Gunshot Road (4 page)

In and out of the shack

A MOUND IN THE
centre of the room: a grey tarpaulin, big enough to cover the body but not the crusted black pool on the floor. An eruption of flies beat up from the sludge as Cockburn drew back the tarp.

I flinched, squinted and looked down. A bearded old man stared up at me with startled eyes, as if death had taken him by surprise. Not that there's anything unusual in that, I reflected. It doesn't usually send you an sms saying
Pick u up 2moz 7.30
.

His skin was desiccated leather, his hands filthy, his nails encrusted with crimson dirt. The face looked like somebody had jumped on it: a deflated football fringed with snow. Not a face I recognised, but there was a prickling familiarity about it.

‘What was his name again?' I asked Jerker.

‘Ozolins.'

However Mr Ozolins had looked in his prime, his distinguishing feature right now was the geological hammer embedded in the base of his throat.

The flies were drawn to it as well.

Cockburn studied the body, his face impassive. He put his bag on the floor, pulled out a video camera. Began sweeping the room.

‘Bloke who did him was flaked out on the bed over there,' said Jenkins, nodding at a wire bunk.

Shit, I thought, staring at the bloody mess on the floor. He did
that
, then went and had a lie down? Made himself a nice cup of tea as well, did he?

‘Feller from the pub come in and found em.'

While Cockburn did his thing, I did mine: poked my nose in, took a look around the old man's shack. It was better than looking at his corpse.

I made a mental note of the late Mr Ozolins' worldly possessions: broken furniture, scattered bottles, a blue kero lamp. A frypan on the stove, a chop marooned in a pool of congealed fat. His fridge a Coolgardie safe. A filing cabinet, its drawers half open.

Nothing out of the ordinary there, but the bookshelves—planks on bricks—held some surprising stuff.

‘Well read old bloke,' I commented, casting an eye across the spines:
The Geology of Central Australia, The Proterozoic Bluebush Province
, Twidale's
Geomorphology
. Most of the books were of a geological age themselves. A stack of yellowing maps and cross-sections sprawled out onto the floor. There was, as well, the odd battered volume from other branches of science: physics, engineering. Newton's
Principia
nestled between Poincaré and
The Origin of Species
.

Cockburn glanced up from his camera, his face expressionless. ‘We come all this way for some overdue library books?'

I glanced at the floor directly in front of the bookshelf.

‘More dust on the floor than on the books themselves.'

‘So?'

‘Looks like somebody flicked through em.'

‘Killer probably wanted something to read in bed.'

I examined the filing cabinet. Again, mostly geology: old army surplus notebooks stored in blue folders. I pulled one of them out. Sketches and diagrams, notes, maps, cross-sections.

On top of the cabinet, a Geiger counter, some bottles of acid, a Freiberg compass. In the corner of the room was a pile of ancient wine boxes. I opened a couple, found dust-covered rocks and minerals, most of the labels faded, fallen and spread across the floor.

I was struck by the lack of any signs of a personal life: no photographs, no mementos, no keepsakes, no items of any obvious sentimental value.

Only…there, on a dirty dresser beside the bed, next to the tube of Deep Heat: a bare patch.

Sure enough, fallen between the dresser and the bed, a small framed photograph. I dug it out: two little girls, mop haired, blonde, impish grins. Another older one, dark haired, sombre. A surprisingly recent shot. The old man might have lived here on his own, but he had somebody somewhere.

Cockburn put away the gear, joined Jenkins, who was on crowd control—he was the crowd—out on the veranda.

‘So you're holding this other feller over at the pub?'

‘Nowhere else to put him, sarge.'

‘Who's keeping an eye on him?'

‘Couple of Transport and Works blokes. Don't worry, he's going nowhere.'

‘What was his name again?'

‘Petherbridge.'

‘And he's admitted that he did it?'

‘Well…'

Exasperation rippled across Cockburn's face. ‘Well what?'

‘He hasn't said he didn't do it.'

‘
I
haven't said I didn't do it either.'

‘They had a brawl at the pub—a dozen witnesses saw em havin a go at each other. Ozolins came back here, Petherbridge followed. Admits they went another round. Says he passed out on the bed. Woke up when the publican come in.'

‘Yeah, right.' Cockburn lifted his eyes to the heavens. ‘Tell the undertaker he can get it out of here.'

As we walked over to the roadhouse, I glanced back at the shack and its surrounds. Rusting car parts, blue coiled fencing wire, shredded tyres. A broken wheelbarrow, shovels and picks. A rubbish dump, mostly bottles and bones, tins.

And to the west of the shack, up against the hills, a rock formation that didn't look right.

A slippage from the cliffs?

‘What's with the rocks?' I asked Jenkins.

‘Old bloke was crazy. Used to be a prospector. Spent his days out there, rearranging his bloody rock garden.'

‘He built all that himself?'

‘Suppose so. Been at it for weeks. Months. See him out here sometimes, muttering away, shifting things around.'

‘Must have been a fit old bloke,' I commented.

Cockburn gave the rock pile a moment's consideration. ‘Or a determined one. Crazy determined. Had a feller once, over Queensland. Same thing. Spend all morning digging a hole, afternoon filling it in again. Same hole. One day he decided it was finished. Jumped in, blew his brains out. Son-in-law said it was an accident. Told him, yeah; life's an accident.'

I glanced at him, mildly surprised.

We made our way to a crusty dwelling behind the pub.

A concrete blackfeller beside the garden path raised a spear at us. I gave him a sisterly wave as we filed past.

A weird little dog, a cross between a shitzu and a toilet brush with pop eyes and jutting lower teeth, confronted us at the door, tail erect. Confronted
me
, more to the point, clearly unimpressed by the colour of my hide. The animal had a growl like an electric toothbrush and gave it to me, full throttle.

A woman came to the door: body and dress featureless, her face thinner than strained tea. She called the dog away, distracted. Ran her fingers through her hair.

‘Mrs Redman sarge,' said Jenkins.

‘June,' she said; the vowel squeezed past her sinuses and came out as flat as the dog's face. ‘Me and me husband own the place.'

June led us through to the kitchen, where two monstrous Works blokes towered over a stocky old man who sat contemplating a mug of what might have been wormwood.

‘We'll be off then mate,' mumbled the lesser of the monsters, climbing to his feet.

‘Good luck, Wireless,' said the other.

Wireless? The name Petherbridge hadn't meant anything to me, but Wireless sure as hell did.

Wireless and the Paradox

THE OLD MAN LOOKED
up at us and I recognised him at once. I'd known him when I was a kid. Nowadays my father ran his own gold mine out at Burnt Shirt Gorge, but back then he was a prospector-cum-station worker, and Wireless was one of the eccentrics on the periphery of his circle. The nickname came from the fact that once you got him going he never stopped talking.

He'd shut up now, though. And shrivelled, it seemed. An impression enhanced by the after-image of the Works titans.

Truth be told, Wireless had never been the most pleasant of my father's acquaintances. He was one of your more theoretical bush bullshit artists, as likely to strut his stuff on half-arsed philosophy or layman's particle physics as he was on some putative nugget or lost reef. And cranky with it, old Wireless. He was always trying to best you in an argument. If he didn't manage it he'd flare up with a readiness that suggested an underlying insecurity, a suspicion that somewhere along the road he'd fucked up—taken a wrong fork. Or impaled himself on it.

From the look of him now, the fuck-ups had coalesced, big time. Arguing with your fellow no-hopers was one thing, slamming geo-picks into their throats was another. He was tapping on the table, chewing the rim of his cup, staring at the tablecloth with red rubber eyes. He was as bald as a bullet, with a blunt nose, a drooping jaw and a serious shortfall in the dental department. He looked like a snapping turtle that had lost its snap.

Cockburn sat opposite, pulled out a notebook. ‘Just for the record, your name is John Vincent Petherbridge?'

‘Wireless,' I interposed.

The senior sergeant looked up at me, his blue eyes querulous. ‘What?'

‘That's what his mates call him. Don't we, Wireless?'

The prospector's death mask was replaced by a quizzical flicker.

Cockburn's disdain was snowballing—about the only thing that was, given the weather. ‘Acquainted with all the local quality, are we, Emily?'

‘Grew up round here, mate.' He arched an eyebrow. ‘We did tend to know each other.' I put a hand out in the old man's direction. ‘Emily Tempest, Wireless. Jack's daughter.'

Recognition worked its way through his crumbled features. He shook my hand, his palm like gravel. ‘Jeez Emily, sorry I didn't recognise you. Heard you was back, o course. What are you doin out here?'

‘What are
you
doin, more to the point?'

The gravity of the situation came back at him, the spark went out of his eyes. He stared at his hands in horror. I couldn't blame him. The right one was crusted in blood and there was nothing to indicate that it was his own.

Cockburn did a drum roll on the table. ‘Sorry to interrupt the reunion, but would you mind giving us your side of the story, Mr Petherbridge?'

Wireless averted his gaze. ‘Not sure I know what my side of the story is. We might have had a drink or two. During the afternoon.'

‘Folks at the pub tell us you were doing more than just drinking.'

‘Well, drinkin and havin a yarn, o course. A discourse, you might say.'

‘They could hear your…discourse a hundred yards away.'

‘We get a bit heated when we get goin, must admit, Doc and me.'

I jumped to my feet. ‘Christ! Wireless…!'

He looked up at me, fearful.

‘That was
Doc
over there?'

My hand flew to the little fossil I always kept with me. A trilobite, given to me more than twenty years ago by the man now lying dead on the cabin floor. Doc.

I'd never heard a surname, and for all I knew the title might have been genuine. He was a geologist. He'd worked for the Geo Survey Office until he was fired for his increasingly oddball behaviour and heavy drinking, then he'd worked for the mines; when they fired him he'd gone prospecting.

The first time I met him was at Moonlight. There was an unusual stream of air emerging from a fissure in the west slope of Mirrinyu—Lizard Hill—not far from the homestead. The elders said it was a goanna breathing. Doc came through with the Geo Survey team and heard the story. When the rest of the crew moved on he stayed behind, camped next to the fissure. Took hourly barometric readings for five days straight. Dad got me to ride out and bring him food; Doc was so absorbed in his work, he'd forget to eat. Before he left he told me that the hill inhaled or exhaled according to the prevailing barometric pressure.

He and Wireless were old sparring partners. When they were in camp together they'd put an alarm clock on the ground between them and hit each other with twenty-minute monologues.

He bored the crap out of most people, but was kind to a curious little black kid. Forever pulling things out of a pocket: a ghost crystal or a double-rimming thunder-egg.

Or a trilobite. I'd carried it with me for a long time, and somewhere along the road I'd had it mounted on a chain. Still wore it for good luck.

It had been years; but even so, I felt bad for not recognising the bloke lying on the cabin floor. Although to be fair I'd been distracted by the object stuck in his neck.

‘What were you arguing about?' Cockburn was saying.

Wireless blinked. ‘Eh?'

‘Your argument. What was it about?'

He tugged at the folds of skin around his throat. ‘Xeno's Paradox. Far as I can remember.'

The coppers glanced at each other, bewildered.

‘Xenos Paradox?'

‘The Greek.'

‘He one of the miners in the bar?' asked Jerker, flipping through his notebook.

‘It's a famous philosophical conundrum, sarge,' I put in. ‘The one about the rabbit and the turtle. Xeno was the feller who propounded it. Ancient Greek.'

For the first time since I'd met him, Cockburn looked nonplussed, like he'd wandered into a world that was beyond his comprehension. His jaw sagged ever so slightly.

‘You were arguing over a dead…
philosopher
?'

Wireless shook his head. ‘Maybe we did raise our voices a little, but can you blame me? He was ravin. Been ravin for months. Reckons he's solved the Paradox. Bullshit, I told him, you can't solve a paradox; there is no solution. That's why it's a paradox. Been that way for months…'

‘The Paradox?'

‘Doc. You couldn't reason with him anymore, the old fool. Maybe he poked me a coupla times—he liked to throw his arms around when he got excited. Maybe I poked him back, I dunno. Somewhere in there I flaked out. Next thing I know Noel's shaking me and Doc's lying on the floor with that…his throat…'

He lapsed back into bewildered despondency; picked up his tin cup, stared into it as if he hoped it held some answers.

Cockburn checked his notebook. ‘Who's Noel?'

‘Noel Redman,' Jenkins responded. ‘Owner of the pub.'

‘Oh Wireless,' I murmured. ‘What have you done?'

Cockburn clearly thought my acquaintance with both suspect and victim was cramping his style. ‘Emily, why don't you shoot round to the bar? Tell Mr Redman we'd like a word with him.'

June cleared her throat. ‘He was in the meat shed last I saw.'