Darkening Skies Read online

  She ducked back in through the kitchen to the family room beyond it. The smoke wasn’t too thick here yet, but the low sunlight from the western window highlighted the haze, with small particles floating in the sun’s rays.

  The pine cabinet she remembered stood in the same place, with its eclectic mix of family treasures. It held nothing of monetary value: a worn, patched teddy bear; a scratched and dented flute; a linen tablecloth embroidered by Mark’s grandmother – pieces of family history that insurance could never replace.

  As she opened the cabinet door the house shuddered with a rumble; part of the structure collapsed, showering her with dust and shattering several of the window panes.

  It took just ten, fifteen, twenty seconds to lay a few things on the tablecloth and draw the corners together in a bundle. A crackling growl crawled along the ceiling above her – the force of the collapse must have blasted fire through the roof cavity. No more time. She ran for the external door, her eyes watering heavily, and barrelled into a yellow-coated fireman, a wall of muscle.

  He swore and gripped a hand around her arm.

  ‘I’m okay,’ she said, but he kept hold of her arm, through the door and into the fresher air outside away from the house.

  She dragged a hand across her eyes to relieve the stinging, and focused on the fireman to see her cousin Paul’s face, framed by the protective helmet. Tall and straight and serious, the image of the war-hero grandfather both he and Paula had been named after.

  ‘Jenn! What the hell were you thinking, going in there?’

  ‘There were three rooms between me and the fire.’ That was what she’d been thinking, and it had seemed logical, a few minutes ago. Maybe smoke was addling her brain. Paul snorted and continued to walk briskly around to the terrace. ‘Paul, your dad—’

  ‘Mark just told me. Thanks for getting him out of there. But don’t you dare go near the fire again, not for anything, you hear me?’

  She might have reminded him she wasn’t a kid anymore, but they’d reached the table where Jim lay, an oxygen mask on his face, and Paul’s attention had switched to his father.

  ‘He’s breathing okay, Paul, and his heart-rate and blood pressure are stable,’ Beth said. ‘The ambulance will be here in a couple of minutes. Do you want to go in to Birraga with him?’

  ‘I can’t yet. Jenn, can you go with him? I’ll come in as soon as I’m finished here.’

  ‘I don’t—’ I don’t want to. Jenn bit back the words and nodded. ‘Yes. I can do that.’ Her fingers closed around her car keys in her pocket, and she handed them to Paul. ‘If my car is okay, could you bring in my bag? I’ll need my wallet and my phone if possible.’

  Paul nodded, giving his father’s uninjured shoulder a brief squeeze before he turned away, stony-faced, back to his duties.

  Jenn watched her uncle’s chest rise and fall. Too many years since she’d seen him, and age and worry had greyed his hair, carved lines into his face. Barrett men didn’t do emotion but Jim had always been kind to her in his own way. Unlike his brother and sister-in-law, who had scarcely given a damn about the orphan niece in their care.

  She wasn’t much good at emotion either – dealing with it or expressing it – but she reached out and gently clasped his rough, work-worn hand, avoiding the bruising that darkened his knuckles. ‘Your boys still need you, Jim,’ she murmured. ‘So, don’t you dare die, you hear me?’

  A jet of water hit the corrugated-iron roof in a roar of hissing steam, the sounds melding with the rumble of pumps and engines and the rolling thunder of the flames into a nightmare cacophony, drowning out all but the most immediate thoughts.

  Sweltering in his fire-fighting gear, Mark targeted his hose at the burning rubble inside his office. Beams and twisted iron from the collapsed roof piled high on the remains of furniture and walls.

  The RFS crews from Dungirri and Birraga aimed at the roof with their higher-pressure hoses, fighting to control the fire spreading through and consuming the old wooden beams. The entire original section of the homestead might be lost, maybe more. The knowledge drove them all – as did the forecast threat of westerly winds during the evening, and dry paddocks all around that a single ember could ignite.

  Mark blasted water on to a sheet of corrugated iron to cool it before dragging it aside to reach the burning remains of bookshelves underneath it. He worked systematically: douse them; extinguish the flames and embers; tackle the next pile. The adrenaline pumping through his body and the years of training kept him moving, working in the cocoon of heat and smoke and noise. Beyond awareness of the fire, the other fire-fighters and the work they did right now, he didn’t think.

  He made himself not think of Jenn facing the fire, unprotected, with only a fire extinguisher. Nor of Jim, his friend, mentor, valued employee, lying so still.

  In the remains of the formal living room, the antique dresser stood scorched amid the ceiling debris, the glass doors smashed, dented Royal Agricultural Show trophies and the charred remnants of champion ribbons strewn around. A century and a half of Marrayin history. Fifty years of Strelitz history. Gone up in flames.

  Mark dragged his eyes away from the blackened awards. Fight the fire before anything else was lost. Questions, emotions and picking up the pieces had to wait.

  When his tank of water ran dry he backed out of the house, coiling the hose as he went.

  Paul Barrett, seemingly everywhere in his supervision of the fire crews, came to join him by the trailer. ‘You going for a refill?’ Mark nodded.

  ‘Birraga West brigade’s almost here,’ Paul said, always serious, never one to waste words. But the strain that had entered their friendship since their meeting yesterday showed in the stiffness of his body language. ‘The breeze is picking up, so we’ll probably get spotting. Can you move Jenn’s car and then look after any spots? I’ll send someone to help.’ The ambulance appeared from around the back and edged around the far side of the garage, its emergency lights flicking on as it headed away, along the driveway.

  ‘They’re taking Dad to Birraga,’ Paul said gruffly. ‘I don’t know if we can save the house, but at least he’s alive and stable.’

  ‘Whatever he needs, just do it. I’ll cover any extra expenses.’ He’d manage it, somehow, even without the parliamentary salary that had kept Marrayin and the other properties going these past years.

  Paul had no shortage of the Barrett stubbornness. ‘We’re not a bloody charity.’

  Mark understood that it was pride talking, and grief, and anger. ‘He’s employed by Strelitz Pastoral, Paul, and covered by workers’ comp, and he’s also a valued friend.’

  ‘And what if he did it?’ Paul challenged. ‘Lit the fire?’

  Mark looked him squarely in the eye. ‘I don’t believe that any more than you do. Listen, I know all the Barretts have got good reason to be pissed off with me, but Jim is no arsonist. If he was, he’d do a damn sight better job of it than this.’

  Jenn hated hospitals. She especially hated Birraga hospital, and the hazy, shock-shadowed memories of a helpless child watching paramedics and nurses work frantically on her mother’s bloodied body, the harrowing images of her father’s death playing repeatedly in her mind, raw and inescapable.

  An adult could deal with it, she told herself now. She could deal with it. Put those memories in their rightful time and place and keep her perspective on the present. But the redeveloped emergency department remained too small to escape the sights and sounds of loved ones being assessed, and the hard plastic chairs could never be comfortable.

  With nothing to do but wait and keep the memories at bay, she itched for her phone, her laptop, even a notebook and pen to write down this story, the objective facts and events so she could de-personalise it, make sense of it all. The home of former federal MP Mark Strelitz was today badly damaged in what is believed to be a deliberately lit fire. Property manager Jim Barrett, 65, of Dungirri, was injured and is in a stable condition in Birraga hospital. Detectives are …
r />   Here. The man asking for her at the nurses’ station wore a plain white shirt and dark trousers, but the weapon on his hip marked him as police even before he approached and introduced himself.

  ‘Jennifer Barrett? I’m Detective Sergeant Steve Fraser.’ He gave her a firm handshake and a cop’s assessing look. ‘How’s Jim doing?’

  Jim – not your uncle or Mr Barrett or something similarly formal. Small towns, rural communities – she hoped he didn’t only know Jim because of his youngest son’s arrest and conviction. ‘He’s still unconscious. They’re taking him to radiology for scans now.’

  ‘Good. Can you spare a few minutes to tell me what happened?’

  ‘Yes.’ Anything had to be better than just sitting and waiting.

  He ran a quick eye over the others in the emergency department – the kid with the broken arm and his father, the dizzy elderly lady and her daughter – and indicated the exit.

  ‘There’s a garden outside where it’s quiet. Let’s talk there.’

  Close to the solstice, it wasn’t yet dark, the light tinged with gold. Long shadows stretched across the grassed area between hospital buildings. The sweet scent of honeysuckle hovered in the air. Detective Fraser chose one of the outdoor tables, and although she would have placed him in his mid-thirties, with a toned and fit-looking body, he eased down on to the bench seat with a suggestion of weariness in his movements.

  ‘So, Ms Barrett, I presume you’re the Jennifer Barrett? International award-winning journalist?’

  She inclined her head. ‘Yes.’

  She didn’t ask how he knew. Not many people recognised her outside the frame of a TV screen, but Dungirri was a small town and some of the older folk probably still proudly claimed her as one of their own.

  ‘Jim’s spoken of you,’ Fraser said. ‘And sometimes I have time to watch the news. I guess you’re here because of Mark’s announcement?’

  ‘I am. I have questions I want answered.’

  An almost-grin cracked the hard lines of his face. ‘You and me both,’ he said dryly. ‘So, take me through what happened today. What time did you arrive at Marrayin?’

  He didn’t make notes but he listened attentively while she recounted the events in order, facts only, clear and precise. A detective who referred to Mark by his first name might be a useful contact, so she would give him the information he needed now, freely and fully.

  ‘You said you saw the intruder?’ He interrupted her to clarify. ‘Can you describe him?’

  ‘I only saw a silhouette, blurred through the textured glass in the window. I had the impression of a man in a light-coloured top and darker trousers, but I can’t give you more detail than that.’

  ‘How long after you saw him did you enter the house?’

  ‘Maybe three or four minutes. I went around the back to see if he or anyone else was there.’

  When she described finding Jim, barely conscious, and dragging him away from the fire, the panic she’d suppressed at the time rose again and threatened her steadiness.

  ‘Take your time,’ the detective said, and she regained control by concentrating on him, on observing his body language and responses to assess how he interpreted what she told him. Usually she asked the questions; she knew the techniques, the tricks, the ways to draw a subject into saying what they didn’t want to say.

  Steve Fraser was cool and confident, and although he listened carefully he didn’t necessarily believe her. He listened to find the holes in her story.

  ‘You seem pretty familiar with the place,’ he said, when she told him about remembering the fire extinguisher in the kitchen and using it to slow the fire.

  He might be on first-name terms with some of the locals now, but he couldn’t know all the history. ‘When I was a teenager, my uncle worked on the property and we lived in one of the cottages. Paula and I were good friends with Mark. We used to spend a lot of time in the homestead.’

  ‘The three of you were friends? But you didn’t go into Birraga with them on the night of the accident?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’ Clear and truthful, and she could give him a legitimate reason why, even if she kept the real reason to herself. ‘A friend of Paula’s was playing in a band at the Royal Hotel and she wanted to see him. I wasn’t eighteen, and anyway, I had other things to do.’

  ‘Did you see them before they left?’

  She recognised the real question: Did she know if Mark had been drinking? ‘No.’ Another truthful answer. ‘I saw him about five o’clock that afternoon. But I was out when he came to pick up Paula around eight o’clock.’ Out on purpose. Sitting by her mother’s grave in the Dungirri cemetery, walking home afterwards in the last light of the long summer day.

  ‘You lived with Mick and his wife?’

  ‘Yes. They were my guardians after my parents died.’

  Fraser grimaced in a show of silent sympathy. Clearly he knew Mick. ‘Why Mick and not Jim?’

  The explanation she’d been given, time and again, remained carved in her memory. ‘A single father with two teenage sons was not considered a suitable placement for a twelve-year-old girl.’

  ‘Was Mick as wrecked then as he is now?’

  More sympathy, or a leading question to assess her and establish her history in the district? ‘I haven’t seen or spoken to him since I left Dungirri after Paula’s funeral. I’d have described him then as a bitter non-achiever who blamed his lack of success on everyone and everything but his own weaknesses.’

  Damn it, a little more emotion there than she’d intended to reveal. Yes, she was bitter, too. But she’d left it mostly behind her, hadn’t let it hold her back from achieving her goals.

  Fraser had to have noticed, but kept his expression bland. ‘What about Mick’s wife? I’ve not heard much about her.’

  ‘Shotgun wedding, hopeless marriage,’ Jenn answered without emotion. ‘Doctor Russell had half the women in Dungirri doped to oblivion on anti-depressants, and Freda was one of them. Paula remembered her when she was younger, more together, but I only knew her as a vague, absent woman. She died some years ago.’ Unmourned, as far as Jenn was concerned. She’d sent flowers to the funeral out of respect for Paula’s memory. That was it. She shoved away the unexpected spike of old anger and pinned the detective with a firm gaze. ‘I don’t see how these questions are relevant to your current investigation, Detective.’

  He shrugged off the rebuff. ‘As a result of the new information Mark provided to the Police Commissioner yesterday, the investigation into your cousin’s death has been reopened and I’m preparing a brief for the Assistant Commissioner. Given Mark’s public announcement this morning, I have to consider that the fire may be connected. So, everything is relevant.’

  Especially the presence of two of Paula’s relatives at the scene before witnesses arrived. Oh, yes, she could read him. The sympathy, the soft approach. He wanted her to slip up, to incriminate herself or Jim.

  ‘My uncle has suffered a head injury, presumably inflicted by the man I saw. Jim’s worked for the Strelitz family for many years. There is no way he would have lit that fire.’

  Fraser lounged against the back of the bench. ‘Sweetheart, I can’t tell you how often I hear friends and family protest that so-and-so couldn’t have committed a crime. Jim was there, he has motive, and he also has a history – he and his boys laid into Gil Gillespie when he first came back to town a few months ago.’

  Oh, that very deliberate sweetheart annoyed her. Exactly as he intended. She unclenched her teeth and aimed to correct the record.

  ‘I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Detective. It was Sean and his mafia mates who assaulted Gillespie. Not Jim and Paul.’

  He dismissed her objection with a shake of his head. ‘You obviously aren’t up to date with all the family news. Days before Sean’s “mafia mates” got hold of Gillespie, your male relatives had an impromptu welcome-back party for him when they ran into him at the pub. Luckily for them, Gillespie refused to make a complain
t.’

  Jenn swallowed back her humiliation. ‘If Jim had issues with Mark, he’d have it out with him face to face, as he apparently did with Gillespie, not inflict wanton destruction.’

  ‘And what about you? You were there, and it could be said that you have motive, too.’

  His goading words sparked her overload of stress and frustration into barely contained rage. ‘Detective,’ she said coldly, choosing her words with care, ‘I’m an experienced journalist. In the same way that you most likely know how any number of corrupt actions could be taken, although you wouldn’t take them yourself, I know exactly how the reputation of a man like Mark Strelitz could be dragged through the mud and left there, whether the police investigation finds him lily-white or not. So, believe me, if I wanted to destroy Mark, I’d choose a far more effective way than setting fire to his house.’

  Before Fraser could answer, his phone beeped and a single glance at the screen wiped the smug grin from his face. With a quick apology he excused himself and moved away to take the call.

  Jenn dropped her head into her hands at the table and fumed. That damned cocky, good-at-his-job detective had undermined her control with a few well-placed barbs. And she’d let him rile her and probably come across as a vindictive bitch, although she’d meant to stress the opposite. There were strategies she would never take. Not even if Mark proved to be a lying, manipulative bastard, responsible for Paula’s death.

  The bright white lights of the hospital blurred Mark’s vision after the half-hour drive in the darkness, his tired eyes gritty from smoke and his gut churning. Now the buzz of engines and pumps and voices in his ears had become machine beeps and the clattering of medical trolleys and the low urgent voices of the emergency department, dealing with someone in crisis.

  The elderly woman sleeping on one bed, and the child with a wrist brace sitting up in another clearly weren’t the crisis. It took him a moment to locate Jenn, standing by a wall, staring at a curtained-off cubicle, her arms wrapped tightly around herself and her face as white as the bandage on her hand.