LITMIR.BIZ

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She took a deep breath. ‘I do know what he’s like, Margaret. And I can deal with this. I promise.’

      ‘How the hell?’ Darcy was looking at her as if she was out of her mind.

      ‘Bring the rest of the kids and the women here,’ she told Margaret. ‘Things are going to change. Right now.’

      ‘You’ll destroy…’ Margaret looked appalled.

      ‘No,’ Ally told her. Once upon a time she’d been terrified of Jerry Hatfield herself, but that was going back almost twenty years. No more. And that these women and these kids—probably the men, too—were going through what she’d faced.

      ‘I’ve waited a long time for this,’ she said. ‘Trust me. I can cope with Jerry Hatfield. Darcy, give me your phone.’

      ‘What—?’

      ‘I don’t have a cell phone,’ she told him, as if he were being stupid. ‘I need it.’ Then, as he didn’t react, she stepped forward and lifted it from the clip on his belt.

      She started dialling.

      And she started walking.

      ‘If you want to see what a massage therapist can do when she decides to do no harm, come along and watch,’ she told him over her shoulder. ‘But this tragedy will stop right now.’ And she started talking urgently into Darcy’s cell phone.

      He followed. He hardly had a choice.

      Whatever harm she did…well, it couldn’t be worse than what was happening, he thought. His intention now was to put Jody into his car and take her down to the hospital, facing the consequences later. There would be consequences. To physically remove a child from her parents…

      It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. The alternative was Jody’s death, and he wasn’t prepared to have what had happened to Sam happen to another child. Sam’s death had occurred in the first month he’d been in Tambrine Creek and he still felt dreadful that he hadn’t done more. He’d called in the social workers, rather than taking things into his own hands, and it had backfired dreadfully.

      But what on earth was Ally about? He watched in stunned amazement as she spoke urgently to someone on the other end of the phone and then stomped furiously across to the neighbouring hut. She was only about five feet one or five feet two. She was slightly built. Her jeans were faded, her shirt had a paint streak down the back and she was wearing flip-flops. Her long blonde hair hung down her back, and it swayed as she walked, accentuating her entire stance of fury.

      She looked like David stalking off to face Goliath, he thought, and he quickened his steps to join her.

      Should he stop her?

      Maybe not, he decided. This situation had reached breaking point. There was no use skirting round the issues at stake, because those issues involved a child’s life.

      But what did she know about this? He was under no illusion that her anger was solely caused by one sick child, justified as that was. She’d reacted too fast, too directly.

      What had she called Jerry? Jerry Hatfield? The name the group’s leader was using was Jerry Dwyer.

      What did Ally know of him?

      All he could do was watch. He arrived at the hut door two seconds after Ally did, and by the time he arrived she was already in action.

      This was the meditation hut. He’d glanced in here once, but the women had almost seemed afraid of it. ‘We only go in there to clean,’ he’d been told.

      The two living huts were putrid but this was lighter and brighter, with a ring of bright candles around the perimeter sending a golden glow over a group of four men kneeling on prayer mats in the centre.

      But the glow was fading. Ally was kicking every candle over, pushing its wick into the dust.

      She was ignoring the men.

      ‘What the…?’

      Jerry was the first to rise.

      The other three men were spineless. Darcy had decided that early in his encounters with the group. Acolytes who didn’t have the courage to stand up to Jerry, they simply did as he said in all things. It was Jerry who called the tune.

      Jerry was in his late fifties or early sixties, a huge bull of a man, habitually dressed in a vast purple caftan with his beard and hair falling almost to his waist. He seemed a bit mad, Darcy had decided. His people were afraid of him, and even though there’d been no proven physical abuse, he guessed there was good reason for their fear.

      Ally didn’t seem afraid of him, though. She kicked over the last candle and then stalked over to face him.

      ‘Jerome Hatfield,’ she said in a voice that was rich with loathing. ‘I can’t believe it’s you.’

      ‘I’m Jerry Dwyer.’ The man was off balance. He obviously didn’t recognise the woman in front of him and he hadn’t a clue what was going on.

      He hadn’t noticed Darcy standing by the entrance, and for the moment Darcy was content to merge into the shadows. And wait.

      Maybe he should take the child now while Jerry was distracted, he thought, but then…he could hardly abandon Ally. And Margaret would never let him take her surreptitiously. He intended to take Jody, but he’d have to face Jerry as he did it.

      ‘You’re Jerome Hatfied,’ Ally was saying. ‘Jerry if you like, but it makes no difference. Don’t lie to me.’

      ‘I have no idea—’

      ‘You have every idea,’ she spat. ‘I can’t believe you had the nerve to come back here. After all this time. If your father knew…’

      ‘My father has nothing to do with you,’ Jerry said, in the great booming voice he used so well to intimidate everyone who came within hearing. ‘Get out of my prayer house.’

      ‘I don’t know who you’re praying to,’ Ally told him, lowering her voice to almost a whisper. It was an incredible contrast to Jerry’s booming vocal, but it was every bit as effective. Just as menacing. ‘But I tell you now. Nobody’s listening. Why would anyone listen to your prayers, Jerome Hatfield, when you don’t even listen to the people around you? When you let children die.’

      ‘Get out.’

      ‘You know,’ she said, suddenly switching her attention to the three men still crouched in disbelief on the prayer mats, ‘if I were you guys, I’d get out now. Consorting with a known criminal is an offence all by itself.’

      ‘I’m not—’

      ‘Oh, yes, you are.’ She kept the hush to her tone. There was no need to raise her voice. Even the chickens seemed to have stilled to listen. ‘You left this country seventeen years ago, while you were on bail for assault, forgery, bigamy, theft…you name it. You left a trail of destruction in your wake, including two wives. The police tracked you down twelve years ago and found you doing the same thing in the States. But you ran again, before you could be deported. I’d hoped we’d seen the last of you then, but suddenly—guess what? A man called Jerry Dwyer is living on a barren bush block that no one ever comes near. It’s unsaleable land. Your father owns it and you know he’s written it off as unusable. So you come back, pick up another lot of vulnerable people and start all over again.’

      ‘You don’t know—’

      ‘Of course I know,’ she said wearily. ‘Do you think I’m stupid? I’m Ally Westruther but, like you, I’ve changed my surname. Try Ally Lindford for size.’

      ‘Lindford.’

      ‘That’s right,’ she said, almost pleasantly. ‘Tony Lindford’s daughter.’

      He stared as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. ‘Tony’s… You’re Ally?’

      ‘That’s right.’

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