Dark Country (8 page)

But if this wasn’t Tony’s work, then it could be that Marci had tried to sell what she thought she knew. There were more than
a couple of people she might have gone to, and if any of them had found out what Gil had done – if they
ever
found out what he’d done – then framing him for Marci’s murder was only the beginning.

Whoever it was, they’d moved fast for everything to have happened within twenty-four hours. To a jury it would look quite
plausible that Gil had come to Dungirri to dispose of the
body somewhere out in the wilderness of the scrub, a wilderness he’d once known well.

Unless he could find some other evidence, then the sergeant’s alibi was the only thing that stood between him and maximum
security at Long Bay or Goulburn.
Except …
His hands curved into fists. What her colleagues could do to her was nothing compared to what Russo or others would do if
she got in the way of their plans. None of them would blink at discrediting or eliminating a straight, honest female cop.

Something more than claustrophobia tightened around his chest.

That straight, honest cop was watching him, waiting for more of an explanation. But for all the gutsy attitude and the weapons
on her uniform belt, she was just one woman. If they got to her, as they’d got to Marci …

The image of Marci’s body flooded Gil’s vision again, and he swallowed hard. Even if it meant cutting the lifeline, he had
to give the cop an ‘out’ and make her think twice about that alibi.
Protect her from them
. He didn’t consciously think the words, just acted on them and started talking, damning himself.

‘The truth is, Blue, that there’ll be hundreds of witnesses who can testify that Marci spoke frequently about our “relationship”.
There’ll also be a pub full of people who can tell the court that we argued in my office a few nights back and that I carted
her, kicking and screaming curses at me, out of the pub. There are probably witnesses who saw me go into her place yesterday
morning, and come out half an hour later.’

‘But you didn’t kill her or set up her murder.’ He couldn’t read in the flatness of her voice whether she believed him or
not.

He wouldn’t go as far as confessing to murder to keep her out of their sights. He looked at her without moving. ‘No, I didn’t.’

She pushed herself away from the wall. ‘I’ll be back in a couple of minutes to book you in.’ Nodding at the folder on the
table, she continued, ‘Choose a lawyer, Gillespie. You’re going to need one.’

The late afternoon sunlight shafted in through the office window. Kris checked her watch, then the times logged in the custody
records. Time of arrest, time of arrival in Birraga, time of Kent Marshall’s arrival.

It had been after noon before the detectives had begun interviewing their suspect. They’d had a few sessions with him – unsatisfying,
it seemed, judging by the brief comments they’d made when they’d come out for breaks – but now it was getting close to five
o’clock. With the time-outs allowed in the regulations, that made the four-hour questioning limit almost up.

She would have handed custody responsibilities over if there’d been someone else qualified to handle it. She’d bent the rules
when she’d spoken with Gillespie earlier on. She bent rules sometimes – out here in the bush, there was often no choice –
but she didn’t bend her principles. She’d assured him the
conversation was off-the-record, and she’d meant it. She’d kept right out of things since then, but now her responsibilities
as custody manager had to kick in.

She found Joe Petric helping himself to coffee in the station’s break room. Steve Fraser, the local detective liaising with
them, was on the phone in his office, and Macklin had gone out a while back and not returned as far as she knew.

‘You’ve now got less than half an hour before you have to either charge Gillespie or release him,’ Kris reminded Petric.

‘Yes, his lawyer has already pointed that out.’ He yawned, and added a second spoonful of coffee powder to his mug. They must
have left Sydney sometime around midnight, and driven through the dark hours, so she almost felt some sympathy for him. Almost.

They might have progressed to first name terms during the course of the day, but she kept catching that whiff of a superior
air under the professional courtesy and cooperation, the unspoken assumption that a uniformed country cop couldn’t match a
city homicide detective.

‘Have you got any basis for charging him?’ she asked.

‘I’ve got a witness who swears he saw Gillespie and another man carry a body out of the back of the victim’s apartment and
put it in his car.’

On the mental list of evidence she added a tick in the ‘Guilty’ column. ‘What time was that?’

‘About three o’clock yesterday afternoon.’

She didn’t need more than a moment to work out the significance of the timing.

‘He couldn’t have driven from Sydney to here in less than
five hours. No way, especially with the direct road closed, no matter what speed he might have been doing.’

‘Yes, I figured that.’ Joe filled his mug with boiling water, before casting her a careful glance. ‘Are you sure about those
times last night, Kris? You couldn’t have been mistaken about when he arrived?’

She bit back a sharp retort. ‘Check the records, if you like. I logged a report of the accident when I called Adam back on
duty, just before we went to get the vehicle. Then there was the call-out to attend the fight at the pub. That can all be
verified.’

‘That’s what I thought.’ He leaned casually against the bench, taking a slow mouthful of coffee. ‘Gillespie has a timed and
dated credit card receipt from filling up with fuel at Mudgee, and will probably be recorded on video, too. Which means my
witness must be mistaken about who he saw.’

She silently filed that under the ‘Not Guilty’ column.

‘Mistaken? Or lying?’

Joe shrugged. ‘Why would someone lie about that?’

‘Oh, I could think of any number of reasons.’ She ticked them off on her fingers. ‘To frame Gillespie. To send you off on
a wild goose chase. To protect whoever did murder her. Or maybe even to be so obviously a lie, that you’d think him innocent.’

‘You don’t think he is?’

‘Hey, I’m just giving you a range of possible reasons. And it probably
is
logistically possible for a man to arrange someone else to do the dirty work, and then travel seven hundred kilometres to
put the body in his vehicle, so he could dispose of it out here.’

‘Getting the local cop as an alibi could be a clever move.’ His eyes narrowed, thoughtful.

This time, she didn’t hold back the retort. ‘Oh, yes, and he would have known that I was going to be so tired that I’d play
dodge ’em with a ’roo and prang the car and be ready and waiting to check his empty boot and give him a nice handy alibi.’

Joe grimaced at her heavy handed sarcasm. Point made, she dropped it for a more even tone. ‘Look, even if logistically it
was possible,
logically
it doesn’t make any sense. There’s a thousand places within an hour of Sydney to dump a body where no-one will find it. So
why would anyone bother to come all the way out here to do it? Let alone arrange two vehicles, and do a body transfer in the
middle of town at night?’

As she made the argument, the common sense of it lifted a weight of anxiety, and the relief almost made her light-headed.

Joe rubbed the back of his neck and stifled another yawn. ‘We can’t entirely rule him out, but you’re right, it seems unlikely
at this point. He knows more than he’s saying, though. He’s a cold bastard, never gives much away.’

A cold bastard? She’d figured him for a loner with a thick layer of reserve, rather than cold – but then, there was a hell
of a lot she didn’t know about Gillespie.

‘You’ve dealt with him before?’

‘Yes, a few times. General enquiries, mostly. Last year I informed him of his father’s death, and all he said was he hoped
he’d rot in hell.’

‘If that makes a person a suspect, then you’d have to arrest at least half of Dungirri, including me. Des Gillespie deserved
to rot in hell.’

‘Like father, like son.’

She wasn’t sure if Joe meant it as a question, a statement, or a challenge. She thought of Des, foul-mouthed, too-ready to
swing his fists at anyone who angered him or to shoot a straying dog the moment it touched his land, and she remembered Gil
last night, offering her his car, using only defensive moves against the Barretts, refusing to press charges, making her dinner.

There might be a lot she didn’t know about Gillespie, but each of those actions spoke volumes.

‘No,’ she told Joe. ‘They’re not alike at all.’

They’d left him alone for a while. Gil sat in the rigid chair in the stark room, and mentally replayed the day, searching
for any hint in the detectives’ questions and comments that might help him work out what was going on.

He’d answered their questions as briefly as he could. Where he’d been, what he’d done, and when he’d last seen Marci. They’d
tried to trip him up, but he’d stuck with the facts, coolly repeating his statements as many times as they’d asked the questions.

He didn’t know enough about Petric or Macklin to even consider trusting them. Marci’s threats gave him a good reason to be
cautious, and the detectives’ arrival in Dungirri was way too convenient for his comfort.

Had the crack and the booze fucked with Marci’s brain so much that she’d really thought she could get away with selling him
out to her dealer and his associates? Gil had warned her she’d be putting her own neck in a tight noose if she admitted
to them that she’d told him about her cop clients. But it was a possibility that fitted this outcome.

Of course, there was a chance a client had just gone over the edge with her. She’d been desperate enough lately to get into
kink, and there were some sadistic bastards in the BDSM prostitution scene. Or perhaps her crack-dealing, pimping boyfriend
had got fed up with her.

But neither of those scenarios explained the presence of her body in his car, or the arrival of the police. His thoughts circled
back again to Tony Russo. Tony had motive; with Vince out of the way he probably had opportunity; he had a network of connections
he could lean on for information; and he usually had at least a few cops in his pocket.

Elbows on the table, Gil dropped his head forward and rubbed the tight muscles of his neck with both hands. If he could get
out of here, he might be able to find some answers. But if they charged him with murder, he wouldn’t get bailed, and he’d
be shipped off tonight or tomorrow to the nearest remand centre. Dubbo, maybe, or Tamworth.

He knew the ropes now, and was tough enough and bastard enough to hold his own in a remand centre. In maximum security, if
he couldn’t clear his name, it would be a different story. Violent lifers with vengeance on their minds and no parole to look
forward to could make a mess of a man, painfully and slowly. He’d just have to damned well make sure he never made it that
far.

The door handle that definitely needed oiling squeaked its warning. He leaned back in the chair, readying himself for another
round with Petric and Macklin.

Instead, it was the sergeant. Gil credited the small improvement in his mood to the fact that she was carrying a large paper
cup, and knew he was kidding himself. He’d scarcely seen her since she’d processed him in the morning.

Expecting the same tasteless gunk that Macklin had brought in for him earlier, the heart-pumping aroma of real coffee that
wafted under his nose as she passed the cup to him upped his mood a little further.

‘Thanks.’

‘Can’t have an addict getting the jitters,’ she said.

The light reference to his comment that morning was the closest thing to ‘friendly’ he’d heard since he’d walked out of Jeanie’s.
He dragged in a deep breath of the coffee, then a taste. The liquid hit the back of his throat, and he looked forward to the
jolt of caffeine kicking in, re-invigorating his brain.

‘Your coffee is better than Macklin’s.’

‘My fault.’ She shrugged carelessly. ‘I forgot to tell him where the good stuff is stashed. My apologies. The instant is so
vile it probably constitutes torture to give it to a detained person.’

It would be stupid to read anything into the dark humour of her comment, or into the fact that she’d brought him the decent
stuff.

She sat on the end of the table. ‘So, how are you doing?’

She might just be following custody rules in monitoring his wellbeing, but the genuine question invited an honest answer.
Gil could imagine a distressed or agitated prisoner pouring out their woes, giving her the opportunity to assess their risk
level. Which was her job, of course.

He kept his answer brief and to the point. ‘I’m not going to harm myself or anyone else, Sergeant.’

‘Good. Still no after-effects from last night? Headache? Dizziness?’

‘None to worry about.’

She nodded, all business. ‘Anything else I should be aware of? Medications due? Other health issues?’