‘You tell me,’ urged Larkin, and tossed his depleted tobacco plug to the visitor. The sundowner gnawed from the plug, almost hit a dog in the eye with a spit, gulped, and settled to the details of the perfect murder.
‘Well, mate, it’s like this. Once you done away with the body, complete, there ain’t nothing left to say that the body ever was alive to be killed. Now, supposin’ I wanted to do you in. I don’t, mate, don’t think that, but I ‘as plenty of time to work things out. Supposin’ I wanted to do you in. Well, me and you is out ridin’ and I takes me chance and shoots you stone-dead. I chooses to do the killin’ where there’s plenty of dead wood. Then I gathers the dead wood and drags your body onto it and fires the wood. Next day, when the ashes are cold, I goes back with a sieve and dolly pot. That’s all I wants then.
‘I takes out your burned bones and I crushes ‘em to dust in the dolly pot. Then I goes through the ashes with the sieve, getting out all the small bones and putting them through the dolly pot. The dust I empties out from the dolly pot for the wind to take. All the metal bits, such as buttons and boot sprigs, I puts in me pocket and carries back to the homestead where I throws ‘em down the well or covers ‘em with sulphuric acid.
‘Almost sure to be a dolly pot here, by the look of the place. Almost sure to be a sieve. Almost sure to be a jar of sulphuric acid for solderin’ work. Every thin’ on tap, like. And just in case the million-to-one chance comes off that someone might come across the fire site and wonder, sort of, I’d shoot a coupler kangaroos, skin ‘em, and burn the carcases on top of the old ashes. You know, to keep the blowies from breeding.’
Harry Larkin looked at the sundowner, and through him. A prospector’s dolly pot, a sieve, a quantity of sulphuric acid to dissolve the metal parts. Yes, they were all here. Given time a man could commit the perfect murder. Time! Two days would be long enough.
The sundowner stood up. ‘Good day, mate. Don’t mind me. He, he! Flamin’ hot, ain’t it? Be cool down south. Well, I’ll be movin’.’
Larkin watched him depart. The bush waif did not stop at the shed to camp for the night. He went on to the windmill and sprawled over the drinking trough to drink. He filled his rusty billy-can, Larkin watching until the mirage to the southward drowned him.
The perfect murder, with aids as common as household remedies. The perfect scene, this land without limits where even a man and his nearest neighbor are separated by nine miles. A prospector’s dolly pot, a sieve, and a pint of soldering acid. Simple! It was as simple as being kicked to death in a stockyard jammed with mules.
‘William Reynolds vanished three months ago, and repeated searches have failed to find even his body.’
Mounted Constable Evans sat stiffly erect in the chair behind the littered desk in the Police Station at Wondong. Opposite him lounged a slight dark-complexioned man having a straight nose, a high forehead, and intensely blue eyes. There was no doubt that Evans was a policeman. None would guess that the dark man with the blue eyes was Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte.
‘The man’s relatives have been bothering Headquarters about William Reynolds, which is why I am here,’ explained Bonaparte, faintly apologetic. ‘I have read your reports, and find them clear and concise. There is no doubt in the Official Mind that, assisted by your black tracker, you have done everything possible to locate Reynolds or his dead body. I may succeed where you and the black tracker failed because I am peculiarly equipped with gifts bequeathed to me by my white father and my aboriginal mother. In me are combined the white man’s reasoning powers and the black man’s perceptions and bushcraft. Therefore, should I succeed there would be no reflection on your efficiency or the powers of your tracker. Between what a tracker sees and what you have been trained to reason, there is a bridge. There is no such bridge between those divided powers in me. Which is why I never fail.’
Having put Constable Evans in a more cooperative frame of mind, Bony rolled a cigarette and relaxed.
‘Thank you, sir,’ Evans said and rose to accompany Bony to the locality map which hung on the wall. ‘Here’s the township of Wondong. Here is the homestead of Morley Downs cattle station. And here, fifteen miles on from the homestead, is the stockman’s hut where William Reynolds lived and worked.
‘There’s no telephonic communication between the hut and the homestead. Once every month the people at the homestead trucked rations to Reynolds. And once every week, every Monday morning, a stockman from the homestead would meet Reynolds midway between homestead and hut to give Reynolds his mail, and orders, and have a yarn with him over a billy of tea.’
‘And then one Monday, Reynolds didn’t turn up,’ Bony added, as they resumed their chairs at the desk.
‘That Monday the homestead man waited four hours for Reynolds,’ continued Evans. ‘The following day the station manager ran out in his car to Reynolds’ hut. He found the ashes on the open hearth stone-cold, the two chained dogs nearly dead of thirst, and that Reynolds hadn’t been at the hut since the day it had rained, three days previously.
‘The manager drove back to the homestead and organized all his men in a search party. They found Reynolds’ horse running with several others. The horse was still saddled and bridled. They rode the country for two days, and then I went out with my tracker to join in. We kept up the search for a week, and the tracker’s opinion was that Reynolds might have been riding the back boundary fence when he was parted from the horse. Beyond that the tracker was vague, and I don’t wonder at it for two reasons. One, the rain had wiped out tracks visible to white eyes, and two, there were other horses in the same paddock. Horse tracks swamped with rain are indistinguishable one from another.’
‘How large is that paddock?’ asked Bony.
‘Approximately two hundred square miles.’
Bony rose and again studied the wall map.
‘On the far side of the fence is this place named Reefer’s Find,’ he pointed out. ‘Assuming that Reynolds had been thrown from his horse and injured, might he not have tried to reach the outstation of Reefer’s Find which, I see, is about three miles from the fence whereas Reynolds’ hut is six or seven?’
‘We thought of that possibility, and we scoured the country on the Reefer’s Find side of the boundary fence,’ Evans replied. ‘There’s a stockman named Larkin at the Reefer’s Find outstation. He joined in the search. The tracker, who had memorized Reynolds’ footprints, found on the earth floor of the hut’s verandah, couldn’t spot any of his tracks on Reefer’s Find country, and the boundary fence, of course, did not permit Reynolds’ horse into that country. The blasted rain beat the tracker. It beat all of us.’
‘Him. Did you know this Reynolds?’
‘Yes. He came to town twice on a bit of a bender. Good type. Good horseman. Good bushman. The horse he rode that day was not a tricky animal. What do Headquarters know of him, sir?’
‘Only that he never failed to write regularly to his mother, and that he had spent four years in the Army from which he was discharged following a head wound.’
‘Head wound! He might have suffered from amnesia. He could have left his horse and walked away – anywhere – walked until he dropped and died from thirst or starvation.’