Pearl in a Cage (40 page)

She was crossing her stretch of road when the first of the walkers came around the curve before her land. Didn't want to speak to them. Didn't want to see Len Abbot amongst them, but he was there. And he didn't need to see what she'd seen.

She walked down to meet them. ‘She's been found, Lenny. You go home to your wife now.'

He tried to push by her, but she took his arm and others took his arms. Not a big man, Lenny Abbot, not a young man who could start over. He'd run the town's saddlery; a clever man with leather.

‘Take him home, lads,' she said. ‘Tomorrow will be time enough to see his little girl. Get him away from here.'

Stood guarding her road and water track until young Mick Boyle and Horrie Bull came to take her place. She went home then, went home where she had no water to waste in washing this terrible day from her. She wasted what was in her bucket, took her washbasin to her room and flung her clothes off, soaped her face, soaped the sweat of what she'd seen from her, got herself clean and into fresh clothes before she spoke to those scared-eyed kids.

‘I need you to hold me for a minute, darlin's. Just hold me.'

Elsie served a meal at seven. Gertrude couldn't eat. She put her plate in the oven and took her chair outside, needing to sit in the dark with her thoughts. Strange thoughts darting around her mind tonight: Denham, her horse, Lenny Abbot, Charlie. And Vern too. And where was he when she needed him? Hoped her horse would find his own way home. He knew the way, if someone hadn't taken charge of him. John McPherson might.
He'd been down at the bridge. He could have put him in his paddock. She'd get him in the morning.

A swarm of men over the road now, cars parked alongside her section. Moe Kelly's van was there, and the Willama police car. This was murder, the brutal, terrible murder of a child. This was too big for Woody Creek.

Water. All she had was in her kettle, and what was left in her stone bottle. Her barrel was down at the creek, with her hand pump. Didn't want to go back there, get the water-carrier to fill her tank. Tomorrow's worry.

She sat until the last car drove away, sat slapping mosquitoes. Too dark to see them, too sick at heart to feel their bite — sick at the sickness of mankind. Couldn't get the image of the curly head out of her mind. Couldn't get that first fear that it was Jenny out of her mind — or that dreadful, that terrible, appalling relief that it wasn't.

God help that poor Abbot family. God give them strength.

Elsie and Joey came out to the dark to kiss her goodnight, her beautiful, gentle kids. She held them, kissed their faces.

‘You should eat something, Mum.'

‘I will, darlin'.'

Maybe she would.

It must have been after nine o'clock when she heard the rattle of someone coming down her track. That got her to her feet. Whoever it was showing a weak light. Couldn't remember if she'd closed her gate or not. Didn't want anyone on her land tonight.

She walked to her chicken-wire gate, then went inside for her rifle. Too many strangers wandering around town these days, and no trust left in her. Couldn't see much, only the swinging light. Relying more on her ears than her sight, she recognised her water barrel, recognised that sloshing sound of a full barrel.

‘Who's there?' she called into the dark.

‘It's Harry Hall, Mrs Foote.'

She knew his name, had seen him around town this last year or two, had seen him driving George Macdonald around in that truck; but he wasn't of this town, and a terrible murder had been
done here, and no man of this town could have done such a thing to that little girl. She knew too that Harry Hall had been living in a hut down behind McPherson's land, fifty or sixty yards from the swimming bend, and whether he'd brought water or not, she didn't want him on her land.

‘I appreciate your thought,' she said, dismissing him.

‘Can I pump it up to your tank for you, Mrs Foote?'

‘I'll manage from here, lad. Thank you.'

Maybe he saw her gun. She could see the shape of him now, but not his face, not his eyes. You needed to see folk's eyes. She stood at a distance, the rifle under her arm. She knew how to use it.

‘You'd better be getting off home.'

She felt her full age tonight, her bones hadn't appreciated that mad barebacked ride. One day she'd grow old, and tonight she wanted him off her land before he saw how damn old she was.

‘I know where you're coming from, Mrs Foote,' he said. ‘I don't blame you. There's a few more in town feeling the same way tonight.' He was carrying a lantern and he lifted it, lit a bit more of himself. ‘It will be all right tomorrow. George knows where I was last night.'

‘I'll know too then, lad, but I don't know tonight.'

‘Of course you don't. I did the wrong thing coming down in the dark. I'll leave you to it then . . . or you can stand there and hold the gun on me while I pump this lot up to your tank.'

‘It's loaded,' she said.

‘Righto,' he said, and he went about backing the horse up to the tank.

There was a lot of length in him. She stood watching him pump, relieved to know she had water, that she wouldn't need to go down there in the morning. He got the barrel emptied and started leading her horse and barrel back up the track.

‘Where are you going?'

‘One of these will last you five minutes this weather,' he said.

‘One is more than I had. I appreciate your thought —'

‘It's as much for me as for you, Mrs Foote. I'm not going home tonight — or not until a few of the hotheads pass out. I may as well be doing something useful.'

‘Where were you last night, lad?'

‘Having dinner with George and family. We were eating when Denham came knocking. He knows where I was, Mrs Foote. It's just a few with a bit too much in their tanks, that's all. They turned my hut inside out. Might have turned me inside out if I'd been in it.' He stood a while, the horse blowing raspberries. ‘I wouldn't lie to you, Mrs Foote. My word is gold. It always has been.'

Her dad used to say that. A man's word is his gold. Maybe she'd said it a time or two herself. He was walking away; her horse seemed to trust him — and he didn't trust everyone. She let him go and took her rifle inside.

She held the hose while he pumped up the second barrel of water and didn't argue when he went back for a third. She was waiting for him in the yard when he returned, waiting with her own lantern to unharness her horse, give him a rub down and a bucket of oats for his labour, and surely that boy deserved no less.

‘I've got a meal in there. It could be a bit dried out, but you're welcome to it, lad.'

‘I've never yet said no to a free meal, Mrs Foote.'

He washed up at her tank and, like Vern, ducked his head as he came through the door. Like Vern he didn't need to, though had his hair not been flattened by sweat, he might have. In the better light of her kitchen, he looked like a half-starved kid stretched out to breaking point, and one who didn't waste his pennys on haircuts.

She made tea, working quietly. She lifted the plate from her cooling oven, lifted the lid covering it, offered him a knife and fork, then stood watching him eat.

Just a snub-nosed boy, and not a good-looking boy, not by anyone's standards. His hair was a rusty red and he had a plague of freckles. His hands were near as fine as Elsie's, though twice as long. He looked fifteen, but had the world-wise, world-weary
way about him of a man three times his age — and the table manners of a duke. Someone had trained that boy.

Joey slept on a single bed down the bottom end of the kitchen. He woke and lay watching Gertrude's late-night visitor but didn't move from his bed. If Elsie was awake, she stayed behind her curtain.

The clock on her mantelpiece told her the time was eleven thirty. It would be near enough to right. She poured him a second cup of tea, then found a brown paper bag and placed a dozen eggs in it.

‘I dare say you can use them.'

‘They'll feed me for a week, Mrs Foote. Thanks.'

Near twelve when he left, the kerosene in his lantern's bowl topped up, that light shining brighter as he walked up the track.

 

Monday was a busy day. They were clearing the lunch dishes when three city detectives and Denham arrived at Gertrude's door. Denham introduced her as the town nurse. She was no nurse, but while the truth was being stretched she introduced Elsie as her daughter. The city men, accustomed to foreigners, didn't look twice at Elsie's darker than normal complexion. They wanted to know what she'd seen. Elsie had seen no one, whether she had or not.

Bullockies travelled that road; each day a truck or two drove by; wood cutters walked and rode out from town; swagmen wandered by, and more than a few came to Gertrude's door wanting a bit of boiling water for a cup of tea — a common swagman ploy, offering a billy containing a bare pinch of tea leaves, hoping the woman of the house would add a pinch more and maybe a pinch of sugar. A few had walked away with a treacle sandwich, a few eggs, the tail end of a loaf of bread.

It was common conjecture that Nelly had been killed by one of those wandering men who camped alongside that creek, who Joey sometimes spoke to when he set his few rabbit traps.

He was setting his traps when the city men came. They wanted to speak to him. Gertrude walked them across her goat paddock to the road, where she stood listening for the sound of
metal hammering metal. Those traps had long pegs that required securing in the earth. She couldn't hear him hammering and her heartbeat started its own thumpity-thump. She'd seen that little girl's mutilated face. She hadn't wanted Joey going off alone today. But he was a big strong boy for his years, and nobody's fool, and he'd wanted to get a rabbit, and no boy needs to have an old woman's fear planted in his heart.

The older policeman told her while they walked the track alongside the creek that the killer had used a slim-bladed knife, that they'd counted thirty stab wounds to the upper body and throat and eight or ten slash wounds to the face.

‘Joey!'

A nine year old wouldn't stand a hope against a madman with a knife, no matter how big and brave he was —

He came from between two trees. It took willpower to stop her hands reaching for him. Instead, she introduced him as her big grandson, and her beautiful grandson dropped his last trap and offered his hand. They shook it, all three of those city men shook it. The hand wasn't offered to Denham. Joey showed the men a wheat bag he'd pulled from the reeds, and maybe the mark of that bag being dragged along the track that followed the creek. There was blood on the bag. The men took it with them when they left.

Woody Creek had a few minor roads leading out from town but none that would loosely qualify as main roads. If you took the road alongside the railway line and followed it east for fifteen miles, you hit the road to Melbourne. A left-hand turn away from Melbourne took you northeast, and twenty-odd miles further on you came to Willama, a good-sized inland town.

Eighty-odd years ago, old man Monk had claimed land out the other side of town and named his property Three Pines, for the three big Murray pines growing alongside his gate. Two of those trees were dead and Monk's property annexed now to Hooper's land, but the road leading out there had retained the name. Three Pines Road started at the hotel corner, curved down past Hoopers', past Macdonald's mill, around McPherson's bend, over the bridge and out to the better farming land in the district. Bryants were out that way, Don Davis, Hooper and a dozen more.

There was the stock route road, which cut a diagonal out to the Aboriginal mission and continued on into the back end of Willama — a more direct route if you had hooves. Then there was Cemetery Road, which started on the town hall corner, went out past the showground and cemetery, out past Duffy's acre, past a handful of dirt farms and eventually on to some place.

The forest road, Gertrude's road, forked off from the Three Pines Road a few hundred yards east of the bridge, promptly disappearing into the wall of trees that followed the creek, twisting and turning like a snake with a chronic bellyache. That
road led out to where most of the logging was done. The bush beyond Gertrude's land was honeycombed by timber tracks.

Charlie White, determined to die and go to where Jean was, had pumped up his bike tyres and pushed off that sunny afternoon, planning to take one of those tracks. They all led to the creek. His aim was to ride until he was too tired to ride any longer, then end his ride in the creek, clinging to his bike, the weight of which should hold him down. He couldn't live without Jean, couldn't grow old without her at his side.

‘Think about that poor Abbot family,' his daughter said.

And he'd tried to think about them, but ended up feeling more sorry for himself. Jean's death was yesterday's news, sidelined now by murder.

‘Life goes on, Charlie,' his son-in-law said. ‘People die, and those left behind just have to make the best of it.'

His bloody son-in-law giving him advice. His bloody son-in-law not taking a scrap of notice of him when he told him to let the shop rot. His bloody son-in-law, who had refused to get in behind that counter these past six years, now suddenly taking a liking to Charlie's white aprons.

So let him have those aprons. Let him have that shop. Charlie wanted to die. For years folk had been telling him he rode that bike like a madman, that he'd come to grief one day. Today was that day.

As he made his right-hand turn off Three Pines Road, Harry Hall, transporting a load of railway sleepers, was making a left-hand turn out of the forest road. They hit head-on and Charlie and his bike took wing.

If there was a thought in Charlie's mind, it was of Jean, waiting out there somewhere to catch him as he flew by. Another man would have died. Another man would have flown headfirst into a tree and knocked his brains out. Fate is a bastard. Charlie landed on his scrawny backside between two trees and slid into a blackberry bush.