Bereft (30 page)

Quinn allowed Dalton to move to the desk and dig out a bottle of liquor from a drawer. His uncle sat in the chair behind his desk and poured two glasses. He pushed one across to him. Quinn shook his head. “Where is Sadie Fox? I know you've been searching for her.”

Dalton sipped his drink. “Yes, that's right. I have been keeping an eye out for little Sadie. Her mother died in the epidemic, you know, just a few weeks ago. Poor girl has no one left. Her brother went to war, her father vanished years ago. I have arranged for her to be taken into care, in an orphanage in Bathurst. That is part of what I do here in Flint, part of my job. She can't possibly live up in the hills all by herself, can she? Sit down, Quinn, for God's sake, you're making me nervous.”

“You might think you got away with it, but you didn't, you know that? I saw you that day. Jim Gracie is dead. I visited him yesterday. He's strung up from the gum tree beside his house. He's no use to you now.”

Dalton sat forward with something like triumph in his eyes. “Hah! There you go. Gracie was in Bathurst yesterday, you lying little shit. He's back today.”

“No. He came back last night. He told me everything. Told me about the other girls. The Gunn girl.”

“Gracie is dead?”

“Yes.”

“And you killed him?”

Quinn thought about his response. “Yes.”

This news appeared to throw Dalton off balance, but he soon regained his composure. “And what do you want with this girl, eh?”

“I'll look after her.”

Dalton snorted and emptied his glass. He leaned forward with his elbows on the desk. “No. Tell me. What do you
really
want with her?”

“I should just shoot you.”

“You'll not get away with it. They'll find you.”

“Like they found you?”

Dalton considered him with his amphibious gaze and rapped the desk gently with his knuckles. “I had a feeling you would return,” he said. “A bad feeling, mind. Mary has been talking about you a lot of late. About you and Sarah. Nathaniel noticed it, too. The poor woman is delirious, of course, but still … I've been keeping an eye out for you. For years I thought you would come back, but as time passed it seemed less and less likely. I have to admit, this is quite a surprise.”

“I bet it is.”

“If you are who you say you are, that is. What the hell did you think you would achieve in coming back here, anyway? Your poor sister is still dead. Everyone knows you did it.”

Quinn thought of the note in the match-safe in his pocket. Its fragile words.
Don't forget me. Come back and save me. Please
. “I came to protect Sadie Fox,” he said. “And to get justice for my sister.”

His uncle gestured vaguely towards the distant sound of hymns coming from the church several streets away, then poured himself another drink. “They'd love to get their hands on you. All that talk of love and so on, but what they
really
like to do is tear some wrongdoer limb from limb. Make them feel like their God gives a damn, which doubtless he does not.” He emptied his glass in a single gulp and grimaced. “Is that all the evidence you have—that you
say
you saw me?”

“I saw you stab her.”

“But no one was with you, were they? Eh? You were alone? It isn't as if you had any other friends.”

“I know what I saw.” Quinn's voice was thin and reedy. Dalton had somehow managed to wrestle the initiative from him, even though Quinn had both revolvers.

“
I know what I saw
,” Dalton mimicked. “You're bloody pathetic, you know that?” He wiped the back of his hand under his glistening nose. “Tell you what. Put the revolver down. Leave now and I won't bother coming after you. Even considering Gracie. Get away from here and never come back. Let's forget this ever happened. You're not the kind of man who'd shoot an officer of the law, are you? I mean—”

From somewhere there came a high-pitched squeak. Dalton glanced at a door to his left that led to the adjacent cell.

Quinn jerked his head. “Is she in there?”

“I told you. There is no one here. That was just a mouse or something. This country is crawling with bloody vermin.” Dalton rubbed his cheek, then fingered the fresh scratch on his neck. “Why don't you go in there and take a peek for yourself, if you're so sure? Go on. It's open. Look for yourself, Quinn. Go on.”

Quinn stared at Dalton. All these years his uncle had been dwelling like an imp in the back of his mind, and now he was here in front of him.

Robert took advantage of Quinn's momentary disorientation. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded. “Everyone knows little Quinn is dead. You don't even look like him. You're just some crazy bastard. You know, after we left you that day in the cemetery, Mrs. Porteous commented on how strange you were.
Highly disturbed
, she said to me. Who the hell are you?”

Quinn had shuffled across to the cell door. A curious calm had entered him. He placed one hand on the heavy iron handle and paused. He faced his uncle and raised the revolver. “I'm the Angel of Death,” he said, and pulled the trigger. A shot, loud and hard.

Dalton grunted and fell back in his chair. His pudgy hands clasped at his chest. Blood oozed between his fingers. “Shit! You
shot
me, you crazy bastard.” He staggered wheezing to his feet. He fumbled for balance against the edge of the desk. “What are you doing? What are you doing? Help me.” Papers slid off the desk. The bottle smashed to the floor and the office was at once infused with the acrid smell of liquor. Dalton sprawled across the desk, and then slapped fishily to the floor where he groaned for several seconds before he was silent.

Shocked, Quinn stared at him and coughed. His hands shook. The Sword of Justice, he thought. After all these years. From the nearby church he heard hymns again.
There's a land that is fairer than day, and
by faith we can see it afar
… He crouched beside his uncle and listened for his breathing, but there was nothing. Blood seeped from beneath Dalton's body and spread out over the floor. Quinn stepped over him and yanked open the heavy cell door. He started at an orange cat that blurred between his legs and bolted outside. “Sadie?” he whispered into the darkness. “It's me.”

29

Q
uinn was terrified of what he might find, of what he might fail to find. When there was no answer, he stepped into the unlit cell. At first just dimness and the farmyard whiff of shit and hay. No one there. Again he whispered Sadie's name. Gradually, his eyes adjusted and, sure enough, the girl materialised from the gloom, sitting on a lumpy mattress on the floor. She was gagged. Her eyes bulged at his entrance. There was straw in her hair and a fresh bruise on one cheek. Again that brief, unbearable squeak. Her hands were secured behind her back with a pair of cuffs, so he dashed to Dalton and rolled over his uncle's heavy corpse to detach the ring of keys from his belt.

He loosened Sadie's gag and unlocked the cuffs with trembling, bloodstained fingers. She was dishevelled and shaking. As soon as she was able, she ripped the gag off and threw it down before cowering against the wall. She spat on the floor and wiped her swollen mouth with the back of one hand.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

She threw him a quick and bitter glance. “Did you shoot him? I heard a shot.”

He nodded and raised the revolver, as if to prove it to her.

“Is he dead?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“He won't come back again?”

“No. He's dead.”

She sat back on the edge of the mattress with her hands on her knees, staring at the floor as if deep in thought. Then she looked up and prepared to stand. “What about Mr. Gracie? We have to go now or they'll send him out to track—”

“No. He's dead as well.”

Sadie slumped back again. “Thank God. Did you kill him, too?”

Quinn made a helpless gesture. He leaned down and put a hand on her shoulder, thinking to comfort her, but she shrugged him away with a grunt of annoyance. She retrieved her filthy cardigan from the floor before tucking her legs up beneath her, primly, as if awaiting inspection. She seemed to have forgotten his presence, almost like one of those shell-shocked people he had seen during the war.

Quinn sat beside her. In silence they stared at a shard of light that crept over the cold stones with the passage of the morning sun, illuminating as it did so the various marks and words scratched into the wall. He was surprised no one had arrived to investigate the revolver shot, but perhaps it had gone unheard. He stared up through the tiny window set high into the wall, out of reach of even the tallest man. The sky was blue, unchanging. He knew it was possible to feel this bad and still not die because he had felt this way before. Small, hard tears of despair rolled down his cheek, one by one. He wondered if his heart might fail for no reason better than pure grief, the way his voice-box did all those years ago.

“I kept hearing angels,” Sadie said after a long time, and tapped her ear, as if she might dislodge the magical creatures lounging there. “All morning I heard angels singing and I thought they were coming for me.” She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. “I thought I would die. I thought I was going to die from it.”

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry I was too late. I didn't know where he had taken you. I'm so sorry.”

She sighed and turned to him. Her eyes were blurry with tears. “It's not your fault.” She dusted dirt from her knee. “At least he didn't kill me,” she said without conviction. “At least I didn't die.”

Quinn stared down at the revolver in his lap. He supposed this was something. He thought of the Military Medal tumbling drowsily across the ocean floor, wedging here and there in coral, accumulating grime about the engraved image of King George.

She sighed again. “What do we do now?”

“I'm not sure. We should get away from here, though.”

The patch of sunlight had meandered across the floor and glowed on the dull bluestones at their feet. Sadie waggled her grubby toes in its warmth. “Quinn? I've been thinking. I don't think my brother is coming home. I think he would be here by now.”

Quinn coughed. “There are stories, you know, about soldiers coming back to visit people. I heard about that a lot of times in France. In hospital I met a fellow who had been in a battle when the men around him lying in … lying dead in the trench for days got up and began fighting. Dozens of them. The battalion had been outnumbered but they managed to fight off hundreds of Germans. And this man had seen it with his own eyes. He was there. Incredible things happen in war, you know. It's not a normal time, everything is different.”

Although she had cocked her head to listen to his little story, Sadie didn't respond. A spider scuttled across the floor and darted into the shadows. She cleared her throat. “But the war is over now, isn't it? It ended ages ago.”

Quinn fingered the revolver. “Well, yes.”

“How long ago did it finish?”

He calculated. “November last year. A few months ago.”

She pondered this. “But we won, didn't we?”

“Yes.”

Again she faced him, and he noted how her smile had been made crooked, as if one of the hinges of her mouth were now broken. “But you're like a brother, aren't you?”

The dark coal of Quinn's heart glowed hot and hard. He choked back a sob. He nodded.

“Perhaps we should go to Kensington Gardens? In England. Remember we talked about that once before?”

He shrugged. It was as good an idea as any. At least there it would be green and fresh. There would be water and mist. He could probably get some kind of work quite easily in London; after all, able-bodied men were in short supply. He and Sadie would find somewhere to live. Perhaps he could build them a house? From outside came the sound of the grey's iron shoes clopping on the flagstones. He heard the wavering, watery drift of a choir—the singing of angels.

“That's it,” Sadie went on, excited now. “The Gardens are full of trees. There are tricky fairies dressed in flowers. They are everywhere, even though you can't see them. They live under tree roots. We could live on that island in the lake. There are birds that turn into real boys and girls.
Swans
, a raven called Solomon, they have parties at night where all the fairies come and dance and there is a queen fairy and she grants wishes. It will be marvellous.”

It sounded an extravagant plan, but Quinn was reluctant to dampen the girl's sudden enthusiasm after all that had happened. Besides, he was quite taken by the idea himself. “Yes. Why not, eh?”

“How would we get there?”

“We would have to go on a boat.”

“Over the sea?”

“Of course.”

“How long would it take?”

“Well, we would have to go to Sydney first. It might take a few weeks.”