Blood Junction (14 page)

India stood at the window of Lauren’s room and stared blindly outside. Twenty-three years earlier her little brother, Toby,
had died. Now Lauren had died too. She suddenly felt exhausted, and had a longing to crawl into bed and sleep for a month.

Instead she searched the room. She checked the inner pillow cases, peered beneath the bed, the mattress, inside the Bible
and the chest of drawers. As India searched, she remembered hiding pocket money Sylvia gave her, so that her father wouldn’t
take it and spend it on booze. She remembered giving anything precious—comics, books, birthday cards—to Lauren, to prevent
them getting thrown out. India searched the room as memories crowded her mind, and her soul felt heavy and inert, knowing
she had no one to share them with any longer.

The bottom of the wardrobe had an old bus ticket in it, and she unearthed a receipt that had slipped behind the skirting board,
both of which she pocketed. Then she walked downstairs and asked if Mrs. Goodman knew anybody in the area called Tremain.

“You mean Ron?”

“Do you know any others aside from him?”

The woman thought a bit, said, “Sorry, no.”

India thanked her, returned to the car.

The shiny bay horse pranced at the end of its rope as she drove away.

Before India headed for Cooinda, she drove to Nindathana Billabong and walked the area where the murders had taken place.
She didn’t expect to find anything, not after Stan had been crawling all over it looking furiously for her gun, but she’d
wanted to see the place for herself.

The billabong was a large and shallow circular depression the size of a tennis court, surrounded by spinifex and saltbush.
Two square brick barbecues were set beneath a tall sparse-leafed ghost gum, along with three wooden tables and benches. There
was a metal trash bin, empty aside from a jumble of broken brown and green glass in the bottom—the remnants of beer bottles
smashed in alcoholic carelessness.

The baking plains around appeared lifeless, but during the hour India was there she saw a variety of desert birds and lizards,
and two hopping mice. Tracks abounded in the sand: dingoes, kangaroos, the feathery brush strokes of snakes.

It was a good meeting place; well off the road and easy to find, and difficult for an interloper to intrude upon. You’d see
their vehicle for miles. However, the atmosphere was deceptive and she found it hard to believe that pretty much where she
stood, beside the police tape strung between some bushes, two people had been violently murdered.

In the heat of midday, India paused at the BP garage to buy a cheese and tomato sandwich and a bottle of mineral water. She
toured the streets in the faint hope of finding a public phone in a quiet street where people wouldn’t see her. After ten
minutes of driving around she gave an exasperated groan, dithered briefly, then headed for the Royal Hotel.

When she entered the bar, she saw to her relief that Red-cap and his cronies weren’t there. Aside from a weather-beaten old
man at the far end, glued to the wide-screen TV bracketed to the wall, there were just two women drinking at the horseshoe
bar. Three men were standing outside clutching schooners of beer and smoking.

The barmaid’s upper lip was beaded with moisture. She regarded India with a combination of amusement and surprise. “Well,
if it isn’t India Kane herself.”

India gave a curt nod. “Debs.”

Debs extracted a cigarette from a soft pack of Marlboros and lit it. “I think you’re maybe a little touched,” she said. “Or
have you forgotten what this town thinks of you?”

India shrugged. “I wondered if I could use your phone.”

Debs jerked her chin towards a door signed
RESTROOM
and said, “Busy at the moment. Sheryl’s ringing around for some part-time work.” She appraised India. “Have a beer while
you wait. She may be some time.”

India raised her eyebrows.

“Not all of us follow the herd,” said Debs, and signalled India over. She pulled a midi of Fosters, pushed it across the bar.
“This here’s India Kane,” she said to the other two women. Neither responded. Debs waved her cigarette at the woman farthest
from India. “That’s Roxy.” Another wave at the woman nearest. “And that’s Kerry.” They didn’t take any notice. Simply continued
staring glumly into their beers.

“Cheers.” India raised her glass before taking a long draft. She could feel the ice-cold lager slide all the way to her stomach.

“You can stuff your bloody cheers,” snapped one of the women.

India put down her beer and made to move away, but Debs motioned her to stay. “It’s nothing to do with you,” she said candidly.
“We’re usually more friendly, but we’ve had a bit of a blow.”

“No worries,” said India. For some reason this innocuous response had a galvanizing effect on Roxy.

“You stupid
cow
,” she said loudly to Debs. “If you had
half
a bloody brain …”

“Jesus, Rox, why can’t you put a sock in it?” said Debs wearily. She’d obviously heard it all before.

“But it’s your
fault
,” Roxy insisted. “If it wasn’t for you we’d all still have our jobs.”

“You call working for that mob a
job?
” responded Debs. “C’mon, we weren’t even on their payroll. Just odd bits here and there. It’s not the end of the bloody world.”

“It may not be for you but what about
us?
You didn’t give us a choice, did you? Christ, Debs, you
knew
the rules. They’re practically embossed in our bloody contracts and you went and bloody broke them.”

Debs heaved her bulky arms off the counter, raised her head high. The atmosphere was suddenly strung tight as piano wire.

“All you had to do was say sorry,” Roxy went on, “it won’t happen again. That’s
all
. But you couldn’t bring yourself to do it, could you? Admit you were wrong. I could
kill
you.”

Debs’s lips thinned. She said, “You weren’t the one being grilled by Gordon bloody Willis. He’s unrelenting. You heard him.
Had I met with a reporter before? Why me? Why that particular week? Why did I break my contract? Was the reporter going to
pay me? What questions did they ask? Christ, he never stopped. How did they contact me? Had they approached anyone else?”

“I wish you’d kept your mouth shut instead of gloating,” Kerry snapped from India’s left. “Fame and fortune my bum! Dave’s
going to throttle me. He won’t get his cordless drill for Christmas. Won’t get nothing, with me penniless.”

“You let him
fire
us!” Roxy’s voice was high-pitched and trembling with rage. “Just because we were at school together you thought we’d back
you up, carry the blame equally …” She ran on and on.

India had stopped listening. Her brain had latched on to the word “reporter” and she stood motionless, staring outside. A
small tan dog trotted past the hotel door. One of the men lashed out a foot and caught it in its muzzle. The dog yelped, ran
off. One of the men came in to use the Gents’. By the time he went back outside, Roxy had finally ground to a halt.

“What work did you do?” India asked Debs after a while.

“Tested products for Karamyde Cosmetics.” She gave a bitter smile. “I liked being on the cutting edge of scientific innovation.”

“I liked the extra cash,” said Kerry, sounding more resigned than angry. “Easiest money I’ve ever made was lying facedown
for ten minutes. I got two hundred for that. Bet even the hottest lawyers in Melbourne don’t charge as much.”

India asked the question with raised eyebrows.

“Punch biopsy,” Kerry supplied. “We call it the cookie-cutter test. They rotate a circular razor blade through your skin and
pull a plug of flesh out.”

“You’re human guinea pigs?” India said, startled. The mention of a reporter had tipped her off immediately and the more she
heard about it, the more Karamyde Cosmetics sounded just Lauren’s type of story. If she could only work out how a man called
Bertie Mullett and Geraldine Child, a Sydney doctor, came into it, she could be on her way to solving the mystery of her friend’s
death.

“Got it in one. What with the animal libs and all, they daren’t test anything on animals.”

“And this reporter?” India looked at Debs. “What did they want?”

She tapped her cigarette against a blue Foster’s ashtray. “A story for some women’s magazine. How housewives can make some
extra money. You know, outline what we get paid, what we’re prepared to do.”

“Did you meet them?”

“No. Just talked on the phone. She sounded nice—”

“Jesus, Debs! How could you do it!” Roxy was off again and India tuned out. The three men came in to buy another round of
beer. One of them stared at India, whispered something to his mates. They stood there looking indecisive, and whispered some
more. She pushed her beer aside and hastily walked outside.

The sun pounded down, and a dust devil swirled down the road, picking up crisp packets and cigarette ends from the gutter
and discarding them on the pavement. She turned right and headed for the post office. She passed a fair-haired man with a
carton of Victoria Bitter on his shoulder and a woman in a tight singlet that outlined her jelly-tot-shaped nipples. The post
office was shut for lunch, so India ducked into the newsagent next door, which was a cavern of wooden shelves lined with glass
bottles filled with a variety of fluorescent-colored boiled sweets.

“Do you have a phone I could use?” she asked the wizened man behind the counter. He was stacking packets of Silk Cut on the
shelf and didn’t turn around.

“Post office next door does,” he replied.

There was a postcard stand next to the till. India rotated it slowly. Pictures of desert, trees and desert, dilapidated if
picturesque farmhouse ruins in desert, sky and desert.

“Do you get many tourists here?” she asked.

“Well, people who venture this far are usually heading for Sturt National Park,” the man replied. “But most often they go
via Tibooburra and if they do come this way, they don’t stop for long.”

“How come the postcards?”

He half turned his head towards her, then back to the Silk Cut. “There’s lots of people who’ve moved here to work for a factory
just out of town. They like sending a picture of what it’s like back home.”

“Karamyde Cosmetics?”

“Oh, you’ve heard of it. Mighty big company all up, I’m told.”

“Seems a weird place to set up a cosmetics industry.”

“We’re glad of it,” the man said, looking at her fully for the first time. He frowned, but continued. “Tripled my business
the second it opened and now we’re the capital of the Corner Country. Even have our own courthouse and such.” He looked proud.

Some capital
, India thought as she let the fly screen bang behind her, where you can’t even find a phone. She walked along the uneven
concrete pavement towards the police station. It was incredibly hot but her skin was dry; any moisture evaporated the instant
it slid from her pores, giving her the illusion that she wasn’t sweating. India wondered that everything was so parched and
barren but still people managed to make a living. When the rain came here, it was in quick bursts, flooding the countryside
overnight and then leaving it drought-ridden until the next deluge, sometimes not for years. It was a land of harshness, a
land of extremes; drought or flood, life or death.

She made the first of her daily visits to the Cooinda Police Station, checking in with Donna, then headed back for the VW.
She started the car and drove to Whitelaw’s. After all, he was at work and would never know she’d snuck back to make a few
calls from the comfort of his own home.

When she pulled up the car, Whitelaw’s neighbor came over to take a look. He was thick-bodied and wore a string vest, and
his upper arms were covered with tattooed dragons. She felt his eyes slide over her as she climbed out, probing at her clothes,
under her shirt and over her breasts.

“You staying here?” he said.

India grabbed her bag and headed for the side of the house without looking at him.

“Mind your own business,” she said.

“That’s not very neighborly.”

India spoke to him over her shoulder. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m not the neighborly type.”

He grinned and stretched, scratching a hairy armpit with a hand the size of a hubcap. There was a greedy look on his face.

W
HITELAW’S BACK DOOR WAS OPEN, NO KEY NEEDED. SHE
walked into the kitchen, picked up the phone. Dialled directory enquiries. Asked for a list of Tremains in the area.

“We’ve an R. Tremain in Cooinda,” the woman said.

“Is that it?”

“Looks like it.”

“Could you try Milparinka or Tibooburra for me?” She heard the woman tapping on a keyboard.

“No Tremains in either place, sorry.”

“Broken Hill?”

More taps. “I’ve a Treeman.”

“Could you try Bourke for me?”

The woman sighed. “I really can’t do this all day, love.”

India hung up. How was she going to find this elusive grandfather of hers? Lauren had said she’d found him by accident. Would
India do the same? Right this instant, she didn’t honestly care. She felt utterly drained of all energy, mental and physical.
She recalled experiencing the same dazed feeling when her mother died, but it was an echo by comparison. Today she could barely
stand. She decided to call Jerome later about the man who’d paid her bail and stumbled into the bedroom. She’d move to the
sofa later but not now when the house was empty, the bed so soft and comfortable. India stripped off her boots and jeans and
crawled into bed. She tried to weep, but she was beyond tears. She lay curled beneath a strange man’s sheets in a strange
room, thinking only of Lauren and replaying her strident and infectious laughter.