Fifty Fifty (Detective Harriet Blue #2)(36)

‘What are you here for?’ Jed asked.

‘I’m part of the investigation into Theo Campbell’s death.’

‘His what?’ Jed was testing the temperature of the milk on his hairy forearm. ‘Theo Campbell’s not dead.’

‘ I’ve got a Forensics team who begs to differ.’

‘What happened?’

I noted the question. What happened? rather than Who killed him?, a question that might have suggested he knew Theo Campbell had been murdered. The tension in my chest was starting to ease.

‘That’s what I’d like to know.’

‘I can’t help you,’ he said. ‘I stay out of the town as much as I can.’

‘People down there don’t seem to like you.’

He snorted a small laugh. Bitter, and tired. ‘I don’t fit into the narrative.’

I was beginning to think he didn’t fit into my narrative either, that I was wasting my time out here. It didn’t make sense that this man would have been setting up bombings, planning to terrorise a town full of people with a baby strapped into the passenger seat of his dusty old ute. I found myself hazarding a few steps closer to the man and the child, a strange desire stirring in me to see the baby’s eyes.

I was knocked out of my spell by the sound of barking coming from outside the house. Jed and I turned towards the sound, and I saw Digger the dog crossing in front of my car, sniffing at the wheels.

‘That bloody dog,’ I said. ‘It sure gets around.’

‘You can take it back to town before I shoot it,’ Jed said, slipping out from between me and the kitchen counter, taking the baby out of sight. ‘I’ll give you a thirty-second head start.’





Chapter 47


SNALE WAS WAITING for me outside John Destro’s beautiful, sprawling mansion just down from the schoolhouse on the northern side of Last Chance Valley. Dez had organised the dinner with Snale – the officer agreed he had the best relationships with everyone in Last Chance, would know things about them that she didn’t. Dez seemed somehow to have secured all the best grass in the small town. To the right of the double garage I could see an extensive green lawn softening to sparse fields inhabited by slow-moving cows. The animals made long shadows as the sun lingered on the edge of the valley rim.

‘Where did you go?’

‘I went out to see Jed Chatt,’ I said.

‘What!’ Snale slapped my arm. ‘By yourself? Are you crazy?’

‘I don’t think he’s as scary as you all make out.’

‘He’s plenty scary,’ she said. ‘It’s not right, him living out there all by himself with nothing to do. Creeping into the town to buy his supplies, not talking to anybody. It’s weird. I wish he’d just go off somewhere else. He gives me the willies.’

I don’t fit into the narrative. Jed’s words came back to me. I don’t fit in.

‘Is he the only member of the Chatt family living nearby?’ I asked.

Snale nodded. ‘All his people moved on years ago,’ she said, walking me to the front doors of Dez’s house. ‘They were all scattered around, and it was tense, you know, because of the fight between the two families way back when. Some were in the town, but they didn’t seem to belong. They all went their separate ways eventually, but he stayed. Making us all feel bad for the way we live down here in the valley.’

‘Do you know much about his family?’ I asked. ‘The ones who moved on?’

‘No.’ Snale shrugged. ‘I don’t think they keep in touch.’

I didn’t want to mention the baby. Jed had been right to suspect that, as a non-local cop, I’d probably come out to check on the welfare of the child in his care, concerned about the inappropriateness of the environment for raising a baby. I knew plenty about child custody from my time as a foster kid. There was no way the authorities would condone the arrangement out there, Jed and the baby alone in the desert, the guns and the blistering isolation.

I thought about my mother. When child services had come and taken my brother and me away from her, we’d been covered in cigarette burns and rashes, malnourished, and bruised. The one-bedroom apartment where we lived with her, her pimp and another man had been raided on suspicion of drug dealing the week before by police, the door splintered and duct-taped back together from being kicked in. A cop in the raiding party had probably reported my brother’s and my condition to child services.

I wasn’t going to be the cop who brought child services down on Jed Chatt. But I knew I wanted to go back, to understand what was happening out there. To discover if the man was a danger to himself, the baby, or the town.





Chapter 48


WE ENTERED THE high-ceilinged hall of the house. There were pictures lining the walls, framed landscapes of the sun hitting Last Chance Valley at different romantic angles, some vintage blueprints of the town pub and the post office. I stopped by a charcoal sketch of a bunch of European settlers standing by the edge of the empty valley, shovels and pickaxes on their backs, their bonneted wives hugging children nearby.

‘This was done by my great uncle,’ Dez said, coming up beside me. He smelled of aftershave and was dressed crisply in a stark white shirt and tie. ‘Beautiful artwork, right? The family camped up there on the ridge for two months while the men went down and prepared the valley.’