‘N-no one,’ I stammered. It was the wrong thing to say. Next thing I knew, he’d grabbed me by the hair.
‘Ouch! Yeow!’
‘Who did you call?’ His broken nose and bushy brows swam in front of me; I could hardly see them through the tears that had sprung to my eyes. ‘Didja call the copth? Didja?’
‘No!’
whump! He drove my head into the floor. It happened so fast that I only realised what he’d done a second or two after he’d done it. The pain wasn’t as bad as the shock, at first. I felt a weird sensation, as if my eyeballs were bouncing off the inside of my skull (which they were, I suppose). But then the pain hit while Danny was hauling me up again. I think he may have wanted to hammer my head against the floor. And all the time he was shouting questions, which I couldn’t possibly have answered. Not with my brain sloshing around like a heap of wet clothes in a tumble dryer.
I was lucky that Reuben appeared. If he hadn’t, I probably would have ended up like that poor sod across the hall.
‘Stop it!’ Reuben shrieked. He must have jumped on Danny, though I didn’t see it. I had my eyes shut. There was a tug at my hair and then Danny let go. I heard thuds and shouts as the floorboards quaked beneath me. I was close enough to smell the sweat and feel the vibrations. Someone hit a wall: cr-r-runch. The dogs were barking hysterically. Then one of them gave a startled yip, followed by a whimper.
I curled into a ball, shielding myself from the swaying, staggering bodies.
‘You want me to? Huh?’ Reuben yelled. ‘I’ll do it! I will!’
Something went click – and suddenly the fighting stopped. There were no more creaks or grunts. All I could hear was the sound of panting. Even the dogs were silent.
I opened my eyes and saw Reuben. He was clinging to Danny’s back, looking like a shell on a tortoise. Danny was bent almost double, clawing at the arm that was wrapped around his neck from behind. In his right hand Reuben held the pistol, which was rammed against Danny’s skull, just above the ear. They were both gasping for breath.
‘He wath calling the cops,’ Danny croaked. But Reuben just tightened his grip, so that Danny grimaced.
‘You wanna make me do it?’ Reuben screeched. ‘Do ya? Is that it?’
‘No . . .’
‘Because I bloody will! Because you’re a mad bastard!’
‘Okay, okay!’
‘Because you’re outta control, and I’m sick of it!’ As Reuben slid to the ground, he kept his arm clamped firmly around Danny’s throat. This meant that the bigger man was pulled sideways, almost losing his balance. But the dogs didn’t leap to his defence. Though they were pacing like wolves – hackles raised, ears back, fangs bared – they were also keeping their distance.
I couldn’t understand why until one of them growled. That was enough to galvanise Reuben. His head whipped round, his teeth snapped, and he hissed like a crocodile.
The dogs all flinched. They slunk even further away, looking thoroughly squashed.
I couldn’t believe it.
‘Now. You gunna toe the line, or what?’ Reuben asked, in a slightly calmer tone. He was talking to Danny, who had bent his knees and twisted his spine to accommodate Reuben’s hold on his neck. ‘Because I’m fed up, Danny. I’ve had it with you!’
‘It was Toby’s fault,’ Sergio cut in. ‘Toby was calling somebody—’
‘Shuddup.’ Reuben flashed him a look that made Sergio cringe like the dogs. Then Danny said hoarsely, ‘Okay. All right. I thcrewed up.’
‘Damn right, you screwed up!’
‘I know. I lotht it. Just leggo, will ya?’
To my surprise, Reuben did let go. But he kept the gun trained on Danny.
‘This isn’t gunna work,’ Reuben declared. ‘You can’t stay here. It’s messing with your head.’
Danny stiffened. ‘Nah,’ he rumbled, hunching his shoulders in a shifty kind of way as he massaged his neck muscles. ‘I had one too many beerth . . .’
‘And let someone escape. And bashed a kid.’
‘I made a mithtake. I’m thorry.’ Danny pointed to where I was cowering. ‘But if that little bugger called the copth—’
‘Then I’ll deal with ’em.’ Reuben interrupted. Lowering his gun, he gestured at the door. ‘If the cops are coming, you’ve gotta get out. You know what you’re like with the police.’ Seeing Danny hesitate, he took a deep breath and continued in a more measured, persuasive manner. ‘Mate, you did a good job. But it’s over now. You can’t stay here.’
Danny was looking disgruntled.
‘I like to finish what I thtart,’ he said.
Reuben scowled impatiently. ‘What’s to finish, for Chrissake? The kids are out. The villains are trashed. One’s brain-dead and the other has first-degree sunburn—’
‘Yeah, but what about number three?’ Danny objected. ‘We haven’t found him, yet.’
‘So why don’t you track ’im down, then?’ Reuben asked. It was a good question. It certainly had an impact on Danny, who blinked and raised his eyebrows.
‘Me?’ he said.
‘Go home, get cleaned up, and head for Broken Hill. Because that’s where the bugger is.’ Reuben must have realised that he’d struck a chord with this argument, because he kept plugging away at it. ‘Sergio can tell me what he looks like, and we’ll take it from there. In fact I’ll call you. I might even join you, if I can get the time off.’
‘Really?’ Danny seemed to have been won over. His voice, though gruff, was also resigned. ‘Well . . . okay.’
‘You’ve gotta go, Danny. When this kid’s mother shows up and sees what you’ve done to him—’
‘Yeah, yeah. I know.’ Danny waved a weary hand. ‘Anyway,’ he remarked, ‘I need to get me truck fixed. I can do that in Broken Hill.’
‘And I’ll pay for the panel beating,’ Reuben offered, clinching the deal. All at once Danny folded. He came to a decision and acted on it.
‘I’ll go,’ he confirmed, clicking his tongue at the dogs. ‘I can tell when I’m not welcome.’
‘Thanks, mate.’
‘If I hang around, I’ll end up hitting people.’ Danny glared at me as he moved towards the door. ‘You wanna watch your back with thith one, though. I would.’
Reuben didn’t comment. He just said, ‘Your truck should be fine. But if it’s not, gimme a yell. I can always take a look at it.’
Danny nodded. Then he vanished – and his dogs vanished too. I heard him stomping down the hallway, heading for the kitchen.
‘You can take the rest of the beer, if you want!’ Reuben called after him.
There was no reply. After a minute or so, however, the fridge door slammed.
I looked up at Reuben, who was listening intently.
‘Where’s his rifle?’ I quavered.
Reuben didn’t answer until Danny had left the house. When the back door creaked, it was like a signal. Reuben sighed. His muscles relaxed. His gaze dropped.
He fixed me with a hard, fierce, icy stare and said, ‘If he was gunna shoot you, he’da done it already.’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘You dunno how lucky you are, mate. You have no idea how lucky you are.’
He reached for the phone just as an engine sputtered outside. It was a second or two before that ominous ugga-ugga-ugga was swallowed up by a throaty roar – and I don’t think I was the only one who heaved a sigh of relief when it happened.
Reuben shoved the phone into his pocket. ‘Didja call the police?’ he asked me.
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure. I tried. But Sergio took the phone.’
Reuben grunted. After eyeing me for a second or two, he decided to take my word for it.
‘All right,’ he grudgingly allowed. ‘So I guess you learned your lesson, eh? No harm done, except to your head. You should put some ice on it.’ He paused briefly, distracted by the noise that Danny’s truck was making as it drove away. ‘Needs a new spark plug,’ he mumbled, before giving hi
mself a kind of mental shake. ‘Right,’ he announced, in a brisk voice. ‘I’m off to pick up Sanford. You two can wait here till I get back. And don’t go anywhere near the guy downstairs – he’s fine as he is.’
With that, he beat a hasty retreat. But just as he crossed the threshold, he threw a sourly amused glance over his shoulder and drawled, ‘Why don’tcha talk amongst yourselves, in the meantime?’
Then he snorted and left.
Needless to say, Sergio and I did not spend the next two hours chatting. In fact we didn’t exchange a single word until we heard Reuben’s van approaching the house again, at about eight-thirty. By that time we were sitting at the kitchen table, studiously ignoring each other. Sergio had swallowed a couple of aspirins that he’d found in Lincoln’s gym bag, while I had taken a bath and put on the dirty T-shirt that I’d stuffed into a kitchen cupboard earlier that afternoon. (I figured that a dirty T-shirt was better than no T-shirt at all.) Sergio was combing his hair. I was holding a makeshift icepack to the lump on my head. We were also eating leftovers: pickles dipped in tomato ketchup.
I think we were both trying to pretend that Lincoln and Gary didn’t exist. We certainly hadn’t made the slightest effort to check on them. I mean, we couldn’t do anything to help them, could we? And I didn’t want to just sit and watch them suffer.
‘Listen.’ Sergio looked up. ‘Is that what I think it is?’
I listened. ‘Someone’s coming,’ I deduced.
‘Quick! Turn the lights off!’
‘You turn the lights off. My foot hurts, remember?’ When he rose, I added, ‘It’s probably Reuben.’
‘Yeah, but suppose it isn’t?’ Sergio flicked the switch by the door, plunging us both into darkness. ‘I wish Reuben hadn’t taken the gun,’ he snivelled. ‘What’ll we do if it’s that guy from Broken Hill? We’ll have to hit him with a frypan when he walks in.’
Luckily, however, it wasn’t the guy from Broken Hill. When Reuben pulled up outside, I was already peering through the back window. And my pulse slowed right down when I spotted his van.
‘Don’t worry. It’s Reuben,’ I told Sergio, who had started to scour the cupboards for a heavy pot. He immediately rushed over to join me.
‘Has he brought any food?’ asked Sergio.
‘I dunno.’
‘There must be somewhere in Cobar that sells food. Even if it’s just salted peanuts . . .’
We both pressed our noses to the dusty glass, keen to catch sight of a pizza box or a bag of groceries. But we were doomed to disappointment. Though the cabin of the van was stuffed with people, not one of them seemed to be carrying so much as a bottle of water.
‘Aw, crap,’ Sergio complained. ‘Would it have killed him to buy a couple of hamburgers?’
‘They might have brought some chocolate bars,’ I hazarded, watching the van disgorge its load. First came Reuben, jingling his keys. Then came Dr Plackett, in a truly ridiculous outfit. (Why the hell was he wearing a safari suit?) Then came Nina, looking very small and pinched in a droopy dress with flowers all over it. And then came . . . ‘Who’s that guy?’
Sergio frowned. ‘Which guy?’ he said.
‘That guy.’ I pointed at a short, balding, middle-aged man with a broken nose and very little neck. He seemed to be grey all over; his face was grey, his clothes were grey, his hair was grey. ‘I’ve never seen him before. No one ever mentioned him.’
‘Isn’t he the doctor?’
‘No. That’s the doctor. The one with the medical bag.’
‘Oh. Right.’
‘How did everyone fit in?’ I couldn’t understand it. They might have been skinny, but even so . . . four? All the way from Sydney? ‘And what’s with the sunglasses? It’s night-time, for God’s sake. Do they think they’re movie stars, or something?’
Much to my relief, the sunglasses didn’t stay on. Nina took hers off as soon as she entered the house, and her two friends did the same. For a moment they stood blinking, their eyes screwed up against the light. Then Nina spotted me.
‘Hello, Toby,’ she remarked. ‘You look a bit rough.’
I could have said the same thing about her. In fact I nearly did. Though I’d been feeling pretty sorry for myself, up until that moment, I was shocked when I first saw Nina in the harsh light of an unshaded, hundred-watt bulb. She was gaunt and pasty-faced. Her eyes were ringed by dark shadows, like a raccoon’s. She had hollow cheeks and cracked lips and bluish fingernails.
So did Dr Plackett, but you always expect older people to have health problems. When an older person is sallow and sickly, it doesn’t seem so strange. As for the grey guy, he was actually tottering. Nina had to lead him to a chair.
‘This is Barry,’ she explained. ‘He’s a bit carsick.’
Carsick my arse, I thought. But all I said was, ‘Why did you bring him, then? What’s he here for?’
Reuben and the doctor exchanged glances. Before either of them could speak, however, Nina jumped in. ‘He’s supposed to be my uncle. The one who let us stay when we eloped.’ There was a twinkle in her eye. ‘Like that priest from Romeo and Juliet.’
I couldn’t help blushing. To hide it, I limped over to a chair and sat down. Sergio, meanwhile, was bombarding Nina with questions.
‘But wasn’t that uncle story just a ruse? To get Toby’s mum out here?’ he asked. ‘Aren’t we gunna tell her the truth when she arrives? Why do we need a fake uncle – have I missed something?’
‘Um . . .’ Nina hesitated. She turned to Dr Plackett, who immediately took over.
‘You must be Sergio,’ he said, stepping forward. ‘I’m Dr Plackett. Dr Sanford Plackett.’
Sergio didn’t know what to make of this. Though he grudgingly let Dr Plackett shake his good hand, he also withdrew it very quickly, with a baleful and suspicious look.
‘This is Nina Harrison,’ the doctor continued, ‘and this is Barry McKinnon. He’s the owner of Wolgaroo.’
‘McKinnon?’ I echoed. But Dr Plackett hadn’t finished.
‘We felt that we couldn’t prevent Barry from coming along to inspect the place,’ he said.
Nina rolled her eyes at the ceiling. I sensed from her longsuffering expression that Barry hadn’t been wanted.
‘It’s my house,’ Barry croaked, as if he knew what I was thinking. ‘I built it. I paid for it. It’s supposed to be empty.’
His voice sounded rough and dry, like sandpaper. He had thin lips and a pale, lifeless gaze. His scars reminded me of Danny’s.
‘You!’ Reuben spat. ‘You didn’t pay for this house, I did! And so did Danny Ruiz and Orlando Esteban and Lupe Calleja—’
‘Yes, yes, we’re all aware of that,’ the doctor interrupted. ‘Please, Reuben, this isn’t the time to discuss culpability issues. You should save it for our next meeting.’ He lifted a hand, as if to quell any further protests. ‘This is obviously going to be difficult for everyone, in light of where we are, but there are far more important matters to address than the apportioning of guilt.’
‘Like what?’ Reuben growled.
‘Like that arm, for instance.’ Dr Plackett nodded at Sergio. ‘And Toby’s head.’
‘You should look at Gary, first,’ I cut in. When the doctor raised his eyebrows at me, I added, ‘He’s really bad, you know. He acts like he’s dying.’
Nina sucked air through her teeth. Dr Plackett rounded on Reuben, who yelped, ‘Don’t blame me! I didn’t crash the truck, Gary did!’
‘And it was Danny who made Gary fall downstairs,’ I observed.
‘That’s right. It was Danny’s fault. We’d all be fine, if it wasn’t for Danny,’ Reuben assured the doctor, who shook his head gravely before asking where Gary was.
‘In there.’ I pointed. ‘He’s still breathing, but only just.’
‘You’d better show me,’ the doctor said to Reuben. Together they vanished into the hallway, Dr Plackett carrying his medical bag and Reuben armed with his gun.
After they’d left, there was a brief,
awkward silence – which I finally broke when I turned to Barry.
‘So,’ I said, ‘aren’t you the one who set up those tanks downstairs?’
Of course I knew the answer to this question. I just wanted to see him squirm. And he did, too. His eyes skittered away as he hunched his shoulders.
In the end, it was Nina who replied.
‘Barry’s really sorry for what he did,’ she insisted. ‘Aren’t you, Barry?’
He mumbled something.
‘Hang on.’ Sergio was frowning. ‘Are you telling me this is the same guy? The guy who used to run fights here?’
‘Jeez, Sergio, did you only just work that out?’ I scoffed. But I don’t think he heard me. A red flush was slowly creeping across his face.
‘The one who kidnapped Reuben? And Danny?’ he choked.
‘Yeah, but he’s paid for it,’ said Nina. ‘Swear to God, he’d be better off dead.’
It was the weirdest thing to say. What the hell did she mean? I shot her an incredulous look, which seemed to make her uncomfortable.
‘In a manner of speaking,’ she lamely amended. I think Sergio might have asked for more details then, if the sound of raised voices hadn’t distracted us. An argument had erupted in the bedroom. I recognised Reuben’s raised voice, though I couldn’t hear his exact words. Dr Plackett’s sharp retort was pitched a little lower.
‘Oh, man,’ Nina murmured. She sighed as she collapsed onto the last empty chair. Everything about her seemed to droop; her hair, her mouth, her spine . . . everything. Her arms were blue-white, and so skinny that I couldn’t help myself. I just had to ask.
‘Are you sick?’ I blurted out. ‘I mean, are you really sick?’
Thump-thump-thump. Angry footsteps were pounding down the corridor. Nina gave a nod.
‘Yep,’ she replied. ‘I’m really sick.’
‘You mean like cancer?’ Sergio came right out with it, before I could say something a little less goddamn blunt. I scowled at him, just as Dr Plackett entered the room.
‘Now – where’s this staircase?’ he snapped. Seeing that no one else was going to tell him, I gestured at the hatch in the floor.
‘Under there,’ I mumbled. Then Reuben appeared in the doorway.