Chapter Twenty-Five
CHAPTER
25
Horses that owners had grown out of or lost interest in were regularly kept in the paddock at the saddlery. Some had been mistreated or neglected and had developed bad habits, like bucking or careening under low trees to get me off their backs. Since I rode them anyway, Grandpa’s claim that I was galloping before I’d started school is likely to be the truth. Kit said I don’t want to tell the truth. My hand on his thigh, his on mine. The traitorous memories are warm and sweet but cruel and sharp as well. He didn’t care that I’d marked his neck. He said he wanted that. He also said he’d wait.
He found my coat and held it out while I put my arms into it. And he would have walked me to Laura’s gate if my mother hadn’t cornered him on the way out. That was three weeks ago. I could have called him and asked the question. ‘What did you mean by “I’ll wait”?’ A hook-up? A relationship like he had with Chloe? I wouldn’t want either of those things.
In my personal life, I’m cautious. And notwithstanding what Kit might believe, I’m careful in my working life too. For the film shoot, the horses were trained. Although it was possible that things could go wrong, it was unlikely Athena would fall. Even when she did, I rolled clear. In the weeks since I’ve seen Kit, I’ve done my best to put thoughts of him aside. Right now, mounted on Phoenix, is no time to regress.
Given all the people Astrid has bossed around since seven this morning—executive-something and executive-something-else and all their assistants—I can see how she’d think that directing The Dragon Slayers would be more stressful than directing the documentary. She didn’t intend to use the footage of Phoenix going off script, but in the end she couldn’t resist it. ‘Now I see Kit’s point,’ she told me. ‘It’s a miracle you didn’t break your neck.’ Phoenix’s relentless pursuit, Athena’s fear, my anguish, was too good not to use.
‘Filming now.’ Astrid’s voice is clear in my earpiece.
I was dressed as a boy from the Starsman clan when I was a stunt double. But after I’d lost my hat, it was clear I was a woman with long sun-tipped hair, green eyes and a gap between my two front teeth. One of the minor characters in the first of The Dragon Slayers novels is a young woman who risks her life to save her brother. The scriptwriters have tweaked the script, so instead of the woman being captured after falling from a bridge, she’s captured after falling from her dappled grey mare. After she and her brother escape, she steals the dragon slayer horse that almost killed her.
Enter Phoenix.
Only Phoenix and I will be filmed while galloping down the hill. It’s too risky to ride bareback, the look Astrid wants, so I’ve tinted a racing saddle black and will ride without stirrups. It’ll appear that I’m bareback. Phoenix and I wait at the starting point—the stand of ironbark trees. The camera crew, wearing orange high-vis vests, brighten the early winter grass and drones dart above us. Phoenix’s mane catches the wind as he waits for my signal.
I lean low and stroke his neck. ‘I get paid more as an actress than a stunt rider, and you have a reputation to salvage.’
‘Mac.’ Astrid again. ‘When you’re ready.’
Phoenix and I have rehearsed, but this is the first time I’ll give him his head. His black coat shimmers under the midday sun; he tosses his head and skitters. Collecting the reins my grandfather stitched, I nudge his sides with my heels.
‘Go, boy.’
As if jumping from a gate at the races, Phoenix sprints headlong into a gallop. My hair whips across my face and my eyes water as the landscape blurs into a kaleidoscope of greens, browns and yellows. Hoofbeats thunder on the hard-packed earth as we charge past a ramshackle hut and leap a fallen log. I grab handfuls of mane as he swerves to the right, picks up speed and flies down the hill …
***
Fired up with adrenaline, I’m laughing as I lift a leg over Phoenix’s back and slide to the ground. Puffing and snorting, he seems happy too. Members of the camera crew shout out and fist pump as I walk Phoenix to the yards, taking off his saddle and bridle before slipping on a halter. He plunges his nose into a water trough as I sponge down his neck, back and flanks. When I rub around his ears he nudges my stomach, sending a wet trail of slobber down my leg.
‘I’ll give you something to eat after you’ve cooled down.’
Astrid is on the phone when she stops on the far side of the fence. ‘Mac did well, Kit,’ she says, before making an exaggerated eye roll. ‘You heard me.’ Another pained expression. Then, ‘She’s here. You talk to her.’
Staying clear of Phoenix, she hands me the phone and I put it to my ear. ‘Hey.’
‘Mackenzie.’
The progress I thought I’d made in not thinking about him too often evaporates. My chest tightens. I’m jittery. ‘Why did you call?’
‘You can’t do the documentary with a broken neck.’
‘Can’t you be happy that I got it right today?’
Silence. Then, ‘Don’t do it again.’
He said he’d wait. I dip the sponge in the bucket, squeeze it out again. ‘Do you have anything else to say?’
‘We want you for a hike next month. Two days. One night.’
I nod even though he can’t see it. ‘Will you take me climbing?’
‘And we can talk.’
***
At home, I’ve released Phoenix into the paddock with an extra-large biscuit of lucerne when Keith Urban jumps over the gate. Head high, tail stiff and hackles up, he runs towards the shed.
‘Keith!’ A truck passes and scoots over the bridge. ‘What’s the matter?’
The fibro shed with a tall corrugated roof and three wide doors that face the road is roughly fifty metres from the house. Keith, running up and down the path at the side of the shed, ignores my whistles. The door is ajar. Is someone inside? Should I call the police?
I wouldn’t know what to tell them.
We never lock the old timber side door, which is warped and clings to the doorstep. Grandpa wanted to replace the hinges. I wanted to buy a new door. In the end we did nothing. The only things of value in the shed are the machinery and workbenches, mostly too old and heavy to get out of the side door, so we were never worried about security. But now …
When I take the handle in both hands, brace my feet and lift, the door creaks further open. Narrow windows line up on the far side of the shed but, unless the front doors are open, there’s not enough light to work at the benches. The open door casts a triangular strip of light on the pale concrete floor. If someone is in there, will they—
Keith shoves his nose around the door and, before I can close it again, scrabbles through the gap. With a series of barks that bounce off the walls, he leaps and bounds to the far side of the shed. His growl is low and threatening; he bares his teeth.
‘Get back!’ a man shouts. ‘Fuck off!’
The man, hidden in the shadows, uses his phone as a torch. Is he holding anything else? Will he hurt Keith? Heart crashing against my ribs, I take a step inside and turn on the overhead lights. My eyes are accustomed to the light. Joseph Rossi, the muscle-bound man who came to the saddlery and asked about whips, covers his eyes.
‘Fuck!’
When Keith jumps towards him, he staggers backwards and his phone clatters to the floor. He peers into the brightness, holds up his hands.
‘I didn’t do nothing!’
The milk crate on the shelf just inside the door holds replica weapons I engraved for The Dragon Slayers —a full-sized sword and thick-bladed dagger the length of my forearm. The metal is flimsy and the blades are blunted but Joseph has no way of knowing that. After grasping the sword in one hand and the dagger in the other, I hold them out.
‘Get back!’ I stab the air. ‘Sit down! Hold up your hands!’
‘Mac, it’s me!’ His voice is high-pitched. ‘Call the dog off!’
‘Sit on the ground!’
As Keith, who has no more chance of ripping Joseph’s throat out than I have of putting a sword through him, watches on, Joseph sits against the wall with his hands on his head. Is that what’s supposed to happen?
‘I’m not doing nothing wrong,’ he says.
‘You’re in my shed.’ I pull out my phone. ‘I’m calling the police.’
‘No, Mac! I can explain.’ He crosses himself. ‘I swear it.’
‘Get your hands on your head.’
He hesitates.
‘Now!’
He does as I ask. ‘Give me a chance, Mac. Let me explain.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I was having a look round. I haven’t taken nothing.’
‘Why were you looking? What were you looking for?’
‘Something your dad left behind. Something that belonged to someone else. They want it back.’
After checking the door is wedged open, I walk to Keith, still a few metres clear of Joseph. ‘Go on.’
‘Put those bloody swords down.’
I lower the sword but keep the long-bladed dagger held out. ‘This “someone else”. What do they want back?’
‘Look …’ He grimaces. ‘I heard about it at the gym a few months back, a bloke from out of town offering a heap of money to pick up his things from the Summerfield saddlery.’
‘It was you who broke into my house, wasn’t it?’
‘Where’s your evidence when nothing went missing?’ His tone is belligerent. ‘I’m not confessing to nothing.’
‘What was this someone looking for?’
‘Film, that’s all I know. Pornos, dirty pictures, that’s what I thought.’
‘My father wouldn’t have anything like that.’
He barks a laugh. ‘If he did, he wouldn’t have told you about it, would he?’
‘Shut up!’
Joseph holds his hands out in front of him again. ‘The bloke wants property that is rightfully his, nothing else.’
‘Why did you think that you could get it?’
‘I live here, don’t I? All I was doing was having a look-see in my own back yard.’
‘This is my back yard.’
‘It can’t be break and enter, can it, when the place isn’t locked? Like I said, someone wants their property, that’s it.’
Holding out the dagger as if I’d know what to do with it if Joseph came hurtling towards me, I pick up his phone and pocket it.
‘That’s my property!’
‘Shut up!’
When Keith’s hackles rise, Joseph holds out his hands. ‘All good. All good.’
I walk backwards to the door. ‘Don’t move.’ ‘I told you everything I know, Mac.’ Standing slowly, he dusts himself off. ‘Honest.’
‘Now you’ve searched my house and my shed, are you done? Will you break in again? Will anyone else?’
‘You had the cops swarming all over the saddlery last time. No way anyone’s coming back after that.’
‘Except for you.’
‘The shed was open, Mac, you can’t deny that. And the bathroom window—’ He cuts himself off.
‘What about it?’
‘I didn’t take nothing.’
I put the sword and knife back in the crate, then balance it on an old upright dining chair with a wobbly leg. Keeping my eyes firmly on Joseph, I drag the chair and crate to the door and push it over the doorstep to the ground.
I whistle. ‘Keith!’ As soon as he scampers outside, I follow.
‘Mac! I told you everything! Don’t you go doing something—’ Heart pounding, I slam the door and shove the back of the chair under the handle. Once I’m confident it’ll hold, I run to my four-wheel drive. As Joseph yells up a storm and thumps on the door, I lock me and Keith Urban inside and call 000.
***
Jeremiah, our local senior constable, and another officer take Joseph away in a police car. A few hours later, Jeremiah returns. He’s sitting at my kitchen table with a cup of tea when he pulls out a pad and flicks through pages.
‘Just need to go over it one more time,’ he says.
‘I think I’ve told you everything.’
His brows lift. ‘You should’ve reported the second break-in.’
‘What did I have to report? I had a feeling someone had been in the saddlery? I thought I’d left the light on and I’d shut the door?’
He smiles. ‘Yeah, fair enough.’
‘Is Joseph still denying he did all three break-ins?’
‘He’s confessed to them all.’
‘What excuses did you get?’
‘He’s denied he was looking for anything specific, including the film you mentioned earlier. He’s also adamant he was acting on his own, that he didn’t hear anything at the gym.’ Jeremiah taps his head. ‘Up here, he’s thinking he’s doing the right thing by whoever it was who paid him, so he’s highly unlikely to turn that person in.’
‘Wouldn’t he get a lighter sentence if he did?’
‘The personal risks in dobbing on someone could outweigh the benefits of helping us out. Whoever paid him wasn’t mucking around—it was a substantial amount.’
‘Has Joseph been in trouble before?’
‘Besides a few misdemeanours, no.’ Jeremiah blows out a breath. ‘And given there was only a broken lock up at the house and no theft or damage to property—’
‘What about Grandma’s broken vase, my smashed pony and all the other mess?’
‘According to Joseph, you’ve got a top-heavy bookcase.’ Jeremiah grins. ‘He was standing on a bottom shelf to get a better look at the top shelf when it fell on top of him.’
‘He’s an idiot.’
‘In his defence …’ Another grin. ‘He told us the second time he broke in, he climbed through an open window and, as a personal favour to you, closed it on the way out.’
‘Why come and see me at the saddlery?’
‘An excuse to look around again to see if you’d upped your security? He told you he was after your father’s film. Does that make sense to you?’
‘I had no idea about the film until a few months ago. Grandpa told me where to find it and I gave it to Kit Thorsen, who copied it for me. All I’ve seen so far are seals, penguins and local landscapes. I haven’t been through it all yet.’
‘Let me know if anything looks out of place.’
My cup is already half full, but I top it up from the teapot. ‘What will happen to Joseph?’
‘Given the minor damage and guilty plea, it’s likely to be a non-custodial sentence.’ He shrugs. ‘Might be for the best, keeping Joseph away from dead-set criminals. Since his mum passed away, he’s lived with his gran, Maria. She’s in her eighties and not as fit as she was so Joseph drives her around, gets the shopping done, fixes things around the house. He’s the only family she’s got left around here.’
‘In that case, I hope he doesn’t go to jail, so long as he doesn’t come back to the saddlery.’
‘He’ll have strict bail conditions, and parole conditions after that.’ Jeremiah shrugs. ‘Maria’s so cranky he’s brought shame to the family name, he won’t be able to take out the rubbish without her knowing about it.’
‘Give her a set of handcuffs just in case.’
‘I have a sense she knows more about why Joseph’s clamming up than she’s letting on, but it’s not like I can interrogate her.’ He touches my arm. ‘Speaking of seniors, how’s Mr Henry getting on?’
‘He’s excited about the documentary. And on that …’ I line up my teacup and the teapot. ‘Can you do me a favour? I don’t want the documentary people to find out about this. You won’t say anything, will you?’
‘We’ve got no reason to, but why keep it from them? I still can’t believe we’ll have Kit Thorsen here in Summerfield.’ He whistles. ‘The man himself. That’s impressive.’
He is impressive, but also interfering and attractive and confusing and … I push my cup away. ‘I don’t want what’s been happening at the saddlery to cast an unflattering light on the town. It wouldn’t be in Summerfield’s interests, or anybody else’s.’
‘Fair enough.’ He stands, pockets his notebook and takes his cup to the sink. ‘But if you find anything off-kilter in that film of yours, we can investigate further. Like I said, someone was prepared to pay generously to get their hands on whatever it was they were after.’