Crystal Coffin (27 page)

She shook her head and turned the mare towards the next gate, which would let her into the open paddock. She stood in her stirrups, feeling more confident with her balance than she was with Locklin's company and stared out over the water, straining to locate a building that she was expecting to see somewhere along the edge.

‘What's up?' he said, riding up to her again.

‘Me,' she said. ‘Look how high I am.' She shaded her eyes from the glare of the afternoon sun off the water. ‘What a view.'

He nodded, admiring it with her.

‘Where's the boathouse?' she asked, unaware that her question slugged him in the stomach. ‘I can't see it.'

‘Why?' he asked, seeing red letters again.

‘Thorna said her husband should be there. I wanted to meet him.'

He went back there? he thought, surprised. ‘You can't,' he lied, needing to distract her. ‘That mare's old. It's a bit far for her. Take the truck,' he said, betting she couldn't drive.

Nikki heard a noise near the house and changed priorities. Thorna was back with screaming kids in the car.

‘Never mind,' she said, seeing the twins slap each other with their school hats in the back seat. She turned the mare and cantered, feeling like the cavalry, to the gate nearest the house.

‘Leave her there,' Locklin said. ‘I'll set her loose.'

‘Thanks,' Nikki said, meaning it. ‘The ride was great. I feel better now.'

So do I, Locklin thought, watching her run away. Now that I know where Maitland is.

‘Hey, Scott!' Janet shouted. ‘Let me catch up!'

Scott unchained his Yamaha, pretending not to hear.

‘You go home by the church, don't you?' she said, running over and tapping him on the shoulder. ‘I've got to meet Tilly there. We're practising for the carnival. Are you coming? Meggie's going. Is Jayson?'

‘Shhh, Janet!' Scott said, looking around quickly like a thief. ‘No-one's s'posed to know, remember?'

‘Oh, no-one can hear. Besides, who'd care? We didn't care, did we? It's no big deal. So he's here. So what?'

‘Who is
we?
?'

‘Meggie and me, silly. Who else would I mean?'

‘Janet! I asked you not to tell her.'

‘I didn't tell her. She beat it out of me. You don't know what it's like having a bigger sister. She's so mean,' she said exaggerating. ‘I couldn't keep a secret from her. No way! I could be just—'

Scott clamped his hand over her mouth. ‘Are you listening?'

She nodded.

‘I'm going home now,' he said slowly, as if explaining something to someone who didn't understand English very well. ‘I'm going past the church and you can come, but if you walk within ten metres of me you're not allowed to say
anything
, okay?'

She nodded again and he released his hand.

‘Does that include saying hi to other people?'

‘Janet!'

‘Oh, sorry,' she said, keeping up with him as he tried to escape. ‘I didn't think we'd started yet. Have we started yet? Technically we're not outside the school yet so —'

His fingers touched her lips again, lighter this time and she nodded. ‘You won't hear a peep,' she whispered. ‘Why do I have to be quiet, by the way?' she asked two metres up the footpath.

Scotty gave up and suggested she should sing. At least he could put up with that, even without music. He pushed his bike up the hill again, surprised and grateful that she helped him all the way.

‘Gee, Janie, you're a peach,' he said between choruses of ‘Like a Virgin' as they reached the top of the hill and crossed the road. ‘Thanks heaps.'

‘No worries,' she said as Scott kicked his stand down and parked his bike at the foot of the steps to St Joseph's. ‘Not from me anyway,' she said, referring to the crying they could hear inside the door.

They rushed up the short flight of steps as Tilly Thomas ran out with her hands over her face. Her backpack flapped with music sheets and her face dripped with tears like trough water from an ostrich's beak.

‘Hey, Tilly, what's up?' Janet said, chasing after her.

Scott discovered what was wrong all by himself. The priest they'd come to think of as family, had been replaced.

‘Hey, look who it is,' Burkett said in the airport lounge.

Parry looked up, thankful for the thick crowd of tourists that waited for the same Qantas flight as Burkett did to Sydney. A long file of black suits walked off the flight that had just landed, seven faces in all that were branded with the same glare. Six thugs and their king, all headed for the escalator to collect their luggage.

‘What's he doing here, I wonder?'

I wonder indeed, Parry thought. ‘Must be important. He's in a hurry.'

‘Yeah,' Burkett said. ‘You sure you want me to go now?'

Surer than ever, Parry thought, still wondering if working with Burkett would earn him a bullet in the back. ‘There's only Fletcher plus six,' he said. ‘If I need help I can get it from the local police in Lowood. You go home and stir things up, as planned.' And I'll tell from the way of the whirlpool, if you've spun the current against me.

Janet gave her best sad face outside the church at the end of ten minutes of burning his ears and Scott gave in.

‘All right, Janet. You can come home with me.'

‘Yahoo,' she said, hopping on the bike behind him. ‘We can coast practically all the way from here!'

Scott's left eye twinkled as he decided to give her a thrill. ‘Sit on your skirt, Janie,' he said, kicking the bike over and revving it up, minus a muffler and less than fifty metres away from Knox's office. ‘Now wave to the nice policeman in the window.'

Janet screamed for seven kilometres and by the time she got off at Granny MacLeod's ostrich farm, her throat was dry enough to keep her from yapping for half an hour. Her eyes bulged behind her pink metal-framed glasses and when she did speak, it was only to say
wow
.

‘She's got 250cc's of power,' Scotty said, patting the handlebars.

‘Wow!'

‘A twenty-one inch wheel on the front for max speed and an eighteen incher on the rear for max control jumping,' he said, pointing.

‘Wow!'

‘And she can climb mountains on less fuel than it takes to start a car.'

‘Wow!'

Yeah, wow, he thought twenty minutes later. Who would have thought that Janet Slaney could be fun to have around? ‘Want to help me do my chores?' he asked, not bothering to go inside the house yet.

‘I've never seen an ostrich up close before,' she said. ‘Do they peck? Do they have teeth? Those are big claws on their legs. Will they kick?'

‘Yes. No. And yes,' he said, grinning. ‘If they give you any trouble you just take a dog in,' he said, pointing to three collies that were yapping on their chains near the shed. ‘The birds get madder at them than they do at us.'

He turned on a tap near the dog's water bowls and giant sprinklers choofed jetstreams of water in circles over the birds in every pen. The summer clover earned a slippery soaking while he showed her how to mix up their feed in buckets, blending lucerne chaff with wheat and shell grit and molasses. He was supposed to pour it through the fence into their feedbins, but with Janet watching he opened a gate and trespassed on the big black hen's territory.

Nervous, some of the younger hens faced him, spreading their wings as they threatened to attack. He barked and they turned, herded into a corner. Looking one way to distract the smart birds and grabbing out in another to seize one, Scott caught a hen's tail and bore all his weight down so she couldn't kick him. She took off and he slid behind, his boots skiing on the wet grass like it was snow.

Janet laughed and asked if she could try, but his grandmother shouted at them from the window.

‘Scott!' she said, waving a telephone out the window. ‘Get off that bird now and get up here!'

Distracted, he slipped over, and the big hen attacked.

‘No!' Janet screamed. She spun on her heel and bolted for the collies.

The first claw hit him near the other bump on his head as the dogs and the girl blurred together and the world went black.

When he woke, he was staring at a hospital ceiling. Helen was in a wheelchair beside him, Janet Slaney was perched on the edge of his bed and his grandmother was by the door talking to the doctor. He could feel pressure around his head and a dull pain all over, but aside from that he felt normal.

‘Got him good,' the doctor said. ‘He can go home as soon as we're sure he's back to his old self.'

‘There's nothing in that head to get damaged,' Sergeant Knox said, walking through the door with a spherical-shaped giftwrapped present under his arm.

Scott clamped his eyes shut again pretending to be asleep.

‘Give him this when he wakes up,' Knox added in his deliberately baritone cop's voice. He let the gift thump onto the foot of the bed and Scott tried not to blink. ‘Tell him to use it next time, or I'll be after him.'

‘But Graham!' Janet yelped, hoping she wasn't in trouble. ‘He didn't fall off his—'

‘I don't want to hear it, young lady. You're coming with me.'

‘Why, is Mum home?'

‘Not yet, but she will be soon. Get your schoolbag.'

Janet grumbled, but as soon as they were gone, Scott opened his eyes and sat bolt upright, surprising his cousin.

‘Take it easy, Scott,' Helen said, holding a gentle hand over her own tummy. ‘You might have concussion.'

He grinned, ripping open his present, and Helen laughed.

‘Well, he's back to his old self,' Gran said.

‘Excellent, a helmet!' he shouted. It was blue and yellow, to match his bike.

‘I guess he's right to go home and finish his chores then,' Gran teased.

Scott slumped back against his pillow and started groaning. Just as quickly, he stopped and put his helmet on, squeezing it carefully over his bandages. Then he lay back and started groaning again as if he was semi-conscious.

‘In my professional opinion,' the doctor said seriously as he removed the helmet. ‘He's fit for a double dose of chores and homework to work off the energy. Look's like you're the only one staying here for the night, Helen.'

‘Why?' Scott asked, instantly awake again. And they told him.