Gunshot Road (18 page)

Bright spark

HAMMER AVENUE WAS ON
the ragged edge of town, out where the bitumen disintegrates and the dogs are heavier than the machines they guard. I dropped round to the workshop later that afternoon.

The sign on the gate:
Bright Spark: Metal Fabrications
. Droll. I parked out the front, walked in.

The pickup, a Toyota HZ575, was squatting in the parking bay; it had a battery of spotlights, truck radials, more bars than Brunswick Street: roll-bar, tow-bar, bull-bar, nerf-bar.

The grisly head on the bull-bar was saying more in death than it ever had in life; if nothing else, it said that the bloke who put it there was a muppet. Whether he was a dangerous muppet remained to be seen.

From somewhere inside the building I heard the sound of an oxy welder. I walked up to the doorway: arcing sparks, bitter fumes. Rivulets of light flickered across a greasy concrete floor.

The head of the bloke inside, when it emerged from the mask, bore a distinct resemblance to the mascot on the vehicle: full of god-knows-what, ragged about the edges, with a drizzly beard, sunken eyes, dropped cheeks. A hot, red face, maybe in its late thirties.

He stood up, removed his leather gloves: the tip of a finger missing, most of the others scarred or burnt. Whatever crimes Paisley had committed, all those and more, he may have done, but he'd obviously put a lot of muscle and blood into his trade. My old man was a bush mechanic: I recognised the signs.

He proffered a businesslike greeting, but the bonhomie disappeared when I identified myself. You could feel the temperature drop. Suddenly we were in a war zone.

‘I had a few questions about the Gunshot Road.'

‘You can ask. Doesn't mean I'm gonna answer.'

‘You've got a mineral exploration lease out there.'

He picked up a hammer, smashed the off-cuts from the steel frame. Jagged metal clattered onto concrete. ‘Sounds like you already know what you wanner hear.'

‘West of the roadhouse.'

‘There a question comin?' The more we spoke, it seemed, the surlier he got. The tendons clenched in his neck. Volcanic forces were brewing beneath the surface of that monolithic personality.

‘Go down there often?'

‘When it suits me. When I get sick…' he delivered a brutal blow with the hammer, ‘…of fuckin jacks breathing down the back of my neck.'

‘They haven't been breathing that hard. Must be, oh, weeks since your last conviction.'

‘Years. Three.' Another blow. ‘And they fuckin fitted me up for that. Cunt couldn't go straight if he tried.'

I took a look around the workshop. Dirty rainbows on the floor, butchered buckets and slabs of metal, burnt slag. It was a building defined by sharp angles and edges: grinders and vices, benches and boxes of welding rods. Paisley and his head were the only blurred things there.

‘The other day I was driving out on the Gunshot Road,' I said, ‘some idiot ran me off it. Idiot with a pig's head on his bull-bar.'

‘You oughter be more careful.'

‘What were you doing out there?'

‘Didn't say I was.'

‘And if you were?'

‘Then I would have been minding me own business.' He paused. Peered at me, puzzled, sniffed the air, sucked the sweat out of his mustache. His eyes swarmed with a cornered-animal suspicion. ‘What'd you say your name was?'

‘Emily Tempest.'

‘What sort of a cop are you, anyway?'

‘None of your business.'

Suddenly it dawned on him. ‘You're not a proper pig at all, out here on your own, runnin round out bush. That joke of a uniform. You're just the fuckin black tracker.'

‘I'm working my way up.'

‘Bugger off and track some blacks.'

He fired up an oxy-acetylene torch, waved it in my face.

‘Careful with that thing.' I took a step back, stumbled against a broken tailgate.

A rare sighting of what was left of the Paisley teeth. ‘Worried you'll end up on the bull-bar?'

‘Worried you'll end up in the back of the van.'

I was tempted to say more, but the look that shot across his face deterred me. Paisley was an over-heated furnace: flip the wrong switch and he'd explode.

The switch? Clearly, the threat of incarceration; he'd been inside, didn't want to go back.

And there was something weird about his eyes. Something hot-wired, wounded. This guy had done time for dealing, according to Harley. From the look on him now he'd been hoovering up the residuals.

‘What are you?' he snarled. ‘Some jumped-up little gin from the fringe camp, put on a pigskin jacket and thinks she can come kickin a white man's door down?'

He lowered the mask, leaned over, flashed a cleavage of Monrovian proportions. The interview was over.

I walked out, noticed another building in the yard, a khaki corrugated iron shed against the back fence. More of a bunker this one: oblong, with a heavily bolted door, a Gothic dog, a row of windows, dark and barred.

The Paisley residence? Not exactly an ivy-covered cottage, but he hadn't struck me as an ivy-covered kind of guy. I was lucky he hadn't struck me at all.

Curiosity—that terrible monkey that's been riding on my back forever—impelled me towards the shed.

I'd only taken a couple of steps when a door on the west side of the workshop crashed open. Paisley's rusty smudge of a head appeared.

‘Shithouse sense of direction for a tracker.'

‘I'm better out bush.'

‘You're on private property.' Aside from a quiver of the nostrils, the face was rigid. ‘Less you gotta warrant, the exit's over there.' He jerked his chin at the gate.

‘Zulu!' he barked, and whistled.

The dog—a cross between a doberman, a Baskerville and a Mack truck—uncurled itself and flexed its teeth. It was chained, but only barely. The corroded links failed to inspire confidence.

I turned round, walked back out to my car. The inside of the workshop was shrouded in darkness, but I could feel Paisley in there, staring, trying to creep me out.

Pretty well succeeding.

I shuddered and got behind the wheel. Drove down to the White Dog for a soothing afternoon libation with the regulars, those who were still kicking. I used to pull beers at the White when I first came back to Bluebush, and I felt at home among those wobbly old gentlemen.

I spent a distracting hour laughing at stale jokes and listening to Roy Orbison sing high harmony to the smack of pool balls and the rattle of rheumatic bones. They even had Cold Chisel on the jukebox. Stan, the licensee, was catching up with the times: he'd got as far as the seventies.

It was getting on for sundown when I headed back up to Midnight Choir, the small peak that looked down over the western edge of town. I took my field glasses, grunted to the summit, nestled down in a spot that afforded me a comfortable view of Paisley's workshop.

If this prick had anything to do with Doc's death, I'd find out. If he had anything to do with anything, I'd find out. I didn't like being driven off the road. I didn't take to having welders waved in my face. And I sure as hell wasn't going to be called a jumped-up little gin and not do something about it.

B and E

I RAISED THE GLASSES
, zeroed in on him. He was hammering away in the half light, metal ringing, sparks flying through the shadows. Over the next hour the odd customer dropped by. Some of them I recognised: Brian Johnston, the manager of Brindle Bore, picked up a pair of gates. Young Daisy Cutter and his overblown FX pickup truck roared off in a blaze of rubber and debt. Archie Skinner, grinning at the wheel of the two-tonner from Fiend's Creek, drove away with a set of iron grids.

Even the Reverend Bodycombe put in an appearance: the Great White Whale rumbled into the yard and Paisley inspected some sort of damage to the front end, scribbled a quote. Had the Rev been running over donkeys?

Sometime round six Paisley closed the workshop, drove away in the Pig's Head. I sat tight and waited. He came back half an hour later, climbed out of the cab with hot food and cold beer.

He tossed something at the dog, went inside, shoulders hunched, singlet hanging loose. Settling in for a long night of watching art-house movies, I assumed—
The Shawshank Redemption
at a guess, the favourite of criminals everywhere—and talking to the dog or pulling the pud, or whatever it was your Bluebush yob did to while away the summer evening.

I was wrong.

The gate stayed open, and the after-hours Paisley was even busier than the business-hours one. By ten o'clock half a dozen vehicles had cruised in and out the yard.

Most of them were anonymous in the dark, but I did spot Con Panopoulos, proprietor of Bluebush's greasiest mustache—this time of the year, he could have deep-fried his chips in it—ramshackle taxi operator and purveyor of fine food to the masses. Con snuck in a couple of times, his lights low, his profile lower, didn't hang around.

It was nearly two before Paisley finally bade the last of his visitors farewell, turned out the lights, locked the gates and drove away.

He didn't sleep there. Good. I gave it another half an hour, then made my way down the slope.

Tried the gate.

Shit!
A monster came roaring out of the dark and lunged at the wire: ferocious teeth tearing at chain mesh, spittle dripping, eyes on fire.

Zulu. I staggered backwards, gasping. Clutched my pounding heart and thought: Emily Tempest, girl detective. Who the hell stages a B and E and forgets about the guard dog?

My options were limited. Shoot the mongrel? An elephant gun would have done the trick, but I didn't have one handy. Call up my father, who could charm the pants from man—or at least woman—and beast? No way: Jack took a dim view of my misadventures, and hadn't quite figured out that I was all growed up now; he'd have me out of there and grounded before I knew what hit me.

I studied the yard. In the dim glow of the floodlight over the workshop door, I could make out piles of steel, glimmering mesh, squat drums. I worked my way round the side of the compound. Zulu followed me every step of the way, balls bobbing, spiked collar bristling. The occasional hint that I was welcome to have another go rumbled from his barrel chest.

I was standing there, anxiously surveying the scene, when something rasped against my bare leg.

‘Christ!' I would have hit the roof if there'd been a roof to hit.

The simpering mewl that came back at me revealed my attacker to be one of the rat-eaten cats that skulk about the seedier quarters of the Bluebush night. This one was on the scrounge. It purred, a crackling, asthmatic whine, scraped its ribs against my ankles, curved a mangy tail. It must have had me figured for one of the strange old ladies who ran around feeding the strays with milk and Kit-e-Kat.

‘Gworn,' I snarled, but the creature persisted.

I kicked it away, at which the moggy got the message, arced up and languidly raked its claws across my calf.

Bastard! I cast an appraising eye across the yard, grabbed the cat by the tail, then whirled it over the wire and into the patch of alley between fence and shed.

The cat effected a wildly yodelling descent and hit the dirt howling, looked up to see Mount Vesuvius bearing down on it and took off. Zulu gave pursuit. During the ensuing cacophony, I ran at a fencepost, scurried up its length, dropped down into the yard and lit out for the set of iron gates I'd spotted leaning against the shed.

The dog twigged, did a lightning turn, came back at me.

I pulled at the gates and they weren't gates, they were heavy grids, and they weren't going anywhere. Shit! I jumped onto an adjoining forty-four and heaved as the dog came galloping over the gravel.

The doberman leapt and the grids came crashing down, trapped the beast in a makeshift enclosure between fence and wall.

Zulu wasn't happy, and let the world know it with a din to wake the dead. How long before somebody responded? His guess was as good as mine: we were out on the lonely edge of town, but even here, I supposed, the occasional security man trundled by, the odd long-haul driver pulled in for a knee-trembler with some drug-fucked prossie he'd picked up at the BP.

I pulled out my torch, examined the building. Heavy mesh welded onto the windows, a fat chain curled around the door.

I gave the chain a rueful shake. Amazing: it wasn't locked. Paisley must have had a lot of faith in the dog, and fair enough—it would have scared most people senseless. Would have scared me senseless if I'd had some sense to begin with.

I uncoiled the chain, crept into the building, swept it with the torch: grubby Formica table, Jim Beam bottles and greasy leftover chips. On the bench, an array of tools: spanners and hammers, safety glasses, a set of night goggles. On the wall, more tools. Most of them penetrating pouty-lipped women with trash tans and silicone tits.

There was a rack of heavy hunting bows: two recurve, one cross. Probably the source of the boar's head on the bull-bar, but nothing illegal. Nothing that couldn't be found in redneck retreats from Bourke to Broome.

Had I risked my neck, tackled dog and fence, broken god knows how many laws, for this?

There was a back room. Might as well be hung for a sheep…I found the door, opened it slowly. As I did so, a flicker of suspicion zapped across my brain.

The night goggles. What were they doing there?

As the suspicion hit me, so did the length of twenty gauge chain: it crashed into my upper body and slammed me into the wall.

I caught a flying glimpse of Paisley, foot forward, winding up for another blow. I flung up an arm to fend it off, ducked my head, kicked out. All futile. The terrible metal came ripping in once more and exploded into darkness.

A bloodshot moon

MY SKULL THUMPED AGAINST
metal. Not bare metal. A touch of rough material in the mix. Canvas? The left side of my brain felt like there was a poultice nailed to it and cinched with barbed wire.

An engine roared.

I was in the back of a vehicle, bouncing over rough dirt roads. The tarp flapped: patches of starry sky, treetop shadows. No streetlights, no houses, nothing but the roaring empty outback night.

I found myself struggling for breath. What the…? My mouth was taped. So were my hands, strapped to the back of the tray: duct tape and rope. My legs were lashed together at the ankles. I was lying face down on a rough surface: scrappy tarp on a patterned metal floor.

I fought a wave of nausea, raised myself onto an elbow, craned my neck, managed to reach the window. I made out a dim figure in the ghostly echo of the dash lights' green. Paisley, eyes on the road, cigarette in his mouth, starlight in his beard.

Jesus fuck—what was going on here?

I struggled at the bonds. Couldn't budge them; he knew how to secure a load.

I worked at the tape. Got nowhere. Feather cuts in the wrists, torn lips. Trussed-up fly in a spider's web. The more you struggle…

The despair started in my groin and surged through my body. Fuck this! I muttered and spat into the gag. How do I get myself into these things?

What was the plan? Kill me and bury the body in the scrub? No. If that was what he had in mind he would have finished me off when he had me out cold.

We raced along, the white road smoking behind us. Then we slowed down, and the ride got rougher: up and over a windrow, onto churned earth, straddling ditches and gullies, scrub tearing at the drop-sides.

Off-road. My body jumped and thudded against the floor.

Twenty minutes of that, and the vehicle jerked to a halt. A door opened and shut. Panic speared my ribs, squeezed the breath out of my throat. I curled up, struggled at the bonds. Nothing.

Footsteps. The tarp drawn back. Paisley appeared, a blurred silhouette against a blue and silver background. Water and stars.

What was that terrible acrid smell?

The Retention Dams. Oh fuck, that made it worse, if such a thing was possible. He'd brought me to the most barren, blasted spot in the country, the chemical-encrusted wasteland west of the mines. Out where Copperhead had been dumping its waste for fifty years. Hissing blue cyanic ponds and mullock heaps, enough to send a chill through the heart of the hardest miner. Soon to be my final resting place.

Paisley had a rifle in his right hand—
must be the cautious type, I'm hardly going to make a run for it
—and his eyes were gleaming. No…the brute was wearing glasses. I hoped to hell they weren't reading specs, the sort of thing you'd put on for close work.

He flashed a torch, examined me. Everything presumably to his satisfaction: arms, mouth, ankles bound, eyes rolling in terror, heart punching like a rock drill.

A hungry look shot across his face, honed his mouth. Cleaved my heart.

He clambered into the canopy, rested the rifle against the well, rummaged though the gear at the back. Emerged
oh sweet Jesus
with a pick and shovel. He leaned them against the tailgate: careful with the tools of his trade, wouldn't want to give himself a splinter digging my grave.

He turned back to me, and I caught the gleam of a knife in his right hand. As he moved forward I swung with my legs to kick him in the balls. Failed miserably. He leaned forward, crouching over me in the cramped tray. Dropped an elbow into my back, crushed my head into the floor. I struggled, but he was an inexorable mass. The power of all that metal-born muscle crunched into my skinny little backbone.

He whispered into my ear, a gravelly exhalation. ‘Not so quick with the lip now, eh?' He raised the knife to my head. To my throat.

Now
, I thought.
I'm about to die.

He sliced through the tape around my mouth, ripped it away, tearing hair and skin.

‘Like to hear you—nobody else will.'

He reached down, hacking at the bonds around my feet. Ripped away the denim skirt and underwear, dragged my legs apart. Took a long look.

I felt a wild lurch in my gut. Oh Christ, that was why he'd kept me alive this long.

His strange, dead face loomed over me, eyes red rimmed behind the glasses, untouched by human feeling. Uneven teeth, two missing. A slobbering hop-head maniac. His massive spanner-hands pinned me to the floor.

The weight. There was nothing I could do to shift it; my feeble struggles seemed to amuse him. He sniggered as he reached down and rubbed something into me. Grease?

Was there any point yelling? No. I yelled anyway. I twisted my head, took a look around.

Something, anything I could use for a weapon.

Dream on. The truck was full of equipment, to be sure—spanners and files, hammers and rods. All useful if I had them in my hands, but my hands were bound.

There was a welder against the sides of the tray, a couple of gas bottles. I'd have blown us both to smithereens if that was the only option, but he wasn't about to sit back and let me do that.

I felt him tugging at his belt, loosening his trousers. He leaned into me, and I felt the momentary touch of his cock high on my leg before the ramming and tearing.
Ripping me apart.

Waves of despair breaking through my body.

I pressed my face to the floor, tears stinging. Moonlight washed over the gear cluttered about me.

Moonlight.

Somewhere, through the pain, through the grunting, a dove called. A diamond dove: my dreaming, the
purrpurrpur
a song that wrapped itself like wings around my soul.

I opened my eyes.

Find yourself. Reach for your strength
.
This man is nothing. The country lives in you: your people have been here forever.

I twisted my neck, peered back down the tray, past his pumping flanks.

The gun. It was resting against the well, the barrel angling ten degrees above us. I inched my right leg over, touched the stock with a toe, found the trigger guard. Felt my way round it, made a guess at the angles. Was the safety on? Didn't feel like it.

Paisley panted and thrust, shuddered and shook and, at last, flopped down on top of me. His body hair like a layer of toxic ash, buttons and zips biting. He buried his rough head in my shoulder, dribbled. I felt broken teeth, a tongue.

You piece of filth, don't go to sleep on me.

He began to raise himself.

I seemed somehow to be gazing down on the scene, like a floating raptor. Or a hovering dove. I saw his arms unwind, his back arch. The airborne perspective sharpened my judgment and hurled me into the moment, into an epiphany of angles and trajectory.

I concentrated, clenched my eyes, twisted over and flicked the rifle with my toes. Felt the barrel graze my leg and land in the small of his back.

The blast smacked at my brain. Cordite suffused the cramped atmosphere, a hot, sharp smell. No idea where the bullet had gone, but maybe Paisley would be thrown for long enough…

He lurched and dropped back down. What was going on? I felt him shudder and twist, flop alongside me. His eyes locked onto mine, then disappeared. The glasses were gone, the mouth was working hard. Nothing came out. He struggled to rise, got as far as one elbow. Collapsed.

I felt a charge of hope run through my body. Knew there was a bullet in him somewhere.

‘Oh the cunt, as if they didn't warn…' His voice trailed away, crumbled into a string of disjointed groans. We lay alongside each other, an obscene parody, a sculpture of two hell-bound lovers cast in brimstone.

I tried to wriggle as far away as possible, to the other side of the tarp; the other side of the world wouldn't have been far enough.

I groped around, feeling for something I could use to free myself. Scrabbled around the floor with my chin. Came across a chunk of metal, the tip of a welding rod. Clenched it between my teeth, sawed into the tape around my hands. Dropped it. Tried again. Lost it. Twisted my neck, picked it up, my mouth full of dirt and bitter filings. I clenched it so tightly my cheeks bled. Worked away. Every thrust sent stabbing pains into my mouth.

‘…the fuck you doing?'

Paisley, stirring, gurgling, breathing blood; sharp red eyes on fire. He raised an arm, threw it across my back. Dead weight: no power there. I shook him off, got back to work.

The beginnings of something giving in the tape.

Paisley's groans were growing weaker.

I thrust fiercely, back and forth, pulled for all I was worth. The rent grew longer. A final surge, and my hands came free.

I climbed to my knees. Scrambled to the back of the tray, desperate to be out from under that canopy of horrors. I drew the flaps back, jumped down.

A sudden snarl, a rush of paws and a fiery tearing in my right leg.

Zulu.

I rolled back into the tray and the dog came with me, its ferocious jaws latched onto my calf. I threw out a hand, landed on a spanner, bashed it across the skull. It ignored the blow, shook, emitted grinding, gravelly snarls. I touched the rifle, snatched it up, rammed it into the ribs and pulled the trigger. The dog flew back with the blast. Curled over and lay whining.

I put another one into its head. I ran from the truck, screaming and weeping. Crumpled against a tree. Retched.

Spewed my insides out, compulsive spasms tearing my stomach and throat. I wanted to bury myself in the sand, but there was no sand, there was only a vile green sludge that stung my feet and rippled with my vomit.

At last I shuddered to a halt. Breathed deep. I steeled myself, straightened up, took a look around: a bloodshot moon bled tears of light on ghost lagoons. A maggot-eaten bird was the only sign of life.

Dear god, what a place. Nobody ever came out here. The spirit of the country was long gone, eaten away by acid. I would have lain here forever, my bones corroding, my soul screaming into eternity.

I returned to the car, jumped into the driver's seat, rammed her into gear. Drove flat out, cutting across country, flying over ridges and rises, smashing termite mounds and branches. At one point I was up on two wheels, cutting a swathe through the poisonous pools that oozed from the cracks in the dam walls.

Dead country loomed up into the cones of light: crumbling samphire bushes caked with blue dust, the hollow ghosts of rats and snakes, frogs frozen in time.

I powered on, afraid to stop, hanging on to the motor's rise and fall, terrified that any fall might become a stall and leave me stranded among these monstrosities.

I splashed through foetid gutters and cuttings, grey slime whirling in my wake. Then diminishing. The earth became redder, the grass more yellow, the leaves more green. The country coming back to life.

I drove past a skull and crossbone sign on a sagging barbed wire fence:
DO NOT ENTER. By Order: W. Demsky, CEO, Copperhead Mines.

I eased off on the throttle. Not long to go and this cursed place would be behind me. I sighed.

And a bloody hand burst through the window. Clenched my face, fingers in my eyes, my mouth.

Paisley: he'd climbed out of the tray, worked his way round. He was standing on the steps, one arm on the pillar.

I thumped him, bit hard on a thumb, lost control of the vehicle. We went into a fish-tail, quivered ominously.

A ghost gum loomed in the headlights. I threw the wheel to the right, crashed into its branches, side on. Saw a dead branch lance the bastard, catch him under the ribs. His face whipped away behind me, racked by shock and pain. I gunned the motor, risked a backward glance: Paisley wriggling on the tree, speared like a barramundi.

I crashed through sagging fences and fallen gates, rotting logs. Came to the creek and belted down its banks. Reached the town dam. Clean water glimmered in the moonlight.

I skittered down to the water's edge, slammed on the brakes, leapt out. Stripped off, dived in. Wanted to wash my soul, eradicate the memory of that hot red metal breath, those dead mechanical eyes, that alien vileness.

Then, a long while later, I lay on the banks and wept. Wept myself out. It's only a thing, I told myself. A man's body.

It cannot touch your diamond soul.

I punched the sand, hard. Felt, through the pain, the first sign of life—anger—seeping back into my bones. Fuck him, I spat through a twisted grimace. Fuck him a million times over. A curse on him and his kind forever. He will not do this to me. It's over. Over.

I stood up, saw the lights of Bluebush in the distance. Dragged the rags of my clothing together, drove into town, walked up the station steps.

Harley was at the desk. His mustache drooped. ‘What the…?'

I caught a glimpse of myself in the window behind him: bedraggled and bleeding, wet hair falling on my shoulders, eyes wild.

‘Paisley. You were right about him.'

‘What?'

‘Told me to watch out.'

The floorboards moving under foot, their colours swimming into one another.

‘You had a run-in with him? Where is he now?'

‘Up a ghost gum.'

‘What's he doing there?'

‘Becoming one himself.'

‘Becoming…?' The senior constable looked lost.

‘A ghost.'

My eyes fell on a clock. Four-thirty. It had been a long night.

I sat on the bench. Thought better of that and lay down. Harley was reaching for the phone.