‘No problem. Thought I’d see you yesterday when I got here. You okay, Charlie?’
Charlie didn’t look okay. He looked tense and like he hadn’t slept, and he ignored Hux’s question, so Hux decided this wasn’t the moment to ask why the company’s R22 looked like it had been parked on the airfield by a learner driver.
‘Phaedra’s got the kettle on,’ Charlie said.
Hux followed his brother-in-law off the painted-up slab of cement that served as the launchpad for the helicopters. Charlie had set up operations here in Yindi Creek for more than just the obvious reason that it was his home town: the place straddled both sheep and cattle country (which meant mustering jobs) and the tiny local airstrip had a donger for rent that nobody else had wanted, so he’d got it dirt cheap. When Hux bought in, the donger had still been a derelict ruin but between the two of them, they’d tidied things up. Built a business that supported a growing family. Prospered.
Hux was eyeing the very same donger now. Once a site office at a mine somewhere, it had been bought and sold through the secondhand donger market enough times for it to be barely watertight and its windows more grime than glass. He could remember hosing it down with a pressure washer they’d borrowed from the pub—the inside and the outside of it—in return for a Saturday night washing glasses, and he and Charlie had kitted it out with whatever scraps of furniture they could beg or borrow.
The donger had been tarted up with a coat of green paint since Hux had gone east at the start of November. A new sign was bolted onto the side just under the roofline, and there was a pot plant—as in, an actual living plant rather than a long-dead stalk with yellowed cigarette butts for mulch—by the glass sliding door that he’d not noticed yesterday when he’d flown in.
‘You do this refurb yourself?’ he said.
‘Yeah. Business got a little quiet in November, so I thought I’d spruce the place up a bit.’
‘It looks good.’
Hux hauled the sliding door open, but before his eyes could adjust from the bleached glare of the outback sun to the dimness within the donger, he was being shouted at by the five-foot termagant who ruled the terrain within.
‘Gavin bloody Huxtable, your dog has pissed all over myFicus lyrata.’
He grinned. ‘You know, if I knew what that was, I might be as outraged as you, Phaeds.’
Phaedracilla Kong had turned up in the tin-shed hangar of what was then called Huxtable & Cocker (before they learned about business-type stuff like search engine optimisation and renamed it) for a two-week Year Eleven work experience placement in their first year of business. When work experience was over, they’d invited her to make it a regular Saturday morning gig with a pay cheque attached, and once school was done, she’d started turning up with a tin of tuna and a box of crackers in a plastic bag, rearranged the filing cabinet and announced they needed a full-time office administrator and she’d be starting immediately.
Two kids, one divorce and an arm tattoo of the GPS coordinates of Yindi Creek later, and she was now the beating heart of the business.
‘It’s my pot plant. My new pot plant. I opened the door to let the little rat out to do his business and he did it right there. And his aim, can I tell you, is crap.’
‘He’s a boy, Phaeds. Of course his aim is crap. It’s all part of our broader appeal.’
Possum had tottered forwards from whatever corner of the donger he’d been kipping in and sniffed Hux’s boot. ‘You want to go outside with me, buddy?’ Hux said. ‘Lift your leg over some dead brown grass without being judged?’
Clearly, the dog did not want to leave the aircon. Possum gave Phaedracilla a look which, if Hux had been a dog whisperer, he’d have interpreted as a middle finger, and wandered off to the rubbish bin by the fridge to inspect the contents with a practised eye. Hux closed the sliding door once Charlie was through, then followed the dog to the fridge.
‘This is why the office policy says no dogs.’
‘Have a heart, Phaeds. My place has got no running water so I’m staying at the pub, and if I leave Possum with Maggie she’ll spoil him with meat pie scraps all day. Three-legged dogs have to watch their weight.’
‘Hmm,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry about your plant,’ Hux added, because a little grovelling went a long way with their office manager. He glanced at Charlie.
But Charlie didn’t look as though he was even listening to, let alone enjoying, the usual Hux–Phaeds comedic banter. Hux raised his eyebrows at Phaedra, who shrugged.
Then she cleared her throat and pulled a clipboard off her desk. ‘Rightio, boys. The kettle’s boiled, so, Hux, help yourself to a mug and a teabag, then come sit yourself down. Charlie? You, too. Grab a cuppa and set your arse down on this chair.’
Charlie still had a dazed look about him, so Hux took over tea-making duty. He plonked a brimming cup of tea on the desk in front of Phaedra, another in front of Charlie, and grabbed a cold water for himself. If he dug around, he’d probably find biscuits, but those burning questions were starting to eat a hole in his head. He should probably phrase them gently, but frustration won out.
‘Can someone clue me in on what the fuck is going on?’
Charlie opened his mouth but Phaedra started ticking off her fingers before he could speak. ‘Yindi Creek Choppers took a job taking some bloke out to visit a campsite just off Doonoo Doonoo Road. Cash job. He was a walk-in on Friday morning, and it was the first time the guy had booked with us.’
‘What sort of campsite? He was an opal miner, right?’ Wasn’t that what Number Four had said?
‘He wasn’t an opal miner,’ Charlie answered, ‘but he was visiting his friend who was. At least, that’s what he said. He was spending the weekend out bush with a mate who was getting some good colour out of the ground, but his ute had problems and he’d promised to get supplies out, so would I take him out and then pick him up. He didn’t have much with him—groceries from the IGA stuffed into some dark bag thing, a duffel, but it wasn’t zipped up and those IGA bags are bright, you know? You notice them. He had one of those little fold-up shovels they sell at the disposal store, two ten-litre jerrycans, and … What else was there, Phaedra? Oh, yeah. He had a couple of meat pies in a paper bag from the bakery in town.’
‘Jerrycans? With fuel in? The legal kind?’