Blood Junction (18 page)

“Please don’t lie.”

Mikey looked startled, but said nothing.

“I know you can barely stand the sight of me,” she continued, “but we’ve got to work together on this if we’re going to catch
Lauren and Tiger’s killer.”

“Hmm,” he said. If she hadn’t known better, she would have said he was abashed.

“Shall I leave the photo with you to follow up? Since you know them—”

“Only one. The older guy.” He pointed at the ascetic-looking man holding the rod. “He wrote
East Asian Approaches
.”

At her blank look, he added, “John Buchanan-Atkins. He’s a well-known historian and has his own school in Sydney: Erskin.
His book is a classic work on Central Asia, set in the Caucasus and Turkestan during Stalinist rule.”

“You read history books?” she asked, thinking of the box of cheap cowboy paperbacks in his room.

“Mostly I listen to them. In the car. They’re useful on a stakeout, and I use them when I’m driving long distances.” He gave
a thin smile in response to her surprised expression. “I like Peter Hopkirk best. He wrote about Central Asia too,
The Great Game
. In fact, I like most history books. Some are just easier to digest than others.”

India adjusted her picture of Mike Johnson as semiliterate. She’d never imagined him reading anything but pulp fiction, with
maybe an occasional tabloid newspaper or police journal.

Mikey took a long slug of bourbon and turned a bland face to her. “You seem surprised that I—”

“Not at all! I think history’s very interesting too.” Hastily she lit another cigarette to cover her confusion. “Enough of
hobbies. What have you been up to?”

He passed the photograph back to her then peered into his glass as though it held the answer.

“I’ve discovered that the owner of Karamyde Cosmetics, one Roland Knox, is away in China for some big meeting with the government
there. Nobody will say what it’s about. I’ve also ascertained the Australian Medical Association is as tight as a duck’s”—he
paused—“gizzard. Everyone who worked with Alex Thread has either left or been transferred overseas since he died, including
his boss, Dr. Nathaniel Jameson, who was head of ethics.”

India looked down at her shoes, noticed they needed resoling. “Sounds like a cover-up.”

“An eiderdown special,” he agreed, and took another slug of bourbon.

“Can’t we get in touch with Jameson? Ask him what was going on?”

“I reckon they don’t want him found. All I managed to glean was that he might be in the United Kingdom. Could be Northern
Ireland, Scotland or Wales for all we know.”

India considered her contacts in the UK. “I’ll call a friend, a medical journalist, see if he can help.”

“I hope you’ll pay Jed back for the phone call.” His usual biting tone was back. “Or will it be at a peppercorn rate, like
you pay for his divan?”

She gave him a cool look. “Is that all you’ve discovered? That Jameson’s in the UK? Nothing else? I suppose you spend most
of your time gazing into the bottom of a bourbon glass.”

His expression hardened. “Actually, I have discovered something fairly vital,” he said.

“Oh, yes?”

“That your alibi is shit.”

She flung up her hands in exasperation. “What were you, a parking attendant in your previous life? We all know Frank’s gone
bush, but surely even you can do better than that.”

“And that you have a preference for fried egg sandwiches for breakfast—when you have breakfast that is—and cheese and onion
toasted sandwiches for lunch, and that you live on a diet of fast food whenever someone doesn’t feed you.”

India’s eyes widened fractionally.

“That kind of diet will kill you eventually. Along with your smoking. Keep up the good work.”

She didn’t say anything.

“I’ve also discovered that you and your friend were amazingly stubborn about meeting in the other’s home city. That you made
a handful of friends in Melbourne, but none of them wants to help you out in your current predicament. That some people loathe
you, which I can relate to, whereas others seem to kiss the ground you walk on, like Bill Maynard, your ex-
Courier
colleague.”

India struggled to keep her expression neutral. “You have been busy,” she said.

“I try to pull my weight.”

She refused to be intimidated. “So … um … what are you going to do next?”

He rose to his feet, drained his glass. “I’m taking the rest of the day off.”

“But what about—”

Mikey’s face was like stone. “Tiger’s sister is coming over. She wants to see him.”

I
NDIA DROVE WEST OUT OF COOINDA, THROUGH INCREAS
ingly tatty streets lined with fibro houses. So she’d forgotten about Tiger, had she? She’d lost her best friend too, for
God’s sake! What did Mikey expect? Unbridled sympathy on the dot of every hour? At least he had the opportunity to remain
in touch with his friend’s relatives, whereas she couldn’t. Lauren’s family would probably lynch her the second they laid
eyes on her.

Telling herself that she didn’t care what Mikey thought of her, she almost missed the turning on the right towards the Aboriginal
settlement and, hopefully, Bertie Mullett. Hastily she jammed on the brakes and slid, with an ugly screech of rubber, across
the road and onto a dirt track.

Within minutes the car was filled with dust, fine as flour, red as brick. It coated the dashboard, seats and windscreen. It
lined her nostrils and throat, her lungs, the inside of her mouth, and coated her hair and skin. The temperature seemed to
increase by ten degrees. Wedging the steering wheel with her knees, India grabbed the bottle of water from the passenger seat
and rinsed her mouth. Mikey had put the water in the car. She’d barely thought about what supplies to take in case of, God
forbid, another breakdown, when he turned up with four bottles of water and a ten-liter jerry can, which he strapped beneath
the hood.

“This shit-heap’s air-cooled, so the extra water’s for you.”

She’d asked him why he didn’t cheerfully wave her away to a dry and dusty demise. He’d chuckled humorlessly. “You have your
uses. Not that they’re apparent quite yet, but I’m sure they’ll come in handy one day.”

About ten minutes into the hot, red interior, she saw the first signs of habitation. A thick carpet of empty beer cans disfigured
both verges. Plastic wrappers and cartons intermingled with blinding, flashing tin made an ugly highway to the Aboriginal
encampment. She passed a battered-looking bicycle and a car in the middle of the road. Later she learned it had been abandoned
by a drunken driver because he had run out of petrol.

India drove slowly through the dilapidated shantytown and parked the VW beneath a sparse-leaved gum tree in the vague hope
it might offer some shelter. Taking a pack of cigarettes from the glove box, she made her way up what appeared to be the main
street. The houses were an odd assortment of rickety shacks, built from corrugated iron, old doors and piles of breeze-blocks.
Each dwelling had an assortment of plastic tubs and drums outside, presumably to catch water.

Dogs lay everywhere. Brindle, gray, brown, tan and mottled blue. India counted twenty dogs in twenty yards. She saw three
young pigs in the shade of a rusting Ford truck and a large pink-brown sow panting on her side, eyes tight shut. A small group
of Aboriginal men, apparently impervious to the intense midday heat, squatted beneath a tree playing cards. They regarded
her with barely concealed suspicion as she approached. The only sound was the heavy vibration of cicadas.

“Hi,” she said, taking out her pack of cigarettes and offering it around. “I’m India Kane. I’m a reporter.” Each man took
a cigarette, nodded and returned to their cards.

“I’m trying to find Bertie Mullett.”

One of the men, of indeterminate age, with grizzled hair and a red bandanna around his head, spat on the ground. None of them
met her eye. She already knew she wasn’t going to get anywhere, but she didn’t want to give up yet. “Do you know where he
might be? I can make it worth his while.” India withdrew a sheaf of folded notes from her back pocket and flicked through
some twenty-dollar bills. “Or yours, if you can help.”

Silence.

“You might have seen my friend around. She’s much smaller than me, with short blond hair.”

The men studied their cards as she watched their faces.

“Did you see my friend Lauren Kennedy?”

Shrugs of indifference.

India raised her hand to shield her eyes from the vicious glare of the sun and searched for someone else to ask, but the shantytown
appeared deserted aside from a few crows hopping about. She noticed a curious-looking shelter set just beyond the town’s boundary,
built of a rusting metal car hood, tires and bits of cardboard. As India studied it, wondering who lived there, she thought
she saw a shadow shiver inside. It was a small shadow appropriate to such a small shack, so minute that she doubted whether
you could sleep with your legs stretched out.

“I’ll give the first man who can tell me where Bertie Mullett is twenty bucks.”

The shadow trickled to the shelter’s entrance, then it became a figure. Polly was flying towards them as though running at
the Olympics, chest thrust out, bare feet pounding. Panting hard, pink tongue showing, she flung herself onto India and wrapped
her skinny arms around her neck.

“You came to see me!” The girl’s hair was matted, her body smudged with dirt and grit. She smelled of burnt wood and apples
and felt light and fragile as a sparrow.

India’s breath caught in her throat, which she put down to her windpipe being crushed by Polly’s grip.

“Hello, sprat,” she said. She sensed the men’s curiosity as she put her arm around the little girl. Polly’s ribs jutted out
like sticks. “When did you last eat?”

“Had some cornflakes this morning,” Polly said shyly. “Some last night too.”

“What about a proper meal?”

“At Albert’s. With you.”

“But that’s four days ago!”

Polly grinned at her. “Shan’t we go to Albert’s today, then?”

“Shall we,” India corrected.

“Shall we go to Albert’s?”

“I think we’d better, before you start shrinking. We don’t want you to become so tiny you get gobbled up by a cockroach.”

Giggling, Polly turned in India’s embrace and stood with her arm possessively around her neck. “Who’s winning?” she demanded.

“Never you mind,” said the man with the red bandanna.

“That means you are,” Polly said, and giggled again when he picked up a stone and mock-threw it at her.

“You’re Polly’s friend?” the man asked India. “The one who stopped Stan having a go at her, right?”

“Right.”

Nods of approval all around. A couple of spits and a crack from someone’s knee as he shifted slightly.

“Why do you want to know about Bertie?” said one of the others. “He ain’t done nothing of interest to no reporter.”

“I’m not sure yet. My friend was looking for him. She was murdered last Sunday. I thought Bertie might help me find out why
she died.”

A long pause while the flies buzzed.

An old man with a face like a worn polished boot blew smoke from his mouth and said, “I’m not real sure where Bertie is, that’s
fair dinkum.”

“Do you know where he was headed?”

They shook their heads.

“Do you know when he’ll be back?”

More shakes of heads.

“Why did he take off, do you know?”

“He’s an Abo,” said Red Bandanna, and they all chuckled.

At her gesture of frustration, the man said, “We’ve got something in us that makes us want to keep moving. You white fellers
can build yourselves a house and live in it and be happy not moving for years, but we can’t.”

“Did Bertie work at all? Did he have a job?”

“Used to do odd jobs for the Goodmans over at Benbullen. Burning off, fencing and stuff. Backbreaking stuff for a bloody pittance,
he’s always said. Hasn’t done anything for them for a few years.”

India nodded. “What about his family? Is there anyone here I can talk to?”

The faces around her suddenly looked ill-at-ease.

“Is he married? Does he have any children?”

They looked at the ground, towards the sky, anywhere but at her.

“He’s married to Rose, but she’d dead and long gone now,” ventured the leathery old man who’d spoken before. “Three kids he
had, all with their own kids now, but we ain’t seen ’em for months.”

“Where did they go?”

“There was talk of Sydney,” declared Bandanna Man. “Bloody idjits, going to the city. Old Bertie wasn’t having none of it,
but his kids insisted. Something to do with work up there they couldn’t get here. Sounded like a load of old crock to me.”

Polly dropped her arm from India’s shoulder. “You mean that paper they had?” she said. “Getting money for sleeping?”

Bandanna Man nodded, and Polly scampered off, heading for her shelter. A fly touched India’s nostril and she brushed it away,
wishing she’d brought a bottle of water from the car; she was sweating liters just sitting here. She offered her cigarettes
around a second time, then shifted her position so she was sitting cross-legged.

“Do you think they might all be in Sydney now, working?”

“Not Bertie,” the old man said. “The others, maybe, but not him.”

Polly returned in a cloud of fine dust, a grin on her face. “Here,” she said, and thrust a tattered, filthy copy of
TV Week
at India. “See?” She pointed at a full-page, full-color advertisement. “That’s where they went.”

How to get paid for sleeping and taking drugs.

The advertisement showed a young girl, hooked up to various monitors, lying on a luxurious bed of white embroidered cotton,
and two women in white coats, looking down on her sleeping form with warm professional smiles.

Our research unit is a laboratory funded by the government and the Crane Institute to investigate diverse matters such as
the kinds of road that contribute to driver fatigue, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the three o’clock sag, when employees across
the country lose their concentration. Help us develop cures for these common conditions. Fee: $10 per hour.