Crystal Coffin (29 page)

The tree had been, and still was, handsome, but the nail punctures had bled sap that had congealed over the wires. The tightened wires had cut into the bark, scarring the trunk with deep welts as the tree added new rings, and in defence, the tree had used the years to corrode the wires at the points where each nail had chipped the protective layer from the strands. Locklin joined forces with time and the tree, applying pressure to the top wire, pushing it forward and pulling it back against the trunk, working it hard until the pressure point beside the nail heated and snapped.

The western half recoiled to the next post, while the tree hung onto the nail and the top wire on the other side. The loose wire coiled dangerously in the grass, but he picked it up so livestock couldn't become snared and used it to bind a snapped-off white branch to the next wire down, which also stopped the branch from falling.

To a casual glance that section now looked like the branch had fallen, busted the top wire and become snared. To a cow, it looked like a bothersome barrier with not much to munch on the other side. And to a horse, it looked like the top rail of a cross-country jump.

He would have preferred to break every wire and have a safer and faster escape route, but he still needed a fence to deter Freeman livestock from escaping through Scrubhaven onto the road. And his horse could jump.

He checked the ground on both sides of the broken wire to ensure that it was firm, flat and stone-free. Then he encouraged the stallion to leap across and back twice so the horse would know the jump was safe if Locklin had to ask him to do it at a gallop in the dark.

‘Yeah, yeah,' he said, patting Jack when he snorted. ‘I know you can jump higher. Just don't make a habit of jumping fences now.' He cantered back to within walking distance of the boathouse, deciding it was time to meet the enemy.

The clearing between the trees and the boathouse was double the height of the nearest adult gum, and he trotted into it, scouting it like a rider looking for a cow.

As he neared the cabin, he slowed his animal to a walk, half to give the horse time to spot his reflection in the Landcruiser windscreen without shying, and half to keep his hooves quieter to surprise Eric Maitland.

He dismounted short of the door and balled his fist ready to knock. Jack snorted twice and Locklin heard a hurried crumpling of plastic from inside. He forced a grin on his face and poked his head around the door. Too late. The tarp was already settling over Maitland's work.

The table had been shifted into the middle of the room with the chair angled so Maitland was working with the main light from the door falling over his shoulder onto whatever it was that looked tall under the tarp. Maitland fussed with one end of the plastic sheet, pulling it down to make sure everything was covered while he stood between the door and the table to hide what he was up to. He spun, faking surprise at the face that was already looking at him.

‘Yeah, what?' he asked as Locklin knocked and stepped properly into the doorway.

‘Hey, mate!' Locklin said, grinning as he twanged his farm-boy accent. ‘You seen a red cow around here that don't belong?' He took off his hat and wiped his forehead, using the movement to look around the room as his eyes adjusted to the darker light inside. Two empty kerosene bottles were in the corner to his right, another one on the floor to his left. Beside it were two more full of the blue liquid and a brand new high-pressure kerosene lantern.

‘She oughta have a brand FR with a backwards three on her bum,' he added, seeing the shape of the other lantern unmistakably under the tarp at the far end of the table. Maitland had unscrewed it from the middle to make more room to work, he realised.

‘Well, who are you to be asking?' Maitland asked suspiciously.

‘Jack Locklin,' he fibbed with a dopey grin. He stepped even closer to the table and shook Maitland's clammy hand. ‘The Maitlands next door put me on temp while their stockman's gotten himself called up north.'

‘Oh, really? That's news to me.'

‘Yeah, had to see his mum, I think. She's took a turn or something.'

‘Strange that my wife didn't mention it.'

‘Why?' Locklin asked, already knowing the answer. ‘Did she know him?'

‘You could say that. I'm Eric Maitland.'

‘No way! You're my boss? Whatcha doin' here?' He looked around again. There was a small portable campstove in the far right corner — the one his father had stored in the spare bedroom at Freeman for years. It was hooked up to a squat bottle of LPG gas. There was a kettle sitting on top of it, with an open bottle of coffee and a jar of sugar cubes sitting on the flimsy workbench that pulled out from its side. No sign of a cup, though. It was probably under the tarp.

‘You hidin' out here from the missus, hey?'

‘I'm an artist,' Maitland said defensively. ‘This is my studio.'

‘An artist hey?' Locklin said, lifting the corner of the tarp and smelling turpentine. ‘Like of naked ladies an' such? Can I see?'

Maitland knocked the tarp from his fingers and pushed himself between Locklin and the table. ‘Just landscapes — of the lake,' he added, pointing out the door for more than one reason. ‘If you don't mind now, I've got work to do.'

‘Oh, that's all right,' Locklin said, paying attention to the shape the tarp had assumed over the other contents of the table. There were two tall, square-topped peaks at each end and Locklin realised they weren't actually on the table, but standing on skinny timber tripods very close to it. They could have been easels if he believed Maitland's story about being an artist, but he wasn't sure if he could smell any paint. There was also a circular shape, like a cereal bowl with a spoon or something poking out the top, which could have been a giant coffee cup. The rest of the tarp was crumpled loosely over things that bulged without definable shapes.

‘I won't bug ya,' Locklin added, casually wandering towards the new kerosene lantern. ‘I never seen an artist work before.'

‘Yes, and you're not about to,' Maitland said, ushering him politely to the door. ‘I can't handle anyone watching me.'

‘What if I stand over near this?' Locklin said, poking the lantern's valve.

‘No, not there either. Didn't you say you had a cow to find?'

‘Oh yeah,' Locklin said, as Maitland hurried to usher him out. ‘But if you own Scrubhaven too, there's no need, hey? She hasn't really escaped.' He laughed, still playing the dumb country hick.

Maitland reached for his back and Locklin couldn't dodge without looking suspicious. He twisted instead to avoid Maitland touching the holster strap inside his shirt. ‘You can come out now, naked ladies,' he called over his shoulder to disguise his movement. ‘I'm going now.'

Maitland watched him mount the waiting horse and shook his head as he kicked it into a canter headed home. ‘Idiot,' he said loud enough for Locklin to hear. And Locklin smiled, rolling the pressure valve from Maitland's new kerosene lantern between his fingers, thinking, idiot indeed.

He flicked the tiny valve into a thick patch of lantana, wondering how long it would take Maitland to realise that without the valve, he couldn't pressurise the kerosene and without pressurised kerosene, he couldn't light the mantle. He also wondered how much Maitland needed the extra light to work by, and he circled west towards a falling sun, figuring from the height of the sun above the horizon that it would only be another two hours before he got to find out.

Locklin loosened the girth one hole to let his horse relax a little and burrowed a comfortable hollow for himself under a healthy thicket of lantana. Then he took a Mars Bar from the waterproof ration pack in his saddlebag and crawled into his hollow to enjoy it while he watched the boathouse.

He filled his mouth and stretched his legs out behind him, wondering if Maitland was still thinking about his little visit. Probably, he decided. Even disciplined minds could wander if they had to concentrate on one task for an extended time, and just thinking about that proved that he was no exception.

Locklin heard an electronic blip behind him and reached instantly for his Browning. He scrambled backwards, dropping his Mars Bar, and scanned the scrub with his pistol like a tank's turret in search of a target.

Then he relaxed. The sound was coming from his saddlebag.

‘Wouldn't you know it,' he said, reaching his mobile phone before the caller was forwarded to message bank. ‘A guy just gets himself comfortable …' He pushed the green button with a picture of a phone receiver and heard the electronic blip again as the call connected.

‘Yeah, hello?' he said quietly, expecting his sister. ‘What's up?'

‘Jayson, is that you?'

‘Yeah, Gran,' he said recognising her emphysemic rasp and knowing she didn't like calling a mobile phone as a rule. ‘What's wrong?'

‘I'm glad I got you,' she said. The only time he'd said she could get him in East Timor was when he was in Dili where the mobile net had been set up for Australians. ‘It's Helen,' she added quickly. ‘She's in hospital.'

After the initial shock, only the core facts sunk in: ‘tripped … tests … Ipswich Hospital … Room 19.'

‘How did she trip?' he asked. Helen had never been clumsy.

‘Power cords. She had that laptop thing in the dining room with phone and power cords running everywhere. It's my fault. I should have seen it coming.'

‘I doubt it's your fault, Gran. Did Helen say anything?'

‘Not much. She wants to speak to you, though. She was asking for you when she came round. Must have been delirious. Can you call her at the hospital? She's asked for a phone so you can call her in visiting hours. That's when they'll put you through.'

‘Sure, Gran,' he said, thinking he should do better than that.

‘Are you there now?'

‘No. I had to take Scott home. He's got concussion.'

‘What?' His eyes narrowed on the boathouse. ‘How?'

‘It's all right. He didn't come off his bike,' she said, thinking that's what he'd be assuming. ‘Silly grub was skiing on the birds again.'

‘I should be there!'

‘No,' his gran said, causing her to cough. ‘You boys have important work up there, Jayson MacLeod,' she added, trying to reassure him with his proper birth name. ‘You do what you have to do and I'll take care of things here.' She coughed again, air rasping weakly down her throat, but he knew her strength came from somewhere stronger than her body.

‘How's her fiancé taken the news?' he asked.

‘I couldn't get Mark,' she said, after drinking something. ‘I rang the base here at Amberley, and they said they'd get a message to him about Helen and the baby, but I have no idea when that will be. He's off in his Iroquois somewhere. Can you tell him? Do you see him up there much?'

‘Not lately,' he said honestly.

‘Can you contact his unit? I thought you had a field radio?'

‘For official business only, Gran. Why don't you send him a text message on his mobile? He can't turn it on when he's in the air, but he probably checks it whenever he's off duty.'

‘What's a text message?'

‘Never mind,' he said, realising she had enough to worry about. ‘I'll message him.'

He could hear the relief in her thankyou. On top of everything, she'd be worried about how many extra ostrich eggs she'd have to paint and sell to pay for the STD call costs.

Not as many as you suppose, Locklin thought, hoping she wouldn't get a bill soon and notice that her call to him wasn't a fraction of the cost that it should have been calling overseas.

He swallowed hard, his eyes still on the boathouse as he asked the hardest question. ‘Is the baby okay?'

‘We don't know,' she said, lapsing into a fit of rasps and coughs.

‘You take care of yourself, Gran,' he said, ringing off. He waited for his phone to re-initialise contact with the mobile net before dialling again.

‘Hi, Maternity?' he said. ‘Helen MacLeod's room please?'

‘I'm sorry, sir,' the nurse said. ‘There isn't a phone in that room. Visiting hours are —'

‘I know what the visiting hours are. I understand that she asked for a phone in Room 19 so I could call her.'

‘I'm sorry, sir. Doctor's orders. If you'd like to leave your name, I can pass on a message if it's urgent.'

‘Jayson,' he said in frustration. ‘I'm Lance Corporal Jayson Lo —'

‘Oh, from East Timor!' she said, not letting him finish. ‘Your grandmother told us all about you. Your sister is asleep now, but I can give her a message to say you called when she wakes up. But I'm afraid that's the best that I can do for the moment.'

‘Yeah sure,' he said, amazed at how helpful people could be at the mention of soldiers who'd been stationed in East Timor. ‘Just tell her I rang and not to worry. I'll be there for her when she needs me — those exact words please. Thanks,' he added, practically hearing the nurse blush as she said goodbye.

Locklin pushed the disconnect button long enough to switch off the phone. He felt like throwing it. His sister needed him and the phone was useless. He put it back inside his saddlebag, wondering what could be so important that she'd get out of bed, putting her baby at risk, just trying to call.

There was only one way to find out.

He looked at the summer sun, figuring that Maitland wouldn't start looking to light his kerosene lanterns for another hour and a half. Perfect timing, he realised, to get to Ipswich and back using his new short cut over the fence — as long as nothing went wrong.

‘Hello. Are you Mrs Clara MacLeod?'

‘Oh no!' she gasped, covering her mouth at the sight of army uniforms on her doorstep. ‘Please, not Jayson! I was just speaking to him!'

‘It's all right, ma'am,' Chang said, half expecting that reaction. ‘I'm not here to report anyone killed in action. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Chang and these men are my aides, Corporal Ken Beattie and Corporal Peter Ryan.'

She knew that. Their surnames and ranks were on their shirts and her eyes weren't bad enough yet that she couldn't read them.

‘May we come in please? We have a few questions we need to ask.'

‘Why?' she rasped, using her tiny frame like a brick wall in the doorway. ‘Is he in trouble?'

‘Perhaps,' Chang said, hoping to weaken her mortar. ‘That's what we need to find out.'

She studied them for a long time before leading them down the hall to the lounge room. She signalled Scott to lie back down as she passed his bedroom, but didn't know if he'd done it in time to avoid the convoy of uniforms that followed her. They smiled politely as they took their seats and accepted her offer of tea.

‘You said you were just speaking to Corporal Locklin?' Chang asked as he watched her pour boiling water over teabags a few minutes later. ‘Was that by phone?'

‘I prefer if you call him MacLeod,' his gran rasped. ‘Locklin was his father's idea, and he's dead now.'

Corporal Beattie took a note of that, intending to check the birth records in Locklin's personnel file as soon as they left.

‘May I ask if he called you?' Chang asked, trying to find out if she knew which country he was in.

‘I called
him
, of course. Lucky to get him too, I was. His sister's had to go to hospital in Ipswich.'

‘I'm sorry to hear that, ma'am. It's nothing serious, I hope?'

‘She's having a baby,' she said, deciding that was all he needed to know. ‘What's this all about?'

‘We need to speak to him urgently. We were hoping you'd be able to help us.'

‘Why me?' she asked as the wrinkles across her brow furrowed deeper. ‘He's in
your
army. Ring his unit commander or whoever and speak to him yourself.'

Chang saw the two corporals exchange glances, and so did she.

‘You've lost him?'

‘We've had trouble contacting his unit,' he said without lying. They'd mostly been unconscious for the last two weeks.

‘Well, I got him on his mobile about twenty minutes ago,' she said. ‘So he can't be too far from Dili.'

‘Unless he uses international roaming, sir,' Corporal Ryan suggested. ‘Or he may have replaced the sim card in his phone so he has access to the Indonesian network.'

‘Hard to imagine,' Corporal Beattie said. ‘The phone cafe in Dili is fairly convenient.'

‘If you're not stationed somewhere else,' Ryan finished, returning to the theory that Locklin wasn't in East Timor.

‘Would you mind giving us the number?' Chang cut in.

‘I'll do better than that,' she said, reaching for her phone. ‘I don't like dialling STD, but you've got me worried now.'

She dialled and was answered almost immediately by a female computer voice that told her that the person she was calling was unavailable and if she waited for the beep, she could enter a text message using the buttons on her telephone.

‘No answer,' she said, realising now what Jayson had meant by sending a text message to Helen's fiancé.

‘We'll keep trying for you, ma'am,' Chang said, offering her a pen and paper to jot the number on. ‘I'll let you know when we find him, so you won't need to worry.'

‘I appreciate that, Colonel,' Gran said, growing suspicious of an army that looked for soldiers through their relatives. She decided to keep trying for herself as soon as they left. ‘He's a good boy,' she added in case they had any doubts.

‘That's what it says on his record, ma'am,' Chang said, bidding her farewell. ‘You will tell us if he contacts you in the meantime?'

Ryan handed her a business card with Chang's official contact details in Canberra. He wrote the contact number for RAAF Base Amberley on it as well so she could get them with a local call.

‘I'll tell him to contact you?'

‘Ah … no, ma'am,' Chang said, needing to maintain her cooperation without alerting Locklin to the fact that they were close. ‘It's his unit commander who's actually looking for him. I just happened to be in the neighbourhood.' He put on a smile, hoping to reassure her. ‘If you mention that a lieutenant colonel was looking for him, he might jump ship, thinking he's in trouble.'

Corporal Beattie laughed, encouraging her to smile and Chang led the procession to their borrowed RAAF Magna. He waved to her as she stood on the doorstep and waited until Corporal Ryan was backing them out of her driveway before issuing orders.

‘Drop me off at Amberley,' Chang said, ‘Then, Ryan, I want you to track down a mobile-net engineer and get me a full call and message history on that number.'

Corporal Beattie wrote the number out a few times, anticipating that everyone would need a copy.

‘Is a month's records long enough, sir?' Ryan asked.

‘Better make it two. We might be able to tell if he planned any of this. And get them to monitor the network. See if you can set up a triangulation so we know where he is the next time he makes a call.'

‘Yes, sir. I'll send him a text message and monitor until he retrieves it.'

‘You send the message, Beattie,' Chang said, turning to his aide in the back seat. ‘Do it from Ipswich Hospital. If he knows his sister is there, he'll think from the sender's number that it's only her trying to contact him. Let's not give him any chances to get suspicious.'

‘You want me to make contact with his sister while I'm there?'

Chang nodded, appreciating the privilege of working with clever people.

‘Ryan can drop you there after he's let me off at the base and you can find your own way back.'

‘I'll get a taxi,' Beattie said. ‘I saw them coming and going at the base before we left.'

Chang adjusted the rear-view mirror so he could watch the traffic behind them, a career habit of needing to watch his back. ‘Check things out at the hospital before you see her,' he told Beattie. ‘See if she's already received visitors, and I'll leave mode of contact with her up to your discretion. You might want to pick up a change of clothes at the base when you drop me off and hang around the hospital watching as a civilian for a while too, or first. Your call.'

‘Yes, sir,' Beattie said.

‘Do you think he's close?' Ryan asked.

‘There's no solid evidence to support it,' the colonel said with a tone that said there was no evidence to suggest he was anywhere else either.