Ash Island Page 11

  Kelly clambers out of the car boot and stares down in horror at the motionless figure. She crouches by his side and tries to feel for a pulse in his neck. Nothing. Dear God, I’ve killed him. Her phone is sticking out of his pocket and she snatches it and runs for the door. There is no one around, no sign of Karen. The still air, the distant whinny of a horse seem unnaturally innocent. She runs to her car, scrambles in, starts the engine and lurches into gear.

  Her eyes flick continuously to the rear-view mirror, but no following vehicle is visible through the cloud of dust she raises. She presses her foot down hard and doesn’t let it up even when she hits the rocks and potholes of the dirt road through the forest. The main road appears at last and she swings towards Gloucester, wondering what to do. At the roundabout at the head of the main street she sees a sign to the police station up to the left. Hesitates. Turns right, forcing herself to slow down across the pedestrian crossings until she is clear of the shopping area and on the road back to Newcastle, expecting the howl of police sirens any moment at her back. But they don’t come, and on she drives, through Stroud and then into Newcastle, where she becomes lost. She has no idea where she is and finally pulls into a pub car park. Only then does she turn off the engine and, with a shaking hand, ring Harry.

  ‘Harry? Harry, is that you? I’ve killed him. I’ve killed Craig Schaefer.’

  ‘Hang on. Slow down. What happened?’

  She tells him the whole story.

  ‘Where are you now?’

  She peers out and reads the name of the hotel.

  ‘Stay there, Kelly, and don’t speak to anyone. I’ll be with you in fifteen minutes.’

  33

  That morning, Sunday 24 November, Harry woke at home after two hours’ sleep, went out for a run through the empty streets of Surry Hills, had breakfast and rang Jenny. She sounded positive, said she was missing him, and described going out at dawn with Meri to gather eggs from the chook pen and check the eight alpacas. Harry told her that he’d not made much progress but asked her, if she had time, to get on the computer and check the social media sites for any postings by Logan McGilvray. When he rang off he made a coffee and went outside into the small courtyard, sat down to think.

  In a way, the Crows, the bomb, Logan McGilvray all seemed like a distraction from the central question. What did they have to do with the death of his parents and the blinding of Jenny? Roman Bebchuk, president of the Crows, had carried out the murders, but he was no more than a paid assassin. Before Harry killed him, Bebchuk implicated the New South Wales Police Minister, Derryn Oldfield; Oldfield had arranged the contract on behalf of someone else but had refused to give Harry the name. He too was now dead, suicide. But somewhere there was evidence, there had to be evidence, of the compelling reason that had made all this necessary.

  Harry finished his coffee and went indoors, climbed the stairs to his father’s study in the attic. After his parents died he had had to search for any documents relevant in winding up their estate. In the drawer of his mother’s writing desk he had found an envelope addressed to Harry, written in her hand. Inside was a small sheet of writing paper with a message that made his throat close: Harry darling, we are so proud of you. With all my love, Mum.

  There was nothing like that in his father’s study upstairs. Just shelves stuffed with old files and books and bundles of papers. No doubt his father had known where everything was, but Harry could see no order in it. After a cursory search, enough to satisfy him that there were unlikely to be any recent wills, instructions or bank statements buried in it all, Harry had retreated, unwilling to disturb it. Later, when he became convinced that his parents had been murdered, he had returned to look over his father’s recent rulings for some motive. But again, the complexity and fragmentary nature of the documents defeated him. It would have been different if Jenny had not lost her sight. She would have gone through it all with her legal researcher’s mind and perhaps found something, some clue to what had happened. But Harry had baulked, intimidated by it all. One day, he thought, I’ll get the State Library in and they can take the lot for their archives.

  When he entered the study he looked for a moment at the framed photographs on the small areas of unshelfed walls. Danny and Pearl Belltree in 1965, young revolutionaries on the Freedom Ride, standing alongside Charles Perkins and Jim Spigelman; Danny with long sideburns, addressing a rally of Sydney University students in 1968; Danny and Pearl on his admission to the New South Wales Bar, and again twenty years later on his elevation to the bench of the New South Wales Supreme Court. A splendid progression, whose atrocious end has left this room untouched.

  On the long cedar desk below the window there was an in-tray, piled high with loose papers. Harry had gone through it on his early search: requests to speak, invitations to events, charity appeals, newspaper cuttings, a shopping list.

  He read it again, the sad flotsam of a moment in a life interrupted: printer cartridges, my muesli, chocolates for P, shoe polish. The word polish was stained yellow by magic marker ink soaked through from the reverse side, and Harry turned the page over to find a photocopy of a page from an old book. The words that had been highlighted were Egg Mountain.

  He read the whole paragraph:

  ‘The Worimi Tribes of the Upper Manning’, by The Reverend T. J. Bartholomew, The Journal of NSW History, Vol. 16, 1930.

  In the year 1888 I travelled in the upper reaches of the Manning, Gloucester and Barrington Rivers and encountered several full bloods and many half-castes. A head man, named ‘Billy’, then about seventy years of age, was not only an initiate but was also the ruling spirit of a local group, or ‘nurra’, of the Worimi Clan, who spoke the ‘Kutthung’ or Kattang language. He referred to his nurra as the ‘Yoon-goo-ar’, and their territory, or ‘burri’, as that of ‘Kuppoee-Yoongoo’ which I translate as ‘Egg Mountain’, which abuts the lands of the Geawegal Clan to the west.

  Harry read it again, then put the sheet of paper down carefully. Justice Danny Belltree was the first Aboriginal judge of the New South Wales Supreme Court. Is that what this was all about? An Aboriginal land claim?

  And at that point the phone rang. He heard Kelly’s voice. ‘I’ve found her again, Harry—Donna Fenning, Karen Schaefer. I’m on the road north of Newcastle, following her. She’s in a white Nissan Patrol, and I’ve got the number.’

  Harry logged into the police intranet with his iPad. The Nissan was registered to the Kramfors Estate.

  This makes no sense, he thought, and called Kelly to tell her to back off.

  He checked his watch, grabbed his gear and ran out to the car.

  Two and a half hours later he was on the freeway and approaching Newcastle when he got Kelly’s second call, telling him that she had killed Craig Schaefer. Thirty minutes later he turned into the car park of the hotel and found her sitting inside, half hidden behind a bank of pokie machines, hunched over a vodka tonic.

  34

  She looks very pale, hair awry, dirt on her clothes.

  ‘You okay? You’re not hurt?’

  She nods blankly.

  ‘Okay.’ He stretches out an awkward, comforting arm to her and she suddenly falls against him, sobbing quietly.

  When she sits up straight again, wiping her nose, he gets her to take him through it once more.

  ‘So, this must have happened what, about two hours ago?’ He gets out his iPad and taps into Northern Region police. So far there’s no report of an incident at Kramfors.

  ‘Should I report to the police, Harry? Will you come with me?’

  He thinks about that. ‘Do you have a lawyer?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘How about your paper? You could say you were following up a story, couldn’t you?’

  She frowns, thinking. ‘Ye-es, I suppose so. Oh yes, they have top lawyers.’

  ‘I think that may be the way to go, Kelly. But let’s not rush into anything.’ He nods at her glass. ‘How many of those have you had?’

  ‘M
y second.’

  ‘Singles or doubles?’

  ‘Doubles. Chrissake, Harry, I’ve never killed anyone before.’

  ‘Do you think you can drive?’

  ‘Yes…yes of course.’

  ‘We’ll take the old Pacific Highway, nice and slow, away from the cameras on the freeway. You okay with that?’

  The sun is setting, a red glow on the western horizon, as the two cars reach Kelly’s suburb in Sydney. He goes with her to the front door, which is opened by her flatmate. She stares at Kelly, looking exhausted and bedraggled, then at Harry, and immediately grabs Kelly and hustles her inside. Harry follows, listening as Kelly blurts out her story. It would be better if she didn’t, Harry thinks, but it can’t be avoided.

  ‘I suppose you’ve reported it?’ Wendy says at last, staring accusingly at Harry.

  ‘Not yet. We’re going to get Kelly a good lawyer, but first I need to check a few things.’

  Wendy turns to Kelly. ‘What can I get you, love?’

  ‘Vodka.’

  Wendy looks at Harry, who shakes his head. ‘She may need to make a statement.’

  ‘Strong coffee, then,’ Wendy concludes, while Harry gets to work on the iPad. A report has now been flagged up from Gloucester police. An accident at Kramfors Homestead, reported by the crew of the Westpac Rescue Helicopter. They’ve transported a Craig Schaefer to John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle with a serious eye injury.

  ‘He’s alive, Kelly,’ Harry says. ‘At least he was an hour ago.’

  ‘But…he wasn’t moving. I felt the pen go into his brain!’

  Wendy is studying diagrams on her computer. ‘I don’t think so. The eye cavity is like a cone of bone going back into your head, with the pointy end at the back. If the ballpoint got all the way to the back it would have hit the carotid artery there, which would have finished him off straight away for sure. You probably just gouged his eye.’

  Kelly jumps to her feet, gagging, and runs to the bathroom.

  Wendy says, ‘Have they mentioned Kelly’s name yet?’

  ‘Not that I can see. At the moment they’re calling it an accident.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘They’ll need to take statements. It may take time. We still don’t know what the Schaefers were doing there.’

  He returns to his iPad, this time searching for any mention of Logan McGilvray on the police net in the past forty-eight hours. There is nothing. Finally, towards 3:00 a.m., Harry finds an updated report from the Gloucester police on the Kramfors incident. It is now described as an industrial accident. The victim, an employee at Kramfors, fell into agricultural machinery and suffered a ruptured left eye. Involvement of a third party is not suspected.

  He shows Wendy the report and she shakes her head. ‘How is that possible?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll go up there tomorrow and see what I can find out. In the meantime, I think Kelly should do nothing.’

  ‘Right, I’ll tell her. She’ll be just so relieved.’

  But she returns in a moment and says, ‘She’s fast asleep. Reaction, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes. I’ll get going.’

  At the front door Wendy says, ‘Thanks, Harry, for looking after her. She’s had a bad trot lately. She always told me that you were a good friend, but I wasn’t sure till now.’

  35

  Kelly wakes at first light, and immediately her mind fills with dread. It seems she’s still in her own bed, but for how long? How long before the banging on the front door, the raised voices, the handcuffs on her wrists? She imagines the shame, her case reported in her own newspaper.

  She gets up and shuffles through to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. What a luxury, to be able to make a cup of tea in your own kitchen. She wonders which prison they’ll send her to. Silverwater first, probably, then who knows. She’s been inside several, with the luxury of the outsider—thank God I’m not one of them! How long will they give her? Ten years? Fifteen? My life is finished. Jesus, I should have jumped.

  She hears Wendy go to the bathroom. How long will she keep visiting? Six months? A year? I’ll have to tell her not to waste her time.

  ‘Hi. You had a good sleep. You needed it.’

  Kelly turns to her friend. ‘Yes. I just flaked out. I can’t remember what happened.’ Then, the involuntary words spilling out, ‘How long before they come for me, Wendy? How long have I got?’

  ‘Oh, Kelly.’ Wendy wraps her arms around her friend. ‘Harry was here till three last night, waiting for news. Then we got the police report. He’s in John Hunter with a ruptured eyeball, and they’re treating it as an industrial accident.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know, we can’t figure it out either. But it seems you’re in the clear.’

  Kelly sits down heavily on a kitchen chair. She doesn’t dare to believe this is true. There’ll be a twist, she thinks, like an old movie where the condemned man is reprieved at the last minute only to discover it’s a mistake, and is hauled off to the firing squad after all.

  ‘You don’t look happy.’

  ‘I just can’t believe it.’

  ‘Phone Harry. Talk to him yourself.’

  But she doesn’t dare, and it’s another hour before he phones her. ‘It’s true, Kelly. I’ve checked again this morning. As far as the Gloucester police are concerned the case is closed. They’ve flagged it as an industrial accident to be reported to Workcover. The only thing I can think is that the Schaefers were up to something at Kramfors that they want to keep under wraps. I’m going up there to see what I can find out.’

  ‘Oh, Harry. I can’t tell you what a relief this is.’

  ‘I know. Go out and celebrate. But bear this in mind: Karen and Craig Schaefer know what really happened, and they’re not going to be happy about it. Plus, they know that you know they were at Crucifixion Creek as the Fennings. I think, once the dust settles, you could be in trouble, Kelly.’

  ‘Yes, yes, point taken,’ Kelly says, but there’s a wild grin on her face. I’m free! I’m not going to Silverwater!

  She hangs up and turns to Wendy. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

  Wendy laughs at the transformation. ‘Where to?’

  ‘I’m going to buy us a huge champagne breakfast.’

  36

  Smoke drifts across the freeway as Harry drives north. It’s a hot morning, an early warning of a dire bushfire summer ahead. He stops for a coffee and a pie in Gloucester, watching the passers-by in the main street outside the café window, their untroubled pace, their quiet self-sufficiency. Decides against arousing curiosity by calling at the police station, heads straight for Cackleberry Valley. It seems another world today, hidden beyond the forest, a bowl of still, warm air below the Egg Mountain. Kuppoee-Yoongoo.

  He passes the barn that Kelly described—deserted, peaceful, no police tape—and comes to the house, its red roof burning bright beneath the midday sun. In the shade of the veranda he is about to reach for the brass knocker when the door swings open and he is confronted by a boy, perhaps eight or nine years old, who stares up at him with big inquisitive eyes.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Hello. I’d like to speak to Amber.’

  The boy frowns at him for a moment, then turns and calls, ‘Mum. Someone for you.’

  Beyond him Harry sees a large hall panelled in dark timber with an elaborate staircase rising on the far side, painted portraits hanging on the walls.

  The boy turns back to Harry. ‘Are you a policeman?’

  ‘Yes, how did you guess?’

  ‘It’s pretty obvious. About the accident, I suppose.’

  ‘What accident is that?’

  ‘You don’t know? Craig stabbed his eye out yesterday.’

  ‘Yuck. That sounds bad.’

  ‘Pretty bad. He’ll be blind in one eye. I expect he’ll have to wear a black patch, like a pirate.’

  ‘Right. Does Craig live here?’

  ‘He works for us, our estate manager. Are you carrying a Gl
ock?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I see it?’

  ‘We’re not allowed to draw our weapon unless we intend to use it.’

  ‘Oh, right. Cool.’

  Amber Nordlund appears in the hall behind him and says, ‘Dylan? What are you doing?’

  ‘This policeman wants to talk to you, Mum.’

  As the light from the doorway catches her face he sees recognition strike her.

  ‘You’ve got work to do, Dylan.’

  ‘I finished my maths and Karen isn’t here to help me with my project.’

  ‘Well go and read your history book for half an hour, then we’ll have lunch.’

  He turns and walks away with a heavy limp on a stiff right leg. It strikes Harry with a new force that he is soon to become a father, perhaps of a child like this: smart, inquisitive, vulnerable.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘To talk to you, Amber.’

  She seems about to refuse, then sighs and steps back for him to enter. The hall is cool, their tread muffled on a broad Indian carpet. Amber leads the way to a sitting room with a view over a shady garden.

  He takes the seat she offers and says nothing, giving her a chance to speak. She seems jittery, avoiding his eyes. ‘Yes, I thought you’d come back. I…I wasn’t prepared for your last visit. You took me by surprise. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Well, let’s start again.’

  ‘I didn’t recognise your wife—Jenny—at first. She’s changed, hasn’t she? Not just her…her eyes. She was so effervescent before, so full of life. We immediately hit it off. Of course she must have had a terrible time adjusting. I’m sorry I was so rude. I just…I didn’t want to go back there.’ All this comes out in a rush.

  ‘All the same, I’d appreciate it if you would go back there for me now.’

  ‘Yes…Well, your parents and Jenny just arrived one day. They were interested in history, the history of the homestead and so on.’ Her fingers pluck at the tassels on the brocaded cushion at her side. ‘And we hit it off, and I invited them to stay overnight, and the next morning they left, and…well, you know. I didn’t hear till later that afternoon, when I drove into town, what had happened. I was so shocked.’