The Carnival is Over Read online

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  1971—Hal is seventeen, with dreams of escaping from Moorabool to a life in the city. But right now he’s on a good behaviour bond and stuck in a job he hates, paying off the car he ‘borrowed’ and crashed. Hal’s packing-room job makes him a target for workplace bullies and the friendship of the older, more worldly Christine is all that makes each day bearable. So when she doesn’t turn up for work, he’s on the alert.

  So is Sergeant Mick Goodenough. But he already knows what’s happened to Christine: the same thing that happened to the newly elected deputy mayor. When another gruesome ‘accident’ occurs in Moorabool, Goodenough suspects there’s something sinister going on behind the scenes at the abattoir.

  Mick and Hal are both determined to dig up the truth. Before long each of them is going to find himself in mortal danger and running for his life.

  Greg Woodland, author of the acclaimed The Night Whistler, returns with another nailbiting rural thriller that will have you on the edge of your seat.

  To Gina and Louis, and to Dash, the fourth corner of our equilateral triangle: our stubborn, diffident, occasionally affectionate dog, whose spirit and dignity inform the good dogs of my story.

  CONTENTS

  COVER PAGE

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  PROLOGUE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  MAY, 1971

  They are flying.

  Upside down, free from all gravity. The car is flying too, on its side, and Hal and Lloyd are flying inside it. Unhampered by seatbelts. Rollin and tumblin, like the Johnny Winter song screaming from the radio. Like two duffel coats in a giant washing machine: rolling, tumbling, airborne briefly, tumbling some more. And bouncing. Hard. On shoulders and hips. And the Torana bouncing too, on its side. Turning on its roof. Slowly. The noise—louder. Scraping and shrieking like a train through the middle of his brain…Hal and Lloyd and the car, all spinning slowly through space. Then Lloyd dangling by his leg. Twisting. And Lloyd’s wide-open mouth. Roaring.

  Somewhere in the train noise and the shrieking and Johnny Winter’s screaming guitar and the ear-splitting orchestra of crunching groaning soloists all tuning up inside his skull a siren is stabbing his brain—the world’s a-rollin and a-tumblin and we are a pair of dirty duffel coats in the spin cycle—upside-down trees sailing past—hey look at that—

  Hal opened his eyes. Even his eyelids hurt. He was lying face down, ceiling pressed into his cheek. Something dripping down on him from the floor that was now the ceiling. Blood? No, it was clear with a smell like…Oil? Or petrol.

  He sat up. From what he could see, he was all right: scratched and grazed and ribs aching like a bastard and…Yes, and he was all right.

  But Lloyd…Lloyd didn’t look well. His eyes were glittering, then slowly sliding shut.

  ‘Don’t go to sleep. Lloyd?’

  Lloyd was on his back on the ceiling, one leg splayed at an ugly angle, the other dangling from the roof—no, the floor—between the dashboard and what used to be the floor, which was now a crumpled mess of steel and vinyl scrunched like a pair of jaws around Lloyd’s twisted leg. Blood soaked his jeans from ankle to shin. His leg was bent all wrong below the knee, his cheek swollen up like half a rockmelon. Face a mask of blood. Oily stuff dripping down from somewhere onto his stringy brown hair.

  ‘Lloyd.’ Hal shook his shoulder. ‘We have to get out.’

  ‘I’m…tired.’

  ‘Lloyd?’ Hal shook him hard.

  ‘DON’T.’ The roar became a whimper. ‘My fucken leg.’

  Yeah. It’s not good.

  The goo was dripping onto his head and shirt like pungent little raindrops. What if it’s petrol? Cars go up in flames, don’t they? Tendrils of fear wormed into his brain. Hal looked up at the crumpled door. Pushed it. Met resistance. Turned onto his knees. Put shoulders into it, shoved. Oh shit, it’s stuck.

  He braced himself against the upside-down seat and kicked out. Three, four times, till his foot went through glass, showering more diamonds. The door flapped open. He saw the cop car parked in the mud at the edge of the paddock—did we really slide that far? But where’s whatsisname…He could see the face of that cop—young, wiry, weaselly—a face he hadn’t thought about for years, a name he’d forgotten: Petro…Petero…

  Petrovic. Constable Petrovic. Mick Goodenough’s offsider. He’d run them off the road. Now he was sitting on the bonnet watching them. Waiting for…

  …the Torana to explode.

  ‘Getting out, Lloyd. Now.’ He seized Lloyd’s arm and gave it a hard tug.

  Lloyd screamed and tore free.

  ‘Help me then, fuck you.’ He grabbed Lloyd’s knee and pulled, and Lloyd screamed again, his fists pummelling Hal’s aching ribs. ‘Shtop.’

  Hal stopped. The oily goo was soaking his shirt. How to get Lloyd out? Driver’s side. Try the—

  Hal was crawling out of the upside-down cabin when a rough hand seized a fistful of his T-shirt and hauled him to his feet. Hal was two inches taller but skinny, and the cop was as fit as a mallee bull.

  ‘He alive? Your mate?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Injured?’

  ‘Yep.’ Hal stared at the ground.

  The cop seemed unhurried. ‘Wait here. Don’t even think about running.’

  Hal nodded, wiped blood off his cheek.

  Petrovic studied him. ‘I know you?’

  Hal looked down. ‘Doubt it.’

  ‘Young Humphries, isn’t it? The smartypants kid. Sergeant Goodenough’s little pal.’ He grinned. ‘Mick’d be proud of you now. Stealing cars? Oh dear.’

  Hal sighed.

  ‘Thought you’d have more sense than to hang around that dipshit.’

  ‘Nope.’

  Petrovic peered into the upside-down doorway. Something dripped on the back of his head. He touched it, sniffed his fingers, winced. ‘Oi, shithead. Out.’ Silence.

  ‘Lloyd’s in shock, his foot’s—’

  The cop shoved his chest and Hal stumbled back. Petrovic leaned down. ‘Oi, fuck-knuckle. Yeah, you. Get out.’

  ‘I’m shtuck,’ Lloyd yelled. ‘Why else would I be sittin’ here upshide down yabbering with an arsehole?’

  Petrovic death-stared him. Turned to Hal. ‘Run to the police car, open the boot and bring me the tackle box with the octopus strap around it.’

  Hal frowned. ‘Why?’

  Petrovic grabbed Hal’s chin between fingers and thumb and squeezed his jaw like he was cracking a nut. ‘Because I fucking said so. Run.’

  Hal was back in seconds with the tackle box. Petrovic opened it, took out a fishing knife and a Zippo lighter. He ran the flame up and down the sharp serrated blade until smoke curled off it.

  Hal’s stomach shuddered. ‘You’re not gunna…Not without…anaesthetic?’

  ‘What would you do?’ The blade began to glow. ‘Wait’ll the car goes up and let your mate burn to death?’ He snapped the Zippo shut. ‘Or help me save his useless life?’ The cop’s ice-cold blue eyes turned on Hal.

  All we wanted to do was borrow a car for a few days to go up north and get a job on the trawlers…Now this.

  Hal nodded. ‘All right.’

  And as Lloyd howled in panic, Hal crawled reluctantly back into the wreck to assist in amputating his mate’s foot without anaesthetic.

  That was when the other police car came sailing across the paddock towards them, and Sergeant Mick Goodenough stepped out and put an end to Constable Petrovic’s little joke. And Lloyd’s torment. And Hal’s dreams of escape from Moorabool.

  1

  SEPTEMBER, 1971

  Spring had finally hit Moorabool, draping the winter streets and back roads with bright yellow explosions of wattle and creamy eucalyptus blooms. Even the cop shop parking area looked tarted up, with its pink and white magnolias. The jacaranda branches were spreading tentative flashes of lilac over the verandah steps as Constable Petrovic came sauntering down them, heading off to trout fishing or pig shooting or fox baiting, whatever he did on weekends to escape his mother’s bad temper.

  When the phone rang, Petrovic glared back at it, mouthing curses. Senior Constable Ross Bligh watch
ed him, and grinned at Neridah Wakeley.

  ‘I’ve got it. Go.’ Neridah waved Peter away and answered the phone while he scurried to his car, never in danger of looking back.

  Grateful wasn’t a word to be found in Petrovic’s limited vocab, but if it was, even he would have been. Neridah was twenty-one, blonde, smart and considerate for her age. Any age. Gutsy too. Petrovic would half-jokingly call her Dickless Tracy, and she would half-jokingly wave her little finger at him with a wink and say, ‘Really no need to feel threatened, Petey.’ Which made Ross and Mick laugh, and confirmed their view that the only thing standing between Probationary Constable Wakeley and a successful police career was the fact that she was a woman. And one that was, all said and done, very easy on the eye. Ross, casually observing her slim back and the curve of her hip as she leaned over the counter, thought not even the hideous policewomen’s blues could take that away from her. He heard her call his name. All loose thoughts scattered as he took the phone.

  ‘Yep? Where? Uh-huh…uh-huh.’ He spoke in his usual steady way. But when he hung up, his big fleshy face was pale.

  ‘Sounds bad…’ Neridah raised a hopeful eyebrow. ‘Why don’t I come with you? Ross?’

  He looked at her lovely bright face, her ambitious eyes. And he thought of Mick Goodenough’s daughter, Cheryl, who was about Neridah’s age. She worked as an intern at ABC radio in Sydney; declared herself a feminist and went on demos with the bra-burning brigade. She called police ‘the pigs’ to her dad’s face, on the rare occasions she saw him. Thank God feminism hadn’t reached Moorabool yet. But any fool could see the writing on the wall.

  He shook his head. ‘I need you to mind the fort, love. You’ll thank me for it—it’d only give you nightmares.’

  She gritted her teeth and smiled, ‘OK boss,’ and he knew he’d done the right thing.

  •

  The stunted scribbly gums stretched from road to horizon, draping the miles in New England olive-green. There was a thin yellow carpet of everlasting daisies either side of the police Falcon and a few patches of new green in the paddocks. But apart from that, Ross thought, the only thing that had benefited from last week’s rain was the parasite spreading its tendrils over the branches. It strangled the life out of the eucalypts, leaving twisted grey skeletons that could provide no shelter for livestock and no cover to hold the ground firm against the rains.

  Dieback, they called it. It was denuding the land even faster than farmers could clear it. Which was saying something. Committees had formed. Councils couldn’t agree if it was the mistletoe choking the canopy or the larvae of the scarab beetle eating the roots, or if it was a two-pronged attack that wouldn’t cease until the land was as torn up and bereft as a WWI battlefield. One thing for sure: they’d all concluded there was no political mileage in fighting dieback.

  ‘Fuck ’em,’ Ross said as he approached O’Leary Street and threw a right into the side road. A hundred yards from the corner he nosed the prowler up to the ambulance parked opposite the new Monaro. Checked his watch: four o’clock more or less.

  Ambulance officer Jimmy Keynes was slouching, arms folded, mouth down-turned, against the gleaming maroon and black bonnet of Tony Poulos’s shiny new GTS. As Ross walked over, Jimmy flicked a grim look at the passenger-side window and ran a hand through his shock of white hair. Ross noted the smears of blood on Jimmy’s sleeve and the front of his shirt, then stepped up to the window.

  Deputy Mayor Poulos’s mouth was open, but not in his usual magnanimous grin. One eye was closed. The other seemed to squint out the window as if surprised, perhaps by the blood-filled hole in his left temple. The flesh around it was peppered with black powder and half-covered by a layer of blood that blanketed one side of his head and neck. Thick red ropes of blood had run down his left shoulder, chest and stomach, congealing into a dark brown pool on the bench seat. With his left arm stretched wide by the rifle still in its hand, and stiffened by rigor mortis, he looked to Ross like some uncommitted Christ who’d tried pulling himself off his cross but had given up half-way down.

  The rifle was a Remington 552, a common and garden (or, more accurately, paddock) Moorabool implement. Poulos’s thumb was hooked clumsily into the trigger guard, as if trying to shake itself free. Not easy to shoot yourself in the side of the head with a rifle, Ross thought, even a lightweight .22. You’d want a steady arm. And a damn good reason.

  He opened the car door, reached two fingers towards Poulos’s throat and felt for a pulse: going through the motions. Nothing there, of course. The skin was firm and cool to his touch. He cast his eyes over the plump youthful face of the late Deputy Mayor of Moorabool and Deputy Chairman of Moorabool Abattoir. The man who would be king…and by all accounts should have been at the next council election, had he only managed to stay alive.

  Ross heard a match strike. The ambulance officer sucked on his cigarette and muttered something.

  ‘What, Jimmy?’

  Jimmy exhaled smoke at his shoes. ‘Why? Tony Fabulous? Makes no fucken sense. He’d just throw it all away like that?’

  ‘Looks that way.’ Did he leave a note? Ross wondered. Family man like Tony Poulos surely would.

  Handkerchief wrapped around his fingers, Ross opened the glove box and used the end of a pen to prise apart the contents: manual, logbook, rego papers, 1970 Gregory’s Street Directory for Sydney. He flipped pages apart. No note. Not in the car. Might be one at his office. Or at home, for his wife to find. Or not. Suicides often didn’t bother with notes. Nothing more to say. Nothing to apologise for. Just fed up to the back teeth and wanting out of the struggle.

  He shut the glove box and brushed the fat blowflies off the blood. They buzzed right back.

  With Mick Goodenough away at the Manilla Dog Show and out of touch until tonight, it occurred to Ross that he would have to call Mayor Streeton and break the news. Even if Mick wasn’t needed back immediately, that would put the kibosh on his weekend with the mayor’s wife. Ross wasn’t supposed to know about that, of course. But Eileen Streeton would be required back in town, even though the funeral might not be until next week. Of course, telling the mayor would be nothing compared to breaking the news to Linda Poulos, a prospect he shuddered at.

  Ross backed out carefully, avoided touching anything, closed the door with his elbow. It might still be a crime scene and the dees would have a chunk out of anyone they thought had mucked it up before they trampled their big feet all over it. He opened the Falcon’s boot, pulled out his Instamatic and started taking photos. He snapped off half a dozen shots of the late Tony Poulos—or was he now the deceased? Victim of suicide? He turned to Jimmy Keynes, who was stubbing out his cigarette.

  ‘When did you find him, Jimmy?’

  Jimmy picked a tobacco flake off his tongue. ‘Quarter past three. Driving home, end of shift. Seen his car. He’s in the driver’s seat, all hunkered down with his arm out like he mighta been sick. So I slow down and wave. That’s when I seen the blood. All over him. Shock of my life.’

  Ross eyed the bloodstains on Jimmy’s shirt. ‘So, you stopped and…?’

  ‘Checked his pulse. Nothing. So I left him there and went home to call the Doc and yourself. Then I come back here and been waiting—twelve, fifteen minutes?’

  ‘Did you think of taking him to the hospital?’

  ‘I thought of taking him to the morgue. But I reckoned you’d want to see him first.’

  Ross jerked his chin at the body. ‘Doctor Fischman hasn’t…?’

  ‘Nuh. That’s her now.’ He watched the car approaching along the windy road behind them. As the doctor’s Beetle rattled closer, he waved her over.

  She got out clutching a scuffed brown leather doctor’s bag. Ruth Fischman was tall, well-groomed, about forty, her body all limbs and sharp angles, softened by the kindness in her face, her black hair set in a glossy wave. Unusual-looking, Ross thought, but not unattractive. For a doctor.

  ‘Doctor Fischman,’ he hailed her. ‘We’ve been waiting for you.’

  ‘And here I am.’ A cool nod to the two men, Fischman leaned down to the driver’s side window and peered in at Tony Poulos. She clucked her tongue sadly, then walked around to the passenger side, and manoeuvred past Ross. Wrapping his handkerchief around the handle, he opened the door for her. She bent over the corpse, touched nothing, then took a couple of instruments from her bag. She was unhurried and methodical with her procedures, Ross was glad to see. Three minutes later she emerged, snapped her bag shut, and announced life was extinct. Do tell, he thought.