Dark Country (46 page)

The cow stood in the middle of the narrow dirt road and stared at him. Nick stared back and inched the car forward. The cow
didn’t budge.

A second blast from the horn finally had it ambling to the verge, and he put the accelerator down as soon as he was past.

‘Turn left in one hundred metres,’ the female voice of the sat nav intoned.

Down a rough track with a locked gate across it, and an ‘Authorised Vehicles Only’ sign?

‘That’d be another “no”, honey,’ he muttered and turned off the useless system.

An hour since the call had come in, and he still had to travel at least ten kilometres to get there. Assuming his constable’s
directions for the ‘shortcut’ route between Strathnairn and the national park were correct. Assuming he hadn’t taken the wrong
road. Both the map and the sat nav had proved a waste of space – the scale of the map not large enough to show the minor roads,
the sat nav thinking every farm track and fire trail was a public road.

He mentally added
decent maps
to the list of resources he would request. Only three days into the job and his list was already long. His predecessor in
the senior detective position at Strathnairn might have been content to work without adequate resources, but Nick wasn’t.
Although, given the large number of open cases Nick had inherited, he wondered if the word
work
had been in the man’s vocabulary. That made his own posting to the almost-outback command not just a banishment, but a poisoned
chalice as well. Detective Garry Coulter, killed in a car accident over a month ago, had apparently been held in high regard
by the locals, so raising questions about the man’s competence or integrity would not make Nick popular with his new colleagues.

He would worry about that later. Right now, he had a murder report to investigate – once he reached the crime scene.

The road joined another at a T-junction, and a National Parks sign helpfully pointed to Ghost Gums Camping Ground. After another
ten minutes of winding road through dry, rocky bush he descended a hill to the camping ground on the river flats, the parking
area already busy with three police cars, an ambulance and two National Parks utilities.

The two paramedics stood beside their ambulance, idly talking, but as Nick got out of his unmarked car, one strolled across.

‘Are you the new detective?’

‘Yes. Nick Matheson.’ He shook hands, unblinkingly meeting the man’s frankly curious and not entirely trusting gaze. So, the
gossip had gone beyond his new colleagues in the Local Area Command to other emergency services. So be it. He had a job to
do, and he’d do it.

‘Where’s the victim?’

The paramedic nodded towards the police cars at the other end of the camping ground. ‘In the bush over there. He definitely
doesn’t need us.’

‘But you’re hanging around anyway?’

The guy shrugged. ‘It’s pretty gruesome. Someone might faint or suffer from shock.’

‘Who found him?’

‘Jo did.’ He waved a hand towards two people in khaki shirts and trousers, leaning on the bonnet of a National Parks vehicle.
‘Jo Lockwood. She’s a bit shook up, but she doesn’t need us, either. Jo’s tougher than she looks.’

Jo would be the slim one with the light brown hair held back in a ponytail. Nick couldn’t see the woman’s face, but from her
hands-in-pockets, straight-backed stance, Jo Lockwood clearly wasn’t falling apart in hysterics. That would make his job of
interviewing her a hell of a lot easier.

‘Thanks. I’ll talk to her after I’ve seen what she found.’

What she’d found, he discovered when he followed the local constable through the scrub to the scene, was enough to give most
people nightmares for months.

The smells of death – piss, shit and blood – turned Nick’s stomach, but he quelled the response automatically.
Never show weakness
. That had been life’s first lesson growing up on the docks of Newcastle, and kids who didn’t learn it early didn’t get to
grow up.

The constable stayed to one side, staring avidly at the body. ‘Must be a sick bloody psycho, to have done that,’ he said.

Nick crouched and, without touching a thing, surveyed the body. Facts. Evidence. That’s what he needed to focus on. A rope
tied tightly as a ligature above the amputated hand; another above a mangled and bloody foot. A major wound to the other knee,
covered in blood, dirt and grit. The gunshot to the head probably the final of many other cuts and injuries.

The sustained violence and torture of this death – the patterns of blood flow suggested that the injuries were ante-mortem
– was among the worst of the innumerable violent crimes he’d seen.

‘No,’ he mused, as much to himself as to the constable. ‘Not
a
psycho. This guy’s big, and he fought. It would have taken more than one man to restrain him.’

‘From the looks of the camping-ground damage, there were a few crims here last night,’ the constable said. ‘And he’s got tattoos.
Must be some sort of gang thing. You’d know about that, wouldn’t you, Sarge?’

Another one who’d heard the rumours. The question might have been merely curious, but the sly grin suggested insolence.

Nick kept his expression carefully neutral and muttered a non-committal ‘Hmm.’ Yes, he knew about gangs. Street gangs, bikie
gangs, criminal mobs. The possibility of a gang connection in this youth’s death was on his rapidly growing list but, far
more than most cops, he knew there was no such simplistic crime as a ‘gang thing’. He knew the complexities, the constantly
shifting dynamics of power and personalities, of opportunity and risk, of adrenaline and testosterone and fear.

No, tattoos on the man’s arms – which weren’t any gang tattoos he was familiar with – didn’t amount to evidence of an organised
gang. If there were even any such thing out here in the north-west of New South Wales.

He stood, and glanced at the constable’s name tag. Harrison. A Senior Constable. Young, confident to the point of cocksure;
the know-it-all type who probably didn’t like taking orders. Too bad, because Nick would be giving plenty of them.

‘This area needs to be taped off, Harrison. From the grassed area to past here. I called the SOCOs in when you first reported
in, and they’re on their way from Inverell. They’re contacting the forensic pathologist.’

‘Don’t expect one to come in person, Sarge. We’re too far from Newcastle.’

Eight or more hours’ drive, Nick knew. Too far from city resources … but not far enough from his memories. Not that Newcastle
had a monopoly on bad memories. He’d collected more than enough of them, all over the map, during his career. The poor dead
bastard in front of him was just another drop in the ocean. Just one more crime that might, or might not, be solved.

‘Have you got an ID on him? Or found his car?’ he asked Harrison.

‘No. None of us know him. He’s not local. SOCOs will search his pockets for ID.’

Nick nodded, but he doubted they’d find anything useful. And judging by the burns on the remaining hand, identifiable fingerprints
would be almost impossible to obtain.

He also doubted they’d find a car. If the guy had driven his own car, the assailants had probably taken it, could be a few
hundred kilometres away by now.

He couldn’t learn much more from the victim until after the crime-scene officers arrived, so he would have to start with the
nearest thing he had to a witness.

‘The National Parks officer who found him – do you know her?’ he asked.

‘Jo? She’s a newcomer to Goodabri. Setting up things for the new park. She’s the quiet type, doesn’t socialise much. Seems
to work hard enough though.’

Nick had taken a detour through Goodabri on his way to Strathnairn on Sunday, scoping a fraction of the large region covered
by the police command. The town was thirty kilometres off the main road and consisted of fifty or so scattered houses, a police
cottage, a small primary school, a row of empty shop buildings in the main street and a run-down pub. Not a thriving community,
and presumably reliant on the larger Strathnairn, seventy kilometres away.

A woman who kept to herself in a small community …
He mentally filed that piece of information. Jo Lockwood turned as he walked towards her across the grass, assessing him
in the same kind of way he instinctively assessed her during those few moments.

She’s the quiet type …
Her emotions tightly leashed behind her pale face and closed expression, she shook his hand with a firm grasp when he introduced
himself, and the constable’s description underwent a swift revision in Nick’s mind. Quiet perhaps, but from reserve, not shyness.

The calloused hand briefly in his, her lean, fit frame and her lightly tanned skin confirmed the ‘seems to work hard’ part
of Harrison’s description.

Despite her control, the haunting determination in her hazel eyes held his attention. Shock, yes – she still fought to keep
it from overwhelming her. But she knew she could. He’d seen that same determination in the eyes of too many colleagues
over the years – people who’d seen incomprehensible death, and survived it.

He guessed she’d be in her early thirties, but those eyes were older. No makeup, no artifice, nothing
pretty
in her face, only a stunning, stark beauty he found it hard to look away from.

Her colleague stepped forward and extended his hand. ‘I’m Malcolm Stewart, senior ranger for the Strathnairn National Parks
division. Do you really need to interview Jo now? She’s had a tough morning.’

Before Nick could answer, Jo threw her boss a glance that mixed affection with slight exasperation. ‘I don’t need mollycoddling,
Mal. The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can all get on with our jobs. I presume you’ll want this part of the park
closed, at least for today, Detective?’

‘Yes. Perhaps you could liaise with the uniformed police, Mr Stewart, while I ask Ms Lockwood a few questions?’

‘It’s Doctor Lockwood,’ Stewart corrected him. ‘Doctor Joanna Lockwood. She has a PhD.’

With a gentle hand on Stewart’s arm, Jo said, ‘It’s just a piece of paper, Mal. The title is irrelevant.’

Irrelevant? Not in Nick’s estimation. He added intelligence and perseverance to his impressions of capability and control.

For all the cool calmness of her manner, the late morning was already hot, and she’d been standing around waiting for a couple
of hours. Nick dragged his gaze away from a trickle of sweat running down her neck and disappearing below her open collar.

‘Can we find somewhere in the shade to talk?’ he asked her.

She nodded. ‘There’s a table down by the river. I don’t think we’d be disturbing any evidence there.’

She slung a small backpack over her shoulder and led the way, skirting around the edge of the camping ground, along a thick
line of trees and rough undergrowth that obscured the river from view. He could hear it – water running over rocks – but only
caught glimpses now and then. So he looked, instead, at the open area of the camping ground. He would go over it closely later,
but for now he concentrated on getting the general layout, the context in which the crimes had occurred. Even from this distance,
the damage was obvious.

‘They sure made a mess. I don’t suppose you collect names, addresses or car registrations for visitors?’

‘Names and postcodes sometimes – when they fill in a form. But that’s hit and miss.’ She turned on to a path through a break
in the trees, into a clearing beside the water’s edge. ‘However, I can tell you that there were at least two vehicles here.
And two dogs.’

Hope sparked in him. ‘You saw them?’

‘No. I was only here yesterday morning, and it was after that. The tyre tracks are there, though, and dog tracks and faeces
beside where they were parked.’ She rested her backpack on the wooden picnic table and drew out a camera. ‘I have photos.
I was compiling evidence for a long list of offences – criminal damage, bringing dogs and chainsaws into a national park,
lighting a camp fire during a total fire ban – but I guess …’ She sat down abruptly on the wooden bench, her bitter, somewhat
shaky laugh a small crack in her control. ‘Murder pretty much trumps all of those.’

‘It would.
If
the people who did the vandalism committed the murder.’ Avoiding a lump of bird shit on the seat, he sat opposite her, taking
the camera she offered and flicking through the images while keeping half his attention on her. It was incongruous, sitting
in such a cool, restful spot under the trees, the river winding its way over rocks less than ten metres away, when thirty
metres behind him havoc had reigned in the night.

She stared at the table, circling a knot in the timber with her fingertip. Short, unpainted fingernails, he noticed. And tanned
wrists and hands that, although small, were corded with lean muscle.

After a few moments of silence, she looked up at him and said, ‘If it wasn’t them, then the timing would have had to be close.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘When I arrived this morning, the dog faeces were still moist. Only a few hours old. And the …’ she steadied her voice and
continued, ‘the victim – there was no sign of rigor. And few insects.’

She had all his attention now. He considered her argument, and explored possible holes in it. ‘The dogs might belong to the
murderer.’

‘The vehicle the dogs were tied up beside is the same one that rammed down the information board. There’s a distinctive tyre
track.’

‘You’re very observant.’

‘I’m a scientist.’

She said it simply, as though it explained everything. Which, he supposed, it did. Scientists relied on logical processes
and evidence – just as he did.

But he also relied on gut, on the sense of what fitted and what didn’t fit, on his experience of patterns of behaviours that
might not seem rational but could all too easily be the caustic results of mixing personalities, power and passions.

With the niggling certainty that the elements of this crime scene didn’t all fit neatly together, he flicked through the images
on the camera one more time. She had taken some broader context shots as well as detailed close-ups, and despite the small
screen, in between her photos and the general view of the destruction he’d seen he could construct a fair picture of some
of the night’s events.