Fifty Fifty (Detective Harriet Blue #2)(34)

‘You put yours down first.’

I reached slowly behind me and took my pistol from the back of my jeans, set it on the ground at my feet. Jed responded by shifting the aim of his gun from my belly to my knee.

‘I assume you’re Jed Chatt, terror of Last Chance Valley.’

‘You’ve got the right guy.’

‘I’m Harriet Blue,’ I said. I felt a small measure of relief when he didn’t show any recognition of the name. ‘I just want to talk.’

‘Is this about the boy?’ he asked.

‘What boy?’ I said. He didn’t answer. We stared at each other, neither daring to be the one to show their cards first. It was only when a thin, pealing cry sounded from inside the little house that the expression on his face changed, softened for an instant, before hardening again.

I cocked my head. ‘Is that … Is that a baby?’

Jed put the shotgun down and emerged from his chair, even taller than I had imagined. He walked past me and disappeared into the house. I followed him and stood in the doorway. It was dark and cool inside. Pushed up against the back of the couch was a battered wooden baby’s crib. There was almost no other furniture in the room. The big man took an infant from the stark cotton sheet and lifted it against his chest.

I was shaken and confused by Jed’s transformation from menacing armchair spider to whatever he was now, holding the child. I stepped closer. The baby was brown-skinned as he was, gripping at the tired blue cotton of his old singlet.

‘ Nobody invited you in,’ he said.

‘Is this the boy you were talking about?’ I asked. Jed glanced sideways at me, said nothing. I watched as he tried to hold the baby and retrieve the child’s teething ring from the crib at the same time. I bent down and got it for him. Our fingers brushed. Jed’s skin was hard and warm.

‘No one in the town told me you had a kid out here.’

‘I’d be surprised if anyone knew,’ he said. ‘It’s none of their business.’

‘Whose …’ I struggled. ‘I mean, you’re a bit … mature … to have a newborn.’

‘It’s a long story,’ he said. ‘If you’re not here about the child, then it’s none of your business, either.’

The baby played with the teething ring. I sat on the arm of the sofa and watched the man taking a bottle of formula from the fridge, boiling the kettle, pouring the water into a bowl. He rested the milk bottle in the bowl, turned it slowly, the baby grizzling against his chest. The hand that held the baby’s bottom tapped it gently, a soft, steady beat. This man had raised children before. But as I looked around the walls, there were no pictures of them. The baby’s arrival seemed to have been an unplanned thing. There was a small bag of children’s clothes by the door and not a toy in sight. The infant and the man were alone out here. There was no sign of a woman’s touch about the place. I spied a handgun on the counter beside some old books full of handwritten notes.

‘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.