“I was.” He coughed, suddenly bashful. “Actually, me and Katherine Sullivan are married now. Shit, Tommy, I’m co-owner ofBroken Ridge!”
Billy stood there beaming. Proud as a baboon’s arse. Bitterly Tommy smirked and put the kettle on to boil. “The new John Sullivan. Just like you always wanted.”
“It ain’t like that.”
“It’s exactly like that. Right down to your fucking boots.”
“Hey now.”
“We were never good enough for you, Billy. You grew up ashamed.”
That silenced him. Tommy patted himself dry with a towel, then when the water was boiled made the tea. He cleared space atthe table, shoving aside the papers and crockery, the ashtray and dirty cups, and set their mugs opposite each other, thoughneither moved to sit down.
“It’s not what you think,” Billy said. “I never meant for things to work out how they did. Truth is, I didn’t want it, theestate, not at first anyway. She’d have likely married someone else if William hadn’t come along.”
“Seems you’re making the best of it, anyhow.”
“Is it my money you’re most jealous of, little brother, or my wife?”
“Jealous? Do you have any idea the shit I’ve been through? By rights I should probably be dead, and there’s you moaning aboutmaking your fortune, not a hair out of place. Sitting up there on Sullivan’s throne, wearing his clothes, fucking his wife . . .hell, you even talk like him almost. That man was behind everything, Billy—he knew damn well there were never any nativesat the house that day. You knew it too.”
The hurt on Billy’s face was obvious. Quietly, he said, “We found Joseph’s gun.”
Tommy sighed. “The gun proves nothing. It never did. All those people we killed—how is that still all right in your mind?”
“It was only Joseph I went after. The rest was up to them.”
“But Joseph wasn’t there! And Sullivan, Noone, they already knew he wouldn’t be—they used us, you more than anyone, as anexcuse to slaughter the Kurrong. And we let them. Went with them. If you can’t see that you’re even stupider than I thought.”
Billy stood there, his face flushed and knotted with doubt. He scraped out a chair and flopped into it. “Yeah, well, I ain’tdone with that cunt yet.”
Tommy shook his head. Billy hadn’t changed. Reluctantly he sat down. Watching his brother sip the steaming tea, returning his stare over the rim. Billy pulled a cigarette tin from his pocket, popped the lid, offered the tin across.
“I heard you like a smoke nowadays. So my man said anyway.”
Tommy paused then took one. “What else did he tell you?”
“That you’re fond of your dog,” Billy said, tapping his own cigarette on the tabletop, turning it over and pinching it betweenhis lips. “And you’ve a blackboy here, no woman . . .” He glanced around the room. “Which seems about right to me.”
Tommy smoked with his arms folded, holding himself across the chest. “You’d better not have told anyone else.”
“’Course not.”
“He can’t find me, Billy.”
“Who you on about now?”
“You know who I’m bloody on about. He said it wasn’t allowed. This.”
Tommy waved a hand between the pair of them. Billy sighed. “Ah, Noone’s not interested in you no more. If he’d wanted to findyou he could have. He knew you killed that overseer down in St. George. Told me all about it too.”
Dread crippled him. He couldn’t move. The cigarette at his lips, his mug gripped in his hand, picturing the two of them, Nooneand Billy, laughing in John Sullivan’s old parlor, drinking whiskey and sharing the news. Of course Billy would be in withhim. Of course he would, the dog.
“This was a good while back, mind you. Long story short, one of his troopers had took off, Possum or Wombat or whatever thefuck he was called.”
“Rabbit,” Tommy whispered, his bat-like face rearing to mind.
“That’s the fella. Anyhow, you remember Drew Bennett, Daddy knew him, has that little place to the south there; the stupidbugger let the boy hide in his barn. Noone said unless I helped bring him in he’d ride out and track you down. He guessedwhere you were headed, everything. I saved you from him, Tommy, can’t you see?”
So Noone had spared him, had let him get away. It shocked Tommy to realize that he’d meant so little; that he’d been running from a man who didn’t care.
“The point is,” Billy said, sliding the ashtray closer, crushing his cigarette, lighting another, “if Noone didn’t give ashit back then, he sure as hell doesn’t now. And things are different, I’m a rich man these days, I ain’t scared of him. Keepingus apart all this time, treating me like his lapdog . . . he wants something, he whistles, like he did with that trial. Itwasn’t me they were after, but he roped me in as well.”
Blinking, Tommy tuned in again. “What trial?”
“You didn’t read about it? Thing was all over the Brisbane papers.”
“I don’t exactly follow the northern news.”
“There was this inquest, back in ninety-seven, into the killings, and all what came after. Remember that priest we stumbledon out there, well, he hired this city lawyer, name of Henry Wells, who stirred up all sorts of trouble on the coast. Theydid the trial in Bewley, though, the whole thing was rigged. Noone walked. So did I, not that I should have been there inthe first place—we were the victims after all.”
“They put Noone on trial?”
“In a manner of speaking, aye. ’Course, he fed them a load of horseshit, which I had to back up, and that priest never madeit to the courthouse, they must have got to him before.”
A creeping fear rose in Tommy. There was something in how Billy was talking, that smirk in his eyes. I ain’t done with that cunt yet, he had said, and Tommy had dismissed it. But there was more to this than just sharing a tale.
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“I thought you might be interested. Among other things.”
“What other things? What have you done, Billy?”
“Nothing yet,” Billy said, exhaling. “But I plan to. Noone needs paying back. I met with that same lawyer in Brisbane
