Moonlight Downs (25 page)

‘Thanks for tonight, Jojo.’

‘You don’t have to thank me, Emily.’

I buried my face in his neck. ‘You’re the calm after the storm,’ I whispered.

‘After the tempest, you mean. And I don’t know that it’s over. What have you been up to?’

‘Just the usual. Poking my nose in.’

‘How unlike you. Poor old Tom told me about your shenanigans. He thought you were crazy.’

‘What do you think?’

He lay there for a moment or two, his dark eyes gazing out into the stars as they rolled through the trees. A gentle breeze drifted over us and the lantern guttered. ‘I suspect you come from a different galaxy than the rest of us. You’ll find what you’re looking for—long as you don’t get yourself killed in the process. Wouldn’t want to try and stop you, though.’

‘Good, because I’ve got another suspect to throw into the mix.’

‘Oh?’

‘Lance Massie.’

‘I see. Starting at the top and working your way down, are you?’

‘I think he might’ve fathered Flora’s child. Lincoln thought so too.’

‘Okay. Could well be. What’s that got to do with his murder?’

‘God knows, but don’t you think it’d be reasonable to try and find out if they’re linked?’

He climbed out of bed, threw a piece of wood on the fire, turned out the lantern and closed the door. His shutting-down rituals. He came back and sat in a chair next to the bed, put his feet up alongside me.

‘Emily,’ he began, ‘you’re not going to like this, but I have to say it anyway. I understand what you’re trying to do, but I think you need a rest. That look in your eyes tonight—you were totally freaked out. You’re not going to get anywhere like that. Why don’t you leave it with me for a while? I’ll ask a few questions.’

‘Maybe…’

‘You need a break. And I’ve got the ideal getaway for you.’

‘Is this where you tell me I’ve won the five-star holiday at Byron Bay?’

‘Even better. Moonlight Downs.’

‘Moonlight!’ I raised myself up onto an elbow. ‘Don’t know if they want to know about me out at Moonlight right now.’

‘I bumped into Winnie and the kids on the road today; they were hitching a ride back into town with the Jalyukurru water works team.’

‘Clive James?’

‘That’s right. It’s just Hazel and the old folks out there right now, and Winnie kind of hinted that Hazel’s starting to pine for you.’

‘Hazel pining for me? That’ll be the day.’

But I was pleased; I’d been pining for her as well. It was, I had to admit, the reason I’d hung her wind-chime out on my veranda. The trip also offered an opportunity to combine pleasure with business: I’d drop in and visit a little Polish winemaker while I was in the neighbourhood, see what he had to say about his meeting with Marsh and Massie.

‘So what do you reckon?’ he asked.

‘I reckon,’ I paused, reached out, drew him into the bed, slipped him out of his shirt, found his left nipple with my teeth and finished the sentence with a flurry of nibbles and kisses that covered the length and breadth of his body, ‘that—we—might not be— seeing—each other—for a while—so we might as well—enjoy ourselves—while we can.’

A canopy of leaves and light

THE NEXT morning he drove me back to the flat. I rolled up my swag and threw it into my ute, grabbed my hat and bag, gave him a kiss. He stood by his car, arms folded, and watched me as I drove away.

‘See you in a few days, Jojo,’ I called back at him. I picked up a few supplies at the store, then headed out onto the northern highway.

It was late morning when I pulled into Bickie’s—into Bickie’s what? I wondered, looking at it. Too upmarket to be called a camp, but hardly a station. His oasis, perhaps. Twenty acres of trellises and green light, a stone house set alongside the powder-dry Stark River bed. The corrugated-iron shed between the house and the vineyard was presumably where Bickie made his wine.

For the moment I had the place to myself, and I took the opportunity for a bit of a poke around. If Rotenstok had a theme it was water: the name, I recalled, meant ‘red river’ in some dialect of Polish. A nostalgic gesture once, perhaps, but there was water now a-plenty. A bronze fountain studded with blue glass gushed among water pipes and windmills, a man-made stream trickled through rock pools and green plants. Even the shack looked like it had grown out of an upturned water tank.

A little to the east, close to the river and under a tree, was a grave with a single word chiselled into the headstone: Alicja. Another of Jack’s stories came floating up from the past. The tale of an immigrant couple, newly arrived and lost in the desert, of the young wife who’d done a perish and the husband who’d refused to abandon her.

And who’d built, I realised, a kind of outback Taj Mahal.

I heard the sound of an approaching vehicle, and watched as a white Falcon ute came trundling in from the vines. The driver looked at me briefly, then climbed out and stretched his back.

He didn’t look much older. Then again, nobody could have looked much older. He’d shrunk, though. Either that or he was wearing a bigger hat.

The only other change was a huge pair of sunglasses: they made him look like an albino blowie. Presumably the sun was troubling his ageing Polish eyes.

‘Hello, Bickie,’ I said as he came walking towards me with a load of hoses and tools in his arms. He nodded, dumped them at the shed, climbed out of his glasses and studied me, a finger curled round his chin. There wasn’t much of him, but what there was was crackling with an energy that suggested he’d be powering on until the day he dropped.

Recognition dawned slowly, but dawn it did—more than it would have done had our positions been reversed. ‘But you’ll have to give me a Christian name…’

‘Emily.’

‘Tempest,’ he nodded, his voice as deep and cracked as the ravine that split the hills above us. He looked promisingly pleased to see me.

‘Hell of a memory you’ve got there, Bickie. Reckon I was about ten when you last laid eyes on me.’

‘Ach…but it’s the eyes I don’t forget. Such intensity. I remember you sitting on the back of your father’s motorcar, watching like a little bush rat as I felt for water. And did I not see you afterwards, with a length of wire in your own hands?’

‘Never found anything, though.’

‘Perhaps you found things more elusive than water. You’ve grown up as small and beautiful as your father is big and ugly.’

‘He sends his regards to you too.’ Which wasn’t that far from the truth. I’d given Jack a call from the Resurrection Roadhouse, got a few directions, made sure Bickie was still alive and picking.

Twenty minutes later we were relaxing on the veranda, a glass of rough red in the hand, a slab of cheese and a loaf of rye bread on the table. The Dry was coming to a close, the sun was gathering strength, but here, under this tranquil canopy of leaves and green light, all was coolth. I’d given him the bowdlerised version of my life since Moonlight, he’d given me the biography of his vineyard.

‘So, Emily,’ he said, stretching out what there was of his skinny little legs to stretch, ‘much as I hate to sound like Jesus at the wedding—what’s it to be? Water or wine?’

I looked at him blankly.

‘Most people come here for one or the other,’ he elaborated. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?’

I held my glass up to the light, studied the refracted images that came swimming through its curves. I didn’t actually go for wine that much. To my uneducated palate it tasted like Deep Heat, but the artistry that had gone into its making somehow inspired trust in the artist.

‘It’s information I’m after, Bickie.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Information?’

‘Little while ago, you did some work for Earl Marsh.’

The eyebrows stayed aloft.

‘Manager of Carbine,’ I prompted him.

‘Ye-es. I know who he is. He came out here with his friend. The government man. Mr…’

‘Massie. And you met Lincoln Flinders as well?’

He hesitated. ‘Ye-es, we did.’

‘Would you mind telling me what the meeting was about, Bickie?’

He’d pulled out a pipe, a beautiful briar, many times repaired. He fired it up, his cheeks full of wind and his eyes full of questions. The first of which was a cautious ‘Why do you wish to know?’

I stood up and leaned against the railing. A mottled shadow shot across the open ground. I looked up as a flock of budgies came swerving in, tilted, wheeled and disappeared. Drawn to the water. I rolled a smoke, gazed up into the scarlet hills that brooded over us like an imminent storm. Who else had I seen gazing up into those hills of late?

Lincoln, of course, the day we ran into Blakie. Who was still out there somewhere. I thought of him moving over those stony slopes, his nostrils flared, his eyes full of god-knows-what. Blakie the barking mad. Was I barking up the wrong tree myself?

I told Bickie about my suspicions, told him how I’d hunted Blakie and hassled Marsh, and explained that I was keen to find out what he knew about any business, legal or otherwise, that might have been going on between the two stations.

Bickie listened quietly, nodding from time to time, asking for the occasional point of clarification, contemplating the contents of his glass.

‘Mmmm…Lincoln, Lincoln…’ he said softly when I finished. ‘So you honestly think there could be a connection between Earl Marsh and his murder?’

‘I don’t know, Bickie. But if there is I’ll find it.’

He studied me for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he nodded, ‘I think you will.’ He hacked off a chunk of bread, added a sliver of cheese and chewed them thoughtfully. ‘I hope—for my own sake, if nothing else—that you are wrong. I would hate to think that I had contributed in any way…’

His voice trailed off into a reflective silence.

‘Did you know Lincoln well?’ I asked him.

‘Yes, quite well, I would say. We had many dealings over the years. Perhaps a friendship of sorts. He was one of nature’s gentlemen. Not that Mr Marsh thought so: Mr Marsh is not, I fear, a gentleman of any description. There is, however, a certain… directness about the man. Frankly I would be surprised if he had done such a thing. The violence I could imagine, under certain circumstances, but the…treachery? The attempt, you are suggesting, to disguise it as a traditional killing? It does seem out of character.’

‘I must admit, I’ve had the same reservations myself. So what was your meeting about?’

‘Water, Emily,’ he sighed. ‘Like everything else in this country.’

‘Underground water?’

‘Of course. Carbine Creek, for all of its history and traditions, and its apparently rich pasture, is even worse off in that regard than most of its neighbours. Mr Marsh’s main aquifer will not last another ten years. He needs water badly. And I am confident that I found it for him, although I could not be certain of its quality until the drilling has taken place.’

‘Where’d you find it?’

‘Therein lay the problem. That was the reason Mr Massie offered his services. I believe he considers himself something of an expert in the field of Aboriginal affairs. Mr Marsh brought him out here to…negotiate.’

‘With Lincoln?’

‘Yes.’

Christ, I thought, given that pair’s history, that suggested either an astonishing amount of ignorance on the part of Marsh or an astonishing amount of big-noting on that of the Little White Hope. Surely he realised Lincoln wouldn’t have had any time for the bastard who’d colluded in his people’s eviction from the station?

‘Where’d you find the water, Bickie?’

‘Close to the northern boundary. In considerable quantity, I’m sure. Though of what quality I could not say.’

‘Close? You mean on the Moonlight side?’

‘You must understand, Emily, the community was still struggling to establish itself. Particularly in the north. I doubt whether anyone other than Lincoln or Marsh had been out there for years.’ He sighed, trouble biting at his eyes. ‘Yes, the water was on Moonlight Downs. They planned to head on down to the camp, arrange a more formal meeting, but Lincoln came upon us unexpectedly.’

‘Let me guess. Marsh asked Lincoln if he could drill?’

‘Had he done so there would, I’m sure, have been no problem. But Mr Marsh is—how do you say it?—a man of the old school. He didn’t ask—he told. Massie was even worse: he acted as if the deal was already done.’

‘Yeah, I can imagine that. And I can imagine Lincoln’s response.’

‘He told them to go away. But not in those words. I suspected he was enjoying getting a little of his own back after so many years of the boot being on the whiteman’s foot.’

If nothing else, I had at least learned the meaning of Lincoln’s remark to Massie about swapping a pram for water; I bet he’d enjoyed that as well.

‘What was Marsh’s state of mind while this was going on?’

‘Ah, Emily,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘topology I can sometimes read. Men’s minds, especially those of Outback Man, I cannot. Suffice to say that he was far from happy. I’m sure that with time, and a little diplomacy, the situation could have been resolved to the satisfaction of all. But time, alas, Lincoln did not have. Nor diplomacy, for that matter. The next thing I heard he was dead. Killed, it was said, by Blakie Japanangka.’

‘Do you know Blakie, too?’

He shrugged his narrow shoulders. ‘Does anyone know Blakie?’

I let the response settle for a moment. ‘And that’s it?’

‘As far as I know, yes. Mr Marsh and Mr Massie dropped me back here and paid for my services. I have not seen either of them since.’

‘You don’t know whether or not Marsh actually drilled?’

Bickie shrugged again. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve no idea. I could, perhaps, find out. I know all of the drillers around here.’

‘I’d appreciate that.’

I finished my cheese, slipped the wine down into a rose bush. I was ready to roll. Bickie stood out on his veranda and watched me leave, thoughtfully scratching his chin.

As I got out to shut the gate he called out, ‘Emily!’

‘Bickie?’

‘What I said before about you and water.’

‘The divining?’

‘You should try it again. You may be ready for it now.’