Darkening Skies Part 16

Standing here on the back porch, she could see the back of the Memorial Hall next door, and beyond it the creek, curving around the edge of the Dungirri scrub that b.u.t.ted close to town. Scrub Road ran north from the main street along two short blocks of houses, past the old O'Connell house on the corner of Mill Road and on to the vast dry forest that had, when she'd lived here, given Dungirri a timber industry a and double the current population. That the town still survived after the timber mill's closure surprised her. That people voluntarily stayed a people like Mark, like Paul and Chloe, Beth and Ryan, Andrew and Erin a perplexed her.

She'd left the back door open, and Rosie stiffened as Maggie and Dash barked at the sound of a vehicle approaching. Through the screen door she heard Mark's command to the dogs to lie down, and they quietened.

'Jenn?' She heard the concern in his voice, and the hesitation. She went back inside and met him in the kitchen.

'Are you okay?'

'Yes. I am. Rosie and I have been getting acquainted.'

He stood a metre from her but his smile touched her, as if he understood how soothing the quiet time with Rosie had been. 'Good. That's Leah Haddad arriving. She wants to do a formal interview with me. Will you be okay for a while? Kris said to help yourself to coffee or food.'

'I'll be fine. I might ...' She might what? She wanted more solid information before she saw Haddad again. 'I might go up and see Beth. She's in the old O'Connell place, isn't she?'

'Yes, that's right. Can you tell her what's happened? She'll want to know.'

'I'll tell her. Ryan a I was surprised when Jim told me they'd married.' The sweet, shy girl and the rough-lad-turned-boxer who'd been only marginally less on the outer than Gil Gillespie when they were all kids. 'Is he ... do you trust him, Mark?'

'Yes. Absolutely. I doubt that Beth will know anything about Boheme, although if there were any rumours circulating among our mothers' friends she may have heard something. But Ryan's old connections go a little deeper into Birraga's rougher side. He may have heard things.'

'I'll ask a but don't worry, I'll be discreet. I don't suppose you've heard anything from your parents yet?'

He shook his head, and the strain showed in the tightness around his eyes. 'No. I just checked my messages, but there's nothing.'

She'd changed her sandals for walking boots at the hotel earlier, and they provided firm support for her ankle so that it only protested lightly on the walk down Scrub Road, four hundred metres or so. Past the corner of Spring Street, where she'd endured a year in the miserable house after Mick's dismissal from Marrayin. Past the park at the waterhole, where the town's teenagers had gathered on summer evenings. Where Mark and Paula had pretended to be an item; where Gil Gillespie's daughter apparently had been conceived, somewhere in the trees beyond.

The old timber house that Bella O'Connell and her father used to live in had changed in the intervening years, but the roses he'd planted for his wife in the shade of a vine-covered trellis were still there. Roses in Dungirri's hot climate had always struck Jenn as a grandly romantic but impractical gesture. They'd proved her wrong, though, surviving more than thirty years.

She could hear voices and the high-pitched laughter of children coming from the backyard, but she hardly knew Ryan, and hadn't seen Beth in years until this week a so instead of opening the gate and walking uninvited in to the yard, she rang the bell at the front door. Beyond the security screen the door was open, the short pa.s.sageway dull compared to the bright sunlight outside.

A screen door at the back of the house banged closed, and Beth hurried to answer the bell, her face relaxing into a broad smile as she recognised Jenn.

'Jenn! Come on through. We're out the back, where it's cooler.'

In the garden three young girls played in a wading pool, protected from the sun by a tree and a large shade-cloth awning off the garage. They paused and watched as she came out on to the veranda until, rea.s.sured by their mother's presence just behind her, they resumed their game with the plastic floating bath toys that bobbed in the water around them.

Not just a play s.p.a.ce, the backyard had some raised garden beds with a range of vegetables and herbs, and half a dozen chooks foraging lazily among them. Clothes a mostly T-shirts and shorts in a.s.sorted sizes a danced in the breeze on the rotary clothesline, and on one side of the open double garage a few pieces of weight-training equipment found usable s.p.a.ce among tools and timber.

At the table on the veranda, Ryan Wilson greeted her with a broad grin. 'Jenn Barrett. Jeez, girl, you've hardly changed a bit.'

Even though she'd heard about his accident a few years ago, a rugby tackle gone wrong, seeing him in the wheelchair still came as a shock. She leaned down to kiss his cheek and he wrapped a strong arm around her shoulder in a hug. 'Good to see you, Jenn.' He caught hold of her hand as she straightened up. 'I'm so sorry about Jim. He was a good mate. A good man. We're all going to miss him.'

A good mate. She preferred the simple, sincere words to any flowery condolences.

Sitting at the table with Ryan and Beth, sipping iced fruit juice, she could have been enjoying any pleasant weekend afternoon with friends. Except for the news she had to share.

She waited until Beth had brought out a plate of biscuits and sat down again before she began. 'You'll want to know ... Mark asked me to tell you. There's been another incident. At his place.' She had their total attention and Beth's hand slipped into Ryan's. There was no easy way to say it, so she simply told them what happened. 'He noticed one of the dogs sniffing at his car. He thought there might be an animal under it, so he checked. And found a car bomb.'

'Oh, my Lord,' Beth breathed, closing her eyes, and Jenn knew it was a prayer.

'He's okay. He's at the police station with Steve and Kris, and the Sydney detective has just arrived. They'll keep him protected now.' She sounded more a.s.sured than she felt, and she had to put her gla.s.s down on the table to steady it.

'What the f-, heck is going on, Jenn?' Ryan demanded. 'Jim, Doc Russell, Schmidty, a Molotov c.o.c.ktail and now this?'

'It seems as though Mark's resignation has opened a can of worms.' It was a cliche, but maybe 'worm' wasn't such a bad descriptor for s.e.xual predators and blackmailers.

'Last night Wolfgang slipped me a memory stick containing photos,' she explained. 'There are images of Mark's accident that a well, that raise a lot of questions. And there are other images, going back almost forty years.' She kept her voice low, aware of the children not far away, seemingly absorbed in their play. 'Disturbing images of s.e.xual activity, mostly women in positions that could be bondage and S-and-M activities but more likely suggest coercion, maybe even rape. We went to his place this morning to ask him about them, but he died before he could say much.' She raised the gla.s.s to her lips, took a sip and continued, 'Have either of you ever heard mention of a club called Boheme?'

'Boheme as in Bohemian?' Beth asked. When Jenn nodded, she glanced over at her children and said, 'I can't say I know anything really. But when I was seventeen or so a it was after Mark's accident a my mother came to my room one night for a talk. I always thought it was just, you know, that I was getting older, going out with the crowd sometimes. But she warned me a it seemed to really worry her a she warned me not to get involved with any Bohemians. I was a bit surprised, because I thought she meant hippies and she's not the type to be so judgemental. But she said it several times.'

So, Sylvia Fletcher had known about the Boheme Club. But how? From Caroline? If Mark's parents didn't respond to his messages soon, Jenn would visit Sylvia.

'I don't know much either,' Ryan said slowly. 'But there were a few rumours. I left school early, did casual work here and there before I went on the boxing circuit. Some of the guys I knew reckoned they wanted to get work with-' He hesitated. 'With certain employers, because rumour had it there were extra rewards for good work. Nudge-nudge-wink-wink kind of rewards. I a.s.sumed they meant booze or drugs, but "Bohemian girls" were mentioned a few times. I wasn't a saint by any stretch of the imagination, but I didn't want to get mixed up with anything illegal, and I steered clear of ... of that employer.'

'Dan Flanagan?' Jenn asked outright.

He nodded. 'Yeah. There were benefits if he liked you, but I saw more than a few guys employed by him who ended up broken. Some OD'd, some ended up in hospital, some left town and have never been back. Nothing they could ever prove, of course, even if any of them wanted to give evidence. It's the way he always worked, right up until Gil came back to town and the mafia cousins got too ambitious. There's a few people coming forward now, enough to put Flanagan's sons away, but they were only ever his tools, just like everyone else. Unless they turn on him, he'll probably get off scot-free.'

Not if I have anything to do with it. The thought must have shown on her face, because concern tightened Ryan's face and he added, 'Tread carefully, Jenn. Very carefully. Flanagan is a dangerous b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Best leave it all to the police.'

Be careful, Wolfgang had said, and now he was dead. And Mark would have been dead but for a quirk of luck.

Yes, she'd be careful. But the police were over-stretched, and she couldn't rely on them to ask the questions a her questions a that needed answers.

'You shouldn't be standing at that window,' Kris scolded, coming into the kitchen with her laptop and a notepad. 'Anyone hiding in the scrub out there could see you.'

He stepped to one side so that the gingham curtain mostly blocked any view of him, but from where he could still see down the road to Beth's place. Jenn had been there for more than an hour while he'd been questioned by the very thorough Detective Haddad.

'I might-' call Beth, he'd been about to say when he saw Beth's car back out of the driveway.

'Do whatever you like,' Kris said. 'Just stay inside and out of sight. I have to go and make some calls, but I'll just be in the station. I contacted Jeanie. She's finishing with the lunch clean-up at the pub and she'll be on her way shortly.'

Staying inside chafed his already restless mood. He craved the outdoors, and the long list of work he should be getting on with at Marrayin worried him. He'd planned to go back after he'd had lunch with Jenn and work for the rest of the day, but the murder attempt had well and truly stymied that. With Jim gone, there was no-one to keep an eye on things, and Mark was reluctant to ask anyone else to go out there when there might still be danger. He had to hope that the water pumps were working in the various water troughs, that the dams had not dried up in the heat, and that the cattle still had sufficient feed in the dry paddocks. Salvaging belongings from the homestead wreckage could probably wait another day or two, as long as no summer storms rolled in.

Beth's car slowed approaching the main street, and although it pa.s.sed out of sight he heard it turn towards the station, and breathed easier when she drove into Kris's driveway. Jenn called out a goodbye, greeted Rosie, and moments later tapped on the back door.

'You survived the interrogation?' she asked as he let her in.

'We came to a cordial allegiance,' he said. 'She's thorough, Jenn. She won't make mistakes. Did Beth or Ryan have any information to help?'

She pulled out two chairs at the table, sat on one and propped her booted foot on the other. 'They'd heard things that rang true with our suspicions, but nothing specific. Ryan purposely avoided any involvement with Flanagan, although rumours about the benefits for good work included "Bohemian girls". And not long after your accident Sylvia Fletcher warned Beth to stay away from Bohemians.'

'Sylvia knows.'

'She knows something,' Jenn corrected. 'But what Beth recalls of the warning is pretty vague.'

Vague. From Mark's knowledge of the Fletchers, that sounded like the devout Catholic Sylvia, with her natural innocence and naivety, wasn't quite sure what she was warning Beth about.

He filled Kris's electric kettle and flicked it on. He didn't expect her fridge to yield much a he'd known her for five years and cooking wasn't one of her strengths a but was pleasantly surprised to see cold meats and cheese. He suspected Gil's influence. His half-starved stomach rumbled.

'Have you eaten?' he asked Jenn. 'I'm going to make up a couple of sandwiches.'

'Some sourdough bread at the pub, that's all. I didn't get time for lunch, although it looked a lot better than I expected for the Dungirri pub. So, I could go a sandwich, thanks.'

While he sliced the loaf of bread he found on the bench he explained: 'Deb is the chef, and a good one. She and Liam, the bar manager, worked with Gil in Sydney, and came up here with him. They stayed here when he went into witness protection, and since Nancy Butler hasn't been able to sell the pub a Stan died earlier this year a Deb and Liam stepped in to keep it open. Jeanie's been helping them out.'

'A town this size without a pub a it would be a death knell.'

'Yes.' Just one of his many concerns about the town's future. 'George and Eleni Pappas want to sell the shop and retire, too.' He slid her sandwich on to a plate and pa.s.sed it to her, lightening the gloomy talk with a teasing, 'I don't suppose you want to move back to town and buy a shop or a pub?'

She laughed outright. 'Me counting lollies or pulling beers? Nope, not going to happen. But what about you? I can see you as the friendly local publican. Might be a good investment for the family company.'

So much for dispelling the gloom. He sat at the table with his sandwich in front of him, his appet.i.te receding. 'Strelitz Pastoral has been over-extended for a long time. My father's rivalry with Dan Flanagan stretched the company's resources too far years ago. It's been a constant battle to get it back into the black ever since I took over, and it's not there yet. You know the usual story a borrowings too high, drought, flood and bad seasons reducing income.' And now it would be even more difficult, without his parliamentary salary to supplement the running costs, let alone rebuild the homestead.

'Can you sell some land?'

'I could any time a to Dan Flanagan. A couple of Chinese companies have been sniffing around the district and there are mining companies around, too. But I'd much prefer to sell to someone who is going to manage the land sustainably and invest in agricultural production for this country.'

'Land, gas and water,' she commented. 'The problems are everywhere. I sometimes wish there was more I could do, beyond making people aware.'

Stay here and rebuild Marrayin with me. The wish formed unbidden in his thoughts, the wild rush of hope immediately doused by brutal rationality. Yes, they'd resumed a friendship, despite the shadow of Paula's death. He had to be grateful for that, content with that. Even if he could make sense of what he felt now, why he felt it, they had little in common in adulthood beyond, perhaps, nostalgia for an adolescent attraction and friendship, and a commitment to finding the truth about the past.

Jenn was her own person, always had been, always would be. Proud, independent a a wild bird that flew high and far and rarely settled for long.

'The Dungirri Progress a.s.sociation has developed a plan to revitalise the town, and presented a proposal to a prospective buyer for the pub. If things go ahead as the a.s.sociation hopes, perhaps you could encourage any lifestyle reporters you know to come out and feature the town, later in the year.'

She stopped with her sandwich halfway to her mouth, and lowered her hands to the table again. 'Okay, some things make sense now. I heard Gillespie ask Liam for figures the other night, and he walked behind the bar like he owned the place. Is he going to buy the pub?'

Mark fervently hoped so, for the sake of the town, and for Kris and Gil. Liam and Deb had asked Mark for his feedback on the business plan they'd put together for Gil, and he'd made a few suggestions, given his encouragement. But it wasn't his decision to make, or his place to comment. 'You'd have to ask him that, Jenn.'

'Maybe I will. From the crowd there at lunchtime, the prospect of him buying doesn't seem unpopular.'

'Liam and Deb have done a great job these past couple of months. But give Gil time. He only came out of witness protection and returned again a week ago.'

When Jim had picked Jenn up off the floor, bruised, bleeding and crying after Mick's beating on the day after Paula's death, he had taken her to Jeanie Menotti.

The few days she'd stayed with Jeanie in the flat above the Truck Stop Cafe were something of a blur, but she did remember Jeanie's gentle care of her and her down-to-earth common sense. A safe harbour, emotionally and physically, for a battered young soul, and practical help in fetching her clothes and books from Mick's house and giving her a lift to Birraga to catch the bus out of the district for good after the funeral.

Jeanie was the type of person who glued a community together, someone people knew they could turn to in need. Compa.s.sionate, empathetic, non-judgemental, she'd always been a friend to those who needed one, and Jenn could only imagine the secrets she held in trust.

When Jeanie arrived at the police cottage she greeted Mark with a motherly kiss on the cheek and Jenn with a warm embrace.

'You've done so well, Jenn. Congratulations on all your achievements.' Jeanie gripped her hand tightly between two arthritis-gnarled hands, her blue eyes shining into Jenn's. 'Your parents raised a fine young woman, and would be so, so proud to see the kind of journalist you've become. We're all very proud of our Dungirri girl.'

Jenn's eyes moistened. Jeanie had known her parents, so her a.s.surance that they would be proud mattered, went beyond the empty words others had said throughout her life. And seeing Jeanie again somehow brought the memory of her parents closer, a connection of friendship as much as history. Jeanie had known her father all his life, and his parents before him; she'd known Jenn's mother only since her marriage, but they'd become friends on Dungirri visits and Susannah had spoken of her liking and respect for the older woman.

When this mess was untangled, Mark safe, the truth uncovered, perhaps she could come back to Dungirri and spend some time with Jeanie, find out more about her parents through Jeanie's eyes.

Come back to Dungirri? Jenn momentarily reeled at the thought. Not one she'd ever expected to entertain without some compulsion.

She dismissed it to concentrate on the here and now. When they were seated at Kris's kitchen table a more comfortable than the sterile interview room a she broached the reason they'd asked her to come. 'Jeanie, we need your help. I think Kris told you that Wolfgang Schmidt was shot this morning?'

Jeannie nodded, tight-lipped. 'I knew him a little. I knew Marta better.'

'Wolfgang gave me some photos. Most are not his own work a they're more ... disturbing. Some go back a long time. There are photos of the accident too a not only was Gil framed, but it looks like the car was interfered with, and that caused the crash. But that was covered up in the reports. We think there's a connection between the earlier photos and the accident cover-up, but we're not sure how or what.'

Mark poured tea from the pot he'd made. 'Jeanie, I can't get on to my mother at the moment. Did she ever talk to you about ... about a group or a club called Boheme?'

'Ah ... Boheme.' Jeanie leaned back in her chair, clasping the mug he'd pa.s.sed her. 'It still rears its ugly head.'

Jenn stirred sugar into her own tea, watching the older woman's troubled face. 'What can you tell us?'

She and Mark stayed silent while Jeanie arranged her thoughts. Although the stifling heat outside warmed the room, the sweet tea soothed in a familiar, calming way.

'In the sixties, early seventies ... you weren't born then, you mightn't understand what it was like. Change was everywhere. Students rioted in Paris, astronauts landed on the moon, there were ma.s.s demonstrations against Vietnam, and Woodstock and increasing wealth convinced a generation that they could do anything, be anything. You might not believe it to look at them now,' she said with a wry smile, 'but many of your parents' generation had something of a wild youth, experimenting with alcohol, drugs, s.e.x. They were the first generation in Australia to have easy access to university education, and many of the locals went to the city to study. The pill enabled s.e.xual freedom, and magazines a everyone a talked about s.e.x in a way that we never had before. Birraga was no different from anywhere else. Young people went to uni, travelled more, and came back with new ideas and a taste for adventure. And so Boheme was born.'

'Do you know who was involved in it?' Mark asked.

'I'm a little older,' she said, 'and I already had everything I ever wanted in Aldo. But no-one in Boheme invited ordinary folk like us. It was a small, private social group a not even a formal club a and it involved young people from wealthier backgrounds. Professionals, grazing families, business people.'

'People with money to spend,' Jenn said, adding, 'or to be separated from.'

'Yes. It started out happily enough. Social gatherings, parties and ... excitement, you could say, of various sorts. But as things got darker, people tried to leave a and found that what had happened there would continue to haunt them.'

'There are some photographs of my parents, and of my mother,' Mark said. 'Before I was born, and much later a not long before my accident. She got caught in it, didn't she?'

Jeanie looked down at her hands clasped in front of her, and the clock on the wall ticked off several seconds. 'Mark, you will have to ask your mother about those photographs. It's her story to tell, not mine.'

If Jeanie held a confidence she kept it. But maybe if she knew what was at stake ... Jenn reached over and covered the woman's hand with hers. 'Jeanie, Mark's sent messages to Caroline, but she's in the wilds of Bolivia. We can't wait until she gets back to civilisation. Not only was Wolfgang murdered this morning, but Mark nearly was, too a someone planted a bomb under his car.'

'Oh dear G.o.d,' Jeanie murmured, reaching with her spare hand to take Mark's.

'Doctor Russell, Wolfgang, Mark a someone is trying to silence people with a connection to the accident,' Jenn urged. 'We need to know who was behind the club, the blackmail, and probably the cover-up of the accident. I think Caroline would forgive a breach of confidence to protect her son, don't you?'

Jeanie considered for a long moment, holding both their hands, before she squeezed them gently and withdrew. A sip of tea, a deep breath in, and she spoke. 'I don't know the whole story. As I understand it, when she was young a around the time she started seeing your father, Mark a her own father, Charlie Napier, was deeply in debt, facing bankruptcy, and she succ.u.mbed to pressure from someone for s.e.xual favours in return for leniency on the debt. I don't know who he was, but he introduced her to the club.'

Jenn exchanged a glance with Mark. Gerard McCarty, bank manager. Gerard McCarty, in the old photo with his arm around an uneasy Caroline, and Len looking on, angry. A puzzle piece fitted neatly into place.

'My father followed her there, didn't he?' Mark asked, his voice strained.

'I don't know about that, but there was trouble of some sort. Your parents married not long after, and your Napier grandparents sold up their property around that time and retired.'

'Granddad Napier spent a lot of time out at Lightning Ridge with Pop Josef after he retired. He said it kept him away from the bookmakers. Gambling's a nasty addiction.'

'It is,' Jeanie agreed. 'Sadly, Charlie Napier's not the first and won't be the last to have lost a farm that way.' She took another sip of tea. 'Anyway, to get back to your parents, Mark, years later, after they'd developed Marrayin into a successful property and expanded into more property, your mother asked me, in a roundabout way, if I knew any ways to deter a blackmailer. I'd managed to extricate the Truck Stop Cafe from Flanagan's protection-money racket, and I told her how a by gathering evidence and holding it over him.'

'You had evidence against Dan Flanagan?' Jenn asked, unable to keep the hope from lighting her voice.

'Not specifically against Dan, no. He kept a safe distance and did everything through bully boys. That's why he's still walking free when his sons are in prison,' she replied, a hard edge on her usually gentle tone. 'But with Gil's help I collected enough to hold Flanagan's boys off.'