Flare-up: a tense, taut mystery (A Cam Fraser mystery) Read online

  CONTENTS

  Prologue: Monday

  Chapter One: Monday, one week later

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight: Tuesday

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen: Wednesday

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen: Thursday

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Friday

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Saturday evening

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Early Sunday morning

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: One week later

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Felicity Young

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  Monday

  ‘You’re not going to let me down, are you, mate? I mean, you’re not scared or anything?’ Jack’s voice hissed through the darkness like sandpaper on wood.

  ‘Not if all we do is talk, like you said.’ Unable to face his companion, Pizzle directed his answer to the giant dog resting her head on his bare knee. The combination of heat and fur made the skin on his leg itch, but he couldn’t bring himself to push her away.

  ‘Shane’s a liability, you know that. He’s been ripping us off, blabbing about us,’ Jack said.

  Pizzle’s heart seemed to stop beating. He tried to swallow but couldn’t find the spit. ‘Are you sure?’ he croaked.

  ‘We wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t sure. The man keeps secrets like he keeps farts.’

  That didn’t sound like the Shane Pizzle knew. As far as he was concerned, Shane was almost as secretive and terrifying as Jack. ‘Yeah, but, once Shane’s got the money he’ll clear off, like you said.’

  Jack said nothing for a moment, sniffed the air. ‘Christ, you stink! I can even smell you through me cold. Don’t you believe in deodorant?’

  Pizzle wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his blue flannel shirt, all too aware of the sour bite of his own sweat in the air. ‘Course I do. I can’t help it, it’s hotter ‘n hell in here. I don’t know how them early shearers survived in sheds like this.’

  He tried to make out Jack’s face through the grainy darkness but all he could see was a blur of indistinct features, a sinister shadow in the dark. Yet the lack of light put his other senses into overdrive. He registered the smallest of details: the creak of timbers, the whispering of the gum trees in the driveway, a rat scuttling along the beam above him. Something, a knot of wood or a worn nail, jabbed him in the leg, forcing him to adjust his position on the shed floor. ‘You got the money, then?’ he asked Jack as he fidgeted, fighting to keep the tremor from his voice.

  ‘Yup.’ Jack patted his hip pocket and took a wheezing breath. ‘But it might not be quite as simple as buying him out, you with me?’

  ‘No violence, Jack. You said no violence.’

  ‘Not as far as I’m concerned, but you know what Shane’s like. I need to be sure you’ll back me up if he gets stroppy. He might not be too happy with what I’ve got to tell him. I mean, everyone knows how the organisation feels about people who don’t pull their weight or can’t be trusted. Shane might go off his chops before he even hears how fair the deal really is.’

  Jack spoke as if what he was saying in his head were different from what was coming out of his mouth. Pizzle could usually tell what Jack was thinking but now all he caught was the occasional glimmer from the other man’s eye, like light off a dull blade.

  Jack took the inhaler from his top pocket and took some desperate sucks. When he’d finished he leaned into a nearby wool bale and closed his eyes as if to have a kip.

  The minutes dragged on while Pizzle attempted to process the meaning behind Jack’s words. His senses continued to torment him; it was as if the shed itself were breathing out accusations. The clatter of a falling gum nut on the tin roof: Thief. The creaking of the cooling timbers: Grass. The sighing of the warm breeze in the eaves: Judas. Pizzle clamped his hands over his ears to stop himself from screaming back at the voices in his head.

  Jack’s resumption of their conversation was a welcome relief.

  ‘He might still get scared and then he could do anything. That’s why they wanted you here too, just in case.’

  Pizzle swiped at the sweat on his forehead. ‘He won’t get stroppy when he sees the money, but.’

  ‘Yeah, still . . . I need you here tonight, Pizz.’ The double-talk seemed to be over now, and Pizzle caught an uncharacteristic touch of vulnerability in the other man’s voice. Jack’s grey shape shifted, and the flash of a white handkerchief could be seen moving in the vicinity of his nose before he gave it a fruity blow.

  ‘You crook or something?’ Pizzle asked, forgetting his own problems for a moment.

  ‘Shithouse. Getting flu, I reckon; me breathing’s playing up something chronic.’

  ‘That’s too bad. You sound like you should be in bed, mate.’

  The sound of a car crunching on the gravel outside put an end to further commiserations. As the silver beams of headlights sliced through the shed door, both men held their breath. The dog pricked her ears and rumbled a mean growl.

  Then darkness surged around them again.

  ‘Must be him.’ Pizzle pulled himself up, stiff from sitting. About to head for the shed door, he was stopped short by Jack’s hand on his arm.

  ‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing, idjit?’

  ‘Turning the light on, just so he knows we’re here.’

  ‘Jesus Christ! He already knows we’re here. I arranged it with him. We don’t want everyone in the district knowing about us, do we?’

  Then Jack laughed as if trying to smooth out the rough edges of his words. Taking Pizzle’s jaw in one hand, he clamped Pizzle’s cheeks and squeezed them into a fish face, like he always did when he was joking around. Pizzle shrugged out of the other man’s grasp, punched his shoulder and attempted to grin through the burning tightness of his cheeks. The waiting in the dark, the whispers, the mystery . . . it was all a game — wasn’t it?

  ‘I’ve been a good mate to you, haven’t I, Pizz?’

  ‘The best.’

  ‘Done a lot to help out. You and your missus would never have been able to buy this place without me. I mean, it was me that got you the job in the first place, wasn’t it?’

  Rita’s inheritance had helped buy the place, but Pizzle sensed this was no time to quibble. ‘Yup. I’m real grateful for that.’

  A car door slammed, footsteps scuffed across the dirt outside the shed. Jack put his fingers to his lips. ‘Shhh, here he comes. Follow my lead.’

  Pizzle and the dog followed Jack as he stepped out from behind the wool bales.

  Shane’s first step upon the slatted wooden floor was softened by nearly two hundred years of lanolin and sheep shit.
He stood there motionless, his silhouette almost blocking the milky moonlight coming through the open door. Pizzle sensed rather than saw Shane’s stare, and it felt like a rat scampering up his backbone.

  Shane finally tore his gaze away from Pizzle and kneed the sniffing dog. ‘We ready?’ he asked Jack. There was a cocky lilt to his voice, not like someone with a guilty conscience was supposed to sound at all.

  Jack nodded back.

  Pizzle glanced from one man to the other and licked his dry lips. ‘What — what are you fellas on about? Ready for what?’

  ‘Now’s as good a time as any, I reckon.’ Jack spoke to Shane as if Pizzle weren’t there, glancing around as though looking for something. ‘I won’t use me knife this time,’ he added as he reached over and took something metallic from the top of a wool bale.

  Pizzle opened his mouth. ‘Kni . . .’ But the eerie shadows across Jack’s face made his voice stall in his throat. He took a sharp breath, aware of a sudden rush of odour from his armpits. ‘Oh, God! Oh, Jesus!’ he yelled, whirling from one to the other of the men.

  A thread of light on a raised metal hook was all he saw before Jack buried it in his flesh.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Monday, one week later

  Like a malignant spirit, the odour of decay hung in the air, seeping through clothing and skin, airways and cells, until Cameron Fraser felt it must be exuding from his very breath.

  ‘Is this the last one, Rita?’ he asked, breathing through his mouth as he hauled the reluctant merino from the pen. Holding the sheep between his knees, he looked up from his stooped position and watched his companion put crosses through the last of the chalk marks on the blackboard.

  ‘Yeah,’ Rita said. ‘How does it look?’

  Cam didn’t even need a glance at the trembling animal to answer her. ‘Another one, I’m afraid.’ He lifted up a clump of stinking wool and saw the writhing threads beneath it. ‘When we’re finished here I’ll get rid of that dead sheep under the shed too if you like.’ He reached for the shears.

  ‘Thanks, Cam, but I’m not sure what we can do with it. We can’t burn it because of the fire ban, and we can’t bury it because the ground’s too hard.’

  ‘I’ll tow it into the valley for the foxes. Leave it to me — you’ll only get more struck sheep if it stays here.’

  Cam worked his way through the good wool, satisfied with the highway of pink skin the electric shears left in their wake. As he neared the sheep’s rear end, though, the skin became blacker, the wool turning from fluffy white to moist green. He sliced through the wriggling maggots, exposing their peppered holes. Rita handed him the fly-strike spray and it bubbled and frothed as more maggots dropped to the ground.

  The day was hot as a sauna; even the shed seemed to be complaining. Every now and then it creaked and groaned, sending showers of rust pattering from the tin roof to the brim of Cam’s Akubra.

  ‘She’ll live,’ he said at last, pushing the treated sheep down the chute to join its naked companions. He straightened, stretched the kinks out of his back and clipped the electric shears back onto the rig. Then he rolled up his sleeves and headed for the hose, which was curled tight as a snake on the wall outside the door.

  ‘Don’t drink that water, Cam,’ Rita said as he reached for the spigot. ‘It’ll be brown and rusty, that tap doesn’t get used much. There’s fresh water in the Esky.’

  Cam helped himself to a bottle and took a long draught before pouring some of the icy water over himself, scratching it into his hair and shaking his head like a dog.

  Rita clutched a broom to her body as she watched him, standing rigid against it. ‘I’m really grateful for this, Cam. I just wish I’d noticed the fly-blown sheep sooner.’

  ‘It’s that time of year, everyone’s having problems with fly strike,’ he replied as he mopped the water off his face with his shirt.

  ‘But they should’ve been sheared weeks ago. Darren usually does it late January, but this year he was so stressed out with other things he got none of the usual chores done.’

  Cam tucked his shirt back into his jeans as he recalled the panicked message left by Rita’s husband, Darren, otherwise known as Pizzle, on his answering machine: ‘Cam, I’m in a bit of trouble. I need to talk to you.’ But when had Pizzle not been in trouble? By the time he’d got around to returning the call, Pizzle had vanished. Now Cam’s stomach churned as if it were full of broken glass.

  ‘Anything new from the police?’ he asked. He reached for another broom that was leaning against the wall, unable to keep his gaze on the thin woman in the ill-fitting jeans and faded pink T-shirt.

  Startled by Cam’s sudden movement, the huge dog asleep at Rita’s side sprang to her feet. She stared back at him and growled, her hackles forming a spiked mane around her neck, eyes sucking him in like black holes. He’d been aware of the dog when he’d started the shearing earlier, but she had been lying against the stone wall since then, so still and silent he’d forgotten she was there.

  ‘It’s all right, Cam. Ignore Bella, she won’t hurt you,’ Rita said.

  Cam carefully leaned the broom back against the wall and squatted on his haunches, whistling softly. ‘Come here, Bella, come on. Good girl.’

  The dog stared at him, unmoving.

  ‘Anatolian Shepherd?’ he asked, not taking his eyes off the dog, but not looking her in the eye either — do that to a vicious or nervous dog and you’re in trouble.

  ‘Yeah, she’s not very obedient. We got her from a bloke who used her to guard his sheep, so she’s never had much training and not too good with strangers. She’s getting better since she’s been with us. I haven’t the heart to leave her alone in a paddock with the sheep day and night.’

  Cam whistled again. ‘Bella.’

  After a glance at her mistress, the dog slunk over to Cam, trailing her aggression behind her like a faint shadow. His cautious pats of her head were well received, and soon he’d built up to a vigorous body massage, digging his fingers into the thick, sandy pelt. Now Bella’s curled tail rotated like a chopper blade. With pink tongue lolling, the dog seemed to be smiling at him.

  Once the public-relations exercise was complete, Cam joined Rita in sweeping the spoiled wool into a corner of the shed. Bella returned to where she had been lying and collapsed to the ground like an imploding building, spiralling a cloud of dust motes along a shaft of sunlight to the roof.

  There seemed to be more spoiled wool abandoned in the corner than good wool in the wool press, Cam noticed as he swept. He doubted whether Rita and Pizzle Pilkington would even make enough to cover the year’s stock-feed bill, but at least he’d saved her from having to pay a shearer. He did a general sweep of the shed, adding ruined hay, dried pellets of sheep shit, empty Ratsak boxes, assorted plastic rubbish and old baling twine to the pile.

  Rita had returned to thoughts of her husband. ‘The vet was the last to see Darren, I told the cops that. He came over to give Bella her vaccinations when I was at the Guild meeting.’ She rubbed one side of her face. Fine lines criss-crossed her cheeks, like marks on a cutting block. ‘He always comes to us,’ she added. ‘Bella hates the car.’

  ‘Which vet do you use?’

  ‘You know, that funny hippy one, calls himself HK.’

  ‘I’ve never met him.’

  ‘Oh, haven’t you?’ She paused. ‘He used to go out with Jo.’

  Cam, supressing any sign of interest, continued to sweep.

  Rita made a nervous humming sound as if she wanted to take back what she’d just said. When Cam still didn’t reply, she continued with a hurry in her voice.

  ‘The vet said that Darren seemed uptight about something, but when I told that new cop, What’s His Name, he just brushed it off. He said he’s lost count of the number of middle-aged men he’s known who just up and left with no explanation. Says Missing Persons is just full of them.’

  Cam had said something similar to her only a few days ago. Now he asked, ‘Did you tell Sergeant Harris
about the phone call I got from Pizz — Darren?’ He always tried to avoid the derogatory schoolboy nickname in front of Rita.

  ‘Yes, but he didn’t seem to think it was important.’ Rita leaned the broom against the wall and plucked at the stretched neck of her T-shirt. ‘He seems to think Darren’s taken off with another woman, says the signs are all there. I wish you were still in charge, Cam, he’s really hard to talk to.’

  ‘He’s not used to country policing, that’s all. Still learning the ropes.’

  Cam had only met his successor once, after his discharge from hospital, when his arm was still in the sling from the snakebite. A few years younger than Cam, with pale and freckled skin, Sergeant Harris had a reputation as a dependable city cop, despite looking as if he’d just stepped from behind a bank counter.

  Rita said, ‘I was chatting to Leanne the other day. She said she couldn’t believe her ears when he asked someone at the cattle show what kind of a tractor a Limousin was.’

  Cam grinned. ‘He’ll learn fast when he tries to climb aboard one.’

  Rita cleared her throat. ‘Is there any chance you’ll be coming back?’

  He hesitated over his reply, visualising his letter of resignation on the dashboard of his ute; the ink on the envelope was already fading in the sun.

  ‘No,’ he said finally.

  ‘But you’re better now, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yup, passed the medical tests last week.’ Cam flexed his left arm; the shearing had left it stiff and sore but still quite functional.

  ‘Then why . . .’

  ‘Time for a change, Rita.’

  ‘That’s what Sergeant Harris said about Darren. Said maybe he just needed a change, that it was some kind of a mid-life crisis thing. But what do you think, Cam? Do you think he’s left me for someone else?’

  Cam had known Pizzle since they were kids. That he’d held any appeal for a woman like Rita was surprise enough, but two women in his life would be nothing short of a miracle. Then again, Cam thought with a hidden smile, people might have been justified in saying the same about Jo and him.

  The irritating tapping of rust on his head started up again. He took off his Akubra and ran his hand through his wavy, greying hair. As he tried to think up a tactful answer, he turned his hat in his hands. Something pale moving on the brim caught his eye. When he flicked it with his finger a thick cluster of maggots rained to the floor. It seemed the tapping on his hat had not been rust at all.