‘Can I get your number, sir?’ he asked, but realised he was talking to dead air.
‘You’ve got a look of excitement on your face, Burrows,’ Spencer said, mopping his brow. ‘What’s going on? Bugger, it’s hot out there already. Morning all.’
‘A body,’ Dave answered, ignoring the comment on the weather. It seemed to him everyone knew it was hot and talking about it wouldn’t make it cool down. ‘Tim Tucker, you know him?’
‘Sure do. Salt of the earth.’
‘Says there are flies and a smell coming from one of the shafts on his lease.’
Spencer’s eyebrows shot up. ‘A body? Now how does young Tim know it’s a human body and not an animal?’
‘I guess he assumed,’ Dave responded.
‘Good thing he reported it; better to be safe than sorry. Although probably just some poor roo fell down the shaft and wasn’t able to get out.’
Dave felt revolted. ‘Really? Never thought about an animal tumbling into a shaft. S’pose I should’ve.’
‘Unfortunately it happens more than you might realise. But,’ he cocked his head to one side and held his finger up, ‘I worked a case once where we thought a sheep had gone down a mine shaft. Turned out there was a body underneath it. The sheep was an afterthought to hide the body. Wool doesn’t break down, you see. Always gotta keep an open mind.’ He grinned. ‘Come on then, let’s go and check it out.’
Tim had been right about one thing. The smell was sickening.
The three men stood around the shaft, swatting the flies away and breathing through their noses.
‘Wish I’d brought the Vicks,’ Spencer said. ‘Got to be human, though, don’t you reckon, Dave? They always smell worse than animals.’
‘Never smelled a decomposing body before,’ Dave admitted. He wanted to put his hand over his nose, but at the same time didn’t want to appear weak and the new kid on the block. ‘All the bodies I’ve dealt with have been found before too much decay had set in.’
‘I reckon it’s human,’ Tim offered. ‘Remember that lady I found, the one in the car wreck? She’d been there for a couple of days in the sun. Reeks just like she did. I’ve smelled plenty of dead roos, wild dogs, camels even, and they don’t smell like this.’ He reached down to pat a large red heeler sitting at his feet.
Dave glared at the dog from behind his sunglasses. His welcome had been a snarling ferocious bark which had sent ripples of fear through Dave, who was still sporting a deep puncture wound scar on his forearm. One of his father’s kelpies had been caught in a fence and he’d tried to untangle it. The kelpie had been in pain when he’d latched on—Dave knew it never would have bitten him otherwise—but since then he’d kept dogs at a safe distance.
He shuffled to the side of the shaft, eyeing the red heeler as he went. Getting an unexpected whiff of the decaying body, he swallowed hard and turned away, trying to find clean air. The putrefaction hovered above the dark hole, just like the swarm of flies, and spread out from there.
Spencer slapped his hand onto his thigh. ‘Yeah, yeah, I remember her. One car, fell asleep and drove off the road. Drove into a tree. Poor lass.’ Spencer turned to Dave. ‘This is going to be a bit tricky. We’ll need to get the pathologist here from Perth. Got to get whoever it is outta this shaft, and forensics will have to come out.’ He stared down into the hole again. ‘Poor bastard,’ he muttered.
Dave looked into the darkness then over at Spencer. He couldn’t imagine anyone going down to recover a decomposing body in such a small space.
‘How—’ he started to ask, but Spencer interrupted him.
‘I’ll get on the blower to the mine, fire and rescue team.’ He blew out air and rocked on his heels. ‘We’ll need their expertise in this. Before we go in.’
Dave wanted to shudder, only guessing what imagery would greet the poor person who entered the mine shaft first.
‘How will they…?’
‘They’ll use their equipment to make sure the walls are safe first. Once we know that, they’ll send a team member down—remember, they’re trained to work in small, confined spaces, in the dark or at least with minimal light. I’ve been meaning to introduce you to the team leader, Bluey. Looks like we’ll be doing that on the job.’
His mind’s eye conjured up an image of a man in a set of orange overalls being winched down into the dark, the foul stench of death encasing him. He assumed the rescuer would wear a breathing apparatus so the odour didn’t overpower him.
Once the body had been enclosed in a body bag and hoisted to the surface, the decision would be made whether to send forensics down or not. Safety was paramount and, even though highly trained, if it wasn’t safe, forensics and the pathologist wouldn’t get to see the body in situ, which was fairly unusual. Bluey had expertise which the police didn’t have.
The shaft was situated between an overhanging rock and soft red dirt, covered in what looked like blue metal, which the council would use to make a bitumen road. Dave squatted down and picked some of it up. As he looked more closely he realised it was nothing like blue metal, but small, dark and shiny. Quite heavy for the size of it. He looked up, wondering what could be seen from inside the mine: blue sky and trees, their red trunks smooth and tinged with green. Dave reckoned only the tops of the mulga trees would be visible from down in the shaft—they weren’t as tall as the other species.
‘What’s this?’ he held out the small stone to Tim.
‘Ironstone,’ he answered. ‘Ironstone and quartz are good indicators that it’s gold country.’
Dave nodded and considered the shaft, where someone who had believed there was gold under this ground had
