A Certain Malice (22 page)

“Ex-husband?”

“A poisoned hatpin might be Garry’s style, but certainly not a bomb.”

Cam raised his eyebrows. He was pleased to see that some of her humour had returned.

“I’m only joking. Our divorce was messy, but the marriage ended over two years ago. I haven’t seen him since. Last I heard he was busy setting up house with his new boyfriend, they were about to open a wine bar in the city.”

Her gaze dropped to her toes and a flush blossomed up her neck. She leaned against the armrest of the couch and rested her chin in her hand, half covering her mouth.

“I’d like you to think back to the fire. When I found you, it seemed as if you’d been knocked out. Can you remember anything?”

Cecelia rubbed the lump on the back of her head and focused inward. Cam waited for her to speak.

“I was standing on a stool, reaching up to get some glue from the shelf,” she said.“Then I remember a sudden crash and I fell. I guess I must have hit my head. The next thing I remember is the smoke and you crawling towards me.”

“Did you tell anyone that you were going to be working at the photo lab that night?”

She shook her head.

He raised his eyes to the ceiling, steepling his fingers. “I didn’t notice your car anywhere near.”

“I parked it round the front. I had some things I wanted to leave for the secretary. It was easier to carry them in from there.”

“Where would you usually park?”

“There’s a small car park near the photo lab. I usually park there.” Her eyes widened. “You think the person who did this didn’t know I was there?”

Cam shook his head. “I don’t think you were the target, Cecelia.”

“You think they were after you?”

He shrugged and raked his hand through his hair, then reached for his lemonade and swallowed down a large mouthful, trying to get rid of the sudden taste of bile and soot. Now he was certain he could eliminate Cecelia as the target, he had no doubt who the victim was meant to be.

She broke the silence and gave him a puzzled look, “Who would want to kill you?”

Vince, to save his career? Still a possibility.

The killer of Herbert Bell? More likely if he sensed Cam was getting close.

The Razorbacks? The thought made the skin on the back of his neck prickle.

“I’m a cop. Cops always have enemies,” he said.

He looked back down at the stain on his trousers, scratched at the itch and said, “The photos in the drying cabinet, the ones of the renovations, do you have any copies?”

“I was going to give them to the secretary to print up for the school magazine.” She caught her breath. “No, wait a minute. I do have a couple of copies here at home. I put them in an envelope to post off to my mother. Hang on, I’ll get them.”

In a couple of minutes she returned and handed Cam an envelope containing the photos. He thanked her and buttoned them in his top pocket.

It was time to pick up Leanne from the station and visit the Blayney property.

But at that moment a tickle in his chest turned into a spasm and before he knew it, he was in the throes of a violent coughing fit. He stumbled into the hall and coughed himself dry. Wiping his mouth with his handkerchief and gasping for breath, he turned, finding her standing behind him.

“Did you get checked out by the doctor?” she asked, with a frown of concern. “They gave me oxygen at the medical centre. It made quite a difference. You should have gone too.”

He shook his head and took a deep breath.

“You should have, you have smoke inhalation. It’s when the cilia…” She paused and noticed again the scars mottling his arm and the side of his neck. “I suppose I don’t have to tell you about that.”

“No, you don’t.”

Sun streamed in from the leadlight above the door, filling the hall with coloured patterns. She reached for his hand and gave it a squeeze. Cam arched his brow, holding her stare. His eyes drifted to her soft smile and her parted lips. He could imagine the kiss, how it would taste. He drew back.

She let go of his hand. He reached for the hat he’d left on the hall table and turned back to her.

Her smile washed over him, like absolution. “You got me out, Cam,” she said.

28

It was late afternoon, but even under the shade of the large jarrah the day still sweltered. Gay Cronin’s grey hair fell across her face in strings and her T-shirt was dark with sweat. Splattered with yellow paint, her legs looked like co-joined fence strainers jammed into an unforgiving pair of lycra shorts. When she sank back into the faded deckchair, the nylon bulges shimmied in the filtered sunlight.

A country song bounced from a tinny tape recorder by her side. Leanne turned it off, the better for Gay to absorb the sombre news. After a few seconds of silence the old woman opened her mouth and began to wail, revealing a disconcerting cave of bad teeth.

“Herb, my Herbie, what am I going to do without you? Where am I going to go?”

Leanne put her arm around her shoulders. “There, there, Gay. You just let it out. Have a good cry then maybe you’ll feel a bit better.”

She turned to Cam hovering in the background. “How about you put the kettle on, Sarge? Gay, do you mind if the sergeant goes into your caravan and makes us a cuppa?”

Gay wiped at her face with her T-shirt and nodded her head, knocking her leather bush hat to the ground. She picked it up and began to twist the rim around with her fingers. After sucking in a breath from the airless atmosphere, she let out a wobbly sigh. When she sniffed, a phlegmy sound rasped at the back of her throat.

“Grab some tissues while you’re at it, Sarge,” Leanne suggested.

Grateful to escape, Cam walked over to the caravan. A freshly poured concrete slab upon which someone had scrawled the words
Herb loves Gay 4 ever
fronted it.

He pushed open the door. Hot and airless, it had the unique old caravan smell of flypaper and mould, though it was a lot more orderly than he’d expected. The double bed in the end alcove was made with fresh clean linen, a vase of flowers sat on the pullout table, clean dishes dried on a rack near the miniature sink.

When he opened the kitchen drawer for a teaspoon, he noticed all the utensils were engraved with Herb’s initials, HCB. The plates were named in permanent marker, so was the radio by the sink and the tiny television near the bed; every possession, it seemed, was marked by its owner. It takes one to know one, Cam thought with a cynical smile.

While waiting for the kettle to boil, he wandered back outside. A red cloud kelpie, as old as time, looked up from the marron claw it was munching and stared at him through misty eyes. It wagged its tail when Cam bent to give it a pat, its coat as rich and red as earth, glossy with health. People who looked after their animals well can’t be all bad, he thought, until he saw the evil-jawed rabbit and fox traps hanging from hooks off the caravan wall.

Drop nets and scoop nets leaned against the back of the van. A strong fishy smell alerted him to a pile of marron remains nearby, on the fringe of a small wood. A marron poacher: funny how that was no surprise; the succulent freshwater lobster was going for about twenty-five dollars a kilo in the markets at the moment.

Stacks of neatly piled beer bottles reinforced the exterior rear caravan wall. Clean and without labels, they looked as if they were ready for a major home brew bottling operation. His assumption proved correct: the bottles lining the other wall were already full.

The car was parked around the other side of the caravan. She’d carefully covered the windows with newspaper and had been slapping on the yellow exterior flat when they’d pulled up earlier. Then he’d wanted to laugh; now he looked at the industry of her day and felt depressed. He gingerly touched the new paintwork. It was almost dry and spotted with the bodies of trapped flies.

She seemed to have taken an instant dislike to him, because of his authority or his sex, he wasn’t sure. When he handed her a mug of tea, she thanked him with a sharp nod. Leanne occupied the only other chair so he squatted on his haunches next to the old woman. He scooped up a gumnut, breathed in its medicinal scent, waiting for one of them to say something.

Leanne was the first to speak. “Sarge, Gay says she last saw Herb here on Saturday evening.”

Cam looked from the gumnut to Leanne then to Gay, expecting some elaboration. When none was forthcoming, he said, “Gay, it’s really important for us to trace Herb’s final movements so we can find out what happened to him. Did Leanne mention that the evidence so far suggests he was murdered?”

The woman’s bottom lip trembled despite Cam’s gentle tone. Leanne put a hand upon her arm and scowled at Cam, as if grief was some sort of secret women’s business. If they were to progress at the speed Leanne was instigating, he thought, they’d be here all night.

“Did you bring the tissues?” Leanne asked him.

He slapped his hands on his thighs and went back to the caravan, allowing several minutes to elapse before returning with a long ribbon of toilet paper.

“Gay was saying Herb always wanted to have his ashes scattered off the Abrolhos Islands,” Leanne said, taking the toilet paper from Cam and handing it to the grieving woman.

“He liked fishing, did he?” Cam asked.

Gay nodded, trumpeting into the paper.

“I see he also liked the odd marron or two.”

She looked up from her nose blowing long enough to shoot him a poisonous look.

“That’s not what’s bothering me, Mrs Cronin,” Cam said. “I don’t give a hoot about his poaching, or his social security fraud, or any of his other sins, unless they can help us solve the mystery of his death.” Cam took a breath, trying to hide his impatience. “We need your help, Mrs Cronin - I’m presuming you want the character who did this caught, don’t you?”

Sparks ignited in her muddy eyes.“Too right I want him caught, and when you catch him, I’m gonna scratch out his eyes and cut off his balls for what he done to me.”

Cam didn’t doubt it for a minute.“Our evidence suggests Herb drowned in a dam. Did he go marroning Saturday night?”

She looked at the deepening sky, giving the matter thought. She ignored him and turned to Leanne.“Yeah, he left about eight and never come back.”

“You didn’t report him missing, Mrs Cronin. May I ask why?” Cam said.

“We had a tiff, that’s why. I thought he’d just gone walkabout. He does that sometimes. He’ll go on a bender and not come home for days.”

“Apart from your blue, then, had he been acting strangely? Did he seem scared or worried about anything or anyone?” Leanne asked.

“Nah, no more than normal. He was always figuring someone was out to get him, and that’s hardly surprising, seeing as how everyone was. He seemed to piss people off wherever he went.” She made a wheezy noise that sounded almost like a laugh.

Cam attempted a smile. “Do you have any idea which dam he might have gone to?”

“There’s a few. Any he could walk to that had the marron. Sometimes he went to the creeks looking for koonacks.”

Leanne said, “There must be about four dams within walking distance from this place, Sarge, not to mention the little creeks and ponds.”

“Shit,” Cam said under his breath. He got to his feet and walked away from the women, treading carefully to avoid the gumnuts strewn across the ground like ball bearings. He gazed out across the hills with his hands on his hips. It was that magic moment, just before dusk when the light was the colour of melted butter, the gum trees under the spell of an almost supernatural stillness. The humpback silhouettes of grazing kangaroos stood out among the dotted sheep on the hillside. Birds squeaked, chattered and squawked as if making one last effort to drive off the silence of the encroaching night.

The caravan site was on ground equal in height to the tallest of the surrounding hills, allowing an unhindered view across miles of rolling farmland. Small clusters of dusty gums rose from the wheat stubble. Bare paddocks of dry earth, sliced by eroded gullies, or terraced by perfectly contoured sheep paths, curved down the muscled hills to valleys forming natural water-holding cups. The fading sun reflected off two dams he could see, making them shine like sequins in the setting sun. Just how many more were down there, hidden from the naked eye?

Leanne picked her way across the gumnuts to stand at his side.

“Does she have an alibi?” he asked, still gazing at the view.

“She said she was alone that night, just her and the telly.”

“That’s not going to do her much good.”

“She knew what was on, but,” Leanne said, brushing away a persistent fly.

“That’s easy: TV guide.”

“Yeah, but she watched the same programmes as me. We discussed the shows. She knew all the cliff-hangers, who was caught in bed with who, who stole the jewels, everything.”

“I see,” Cam said, arching his brow.

“Well, there’s nothing else to do,” Leanne said defensively. “Besides, do you really think that poor old bat would be able to make it all the way down the hill, do her old man in, then stagger all the way back up again? She’d have a heart attack. It’s not like they have a four-wheel drive either. That old bomb’s all they’ve got and it has less chance of making the climb than she does.”

“Why was she painting it? What’s she covering up?”

“Jeez, Sarge,” Leanne said, slapping her palms on to her thighs.“Maybe she thought it just seemed like a good idea at the time? People don’t have to have motives for everything, you know.”

The lilting cadences of Slim Dusty reached them through the menthol-scented air. Gay Cronin took a swig from a long neck and gave him a wave, his sins now diluted by alcohol. She warbled out the chorus with Slim, the hills sucking down her voice and throwing it back as an empty echo.

Leanne’s face clouded with a look he thought he understood.

“There but for the grace of God,” she said, shaking her head. She took off her peaked cap and smoothed back her thin hair, drawing in a deep breath as if it might restore some of her usual bounce. “Cripes. How the hell are we going to find the right dam? The Blayney property must be at least two thousand acres. As far as I know the State Emergency Service hasn’t even touched it yet.”