  Other than the usual clamour of seabirds, ravens and swamp harriers, the only other birds of note in this area are orange-bellied parrots—gorgeous, high-squawking, stupid creatures that migrate north every year—and a few black-faced cormorants that venture up from the tannin-stained waters of Bathurst Harbour. The largest of these lives in a blackwood tree that stands alone in a far field, above the grave of the farm’s founder, Derek Quorn. It is a territorial creature, often harassing our livestock if they stray into its paddock, but to my knowledge it has never so much as drawn blood from a wombat. I do not like to go near it, partly because I find the bird loathsome, but also because Old Quorn’s paddock contains the main shaft of the old Melaleuca tin mine. Any number of other shafts and sinkholes may have been obscured by the meadows of buttongrass. It would be easy to fall through such a trap, and it could take years before anyone found you.