Darkening Skies (24 page)

Not vandalism or destruction, but a search. For what? The old police report? If so, the intruder went to a great deal of effort to locate a document that contained so little.

The gun locker in the laundry remained locked, and appeared undamaged. Mark keyed in the code, and breathed easier on seeing his laptop and hard drives exactly as he’d left them. He had most of his files backed up on external servers, but with the damage to his home office and Birraga office, this was the extent of the technology left to him until he could replace the destroyed items.

The jeans and shirt he’d washed out late on Friday night flapped on the line in the breeze. He unpegged them, sunlight warm, and changed on the back veranda, folding his discarded clothes – Steve’s clothes – in a pile for the officer to collect shortly.

In the dog run at the end of the yard under the trees, Jim’s dogs watched his every move. Next priority, feeding them. He let them out, and Dash and her mother Maggie bounced around him, jostling for pats and attention. Rosie came for a wary sniff and a pat but then kept a cautious distance.

Mark crouched down, letting them close to nuzzle him and lick his hands, building their familiarity with him. ‘If you girls could talk, you’d tell me who was here, wouldn’t you?’ Dash barked twice and pawed at him. Mark ruffled her head and rose, keeping up the one-sided chatter. ‘Really? He didn’t feed you? And you haven’t eaten since yesterday? Poor starving puppy.’

After they’d
eaten he threw some old tennis balls he found in the shed for them to chase, and they brought them back again and again. This,
this
he’d missed all the years of commuting to and from Canberra, of travelling all over his huge electorate. He found himself grinning with the sheer, simple pleasure. But when a ball bounced off a tree branch and rolled towards his LandCruiser, Maggie lost interest in chasing it and instead gave the vehicle her total attention, crouching low to sniff some scent underneath the car, behind the front wheel.

Mark called her off and strolled over to take a look. It wouldn’t be the first time a possum or a rat had found its way into an engine bay, or a snake curled under a car. A rat with a taste for rubber and plastic could do hundreds of dollars of damage to a vehicle.

When he hunkered down to peer underneath the chassis, he noticed a few footprints beside the vehicle, a few scuffs in the dust. Scuffs that went a fair way underneath. Scuffs too large to be a possum or a rodent.

He lay on his back, wriggled under … and froze. No possum. No rat or snake. A human hand had wired the pack of explosives and the detonator into place.

Jenn
carefully descended the stairs from her room and hesitated at the door to the courtyard. Sunday lunch at the Dungirri pub seemed to be popular. An inexpensive buffet selection, a barbecue in the courtyard, and free face-painting for kids had brought out the families, and most of the tables in the courtyard were taken up with groups of families and friends, mostly adults and teens sitting down while the children ran around.

When she’d dropped Mark at Marrayin they’d agreed to meet here for lunch but she hadn’t expected the place to be bustling with activity and people. Dungirri people. The likelihood of finding a quiet table and having an uninterrupted talk over lunch fell somewhere below zero.

The door into the front bar opened and a man backed out, carrying a tray loaded with glasses, two large jugs of soft drinks and a couple of schooners of beer.

‘Jenn! Hello!
We wondered if we’d see you today. Chloe and the kids are out there with my lot. Come and join us.’

It took her a moment to place the familiar face. Andrew Pappas. Andrew and Sean had been the only two other Dungirri kids in her year at high school, and he still had the broad grin and the easy charm she remembered. Some of the Birraga kids had picked on him because of his Greek background, but in Dungirri’s much smaller community the kids knew each other better, had to rely on each other, and the only teasing tended to be good-natured.

‘Thanks, but I’m meeting Mark,’ Jenn said. ‘Have you seen him?’

‘No, not yet. Come and say hi while you wait.’

She hardly felt social, but refusing would be churlish. No matter how far behind she’d left Dungirri, how rarely she thought of it, in the way of small towns they still regarded her as belonging, as one of them.

‘Look who I found inside,’ Andrew announced as they came to the first large table, shaded by two umbrellas, and within seconds she found herself drawn into the circle in a hubbub of greetings and hugs and introductions.

Andrew’s father George embraced her and kissed both her cheeks. ‘So much more beautiful than on the television. But we are very, very sorry about Jim. He was so proud of you, wasn’t he, Eleni? So proud. Always he told us when your reports would be on.’ And Eleni kissed her cheeks, too, and squeezed her hand, and Andrew’s wife Erin – no longer a fourteen-year-old with braces – hugged her and introduced an assortment of kids too quickly for Jenn to remember names. And finally Chloe, Paul’s wife – whom Jenn had only ever seen in a photograph – stepped forward with red-rimmed eyes, a brave smile and her hand outstretched.

‘It’s
great to finally meet you, Jenn,’ she said. ‘Paul has very fond memories of you.’

‘It’s good to meet you, too. I’m sorry I didn’t call to see you yesterday. I should have, but things …’ Did she really have an excuse? She’d thought about visiting Chloe but had too easily found other ‘important’ things to do. But if she’d put family first, if she hadn’t gone racing off to the library, if she hadn’t pushed Larry and Wolfgang for the photos, might Wolfgang still be alive? One more thought for her conscience to fret over. ‘I got distracted,’ she finished lamely.

‘It’s okay, no need to apologise.’ Chloe waved at the chair beside hers and invited Jenn to sit. ‘I heard about Mick, and of course about the fire in Birraga. I phoned the hospital when I heard, but you’d just left. Are you okay? You weren’t hurt?’

News of Wolfgang’s shooting mustn’t have travelled this far, yet, and she didn’t spread it. ‘I’m fine. But how are you doing?’ Better late than never in acknowledging the family’s sorrow. Marginally. ‘Jim’s such a huge loss to you all.’

‘Yes.’ The word had a small waver in it but Chloe held her composure. ‘The kids were very upset yesterday. A pretty torrid day, all round. Paul had to go and see Sean, of course, but it was hard without him here.’

‘Have you heard from Paul today? How’s Sean?’

‘They’re taking it hard. Both of them, but especially Sean. Paul’s going to stay in Wellington for a few more days. He’s allowed to spend a couple of hours each day with him. They’ll find out tomorrow if Sean will be given a day release to attend the funeral.’

The
funeral. Another ordeal to get through. Two ordeals: Jim’s and probably Wolfgang’s. ‘Do you know yet when it will be?’ she asked.

‘We’ll have to wait for the—’ Chloe dropped her voice as a boy left the other kids and came towards them. ‘The examination. That will be tomorrow, Steve said.’

Depending on what the autopsy found, Jim’s body might not be released for days, or longer. The case was the same with Wolfgang. She might have to return to Sydney and then come back to Dungirri in a week or two, or maybe longer. Or extend her leave. Just the thought of more than a week here made her gut knot further, but she still had to find the truth behind the accident and Paula’s death.

The young boy, not quite a teenager – the image of his father at the same age – leaned against Chloe, an arm around her shoulders, comfortable with the physical affection in a way Paul hadn’t been, back then. Jim had raised his boys the best he could, but physical affection hadn’t been part of his repertoire of skills.

‘This is Calum, our eldest,’ Chloe introduced him. ‘Calum, this is Aunty Jenn, your dad’s cousin.’

Calum gave her a fleeting smile and said, ‘Hi, Aunty Jenn,’ before turning to his mother. ‘Mum, I think Ollie’s getting edgy again. He’s gone all … tight. Do you want me to take him to the car?’

‘No, it’s okay. I’ll come and talk to him.’ Chloe pushed back her chair. ‘Sorry, Jenn. Ollie’s on the Asperger’s scale. He finds crowds and noise hard to process. He usually copes okay with this, but today he’s without his dad or granddad. It’s a big change for a kid who needs routine.’

‘If you
want us to take Dana and Calum for the afternoon, just let us know,’ Erin offered from across the table, and Jenn felt the odd one out, inexperienced with family and kids and this relaxed type of socialising.

‘Here, Jenn, try some of Deb’s sourdough,’ Andrew said, passing a platter piled with slices of bread. ‘She’s the cook. She and Liam are friends of Gil’s.’

Friends of Gillespie? That explained why he seemed to be making himself at home. She took some sourdough, the butter melting into the fresh bread. The light-hearted, affectionate chatter of the Pappas family flowed around her, snippets of conversations drifted from other tables, kids with Spiderman and butterfly-painted faces raced around, and over at the barbecue Karl Sauer flipped steaks and sausages and flirted with a young woman. A pleasant Sunday afternoon in a country pub. The Dungirri Hotel had made it to the twenty-first century.

But there was no sign of Mark, already more than half an hour late.

She checked her messages and emails again. Nothing. Uneasiness crept up between her shoulders. Anything could have delayed him – he’d said he had a few jobs to do at Marrayin before he came in. But the uneasiness wouldn’t dissipate. She excused herself from the table, planning to phone him. She’d limped halfway across the courtyard when Kris Matthews came in through the side gate and scanned the crowd, looking for someone. Looking for her.

Their eyes
met and Kris walked briskly towards her, her skin pale, her face tight. Not good news.

‘I need you to come down to the police station,’ Kris said quietly, her words laced with urgency. ‘Now. With the photos Steve printed.’

‘Something’s happened? To Mark?’

‘Yes. My car’s just outside. I’ll tell you as we drive up there.’

In the small bathroom in Kris’s residence behind the police station, Mark splashed cold water on his face. He couldn’t quite stop his hands from shaking. If not for Maggie’s curiosity, he’d be a dead man. He would have got into the LandCruiser to go and meet Jenn, turned the ignition key … and died.

The certainty of it hit him harder than all the other dangers he’d survived over the past few days. Rescuing Jim, the attack in Birraga, the shooting this morning – he could have died in those, but whoever was behind them hadn’t necessarily been targeting him, intending to kill him.

That someone could so cold-bloodedly wire explosives and a detonator into his car, to explode on ignition … it meant planning and acting for a single outcome: his death. Premeditated murder.

Jim Barrett, Doctor Russell, Wolfgang Schmidt. His would have made the fourth death in three days. And they all led back, in one way or another, to the accident eighteen years ago – and to whatever had gone on before it. They had to find answers, and find them soon, to stop the killer.

He’d brought the dogs with him, chaining Maggie and Dash on the front veranda and Rosie on the back and they barked a warning as Kris’s car returned. He gave his face one more splash with cold water.
Focus
. Work through the facts. Piece together everything they knew. The answers – or at least leads to them – had to be there, somewhere.

Kris and
Jenn came into the kitchen through the back door, and before he could speak, Jenn – reserved, undemonstrative Jenn – thrust the folder with the photos at Kris and crossed straight to him, into his arms, burying her face against his shirt, her body trembling, tension wound tightly along her spine.

Even as he closed his arms around her, he shot a questioning glance over her shoulder at Kris, but she shook her head slightly and slipped past them to the passageway that led to the police station.

‘It’s okay,’ Jenn said into his shirt, as if she’d seen that exchange, ‘I’ll be angry in a minute. Really, really pissed-off angry with whoever did this. It’s just …’ She pushed away from him, scrubbing at her eyes to wipe the dampness away. ‘Holy crap, Mark, that was way too close. Kris said if it wasn’t for the dog, you’d be …’

Her attempt at anger falling short, she stood a metre from him, hugging herself, and pressed a fist against her mouth, unable to say the word.

Dead
.

Although he wanted nothing more than to hold her, to be held, to affirm life and love and humanity, he recognised his adrenaline reaction was an hour older than hers, and for him the racing, gut-slamming what-ifs had finally slowed. She still had to process the fright, the shock, and all on top of this morning’s trauma.

‘I’m alive, Jenn. They tried and failed. Thanks to Maggie’s good nose. She’ll get the best bones every week from now on.’

His
attempt to lighten things had no effect. She stared at him, eyes wide, struggling with her distress.

‘I can’t lose anyone else, Mark. I can’t. My parents, Paula, Jim … everyone I loved. I can’t lose you. So, you’ve just got to damn well stay alive and safe.’