Dark Country (3 page)

‘What time does she open in the morning, these days?’ he asked the kids.

‘Six-thirty. I’m opening up for her tomorrow, but she’ll be around not long after that,’ the girl answered, and something
about the way she smiled struck him with a vague sense of familiarity. Probably the daughter of someone he’d once known. Although,
in his day, Dungirri kids hadn’t worn multiple studs in their ears and nose. A touch of the city, out here in the outback.

‘Thanks. I’ll call in tomorrow, then.’

Out in his car again, he thumped the steering wheel in frustration. He’d be spending the night in Dungirri. He could sleep
in the car, out on one of the tracks that spider-webbed through the scrub east of town … no, not a good idea. All day in the
car had been more than enough for a tall body more
used to standing than sitting, and he had the return journey to make tomorrow.

He reversed out and swung around to park in the side street beside the hotel, away from the half-dozen other vehicles parked
randomly around the front.

Harsh weather and neglect had worn away at the century-old hotel. The external timberwork cried out for a coat of paint, and
the wrought-iron railings around the upstairs veranda were more rust-coloured than anything else. The ‘For Sale’ sign tied
crookedly to a post had faded in the weather, too, adding another forlorn voice to the visible tale of lost glory.

He yanked his bag and his laptop from the back of the car and went in through the side door, purposely avoiding the front
bar. The back bar was dark and empty, as was the office. He tapped on the servery window into the front bar, keeping out of
the line of sight of the customers. He had no desire to meet up with any familiar faces from his past.

A bloke in his early twenties in a work shirt and jeans finished pulling a beer for someone and strolled over to him. Not
anyone he recognised.

‘Have you got a room for the night?’ Gil asked.

‘Sure, mate.’ He reached into a drawer, passed a key and a registration book across the counter. ‘Room three, upstairs. Just
sign here. You wanna pay in the morning, or fix it up now?’

Gil paid cash, signed the book with an unreadable scrawl the guy didn’t bother looking at, and headed up the stairs. The room
was basic, as he’d expected, relatively clean but with worn-out furnishings that had seen a few decades of use already.

He dropped his bag on the floor, lay flat on his back on the bed and stared up at the old pressed-metal ceiling. A few creaking
springs warned him that it wouldn’t be the most comfortable of nights. He’d coped with far worse.

Staring at the ceiling only let his brain wander to places he didn’t want to contemplate, and his body clock wouldn’t be ready
for sleep until at least his usual time of two or three in the morning. He swung his legs back over the edge of the bed, hauled
out his laptop and set it up on the small, scratched wooden table in the corner, draping the cord over the bed to get to the
single power point. The room had no phone line or wireless network – the twenty-first century hadn’t made it to Dungirri,
yet, it seemed – but he connected his laptop to his mobile phone and went online.

For an hour he worked, tidying up the loose ends of the inner-city pub he’d just sold, checking and sending email, making
payments to creditors, transferring funds between accounts. And all the time, the half of his brain that wasn’t dealing with
facts and figures tussled with other questions – like who the hell might have had the balls and opportunity to shoot Vince,
and what the response of his various rivals would be.

Maybe Tony would be too caught up in fighting for power to pursue his long-desired vengeance on Gil. Gil dismissed that hope
as quickly as he thought of it. Tony would view getting even with him as a sign of his new authority, and a message to anyone
who might stand in his way.

Somewhere around nine-thirty, the single light bulb in the room pinged and went out. A light still burned outside on the veranda.
Just his bulb blowing then, not a loss of power.
Reluctantly, he headed downstairs to ask for a replacement. In the corridor behind the bar, an older guy swung out of the
gents’ just as Gil passed, almost knocking him with the door.

The bloke turned around to apologise, and Gil stifled a groan as they recognised each other. His bad luck was still holding
strong. Of all the people in Dungirri to come face to face with.

The man’s face whitened. ‘You …’ He seemed to struggle for control, pain and rage contorting his face, then lost it. He raised
a fist, took a step towards Gil and roared, ‘You murdering bastard.’

Kris took the call on the radio just as she and her constable, Adam, drove back into Dungirri, towing the damaged patrol car
on a trailer behind the police four-wheel drive. A fight at the Dungirri Hotel, police presence requested.

‘We’re right outside,’ she told the dispatcher as Adam slowed down to pull in opposite the hotel.

‘I’ve been on duty fifteen hours already today, and I am so not in the mood for this,’ she grumbled, flicking her seatbelt
off and thrusting the door open.

‘Well, if it’s the Dawson boys again, you can make good on that threat to throw them in the old cell, and force-feed them
your cooking,’ Adam teased, as they crossed the road at a jog.

‘Watch it, Constable Performance-appraisal-tomorrow,’ she retorted, her grin reflecting the easy friendship they’d built over
the past three years. They worked well together, and if she had
to go and break up yet another pub brawl, there were few she’d feel more comfortable with having at her side.

The fight had already spilled out in to the courtyard behind the hotel, judging by the shouts. Pub fights were rarely serious
here – usually just a mix of too much drink and testosterone, and a few lousily aimed drunken punches.

This one, she saw when she pushed through the gate into the courtyard, was different.

The outdoor lights clearly illuminated a dozen men who stood by watching while four others laid into one man with fists and
kicks. The victim – it was
him
, Gil – seemed to be aiming to block blows rather than fight back. And the only one trying to help him was Ryan Wilson, out
there in his wheelchair, dragging at the arm of one of the fighters. And strong ex-boxer though Ryan might be, the odds weren’t
in his favour.

For an instant, an image of a body, beaten beyond recognition, flashed in her memory. No,
that
wasn’t happening again. Not in this town.

Bellowing an order to stop, she charged in on a surge of adrenaline and determination, Adam beside her. She caught one guy’s
arm as he lifted it to punch again, wrenched it up behind his back before he realised what was happening, and dragged him
out of the fight, handcuffing him to one of the big wooden tables. Adam pulled another away and clicked handcuffs on him before
going back to help Ryan. The fourth man managed to get in one more punch before Kris made it to him, and Gil staggered under
the blow to his head and stumbled against the fence, while she pushed the guy down against a table and held him there.

And then it was quiet, but for some heavy breathing, and Kris looked up to see some of the watchers starting to sidle out
the gate.

‘Nobody move,’ she ordered at the top of her sergeant’s voice. ‘If any of you try to leave before I get to the bottom of this,
I will throw the whole damn charge book at the lot of you. Do you understand me?’

She glanced around at Gil, straightening up to lean against the fence, already digging in his pocket for a handkerchief to
wipe the blood from his nose.
Not as bad as Chalmers, thank God
.

Ryan wheeled across to him.

‘Does he need an ambulance, Ryan?’

‘No,’ Gil replied for himself. ‘I don’t.’

She pulled up the guy she held – Jim Barrett – and dumped him on a chair. She did a quick look round the other men involved.
All Barretts. Not the usual troublemakers. Adam still held Jim’s brother, Mick, a morose guy in his sixties who normally propped
up the corner of the bar and hardly said anything to anyone. And the two others were Jim’s boys, in their mid-thirties.

She glared at the entire group, including Gil.

‘Right. Which one of you is going to tell me what the hell is going on here?’

‘That’s Morgan Gillespie.’ Jim pointed an accusing finger. ‘He killed Mick’s daughter, Paula.’

Oh, shit
. Her stomach dropped into her boots.

‘It was an accident,’ Ryan interjected, before she’d had time to draw in a steadying breath. ‘The conviction was quashed.’

‘He got off on a bloody technicality,’ Jim spat back.

‘A rigged blood-alcohol report is hardly a technicality,’ Ryan argued. ‘And he spent three years inside because of it.’

Her brain whirled. So, Gil –
Morgan Gillespie –
had been to prison for some accident involving Mick’s daughter, way before her time because she’d not heard about it. Until
now.

Well, she knew Ryan better than she knew Jim, and if Ryan was prepared to stand up for a person so strongly, she’d lean towards
trusting his judgement over Jim’s. Ryan was a decent man, and with a cooler head than Jim.

The two people most concerned stayed silent. Mick stood, stooped in Adam’s grasp, face downcast, tears running down his cheeks.
And Gil had slid down to sit on the paving of the courtyard, still leaning against the fence, his head tilted back and eyes
closed.

She crossed to him quickly, reaching to check his pulse automatically. ‘Are you okay, Gillespie?’

Dark, near-black eyes opened and looked straight into hers, alert and piercing, and the pulse in his wrist drummed strong
and strangely hot against her fingers.

‘I’ll be fine.’

Split lip, bloodied nose, bruised face aside, his pulse and breathing seemed good, and there were no signs of dizziness or
disorientation in the sharpness of his gaze. She figured he might be right, although she’d take him up to the station and
check him over properly very soon. With the ambulance – and the nearest doctor – at least forty minutes away in Birraga she
wouldn’t call them out straight away, but she’d keep a close watch on him.

She let his wrist go, sat back on her heels and looked straight at him. ‘Anything you want to add to what they said?’

‘No.’

No excuses, no denials, no explanations. She wasn’t sure whether to respect him for that, or throttle him in frustration.
Throttling the lot of them held a certain appeal, right now. But she still didn’t know exactly what had happened.

Satisfied that Gillespie probably wouldn’t collapse and die right there, she stood up and glared at the gathered crowd, with
no attempt to hide her anger and disgust.

‘Right. Gillespie’s coming with me for some first aid and then some questions. Adam, you keep this lot under a close watch
and take statements from all of them. I want some answers. Davo, close up the bar. The only thing you’re serving for the rest
of the night is strong coffee while they give their statements. And if I hear of any of you talking together to concoct some
story, I’ll have you up on a charge of conspiracy so quickly you’ll be in the Birraga lock-up before you know it.’

‘I won’t press any charges, Sergeant.’ Gillespie spoke from behind her, loud enough for everyone to hear.

Damn the man. She wasn’t in the mood for heroics, or for letting anyone off the hook.

She snorted loudly. ‘You’ll change your mind when the bruises start hurting. And if you keel over and die from a brain haemorrhage,
your body will be sufficient evidence to charge the Barretts with murder and the rest of these bloody idiots with being accessories.’
She dropped her voice to a barely audible hiss. ‘So shut up and make it look good and let this lot stew on their frigging
stupidity.’

Community policing as it
wasn’t
written in the manual, but she didn’t give a damn. The people who wrote the manual hadn’t worked for five years in an outback
town that had been disintegrating long before a psychopathic resident had begun abducting local children and murdering witnesses.
Nor had they seen what a frenzied mob could do to an ageing, defenceless suspect, or ridden in the back of an ambulance with
the critically injured colleague – and friend – who’d tried to protect him.

So she’d handle this her way, because she was one of them now and she knew them and this wasn’t just a hot-tempered pub brawl.
And she’d damn well make sure that this lot contemplated –
sweated over –
the possible consequences of their idiocy.

It had to be the blows to the head that were making him feel dizzy, because the physical proximity of the fiery sergeant shouldn’t
be doing it. Not when she was as seriously pissed off as she was.

This close to her he could see the anger, tightly controlled, but the intensity of it almost made him take a step backwards.
The sort of anger with its roots in deep emotion, not some mere bad mood.

Make it look good
. She wanted him to limp away from this as though he’d been really hurt.

Ryan Wilson wheeled his chair a little closer and studied him. Ryan, the only one of the lot of them who’d tried to help him.
Gil’s irregular school attendance had become even more irregular when high school meant having to get into Birraga each day,
but on the rare occasions he’d been, he’d hung around with Ryan and
the other rough-edged Birraga larrikins. Time and circumstance might have smoothed Ryan’s roughness slightly – he’d apparently
ended up marrying one of the shyest, nicest girls in Dungirri – but there sure as hell was nothing
meek
about the man.