Part 17 (1/2)

An unlikely crime-fighting duo, the compa.s.sionate elderly woman and the rough teen, but Jeanie's story correlated with Gil's information. In her memories of the cafe, Jenn recalled the taciturn youth who'd worked to fill tanks and keep the place clean while the rest of the teens ate hamburgers and laughed at the tables ... yes, she could see how that partners.h.i.+p, that loyalty had developed.

'Did my mother say what the blackmail was?' Mark asked.

Always 'my mother', Jenn noticed, and rarely if ever 'Mum'.

'No, she didn't say specifically, but it was something that went back to the early trouble, and she was afraid for your father, willing to do anything to protect him. But the price was high, requiring regular ”payments”, and she was desperate to get out of it. I advised her to go to the police, but she said she couldn't, that they'd destroy Len. That was a couple of weeks before your accident, Mark.'

Mark's face was drawn, anger in his clenched hands, his white knuckles. But he kept his voice low and even. 'Was Flanagan behind it?'

'It was no secret that your parents and Dan were rivals, in the legal side of Dan's businesses, anyway. But I remember her saying that there were far more dangerous criminals than thugs like Dan.'

Worse than Dan? Jenn thought of the photographs, and shuddered. 'Do you know what she did to get out of it?'

Again Jeanie considered her answer. 'I knew Marta Schmidt a little, and I knew there was more to Wolfgang than he let on. Marta hinted that he'd taken on the Boheme Club. I suggested to Caroline that she contact them. I didn't see her alone for some weeks after that, until after you'd come back from hospital in Newcastle, Mark. But she said she'd resolved it, and she never mentioned it again.'

'Blackmail ... hurt Marta.' Wolfgang's words echoed in Jenn's mind. A threat to Marta would have been reason enough for him to take on the club, to get his hands on the photographs he'd taught Dan to develop long ago, and to gather evidence in surveillance photographs. And if he'd known that Caroline was being blackmailed, perhaps it wasn't surprising that he'd taken photos of Mark's accident. a.s.sumptions, yes, and she had no proof connecting it all yet, but it made a logical sense, fitted all they knew.

Caroline might have 'resolved' her problem with Wolfgang's a.s.sistance, but questions still tugged at Jenn. Was it resolved before the accident, or after? Did she resolve it permanently? Did Len know? And did it have anything to do with Caroline and Len leaving Dungirri and handing everything over to Mark when he finished university? That had struck her as strange, for a fit and healthy couple barely near retirement age.

But if Caroline had endured forced s.e.x a d.a.m.n it, call it what it was, rape a that would be reason enough for any woman to want to leave the district. Jenn's stomach churned. They might be getting closer to answers, but none of them were easy to bear.

Jenn still had questions for Jeanie, and although she wasn't sure she wanted to hear the answers she sucked in a breath and asked, 'Do you know if ... if my father ever had anything to do with Dan Flanagan?'

Jeanie turned her teaspoon over on the table and took a long time to answer. 'I think he did some work for him. Before he joined the army. It was decades ago, Jenn. He ran a little wild like many young men, but he straightened out and made your grandparents proud.'

Aware of Mark near her, his wordless gaze reading her intention and giving her courage, she asked, 'Do you believe my father did it, Jeanie? Killed my mother?'

Jeanie sat up straighter, her hand warm over Jenn's. 'I believe he was a good man, Jenn. I don't know what happened or why, but he loved your mother and you. I've never doubted that.'

I've never doubted that ... The words eased some of the ache in her heart, and made her more determined to find the truth, clear her father's name.

Jeanie embraced her affectionately before she left. 'Don't go running away again without coming to see me. And,' she drew Jenn's head down and kissed her forehead, as if in benediction, 'be careful, and look after each other.'

While Jenn worked through the photos, creating a spreadsheet of dates, initials and other details, Mark made lists, laying the names out in groups a everyone who might have been involved in the accident and its aftermath, police, medical, legal, each name notated with position t.i.tles, current whereabouts and other notes. Bill Franklin topped the list of police, Will Cooper the list of paramedics. Where he didn't know names, he noted positions, such as Deputy Coroner, nurses at the hospital, other patients.

When he finished with those lists, he started a new one: Flanagan a.s.sociates and friends. People who worked for Flanagan. People who worked with him a other graziers, suppliers, business people who didn't seem to mind the company. People who attended his Christmas drinks, usually reported in the social page of the Birraga Gazette.

Gerard McCarty topped that list. Mark added Larry Dolan from the Gazette. There had certainly been more advertising of Flanagan's transport and irrigation operations in the Gazette after Clem Lockrey's retirement as managing editor.

And all the time he made notes, Jenn worked at the other end of the table, every now and again glancing up, making a comment. But she didn't recognise anyone else in the photographs. 'Whoever took these photos was either very cautious,' she commented, 'or just not interested in faces.'

Steve returned in the late afternoon, and brought Mark's laptop with him. 'Forensics have finished at your place, and I thought you might need this.'

'Thanks. Any news?'

'Good news is, there are prints on the tape on the explosives. The bad news is, they're not Flanagan's. Forensics will run them overnight and maybe we'll get an answer in the morning if they're on file. In the meantime, you're staying here tonight. Haddad and the Feds want you protected.'

'Here?' Mark hesitated. 'I could go to the pub.'

'Nope. Not secure enough, and there's no-one spare to stand guard. Kris says you can have the guest bed. Apparently Gil will be down later a no prizes for guessing where he's sleeping a and I'm going to crash on the couch. In a police station with the three of us and your dogs outside, you should be safe enough for tonight.'

The continued inactivity and restriction on his movements grated, making him uneasy, and he had to consciously stop himself from pacing around the rooms of Kris's small residence. Patience. Focus. Work. Research.

At least with his laptop returned he had something to do with his restless mind. He booted it up and connected to the internet via Kris's wireless. First task: check his email. He scrolled the lists of messages in the Marrayin and his personal accounts. Still nothing from his parents. d.a.m.n it. If they'd been flooded in to the village by heavy rains it might be days before they received his messages.

Second task: he typed 'Gerard McCarty' into the search engine. Too many results, with many professional, presumably respectable men filling the top few pages a but no bankers. He narrowed the search terms to New South Wales, then on a whim added Queensland. On the second page of results, the summary sentence of a news report caught his eye: Gerard McCarty, wanted for questioning on suspicion of rape and murder. He opened the link, and the report a dated four years ago a included an image. As the image slowly loaded, he found himself looking into the cold, smirking eyes of the man photographed with Dan Flanagan eighteen years ago.

FOURTEEN.

She was well outnumbered, three against one. She would have argued, held her ground a but the trouble was, they were right.

She rubbed Rosie's ears. 'Guess I'll be staying here tonight, Rosie girl,' she murmured. 'It does make more sense than being alone in the hotel.'

So much for peace and quiet and s.p.a.ce to think without a horde of others around. So much for time to sort through some ragged, confusing-as-h.e.l.l emotions.

The screen door squeaked. Steve, not Mark. He sat on the back step beside her and launched straight into round two of ordering her about.

'Listen, Jenn. McCarty's been on the run for four years and you can bet he's in this up to his b.l.o.o.d.y neck. He might have a chance of beating one accusation of rape and murder, but if he knows that you a we a have the photos, and if we can get Caroline and the other women to testify, he's looking at life. You're potentially as big a target as Mark. And I don't want to have to identify your remains, so stop being a stubborn idiot and use your brain.'

'Are you always this much of a bossy b.a.s.t.a.r.d or are you making a special effort to impress me?' She aimed for a mocking tone but in truth she wasn't feeling it, and the edge of teasing showed.

He glanced sideways at her, that playboy grin not far away. 'Sweetheart, if I thought I had any chance this side of h.e.l.l of making that kind of impression on you, you'd know about it. But I don't do lost causes.'

A lost cause? Well, yes, as far as Steve was concerned, she was. She'd come to like the guy and his mildly flirtatious ways and to respect the serious dedication beneath it, but the flutter in her heartbeat, the awareness of him, the tingle on her skin and catch in her breath? No, none of that had happened. Wasn't going to happen. Not with Steve. A part of her wished it would because that might be a whole lot less complicated than ... No, she wouldn't even think that. Not Mark. Nothing but a little nostalgia with Mark.

She decided against trying to respond to Steve's bait and flipped back to the real issue. 'I was just telling Rosie here that I'd be staying the night. I wasn't so much suffering from a bout of stupidity as a mild oh-s.h.i.+t-oh-s.h.i.+t-oh-s.h.i.+t attack. So, don't go thinking it was your persuasive charm that made me agree, okay? Rosie's my witness.'

'And probably more intelligent than half the witnesses I see on the stand,' he said. 'But now, can I persuade you to come inside? That scrub out there has hidden snipers before.'

With the vision of Wolfgang bleeding to death still fresh in her mind, she didn't need further convincing.

Afternoon darkened into evening. All of them continued to work, think, research; Steve and Kris in the police station, Jenn and Mark in the marginally more s.p.a.cious kitchen. She finished indexing the date and initial codes of the photos and started trying to match Birraga or Dungirri names to the faceless or blindfolded women. There was one that might have been Marta a MS a a woman bound in a chair and flinching, the ant.i.thesis of Wolfgang's reverent work.

Others she couldn't be sure of. Wealthier women, Jeanie had said, and the haircuts, artfully coloured lips and smooth skin in the images confirmed they were women with the time and money to look after their appearance. She concentrated on the time period she remembered best, trying to recall the women featured in the Gazette's social pages, the ones who'd had the money to make regular visits to Vanna's beauty salon next door.

The mayor's wife? He'd been a slimy pig but she'd been a sweet if nervy woman. Initials a tick. Body type and hair a yes, probable.

Sally Duncan from the Birraga Boutique? Initials a tick. Body type and long wavy hair a yes.

Sharon Rennie, a daughter of the family who owned the local, long-established department store? Initials a tick. Body type and pageboy hair cut a yes.

'b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.' She pushed the laptop away, nausea roiling in her gut. At the end of the table Mark looked up from his own work. 'It wasn't just your mother, Mark. There's at least three other prominent women of similar age in there. Maybe more. Boheme got its dirty claws into at least half the best businesses in town.'

'Take a break, Jenn. You've been at it for ages.'

Take a break and do what? 'No, I should keep going with this. If you can give me the names of some of the women from grazing families, I can check for them.'