Only Killers and Thieves(42)

“I will need both testimonies. I cannot be seen to act without proof.”

“They’ll give it, whatever you need. When can we leave?”

Noone hesitated, angled his head. “We being?”

“Me, Locke, the two boys here. They deserve to see it done.”

“You and your monkey man are bad enough, John. Really I shouldn’t even allow that. But I certainly can’t be taking two children along.”

“We ain’t children,” Billy said. “I’m sixteen and a half and he’s fifteen almost.”

Noone stared at him. Billy shrank back into his chair.

“I already promised him,” Sullivan explained. “I’ll double the fee if that’ll persuade you. Make it more than worth your while.”

Noone snorted a brief laugh. “Fourfold, I should think. One for each man.”

“Call it three—young Tommy can stay behind.”

“I’m coming,” Tommy said. “I’ve as much right as Billy does.”

A smile flickered on Noone’s lips, a twitch beneath the mustache. He drained his drink, replaced the glass precisely on the corner of the desk, adjusting the base against the angle like he was measuring its fit.

“In fact, I insist,” he said. “It’s both boys or none at all. If you want to save yourself money, John, you can leave the ape at home.” He turned to Tommy and Billy. “You can shoot, I take it? You have weapons, horses?”

“Yessir,” Billy said.

“Horses are in the stables,” Sullivan said. “Got all four of ‘em here.”

“Four horses were left behind?”

“Two,” Billy said. “We had ours with us.”

Sullivan added, “And the others are a broken-down packhorse and a brumby with eyes madder than yours. There’s no bugger would want either of those things.”

“I see,” Noone said. There was a long silence. “Well, we’d best get on with it. We’re not going anywhere until I have both testimonies written and signed.”

*

After it was done, their false confessions sworn, Tommy dragged Billy along the back corridor and out into the rear yard. Heat hit them like a wall. Servants hanging clothes and washing crockery paused to watch them pass, as Tommy cajoled his brother through the yard and into a grassy clearing up the hill. To the east were the stables and other storage sheds and, in the foreground, a little fenced-off area with a struggling lawn and two short rows of evenly spaced headstones.

“Well?” Tommy said.

“Alright. I know. But John said we had to, or Noone might not have agreed.”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“Joseph on his own, even Arthur, John didn’t think—”

“A dozen blacks, you said! Their heads stoved, Billy!”

“John thought—”

“John, John, John . . . have you heard yourself these days?”

“I’m only trying to do what’s right.”

“Which is what?”

“See to it there’s a dispersal, or whatever they call it. See the bastards hang. I was aiming to keep you out of it, Tommy.”

“Horseshit. You want it just you and him. Crawling after him like a whelp.”

Billy threw out his arms. “All I’m doing is seeing us through this, Mary too if she pulls round. There’s expectations on us to put right what’s been done. And then afterward—you ever think about that? What’ll happen to us then? We’re minors, you and me, can’t take on Daddy’s run, can’t do nothing on our own. They’d make us wards if they found us, put us in some lockup or Mission house, no better than the fucking blacks. But if John agrees to help us, gives us work, lets us stay on . . . he’s the best bloody chance we’ve got.”

“I don’t want to stay here.”

“Where else would we go? Where would Mary get well?”

Tommy looked out across the scrub. “I don’t know.”

“Because there is nowhere else. This is it. But if you keep bleating on and causing trouble, he’ll turn all three of us loose.”

“I don’t trust him. How do you even know he wasn’t involved?”

Billy fell very still. He narrowed his eyes. “Involved in what?”

“There was something else between him and Daddy that we didn’t know.”

“We found Joseph’s bloody gun.”

Tommy frowned into the dirt. “What about Noone, then? You trust him?”

“No,” Billy said. “But we need him, John says. Let me worry about Noone.”

“I signed his testimony same as you.”

“I know you did.”

“There wasn’t a true word in it.”

“You were offered to stay here and you wouldn’t. I said to wait in the room.”

“I ain’t staying behind.”

“Well, then.”

“Well.”

They stared at each other in silence. The pair of them had never been great talkers but Tommy had always felt that most of what lay between them didn’t need to be said. He’d known Billy as well as he knew himself; could guess what he was thinking, read his moods. It didn’t feel like that now. He looked at him, at his dark heavy eyes, the eyes of their father if he thought on it too hard, and couldn’t be sure what was in his brother’s mind. He was presuming the worst these days, and felt himself justified.