Darkening Skies Part 17

An unlikely crime-fighting duo, the compa.s.sionate elderly woman and the rough teen, but Jeanie's story correlated with Gil's information. In her memories of the cafe, Jenn recalled the taciturn youth who'd worked to fill tanks and keep the place clean while the rest of the teens ate hamburgers and laughed at the tables ... yes, she could see how that partnership, that loyalty had developed.

'Did my mother say what the blackmail was?' Mark asked.

Always 'my mother', Jenn noticed, and rarely if ever 'Mum'.

'No, she didn't say specifically, but it was something that went back to the early trouble, and she was afraid for your father, willing to do anything to protect him. But the price was high, requiring regular "payments", and she was desperate to get out of it. I advised her to go to the police, but she said she couldn't, that they'd destroy Len. That was a couple of weeks before your accident, Mark.'

Mark's face was drawn, anger in his clenched hands, his white knuckles. But he kept his voice low and even. 'Was Flanagan behind it?'

'It was no secret that your parents and Dan were rivals, in the legal side of Dan's businesses, anyway. But I remember her saying that there were far more dangerous criminals than thugs like Dan.'

Worse than Dan? Jenn thought of the photographs, and shuddered. 'Do you know what she did to get out of it?'

Again Jeanie considered her answer. 'I knew Marta Schmidt a little, and I knew there was more to Wolfgang than he let on. Marta hinted that he'd taken on the Boheme Club. I suggested to Caroline that she contact them. I didn't see her alone for some weeks after that, until after you'd come back from hospital in Newcastle, Mark. But she said she'd resolved it, and she never mentioned it again.'

'Blackmail ... hurt Marta.' Wolfgang's words echoed in Jenn's mind. A threat to Marta would have been reason enough for him to take on the club, to get his hands on the photographs he'd taught Dan to develop long ago, and to gather evidence in surveillance photographs. And if he'd known that Caroline was being blackmailed, perhaps it wasn't surprising that he'd taken photos of Mark's accident. a.s.sumptions, yes, and she had no proof connecting it all yet, but it made a logical sense, fitted all they knew.

Caroline might have 'resolved' her problem with Wolfgang's a.s.sistance, but questions still tugged at Jenn. Was it resolved before the accident, or after? Did she resolve it permanently? Did Len know? And did it have anything to do with Caroline and Len leaving Dungirri and handing everything over to Mark when he finished university? That had struck her as strange, for a fit and healthy couple barely near retirement age.

But if Caroline had endured forced s.e.x a d.a.m.n it, call it what it was, rape a that would be reason enough for any woman to want to leave the district. Jenn's stomach churned. They might be getting closer to answers, but none of them were easy to bear.

Jenn still had questions for Jeanie, and although she wasn't sure she wanted to hear the answers she sucked in a breath and asked, 'Do you know if ... if my father ever had anything to do with Dan Flanagan?'

Jeanie turned her teaspoon over on the table and took a long time to answer. 'I think he did some work for him. Before he joined the army. It was decades ago, Jenn. He ran a little wild like many young men, but he straightened out and made your grandparents proud.'

Aware of Mark near her, his wordless gaze reading her intention and giving her courage, she asked, 'Do you believe my father did it, Jeanie? Killed my mother?'

Jeanie sat up straighter, her hand warm over Jenn's. 'I believe he was a good man, Jenn. I don't know what happened or why, but he loved your mother and you. I've never doubted that.'

I've never doubted that ... The words eased some of the ache in her heart, and made her more determined to find the truth, clear her father's name.

Jeanie embraced her affectionately before she left. 'Don't go running away again without coming to see me. And,' she drew Jenn's head down and kissed her forehead, as if in benediction, 'be careful, and look after each other.'

While Jenn worked through the photos, creating a spreadsheet of dates, initials and other details, Mark made lists, laying the names out in groups a everyone who might have been involved in the accident and its aftermath, police, medical, legal, each name notated with position t.i.tles, current whereabouts and other notes. Bill Franklin topped the list of police, Will Cooper the list of paramedics. Where he didn't know names, he noted positions, such as Deputy Coroner, nurses at the hospital, other patients.

When he finished with those lists, he started a new one: Flanagan a.s.sociates and friends. People who worked for Flanagan. People who worked with him a other graziers, suppliers, business people who didn't seem to mind the company. People who attended his Christmas drinks, usually reported in the social page of the Birraga Gazette.

Gerard McCarty topped that list. Mark added Larry Dolan from the Gazette. There had certainly been more advertising of Flanagan's transport and irrigation operations in the Gazette after Clem Lockrey's retirement as managing editor.

And all the time he made notes, Jenn worked at the other end of the table, every now and again glancing up, making a comment. But she didn't recognise anyone else in the photographs. 'Whoever took these photos was either very cautious,' she commented, 'or just not interested in faces.'

Steve returned in the late afternoon, and brought Mark's laptop with him. 'Forensics have finished at your place, and I thought you might need this.'

'Thanks. Any news?'

'Good news is, there are prints on the tape on the explosives. The bad news is, they're not Flanagan's. Forensics will run them overnight and maybe we'll get an answer in the morning if they're on file. In the meantime, you're staying here tonight. Haddad and the Feds want you protected.'

'Here?' Mark hesitated. 'I could go to the pub.'

'Nope. Not secure enough, and there's no-one spare to stand guard. Kris says you can have the guest bed. Apparently Gil will be down later a no prizes for guessing where he's sleeping a and I'm going to crash on the couch. In a police station with the three of us and your dogs outside, you should be safe enough for tonight.'

The continued inactivity and restriction on his movements grated, making him uneasy, and he had to consciously stop himself from pacing around the rooms of Kris's small residence. Patience. Focus. Work. Research.

At least with his laptop returned he had something to do with his restless mind. He booted it up and connected to the internet via Kris's wireless. First task: check his email. He scrolled the lists of messages in the Marrayin and his personal accounts. Still nothing from his parents. d.a.m.n it. If they'd been flooded in to the village by heavy rains it might be days before they received his messages.

Second task: he typed 'Gerard McCarty' into the search engine. Too many results, with many professional, presumably respectable men filling the top few pages a but no bankers. He narrowed the search terms to New South Wales, then on a whim added Queensland. On the second page of results, the summary sentence of a news report caught his eye: Gerard McCarty, wanted for questioning on suspicion of rape and murder. He opened the link, and the report a dated four years ago a included an image. As the image slowly loaded, he found himself looking into the cold, smirking eyes of the man photographed with Dan Flanagan eighteen years ago.

FOURTEEN.

She was well outnumbered, three against one. She would have argued, held her ground a but the trouble was, they were right.

She rubbed Rosie's ears. 'Guess I'll be staying here tonight, Rosie girl,' she murmured. 'It does make more sense than being alone in the hotel.'

So much for peace and quiet and s.p.a.ce to think without a horde of others around. So much for time to sort through some ragged, confusing-as-h.e.l.l emotions.

The screen door squeaked. Steve, not Mark. He sat on the back step beside her and launched straight into round two of ordering her about.

'Listen, Jenn. McCarty's been on the run for four years and you can bet he's in this up to his b.l.o.o.d.y neck. He might have a chance of beating one accusation of rape and murder, but if he knows that you a we a have the photos, and if we can get Caroline and the other women to testify, he's looking at life. You're potentially as big a target as Mark. And I don't want to have to identify your remains, so stop being a stubborn idiot and use your brain.'

'Are you always this much of a bossy b.a.s.t.a.r.d or are you making a special effort to impress me?' She aimed for a mocking tone but in truth she wasn't feeling it, and the edge of teasing showed.

He glanced sideways at her, that playboy grin not far away. 'Sweetheart, if I thought I had any chance this side of h.e.l.l of making that kind of impression on you, you'd know about it. But I don't do lost causes.'

A lost cause? Well, yes, as far as Steve was concerned, she was. She'd come to like the guy and his mildly flirtatious ways and to respect the serious dedication beneath it, but the flutter in her heartbeat, the awareness of him, the tingle on her skin and catch in her breath? No, none of that had happened. Wasn't going to happen. Not with Steve. A part of her wished it would because that might be a whole lot less complicated than ... No, she wouldn't even think that. Not Mark. Nothing but a little nostalgia with Mark.

She decided against trying to respond to Steve's bait and flipped back to the real issue. 'I was just telling Rosie here that I'd be staying the night. I wasn't so much suffering from a bout of stupidity as a mild oh-s.h.i.t-oh-s.h.i.t-oh-s.h.i.t attack. So, don't go thinking it was your persuasive charm that made me agree, okay? Rosie's my witness.'

'And probably more intelligent than half the witnesses I see on the stand,' he said. 'But now, can I persuade you to come inside? That scrub out there has hidden snipers before.'

With the vision of Wolfgang bleeding to death still fresh in her mind, she didn't need further convincing.

Afternoon darkened into evening. All of them continued to work, think, research; Steve and Kris in the police station, Jenn and Mark in the marginally more s.p.a.cious kitchen. She finished indexing the date and initial codes of the photos and started trying to match Birraga or Dungirri names to the faceless or blindfolded women. There was one that might have been Marta a MS a a woman bound in a chair and flinching, the ant.i.thesis of Wolfgang's reverent work.

Others she couldn't be sure of. Wealthier women, Jeanie had said, and the haircuts, artfully coloured lips and smooth skin in the images confirmed they were women with the time and money to look after their appearance. She concentrated on the time period she remembered best, trying to recall the women featured in the Gazette's social pages, the ones who'd had the money to make regular visits to Vanna's beauty salon next door.

The mayor's wife? He'd been a slimy pig but she'd been a sweet if nervy woman. Initials a tick. Body type and hair a yes, probable.

Sally Duncan from the Birraga Boutique? Initials a tick. Body type and long wavy hair a yes.

Sharon Rennie, a daughter of the family who owned the local, long-established department store? Initials a tick. Body type and pageboy hair cut a yes.

'b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.' She pushed the laptop away, nausea roiling in her gut. At the end of the table Mark looked up from his own work. 'It wasn't just your mother, Mark. There's at least three other prominent women of similar age in there. Maybe more. Boheme got its dirty claws into at least half the best businesses in town.'

'Take a break, Jenn. You've been at it for ages.'

Take a break and do what? 'No, I should keep going with this. If you can give me the names of some of the women from grazing families, I can check for them.'

He came to her end of the table, reached over and closed the laptop screen. 'Take a break. You've been staring at the screen too long, and there's a limit to the amount of horror a person can take in at one time.'

'Yes, I know. Horror's part of my business, remember?' And she crafted it into thirty-second sound bites, two-minute reports, or longer features that kept the hardest-hitting facts for the climax after easing the reader or viewer in. 'I should be used to this kind of s.h.i.t. I've uncovered enough of it.'

'Maybe not so close to home. People you know. That's always worse.' Standing behind her, he drew her back in her chair and began to ma.s.sage the tight, hard muscles of her neck and shoulders. 'Take a break,' he repeated. 'This cement means you've been working too long.'

She closed her eyes, accepting the gift, letting his firm fingers work gradually, increasingly, into the knots. Maybe he was right. Not just about the cemented muscles. About horror being worse when it was people you knew. She'd seen plenty of evil a corruption that made her cynical, violence that sickened her, poverty that made her despair, and natural disasters that left her feeling powerless, tiny and vulnerable in the face of the planet's physical forces. But each time, after a few days, after filing her reports, she could walk away from the strangers whose lives she'd glimpsed for a short while.

The August day when Sally Duncan had been planning her boutique's spring sale and enquired about advertising rates in the Gazette office a had that been before or after she'd gone to the room with the long drapes and the metal chair?

When Caroline had driven to the place where she'd knelt naked on the carpet, what had she worn? The well-cut jeans and tailored shirt she often wore for quick trips to town? The blue linen dress for lunch with her friends? Had Len known where she was going, and why, or had she made up a story, forced to lie? Had she scrubbed her body all over when she got home and then pretended over dinner with her husband and son that everything was fine?

That son's hands paused on Jenn's shoulders. 'You're tensing up. Is this hurting? Do you want me to stop?'

'No. It's okay. I just lost the zen thoughts there for a while. Will your hands hold out for a minute or two more?' Two minutes wouldn't make much difference to the state of her neck and shoulders, but she could get herself together in two minutes, defeat the urge to cry, and be ready to face him and pretend that she could deal with everything a including him a without falling apart and taking more from him than a shoulder ma.s.sage.

Being confined in a four-room house made him edgy. Mark lingered at the printer in Kris's spare bedroom-c.u.m-study, staring at the pages in his hand without seeing them. He rubbed the rock-hard muscles at the back of his own neck, tense after hours of being cooped up inside, of considering all the possibilities of the past darkness, of working at the same table as Jenn. His offer to ma.s.sage her shoulders had been every bit as much for him as for her a to ease her pain, to touch her, and to stand behind her so she couldn't see how deeply she affected him. All the promise, all the potential she'd had at seventeen flowered now as an adult a her intelligence, her perseverance, the pa.s.sion for justice that blazed in her eyes.

If things had been different ... He cursed the circ.u.mstances that had brought her back into his life now, now when he had a cloud over his head, when he was bound here by honour and commitment to help Dungirri a his community a recover from traumatic years and rebuild its shattered ident.i.ty. Even if he was not charged over Paula's death, Jenn's life and career lay elsewhere, and he was not free to be with her.

He'd gripped the pages in his hand so tightly they'd creased in long untidy folds. He wished it was Flanagan's neck he'd had his hands around.

Did that make him little better than Flanagan? He didn't know, but the anger and violence within him simmered and he had to deliberately focus to slow his breathing, to open his fists, to smooth out the papers and return to the others a to Jenn a with some semblance of calm.

Gil arrived, bringing with him bread, steaks and salad from the pub kitchen, and he prepared a meal while the rest of them gathered around the table and shared progress and news.

'Leah's banging her head against a brick wall trying to get more resources on the ground,' Steve reported. 'So, tomorrow I'm officially back on the team. At least if I get shot in the line of duty tomorrow I'll be covered by workers' comp, but we'd better try to avoid the shooting stuff tonight, right?'

'I'll second that,' Mark volunteered, re-joining them at the table. They'd put away computers, reshuffled seats for everyone to fit, and he took the vacant seat next to Jenn. Maybe he should have taken the one furthest away instead of being so close that their thighs were only inches apart and he could almost feel the warmth of her body. Every small move distracted him, and he had to concentrate to follow the discussion. But she was part of it, animated and engaged with the intellectual puzzle, despite her fatigue.

'Jenn, I pa.s.sed along your information about the women you've possibly identified,' Steve continued, going through his notes. 'Leah wants to visit them in the morning, and she wants you to go with her, Kris, as you're the local s.e.xual a.s.sault specialist.'

'Did the forensic team find anything else at Wolfgang's place?' Jenn asked.

'His artwork is neatly catalogued in cabinets in the studio. But there's a storage s.p.a.ce under the darkroom floor with a whole lot more photographs and negatives, and I doubt they're his work. They'll take some time to go through, but this is a copy of one that fell out of the pile while forensics were packing them up.'

Steve pa.s.sed the photo across the table to them and Jenn took it, placing it so Mark could see it.

A black-and-white photo, almost cartoonish, with an oversized head added clumsily to the image of a beaten woman's body, the face young, pretty ... and familiar. Jenn made a small sound of shock, and with disgust Mark turned the photo face down, and shoved it back to Steve.

'It's Barbara Russell,' he said, and Gil stilled for an instant at the bench, then spun around, knife in hand, and reached across Steve for the photo. 'Just her face, edited on. Poorly edited.'

Mark watched the knife gripped in Gil's hand, but he had himself under control. Almost. If Flanagan had been there, he'd have been a dead man. And Mark wasn't at all sure he wouldn't have helped.

'It's a threat,' Gil said harshly, tossing the photo back on the table. 'You'll probably find a copy in the doc's papers somewhere. That'll be how they gained his compliance.'

He turned away again, but the knife clattered into the sink, and he grasped the edges of the bench, breathing through clenched teeth. Kris went to him and put her hand on his shoulder, then his arm came around her and pulled her close to his side.

Glad for them and what they'd found together, Mark nevertheless had to stifle a wave of envy. Beside him Jenn held herself stiffly in her seat, closed off and unreachable. Except her intellect wouldn't be silenced.

'Maybe the doc knew,' she said, thinking aloud. 'Maybe he knew about the women and what went on at the club. Because that image would have a lot more impact if he knew how real it could become. I can't imagine many women confiding in him, but if there'd been injuries, unwanted pregnancies, emotional distress he might have guessed something of it.'

And done whatever he had to do to protect his daughter from the same fate. Like signing a blood-alcohol sample with the wrong name. Mark's anger at the old doctor eased down a few notches.

He still had questions about how Wolfgang had obtained a or stolen a those photographs and from whom, but they weren't his main concern. Men who preyed on beautiful women were, and the need to protect the woman sitting beside him who'd become involved and wouldn't step back from searching for answers. 'Did you track down any more information on Gerard McCarty?' he asked Steve.

'Yes, I'm getting to that.' Steve shuffled a couple of pages of notes. 'Okay, McCarty left here not quite eighteen years ago a a couple of weeks after the accident. He transferred to a similar position in a larger branch of the same bank on the Gold Coast. He resigned from there three years later. Then he set up a business as a financial consultant and paid cash for a million-dollar house on forty hectares in the hinterland. He liked to entertain, was well respected and had interests in several property-development companies. He was questioned about the disappearance of a woman five years ago, brought along a top lawyer, refused a DNA test without a warrant, then walked out of the police station without being charged a and hasn't been seen since. Her body was found in bushland a week later. And,' he grimaced, 'you don't want the details of that.'

Gil had resumed cooking and the steaks sizzled on the hot grill, making Mark's stomach take a queasy roll.

Gil put a salad bowl in the centre of the table and threw a glance at Steve. 'After dinner,' he said, with a slight emphasis on after, 'see if there's any connection between McCarty and Vanna Flanagan. She's been up on the Gold Coast ever since she left Dan, which was around that time.'

Mark watched Gil's face. He'd been inadvertently involved in the business run by Vanna's mafia brothers in the city, and had discovered their local connection. 'Do you think McCarty got her caught up in this, too?' Mark asked.

Gil shrugged. 'Maybe. I don't know enough about her. But there's a coincidence there. Rumour has it she took Dan to the cleaners in the divorce settlement. She certainly expanded her empire a the network of salons, spas, whatever you call them, across the country, and what's now a large modelling agency.'

Steve shoved his notes to one side. 'The Feds have been looking into all of that in the investigation of the Flanagan businesses since the sons' arrests. But she's not involved in the family companies now; she came up clean.'

Gil snorted.

Jenn suddenly sat forward, her hands on the table. 'What if we've been underestimating her? She's a link. Her salon back then was probably a link. The place where Birraga's wealthy women went, relaxed, unwound a and talked. She would know them all. McCarty would have known their financial status. Women aren't always victims. Sometimes,' her eyes locked on Steve's and she used the words Jeanie had quoted earlier, 'sometimes there are far more dangerous criminals than thugs like Dan.'

It was after midnight, and only small sounds were audible in the quiet of the house. The rattle of a chain on the wooden veranda as one of the dogs changed position. Steve's low, deep breathing from the couch in the living room. The sound of Mark turning in his sleep on the blow-up vinyl mattress. Only silence from the next room, where Kris and Gil slept.

Jenn didn't know what had woken her. She must have drifted off to sleep at last but it had taken a long time to still her brain enough to relax. Now she lay in Kris's guest bed, the sheet half over her, and listened for any sound that didn't belong.

Frogs in the creek, the low call of a mopoke owl a years since she'd heard that a and the high-pitched buzz of a mosquito circling just outside her room.

She pulled the sheet up over her bare arms and scratched an itch on her wrist. A feasting mozzie. Yes, that would be enough to wake her. Nothing to worry about a except the itch. She turned over, settled the pillow and made sure the sheet protected her shoulders before she closed her eyes again.

Explosion ... fire erupting ... flames, flames all around him ... she ran, fell, pain in knees and hands and ankle ... crawled, crying ... couldn't get to him ... couldn't save him ... cried out again ... and again- 'Jenn? Jenn, it's okay. You're dreaming. You're safe.'

Quiet voice. A dark head, a weird green glow on the face ... She closed and opened her eyes again. Mark. Mark in the dull light of the bedroom. The green glow from the power light on the printer.

The nightmare still lurking in the cobwebs of sleep, she pushed herself up to sit and shook her head to try to wake up. 'Sorry. Bad dream. Thought ...' Thought you were burning to death in a car. No surprises that her subconscious had thrown that at her.

'I had one too,' he whispered. 'I was going to get a gla.s.s of water. Do you want one?'

Her throat as dry as if she'd been trying to scream in her sleep, she nodded. 'Thanks.' Water would be good but ... Bathroom. That would help her settle again. She tossed the sheet off and swung her feet to the floor, following him out the door.

When she came back the green glow from the printer reflected off a gla.s.s left for her on the bedside table, and Mark stood silhouetted against the window, sipping from a gla.s.s in his hands, tall and muscular and yes, breathtaking in a rumpled T-shirt and jeans. The floorboards cool against her bare feet, she crossed to Mark and laid her hand on his arm.

Aware of the others sleeping just metres away, she kept her voice to a whisper. 'Thanks. You always were a rock when I needed you.'