Skull river, p.1
Skull River, page 1
Pip Fioretti has a professional background in visual arts, both practice and teaching, and took up writing fiction in 2008. She has published three women’s fiction books with Hachette Australia and Pan Macmillan. Her first crime novel was Bone Lands, published by Affirm Press in 2024. Pip lives in Sydney and likes reading, looking at art, bushwalking and hanging out with friends and family.
First published in Australia in 2025 by Affirm Press, a Simon & Schuster (Australia) Pty Limited company
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For my father and his books
To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles,
they call empire, and where they make a desert,
they call it peace.
Tacitus, Agricola, c. AD 98
Autumn 1912
Colley, Central West,
New South Wales
1
I heard gunshot. Startled awake, heart thumping, waiting for the next one. Nobody sounded the alarm. The officer of the watch must be down. Very deep shit.
I groped for a light. As the candle toppled to the floor alongside a spill of matches, I realised I was not in a tent on the Transvaal. I was in a bed, in a lean-to at the back of Colley police station. I sat up and pushed the curtain to one side, letting in a sliver of starlight; rubbed away the condensation on the glass and peered out into the night, just to be certain, then sank back onto the bed, waiting for my nerves to settle.
Outside, two foxes called to each other in a gravelly yap. I was so cold I debated getting up to put on my greatcoat but could scarcely muster the energy. The autumn air was bitter as wormwood and the meagre police regulation blanket a match in meanness. Welcome back to the New South Wales Mounted Troopers, Gus, you rash and reckless fool.
I’d ridden into Colley from Bathurst last night, arriving close on midnight. After I found the police station and banged on the door of the private quarters for five minutes, Trooper Scanlon answered, bleary and befuddled, in his nightshirt; yet he was ready to vacate his bed for me, his new sergeant. I couldn’t have that, so I gave him my firearms to lock up, took a lantern, put my horse in the stable, rubbed him down and left him some tucker, then let myself into the lean-to out the back.
Wasn’t much to look at, just a sagging old mattress on a rickety iron bedstead, a couple of cats curled up on the blankets, and a heap of dust. I could have slept leaning on a gatepost after an eight-hour journey on a horse who had ideas of his own. I kicked off my boots, swept the cats away and dropped like a stone, eyes closed before I hit the mattress.
Now I was awake, and with no idea of the time I just lay there, eyes closed, telling myself I was resting and that’s as good as sleeping. It’s not really but I always like to keep my self-deception skills polished and ready. Then I heard a voice outside and just about sprang up to the ceiling.
‘Sorry to wake you, sir.’
Trooper Scanlon. I swallowed, took a breath. ‘What is it?’
‘Sorry, sir, but I just had a message. Trouble up at Gibbet Hill – Trooper Murphy’s sent for help.’
‘Details?’ I said, sitting up and swinging my legs out of bed, planting my bare feet on the cold, gritty floor.
‘No, sir. Reckon we should get up there quick-smart, but.’
I sighed and rubbed my face, then stared at my uniform, freshly issued yesterday, lying in a tumbled heap on a spindly chair. I’d hoped for a slow day and did not relish the prospect of getting back on a horse. Gibbet Hill, high in the hills to the west, was a goldmining town where the gold was tucked away in underground reefs. A lot of mine shafts, a lot of grog, feuds, sudden wealth and long, drawn-out failure. Not a good combination for public order.
‘Give me a moment,’ I called out. ‘I’ll meet you in the stable. What time is it?’
‘Quarter to six, sir.’
The pitcher in the washbasin was empty. I ran my hand through my hair, stretching and wincing as the muddle of scars around my chest and underarm pinched and puckered. Fresh shirt, buckskin breeches, navy tunic; do up those buttons, son, smarten up. Tucked my warrant card, notebook and pencil in my tunic pocket, cap on my head and stepped out into the gloom. Light in the east above the darkened mountains signalled dawn.
I had no idea where the outhouse was so I went around the back, through the long grass, and pissed against the wall, steam rising, shoulders stiff, my entire body aching. Feeling eyes on me, I looked over my shoulder to see, in the neighbouring paddock, a flock of horned white goats in the grey half-light. They’d all paused in their grazing and were watching me with those unnerving devil eyes. In the corner of the police block was a stand of pine trees laden with white cockatoos, which flew away like screeching demons at first light.
I went back around through the damp long grass past the police station private quarters, noticing wisps of smoke rising from the chimney. I tried the front door of the station. Scanlon had locked up already. I could have murdered some porridge. Even a crust of bread would have done.
I trudged back up to the stable and found my horse. He was knackered from the ride yesterday and had a mutinous glint in his eye. While I was saddling up, Scanlon appeared and began to saddle his horse: another bay, with three white socks, name of Tosser, by the sounds of it – not one to inspire confidence. Scanlon was a young, lanky bloke, fair, ruddy-cheeked, clean-shaven, an open face and a broad smile that had a curl of mischief to it. My first impressions were that he’d be easy to work and live with.
‘Had breakfast?’ I asked him as he tightened the girth on his horse.
‘No, sir. When we get to Gibbet Hill, they’ll do us something at the Criterion. Gotta good cook there. I’ve got your guns here too.’
I took my Martini–Henry carbine and a Webley revolver, a .455 Mark II, which the British complained had no stopping power. But we in the colonies still used them. These were the old, mounted trooper standbys that were issued to me yesterday in Bathurst. I loaded them and took some spare ammunition for my saddlebags.
We led the horses out into the subdued light, mounted up and clattered through the town. I’d spent a week in Colley about six years before, but most of that week had been spent blind drunk so my recall was not good. I glanced around: huts and cottages, some in good repair, others abandoned, a general store, a blacksmith’s, the huge, two-storey pub with a balcony all prettied up in iron lace. The cold morning air was thick with the smell of burning grease. A woman swept the front of her house, the ostler at the coach turnaround raised a hand in greeting; kids ran about in their school pinafores, clutching thick chunks of damper smeared with dripping.
‘Five hours to Gibbet Hill, sir,’ Scanlon said, flexing his back and yawning. ‘Whatever trouble they’re having should be over by then.’
Five bloody hours. As we left the town, I looked over at the river on our right, heard the water rushing over pebbles. The Bull wasn’t a transport river: it was shallower, faster, narrower, and had large river stones and gravelly banks pitted with mounds and holes from past gold diggings. It was scattered with broken wood cradles, picks and shovels, pans and assorted rubbish that had been left to rot by the diggers who’d had a gutful of cold, wet work and nothing to show for it. There were pools of yellow water so thick you could stand a spoon in them. It was the colour that astonished me, like a stream of piss trickling across the pavement, but opaque and stinking of rot.
‘River usually like this?’ I asked.
‘Yes, sir,’ Scanlon said. ‘Dump’s full so people chuck their rubbish in the river.’
‘Why don’t they organise a new dump?’
‘Don’t know, sir.’
I’d have to speak to the mayor about that. Put it on my checklist, which was growing longer by the minute. I’d been told that at the height of the gold rushes the town’s population was around forty thousand. Now it was three hundred and dropping. The rush was over, the town’s vigour and optimism spent, its buildings losing the battle to stay upright; its bleary occupants waking as if from a fever dream, only to find their pockets empty, their gold gone. That gold is now deep inside the government pocket and spent on the wages of mounted troopers like me, who lock up those bleary drunks who smash up the place after finding no gold. This was the grand circle of existence; it had a pleasing symmetry if you thought about it.
To our left was a steep hill studded with rocky outcrops and a few saplings. Wattlebirds and parrots flitted about, calling in the fresh morning air. At the base of the hill, down beside the road, lay mullock heaps, gre
Scanlon was a neck ahead of me as we clopped along, his broad shoulders pushing at the seams of the navy-blue tunic. He’d have to get a new one soon.
‘Did you hear gunshot this morning?’ I asked.
‘You hear them all the time just before dawn. Farmers or hunters going after rabbits, foxes, pigs, wild dogs. Usually it’s—’
Scanlon suddenly jerked to the right and a spray of blood spurted from his head. The echo of the gunshot bounced around the valley. He slumped forward on his horse. Another shot – coming from the slope to my left. Scanlon’s horse took off with him collapsed over his neck.
The crack and whiz of another shot, again from the left. Hit my horse’s neck with a thud. He screamed and reared up. My training kicked in. I slipped my feet out of the stirrups and, as he went down, I jumped off and hit the road just as he did.
Fumbling for my pistol, I dropped beside my horse as he screamed and thrashed. He wasn’t going to survive, by the look of the blood gushing from his neck and pooling beneath us. I hesitated but his terrible screams cut through me. I placed the muzzle of the gun behind his ear and pulled the trigger. He jerked and stilled while the beat of the call to arms drummed through my veins.
My rifle, in its saddle holster, was pinned under him. Another crack and whizz echoed around the valley. Sheltering behind a dead horse, eyes scanning the hill, lying in a spreading pool of blood. What the fuck was going on?
My mind raced back to my sweaty, grimy years on the veldt as a young subaltern, making decisions under fire, getting it wrong, getting it right, trained to do this, so do it. I rolled onto my back, still sheltered by the horse’s body. Checked out the lower riverbank. A ditch ran along the side of the road – I could roll into that. Had to – no choice. My heart was hammering like a piston in a threshing machine.
Birds were silent. Frogs, insects, all holding their breath, curled up, small targets. Just the river rushing over stones. Scanlon’s blood spurting through my mind, horse’s blood spreading from beneath his body, pooling around my body, wet and ferrous, his screams ringing in my head.
The gunman was up there with a good view of the road – of me – and he was waiting, he had all the time in the world. I grimly counted to three and then rolled and slithered across the stony road and into the ditch, which was deeper than I thought. Panting and nauseous, I lay still, pushed my face against the grass, the acrid, fresh smell bringing the thwack of leather on willow, pretty girls, strawberries and cream in the tea tent. Then more bullets thudded into the earth, sending tufts of grass and gravel flying up, the echo of the shots ringing out across the valley.
From my new vantage point, I could think. Someone was trying to kill me – that much I knew. Killing police troopers was a one-way trip to the gallows with a few well-aimed smacks along the way, as was widely known among our usual customers. It had to be that way or they’d be shooting us left, right and centre. So what was his game?
Did he want to take out as many troopers as he could before shooting himself? That was not unheard of. Maybe his missus had left him, and he was so angry he wanted to kill? Also not unknown. Wanted to stop us getting to Gibbet Hill? Maybe. Which meant that if there was trouble up there, it was very big trouble. Mail coaches. Gold transport. Prisoner transport. A grudge. Or all of them, crammed into a bullet.
A breeze blew along the river, coming from the east, from Colley. Horse blood dripped down my face. A haze had fallen across my eyes. I was dying. He’d hit me somewhere. I frantically ran my hands over my chest, tugged my tunic up, looking for holes. I knew you could be shot and not feel it in the chaos of the moment.
Church bells rang in the distance. Smoke on the breeze. Looking up, I saw billowing clouds of smoke rising from the town, great thick, grey plumes of it. I wasn’t shot. But try as I might to orient myself to whatever the hell was going on, I couldn’t. Unless Germany had invaded and were ahead of the newspapers. Clever Hun bastards.
I slipped and slithered down the riverbank into the stinking, shallow water. Bastard fired again. Crept along, keeping my head low, sloshing, sinking into sandy gravel, muddied hands, visions of Scanlon’s head exploding. Gunshot screaming out across the valley. Church bells ringing the alarm.
Closer to town, I clambered up the muddy slope onto the riverbank, then staggered onto the road. Smoke was thick. Dogs barking, people shouting. I ran towards the main street, but the fire was coming from higher up in the town. A crowd of people milling about.
It was the police station, burning like a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Night.
2
The entire structure of the police station was ablaze, flames leaping, roaring in my ears, air thick with smoke. I stopped running, took in the sight, panting, hands on hips. All the files and records from sixty years, the incident book, the weapons, the private quarters, stable and the lean-to with my barely unpacked bag, spare boots, uniform, books, all gone. People staring in fright. At me.
‘Where’s Trooper Scanlon? And who the hell are you?’ some bloke shouted at me.
‘And who the fuck are you?’ I shouted back in his face.
He took a step back, eyebrows raised as if he’d confronted a wild man.
‘Is anyone in there?’ I yelled over the roar of the flames, pointing at the burning station. The crowd silent, staring, huddled. ‘Is there anyone in there? Answer me’
There was no time to wait. I marched towards the flames. A hand grabbed me, tried to drag me back. I shook it off, but the hand yanked me back again. I struggled against his grip. Women were crying, coughing, kids clutching their skirts. Burning farms over their heads. The girl, her body suspended above the flames in an infinitesimal moment. Then she falls through the fire and into eternity.
‘The blood on your breeches, man, whose is it?’ a man asked.
I turned away, rubbed my eyes, then jumped out of my skin as the roof of the police station caved in, the sparks dancing into the sky. This wasn’t Ventersburg and the girl had been dead for ten years, only she died again and again in my night terrors.
‘Trooper Scanlon?’ the same man asked, louder this time. ‘Where is he?’
‘Dead – he’s dead on the river road,’ I shouted back at him. ‘An ambush.’
I heard people gasp and took a deep breath, coughed from the smoke, the scars on my chest pinching and tightening. A tremble in my hand and the small muscle beneath my eye twitching like a maddened earthworm.
‘Davy’s dead?’
I whirled around to see who’d spoken. He was a slight older man, a ring of white hair around his skull and horror in his eyes.
‘But how?’ he said. ‘Who? Was he shot?’
‘Who are you?’
‘Bill Pomeroy, local doctor. You sure he’s dead?’
‘Of course I’m sure – you don’t survive a bullet to the skull from a hundred and fifty yards. Why? You think you can use your pills and potions to revive him?’
The word that Scanlon was dead went around the crowd. Exclamations, horror and fear on all the faces. At the edge of the crowd a woman dressed in mourning paced in circles, her hands pressed against her mouth, eyes closed, while a young lad followed her, step for step, wailing and sobbing, reaching out to grab her dress.
Questions shouted at me. Who did it? What happened? Who are you? A babble of voices in the smoke haze. All of us confused. I undid a couple of buttons on my tunic and took out my warrant card, which was all I had left, apart from my filthy reeking uniform. A man took it and passed it around.
‘Rode in last night arrived after dark,’ I said. ‘Call Bathurst if you don’t believe me. I have to speak to them anyway. Who’s the telegraph operator?’
‘I am – Harry Barker.’
I turned to see a middle-aged man, lock of dark hair falling across his face, unshaven, puffy around the eyes. He looked down at my breeches. I looked too, shocked to see the pale buckskin breeches half-sodden with horse blood, my navy tunic too, my shaking hand gripping my pistol.
