“And how did he seem? Is he happy?”
“He was working mostly. Or sitting with his dog.”
“Lonely?”
“Might be, aye.”
Billy shook his head. “I need a fucking drink.”
He rose and poured himself a tall whiskey, nothing for Wainwright, and sat back down behind the desk. Billy’s hand was shaking.Tommy, after all this time. Wincing, he took a long pull of the whiskey, thought fuck it and tipped the whole thing down.He came up gasping. Eyes pinched, sucking in through his teeth. He set down the glass and waited while the burn subsided andthe liquor swam nicely in his belly and head, then focused on Wainwright again.
“So how’d you find him?”
A shrug. “Followed the trail. He wasn’t an easy man to run down.”
“Could others? The police?”
“Find anyone if you look hard enough. It’d have to be worth their while.”
“You bring proof?”
“Like what?”
“Anything—you could be spinning me a line.”
Wainwright shifted a little in the chair, flexing his thick shoulders and neck. “I did, it would cost my reputation. And youain’t paying enough to risk that.”
“But you’re sure it’s Tommy?”
“Now that I’ll stake my name on. It’s him all right.”
“You know what I can do if you’re lying to me?”
“I’ve an idea, aye.”
“And you’re sticking with your story?”
“It ain’t a story. It’s the way things is.”
“Fine.”
Billy leaned to the safe, opened it, counted out a stack of bills. He handed them to Wainwright, who counted them also, slowly, then folded them and slipped them into the pocket of his jacket. They sat a moment in silence until Wainwright remembered something, dipped into another of his pockets and came up with a handwritten note. “There it is all wrote down for you. His name. Directions from the town.” He leaned forward and sent it fluttering across the desk. Billy picked it up and read. He wondered where Bobby had come from. There weren’t any Robert Thompsons he knew. It was a common enough name though. Must have been thousands outthere.
“We’re having a party tonight. Stay for a drink and a feed.”
“I don’t really go to parties.”
“And I’m not really asking. I want you here while I make a few enquiries.”
“What enquiries?”
“I have a man in the Melbourne land office. I’ll send an urgent telegram. Won’t take long.”
Wainwright sniffed dismissively. “I told you. It’s him all right.”
“Then you won’t mind staying. Fill your boots with my champagne.”
Billy dismissed him. Wainwright skulked from the room. Hardy came in soon afterward and Billy told him to watch their guest:he wasn’t to leave the station until Billy said he could. Billy picked up the piece of paper and reread it. The words seemedmagical on the page. A few simple ink scrawls and within them a whole world. Tommy. It had been twenty-one years. Apart longerthan they were together—the thought stopped Billy cold. It seemed only weeks ago they had embraced and said their final goodbye.But now here he was: a grazier, in the green hills of Victoria, where they got the rain. Billy shook his head, and smiled.
“If either of you talks, if Billy leaves, or Tommy returns, if there’s so much as a letter in the mail, I will kill the both of you and your families and anyone else you hold dear. There will be no warning. One day you will simply look upon my face and know what the other has done.”
Noone. Well, fuck him. Billy wasn’t scared of that cunt now. He’d been a boy, sixteen years old, when out there in the atrium Noone had laid down those terms; sixteen and trembling like a beat dog. Now Billy owned the atrium, and the house around it, the entire district, while Noone was some pencil-pushing civil servant, commissioner of police for whatever that was worth, sitting around in dusty guildhalls, wearing wigs and smoking cigars. And he was old, the fucker, he was an old man these days—Billy had done some digging too. Big house on the river, a wife and two grown-up girls, moving in all the right society circles and with far too much to lose. What did Noone care about Billy and Tommy now? About threats made two decades ago? Billy was not some young pup he could frighten anymore—he would wager his own influence stretched just as far as Noone’s, you only had to look at who was coming tonight. The real power in Queensland lay not in the city but in those who owned the land. The people Billy had in his pocket, the favors he could call in. Christ, he could only imagine what it would feel like to ruin him, to bring that bastard down. Let him feel powerless for a change; your life on another man’s whim. And he could do it, he was suddenly realizing; he’d always had the means. But he hadn’t been strong enough. He hadn’t dared. Not now. Now he had the strength, the power, the wealth: Billy could ride out any scandal far easier than Noone. Because Noone was a politician, and politicians are men of straw: light a fire under them and see how quickly they burn. With him gone Tommy would be safe, Billy could fix it for his brother to come home. And if he did this, if he was able to pull it off, Katherine might find a way to forgive him, they could have a real marriage again.
He was seeing it so clearly: redemption, at last.
All he had to do was confess.
Chapter 31
Tommy McBride
Birds chirruped softly as Tommy rose and swiveled to the edge of the bed; the rapid-fire cackle of a kookaburra’s cry. Carefullyhe slid the bedsheet back over Emily, protecting her modesty, and her body from the early morning chill, let his hand reston her shoulder, cupping the slender bone. She lay on her front, her head turned away from him, blond hair spread over thepillow, naked beneath the sheet. Tommy was naked also. They’d slept however they fell. He stood and padded quietly from thebedroom,
