Darkening Skies (31 page)

His eyes shot open again, and he tried to grasp the wisps of memory. Jenn – yes he remembered that day in the shearers’ kitchen. Sammy – much loved, long gone, his marker a cairn of stones and a painted tile. The scrunchie, in the room in the shearers’ quarters he’d set up as a study and bolthole. The old camp bed he lay on while reading and listening to music, the desk with his books.

He could see himself standing there, holding the scrunchie, puzzling over its presence. It took a moment to pin the memory down. In those first few days home from the hospital, his brain
was still healing from the injury and sometimes foggy, making it harder to come to terms with Paula’s death, with the gaping hole in his memory, with Jenn’s absence and with the news that he’d become Paula’s boyfriend. A scrunchie from a girl’s hair caught up in the rumpled blanket? The only conclusion to draw at the time was that he’d lost his sense and maybe even his virginity with Paula in those days he couldn’t remember.

But Jenn remembered those days, and the only girl he’d ever dreamed about sleeping with, making love with back then, was her. Paula had never featured in his youthful fantasies, and he doubted he’d ever featured in hers.

Whereas Jenn … Jenn still featured in his dreams. Every few months through all those years, he’d woken in the night, having dreamed of her in his bed, in his arms, in his life. There’d been other women every now and then, even a couple of relationships, but he’d never dreamed of those women the way he dreamed of Jenn.

He turned over and tried to relax the tension in his body. All this time he’d told himself that he’d dreamed of Jenn because he saw her name in the newspapers, her face on the television. That was all.

He must have slept, because he woke suddenly in the first light of dawn to a car’s engine revving in the street, a fast brake, and the dogs on the veranda barking in warning.

Steve swore, car doors slammed outside and footsteps sounded on the veranda steps, Dash barking loudly, Maggie growling.

Alert and wary, Mark rolled off the air mattress and pushed to his feet as someone knocked hard and repeatedly on the front door.

‘Officer, please,
it is urgent. Please open.’

Kris hurried past and joined Steve near the front door as Jenn came out of the bedroom. Mark gently pushed her back, out of the line of sight of the door. Gil came and stood beside them.

Kris checked through the spyhole and nodded at Steve. ‘It’s okay. It’s a couple of tourists I’ve met.’

The young couple stood on the doorstep, dishevelled and tense. The young man spoke first, his English accented with a soft Scandinavian lilt. ‘Officers, there is a murder. A man shot. At Ghost Hill campground. Two hours ago, but we hid, could not come earlier. There was a car, and shouting, and then the gunshots. The killers did not leave straightaway, so we waited in hiding. When they did, we went to help the man – but he was dead. We did not touch, we left him, came straight here, but see this.’ The young man passed his phone to Steve. ‘I took his photo. We do not know his name, but perhaps you know him?’

Steve looked hard at the phone image, then passed it to Kris. Mark saw her frown, studying it for a moment before looking back at him. ‘Mark, you remember faces well.’ She handed him the phone.

In death, the man’s face was slack, sightless eyes staring up beneath sparse grey hair, jowls fat around his neck. In his sixties perhaps, or older. Mark tried to imagine the face with movement and life, and recognition crystallised.

Mark handed the phone to Gil. ‘Yes, I know who that is.’

Gil glanced at the image and nodded.

‘Please, wait here for just a moment,’ Kris said to the tourist couple. ‘I’ll take you through to the station shortly to get the details from you.’

She half-shut the
door and the five of them gathered in the kitchen, all eyes on Mark and Gil.

‘Okay, so who is it?’ Steve asked.

‘It’s Bill Franklin,’ Mark said. ‘The old sergeant.’ The man who’d framed Gil and written a false accident report. At the very least.

Gil said nothing, his dark eyes narrowed.

‘The Northern Territory coppers thought he was dead,’ Steve said.

Mark thrust his hands into his jeans pocket and leaned on the kitchen table. ‘He is now. He had a lot to lose with the reopened investigation. That might be why he was here. But the big question is: who killed him?’

After the abrupt awakening the morning crawled by in uncertainty and restlessness, waiting for news. There was no chance to find a few minutes alone with Mark; the tourists had to be calmed and were invited for breakfast, and then Leah Haddad arrived with her team in quick response to Steve’s call, and the small station overflowed with police and forensic officers.

Jenn had to admire the detective’s focus. Leah held a quick briefing with Steve and Kris and despatched them to the scene, then interviewed the young couple, called Mark in for some questions and background information and within a very short time was ready to head out to the campground. Before she left she joined Jenn in the kitchen, a young constable behind her.

‘I’ve asked Mark to come with us, because he knows that area well,’ she said. ‘So, Constable Riordan will stay with you
for now.’ She paused for a second, hesitation that might have been uncertainty. ‘I have a favour to ask you, Jenn. Our media team is flat-out with something else, and the regional media officer has appendicitis – and I need to get a media statement out covering yesterday and this morning. You’d know the kind of thing well – could you possibly draft something up if you have the time? I’d be very grateful.’

Jenn had the time. She had hours to fill, stuck in the cottage with the young probationary constable, who took her duties so seriously that she followed Jenn from room to room. The media statement – how many thousands of these had she read during her career? – took only a short time, bland facts and standard declarations of resources allocated to the continuing investigations and the Crime Stoppers contact number for anyone with information.

She collected the page from the printer in the bedroom and handed it to the constable, Tenita, standing in the doorway.

‘Tell me what you think,’ she said, not because she needed any reassurance herself, but because the young woman seemed as bored and restless as she was.

Jenn then sat back down at her computer and opened a new document. She should write something. Something other than a bland media statement. She was a journalist in the middle of a series of crimes in a town she’d once known and she should record …

Record what? Events? She’d done that, in the single page Tenita was reading. Distant, objective statements of fact, circumstance and intentions. Easy.

She rested
her fingers on the keyboard. Could she stand back enough from herself to observe realities and impacts? She had no plans to report anything for now – in fact, avoiding the media was her preference – but maybe there could be a feature article down the track. The effect on a small community. The experience of being caught up in crime after crime. Someone she cared about threatened.

Any number of potential angles came to her. But the page remained empty.

Steve returned several hours later.

‘I dropped Mark at Ward’s store,’ he said, propping against the kitchen bench, more relaxed than he’d been earlier. ‘He’s getting some supplies for Marrayin. He’s worried about things being neglected out there and wants to get back.’

‘But—’ Jenn glanced at Tenita. ‘Is there someone with him?’

‘Nope. Good news is, the vic’s definitely Franklin. Our Danish friends said he was already camping out there when they arrived yesterday morning. And the portable scanner confirmed that his fingerprints are a match to the ones on Mark’s gate on Friday, and yesterday’s explosives tape.’

Jenn pushed aside her laptop as relief and worry battled for dominance. ‘Franklin tried to kill him?’

‘That’s what the evidence says. Oh, and the man’s a fool. Any cop – hell, any crim – worth their salt knows that if you’re going to stand on a damp garden in boots with a distinctive print while garrotting a man, you should toss those boots and get a new pair.’

A fool? Or
a man panicking? ‘So, he tried to get the report on Friday and failed, silenced Doc Russell on Saturday, and since Mark was away from home on Saturday night he wired his car?’

‘That all fits. There’s nothing yet to connect him with the attack in Birraga, but I’m still not convinced that was a murder attempt.’ Steve grabbed a glass from the drainer and filled it with water. ‘Anyway, Mark’s prepared to take the risk and wants to look after things at his place.’

‘Do you know yet who shot Franklin?’ He couldn’t. Not so soon. So, there was still a murderer out there.

‘It wasn’t Dan Flanagan. He was in Birraga hospital all night with angina, so he’s in the clear. Again.’ He gulped a few mouthfuls of water. ‘Look, I know what you’re thinking. But I can tell you that Franklin – his death was execution-style. His prints may well be linked to a drug seizure a while back. He has to have been living off the grid, so to speak, and drug running would make sense. But if you piss off the wrong people in that game, there’s no need for a pension fund.’

‘So, you don’t think it’s connected?’

His mouth curved into a small grin. ‘Oh, all things are connected, Grasshopper, in one way or another. And I may be spectacularly wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time. I can still argue a case for protection for you. That’s up to you.’

Another day holed up inside? ‘No. Thank you. There are some things I need to do.’

He smiled, and this time it wasn’t a cheeky grin but a warm smile of friendship. ‘Mark said to ask you if you could give him and the dogs a lift to Marrayin. If you want to. Otherwise he’ll call Karl and hitch a ride with him.’

If she
wanted to? She had plenty of unanswered questions, but that wasn’t one of them. Although the answer frightened her. She and Mark were a team, she reasoned, actively searching for the truth, and when they found it she could leave Dungirri with her heart intact. Mostly.

The sun hot on her skin, she walked the block down the main street to Ward’s Rural Supplies, the first in the row of century-old shops, the rest of them empty. She pushed the door open, an electric buzzer sounding instead of the jingle of bells she expected. That had changed. Little else seemed to have altered. Tools, stock tags, marking rings, ropes and other supplies on the first few shelves; drenches, weed killers and other chemicals beyond, and deeper into the store stacks of dog food, rolls of wire, fence strainers and star posts.

There was less stock now than there used to be, and instead of Joe Ward, a young woman rang up the stack of items on the counter.

‘On the account, Mark?’ she asked, casting a quick, curious smile at Jenn.

Mark’s smile lasted a good second longer but he gave his attention back to the woman and answered, ‘Yes, thanks, Mel. Do you remember Jenn Barrett?’

Mel
. She had to be Melinda Ward. Not six years old anymore. Tall and capable in jeans and a cotton drill shirt, with strong hands that had probably hefted many a twenty-kilo bag of feed.

‘Hi, Mel,’ she greeted her politely. But reluctant to get bogged in conversation with the woman when she’d scarcely remembered the child, she turned to Mark. ‘I’ll go and get the car from the pub. Won’t be long.’

The empty
shopfronts she walked past each evoked memories. The bakery and milk bar. The barber’s shop. The butcher’s shop. All gone, and only George and Eleni’s corner store across from the pub providing groceries now.

If Dungirri lost the pub, the town would die.

She left her gear in her room, and was upstairs for only a few minutes, but when she came down she found the local police constable, out of uniform, standing near her car. She’d seen him at the Russells’ on Saturday morning and out at Wolfgang’s yesterday. A young Indigenous man with a serious attitude and an easy manner with his colleagues. Adam, she’d heard him called.

‘Hi. Steve just phoned, asked me to check your car before you drive it. Can’t see any signs of interference around or under it but let’s be sure, hey? You wanna pop the bonnet?’