Only Killers and Thieves(90)

“No, I’m certain. As soon as I heard, I began finishing up here, but the second telegram arrived before I could leave.”

“Who sent it? The second one?”

“From Broken Ridge, that’s all I know. There was no name.”

Tommy tried to hold the stare but couldn’t. His gaze wandered around the room. In the back was a wheeled curtain, a restraint table, a benchtop filled with bottles and implements of all kinds. Two human skulls on a shelf: adult and child.

“I never had a chance to get up there, Tommy.”

“What you’re saying, it can’t be right.”

“I can assure you it is.”

“You got them two telegrams still?”

“No, but if you don’t believe me you can ask at the courthouse. That’s where they come. Honestly, I’d have helped her if I could; there just simply wasn’t time.”

Tommy stared out of the window, nodding minutely to himself, his jaw set and his eyes far away. He went slowly to the door and Shanklin rose, saying, “Hold up, now, hold up. You’re clearly not well yourself. Feverish maybe. That hand might be infected. I should take a look.”

“I’ll see about them telegrams.”

“Tommy, please. It won’t take long at all.”

He opened the door. Shanklin scrambled around the desk but Tommy was already outside. Their eyes met through the glass, then Tommy walked out into the blazing street and crossed to the other side, and from the direction of the hotel someone shouted: “Y’alright there, mate? Get a drink in ya, eh?”

He followed the narrow path between two squares of ruined lawn, grass as dry as kindling in a powdery red earth. The whitewashed courthouse looming ahead: sheer-walled, narrow-windowed, black-tarred doors riveted with metal plates; the stocks beside the entrance; a dusting of fresh sand beneath the splintered wooden cross.

Tommy reached the doors and halted. One was already open but the interior was pitch-dark against the sun. He set down the paper bag and waited; shapes emerged dully in the large hall. A guard asleep on a chair, behind him a short corridor lined with cells, where someone whistled an ebbing, haunting tune. To the left of the hall a young clerk sat at a desk, alongside doors to two further rooms: the courtroom itself and an office belonging to Magistrate MacIntyre.

Tommy stepped into the gloom.

The floor was flagstoned and dusty, no give underfoot. The clerk noticed him coming, looked up. There were no chairs inviting him to sit.

“Telegraph comes here, I heard?”

“Official use only. You’ll have to wait for the mail.”

“I’m not mailing nothing. John Sullivan sent me. From up Broken Ridge.”

Now the clerk set down his pen and leaned back in his chair. The wooden joins creaked. The whistling from the cells rose and fell.

“You new? Got a name?”

“Tommy McBride.”

The clerk’s eyes pinched. “As in them that were done by the blacks?”

Tommy nodded. “We’re working for Sullivan now, so can you—”

“Mr. MacIntyre’ll be wanting a word,” the clerk said. He angled his head toward the office and called, “Sir! Someone out here!”

There was a muffled response from inside the room. The clerk’s shouting also roused the guard. He tipped back his hat and peered at Tommy, yelled over his shoulder for quiet from the cells. The whistling paused, then took up again, as Tommy leaned over the desk and said, “There were two telegrams sent a couple of weeks back, both for Dr. Shanklin, came the same day.”

“About your sister,” the clerk said, nodding. “And wasn’t that a bloody shame.”

“You remember them?”

“Course I do. Had me back and forth to Shanklin like I was on a spring.”

“One followed the other, you’re sure about that?”

The clerk was nodding, but the office door opened before he could speak again. Magistrate MacIntyre stepped out. He was a big man, tall and broad, his buttoned suit jacket pulling at his gut, and ruddy in the cheeks, hair wild, like he’d just come through a sandstorm, or had been asleep.

“Sir, this is Tommy McBride,” the clerk said, pointing. “One of them that—”

“I know a McBride when I see one, Walter,” the magistrate said, barreling across to the desk. His accent was thick Scottish. He took hold of Tommy’s hand and flung it up and down. “Good to see you, lad, good to see you. Circumstances aside.”

Tommy had met Spencer MacIntyre no more than twice in his life. He’d once asked whether the name meant they were blood-tied, and while Mother had only laughed at him, Father had cursed and answered, “That snaky bastard’s no kin of mine.”

Now the magistrate took Tommy by the shoulder and steered him across the hall. The clerk and guard watched them go. There was a smell of drink on the man and a strong tang of sweat. He opened the office door, held it while Tommy walked through, then followed him inside.

“Best not to say too much out there, son. Walls are always listening in this place. Got eyes and mouths as well.”

The office was cramped and airless. A desk, chairs, bookcase, faded paintings on the walls, a couple of official appointments bearing MacIntyre’s name. The magistrate went around to his side of the desk, then thought better of it and came back again. He motioned for Tommy to sit, then did so himself, lowering his bulk into one of the flimsy wooden chairs, the two of them facing each other, knee to knee.