‘Well, we can rule one person out,’ says Alan, wiping his eyes. He points to the edge of the bum print, where you can make out another print. ‘Culprit’s got balls at least.’
‘Up to Boonderie next week,’ Alan announces at tea. ‘Hot as a bloody dog’s gut up there.’
It’s as far north as I’ve been since leaving, but the people of Hedland won’t mix with the people of Boonderie. Still, my mouth goes dry and I scull a beer to dampen myself down.
Sid makes bread out of the weevily bum flour, and it sits, turning to rock, in the centre of the table. No one will touch it, not even Stuart, not even with a fork.
The light is out and Greg has his large thumbs in the dips of my pelvis, and the shed is hot and dry. I feel out of myself tonight, like my bones have become too heavy for my flesh. The heat gets itself in under the metal roof during the day and it stays there at night, making the spiders sleepy. I loop my fingers in Greg’s hair, to let him know I’m still paying attention and to try and remind myself to keep focused. A frog is creaking outside, and so maybe soon there’ll be rain hammering the roof. Sometimes when it rains, which is not often, it feels like the drumming will knock the spiders off and onto my bed.
The frog stops, and there is a cool breeze that swims into the shed, like the kind of wind rain makes when it’s on its way down. Greg sighs, I remember where I am, and grasp harder at his hair. Something large and black darts in the doorway, skitters along the far wall and under the workbench, and I bounce up in bed, knocking Greg in the face with my groin and taking a clump of his hair with me. ‘The fuck?’ he says, holding his face with both hands.
‘There’s something in here,’ I whisper, though whispering is pointless against Greg’s noise.
‘What something?’ He examines his palm for blood from his nose and then feels for the spot I ripped his hair from. ‘Fuckin’ needed that,’ he says.
‘Under the workbench, something big.’ He looks up at me, his expression changes.
‘How big?’
I’m feeling under the bed for the hammer. I can’t find it in the dark. Greg lifts himself off the bed and gives his head a small shake to clear it. He goes lightly over to the switch and turns it on. The strobing of the strip light does nothing but throw shadows.
‘Like a big dog.’
The strobe settles, but there are still shadows and places to hide. The workbench is covered by a blue oilcloth which hangs down and hides the space under it. Greg picks up the metal pipe that leans against the wall. I’m glad that he kept his underwear on — I think, This would be so much worse if he was naked. I have made his nose bleed, but he ignores it, lets it flow down on to his lip, while he holds the pole with both hands like a cricket bat. He treads carefully and slowly towards the workbench, his eyes dart around finding new shadows. The hair on the back of my neck prickles. I try not to think of Kelly, or picture Otto outside holding a gun, watching. Holding his cut-throat. He will shoot Greg then he will do me slowly; Kelly will snap at the air by my face as she watches me die. He will cut off my hand and give it to her as a prize. Kelly is dead, I think, but the thought is not a comfort.
I take the corner of the oilskin in my fingers, look to Greg who raises his arms, ready to strike if something runs out. He tells me with a nod of three to lift it, and I make my own countdown and jerk the cover up. Under the workbench, there is nothing. Greg lets his arms fall at his sides and the metal pipe clangs on the floor.
‘Jesus,’ he says, ‘if you weren’t in the mood you just had to say.’
I look at him to see if this is a joke, but I can’t tell.
Later, when he sleeps next to me, I get up out of bed and, careful not to wake him, I pull on a shirt and some shorts, and leave the shed. It is cooler out; I concentrate on breathing, sucking the cool air in, blowing the hot air out. The night sky is crisp with stars and I sit on the fence, listening to the cicadas and the night birds, the bandicoots and rats and all the live things that are out there, breathing with me. Not far away, the sheep are a dense and silent cluster. I feel the pull of being alone, of answering to no one, the safety of being unknown and far away. I sense a small movement behind me and turn just in time to see a shadow in the doorway of the shed. But it’s Greg, I know his shape, and he doesn’t want me to have seen him, and I don’t want him to have seen me, and when I get back to bed an hour later, he feigns sleep and I feign sleep too and soon we are both asleep. In the morning he looks closely at my face.
‘Jesus,’ he says, ‘you look like you’ve been plugged in both eyes.’
5
Inside, the police station smelled of tomato soup. A ponytailed policewoman stood behind the reception desk beaming.
‘Hello and how may I help you today, madam?’ she said, and then flushed a bit. I’d parked opposite the police station, thinking I’d sit for a while and figure out what I was going to say, but once I’d put the handbrake on, faces appeared at the window of the station. I tried not to look at them, tried to move in the same way and at the same speed I would have if no one was watching, but I’d forgotten how. My arms felt overly long, and as I crossed the empty road, my bum had more control over my legs than it normally did, and I sashayed stupidly up the steps to the entrance.
I thought about the evidence I had. I would be calm and clear. I reran the day before in my head looking for things to report when I was asked, Had you noticed anything unusual?
It had been forecast to snow by the early evening, but my sheep had been unmoved by the news, standing against each other, eyeing me as I moved between them and sprayed their feet for rot. By the time I’d finished, say 3.30, Dog had rolled in goose shit and the wind had picked up, throwing pebbles of water at my face. I walked down the hill into the sea wind, due south. It was cold, a few dead leaves clung to the beech trees. Dog barrelled ahead of me at the perimeter of the woods, black even against the matt darkness of the trees, his ears pricked; he was swallowed by it, sending up a fire of blackbirds, who called loudly and then resettled in other trees, ruffling their feathers and shaking their heads. It would be an early hare, and Dog would have no chance at catching it, would appear back in ten minutes pink-tongued and tired, with a mudded undercarriage.
I looked for strange prints and droppings or hair caught on fences, but all I found was a collection of buzzard pellets. I put my hands in my pockets and felt the grit of them, like compact animals themselves, their leg bones folded into their grey feathery bodies, and my fingers worried them to dust as I walked.
I had stopped at the stile that led onto the bridleway, in the shelter of the hawthorn shrubs that separated the top field from the bottom, and which stretched all the way down to the coastal path. If you stood on the stile you could see the woods in the bottom field, and my cottage, its two storeys looking squat against the slope of the downs. I smoked a cigarette. Down in the bottom field, one of the ewes ate from where the grass was still darkened from the dead sheep. They didn’t hold a grudge, sheep.
On the ground at the foot of the stile was a scattering of cigarette butts. Not the kind I smoked — these ones were filterless and the ends had been chewed until they were flat and mulched. I counted seven of them at my feet.
‘Bastard kids,’ I’d said to Dog. I smoked to the end of my cigarette and ground it out on the stile where there was a black mark that the other smoker had made with theirs. I collected the stubs and tucked them all into the empty end of my matchbox. We headed down the bridleway and onto the beach as the sun was starting to go down behind the clouds.