Darkening Skies (12 page)

‘Are you sure you’re okay, Jenn?’ he asked as she turned to go inside. ‘I’d be happier if you were assessed properly, in case of concussion.’

‘I’m fine,’ she insisted. ‘I promise, if I get a bad headache or start feeling woozy I’ll let someone know.’

He didn’t like it, judging by his frown, but he didn’t argue. ‘I should be back in an hour,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll take you to collect your car.’

Inside, the breakfast buffet was still laid out in the bistro, the only guests
a couple of young tourists so absorbed in each other they scarcely glanced up when she entered. They must have been in room three. Scandinavian, by the sound of their accents and blond looks. Young and in love and travelling the world, and as oblivious as the dogs to the violence and murder outside. They didn’t notice her blood-stained T-shirt.

The rich aroma of freshly brewed coffee hit her nostrils and almost, but not quite, overpowered the smell of blood and antiseptic clinging to her skin and clothes. The thought of food didn’t tempt her, but the caffeine craving kicked in and she longed for some kind of normality and comfort. Just as soon as she’d cleaned up.

In the solitude of her room her composure wavered, but she caught the beginnings of self-pitying thoughts and stopped them. She would
not
let Mick, a miserable failure of a man, determine her emotional state. No way in hell. Now the initial shock of their confrontation had passed she’d square her shoulders, ignore the bastard, and get on with achieving her objectives.

In the bathroom, she dragged the bloodied T-shirt over her head and dumped it in the bin. A quick wash, a fresh T-shirt and assertive thinking restored her sense of self and purpose, and she gave her reflection in the mirror an affirming nod. Mick might have bruised her face but that would heal quickly enough, and he couldn’t touch the core of who she was.

As she made her way down the staircase, she could see in the hallway the young barman
from last night talking with the Scandinavian tourists. Liam, Mark had called him. He indicated something on the map they’d spread out, his easy courtesy and helpfulness drawing warm smiles from the couple. Their conversation finished as she reached the bottom of the stairs, and the couple passed her to go upstairs. Liam greeted her cheerfully and followed her into the bistro, busying himself clearing their table.

She heaped several spoonfuls of coffee grounds into a plunger. ‘I didn’t think Dungirri had anything to offer tourists,’ she commented to Liam. ‘Were you showing them the thirty-second tour, or the way out of town?’

He shook his head good-naturedly. ‘Oh, there’s plenty of potential for eco-tourism here. They’re interested in wildlife, birds in particular, and asked where to camp. I suggested the Ghost Hill campground.’

‘There’s a campground there now?’

‘Yes. Near the river. Birraga Council has just finished it. Water tanks, outdoor kitchen and composting loos.’

‘And mosquitos and deadly snakes,’ she added dryly. And memories. A popular camping spot for the local teenagers – without facilities, back then – she’d camped there numerous times, with Mark and Paula, with Jim’s boys, sometimes with a crowd of local kids. Brief escapes for her and Paula from the depressing, sullen atmosphere of their home, and for Jenn reminders of better times, camping with her parents on their infrequent leave together from her father’s army duties.

But none of those memories was relevant to here and now.

She carried her coffee mug and a bowl of fruit and yoghurt out to the courtyard, and found Gil Gillespie sitting at a table, his laptop in front of him and one hand around a large mug. An old, spreading kurrajong tree cast dappled
light and shade over his face, so that she couldn’t read his expression clearly as he watched her approach, but the four-cup coffee plunger beside him was almost empty. Without asking permission she sat on the bench seat opposite him.

If she’d been the easily intimidated type, his scowl would have done it, but she doubted that the lover of the local police sergeant posed any serious threat.

‘I’d say good morning,’ she began, ‘but that’s a debatable statement. Especially for the Russells.’

‘Yes,’ he said slowly, taking a long look at her face. ‘You been walking into doors?’

The bruises must be coming up. Great. ‘Not a door. My uncle. For an alcoholic, he has a mean right hook.’

‘Yeah. He does. Seems to be a Barrett speciality.’

‘It’s a deficit in the Y chromosome.’ She bit her tongue as soon as the words left her mouth. He had every reason to mistrust, even hate her family, given his encounter with Mick, Jim and the boys when he’d first returned to town, days before Sean had tied him to a chair and gone at him with a metal pipe. His experiences with the Barretts called for something more than flippancy. ‘Gillespie, I’m not proud of what they did. As for Sean … I can’t comprehend how he …’ With the shock and pain of Mick’s attack still reverberating, the horror of her cousin’s brutal actions constricted her throat and her words faltered. ‘I’m sorry …’

‘You didn’t do it,’ Gillespie interrupted bluntly. ‘You weren’t there. Sean’s crimes are his responsibility, not yours or Paul’s or Jim’s.’

Despite the harshness of his voice, his generosity of spirit, if not forgiveness, surprised her. She pushed the peach slices around in her
bowl, searching for the right words.

‘You must regret ever coming back to Dungirri.’

He shrugged. ‘I came back to pay a debt. Found more than I expected.’

The police sergeant. And the dark-haired girl on the back of the bike.

‘The girl – your …’ She still couldn’t get her head around that. ‘Barb’s daughter – is she close to her grandparents?’

‘Megan’s fond of them. She’s made the relationship work, despite difficult circumstances.’

And clearly she had made her father proud. Beneath his hard-edged, taciturn manner she began to suspect a soft heart lurked. Well beneath.

But contemplating Gillespie’s complexities wouldn’t get the answers she needed to the questions raised in the past two days.

‘Doctor Russell’s death – do you think it’s connected to the accident and Mark’s announcement?’

His face closed and he studied the laptop screen, hitting a couple of keys. ‘No comment.’

‘Jesus, Gillespie, I’m not interviewing you.’ Frustration rushed the words. ‘This isn’t about a story. It’s about my cousin’s death. And perhaps Jim’s. You’re the only witness to the accident and I need to know what really happened.’

He considered for a long moment before he answered. ‘I was hitching on the Birraga road. Mark gave me a ride. I’d fought with the old man for the last time and walked out for
good, so I wasn’t in any mood to be sociable. Paula had a bottle of something and offered it around, but neither of us had any. I saw nothing to suggest that Mark had been drinking. I was in the back seat with my eyes closed, when all of a sudden Mark swore, the car swerved, Paula screamed, and then we hit the tree. That’s it. That’s what happened.’

Paula screamed.
Simple, stark words, and she could
see
Paula’s face transformed in terror. ‘Did she … was it quick?’

‘Yeah. I don’t know what they told you. A low broken branch came straight through the windscreen. I tried … I hardly knew what I was doing, but I did try. Although I think she was gone the instant the branch hit her.’

There was more information in those few sentences than anyone had ever told her, and tears flooded her eyes. Embarrassed, she dragged the back of her hands against them, and struggled to find her voice.

‘Thank you.’ Not enough, for what he’d tried to do. For the horror he’d faced, young and alone in the night. In the hardened, mature man across from her she could see reminders of the too-wary boy he’d been, a solitary youth who’d had to deal with the shock of death and injury – and the subsequent events that changed his life forever.

She struggled to pull her thoughts together, to pull herself back on track. ‘You said last night that the only crime was what happened after the accident. What did you mean by that?’

‘Off the record?’

‘Yes. You have my word on it.’

‘Falsification of evidence, intimidation of witnesses, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.’ There was nothing
soft in the anger glittering in his eyes, and his clipped phrases contrasted with the marginally gentler tone in which he’d described the accident.

‘Intimidation? Is that why you lied? Why you said you were driving?’

‘I didn’t say it. The old sarge assumed that I was driving to start with, then he decided to stick with that.’

‘But you pleaded guilty. Why?’

‘Well, it wasn’t because I wanted to go to prison.’ As dry as a desert, he wasn’t making it easy for her.

‘Were you protecting someone?’ she persisted. ‘Were you protecting Mark?’

‘Mark? No. He’s always been a decent bloke, but I wouldn’t have gone to jail for him.’

‘Then who? Was there someone else in the car?’

‘There was no-one else in the car. Listen, I’m not going into detail now. Let’s just say that I was only a kid, powerless, and I’d made enemies. Threats were made against someone who mattered, and I had good reason to believe they’d be carried out unless I complied. I’ve told Fraser that, and—’ He waved a hand at the laptop. ‘It’s all in the statement I’ve just sent to him.’

The statement he wouldn’t let her see, probably for the same reasons Mark had given her. But she refused to be dismissed. ‘Who made the threats?’ she pushed. ‘The old sergeant?’ She dug in her memory for the name of the arrogant, bigoted cop who’d picked on the easy targets to make himself a big man. ‘Franklin, wasn’t it? Bill Franklin?’

He snorted. ‘If it had only been Franklin, I could have had him charged for wrongful arrest and police brutality. But he was
only ever a tool, way out of his depth.’

‘So, who was behind it?’

She wanted to hear Dan Flanagan’s name, but Gillespie kept his guard up.

‘I’ve got no proof of who was behind it. Or why. Threats were delivered by messengers. Things were insinuated, not stated outright. What I believe and what I can prove are two different things.’

We’ve had our own tangled web of organised crime around here for a long time …
Mark’s words from earlier this morning added substance to Gillespie’s near-cryptic comments, and made her wonder what the hell had been going on in the district, what Gillespie had been caught up in, while she’d been absorbed in preparing to escape the place.

‘You said you’d made enemies. Dan Flanagan, right? How?’

‘Back then I collected some information. Used it to …
dissuade
Flanagan from sending his thugs to collect protection money from Jeanie Menotti’s business. Not anything that would have stood up in court, but enough to damage his business if I’d been able to get it to an uncorrupt cop.’

Jeanie Menotti’s Truck Stop Café, where Gil had worked part-time as a teen. Burned out back in September. She’d bet it was Jeanie he’d been protecting, that he’d gone to jail to keep her safe.

His phone beeped and he glanced at the message, closed his laptop and tipped the thick dregs from his coffee mug on to the adjacent garden.

She had seconds before he
walked away and not enough answers. ‘I read that Dan Flanagan’s sons were arrested with Sean and the Sydney mafia guy – Sergio Russo, wasn’t it? But I don’t understand how the Flanagans are connected to organised crime, now or then, or why the Sydney mob came here.’

‘Vanna Flanagan. Dan’s wife. She’s the connection. Her maiden name was Russo.’ He rose to his feet, tucked the laptop under his arm, picked up the coffee mug and plunger. ‘And I pissed off one of the Russos in Sydney. They wanted payback, and the Flanagans were happy to help.’

With no farewell he left her, walking back into the pub through the bistro door.

She swallowed some of her own cooling coffee, her thoughts sprinting to round up scattered recollections. Vanna Flanagan. Tall, elegant, impeccably dressed, the owner of a chain of beauty salons across northern New South Wales – one of them next door to the
Birraga Gazette
office. Wife of Dan, a Birraga businessman with interests in many areas, and a substantial advertising account with the
Gazette
. Mother of Brian and Kevin, loud, obnoxious boys a few years older than her, arrested with Sean two months ago after the assault on Gillespie.

A year on the crime desk of a Sydney newspaper early in her career meant she knew of the Russo family. Whispers, shadows, hints and hearsay – but nothing ever definitively connecting prominent property developer Vince Russo or his brother Gianni with the crimes of the day.

It seemed absurd that the small-town Birraga Flanagans could be
connected to the Sydney Russos. Laughable, almost. And yet … there
had
been a few whispers about Dan Flanagan when she’d hung around the
Birraga Gazette
office as a teenager. Only whispers, nothing concrete, nothing said in front of her. Certainly nothing printed. Not with his advertising dollars keeping the struggling regional paper alive.

But perhaps those whispers held substance. Perhaps there had been a shady underworld back then, capable of framing a young man and getting away with it for years.

She carried her empty dishes into the bistro and went upstairs to her room. She opened her laptop. Research. Go back to the sources, reconstruct events, piece together the connections and the relationships. Her skills and talents, the exact same approaches she took in her work could be applied to this.

But it had never mattered quite
so personally before.

The forensic team from Inverell that had been on its way to Marrayin to investigate the fire stopped first in Dungirri to assess the Russell crime scene. The senior officer, Sandy Cunningham, grilled Mark on every movement he’d made while in the Russells’ garden and house and took his fingerprints and an imprint of his boots, although the footprint in the garden had a very different tread pattern from his.

When they’d finished with him he joined Steve and Kris beside Steve’s car.

Steve was on the phone, but Kris greeted him as he approached. ‘Karl told me what happened. If Jenn’s up to a few questions, I’ll go and see her, since I can’t do anything else here.’