“Enjoying yourself?” Douglas said.
“We did the bushwalk. How was your day in town? Get up to much?”
He was almost drunk enough I thought I’d get away with Shoot anybody? but I refrained.
He looked up at the stars as if having a religious moment. Eventually he said, “Life-changing.”
“I’m glad.”
“I’ve got you to thank for that. That’s what I wanted to say. Thank you.”
I hesitated, chastened already this trip from accepting apologies I didn’t understand, but gave in to his expectant eyes. “You’re welcome.”
“I mean it, Ernest.” He ripped a bottle from the ice like he was unsheathing a sword. A little avalanche of ice cubes toppled from the tub into the dirt. He held the beer out to me. I took it, again not sure what kind of accessory I was obliging myself to become. “I could tell you thought I lied to you the other day. When we met. When I said I was traveling alone.”
“Oh.” I waved it off. “No, I didn’t.”
“You did. And it’s okay. I get it. I am traveling alone, technically. But there’s someone else with me, you know, spiritually.”
I’ll reiterate the rule here that ghosts are not allowed in fair-play mysteries, and I was about ready to write off Douglas as a drunken crackpot, when he went on.
“I used to live out here. I raised cattle back home and wanted a change, and Australia seemed like the best place to use those skills. My partner, Noah, and I would watch this train go past—we could see it from our porch, and he loved it. Would check the schedules and everything. Ever since they turned it into a passenger train, I’ve wanted to go on it. For him. Well”—he spread his arms—“here we are. All we’d dreamed of.”
“But he’s not here with you, is he?” I said, though I already knew the answer. Two glasses of champagne. A solitary cheers.
“He’s dead.”
“I’m very sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Douglas beamed. “That’s what I’m trying to say thank you for. I ran away when it happened. Across an ocean. And I stayed there and tried to forget it all. But today . . . I scattered his ashes. I was able to let him go. After thirty-two years. Because of what you’ve done. I am free!” He looked up at the sky and gave a semi-howl. I noticed droplets of beer clinging to strands of his beard, like dew on a rainforest fern or, less generously, the jaw of a rabid dog. Whether he was ecstatic or lunatic, it was hard to tell.
I thought back to my brief conversation with Douglas. He’d asked me what it felt like to kill someone. He wanted to know if revenge was bitter or sweet. Even given the context of my first book, those questions were particularly intense.
Hang on, I thought. What had he just said? Because of what you’ve done. Sorry to flash back to a sentence literally two paragraphs up, but it’s important. Pieces clicked. Three specific events found their correlation.
Douglas had brought a gun on the trip.
Henry McTavish had died.
Douglas had disposed of the gun.
Douglas wouldn’t have gone to all the effort of getting a gun just to use heroin for the murder. The only reason to dispose of the gun was if he didn’t need it anymore. Which logically meant the man he’d come to kill was already dead. Was he accusing me of killing McTavish? Thanking me for saving him the trouble?
“I’m sorry to ask,” I said, lowering my voice. “But you said it’s thirty-two years you’ve had Noah’s ashes. Your partner—how did he die?”
Douglas’s eyes, without embellishment I swear, twinkled. “Oh, you are good. Why don’t you tell it? So the scene plays better in your book. Like you’re explaining it.”
I took the invitation. I knew a certain tragedy had happened thirty-two years ago. “Noah was a teacher, I’m guessing.”
“Not only that, but a good one. A great one. He knew his kids. Schools out here, they’re different. There’s none of that faceless point and learn, it’s about getting to know all the kids. Noah could tell something was wrong, but he just had a hunch and a hunch doesn’t get you far—especially in the nineties if you’re a gay man in the outback, let me tell you. I don’t want to put into words what this man had been doing, but some people are monsters. Noah had noticed, though. A girl in his class, usually so bright and happy, had fallen quiet. He finally convinced her to tell him what was happening, and he was going to help her tell the police. I don’t know how the guy found out he was about to get exposed, but he did. So he had to think of a way to shut them up. Everyone that knew about it.”
A schoolteacher. An abused child. An abuser about to be exposed. Four kids and a teacher killed in a train accident.
“The bus driver,” I said. “It was the bus driver. He was molesting the kids.”
What had Aaron said? Bus driver was a bit hard to ask, flat as he was. Just like the plot of a certain book.
Douglas nodded somberly. “Parked that school bus right up on the tracks. Locked the doors. Noah’s ashes are more ceremonial than real. So let me ask you this, do you think you could identify a body from that mess?”
I imagined again those tiny palms against the glass, the plume of dust charging, but this time I saw a lone shadow running from the tracks, sweat-slicked hands slipping off a locked door, as Douglas brought his hands together with a bang.
Chapter 18
The bus driver’s name was not Archibald Bench, by the way.
Of course, that was the first thing I googled.
Alice Springs gave me the gift of internet reception, and a freight train crunching a school bus was newsworthy enough to pop right up in a search. I found a list of the dead: four children; a teacher, Noah Witrock; and the driver, Troy Firth. Nothing in the article alluded to accusations being leveled against Troy, or anyone being directly at fault: it was a tragic accident and nothing more. But the story itself, mixed with Douglas’s version of it, did hew shockingly close to the plot of Off the Rails, the book that Majors had accused McTavish of pinching from her. Swap the parents for the bus driver, a car for a bus, and it was essentially the same method of murder. And the same method of getting away with it.
Troy Firth, unfortunately, is not an anagram of Archie Bench no matter which way you cut it. However, you’ll have thought the same thing Douglas did: it’s entirely plausible that the bodies were unidentifiable or irretrievable from the crash. It would also be fair to remind you here that Henry McTavish was crippled down his left side. I don’t want to lead you up the garden path, but I have already told you some people in this book go by several names. All these thoughts ran through my mind but were too slippery to connect.
Douglas left me to rejoin the dance floor. I passed through the tables. As I walked past Wyatt, he grabbed at me.
“Oi,” he said, tugging at my pant leg. “I picked up Simone’s scarf the other day. Think your missus left it behind. Let Simone know I’ve got it?”
That would be a relief to Juliette. I said as much and thanked him. He leaned over and slapped me on the back, but because he was sitting down, it was more a jab to the kidneys. He was incredibly jovial for someone whose author, and I assumed friend, had just kicked the bucket, but I reminded myself that he stood to make a lot of money from the death. He’d seemed quite unhappy with McTavish’s manuscript last night when I’d overheard him in the corridor, as it wasn’t a Morbund book. I suppose posthumous publicity balanced out the lower value of the content.
“I’ll give it back when I see her—it’ll give her one less thing to be sour about.” Wyatt laughed. “Never likes to lose, that one.”