The Great Divide Read online

  A child’s shriek echoed across the backyard, soundly ignored by the three men in Jake’s company. A petite woman in high heels came hurtling through the back door with an answering cry.

  ‘Daniel! Get off your sister!’

  Jake saw a small boy of around eight or nine years old standing on top of a girl of around eleven or twelve, one foot in the middle of her back, holding her by the ponytail, the front of her neck stretched to breaking point as she screamed.

  ‘He’s fine, they’re just playing …’

  The woman whipped around and glared at Trent- in-the-checked-shirt.

  ‘Daniel, let her go,’ he growled.

  The boy complied, causing his sister’s chin to hit the grass. He ran off with another boy, laughing.

  ‘Come on inside,’ Kelly said, leading Jake through the back entrance and down a long corridor to a significantly sized study. ‘So, how’d you go today?’ he asked, closing the door.

  The room had been designed for drinking as well as work, with large built-in bookcases housing strange artefacts, neat rows of matching book spines and a well-stocked bar.

  ‘Not sure I’m making much headway, to be honest.’

  ‘Scotch?’ Kelly offered, lifting a small pineapple-cut crystal decanter.

  ‘I’m technically on duty,’ Jake shook his head. ‘Couldn’t get anything useful out of the MacDonald or the Murphy girl.’

  ‘I’ll work out your vice sooner or later,’ Kelly said as he poured himself a decent slug into a lowball glass.

  Jake flashed him a grin. ‘I’ve already told you, sir, it’s rock climbing.’

  ‘Hardly a vice.’

  ‘Addictive, expensive, time-consuming and the cause of broken marriages?’

  Kelly laughed. ‘So, nothing useful from those two?’

  ‘Not apart from some disagreement over one’s love of watching daytime soaps. That’s apparently what Ava O’Brien was worrying over when she saw her brother on Wednesday night.’

  Kelly looked perplexed. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘That’s all I’ve been able to find so far.’

  ‘Women, hey?’

  Jake chose silence.

  ‘Anything further on cause of death?’

  ‘Unlikely before Monday.’

  ‘Anyone from the campground with priors?’

  ‘Nothing yet, but Murphy should have an initial report on everyone who was there by tonight.’

  Kelly gave Jake another look he couldn’t quite interpret. ‘You’re really by-the-book, huh?’

  ‘Is that a problem?’

  ‘I was expecting someone a bit more … most coppers looking for a couple of years in the sticks are, well, a bit more relaxed.’

  Jake had thought he was being relaxed. ‘I’ll work on it.’

  ‘Oh well, as it’s Saturday night you probably want to be on your toes anyway,’ Kelly said.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘You’re on call tonight. There’ll likely be a fight to break up at the pub, a few domestics, the usual.’

  Damn it. Jake’s first overnight shift in Dunton had been a complete non-event, but that wasn’t a Saturday night. He should have realised Saturdays in country towns would be busy, like they were everywhere else. He had been looking forward to sneaking several hours of sleep in the heated station lockup, which happened to contain a full-length single bed.

  ‘Give me a call if anything looks like it could get out of hand,’ Kelly said. ‘I usually know the people involved, happy to go around and have a word with them.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Aiden,’ Kelly’s wife called from the kitchen end of the corridor. ‘Time to eat.’

  Kelly downed the remainder of his whisky and smiled at Jake. ‘Best not to keep them waiting.’

  *

  Jake took a seat next to Evelyn at the adults’ table in the portico. It almost groaned under the combined weight of Trent and Kayden’s contributions from the barbeque plate and the multitude of salads and sides Kelly’s wife, Maria, ferried from the kitchen.

  The children were encouraged to serve themselves then sit at a smaller nearby table. As the adults began to fill their own plates, Maria tsked and bent her head to stage whisper to the mother of Daniel and his long-suffering sister, who now bore a scraped chin.

  ‘Talia, I’m concerned that Jackie’s looking a little heavy.’

  Talia pursed her lips. ‘Maria, as I said before, she’s healthy and that’s all we care about.’

  ‘I put Evelyn on her first diet when she was eight, and look at her now.’ Maria patted her daughter fondly on the arm, who smiled in return. ‘Jackie’s not too young to start.’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Talia said, her volume rising.

  ‘Let’s not talk about something so trivial.’ Aiden Kelly chuckled. ‘Especially not in front of a guest.’

  Everyone at the table, bar two, began eating indus­triously. Talia met Jake’s eyes with a look of exasperation. He had learned from Nic long ago to never to interfere in female politics, because doing so could only result in his being caught in the crossfire.

  Jake offered Talia a neutral smile in return and began constructing his first forkful.

  As late afternoon became evening, Jake realised he’d been at the Kelly home for a good three hours. He really needed to get back to the station and go through whatever paperwork Murphy had started.

  His phone buzzed and he pulled it from his pocket to check the number, expecting it to be Nic.

  It was a landline, possibly Tasmanian. He stood up and walked away from the table, on to the dew-slick grass beneath the oak trees lining the property’s perimeter.

  ‘Hello?’

  Soft, ragged sobbing echoed down the line.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Detective Hunter?’

  He recognised the voice from earlier in the day. ‘Charlotte?’

  ‘I … I …’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Please don’t blame me.’

  ‘Take a deep breath. Where are you?’

  ‘Melia’s place.’

  ‘Are you injured?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what’s wrong?’

  ‘I think she’s dead.’

  Chapter Six

  Dunton, Tasmania

  Saturday, 8.16 p.m.

  Shit. What the hell had happened?

  Jake walked back toward the family gathered around tables in the portico, signalling for Kelly to join him at the backyard boundary, away from the other diners.

  ‘All right, Charlotte. I need you to be very clear. Where is Amelia now?’

  ‘Her mum’s calling an ambulance but I think it’s too late.’

  ‘Where is Amelia?’

  ‘On the floor of her bedroom.’ She began to hyper­ventilate.

  Kelly arrived at his side, his hands raised in query.

  ‘Charlotte.’ Jake adopted his deepest tone while looking at Kelly with what he hoped was meaning. ‘Stay. With. Me. Have you checked her breathing? Does she have a pulse?’

  Charlotte’s breathing slowed a little.

  Kelly nodded at Jake.

  Good, he understood the nature of the situation.

  ‘Are you with her?’ Jake asked Charlotte.

  ‘I’m in the corridor … oh my God!’

  ‘Charlotte, stay calm. What is it?’

  ‘Mrs MacDonald just fainted.’

  Jake whispered to Kelly. ‘One, possibly two, need an ambulance at Amelia MacDonald’s house. Both Amelia and from the sounds of it now Mary MacDonald are unconscious.’

  ‘Any violence?’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like it.’ He returned his focus to his panicking caller. ‘Okay. Now Charlotte, we’re going to do this together. Are you with me?’ />
  ‘I … ah …’

  ‘I’ll make the call and drive us there,’ Kelly whispered.

  Jake nodded to him, then said loudly to Charlotte, ‘Together, okay?’

  ‘K.’

  Jake watched Kelly return to the house to grab his keys and phone. ‘Right. First, we check on Amelia. Then Mrs MacDonald. Okay?’

  ‘K.’

  Jake moved toward the front of the house and Kelly’s car, which thankfully sat in the driveway with an unobstructed exit.

  ‘Walk over to Amelia and kneel beside her, Charlotte. Are you there?’

  ‘Just a sec.’ Her voice had risen an octave.

  ‘Is she injured?’

  ‘There’s blood everywhere.’

  ‘Can you see where it’s coming from?’

  ‘Her hands, I think. Maybe her arms.’

  Had Amelia cut her wrists? ‘Is there blood on her face or neck?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is there blood on her chest?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right. Put your finger below her earlobe and trace straight down to just below the point of her jawbone, then press. Can you feel a pulse?

  He heard Charlotte suck in a lungful of air then hold her breath.

  Seconds ticked by.

  ‘Yes! Yes! She’s alive!’

  ‘Okay. Is her head in a good position for her to breathe?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Okay, now we’re going to check on Mrs MacDonald.’

  Kelly opened the car door for Jake. As he directed Charlotte in her care of the two unconscious women, Kelly tore along the streets of Dunton, siren screaming.

  In the midst of providing instructions, Jake couldn’t help reflecting on his move to the middle of the Tasmanian wilderness. It was supposed to be somewhat restful, to offer a calm space in which he could re-evaluate things. The past forty-eight hours proved that few of his plans survived contact with real life.

  *

  Amelia hunched against the side of the hospital gurney hugging her thinly clad stomach, rocking back and forth, keening. Her make-up had run and smeared creating a swirled, twisted impression of a clown face.

  She had stopped breathing in the ambulance, been revived, then thrown up what apparently looked like an entire bottle of pills. When Jake first saw her in the emergency department she’d been screaming, ‘You shouldn’t have brought me back! You shouldn’t have brought me back!’

  Her mother— who had recovered from her faint—sat next to her in the curtained emergency department bay, tears drowning her cheeks.

  Amelia moved her hands to cover her face. Under the harsh lights, Jake could see where each of her long, pink fingernails had been ripped off, presumably by Amelia herself. The nailbeds beneath were red and swollen, the source of the rivulets of blood now caking her fingers, hands and forearms.

  Jake looked at Mary, who appeared to have aged ten years since this morning. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Not long after you left she started moving around again. I thought she was fine. She wouldn’t say much, only…’ Amelia’s mother hesitated.

  ‘Please, Mary.’

  ‘… Only that she thought you’d come to help her, but instead you seemed to think she was guilty, so maybe she is.’

  Kelly’s words to Jake in the car as they drove to the MacDonald’s house rang in Jake’s ears. ‘We don’t want to make things worse for the MacDonalds, but we have to consider whether this is a sign of the girl’s guilt.’

  Mary sat upright in her rigid plastic chair, looking at Jake, aghast at what she had said. ‘I don’t mean she’s actually guilty of anything. She hasn’t been near Ms O’Brien in years. She’s just always struggled with a sense of guilt.’

  Jake dragged the cubicle’s other chair across to sit next to Mary. ‘About what?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know … but it’s one of the reasons I kept her out of school. There was always this stupid’—she spat the word—‘idea that she came from a home for bad girls. I’ve heard all kinds of people say it since we adopted her, and before.’ Mary’s voice caught in a sob. ’After her first day at school I found her in the shower screaming and tearing at her skin. I home-schooled her after that.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, it sounds terrible.’

  ‘She’s so brave, so smart,’ Mary continued. ‘But she just can’t beat whatever’s tormenting her.’

  A doctor appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Detective, could you please step outside?’ she said, drawing the cubicle curtains. ‘I’m going to examine Amelia.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Jake went into the waiting room where the lanky teenage boy from the MacDonald’s house was sitting, an older man by his side. Though the teenager’s facial features and colouring underlined that Amelia was not a close genetic relative, his concerned expression was every bit as brotherly as if they had been twins.

  ‘Andrew, is it?’ Jake asked.

  He gave a small nod.

  ‘Scott MacDonald.’ His father grabbed Jake’s right hand with his own and attempted to crush it, compressing the bones painfully as he pumped up and down.

  ‘Detective Jake Hunter,’ said Jake. His hand was released immediately.

  ‘Oh. Right. It was you this morning.’

  ‘I apologise if our visit precipitated a crisis for Amelia, Mr MacDonald— that certainly wasn’t our intention.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m sorry if we upset your daughter. We didn’t mean to.’

  The man harrumphed.

  Jake turned his attention to the son. ‘Can you tell me what happened, Andrew? After we left?’

  He shrugged the teenage shrug of infinite indifference.

  Scott MacDonald kicked his son’s ankle lightly. ‘Andrew.’

  ‘Melia was quiet after you left, but then she was okay enough by dinner to eat at the table. Mum was worried though. Dad was going to sleep in the spare room so Melia could sleep with Mum to make sure she was okay.’

  ‘Is that correct, Mr MacDonald?’

  The older man lifted his chin. ‘I sleep in the spare room when Mary’s worried about the girl.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘After dinner that Murphy girl came over to visit,’ said Mr McDonald, ‘so I went out to work in the shed. Then all hell broke loose. Again.’

  Scott MacDonald didn’t seem to hold much sympathy for his adoptive daughter.

  ‘Do you know what happened?’

  ‘She got her hands on some Valium, I think. Took enough to kill a horse.’ Mr MacDonald sighed. ‘Look, detective, we do our best, but the girl’s not right. There’s nothing else we can do.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Andrew murmured beside him.

  ‘What was that?’ Jake asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Speak up, boy,’ Scott MacDonald ordered his son.

  Andrew rolled his eyes. ‘Why bother? You never listen.’

  ‘Andrew,’ Jake said. ‘I’ll listen. What do you want to say?’

  The boy looked taken aback. ‘Uh … okay. There is something we can do. Keep Melia away from strawberries.’

  Strawberries?

  ‘Not this again,’ his father sniffed. ‘Don’t be so bloody stupid. How could some bloody berries do this to her?’

  His son huffed right back. ‘Not just any berries Dad, strawberries.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Jake asked. ‘You think strawberries are connected to Amelia hurting herself?’

  ‘He’s making it up for attention.’

  ‘No, I’m not!’ Andrew turned his back on his father to face Jake. ‘I don’t know why it happens. But I just know when we have strawberries, sure as shi– It’s when she tries to harm herself.’

  ‘Andrew!’

 
‘Well, it’s true. You and Mum never listen to me.’ His voice softened. ‘I didn’t like Amelia coming to live with us at first because she was all Mum seemed to care about. But I get it now.’

  ‘What do you get?’ Jake said.

  His father opened his mouth to answer on his behalf.

  ‘Please, Mr McDonald, let Andrew speak.’

  ‘Just … It’s just … when she loses it, if you think back, we’ve usually just had something with strawberries in it.’ He swallowed. ‘Everyone thinks I’m too young to notice stuff, but I’m not.’

  ‘Have you ever spoken to Amelia about it?’

  Andrew slumped against the hospital corridor wall. ‘I’ve tried, but it just makes her go quiet. I told Mum, but she wouldn’t believe me. So now I just try to eat anything that has strawberries in it to keep them away from Melia.’

  Remembering how close he had once been with his own brother, Jake could appreciate Andrew’s attempts to protect his sister in the face of adult obliviousness. And he now had a lead—but what to make of the association between strawberries and Amelia’s mental health?

  All three of them looked up as Charlotte Murphy walked around a corner into the waiting room clutching a Styrofoam coffee cup.

  ‘Please excuse me,’ Jake said to Andrew. ‘I’ll talk to you more later.’

  *

  Charlotte blinked repeatedly as Jake sat in one corner of the waiting room interviewing her. He needed more background on both girls and whatever had happened at the home.

  ‘Mrs MacDonald was just telling me about Amelia’s first day at school, after she was adopted. Did you two go to the same school?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Can you tell me what happened?’

  ‘I was excited to meet more kids. Amelia was too, I think. But some of the kids started calling us names at morning recess.’

  He paused as two women in blue scrubs and stethoscopes ran past the waiting room, a gurney between them, yelling for more staff to assist.

  ‘What did they call you?’ he asked Charlotte.

  ‘Just “bad girls”’.

  ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘They wouldn’t say. I just laughed at them and told them they were stupid, but Amelia was really upset by it. Her mum kept her home after that.’

  ‘And did anyone else say similar things?’