Killarney, p.19
Killarney, page 19
‘They just called. They managed to lift two sets of fingerprints. One lot was Sean’s, as it’s his bike. But there was also another set of prints we managed to identify.’
‘Whose were they?’ She held open the driver’s side door peering in at him.
‘You’re not going to be happy about this, Dana.’
She wished he’d hurry up. ‘I don’t care. Just tell me.’
‘They belong to Angus Fitcher. I’ve got an officer heading out there to speak with him now.’ Ryan looked at her apologetically, realising the news had come as a shock. ‘Sorry, I’ve really got to go. I’ve got a truck trying to cross the border and I need to get out there. Thanks for breakfast.’
‘Can I grab a lift to the Queen Mary Falls store? It’s on the way.’ She needed to ask Angus why the hell his fingerprints had been found on the bike that killed Johnny Buckley. Dana didn’t wait for him to answer. She skirted around the front of the vehicle and jumped into the passenger seat.
Ryan started the car and tore open the wrapper of his breakfast burger with his teeth. He steered out of the car park with one hand, then headed south.
‘Let me.’ She unwrapped it for him and handed it back.
‘So, what’s the story with the truck at the border?’
‘We’ve been searching a lot of the vehicles for drugs over the last week and apparently the driver of this one is acting suspicious.’
‘In what way?’
‘Speaking fast, rubbing his nose a lot so they think he’s taken methamphetamine to stay awake. But he’s refusing to let the officers inspect the load.’ Ryan wolfed down his burger in a couple of bites.
‘Right. So, rumour has it that you’ve been using Sean to get you some information as part of Operation Border Control and now he’s in trouble.’
‘How do you know that?’ He frowned as the houses grew further apart and they flew past the industrial area on the outskirts of town.
‘Lachlan told me last night, after I was chased back from Queen Mary Falls by a semi-trailer and it tried to drive me off the road. Right about here actually.’
‘Seriously? That’s terrible. Did you see the driver? Get a number plate?’
‘I was too busy fearing for my life to be able to do either of those things.’
‘Sure, sorry. But Lachlan shouldn’t have told you about Sean and Sean shouldn’t have said anything to Lachlan either. It’s very unprofessional.’
‘Well, as of last night, Lachlan said he was going to head out and try to find Sean.’
Ryan put his head back and let out a groan of frustration. ‘I told him explicitly not to do that. I warned him he’d end up a dead man if he did something that stupid.’
The two-way radio beeped. ‘228 to 97.’
He picked it up. ‘97 to 228, come in.’
‘He’s dead!’ A voice wailed into the dispatcher.
‘Who? Who are you talking about?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen him in my life.’
‘Calm down,’ said Ryan. ‘I need you to tell me what’s happened.’
There was a static sound on the radio accompanied by a scraping sound.
‘Sorry, Boss. We’ve located a body in the back of the truck.’ A new voice on the radio. ‘On Border Road just past the Spring Creek Road intersection. White Caucasian. Male. Looks like a drug deal gone wrong.’
Nausea twisted in Dana’s intestines. ‘Do you think it could be Sean? Or Lachlan?’
Ryan’s eyes remained on the road. ‘I don’t know. I’m more worried that it’s Jayden. That he’s tangled up with the drug runners.’
Her stomach hurt as she pictured the dead body. She thought about what Lachlan’s wife, Rachel, would do if he was dead. After his near miss on the road to Crows Nest it was a miracle his wife let him return to work. If he didn’t make it this time Dana knew who’d get the blame.
‘Roger that,’ Ryan said into the radio. ‘I’m on my way.’ He turned on the siren.
She covered her ears as he put the car into fourth and sped towards Woodenbong and the New South Wales border.
The B-double truck was parked on the side of the road with a police car in front of it, red and blue lights flashing. Two officers in high-vis vests had handcuffed the driver and pushed him up against his vehicle.
Ryan killed the engine and stepped out of the car. He stuck his head back in.
‘Stay in the car. I mean it.’
She nodded. A sickening dread coiled around her throat as the minutes crept by. Ryan and the officers gathered around the back of the semi.
After fifteen long minutes an ambulance pulled up. She craned her neck to see a male and female paramedic enter the back of the truck with a medical kit. They returned for the stretcher a few minutes later.
She chewed her nails. Now there was a possibility that Sean was dead she felt deeply regretful for judging him so harshly. He had been kind to her – when he’d cooked her dinner and shown her Queen Mary Falls.
The paramedics wheeled the trolley down the rear ramp of the truck, the silhouette of the body under a white sheet strapped to a gurney. When the wheels became momentarily bogged in thick black mud it was all she could do to stop herself from sprinting onto the road and demanding that Ryan tell her the identity of the corpse.
After another five minutes passed, she could no longer stand it. She got out of the car and strode over to where Ryan was standing near the front cabin of the truck. He had his back to her and was speaking to one of the officers. She tapped him on the shoulder.
‘Just a moment.’ Annoyance flickered across his face.
She stood back and listened closely to what he was saying.
‘We’ll need to contact forensics. Once we have an idea of who the victim is we’ll need to start contacting family members for verification.’
She wiped the sweat from her palms onto her pants.
Ryan swung around, his eyes bright with anger. ‘What is it?’
‘Who is it?’ There was desperation in her voice. ‘Is it Sean or Lachlan? Jayden?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s not them.’
She turned quickly and walked back to the car so he wouldn’t see her face, tears of relief in her eyes.
17
It was much later that morning when a police officer finally dropped Dana at Edith’s corner store. She passed a dog tied to the front steps, a look of trepidation in its ice-blue eyes as she went inside to find Angus. After being told that he was in Tina’s cabin, she strode around the corner and found him on the front deck, reading.
‘Still Flowers in the Attic?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, but this is the last one in the series.’ He put the book down. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do when I’m done.’
‘Start a new series?’ she suggested, hoping she could steer his interests towards something more appropriate.’
‘There’s a heap of Stephen King’s, so maybe I’ll try them.’ He stood up to give her a hug.
She stifled a groan and changed the subject. ‘Who owns the dog at the shop?’
‘Oh, that’s Billy’s dog. He got him a few days ago. Do you want to come meet him? He’s so awesome.’
‘Love to,’ said Dana, thinking it would be a good distraction while she questioned him about the Thunderbird.
Dana struggled to keep up as Angus jogged over to pat the black-and-white border collie.
‘Hey, Rocky. Hey, boy.’ Angus pressed his face into the dog’s fur.
‘I didn’t realise you loved dogs so much.’
‘I always really wanted one. When I was younger I used to beg Mum for one. She got me a toy poodle one Christmas, even though it wasn’t what I wanted and I’d spent the entire year begging for a border collie. But then we only had it for two months because it got a tick and died.’
‘That’s a sad story.’
‘Oh well,’ he said philosophically.
She sat down on the step next to the dog. ‘There’s been something I’ve been meaning to ask you about actually. That bike that’s been in the shed for the past few weeks – did you ever end up riding it?’
‘Nah, Jayden and I used to sit on it sometimes and pretend we were in the Grand Prix. I can’t ride it myself, it’s too big. But Jayden took me for a ride.’
She breathed a huge sigh of relief. She’d come to know when he was lying and he hadn’t exhibited any of his usual tells, such as not meeting her eyes.
‘And besides,’ he went on, ‘I knew that Mum would have hated it.’
‘Really?’ she said with surprise, thinking motorbikes were right up Tina’s alley.
‘She had a boyfriend once who had a really bad motorbike accident where he fell off and cut up his leg, so she made me promise never to get one. She calls them donor cycles – because people who die on them get head injuries but their bodies are usually intact so they can donate their organs.’
‘I got the inference.’ She hid a smile over his need to explain it to her. ‘By the way, did Jayden ever ride the bike on his own?’
‘Yeah, all the time. Jayden was good at fixing stuff. He used to work on the bike and make sure it was running well. Sean said he could just take it whenever he wanted. He didn’t even have to ask.’
‘That was nice of him.’
‘Anyway, I already told all of this to that copper who came out earlier today.’
‘It looks like the bike was involved in the hit-and-run.’
‘I know. They thought I ran over Johnny, even though I have no idea how to ride it and I’ve only ever sat on it. I told him he was clutching at straws.’ Angus shrugged. ‘I said he could cross me off his list of suspects. When I told him that we solved the Sandra Kirby and Debbie Vickers case last year he was really impressed. He asked me questions about it for, like, forty-five minutes.’
‘Well, I’m glad you enjoyed being interrogated.’ She was relieved that there was a reasonable excuse for Angus’s prints to be on the bike and that, for once, she had agreed with Tina’s parenting advice.
‘I did.’ He grinned. ‘Hey, let me show you the tricks Rocky can do. Sit boy. Shake hands.’
The dog obediently put out its paw and Angus shook it.
Dana spent the remainder of the day trying to distract herself by helping Cynthia serve up food and drinks to the volunteers who were helping to clean up the streets. There was excitement in the air, a local covers band had been arranged to play for the Australia Day public holiday and while most of the other festivities had been postponed due to the floods, Cynthia felt that the celebration might help raise everyone’s spirits. Despite the fact Dana was keen to get home, her main concern now was the whereabouts of Sean and Lachlan. Why the hell hadn’t they gotten in touch?
It was 3 pm when the landline behind the bar rang. Dana made a dive to pick it up.
‘Two people have turned up at Glengallan House, an isolated homestead. One of the builders called it in,’ explained Ryan. ‘There’s a good chance it might be them. The rescue chopper will be landing behind the pub in five, if you want to come?’
She didn’t need to be asked twice. Dana slammed the phone on the receiver and raced outside, through the car park and into the wide expanse of grass behind the pub. Minutes later the silence was broken by the deafening whirr of propellers as the helicopter landed. She clambered into a seat beside Ryan. The pilot talked into his headphones and flicked the controls. The roar of the engine crescendoed as the chopper tilted backwards and rose into the air. Large drops of rain began to hit the windscreen as they flew over crops and farms, heading north. The Condamine River, brown and swollen, coiled towards Warwick, and the acres of green plains sprawled towards the distant peak of Mount Sturt. Twenty minutes later, a sandstone mansion appeared below. Ryan turned around and mouthed the word Glengallan over the din.
The homestead was the epitome of a haunted house - fire damage had warped the front verandah. A cypress tree grasped at the roof with branches like skeletal hands. As they descended, the grass parted and Sean and Lachlan darted out from the lower level of the house, shouting and waving their hands in the air. A surge of emotion hit Dana squarely in the chest as they came closer. The helicopter hovered a few metres above the ground. Their faces were lined with exhaustion as they rushed forward.
The band members were dragging PA equipment towards a makeshift stage and the locals were lined up in rows in front of the bar when she got back to the pub.
‘So, what was it like going up in that chopper. Was it exciting?’ Cynthia asked her and Lachlan.
‘A little bit too exciting, if you ask me,’ said Dana.
‘You can fill me in on everything when I finish work tonight,’ Cynthia said, and hurried back to the kitchen.
‘Sean should be down in a minute – he’s just having a shower,’ Lachlan explained, taking a long sip from his schooner and wiping the back of his hand across his mouth when he’d finished. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever needed a drink as much as I’ve needed this one.’
Dana leant forward. ‘Don’t hold out on me. What happened?’
‘It was the craziest thing ever … I can laugh about it now, but at the time I wasn’t sure I was going to make it out alive.’ He appeared to note Dana’s look of frustration. ‘Anyway, I went searching for Sean at this property which was owned by a friend of my cousin. We’d gone to school with this guy years ago. But when I showed up one of them recognised that I worked at the Department. They quickly realised that Sean was an informant and he wasn’t there to buy drugs after all. They called three of their mates and, long story short, ended up holding Sean and me at gunpoint with a sawn-off shotgun.’
Dana’s face filled with horror. ‘Then what happened?’
‘There was a bit of a scuffle. Sean got a black eye and they locked us in a side room while they figured out what to do. I was sure we were goners. But then they tied us up and shoved us in one of their big four-wheel drives and dropped us in the middle of nowhere. I guess they figured that it was going to be easier to make us disappear for a bit than actually murder us. Anyway, we wandered around in the dark for a few hours until we stumbled across Glengallan House. Thank god for that, otherwise we wouldn’t have known where the hell we were. We ended up sleeping there, which was seriously creepy, and then in the morning one of the builders who was doing repairs took pity on us and called the police.’
‘Wow, that’s quite a story.’ She had to yell over the top of the music as the band started up. Cynthia delivered their bowls of nachos. ‘And did you manage to get any more information on Jayden? Whether he was distributing drugs for them?’
‘No, I really think he had way too much decency to be involved in anything like that.’
Dana sat back in her chair. ‘I’m so relieved we found you. When you were gone, I started thinking about what a good friend you’ve been to me since I moved to Toowoomba. I was so upset when I thought about how bad things have been between us lately.’
‘It’s all good. It’ll take a lot more than a few arguments to stop us being friends. Besides, who else would I get to type up my case notes for me?’ He grinned.
Sean came towards them with two schooners of beer and placed one of them in front of Dana.
‘You’re looking good.’ He touched her upper arm as the strains of White Town’s ‘Your Woman’ drifted through the speakers. His eyes were unnaturally blue and he’d amassed extra facial hair while he’d been away.
Lachlan finished his drink and stood up. ‘I’m going to hit the shower myself. I’ll be back soon.’
‘How’ve you been?’ asked Sean once they were alone.
‘Fine, thanks.’ She knew she should ask a question in return but remained silent, waiting for him to explain himself.
A look of confusion clouded his face over her apparent lapse in manners. ‘What have you been up to?’ he asked.
‘Just work and being trapped here in Killarney.’
He frowned at a group of young women dragging each other onto the dance floor. ‘Do you want to go outside for a bit? It’s hard to talk in here.’
‘Sure,’ she said in a resigned way, following him through the French doors and onto the verandah.
His words came in a rush. ‘Sorry I went off the grid again. It’s just that Ryan was putting pressure on me to help find that kid and I couldn’t say no. And I thought if I told you, I’d put you at risk.’
The anger that she’d been building up over the past few days evaporated and settled into something more benign. ‘I know, it’s just been incredibly hard not knowing if Lachlan was okay.’ She wasn’t about to admit that she’d also been worried about his safety.
He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I get it, I really do. And hopefully you’ll let me make it up to you.’
She shrugged off his touch, not allowing herself any further weakness. ‘There’s one thing I need to ask you first. What’s the story with your bike?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The Triumph Thunderbird. It was the bike used in the hit-and-run.’
He blinked and sat back on his stool. ‘I left the keys behind the counter at the shop that night so anyone could have ridden it. You have to believe me; I had no idea that it had been used in the hit-and-run that killed Johnny Buckley.’
‘What about the damage to the bike,’ she shot back. ‘You must have noticed the repairs on the handlebars?’
He ran a hand through his hair. ‘I did, but whoever borrowed it did the right thing to fix it. I didn’t see the point in tracking down who’d ridden it, I thought it was probably a kid and didn’t want to get them in trouble.’
