Darkening Skies (6 page)

Sean at risk of suicide? Jenn could hardly imagine the cheeky, irreverent cousin she remembered falling so deeply into depression. But then, she couldn’t imagine him getting mixed up with organised crime and beating Gil Gillespie almost to death with a metal pipe, either, and yet he’d done that and more back in
September. Jim’s emails hadn’t been full of detail, but from a cafe in Tashkent she’d looked up the court reports of the evidence and Sean’s guilty plea at his committal hearing, the words distant and unreal, unconnected to her. Only Jim’s diligent cards and notes every birthday and Christmas – not her own efforts – had kept the family connection alive after she’d left Dungirri behind her at seventeen.

And in the phone message she hadn’t heard until her plane landed in Sydney last night, Jim had pleaded with her to come. Now there was only Paul and Sean – Sean suicidal in prison, and Paul overwhelmed with responsibility. Jenn shut her eyes against the light, swamped by the desperate desire to wake up, somewhere, anywhere else. Family … God, she didn’t know how to do family.

Paul sat at the end of the table, holding his grief behind a face carved into stone, still wearing his grimy RFS T-shirt and fire-fighting trousers. Hard-working, dependable Paul. Their fearless Grandfather Barrett would have been proud of his namesake. Whereas she … she’d fought some hard battles in some of the world’s hellholes using words as her weapons, but she’d chosen those battles. Not this one.

She owed it to Jim to try. She might be a failure at family but she had other skills, and unearthing the truth might help them all.

Would it help Mark? He stood by the window, tense and silent, his once-white business shirt discoloured by soot and sweat. The brown-haired, brown-eyed good looks of his teenage years had deepened in maturity, but the media images she’d seen over the years didn’t capture the intense reality of his presence. The five o’clock shadow, dishevelled appearance, and the large,
work-roughened hands emphasised his authenticity.

Authenticity? The word had sprung to mind, but did it still apply? The truth used to be important to him. The law used to be important to him. Truth, honour, compassion, conciliation, justice: the values that had defined him in his youth. Or so she’d once believed. She didn’t know what she believed now – about his sudden confession, and the convenient amnesia – but although he’d lost his career today, his home, and a friend, evidence of his concern for others was there in the mug of coffee in her hands, in his quiet presence.

They’d all fallen silent, each deep in their own thoughts. Even the detective, who might simply be giving them space but who seemed almost as drained as the rest of them.

Paul pushed his chair back suddenly and stood. ‘I can’t stay here,’ he said. ‘I have to tell the kids about their grandpa, after I see Mick. And I’ve got to get to Wellington by the morning to tell Sean.’

Jenn almost offered to go with him but he was already walking towards the door on his way to his wife and family who knew him far better than she did. He paused with his hand on the doorframe, desolation in his eyes. ‘Catch the bastard who murdered my father, Fraser.’

They all listened to the heavy tread of his fire-fighting boots take the thirty paces down the corridor to the exit.

Answers. They all needed answers, and she needed to
do
something, make some order of the jumbled thoughts in her head. Focus on the questions and establish the facts … and take the lead and prod the detective away from any more irrelevant questions about Jim.

‘Detective, as I told you
earlier, when I went into the office, there were papers on the floor and the desk and the filing cabinet drawers were open. It gave me the impression that the intruder had been searching for something.’

Fraser gave her a sharp look that said he read her tactic, but he took the prompt anyway. ‘Did Jim say anything to you? Did he tell you that there was someone there and that he was attacked?’

‘He was barely conscious. He only said a few words, and they were mumbled. But he did say “fight”, and if you look at his hands you’ll see some bruising on his knuckles. And I think you’ll agree, Detective, that it’s very difficult to hit oneself on the back of the head hard enough to do serious damage.’

Fraser conceded the point with a slight nod. ‘Okay, let’s assume for the moment that Jim confronted an intruder – the person you reported seeing leaving the house. Have you any idea what they might have been searching for, Mark? Were there valuables in the room? A safe, maybe?’

Mark turned slowly, considering the question. ‘No, nothing valuable. There’s no safe in there. And the computer equipment is nothing special – a few years old.’

And now it was just piles of molten plastic and metal. Jenn hoped he had a sound back-up system in place. ‘What about files or documents?’ she asked, tossing an unapologetic look at Fraser. ‘Filing cabinets and paperwork wouldn’t usually be the first place a thief looks for valuables. Are there any parliamentary papers or reports someone might want to get their hands on?’

‘Not at the house. Confidential papers stay in Canberra, or are locked up
in my office in Birraga. But there’s been nothing sensitive lately.’

‘What about—’

‘Did you—’ Jenn spoke at the same moment as Fraser, continuing when he stopped, her train of thought running on an express line. ‘Did you have anything relating to the accident?’

‘Yes. A copy of the police file.’

Fraser forgot police etiquette and swore. ‘How the hell did you get one so quickly? Archives told me two weeks.’

Mark shook his head. ‘I’ve always had it. I requested it a month or so after the accident.’

‘Why?’ Jenn asked. It had never occurred to her back then to ask for the police report. Gil Gillespie was already in prison, having pleaded guilty to drink driving. There’d been nothing more to find out.

Mark wrapped both hands around his coffee mug, leaning back against the window with so much weariness in his face that she almost felt guilty asking questions. ‘It was just after I got out of hospital. I couldn’t remember anything. I hoped something in the report would prompt my memory, bring it back. But it never did.’

She dropped her gaze from his. If the amnesia was a lie, he was telling it convincingly. She wanted him to be telling the truth. Maybe he was.

‘Please tell me,’ Fraser said, ‘that you have a back-up copy of that report somewhere safe.’

‘Several electronic copies. With off-site back-ups. But Steve, I’ve been over it again, several times this past week. There’s nothing in it that contradicts the official story.’ He shifted his gaze to her. ‘Jenn, if you know anything, anything at all, please
tell Steve.’

‘I don’t. I’ve already told him that I didn’t see you that evening, so I’m no help.’ No help to anyone, Steve or Mark, in piecing together what had happened. She needed to get it all straight in her head, line up the facts. ‘The report says Gillespie was driving? And drunk?’

Mark’s legal education showed in the careful way he chose his words, as though he were on the stand in court. ‘It states he was the driver, yes. And that he recorded a blood-alcohol reading of point one-four.’

‘But there was some mix-up with the blood test, wasn’t there?’ she pushed, remembering the reasons for Gillespie’s release from prison. Reasons she’d been angry about at the time. ‘That’s why his conviction was quashed after a couple of years. An error recording the time, wasn’t it?’

‘At the time the test was recorded as being taken here at the Birraga hospital, Gil was, according to the custody records, still in the Dungirri police cell, sixty kilometres away.’

Still those precise, factual words. Nothing she couldn’t find out from public records. But all that precision highlighted what he hadn’t said. He hadn’t agreed that it was an error. If it wasn’t an error … her sluggish brain processed that slowly. If it wasn’t an error, someone had deliberately framed Gillespie.

Steve took advantage of her pause
to reassert control of the conversation. ‘Mark, you made a very public announcement this morning, and although you were circumspect in your comments to the media, I’ve read the statement that you sent to the Commissioner that details your concerns and the conversation with Gillespie. This afternoon someone
allegedly—
’ Jenn caught the warning look he shot at her, ‘broke into your office, went through papers and set fire to the place. Maybe they’re unconnected, but in the absence of other evidence or explanations, I’m thinking not.’ He paused and aimed a questioning tilt of the head at Mark. ‘Who knows that you have the report?’

‘I haven’t spoken of it to anyone since I received it. But I presume some police and perhaps some others around at the time may have known I’d requested it.’

‘
Perhaps some others
?’ More subtext … and Fraser nodded and seemed to understand.

She didn’t. Yet. ‘The statement you sent to the Commissioner – can I see it?’

For a moment, she thought Mark would say yes. The instinct was there, a flicker in his brown eyes. But the moment passed and he shook his head. ‘The matter’s with the police now, Jenn. I made my public statement.’

Oh, that stung. Caution or distrust? Did he think she would race to publish it?

‘Paula was like a sister to me,’ she objected.
And you were my closest friend
. ‘I have a right to know.’

Mark met her gaze but remained silent.

Fraser stood and broke the moment. ‘I’ll keep you informed of the investigation’s progress, Ms Barrett, when I have the facts. Will you stay in Birraga tonight? Or would you like me to arrange a lift for you to Dungirri?’

Interview over. Smoothly, politely done, but she wouldn’t get anything more
from Steve Fraser tonight. If she’d been somebody other than Jennifer Barrett, journalist, maybe she would have. But in this circumstance her reputation worked against her, not for her. Fraser and Mark were toeing the professional, legal line, and neither of them would be easy to budge.

She would respect that if it didn’t frustrate her so much.

But if Jim’s death was connected even slightly to the long-ago accident she would keep pushing until she uncovered the full story. Just not right now. Not when she was so exhausted from the mix of jetlag, smoke inhalation, adrenaline letdown, shock and grief that she could scarcely think straight She dragged a strand of hair away from her eyes, the movement giving a sharp, painful reminder of the damaged skin on her hand. Tomorrow. Tomorrow she would ask questions. In the meantime, she needed to arrange somewhere to stay for the night.

‘I can drive you to Dungirri, if that’s where you want to go,’ Mark offered quietly. ‘I brought your things from your car.’

Forty minutes in a car with Mark? Nothing about today had been easy, but she would rather drive with him than the detective or some night-duty constable allocated the task – and maybe she would be able to get a better sense of the man he’d become.

He watched her, waiting for her response, and she wondered if he thought she would reject his offer out of hand.

She nodded. ‘Thank you. I planned on staying at the pub, assuming it’s bearable. But I haven’t booked.’ She couldn’t stay with Paul and Chloe, not unannounced, not tonight when Paul needed his wife and family and privacy to grieve.

‘They’ll have a room for you,’ Mark said. ‘It’s nothing flash, but it’s clean and well kept.’ He
made an attempt to smile, a ghostly shadow of his old grin that twisted in her heart. ‘In other circumstances, I’d offer you a guest room at Marrayin, but I’m sure you’ve breathed enough smoke for tonight.’

‘Yes. Thank you.’ They were dancing around each other, being polite, and as he escorted her to his LandCruiser, controlled and distant and so unlike the easygoing friend of her youth, the unexpected sorrow of that loss hit her almost as hard as her uncle’s death.

The headlights illuminated the black ribbon of road ahead, a tunnel in the dark night. Beside him Jenn sat silently in the passenger seat, staring out the window away from him.

He didn’t intrude on her grief with any attempt at small talk. Nothing he could say could ease such sorrow – hers or his. He steered his own thoughts away from the quagmire of feeling on to the solid ground of planning and practical needs. There would be plenty to deal with: the workers’ compensation inspector, house-insurance assessor, arson investigators and safety inspectors as well as the police questions about both the fire and his confession. The days ahead would not be easy. And the media would have hold of the story by morning, relishing another dramatic turn to the news of his resignation.

The road began a zigzag around some old property boundaries and the headlights shone on a large old gum tree, dead branches stark against the black sky.

‘It was there, wasn’t it?’ Jenn broke the silence as he shifted down a gear to negotiate the next curve.

‘So I was told.’ On his
release from hospital he’d stopped there, seen the rut dug into the dirt by the wheels, the scar on the tree, the broken stump of the low branch that had speared through the windscreen.

‘What I don’t understand,’ she said, turning to face him, ‘is why Gillespie is making these accusations now about you being the driver, after eighteen years? And why you believe him?’