Little Girl Lost (4 page)

She caught herself. No. She’d promised her mother she wouldn’t say it. She wouldn’t even think the words.

There were no knights in shining armour, but a positive attitude could make all the difference to her father’s treatment. At least, that’s what people said. She hoped they were right.

Max was seated at the long wooden bar, a beer in front of him. He had changed into civvies before coming to the pub. That was unusual on a week day. Both the civvies and the beer. Trish raised an eyebrow when she saw him, but she didn’t say anything. That was unusual for any day.

Max wasn’t the only person in the bar. There were a couple of regulars sitting down at the other end of the expanse of polished timber. He had exchanged friendly greetings with them when he entered, but he sat alone as he usually did. He wanted to avoid the awkwardness of drinking with someone on one night, and perhaps arresting them for drink driving the next. He was part of the town, yet not part of it, and he was happy to keep it that way.

He heard steps on the wooden veranda. He glanced up, trying not to notice the anticipation he felt and then trying to hide his disappointment when Ed Collins, owner of the town’s service station, walked in. They exchanged a greeting then Ed settled himself further down the bar. Ed had become a more frequent visitor to the pub since his reconciliation with his son last Christmas. Ed had a new laptop with him and was soon making use of the pub’s much vaunted Wi-Fi. Max knew he was planning a trip to England to visit his son Steve and his fiancée. Max knew a lot about most people in the town. Perhaps not quite as much as Trish Warren and her gossip grapevine, but more than most. After all, that was his job. He told himself he was just here at the pub to keep up his casual contact with the town. He really wasn’t waiting for anyone in particular.

And if he wasn’t, he was therefore not at all disappointed when the next person to walk in through the pub’s front doors was one of the teachers from the school.

Max ordered a second beer. It would be his last for the evening. A few minutes later, Trish delivered a burger to one of the other patrons. It smelled good. Max suddenly realised he was hungry. For a few seconds he contemplated ordering a burger for himself, but stopped. In a moment of honesty he admitted to himself that he had really come to the pub in the hope of seeing a redhead in motorcycle leathers. To stay here still hoping she would appear was a bit sad. He stood up and left the last of his beer.

He paused on the top step long enough to glance up and down the road. He listened but heard nothing but normal night sounds. With a sigh he set off home.

It wasn’t a long walk. He crossed the Mount Isa road and entered the tiny town square that fronted the road. The town hall, Coorah Creek’s only brick building, was at the back of the square. The post office and police station formed the other two sides. Town square was perhaps too grand a name for the tiny patch of grass, bordered by a flower bed. But, thanks to the mine manager, Chris Powell, it was green and the flowers added a touch of colour. Not for long though. Come the soaring heat of mid-summer, not even the automatic watering system installed by mine engineers would save the square from the blistering midday sun.

Max walked along the side of the station to the house behind it. Once in his home, he headed for the kitchen. He was a reasonable cook, but cooking for one wasn’t much fun. Once a week he’d make a big pot of something which would keep him fed for several days. At the moment it was spaghetti with a meat sauce. It wasn’t grand enough to be called bolognese, but it was tasty none the less. He spooned a helping into a dish and set it in the microwave. While it heated, he ripped the top off a can of Coke.

He carried his dinner through the kitchen door into the garage he’d turned into a workshop. He perched on a chair and ate, all the time studying the pile of old timber in front of him. It had come from one of the old houses by the railway station. Those houses were now owned by the mine, and he’d done a deal with Chris to take whatever timber he wanted. The boards were weathered by years of outback sun; any paint they had once known was long gone. There was something about this old wood that spoke to him. This was part of a house. It had echoed to the sounds of families. Of mothers and children. It was wrong to simply let it rot.

By the time he’d finished his spaghetti, he had a picture in his mind. He knew what the timber wanted to be.

There was a sketchbook on the bench, but he didn’t bother making a plan. He could see the image so strongly in his head he didn’t need one. He drank the last of his Coke and picked up a plank. He weighed it in his hand for a few seconds, feeling its weight and its strength. Then he set it into a vice and picked up a plane. He slid the tool along the side of the wood, feeling the first layer of weathered timber flake away to reveal a darker, richer colour underneath. He was quickly engrossed in his task. He worked until the small hours, bringing that piece of wood back to life. Just as he went to bed, around one o’clock, the Harley roared through town in the direction of the mine.

He couldn’t begin to guess where the girl had been or why. In fact, he knew nothing at all about her and that wasn’t good enough. He wanted to know more. He would even be happy to hear some gossip about her from Trish. Not that he listened to gossip, of course. But Trish always seemed to know everything about everyone. She knew what was happening in the town. Sometimes before it happened. And she was seldom wrong. But despite several visits to the pub this week, he’d learned nothing at all from Trish. In fact, Trish had been remarkably silent on the subject of the Creek’s newest resident. That was unlike her. If he had a suspicious mind, he would think Trish was up to something.

His interest in the girl was work, he told himself as he settled himself for sleep. It was his job to check out any newcomers in town. Especially newcomers who might cause a problem. And if anyone was likely to cause a problem it was a good-looking redheaded girl on a Harley in a town full of single miners. Or, even worse, the FIFO workers who had left their wives behind.

Max had never planned to come to Coorah Creek. His honesty had brought him here. Well, that and a youthful tendency to speak without thinking. He winced as he remembered his words and the look on the commander’s face the night Max had arrested a powerful man who had been driving home late at night, weaving all over the road. Max hadn’t needed a breathalyser test to know the man was drunk. It would have been easy to let him go with a warning. Easy, but not honest. Three days after charging the man, Max had been reassigned to Coorah Creek, a promising career brought to a pretty abrupt halt.

He had no regrets. He’d done the right thing, although perhaps gone about it in the wrong way. And he had come to love Coorah Creek and its residents. He appreciated their community spirit. He loved the colours of the sunset. He loved the smell of the first drops of rain as the wet season arrived. He was happy dropping by the pub occasionally for a beer. If this was punishment, he was happy to accept it. There was plenty of time to reboot his career in the future, if he wanted to.

But if he prided himself on his honesty in his work, he was going to have to be honest with himself too. His desire to find out a bit more about the red-haired girl wasn’t entirely work. There was a personal angle as well. He hadn’t been able to get her out of his head. She was a beautiful girl … woman. Coorah Creek seldom saw the likes of her. But it was her haunted air that kept him awake at night. That and her late night rides on a very noisy motorcycle.

He had to know more about her.

Next morning, Max drove to the mine.

Chris Powell greeted him as he entered the office. ‘What brings you out here? I hope one of my boys hasn’t been causing trouble?’

Max shook his head. ‘Not this time,’ he said. ‘Actually, it’s a woman I’ve come to ask you about.’

Chris raised an eyebrow and indicated that they should go through to his office, away from the interested ears of the general office staff.

‘I guess you mean Tia,’ Chris said as he closed the office door.

Tia. Until now Max hadn’t even known her name. It suited her. He wondered what, if anything, it might be short for.

‘Yes. What do you know about her?’

‘Not a lot. Tia Walsh. She’s only just got her licence to drive the Cat 793. But she’s good. She’s got a trailer in the accommodation compound. Keeps very much to herself, I think. If you want I can get her personnel record.’

Max was about to say yes, but caught himself. This wasn’t right. The girl … Tia … had done nothing wrong. He had no right to use his job to check up on her. No right at all. It would be an invasion of her privacy. Much as he wanted to say yes, he shook his head.

‘No. It’s fine.’

‘If there’s something I should know …’

‘Absolutely nothing.’ Max felt a pang of guilt. The last thing he should be doing was giving Tia’s boss any reason to doubt her. ‘Nothing at all.’

Chris raised a questioning eyebrow which Max tried desperately to ignore. That and the knowing smirk that accompanied it.

‘I’m off,’ he said, making for the door. ‘See you around, Chris.’

Walking back to his car, Max looked across the gravel car park towards the giant hole in the ground that was the source of the rare ore that had brought prosperity to the town. Some distance away from the office building, huge gantries clustered around the railhead, conveyer belts reaching into the sky like giant skeletons. A train was loading, and the mineral ore crashed down into the open ore wagons, sending a cloud of dust into the air. As he watched, another of the massive earth moving trucks appeared rumbling slowly up the path from the open cut working. It was huge. Every time he saw one Max was fascinated by the size of them. They towered over the mere men who worked the mine. The diggers that loaded the ore into the tray backs were even larger. He knew the enclosed cabs were air-conditioned and noise protected. The best possible hydraulics aided the drivers who guided the giants up and down the face of the cut. But still Max marvelled at the sheer size of these earth-eating giants.

And he marvelled at the thought that a slender slip of a girl named Tia Walsh drove one. Perhaps that very one. Sunlight glinted off the glass cab. Max squinted. He could see a dark shape inside, but he was unable to tell who it was.

He slid behind the wheel of his car, and backed out of the car park. At the gate, instead of driving forward towards the town, he turned right. The mine accommodation compound was a few hundred metres away. He drove slowly, the police car kicking up a cloud of dust that followed him. He reached the open entrance to the compound and pulled up, his motor still running. He could simply go inside. He was the town’s policeman. No one would query what he was doing. He would no doubt find the Harley parked beside her trailer. It would be a simple matter to take down her reggo and then enter it into the police system. He’d be sure to find out something about her that way.

He gently tapped his open palm against the steering wheel. Then shook his head, his decision made. This wasn’t right. Using his job to check out a woman for no reason other than because he found her attractive. That was wrong.

He slipped the car back into gear, dropped a U-turn and headed back to town.

From inside her trailer, Tia watched the car disappear behind a cloud of red dust. She waited for a few minutes as the dust settled slowly back to earth. The cop was checking up on her, she just knew it. How much did he know? Had there been some sort of a bulletin from the east coast? Perhaps something to do with the hog? She shouldn’t have kept it. But when she walked away from Andrew Kelly, she had wanted to hurt him just as much as he’d hurt her. So she’d taken the things that mattered most to him. The hog was one of those things. Had he reported it stolen? She doubted that. He wouldn’t admit it, but he was even more threatened by the police than she was.

The cloud of dust outside was gone and the road was empty. Tia heard voices and movement from the other side of the camp. A handful of men walked into her line of vision heading for the mine. It was time for the start of the next shift. She was due to start work with them. She glanced at her watch.

She could leave now. Jump aboard the Harley and head through that gate, away from this town to some other place and try again for a new start. She turned away from the window. Her leathers hung behind the door. Her helmet sat in its customary place on the end of the table. She had all her wages in cash. The wages were pretty good. She had enough money to get a long way from here. Maybe she should head south into New South Wales, then cut across to Western Australia. Kelly would never find her there. It would be so easy to get on the bike and go. She reached out to retrieve her helmet, and as she did, her eyes fell on the glass casserole dish drying next to her sink. Last night she had used her new casserole dish to cook up a tuna pasta bake. The recipe had been on the tuna can in the store, and she’d purchased all the ingredients on the spot.

It was the first meal she had ever cooked in an oven. By most people’s standards the tuna bake had probably been a pretty poor attempt at a home-cooked meal, but to Tia it had tasted wonderful, partly because of the satisfaction of using ingredients bought with money she had earned. Not only that, she knew the name of the girl who had delivered those ingredients. Sarah. She had felt able to open the door to her when she knocked. And, most importantly, the meal had been eaten at her own table … well, the mine’s table, but hers for now. It was just like being a normal person.

Nothing she had eaten had ever tasted that good.

Tia stood stock still in the middle of her little home and made a decision.

She wouldn’t run. Not yet. She would make sure she was ready to go, but she’d wait and see what the cop did.

She nodded to herself. That seemed like the best thing to do. She grabbed her work gloves from the bench beside the door and stuck them in the back pocket of her jeans as she walked out the door, enjoying the feeling of locking the door behind her.