The fourth crop, growing in the open under white netting, was one he had used to grow himself before the drought. Triticum aestivum, common bread wheat. Other than for small tears here and there caused by the wind, the netting covered the crop like a tent. He took out his knife and slit it open.
Inside, there was a faint residual dampness on the ground from a recent watering. Walking along a pathway cut through the centre of the field, he saw on the ground birds-parrots, corellas-which had escaped the fence and got in through the tears in the netting. They were starved images of themselves, heaps of pale bones dully shining through dirty feathers. He knelt to look at them. Around about, the heads of the wheat were well grown and heavy, ready for harvest. He stood up and crushed some of the wheat in his hand. There seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary about it. It should have been good feed for any stray birds. Still, he decided against tasting it. Halfway along, he found a small mouse, its tiny feet curled up to its chest in a tight circle of dried fur and bone. He picked it up, caught by its dead perfection. It came apart in his hands, the pieces falling to dust. Harold decided it was to time to leave.
He locked the gate behind him and called to Rosie. She came to him, jumping up onto the tray of the ute. He tossed the plastic bags on the passenger seat in the cabin and then drove back across his pastures to the farmhouse. At a distance, he stopped and let Rosie jump down from the tray. ‘Off you go,’ he said. As thin and swift as a greyhound, she raced him back home across the dry fields, her black coat shining in the sun.
Following her, he passed the shearers’ quarters on the edge of his yard. Inside this unused building, wasps built their chambered nests out of red dirt. Outside, welcome swallows nested under the roof line. He drove past the machinery sheds, then the broken-down poultry yards, empty now except for his few chickens. By the time he reached the house gate, he felt a prickling sensation in the skin of his hands. When he got out and looked at them, he saw they were tinged red. He collected his specimens and went inside the farmhouse. Rosie followed him to the back door where she stopped to drink from an old ice cream container before settling down on her blanket once again.
By now, the prickling sensation in Harold’s hands had begun to feel like a slow, deep burn. He dumped the crop specimens on his kitchen table and went to wash his hands in cold water. It made no difference. His skin had turned a dark and inflamed red while the pain continued to grow. He walked slowly back to the kitchen staring at them. The burning sensation grew to such an intensity he believed he wouldn’t be able to stand the pain. Then as mysteriously as it had started, it began to fade. By this time, his work-hardened hands were badly blistered and covered with weeping inflammations. Even though the surface sensation was less strong, he still felt the deep burn in his skin so powerfully he didn’t think he’d be able to drive.
‘Jesus,’ he said softly, staring at them. His gaze moved from his hands to the crop specimens that lay on his table where he’d thrown them. He remembered the touch of the tobacco, that faint oiliness. Nothing else came to mind as a possible cause.
As carefully as he could, he took the keys to the Cage out of his pocket and threw them on the table. They landed on the note they had come with. They were a dead man’s keys, surely. If the woman, Natalie Edwards, had been shot dead, then one of those unnamed bodies up at Pittwater must be the man who had been here with her, Jerome. For whatever reason, Stuart hadn’t been with them when they were shot. That was Stuart. A survivor.
Don’t tell Stewie you have these keys or these specimens. That was an imperative. Harold got to his feet and went to ring a neighbour to ask if someone could drive him to the local hospital. For the first time in years, he would have to see a doctor. Go to the police, the note had said. There was someone he could call on but he needed time to think the matter through and make that decision. Always Harold needed time, even when it felt like life and death.
10
On Bondi beach, swimmers body-surfed the bright water, sunbathers gleamed with lotion on the sand. Grace sat on her beach towel. She thought about her life, her own happiness (whether such a thing was possible), and Harrigan, his moods, the way they made love. His mouth on hers, the impression of each of their bodies to the other’s. Grace cradled her arms about herself in the hot sun, reliving last night’s memory, balanced on the tightrope between joy and heartbreak.
She had decided years ago there was only a thread between life and death. Live with this belief on a daily basis and happiness becomes a possibility you respect. A conundrum for you, Gracie. Are happiness and Harrigan each other’s contrariety or are they indivisible? Or both, a paradox?
Gently, she touched the dressing on her arm where the splinter of broken glass had nicked her skin. All that violence trapped in your head, Paul. Those black moods you have. The way you wake up thrashing at night. All those nightmares hung on the wall of your study where you sit in solitude and think. How do I deal with it? How do I stop it hurting me?
Even before she had met him, people had told her he was driven. In the short time that she worked for him, she had seen how he drove everyone else just as hard. He was still consumed by his work. She had thought it was an addiction, now she was sure. Stop working and he would die because he had nothing else to do. Where did she fit in? In the margins of exhaustion at the end of the day, a space between midnight and dawn. It was no place to live.
‘Gracie. I was hoping I might see you down here today. Mind if I sit down?’
Grace looked up to see Jerry Freeman, a pale figure in a yellow shirt patterned with huge orange and green pineapples, lowering himself down beside her on the sand. He dropped a worn sports bag between them and adjusted a scrappy straw hat. His shapeless polyester trousers and plastic sandals were grey against the sand.
‘What do you want? Get away from me.’
The words came out as a softly spoken visceral rejection. Her aversion and anger at his intrusion were equally mixed. The sole time Grace had met Freeman had been one morning eighteen months ago in a side street near Central station where a young sex worker, Gina Farrugia, and her petty dealer boyfriend had been found murdered. The girl had been Grace’s informant; they had met only the night before. In the grey wash of the winter dawn the two had lain against the alleyway wall while Freeman, one of the investigating officers, had grinned at Grace and quizzed her. Harrigan, waiting impatiently in the background, had later spoken to her with unconscious intensity. Leave it alone, he’d said. Whatever else she did, she should stay away from Freeman. The implication had been that he wasn’t just involved but responsible. But if that was true, he wasn’t only their murderer. As Harrigan himself had told her, Freeman had almost been his killer as well.
‘Jesus, mate, don’t look at me like that. I just want to talk to you. You can’t be frightened of me. Look at me. I’m too fucking sick!’
Fear was the last thing on Grace’s mind, her anger was stronger. But she knew he had been sick. About a year ago, Freeman had been invalided out of the force with heart disease. Frenzied rumours about his activities had followed him out the door. Three months ago, he had been hospitalised again. Grace remembered a bulky man. He had lost weight, his skin was translucent in the sun. It was a body like a curtain barely in place. He seemed so frail you could push him over with a single touch. It was hard to fear someone who looked so broken-down.