‘Did the Ice Cream Man find you out here before he went missing?’ he said. ‘I asked you that question once before and you said no. You can tell me the truth now.’
‘It’s a story, mate,’ she said. ‘If you’re in a hurry, you don’t have time for it now.’
‘Did anyone follow him here?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Because right now, I think he’s out there. He didn’t come here for you, he came for me. I’ve got something he wants. But now he’s here, he won’t mind finishing you and your kids off as well.’
‘Fuck!’ She hit the table. Her fingers were stained with nicotine. ‘I knew he’d fucking come back for us.’
She pushed past him, opened the door to the second room and switched on the light. There were the confused sounds of children crying.
‘Get up, all of you. Get your shoes. We’re getting out of here right now. Laurie, get your little sister. Come on, hurry. No, Little Man, don’t pick that up. Come on!’
They tumbled out of the room, still pulling on their clothes and shoes. Laurie, a boy of eleven; Jen, a tiny girl of eight; and the youngest, Little Man, five years old and golden-haired like a cherub. They were sleepy and frightened. Most of their lives, they had been pushed from one bit of makeshift accommodation to another. Quickly, Ambrosine took them outside. Harrigan sat them all in the cabin of the ute.
‘Mate,’ Harold said quietly, ‘I didn’t hear or see a car on the Creek Lane. But I did hear something in the distance. Sounded like it was coming from the north. On the other side of the house. I thought I heard Rosie barking as well.’
‘We’re all getting out of here as soon as we can,’ Harrigan said. ‘I’ll take us to Coolemon in my car. Drive straight back to your garage, Harry. Give me your shotgun. I’ll ride in the back.’
He climbed onto the tray of the ute and pounded on the window for Harold to go. The ute roared across the paddocks, bouncing over the ground, forcing Harrigan to hang on for dear life. They had driven through the last open gate before the house when the ute suddenly lurched to the right, almost upending itself. It shuddered to a halt with its right front wheel snagged deep in the ground. Harrigan was rolled hard against the side of the tray. He lay against it for a few moments getting his breath, then scrambled out, the shotgun in hand. They were on the edge of the old garden beds at the front of the house.
Immediately, Harrigan went to the cabin door on the passenger side. Before he got there, it was pushed open by Laurie. The boy climbed out. Harrigan leaned the shotgun against the ute and lifted out the other two children. Little Man was bawling loudly enough to wake the dead. Jen tried to comfort him but he pushed her away. Ambrosine was next.
‘You’re heavy,’ Harrigan said.
‘I’ll be heavier if I’m dead.’
Harold had got out the other side and was leaning on the vehicle for support.
‘We’re lucky we didn’t go all the way over,’ he said, one hand on his forehead. ‘I cracked my head.’
‘Cracked your head?’ Ambrosine laughed loudly and went and grabbed him by the arm. ‘Fucking Christ, Harry. Can’t you drive?’
‘It was my hands. They were hurting too much.’
‘Keep it quiet! Get your kids in the house now.’ Harrigan spoke as quietly and urgently as he could. ‘Harry, take your shotgun. I’m going to get my car out of the garage. I’ll drive it to the back gate and pick you all up there.’
Harold took the shotgun and went towards the front door with the others. Harrigan walked quietly to the kitchen end of the house, past a thick-trunked old sugar gum whose branches extended above the veranda over the roof. Suddenly, he heard a scuffle behind him and turned to look back. Harold was gesturing to him. Before Harrigan could work out what he meant, he laid the shotgun on the edge of the veranda and sat down abruptly as if too shaky to stand. Ambrosine began to help him to his feet. Harrigan waved at them to get into the house as soon as possible.
The night air was warm. Harrigan stepped up on the veranda, staying close to the house and moving carefully in case the wooden boards creaked. Just before the corner, he stopped and took out his gun. From here, he could see Harold’s ancient rotary clothes hoist, the house fence and beyond that the garage and the yard. Everything was still. It was deeply silent. Too silent. At once, he realised what Harold had been trying to tell him. Rosie wasn’t barking. She should have been barking from the time the ute had arrived at the house. It should have been the first thing they heard. Silence is death. Someone had found a way of silencing her.
In the darkness, Harrigan almost stopped breathing. He turned off his phone in case it rang in the silence. How could you find me? Standing there, tense to every sound, he became aware of a small nugget of pain near the strap of his shoulder holster. He touched it, then reached into his shirt pocket to take out the thick gold badge he had been given at Life Patent Strategies that morning. When the ute had nearly overturned, he must have rolled onto it, pressing it into his chest. Until now, he had forgotten about it. What better way of smuggling a tracking device into his car than by pinning it to his shirt? He put the badge on the window sill beside him. Thought.
Assuming it was Grace’s gunman waiting for him somewhere out there, he would have found Harrigan’s car in the garage, which meant Harrigan was coming back. Unless he was blind and deaf, he would have seen and heard Harold’s ute coming across the fields and heard them all arrive, no trouble. He must have worked out that somehow the ute was no longer functioning.
The scenarios were these. He would either ambush Harrigan’s car on its way back to Coolemon or sabotage it beforehand so that it broke down in the middle of nowhere. In the isolation, he would pick off as many of the passengers as he could. If his purpose was getting hold of the tape, then he would try and take Harrigan alive, although not necessarily in one piece. If he was winged in the shoulder, the way the Ice Cream Man had been, he would be much easier to deal with. Or he might shoot everyone here in the backyard just as soon as they walked out of the house to the car. Leave the bodies to be found by whoever, whenever. Again, disable Harrigan so he could be dealt with more easily. An experienced gunman with the right weapon could do it.
Either way, this person would be waiting where he could see Harrigan approach the garage to get his car. In the pepper trees that lined the south-western side of the house. That vantage point would give the watcher a full view of the yard and enough of the back door to see anyone going in and out.
Leaving the LPS badge behind, Harrigan turned and silently made his way down to the other end of the house. From the front veranda, the ruined gardens were ghostly in the moonlight. He moved towards the pepper trees, the bulk of the house water tank providing him with cover while he crossed to the open space. There was too much leaf litter under the thick line of trees to walk silently. Very carefully, he moved through them to the bare ground on the other side, waiting for a shot or a blow to the head, even for Death to touch his shoulder and say ‘Time, please’. Nothing happened.
On the other side of the trees, he saw a white car parked where it was invisible to the house, under the grove of coral gums that had once been part of Mrs Morrissey’s gardens. It was too far away for him to get its registration number.
Slowly, Harrigan moved along the line of pepper trees, keeping close in to the shadows and stooping to get a view closer to the ground. Then he saw who he was looking for. On the other side of the water tank, a man was crouching in the trees where he had a clear view of the back of the house and the yard, his firearm at the ready. It had a scope, presumably with night vision. Harrigan raised his own gun. Whoever this man was, he wanted him alive.