Dark Country (15 page)

‘None of us did. We weren’t looking for a murder weapon. There was no reason to think there might be something across the
road.’ Kris leaned back in the chair, rubbing her temples with both hands. Overtired, in pain, with too heavy a load on her
shoulders – a load that
he’d
put there – yet she pulled herself together within seconds, deciding the necessary action. ‘Adam, we’ll need to secure the
skip until Forensics can get back here. Can you go down, keep an eye on things while I call Sandy and see if he can come back
tonight? I’ll get a couple of guys from the Birraga night shift to come over as soon as they can.’

‘No worries.’ The young man’s cheerful willingness to work even longer hours impressed Gil, and he didn’t begrudge the copper’s
caution where he was concerned. Adam’s loyalty and commitment lay with Kris and the police service, and she needed as much
of that as she could get right now. ‘I’ll just go grab a torch.’

‘I’ll be down as soon as I can, Adam. I’ll call Steve Fraser, too, and let him know of the developments.’

Adam nodded and left the room, heading to the old cell-turned-storeroom, and Kris swivelled her chair round to face Gil.

‘I don’t suppose you saw anything to identify either of the people?’

‘No. Sorry.’ He wished he could say ‘yes’, give them a lead to go on, but the figures had been ghostly shadows, just hazy
movement in the poor light. Even the closest image, near the
diesel pumps, hadn’t caught any recognisable detail of the two people in the car.

‘I’ll need you to work on those lists, then, while –’

Her words were lost in a thunderous roar of sound, smashing through the quiet night outside.

‘What the …?’ She was already on her feet and out the door, Gil right behind her.

A block down the road, brilliant orange flames leapt high in the sky over Jeanie’s Truck Stop Café.

Gil bolted ahead of her towards the Truck Stop, but she wasn’t far behind him, despite dialling triple 0 on her phone as she
ran.

The building itself was ablaze, but not the fuel tanks – not yet anyway. At the Rural Fire Service shed a few doors down,
she could see lights on already, and she hoped their volunteer training dealt with the possibility of thousands of litres
of exploding fuel, because hers sure didn’t.

A few men were coming out from the hotel, two already running towards the RFS shed, and she yelled across the road, ‘Dave,
evacuate the pub – everyone out and away from here!’

Adam caught up with her, and without stopping she ordered him, ‘Evacuate a whole block on all sides. Get those on this side
down to the hall, and …’ she thought quickly, not wanting residents of the side street and beyond walking within range of
the fire and potential explosion, ‘the others over the creek and around to the hall the back way.’

‘But Jeanie …’

‘I’ll go for her.’

The west end of the café was well alight, and when she followed where Gil had disappeared around the back, she saw the external
stairs up to Jeanie’s place had been blown off, along with half of the back of the building.

It was probably the gas cylinders used for cooking that had exploded, but she’d worry about the how and why later. Right now,
Gil was climbing up the remains of the stair post, despite the flames eating at the old wooden building only a metre or two
away, and the thick smoke swirling around them.

If Jeanie was in her place – and where else could she be? – then they had only minutes to get her out. It would take the volunteer
RFS crew longer than that to get to the truck shed and gear themselves up.

As Gil swung onto one of the remaining floor beams, she started up after him, but he saw her and waved a hand towards the
old cabin. Above the roar of the fire she only caught some of his shouted words: ‘… ladder … there … awning at … front.’

He disappeared into the building, and with fear strangling her breath as much as the smoke, and fighting panic, Kris made
herself move through the heat and debris behind the café until she reached the cabin. Gil must have noticed the ladder earlier
– he couldn’t have seen it through the smoke.

Firelight glinting on the metal helped her find it, propped against the cabin.

It was heavy, metal and big, but adrenaline helped her drag it
around the front, skirting the fire to take it past the fuel bowsers to the side of the awning furthest from the worst flames.

In the middle of her terror for Jeanie and Gil, the stark realisation occurred to her that if the fuel tanks below her feet
blew, at least her own death would be speedy.

The ladder in place, she scrambled up it, the corrugated iron of the awning already hot from the fire’s heat, glass from Jeanie’s
large windows shattered all over it. The west end of the top floor was burning now – Jeanie’s kitchen and bathroom. Kris climbed
through the bedroom window at the other end shouting Gil’s name, Jeanie’s name, and coughing at the effort. In the smoke and
the heat and the hellish whirling light, half her instincts screamed at her to get out of there. The other half drove her
out of that room and into the living area, desperate to find Jeanie … and Gil.

Eyes and throat burning, she couldn’t speak when Gil lurched from the kitchen, Jeanie’s limp body in his arms, the garish
light showing her white hair dark with blood. Coughs wracking his body, Gil stumbled, falling to one knee. Her own legs barely
working, Kris pushed past him, slamming the door shut against the flames. With the wallpaper already curling on one wall,
and the carpet smoking in the corner, she knew the closed door would only give them a few seconds advantage.

Gil was already struggling to his feet, and with one arm around him, she took some of Jeanie’s weight. An upturned table blocked
the window, so together they stumbled to the bedroom, and she kicked the door shut behind them.

‘You first,’ he croaked, nodding at the glassless window. ‘I’ll pass her.’

Jeanie weighed less than she did, but with oxygen-starved lungs it was a struggle to hold her when Gil handed her through
the window. Her knees buckled, taking her down. At the same moment the back of the bedroom wall erupted in flames, Gil disappeared
from her view and trapped, holding Jeanie, she could do nothing but shout his name.

She dragged Jeanie back a few metres towards the ladder, and then Gil was there again in the garish light, tucking something
inside his jacket, clambering over the window frame, and insanely she wanted to cry and rage at him for scaring her.

He lifted Jeanie in his arms as Kris crawled the last metre to the ladder.

‘Go.’ He gave her a small nudge with his foot.

Somehow she made it onto the ladder without falling, concentrating hard to get each foot onto one rung, then the next, feeling
the ladder shudder as Gil moved onto it above her. And then yellow-clad arms folded around her, and Paul Barrett’s voice said
near her ear, ‘Nearly there,’ as he steadied her, and lifted her down the last rungs, then Karl Sauer in his orange SES overalls
moved in to take Jeanie from Gil.

Her eyes burned so much she could hardly see, but she knew the body holding her upright as she coughed was Gil, his own breathing
as ragged as hers.

‘We need to get out of here, Sarge,’ Karl said. ‘Can you make it as far as Ward’s?’

She nodded, and with Gil beside her, she pushed her heavy legs one step at a time away from the fire, following Karl hurrying
down the road with Jeanie.

She didn’t know if Jeanie was alive or dead, and that frightened her more than being in the midst of the heat and flame.

How could she bear to lose Jeanie? And how would Dungirri survive, if Jeanie died?

Gil felt like an old man, shambling up the road; the effects of the smoke seemed to be paralysing his muscles as well as his
lungs, the effort to keep moving as great as if he carried a huge cement block instead of supporting one slightly built policewoman.

He’d never in his life experienced fear as strong as the dread that had gripped him when she’d appeared in the burning building.
Seeing the car accelerating towards her earlier in the evening had been bad enough, but that had been over in a few moments.
In the fire, the time had dragged like hours, each second endless.

Even now, she might not be all right, and Jeanie … Jeanie had to be in a bad way. The gash on her head, the lack of consciousness,
and there were burns on her legs. He’d had no choice but to get her out of there, but how much had hauling her around worsened
her injuries? He might have killed her.

Ahead of them, under the streetlight at the vacant lot beyond Ward’s Rural Supplies, Beth Wilson leapt out of an SES vehicle,
and ran to meet the guy carrying Jeanie, starting her examination even before he laid her carefully on the ground.

Gil was too far away to hear their quick exchange, but close enough to see Beth start CPR. In the ten or so seconds it took
to reach them, the man – one of the Sauer brothers, he thought
it might be – had grabbed a defibrillator out of the SES vehicle, and Beth was giving instructions to place it.

Gil held Kris back, just held her, while Beth administered the shock to Jeanie’s chest. There was noise in the distance, but
here they all kept still, hardly daring to breathe.

When Beth gave a weak smile and set the defibrillator aside, he started breathing again, and coughing.

She glanced across at them while she attached an oxygen mask to Jeanie. ‘You two, sit down somewhere. Try to breathe slowly
and deeply. We’ll take a look at you as soon as we can.’

‘Will she be okay?’ Kris asked.

‘Her heart’s beating again. That’s a good start.’

‘I should help. I’m trained …’

Beth barely spared them another glance, but her firm order wasn’t unfriendly. ‘So are Karl and I. You’ll help most by sitting
down with Gil, and letting me know if either of you develop any severe problems.’

Karl waved a hand towards a rough bench against the brick wall of the Ward’s building, and Gil pulled Kris down beside him,
relieved to be able to lean back against the wall instead of making the effort to stay upright.

They watched in the streetlight and moonlight while Beth and Karl worked with calm and efficiency on Jeanie. Funny how the
girl who’d been so shy she’d been nicknamed ‘Mouse’ now gave orders to others without hesitation.

In the distance, he could hear the motor of the fire truck pumping water and the shouts of the crew at work. If they could
keep the fire contained to the building, the fuel tanks would probably not explode, he figured. The fuel pumps would have
been turned off for the night, and that should reduce the risk. They were far enough away here, and protected by the sturdy
building if it did blow; further down, at the end of the main street, he could see the lights and the shadows of the evacuated
people, milling at the hall.

Kris and Gil sat in silence for a while, listening, watching Beth clean Jeanie’s head wound and monitor her while Karl cut
away the remains of her trousers and treated the burns on her legs. Kris’s breathing gradually eased and Gil’s, too, became
less of a struggle.

‘There won’t be anything left of the building,’ Kris said, her voice raspy but no longer gasping.

‘No.’

As if on cue, a rumble and a drawn-out crash signalled a significant collapse.

‘Oh, God.’ She sniffed, cleared her throat. ‘It’s been her home for fifty years.’

‘I know.’ It wasn’t just smoke clogging his voice. He tightened his hand around hers, and then wondered when he’d taken hold
of it.

He should untangle his fingers, let hers go, before anyone saw and made things difficult for her. He kidded himself that it
didn’t matter, that it was a normal reaction to the stress. Maybe she hadn’t noticed. Or maybe with all the chaos and trauma,
she’d forget.

‘You care for her.’

For Jeanie, Kris must have meant by her observation, but that wasn’t his brain’s first interpretation, and the words echoed
in his head as an accusation.

‘Yeah. I worked for her for a while.’ Those few words weren’t adequate, but he didn’t know how to describe what Jeanie had
come to mean to him. How she’d shown him that there was a world beyond the hell of living with his father. How sometimes,
in quiet times, they’d talked. Or rather, Jeanie had talked, and he’d listened. He realised later – years later – that in
her own way, in her stories of her marriage, her life and community, she’d been teaching him things he’d needed to learn.

He still had hold of Kris’s hand. He uncurled his fingers, reached inside his jacket, and drew out the photo of a young Jeanie
and her husband that he’d snatched from her bedside table. The light from the moon shone on the silver frame, and the couple
smiling out of it, and Kris gently took it from him.

‘This is what you went back for?’

He nodded. ‘She doesn’t have many photos of him.’

And even fewer, now. So little to be left of a man’s life. Aldo Menotti, who’d survived war and imprisonment and made a new
life in a young country and winked when he’d snuck sweets into a small boy’s hand.