Darkening Skies (14 page)

But now there was only Mark.

‘I’m camping in the manager’s cottage for the time being,’ he said as he parked beside her car. ‘The east wing of the homestead might be livable, but I’m not sure yet how much damage there is.’

‘You won’t be employing another manager?’

‘No. Not for here, probably not at Gearys either. I prefer to be hands-on. I just couldn’t do it while I was an MP. Now I can again.’ And although he’d been silent and preoccupied most of the drive from Dungirri, that last sentence –
Now I can again –
rang with a quiet pleasure she hadn’t heard from him since she’d returned.

Mark and Marrayin. Every memory of him mustering cattle on horseback or motorbike, hot, sweaty and filthy after a day fencing
or calf-marking, or half-covered in hay and chaff after carting feed during dry spells, came with an awareness of his deep contentment, his joy and fulfilment in the hard work and its rewards. He’d been passionate and committed in his parliamentary career – she’d stood in the shadows in the public gallery when he’d given his influential maiden speech, and all her colleagues agreed he’d achieved significant respect for his actions and achievements – but nothing she’d seen or read in the past six years hinted at the same kind of serenity. Some people thrived on the cut and thrust of debate, on power plays and negotiations, on political tactics, manoeuvrings and victories. Not Mark.

If his intellect, his detailed comprehension of complex rural issues, his natural leadership skills and his commitment to service had led him to stand for parliament, it must have come at a personal cost.

Mark belonged here, at Marrayin.

She stood in the drive-circle beside her car and surveyed the damage to the house. ‘You will rebuild it, won’t you?’

‘I hope to. I’ll have to wait for the building inspection and the insurance decision. And for the outcome of the police investigation.’ He shot her a sideways glance. ‘If I’m found culpable for Paula’s death, there may be a prison sentence.’

Mark in prison? Her mind blanked and refused to process the thought. At what point had she shifted from anger and suspicion to wanting him to be innocent? Even at her angriest, her most doubtful of him, at no time in the past forty-eight hours had she imagined him behind bars.

He stood by the back of the ute, gently rubbing the ears of one of the dogs, and when she didn’t respond he said, ‘I’ll accept the findings and the outcome, Jenn. Paula was important to me, too.’

She found enough coherence in her brain to string some words together. ‘I know she was. So, now we just have to work out what actually happened.’

‘Yes. Although Steve’s first priority will be Jim and Doc Russell. We can’t know for certain if they’re linked, but I’m hoping those investigations will shed light on the old crime.’

So was she. Because no matter what the level of public interest was, no police command was going to allocate many of their scarce resources to an old car accident that might, or might not, have been caused by a man with an otherwise unblemished record.

A white car turned into the
driveway. Insurance, WorkCover or police – whichever, Mark would be caught up with them for some time. Jenn checked her watch. She just had enough time to get into Birraga library before it closed; she wanted copies of the accident reports from their archives of the
Gazette
. She planned to investigate the accident, too, and that was a good place to start. She’d known all of the
Gazette
’s small staff. She’d find out from the archives what had been reported, and – just as importantly – what hadn’t, and armed with that information she would ask them why.

‘We don’t hold the hard copies here anymore,’ the young woman at the library’s information desk told her. ‘They’re in the Regional Archives Centre in Armidale. But we do have the papers on microfilm. Which year do you want?’

Tucked into a corner in the reference section near several large printers, the small booth with the microfilm reader trapped warm air and received little of the flow of cool from the air-conditioning.

‘Can’t wait for digitisation,’ Jenn murmured, threading the microfilm through the rollers and under the lens. The rollers squeaked as she fast-forwarded through the months of papers, the images and text flashing across the screen in a scratchy blur.

She slowed as she scrolled through the three editions in the second week in December
and paused with a wistful smile at her Friday column, ‘Youth Matters’, celebrating its second anniversary. Started during her first week of work experience when she was fifteen, she’d badgered the editor Clem Lockrey to keep it going, providing copy every week, and before long it became a regular column. All those afternoons through years ten and eleven at Birraga High, hanging out at the
Gazette
office, making herself useful, drafting advertising copy, assisting with research and proofreading items eventually paid off when Clem gave her a desk, a modest wage as a part-time office assistant and the occasional by-line when she transformed Birraga Council’s media releases into coherent articles. And ‘Youth Matters’ had gradually moved from page eight to page four.

She skimmed her very last column, ‘Cool things on the World Wide Web’, with some amusement at what had seemed cutting edge then, and pressed the button to scan it to email. Maybe she’d do a retrospective piece on it some day.

She scrolled through Friday’s classifieds and sports pages to reach Monday’s edition. Front-page news, as she expected.

The headline took up a third of the page: ‘FATAL SMASH KILLS GIRL’. The rational, distanced part of her brain focused on the clunky phrase. One of Larry’s, probably. Headlines weren’t his strength.

But the headline didn’t matter. She couldn’t stay distanced and she braced herself as she scrolled the page up on the screen to study the photos and the story. Staring out at her was a four-column image of the smashed car at the crash site, with an inset photo of Mark in school uniform.

Birraga High School captain Mark Strelitz was airlifted in a critical condition to the John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle following a single-vehicle accident on Saturday evening on the Dungirri road that claimed the life of Paula Katherine Barrett, aged 18.

Lead with the most important
fact – and in the way of small-town newspapers and the social strata of the district, Mark’s injuries made more significant news than Paula’s death. Jenn ignored the twinge of resentment on Paula’s behalf. Selling newspapers was always the purpose, not assuaging the feelings of a few family members.

The only child of graziers Len and Caroline Strelitz, Mark suffered head injuries and remains in a coma. Speaking from Newcastle, Mr Strelitz expressed his gratitude to police, paramedics and nursing staff for their care of his son, and his sorrow for Miss Barrett’s death.

Build sympathy for the victim – and already, in this first report, Mark had been presented as victim, not offender.

Morgan Gillespie, also 18, of Dungirri, has been charged with culpable driving occasioning death and was remanded in custody. Police allege Gillespie had a blood-alcohol reading of 0.14.

A statement from the senior sergeant at Birraga added the detail that the car had
‘apparently swerved off the road and collided with a tree’.
Coming after the mention of the blood-alcohol reading, it reinforced the perception of Gillespie’s guilt.

The next statement, from the principal of Birraga High School, expressed shock at the tragedy.
‘Paula was a delight to teach and a valued member of our school community, loved by her peers and always supportive of younger students.’

Jenn’s eyes watered and she had to dig in her bag for a tissue. Good old Mr Howie.

The final paragraph was in italics, indicating an editorial comment on the story, and as Jenn read she had to press the tissue against her mouth to suppress a sob, tears now spilling over.

The deceased woman is the sister of the
Gazette
’s Youth
Matters columnist, Jennifer Barrett. The staff of the
Gazette
express their deepest condolences to Miss Barrett and her family.

The screen became a blur, and she had to look away, wipe the tears running down her face. It had to be Clem who’d added that. The main article had Larry’s old-school style, and his technically incorrect reference to an eighteen-year-old woman as a ‘girl’. But that reference to Paula as her sister – that was Clem, bless him, and it harked back to an editorial she had proofread for him about extended families and foster-siblings and complex care relationships. And he’d argued in that article that often the legal relationship didn’t matter as much as the relationship of the heart.

God, she had to pull herself together before she started to howl. The grief shouldn’t still be this fresh and raw – it had to be just her fatigue and the shock of the past days’ events throwing her emotions off kilter.

She heard a librarian informing other patrons that closing time was in ten minutes. Ten minutes. Hiding in her corner and howling wasn’t an option. She dragged a dry tissue over her eyes and made them focus on the machine. Print. Scan. Email.

She quickly scrolled through the next couple of editions but saw little that related to the accident, other than a brief mention of Mark remaining in hospital in Newcastle. And then she was out of time. Wishing that small community libraries had the staff and funds for longer opening hours was wasted effort. She’d just have to
wait until Monday to look for mentions of Gillespie’s committal hearing.

After placing the microfilm back in its box, she collected her pages from the printer, glancing over them to check they’d printed all the text. She stopped abruptly, her eye drawn to the photo of the accident.

The low quality of the microfilm made the image grainy and she stared at it, blinking salty eyes to try to make out the detail. No, to be certain she needed the original image. Now she just had to find out if Clem or Larry were still around, and if she could get it.

With the arson investigator, WorkCover inspector, insurance assessor, police forensic officers and Steve all arriving, the driveway soon filled with vehicles. Mark answered their initial questions and then left them to their work. Stand around passively watching while they picked over the remains of his home? No, not when he had a property to run, and no-one to help him do it.

Jim’s dogs leapt with ears-up eagerness on to the tray on the back of the quad bike. They knew Mark and accepted direction from him, keen to work. Out in the sun-hot paddocks checking water troughs, dams and stock, his physical restlessness found some ease. He wished he could spread that ease to the crowded, racing activity of his thoughts, but planning what needed to be done on the property only added another layer to the discordant chorus of concerns in his head.

The sale of two hundred steers just before the manager left a few weeks ago meant that Marrayin wasn’t heavily stocked
at present, but he had heifers to move from one paddock to another, this season’s calves to be marked and, he discovered when he reached the east river paddock, a mob of feral goats and a trampled fence to deal with.

He prioritised tasks, made plans. First priority – phone Karl and offer him some casual employment. He’d already proved to be a good worker. Mark would have to go over his finances and see if he could juggle things to offer Karl something more permanent, or at least regular. Like most rural communities, limited employment opportunities in the district meant that Dungirri’s younger people left for larger towns and cities, but if the town were to have a future, it needed people like Karl to stay. Mark would do what he could to enable that.

He rode along the river and up past the stockyards to the three long-empty workers’ cottages, and the old shearers’ quarters. He left the quad bike under a tree to check inside. There was some basic equipment and tools stored there, plus a fridge in the old kitchen for days when a few people were down here working. And there were memories.

Jenn kept coming to his thoughts, each part of the property holding recollections of working, playing, and exploring the landscape with her. Always Jenn stood out more than Paula, although he could still see, too, the warmth of Paula’s smile, hear her teasing him with the cheeky confidence of their four weeks’ age difference. He never minded, because she needed all the confidence she could find within. But Jenn, for all her reserve and emotional armour, had a stronger sense of self and certainty. From horse riding to mustering, school work to journalism, if she set her mind to something she usually succeeded.