Leonard could not help a laugh, and its sound evaporated the anger that had filled the cell. He sat on the other bunk and leaned back against its rolled mattress. “Tell me about it, Albert,” he said quietly. “What set off you two blokes?”
“Ah — who knows. Grog — flagons.” He shrugged. “Can’t remember clear. We drank so much, something started a fight. Can’t remember.”
“Drank up your day’s pay?”
“No. No work — didn’t have any. Rode on a ute from the Reserve. Saw Miss Daisy going foot-Falcon along the road and gave her a ride, and she gave us some money.” His eyes widened. “She okay? We fight with her too? She get hurt?”
“She’s not hurt. Plenty plonked, but she’s home now.”
A nod, and the man’s torso sank back in a slouch.
“You cut your brother.”
“Think so. Maybe a bottle cut. Don’t remember what for. Maybe a long-ago thing, some fight from before.” He shrugged again with a mix of resignation and self-disgust. “Drunk.”
It was Leonard’s turn to nod. “Miss Daisy say where she got money?”
He had to consider for a moment. “Ghost money, she said — money left on her verandah. Share some good luck, she said, and gave us a bleeding tenner!”
Ten dollars for the Karenji’s and enough left to pay for her own drunk. Leonard asked a few more questions, then used Constable Jones’s telephone to call the hospital.
The ward clerk said Edgar Karenji’s wound was serious but not life threatening and he was resting under sedation. “He should be discharged in seventy-two hours, but he will need to avoid exertion and see a physician regularly for a few weeks.”
Leonard thanked the woman and used a corner of Jones’s desk to write his report on the fight for Sergeant Dougald.
Looking up from the sheet of paper, he asked Jones, “You live here in town or further out?”
“In town. Over on Stainton Place.”
“Like it?”
“Price is right and I walk to work, kids walk to school. Save bloody-all on petrol and the missus has the car. But the cost of housing’s bloody well insane now, and not much new being built.” He explained, “Most of the land that’s left belongs to traditional owners who don’t want to sell.”
“Some new motels and development are out near the airport.”
“Right — but that was the last open land. Broome’s a big tourist place now, and unless somebody figures out how to free up more land for development, prices are going higher than anybody can afford. So don’t get your hopes up about moving here.”
Leonard shook his head. “Got a caravan up in Derby. Don’t see much of it, though. Usually on the road.”
Jones grunted. “The Kimberley’s a big district.”
It was: 421,000 square kilometers. Three times the size of Britain, Leonard had read in a training manual. And there was a lot of it he hadn’t yet visited. “Was Miss Daisy drinking with the Karenji brothers?”
“Not when the fight took place. She usually gins it up over by the courthouse.”
“Usually?”
He nodded. “She’s there every other weekend, it seems. Sometimes a bunch of them, sometimes just her.”
Leonard thought. “Hear any talk about somebody searching for something?”
“What kind of something?”
“Buried treasure, like. But small. Something easily hidden maybe at an old station house around here.”
The Welshman shook his head. “There are stories. You know, the perfect pearl someone stole sometime from some diving boat somewhere. That airplane full diamonds that was shot down by the Japanese back in the forties. Aunt Tillie’s old map to her grandpa’s gold mine. But anything like that,” he lifted his hands in dismissal, “if it happened at all, the swag wouldn’t be hid around here. Any bugger taking it would have sold it long ago and be living the life of Riley in London or New York. I mean, what the hell are you going to spend that much money on around here?”
Jones was right. The whole idea of stealing was to get the goods and run someplace to sell it, not hide it here. He finished the brief report and stopped by the cell to let Albert know that his brother would live. Then he dropped the report in Sergeant Dougald’s box and sloshed through puddles to the Roebuck Bay Hotel.
When in Broome, Leonard liked to eat at the Rowie. Unlike many restaurants in the town, it welcomed any color of skin as long as that skin could pay. The dining saloon, separate from the main bar, was usually quieter. Tonight he sat at the almost empty saloon bar rather than at a table. It gave him a view past the bottle cabinet into the larger, raucous barroom, with its ranks of heavy wooden tables, plank floor, loud, thumping music, and the adjoining billiards room filled with the glare of fluorescent lamps and tobacco smoke. As usual this late in the day, the main bar was crowded with red, brown, yellow, black faces all with their mouths open in talk and laughter. While he waited to be served, Leonard noted the faces he recognized.
One of the barmaids, looking somewhere between thirty and forty, but actually in her late twenties, came around the bottle cabinet from the main bar. “What would you like, Constable?” She wiped a hand across her forehead to push damp bleached hair out of her eyes.
“Swan middy with fish and chips. Got you hopping a bit tonight, eh, Shirley?”
“Like a tree frog in a frying pan. Be right out.” She turned back to the main bar.
A figure settled a couple of stools away and called after her, “The same gargle for me, Shirley — ta!” Then to Leonard, “Hot’s the word. Radio said Nullagine hit forty-eight degrees today. Set a bleedin’ record for this late in the summer. It’s that global warming, it is.”
Leonard nodded agreement. “How you doing, Barry?”
“Keeping above water. Just.” Beneath a fringe of tobacco-stained white mustache, the man’s wrinkled lips squirted a stream of smoke. He ground out his cigarette in an overflowing ashtray.
Like much of Broome’s longtime population, Barry had drifted into town because this is where the continent ended. For as long as Leonard could remember, the man worked odd jobs in the area, made enough to live on, and absorbed far more about Broome than Leonard would ever know. And that gave Leonard an idea. “Shout you for a game,” he said.
White eyebrows lifting into the pale flesh above his hat line, Barry accepted in true Sand Groper fashion — bet first, question later: “Done. What are we playing?”
“Association. Trying to think of all the occupations in Broome that have to work on Sundays during the Wet. First one treed buys.”
“Broome and environs, or just Broome?”
“Environs — ten kilometers. Any business. Go ahead.”
“Environs. During the Wet. Sounds bugger-all silly to me, but it beats listening to the rain.” Barry wagged his thumb at the dining room. “Restaurant staff.”
“Petrol stations.”
“Airport workers.”
“Taxi drivers.”
“Hotel staff.”
They went quickly through the service industry jobs and moved to official duty stations: fire brigade, hospital, police. Shirley brought a second round and the bet became double or nothing. Pale blue eyes glinting as the contest sharpened, Barry grinned, “The Crocodile Park — Sunday’s feeding day year round!”
That was one Leonard hadn’t thought of. He searched for an occupation not yet named. “The deep water port — that’s open on Sunday, right?”
Barry shook his head. “Not regularly in the Wet — and only if a ship comes in. Can’t let you have that one.”
True, there weren’t many ships anymore. Leonard thought again.
“Give up, Constable?”
“Preacher — works every Sunday!”
“Bloody hell! All right: the bird sanctuary watchman.”