Darkening Skies Part 8

The blackened ruins of the homestead's central wing stood against the brilliant blue of the sky, the reality of the destruction making Jenn's breath catch in her throat.

Never her home, but still she'd loved the house, the heritage grace of the old sections, the rambling additions of successive generations and owners, the whole place rich with history and stories. In Marrayin's glory days, a hundred years ago, there'd been a whole community here a a family, household staff, station workers a with the buildings to house them. A self-reliant village, like so many large properties isolated from towns. As a girl she'd been fascinated by the history, spending many long hours reading the old account books and wandering around the outbuildings, imagining the kitchen maid in the dairy where the machinery shed now stood, the stableboy working with the family horses in the main stable, now the garage, and the grazier's daughters playing tennis in long white frocks.

But now there was only Mark.

'I'm camping in the manager's cottage for the time being,' he said as he parked beside her car. 'The east wing of the homestead might be livable, but I'm not sure yet how much damage there is.'

'You won't be employing another manager?'

'No. Not for here, probably not at Gearys either. I prefer to be hands-on. I just couldn't do it while I was an MP. Now I can again.' And although he'd been silent and preoccupied most of the drive from Dungirri, that last sentence a Now I can again a rang with a quiet pleasure she hadn't heard from him since she'd returned.

Mark and Marrayin. Every memory of him mustering cattle on horseback or motorbike, hot, sweaty and filthy after a day fencing or calf-marking, or half-covered in hay and chaff after carting feed during dry spells, came with an awareness of his deep contentment, his joy and fulfilment in the hard work and its rewards. He'd been pa.s.sionate and committed in his parliamentary career a she'd stood in the shadows in the public gallery when he'd given his influential maiden speech, and all her colleagues agreed he'd achieved significant respect for his actions and achievements a but nothing she'd seen or read in the past six years hinted at the same kind of serenity. Some people thrived on the cut and thrust of debate, on power plays and negotiations, on political tactics, manoeuvrings and victories. Not Mark.

If his intellect, his detailed comprehension of complex rural issues, his natural leadership skills and his commitment to service had led him to stand for parliament, it must have come at a personal cost.

Mark belonged here, at Marrayin.

She stood in the drive-circle beside her car and surveyed the damage to the house. 'You will rebuild it, won't you?'

'I hope to. I'll have to wait for the building inspection and the insurance decision. And for the outcome of the police investigation.' He shot her a sideways glance. 'If I'm found culpable for Paula's death, there may be a prison sentence.'

Mark in prison? Her mind blanked and refused to process the thought. At what point had she shifted from anger and suspicion to wanting him to be innocent? Even at her angriest, her most doubtful of him, at no time in the past forty-eight hours had she imagined him behind bars.

He stood by the back of the ute, gently rubbing the ears of one of the dogs, and when she didn't respond he said, 'I'll accept the findings and the outcome, Jenn. Paula was important to me, too.'

She found enough coherence in her brain to string some words together. 'I know she was. So, now we just have to work out what actually happened.'

'Yes. Although Steve's first priority will be Jim and Doc Russell. We can't know for certain if they're linked, but I'm hoping those investigations will shed light on the old crime.'

So was she. Because no matter what the level of public interest was, no police command was going to allocate many of their scarce resources to an old car accident that might, or might not, have been caused by a man with an otherwise unblemished record.

A white car turned into the driveway. Insurance, WorkCover or police a whichever, Mark would be caught up with them for some time. Jenn checked her watch. She just had enough time to get into Birraga library before it closed; she wanted copies of the accident reports from their archives of the Gazette. She planned to investigate the accident, too, and that was a good place to start. She'd known all of the Gazette's small staff. She'd find out from the archives what had been reported, and a just as importantly a what hadn't, and armed with that information she would ask them why.

'We don't hold the hard copies here anymore,' the young woman at the library's information desk told her. 'They're in the Regional Archives Centre in Armidale. But we do have the papers on microfilm. Which year do you want?'

Tucked into a corner in the reference section near several large printers, the small booth with the microfilm reader trapped warm air and received little of the flow of cool from the air-conditioning.

'Can't wait for digitisation,' Jenn murmured, threading the microfilm through the rollers and under the lens. The rollers squeaked as she fast-forwarded through the months of papers, the images and text flashing across the screen in a scratchy blur.

She slowed as she scrolled through the three editions in the second week in December and paused with a wistful smile at her Friday column, 'Youth Matters', celebrating its second anniversary. Started during her first week of work experience when she was fifteen, she'd badgered the editor Clem Lockrey to keep it going, providing copy every week, and before long it became a regular column. All those afternoons through years ten and eleven at Birraga High, hanging out at the Gazette office, making herself useful, drafting advertising copy, a.s.sisting with research and proofreading items eventually paid off when Clem gave her a desk, a modest wage as a part-time office a.s.sistant and the occasional by-line when she transformed Birraga Council's media releases into coherent articles. And 'Youth Matters' had gradually moved from page eight to page four.

She skimmed her very last column, 'Cool things on the World Wide Web', with some amus.e.m.e.nt at what had seemed cutting edge then, and pressed the b.u.t.ton to scan it to email. Maybe she'd do a retrospective piece on it some day.

She scrolled through Friday's cla.s.sifieds and sports pages to reach Monday's edition. Front-page news, as she expected.

The headline took up a third of the page: 'FATAL SMASH KILLS GIRL'. The rational, distanced part of her brain focused on the clunky phrase. One of Larry's, probably. Headlines weren't his strength.

But the headline didn't matter. She couldn't stay distanced and she braced herself as she scrolled the page up on the screen to study the photos and the story. Staring out at her was a four-column image of the smashed car at the crash site, with an inset photo of Mark in school uniform.

Birraga High School captain Mark Strelitz was airlifted in a critical condition to the John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle following a single-vehicle accident on Sat.u.r.day evening on the Dungirri road that claimed the life of Paula Katherine Barrett, aged 18.

Lead with the most important fact a and in the way of small-town newspapers and the social strata of the district, Mark's injuries made more significant news than Paula's death. Jenn ignored the twinge of resentment on Paula's behalf. Selling newspapers was always the purpose, not a.s.suaging the feelings of a few family members.

The only child of graziers Len and Caroline Strelitz, Mark suffered head injuries and remains in a coma. Speaking from Newcastle, Mr Strelitz expressed his grat.i.tude to police, paramedics and nursing staff for their care of his son, and his sorrow for Miss Barrett's death.

Build sympathy for the victim a and already, in this first report, Mark had been presented as victim, not offender.

Morgan Gillespie, also 18, of Dungirri, has been charged with culpable driving occasioning death and was remanded in custody. Police allege Gillespie had a blood-alcohol reading of 0.14.

A statement from the senior sergeant at Birraga added the detail that the car had 'apparently swerved off the road and collided with a tree'. Coming after the mention of the blood-alcohol reading, it reinforced the perception of Gillespie's guilt.

The next statement, from the princ.i.p.al of Birraga High School, expressed shock at the tragedy. 'Paula was a delight to teach and a valued member of our school community, loved by her peers and always supportive of younger students.'

Jenn's eyes watered and she had to dig in her bag for a tissue. Good old Mr Howie.

The final paragraph was in italics, indicating an editorial comment on the story, and as Jenn read she had to press the tissue against her mouth to suppress a sob, tears now spilling over.

The deceased woman is the sister of the Gazette's Youth Matters columnist, Jennifer Barrett. The staff of the Gazette express their deepest condolences to Miss Barrett and her family.

The screen became a blur, and she had to look away, wipe the tears running down her face. It had to be Clem who'd added that. The main article had Larry's old-school style, and his technically incorrect reference to an eighteen-year-old woman as a 'girl'. But that reference to Paula as her sister a that was Clem, bless him, and it harked back to an editorial she had proofread for him about extended families and foster-siblings and complex care relationships. And he'd argued in that article that often the legal relationship didn't matter as much as the relationship of the heart.

G.o.d, she had to pull herself together before she started to howl. The grief shouldn't still be this fresh and raw a it had to be just her fatigue and the shock of the past days' events throwing her emotions off kilter.

She heard a librarian informing other patrons that closing time was in ten minutes. Ten minutes. Hiding in her corner and howling wasn't an option. She dragged a dry tissue over her eyes and made them focus on the machine. Print. Scan. Email.

She quickly scrolled through the next couple of editions but saw little that related to the accident, other than a brief mention of Mark remaining in hospital in Newcastle. And then she was out of time. Wishing that small community libraries had the staff and funds for longer opening hours was wasted effort. She'd just have to wait until Monday to look for mentions of Gillespie's committal hearing.

After placing the microfilm back in its box, she collected her pages from the printer, glancing over them to check they'd printed all the text. She stopped abruptly, her eye drawn to the photo of the accident.

The low quality of the microfilm made the image grainy and she stared at it, blinking salty eyes to try to make out the detail. No, to be certain she needed the original image. Now she just had to find out if Clem or Larry were still around, and if she could get it.

With the arson investigator, WorkCover inspector, insurance a.s.sessor, police forensic officers and Steve all arriving, the driveway soon filled with vehicles. Mark answered their initial questions and then left them to their work. Stand around pa.s.sively watching while they picked over the remains of his home? No, not when he had a property to run, and no-one to help him do it.

Jim's dogs leapt with ears-up eagerness on to the tray on the back of the quad bike. They knew Mark and accepted direction from him, keen to work. Out in the sun-hot paddocks checking water troughs, dams and stock, his physical restlessness found some ease. He wished he could spread that ease to the crowded, racing activity of his thoughts, but planning what needed to be done on the property only added another layer to the discordant chorus of concerns in his head.

The sale of two hundred steers just before the manager left a few weeks ago meant that Marrayin wasn't heavily stocked at present, but he had heifers to move from one paddock to another, this season's calves to be marked and, he discovered when he reached the east river paddock, a mob of feral goats and a trampled fence to deal with.

He prioritised tasks, made plans. First priority a phone Karl and offer him some casual employment. He'd already proved to be a good worker. Mark would have to go over his finances and see if he could juggle things to offer Karl something more permanent, or at least regular. Like most rural communities, limited employment opportunities in the district meant that Dungirri's younger people left for larger towns and cities, but if the town were to have a future, it needed people like Karl to stay. Mark would do what he could to enable that.

He rode along the river and up past the stockyards to the three long-empty workers' cottages, and the old shearers' quarters. He left the quad bike under a tree to check inside. There was some basic equipment and tools stored there, plus a fridge in the old kitchen for days when a few people were down here working. And there were memories.

Jenn kept coming to his thoughts, each part of the property holding recollections of working, playing, and exploring the landscape with her. Always Jenn stood out more than Paula, although he could still see, too, the warmth of Paula's smile, hear her teasing him with the cheeky confidence of their four weeks' age difference. He never minded, because she needed all the confidence she could find within. But Jenn, for all her reserve and emotional armour, had a stronger sense of self and certainty. From horse riding to mustering, school work to journalism, if she set her mind to something she usually succeeded.

But she'd never smiled enough. She still didn't. Granted, there hadn't been anything to smile about since yesterday and no reason for her to smile at him now, but he wished he could see her again as she had once been, whooping with exhilaration after a good gallop, or sitting here on the old shearers' kitchen table, sweating from a day's work in the yards, tossing her head back to glug down a bottle of water, laughing as he tipped it to spill on to her face.

He blinked hard to dislodge the image. Nothing but dust and daydreams here now, and he had no time for any of them. Fatigue descending on him, he moved leaden feet out into the sunshine again. At the tank stand he splashed water over his head and face and gulped several mouthfuls from his cupped hands, pouring some into the enamel dish kept there for the dogs and placing it down for them.

Beyond the sound of their slurps he idly tuned in to the usual background noises a the ever-present buzz of insects; a flock of galahs squabbling; a few cattle in the large wool-shed paddock mildly protesting another's transgression. But those last sounds were coming from the wrong direction. Unless the cattle were behind the wool shed ...

He called the dogs and started the quad bike. The track from the road to the stockyards pa.s.sed the disused wool shed and he rode up there, expecting to see the beasts come into view. Instead he found a gate that should have been shut swinging wide open, and around twenty young steers calmly grazing along the roadside.

Hadn't Jenn said last night that she thought she'd heard a car down this way?

He stopped on the track. d.a.m.n it. It would have been easy enough for the arsonist to leave his vehicle here and approach the house unseen, able to ensure that no-one was around before he broke in.

To preserve any tyre tracks or other evidence at the gate, Mark went back to the stockyards and out on to the road across the stockyard grid. On his command, the two older dogs, Maggie and Rosie, flanked the cattle but he kept the youngest one, Dash, at his heel, and between them they made short work of moving the cattle into a paddock across the road.

On his way back along the road up to the homestead Mark stopped to close the wool-shed gate, avoiding touching it where someone might ordinarily handle it. Twenty cattle milling around the gate had churned up the track and obliterated tyre prints, but if there were fingerprints on the gate, he wanted them saved for the crime-scene officers. As he dropped the chain over the hook, something small and white caught his eye in the gra.s.s near the base of the gate post. He knelt to see it better. A cigarette b.u.t.t. He didn't smoke. Jim didn't smoke. It might not be relevant ... but it might.

When he arrived back at the house the crime-scene officers were packing up their gear, but on hearing his suspicions Sandy Cunningham sent his offsider down to see what she could find.

'The arson investigator has finished and so have we,' Sandy told him. 'You can go into the safe parts of the house to salvage things, but not that whole front part a what's left of the roof could be unstable. Wouldn't be anything worth salvaging in there, anyway, I'm afraid.'

The insurance a.s.sessor, a solemn man in his fifties, echoed the warning. 'I'll arrange for a structural engineer to come out on Monday. You can go into the kitchen, and that east wing from the second room down, but the rest is unsafe. I'll be in touch early next week with the report.'

The kitchen and the east wing a three guest rooms and a sitting room a were all that remained. He might as well keep to his plan to stay in the manager's cottage.

His boots crunched on the gravel driveway as he walked along in front of the house to see the state of his bedroom through the remains of the veranda. Yes, they were right. Nothing much left there but charred memories.

Who? Who had broken in, searched through his papers, fought with Jim, and set the office alight? Who had known the property well enough to enter via the wool-shed gate? He still refused to believe that Jim could have been responsible for the fire. Mick? Perhaps. He knew the place a but then, so did plenty of other people. There had been tens, possibly hundreds of people over the years who had worked on or visited the property. Shearers, when they'd still run sheep; livestock truckers every few months; station hands and fencers; fuel and feed-truck drivers ... the list went on and on.

No easy answers there. He veered his thoughts to practicalities and plans. Clothes. He had Canberra clothes down in the cottage a not much use here, but at least he'd have a suit for the funerals. He needed work clothes and some everyday gear, and food, since the perishables in the fridge would be well gone from the heat. Bedding he could get from the guest rooms. Likewise some furniture. Computer equipment could come from his office in Birraga. And he'd need fuel for the generator since the fuel truck wouldn't be out this way again for at least a week.

'Bit of a b.l.o.o.d.y mess, mate,' Steve said behind him.

'Yes. But I've got enough left to get by. It could have been worse.' Jim's death still cut sharply into his emotions, but at least Jenn was okay, when she so easily might have been killed.

'I've just heard from Adam,' Steve commented. 'Mick Barrett's in the clear for this. Adam was throwing him out of the pub yesterday evening at the time your intruder was lighting fires. And this morning Frank Williams was watering his garden before six and he saw Mick in his house across the road. Frank went over to check on him, because he was on something of a bender last night, and made him coffee.'

'You couldn't get a much more reliable alibi than Frank.' Retired accountant, president and driving force of the new Dungirri Progress a.s.sociation, and member of numerous community groups in the district a he was a man Mark respected a great deal.

'Nope. It's as solid as a rock.'

Unlike his own, non-existent alibi. Steve gave no indication that he seriously considered him a suspect, but the fact that no-one could confirm his whereabouts before either crime hung in Mark's awareness.

'I'll need to go into town to get some supplies and more fuel for the generator,' he told Steve. 'If you don't need me anymore.'

'No. I'm heading back to Birraga myself. Got a few things to follow up.'

He didn't offer anything more and Mark didn't ask. Police business, and for all that Steve had been more open with him than a stranger might have, he had no role in the investigation other than as a witness.

Mark respected the law and the judicial process. But two men had died, and he'd do whatever he could to ensure that no-one else did.

The front door of the Gazette office was closed and locked a not surprising on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon. But the vintage sports car parked outside was typically Larry, and through the window Jenn could see the overhead fan circling. She rapped on the window using her old signature rhythm for after-hours entry.

When Larry pulled open the door he stared, mouth dropping open, for a good three seconds.

'Jenn Barrett?' Incredulity slid into pleasure, and his face lit up with a wide grin. 'Jenn b.l.o.o.d.y Barrett, what the h.e.l.l are you doing here in the back of beyond? Come in, come in.'

The computer screens on the desks were bigger and the office chairs had morphed from dark brown to muted green-grey upholstery, changes that seemed reflected in Larry himself, carrying extra kilos, his hair grey and receding.

'So, look at you, living the dream, hey? Foreign correspondent, travelling the world.'

'The fantasy doesn't bear much resemblance to the reality,' she said. 'Long hours, a lot of travelling, and no glamour. Just as Clem warned me. Is he still around?'

'Clem? Retired five years ago. Then had a heart attack a couple of years back when he was out fishing with some mates. Not a bad way to go.'

For a quiet man who'd struggled with his health but loved fishing and the outdoors? 'Not a bad way at all,' she agreed, 'but I'm sorry he's gone. I would have liked to have seen him again.'

Larry poured her a mug of coffee from the ever-warm pot and waved her to a seat by his crowded desk, moving a couple of manila folders to a side table behind him as they sat. 'So, where has the intrepid Jennifer Barrett been reporting from lately?'

'Central Asia. Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan. Doing a series of reports about gas and water issues.'

His chuckle bubbled, just as she remembered it. 'Jeez, Jenn. No need to go all the way to the 'Stans. If you want to do stories on gas and water rights, we've got plenty of them here.'

She nodded in agreement. Here and everywhere. Energy, water, food production a fundamentals for twenty-first century living, and potential battlegrounds for control and exploitation. 'At least you don't have several nuclear-armed nations vying for control of the resources.'

'Maybe not. Yet. But where there's money and big business involved, there's always a story to tell.'

His knowing grin and hints piqued her interest but she quashed it and moved on. 'There's only one issue I'm interested in here, Larry.'

Lounging back, hands clasped behind his head, under the pretended casualness he watched her shrewdly. 'Mark Strelitz and his out-of-the-blue resignation.'

'Yes. What do you know, Larry? What's your reading of it?'

'I could ask you the same thing. I'm not the one who knows him well.'

'Knew him well,' she corrected. 'As teenagers. There's been plenty of water under the bridge since then.'

'Actually, more drought than floods round here,' he teased her lightly. A cla.s.sic Larry avoidance strategy.

'If I wanted a rainfall report, I'd look it up online,' she said. 'What's your take on Mark's resignation?'

'You can look that up online, too. Breaking news goes out digitally now.' His eyes sparkled with the pleasure of sparring with her again.

She took a sip of the strong black coffee and considered him carefully. 'I didn't ask for the paper's take on it. I asked for yours.'

'Why? Are you covering the story?'

'No. I'm on leave. Paula was my cousin, so this is purely personal for me. And I'm asking for your opinion because you've been here all these years, you know Mark, his work and what goes on in this district far better than I do.' Unblinking, she kept her eyes on his. 'And because you reported the accident originally.'

He didn't shift in his chair, or look away, or fidget with anything. He held her gaze steadily, serious now. 'I did.' But that steadiness when he'd teased her a moment before, along with his brief answer alerted her.

'Tell me about it,' she said.

He gave a casual shrug. 'There's not much to tell. Wolfie and I were covering Carols by Candlelight at Anzac Park when Clem paged us. We went out there, but it was dark and not much to see since the police wouldn't let us close. The ambulance had gone, Gillespie had already been arrested, and the cops were just waiting for the forensic people. Wolfie took a few shots with the telephoto lens, and that was it. I put the report together mostly from the police statement.'