Dark Country (25 page)

Near the cupboards at the back …

It hit him then, what he’d never seen before. As a youth, he’d spent as little time as possible here. It was the old man’s
domain, and Gil had kept far away from him whenever possible. He’d stacked the timber at night, after a long day cutting it,
hauling it from the truck out front to the shed by the light of a kero lamp, plank by plank.

But now in daylight, looking from the side, and with the years of renovations and rebuilding the pub sharpening his eye for
proportions, he saw the inconsistency.

‘The dimensions are wrong.’ He scrambled to his feet.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The shed. It’s longer on the outside than on the inside. Not much – a metre at most. I’m going to check.’

Kris started stuffing things back into their bags, but he didn’t wait for her, jogging across the clearing.

He went straight to the back of the shed, outside. The tank that had once collected water from the roof was on a low stand
near the corner, but the guttering on the shed and the pipe connecting it to the tank had long ago broken off. Brown marks
on the wall, and a damp, grassy area below,
showed where the water ran when it rained. Some of the wall boards had warped, been pulled out of place, riddled with damp
and rot.

He broke one of them with his bare hands, but couldn’t prise the whole board off far enough. There were a few pieces of rusting
junk on the tank stand – he found a solid-looking piece of metal, and used it to lever the board out.

Definitely a cavity. He cursed himself. How he’d never known about it, for all those years … but back then, other than stacking
wood, he hadn’t spent much time in the shed, and he’d had other things on his mind. And it was big, so a metre or so didn’t
stand out as obvious.

Kris joined him as he levered off another board below the first one. He needed a bigger opening, enough light to see inside.
The nails in the third board gave way, and Kris helped him tear it off.

And then he froze.

The floor level was visible, a few inches below. There were bones in the narrow cavity – human bones, a skeleton, only slightly
scattered. And just below the dented skull, a plastic necklace strung with coloured beads looped behind the neck vertebrae.

He couldn’t drag his eyes away. He heard Kris speak, had no clue what she said. There was only the bones, and the necklace,
and his pulse pounding in his head and the anger rising and boiling until he felt as though his head might burst with the
pressure.

She hadn’t left … She’d never left.

‘He killed her.’ He heard the words, didn’t recognise the ragged voice as his own. ‘He said she left, but the fucking bastard
killed her.’

Gil wrenched away from her hand on his arm, flung the piece of metal with all his strength into the bush, and strode away
to the edge of the clearing, standing there, facing the trees, hands clenched stiff at his sides.

She didn’t follow him immediately. She’d seen the remains, the childish necklace that only a mother would wear. She couldn’t
imagine the shock for him, after a childhood of cruelty, to discover this truth. A man as independent and proud as Gil would
need a few minutes alone after this blow.

She brushed her eyes with the heel of her hand, and moved into duty-mode. Further into the cavity, she could make out a couple
of bags beyond the skeleton, and what seemed, in the shadows, to be a stack of plastic boxes. The false wall obviously extended
the full width of the shed, but in this part, at least, there appeared to be only the one lot of human remains.

Despite the dryness of the bones and the likelihood of the identity of them, it would take some time for an official
confirmation, and she knew that the discovery of another body, connected to Gil, would only feed speculation and gossip.

She pulled her phone from her pocket and reported the discovery of the remains to the duty officer, and then phoned Steve’s
number and asked him to come out. Sandy from forensics was next. Already on his way back to Inverell, he grumbled that maybe
he should move the office to Dungirri, before promising to be back within an hour or two.

With the official notifications made, she phoned Delphi again. If the vehicles had travelled that way, they’d have gone past
her by now.

‘No sign of the Land Rover,’ Delphi said.

The spark of hope she’d been holding on to sputtered and died. A dead end on that one, then. ‘And the ute?’

‘A blue ute did drive past, and I got the number.’

Kris didn’t have a pen, or anything to write on. She picked up a stick and wrote in the dust as Delphi recited the letters
and numbers to her.

‘Thanks, Delphi. I appreciate your help.’ A thought occurred to her, and she asked, ‘On another matter, Delphi – did you know
Des Gillespie’s wife?’

‘Gave her and the kid a lift now and then. She used to walk into town with him. Long time back, now.’

‘Do you remember when she left?’

She blew out a breath, as though she was thinking. ‘Must have been ’bout the same time Ruth died, bit before. Ruth taught
the boy at school. I remember she was worried about him. But I didn’t see him much after his mum left.’

Ruth. Bella’s mother, Delphi’s sister-in-law. Kris knew she’d died of a snake bite, when Bella was in kindergarten, around
thirty years ago. And Gil was the same age as Bella.

‘That’s a great help, Delphi. Thanks.’

Never one for unnecessary words or social chat, Delphi gave an indecipherable grunt, and hung up.

Kris phoned the Birraga station and requested a registration check on the ute’s rego number. The constable only took a few
minutes to look it up.

‘Registered to a guy at Jerran Creek, Sarge, but he reported it stolen yesterday. He left the keys in the ute when he carried
some cases of beer inside, and came out and it was gone.’

‘Damn.’ Kris kicked at a clod of dirt. ‘Any leads on who stole it?’

‘Apparently not.’

‘Put an alert out for the vehicle, then,’ she instructed. ‘Let’s hope they’re stupid enough to keep driving it.’

With the patrol car due to arrive at any moment, and Steve on his way, Kris crossed the clearing to Gil.

He stood still, staring out, his hands now thrust in his pockets, his spine rigid. He heard her approach, acknowledged her
presence with a glance.

‘I’m so sorry, Gil.’ It seemed such an inadequate thing to say under the circumstances.

He didn’t respond immediately. She stayed beside him, looking out on to the dry bush, wishing she had something better to
offer, wishing she could read what he was thinking and feeling, behind his stone-set features.

Birds sang among the trees, and the dappled sunlight danced on the ground as leaves moved in the breeze, the peaceful scene
an unsettling contrast to the violence and trauma occupying their thoughts.

She knew little about his mother. In the time she’d been in Dungirri, people had only discussed Des Gillespie occasionally,
and his wife had hardly rated a mention – other than someone commenting that she’d had the sense to leave him.

‘I have to ask some questions, Gil. We need to investigate formally, confirm her identity, try to establish the time and cause
of death.’

He nodded, not looking at her.

‘You believe the remains are your mother’s? When did you last see her?’

‘It’s her.’ He spoke flatly, but with certainty. ‘The necklace … I made it for her. Mrs O’Connell, the kindergarten teacher,
helped me. She, my mother, put it on straight away.’

She found it hard to imagine him as a small child. Dark-eyed and serious, perhaps scowling as he worked to thread the beads,
a solemn smile when she put the necklace on. The image made her eyes sting.

She asked, through her clogged throat, ‘Can you remember when she disappeared?’

‘Maybe that day, the next. I would have been about five.’

So young. Too young to be left alone with a man like Des. That matched what Delphi had said, but Kris still had to make him
dredge up memories, get more facts.

‘Can you remember her going?’

‘Kind of.’ He sucked a slow breath in through his teeth, let it huff out. ‘She said we were going on a holiday, that we’d
leave after dark. He wasn’t there. It seemed to stay light for ages. She was wearing the necklace. I watched her put my jeans
and pyjamas and the three books I had in my school bag. But I must have fallen asleep. In the morning, she was gone, and so
was my school bag, and he just said she’d buggered off in the night.’

He paused, gave a small shake of his head. ‘I believed him. Everybody believed him. I hated her for leaving.’

Mentally, she cursed Des Gillespie to Hades, and everyone else ready to believe the worst of a woman, instead of asking questions.

‘You were five years old, Gil. There’s no way you could have known otherwise.’

But that couldn’t make it any easier for Gil. She’d worked enough domestic violence cases to know that a child would still
blame himself and, now as a man – no matter how strong – he would still carry the scars, buried deep. Yet despite everything
he’d been through, he’d made himself a man she respected.

‘Do you remember much about her?’

He finally turned to face her. ‘No. I didn’t want to remember.’ His brow creased as he thought back. ‘There’s only a few bits
and pieces, snippets of scenes. He belted her. She taught me to read.’ His mouth twisted up slightly. ‘She took me to Birraga
once, to the library. I was amazed at all the books.’ He paused, frowning again. ‘But I can’t remember what she looked like.’

That he trusted Kris enough to share a memory or two from a time when he was so young and vulnerable, both surprised
and touched her. She’d expected the stone wall, a grudging response to her questions, or rage against his father. The anger
was there, no doubt about it, but constrained, simmering along with grief and guilt.

‘Without photos, most people wouldn’t recall a face after all this time,’ she said gently. ‘Especially not from childhood.’

‘Maybe.’ He didn’t sound convinced.

‘Her name … do you know it?’

‘Jeanie and Aldo called her Anne. I don’t have a clue whether they were legally married or not.’

‘Any relatives that you can remember?’

‘No.’

A woman named Anne, who might or might not have the surname Gillespie, who disappeared thirty years ago … Kris hoped there’d
be a good DNA match with Gil, because otherwise they’d have a hell of a time confirming her identity.

The rumble of a car engine sounded in the distance.

‘That’s probably the backup arriving. Steve’s on his way, too.’

The patrol car appeared around the bend and parked beside the shed, and she left Gil and went over to greet the two constables.
Gil needed some time to himself, and she had work to do – again.

There were more questions, of course. Gil sat on a stump in the shade, watching the investigation begin, and let them come
to him with their questions. Fraser asked most of them, in his off-hand, careless way. When the forensic guys arrived,
one of them asked a few more, his manner more serious and formal.

But after all the questions and the waiting, watching Kris and her colleagues at work, it was a relief when she told him there
was little reason for him to stay any longer.

The ride back to town didn’t so much clear his mind as numb it. The anger settled to a dull pounding and the words he uselessly
imagined beating into the old man stopped going around and around in his mind. Useless, because the old man was dead, and
there was nothing left to curse except memories.

He walked into the kitchen at the pub to find a whirlwind of activity, Liam and the girl, Megan, effectively filling in as
kitchen hands for Deb.

‘You’re back,’ Deb greeted him with a quick grin, her hands in a large bowl of pastry. She nodded over to the sink. ‘The dishwasher’s
broken. You’re it.’

The routine work of scrubbing dishes occupied his hands, and gave his mind space to roam. Yet, instead of searching for solutions
to the current threats, or going over the implications of his mother’s death, he found his attention constantly drifting to
the conversation of the others. Angie flitted between the bar and the kitchen, juggling serving customers with dessert preparation,
grateful for the assistance. Deb gave orders, keeping track of multiple tasks being performed at once, allocating jobs to
the others, providing guidance and answering questions. Liam had often helped out in the pub kitchen, and was accustomed to
Deb’s style of work. Megan’s experience working for Jeanie stood her in good stead. She asked a lot of questions, intelligent
ones, and she learned quickly.

Gil’s efforts to take little notice of her failed, as they had earlier in the day. She’d chatted comfortably while they were
cleaning the kitchen this morning, off and on, and he’d learned more of her story. He’d even – much to his own surprise –
asked a question or two. She’d mentioned going off the rails and running away, living on the streets for a while after the
death of her adoptive parents. But she’d pulled herself together well, and was trying hard to make the new relationship with
her biological grandparents work, despite the differences between their old-fashioned, conservative ways and her experiences.
He’d been impressed by her maturity and intelligence.