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  ‘What do you think?’ he asked, then quickly wished he hadn’t. Her thoughts probably weren’t going to be good ones.

  Melinda remained quiet.

  ‘It’s comfortable,’ Dave said, hoping to get Melinda talking. ‘And we don’t have to pay rent. We’re going to be able to save a heap of money here, honey.’

  She nodded and swallowed hard. Realising she was indeed close to tears, Dave went to her and put his arms around her.

  ‘It’s okay.’

  Melinda rested her head against his chest and muttered something.

  ‘What’s that?’ He leaned down to hear what she was saying.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she gulped. ‘I’m being a cow.’

  Dave smiled. ‘Look, all of this is new and I know it’s a long way from your mum and dad, but you’ll settle in quickly. If Kathy is anything like Spencer, she’ll be warm and friendly. In a couple of months you’ll have new friends and a new job. We’ll both have new friends and new jobs.’ Dave’s tone was earnest, as if he were reminding her he was new here too. ‘Spencer said Kathy had a bit of a hard time settling in too—maybe you guys could chat about it.’ He hoped those words would bring some kind of comfort.

  ‘I know, I know,’ she nodded and Dave felt hot tears on his chest.

  ‘Look, I know Barrabine seems a little…’ He paused, not wanting to say rough or backward and give her more reasons not to like the place; finally, he settled on ‘…isolated. But we’ll both get used to it.’

  ‘What if I can’t get a job?’

  ‘I’m sure the hospital couldn’t say no to a paediatric nurse as good as you.’

  ‘They can if there aren’t any vacancies.’

  ‘We’ll work it out, Melinda. I promise.’

  ‘And this, Dave,’ Spencer said in a loud voice, ‘is Plenty Street. There’s always plenty on offer here.’

  Dave looked around at the buildings trying to work out what the plenty on offer was. They were plain and without signage.

  ‘They’re the brothels of Barrabine,’ Spencer explained with a flourish. ‘Now, what you need to know is brothels are an important part of Barrabine—single men make up the larger part of the population and there’s a need for sex workers here. As a copper, you have to understand the history and why we leave them to their own devices. If they weren’t here there’d be trouble, if you get my meaning.’ He looked over at Dave and raised his eyebrows. ‘There are only five left. Used to be ten. We have a great working relationship with the madams in Barra. They come to the police first if anything goes wrong. Us. The coppers. And we need that. Sometimes they can give us the heads-up if someone is odd or causing trouble, and vice versa.’

  That certainly is different to the city, Dave thought.

  They drove in silence for a while, Spencer taking quick turns here and there before saying, ‘Down here is the jail.’ Spencer listed the number of criminals incarcerated; it was more than Dave had expected. ‘I had one bloke put away last week. I’ve been chasing him for years.’

  ‘What’d you get him on?’ Dave asked, his eyes running along the razor wire at the top of the fence as they drove slowly by. You’d have to hope no one ever got away because the jail was almost in suburbia. It seemed to go from houses to jail without any land or break in between.

  ‘I’d known for ages he’d been illegally prospecting on mine leases—ones that didn’t belong to him—but I’d never managed to get there quick enough to catch him in the act.

  ‘We had a bit of rain last winter and the dirt gets real slippery out here—even after a small amount. Well, Clever Clogs managed to get himself bogged on someone else’s lease, with ten ounces of gold in his pocket.’ Spencer let out a laugh and his large belly jiggled, touching the steering wheel. ‘Of course, he tried the oldest trick in the book: he’d found it elsewhere. Trouble was,’ he turned to Dave gleefully, ‘I got a search warrant for his GPS and, after a little more research, I managed to come up with a wit who had heard him bragging in the pub the night before, saying he was heading back out to the same spot as the GPS had shown he’d been because he’d clean up out there! He’s gone inside for a couple of years. Pretty happy with that result.’ Spencer gave a bit of a laugh. ‘Now if he’d kept his mouth shut, I doubt I would have been able to get him put inside. I’ve found that people who’ve found gold can’t help but brag.’

  ‘That’s a good thing for the gold squad, I guess. Anyway, well done. Always a great feeling when you get a result like that. Especially if you’d been chasing him for a bit.’

  ‘Dead right, my man, dead right. Proving where gold has been stolen from can be a bit of a problem sometimes. It doesn’t come out of the ground with an address or GPS coordinates.’

  ‘Other than gold stealing, what other type of crime is most prevalent here?’ Dave asked. Just then he saw a group of young boys with a shopping trolley running down the street. There were two inside the trolley, one pushing it and the others yelling encouragement.

  ‘Look at those little buggers! Kids making their own fun. We don’t interfere with that type of thing too much, although they should take the trolley back.’ Spencer shrugged. ‘We have a lot of break and enters, alcohol-related crimes and DV.’ He paused. ‘It’s the domestic violence that gets me,’ he said. ‘I hate it when uniforms go out to a job, come back with the perp, lock him up and when we’re ready to throw the book at him—or her—then the vic decides they don’t want to press charges and the lowlife walks. Trouble is it happens again and again and again. You start to recognise the address when it’s called out over the radio and know what’s been going on.’

  ‘I get what you mean. When I was in uniform, same thing used to happen. It’s awful.’

  They drove in silence for a little while and Dave contemplated what he was seeing. The main street had lots of shops, from clothes and sports gear to gift shops. He counted three cafés and made a mental note to ask a few different people which made the best coffee. There weren’t very many people out on the street and he guessed the heat was keeping people indoors.

  ‘Usually busier than this,’ Spencer said, as if reading his mind. ‘But school went back today and the mums will be breathing a sigh of relief at not having to be out in the heat, trying to entertain the kids. Town is always quiet the first week back to school.’

  ‘It’s fierce, isn’t it? Different heat to Perth. Dry and…’ He tried to find a word to describe it. ‘Like the air wants to crackle. And the flies! They weren’t this bad when I lived out in the wheat belt.’

  ‘You’ll know what crackling is like then when you see the lightning! Man, some of the thunderstorms that come through, I tell ya…’ He went on to describe how the clouds would start to build up about three in the afternoon and before long they would turn inky black. ‘The first thunder crack always stops the town. Don’t reckon I’ve ever seen lightning split the sky the way it does here. So bright, I tell you. Sometimes it rains and sometimes it doesn’t. But, when it does, the drops are about as large as a fifty-cent piece and the air smells so sweet. You know that rain on dry ground smell?’ Spencer smacked his lips. ‘Mmm, I love it!

  ‘You know, lots of things about Barrabine can take a bit of getting used to, for sure,’ Spencer continued. ‘But I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else now, and Kathy loves it too.’

  Dave wanted to ask him how long it had taken Kathy to settle here. To find friends and be happy, but he wasn’t sure he wanted his work partner to know that Melinda had cried herself to sleep last night, thinking Dave hadn’t heard her. But he had and his heart had hurt the whole time.

  ‘And the kids, what do they do? Why weren’t the ones we saw back there in school?’

  ‘Probably playing hooky first day of term. We’ll keep an eye on them. As coppers, we work hard at having good relations with the kids in town. Some are more well known that others, as you would know from Perth. We’ll head up here,’ Spencer said, flicking his blinker on and driving up the winding road to the top of the hil
l. ‘Finders Lookout.’ Parking the car under the lone tree, which didn’t offer enough shade, he pulled on the park brake and indicated the steel structure with a spiral staircase leading to a platform. ‘Too hot to walk to the top, but there’s a nice spot around here you can look out over the town. Come on.’

  Together they stood, hands in pockets, and surveyed Barrabine. The silver roofs threw off the glare of the midday sun and there was a continual line of cars on the highway. Further out, Dave could see the red scars of the mines, slashed across the earth. There were large, heavy machines moving in the distance. The railway line glinted in the sun but remained empty of carriages.

  ‘What’s that noise?’ he asked. The hum had been a constant since he’d arrived. He caught a glance of the main street, lined with heritage buildings, and the tall structures, all different heights. Spencer had told him these were mine shaft headframes.

  ‘That’s the mines,’ Spencer said softly. ‘The noise is there all the time. Day and night. They work round the clock to harvest the gold.’ He continued to stare straight ahead. ‘This is a hard town, Dave. One where fellas would rather put you in the ground than give up where they’ve found the yellow stuff. Where some blokes would rather take the gold from others than look for it themselves.

  ‘The miners work hard, especially the ones underground. And they play hard too. In a sense, Barrabine is like the last frontier.’ He turned and looked at Dave. ‘I hope you’re prepared.’

  Chapter 2

  Waiting to greet Dave on his arrival home from his first day at work was a swarm of small black bush flies at the front door. Waving his hands around, he tried to swat away as many of them as he could and then make a dash inside with only a few following him.

  ‘Shit,’ he muttered, nearly tripping over a cardboard carton and having to grab the wall to save himself. The lounge was filled with half-unpacked boxes and furniture was pushed up against walls. Loud music was blaring from the stereo.

  ‘Hello?’ he called out. ‘Melinda?’

  ‘Down here.’ Her reply was muffled, as if she had her head deep in a box.

  Stepping cautiously around the mess—he was sure they hadn’t packed so much when they’d left Perth—he made his way down the passage, looking in each room, curious to see what changes had happened while he’d been at work.

  They hadn’t lived together before they’d got married—he’d been in a little one-bedroom unit, not far from the police station, with nothing but of bit of cooking gear, a bed, TV and fridge. He’d taken his washing to the laundromat. He liked living minimally; it was part of who he was. Having lived in the shearers’ quarters on his father’s farm for five years, he’d always managed to fit everything he had into one small room. This house full of furniture and things Melinda said they needed was quite foreign to him.

  Melinda, on the other hand, had shared a house with three of her friends from uni and had slowly been collecting everything she would need to move out on her own. Most of the furniture was either hers or what they’d been given through the gift registry for their wedding. Walking through a department store picking out items for the new house and then asking people to buy them as wedding presents had made his toes curl, but he had to admit that the house was taking shape and looked very nice.

  ‘Making headway?’ he asked when he finally found her in the bathroom, stacking toiletries into the mirrored cupboard above the basin.

  As he’d left the station tonight, Spencer had offered to come around and help to move the furniture into place, but Dave had thanked him and said it would be best if he went home first and saw what was going on before he said yes. Now he was glad of that. It looked like Melinda had everything under control…Maybe. He couldn’t be sure.

  ‘Yeah, I think so.’ Melinda turned around to face him, her face covered in dust and her cheeks red. ‘I’ve got the bed in the right spot and made up, so at least we won’t have to stay in the hotel again.’

  The furniture had arrived yesterday just as the sun had been going down, so Spencer had suggested the department fork out for a night in the local pub. Dave had jumped at the idea; they didn’t need to be unpacking well into the night after a day like they’d had. Leaving Bunbury that morning had caused floods of tears from both Melinda and her mum. Her father, Dave had noticed, had also teared up a little. Melinda hadn’t stopped crying until they were a couple of hours down the road. Of course, she had started again when they’d arrived in Barrabine.

  ‘What’ve you been doing?’ Dave reached over to wipe a cobweb from her head. ‘The house isn’t so dirty that you should be getting cobwebs in your hair!’ He grinned at her and tried to reach his arm around her waist, but she was too far away.

  ‘Did you know there was a shed out the back? I didn’t notice when we arrived. I went to have a look to see if we could store the suitcases and stuff in it, and it’s filthy. Hence I look like this.’ She spread out her arms and pirouetted on her toes.

  Dave grinned. ‘Well, I guess that’s better than having rolled in the dirt.’ He passed her a can of deodorant and a tube of moisturiser from the box at her feet so she could stack them where she wanted.

  ‘How was your day?’

  Dave reached back into the box and handed her more toiletries. ‘Fine. Police station is okay. Met a couple of the other blokes, who seem nice enough. We went through some files Spencer is working on and had a bit of a drive around. But the most interesting piece of information I learned today is that the police station is haunted.’

  ‘Haunted?’ Melinda flicked her long hair over her shoulders and looked up at him, her tone disbelieving. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yep, apparently so. There was a gold squad detective back in the early 1920s who was murdered and—’ he dropped his voice to a low rumble ‘—they say his headless body roams the station at night. There are noises and happenings that people can’t explain.’

  ‘Happenings? Really, like what?’

  ‘Pieces of papers being moved, rubbish bins emptied. And it seems you can’t leave a dirty mug on your desk overnight. The ghost is a bit of a clean freak. They always end up on the kitchen sink. The guys have tested it heaps of times, apparently. Every time there’s a dirty coffee cup on a desk or somewhere other than the sink, it gets moved to where it can be washed.’

  ‘Right.’ Melinda drew out the word. ‘I think everyone has a dose of the sun.’ She reached into the box and picked up another bottle.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Dave said. ‘I thought I might test the theory myself.’ He gave her a grin. ‘Always wanted to know if I’m able to get in touch with my spiritual side!’

  Melinda rolled her eyes at him and Dave knew the conversation was over. Spiritual was something Melinda didn’t do. She was practical and didn’t believe in anything to do with religion or an afterlife. Even when her oldest nursing friend, Tash, told her the story of a man who had arrived on her ward in the hospital and stood in front of a patient who was stable and expected to make a full recovery. The man didn’t say anything to the patient, who was asleep at the time, only stood and watched him for at least ten minutes, then left. Not ten minutes later the patient went into cardiac arrest and died, despite everyone’s best efforts. Dave knew that to this day Tash still believed she’d seen the Grim Reaper. Melinda didn’t.

  He changed the subject. ‘Did Kathy come over?’ he asked. ‘What was she like?’

  ‘Yeah, she did. Turned up about ten this morning. She was nice enough. Much taller than Spencer—I think they’d look strange standing next to each other. And she was quite slim. I’d say the two of them are opposites in every sense of the word.’

  Dave gave a chuckle. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting her then.’

  ‘Hmm. She asked lots of questions. Wanted to know how we got together and why you’d wanted to be transferred here. Said it was strange. Not many people ask to come to Barrabine apparently.’ She raised an eyebrow at him, as if to say ‘You’re mad’ and then stretched her back out before letting
out a groan. ‘My back is killing me.’

  ‘Come on,’ he said, reaching out a hand to help her over the box. ‘Let’s go and find a pub to have a drink. You look like you need one. And let’s have tea there. Neither of us needs to be thinking about cooking tonight. If the bed is made up, that’s all we need.’

  Finally she smiled. ‘That would be nice. I’m tired.’

  The shrill noise of the telephone made Dave jump. ‘Where’s the bloody phone?’ he asked, walking towards the noise.

  ‘Kitchen,’ she said. ‘On the wall, next to the door going into the lounge.’

  ‘Hello?’ Dave answered, picking up the receiver.

  ‘Dave, g’day. It’s Mark Beattie. Settling in okay?’

  Grimacing, Dave tucked the phone in between his shoulder and ear and reached down to pull his shoes and socks off. ‘G’day, Mark,’ he said to his new father-in-law. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Fine, fine here. Although we’re missing Melinda already.’

  Dave noticed he wasn’t included in that statement.

  ‘Yeah, I bet you are,’ he answered. ‘I’m sure she’s missing you too, although she’s been pretty busy today.’ He left out the ‘so hopefully she hasn’t thought about you at all’ part. Dave hadn’t liked his father-in-law from the moment he’d met him. Mark came across as a pompous arse—having made his money from good investments, he was always dropping hints about how intelligent he was, how he didn’t need to work any more, he just did it for the enjoyment, and how his daughters had taken after him. After many hints about how Dave wasn’t good enough for Melinda, the final straw had been when he’d suggested to Dave that his policeman’s income wasn’t going to be enough to keep his daughter in the way she should be looked after and perhaps the kindest thing would be for Dave to break off the engagement.

  ‘Unpacked yet?’ Mark asked, returning Dave to his tiny, weatherboard house in Barrabine.

  ‘Well, Melinda seems to have done a great job already, but there’s still a bit to go. Rome wasn’t built in a day.’