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Highway hunter.

← A novel by David Baxter

PART 1: detritus

Prologue:

He remembered time altered, the first time he killed a man.

Actions fractured, as if time ran fast/slow, like a strobing clock, instead of exactly even, second by second.

He never forgot. Power suffused him: he towered over himself. Everything beneath receded into minuteness.

After, killing was always easy.

He used an axe, because it was there.

He just chopped the head.

As if he was splitting wood, that sort of swing. But the axe went right in, smashed right in. Stuff spilled out; went everywhere. And blood – gushed out, like a burst hose. Nearly squirted on his bare feet.

Nothing else moved. The body didn’t. He’d half expected that chook thing to happen: a man, running round with no head. But there wasn’t a twitch. It just lay there, the stuff leaking out of the split head, soaking into the red earth, making it a different red; darker.

He’d first intended chopping everything, hacking the whole thing into pieces and taking it all away. There were plenty of places he could hide it. But there was too much mess – he couldn’t do it without getting stuff all over him. So he left it.

It.

The body.

Like a broken toy, the limbs somehow more limp, a puppet with no strings. Couldn’t be made to move, and couldn’t move itself. Ever.

There wasn’t even much fuss when they found it. Things happened out there. If they knew who had done it, no one asked him about it. And those who knew, or suspected, probably thought it was fair enough.

But most hardly even knew he was there – and he was only a boy, after all.

That first one had to be done. It was necessary. He’d been forced to kill again, too.

Now, it was different. His world was a dark place. Dark beauty. In that darkness was such power, a love that could choke. He selected carefully those he would invite into his world. For them, always, it was a trip through unimaginable heights – and depths.

The final step was always the merging of paths: theirs and his. For them, the final step on their journey.

For him, another step down the road. The hunter’s road.

Chapter 1: The killing ground.

The road is a flat, slabbed barrier; a boundary. It bisects the whole continent; south to north: Adelaide to Darwin. East is separated from west.

Initially, it was a scratch in the earth – a notion, rather than anything definite. Later, the vague, red, dusty track was surfaced and metalled, the corrugated surface flattened and tamed. Where only the hardiest of vehicles, beasts and men had attempted the three thousand-kilometre trek, now city-bred cars sped imperiously along the smooth, civilised surface.

Plenty still failed that test, man and machine. It might well have been far less intimidating than the expeditions of earlier years, but there were wrecks still crouched forlornly at the roadside, or further out, peeping from a shroud of shrubs and scrub that completed the job of disintegration.

The urbane appearance of the highway misled. In becoming part of the land it had been laid on, the road was also ruled by it.

The lands were implacable, over which it stretched. The roadway never belonged, was always an imposition. One that was constantly attacked. Sun assaulted the tar, melting it. Cars’ and trucks' wheels ripped the stones from the surface. Once an avenue of weakness was found, wind and water could combine; cracks, potholes and sinks bred like sores on skin. Without rigorous and constant maintenance, the road would in days or a few weeks, begin to be claimed by the wild; concealed by drifts of fine, deep red dust: cracked, rutted, scarred and riven. Eruptions of green tendrils showed where irrepressible life would soon claw aside even this most arrogant of man’s acts. It was as if the stone and tar covered something so virulent that it must seep and burst through, like some pussy eructation from deep within.

Yet it persisted. Made and remade, it stayed. Along it, streamed a river. Men came, looking for wealth – or running from the evil they did. Women came, following the men. Some came and left. Some came and chose to stay. Some came, and never left: claimed or kept; trapped and bound.

Some creatures – kangaroos, native rodents and reptiles, as well as the rangy black cattle that scattered across the endless plains – never accommodated the highway very well. Each morning would find some of their number strewn in bloody dead sprawls beside or across the road.

Others adapted it to their needs. Lazy hunters waited until the road provided their prey and then helped themselves to the grisly bounty.

The hunters always found it fertile ground. The road drew to it the prey they loved to pursue. For them only part of the pleasure came from the hunt. The thrill was not only in the kill.

There were bones that lay not far from the bitter, baked slab of stone and tar; some scattered like parts of a broken toy. Others rested beneath wind-scraped shrouds of scant red earth.

* * *

The recent rains had left puddles of water where usually only a drift of frazzled flowers or a wizened, deeply-rooted tree hinted at some reserve deep within the arid earth. Following the water the sleek, dusk-grey kangaroos roamed further from the shady, deep holes they usually used, feeding on the tender shoots and fresh growth that always flourished, drawn to the surface like magic, as the sun evaporated the water.

On the cusp of night, there wasn’t a cloud to mar the breadth of aching, fading blue that was the sky. All day, the sun had burned, brightly enough to tempt a few of the lizards: fat-bodied blue-tongues, with tails like leathery whips and spiky ‘devils’, their mouths gaping in silent fury. They had marched out onto the warm blacktop, to soak up the heat from the baking stones. Their bodies were there now, wracked and broken, snapped and scattered.

It hadn’t been very hot, though. The wind had swept across from the west all day; gritty, spitefully cold and gusting strongly. By the evening, its force was moderating; as the light softened, so did the wind. The temperature dropped quickly, as the light drained. The blue leached from the sky, becoming more and more faint, streaks of vague cream and fleeting cool pink staining the western rim of the land. The light above the highway thickened; gloom suffused the land, turning hollows to dark pools, ridges fringed with grass glimmering with uneasy movement in the dying breeze.

The small mob of kangaroos grazed unconcerned in a large expanse of fresh shoots that had erupted from the barren earth over the past few weeks, covering the bare expanses beside the road with a silky fringe of tossing, pale seed-heads. Heads down, the ‘roos could hardly be seen among the long stems. In the evening light, they became virtually invisible.

Without seeming to respond to any particular signal or prompt, the half-dozen or so stood erect, heads appearing to sprout from the waving, bleached fronds beneath which they’d been scratching. Shoulders hunched and heads bobbed forward; tails extended for balance. The small mob began to move with graceful, effortless leaps through the grass, heading back to stony outcrops where they would lie up for the night amongst the still-warm rocks and crannies.

They veered right, across a storm gully, where water had torn open the red, stony ground and up an embankment. In only a few relaxed bounds, they crossed the still-warm stone of the roadway and were back in the safety of darkness.

As the last animal reached the road, however, she stopped, transfixed by a spear of light and noise that hurtled down a corridor of confusion towards her.

The road train driver swore. The vehicle shuddered slightly, as the huge metal grid of the bull-bar struck the kangaroo with the force of a bomb. She was ripped to pieces, first by the impact of the truck – nearly fifty tonnes in weight, hurtling along at nearly one hundred and sixty kilometres per hour. As her broken carcass tumbled under the wheels of the trailers, the grey kangaroo was mulched; flayed and sprayed out the back in bloody remnants.

The truck was unaffected, although the driver knew he’d be spraying blood and bits of flesh off the paintwork and out of the little crevices in the bodywork. He shook his head. “Stupid bloody ‘roo. Think they’d bloody learn.”

But they never did. That’s why they always fell victim.

Along the road’s edge, the bright red petals of the Desert Pea trembled with the truck’s passing, seeming almost to flow like liquid in the bitter wind’s malevolent caress.

Chapter 2: Mintalie – April, 1964

The girl listened intently to the fading sound of her mother’s car. The breathy, coughing rattle of the battered Holden was slowly swallowed by the red dust and scrubby bushes that surrounded the tin shed they lived in. A few yards away, piles of stone and wood, bags of cement and sand littered the ground next to the bare, flat ground with its blurred trenches and drainage pipes where their new house was promised to be.

The man had scratched out the square outline on the rocky earth: showed the girl where her bedroom was going to be. Later, she’d gone back and used a bunch of leaves to erase the marks.

She could hear the noises he made as he moved around outside. Every time he came near the open doorway – the creaky hinges cawed like the crows that waited for the dead meat along the road – she would tense, wondering if he’d come inside.

They’d come here ages ago. She couldn’t remember when. This was the only home she knew, really – apart from Fran’s place, the brick house in Alice Springs. They’d sheltered there once, when they had been flooded out – stayed for nearly a month. She been able to play with other kids – Fran was her mother’s friend, and had three children of her own; two girls and a boy. The boy and one girl were older, but the youngest girl, Pippa, was her age. They’d play together for hours, making up stories in which they were princesses, imprisoned in towers, rescued by magical knights.

They would have stayed longer, if Fran hadn’t had a fight with the man. She told him to get him out, out of her house. She only told him, but her mother had gone too. Back to Mintalie. Back to Hell.

She only understood why Fran had done it later. It was something to do with the oldest girl, she knew that much. But it was much later before she realised what it must have been. Too late.

The man always called Fran “That fuckin’ Witch. With a capital B”. But she’d never been anything but nice to the girl.

Her mother wouldn’t talk about it. But Fran had taken the little girl aside, while her mum packed the car for the long trip back. “If you ever need anywhere to come to, Alexandra,” she had said, bending down, so that she could look right into the girl’s face, “you come straight to me.”

She hadn’t understood, then. Later, she had needed to run – had tried, so many times. But each time, she’d failed to escape. Either he found her again, or someone else did, and returned her. Even her mother had become angry with her.

“Why do you do it?” she’d asked, again and again.

The little girl had kept her face turned down to the floor, knowing that if she looked up, his eyes would be there, staring at her, daring her to tell the truth.

And the truth was something she couldn’t tell anyone. Especially not her mother.

Because the truth was something she feared that her mother did know, and she couldn’t allow herself to know that.

The door gave a groan, like something in pain. The flat, white light from the outside scattered the dimness, causing the shadows to flee and then, in a moment, to return as his outline, rimmed in glare, framed in the doorway.

He entered, saying what he always said: “Ah, here’s my good little girl, aren’t you?” The girl heard herself keening, in fear and sorrow. It was as if the sound came from somewhere else.

It might as well have been. He ignored it, as he always did.

The closing of the door extinguished the light.

Chapter 3: Mintalie - 1973

The road to the town was a vague, sandswept suggestion, but it arrowed straight across the red, stony scree and through stunted, twisted scrubby clumps of trees. It left the highway at exactly ninety degrees and crossed the railway line, heading straight to where it needed to go: it was a practical necessity, not a meandering journey of discovery. Forty k’s away, hunched along a stony spine of opal-rich rock, the township of Mintalie scraped out its existence.

Where the two of them lived wasn’t a complete house at all, really. The native stone, distinctively ochre, had been used to provide footings and walls that rose only four feet or so, to the base of unglazed window apertures that gave it the appearance of having been blinded. Above this point, the walls were corrugated iron, nailed to rough timbers mostly liberated from the many derelict houses that constituted the majority of buildings remaining in Mintalie.

A veranda – more corrugated iron, fibro and sacking – ran around all four sides of the house. The inner group of rooms contained two small bedrooms, a small dining room and what passed for a living room.

None of the rooms opened to natural light. Each existed in a dingy half-light during the days that deepened to cave-like blackness at night. All of the rooms were crammed with scavenged furnishings: tables, lounge chairs, sofas – even a cigarette machine stolen from the deserted motel. Every horizontal surface was heaped with cast-off clothing, papers, food packaging and tins, and hundreds empty beer bottles and cans everywhere, inside and out.

One section of the veranda had been appropriated as a bathroom. Battered fibro sheets were roughly squared round a stained, concrete floor. A roughly chiselled groove in the cement channelled waste water off, into the bushes outside. The gas hot water service roared, rumbled and clanked ominously, providing a more or less reliable source of hot water for showers. Not that the two permanent inhabitants of the house used the shower all that frequently.

The kitchen sink was piled high with unmatched, chipped, cracked and greasy plates. They were still smeared with the remains of meals consumed days or even weeks ago. A plastic drum sat on a long plank that served as kitchen bench and larder. A clear hose led into it from the roof, with a twist-off tap on the end. This provided drinking water: powdery-tasting household water was obtained from the bore. It tasted almost as foul as it looked.

Half-used packets of food and scavenged kitchen oddments piled in profusion on the bench. Large, stainless steel kitchen appliances looted from the empty motel restaurant cluttered shelves, gleaming steel dulled by the dust that blew in every opening, on every breeze. None was ever used. Even if there had been fuel for the generator, neither resident knew how to cook anything but the simplest of meals. Spreads, condiments, packets and wraps piled on plates and bowls, pans and pots.

Battered furniture cluttered the living room area, spilling out the side door into a shaded carport. This, from its appearance, doubled as an extension to the house’s living space: an old oil drum had been converted into a wood heater. Around it, in a semicircle, chairs in various stages of dilapidation awaited occupants.

There was no glass in most of the windows and dusty flywire, ripped and rent, flapped and scratched in the cavities. As the doors were left open and unlocked all day, every day, there wasn’t much point to worrying about the flies and other insects that invaded.

There were two bedrooms, both in the central, windowless part of the house. One, the larger, consisted of a stained double bed mattress that rested slightly askew on an ornate base whose curved, mirrored head showed only a dark, cavernous lair in which undistinguishable piles reached up like lumpy stalagmites in the gloom. The second bed was also permanently dark. There was a single mattress with two rumpled blankets in one corner, and some black, plastic garbage bags from which oddments of clothes spilled. Near the bed was a small jar, half-filled with water, in which three desert roses drooped tiredly. The muted purple of the petals deepened in the gloom to the faded, bruised colour of sadness. They looked like flowers that had never seen the daylight – or had had it sucked from them.

Chapter 4

September, 2000

Julian Bailey scowled. It was a wasted expression. There was no one else to see his grimace. The passenger seat of the VW Kombi van was occupied now only by odds and ends of discarded clothing, maps, lolly and chip packets and the plastic triangular snap-together boxes that sandwiches bought in fast-food joints came in.

The scowl was for the benefit of the late model Commodore Acclaim that had just swept past him, as the Kombi laboured along at a rattly eighty kilometres per hour. Julian had been nursing the engine ever since Adelaide, and that was nearly nine hundred kilometres ago. If he took it over eighty – especially if it was hot, or if the road went up a long or steep hill – the engine started to get a strange sort of whine, and it’d overheat.

Julian’s anxious eyes returned to the engine temperature dial more often than they consulted the speedo. Still, so far, so good. And Darwin was almost closer now than Adelaide: he was nearly halfway.

The trip round Australia was something that he’d promised himself since … when? It had been one of those ideas that seemed always to have been there, in a way.

The fact that his father had moved to Darwin to live was part of the reason for the pilgrimage too, Julian acknowledged. His parents’ separation had been relatively painless, as these things go. But there was still, between Julian and his father, unfinished business. At least, as far as Julian was concerned, anyway. At least his father wasn’t a cop, anymore. The Job had broken Julian’s parents’ marriage, and fractured Julian’s relationship with his father, he believed. Not that what we was doing was probably all that different. But maybe he would have changed.

His father’s reaction when he’d written, saying he was coming up to stay for a while, had been initially lukewarm. But Julian was insistent. He had even said that he was thinking about reverting to his father’s surname. He remembered that his father had laughed, on the phone, but he sounded almost pleased. “Come on, then,” he’d said. “You can stay as long as you want. And you don’t have to change your name.”

The second part of the equation was Rachel. They’d met in College, at Uni. Julian smiled, remembering how they’d called it fate, kismet – “meant-to-be” as they’d discovered the things about themselves that were reflected in the other.

“Self-love,” he muttered aloud. “You show me what I love about myself – so of course I love you.” He shook his head.

Nearly two years of wage-slavery in a bank, going in as a graduate to be part of a “graduate management intake stream” that he had no intention of swimming along in. Saving madly, the two of them: Rachel working long hours on the phones at a market research company, Televend.

They’d bought the car together: a rolling cliché: the VW Kombi campervan. They had pored over maps, used birthday presents and favours to beg, borrow or blackmail camping and travelling equipment. Finally, nearly six weeks ago, they’d set off from Melbourne, heading across to Adelaide. From there, they planned to go straight up the middle to Darwin, then down the west coast. Eventually, they would cross the Nullarbor, straight to Sydney and then head north, as far as they could go.

A job on one of the resort islands, they’d decided and then, when they felt like it, follow the coast: south, back home. Unspoken, but at the back of their minds the notion that, with the “trip of a lifetime” done, they’d settle down, get married, have kids.

The adventure had turned to a grim struggle. He and Rachel had lived together, more or less, for three years. More or less, because if you counted the college they’d both resided in during university, it was longer: they’d virtually shared a room.

Living together over the last couple of years had, Julian could see now, been a mistake. Familiarity had bred contempt. Or, if not contempt, the loss of an ability to appreciate each other. He’d taken Rachel for granted, he knew. As she had him. Or maybe, he thought, it had more to do with change. Perhaps she’d changed more than he had: the self he reflected she didn’t find so attractive, anymore.

It hadn’t mattered so much in cosmopolitan Fitzroy, where there were a million ways to avoid contemplating each other too closely. But the compressed confines of the Kombi, turned the fine fractures that lined the glaze covering their relationship into fissures that weakened the vessel so that it collapsed in a heap of razor-edged shards.

Rachel had flown home from Adelaide, after the big blow-up. Julian had sulked for a week, half-hoping she’d realise her mistake and return. Finally, he’d decided – mainly out of pigheadedness – to complete the trip alone. His father, on the phone from Darwin, had been understanding and philosophical, and, surprisingly, had encouraged him to keep coming. He’d even offered to mail down the airfare.

Julian had decided to press on alone. “When the going gets tough,” he told himself. It was a cliché, but what the hell. Sometimes life was clichéd. He would go on. He would make it to Darwin on his own. He didn’t know what that would prove, but something.

But things kept on cracking up. His wallet had been stolen, while he was in the caravan park shower – and there’d been over a hundred dollars in it. He’d had to replace the windscreen, when a stone kicked up by a road train had starred it to shatter lines. And now the engine was making worrying noises.

He’d been thinking that maybe he should skip Ayers Rock – he supposed he should say Uluru, now – and Kings Canyon.

“No. Bugger it.” He said the words aloud, to himself. If the car broke down, it broke down. Who cared? He’d come this far. Anyway, the helpful bloke at the Marla servo had said that as long as he watched the water and oil he should be right. “Long as you keep ‘em lubed, these old V-dub donks’ll go for ever,” he’d said. It would all make a great story to tell the old man – and his friends, including that silly bitch Rachel, when he got back to Melbourne. Might even write a book. One day.

“Might as well do it all, or die trying,” he muttered, smiling to himself at the melodrama.

He glanced at the roadside marker: only seventy-five k’s to Erldunda and the turn-off. It was getting late. Julian had hoped to have been safe at Uluru by now. It was still a long way – at least three hours – to the Rock from the turn-off, but he thought he could probably put up the tent blindfolded by now.

He re-settled himself in the driver's seat and focused on the road ahead. In the far distance, where a series of moonscape hills reared ruggedly alien shapes, the road still shimmered and twisted. It was only mid-September. In a few months, the whole road would bake in the outrageous temperatures of summer.

The sun was nearly gone. Its heat still remained in the road, but on either side, the vast expanse of desert was losing definition, as the light ebbed to the west. Here and there, close to the road, in the feeble glow of the Kombi’s lights, which he’d already turned on, Julian could glimpse the bright red petals and black eyes of the Sturt Desert Pea. The pale grass on the rolling, dune-like landscape seemed to ripple like water in the fading, uncertain light.

"Shite!" The exclamation involuntarily burst from his lips, as a car roared past, travelling much

faster than he, horn blasting. He only half-glimpsed the driver, as a dirty white four-wheel drive, the back covered with a worn canvas cover, swept in front of him swerving extravagantly back into the lane. The blare of the horn, which had made him jump, trailed away as the other car quickly pulled far ahead.

"Dickhead!" Julian muttered, he stuck up his middle finger, hoping the driver was watching in his mirrors.

Julian tried again to relax his shoulders and arms. His friends always told him that he looked like a puppet, when he drove a car: sitting bolt upright behind the wheel, every segment of his body angled and stiff. Julian couldn't help it. Where driving was something that came naturally to some - perhaps most - people, to him it was an alien, complex and stressful task, one that required maximum concentration and effort.

Still, everything seemed to be going along OK at last. Julian smiled to himself. He hoped the store at Erldunda had a decent coffee machine. That was one thing about the city he really missed – a decent cup of espresso coffee.

He scrabbled amongst the mess on the seat, looking for a CD to play: a bit of music, that’s what he needed.

Glancing up, he stopped his search and stared ahead. A car was parked at the roadside, pulled off the bitumen, standing in the stony gravel that edged the highway. Dust still swirled around it – it had only recently pulled over. Someone was standing beside it, and as Julian approached, slowing, he saw the person was waving.

It was the car had sped past only minutes earlier, Julian saw, with a certain feeling of satisfaction. A dusty old Landrover, about the same vinatge as his Kombi. Julian prepared to stop, all the same, feeling some kinship with the driver. He slowed, changing down, the VW’s engine roaring like a sewing machine. Rachel had always insisted that they not stop for anyone by the roadside. But since she’d shot through, Julian had relaxed, stopping to talk to cyclists, a couple of stranded motorists – even a couple riding camels. Part of it was a feeling of rebellion: you can’t stop me doing whatever I want. Anymore.

The driver standing by the roadside was a bit rough-looking, but as Julian slowed, he smiled and touched his finger to the brim of a grubby peaked cap. He had longish, straggling hair, and was holding a clear, plastic container in his hand – empty. Julian couldn’t hear, but could read his lips: “Water,” the man was saying.

Julian nodded, and pulled off the road ahead of the man’s car. He heard crunching of booted feet on the stones and opened his door.

“Got any water, mate?” the man asked. “She drinks water like a bloody camel, that old bomb o’ mine.” Up close, the other driver was like so many of the men Julian had seen and met in the Outback. In fact, his face looked vaguely familiar, and younger than Julian had first thought. The grubby, sun-faded peaked cap was pulled low over eyes that lurid wrap-around, dark glasses hid. A sun bleached checked shirt flapped over a dark blue work singlet. Creased and stained jeans clung to lean hips. His feet crunched the red gravel in the ubiquitous scuffed, dusty workboots.

“Yeah, sure.” Julian got out of the car. The sun was low, glinting a dark, wild red, its last rays arrowing across the darkened land. The road still radiated a brassy heat, though the air was cool. Sweat prickled on his face and in the small of his back.

“Gunna be hot tomorrow?” he asked, conversationally.

“Yeah, reckon so,” the man replied.

Opening the sliding door at the side of the van, Julian pushed aside the pile of clothes and the foam mattress to find the plastic five-litre container he’d filled before leaving Marla.

As he began to back out, things began to feel wrong. The man was standing oddly close behind him. Strange shadows dove like birds of prey: Julian could hear the wind in their feathers. Before he could begin to wonder why this might be, something pushed him hard in the back. He fell forward, a soft darkness pressing over his mouth and nose. He tried to shout, but nothing came out. The dark wings enfolded him.

Melbourne Herald-Sun, October 21st, 2000

|The Road to |Nowhere |

|The Stuart Highway, the road that connects the tropical far |Alice Springs Mayor, Councillor Pauline Rawson disagreed. “The|

|north of Australia to its more temperate southern cities, has |fact is that there are relatively few disappearances in the |

|been a road to nowhere for perhaps as many as forty or fifty |Northern Territory. It’s one of the safest places in Australia|

|travellers. |– especially if you compare it to one of the big cities. This |

|“People just drop off the map,” according to Bruce Foley, |is just the media blowing an unfortunate incident out of |

|Alice Springs private investigator. “It’s not just the ones |proportion.” |

|that are reported in the press, but there are so many more |Carl Reimerthi, father of Julian Bailey, whose abandoned Kombi|

|that people never even hear about.” |van was discovered near Erldunda, 200 kilometres south of |

|Mr Foley’s comments come as attention is focused on the |Alice Springs, disagrees. “I’ve lived in the Territory for |

|Northern Territory for the wrong reasons after the narrow |years. Talk to people round here,” he said. “They know what’s |

|escape of British tourist Jennie White from a possible |going on. It’s a crime that the truth isn’t discussed openly, |

|kidnapping attempt. It also follows the disappearance of |so that it can be dealt with. What happened to my son has |

|Melbourne student Julian Bailey only a month ago. |happened to other people. It’s about time the police and |

|“It’s a Bermuda Triangle,” according to a local businessman. |politicians started taking this situation seriously.” Mr |

|“And every time this happens, the tourists stay away in |Reimerthi intends to continue pressing police and politicians |

|droves.” |until his son is found – dead or alive. “I know that if I just|

| |let it go, the whole thing will just be buried,” he said. “As |

|[pic] |long as I keep asking questions, they can’t forget about |

|The Northern Territory: “Never-neverland … you might never, |Julian.” |

|never come back …” |Sgt Kim Davenport, Missing Persons investigator with the |

| |Northern Territory Police, believes Mr Reimerthi would be |

| |better off leaving the experts to do their job. “Contrary to |

| |popular belief, we do know what we are doing, and we actually |

| |find most of the people reported as missing – even those who |

| |have disappeared deliberately. The fact is that most of these |

| |people are wanderers. Many just go bush for a few days, or |

| |even weeks, and turn up wondering what all the fuss is about.”|

| |Sgt Davenport declined to comment on Mr Reimerthi’s statement.|

| |“The investigation into the circumstances of Julian Bailey’s |

| |disappearance is ongoing,” she said. |

| | |

| |Liam Davidson |

PART 2: desert dust

Chapter 5

Early October, 2000

Jack Treuwin pushed a button on the sleek, silver coffee machine that occupied pride of place on the kitchen bench. Jack had almost every gadget known to man. Digital cameras, palm-top computer, phone that could do everything except make toast – he even had a GPS receiver in his car. “Just in case,” he’d said, a little defensively, when I’d asked why. “You just never know when it might come in handy.”

While I might have got a giggle out of the GPS device, I certainly didn’t mock the coffee machine. Anymore. It was a Saeco – like the one I had at home. Except that where mine was the Tiger Moth model, Jack’s was the Starship Enterprise: computerised, automated, fool-proof: excellent coffee, every time.

“Takes all the fun out of it,” I’d said, enviously.

Sandra snorted. “I’ve seen you swearing over that antique of yours often enough to know how much “fun” it is, Sunshine,” she said, smiling at me, eyebrow raised.

I was sitting in the living room at Sandy and Jack’s place. Their house was on the road that winds down the Mornington Peninsula from the long ridge that stretches south and east from Arthurs Seat, all the way down to Flinders and the sea. It was a favourite cycling route of mine. Today, though, I’d driven up.

The room we were sitting in had cathedral windows two storeys high. From where we sat, looking across a creek valley there was an expanse of grape vines on the north-facing hillside. A tractor moved deliberately along the greening rows, its motor farting and burbling distantly, busily. If you stood at the windows and looked away to the right, you could kid yourself that the blue smudge far away to the south-east constituted a sea view.

Sandy was a neat, elegant woman. Most of the time, her face was still, imperturbably calm – even her movements imbued with an indolent grace that looked like lassitude. She had high, sharp cheekbones and dark, almost slanted eyes that gave her face an exotic look when she wore makeup – which wasn’t often. The calm was a veneer. Jack often joked that the saying about still waters was never more true than in his wife’s case. “The currents under the surface there will carry you away,” he said.

Sandy had smiled at him, but it was one of those jokes that partners make about each other that has been made once too often: like a woollen blanket on bare skin, it itched and irked.

What’s more, I knew it to be too, too true.

I’d known Sandy and Jack for years. I’d met Sandy first, at an art course, of all things, run by a teacher at a local primary school. I’d decided I needed to get out somewhere other than the pubs I invariably ended up at when I went out with my cycling friends.

So when I’d seen the ad in a local paper, for adults to learn the skills of sketching, and painting in water and oils, I’d quelled my fears of failure and signed up.

The course – such as it was – hadn’t lasted that long. The teacher was a thirty-something woman who wore lots of very dark eye-shadow, lipstick the colour of port and bangles that clattered when she waved her hands artistically, which was often. Her involvement consisted of scattered Impressionistic comments and incomprehensible Abstract suggestions until the wine she provided for each session ran out. At this time, each lesson finished.

One evening, as the half dozen would-be artists – a few housewives, a newly-divorced, still-angry cop looking for his sensitive side, a stressed business executive and me – stood outside the dark, locked school art room, she simply hadn’t appeared. After half an hour, most of the others had gone home, but a few – including Sandy and me – had gone to a local wine bar, for a drink or few.

Sandy phoned a few days later to ask me round for dinner. I’d met Jack then, and she’d filled me in on the art lessons’ demise: the art teacher had eloped with the wife of the school principal: the local gossips were having an absolute field day. The lovers had disappeared – to the Far North, Sandy said. The principal was on “stress leave”.

That was the finish of my artistic aspirations. Sandy and Jack, however, had become good friends.

In Sandy’s case, too good. We’d been lovers, of a kind, for almost two years, now.

It was a very strange relationship. In the first place, Sandy had said from the outset, with flattening matter-of-factness that she had absolutely no intention of leaving Jack. It was her second marriage, and one divorce was quite enough, she said.

My own attitude fluctuated so violently that it bordered on schizophrenia. When I couldn’t avoid thinking about how I was betraying Jack, I’d vow to end it: to refuse to come, when Sandy next called. Somehow, though, the process of disengagement was too daunting. I’d duck and go with the flow.

In truth, the last thing I should have been doing was entangling myself in an affair with anyone. Certainly not with the wife of someone I called a friend. I’d have said before it started that I’d cut off my hand before I’d do that. It’s easy to say things like that, though. Harder to honour them.

Chapter 6

August, 1969

The house was a corrugated-iron shambles. It was a shit-hole. Even the old man said it was, and he’d built it, more or less. One day, the boy had copped a smack in the face, for sitting on the killing stone under the peppercorn tree, saying what the old man said, singing it to himself, over and over, to a tune he’d heard on the juke box, at the pub: “We all live in a shitty shithole, shitty shithole, shitty shithole.” The boy hadn’t even heard the old man until he was there, fist swinging. The first thing the boy knew, he was face down in the red dirt. Again. His ear had hurt so bad, he hadn’t been able to hear anything anyway. He’d just run. The boy was always running.

In the summers, the shit-hole turned into an oven. The boy used to find a shady spot, under the table with its brown, heavy draped cover, in the unused front room, or in the peppercorn tree outside, with the stray dogs, and lie there. There were always lots of stray dogs, a floating pack that hung around with the old man’s dog. It was as if they sensed something in him, the mongrels, the runts and cast-offs. The old man hated them, cursing them for their smell, their fleas, their shit.

Not, the boy thought, that the dogs were any worse than the old man, who pissed outside the back door, if he made it that far, and shat wherever he collapsed, sometimes inside his clothes. But arguing with the old man was a mistake. Once he’d thrown stones to drive the old man’s dog away from a smaller dog it was attacking. He’d arrived home the next day to find the little dog’s bloody carcass outside the house, and the rest of the dogs cowering and prowling in the darkness, out of the range of the old man’s sight – and rifle range.

The boy had hesitated, wondering if, like the stray dogs, the old man would shoot him too.

It wasn’t as if he cared for the boy. No one did.

The boy couldn’t remember his mother. When he’d asked the old man, he’d copped a “smacking”. It hadn’t even been an angry blow, just a casual backhander that had thrown him stumbling back, through the door and away to temporary safety. He didn’t ask any more. And if the old man wouldn’t tell him, there was no one else to ask.

He supposed it made no difference anyway. What could he have done with the knowledge – a name? And in the feral, filthy, dingy pit that was the shit-hole, there was no sign that any woman had ever been there. Except that he was there. Him and the old man.

His father? the boy wondered. But he wasn’t at all sure of that. He’d tried calling him “Dad” once, the word strange in his mouth, like something in a foreign language. The old man hadn’t even belted him. The boy had just copped a sly stare from those sneering yellow eyes, and then seen something more horrible, more revolting than anything the old man had done before. The yellowed fangs in the old man’s festering gob had been bared in a smile, a smile that had turned into a sneering laugh. He’d never said it again.

They lived in Mintalie. The arsehole of the earth, the old man said.

It was an opal mining town, of sorts. Like many tiny communities pocking the outback between Woomera and the Alice, Mintalie had had its momentary boom, and now clung desperately to the vestiges of existence.

Most opal miners hung around the large, populous fields round Coober Pedy or Lightning Ridge. The old man had lived in Coober Pedy, once. He’d been rich, to hear him tell it. Not any more.

Now like most of the refugees who lingered in Mintalie, he eked out a living with other desperadoes: failed miners, now opal junkies. They hung around the smaller, newer fields: the “strike” spots; Mintalie, Arkoola, Noonkanjarra. As opal was discovered at each new strike, the most recent town would empty, as its inhabitants sped in battered, barely serviceable vehicles to the new grounds to stake a claim and find the stone that would make them rich. From more than two thousand residents, Mintalie was down to the last hundred or so.

But after each desperate emigration, like the rubbish and discarded, broken possessions they left behind, a few wrecked souls would remain, too broke, or broken to leave, “noodling” on the chalk-white, barren mounds of discarded rock for the few meagre flashes of colour that the first miners had missed. Some, like the old man, would simply do whatever no one else would to earn a few dollars for beer or anything else they could pour down their ever-thirsty throats.

Among the rubbish someone left behind somewhere, had been the boy.

Chapter 7: October, 2000

Only infrequently had I been “involved” with anyone. And don’t even start me about love! I seemed unerringly to pick the wrong person, or the wrong time. Or maybe it was just that I couldn’t sustain the intensity that a “real” relationship required. Or so I’ve been told.

Involved felt like entangled, to me. Trapped. Tied up. It was a feeling that was both vaguely threatening and somehow smothering. I’d withdraw, retreat, escape whenever permanency and commitment began to loom.

I supposed Sandy was another example of that. There was no possibility of entanglement, because the basis of the whole relationship was secrecy and detachment. Maybe I took a perverse reassurance from that.

There was – as there always is – a frisson of excitement, of course: the thrill of breaking the rules. The pleasure I extracted from this aspect did dismay me. But I couldn’t deny it. The only thing I seemed to do with more regularity than make resolutions was break them. If Jack ever found out, I thought it’d kill him. However, he might well take an axe to me first.

Besides, Sandy was the last person I’d have imagined having a clandestine affair, least of all with me. She didn’t seem the type – not that I was any expert. But she was always so self-contained, so controlled … remote. She appeared to have insulated herself against feeling. Until the time she came to my house and my bed, I never saw her really animated. Never saw her laugh without restraint. Never even saw her cry or even lose her temper. Sometimes, she’d become icy and vituperative, her tongue slashing, a scornful whip. But that was all I saw, until much later. Until much too late, really.

It wasn’t that Sandy was not perceptive, not that she didn’t know what others expected of her – she most certainly did. I thought that she had grown impatient of people’s sensitiveness; what she called their “neuroses”. She would make wounding, whiplash comments that affronted people not so much with their spitefulness as the intense, direct honesty. Her view of life was unvarnished: no polish, no gloss. No romance.

She was as brutal with herself. “I’m an alcoholic,” she told me, during one of the art lessons, when I’d offered a glass of “vin rouge tres ordinaire”. “So I won’t have a drink, if that’s OK.”

“Oh … fine,” I’d said, feeling that I’d said the wrong thing, somehow. I put the bottle back down, thinking that perhaps I shouldn’t drink in front of her.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Daniel,” she said, smiling without amusement. “I’m the one with the problem. Have a glass of wine.”

A spade was no spatulate instrument for soil relocation, with Sandy. Our affair was a mystery. But not one that she’d discuss with me.

Often Jack would puzzle about her, as we drove to the footy together, or on the few occasions I’d dragged him out for a ride. He used these times as counselling sessions, running his anxieties and frustrations past me. I wasn’t sure from the start why I’d been elected. It wasn’t as if I had experience that would make me able to offer some advice or insight that might help. Later, the hypocrisy of my position almost paralysed me.

“She’s a closed book to me, Daniel,” he’d said, once. “There’s whole … chapters of her life that she won’t discuss. Just tells me it’s none of my business – butt out.”

“What’s to know, Jack?” I asked, lightly. “Maybe wysiwyg.”

He glanced at me, eyebrows raised. “The fuck? Wizzy wig?”

I smiled, “No, W. Y. S. I. W. Y. G. – what you see is what you get.”

“Ah. Must remember that.” But Jack shook his head, “No. There’s more to it than that. I’ve not even met any of her family. None of them.”

I looked at him. At a barbecue they’d held, I’d thought I’d been introduced to Sandy’s mother.

“What about Jetta?” I asked. It was pronounced “Yetta”.

“She’s a foster parent,” Jack replied. “Jetta and Robert – he died a couple of years ago – adopted Sandy, when she was about twelve. They couldn’t have children – something to do with what happened to Jetta during the war.”

“Maybe Sandy doesn’t know,” I suggested.

“She knows,” he said, hands gripping the steering wheel. “Her birth mother lives in Adelaide, she said. Sandy wants nothing to do with her.”

“So what?” I said. “Jetta’s nice. Does there need to be more than that?”

“That’s not the point. It’s that she won’t discuss it – and Jetta won’t say anything either. Like she’s got a secret.” Jack hit the steering wheel lightly. “It’s not the biggest deal in the world, but it matters to me. It’s about trust. She won’t let me in.”

I shrugged. “Maybe there’s nothing to tell, Jack,” I’d said. “Families that split up aren’t that uncommon.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” he continued, as if I’d not spoken, “I’m not after deep, dark, bad secrets … I just want to hear about her childhood, for example – you know, those idiotic little stories like the time you broke your arm or cut your hand or had a birthday party or something.”

“Little intimacies,” I said.

“That’s it,” he agreed. He said the words again, almost under his breath. “Little intimacies.”

Another time, he’d made a complaint typically male – but odd in the circumstances that I found myself in – “Every time we have sex, she’s doing me a favour. Like there’s nothing in it for her at all. I just want – for once – to have a fuck where there’s no agenda. It’s almost like she’s somewhere else altogether.”

With someone else? I felt guilty and remorseful. I told myself that it had to stop.

But it didn’t.

What made it worse was that stolen hours making love with Sandy were sensual, sexy, frantic; full of urgency and pleasure. Was she giving me what she wouldn’t – or couldn’t – give her husband? I vowed time and again to end it. But each time our gazes crossed in that particular way – the rough lick of the tiger’s-tongue – I’d succumb with no hesitation whatsoever.

Sandy was very pragmatic. “I don’t want to marry you, or leave Jack. This is convenient, just like it is. It doesn’t hurt anyone. Life’s a bitch. Why shouldn’t we take a little pleasure where we can?” Anything more than that was off limits. I didn’t know how thrilled I was about being “convenient”, but neither was I so fussy that I’d rock the boat.

Sandy never expressed anger or irritation, but if I tried to talk about her relationship with Jack or me, She would either smile and shake her head, or simply talk about something else. Past and future were poles apart … and they never came together.

Mintalie 1970

After the school went, it was as if the boy became invisible. He’d hardly been there anyway. One teacher, early on, had seemed to take an interest in him. She didn’t stay long, though. No one like her did, in Mintalie.

That teacher didn’t even dress like the other women. Most women in Mintalie wore clothes that could have doubled as sacks or curtains. Miss Parker wore dresses that were crisp, and clean. It was as if her edges were sharp and clear, while everyone else in Mintalie had been dulled by dust and heat.

She read them stories. They all had to sit on the mat; legs crossed, hands on lap, while she read from books.

She noticed that the boy had been sitting with his eyes shut, one day. Afterwards, she made him wait, when the others ran out to scurry and fling like tumbleweeds round the threadbare grass in the schoolyard. “Why did you have your eyes shut?” she asked.

The boy kept his eyes on the floor. He felt like he had some more smacko coming.

She asked him again. Her voice was low, and soft: there were sounds in it that the boy heard nowhere else: everyone else in Mintalie spoke in a flat, squashed slur, as though the words were squeezed out, against the pressure of sand and sky.

The boy tried to think of something to say. He wanted to ask if Narnia was a real place. If she came from there. He wanted to ask if he could go there when he was older. The questions never got asked. He shrugged.

“Is the light too bright? Or are you tired?” she asked him. Then, “Don’t you like the stories?”

The boy had looked at her, then.

“You like the stories?”

So she had sat there and read him more, at lunchtimes, even after school, sometimes.

She lent him some books, too. Ones with plenty of pictures, at first. She sat inside with him, while from outside, the sounds of screaming and laughter, jeers and barracks floated through the sand scoured walls and windows like savage birds’ cries. The boy found himself sitting beside her, starting to follow the words, his eyes dancing, with hers, in great leaps across the pages and the world.

The old man had found the books she lent him. He’d snatched them from the boy; showed Bern. “Look a’ fucken this! What, ‘re you doin’ with these yer little bastard? Fucken ‘Cat ‘n th’ fucken hat’!” They’d had a great time with “The horse and his boy” – a book that was Miss Parker’s own. By the time the boy had it back, its cover was gone, the pages ripped and soaked with piss and spit.

He had been too ashamed to take it back to school. He’d hidden instead, and when the old man had staggered off to the pub with Bern and Vic, he had snuck back to the house and curled up on his bed for the day.

One day he decided he’d go back, and tell her it was an accident. Say the dogs had done it, or something. But she was gone. There was another woman there, wearing old curtains, with arms that flapped like wings, when she moved them. She looked at the boy as if he smelt of shit. Sat him down the back. “Have you been checked for lice? Have you washed today?” she asked. That did it, for the other kids. Stinky. Mongrel. Fleabag.

He went back to staying away. Got bored with home and started wandering up to the mine workings. He liked the dark places. It was something he had that the other kids didn’t. They were frightened of the old workings. For them, the rock-edged squares framing a few yellow metres of tunnel – all submerged beneath water as clear as air – were places where things hid that crawled out, in the night-time, sucking you in. For them, the holes and edgy cracks that lurked in secretive, forbidding folds and carved cliffs held a sinister attraction: pulling them in, and sending them shrieking in fear after only a few tentative steps into dripping darkness, where the earth leaked yellow mould and slimy red tears.

The boy liked to go as far as he could. To see the way, he used a miner’s headlamp he stole from the back of a ute outside the pub. But he sometimes sat in the absolute darkness, at the far end of a long drive, eyes wide open. He wasn’t trying to see. It felt like the darkness was pressing in through his open eyes, like black water. Once he’d emerged to find that it was growing dark. His whole day had passed, immersed in darkness. Swimming in it.

Even that stopped when the older lady came, with the copper. Though the old man had given him some smacko afterwards, the boy had only gone to school when he absolutely had to. Sometimes he just ran away, and after a while, they stopped chasing him.

October 2000

I sipped Jack’s excellent coffee, seduced as always, by it – and the view. We were talking – or Jack was – about my passion for cycling. In particular, my annual participation in Melbourne’s Bay Ride, in which thousands of cycling nuts like myself tried to ride the two-hundred and ten kilometre distance in as little time as possible. In my case, that came to a little over six hours, usually.

“I don’t know why you do that stuff,” Jack said, emphasis on the “why”.

I shrugged. “It’s like Hillary said, Jack,” I said, smiling. “Because it’s there.”

“So are a lot of things,” Jack said. “But no one stakes themselves out on an anthill with honey on their nuts just because that’s there … why do something that hurts so much?”

I started to say that it didn’t hurt so much, but stopped myself. There were plenty of times that completing the distance meant suffering a lot. And that was Jack’s point. It was pain I chose to subject myself to – that I trained myself to endure.

“I could give you heaps of reasons, Jack,” I said, at last. “Like it doesn’t hurt always, and it’s a real challenge. But that won’t explain it. The thing is, you can’t ‘almost’ do it … you either make the whole thing, or you don’t. It’s not negotiable. Almost everything else in my life is grey. That’s black and white, yes or no. It’s… a journey. And you don’t always end up where you think you will.”

“But –“ Jack started to wind up, little spots of colour high in his cheeks. He loved nothing better than to pursue some kernel of thought or an idea until he’d gnawed it to the absolute nub.

“Let it go, Jack,” Sandy said, cutting him off abruptly, before he could go any further. “Daniel likes to ride because he likes to ride. You don’t understand because you can’t do it. What more is there to understand?”

Jack, the wind taken from his sails, looked at her, for a long moment. He glanced back at me, sharply. For a guilty moment – as happened from time to time – I imagined some knowledge, some calculation in his eyes. Then he smiled. “You’re probably right,” he said. “Why make it more complicated than it needs to be?”

I said nothing, just smiled and sipped my perfect cup of coffee.

I’d been “into” cycling for years. Football training consisting of pounding the hard streets for miles had taken a toll on knees and ankles: cycling was a form of exercise that enabled me to get out, but which didn’t cause pain and suffering for days afterwards. It was also been a form of exercise that was fulfilling in that the more you did, the more you could do. Distance ceased to be a problem, and even the steepest local hills had succumbed.

The challenges changed. Port Phillip Bay was a huge, diamond-shaped expanse of water between Melbourne city at its apex and, at the lowest point, “The Heads” – where an improbably narrow strip of water was ruffled by the infamous “Rip”, beyond which were the dangerous waters of Bass Strait.

Completing the Bay Ride in less than six and a half hours was an annual ritual for me. It was a yardstick. If I was fit enough each year to complete two hundred-odd k’s in that sort of time, I was doing OK, I reckoned. At thirty-something, that mattered.

Jack had a wide, open face that smiled readily. But his nose was sharp and pointed: like a fox, he was curious – a hunter, acquisitive and inquisitive. Jack was a businessman, a very good one. He’d never discuss the details of how much money his various enterprises actually made, but he and Sandy always lived with the best of everything: house, cars, food, holidays. Even when Jack had once bought a bike on a “move it or lose it” fitness kick, it had been a $7,000 dual-suspension racing mountain bike that he’d sweated round the flat-as-a-tack bike paths on.

Jack’s problem was that, since his role as an entrepreneur meant frequent travel, with fast food, and rounds of meetings and lunches and dinners, he was carrying a lot of extra weight. He wasn’t grossly overweight, or obviously unhealthy, but even the exertion of climbing the stairs to reach his company box at “The Telstra Dome”, the corporate-sponsored football ground in Melbourne caused him to puff, cheeks bright with the unusual exertion.

Over the years, Jack had spent a lot of time – and money – on ways to lose weight and get fit. Each year, he’d take himself off for a month to a health resort, the “Corps d’Or” – Sandy called it the “corpse-door”. He’d come back a little fitter, tanned and relaxed. But within few weeks, he’d have slipped into the same practices as before – too much rich food, not enough exercise – and put it all straight back on.

He had come out for a few rides with me, on his lightweight mountain bike. They were just gentle rides of ten or twenty k’s, but they weren’t enjoyable for him. He wasn’t fit enough. He was caught in no-man’s land: wanting to attain whatever it was that gave me so much enjoyment, but not able to get to the point where it was ever going to become fun.

He couldn’t let the question go, though. Sandy’s acerbic put-down simply spurred his curiosity. “You’re right, though. It is simple. Even I can understand that. Daniel likes to ride because he likes to ride,” Jack continued, teasing Sandy. “Very female logic.”

“It is something like that,” I said, smiling lopsidedly at him.

Sandy gave Jack a narrow-eyed glare. “See?” she said. “You just can’t understand it because you can’t see where there might be money in it, you,” she said, voice brittle with mock-anger that had a real edge underneath.

“Hadn’t thought of that,” said Jack, nodding his head, lips pursed thoughtfully. He looked at me, some sort of assessment taking place behind his veiled eyes. “And how long did this ride take you, the other day?”

“Six hours and seven minutes,” I said. “Actual riding time – that doesn’t include the ferry ride.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. “So that’s what, about thirty-odd k’s an hour?”

“Little bit more,” I said, with false nonchalance.

“You do it on your own?”

“No, there’s a group of us that stick together,” I said. “We look after each other, share the effort.”

“Sure,” he nodded, without really understanding what I was talking about. “And how much training did you do?”

I shrugged. “Well, the short answer is years, Jack – I never stop, really. But some of the guys were doing it for the first time, and they only got serious in May or June.”

“Serious meaning what?” he asked, looking at me intently.

“Jack,” said Sandy, in a warning tone. “Don’t even think about it – unless you plan to increase your life insurance policy.”

Bad joke. Another one of those couples’ in-jokes that is no longer funny. Jack gave her a “stay out of it” look.

“Serious meaning what?” he asked again.

“Serious meaning about a hundred and fifty k’s a week plus, in training,” I said.

“Right,” he said. He didn’t speak for a minute or so, staring out the expanse of windows at the glimpse of sea, far away to the south. Finally, he nodded, affirming something to himself. “Next year, when you do the Bay Ride, I’m doing it with you.”

“Oh, Jack,” said Sandy, shaking her head.

I smiled at her, shaking my head. “Go for it, Jack. You get there and I’ll ride round with you.”

Sandy looked at me, the lightness leaving her expression. “Bloody men,” she said, shaking her head.

She got up and left the room.

Mintalie, December, 1970

Christmas was not a time of year the boy enjoyed.

The old man never acknowledged it in any way at all. But the boy saw, on the other ramshackle and dilapidated homes that clustered forlornly amongst the dusty, dishevelled scrub, frazzled green wreaths with faded red berries bloom on the doors. Tinsel, silver, green and red, sparkled gleefully in the sun, like laughter – for a few days anyway, until the relentless wind and insistent dust smothered it.

In the store, Mama Paguliio and her husband Tony – new in town – were making an effort to bring Christmas to Mintalie. On the radio-casette player that stood behind the counter, and which usually muttered race-day odds and result into Tony’s avid ear, taped Christmas carols blared cheerily around over the battered lino floor, reverberating off the cluttered shelves and grimy walls, ricocheting from glass-doored fridge to squat, shivering freezer.

The shelves were decorated with more tinsel. A small, plastic Christmas tree, its spindly wire branches groaning beneath a welter of stars, and balls in silver, red and green stood in a corner near the counter. It had little coloured lights, which flashed on and off. Underneath, an assortment of garishly-wrapped parcels piled – so high that they reached above the tree’s lower branches.

What was in them all? Who were they for? The boy tried to see if there were labels. Maybe there was one for him. Maybe Father Christmas had left a parcel there for him. This time.

The boy began hanging round the store, unable to tear himself away from the sight of so much colour, and joy. Tony had some jars beside the counter that contained fragments of sweets or biscuits – ones that had been broken in the trip to Mintalie. He would give them out to the kids who came in with their parents. On day, he’d noticed the boy, sitting on the bench seat outside, where he could glimpse the tree, glowing in its corner. “You, boy,” he said. “You wanna li’l bit do some work for me? On’y li’l bit?”

The boy didn’t really understand. The way Tony talked, sounded sort of backwards to him, but he heard the word “work”. He nodded. Maybe Tony might give him some money.

He spent an hour working with Tony in a dim and dusty store room behind the Paguliio’s living quarters. He got the feeling that Tony didn’t really need the help, but wanted the company, because he never stopped talking. Now and then, there’d be a question, mixed up in a welter of words that the boy barely understood. Tony would pause, waiting for the boy to respond. The boy would stop, straighten, look at Tony and wait, wondering what he had done wrong: silence with the old man was a prelude to violent disaster. Tony’s eyebrows would arch, high in the middle, low at either side. “OK, nevermind,” he’d say, and they’d keep doing what they were doing.

Mostly, it was unpacking boxes. Biscuits, tins of soup and drinks, detergents, sponges and scrubbers, chips, packets of lollies and chocolates – even plastic toys. They took the toys straight out, arranging them along a series of shelves that were flamboyant with frantic Christmas frills. In one box was a plastic plane, bright red, with two wings – one above the other. It had become crushed. One of the wheels is sat on was gone, and the wings at one end were sandwiched together, instead of being an equal distance apart. “Oh, shit! They send me this why?” Tony looked at the boy, his eyebrows doing that upwards tweak again. “Who’s gonna buy this, huh?” He shook his head, turning to put the plane on a bench near the door. Then he stopped and looked back. “You want it?” he asked. “Little pressie for you, boy?”

The boy ran along the track to the house. In one hand, the red plane whizzed, the tiny propeller on the front spinning in the wind. He fizzed a whirring noise, his lips squeezed together, swooping and diving the plane, stopping to whirl in frantic circles, trying to watch the red shape as it flew past a blurred world at the end of his arm.

He raced into the carport, twisting to avoid the half-wrecked chairs that crouched forlornly road the cut 44-gallon drum that provided a fireplace for winter. Not that you needed a fire at this time of year. Today wasn’t really hot, but the boy’s t-shirt clung to his skin.

He realised where he was and stopped dead. He stood statued, listening to the house. It was impossible to be inside it without your presence being broadcast. Floorboards, scuffed and scarred, twisted and moaned; fibro wall-panels ticked, rafters and even the iron sheets on the roof screeched as the studs twitched and joists and bearers flexed. Every footfall told the boy his fate.

There was nothing. Only the gentle flutter of windy cat’s paws teased the ragged flywire that edged the gappy windows like scruffy lace. Even Adolf was gone. His chain curled like a dead snake round the iron peg beside the old box and his enamel-plated bowl.

The boy sat on the old man’s mangled armchair. He held the plane up, high above his head, zooming it back and forward, in dives. Exclamations of sound: cries for help, orders and warnings spluttered from his lips, explosions puffed in the heat-swollen air under the carport.

He hid the plane in his room, inside the pillowcase.

The next day, he helped Tony again. They seemed to get along. Tony said, at the end of the day. “You good boy. You help me out – what I give you? You want money today? Or maybe some ice cream, huh?”

The boy thought. Money was tempting … but he’d never even tasted ice cream. Ice cream it was. A Drumstick. It came in a paper wrapping that peeled away. It cost almost a dollar, but Tony just smiled, when the boy asked. “Sure. Take it, boy,” he said.

The experience of eating the Drumstick was almost religious. From the moment his lips touched the chocolate and nuts that sprinkled the top, a sort of explosion ripped through his mouth that seemed to suck sensation from every part of his body. He shivered, ecstatically.

The boy sat on the scarred bench outside the store to eat it. Some of the kids from the school were there, with some bottles they’d collected from the back doors of the houses for the deposit. The boy watched them. They stared at him. They knew. A Drumstick was a piece of heaven, angel’s food: out of reach.

Nothing ever tasted as good. Nothing. Ever.

December, 2000

I didn’t see much of Jack, for a couple of weeks. Sandy either, for that matter. I occasionally saw Sandy’s car, as she drove her twin girls to or from school. But I didn’t call her – never did, for that matter – and she didn’t ring me, either. I wondered whether she was still angry.

One Sunday morning, however, as I rode past their driveway, along the Flinders Road, Jack was emerging, driving the massive, shiny four-wheel drive that he commuted to Melbourne in.

I braked and pulled over to his window, staying clipped into the cleats, leaning against the shivering, sunwarm metal side of the car. The window slid down, electronically.

“’Day, Jack,” I said.

“Daniel,” he said, gravely. He eyed my bike and the cycling gear I wore, sideways, like a nervous horse.

I thought he would comment, and got in first. “Don’t laugh,” I said. “You want to come round the bay with me, this is what you have to wear!”

“Never!” he gasped, horrified at the thought.

“I’ll buy you a pair for Chrissie,” I said. I looked at the floor of the car: Jack was an inveterate snacker – couldn’t resist the fast-food chains. Sure enough, the interior was littered with Macca’s burger wrappers and empty boxes that had once contained “fries”.

“Save your money. Can you really see me in that get-up?” he asked – and then saw my glance. Jack’s foxy face creased in a wry smile. “I could tell you it was the kids’ mess,” he said. “But I’d be lying. I have been riding, though,” he protested.

“How much?” I asked.

“Well, I’ve been away a fair bit, but usually, about … half an hour every day – at lunchtime,” he said. “I don’t eat lunch, just go out and ride. There’s a path, right past my factory.”

“There’s your problem,” I said.

“What?” he wrinkled his brow. “The bike path?”

“No, the lack of lunch,” I said. “Skipping meals actually mucks up your eating. You get so hungry that you actually eat more – and the wrong stuff – later on. That’s why you can’t go past those places –” I pointed at the wrappers, “ – on the way home. The other thing is that you actually slow your metabolism down.”

He thought about it. “But am I getting fitter?” he asked.

“Probably,” I said. “Certainly, if you’re riding every day. But you won’t lose any weight, training that way. You might even put some on. Skipping meals makes you hungry and exercising does the same.”

“So what should I do?” His face wore a look of resignation. “Fair dinkum, Dan, you sound just like bloody Sandy.”

“There’s just a remote chance that she might be right, this time, Jack,” I said, smiling.

“For Christ’s sake, don’t tell her that!” He looked quite worried.

“Secret’s safe with me,” I said. “But if you want to get fit, lay off that crap,” I said. “You need to cut back on fat, and that stuff’s full of it.”

“I know, I know. It’s just hard not to,” he said. “I’m out of the house before dawn, usually don’t get home until well after dinner time … it’s easier to stop at one of those joints on the way past.”

“Easier, but not better for you,” I said. “Not if you want to drop a few kilos.”

“Jesus Christ. There’s got to be an easier way,” he sighed.

“Sure – get your stomach stapled or something,” I said, making a face.

Jack looked at me without amusement, “Spoken like a man who doesn’t have to worry about his weight,” he said.

I tried to sound more sympathetic. “Maybe you could try other exercise programs.”

Jack shook his head. “I’ve just about done them all,” he said. “It’s like that health resort place. While I’m there, it’s fine. I do the diet and the exercise and the weight starts to fall off. But I come back here and just slip back into doing exactly what I’ve always done and it always goes straight back on.”

“Keep looking though,” I said. “I mean, cycling works for me. You just have to find something that uses muscles and burns calories.”

“It’s a shame you can’t lose weight rooting,” he said gloomily.

I laughed. “You’d have to do it twenty-four-seven!”

“I wouldn’t mind,” he said, with the accent on “I”.

“Gives a whole new meaning to riding the exercise bike,” I said, smiling.

“Think Sandy’d buy me one of that kind?” Jack raised his eyebrow.

“Don’t bet on it.” My smile felt stretched. This was uncomfortable ground.

“Well,” he turned to stare out the front window, “it’s not as if she exercises it all that often.” He glanced back at me, then away again. “Probably going to atrophy through lack of use.” He grinned without humour, his gaze trying to hold mine. I looked away.

“There’s always Mrs Palmer,” I said, making a clumsy joke.

“I’d like to think I could do better than that.” Jack’s gaze was level and serious. “I need a bit more than what Mrs Palmer has to offer, just between you and me.”

“Fair enough.” I tried to think of a way of extracting myself from a conversational quagmire. I spun the right hand crank, and re-inserted my cleat into the pedal with a loud click.

Jack nodded ruefully. He tried to shake off the dour mood, jerking a thumb at my bike. “Where are you off to, then?”

“Flinders, then across to Rosebud, down to Portsea and back home,” I said.

“Bloody hell!” his eyebrows disappeared under his thinning fringe. “How far’s that?”

I shrugged. “Don’t know – ninety or so?”

“And you do it for fun!” Jack slid his window back up, shaking his head. As the car began to move, I noticed the long scrape down the side at the rear. I banged the side window. Jack braked and slid the window back down.

“What happened there?” I asked. “Sandy been driving?”

He glanced back and nodded, smiling a little thinly, “Some idiot ran me off the road, the other day.” He smiled, but without much humour. “Coming up White Hill, prick tried to overtake me; someone came towards us, down the hill. He just came back across in front of me. I drove into the gravel, lost it, braked too hard and slid down into the trees on the left-hand side. Close shave. That was the only damage, though.”

“Did he stop?” I asked.

“Did he!” Jack said. “Arsehole fucking stopped alright! Saw I was right off the road, and just drove away.”

“What a prick. You were lucky though,” I said. “There are some absolute dickheads out there.”

“Yeah, there sure are,” he said.

“You want to try riding a bike.” I shook my head in disgust. “That happens almost every ride.”

“So I’m just getting out of the frying pan?” he asked smiling.

“And right into the fire,” I agreed.

“Might have to buy asbestos boots,” he said.

“Or learn to fly.

“Or stay lucky.”

“You can’t rely on luck all the time,” Jack said seriously. “Sometimes you have to be smart.”

“True. But smart and lucky is best,” I said.

Jack nodded, face thoughtful. “True,” he said. “Catch you later.” He pulled away from in front of me.

I clicked both cleats back into the pedals and rolled on, down the winding road towards Flinders. I was actually quite impressed that Jack had actually been making an effort. I wondered whether he’d keep it up.

I had a most enjoyable ride – except for a moment at the end. When I was almost home, a large, white car roared down the short, sharp hill which led to my house, on the wrong side of the road, tyres snickering, as it swerved around corner, narrowly missing me.

I caught a glimpse of a snarling, feral face, a brandished fist and then it was gone in a horn blast and roar of acceleration. Happy fucking Christmas, arsehole, I thought, shaking my head.

I wondered whether, talking to Jack, I’d said something to tempt fate.

Chapter 8

Mintalie, March, 1971

The old man’s hatred of dogs only extended to any strays. Certainly, the only living creature the boy had ever seen the old man show affection of any kind to was his own dog. Adolf. Pronounced “Ay-doff”.

Adolf was a Pit-bull terrier. He was a low-slung tank of a dog, with slabbish, lumpy shoulders that strained to support jaws and a snout too large for the rest of him. He was as foul-tempered and vicious as the old man. Except that the dog loved the master.

The ugly brute would lie at the old man’s feet, lumpy head on front paws, watching the boy with its red, glaring eyes, growling if he moved. The boy would crouch in his corner, staring at it, rooted by fear. His eyes would flick to watch the old man, nervously.

“’Tcher fuckin’ lookin’ at?” he’d snarled. The dog had looked too, and growled again.

“Careful I don’t let Adolf eat ya. Not that yer’d make much of a meal. Fuck off away, yer little bastard. Garn. Fuck off out of it.”

Usually he fucked off – with relief – to the peppercorn tree. In its shade, perched in the solid grey weathered branches, under its light, shielding shroud of foliage, he could pretend he was one of the characters in that Faraway Tree, a story the teacher had read them at the school. At the top of the magic tree, there’d be a different land, each day. He wanted to climb up, and go visit the land, like the kids in the book. Only, if he found a nice one, he’d stay. There was a fairy up that tree called Silky, who dressed in colours and had golden hair around her head, like a cloud. The boy wished he could live in the tree with Silky.

It was closed now, the school – even the buildings gone, loaded on two massive trucks and driven away. Not that the boy had not gone to classes all that often. He’d preferred to wander off, round the endless white, dusty mounds marking claims that had been scraped bare and passed over. He’d even explored some of the black holes that plunged into the earth.

That had all stopped, for a while, when a lady in a dress came with a cop and spoke to the old man. The boy had heard her high, educated voice, threatening the old man with the police and worse, if he didn’t make sure the boy went to school. The boy had copped it, for that.

But he remembered the stories the teacher had read.

The boy liked to sit in the peppercorn tree, looking out over the stunted, scruffy scrub that surrounded their shit-hole. Behind the house, the weathered, lumpy slabs of red and orange rock reared to the surface from deep underneath the ground where, concealed its slips and folds lay secret glimmers of opal. The ridge ran, like a battlement, across from the back of their house to the edge of the town, where the houses petered out and the holes, the ruination of the land began.

He couldn’t even imagine one real tree out here, let alone a forest. And as for a silky-haired fairy and the other fantastic creatures of the magic tree, forget it. The peppercorn tree was about the only thing here taller than the scrub. And fairies got the shit beat out of them, according to the old man.

Every few weeks, the old man would disappear. He might go noodling with a couple of his friends, or hitch a lift to Marla, or even the Alice now and then, if he had some money. His cronies were the absolute dregs: foul Vic: swollen-bellied, unpredictably violent, leering at any woman unfortunate enough to pass him, and a notorious local thief; and Bern, whose strange, light eyes always seemed to follow the boy around, with a hungry glare that the boy found frightening. Bern had a dog, too. “Princess”, a ratty little animal. Bern boasted that it was a pure bred Schitzu. He took it everywhere – he’d even kiss it, right on the mouth, or feed it half-chewed meat, straight from his own lips.

Once, when the old man was away, the boy went into his room, looking for the old man’s gun. He liked the gun. It was heavy. Even its weight was deadly. It was filled with the authority of death, of killing. The boy used to walk around the house, in the semi-darkness, peering out of the windows, imagining he was a lone soldier, in an abandoned fort, holding out against a stealthy enemy who crept through the stunted, dusty undergrowth. He’d aim the rifle at the bushes and pull the trigger, hearing the snap as the firing pin clicked into the empty chamber. He knew how to work the bolt, to load. He’d watched the old man a thousand times. Snap. Snap. Killed them all.

That day, however, he hadn’t found the gun. Maybe the old man had taken it with him. But behind a couple of doors the old man had ripped off an abandoned house and souvenired, the boy found a cupboard he’d never noticed before.

In it were a woman’s clothes. The boy had never seen dresses like these, or any woman who could wear them. The only women still left in the town were miners’ wives like old Mama Paguliio, whose husband Mario owned not just the store, according to the old man, but most of the town – not that it was worth much now. Most of these women, were silent, sunstrained ghosts. Their lips stretched tight across their faces, so as not to let out a sound. They knew the moment they started to speak, they’d say what they really felt about it all: husbands, town, opals, mining, dust … kids.

A few women came into town on Friday nights, staying for the weekend. Some were Aborigines or half-caste women from the communities further west in the desert. They’d mostly come in to hang around the single surviving pub, Borgert’s Hotel, cadging drinks from dust-dry, desperate opal miners. Some even hung around the old man’s house. The old man and his mates called them fucksluts. The boy sometimes sat in the abandoned car across the road and watched while the old man and his friends drank with the women.

Later, they’d lie on top of them, in the dirt, or in the bushes. The boy would hear them wheeze and groan, muttering and swearing in the dirt and darkness. Sometimes, the women would vomit, staggering over to the scrub near the boy. Their cheap dresses would often be torn and dirty. Their wrinkled breasts would hang and sag as they leaned over, stomachs cramping. After, they’d wipe their mouths and return. In the morning, the boy would creep past their grey, slack-skinned bodies spilled over the ground like badly-filled bags, hoarse, cawing snores like crows’ calls rasping from gaping wet holes in their empty faces.

Their clothes were gaudy, cheap, hanging off bony shoulders and sagging tits, or stretched round rumps whose cheeks shelved at the back, like a hump that had slipped.

But the clothes in the cupboard were soft, and coloured like rainbows. They smelled like fields of flowers – like the flowers in the forest where the magic tree was, the boy thought. Silky would wear these clothes. Or a princess. Or a queen.

After that, he’d often sneak in there, when the old man was gone. He’d shift the doors, open the wardrobe and take out the things from inside. One at a time. He’d lay them out. He’d look at them, smell them, touch their softness.

He wondered whose they were.

Chapter 10

December 12th, 2000

I was mowing the lawn, on the ride-on mower, concentrating on getting as close the trees and shrubs as I could without skewering my eye on a branch, crushing the plant in question or ramming the mower into something more solid than it was. It wasn’t a bad day for mowing. If you liked that sort of thing. Which I didn’t.

I only noticed Jack because the dog, who likes to watch carefully when I mow, got up and trotted up the garden, tail wagging. She has only two modes of greeting: all-out ferocious bark or tail-wagging sycophancy. She bounced up to Jack and pushed her nose in his crotch – her usual mode of approbation for any male visitor that she trusts.

Jack pushed her head away and sat down on the steps leading down to the grass, raising a hand to me. I waved back and circled my hand, before holding up five fingers. The lawn had been reduced from shaggy unkemptness to a mere mohawk which would only take a few more passes.

He nodded. I finished off, drove the mower round to the shed and parked it, turning off the ignition, so that the clattering racket subsided with one last pop.

“It always does that,” I said, taking off the ear-protectors. “I don’t know why.”

“Me neither,” he said. “Probably not that important, in the scheme of things.”

“Probably not,” I agreed. “Coffee?”

Jack nodded. He followed me inside and perched on one of the tall stools along the curved front of the kitchen bench. “I’m going for a ride,” he said, making room for himself by pushing aside the scatter of keys, coins, letters and wallet that accumulated up there each time I came home and emptied my pockets.

“When?” I asked, rummaging in the pantry cupboard for the coffee. “D’ you want some company?”

“Ah, well. I’m going in a few weeks,” he said. “And no, you can’t come.”

His tone was strange. I stopped what I was doing and looked around at him. “Meaning what, Jack?”

He shrugged, smiling lopsidedly. “Meaning I can’t make myself train here to do that Bay Ride thing. I just get distracted, or the weather’s crappy, or something blows up at work,” he said, and paused.

“So?” I prompted him.

“So I’ve bought a bike. I’m flying to Darwin and riding to Adelaide,” he said.

“Oh, right,” I said. “Darwin to Adelaide. Of course.” I looked at him, eyebrow raised. “You idiot.”

“Don’t you start,” he said. “I thought you’d be on my side.”

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“Well, you should be all for it,” Jack said. “Isn’t it the sort of thing you want to do?”

“Well, yeah, but …” I began.

He spoke over me. “Don’t give me that stuff about you’re a trained athlete crap,” he said. “That just means you could do it further each day, or faster or whatever. It’s not a reason why I shouldn’t have a crack.”

He was right. That had been what I was about to say. And he was right. He should have a crack at it, if that was what he really wanted to do. But he was also wrong. This wasn’t a “have a crack at it” thing. You had a crack if failing meant no real drama. You had a crack at trying to do the Bay Ride. But trying to cycle across Australia from north to south was drama. And failing might mean huge drama.

“What does Sandy say?” I asked, weakly.

“What’s it got to do with Sandy?” he asked, eyes boring into mine.

“Nothing, I s’pose.” I avoided his gaze, making the coffee.

“Damn right.” Jack leaned back, both hands flat on the counter top. “Actually, she asked if I was leaving her.”

“Did she?” I felt like my face was frozen.

“Yeah.” Jack laughed, but with no humour in it, “I told her I wouldn’t dare.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He avoided my look. “Nah, it’s like you said: move it or lose it, Daniel. I don’t intend to wind up at the end of my days saying, ‘I wish I had’ or ‘What if?’”

“Fair enough,” I didn’t pursue the subject; poured some milk into the stainless steel jug and slipped it under the steam jet. “But why does any of that necessitate a trip from Darwin to Adelaide by bike?”

Jack didn’t answer for a few minutes. I glanced at him, waiting for the coffee machine’s “ready” light to come on.

“It’s not just the bike thing.’ he said. “Sandy and I haven’t been travelling too well, lately. This is a way of … giving her some space.”

The sound of the steam spurting and bubbling as it heated the milk precluded conversation. When I turned the noise off, I said only, “The other side of the country is a fair bit of space.”

Jack grinned. “Yeah, there is that. But at least I’m heading in the right direction. I’m starting a long way away, but heading back here,” he explained, seeing my puzzled expression.

“Gotcha. A metaphorical journey too.”

“Whatever. All of that “phorical” stuff,” Jack said. He took a sip of his coffee, but held up a flat hand when I offered him an Anzac biscuit. “No more of that for me,” he said, face stern.

“Jesus Jack, if you’re cycling from Darwin,” I said, “an Anzac biscuit here or there isn’t going to make any difference.”

“No way! Don’t you tempt me, Satan,” he said. “The first step of the journey is as important as the last.”

“Aaah, Grasshopper!” I put on a sage, Confucian voice. “You are so deep that this tiny mind cannot fathom your meaning.”

“You may well laugh, my friend.” Jack smiled, but his eyes were serious. “It’s a time of great change in my life. You don’t get the chance to fix mistakes very often. When the opportunity comes, you have to take it, and make it work.”

I tried to make light of it, feeling as if we were slipping into one of those conversational pits that wound up exploring Jack’s darker side – which was a place I preferred to stay away from. “It’s just a bike ride, remember?”

“Every bike ride is a journey,” he said. “But you never end up exactly where you thought you would when you started.”

“Who said that?” I asked, thinking he was quoting from somewhere.

He was. “You did, you dickhead.”

June, 1970

The wardrobe became a doorway to another world. Days when the old man stayed home, or didn’t go far enough away to allow the boy time to properly explore the world he’d found became trials. The hours scratched past with fingernail on blackboard tension. The old man never had any regular plans. Except on the day his benefit money arrived. The moment the mail arrived in Jim Cummings’ rattly old Holden ute at the Post Office-cum store, the old man would cash it and disappear into the dingy, cool depths of Borgert’s Fire in the Stone Hotel. There he’d stay until it was all gone. Usually it took a couple of days, at least. A few times, though, he’d been robbed while he lay in a drunken heap. When this happened, would return home, vengeful and vicious, looking for someone or something to take out his spite on.

Usually, that was the boy, if the old man could catch him.

Most often, though, the boy knew that he could rely on the old man staying away for three or four days – up to a week. These times, especially after the discovery of the wardrobe and its contents, became like jewels: opals in the desert of the boy’s existence.

For days, there would be no beatings, no shouting, no sullen, unpredictable, volcanic presence to tiptoe around in fervid fear. These days would pass for the boy in a sensuous riot of soft, silky cloths, subtle, exciting scents and imaginary characters that played like the fantastic films he’d glimpsed from the bushes that lined the outdoor cinema Mintalie had once boasted.

At first, he’d crept back into the old man’s room, mouselike. He had, for hours, just touched and smelt the jumble that pressed against the musty, dark wood of the old cupboard. Then, one day, he’d emptied the whole thing: the clothes that hung from twisted wire hangers; shoes, belts and bags which tangled the floor beneath them; and the three drawers of underthings whose softness and sheer delicacy made him shake his head in disbelief.

Ripping back the grimy, foetid linen from the old man’s bed, he’d spread them all out. In the dim, fusty room, they almost glowed, rainbows amidst clouds or as if some gaudy bird had been able somehow to cast off its plumage.

Best of all, in the bottom of one of the drawers, was a slim packet of photographs, in a faded yellow envelope. They were old, the colours strange: the faces of the people orange, yellows faded to a sickly puce, greens and blues browning. It was the subject matter that captivated the boy – transfixed him.

They showed the house, not as it was now, but as a building project: cement mixer in the driveway, stone walls barely showing above the red, dusty earth. Next to the piles of fractured rock which would become the house, young people, smiling confidently for the camera, a million years away from the disappointments of a future that would scar and mutilate.

Although the photographs showed many people, one picture particularly interested the boy. It showed two females and a man. The man was the old man, no doubt about it. Smiling widely, he stood beside a framed-up window, hand resting possessively on the shoulder of a woman with long, fair hair that fell limply over her shoulders and down her back. She regarded the camera with a level, serious intensity; mouth curving in a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

Next to them was a younger woman, little more than a girl. She wore a simple blue smock-dress and sat hunched at the feet of – obviously – her mother and father. She too stared impassively down the barrel of time. The boy stared at her face for a long time, trying to understand what was in her eyes and that of the woman he thought was her mother. Who were they? And where were they now? Why were they no longer here?

He spent ages holding the photo next to the mirror, looking at their faces and his. He had become convinced – or convinced himself – that the woman was his mother. Was the girl his sister? Had they lost him, somehow?

Or were they somehow lost, themselves?

One thing he knew. Asking the old man would be dangerous, and a waste of time. The boy knew that the woman and the girl were not here only because they’d escaped. The old man would not know where they were, because they would have made sure of it.

Chapter 11

December 14th, 2000

“Has he told you what he’s doing?” Sandy asked.

“What?” I said. I’d drifted off. The weekend had started badly – I’d lost my wallet, and had spent a crazy day or two cancelling credit and bank cards, and trying to replace my driver’s licence and sundry other memberships of this and that – including my journalist’s accreditation. My mind had made some weird connection between lying on a bed after making love and wondering about the missing contents of my wallet.

It was hot, the sun streaming in through the windows, reflecting with eye-squinting intensity off the brittle blue dish that was the bay. Our bodies were still filmed with a sheen of perspiration. Sandy had rung an hour or so earlier, asked if I was busy. “Not too busy,” I’d said, feeling that familiar tightness in the base of my stomach.

So she drove over. Jack had taken their girls to see a film.

“Has Jack let you in on his idiot plan,” Sandy said, impatiently.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was a million miles away, if you’ll pardon the expression.” She didn’t smile. “If you mean the ride from Darwin, yes he has.”

Sandy didn’t say anything for a few minutes. I glanced at her. She was lying on her back, one arm under her head, the other playing idly with the silver heart she wore on a chain round her neck.

I looked away, out through the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the bay, eyes narrowed against the brightness outside. My house perched on the hillside at Mount Arthur. It was a bayside suburb where the house blocks were still large enough to create the illusion that you had some privacy. Anything that had a view of the bay meant that you could lose yourself in the many moods of the waves and the sky.

Sandy turned her head. I could feel her watching me. “What do you think?” she asked.

“You mean, do I think he should go?” I said.

Sandy sighed. “I mean will he kill himself,” she said. “That’s what I mean. No –“ She stared at me, as if it was me she was angry with. “I really mean why the fuck is he doing it?”

I shrugged. “No idea,” I said. “Maybe it’s about that ”Everest” thing - because it’s there?”

“More likely because it’s something you’ve never done,” she retorted.

A silence stretched out. I didn’t want to answer, but she waited me out. “Maybe,” I said, eventually.

She raised her chin, her gaze almost demanding. “Why don’t you go with him?”

Flatly, I said, “I’m not invited.”

Sandy raised an eyebrow. “Did he say that?”

“Yes, he did,” I said, remembering. Now, as I thought back, it seemed odd that Jack had expressly told me that I couldn’t come with him.

“I don’t know what he thinks he’s going to prove.” Sandy rolled onto her back again. She pushed the pillow up under her head and draped her arm across her eyes.

“Who says he’s proving anything?” I asked, rising on my elbows to see her better.

Sandy jerked the arm down by her side. She sat up, turning away from me. “Oh come on, Daniel,” she said. “You’re not that dumb. You don’t just get a bee in your bonnet about cycling at forty-something.”

“Some men do,” I said, avoiding her eyes by gazing out through the window again.

“Not Jack,” she said. She lay without speaking for a few minutes. I could feel that she was watching me. “I think he knows something. About us,” she said.

I felt my chest tighten: guilt’s grip. “Why do you say that?” I tried to make my voice neutral.

“This cycling thing, for one,” she said.

“Has he said anything?” I asked.

“No. But it’s like he’s trying to show that anything you can do, he can do too,” she said. “Surely you can see that?”

“I suppose,” I said. “But that needn’t necessarily be anything to do with …” I flapped my hand at her, “Us. Blokes are … you know, competitive about sports. Maybe it’s a version of the macho thing. Besides, he told me he’s using it as a way to lose weight.” I didn’t say anything about the conversation I’d had with Jack where he’d virtually said that he was trying to put some distance between he and Sandy. And implied that she wanted it.

Sandy raised an eyebrow, then shrugged. “And you believed him?” she said.

I didn’t think she expected – or wanted – a reply to that, so I kept quiet.

“I don’t think he’s coming back,” she said, at last.

“Bullshit.” I reacted without thinking. I couldn’t believe Jack would do that. If not because of Sandy, for the girls’ sake, at least. “He’s just working something out of his system, that’s all. You’ll see.”

“I’m not giving it all up, you know,” she said.

I wasn’t quite sure what she meant. It was confusing, I mean, she was lying naked next to me, in my bed, having just made love, declaring that her marriage was vital to her. I tried to be placatory, positive, reassuring. “That’s the idea,” I said. “If you think positive, that’s the first step.” I was babbling.

It didn’t matter. I don’t think she heard me. “I’ve worked too hard for all this, Daniel,” she said. Her face was calm. “I want you to stop him.”

I was flabbergasted. “How do you mean?” I asked.

“I want you to stop him from going. Or go with him,” she said.

I looked away, out over the bay. I wanted to see that the world was still where it had always been. That I hadn’t slipped into some alternate universe. “Sandy,” I said, at last, “even if I could stop him – which I can’t – I wouldn’t. If he really wants to do this, then he has the right to try.”

She didn’t speak, but her eyes glared at me, as if she was furious. I saw her throat contract, as she swallowed. Finally she said, “Even if it kills him.”

“It won’t,” I said. “He’ll do his macho thing, get it out of his system, and come back. It’ll be OK, you’ll see.”

After a moment, Sandy rolled off the bed and went into the bathroom. When she came out, she got dressed without saying anything further. When I tried to make conversation, she replied in monosyllables.

I figured I’d better have a word to Jack. I said as much, but Sandy just shook her head. She left without speaking, even to say goodbye.

Some days, it’s better not to even try to say the right thing. Lost wallet. Lost Sandy. What next?

* * *

It was a week or so before I caught up with Jack. I’d decided to try to talk him out of his plan, but without being too obvious about it. Guilt? Self-interest?

I met him one morning, coming out of the Post Office at Dromana. The local lads had developed a habit of kicking down roadside letterboxes for fun. I’d not bothered repairing it, when they’d done mine. I just went and rented a locked box from which I could collect my mail a couple of times a week.

Jack didn’t see me. He keyed his own box, removed a sheaf of mail and stood looking through it.

”G’day, Jack,” I said, moving to where my own box was, sorting the key from the clump on my key ring as I did so.

He seemed startled, when he realised I was there. “Dan!” Smiling, he stuffed the sheaf of envelopes and brochures in his coat pocket and crossed to where I was sorting through my own pile of bills, junk mail and postcards from friends travelling in exotic places.

“Didn’t know you and Sandy had a postal box here,” I said.

“Sandy insisted,” he said. “So we don’t get piles of shit for the business at home.” He gestured at the pile of stuff I was winnowing – most of the advertising leaflets went straight into the bin unexamined. “Got a few postcards there.”

“Yeah,” I said. I shuffled quickly through. “One from my sister, in Italy; another friend’s in … Borneo and this’s from a friend who’s got long service leave. He’s travelling round Australia, with his wife and kids.”

“Really?” Jack’s voice rose with interest. “Where?”

“You’ll be travelling in their footsteps,” I said, showing him a card with a picture of a large croc, a bloody hunk of meat in its mouth. “They’re in the Territory now.”

“Going well?” he asked.

“Yeah, although they’re planning to stay in Alice Springs for a little while,” I said, scanning the latest card. “Seems the police are advising people to be careful, on account of this kidnapper, or whatever.”

Jack raised an eyebrow, interrogatively.

”You know,” I said, “that Uni student who disappeared …”

“Oh, yeah,” he nodded. “Stopped to help somebody, or something.”

“Mmm.” I tried a non-too-subtle hint. “Maybe you should try another route?”

“Oh, right, like a sex-fiend kidnapper’s going to be waiting for me,” he said, giving me a sharp glance. “Sandy been in your ear, has she?”

“No,” I said, sounding unconvincing and defensive. I smiled, shaking my head. “OK, she has, a bit,” I said. “But that doesn’t make her wrong.”

“No, but it’s not a reason for not doing it, either,” he said. “As long as I know what I’m taking on, I can –”

“Do you reckon you do?” I interrupted. “I mean, do you really know –“ I faltered, “– what you’re taking on?”

Jack paused, looking at me. His eyes narrowed combatively. “You reckon I don’t?” he asked.

I took a breath. “Not really,” I said, bluntly. “You ever even been to the Territory? And the bike – riding alone, breakdowns – have you fixed a flat before? It’ll be something else again. It won’t be like our gentle rambles round here, Jack. How many k’s a day are you going to do? How are you going to carry everything?”

“I know the area,” he said. “I’ve been to Darwin often – got a business up there.” He made a shape in the air with his hands. “Beside, I’ve got some of those pannier things,” he said. “I’ll take plenty of stuff.”

“But what about repairs and breakdowns?” I persisted.

“Look, how hard can it be to change a tyre?” he asked. “Jesus, Dan, it’s not rocket science.” He held up him mobile phone. “This thing’s supposed to be able to dial anywhere on earth from anywhere else. I know you won’t admit it, but mobile phones are shrinking the world.”

“They’re a wank and the only people who use them are braindead yuppies,” I said, mechanically parroting my usual line of cant. “Present company not excepted.” I thought of something else, “Have you worked out where you’ll stay each night?”

“I’ll camp wherever I am, if there’s no campground or town.” Jack shook his head irritably. “Look, I’m not completely useless, you know. And besides, no nutter is looking for a forty-five year old, overweight, balding businessman. I’ll be utterly safe, you’ll see.”

“Betting on what a nutter might or might not do seems a little risky, to me,” I said.

Jack shook his head impatiently. “Look, it’s not even going to come to that,” he said. “They’ll catch this guy in a couple of weeks and it’ll be just like usual. The bottom line is that I’ll not get another chance to do this – get really fit. Thousands of people do it all the time. It’ll be like riding down the Nepean Highway – cyclists everywhere.”

The Nepean Highway was the cyclists’ Mecca. It formed part of the Bay Ride route, around the eastern half of Port Phillip Bay. Every weekend, groups and single cyclists formed an almost unbroken chain heading along it. “A Nepean Highway that’s three thousand kilometres long,” I said.

Jack shrugged. “So? If it takes me six weeks, so what? What’s the hurry?”

There were a lot of answers to that, but not any that he wanted to hear, so I shut up.

“Besides,” he said, having the last word. “I need to do it. Sandy needs it too, even if she doesn’t say it.”

Sandy was saying exactly the opposite. I wondered how Jack could be reading her so wrong. “You sure about that?” I asked.

Jack gave me a sharp look. “Yeah, I am,” he said, “since you ask. She needs to make a few decisions about what she really wants.”

I backpedalled. “Look, Jack, no offence. I just … You don’t want to come back and find you’ve lost … something.” I felt as if I was walking in darkness, edging along a tunnel with no light to tell me if the next step was over a cliff.

Jack spoke sharply. “You don’t know what I want, Daniel,” he said. “Sandy doesn’t know what I want. Nobody knows what I want – not even me, at the moment. That’s what this is all about – partly, anyway.”

“Fine, Jack. Whatever. I was only trying to … help.”

Jack’s face, which had become sharp, spots of colour high on his cheeks, relaxed. “It’s OK,” he said. “I understand what you’re saying. I’ve thought of that too. I’m not just running away, Daniel. Try to understand that. I do know where I’m going.” He grinned, shrugged self-deprecatingly, “Sort of.”

“OK, Jack,” I said. I put out my hand, oddly. We gripped, a firm clasp, and then stepped away. “See you.”

Jack turned away to where his car stood at the kerb. I watched as he climbed in and raised a hand in salute as he drove away. The other noises of the busy highway seemed strangely absent, and the distinct sound of the car’s engine was suddenly extinguished, as he turned left to climb the hill back to his home.

Chapter 15

September, 1972

Even the magic of the wardrobe and its contents was fouled, of course, as everything was, in Mintalie. It was violated and despoiled, drowned in filth and depravity. But not, on this occasion, by the old man. Or not directly.

It was his friend, Bern. Bern, with his whipped-dog, sly yellow gaze, who noiselessly appeared in the doorway to the old man’s bedroom.

The boy had been sitting on the bed, the photos spread out in front of him. He was holding the same dress as the woman in the photograph, which he’d found, among the clothes. He hadn’t even heard Bern’s footsteps, as he’d crept through the house, stalking.

For a moment, Bern stood at the door to the dim bedroom, peering in. The room was so dark that, for a moment, he couldn’t make out what he was seeing.

The boy sat on the bed, frozen, uncomprehending; wrenched from the safety of his dream-world. This world didn’t contain people like the old man, like his friend, Bern.

Gradually, Bern’s eyes became accustomed to the light. He saw the boy, and the dress, sitting on the bed. In his eyes, the sly fantasies that had warped and twisted in his mind as the light rippled and distorted the rocks of the land, came to life. He moved into the room slowly, but his body became rigid with urgency; his breaths seemed to turn the air rank.

The boy saw only that yellow, glistening gaze, hypnotic, feral. It seemed almost to lick him, as a hunting animal licks the prey it has killed, prior to consuming it. He shivered, seemed to wake. He said, “What are you doing in here? Go away, Bern.”

Bern didn’t reply. He edged closer to the bed, eyes flicking from side to side, taking in the other women’s clothing that piled on the tangled sheets. In the quietness of the house, Bern’s breathing sounded like tearing cloth, gasps that rent the still, thick air. Small sounds magnified. The iron roof ticked and creaked as the early sun began to exert its potency. Threadbare curtains in the gaps above the stone walls in the kitchen flicked and whisked against the shredded flywire as light northerly wind’s gusts tested the house with sly, feline pats. The floorboards creaked and moaned, as if other, phantom feet crept across them.

Finally, as Bern reached the foot of the bed, the boy moved, shrinking back towards the wall.

Bern stopped, a wet smile spreading across his lips, even though his eyes didn’t lose that hungry leer. “What have we got here?” he said, his voice a husky whisper. “Got a boy who likes girlie things, have we?”

“Go away, Bern,” the boy said, his voice cracking shrilly.

Bern ignored him. “Come here, little girlie,” he said, voice a rasping, tigerish purr. “Come to Bernie. He’s got something for you. Something little girlies like.” He had no boots on – that was why the boy hadn’t heard him creeping through the house in his revolting socks. His hands fumbled for a moment with the belt at his waist, and the stained, faded jeans that hung from under his small, round pot belly dropped to the bedroom floor. Bern’s white, gnarled legs with a pelt of dark hair gleamed in the dimness with the unhealthy, evil pallor of a snake’s underbelly.

The boy darted for the door while Bern kicked his stained jeans away.

The man caught him with one hand, plucked him almost out of the air and effortlessly dragged him over to the waiting, filthy bed.

His face was buried in the colours of the clothes. And they all turned black.

Chapter 16

March, 2001

Although I knew that Jack was planning to leave in early autumn, I only found out through a mutual acquaintance that he’d gone. Sandy hadn’t phoned or made contact since our last … time. I was going through one of my anger-and-guilt cycles – inflamed by Jack’s determination to go and the sneaking gladness I’d felt at the thought that his departure would make meeting Sandy even easier.

My anger was not at myself, but at Sandy’s capricious and arrogant behaviour. From my point of view, anyway. She was treating me like some kind of pet – one that she could call or dismiss at will. What diminished me most, of course, but what I was most reluctant to face, was the knowledge that she could only do that to me if I came when she called.

I felt even more confused hearing that Jack had left for Darwin, without making contact, or for a goodbye drink. Guiltily, I wondered if perhaps Sandy was right: Jack knew about our affair and was punishing us both. It made no difference now one way or the other, I supposed. But it wouldn’t have cost her anything to let me know before he had actually gone.

I rang Sandy. “Why didn’t you tell me Jack’s left?” I asked, without introducing myself.

“What’s it got to do with you?” she replied, after a short, frosty pause.

“Well, it had plenty to do with me, the last time I spoke to you,” I said, feeling my temper rise. I had been blamed by Sandy for my fault in somehow not dissuading Jack. Or perhaps for his becoming infatuated with cycling. Or for providing the focus of his desire to compete. It didn’t matter to me. His strange pilgrimage was not something for which I accepted responsibility. Full stop.

Except. Except if he had found out about Sandy and me.

“Well it doesn’t now,” she said. “He’s nothing to do with you, and neither am I.”

“Fine,” I said, and disconnected, thumping the phone back onto its charger. “And fuck you very much.”

It wasn’t fine, though, of course.

I felt responsibility whether I wanted to acknowledge it or not. Or guilt. One of the two. Or both.

It was partly the feeling that in allowing myself to slide into the relationship with Sandy, I had betrayed something intrinsic to my friendship with them both. It also had something to do with a half-understood idea about who I was and what sort of values I upheld. Or should have.

I didn’t even like to try to think about this side of the situation. The self-scrutiny that this would entail was too uncomfortable. It was something I’d always shied away from: live for the moment, pretty much. Take it as it comes. No commitment, no promises. Probably because I’d have to face some truths I’d always preferred to leave buried, unquestioned, unscrutinised.

It was easier to feel resentful about the way Sandy had behaved, irritated at whatever psychological games Jack was playing, pissed-off at being caught up in the tension between them. That way, I could feel myself maligned and abused. The one had simply used me as a convenient distraction from the pressures of her relationship with her demanding husband; the other as an instrument to wound his wife.

Bugger them both.

I retreated – as usual – into work.

I’d drifted in and out of a few jobs, after school. I hadn’t been able to stick at anything. For a couple of years, I’d taught at a local high school. But I’d gone to work, as usual one day, turned into the staff car park, stopped the car, and then just started it again, turned around and driven out.

I’d phoned the Daily Organiser to say I wasn’t coming in and then resigned. No reason, no moment of epiphany. Just didn’t want to do it anymore. Pathetic, really.

After that, the main means of paying the mortgage for a couple of years was as one half of a two-man fencing operation. With Dick Spray, a rough-and-tumble bloke I’d met through cycling, “Dick and Dan” constructed horse-yards, vineyards, cattle yards and any other kind of enclosure our customers could put a name to.

It was hard, sometimes back-breaking work, and it always seemed either blazing hot or freezing cold, out there in all weathers. There was a certain satisfaction, however, in downing tools at the end of the day and looking back along the way, at what we’d accomplished.

I had been marking time, though. Dick knew it as well as I, but after years of grinding away on his own, he enjoyed the company and two sets of hands certainly made the work easier.

Then I’d fallen by accident into doing some writing for newspapers. As so many things in my life seemed to, this had evolved from my cycling craze. It had started through a newsletter I wrote for a group of cyclists who’d formed a loose club. After each ride, we would have coffee at the Top End coffee shop, with sticky-jam rolls from the Baker Boys’ bakery. We’d award ourselves a trophy: a legless Action Man, for the silliest act or comment over the week or on the ride.

We organised dinners at local restaurants, social events at the cinema and theatre. The café next to the bike shop asked to put an ad in, then a local physiotherapist. As the other shopkeepers came to know us, and as our numbers increased, they’d started to ask me to put in their ads, or to make announcements in the newsletter about specials, or special events. The content expanded until I was writing about most of the happenings of the shops that lined the main street of Mornington.

Mark Adams, the editor of the Mornington Flyer, the local paper, heard and rang me, having obtained my number through Geoff, at the bike shop. “You’re doing all this collecting of info anyway,” he said. “Why not just turn it into a column and put it in the paper, once a week?”

I’d shrugged and done it. As he’d said, it was no more work to email him what I’d already done. As time had passed, and Mark had seen that I could string a few words together, he’d offered me other small assignments: a restaurant or film review; a report on a local occasion or exhibition. It wasn’t enough to make me rich, but together with “Dick and Dan”, it kept me in beer and pizza and the mortgage paid, for a while.

The journalism became more serious after Mark had handed me a letter he’d received from a local woman who claimed that a local pub owner had been threatening her elderly mother to try to get her to sell her house, so that he could obtain the extra parking space he claimed he desperately needed.

I’d walked round and spoken to the little old lady, whose house was surrounded on three sides by a sea of ugly asphalt. Then I’d visited the hotel manager, a large, fleshy man with eyes too close together either side of a beaky nose. He had been as nice as pie, thinking me a “real” journalist, until he realised that I was only writing for the local paper. “That little rag?” he’d sneered. “Fuck off. You’re wasting my time.”

A story duly appeared, written by me, with excerpts from the interviews with both the polite little old lady and the boorish, arrogant pub owner. The result was a boycott of the hotel and picket of its entrances by locals, over a whole summer – all inspired by an article in a local “rag”. An article that was picked up and re-printed by both of the two main Melbourne dailies and which formed the focus for a memorable “Current Affairs” program.

The result was an abject apology from the pub’s leaseholders and a large noise-reduction fence built round the lady’s house. The manager had been unceremoniously sacked.

That had been followed by a story about a local bank manager who had been requiring that attractive female clients wanting loans (and female employees, it turned out) grant him sexual “incentives” (his word!); and finally, a biggie on some land deals in which some of the local councillors were at much less than arms’ length. Not bad for a little local rag.

The result was an offer of a formal position as a sort of liaison between the many small local newspapers, with their parochial focuses, and the major dailies. I’d receive material from all the suburban papers and sift through these for issues in which the larger papers might have an interest. It was a fascinating and consuming task, one which made me something of reputation as a “citizens’ friend”.

Most of the time, this kind of work was sort of rewarding, both personally and professionally. I’d been bitten a couple of times, once by a woman who faked an injury after the collapse of a local landmark, a chairlift. She’d seen it happen, and had the presence of mind to lie underneath an empty chair, having scratched herself with some leaves and rocks, pretending to have fallen. In the resulting flurry of media focus, I’d used her as the focus for a series of articles on the incident. When a jealous friend dobbed her in, and her whole story collapsed, apart from almost sabotaging the many genuine claims from injured people, it also dented my confidence in my perception and acuity.

The second incident was a real David and Goliath story in which after a protracted and at times vicious campaign in the paper, a giant construction company concerned had given up and finally paid the family whose home and health they’d ruined. They’d built up the land around a new housing estate using landfill that turned out to have been contaminated with all sorts of industrial chemicals that leached into surrounding, pre-existing homes.

Unfortunately, by the time the settlement had come, the family had been destroyed. First the marriage had broken up, leaving the husband who’d contacted me living alone in his empty, sad, lonely, contaminated house. The company’s capitulation had come only days after he had suicided. His wife hadn’t returned any of my phone calls. When I’d tried to attend the funeral, as a mark of respect, the dead man’s brothers had prevented me from entering the church. “You’ve got what you wanted,” one had told me, standing massively in front of me, face filled with a sombre, implacable dignity, “now leave him alone. Leave them all alone.”

I had been blasé about the damage that could accompany my crusades. It was easy to pursue the story and forget that people’s lives were involved. Sometimes the cost of victory was too high, and never paid by me.

So, in the atmosphere of frigid détente that followed my phone conversation with Sandy, I concentrated on the many small scandals and injustices that arose, like weeds after rain, in the many municipalities of Melbourne. It was what I’d always done, really. Even when I’d been aware that things weren’t quite right with other girlfriends, I’d simply thrown myself more thoroughly into my work. Easier to deal with other people’s problems than your own.

My “occupational” therapy continued until Sandy broke the ice. She appeared at my door, quite late one evening, in late March.

I saw her familiar outline through the frosted glass panels either side of the front door. I opened the door without speaking. She looked as if she wanted to run.

“Can I come in?” she asked. “I need to talk to you.”

“You need to talk to me,” I sneered, emphasising “you”.

Sandy sighed, “You can be such an arsehole, sometimes, Daniel.”

“Yeah, well that cuts both ways,” I said, affronted. “You made the bed, Sandy.”

She stared at me, a flat, level glare that revealed a depth of hatred I’d never even glimpsed in her before. Hatred at herself, at me … I wondered how far that baleful, immolating attitude extended.

“And I will lie on it, Daniel,” she said at last. “It’s what I do best, remember? But I really need to talk. And unfortunately, you’re the only one I can turn to just now.”

I should have shut the door. I wanted to. Instead, I stepped back and let her inside.

Chapter 17

Winter, 1977

The initial revulsion the boy felt faded, with time. The physical pain was supplanted, by a bewildering cavalcade of responses. That he enjoyed, what was done to him, that his body eventually reacted filled him with self-disgust. Though he’d have died rather than admit it, he secretly craved the perverse mixture of attention, even affection and the release which would accompany these “sessions”.

What never left him was the sick, dark hatred that suffused him whenever he saw Bern, or even thought of him. It was strange to him that this feeling could coexist with those of the lust, longing – and hopelessness – that meant that for a long time Bern could, with only a glance, command the boy to make his way to the isolated caravan and lean-to in which Bern lived.

It was about this time that his fascination for pain began. Watching the old man once, he’d seen him, drunk, stagger over Adolf, vicious Adolf, fawning too close round his master’s feet. The old man had turned and lashed out, catching the dog in his tawny, tigerish flank with a boot. Instead of attacking, the animal had cringed, belly to the floor, head low and eyes ringed with white, while the old man had shouted. It hadn’t even tried to avoid the kicks and flailing blows. The boy had been entranced: it was like watching himself.

He had no pets, anymore. Nothing in Mintalie was lower than he was. Except the strays.

No one ever caught him doing the animals. But they knew. Once, when he’d gone into the post office, Mrs Travers, wife one of Mintalie’s oldest inhabitants, was there with her visiting grand-daughter. The girl had brought her puppy, a little terrier cross: fluffy, yapping and cute. When they saw the boy, sidling in behind them, Mrs Travers had moved protectively between the boy and the dog, as if he might do something simply by seeing it.

The pack of dogs that had roamed the town, stealing any food left unguarded and raiding bins and rubbish dumps, had by this time, virtually disappeared. Only the fearful, evasive remnants skulked amongst the shanties and half-completed huts that fringed the community of isolates that was Mintalie. They shied away from any human approach, slinking cautiously amongst the more populous areas under the cover of darkness to find what meagre leavings they could.

The dogs had learned the hard way. The human remnants of Mintalie had woken on many mornings to find dogs, cats, and other animals impaled on poles, or displayed in grisly, anatomical detail on walls, or staked out near ant nests.

The boy couldn’t begin to explain what it was made him want to do it, either. He actually liked the dogs. He remembered sleeping with them, sometimes, when he was small and the old man’s anger had filled the house with fear.

He didn’t like to think about the whys too much. It just made him feel in control. He knew how it affected him. He’d seen the effect it had on others. The looks he got made him aware of the need for secrecy, though.

Out beside one of the maze of roads that led up into the older opal diggings, he found a deserted, half-completed house. Cars couldn’t drive the track, anymore. The sand had reclaimed much of it; drifts blurring its outlines. The house walls were solid though, built of the native stone whose geometric shapes emerged from the wind-sculpted covering of red gravely sand and scrubby Spinifex. There was no roof. It wasn’t that it had fallen in, just that the roof hadn’t ever been finished. The rafters were there, but the interior was open to the skies.

What the boy had found inside, though, was a cellar. Evidently, the house had been built over an old mine shaft. It wasn’t very deep, nor were the lateral tunnels long, but as the builder had floored over the entrance and covered it with a trapdoor that had remained quite sound, even after its abandonment, the resulting cavern was dry, habitable – and very secret. Just the place the boy wanted.

Gradually, he’d moved his meagre belongings there. He went to the old man’s house as infrequently as possible. If Bern was there, he stayed away. Not that Bern came for him any more.

Not since he’d killed Bern’s dog. It wasn’t the first, but it was the one that showed him the power you had, if you could kill.

For a long time, he hadn’t known how to fight Bern. After the day when Bern had cornered him, the boy had hidden, staying in the dimness of his room, huddled in the pile of filthy sheets and blankets that formed his sleeping place.

He didn’t understand what had happened. He’d watched from the bushes while Bern, and Vic and the old man – and others had done what they called “the business” with the women who hung around drinking with them. He knew all their names for it: rooting, shagging, fucking screwing … He realised that what Bern did to him was in some way related to that.

But the close, hot, stifling feeling in the room; the harsh panting of Bern’s vile breath; the sheer size of his cock, quivering; rigid and urgent was alien, somehow not explainable by him. He remembered Bern, forcing his mouth open; gagging at the size; being held, vicelike – used, while he slumped, inert and unresponsive as a doll. Then bent forward against the bed; a pain in his behind – like being split in two. Wailing – crying with the agony of it – until Bern had stuffed a wad of filthy sheet in his mouth.

Afterwards, hearing Bern shuffle away, the boy, discarded on the floor, feeling the wetness on his legs – fearing that he was bleeding to death, so great was the pain – he had crawled to his room and huddled there, waiting to die. He knew only that what had happened to him was a violation, an expression of a strange and vicious power. He felt dirty, ugly and empty. What was torn inside him that day never healed.

It happened again, of course. Over and over again.

The boy was never sure how long it went on. He thought the old man knew. He’d exchange looks with Bern, now and then, and turn a level, accusing stare on the boy that suggested that he derived some kind of amusement or satisfaction from the knowledge.

Once, a long time after it began, he’d tried to resist, gritting his teeth tight, struggling to prevent Bern from opening his mouth. The resulting punch had virtually broken his jaw – it still clicked, if he yawned too widely. It hadn’t prevented Bern from doing what he wanted. He knew what was required of “good girls”.

But afterwards, even while he was unable to eat anything that required chewing, the boy had worked out his plan. He’d caught one of the stray dogs – one of the smaller ones – tied its legs together so that it lay helpless, on its side, eyes gazing at him with a dumb, helpless entreaty that he recognised only too well. He’d killed it with a hammer. He’d had to walk behind it, so that it couldn’t watch him raise the bludgeon and smash in its head, right between the ears.

Catching Bern’s was easy. The little ferret of a thing was so greedy, it’d do anything for food. When Bern and the old man were sprawled in snoring, farting heaps, the boy grabbed Bern’s little mongrel. He hadn’t hammered it, though. He tied its paws and took it to the caravan that Bern lived in. Using the old man’s screwdriver, he had screwed it to the caravan wall until it hung by all four paws, still alive. Then he’d used a Stanley knife to slit its belly open, until the guts slipped out and hung in a looping chain. It hadn’t bled all that much. The dog hadn’t even made a lot of noise, just a whining yelp as he’d opened its stomach. Then it just hung there.

It had been fun watching the other dogs, when he’d shown them the loop of bloody entrails. Bern’s little pet had whined, while its body was pulled this way and that by the mongrels fighting over his guts.

The boy had retreated to his hideout. He’d already taken everything of value from the old man’s house and hidden it there, days before. Now he stayed there himself, watching from the high, rock outcrop behind the old man’s house as they woke. Watching, while Bern emerged, standing out side the back door, pissing while he whistled for his dog. Watching, later, while Bern trudged along the sandy winding track back to his hovel. Watching – and listening – at the howls of outrage and anguish that tore the thin, cool air. Watching as Bern ran back to the old man’s house, stumbling and staggering, weeping with rage and sorrow, holding the mangled body of his pet.

They’d known who’d done it, of course. But he’d stayed away while they searched for him, knowing he could elude them forever, in the maze of tracks, shanties and tunnels that encircled the town. He’d watched, too as the old man had emerged from the house when he realised that his precious gun was gone, and all the shells. And that the cupboard in the corner of his room was empty. Clothes, photos, boy … all gone.

But as the old man had stood there and gazed up at the rocky escarpment, as if he could see him watching, the boy had shrunk down, and slunk away. Like the dogs, there was something in that baleful glare that sucked out his spirit.

Chapter 18

Late March, 2001

We sat in the kitchen – Sandy’s choice – rather than the front room, with its views. Sandy sat on one of the creaky cane stools that lined the kitchen counter. I leaned my hips against the edge of the stove, watching her while the coffee machine began to burble and hiss as it readied itself.

Sandy was having trouble meeting my eyes. Her gaze flicked around the kitchen and hall area, as if she was seeing my house for the first time.

While I made the coffee, we retreated; an unspoken mutual truce, making a pretence at normality through the formality of the cuppa ritual. We talked about inconsequential things – local events. People we both knew. Her kids. My cycling.

That was the bridge to Jack, of course. “Have you heard from Jack?” she asked, hesitating as she said his name.

“No,” I said. “At least, I got a card shortly after he arrived in Darwin, but I’ve heard nothing since then. That was –“ I pulled the postcard from the fridge door, to which it was fridge-magneted, “– dated March 3rd. Nothing since then.”

Sandy didn’t say anything. She wasn’t looking good. Her face had been fractured with fine lines, which hardened the set of her mouth, turning the corners down. Her skin appeared papery, almost brittle.

“Why?” I asked. “Is there a problem?”

Sandy shrugged, opened her mouth to speak, but then changed her mind. Her shoulders slumped. “I think there is, Dan,” she said. “I … the girls had two postcards a week apart, after that, and a phone call every few days until the 20th. Nothing since then.”

I glanced at the calendar behind the kitchen door. It was the last day of March: the 31st.

“Maybe he’s out of range with the mobile,” I said, to be reassuring. But I was remembering Jack’s boast about his new phone that could reach anywhere from anywhere. I tried to placate her. “He was talking about camping along the roadside when I spoke to him.” She was shaking her head, already. I took a risk. “Was he pissed off with you?”

She turned her face to me; eyes rimmed red, lids brimming with tears, which finally spilled down her cheeks. Unwillingly, she nodded, without speaking.

Neither of us spoke for a while. Sandy’s breathing eased, as she regained her composure. In the end I had to ask. “Was he shitty with you about anything in particular?”

Sandy smiled, a taut, bitter expression. “Not about you … us, if that was what you were worried about,” she said.

“You said just before he left that you thought he knew. If he hasn’t spoken to you for over a week, it’s a natural enough question.” I sounded defensive, but couldn’t prevent the anger I’d been dwelling on from spilling out.

She held up a flat hand in my face. “OK, I’m sorry, Dan. You’re right. I’m … tense.”

I had made two cups of coffee, the laborious, intricate, ceremony that I’d devised, using my ancient but effective Espresso machine, over many years. It still tasted as good as any I’d had anywhere, to me.

“Where are the girls?” I asked, sipping mine.

“At Mum’s.” Sandy’s fingers played with the silver wire handle of the coffee cup, but she wasn’t drinking it. Those red-rimmed eyes still roved around the room.

I nodded. “Are you sleeping?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I’ve got some pills. They work.”

“Have you rung … anyone? The police?” I asked.

“I … They don’t want to know,” she said. “They say he’s not a risk. They think –“ she couldn’t get it out, “–they reckon he’s probably shot through.”

“What? They said that to you?” I asked, incredulous.

She smiled that weary grimace again. “No, never in so many words,” she said. “They just ask the same questions, over and over. How long since he left home? What was his itinerary? Had he done things like this before? Had things been good at home?” Her tone had been flat, making the questions into statements devoid of expression. “As soon as I say we’d been having a few … difficulties, that’s it. I can hear it in their voices.”

“Are they doing anything?” I asked.

“They’ve contacted the Darwin Police, reported him missing,” she said. “That’s it, pretty much.”

“Well, maybe it’s best to wait,” I said. “It hasn’t been that long, really.” I felt a strange sinking feeling, remembering Sandy’s prediction when she’d asked me to stop him.

She didn’t mention that, however. She wrapped her thin arms around her chest and leaned forward, until her head rested on the kitchen bench. “He’s gone, Daniel. I’ve lost him. He’s gone.” Her voice was muffled, her face turned away from me, but I could hear the emptiness in her tone.

I stood with my tepid coffee in my hand and watched, completely unable to cross the couple of metres of kitchen that divided us. Hugging her, holding her, was impossible.

I didn’t know what to say. Or do. So I did nothing. Mistake.

After a while, she sat up. I thought she might be angry with me, but she excused herself, went to the bathroom and came back, face washed, hair pulled back into her usual neat ponytail.

“I’m sorry,” I said, making a stupid helpless gesture with my hands.

“It’s alright, Dan,” she said. “I just had to … I thought you’d understand.” She came round the bench to where I’d wedged myself in a corner of the kitchen. “I’d better get back home,” she said, raising her cheek for me to kiss.

When I bent to do so, she turned her head, and caught my lips on hers. Her hands quickly slipped up my chest and lightly gripped my head, pulling me gently, but insistently into her kiss.

Confused, completely disoriented, I did what I always did, and gave her what she wanted.

Mistake.

Chapter 19

Winter – Spring, 1977

The boy had lived in his secret place from then on. He’d learned to hunt for food. Survival was simple. When he was hungry, he ate what he could get. Even dog tasted OK. When meat was cut up and cooked, it all was pretty much the same, he decided. When he needed something else, he stole it. At first, he simply went to the old man’s house, took what food – and money – he could find. But he knew that would be too dangerous. The old man was as cunning and vicious as a rat. If he kept going back there, he’d be caught. Besides, there were easier targets. No one in Mintalie locked anything.

Mrs Paguliio at the store had looked at him sharply, a piercing glance out of her black eyes, but said nothing. She just sold him the food he asked for. No questions asked, that was the Mintalie way.

There had been some close shaves, in the early days. The old man hadn’t bothered trying to find the boy. He was pissed off at the loss of the gun, but nothing else. But the boy had seen Vic and Bern, cruising round the town’s outskirts in Vic’s clapped out ute. A pair of gun barrels had poked out of the open windows, as they’d turned their heads like robots, basilisk eyes covered in black glasses scanning the humped heaps of discarded stone and cavernous pits that made the area that surrounded Mintalie into a moonscape.

But he’d stayed out of sight, watching them fruitlessly prowl around the miles of diggings. He could hear them, in his mind: “Little fucker could be anywhere.” Vic.

“I’m gunna tear that little cunt a whole new arsehole.” Bern.

“Could be anywhere – look at this place. He’ll be like a fuckin’ rat down one of these old holes. We’ll never find him.”

“I find him, he’ll be down one o’ them holes, alright. For fucking ever.”

But they hadn’t found him. Two months later, he’d watched from the cliff at the back of the old man’s house as Vic and the old man had piled the ute tray high with gear, and loaded more onto a rickety, rusty trailer behind it and left.

He’d wondered if it was just another hunting trip. But while Bern had stood around, mouth turned down sourly, the other two men had taken everything that had any value, and whatever furniture and equipment they might need to dig in another town – compressor, the pump and black, segmented pipes.

But what let the boy know they were gone for good was the way the old man, just as he climbed into the passenger seat to leave, had turned to the escarpment, staring straight at the outcrop behind which the boy crouched, and stuck up his arm, hand outstretched, index and middle fingers extended: get fucked.

Bern had more or less assumed ownership of the house, but he didn’t stay there. He was still persistently looking for the boy. He got hold of an old Honda 125 from somewhere, and used to belt up and down the tracks, rifle across his back. He looked ridiculous, the boy thought, like some fat-arsed poofter playing at something out of a cowboy movie.

The boy had watched him contemptuously, for a while, following the farting tone of the motorbike as it systematically investigated every claim site and derelict building for miles.

He’d even gone to the house the boy was living in, but the boy never used the front door anyway – he’d found that one of the tunnels had a hole which provided another entrance. Perhaps it had been an air vent, or pump outlet, for although it would have been hard for a man to enter that way, it was easy for the boy. The house he’d secured, wedging the front door tightly shut from inside, scattering debris throughout, so that it appeared totally deserted. Bern had hardly glanced at it before mounting his bike and rattling off to the next possible hiding place. He was determined, you had to give him that.

It was like a game for the boy, for a long time: grown-up hide and seek.

Until he lost.

Chapter 20

April 1st, 2001

I tried ringing Sandy over the next few days, but all I could get was the answering machine. She didn’t reply to any of the messages I left.

I turned to other things, the minutiae of everyday. Perhaps, I told myself, it was good news that she hadn’t replied. Maybe that meant she’d heard from Jack.

In my heart, I knew that wasn’t it, of course. I could picture Sandy only too vividly, sitting at home, those lines of tension growing more pronounced, as each day passed with no news.

I grew – again – angry and frustrated. Why she would appear at my front door teary and upset, to unburden herself – and then to basically throw herself at me – and then make no contact at all? I suspected I had failed her: I certainly hadn’t been a shoulder, if she’d wanted one to cry on. Something far more basic. Certainly, I’d found it impossible that night to reach her emotionally. We’d coupled right there in the kitchen, grappling with angry intensity.

But at least there was a routine about this act that made parting relatively normal. When I’d first heard of Jack’s plans, my secret, bastard’s reaction had been to wonder whether Sandy would find more opportunities to be with me, while he was away. Maybe, I thought, my imaginings had been close to the truth.

But I knew. I can pretend with the best of them, but even I knew that if Sandy had come to me for help, for comfort and for understanding, I had given her none of those things, let alone soothed her fears about what might have happened to Jack.

As days became a week and more though, I was able to convince myself that Sandy had simply used me – again. While Jack had been around, I’d been a convenience. When she was shitty with Jack, she could forget – or extract some covert revenge – by screwing me. When he was gone, she could still come and forget about how bad she was feeling, in the same old way.

Maybe, in the past she wouldn’t share with Jack, there was something that would explain why she needed sex with someone not her husband. Especially since I remembered Jack saying that sex with him had always seemed something Sandy had taken on as a duty, rather than in a spirit of intimacy or adventure. Her behaviour when she had had sex with me had been, if not wild, quite abandoned and unrestrained. Or so I’d thought.

Maybe, I thought, there were others. Why should I assume that I was the only “extra-curricular” activity that Sandy was undertaking? I quickly built this into a certainty. Sandy hadn’t only been betraying Jack with me, but both of us with … someone else.

Initially, this was simply a convenient way of justifying my self-serving behaviour to myself. It became something of an obsession, though. In the succeeding weeks, I even drove up the hill and past their driveway, trying to catch a glimpse of her car parked in the turning circle at the front door. The house itself was barely visible through a fringing screen of trees. I’d slow, trying to spot a stranger’s car.

However, the only “foreign” cars parked in the drive were Jetta’s – her adoptive mother’s, which I knew – and on a number of occasions, a white vehicle marked with the badge of the Victoria Police.

I never stopped. Didn’t call in. Ceased leaving phone messages.

Until I saw the article in the newspaper. By then, as far as I was concerned, Sandy was a lost cause. Not that I knew that.

Sunday Herald-Sun, April 3rdth, 2001

|MELBOURNE MAN MISSING ON ‘ROAD TO NOWHERE’ |

|Police hold grave fears for a missing Melbourne businessman. Jack Treuwin’s dream was |

|to travel from Darwin to Adelaide – by bicycle. After flying to Darwin, he set off, |

|heading south, at the start of March. |

|But by the end of the month, when wife Sandra hadn’t heard from him for two weeks, she|

|contacted police. The discovery on Sunday of Jack Treuwin’s bike and all of his |

|camping gear, ransacked and abandoned turned worry into outright fear. The campsite |

|was only a hundred metres from the Stuart Highway, but 800 kilometres from Darwin. |

|Police know that Mr Treuwin left Darwin on Sunday, March 3rd. He apparently rode |

|steadily for the next 2½ weeks, averaging between 60 and 100 kilometres per day. He |

|wasn’t in a hurry – he stayed at Jabiru for four days, and also stayed at Katherine |

|and Mataranka. He phoned home and sent postcards to his two daughters regularly. Until|

|he left the Mataranka Homestead Caravan Park, on March 20th. |

|Despite the report from Mr Treuwin’s wife, police had not acted until tourist Ralph |

|Barraclough, a birdwatcher and amateur photographer, yesterday stumbled across the |

|deserted campsite. |

|Mr Treuwin’s top-quality camping gear appeared to have been ransacked. A number of |

|items, including his expensive touring bicycle, are missing. |

|Northern Territory Police spokesperson, Sgt Kim Davenport, said that the report of Mr |

|Treuwin’s disappearance had been given the same priority as any missing person report.|

|“We receive at least three per week,” she said. “Most are solved – the person turns up|

|– within a week.” |

|Not in this case, it seems. |

|Liam Davidson |

Part 3: Submerged strata

Chapter 21

Summer 1977 – Autumn 1978 (i)

The following three months were the worst in the boy’s life – and that was saying something. Even now, there were only patches of time, and strange, disconnected events that formed his memories of being imprisoned by Bern.

He’d been stupid. He got cocky, careless. He’d started to think of Bern as stupid, following him from place to place, riding a bike he’d stolen, while Bern putted along on the stupid motorbike. Each morning, the boy would climb to the crag that overlooked Bern’s caravan shanty and watch until Bern shambled out of bed and either dragged out the bike for another day of searching, or went noodling, or immersed himself in the pub. The only other place Bern went was to a small area next to the caravan where he’d buried the remains of his dog. He’d planted flowers and built a little cairn of stones – even left a photo of the ratty little thing, wrapped in plastic wrap, perched on top.

The boy had pissed on it.

But one morning, as he’d slipped into his little possie to watch Bern’s house, Bern had been waiting. The first the boy had known was when a rifle barrel had jabbed into his ribs, hard enough to gouge a deep wound.

“Go on, you little fucker,” Bern had snarled, as the boy had tensed to make a run for it. “Give me a shot at you, puh-leese.”

In some ways, that would have been the better option.

Tying his hands with some greasy cord, Bern had dragged him back to the old man’s house. Handcuffs and bright silver chains were ready and waiting. He’d been preparing for this.

Bern shackled the boy in the room he’d occupied when the old man and he shared the house. There was a steel ringbolt drilled through the floorboards, the chain padlocked securely to that.

Initially, to the boy’s surprise, Bern hadn’t done anything. He’d left the room, shutting the door behind him. The boy heard a bolt rammed home.

The space he occupied was intimately familiar to him. There were patches in the plaster of the ceiling that had assumed the characters of living creatures in his fantasies and dreams, over the years. The walls were pitted with dried gobs of Blu-tack which had held the pictures he’d cut out of comics and magazines. They’d all been taken down. His feet even knew the floor: the creaky boards which would betray a footstep. Over the years he’d shared the house with the old man, this room had been his refuge. Now it became his cell.

There had been a mattress on the floor, which had always been his bed. It was gone. Only a couple of ragged, stinking blankets indicated where he might sleep at night. Everything else had been removed. The room was bare. Its walls, plasterboard, had been reinforced with tall sheets of masonite – unpainted – whose chocolate brown colour increased the gloomy darkness.

The boy had no idea how long Bern left him in the room. Because there was no window, and the tiny vent in the ceiling had been boarded over, no natural light entered the room at all. Bern just left him. No food. No water. The boy could occasionally hear Bern’s footsteps moving around the house. The floor, in those areas of the house that had floorboards, creaked and writhed.

Every time the steps approached the door, the boy had tensed, waiting for his torment to begin. But nothing had happened, and eventually, with nothing else to do, the boy had slept.

He’d woken to darkness, and slept again. And again.

Chapter 22

Tuesday, April 28th 2001

The weeks of estrangement from Sandy were the worst in my life. In truth, I lost the plot, pretty well completely. Perhaps it was rejection. Pique, because I’d been used, by her – instead of the other way round, which would have been fine, of course. My trips past her gate turned into covert watching sessions; parked some distance down the road, sitting in the car, I’d watch the comings and goings from her gate. I even – to my shame – snuck up through the garden one night, peering in at the brightly lit windows, a desperate voyeur.

I saw nothing. The police car was out the front, but there was no sign of either Sandy or the girls or anyone else inside. I waited for over two hours before I finally gave in to the cold, and left.

Now, standing outside her front door, I hesitated. It was huge, panelled – twice the width of a normal door, with an ornate brass handle shaped like an old spinning top set into a bowl. The door was the only opening at human level in the whole façade of the house: the only windows were narrow and long, set high, for light, not viewing. It appeared aloof, intimidating. I’d knocked several times, watching the spyhole intently for the tell-tale shadow behind it that would indicate that someone was there.

I’d heard through friends that after the discovery of Jack’s campsite, Sandy had flown to Darwin, to identify his belongings and talk to the investigators there. I wasn’t sure whether she would have returned yet, but when I’d tried to ring, the previous night, her phone had been engaged for well over an hour. I’d assumed she was back, but was busy fielding calls from relatives and other friends. It was time, I thought, to get a grip. I’d take the bull by the proverbials and have it out with her.

There wasn’t a suggestion of movement. I walked back to the car, opened the door to get in and hesitated. I slammed it shut again and walked along the front of the house to the carport at the side. Sandy’s car, a sleek European wagon, was there. It was angled, oddly, across the twin parking space. As well, it was unusually filthy.

I tried the door that led from the carport to the house, but it was locked. I let myself through a gate at the side, into an enclosed yard that contained a small lawn area and the pool. Last time I’d been through here, I’d been sneaking like a thief. I called out, to announce my presence. “Hello – is anyone there?”

Beyond the pool enclosure was the back section of the house, where I’d sat having coffee, so long ago. On this side of the house, there was no protection from a spiteful autumn wind that knifed up the valley, under a leaden sky. It wasn’t raining, but looked as if it was going to, any minute.

I peered in through the windows. The room looked empty. But there were some cups and plates on the dining table, and a clutter of papers and a couple of bottles of wine on the coffee table in front of the two sofas.

It was the wine that set alarm bells off. Then I saw the feet sticking out from behind the kitchen bench.

Sandy was lying sprawled on the chequerboard tiles of the kitchen. She had been sick, though it had dried, crusty and brown on her clothes and the floor. A small trickle of blood had dried in the corner of her mouth. Her breath rattled stertorously in her throat. She smelled sour and winey.

I was about to ring an ambulance, but hesitated. The house had been locked – deadbolted. Sandy had locked herself in. There were two bottles of wine, but only one glass on the coffee table. There was another half-empty bottle on the kitchen bench.

I’d had to smash the laundry window and climb in there, to get to her.

I eased my arms underneath her and picked her up. She didn’t wake, but mumbled a string of barely intelligible words, “Are you Zjack? I’s sorry, you Sjack …”

In the bathroom, I turned on the taps of the large bath, and took off her clothes, stained with blood and vomit. I hesitated over her underwear, somehow squeamish about seeing her naked like this. In the end, I just stripped her, and eased her into the bath. I had to prop her up. Without my support, she lolled and slid bonelessly on the white porcelain.

I sponged off the mess, noticing that she had a bruise and a lump on her chin, as well as one on her forehead. The blood on her face had come from her tongue, which she’d bitten – probably when she fell. I emptied the bath, wrapped her in a towel and carried her to the bedroom. I pulled the doona over her and closed the curtains.

Back in the kitchen, I cleaned up where she had been lying. I used a couple of towels I found in the laundry and the dustpan and brush. It wasn’t very expert, but it got the job done. The mess, mostly dry and caked, went into the bin. I heard the chink of broken glass and noticed the shards of another wine glass in there too. I tied the bag and took it outside to the domestic garbage bin. Finally, I turned on Jack’s coffee machine and cleared the plates and cups that had been left on the table.

It looked like Sandy and the girls had eaten lunch. Then, her daughters must have gone somewhere – with their grandma? And she’d stayed, alone, it seemed. And drank.

I looked over at the coffee table. Two wine bottles, one glass and the newspapers. I picked them up. Last weekend’s Herald-Sun, folded open at the page reporting Jack’s disappearance.

I sighed. I made myself a coffee and settled on the sofa, with my feet up. I turned the TV on, with the sound off, watching the footy without registering much – even who was playing. Every half hour or so, I went up to the bedroom, to check on Sandy.

Over the valley, the vines that had greened the hillside a couple of months ago were yellowed. The nets that protected their fruit from marauding birds had been pulled aside, leaving the vine rows open to the skies. They looked like claw marks across the earth.

I sat, idly reading the previous day’s paper and a tawdry detective thriller someone had left on the coffee table while the light deepened outside until darkness claimed the valley and hillside.

Chapter 23

Summer 1977 – Autumn 1978 (ii)

By the time Bern came, the boy would have done anything for water.

The room was stifling, its dimness pressing in like a velvety, smothering wall on him. The airlessness made him pant for breath as though there wasn’t enough oxygen in the air.

The only evidence of any life outside the room was the intermittent sound of Bern’s creaking steps moving through the rooms. Every time they approached the door to the boy’s prison, the boy had tensed with fearful anticipation, the door hadn’t opened.

When Bern did come, the boy was asleep.

He awoke to find Bern looming over him, a bright light shining in his face.

Something hard jabbed in his stomach. A swinging blow caught him across the shoulders.

The boy cringed away, across into the corner. “Up,” Bern snarled. “Stand up, you little shit.”

Slowly, the boy edged to his feet. He kept a wary eye on Bern, squinting into the light. Bern stood close by, holding a polished wooden waddy stick.

“Hold out your hands.” The boys hesitated. Bern raised the stick. He held out his handcuffed hands. Bern reached out and inserted a key, twisting it until he released the handcuffs. “Get your clothes off.” Bern’s voice was a hoarse rasp.

The boy’s head dropped. He’d been expecting it. Dreading it. But he’d known what to expect.

He unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged it off. Then, his eyes fixed on Bern’s face, he pushed his shorts and underpants to the floor. The chain around his ankle prevented him from taking them right off.

“Sit,” commanded Bern, in that same rasp. When the boy was down, he edged closer, producing a large pair of scissors. He cut the clothing from the boy, pulling the rags away.

It was a relief, in a way. He’d been wearing them for days, and they itched and stank.

Bern stepped back. He threw something soft at the boy. “Put that on.”

The boy held up the garment. A dress. A girl’s party dress. He stood and looked at Bern. Bern waved his cudgel, slapping it into the palm of his hand. “I said, put it on, girlie,” he said, voice rising.

The boy pulled the dress over his head, keeping his eyes down so that he wouldn’t see the feral light in Bern’s eyes. His hands were cuffed again, behind his back.

And then it began.

Afterwards, he heard Bern open the door, step outside and re-enter.

“Up,” Bern said.

The boy had been lying, facing the wall, curled up small. He rolled over, pulling the dress down to conceal his skinny hips and flanks from that foetid gaze.

Bern had placed two bowls on the floor.

Even without seeing the name printed on the rim, the boy knew they had belonged to Bern’s dog.

“Get over here, Princess,” Bern smiled. “Eat your dinner.”

The boy wanted to resist, but watching Bern gently swing his stick, gave in. On his knees, unable to use the hands pinioned behind his back, he crawled over to the dog bowls and bent his face to the food and water.

“Good girl,” Bern crooned, watching. “Good girl.”

Chapter 24

Tuesday night, 28th April, 2001

I was sleeping when Sandy awoke. I’d slipped into a restless, twitchy doze that left me feeling prickly and bedraggled when I heard her voice calling out from the bedroom.

I rolled off the sofa and went up the stairs to the bedroom. The bed was empty, but the en-suite door was open, and I could see Sandy, kneeling, bent over the toilet. She retched, body shaking with the force of the spasms. Her backbone stood out sharply, an arc of sharp bumps, like a knotted rope beneath her skin. She’d lost weight. Even her skin seemed finer, stretched over her spine and hips like paper.

I felt like a voyeur. Before I could back away, she seemed to slip, and slumped sideways, catching her cheek on the edge of the bowl.

I stepped forward, knelt down and held her shoulders, steadying her.

She tensed, then relaxed, slipping back in my arms, leaning against me.

“You, Jack,” she murmured, still slurring her words a little.

“It’s Dan, Sandy,” I said, my words catching in my throat. “It’s only Dan.”

Her eyes were closed, and a slight frown crinkled her eyes, as if she was straining to understand something, but she didn’t open her eyes, just leaned back into my grasp.

I stayed there, holding her, until I realised that she’d slipped back into sleep. I put my arms under her shoulders and knees and carried her back to the bed. I pulled the bedclothes back over her, then wiped her mouth with a tissue from a box beside the bed.

In the kitchen, I filled a glass with water from a unit in the fridge door. I put this on the bedside table and returned to the sofa. It was fully dark outside, the expanse of windows magnified the effect of the blackness outside. It pressed in against the glass, unrelieved by stars or moon, because of the clouds that still blanketed the sky. There were no lights from the houses across the valley, either, just the vaguest suggestion of a deeper blackness where the trees, blustered by the wind gusts, swayed like boxers evading a succession of punches.

I settled back into my position on the sofa, and turned the TV back on, flicking through a succession of nothing Sunday evening programs. I tried eventually to get interested in a re-run of a re-run of a sequel that should never have been made when Sandy spoke from behind me.

“Dan?” she said.

Her voice was a husky croak. She stood on the stairs, a huge white robe wrapped round her. Jack’s. I sat up and stood. “Sandy,” I said. “I …” No words came. I had no idea what to say. I waved my hands, uselessly.

She regarded me without speaking. She turned, still without saying anything and went back up to the bedroom. Just before she disappeared round the corner, she stopped, looked back over her shoulder and spoke: “I’d like some coffee.”

I felt relieved. I could do that.

By the time she came back, dressed and with a hint of make-up to conceal her pallor, I had two cups waiting on the kitchen counter. Mine with milk, hers without.

She perched on one of the stools and picked up the cup with both hands.

“Thanks, Dan,” she said. Her voice was low, husky, bruised-sounding. It was how she looked, too. Whipped. Crunched. Disoriented. Or maybe that was just me.

I shrugged. “It’s OK,” I said. Then thinking that sounded condescending, I tried to explain. “I just dropped by to make sure you were alright. I saw the paper –“ I gestured at the article, still on the coffee table. Mistake. The bottles were still there.

“Dan.” She reached out, held my wrist. “Thanks.”

I glanced at her, smiled – sort of.

Sandy released my hand and sipped at her coffee. “What day is it?” she asked.

“Pardon?” I understood, but didn’t want to.

Sandy sighed. “I’ve done this before,” she said. “Sometimes I lose days. Weeks, even.”

“Tuesday.” I met her eyes. “Tuesday night.”

Her mouth tightened in a humourless mockery of her smile. “That’s not so bad,” she said. “Only a couple of days.”

I looked away, but she reached out and gripped my arm again. “Dan, he rang. Last night – I mean, Sunday night. Jack rang.”

I stared at her. “Jack rang here? Where is he?”

Her eyes filled with tears, “I don’t know. He sounded … wild, desperate. He was cut off. Someone’s got him, Dan.”

I shook my head, trying to understand what she was saying. I felt as though I’d been hit. My eyes blinked rapidly. “Did he say that?” I asked. “Did you contact the police?”

Sandy’s eyes slid away. “Yes,” she said. “Yes to both.”

“What did they say?” I asked, when she went no further. “Can’t they trace the call or something?”

She didn’t answer. Her eyes were fixed now on the flat, featureless Laminex counter top, fingers plucking at the skin of her hands, pinching it into folds, tight, so that the skin turned white. Slowly she told me what the last few weeks had involved.

Sandy had become more and more concerned, as weeks went by with no word from Jack, and no action from the authorities she had contacted. After the initial interview, when two uniformed police officers had come to her house and questioned her about her relationship with Jack and the nature of his trip to Darwin, there had been no news at all.

She rang again, frantically asking what was being done. Their reassurances had simply inflamed her anxiety: they sounded condescending and patronising – which they undoubtedly were. Unable to make them understand, and unable to comprehend herself the way these disappearances were investigated, she started ringing more often, sometimes crying, even screaming at the officers she spoke to.

She began drinking again, too. This had made her moods even more extreme.

Then had come the discovery of Jack’s roadside camp. Feeling as if this proved what she had being saying, Sandy had flown to Darwin hoping at least that Jack’s disappearance would be taken seriously – treated as a kidnapping, not a runaway husband.

However, the questions had seemed to follow a similar track to those that the police down South had asked. Did Jack owe money? Was money missing from the business? Was their marriage in difficulty? Had Jack ever, to her knowledge, had affairs? They’d even asked her whether he was insured, and for how much. Since the answer to many of these questions was yes, they were more inclined to treat it as a case of embezzlement and include her as a suspect.

Distressed and confused, Sandy had retreated, flying home.

Isolated, and angry – I didn’t ask why she hadn’t rung me – she’d drunk more and lost more and more control. She started harassing the police – both in the Northern Territory and here. By the time she phoned them to say that she’d received a phone call from Jack, they’d have given her as much credence if she’d told them Martians were landing on her back lawn.

Her stepmother had been looking after the girls. Sandy had just told Jetta that she couldn’t cope. “She just came and took them,” she said, still gazing at her hands, which trembled. “Ah, Jetta knew. She’s been here before.”

“Been where?” I said. “Your husband’s vanished. Don’t beat yourself up for not coping. You’ve never been here before.”

She began to cry, with sobs that sounded like they were torn from her throat. There were no tears, but her shoulders shook, as if something was actually shaking her.

I stepped forward and held her, feeling the tension in the bunched muscles of her shoulders and back. I smoothed my hand down her spine. “It’s OK, Sandy,” I said, reassuring her, as one would a small child. “It’s OK. Good girl. Good girl.”

She turned into my arms, and a stood and held her until she stopped sobbing.

When she was asleep, I smoothed the blankets down, left a light burning in the hallway, and let myself out the front door. She’d clung to me, cuddled in, body trembling, pressed close against mine. I’d felt myself responding. Pathetic.

This time though, I’d picked her up, carried her upstairs and put her to bed. When she’d asked me to stay, I’d gently refused. Gently kissed her forehead, stroked her face until her eyes closed and she relaxed, the tautness in her face smoothing until she looked like a girl, curled up amongst the large, white pillows and acres of doona in that huge bed. When I looked back, from the bedroom doorway, I could hardly see that she was even there.

Chapter 25

Summer 1977 – Autumn 1978 (iii)

It was only afterwards, when the boy was free that he was able to work out how long he’d been imprisoned. It was near enough to five months.

It had been a series of experiences without any measure in time. The only way the boy had of calculating where one day began or finished, was the heat, during the summer. But after the first few weeks, with infrequent and unevenly-spaced deliveries of food, the boy became weak, disorientated. He slept for long periods. Perhaps Bern put some kind of drug in his food. He had no way of knowing – except that, after he got out, he discovered many plastic containers of strange tablets in the kitchen. Even then, it was years before he worked out what Bern had been doing to him.

The boy had spent years adapting. Whatever changes had happened in the strange environment he called home, he would just find a way that he could exist without being hurt too much and cope. As long as he had been able to find food, and sleep somewhere warm, he’d not expected – certainly never asked for – anything more.

Life as Bern’s pet – his “Princess” – was just another set of circumstances to endure.

He learned quickly to gauge Bern’s mood when he entered.

Often, it was just what he called in his mind “the love stuff”. Not that there was ever any love involved. But from the nights he’d watched Bern, Vic and the old man lying on top of the women in the dirt, screened by the ragged scrub, the boy knew that what was being done to him was somehow associated with all of that. It had lots of names, he knew, but somehow, although it sounded like pain – and certainly was, when it involved him – it was called love.

The things that happened to him became blurred and indistinct: when he tried to recall particular moments in the parade of strange fancies that Bern enacted with the boy, they slipped away. Like bad dreams, their miasma remained, still with the power to haunt and terrify, but the exact form those monsters took receded into a mist of shifting shadows.

That didn’t mean that each time Bern came for him, the boy didn’t know exactly what to expect. But after the first few times, there was less pain – and no blood amidst the mess in the bucket which stood in the corner and which Bern removed every few days.

The boy preferred that, anyway. It was those times when Bern made him face him. Then he could see the strangenesses crawling under the skin of Bern’s face, shifting shapes in the light, tawny eyes that suggested something truly frightening to the boy, because he couldn’t even put a name to it.

The actual things they did were just routines the boy went through so that he could ensure he survived. He went through the motions. Where possible, he made sure he was somewhere else altogether, in his head. He’d imagine the hideout he’d made, and which Bern hadn’t discovered, though he’d quizzed the boy about where he’d been hiding.

He just had to be careful – once, he’d drifted right away, only recovering his wits when Bern’s hand smacked the side of his head.

The clothes Bern made him wear actually made it easier. It was as if it was all happening to someone else altogether. Afterwards, he could strip off the garments – often stained or torn – and lie down naked or wrapped in the grimy blankets.

Then he could truly dream – his dreams. Escape. He had examined the chain that secured his ankle to the ringbolt in the floor, examined the ringbolt and the floorboard itself. He’d even tried, with his fingernails to rip at the raw, drilled edges of the bolt hole. All he’d done, however, was tear his nails to pieces.

The cuffs on his hands were less of an impediment. After the first night, he’d discovered that he could simply bring his knees to his chest so that his hands were pinioned in front, rather than behind him. He couldn’t remove them, but moving, sleeping – even eating became much simpler.

Of course, sometimes when Bern came through the door, it was not for “love”. His face would be twisted, somehow swollen, mouth a tight slash. At first the boy had cringed, curling in the corner, away from the belt, or cudgel or fists that poked and beat at him. As time went by, he learned that when he tensed up his body to resist, it not only increased the rage – and force – in Bern, but actually made the bruising worse. He started to simply turn his back and make his body limp, so that the blows slapped into inert and unresisting flesh.

Usually, this had the effect of shortening Bern’s violent rages. Unable to extract a reaction from the boy, Bern usually ground to a halt. He would stand over the boy’s supine body, panting, cursing – crying sometimes. Then, after a few half-hearted pokes or swats, he’d stagger from the room, always remembering to carefully bolt the door behind him.

These occasions happened when Bern had been drinking – the boy could smell it. The air would reek with the gusts of foulness. The scent seemed to evaporate from the pores of Bern’s body, even, clinging to the bare walls long after he’d gone. Often, Bern was so drunk that he missed the boy as often as he hit him, flailing in a blind fury, holding himself upright with one hand against the wall, legs splayed wide for balance.

Afterwards, the boy would listen as Bern drank himself into a stupor. Sometimes, he’d come back in, seduced by the alcohol, but he was never able to keep himself erect long enough to do anything. Once, trying to jam his semi-flaccid cock into the boy’s bum, he’d only dribbled piss all over him, and laughed before staggering from the room.

Eventually, the boy knew, he’d lapse into an unconscious stupor and the house would become silent, except for the twitches and groans of the weather-warped timbers and iron stressed by the heat.

It was a long time before the boy found the key to unlock his prison. Only as he acclimatised himself to his situation did the boy begin to really be able to think forward; plan to escape. At first, the lack of food and the constant round of beatings and “love” had caused a sort of paralysis. The boy hadn’t even been able to move from the mattress. When Bern left, he had simply slept, as if a switch inside had turned off.

Lying on the mattress, though, he’d seen a cup hook, sticking out of the wall. It was high up, above the level that the masonite reinforcing finished. There was no way the boy could reach it. But he thought about it, and planned.

The chain round his leg was long. His room was narrow and thin, but the shit bucket was down the far end, so the chain had to be long enough for him to get there. Since it attached next to the bedding, there was quite a long loop, when he was up that end of the room. He had tried gathering a loop and throwing it up to try to snag the hook, but the noise brought Bern immediately.

“What the fuck you want?” he snapped.

The boy told him that he was thirsty. Very thirsty.

“This i’n’t a fuckin’ hotel.” Bern gave him a sharp look, but left and brought back his water bowl, filled.

The boy was more careful, after that. He listened until Bern left the house, hearing the little motor bike rattle and fart away along the sand-drifted track.

Then he’d tried again.

Snagged the hook. And pulled it free of the plasterboard.

Chapter 27

Mid-June, 2001

The next two weeks were a roller coaster.

I had thought, because of the way I’d left Sandy, on the Tuesday night, that we would have at least rediscovered something of the easy equilibrium that we’d possessed for such a long time.

The next day, I suggested she ring her telephone company, to see whether she could obtain the records of calls made to her home or, if that were not possible, to ask if she could get hold of a record of calls made on Jack’s mobile phone. This would prove the existence of Jack’s call. She had brightened up when I’d suggested this. “I’ll do that tomorrow,” she said. She looked terrible. Her skin was pale and blotchy; she’d rubbed at the skin of her temples so much that there were red, sore spots there.

I’d also thought that she could check whether there was any activity on Jack’s credit cards. If they’d been stolen, perhaps the thief could be traced by the items he’d bought.

I offered to talk to the police for her. One of the blokes I cycled with regularly was a member. I knew he’d take me seriously, if I told him what Sandy had experienced.

I’d hesitated, but knowing she’d been drinking, I asked, “Are you sure it was Jack’s voice?”

Sandy’s look would have frozen vodka.

She agreed that I could speak to my copper friend.

On Wednesday, I rang Brendan and suggested a ride. As we cycled along, I told him the story.

He didn’t hold out much hope, but agreed to ask a few questions of the people Sandy had been dealing with. “The thing is, mate,” he said, “most of these missing persons cases are absconders. Hubby gets tired of being a wage-slave, and takes off with the secretary. That’s why they mostly just give it a watching brief. Unless there’s evidence of foul play, there’s nothing to investigate, really – a bloke leaves home and doesn’t ring his missus. What is there in that?”

“What about the campsite they found?” I asked, between breaths, as we climbed back up Oliver’s Hill on the way back to Mornington.

Brendan shrugged. “Might mean anything,” he said. “I’m not saying anything about your mate, but some of these guys go to a lot of trouble to just disappear. Even to the extent of staging their own murder or something. It happens.”

Remembering Jack’s strange attitude, prior to his sudden departure, it might well, I thought. But I wasn’t telling Sandy that.

I phoned Sandy, later that day and I got the answering machine. When I left a message, she phoned back, almost straight away. She had good news and bad.

The telephone company could confirm that there had been a call to her home number on the Sunday evening and that it had originated from the Northern Territory.

They would not, however, give out any details of Jack’s phone. Nor would the bank disclose any other transactions than those which had been performed with Sandy and Jack’s joint card and the business accounts – Sandy was a director. These would be faxed to her.

This seemed to give us, at least a time frame for Jack’s disappearance. If Brendan could get the Northern Territory Police to take seriously the possibility that he had not absconded, but been attacked and kidnapped, they might follow up Jack’s movements. Perhaps we could find people who had seen him since then. Maybe they would be able to obtain his phone records and ascertain exactly where his call had been made from. I gave her Brendan’s phone number, so that she could call him.

She sounded more hopeful, although there was still a hoarseness and tension, which made her voice tremble and falter. She had called back immediately, when I’d rung, which I felt was a good sign.

I offered to come round to stay with her.

There was a pause. “Thank you Dan, but no,” she said. “I’m grateful for all that you’ve done, but I have to stand on my own two feet.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” I asked, and could have kicked myself. Foot straight in mouth.

“I’m not sure whether it’s wise or not,” she said, ice in her voice. “But that’s what I’m going to do. Without any sanctimonious crap from you or anyone else.” She hung up.

Disconnected.

Chapter 28

Summer 1977 – Autumn 1978 (iv)

Escape, when it finally came, was so easy that the boy could hardly believe it. He had used the cup hook to scratch and tear into the edges of the hole where the ringbolt to which his chain was padlocked went through the floor. Bern never checked, so it was easy to ensure that a fold of his bedclothes or a scrap of his clothing concealed the damage he was doing.

Quite soon, the hole became wider, the bolt rattling round. He couldn’t pull it through, however, because there was a nut and large washer on the other side. He just kept widening the hole he’d made so that in the end, the ringbolt would be able to slip through.

He kept wriggling it and worrying at it. Now the washer too chewed away at the edges of the raged hole in the floorboards. He would worry at it in short bursts, stopping to listen all the time, in case Bern had returned. He angled the bolt across the hole, so that the shank pressed down on the edges of the hole above and beneath the board.

The boy lost patience and wrenched at the bolt. It caught and then ripped from the wood, making him overbalance. He smacked the back of his head against the masonite wall.

For a moment, he lay there, stunned. Then he sat up, listening cautiously. There was no sound from the rest of the house. Immediately, the boy got up, coiling the chain up, so that he held its length in his hand. He was wearing yet another of those horrible, frilly dresses Bern kept bringing. The rest of the discarded clothing that was strewn around the room he rolled up and stuffed under the blanket.

The boy sat in the dimmest corner on the other side of the door, making himself as small as he could, and waited.

Every now and then, he’d had to stand, as the cramped position he was in made his legs spasm and ache. He knew he needn’t have stayed in the corner the whole time, but his anxiety kept him on edge. He was there. He was ready. He would have one chance only. He knew that. If he failed, Bern would kill him. This was certain.

The sound of the motorbike was an uncertain stuttering mutter, at first.

As it came closer, he could tell by the sound of the engine that Bern had been drinking. On other occasions, when he’d been like this, Bern had lurched into the room with his stick, shouting and fumbling. The boy hoped he’d do the same today.

The boy had no idea what time it was – only that it was day. At night, it was as black as a pit, in his cell. But during the daylight hours, there was light in his cell. It didn’t change much: always dim, unless Bern brought a torch or lantern. The bulb had been removed from the ceiling.

The motorbike’s engine farted and died beside the house, under the carport. The boy heard nothing for minutes that dragged at his nerves like cats’ claws through wool. Finally, fumbling footsteps slapped on the cracked lino that covered the bare concrete of the entry porch and kitchen.

Boots clattered on the floorboards – drumbeats louder than the boy’s heart – as Bern stumbled towards the boy’s prison. He could hear Bern mumbling and cursing as he reeled in. There was a rattle as he picked up his waddy-stick from outside the door, and then the rasp and scrape as the hasp of the bolt was drawn back. A creak and growing shape of light as the door swung open, and Bern stepped inside, looking intently towards where the shape of the boy lay under the blanket.

He stepped in. “Now, you little fuck,” he snarled, “teach you to kill a poor li’l fuckin’ dog, I’ll –“

He’d moved forward enough: there was a gap and the boy launched himself through it like a missile, sprinting down the short passage, skidding on the lino, catching himself on the bench scattering utensils and dirty crockery as he pushed off. In a moment, he was out the empty doorway, sprinting on legs that had no strength down the track until he could dive into the scrub, worming his way through the scratching, spiky branches, hiding, skulking just like one of the stray dogs that the old man had shot at.

Once he reached the end of the ridge that became the escarpment that loomed behind the house, the boy turned to follow its base, rather than going round the lower end, where the going was easier, but there was less cover. At the base of the cliff, the ground was littered with scree – rocky fragments that would show no tracks, as a light-framed, barefooted boy flitted along. His route took him back closer to the house, but he knew, in his animal heart that he’d be safer hiding close by and stealing away after Bern had vented his furious energy.

For he could hear the screams and ranting down the rutted track that he’d run along first. Almost immediately, they stopped and he knew Bern had gone back for the rifle. He curled behind a large, fractured piece of red, crumbling rock, burying into a crevice at its base. From the intensity of the light, the boy knew that it was late afternoon. With any luck, Bern wouldn’t be able to find him before dark, and he would steal away. He closed his eyes, and waited.

Chapter 29

June 16th, 2001

I had no option but to wait for Sandy to make contact again. If she would. Calling her was no good – she had the answering machine on permanently. She wouldn’t return calls from those she didn’t want to speak to.

The next news I had of Sandy or Jack came not from her, but via a visit from the local police. Obviously, I knew I’d put my foot in it with Sandy – again. It didn’t take much, I reflected ruefully. I’d driven up to the house once, but there was a police car parked in the front drive. I thought it was best not to intrude.

The late afternoon sun slanted across the bay and through the veranda windows with that glorious red-gold sunset that is a feature of autumn and winter in Melbourne. The doorbell didn’t work – it was on the west-facing wall, which received a fair belting from whatever weather blew across the bay. They must have tried it and tired of waiting. The knock on the glass panel sounded hard enough to break it.

“Steady on!” I said, opening the door. “You don’t have to smash the glass.”

“Are you Daniel Kinner?” The speaker was shorter than me, slender and lean, in a dark-coloured, well-cut and stylish suit. His partner was stockier, and looked less polished, his coat unbuttoned and shirt a little crumpled over his solid torso. In the speaker’s hand was the coin he’d used to knock on the glass pane. He spoke brusquely, peremptory, as if my window, my concerns were not important to him. Which, clearly, they were not.

I resented his tone. As ever, I couldn’t refuse the bait. Ignoring him, I looked carefully at the outside of the pane, as if to ensure he hadn’t cracked it. When I turned back to them, his face was flushed, eyes glinting with anger. “I asked you if you were Daniel Kinner … sir,” he said, holding back the “sir” until it had become a calculated sneer.

I raised an eyebrow. “Might be. Who wants to know?”

“Listen, mate –“ he stepped forward, eyes narrowing, but his partner cut him off, using his arm to physically hold the shorter man back.

“Excuse me sir,” he said. “We’re from Mornington CID. We’re just investigating some aspects of the disappearance of Mr Jack Treuwin. We were just hoping that you might be able to help us with some of our inquiries.”

I relaxed. “Jack? Sure – happy to help. Come in.” I opened the door wide, standing aside so they could move past me into the foyer. The angry detective moved as though his spine was steel. I could feel the fury emanating from him in waves.

I wondered what could have created such intense animosity. He could hardly have spat the dummy because I’d been shitty about the way he’d knocked on my door, could he?

I led the way to the kitchen. They looked around curiously as they entered. Most people did.

The entrance hall opened onto a small lounge area on the right. It was where I sat to watch TV or generally chill out. In an alcove left under the staircase several guitars stood, each on its own stand, waiting for the mood to take me. Sometimes, with the front door open, the wind would move the strings, the whispering harmonies a wistful call to play.

Opposite them, the space opened out to the eatery, which could be accessed from the kitchen through a hatchway. An oval table, surrounded by eight chairs, awaited company. It had been waiting a while.

In the hallway, between the dining room and the kitchen, I’d had a fish tank custom made. It was nearly twelve feet tall and six wide. With a range of brightly-coloured and quite large-sized fish swimming in it, and tall fronds of weed growing from the sand in the base, it was an arresting feature.

“Amazing.” The stocky, rumpled policeman stood in front of the aquarium, fascinated. He turned to me, holding a black leather wallet, so that I could see a badge and ID card, “I’m Ross Clayton.”

“Thanks. I’m Daniel Kinner,” I said, taking the hand he held out at me.

Clayton gestured at his companion, who regarded the fish tank and its captives morosely. “This is Aruzak Sarich.” He pronounced his name “Ah-roo-shak”.

Sarich glanced at me, didn’t offer a hand or show his identification. I studied him more closely. He reminded me of someone I’d seen or met, but I couldn’t figure when or where. Now probably wasn’t the time to ask, either. So I did. “Have we met?” I asked.

He didn’t reply.

Clayton hitched a haunch onto one of the kitchen stools, opening a clipboard and rifling through a few pages of handwritten notes and official-looking forms.

“Now, Mr Kinner,” he said, “Jack Treuwin –“

I interrupted him, “It’s Daniel,” I said. “I’m making coffee, if you want some.”

“Sure,” he said, easily. “White no sugar, for me.”

“What about him?” I asked. His partner had disappeared round past the fish tank into the dining room.

“Sarich! Coffee?” Clayton called.

“No.” Sarich stayed where he was, out of sight. I could hear his shoes on the tiles as he moved around.

I was becoming pissed off again at his arrogance and rudeness. “If your mate wants to look round my house,” I said, “he can either request the guided tour or bring a search warrant.”

Clayton sighed, got up and disappeared round the corner. I busied myself with the coffee.

A moment later, they both appeared, Sarich with a sneer curling his lip. He sat at the table behind Clayton, who perched on one of the stools at the bench. Sarich ignored us.

Clayton looked down at his notes. “You are a friend of Mr Treuwin?” he asked.

“Of both Sandy and Jack,” I said. “I got to know them both pretty much at the same time.”

Sarich made a scornful noise.

Clayton nodded, ignoring him. “How would you describe your relationship with Mr and Mrs Treuwin?”

I hesitated. I’d been dumb. I hadn’t even considered that the questions these two would ask might lead into these waters. “Well,” I said carefully, “friend to both.”

Sarich raised his head, not looking in my direction, but listening intently.

“Uh-huh,” Clayton paused, as if waiting for something. Then pressed on. “Did you talk to Mr Treuwin about this bike ride?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, relieved to be on safer ground. “Not in any great detail, you understand – Jack made it clear that I wasn’t invited, and when I tried to talk about the dangers, he as good as told me to butt out. He thought I was firing the bullets for Sandy.” I turned from the coffee machine.

They were both looking at me, eyebrows raised.

“Sorry,” I shook my head. “Bad choice of words,” I said, smiling. I placed Clayton’s coffee cup in front of him. “I meant that Sandy had told me she was worried about Jack coming to grief because he had bitten off more than he could chew. She thought he was only doing it to go one better than me,” I said.

They still looked at me expressionlessly. “I cycle,” I said. “Jack wanted to do the Bay Ride, this October.”

Clayton nodded with understanding, “That’s the 200 kilometre thing?” he asked, looking at me with raised eyebrows. “Mr Treuwin wanted to do that?” He picked up his coffee, sipped it and smiled appreciatively.

“With me,” I said. “But he told me he couldn’t make himself train and be disciplined about his eating here, so he was going to ride from Darwin to Adelaide to get fit.”

Sarich snorted. “That’d do it,” he muttered.

I ignored him. “Jack told me he wanted to do it alone,” I said to Clayton. “But I think Sandy was right, too. I think he wanted to do something I’d never done.”

“Uh-huh,” Clayton said again. He glanced down at his notes. “You ever argue with Mr Treuwin?”

“No,” I said immediately. “We’ve never had a disagreement of any kind. We don’t have that kind of relationship. We’ve gone to the footy a few times, went for the occasional ride when Jack wanted to get fit – that sort of thing. We certainly aren’t in each other’s pockets all the time.”

“Not that close, then?” said Clayton, looking down while he wrote on his pad.

“Well,” I searched for the words. “He was a mate. A friend. I liked him; he liked me. That’s it.”

They both stared at me, Sarich with an intense gleam in his eyes.

“What?” I asked, taken aback.

“’Was’? ‘Liked’?” said Clayton. “Why past tense?”

“Jesus Christ!” I said, “Because he’s fucking gone missing, that’s why. And because the only ones who haven’t taken it seriously seem to be the freaking police!”

“Oh we’re taking it seriously, Mr Kinner,” Sarich said, at last. His voice was surprisingly mellow. Not smooth, but resonant. “When were you last in the Northern Territory?”

Clayton glanced at Sarich sharply. I thought he was irritated with his partner.

I looked at him, speechless. “You must be fucking joking,” I said. I looked at Clayton, wondering whether he would intervene. He simply sat and watched me. “You are out of your tiny minds,” I said. “I think you’d better leave, please.”

“Just a few more questions, Mr Kinner,” Clayton said, calmly. “Has Mrs Treuwin visited you here recently?”

“No way am I answering any more questions,” I said. “You want to ask more of that crap, you arrest me.”

Clayton nodded, shutting his folder. “We’ll be back, Mr Kinner,” he said. “It would be better if you co operated.”

“It would be better,” I said, “if you two spent your fucking time trying to find Jack Treuwin instead of … this bullshit harassment.”

“Harassment?” Sarich said, stalking towards the door. “This isn’t harassment. If you think this is harassment, you’ve got a very rude awakening coming.”

“Go for it,” I said. “But I hope your drycleaner is good, Sunshine, because you’re going to wind up in so much shit your natty suit’ll need a fucking acid bath.”

He stopped as he was passing through the doorway and looked back at me. His eyes were very dark, and without expression. But he didn’t say anything, just nodded and left.

I sat on the upstairs veranda for hours after they’d gone. I couldn’t calm down, couldn’t relax. It felt as if my home had been invaded, as if some foreign presence still lurked.

Chapter 30

Autumn, 1978

His hideout had been completely undisturbed. They boy had stayed close by it for the next few days. There was a small knoll above and behind the incomplete house. He sat in the meagre shade of a bush, eyes closed, allowing the light and warmth of the sun to make his eyelids glow pink and warm. Incarceration had made his skin so pale it almost seemed translucent. Although it wasn’t very hot, he soon turned pink. The boy didn’t move. The warmth seemed to bake from the surface of his skin into his bones, into the very core of him, banishing the blackness.

He pulled a piece of old, brownish curtain cloth over his head and stayed there, watching the expanse of land. Just watching. Absorbing it, catching up what he’d missed. Space. Freedom.

Every time he heard a motor coming anywhere near, he’d wriggle back down the knoll to the little cellar at the end of the hidden tunnel, retreating inside. He kept every lamp and candle lit in the cavern that formed the main room of his hidey-hole – anything to dispel the darkness of the memories of being shut up in Bern’s prison.

He’d remained curled beneath the rock at the base of the cliff, listening to the sounds of Bern’s pursuit. Once the repeated cracks of the rifle firing had made him flinch. As quickly as his reaction came the realisation that Bern was firing at nothing, shooting the bushes, hoping he’d panic the boy into making a run for it.

But the boy had stayed right where he was. Only when it was dark, when he’d watched the moon rise balefully over the lumpy horizon, bathing the scattered buildings and meandering tracks of Mintalie in its wan light, had he cautiously moved. He stole out from behind the rock and carefully made his way along, only a few metres above and behind the old man’s house, moving across the rock like a shadow.

The generator was rattling away and there were lights on in the house. But as he worked his way past, the boy could see no sign of Bern inside. Perhaps he was waiting, hiding along the other end of the track for the boy to try to sneak out that way. Instinctively, the boy had known that the safest way, the way Bern would least expect was the way that seemed to pass closest to danger.

There was no sound, no challenge. Only when he was far away, walking along the track that led to his hideout had the boy heard another, furious volley of rifle shots. He assumed that Bern had lost patience, at last, and was venting his frustration at the impassive bush.

Apart from that, however, the boy saw no sign of Bern. No little motorbike came rattling up round the diggings, Bern perched astride it, rifle on his back. Only the few miners still working the claims at Mintalie drove their battered utes and station wagons out to their dusty shacks, past abandoned claims and water-flooded shafts. The boy watched them go, followed them, sitting close enough by that he could hear their conversations at lunch times and smoko. There was no mention of him or Bern. A few gunshots was a common enough event to arouse no particular notice.

Although he moved further afield, after those first few days, it was a long time before the boy dared go anywhere near the township proper, or the old man’s house. It was months.

When he did, he approached, at night, from the same side that he’d left. The ground was broken, steep and slippery, covered with scrub and straggling trees. Even if Bern was, after all this time, waiting or watching there, it would be a miracle if he saw the boy, let alone caught or shot him.

They boy knew it was dangerous, but he also knew that he needed to know what Bern was doing. He’d underestimated Bern once. He’d believed he could live close by and get away with it. Now, he knew differently. He had to deal with Bern.

The house was dark. No generator noise. No movement. Patient, the boy sat there through the night. All the next day, covered in his tattered scrap of curtain cloth, he stayed, waiting.

There was no movement in the house. He could see, in the daytime, through the gaping windows at the back of the veranda. The doorway to the lounge was dark and cavernous, but nothing stirred inside. The boy took sips from a plastic bottle full of water that he had brought with him. When night fell, he stole away, got more food and water and returned.

After three days, he was sure that the house was empty. Bern wasn’t that patient. He had cunning, but not the relentless, timeless endurance of the hunter that would simply wait until its prey walked into a set trap. The volley of shots the boys had heard as he’d walked away after his escape proved that.

In the cold, pitch-black early morning, the boy crept down to the house. He used the front door, which was never used, and opened onto an end of the veranda which had become a sort of lounge room. The old man hadn’t ever entertained anyone formally, so the room with its antimacassared armchairs and three-legged tables remained empty. The door had a lock, but the boy had often used the key that was sandwiched between two flat rocks to sneak into the house when he’d needed to avoid the old man in one of his rages.

The room was dark and still. The house was silent, too. Perhaps it was waiting, filled with the voiceless screams of the cruelties that had taken place within its walls over the years. The boy silently placed the package he’d prepared four days ago on one of the armchairs, every sense alert for the first sound of any movement within the house.

There was nothing. The boy listened, waiting without moving for a full ten minutes. He moved to the window, gazing into the darkness outside that he’d left. He watched, seeing the empty track beyond the peppercorn tree. The boy was sorry about the tree.

He lit the cigarette sticking out of the box he’d placed on the chair and walked out, trying not to breathe in the acrid fumes. He left the door open, so that more air could enter, and fan the flames. Silently, he melted into the shadows behind the house, climbing straight up the rocky escarpment, using a route that he’d polished a thousand times during his childhood.

He was folding his curtain-cloth when he heard the whoomf from the house and saw the windows glow with flickering flame inside. It looked like a giant lantern, casting strange and distorted shadows across the shadowed and disproving cliff.

He waited, while the fire took hold of the house, watching to see if anyone emerged from inside.

No one came out, however. The boy turned his back on the house as gouts of joyous flame pushed through the corrugated iron roof. They curled out through the glaring window cavities, escaping into the air triumphantly. He made his way over the ridge and along a maze of paths and tracks back to his place. His true home.

Chapter 31

June 17th, 2001

I’d tried ringing Sandy, as soon as the two policemen had left, but only got the answering machine – again. I left a terse message, saying that I’d had a visit from the police and wanted to talk to her.

I was more than a little bewildered by Sandy’s actions. Unless she had completely lost it over my comment when she’d knocked back my offer to stay with her, this lengthy estrangement was inexplicable. Unless her annoyance at me was exacerbated by embarrassment, because I’d been the one to discover her at rock bottom the other day.

When I considered the questions the police officers had asked, they made a kind of sense. How they’d been directed to my doorstep I had no idea. Had Sandy said something? I wondered whether they knew – or suspected – that Sandy and I had been having an affair. It had no bearing on what had happened to Jack, but it wouldn’t look too good – especially if they thought I was hiding it. There had been an air of smugness about them that had hinted at more knowledge than they’d let on.

The attitude of the shorter man, Sarich, I’d put down, in the end, to strategy: he played the ‘bad cop’, so that I’d respond more openly to Clayton – which I had, I supposed. Sarich certainly exuded an air of vehement anger and menace. Maybe it was the “little man” complex, I though snidely.

I slept fitfully. I kept surfacing from smothering sleep where, in restless dreams I tried to escape from something which hunted me. I ran, desperately pushing through loose, clinging soil and bushes whose branches slashed and clawed at me as I burst through them. What it was that pursued me I couldn’t recall.

Eventually, I got up, standing at the windows looking out over the bay, even before the sun rose over the hill behind the house. It turned the bay from a sombre, sullen expanse into an arc of shades of grey, capped by snarling teeth of white foam that marched across the water towards my house, driven by a bitter, dirty wind from the northwest.

I had to work at the newspaper. I showered, feeling grittiness in my eyes and that leaden dullness of brain that heralded a cold. Just what I needed. Although I was a tea-drinker for breakfast, I opted for coffee, thinking that something feisty and strong would kick the brain into gear.

It was only just after six when I locked the house and headed for the office. It was at the bottom of Main Street, directly over the road from the police station. I smiled – without much humour – wondering whether Clayton and Sarich were beavering away at their investigation already.

Mark Adams, the editor, raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Whoah!” he said. “To what do we owe this honour – in and ready to work and it’s not even seven!”

“It’s not even six-thirty. Treat it just an indication of my professionalism and commitment to my vocation,” I said, leaning in his doorway.

“Wow,” he fossicked through the papers on his desk. “Just let me grab a pencil – I want to write that down – can I use it, sometime?”

“Royalties do usually apply,” I said, “but for you, I’ll do a special mate’s rate: double.”

“In your dreams, sunshine,” he said. “Grab a coffee and come in.”

I skipped the foul Café bar coffee and opted instead for a glass of water from the cooler next to it.

Mark and I spent half an hour or so looking at a range of possible projects. There were a few letters that had come in – the paper was getting a reputation for “sorting out” people’s problems with bureaucracy, or injustices at the hands of “big business”. A couple looked promising. I would ring them, to set up an interview.

There was also the run-of-the-mill stuff. I still collated the events which people in the local shopping centre wanted to publicise and details of the various rides and social functions from the cycling group. I handpassed the film reviews. We had recently employed a journalism student, part-time. Natalie loved doing the film and restaurant reviews. She was a healthy eater, so most of the places she went to had positive reviews … but that was part of the deal, really: we weren’t there to bite the hand that fed us, to perpetuate an often-used pun.

By mid-morning, I’d rung the people I needed to ring. I’d written a scathing indictment of the way that the State Government had insisted on closing a campus of a local secondary school so that all the students could be squeezed onto the one campus and the second site could be left, the grounds gone to seed, windows smashed, walls graffitied and the pool empty and cracking. It wouldn’t do any good, but as Mark said, sometimes it was good to “vent”. Besides, he said, more cynically, we’d get a barrow load of letters congratulating us on our “courageous stand”, with subscriptions to follow.

I pushed myself back from my desk, sliding the plastic castors back over the streaked, stained lino, until I could stretch my legs out and arch my back. I considered making a cup of tea, but decided I’d slip next door to the Top End Café for a decent coffee. I wasn’t so sure any more about the head cold: maybe I’d just felt raw and heavy because of lack of sleep.

Anne, the receptionist, called me as I opened the door onto the street. “Dan! Wait!”

I poked my head back round the door jamb, eye brows raised inquiringly.

“Got a Warrick on the phone – wants to speak to you urgently.”

Warrick was one of a group of casual and itinerant surfers who inhabited the house across the road from me. “Wal,” I said, taking the handset from Anne, “what’s the story?”

“Mate,” he said, drawing out the word, “have you been a bad boy?”

“No more than usual,” I said. “Why? What’s up?”

“There are four police cars parked outside your house, my friend, and about ten coppers. And from the sound of it, one of them has just kicked your back door in,” he said.

“Fuck!” Mark had emerged from his office, noticing my reaction. “What’s up?” he asked, as I raced back to my desk and grabbed my coat.

“There’s a police raid in progress,” I said.

“Great!” he rubbed his hands together. “Where?”

”My house.” I headed for the rear door and the car park.

“Wait!” he called. “Take a photographer!”

Which I did.

When we pulled up outside my house, ten minutes later, there were police cars parked in the driveway and along the grass verge at the side of the road. The side gate was open. As I approached, Simon, the photographer running behind me, was already snapping pictures. A uniformed officer stepped forward, hand held out. “I’m sorry, sir. You can’t go in there. There’s a police operation in progress,” he said.

“Police bullshit!” I said. “That’s my fucking house! Get out of my way.”

The officer continued to stand in the gateway, barring my access. Simon kept snapping pictures, behind me, as I tried to push past. “Sir,” the policeman, panted, pushing back against me, “if you’ll wait until Sergeant Sarich gets here, we can –“ He caught sight of Simon’s camera. “You can’t take photographs, sir!”

My anger suddenly evaporated. I stepped back, laughing at the absurdity of it all. Barred from my own house, which was being searched, without my consent or knowledge by police – who were supposedly the guardians of truth, justice and the Australian way. “Actually, mate,” I said, standing my ground as he tried to get past me to Simon, who had ignored his instruction about not taking photographs, “we’re from the press. Not only are we going to take pictures, but we’re going to tell the whole story of this fascist harassment, front page. I guarantee it.”

Sarich emerged from the house behind the officer and heard the last part of what I said. His brows drew together, frowning at the sight of me, and his face suffused with an angry flush as Simon’s camera clicked and whirred in his direction.

“Take that man’s camera, Constable!” he snarled.

“Touch that journalist’s camera,” I said, “and you’ll be checking expired parking meters, mate.”

The officer persisted, pushing past me. Simon retreated, still taking photos as the policeman approached him. At the last minute, he turned and ran, heading for my car, fingers fumbling at the back of his camera as he went. The officer pursued him.

I watched them, shaking my head. “I hope to Christ you know what you’re doing, Sarich,” I said. “Because unless you’ve got everything absolutely nailed down, I’m going to take you to the fucking cleaners.”

“Join the queue, dickhead,” he sneered.

Chapter 32

June, 1978

It took the boy a few months to work out what had happened to Bern. He overheard Mrs Paguliio discussing the house fire with some other customers in the store. People usually either ignored the boy, or told him to piss off. Often, he heard a lot when people simply forgot he was there.

Initially, according to Mrs Paguliio, Bern hitched a ride with a couple of the opal miners working a noodling machine over old claims who’d been going into Marla for supplies.

He’d come into the store the morning after the fire, claiming that someone had tried to burn him alive. “Drunk, ala-ways drunk!” she had said, disapprovingly. Bern had used the payphone in the corner. “He say, ‘That little – you know, so-and-so – he try to kill me!’” she said. She didn’t look to where the boy lurked, but he thought that she knew he was listening. Her accented English made Bern’s actions sound comic. “Then he go, lock him up inside he’s van and wait there until Steffen and Gregor take him to Marla. He not even go outside! Frightened for he’s life, he say.” She giggled, her chest heaving and the flesh on her giant forearms quivering, “I think he smoke too much shit, drink too much shit, you know?”

Most people seemed to agree with Mrs P’s assessment. Bern’s paranoia was attributed to an exposure to several decades intense ingestion of many substances not recommended for human consumption. He was in any case, by general consensus, no great loss.

In the succeeding weeks which stretched into months, the boy took to noodling himself, roaming round the abandoned heaps of greyish-white rock which the bulldozers had scraped into piles high in the air. He turned over rocks, looking always for the flash of blue-green and orange fire, or milky blue-white that was the band of opal-bearing potch.

The boy’s eyes were sharp and fingers nimble. He knew the fields better than anyone, having spent his whole life poking round them. He found plenty of small chips and stones to trade to Mrs Paguliio to keep him supplied. When he bought supplies, they’d carefully mark off together the value of what he bought against his findings. Gradually, she taught him the rudiments of arithmetic. He got so good that he could keep a tally in his head of exactly how much he had.

“You boy, you good!” she’d crowed, when he added a column of figures faster in his head than she could using the adding machine which sat next to the large, noisy till. “You don’ need one a’ these – you gotta machine in you head!”

He even discovered a couple of larger pieces, one the size of his fist, that he kept in his hideout. He knew instinctively that it was worth more than Mrs Paguliio could pay, but he didn’t know who to take them to. He had no one he could trust.

Gradually, some of the opal miners who still worked claims locally started to pay the boy to do odd jobs. He’d stand for hours in the darkness of the blue-lit noodling machine watching, almost mesmerised, as tonnes of rock rattled past, rolled and scattered by the boy’s nimble fingers, to catch the stark, white gleam of opal under the purple light. They’d pay him a pittance, but the boy didn’t care. It was only time he was giving up and he had plenty of that.

The men taught him things. He learned how the opal was found – the band of rock in which it was sandwiched lying sixty feet under the surface, a frozen river of cold fire whose brilliance was only revealed when it was brought to the surface. He walked behind the dozers, scanning the earth turned over by the enormous blade for the flash of blue, or green or orange amongst the grey and white dross.

Gregor showed him how the machinery worked: the conveyor belt, run by the generator, a large, yellow box on a trailer; the pumps that kept the working areas of the mine tunnel clear of the ever-encroaching water. He learned how to run and repair some of the machines himself.

More and more often, he returned to the claim Gregor and Steve worked. Gregor was a block of a man, solid, bearded. He didn’t talk much, since he spoke English haltingly. Steve – Steffen – was lean and dark. Where Gregor was stolid and painstaking, Steve was impatient and volatile. They were both from Yugoslavia. The boy didn’t know where that was. Far away, he understood that much. But everywhere was far away from Mintalie.

Sometimes, when Gregor and Steve arrived – usually hung-over – the boy would have been working for hours already. He always handed over whatever he found. Opal miners were a deeply suspicious, paranoid breed, but Gregor and Steve seemed to realise that the boy had no interest in the opal for the money it could bring. He was simply interested in learning the things that they knew.

He maintained the pumps and even learned to set and explode the charges that lengthened the mine tunnel the men were digging on their claim. Gregor and Steve recommended him to other miners, so that they too would ask him to help them service their machinery, rather than do it themselves.

In time, they spoke to the boy as one of themselves. They asked no questions about the old man, or Bern. The boy’s business was his business. It was the law of the opal fields.

Then Bern came back.

The boy had visited Bern’s caravan. When he’d heard Mrs Paguliio say that Bern was gone, he’d checked, hardly believing it could be true. He had thrown rocks at the side of the van until he was sure there was no one inside. He approached cautiously, as if the van had the power to harm him, even though it was empty. The van was surrounded by rubbish: scrap pieces of metal, roofing tin, PVC pipes and rusting machinery. Behind the van was a chopping block, with a rusting axe wedged in the top. A pile of kindling and split logs had been haphazardly stacked under a sheet of corrugated iron leaning over the rusted tow bar.

The outer doorway was chained shut, but the boy simply cut a slit in a canvas section at the back of the annexe. After many weeks, the air was foul and stale: there was rotting food somewhere. The boy took a deep breath and entered.

The van itself was raised on bricks. The lean-to area was bare and dusty, floored with scraps of lino and carpet, enclosed by walls of canvas, scrounged wood and roofing iron. It provided a second room, with a home-made brazier, cut from an old kero tin and a few rickety chairs. In one corner, chained up, was Bern’s little 125.

The boy tried to open the off-white, aluminium door of the caravan itself. It was locked, but a minute’s work with a knife blade had pushed back the spring-loaded catch, so that the door swung open. Once inside the dark, dank van, the boy drew back the grimy curtains over the sink, so that some dull light could filter in.

He’d not found much. He’d hoped to find – and take – Bern’s gun, but that was nowhere to be seen. He did find a half-empty box of ammunition, and took that. Apart from some clothes – most not much better than rags – and odds and ends of food in cans and packets, that was it. Except for a pile of magazines filled with pictures of naked men and women doing some of the things Bern had made him do. The boy had hesitated, repelled by the pictures, yet aware of a strange uncoiling of something in the pit of his stomach.

When he’d left the van, he took the magazines.

Gregor told him Bern was back. The boy had been working down their mine, repairing a blocked filter on the intake pipe for the pump. The pump was running, filling the tunnel with its rhythmic, gurgling hum. He was wearing ear protectors, but sensed the change in the light, as Gregor came along behind him.

Gregor squatted, inspecting where the boy had painstakingly cleared the fouled grid and filter, before replacing the pipe and starting the pump, so that the water level wouldn’t enter the area where the men were digging.

Gregor nodded approvingly at the boy, scratching his tousled, dusty blond beard. He stood and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. The boy followed him up the mine shaft, feet squelching in the thick, grey mud, out into the flat, overcast daylight. Gregor sat on the heap of stone, discarded at the mine entrance, rolled a cigarette. The boy sat, too, pulling the ear protectors down so that they hung around his neck, like Gregor’s.

“Good job,” Gregor said. He stared back up the steep graded track that was the only way in and out of the mine. His eyes had darted sideways at the boy. He lit his smoke and then held it in his cupped hand, blunt, scarred fingers picking a flake of tobacco from his lip. “Steffen come back from Marla today,” he said. “He saw that Bern there. Bern says to Steff he coming back here.”

The boy said nothing, but his body grew still. He felt suddenly colder even than was warranted by the prying fingers of the winter wind.

Gregor hadn’t finished. “Steffen say Bern have a gun,” he said. “New gun. Shoot many bullets. Bang-bang-bang.” He looked at the boy again. “You good boy,” he said. “Be careful, now, you hear?”

The boy nodded.

Bern found the town had changed, in his absence. No one wanted to hear that he hated the boy. His tales of the boy’s efforts to burn him alive found few willing listeners. No one cared that his van had been broken into and left open, for anyone who cared to enter and take what he wanted. Only the real dregs, who’d do anything for a drink, hung around him, listening to his grievances.

On his first night back in Mintalie, he was thrown out of the hotel – still with his audience of sycophants – when his money was all gone. He could walk, but only just. His ‘buddies’ all melted away, when they realised he had nothing else to drink. Alone, Bern started to walk back to his van. It was a trek he’d made many times before – often even more drunk than he was now.

Tonight, though, all the tracks seemed somehow strange. The light which shone over the expanse of dusty ground in front of the stone general store shone sickly and mocking. The light pole shivered slightly at the spiteful pushes of the winter wind.

Bern wrapped his grubby parka round himself, hitching the strap of his new semi-automatic rifle higher. He stopped and moved the gun round, so that it perched on his hip, the strap over his shoulder, like a character out of some Schwarzenegger movie. He fingered the trigger, scanning the darkness. The bushes that lined the track bobbed and flailed, thin, whiplike branches jerking as if they reached out for him. Bern kept twisting, imagining some movement just behind him, or just out of range of the meagre light from the occasional street lamp or house.

With relief, he saw the familiar track to his van, and scurried along it, feeling pursuing eyes on his back. He glanced behind, but saw nothing in the blackness. He pushed open the door to his annexe, scanning the dimness inside. He stepped through the door, sighing with relief. Moments later, a kero lantern cast a wan, flickering light around the canvas and cast-off walls.

The boy waited a few minutes. He picked up a stone, from the supply he’d arranged in front of him, aimed and threw it high in the air. It burst on the van’s roof with a sound like a bomb going off. Bern screamed like a woman. Then he ran outside, waving his gun, swinging it aimlessly at the night.

“You little fucker!” he yelled. He glared at the darkness that pressed in on his van. “Come ‘ere! I’ll kill you, you little shit!”

Eventually, he ran out of obscenities and retreated. As soon as he was safe inside, the boy landed the next stone on the roof. Bern appeared at the door, stepped into the dusty area in front of his van, scanning the dark, heaving expanse of scrub. He could see nothing beyond the weak perimeter of the light cast by the lantern inside, his night vision spoilt by the light. He could hear nothing, except the wind rattling the branches, and the creaks and flapping of his patchwork home. He waved his gun threateningly at the darkness and retreated inside again.

The boy immediately threw another stone and dropped flat. Bern had waited just inside the door and leapt out, gun sputtering off a magazine’s worth. It smashed and zipped through the heaving scrub – but nowhere near the boy.

Bern stopped firing and stood, listening in the darkness. He stared over towards the track to where he imagined the stone had come. Knowing he couldn’t be seen, the boy threw another stone, this time, right over the back of the van. Hearing it crash behind him, Bern turned and sprinted towards the rear of the van. He ran straight into the chopping block. Arms flailing, he fell, smashing onto the block, with its embedded axe. He seemed to fold in half, the air driven from his lungs with a grunt, and collapsed face first, on top of the gun, which he’d dropped.

The boy watched, grinning. He wanted to cheer.

Bern lay where he had fallen. The boy waited for him to get up, but he stayed, unmoving in a dark, untidy pile.

Neither moved for over half an hour. Despite knowing he should not go anywhere near the man, the boy crept out of his hiding place. He approached from the side opposite where Bern had fallen, moving like a shadow amongst the creaking, rustling bushes.

In the feeble light, he could see Bern’s face, pressed into the dirt. Dust puffed out near his mouth, was smeared with blood across his face as he panted, snorting, gurgling breaths. The gun was wedged under his head; his hands were splayed wide, where he’d tried vainly, to break his fall.

Finally, the boy stood behind Bern. Towered over his fallen enemy. With a deft, hurried movement, he reached for the barrel and jerked the gun out from under Bern’s head, whirling to hurl it away into the bushes. He leaped back, in case Bern reacted.

Bern made a snuffling moaning noise. His hands scrabbled feebly at the sand, and then relaxed as he slumped, limp.

The boy approached again, standing next to the chopping block. He reached out a hand for the axe handle, the head still wedged deep into the block. He could see blood on the head of the axe, where it had caught Bern’s face as he fell.

He gently wiggled the handle, feeling the head gradually rock more and more, until it came free of the block. In the wind and dark, he studied Bern, lying at his feet. In his hands, the boy held the axe. He stepped so that he was astride the unconscious man and hefted the axe in his hands.

For a fragment of time that was only a second, or was many minutes, he stood there. He felt the weight of the axe in his hands. He examined the man who’d imprisoned him.

This man. This manimal. Who had tormented him. Who had torn his dream world to pieces. Who’d used him. Beaten him. Raped him.

On the rutted ground, beneath the boy, was an old man: grubby, shrunken, decrepit. His filthy jeans were faded, stained and ripped. He wore a collared business shirt whose original colour was a distant memory. Over that, a cheap parka whose white filling leaked from tattered seams. Comb-over strands of his filthy, lank hair fluttered round a bald patch at the back of his head.

Frozen time ended. The man on the ground snorted, coughed, his body arching. His hands flexed, scrabbled for purchase beneath his chest. Above him, smooth as a metronome, the boy came to life. The axe rose high into the air in one fell arc. It smashed to the earth, shattering bone, spattering the baked and frozen earth with blood and matter. The boy raised the axe once more, but it never struck again. Instead, with distaste, he stepped away from the sprawled thing which lay crumpled and broken on the ground. As if waking, he shook his head, but not in denial.

He backed away, over the baked, dusty ground, his bare feet leaving only vague marks that vanished under the wind’s sweeping strokes. The axe hung from fingers that barely remembered to hold it. The boy turned away and walked back down the track. The scudding moon threw his shadow long and dark along the rutted sand in front of him.

Only the wind persistently tried to shake the body back to life. The blood, the matter from the head dried, congealed, soaked into the thirsty earth.

It took two weeks before anyone even came looking for him. By then, there wasn’t all that much left.

Chapter 33

June 17th, 2001, 11:30 am.

While I waited at the gate with Sarich and the constable on duty for ‘the Inspector’ to come and talk to me, a car pulled up behind us. It was a sleek, late-model sedan with dark, tinted windows. The driver’s slid electronically down revealing the smiling, gum-chewing face of the newspaper’s legal adviser, Andrew Davies. Andrew always smiled. It was a lawyer thing, I sometimes thought.

“G’day, Daniel.” His large, white teeth snapped and cracked the wad of gum. “Need any help?”

“What do you know about police searches?” I asked, grinning back at him.

“Quite a bit, actually,” he said. “In fact, I’ve even been involved in a couple of cases where police searches found stuff that was never even there in the first place.” Andrew opened the door and extracted himself from his car. He was long and lanky; the suit he wore, though custom-made for him, hung off his limbs like rags on a scarecrow. His face was lean, ever-smiling lips connected by deep lines to his nose, eyebrows that drooped either side of mischievous brown eyes. He didn’t so much as sit in a car as fold himself into it, like some collapsed mechanical construction.

“Mark rang me,” he said, seeing the question I hadn’t yet uttered. “What’s it about?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. I explained quickly about Jack’s disappearance – including the nature of my relationship with Sandy – and the visit yesterday by Sarich and Clayton. His face remained impassive. When I’d finished he just nodded.

“OK. Let’s see what we’ve got,” he said. We approached my gate again, Andrew in the lead. “Now, you presumably have a warrant to show us?” he said, speaking to Sarich.

The policeman didn’t answer. In fact, his eyes remained focused on me. The constable on the gate, looking more and more uncomfortable, said, “Inspector Goldby will be with you in a moment, sir. He has the relevant paperwork.”

“Good. Because we will, of course, contest the legality of this unsupervised, unwarranted intrusion, not to mention that any damage you have done to the property will have to be made good,” Andrew said, maintaining that cheerful, irritating tone. He even winked at Sarich.

Sarich turned away. He stalked back into my house. My gaze burned into his back. I resented his invasion of my place. I resented his fat-arsed cop swagger. Even though he didn’t have a fat arse.

As Sarich disappeared, two men emerged from round the side of the house. One was Clayton. The other wore a grey suit that was almost as crumpled as Clayton’s. He was frowning. Noticing our group standing at the gate, he shook his head at something Clayton had said and strode up the path towards us. “What’s going on here, Constable?” he snapped, his voice, peevish and nasal.

“Sir, this man says he lives here,” the man at the gate said, pointing at me.

“I do live here. And this man is a press photographer,” I said, as Simon, having re-emerged from my car with Andrew’s arrival, snapped the new arrival’s picture. “And this man,” I pointed to Andrew,” is my lawyer. And we’d like to know what gives you the authority to break into my house and conduct a search while I’m not here.”

“Your name?” Andrew inquired. He moved forward authoritatively, and the officer at the gate, with a despairing glance at the man in the suit, faded out of our way.

“I’m Inspector Goldby.” He extracted a folded paper from his pocket and waved it at Andrew, who held out his hand until the Inspector reluctantly placed the warrant in it. Clayton stood to one side, watching impassively.

Andrew held the paper so that I could see it. It was a photocopied type-written sheet that stated baldly that the Authorising Magistrate sanctioned the search of the premises at – my address was inserted over a dotted line. I read it over his shoulder.

“What material?” I said.

“Well, Mr Kinner,” Goldby said. “You could speed up proceedings by handing over any records of recent financial transactions you might have completed. And,” he said, as if struck by an afterthought, “details of any interstate trips you have undertaken.”

“Financial statements?” I said, snorting with derision. “Travel? What – am I supposed to be involved in some kind of international money laundering operation or something?” I shook my head, glancing sideways at Andrew, “I thought this was to do with Jack Treuwin.”

“It is,” Inspector Goldby retrieved his search warrant. “We are looking for evidence we believe links you to the disappearance of Mr Treuwin.”

I still didn’t get it. “What, you think I helped Jack to shoot through on his wife and kids?”

Andrew gripped my arm, warningly. “No, mate,” he said. “They think you’ve disappeared him – it’s a murder inquiry.”

“Well fuck me senseless,” I said.

“On that note,” Andrew chimed in, “my client won’t be saying anything further, unless it’s in a formal interview.”

What the police search was trying to find was evidence in my home that linked me to what they had already found at Sandy’s house. In particular, her bank statement showed that two payments of $25,000 had been withdrawn from the business account, on Sandy’s authorisation and electronically transferred to an account in the name of Daniel Kinner, which had been opened recently at a local bank.

There was also the question of a booking for a flight to Darwin that had been made – and used – on March the 18th, again in the name of Daniel Kinner.

This information emerged during a long and exhausting interview at Mornington Police Station. We sat in a small, windowless room at the back of the open plan office that made up the largest part of the ground floor of the building. As Andrew and I had accompanied Inspector Goldby to the interview room, officers sitting at the rows of paper-covered desks regarded us with that hooded, predatory look that cops give crims. Even if you haven’t done anything wrong, you feel as though you have. We felt like rabbits walking through a foxes’ den. Or I did, anyway.

We sat at a solid table, made of pale wood scarred by cigarette burns and scratches. On the end of the table nearest the wall, a large twin-deck tape machine stood waiting. The ceiling was dotted sound-tiles, the walls plain-painted white, marked with scrapes and black streaks that looked like kicks. The room smelt: of desperation and frustration.

With Andrew there, repeating at every juncture that I was assisting the police inquiry out of the goodness of my heart, and Sarich absent while Clayton and Goldby conducted the interview, there wasn’t much difficulty. It was more bewildering than anything else.

The police investigation had arisen from a series of oddities, some of which involved me.

The campsite in Darwin was definitely Jack’s. Sandy had identified many of his belongings. They had discovered a large area of bloodstained earth, not far away from the tent. Forensic tests had revealed it to be kangaroo, not human blood. Trackers had discovered vehicle tracks, quite close to the camp – some sort of four-wheel drive, but the vehicle that had made them hadn’t been found. Nor had anyone come forward who had seen it.

Money had been deposited during December, in a bank account opened in my name – but not by me. They had shown the teller who had opened the account my photograph. She had unhesitatingly said that the person who had provided bank account cards and licences in my name was not the person in that photo. It suggested she’d not looked too closely at the photo ID on the drivers’ licence, but I let that go.

The $50,000 that had initially aroused their interest was now the least of their concerns. Something like one-and-a-half million dollars had passed through that account, since it had been opened. It had then been almost completely emptied over the succeeding months.

I gave them carte blanche – despite Andrew’s protests – to examine all my bank dealings, to see whether any of it could be traced to me. I knew how little was in my bank accounts. If they could find even five grand in an account in my name, good luck to them. I said as much, trying to make light of it, but it came out sounding more like a challenge. I could just see Sarich’s face, listening to the tape.

Similarly, whoever had booked the plane ticket and flown to Darwin was not me. I hadn’t been working that day, so no one at the paper had seen me during working hours, and since I’d gone for a long ride by myself and then spent the afternoon reading quietly at home, establishing an alibi might have been a problem. Except that I’d attended a function at the Mornington Civic Centre that night – a book launch, for a local author and celebrity. That week’s paper contained a photo in which I stood right next to the dazed-looking writer, as he autographed a copy of his book for me.

I’d been equally incontrovertibly visible over the succeeding few days. Darwin Dan wasn’t me.

That didn’t rule out the possibility, suggested Goldby, that I’d sent someone else on my behalf.

Andrew stared at him. “You must be joking,” he said. “The master criminal sends someone to Darwin to knock off Mr Treuwin, carefully establishes an alibi for himself here – but makes the flight booking in his own name?”

“You have no idea how stupid some crims are,” Goldby said, nodding his head knowledgably.

And policemen, I thought. But I was smart enough – just – not to say that aloud.

When we left, I had the strange feeling that I’d found out more than they had. I heard Clayton speak to someone behind me, when we walked through the office area. “It’s bullshit,” he said, sounding pissed off.

In the interview room, I’d asked how they found out about the plane flight in my name.

Goldby had glanced at Clayton, who’d shrugged and said, “Anonymous tip.”

I didn’t know how it looked to them, but to me it appeared someone had – very clumsily – tried to make it look as though I’d been paid by Sandy to knock Jack off.

Who the fuck would want to do that?

Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice said.

Chapter 34

Mintalie, 1983 (i)

The boy turned, hearing the sound of Gregor’s car, rocks rattling off the underside, drowning out the sound of the engine. He stood at the bottom of his claim. His, in partnership with Gregor. Steve had gone. Two years ago, now. Always temperamental, when weeks of rain had caused their mine to flood, resulting in the tunnel collapsing, burying tools and equipment and ruining weeks of work, he had ranted and raved, throwing his belongings into a battered rucksack, muttering in a language that the boy couldn’t understand, but which Gregor could.

Gregor tried to persuade Steve to stay. He held his arm, through the open window of the car, speaking to him in their own language. But as he explained to the boy later, his partner had had enough. “He is … from the city, back home,” he said. “This life, here, is very hard for someone like him.”

“What about your mine?” the boy asked.

Gregor had shrugged. “He can sell his share, if someone will buy.”

“How much is it worth?” the boy asked. He had added to his little hoard, over the years. He had some quite sizable chunks of opal now, hidden away in his cave. The hideout was still there. It had changed a bit, since the boy had first discovered it, though.

He had made the house his, now. In Mintalie, possession was more than nine-tenths of the law. It was the law – except where mining claims were concerned. The boy had put a roof over the exposed section, using sheets of iron scavenged from other, derelict houses. The rafters and trusses had been built to take a tiled roof, but the boy simply nailed corrugated iron sheets into place. They were quite adequate.

The stone walls had protected most of the rest. The flooring, of tongue-and-groove sheets, had warped a little through its exposure to the heat and rain, but was serviceable enough. The entrance to the tunnels underneath he had covered with a new piece of wood. It was different from the rest, but that couldn’t be helped. He hinged it, so that it lifted up, like a trap door.

Underneath, in the old mine tunnel, was his keeping place.

He had taken the generator from the shed at the old man’s house, and installed it next to his cottage. It provided limited light and power. He didn’t use it often, preferring candles or lanterns. At first, he had just used tattered remnants of carpets, rugs and mats to cover the floor in a patchwork mosaic of stained and faded – but relatively clean – coverings. Over time, though, he had upgraded, obtaining by barter the odd mat or section of carpet from people leaving town. His trapdoor was concealed by a large, colourful rug with a picture of Ayers Rock on it.

Inside the stone walls, the house was divided by stud walls which hadn’t been finished. The boy simply hung old curtains from the bare wood. This effectively split up the space. It didn’t make much difference to the boy, anyway. And no one else visited.

Gregor had helped him repair a windmill, set on the hill behind the house, which pumped water from the artesian spring to a header tank. They also set up a wood-heater that not only heated the house, but created hot water through a coil, as well. Drinking water came from a rain collection tank, or from Paguliio’s store, in large plastic containers.

When he’d asked the question, Gregor had looked hard at the boy. Then he had shrugged. “You want to buy Steffen out?” he asked. Everyone else had co operated with Steffen’s efforts to Australianise his name, except Gregor.

“Do you think I should?” the boy had asked.

Gregor scratched his beard. It was encrusted with gobs of mud from the collapsed shaft, which had dried in the wiry hair as, with the boy’s help, he had begun the laborious task of clearing out their mine. At last he sighed. “I cannot tell you, boy,” he said. “This –“ he waved at the tunnel, eight feet high, disappearing into the earth behind them, “- it could be for nothing. Could be …” he searched for the word, “nothing. Hard work, no fire-stone.”

“Or,” the boy said slowly, “it could be worth heaps.”

Gregor laughed, shaking his head. “Boy, how many rich miners do you see?”

Even so, the next day, the boy brought the fist-sized lump of opal and showed it to Gregor. “Would Steve sell his share to me for this?”

Gregor whistled, turning the rock over in his dusty, calloused hands. His eyes became blank, grey and flat. For a moment, the boy became afraid. The opal chunk was fractured, sticking out of a sandy, nondescript boulder, but the stone was beautiful: a smooth face that sparkled with cold fire as Gregor turned the stone over in his hands. Gregor’s face relaxed. His tongue wet his lips. “Where you find this, boy?” he asked.

The boy told him – up on the massive, piled heap of one of Old Tony Paguliio’s abandoned workings. Gregor nodded. Old Tony tended to let his son, Young Tony, work the claims. Tony Paguliio junior was known to be careless. There had been other, similar finds. “We should take the noodling machine up there,” he said.

“Would he take this?” the boy persisted.

Gregor shrugged, then nodded slowly. “Steffen will accept this,” he said.

Now, Gregor and he were partners. The mine had not made them rich, but they were finding enough with the noodling machine to enable them to keep digging. The opal at Mintalie, unlike the field at Coober Pedy lay in a band that threaded through the ground sixty feet beneath the surface. At Coober, seismic activity had broken up the layer of opal, so that it could be found at seven feet or seventy. The Mintalie opal wasn’t in a flat, regular sheet, of course. If you could see through the earth, it must have looked, the boy thought, like a giant, technicolour splash, sandwiched in rock deep beneath the surface.

Most of the claims were strip mined. A dozer operator would work either for a set fee and a percentage, or for a set fee alone. Mostly they worked for a straight fee. That way, they couldn’t lose. If the miner was short of cash, and the area being mined was known to be rich in opal, they’d accept other arrangements.

The dozer would simply drive across the claim, scraping off a layer of earth and rock at a time. Behind it the claim’s owner would walk, examining the torn earth for signs of the fire in the stone.

Some miners still dug tunnels. The principle here was to dig down to the sixty-foot mark and then to dig drives radiating out until you connected – hopefully – with the frozen lake of opal. Gregor and Steffen’s tunnel started from the side of an excavation that had played out. It had been a rich area, and the section that was their claim hadn’t been worked at all. They’d hoped to find an overlooked section of the opal.

So far, they’d found only the odd, teasing trace. A few slender wisps of blue and green streaking the side of a stone, never quite thickening out into a nice, thick band. They found plenty of potch, the milky, bluish marble that the opal ran through. But, so far, not the real thing.

“Boy! You ready?” Gregor asked, as the car groaned to a halt, in a scatter of small stones.

“Yup, ready to rock and roll,” the boy replied.

“Hmm. Rock and roll,” Gregor repeated. He walked into the tunnel, inspecting the drill holes and set explosives the boy had packed into the areas of the shaft they wanted to blast out. He stopped. “Boy! What you do this here for?” he asked.

The boy shrugged. Instead of placing all the charges deep in the tunnel, where the drive extended far under the earth, he had put two charges at the end of a short, dead-end false start, not far from the opening of the mine.

“Shit! You will bring the whole thing down – collapse it all!” Gregor grumbled.

They had talked about this before. The boy was convinced that the men had gone too deep and too far out from the starting point, close to the huge excavation which marked the area that most of the good stone had been found. The dead end tunnel had become the place where tools were kept, or where they sat to eat, out of the sun, or wind and rain.

“It won’t,” the boy argued. “It’s just a small charge. Just to see.”

Gregor began to grumble, but at the same time, he unrolled the spool of cable that connected the detonator to the explosives.

They retired behind a mound of discarded rock outside the opening to the mine. Gregor wired up a siren to the car battery, warning anyone around that they were blasting.

The boy felt the familiar wave of excitement suffuse him. He loved this aspect of mining. Setting the charges, retiring and then the crump and flat crack as each charge burst deep in the stone, shattering the rock, filling the mine and the air outside with a mist of fine dust.

It was two hours before they could venture inside.

They never got to the end of the drive. Only a metre inside the tunnel they found the first large chunk of rock banded with a thick, serpentine layer of rich, impossibly gorgeous colour.

Gregor sank to his knees. “Fuck me. You found the mother,” he said. “You found the fucking mother.”

Chapter 35

June 19th, 2001

Whether she wanted to or not, I had to speak to Sandy.

I phoned and got the answering machine – just for something completely different. I left no message, but took the car for a drive up to her house.

A white, sleek-looking car was parked in the driveway. I drove my car right in behind it. I wondered if it was a police vehicle. There was no insignia on the exterior, but there was on the papers and folders on the back seat. The police were back. I remembered something that puzzled me. I hadn’t thought about it before, but Sandy had complained, I was sure, that the police hadn’t taken her seriously over Jack’s disappearance. They hadn’t contacted her or kept her informed. She’d had to harass them. But I remembered seeing a marked police car in her driveway several times, when I’d driven past.

Perhaps the “session” with the wine had disorientated her. Perhaps …

I pushed the doorbell button and then knocked, just to be sure.

Emilie, the older of Jack and Sandy’s two daughters at ten, opened the door. “Hi, Uncle Dan!” she smiled. She had gone in days, it seemed, from being a tubby little girl splashing in the pool and coming inside every ten minutes for a bandaid, to being a sophisticated little mini-teenager – right down to the midriff tops and low-cut jeans with silver-studded belts.

“Wow Em!” I said, noticing the inexpertly-applied makeup smearing her eyelids, “What are you all dolled up for?”

She smiled, a little suspiciously, not sure that I wasn’t pulling her leg – which, to be fair, I’d done in the past often enough. “Gran’s taking us to see a film,” she said.

I looked behind her, to where Jetta, Sandy’s foster-mother, was helping Em’s six-year-old sister, Mindy, into a smart blue coat, shepherding her out the door. We’d met a number of times. She smiled at me, “Hello Daniel,” she said. “Go right in. She’s downstairs.” Jetta was a striking woman. She was always immaculately dressed and her long, still-dark hair was coiled up on her head. Jetta’s voice had an attractive huskiness to go with a sibilance that revealed her European origins: she said my name as “Danny-ell”. Now, though, her mouth was set in a tight, disproving line, and she jerked her head abruptly towards the stairs. But she smiled and patted my arm, as I passed her: I wasn’t the problem.

“Thanks, Jetta,” I said.

She shepherded the girls through the front door. I descended the polished wooden stairway, seeing a man’s silhouette against the expanse of windows in the living room. I recognised not so much the outline, as man’s angry aura. The police car out the front belonged to Sarich. He was here on his own. Whoops.

Sandy was standing in front of the windows, arms folded tight across her chest. She stared at me, as I came down the steps. There was nothing in her expression at all: not welcome, not even acknowledgement. Her eyes seemed to have receded in her face, giving her a hunted look.

“Hello Sergeant,” I said to Sarich, noticing at once how the colour flooded into his cheeks at the sight of me. He hadn’t been playing bad cop at all. He disliked me, with virulence. I wondered why it was so personal. Natural antipathy? Misanthropy with a particular focus? A cop-thing?

It was stupid, but I goaded him. “Long time, no see,” I said. “Raided any nice houses lately?”

His eyes flickered at Sandy, then back to me, glaring balefully. “Don’t get too cocky,” he said. His voice was low, but vehement. “I can take you down, don’t you fret about that. Any time I want.”

“Yeah?” I smiled at him. “I look forward to it. Nothing I like better than a good taking down.”

He ignored me, showing commendable – and surprising – restraint. He looked back at Sandy. “I’ll be going, Mrs Treuwin,” he growled. Without waiting for her, he headed up the stairs. Sandy hurried past me, without meeting my eyes. Her heeled shoes clattered up the stairs as she showed him out. Her arms were still wrapped tight around her abdomen as if she felt cold.

It was quite a few minutes before she returned. She descended the stairs, air-kissing me vaguely on the way past. I tried to tell whether she’d been drinking, but couldn’t. “Coffee?” she asked, moving to the kitchen counter with jerky, almost aimless movements.

I agreed to coffee. “What did Sarich want? Are they hassling you about this money thing?” I asked.

She hesitated, then nodded. Her eyes filled with tears. She rubbed at her temples again, a finger beside and behind each eye. “I can’t understand it, Dan,” she said. “Jack handled all the money stuff. It must have been him – but why would he have done that?”

I grimaced, feeling a wry distaste. “It looks to me as though you were right,” I said. “If Jack knew about … us, maybe this is a kind of revenge. Make it look as though we’ve killed him, while he disappears with the money. Mind you,” I said, shrugging, “even a mill and a half isn’t much to disappear on.”

Sandy slumped on the kitchen counter, head on her hands. “It’s more than that,” she said. “That’s only the start. There’s millions missing from the business. More than five million.”

“Oh shit,” I said.

I drove straight to Mornington, making a quick stop before I got to work. Sometimes I get to places, having driven there, and realise that I’ve done so without concentrating one iota on driving the car. This was one of those occasions.

I wondered about Jack. The nature of my friendship with him had always been fraught – from my point of view, at least – because of my affair with his wife. Even so, we had shared many things about ourselves that were true, had shared many moments of simple pleasure at the football, or riding our bikes together. Our friendship had been genuine enough. At least, I’d thought so.

I had thought I’d known Jack. It was disconcerting to realize that I’d not known him at all. It was ironic to realise that he had perhaps understood me better than I’d thought. And much better than I had him.

At the newspaper office, I spent twenty minutes talking to Mark about the previous day’s events. We agreed in the end that it wasn’t that big a story, but that we’d run it, with a few photos, on the principle that, given the paper’s reputation for exposing deceit and hypocrisy, if we didn’t and someone else did, we looked either stupid or shady.

I spent another twenty minutes or so sorting through the stuff – phone messages and media releases – that had accumulated on my desk. Finally, I rang the number of the police station across the road. Clayton was there. “Got a minute?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. His voice gave nothing away. “Do you want to come here?”

“No,” I said. “I’m straight over the road – come over for coffee.”

We sat at one of the streetside tables outside the café, despite the edge on the winter breeze that made a mockery of the sunshine.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” I said. “I’m not going to confess or anything.”

“Shit,” Clayton sipped his cappuccino, giving himself a creamy moustache. “There goes the solved crime bonus.”

“In fact,” I smiled mischievously, ”I’m not going to tell you anything you don’t already know, really.”

“You’re talking yourself down,” he said, eyebrows raised. “You drag me out here on a mid-winter day to not confess, freeze my arse off to tell me stuff you reckon I already know.”

“Could be worse,” I said. “At least the sun’s shining. And I did pay for the coffee.”

“Big spender,” he said, but raised the coffee cup in an ironic toast. “Here’s to ill-gotten gains.”

I told him about my relationship with Sandy. It was one of the things I’d informed her about that morning. Not saying anything earlier had been part cussedness at Sarich’s attitude and behaviour and part gentlemanliness – or that was what I told myself, anyway.

He nodded. “The tip-off told us you two were doing the business.” He took a long swallow of his coffee. “It doesn’t seem to matter, I’ve gotta say,” he said. “We’re looking at this as a hoax. You and his missus were set up, not very well.”

“It’s weird,” I said. “It’s almost as if he wanted it to look fake.”

“Yeah,” Clayton agreed. “It didn’t seem worth the effort. Fooled no one.”

I raised an eyebrow, “Apart from your mate.”

“My mate?” Clayton looked puzzled. Then he grinned, glancing over the road at the blank-windowed façade of the police station. “He’s not my mate,” he said, with the air of someone imparting a deathly secret. “You don’t want to mind him. Sarich got the boot from the Fraud Squad – he’s not taking his demotion too well.”

“Hard to tell, that poker face of his,” I said.

Clayton shrugged. “Anyway, it looks as if your mate shot through and wanted to leave a mess to blow up in your face.”

“Yeah, that’s how I figured it.” I pushed two pieces of card across the desk. “Just to make certain,” I said. Clayton picked them up. One was a photo of Jack. Across the back was written: ‘This is the man who opened an account in the name of Daniel Kinner.’ It was signed. “I showed that photo to the teller,” I said. “My wallet went missing November some time. I remember Jack dropped in one day. He must have got it then and used the ID stuff to open the account. He obviously planned this a long way in advance.”

“You’re right,” he said, looking at the second card, which was a photo of me. The statement signed by the teller was identical, except that the word “not” was inserted between “is” and “the”. Clayton passed the photo back to me. “We knew that,” he said. “It looks certain he set you up. The fraud boys are starting to go through some of the stuff he did financially.” He shook his head. “You’re lucky. His wife is in shit neck deep.”

“Why?” I asked. “Isn’t she a victim too?”

“She’s a company director,” he said, shrugging. “What I hear from those boys, she carries the can.”

Chapter 36

Mintalie, 1983 (ii)

Even after Gregor had paid off what they owed, the boy stood to make something like a hundred thousand dollars from the opal they extracted from the new drive. They found nothing as rich as the chunk of that first huge seam, but they were following a narrow band of potch and colour through the rock, hoping it would lead to another rich lode.

There was no one at Mintalie, of course who could buy the stone they had uncovered. Gregor phoned a dealer in Alice Springs, to whom he had sold stones before. The man flew down the next day, his plane sweeping to a dusty stop on the bare, bumpy dirt strip. The boy watched as Gregor took the dealer to Borgert’s Hotel. They were there a long time. It was late afternoon when the dealer emerged. Old Tony Paguliio drove him back to his plane. The boy watched as it took off, swooping in a wide, arrogant arc over the town, before heading north, back to Alice Springs – a place the boy had never even seen.

Gregor didn’t emerge from the pub at all. The boy became tired of waiting, in the end, and went back to his house. He couldn’t settle, however. The wind teased at the stone walls, whistling through tiny nooks the boy hadn’t plugged, rattling a sheet of tin on the roof where a nail had pulled a little from a sun-wracked rafter.

The boy paced his living room. A lantern lit up the kitchen alcove, but the rest of the house was in near darkness. The cast-iron wood heater in the corner, metal ticking as it expanded, gave the room a warmth that reflected from the reds and oranges of the native stone, as if they retained the heat baked into them by millions of summers. Light from the stove’s tiny, smoky glass window cast jumping, writhing shadows that lurked in the niches where each fractured lump of naked stone nestled up to its neighbour.

The boy snatched a bulging scrapbook from a rough wooden shelf and began to leaf through it, sitting in a vinyl reclining armchair he had found. The photos pasted and taped inside were now badly faded. The older ones had blurred; orange or dark grey bars obscuring sections of the pictures.

The boy looked carefully at his favourite picture: the old man, the woman and the girl.

He had folded the photo, so that the old man, with his arrogant, leering sneer of a smile, was underneath. Only the two women’s faces looked out at him. He stared at the face of the woman. He remembered how he used to hold the photo next to the mirror in the old dresser in the old man’s room, back at the house, trying to see something of her features in his own face. Her hair, faded to a yellow-white blur, was certainly much more fair than his. It was impossible to tell what colour her eyes were.

Only in that smile that held no hint of amusement could he discern anything of himself. In the shadow that it cast on the expression of her face, and that of the girl at her feet the boy could see the wariness and watchfulness of his own features. But where in her, it gave her the look of the victim, in his own face, it was subtly transposed into something more wild.

It was the look of the captured creature, that sits safely behind its fence, watching the world that passes. It was the face of the dissembler, the mask that colours danger in the cloak of normalcy. It was the hooded, sharpened arrow-glance of the hunter.

The photos held no peace for him tonight. There was nowhere there for him to go. Nowhere there.

The boy hurled himself out of his chair, slamming the scrapbook down onto the trestled door that served as his table. He slid a bolt across, to prevent the outside door from being opened.

The rug he swept aside with booted feet, revealing the trapdoor to the world beneath. He pulled at a flattened metal strip inserted through a hole in the board. It slid easily from the wood, so that he could lift the slab enough to insert his fingers in the gap and lever it open.

He lowered the trapdoor behind him, as he descended into the tunnel beneath.

The tunnel beneath the house had changed very little since the boy had chanced upon it, covered by a warped sheet of plywood, when he had been exploring the partially-completed house. The initial shaft was only three metres down, and angled, not vertical. Originally, there had been only rough handholds, chipped into the rock, but the boy had put in a set of steep, solid wooden steps.

At the bottom, the drives opened off a small pit that was about three metres square. There were three tunnels. Off to the left, the boy had discovered the way that led out, through a narrow tunnel made for ventilation or perhaps pumping equipment. The boy had widened and improved this access. At its outer point, he placed a set of heavy boards that he secured from the inside with a huge baulk of wood. He could exit from inside, but from the outside, his lair was secure.

The second tunnel went from underneath the steps, and only extended a few metres: it had probably been a storage area. The final tunnel – the main drive – led straight ahead. It was quite long, almost sixty metres, and sloped gently down. Because the house was set quite high, there was no problem with water seepage, so the tunnel was dry. It wasn’t even very cold – the temperature underground hardly varied, throughout the year.

At the end of the drive, the boy had placed brick pallets and then flooring on top of them. There was a double bed mattress, covered with lurid sheets he’d stolen from the abandoned motel. To one side of the bed, a plastic-wood-veneered cupboard contained all the magazines he’d taken from Bern’s caravan, and many others he’d added himself, since then. A battered plywood wardrobe contained the clothing from the old man’s bedroom. His mother’s clothing. The princess’s clothes.

The boy lay on the bed for half an hour or so, flicking through the magazines, looking at the faces of the people in the pictures. He felt the swelling of his power tighten the muscles of his stomach. His head pounded with the fullness of the force that congested his breath and made him hard.

The open space he’d carved out was redolent with the brassy smell of blood. The sour odour of fear and desperation and death had somehow permeated the rock walls. Far from being repulsed, the boy’s breathing quickened. He left the bed, on its platform, and made his way across to the other side of the cave. He ducked his head a little, unconsciously feeling that he might scrape his head against the stone ceiling, as he straightened and grew with the power that filled him.

The walls here were decorated with tools hanging from hooks drilled into the rock: pincers and pliers; rope and chains; shackles, hammers and knives. Many were stained black, with old blood. The gritty, dusty floor too was bodged with dried patches. In the middle of the tunnel, in this alcove, was a bench, made from a solid slab of wood, set on four posts, concreted into the floor. Set in the bench top were ringbolts. The wood and metal fittings were coated black.

As the lantern the boy carried illuminated the end of the tunnel, from a large box, set with a solid, small-meshed wire grid in the lid, came a rustling sound of movement. A dog’s face appeared at the opening, as it leaped eagerly to see him.

“Hello, then,” the boy crooned. “Do you want to play?” He spoke softly and gently as he unbolted the lid, removed the dog and placed him in the centre of the table, where he sniffed the surface interestedly.

Chapter 37

Jetta 20th- 24th, 2001

Sandy was in deep trouble. Jack had completely stripped the family company of assets and cash before he left. Over the first few months of this year, company assets – including subsidiary businesses that Jack had started – had been sold off and converted into cash. All of this had disappeared. The process had intensified up to March and then ceased, except for a late surge of withdrawals, from cash accounts, particularly, from March 18th, until the 22nd, after which there was nothing.

There were two oddities that kept teasing at me.

The first was that the way Jack had done this had effectively ensured that his daughters were left with nothing. If he had known of Sandy’s betrayal and mine, his attempt to entangle us in a plot to murder him made some sort of sense. It also followed that he’d try to leave Sandy with nothing.

But Jack had always prided himself on being what he called a good “provider”. He worked long – extraordinarily long – hours, but he’d buy the girls gifts and take them to see films, or to theme parks and on holidays. He would often go without Sandy, who disliked the glitzy showmanship of the adventure parks and their rides, and who detested most films, preferring books. This action was completely out of keeping with that side of his character.

Secondly, the way he’d set Sandy and I up was clumsy. I didn’t know why he’d bothered, really. It was so transparently false that the police had suspected from the outset that that was what he had done. According to Clayton, anyway.

Jack was smart. He was also very clever with money – and people. If he’d wanted to ensure Sandy and I were implicated in his disappearance, I was sure he could have made it look much more convincing than he had. So why do it?

Possibly, he had just wanted everyone to know exactly what he had done. It told everyone, loud and clear that far from being the duped cuckold, he had known what was going on and had dealt with it, in his own way.

That certainly accounted for what he’d done to Sandy, but if his aim was to punish, he’d pretty much let me off scott-free. The police investigation (and even my own cursory inquiry) showed that opening the account in my name into which the $50,000 had been placed – and from which it had been removed – had been wasted effort. There was no other link between me and either the missing money or his disappearance. It had meant a few days’ inconvenience, but nothing else. Sandy, on the other hand, was staring at the loss of her whole lifestyle: house, cars … the lot.

Maybe he blamed her more than me. Or maybe he was thinking that I’d feel obligated to help Sandy out of the difficulties that were assailing her. Well, he was right – I did. But even so, that was hardly punishment on the same scale as he’d meted out to her.

And, through her, to his daughters.

And even though I’d tried to offer Sandy my help, as she had so often before, she went from having been approachable and communicative, to remote again. I left one message on the answering machine. But when she never returned it, I drove to the house. I was determined not to let her slip into a depressed trough of alienation and negativity.

Jetta was still staying with her. Recently, I had talked more to her than to Sandy – who might stay in her room, even if she knew I was there. Jetta thought the pressures of all that had happened were causing Sandy’s depression to return. I didn’t really know what to make of her attitude.

According to Jetta, the police investigation was progressing quickly. The investigators had discovered Jack’s trail, tracing the way he had methodically sold off various components of the business. He had converted most to cash, merging loans; selling capital assets, company titles and investments.

The nature of the flower business itself had allowed him to simply siphon off the cash as it came through. By the end of February, when he’d departed, all that was left was a shell company consisting of a series of bank accounts – all with healthy balances – and nothing else.

The result, at that stage, was a business whose operations – or operating parts – had vanished, but which was cash-rich. Certainly, there was plenty there to satisfy bank loans and overdrafts which were still to be honoured.

From Darwin, however, he had withdrawn the balance of those accounts, in two bursts, a week or so apart. Some were large cash withdrawals, but most were electronic funds transfers to accounts in the Cook Islands. “Apparently it’s the Australian equivalent of a Swiss bank account,” Jetta had explained, seeing my raised eyebrows. “Once the money is there, nobody knows nothing – unless you have the access code.”

Sandy’s problem was that the banks didn’t care what had happened to the business, they only wanted their money back, without caring much where it came from. Jack had recently used the family home as collateral for some of those loans. Others had been secured against assets of the business that no longer existed. Sandy was looking at losing her house and facing prosecution, for failing her duties as a director of the company.

None of this I heard from her lips. But her stepmother, struggling to deal with what had happened, confided in me. If I tried to broach the subject with Sandy of how she was going to deal with the legal and other circumstances confronting her, she was dismissive. “Dan, it’s kind of you to be concerned,” she said, when I more or less cornered her. “I’m sorry that you were involved in the way that you were, and I’m glad it was so easily cleared up. Now you’re clear, I don’t want you to be caught up in this. We’ll deal with it the best way we can.” She wouldn’t meet my eyes, and folded her arms across her midriff, hands gripping the opposite forearm tightly.

“That’s silly,” I said. “It’s not as if we’re acquaintances or something. We were – we are involved. Why won’t you let me help?”

Jack had often said that when Sandy shut him out, it was like a door slamming in his face. I saw that now. “We are acquaintances, Dan,” she said. She turned in my direction, but without meeting my eyes. Her face was as still and cool as marble. “Whatever we were is gone. I have a future to piece together. It doesn’t involve you. End of story.”

Well, that seemed clear enough. Why couldn’t I accept it?

Chapter 38

Mintalie, 1983 (iii)

Gregor had long gone, by the time the boy went looking for him the next day. He’d worked at the mine all morning, trying to chip away at the seam of potch that bled through the rock beyond where the charges had demolished the tunnel end.

At lunchtime, he’d given it away, and driven the old car he’d inherited from Steffen, along with his share of the claim, to the pub. Wally Borgert said he’d not seen Gregor at all. But he wouldn’t meet the boy’s gaze. His eyes slipped away, to the doorway, behind the boy, or to the grimy windows, before flicking back to his face, as if drawn by some fascination.

The boy walked around to the flat behind the motel that Gregor had lived in since he had arrived at Mintalie. He had used to laugh at how the cost of the room had fallen, over the time he’d lived in the town, rather than rising, as the price of everything else did.

Gregor’s was the only room of the row of ten that was still used regularly. Accommodation was something that Mintalie had plenty of. People to fill the houses and hotel rooms … they were scarce, and growing more scarce.

Gregor’s room was – as always – unlocked. It was completely empty. The boy had been on other occasions, to pick Gregor up, or to drop stuff off. Gregor didn’t own many belongings, but there had been a scatter of dusty clothes, magazines and a couple of books, and rock curiosities he’d found – some fossils in potch and opal – to give the room a touch of personality.

Not now. It was completely empty: clothes, books, rock collection, all gone.

Later, old Tony Paguliio told the boy what had happened.

Not only had Gregor taken the money and gone, but he’d also sold the claim to Paguliio before he left. The boy had never troubled about things like birth certificates, or licences. In Mintalie, they weren’t really necessary. When he’d paid Steffen for his share of the claim, nothing had been signed. No paper had exchanged hands.

The boy read only haltingly, anyway, and his hand writing seemed to have atrophied since school, through lack of use. A handshake had sealed the deal, and his partnership with Gregor at the same time. It didn’t seem to need more than that.

What costs had accrued since then had been borne between he and Gregor out of what they found with the noodling machine, since the mine, up till this point, hadn’t delivered. Profits hadn’t really been something that troubled either of them, since after food and fuel, there wasn’t much left over anyway.

The boy had a small amount of cash hidden in his house that had accrued over the past two years. He certainly didn’t have a bank account. Or any official documents at all.

In terms of the claim, he didn’t exist. Gregor’s had been the only name remaining on the title. In terms of the partnership, the boy had no rights at all, either. The lure of the money – a fair bit more, it turned out, than he’d initially led the boy to believe – had simply been too much for Gregor to resist. Having sold the largest stones to the Alice Springs dealer, he had simply pocketed the cheque, loaded the car and driven away, never to return.

Mrs Paguliio had insisted that her husband explain what had happened. In fact, Tony Paguliio employed the boy, in the end. He could have ordered his son to work the claim – or contracted others, as he sometimes did. But it was easier – especially with his wife nagging him – to make a deal with the boy. Paguliio knew he was reliable. The boy also knew the claim and the workings.

The Paguliios helped the boy to obtain his birth certificate. There had, in fact, been no record of his birth at all. He had to go through a long process – signing various forms that Paguliio and a policeman from Marla went through with him.

It had been difficult. Paguliio had tried to explain to the bewildered police officer. “He useta live with ‘is grandfather, see,” he said. “But he shot through … coupla years ago. Left the boy ‘ere.”

“So what was his grandfather’s name?” the policeman asked, pen poised over a blank section on the application form.

Paguliio shrugged. “I never know his name.” He called to his wife, who came up with “Mick”. Someone, she was sure, maybe Vic, had called the old man “Cookie”, from time to time.

The policeman put a dash in the section of the form that said “Mother” and “Father”. Under next of kin, he wrote “Michael Cook”, leaving everything else blank.

“When’s yer birthday?” he asked.

The boy wasn’t sure of this either. But the previous year, when Gregor had had a birthday party, he’d been asked the same question, and had invented a date. He used that now. “January 13th, 1965,” he said.

“OK,” said the policeman, writing the date in, “that would make you … eighteen years and seven months.”

Weeks later, after the policeman drove away, the boy had received, through the post, his first letters: one contained a birth certificate – largely blank; the second a driver’s licence.

A separate envelope – unstamped, because it was handed to him direct by Tony Paguliio, contained a copy of his agreement with Antonio Paguliio (Trading as Coppi Inc.).

The boy went back to work.

Chapter 39

July 2nd – 14th, 2001

Why couldn’t I accept Sandy’s dismissal? Partly because of my own arrogance. But also because one way or the other, I was involved. Even if Sandy didn’t acknowledge the fact that our lives were intertwined, the fact was that they were. I was Jack’s friend too, wasn’t I? Whatever had happened. I owed him at the very least a duty of friendship. In fact, given that I had betrayed his trust, whether he knew it or not, I probably owed him more, didn’t I?

But the larger truth was that I couldn’t stay away. My phone messages continued. And were ignored. I told myself that if Sandy wanted to move on and remove me from her life, she had a perfect right to do so.

I told myself that, but I didn’t believe it. I kept finding myself in the car, slowing, as I drove past her house, debating whether to present myself at the front door, trusting to her sense of manners or decorum – or her unwillingness to risk a scene – to get me inside.

I didn’t go in, however. But I’d slow down, even stop outside the driveway, to check that she was there. The white cop car that I’d seen Sarich drive was often parked in the front drive. On those occasions, I simply drove on, turned and went home. For a ride, or a drink. Or anything.

It seemed obvious that the police investigation into Sandy was a continuing and invasive affair. I wished I could help. I wished I knew what was going on. Jetta had stopped talking – I got the impression Sandy had instructed her not to tell me anything.

The police had shown no further interest in me. I’d phoned Clayton, a week or so after our coffee meeting, to ask whether they’d identified the person who’d flown to Darwin under my name. “No,” he said. “We showed the hostesses a photo of Jack, but they couldn’t ID it. No reason for them to notice, really.”

“What about airport security cameras?” I’d suggested.

There was a silence. Clayton said, tone light, “Listen, your next article – use less words. There are too many words in your articles. You need to say the same thing, but shorter. That’s what you need.”

I got it. “Thanks,” I said. “Listen, I have to go – I need to phone granny and give her some tips on egg-sucking.”

“Go to it,” he said, chuckling.

I still buzzed around Sandy, like a demented bee. It wasn’t that I was in love with her. Nor was it some Lancelot complex driving me to impose my rescue on a fair maiden – whether she wanted it or not! It was sheer bloody-mindedness. I didn’t like being shown the door. I didn’t like being ordered around. I especially didn’t like being told what was and what was not my business.

Finally, I got a phone call from Jetta.

“Sandy’s asked me to call you, Daniel,” she said.

“Great. It’s nice to talk to you too, Jetta.” Jetta liked me, I knew – and we’d offered each other some comfort, at times, since all this had blown up. Until recently, that was, when she’d clammed up too. She wouldn’t appreciate the sarcasm, so I tried to soften it with a question. “How’s Sandy going?”

“She’s doing well, thank you Daniel,” she said, speaking carefully, as if every word needed to be measured out and placed like a stone in a wall.

“That’s good,” I said. “Because I was afraid all the pressure from the police and the money stuff might have been … you know, grinding her down.”

“Well it is distressing, of course,” she said, “but Sandy’s getting plenty of support.”

“Oh,” I said. “Fine.” I sensed that Jetta was saying something more than just that Sandy was coping. The sense was that any more support was not wanted. “Well, if there’s anything I can do …” I said.

“Well, there is, in a way,” she said. She paused, and then continued in a rush, “You need to stop trying to contact her, Daniel. Doing that is causing some … distress.”

I felt the anger spike inside me, alongside a feeling of uncertainty: how much had Sandy told her mother? “Well, it’s distressing me too, Jetta,” I said. “I keep going from being good friend to pariah every few days, and I haven’t the faintest idea what I’ve done.”

“I really can’t answer that, Daniel,” she said quickly. “I’m simply doing what Sandy wants me to, at this stage. We all want her to get through this, and she just can’t cope with too much, at the moment.”

“I do appreciate that, Jetta,” I persisted, refusing to take the hint. “That’s why I’ve been trying to offer to help.”

“And I understand what you’re saying, Daniel.” Jetta spoke firmly. Then she hesitated and said, “I have to tell you that Sandy is going to take out a restraining order, to prevent you from contacting her – or trying to.”

“A restraining order!” I was aghast. What the hell was going on?

“I’m afraid so, Daniel. That means no phone calls, no … driving past the house all the time. Nothing at all.”

I felt, all at once, very tired. “Whatever, Jetta,” I said, giving in. “But this is nuts.”

“Daniel,” she said, and I heard a catch in her voice. “I don’t know what’s going on, either. This may just be something Sandy has to go through in her own way. I’m very sorry.”

The restraining order was duly delivered. By Sarich, with a smug look of satisfaction on his face. I knew what it was about when I opened the front door to his peremptory – if not quite as violent – knock.

“Mr Kinner,” he said, deep voice restrained and formal.

“Yeah, yeah.” I held out my hand. “Got a letter for me, have you?”

“Yes, I have,” he said, voice flat. He smirked, as he recited a formal spiel. “This is an intervention order sought by Mrs Sandra Treuwin. It has been granted for a period of two weeks after which time, at a hearing, a magistrate will decide on a continuation. You will have an opportunity at this time to contest the order. In the meantime, you are prevented from contacting Mrs Treuwin in any way, and from entering or loitering near her premises. Do you understand the circumstances of this order?”

“Yes,” I said, holding out my hand.

He kept me waiting, though, rubbing it right it. “Contravention of this order can result in your arrest and being charged with an offence.”

“Whatever.” I held out my hand again.

He allowed me to grasp the envelope, but didn’t let go. I met his eyes, puzzled. “You’re not off the hook, shitwit,” he said. “There’s something suss about all of this, and I figure you right in the middle of it.”

I pulled the envelope from his fingers, “You’re nuts,” I said, swinging shut the door in his face. “Piss off.”

Not the most eloquent of dismissals, nor the smartest way to speak to a cop, especially one like Sarich. He moved his foot forward, preventing the door from closing. Using his hip to keep the door ajar, he reached in and grabbed my shirt. He might have been short, but he was strong and his permanent anger – allied to the unexpectedness of his action – caught me by surprise.

He jerked me towards him, into the gap between the partially-closed door and the jamb. My face cracked against the edge of the door. As I jerked back against his grip, he gave me a shove and released me, so that I sprawled backwards on the tiles.

Leaving the door wide open, he turned and walked away.

I sat where I had fallen, shocked at the suddenness and violence of his actions. Despite my more than occasionally vitriolic mouth, I had very seldom been involved in physical conflict.

Drops of blood began to spatter on the tiles between my knees, I pinched my nose, feeling with my tongue the abrasions on the inside of my lips. Eventually, I went and got some ice.

Things we do – and say – can sometimes have an obverse effect.

The result of the intervention order was in some ways exactly what Sandy intended. I gave her a wide berth. No phone calls, no drive-bys. Sarich’s short, sharp reminder of the stupidity of stirring up snakes, however, made me resentful. Instead of confirming his superiority and authority, he aroused my antagonism. Instead of fear, he produced anger.

So did it stop me from gnawing away at the puzzle of Jack’s disappearance? No.

In fact, it made me more determined than even to unravel what had happened. If the starting point had been my affair with Sandy, then the ignition point must have been when Jack found out about it. From that time, he had decided – as far as I could tell – to leave, and in a way that left no one in any doubt about how he felt or what he knew.

The half-hearted attempt to implicate me could either be seen as compromised because of time, or – less likely – because he wanted to make a point, but not seriously to hurt me. Sandy’s betrayal, in that sense, he had obviously regarded as far more serious. Her “punishment”, therefore, had been far greater.

Once in Darwin, Jack had begun to denude that various banks accounts he had set up. Then, definitely, he had started his bike adventure. He had pedalled almost 600 kilometres, before making his last roadside camp, a hundred and fifty-odd kilometres south of Mataranka and disappearing. At about this time, there had been a final series of withdrawals from holding accounts for the money realised through the gradual dismemberment of his company. So far so good – an organised disappearance.

But then, a week after that, a strange, garbled phone call to Sandy, calling for help.

Everything else that had happened could be explained – tied in with his plan to abscond, and punish. But why plan everything, effect the disappearance, and then “reappear” with a phone call – and one pleading for help?

Since then, there had been nothing. Police, according to Clayton, had confirmed that the call had been made from Jack’s mobile phone, and had originated from a relay tower near the Borroloola Rd intersection with the Stuart Highway. They were convinced that it was just another part of the hoax, designed to torment Sandy even more.

I wasn’t so sure. It was quite possible that the call had been genuine. What if, having modelled his disappearance on the actions of the killer they were calling the “Highway Killer”, Jack really had fallen victim to someone preying on strangers, tourists – wealthy quarry just like him?

There were no answers here, I thought. Time to get away from lost friendships, lost lovers, raids, restraining orders and angry policemen. Time for a holiday. Perhaps I’d head north. Who knows? I might even meet up with Jack!

Part four: north promontory

Chapter 40

Mintalie, 1990

“That OK, Rob?”

The boy nodded, smiled. A grimace, really, but it passed. Alex leaned the sign he’d just dragged from the roadside against the workshop wall. Once Alex was out, the boy slammed shut the entrance port set into the huge roller door that closed off access to the repair bay of the Marla Roadhouse. Sure that it was securely locked, he tucked the keys in his overalls pocket and swung the holdall he’d used to carry some tools and his lunch into the open back of his station wagon.

“See ya tomorrow, boss.”

The boy lifted a hand as he walked round to the driver’s seat. “No, you won’t, Alex – you open up, can you? Seven-thirty sharp, right?”

“No worries – you not comin’ in?”

“I’ll be here first thing, but I have to go to Alice for a few things – keep the bank happy. Be back Monday. You’re in charge.” The boy’s lips twisted in that approximation of a smile again.

“No worries, boss, I’ll be here!” Alex repeated, grinning back at him. He liked being left in charge, liked the way the boss relied on him. But there was an element of seriousness in his tone. Rob Cook was a very fair boss, but what he said was what he meant, no question. Just because he wasn’t round didn’t mean that you could let things slip. Oh no. Tight, trim, shipshape. That was Rob Cook’s Marla Auto Centre.

The boy had been lucky, in so many ways. His partnership with Old Tony Paguliio had earned both of them a good dividend. There’d been nothing like that first great stone out of the mine, but they’d kept finding small, but worthwhile pockets of opal for two years before it had played out.

He’d continued to run the noodling machine, too. Gregor had left it – obviously! – and no one else had laid claim, so the boy had simply carried on as if it were his. Eventually, it just was. He’d found a twenty thousand-dollar stone, and many smaller ones. With nothing to spend it on, the money in his bank account just kept piling up.

He’d become bored, however. When the opportunity came up to work at the automotive centre at Marla, he’d jumped at the chance. He’d leased the noodling machine to a pair of young fortune hunters and become, in Old Tony’s contemptuous words, “a wage slave”. He’d enjoyed it, though.

He was good with machines. The lessons he’d learned in those early days with Gregor and Steffen had been valuable. His willingness to work hard, coupled with a meticulous and organised approach had meant that he’d assumed more and more responsibility in the workshop.

When Algar Strelecki, the owner, had decided to retire to Alice Springs and sell the lease to run the place, the boy had hesitated not at all. He’d borrowed a little money from the bank – something which made him nervous, but which Old Tony Paguliio had helped him through – and started to make money.

He’d cleaned the workshop out, from top to bottom. Staff – those who stayed – were put on rosters, signed in and out, and were paid regularly and at set rates. They wore clean overalls, and spoke politely to customers. Everyone took turns working in the office. A few, accustomed to the casual way that Algar had run the workshop, left. The rest had enjoyed the change. They now were firmly encouraged to take pride in their work.

The track to Mintalie hadn’t improved an iota in the years the boy had been driving back and forth. At this time of year, it was at its best – relatively speaking. During the wet, it became difficult, and often impassable. It would frequently be cut by swift-flowing, incredibly broad stretches of muddy, swirling water. Even when they receded, the residue was so slippery and treacherous that it took a four-wheel drive and a very skilled driver to negotiate the 40-odd kilometres to the sealed road. The boy often stayed in a cabin behind the caravan park, when this happened.

In the dry, drifts of fine, powdery dust covered corrugations and potholes, so that the unwary driver – or a vehicle not robust enough for the track – might come to an abrupt, clattering halt as shock absorbers collapsed, springs shattered or a concealed protrusion of the rocky spine beneath the thin skin of dry earth ripped the exhaust off or sump out.

Today, the track was dry. September was a month most loved in the Territory. Wildflowers spread in wild and colourful profusion as far as the eye could see. It almost looked as if some incredible gardener had sowed enormous patches of particular flowers, so that for kilometre after kilometre, purple, or yellow or white might stretch to the horizon. In many places, the road was fringed with the red and black lace of the Desert Pea.

Driving west, into the sun, the boy could hardly make out the flowers: the glare of the lowering sun, refracting through the dust smeared across the windscreen made the road ahead a glare of red and gold over a hump of darkness that was the next ridge.

The oncoming car was almost on him before he realised. At the last minute, he caught the glint of sun on metal and pulled over to the left, slowing to allow the other vehicle to pass. It was a Land Cruiser, painted white – but layered with a red smear of dust – and equipped with an angular black bull-bar. The boy raised a casual finger in salute, glimpsing the official coat of arms on the dust-streaked side panel, as they slipped past: ships in the desert.

The boy stopped at Paguliio’s to drop off a few things that had been left at Marla for Mama and Tony. “What were the cops doing here?” he asked, as Mama slipped some beers into a plastic bag for him.

Mama Paguliio grinned, her eyes narrowing to knowing slits. “What’s up, hey? You gotta guilty conscience, you boy?”

The boy forced a smile, shaking his head. “Yeah. I have this crop of magic mushrooms down the mine.”

Mama Paguliio guffawed, her massive chest shaking with mirth: she’d developed a soft spot for the boy, ever since Bern’s demise. Even if she suspected what had happened to Bern, she’d also formed her own suspicions about why. Now, even the wattles of flesh on her biceps trembled. “No,” she said, at last, “it was just that police girl – Kimberley Whatsaname. She put up some of her posters.”

In a corner of the store, near the door, was a large, Perspex-covered notice board. On it were pinned many community service announcements, including police bulletins for stolen vehicles and missing persons. The boy went over and casually glanced over the pages. There were two A4 sheets with passport-size photos in grainy black-and-white. Even if you knew the people well, you’d hardly be able to recognise anyone from the pictures there, he thought. Unless … His gaze lingered, and then he turned away.

It was almost nine, by the time he parked the car inside the large shed he’d built beside the stone cottage, but there was still plenty of light. He unloaded a few things he’d brought from Marla and the cold beer from Mama Paguliio’s and entered his cottage.

It was quite sophisticated inside, now – by comparison with his early efforts, anyway. The stone walls of the main room were still undressed – he liked the way they reflected the new woodfire, glowing with remembered colour. The kitchen area and bedroom were properly separated. The bare studs had been plastered, finished and painted a plain, Spartan white. The kitchen benches and cupboards were of pine, but stained and lightly varnished. They contrasted with the white of the walls and vivid blue and yellow curtains.

His bedroom was simply furnished too. Only a large double bed, a wardrobe and a cupboard occupied the floor space. The boy owned few clothes, few possessions, in fact, apart from those he used day to day.

The biggest change was in the modern, efficient generator, which supplied plentiful electricity. Now each room was lit by carefully positioned lights that either illuminated the entire space, or shone to highlight particular areas or features. The power also enabled him to have a proper fridge and freezer.

Once inside, the boy put his shopping away. Freeing a beer from its cardboard holder, he sat outside on the paved area at the front door, trying to relax. The house looked out across a wasteland of humped hillocks and plunging holes. Scrubby bushes eked out a desperate existence between piles of greyish waste stone, unearthed from its secret, drab concealment metres beneath the surface and turned to show its true, worthlessness. It had been ripped from its place because of its nearness to something of value. Death by association. A few struggling native grasses peeked from remnants of the original topsoil that had somehow escaped the bulldozers’ scything blades.

It was a revolting prospect, but one which usually brought a degree of contentment to the boy. It was a wide, brutal, uncompromising environment. It was what had bred him, borne him, wrought him.

He considered the paper pinned to the wall of the store. Was there anything sinister about it appearing here? No. There was one probably in every town up and down the central highway. There could be nothing for him to worry about.

The sun bathed him and the front of his home in an ochre surge of light before it dipped suddenly below the lumped horizon. The glow seemed to infuse him with life and energy. He felt that redness suffuse him. It was as if his muscles swelled, sucking out the heat from the dying sun. The boy drained the bottle, stood and went back inside the house.

From the fridge he poured some meat from a tin of pet food into a battered tin bowl. The letters that spelt out “Princess” were barely intelligible, now. He locked the front door, threw back the rug that covered a section of the bedroom floor. Beneath it was a square of particle-board flooring. Lifting a small metal hook embedded in the board, near the wall, he raised the whole section, propping it open with a rod that hinged down and slotted into a hole in the support below. In the centre of the revealed section was the trapdoor he’d installed when he first claimed the house as his own, all those years ago. The boy picked up the bowl and opened the trapdoor.

As he went down the steps, he flicked a switch that turned lights on in the passage below.

He chose the right hand passage. His booted footsteps made soft scraping sounds on the worn rock. His breath rasped back at him from the stone walls.

At the end of the tunnel, now, there was a metal grid, cemented into the stone. Beyond that lay the bench and his tools. Past that, the end of the tunnel, with its garish bed, the bench table, ringbolts in the wall and the cage-box. As the boy approached, something stirred inside the box. Something moved to peer through the wire grid at the front. A chain rattled and the creature whimpered.

Chapter 41

Mid-July, 2001

It was late afternoon and pouring, when I darted from the shelter of the front porch to where the car stood, backed up to the house. Once outside the gate, I looped a chain around the gatepost and snicked a padlock shut on it, making it impossible to open it without cutting the chain. It should deter even a police raid, should they feel inclined to return.

I felt like I should take a last, long look at the house. The rain, however, made lingering farewells impossible. I hurled myself back into the driver’s seat, turning the air conditioning up as the heat of my wet body began to steam up the windscreen.

Over in the west, the sun glowed hazily gold, breaking through the scudding clouds and the last of the rain. A harbinger? I was headed west. And north. By the time I got to the freeway, the rain had almost stopped, though the road was soaked. Ahead, the sky was purpled with the coming night, tousled with clouds. Arching over the road, as clear as if it were man-made, a pyrotechnic display for a rock concert or film, was a rainbow. If I kept on, I’d travel right beneath its vibrant, electric blaze of colour. It was the clearest, most vivid I’d ever seen, each band of colour distinct.

It receded – fled – faded, vanished before me. Even in the car I couldn’t catch it, pass beneath it. It was a passage only attainable in dreams, I thought. Or maybe you could pass under that ghostly magnificence, but not know it. After all, would it really change anything? Only in stories, in legends.

In the rain-washed air, each feature of the countryside was carved, outlined with a clarity that went beyond sight, almost to touch. Traffic lights glowed: the green an emerald that was frantic with life; orange bursting, joyous; red pulsing with angry denial. Oncoming cars’ lights gleamed a sickly, pallid yellow: jealous, empty, pursuing dreams that hurried away before them.

As I might well be. What was I looking for? What was I hoping to find? A car, crossing the highway, sped across in front of me. The driver hadn’t paused and looked. If it had happened a few seconds later, it might have cut my car in two. Maybe, at the end of a road across the continent, that’s all I’d find” capricious fate had caused two events, two lives to coincide, instead of missing by seconds.

Or would lightning yet erupt from those still-vehement clouds, to arrow through my illusory security? I was, as we all are, wrapped in the busyness of being me: this course and action said I was who I was: I am what I do. My conceited faith declared that because of that fact nothing would happen, and I’d continue on my way.

Nothing did. And I did.

I parked in the long-term parking section of the airport, loaded my luggage onto the trailer of a green-and-white bus that transported me to the air terminal. Each action felt more significant than I wanted it to be. It was as if things meant more. As if going at all was a journey that was more than just getting away from things, or even looking for a lost friend.

Telling Mark I needed time away from the paper hadn’t been easy. He had a business to run. I’d worked hard to establish myself there. He’d accepted my need to go, but hadn’t been very encouraging.

“Fair enough. I understand that you feel you need to go.” He leaned forward, challenging me with his eyes, hands clasped together, index fingers aimed like the barrels of a gun. “But at the end of the day, there may still be a place for you here, or there may not.” He sat back, folded his arms. The message was: you’re an idiot. Don’t go.

It was what I’d been telling myself for days, now. But I was leaving anyway.

Sighing, I took an envelope from my carry-on bag. It contained a sheaf of articles culled from the major newspapers that I’d put together. There were articles about Jack’s disappearance as well as pieces about other travellers who’d vanished without explanation in the area. There were a surprising number.

Reading between the journalese, the Northern territory, and in particular, the Stuart Highway, which ran from Darwin straight through the centre of Australia to Adelaide, was a place people got lost. It was also a place to which people sometimes went deliberately to get “lost”.

Jack wasn’t the only one who had headed for the Far North, or the Centre to reinvent themselves. There were many hundreds of people who made the trip as some sort of pilgrimage: see the “real” Outback, or the “Red Heart” of Australia. There were articles about some travelling on foot, dragging large trailers behind them. Others completed the journey on horseback, or camels. Bikes were by far the most popular, once you eliminated vehicular transport.

Almost all of these adventurers arrived unscathed and more or less on time, at their destinations. Some became sidetracked – took some kind of impromptu detour – but they still arrived, in the end. A few, however, never arrived. There was a “significant number”, according to the newspapers, who set off – from many different points along the route – and just failed to reappear anywhere.

In recent years, their “research” suggested that this number had grown. And the narrow escape of a British girl whose boyfriend had disappeared while she managed to free herself and evade her would-be kidnapper had given rise to speculation in the press – and elsewhere, of course – that there was a “predator” who was hunting victims among the vulnerable, isolated travellers on the highway.

One of the more salacious and sensational Sydney newspapers even printed a map listing the names, ages and disappearance points of some twenty people over ten or more years. The not-at-all-subtle inference was that these disappearances were linked.

Whether or not this was true was debatable. The politicians’ protestations might be expected – God forbid that anyone say anything that might discourage the tourists! But even the police were quoted as considering that prospect unlikely. A serial offender carrying on such an activity, undetected, over such a long period of time was most unlikely, they said. A psychologist quoted by the same paper suggested that such personality types were inherently unstable, and would “decompensate” over time, making their behaviour more and more erratic, and therefore more likely to be found out.

I smiled at the implication that such behaviour wasn’t “erratic” in the first place. However, the flaw in his argument was that many serial killers managed to conceal their behaviour from their closest relatives – even wives – over quite long periods of time.

At the end of it all, I wasn’t sure where it left me. Maybe Jack had disappeared in the same way the newspapers suggested these travellers had. Or maybe he’d disappeared himself.

When I arrived in Darwin I decided, I would go where Jack had gone – see whether I would see something that might pluck a chord with me that other investigators, who didn’t know Jack as I did, might have missed. I would retrace his steps (or wheel tracks, metaphorically), down the Stuart Highway. Perhaps, in a sense, I’d be tempting fate. I thought that was unlikely. More likely I would be wasting my time in a mawkish, sentimental journey of contrition.

Darwin International airport looked from the air like a scruffy set of large tin farm sheds stuck beside a network of runways in the middle of a brown, barren paddock. The terminal building itself reinforced that image: opposite the counters where the airline employees booked you onto your flights, the roof curved down, like the edge of a corrugated iron sheep station veranda.

Although air-conditioned, the terminal wasn’t able to prevent an air of oppressiveness that persisted, even in the middle of the dry season. It leached the energy from me, the transition from a southern winter very difficult to make. Outside the terminal, I climbed into the back of a taxi. The driver’s massive forearm rested in the open window. He made no effort at all to help me with my luggage, other than to flip the catch that opened the boot.

“Where to, mate?” he asked. His eyes gazed curiously at me in the rear-vision mirror, fleshy lips writhed as he chewed open-mouthed at some gum. “What ‘appened to yer face?” he asked.

“I walked into a door,” I said shortly, trying to discourage conversation. I was tired and hot.

It was a drive of ten kilometres or so from the airport to the hotel. The “CBD”, according to the taxi driver, whose tourist guide commentary reached new levels in terse, was “over there”. Against the blue sky a cluster of pale, striated boxes loomed over mangrove-fringed water and humbler buildings which nestled among the greenery. I wasn’t in that much of a hurry to check it out.

“Industrial estate,” he observed as we passed through a series of even more boxlike buildings shortly after leaving the airport. “East Point Reserve – good views,” as we passed a turnoff. “Y’up for some fishin’?” he asked. “Ay? Bizness or pleasure?” The word “pleasure” had an emphasis that was unmistakable.

“Not fishing,” I said, ignoring the innuendo. “Business, sort of.”

“Right,” he grunted, and packed the tour commentary away – on me, evidently, it was wasted lack of effort.

I’d booked at the MGM Grand hotel. It existed in a sort of symbiosis with the MGM Grand Casino, unquestionably a front-runner in any competition for the world’s ugliest building. Squat, shaped like a truncated white pyramid, it lurked on the foreshore behind Mindil Beach. Arriving gamblers checked into the hotel accommodation and travelled the handful of metres, complimentary alcoholic drink of choice in hand, straight to the gaming rooms. “High rollers”, I supposed, went direct to their rooms while their financial bona fides were discreetly ascertained. If they ventured outside the casino or hotel, it would be in chauffeur-driven limo’s for quick scenic tours of local banks or other financial institutions. Their luggage was taken straight to their luxurious rooms where hot-and-cold running women, wine and wassail were laid on.

That’s not the reception I got, of course. As a low-roller, at best, I was suitably thankful to receive a cold complimentary orange juice, and to be shown directly to my room. I’d decided to stay here because I figured it was where Jack would have gone. He liked luxury, and the bright lights. He was not a big gambler, but he’d certainly have a flutter, if it were available. I remembered Sandy complaining about the nights when Jack, instead of driving home, after a long day at work, would go to a movie or to the casino, before staying in a hotel for the night.

Jack was a social animal: he liked to be around people, loved to talk to others and “play” with them. It was one reason he’d started to ride with me, I thought. Not the company, or the exercise, really, but the desire to find out what it was about cycling that I loved so much. I could imagine him, at the casino, making his casual bets, smiling – and watching the way the other people behaved. It was one of the things that made him a good businessman, I supposed. He watched people, figured their angle – what made them jump – and used that knowledge to his advantage.

I’d come armed with photos of Jack. They had been taken at my thirty-fifth birthday party – Sandy certainly wouldn’t have given me any! I figured I’d show them to the proprietors of hotels and caravan parks along his route, to see whether anyone remembered him. I knew the police investigation had covered the same ground, but I didn’t think they’d used pictures of Jack. They’d been tracing him by name, through credit cards and accommodation registrations, as far as the point he’d disappeared. I was pretty sure they were primarily interested in him as an absconder, at that stage. After Mataranka, Jack Treuwin had simply ceased to register – anywhere.

But I reckoned that, at some point if he’d staged his disappearance, Jack had to stop being Jack, and start using a new name. If I could match his face to a different name, in someone’s memory, I might be able to track him down – if, indeed, he was still alive.

I didn’t bother with the photo at the hotel desk. It was such a huge place, with so many visitors, that chance of striking the receptionist who’d registered Jack when he arrived was minuscule. Even if I found the right one, remembering one guest among the thousands who’d stayed here since February was impossible.

The porter lugged my bags and bike box to the room, making the task look as difficult and complex as possible, so I’d understand what a great job he was doing. He painstakingly pointed out every conceivable feature of the room, hoping that I’d get the hint and offer him a tip. I was disappointingly obtuse. He left, curled lip more pronounced.

I sat on the bed and picked up the phone. Now that I was here, I hesitated. Coming to Darwin was one thing, but when I started to turn over the rocks, I knew I might find things that I didn’t want to know about – or which others didn’t want discovered.

When I rang the number to connect me to the Police Headquarters and asked for the Missing Persons Department, I was put on hold for a long while. Eventually, the switchboard operator came back on the line to ask me again what I wanted.

“I asked to be put through to someone in the Missing Persons department,” I said, sarcastically. “Can’t you find them?”

There was a frosty silence. “Putting you through,” she said, curtly.

An electronic burbling told me that the line was ringing, but it rang for a long time before anyone picked up. An impatient voice snapped, “Just hold on, can you?” The receiver clunked down. I could hear muffled sounds of talking. They rose and fell in pitch and tempo. I couldn’t make out words, but whoever it was, they were arguing. I heard a loud bang, and then silence. I waited. No one came. After ten minutes or so, I hung up the phone.

The doorman was only too happy to direct me to the building that housed the headquarters of the Northern Territory police. He was less happy when I didn’t tip him either, but hey, life’s life that. Full of disappointments. I hadn’t even been able to make a simple phone call, and I was dealing with it.

The central area of town, where the Government offices and the police headquarters were located was some distance from the MGM. I couldn’t stomach the taxi, so I walked. It was only about three kilometres and I felt like I needed to get out. I used the opportunity to gawk, since I’d not travelled this far north before. Most of the buildings looked relatively recent, and I remembered that the whole city had been destroyed by a cyclone, some thirty years earlier. There were plenty of green lawns and tropical plants with ragged or glossy and dark leaves. Since it was winter, the temperature, in mid-afternoon, was warm. There was a hint of that closeness which was almost an inevitable aspect of the climate here, but it was nothing like the oppressiveness I’d been warned would set in, from December onwards during “The Wet”.

The police headquarters was a two-storey, sandy-coloured building – cement render over bricks, designed to look like stone: a modern, ugly version of a sort of British Raj classical, solid, official reliability. The windows were tinted dark, and were inset in horizontal slits in the walls, so that they looked almost like gun emplacements.

At the reception area, a semi-circular desk curved in front of a wide window striped with silver strips. From the outside, you could see only vague hints at movement inside. A switch on the counter was labelled, “Press if counter unattended” in blue Dymotape. I didn’t touch the button, but looked around the ante-room, orientating myself a little.

A large pinboard on a sidewall was covered with A4 sheets of paper. I walked over, for a closer look. Each of the notices contained a photograph and a printed description. Many sheets also offered a reward for information. Jack’s picture wasn’t there. Many of the other names, though, I recognised from the articles and information I’d found in newspapers and on the Internet.

“Help you?”

I turned. A woman constable stood at the counter. She wore a sandy-coloured uniform, and her hair was tied tightly back and pinned up. She had both hands on the benchtop, at her waist height, but leaned her shoulders towards the higher front section of the counter. Her mouth was a thin line across her face and her eyebrows drew together in a crease above her nose. The face said: don’t mess with me.

“Yeah, thanks.” I walked back to the counter. ”I’d like to speak to someone in the Missing Persons Department,” I said.

She snorted. Now that I was closer, I could read her nametag: Const. M. Coventry. “Department?” she said. “Yeah, right. Anyway, that’d be Senior Sergeant Davenport. Did you want to make a report?”

“Pardon?” I said. “Oh, no – I have a friend who … got lost. Disappeared, that is – I just wanted to find out how the investigation is going.”

She looked at me with narrowed eyes. “Who?”

“Jack Treuwin,” I said. “They found his campsite –“

“Yeah. I know who you mean,” she said. “But that was a murder investigation.”

“Is that right?” I said, blandly. “We heard back home that you guys thought he’d done a runner.”

She looked at me without speaking for a moment. “What did you say your name was?” she asked.

“I hadn’t introduced myself, actually,” I said. “I’m Dan Kinner. I’m a friend of Jack’s. Of the family, actually.”

“Yeah? And what were you after, exactly?”

“Well,” I tried to fudge it a little. “There’s a detective called Clayton, in my local police who’s in charge –”

“Clayton?” she said. “No, we had someone from the South come up here, but that wasn’t his name.”

“Sarich?” I asked, with a sinking feeling.

Coventry nodded, hearing the tone in my voice, “Yeah, that’s it – little, angry bloke. Arrogant shit.”

I smiled sympathetically, “Yep. That’s the boy. He’s Clayton’s offsider.”

“Lucky Clayton,” she said. She’d made up her mind about me. “Just hang on a tick, will you?”

While she used the telephone, I wandered back over to the notice board, with its parade of bewildered, disembodied faces. The board was covered with them. Most were black-and-white. A few contained colour photographs. Some had been there so long that the colours had faded. Even the printed words had become indistinct in places. What was clear and stark in almost every page, however, was the expression in the eyes of the lost people. In their expressions were silent cries of anguish and distress. It was as if, behind those images, imprisoned, the missing people tried to burst through, to make contact.

In a few, though, there was a sad resignation. In those faces, there seemed an acceptance that there was no way back from wherever they were. Jack’s face wasn’t there. I wondered whether he’d ever come back from wherever he was. Or if I would, for that matter.

A brusque voice interrupted me. “Mr Kinner? I’m Kim Davenport. What can I do for you?”

Chapter 42

December 1992 – January 1997

“You orta go inta politics, Rob. Y’ know?”

The boy smiled: his patented, polished stretching of the lips. Fooled them every time. “I’m not sure whether that’s an insult or a compliment, Steff,” he said. He put the last of his groceries into a plastic bag himself. Mrs Paguliio would be rolling in her grave: customers never packed their own bags while she worked the register. But she’d been gone two years, now.

Two years earlier, Old Tony’s heart had packed it in. Mrs P had woken one morning, the week before Christmas, to find him next to her, in bed, cold and blue – stiff as a board. She’d heard him gasping and grunting in the night, she’d said, tears squeezing from the corners of her eyes and leaking down her crumpled cheeks. She’d thought he was just restless and about to snore, so she’d elbowed him and told him shut up.

Tony had certainly done what he was told, the boy thought.

Without Tony round, the boy found it hard to settle, hard to retain the sense of direction and purpose that he had slowly evolved. Tony would never give advice. “The stupidest thing I could say is “If I was you”, because I am not you,” he always said. But if the boy talked something through with Tony, in the end it would be clear that this was a good or bad idea, without Tony ever having said, “I think you should do that.”

So, straight after the New Year, the boy had put a manager in to take care of the operation of his repair centre, locked up the house and gone travelling. He headed north, right up to Darwin. Doing the tourist tango, he’d taken in Kakadu and Katherine, before working his way west, all the way down the coast, to Perth. He’d liked Perth. The spare lines of the city and the feeling of space and time gave him a feeling of relaxation. It was almost like being re-born: he felt quite different inside.

Finally, he moved on: across the Nullarbor to Adelaide, which he’d also liked; Melbourne which had almost frightened him: austere, frowning buildings created huge canyons filled with intent, hurrying people. Then Sydney – pretty, but filled with a similar sense of purposeful, frantic haste to Melbourne.

On the Gold Coast and the Whitsunday Islands, however, the boy found a stream of pleasure, and plunged in. November was “Schoolie” month, and the whole place was crawling with young ex-students from schools in the south, all hell-bent on partying. No one asked questions, no one knew that the boy was anything other than what he appeared to be: mid-twenties (although he was older than that); plenty of cash; fun to be around.

He might have stayed much longer, but for Christa.

Christa was from Melbourne. She fizzed with gaiety. Wouldn’t or couldn’t slow down. The boy had been sitting watching a group of girls trying to drink from a yard glass, and succeeding only in pouring beer all over themselves. He smiled, as Christa gave herself a beer shampoo, to the accompaniment of high-pitched squeals and cheers from her friends. Sputtering, trying to flick beer off herself, Christa had caught his look.

She pranced over, her tight jeans and beer-wet top an open advertisement, and thrust the glass at him. “OK smartarse – you do it then!”

The boy had had plenty of practice drinking beer – in any kind of glass. Once the barman had re-filled it, he’d tipped the yard glass straight down, without spilling a drop. That was all it took. Legend for a night, he’d accompanied the girls on a whirlwind tour of discos and pubs, until he’d found himself in a hotel room, gleefully drunk, under a false name, with Christa, at four in the morning.

At which point, it all went badly wrong.

They boy had never had a sexual relationship which could have been remotely described as “normal”. Christa, full of various flavoured vodka drinks, had also been popping the odd “E”. Always hyperactive, she was filled with a frantic intensity, dragging the boy to the large and anonymous double bed, her own clothes strewn across the room on the way. Fervidly, she’d started to undress him, too.

The boy freaked. Wild panic made him feel as if he was about to vomit. He’d tried to stop her, evade her busy hands and fumbling fingers, but she heard none of it. Only when he began to emit strangled, rasping grunts, his breath choking in his throat had she looked up.

She hadn’t understood. She was kneeling in front of him, his pants, despite his attempts to hold them up, halfway down his thighs. Christa looked up at his face, saw the expression and laughed. “What’s wrong with you?” she said, sitting back on her haunches. “You’re not a fucking poofter, are you?” Her hands darted to his underpants, pulling the front down to reveal his cock, shrunken almost out of sight by fear.

Her laughter scratched the boy’s soul. He knew that sound. It was the Old Man. It was Vic. It was Bern. He grabbed her head, lifted her and pushed her away with all his strength, falling backwards, as the bed caught him behind the knees.

He hadn’t even realised, at first. He didn’t know how long it took for him to regain control over himself. Only that when he did, and sat up, he could see Christa. She was sprawled half under the table beside the doorway, crumpled like a child’s discarded doll. The boy knew, of course.

He ran. Straight back to where he’d parked the car; drove to his campsite, packed and left.

He made it home in two days, driving non-stop, fuelled on Speed, and No-doze and junk food. He slept for thirty-six hours straight. Days later, he’d caught some mention on the TV news of the “Melbourne schoolgirl’s death” and the police search for a “male in his mid-twenties”, but nothing more eventuated. As the weeks went by, he relaxed.

Life resumed something of its former pattern. The boy spent quite a bit of time looking after Mrs P. Tony might have been under his wife’s thumb, but without him, Mrs Paguliio couldn’t cope. She seemed to deflate. Her robust fullness shrank. Her body seemed to crumple in on itself. She still maintained her air of indomitable irascibility, but it became strained, as if she was playing herself in a bad film. She had all the lines, but said them without conviction.

She went through the motions for a further two years. Old Tony had been taking some pretty heavy-duty painkillers, it turned out. One night, Mama P just took to her bed and chowed a whole bottle. And that was all she wrote. The boy spoke at her funeral, exchanged hugs and kisses with her and Tony’s kids. And that was it.

Only a couple of weeks after the funeral the store had reopened. Life – or retail life, anyway, went on. Steff and Johnno ran it now. Or Steff did. Steff was short for Steffni, she told him, but only her mum called her that. Her “partner” Johnno spent most of his time down at Borgert’s, telling ridiculous lies about how much money he’d won – and lost; or how he’d bowled Steve Waugh for a duck and punched out Jeff Fenech. There were only two things Johnno was definitely the best at: he was a world champion artist, the boy decided. A Piss-artist and Bullshit artist.

So Steff spent a lot of time alone. She liked company – a lot, according to a few of the miners. She’d made it plain that she enjoyed talking to the boy. He’d been ignoring hints for a while that she’d enjoy a bit more, too. “It’s a compliment, silly.” She giggled with what she patently hoped was coquettishness. Together with her long, straight, crow’s-wing black hair and nose stud, her behaviour made her look and sound like Morticia Addams on speed. “You talk more sense than half those arseholes in Darwin. And you’re a successful businessman and all. People’d listen to you, y’ know?”

“No one listens to me, Steff.” The boy carefully lifted the carry-bags, making sure the whole lot didn’t just burst straight through the flimsy plastic. “Except my employees, and they only listen because I pay them.”

Steff laughed loudly, following him to the doorway. She was wearing a tight, short denim skirt and a purple shirt over a pink singlet. Not your average Mintalie summer outfit, but in the relative cool of the supermarket, she got away with it. “You wouldn’t hafta pay me, Rob,” she said. She came no further than the door, watching the boy climb into his car with a smile that closely resembled the boy’s: smeared over her mouth, it went nowhere near her eyes.

Better watch out, the boy told himself, smiling at her “joke”. That way danger lies.

The motor still ticked and gurgled with heat. It coughed and spluttered, the petrol vaporising before ignition, until eventually, it caught and roared to life. It was baking hot, even though it was well after six. Lifting a hand in a casual salute, the boy reversed away from the store and then accelerated along the track. The air was hazy. Dust enveloped the boy’s car. There was no wind, and the dust kicked up by vehicles hung in the air for many minutes after they’d passed.

The boy drove up the winding, rutted track that led to his home. His was still the only house out here, where the earliest pits and shafts – all having been abandoned years ago – existed. Others had begun to incorporate abandoned mines into their houses. It gave you a retreat when the heat of the day made everywhere else intolerable. By eleven in the morning, at this time of year, the heat could reach more than fifty degrees Celsius. The boy remembered Mrs Paguliio saying that, in the early days, before her Tony had bought her an air conditioner, she would fill the bath with cold water and lie in it, all afternoon.

He parked the ute in the huge workshop, beside his battered Landrover. He left the groceries in the ute for a moment, and crossed to the generator. He checked the fuel and then pushed the automatic timer switch to manual. Immediately, the rumbling clatter reverberated round the tin walls.

The shed and workshop was almost as large as the one he had at Marla. It was all utilised, though. In front of the bench was a work area, and in other parts, the clean, swept concrete floor was painted with the shapes of the machinery and vehicles that he kept there. In one corner, a brick room, with a locked door contained the explosives he still used, from time to time in his mining or other operations.

The boy paused as he passed the Landrover. He leaned to look in the canvas-covered tray. A pile of old curtains and blankets, ragged and grease-stained, lined the metal bottom of the tray. He inserted a finger on a small hole drilled in a corner of the floor. The right hand side of the tray lifted up, revealing the empty, rectangular space beneath. He lowered the cover again.

In the cab, on the passenger seat, was a small holdall. It was a battered airline travel-bag, closed with a worn metal zipper. The boy pulled it towards him, opened it and sifted through the contents. He nodded and grunted to himself. Crossing to a spotless workbench, he opened a plastic drawer. He grabbed a handful of clear plastic zip ties and stuffed them in the holdall. He also took a small plastic bottle and refilled it from a larger container on the bench.

A faint noise stilled him. It was almost drowned out by the noise the generator made, but the difference in the cacophony was all it took. He glanced up to where, mounted on the cross-beam, an electric bell buzzed impatiently: the phone imperiously summoning him. No rest for the wicked. The boy dropped the bag back into the Landie, grabbed the shopping from the passenger seat of the ute and crossed the yard to the house.

He paused at the front door. He could hear the phone, still ringing, inside. There was a sheet of paper jammed in the crack between the door and the jamb. Someone had been here. Someone had been at his place, while he had been away. He turned to gaze back at the shed. The dusty ground between the house and the shed was creased with tyre marks. There was no telling where the intruder had been.

The boy inserted the key, and then, when the lock snapped open, pulled at the base of the tarnished metal knocker. He drew out the small knob on which the swinging arm tapped, so that it pulled out from the door on a length of stainless steel wire. It lifted a heavy bar from its position, barring the door from within. The door yawned open, the folded scrap of paper fluttering to the floor.

The phone stopped as he lifted the shopping onto the counter, of course. The boy shrugged. If it was important, they’d ring back. He retraced his steps, turning on the air conditioner and picking up the note from where it lay.

He stood with his back to the door, looking down at the note without unfolding it. Through the paper, he could see there was a small card. On it were some printed words and he could clearly make out the coat of arms of the Territory Police that formed the letterhead.

Police. Here. The boy took a shuddering breath. Reaching behind him, he fumbled the bar back into its position. The room was dim, the air still stifling. Shards and darts of light slipped round the heavy curtains, barring the floor and ceiling. The boy tried to lock his knees, bracing his hips against the door. He leaned forward, slid his hands down his thighs until he could hang onto the knobs of his knees, straining to hold himself upright.

The fold of paper fluttered onto the floor. The boy slid down beside it. Legs splayed out, he fought for breath. He fixed his eyes on his hands. They were clasped together on his lap, knuckles white with tension – but they trembled – his body shook, heels rattling spasmodically against the floor – as if he was about to explode. Grunts, guttural detonations burst from his frantic chest; his inhaled breath hissed through a throat corded, inflamed, angry and purpled.

The room slowly filled with darkness, swollen with the strangled, harsh suffering of a trapped animal.

The phone’s insistent blurting prised open the boy’s eyes. He was lying on his side, still in front of the doorway. He couldn’t move, at first. He felt the muscles in his legs and arms trembling. The room was so dark that he thought his eyes weren’t working. Gradually, he began to discern shapes; the familiar shadows of his space. He closed his eyes again. He could feel the gritty wooden floor. His breath ebbed and flowed, each inhalation an infusion. Reanimated, his limbs scrabbled spastically to lever his body back upright.

The phone rang out again. The boy crawled over to the sofa and rolled onto it, so that he lay along its cushions. His eyes closed again, and he slipped into a kind of sleep. And dreamed.

In his dream, the boy ran down a road that stretched, as straight as pain, into nothingness, far ahead. He looked only in front of him – dared not look behind, to see what came after. He’d never make it to the end. The roadside was bordered by scruffy, straggling bushes. If he went in there he might escape his pursuer. But other creatures weaved sinuously through the dark undergrowth. They kept pace with him, no matter how fast he ran, just waiting until he became so desperate he’d risk them, rather than keep to the road.

The boy could hear nothing, behind him, but he knew it was there, coming, closing in.

When it caught him, he’d have to go back in the room.

The boy would never go back in there. Never.

The room was pitch black, and icy, when the boy woke again. His clothes were soaked with sweat. It had congealed on his skin, slimy and smelling of fear.

He stood under the shower until the hot water ran out. His clothes, shucked like an old skin, puddled the floor. The shower was purging. It was as if the nightmares and fears were rinsed off, leaving him cleaner, recharged.

Standing in his bedroom, the rug over the hidden trapdoor, exerted a pulsing, magnetic force. He felt the familiar sense of power suffuse him, the electricity and exultation bringing him fully erect. He carefully robed himself. When he was ready, the boy pulled the rug aside, lifted the catch near the wall and raised the section of the floor to expose the trapdoor.

Each step down made him grow. He felt strength suffuse his arms and legs, felt the muscles swell beneath the skin. As he entered the tunnel, he turned the lights on. Immediately, in the darkness ahead, he heard the sound of startled movement. Then came the noises. “Stop the noises!” he snapped, striding towards the metal-barred pen. “You’ll have to be punished, if you don’t!”

The creature behind the bars whined and moaned. It had fouled itself again, the boy noticed, with irritation. There would be extra punishment, for that. He told it so. It whined even more, the sound scratching the boy’s heightened senses raw. He attached the leash, then threw open the door to the pen and dragged the creature out. He’d stop its bloody noise. He’d teach it. Once it was strapped to the table, the boy breathed easier. It was sometimes hard to manoeuvre them out of the cage.

He relaxed, taking deep breaths. He replaced the chain, looping it round the spike hammered into the wall above the cage, and leaned his “persuader” – the stained and battered handle of an axe – beside it.

He turned to the table, his clothing slipping to the rocky floor. “First we’ll have some fun,” he said. “But you’ll have to be punished, in the end. You know that, don’t you?”

It sobbed. “Please …”

The boy ignored it. He closed his eyes, hearing only the harsh, rhythmical sounds of his own pleasure urging at him, wild sounds like cries torn from the bare rock. His bare skin gleamed, gleamed: vivid under the hectic electric light. Cradled in rock, surrounded by metres of stillness, petrified time, he was movement, energy, force.

When he was finished, he was the only thing that moved.

The card was from a police woman. The boy smiled at that. A woman. A woman in uniform. She had printed on the back of the card a simple instruction – not a message, a command: “Call me.” And her mobile phone number, scrawled beneath that in a bold, confident hand. On the front of the card was her name: Senior Sergeant Kim Davenport.

The boy wondered what she looked like. Standing at the kitchen bench, eating a sandwich he’d thrown together, he felt the energy still buzzing through his muscles, like worms crawling through his flesh. Perhaps he should go and pay her a visit. He might even invite her back. For a while. A long while.

Chapter 43

July 24th, 2001 (i)

“How can I help you, Mr Kinner?”

Senior Sergeant Kimberly Davenport was tall – almost lanky, like teenagers look, as if she was still growing into her arms and legs. She was in her thirties, though, with a rough-cut crop of dark blonde hair and a way of looking at you that smacked more of X-rays than eyes. After I had followed her along a warren of corridors, I was sitting in a plastic bucket seat that had seen better days in front of a desk that looked as tired as the chair, in an office that outdid them both for decrepitude.

She noticed my survey, caught my eye and shrugged. “This is Missing Persons,” she said. “It’s only a high priority round here if someone high profile goes walkabout, or if it threatens the tourist trade.”

“Gotcha,” I said. I’d wondered how to play this – bullshit a little, or go straight for it. I’d asked Brendan if he’d write a “reference” for me. He’d agreed, but said, “Won’t do any good. All this tells whoever reads it is that you’ve got a mate who’s a cop.”

I gave it to her anyway – and pretty much told her exactly where I was coming from, apart from my relationship with Sandy.

She listened carefully, without interrupting at all. When I’d finished, she nodded. “OK. Thanks. This Brendan O’Leihy – big bloke – red hair?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s him.”

“Right into cycling,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said again. “That’s how I met him.”

She nodded. “I know Brendan. I did a training course with him at the Victorian Academy a few years ago.” Davenport paused, smiled a little resignedly, “No, a lot of years ago. Anyway, if he reckons you’re alright, you probably are.” She stood and crossed to a grey steel filing cabinet – one of five – covered with postcards and post-it notes of many colours. Many of them contained little quotes and sayings: “Get your retaliation in – FIRST”; “If you can’t take a joke – fuck off”; and “the bigger they are … the smaller their dicks”.

She grasped the silver handle, braced her other hand against the top and jerked hard. With a protesting screech, the drawer slid open. She rifled through a multitude of folders with coloured tabs on the top edge and selected one. “OK. Jack Treuwin. This isn’t actually my case anymore. At first, when his wife reported him missing, it came here. The theory was then: absconder. Then after we found the campsite, it went to homicide. Now it’s back with the Fraud Squad – they think he’s an embezzler. However –“ she looked at me across the desk, her hands flat on the file, “– you don’t care about that. You just want to know what we did to try to find him, in the first place.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much it,” I said. I leaned forward in my chair, “I know the way the police in Melbourne dealt with it, but I thought that you’d have had a different perspective, up here. I read from the newspaper reports, for example, that it was treated as a missing persons thing first.”

“Yeah,” Sergeant Davenport looked down at the pen she was twirling in her fingers, spinning it so that it rotated on the knuckle of her thumb and returned to nestle between her thumb and forefinger, ready to write. “The thing is,” she said, “that as far as the Missing Persons Department is concerned,” she gestured round the battered, cramped office, “this is it.” She stood up, holding the file, went to the window and leaned her hips against the sill. “Now the area ‘we’ cover,” she crooked a pair of fingers to signify the inverted commas, when she said ‘we’, “is vast. And you’ve got no idea how many people get lost, or try to get lost, or run away or …” she threw up her hands. “I get anything between ten and thirty-odd reports a week.” Looking down, she flipped open the cardboard covers, glancing at the documents inside. “Most are pretty simple. Someone goes walkabout for a while, or gets geographically embarrassed … They find themselves, really. But there’s two categories that we worry about. One is people who just … disappear. The worry is, frankly, that over the last ten years or so – which is as long as I’ve been here, that number’s on the rise. They come here, and vanish, and never turn up again.”

I nodded. But she continued, before I could say anything.

“The second category is the ones who come here, thinking it’s a bit of a frontier, to drop out of sight. We get crims, husbands running out on the missus, businessmen taking off with the company assets … all sorts. Your mate, it seems, is in category two.”

I tried to interrupt, but she smiled and spoke over me, hand held up in the universal sign for “halt”.

“Don’t get yourself all het up.” She closed the folder and held it clasped to her. “The thing is,” she said, “that there are a few aspects to this one that I don’t quite get. They’re not typical.

The long and the short of it is that I think your mate tried to do a runner, alright. He cleaned out his company, played the thimble game with the money and slipped away up here. Then he started his bike ride. And we tracked him – he left a trial a mile wide: Kakadu, Katherine Gorge … Cutta Cutta Caves – all the tourist things, just as if he hadn’t a care in the world.”

I nodded. I’d seen the postcards Jack had sent to Sandy and the girls from those first two weeks.

“All of this is apparently on the bike,” she said. “We got people here there and everywhere who saw him at overnight stops, or gave him lifts. But when we’ve got him pegged for sure at Mataranka Caravan Park, he’s apparently here in Darwin making withdrawals from various bank accounts.”

“Really? Like how much?” I asked.

She hesitated, “Just over two hundred and fifty thousand that we know about,” she said. “All transferred offshore. They’re not even sure how or where.”

I thought for a moment, not sure whether to say anything. “I think,” I said, taking the plunge, “there’s a fair bit more than that involved.”

Davenport’s eyes creased as she smiled. There were faint, paler lines at the corners of her eyes: the inevitable consequence of prolonged exposure to the harsh, bright light of the north. “You want to be careful,” she said. “You might make me think you’re on the level.”

“Well, as long as you’re thinking along those lines,” I said, “there’s this big fat bloke in a red suit, see …”

She laughed, “Don’t push your luck.” She made a decision. “Look, I’m going to get a couple of cups of coffee. It might take me twenty minutes. No one will come in here, so don’t let me catch you looking at any papers on my desk, right?”

I didn’t, of course, take advantage of her trusting nature to look through the folder she’d left on her desk. But if I had, I’d have found an A4 sheet like those posted on the board at the entrance to the station, with Jack’s photo and personal details. I’d have also found a list of the places he’d been to – details of the accommodation he’d used, even names and addresses of people who had come forward after reports on the media to report having seen or even spoken to him.

By the time Senior Sergeant Davenport returned, carrying two cups of something that could conceivably have been mistaken for coffee – until you tasted it – the folder was on her desk, closed, and since I hadn’t opened it, I could hardly have copied down any details, could I?

“Eeaagh!” Davenport made a face. “I could swear someone replaces the grounds in that thing with bulldust.” She looked in alarm as I raised the cup to my lips. “Don’t drink it!” she said. “It’s just for appearances’ sake!”

I smiled, “Well, maybe I could shout you a real coffee somewhere later on – to say thanks for nothing.”

Davenport’s smile slipped a little. “Best not,” she said, “though that might be nice.” She even managed to sound like she meant it. “Before you go, though,” she held out a folded sheet of paper. “You can have this for nothing. It’s a list that no one here likes very much.”

I opened the folded sheet. On it were twenty or so names. Next to each was a date and location. “What’s this?”

“That’s how many people have completely vanished along the Stuart Highway since 1990,” she said. There was no amusement in her tone, now. “That’s like, without a trace. No reason to go, no obvious signs of preparing to disappear … just here one day; the next – gone.”

“I’ve got a news article that’s similar,” I said.

“Yeah, shit hit the fan when that came out, let me tell you,” she said. “Do anything you like, say anything you like, just don’t scare off the tourists.”

“But that article hasn’t got half of these names,” I said.

Kim Davenport smiled. “Of course not. As usual, they don’t know half of it! I shouldn’t be giving it to you. In fact, I’m not, am I?”

I smiled and shook my head. “What list?”

“Good.” Davenport smiled – briefly. “But if you consider those names and your buddy’s last phone call, there’s more than a possibility that even though he might well have planned doing a runner, your concerns might have very good grounds.”

Chapter 44

Marla, September, 1998

The boy carefully reversed his ute, backing into the tiny corrugated iron shed behind his workshop. Waiting outside, almost invisible in the evening gloom, was the Landie, its exhaust vibrating and sputtering as the engine warmed up. The Toyota Landcruiser looked as if it’d hardly make it as far as the caravan park, half a kilometre up the road, but under the battered exterior, the motor was fine – maintained as well as the boy knew how. They were good engines, in those old Landcruisers, as long as you looked after them.

Everyone else had long gone. The boy locked the shed door, took a last look around and climbed in. His gear was piled on the seat next to him, the rest in the canvas-covered rear section of the vehicle.

Cautiously, he drove through the cyclone mesh gate, with its triple strand of barbed wire on top, that led from the scrap-filled yard at the rear of the workshop. Once the gate was locked behind him, he drove along the dirt track until he could bump over the floodwater ditch beside the highway and emerge on the bitumen. Red tail lights glared savagely through the dust as he accelerated away, heading north.

It was nearly nine hours’ drive to get to Kings Canyon. It was well and truly light by the time he pulled off the road along a track barely visible through the coarse spinifex grass and desert sheoaks. You had to know it was there. He stopped a couple of hundred metres off the road. He walked back, dragging a couple of hessian bags over the first fifty metres, turning his tyre tracks into vague blurred ridges in the red, sandy soil.

The he climbed into the back of the Landie and slept.

The evening was well advanced by the time the boy, a neat but travel-stained rucksack on his back, trudged along the road towards the Kings Creek Station campground and caravan park. Occasionally, cars roared up behind him, many with headlights on, despite the setting sun that made the drivers lower the sunshades over the top half of their windscreens and shade eyes that ached from the road glare. None stopped, but one slowed, only accelerating away when the boy waved them on. He didn’t want anyone to get too close a look at him.

As he approached the campground, he left the road, working his way around until he could emerge amidst the tents and caravans from the encompassing bush. He wore a peaked cap low over his eyes, and avoided making direct eye contact with those he passed. Not that he looked evasive; he simply smiled and looked beyond them, as if he saw a friend, or his destination ahead.

It took only a few minutes until he saw what he was looking for. A bicycle stood chained to a stunted wattle tree. Beside it, some green panniers, contents strewn over the sparse grass, lay next to a tiny stove and small but serviceable green tent. A small sign on a spike was stuck into the ground next to the tent: Darwin or bust. There was no one moving round the campsite, but a pair of feet, crossed at the ankles, stuck out of the tent’s arched doorway.

The boy retreated, making his way to one of the brick barbecue shelters. Other campers were preparing their meals already, but were quite happy to share a section of the hotplate with him, while he cooked his steak, onions and egg. The boy even joined a family: mum, dad and three kids running round in T-shirts and bathers after a dip in the nearby swimming pool. Dad was a schoolteacher, using his long-service leave to take the obligatory family camping trip. The boy nodded and smiled, as he chewed. The father expounded on travel, the Northern Territory, kids these days, Kings Canyon …

Bloody teachers, he thought. Think they know it all. He didn’t hang around after dinner. The man’s wife was giving him a fishy eye. Mothers were always more suspicious, the boy knew. He muttered goodnight and set off with his dishes towards a large stainless steel sink to wash up.

Then he simply faded into the darkness, returning to where he’d left his pack, and crouched down to wait. He was able to see the cyclist’s campsite. Eventually, a torch flickered inside the tent and the nylon walls bulged and rippled before disgorging a shadowy figure. The boy watched as the camper started up a tiny gas stove and prepared a meal by the light of a small, powerful lamp. When he saw the man sit, cross-legged, plate held up under his chin while he scooped a soggy mass of spaghetti into his mouth, the boy rose and wandered casually past.

As he approached, he stopped, as if puzzled, and peered into the gloom at the eating man. “Martin?” he inquired. “Martin King?”

“Yeah, who’s that?” The man put his plate down on the grass beside him and leaned forward.

The boy took off his hat and stepped towards the tent, “Rob Cook – from Marla,” he said. “Remember? Fixed your bike?”

“Shit yeah!” Martin King rose and came towards the boy, hand outstretched. “Mate! What are you doing here?”

“All your talk of this place and travelling and all that,” the boy waved his hand. “Well, it made me feel like a fraud – living out here, not seeing any of this – so I’ve taken a week off – I’m following in your footsteps.”

“What a fucking coincidence!” King gestured to the grass where his half-eaten meal waited. “Pull up a patch of dirt and sit down – shit, it’s good to see you. I’ll have to buy you a drink – I would have been nowhere if you hadn’t been able to fix the bike.”

The boy waved his hand. “Not a problem – a pleasure.” He sat, pointed at King’s meal: “Eat up, don’t let it get cold.”

King laughed, ”Thanks, I will. It tastes like shit, but it is hot, at least.” He chewed a mouthful and said, “I’d offer you a beer, but I haven’t been over to the store yet.”

The boy jumped up, “No problem – my shout,” he said. “I’ll nip over to the bottleshop – what’ll you have?”

It was ridiculously easy, the boy thought. The Landie lurched as it rolled over the speed hump at the entrance to the campground. A little Rohypnol in the stubbie, and Martin King was away with the fairies. The boy only had to jog back to where he’d hidden the vehicle; slip into the campground at three in the morning, when all the little mummies, daddies and kiddies were fast asleep; pack up Martin King’s camp – bike, tent and all in the back of the Landie, throw Martin King in on top – hands and feet zip-tied tight, of course, and head for home.

Thanks for coming.

He drove steadily through the early morning, wide awake because he was so wired – as always, after a “road trip”. By dawn, he was three hundred kilometres away, turning at Erldunda, south along the Stuart Highway. By midday, he was home, the Landie in the shed, gear put away and Martin King – conscious, scared, angry – safely penned.

The boy went to bed. He lay awake for hours, of course, completely overstimulated. He wanted to go down, to commence the treatment that would train the new creature to be obedient and docile. But he knew that it was important that he stay away: leave it alone, in the dark for a few days. Then it would be so much easier to bring it to heel.

He prided himself that he had the routine so well worked out, now. It had taken quite some time to work out how to do it. Books had helped. He’d ordered them through the Internet, just as he had the Rohypnol and the other “medications” he’d used, from time to time. The truckies who passed through his workshop at Marla were a useful source, too. They used – and sold – all sorts of weird stuff. Trial and error had allowed the boy to calculate exactly what dosage worked best. He’d made the occasional error – one girl in Elliot had gone into a kind of fit, had a seizure and died right there in her tent. The boy had fled in horror.

He’d driven straight home in a fever, sure that the police would be hot on his trail. He’d been lucky that time, however. She’d been an epileptic. The assumption was that she’d not taken her medication.

He’d had no trouble with the police at all. He smiled, remembering his panic when he’d found the note from the Darwin policewoman, Sergeant Davenport, on his door. He’d rung the next day from the workshop, apologising for not calling the night before. “I didn’t get home till really late,” he said. “A bit of an emergency repair.”

“No drama,” Davenport had replied. “I’m just following up a missing persons report that came in the other day. Do you remember repairing the windscreen on a ’96 Mitsubishi Magna sometime in early September?”

The boy’s heart was pounding, but he made his voice calm. “Jeez,” he said. “Sergeant, do you know how many windscreens we fix each week?” He kept going, before she could think he was being obstructive. “Look, I can’t recall a particular one, but I’ll just get the invoice book. Do you have the number plate and colour?”

He found it, of course.

She told him that the car had turned up – abandoned – in Tennant Creek, with a sticker from his workshop on the screen. Davenport had asked him about the driver and whether he’d discussed his plans during the time it had taken for his car to be repaired.

The boy hadn’t had to lie, even. In fact, he told her, Alex and Joss had worked on the car. What the boy knew of the driver’s plans he’d overheard, as he worked on another vehicle close by. But he went and got Alex to come to the phone and tell the Sergeant from Darwin what Larry Vines had told them about his travel plans. Even so, he made a silent vow to ensure that there were none of his service stickers on any car that passed through containing likely “subjects”.

He’d hung up on very cordial terms, telling Sergeant Davenport to stop by if she was down this way. He’d even give her “the full service”, he said, being very daring.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Davenport had said, voice flat.

At first, the boy had been frightened, hearing the distaste in her voice. But later, he realised, it had been exactly the right note. She got that, of course, all the time. He’d sounded just like every other Territory male: any woman was fair game for a hunter on the prowl.

Eventually, the boy slipped into sleep, dreamless, empty, peaceful and dark.

Chapter 45

July 24th 2001 (ii)

After I left the Davenport’s office, I turned right, walking along Knuckey Street until I reached the parklands at the end the stretched along the foreshore. It was all carefully manicured lawns, with trees so domesticated they practically sat up and begged whenever a dog passed. Beyond the fringe of greenery, the sea was streaked with white by the wind, as if some giant claw had scraped off the blue to reveal a pale undercoat.

I followed the road right round to Fort Hill, from which I could look out over the Harbour, with its encircling arms of jetties, marinas and piers. Much of it, and the area adjacent to the foreshore, was devoted to cafes and little restaurants. Darwin was, if not yet chic, fast heading that way.

Many of the boats that moved busily in and round the harbour and marina, were pleasure craft: sleek white and blue fibreglass-hulled boats whose owners wore natty nautical hats; passengers – female and much younger – bikinis or figure-hugging tops and slacks.

Further away, out the jetty was spiked with cranes and gantries working the wharfs. The boats here were purposeful in a way that the others were not. Their paintwork was serviceable; no brightwork, no oversized blatting motors ostentatiously declaring wealth and importance. The hinges, cleats and windowsills were slathered thick with years of super-imposed layers of functional paint. Blunt, square hulls, under which the sea slapped sullenly, were stained with streaks of coppery green below bilge-pump pipes, looking like the scouring of cows. Faded streaks of orange on hulls and superstructure showed where iron screws and fittings suffered the sea’s sustained attack.

Side by side here was the old Darwin and the new. The remote fishing port and trading gateway to the lucrative islands of Indonesia and the Philippines butting up against the tourist Mecca, where rich men came to hire huge boats, so they could be photographed hauling in a large, endangered, species of fish. Or richer man came to stay in the homogeneous opulence of the casino hotel to bet – and lose – sums of money that would feed vast numbers of the world’s poor.

The old Darwin, its polyglot raffishness, traces of Empire outpost charm, was being sidelined or suffering cosmetic makeover. If it could be “cute”, it still had a place. If it was rough, dirty, raw; best move it aside, out of the way: don’t frighten the horses. However, Darwin was still an outpost. It clung precariously to a coastal fringe beyond which was an awful lot of absolutely nothing. The land around had given up its resources reluctantly. People still had to wrench their existence from an environment that fought every change, for tens of thousands of years.

It made for an uneasy alliance. The north of Australia is a moody and violent place. Every now and then something happens to remind people of that: Cyclone Tracy, for example, in 1974. Now, perhaps, from the amoral, pitiless desert that pressed at Darwin’s back, something else had emerged, predatory and hungry.

Kim Davenport’s list was daunting. Even if a significant number of the names turned out to be people who had deliberately dropped out of sight – say half – that still left an average of more than one per year that was involuntarily “disappeared”. The circumstances that surrounded a number of those – as recorded in the newspaper article I’d mentioned to Sergeant Davenport – were suspicious enough to suggest they’d definitely become victims. But of what? Or whom?

In my hotel room, I sat at the table, looking through her list. It was a photocopy of a list typed on plain white paper – no letterhead – and she had ruled a thick black line straight through her name.

I compared her list with the details in the newspaper articles I’d assembled. I was able to add some extra details – some information about the places from which these people had disappeared and their ages. I didn’t know whether any of it was relevant or not, but I wrote it all in, anyway. I didn’t have the details of them all – some of the people on Davenport’s list weren’t even mentioned in the press articles I’d found; for others there were no ages given and in many cases, the precise spot from which they’d disappeared wasn’t known.

What I was left with looked like this:

UNEXPLAINED DISAPPEARANCES: STUART Hwy, 1990 – 2001

Compiled by Senior Sergeant Kimberly Davenport, April, 2001

1990 – Aug: Justin Bryant (age?) Erldunda

1991 – Dec: Jonathan (Woody) Wood (age?) Ayers Rock

1992 - May: Louise Wilson (age?) Barrow Creek

Dec: Joanne Sharpe (17) Alice Springs – Rydges Plaza?

1993 – ??

1994 – Jan: Laura Craig (19) or Lauren? near Larrimah

Feb: Philip Mullins (52) Alice Springs * Age?

1995 – Mar: Lisa Blair (21) Devils Marbles

1996 – Sept: Larry Vines (31) Tennant Creek

1997 – Mar: Sally Rapke & James Sinclair (ages?) Barrow Ck

Dec: Meredith Lewis (26) Katherine

1998 – May: Tara Miller (19) Erldunda

Sept: Martin King (24) Kings Canyon

1999 – Feb: Eleanor Shepherd (age?) Ross River Homestead

Oct: Kylie Adams & Anna Katsiakis (19 & 18)Ayers Rock campground

2000 – Apr: Sadako (Sam) Osuka (47) Alice Springs - Age?

*Aug: Jennie White – attacked; escapes (22) Barrow Creek

Sept: Julian Bailey (23) ? near Erldunda?

2001 – Mar: Jack Treuwin (46) near Mataranka?

Mar: Amy Roper (21) Barrow Creek

11/31

The list raised more questions than it answered. I assumed that this kind of drop-out rate was most untypical – why would Davenport have drawn attention to it, otherwise? The least it suggested was that this spate of disappearances over such a lengthy period needed to be investigated.

The list itself, and the sparse details about the victims raised other interesting riddles too. The closeness in the ages of many of the victims suggested a concentration on young people – but there were a few who were much older. There were more females than males, but it wasn’t a huge disparity. There were even two instances where pairs had vanished – but once it was a male and female, the next, two females. There was an enormous spread of locations, from far in the north of the Territory right down almost into South Australia.

But there was no data from inside South Australia. I wondered why – was this just a Northern Territory problem? Or was there some other reason that the listed disappearances only covered what had happened north of the border? From these details, there was a concentration (ten disappearances) south of Alice Springs, but this might suggest that whoever it was operated away from his home base, rather than pinpointing his location. There was another cluster, for example, between Alice and Tennant Creek – six had gone missing from this area. What did this mean?

And why was there not a single unexplained disappearance for the whole year of 1993?

I picked up the phone to ring the police station, hoping to ask Sergeant Davenport some of these things, but a glance through the window surprised me: it was pitch black outside. I stood, stretching my arms above my head to get the kinks out of my back and shoulders. There was another question I had for the Sergeant, too. Some scribble in the bottom corner of the page covered over a number: thirty-something. What it suggested to me was that Davenport had shown me only the tip of the iceberg. This was a single page of a report. I wondered what the rest of it said.

I left it. After a shower, I headed for the casino, armed with a few copies of Jack’s photo and money … but not very much money.

Casinos are a paradox, I thought, cynically. Established for “fun”, decorated in the most extravagant of fantastic designs and styles, they are, nevertheless, sad places. Their huge gaming rooms inhale people, overwhelming them with a frantic assault of the light and noise of electronic jubilation. It is, of course, designed to camouflage the desperation and loneliness that lies in the hearts of so many who can’t resist the pull of the casino.

Croupiers and dealers stand at the head of the tables, corporate smiles – an oxymoron, if ever there was one – in place, snake eyes watching carefully to spot the cheat. Or worse, the professional gambler, who might stuff up the whole system by actually winning regularly.

The MGM Grand gaming room was carpeted in red and dark swirls. Above the cashier’s stall, a blue neon fountain spurted fake water in an endless orgasm of euphoria. Everywhere else, lights flashed and pulsed with a hypnotic, urgent, sinuous seductiveness. Jacketed “guests” – a euphemism for losers – moved with despairing gaiety from table to table, game to game, searching for a win. Or, rather, “the” win. The aim, after all, was to walk away a winner. Not that any of them ever could walk away. Even if they did win, there always had to be another one: bigger, or somehow more satisfying. Bar staff swam through a sea of drifting bodies with loaded trays of free soft drinks, offering always to bring a glass of something stronger, something to loosen the restraints. Open the wallet.

I wandered around the table games: poker, baccarat, vingt-et-un for the card players; roulette and two-up for those to whom gambling was more a spectator sport. Only at the two-up was there a sense that anyone was enjoying what went on. A lucky spinner was earning raucous cheers from a large, uninhibited crowd.

In the pokies room, a seascape motif adorned the walls over and behind the machines. Large, dun-coloured fish with stunned expressions on their faces loomed sightlessly over gamblers equally unaware of their presence. The decor heightened the impression that in here, people drowned.

Jack never drank, so I didn’t bother with the bar staff. I knew he liked crowds, so I waited near the roulette tables, until the croupier took a break. Smiling with relief, he stepped out of his position, as his replacement slid in. A saturnine gent in a dark suit watched carefully, until the new man settled in, then slid smoothly away, as if his shoes had tiny casters on the soles. I trailed after the departing croupier, and caught up just before he disappeared through a smeary swing door labelled “STAFF”.

“Excuse me,” I said, “I’m trying to track a friend of mine who stayed here a short while ago – can I show you his photo?” I realised how pathetic it sounded as I spoke.

He turned sharply, and darted a glance round the room before he looked at me, and then glanced down at the picture of Jack. “Nup. Never seen him,” he said. He turned and pushed the door hard, so that it banged against the stopper, huffing back through its arc. I watched his waistcoated back disappearing down a corridor whose emphasis was on functionality, not gloss.

I drifted back to the tables, waiting so that I could watch both the roulette and two-up tables. I tried two other staff, but neither was helpful – although both at least looked at the photo. The fourth person I spoke to, a woman on whom the waistcoat uniform was a bad idea, turned eyes crow’s-footed by too many late nights and too much cigarette smoke on me. “You’ve got no hope,” she said. “You any idea how many people come through here each night?”

“No,” I said. “Do you?”

“Thousands,” she said. “We’re open twenty-four-seven, for Christ’s sake!”

While we spoke, the tall, silent gent I’d seen standing near the roulette table earlier glided up to us. “Is there a problem, Natalie?” he asked. He watched me with attentive, passionless eyes.

“No, Mr Reimerthi. No problem.” She smiled at me. “This gentleman is looking for a friend of his who stayed with us a few weeks ago. Has he gone walkabout or something?” she asked, turning to me.

I showed him the picture of Jack. “I’m trying to trace this man,” I said. “He’s a friend of mine who stayed here. A couple of months ago, actually. He disappeared from a campsite on the Stuart Highway, but I want to find out as much as I can about what he did before then.”

Reimerthi looked at me without speaking. His silence was making me uncomfortable.

Finally, he spoke softly. “This friend of yours – has vanished?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Not from here. But I think he stayed here. I just want to …”

He held up a hand, then nodded abruptly. I realised he’d been listening to instructions through an earpiece whose wire ran unobtrusively under his jacket collar. “Will you come with me, sir?” He motioned with his hand, for me to precede him. I turned to thank Natalie, but she was already out of sight, the swinging “staff” doorway wheezing on its hinges in her wake. I proceeded in the direction Reimerthi indicated.

He directed me out through the entrance to the gaming area. I was beginning to think I was going to be kicked out, when he veered off to the right, approaching an anonymous wooden door. He swiped a card along a small slot beside the handle. When the locking mechanism chunked back, pushed the door open and held it so that I could enter.

I followed him along a carpeted corridor and up a short flight of steps to a door at the end. It bore the legend: Operations Manager. Under that was a metal strip with a plastic name tag inserted, which said, Graeme Brewer. He knocked and waited.

A voice called out, “Yeah, come in!”

Reimerthi held the door open, so that I could move past him. He didn’t come in, but stood at the doorway and said, “Will that be all for now, Mr Brewer?”

“Sure, thanks, Carl.” Brewer had a smooth American accent. He dressed like a smooth American, if it came to that: tailored dinner jacket, crisp white pleated shirt and impeccably straight, neat bow-tie.

He was standing behind the desk, looking at some papers on it, but came around, hand outstretched. “Hi there,” he said. “You’ll be Daniel Kinner, right?” He kept right on talking – it hadn’t really been a question. “I’m Graeme Brewer. I sort of keep an eye on things out there –“ He gestured at the wall to my right, which I noticed was tinted glass, and which looked out over the gaming room, from just below the ceiling. There was also a bank of TV screens below the window, each flicking to show the view from a different camera every few seconds. “Have a seat.” He waved me towards a comfortable-looking chair and took a second himself. “Coffee? No? Cold drink?” I accepted a soft drink, which he took from a very well-stocked bar fridge under a well-stocked bar. “Now, how can we help you, Mr Kinner?”

When I’d explained, he nodded. For a few moments he didn’t speak. The he said, “So Mr … Trueman? was it? Stayed here, but disappeared six hundred klicks south?”

I nodded, about to speak, but he held up his hand.

“Just a sec,” he said. “You a private detective or something?”

“No,” I said, smiling wryly. “I’m just a friend of Jack’s and Sandy’s. When he disappeared, I felt, responsible, kind of.”

Brewer watched me without replying, for a few moments. I wondered what he was making of my feeling of guilt. It wouldn’t take Einstein to put two and two together, I supposed.

“OK, then.” Brewer seemed to come to some decision. He moved to his desk and typed on a laptop, which occupied one arm of the desk’s return. “Just spell that name, will you?”

I did.

“OK, Treuwin. Yup,” he said. “With us from … March 3rd until the 8th. That’s it. Checked out, never came back.” He looked at me. I could see that for all his smooth surface and easygoing exterior, he missed nothing at all. “What exactly did you want to find out, Mr Kinner?”

I shrugged. Now that I had to put it into words, I fumbled a little. “I’m not that sure I can explain it,” I said. “See, either Jack came up here, set off on his big bike trip and it looks like he met up with, you know, -“

“Foul play?” he said, smiling gently. “There may be other possibilities, though …”

“Right,” I said. “It might well be that he came up here as part of a planned escape. He intended dropping out, and chose this place to disappear from.”

“The end of the earth,” Brewer said, still smiling.

“I figured Jack would have come here,” I said. “I thought if I could speak to people who remembered him, they might remember something about how he acted, something that might give me a clue about what he was going to do.”

Brewer relaxed a little in his desk chair, making the springs and the fawn leather creak. “You know the police came and spoke to us?”

“I didn’t know,” I said, accenting the “know”, “but I guessed they would have. I’m not looking for quite the same things as them.”

“No, I guess you’re not,” he scratched his smooth-shaven chin. “Nor in the same places, maybe.” He picked up the phone, pressed a button, waited. “Damien,” he said, “could you come in here a moment?”

Seconds later, the door opened – no knock – and a thin young man, wearing jeans and a dress shirt with no tie surged into the office.

“Damien Abrams,” he said, shaking my hand. He threw himself into a chair and looked at Brewer expectantly.

“Mr Kinner,” Brewer said, “can you give Damien that photo?” He came round the front of the desk, speaking to the young man who glanced incuriously at Jack’s picture. “See if you can scan it into our security computer, run the tapes.”

Damien Abrams nodded, unfurled himself from the chair and left.

“If Mr …” Brewer turned back to me. “If your friend was here, it’ll spot him. That is if he came here to play. Won’t help necessarily if he didn’t use the casino. The whole hotel’s not –“ he gestured at the window and screens “ – like this. But if he was here, we can show you the footage, probably. You can check if there’s anything he does … or whatever.”

“The police didn’t do this?” I asked.

“No,” he shrugged. “You were right. They were looking for something different.”

“That’s amazing,” I said. “How long will it take?”

“How about you come and see me about … four tomorrow?” Brewer said.

“It’s a date,” I said, smiling. I could hardly believe my luck.

“Mr Kinner!” Brewer frowned. “I hardly know you, sir!”

Chapter 46

Aug 2000

The boy’s fingers tapped the rim of the steering wheel. The Landie vibrated and creaked as he roared along the highway. He’d passed through Alice an hour ago. Not far to go, now. Another hour or so. The boy liked driving. Especially at night. The headlights carved a tunnel through the darkness, creating a momentary path along which he could travel. Yet for every instant that he moved forward, nothing remained to mark his passage. The road was impervious, impassive.

Only when he stopped did the land cease its slippage, holding firm around him, cradling and framing him for moments in time. Back in his cocoon, he could stare along the light, watching the strip of the road crawl towards him from the horizon, gradually increasing its pace until it blurred and melted under the headlights’ beam and the rushing wheels.

He was running a little late – he’d hit a ‘roo, just north of Alice. He hated running down animals on the road, but it was part and parcel of driving at night in the Centre. The bloody animals couldn’t figure out that the road was deadly, and often, even as they fled the car’s approach, they would freeze, at the last minute, even while they could yet have escaped, and turn to stare at death.

Sometimes the boy’s creatures behaved in much the same way.

Usually, at first, they would be angry and shout threats and try to escape. They weren’t always like this, of course. Some were frightened – especially of the darkness of the tunnel they were kept in. When the lights were off, there was no light at all, down there. None. You could see not even the suggestion of your hand, if you held it before your eyes. Blindfolded, it was worse, of course. At first, they all hated the dark.

Eventually, they hated the light more.

The boy had developed his techniques, over the years. Now it took him only a week or so to train a new creature. He didn’t like the term “breaking in”, although sometimes that was what it amounted to.

Sometimes, in the early days, he just hadn’t been able to do it. Then he simply had no alternative but to dispose of them. It was a waste, but sometimes, there was simply no other option. If they wouldn’t learn, they had to go.

At first, he’d hated that chore, too. It made him angry that the creature would put him in such a terrible position. It was better if they accepted their fate. Sometimes, they even behaved as if they liked it.

One time he had believed in one of them.

But that had nearly turned to disaster.

The creature had been faking. Pretending to like the boy, pretending to accept its role, only until it could try to escape. But that would never happen again. Never.

Mostly, the initial reaction was to shout and threaten. But the boy would simply stay away for the first few days. After that, he would visit, providing food and water, but then leaving, without speaking. The trick was to provide only a little food – much less than they usually got – and only once a day. Leaving them in darkness and silence broke them down faster. After less than a week, as a rule, they would start to try to please him. That was always a good sign.

He was heading for Barrow Creek, just under three hundred k north of Alice – about three-and-a-half hours’ drive, which was about right. The boy had learned that distance was important. He needed to be able to secure his prey and be far enough away that the routine of the hunt – as practised by the police – would, predictably, miss him.

His Landie had a few alterations which would enable him to pass a cursory inspection, but a real going-over would reveal the truth, especially if his hunt had been successful and a creature was on board. The boy had raised the tray, behind the cabin. He’d created two spaces thirty centimetres high and almost six feet long that ran along each side of the vehicle’s central drive shaft. In one side, he kept his hunting equipment: weapons, ropes and blankets and a bag containing his “catch kit”, including the drugs that helped to ensure his prey were compliant.

The other side was empty. It was a long, thin, cramped space, but there was easily enough room for the creatures the boy liked to capture. Comfort wasn’t an issue. Besides, they were usually unconscious most of the time they were in there. Usually.

It was just approaching dawn – perfect timing – when the boy pulled the Landie off the road, making sure that no other vehicles were around to observe him. There was a narrow track through the scrub a good ten k’s out of Barrow Creek that he’d used before. It wound through the straggling bushes, almost obscured by drifts of the spring wildflowers that would turn the drab desert into a carpet of colour in a few more weeks.

He had chosen Barrow Creek after seeing a newspaper report about disappearances along the highway. The list disappointed him – many of his creatures were not on the list, and there were a few there he knew nothing about. He frowned, wondering whether there was someone else doing the same thing he was. What a coincidence that would be! However, using a location that had been tried before, he reasoned would be smart because they’d think he would avoid it.

He pulled round behind a rocky outcrop, one of the many eruptions of stone that broke through the fragile, thin-stretched skin of red earth like compound fractures of bones. Slabs of stone, riven, carved and cracked, piled like giant tablets, created a screen behind which the Landie – with its sleeping driver – could rest undisturbed.

* *

Barrow Creek was a tiny town – little more than the hotel and a tired and worn-looking caravan park.

Except at this time of the year. The Barrow Creek Picnic races attracted people from miles away – hundreds of “locals” would flood in for a weekend of sleepless nights and raucous days of drinking and partying – with the odd horse race thrown in.

It was the perfect occasion for the boy – lots of strangers, most people drunk and riotous behaviour the norm. It was easy to limply hover on the fringes, selecting the perfect victim and choosing the time to strike.

Since he’d only arrived in the area on the Saturday morning and the celebrations would have well and truly kicked off on the Friday night, he’d be able to merge in easily.

The boy slept most of the day, and “breakfasted” mid-afternoon, when he awoke, on a couple of muesli bars, carefully placing the empty wrappers in a plastic bag in the Landie. He washed the gritty, honeyed cereal taste down with some warmish water and moved the car back towards the road, stopping just on the stony fringe of the highway, where he’d leave only the vaguest of tracks, if at all. He walked back in to where he’d camped, dragging a pair of sacks to obliterate the tyre marks.

Then he drove sedately into Barrow Creek, pulling into the pub car park, where the Landie blended in with other vehicles almost identical: battered, dusty, once-white, all with canvas-covered trays that served not only as a means of carrying almost anything but also, when occasion called, as a portable home.

The Barrow Creek Hotel was typical of many Northern Territory pubs. It was a building that had gone through a number of incarnations, the transition to each stage leaving scars as well as physical developments. The original building was long and low, the windows glowering under a deep, shady veranda. To this, a brown brick motel wing had been added, whose aluminium awnings on spindly poles contrasted oddly with the original. Behind the main bar, part of which was by now a general store, with delicatessen counter and pinball machines, someone had constructed an outdoors area: barbecue, bar and dining courtyard. Finally, the advent of poker machines heralded another eruption: a corrugated-iron-walled monstrosity whose doorway sternly forbade the entry of children at the same time as a pink-and-purple neon sign in the shape of an ambiguously crooked finger seductively beckoned “Winners” within.

The pub was not just crowded. At this hour, it was full to overflowing: the bar barely contained a rowdy throng through which it was impossible to approach the bar.

The publican, Stan Oataway, clutched a scruffy piece of paper covered with scrawls and cross-outs in one hand and a microphone in the other. He stood on a rickety table beside the bar, attempting valiantly to make his raspy voice heard as he read out the names of horses to be raced in the Calcutta the following day and tried to take bids from the seething, hilarious mob that surrounded him. Horses entered in the Calcutta could be “bought” by groups, through a bidding process. The money bid went towards the winner’s prize and also raised money for the Flying Doctor service.

The boy eased himself along the wall, until he could lean his hips against a window sill – the window wide open – and watch from under his cap brim the people around him.

From time to time, he moved around the room. When the bidding was over, the beery crowd spilled outside, to where a temporary bar was set up under a blue tarp, rigged over a couple of poles in the “beer garden”: a motley collection of bedraggled plants in concrete pots that mingled with tables and chairs that looked as if they’d taken one pounding too many. Loud speakers had been bolted and tied to downpipes and tree branches. Normally they broadcast the sounds of the various bands and performers who “graced” the small stage in one corner of the bar. Now, though, it was Stan Oataway’s dulcet tones, which erupted from the flared speaker as he stumbled and fumbled through the list of horses and took bids from the crowd.

It didn’t take the boy long to find her. She was just his type. He watched as she sat with a crowd of friends: three other women and seven or eight men, a ratio that was typical up here. The other females did nothing for the boy at all: they were blowsy and obvious. One, a heavy-thighed creature with black-rimmed eyes and stark, garishly “blonde” hair, was drunk already. She hung around the neck of one of the men, who smiled cruelly, as he and his friends fondled her breasts and buttocks under her scanty clothing. The woman made ineffectual attempts to stop them. The boy thought perhaps she even liked the attention.

His chosen was different. She kept herself a little aloof, laughing at the antics of the beery, boorish locals who vied for her attention, and sipping daintily at a drink, shaking her head at repeated attempts to get her to drink faster or to accept other glasses that were thrust at her.

Her eyes revealed her amusement, though. She was enjoying the rough boisterousness, without being swept up in it. Her hair was pulled back from her face and worn in a neat, glossy brown coil at the back of her head. Where the other girls wore short tops and skirts low on their hips, revealing pierced navels and even a blue-inked tattoo, which disappeared teasingly under the waistband of one skirt, she wore a more modest light blue top and white, baggy knee-length shorts. The boy approved.

He withdrew, easing himself away from the immediate circle, so that no one would be able to place him near her, if it came to that. From the other side of the yard, he drank only water and waited. He’d need to be ready, if the chance came, but he planned to act only when full darkness would veil his actions.

He didn’t have to wait till very late, however. The sun slipped lower, its stark, flat light edging the subtle ridges and hollows so that the expanse that surrounded the isolated cluster of haphazardly scattered buildings looked alien, cold and inhospitable, like another planet.

Inside the hotel, as the light deepened outside, the action was predictably growing more and more exuberant. The drunk girl’s behaviour, encouraged by the attentive, exploitive men, grew more and more erratic. Sprawled across the lap of one, she giggled vaguely, pushing ineffectually as one man grasped her breasts under her top. A second slid his hand along her thigh, under the short hem of her dress, while another pushed a glass into her hand, urging, “Skull, come on! Skull it, Lindy!”

She tried, giggling as she tipped the mixture between her smeary pink lips. Her girl friends shrugged resignedly and watched her with disdain. Only the boy’s chosen one tried to intervene, but her tentative protest was laughingly ignored.

The end came quickly, as the drink the girl had been forced to swallow rebounded – along with everything else she’d consumed – in a revolting spout of semi-liquid that spattered those near her. (They deserved it, the boy thought.) In a second, she was tossed onto the brick-paved floor, as the men who’d been exploiting her compliance recoiled in raucous, hilarious disgust.

But the boy watched as his intended prey rose and gingerly helped the moaning girl to her feet. They were given a wide berth as, with one fleshy arm over her supporter’s shoulders, the drunken girl staggered towards the makeshift toilets erected at the back of the hotel.

No one else even took much notice of the pair. The boy eased himself away and left the courtyard through an alternative exit. Outside, the hotel buildings were ablaze, but only metres away, the surrounding darkness seemed to swallow the light. The two girls made unsteady progress towards a row of temporary toilets, a row of fibreglass cubicles arranged inside canvas screens, so that the males entered theirs from the right-hand side; the women from the left. He could hear the drunken girl moaning from inside one of the toilets, the revolting sounds of her retching magnified by the enclosing walls of the cubicle.

She – his prey – was standing outside, uttering soothing reassurances. They were the only ones in there, he could tell. The entrance turned back on itself, so that you couldn’t see into the cordoned off area. The boy stood outside the cloth wall, close to where she stood outside the closed door of the toilet.

“They’ll all think I’m a slut,” the sick woman moaned.

“No they won’t, Lindy.“ She sounded unconvinced. “You’ll be fine – just get it all out and we’ll get you cleaned up.”

The boy listened to her voice: calm, well-spoken, the sound almost musical. He imagined her speaking to him in that way.

Away across the stony earth dotted with struggling patches of grass and clumps of spindly wildflowers, the pub speakers blared tinnily, the crass harshness reduced to insignificant squawking by the vastness all around. The excitement at the hotel was reaching a fever pitch. The boy listened to the escalating pace and pitch of the voices. Wild cheers and whistles punctuated each announcement. The boy realised that the winning syndicates for each horse in the Calcutta were being read out.

“Jus’ leave me – you go back to the others,” Lindy moaned.

“No, just get yourself right. Come back to camp and find a change of clothes,” the girl said.

There was no one else nearby – everyone was packed into the hotel’s immediate surrounds to listen. The boy didn’t hesitate. In one pocket was a small bottle of ether. In another, a cloth dust-and-allergy mask. He slipped the mask over his head so that the white pouch was over his mouth and nose. He soaked the cloth with the ether, returning the bottle to his pocket.

He glanced around the end of the toilets, towards the pub. Still no one there. He marched straight into the women’s toilet entrance. She was standing beside the closed door, one hand on the opening latch, jiggling it. “Come on, Lindy,” she said. She didn’t even look at the boy until he was only a metre away.

It was the work of seconds to reach behind her head, pulling her forward, so that the hand with the soaked pad was clamped right over her mouth and nose. He disregarded her attempts to fight him off, flailing at his shoulders with her hands. Because his body was so close to hers, her arms were sandwiched between them, so she couldn’t obtain any leverage to really hurt him.

She was a fighter, though. She tried to knee him, and then to get her hands up to his face, but by the time she was able to do so, the pad had worked its magic. Her movements became disjointed and ineffectual. In a few seconds, she sagged against him, so that he had to support her.

The boy scooped her up. He quickly moved to the rear of the women’s toilet area and lowered her to the stony ground. He lifted the material of the screen, peering out to ensure no one was outside. This side was the furthest away from the hotel. A line of straggling bushes fifty metres away provided the cover he wanted.

The boy rolled her under the cloth wall, following as the girl in the cubicle called tremulously, “Jennie? Are you there?”

No, he thought, she’s not.

From the bushes, he carried her until he reached the main road, a good half a kilometre from the hotel, shielded from it by a thick stand of stunted bushes and wind-wracked trees. Placing her on the ground, the boy pulled some plastic zip ties from the bag he had belted round his waist, under his shirt. He used three he’d already loosely connected together to bind her wrists behind her back in makeshift handcuffs. Three more pinioned her ankles. Finally, he wadded up the cloth, stuffing it in her mouth. There wasn’t much of the ether left, but what remained would help to keep her unconscious.

He pushed her out of sight under one of the overhanging bushes and left, placing his mask over a white post by the roadside to mark the spot. In minutes, he was back in the car park. It was almost deserted. The few people standing drinking from eskies in the back of utes took no notice of him as he climbed into the anonymous Landie and drove out onto the road. It had all gone like clockwork. So it should, he thought, smiling cruelly. He’d certainly had enough practice.

He slowed near the spot, checking in the rear view mirror that no other cars were near before he switched off his lights and stopped at the roadside. He pulled right off the road, into the belt of scrub, before stopping, and getting out. He stood for a minute, listening. Not a sound.

Moving with practised sureness, he undid the clips that held the canvass and rubber flaps of the canopy shut, lowering the tailgate and flipping up the floor panel. Then he crossed to the bush where he’d left his prize.

She was gone.

The boy couldn’t move. His mind refused to accept what he saw. There was no way she could have escaped. He glanced around, in case he’d mistaken the bush, but his frantic gaze returned quickly to the ground, realising what the marks in the rough, stony ground and the wadded cloth from her mouth meant. He could see where she had squirmed, her movements making gouges in the earth. Beside the scuffed dirt lay the severed plastic ties that had bound her legs. She’d had a knife. He hadn’t checked. He’d assumed she was out to it. He always checked. The boy shook his head. It was a stupid error.

He moved immediately. He considered cutting through the bush in the direction of the pub, so that he’d be able to head her off. She might not know which way they’d come. Perhaps he could yet retrieve the situation.

In his waist bag was a Taser gun he’d bought through an Internet ordering company. The boy’s fascination for guns had lasted far beyond the old man’s rifle, which he’d stolen when he absconded all those years ago. Mostly through the Internet, which was nicely anonymous, when you knew how to go about it, he’d accumulated a number of weapons of varying power and range. His prize piece was an Uzi SMG, a sub-machine gun. Illegal in Australia, it was an Israeli assault rifle capable of spewing out 600 rounds per minute. That one, he’d picked up from a truck driver, who said it had been smuggled in from Indonesia. It had cost him heaps. But it was worth it, just to have it.

He had a variety of handguns, too. They were all stored in a cupboard he’d built in the living room of his house. The top section was a display case. The bottom was always locked. He kept the ones that the stupid Australian Government outlawed in there. Except when he used them.

His Taser, though, was a wonderful weapon. He’d used it many times to subdue his quarry. Although it looked like something from a kid’s toy box, its two tiny darts (probes, the handbook called them) would blast through up to two inches of clothing and immobilize anybody or anything. Since it used compressed air cartridges to fire its darts, it made little noise and most importantly for his purposes, it caused no lasting damage at all.

The boy unzipped the bag and slipped his hand around the gun’s grip. But he abandoned this idea immediately. He’d always had a rule: if it went bad, run. Don’t wait, don’t delay, just get out of there. It was dark, and his chances of hitting her with the Taser, or even finding her, if she stayed still, were remote. He slammed the Landie’s tailgate shut, buttoned up the flaps and drove away.

Once on the highway, he wound the Landie up as fast as it could go, putting as much distance as he possibly could between himself and Barrow Creek.

The boy reckoned he had at least an hour before anything concrete happened behind him. Even assuming the girl went straight back to the hotel and her friends, by the time they managed to find a policeman – a sober one – and organise any kind of search, he could be almost a hundred and fifty k’s away. That would put him past Aileron. Aileron had no permanent police station, so he’d be safe. They wouldn’t be sure whether he’d gone north or south. The danger, if it came, might be a move northwards out of Alice Springs – and a roadblock – rather than pursuit from behind. But he’d prefer not to be in the trap, when it sprang shut.

Before he reached Aileron, he turned off the highway, heading out west towards the Yuendumu aboriginal community. Thirty kilometres out from the station, he drove the Landie off the road, leaving it in a thick forest of young gum tree saplings, beneath the towering face of a red rocky cliff that kept the little valley beneath cool and shady. It was invisible from the road and, with a tarp over the top, hard to see from above, if they tried to spot his vehicle from the air.

Then he walked. He spent the next two days following a creek bed in a southerly direction, walking during the evening and early morning, staying under cover during the day, until he reached the main Yuendumu road, just north of a small series of typically central Australian hills he knew was the Stuart Bluff Range. They looked like a series of ramparts; long lines of hills broken in places by deep gorges carved by the flooding rains and bitter, relentless winds.

Once he hit the road, the boy hitched into Alice, squeezing into a Toyota Land Cruiser already packed with aborigines from the reserve. There were no road blocks, no coppers, no problems. Once in Alice, the boy walked into the motel he always used for his trips to town, where he kept a room permanently booked.

He rang the workshop. When Alex answered, the boy asked him how things had been going.

Alex was completely relaxed. “No worries, boss,” he said. “Listen – don’t hurry back – after your business, why not take a few days R and R? We can take care of this place for ya.”

“Thanks, Alex,” he said. “All the same, I’ll see you tomorrow lunchtime.”

Then, shower, and bed.

He was home and hosed.

Chapter 47

July 25th 2001

I woke in my luxuriously appointed MGM Casino Hotel room with the feeling of guilt that such sybaritic comfort always induces. Not that I was staying in the hotel’s most expensive accommodation, but it was pretty lavish, by my standards.

Nevertheless, I quashed my qualms, determined to make the most of what was sure to be a fleeting experience of the way the other half live.

The only fly in the proverbial ointment – apart from the damage the room was doing to my credit card – was the bed. Like all hotel beds, it lacked that idiosyncratic feeling of rightness that your own bed gives you. Stretching an aching back, I opened the curtains, letting in the sunlight. The view was worth the expense. It looked out over the tousled expanse of Fannie Bay off Mindil Beach, with Myilly Point over to my left. Although the flailing of the palm tree branches and white-flecked water provided evidence of the strength of the wind, you’d not have known it, inside the hotel. Not a sound penetrated the double-glazing. It was like watching real life, on TV with the sound off.

I dawdled over a delivered breakfast of toast, tea and the morning papers while I decided what I’d do next. I wanted to phone Sergeant Davenport, as soon as she was likely to be at work. The lack of any information about disappearances along the Stuart Highway in South Australia left a strange gap in the information she had given me. I also wanted to ask her about the year 1993, when there had not been a single unexplained disappearance.

It was still much too early to ring, though, so I looked back over the scribbled notes I’d not taken from the dossier on Jack at which I’d not peeked while Davenport left had her office, the previous day. Prepared by Davenport herself and later augmented – barely – by the investigating Homicide detectives, it showed that Jack had arrived in Darwin on March the 3rd. He’d taken a taxi from the airport and registered at the MGM Grand Casino Hotel, just as I had. He had stayed in the hotel until the 8th.

Then, Jack had appeared on the twelfth at the caravan park at Annaburroo, heading for Kakadu. After staying the night in one of the motel units there, Jack had pedalled off towards Kakadu, arriving there the following day. He’d hitched a lift over the last forty or so kilometres with a group of park labourers who piled his bike and its gear into the back of their ute.

For the next four days, he’d played the tourist at Kakadu, joining in tours and seeing the sights of the park around the resort area. He’d stayed each night here in luxury at the Gagadju Crocodile Holiday Inn, rather than camping.

When he left the national park, he’d stayed the night of the 18th, however, at the Kakadu Gateway Caravan Park, at Pine Creek, back on the Stuart Highway 250 kilometres south of Darwin, using one of their cabins. Initially, it was unclear how he had managed this leap. But the police had eventually discovered a group of four-wheel drive enthusiasts who’d given Jack a lift from the resort at Jabiru all the way to Pine Creek. Most of the two hundred-kilometre trip had been over an unsealed road. Their assistance saved Jack days. And a fair bit of sweat.

From Pine Creek, he’d headed more sedately south, to Katherine, staying one night in a motel again; then at a caravan park at Mataranka. After this point, he’d not been seen. A well-known local eccentric on a bird-watching expedition had discovered Jack’s abandoned campsite.

There were a number of riddles that leaped out at me, reading this information. Apart from that final site, Jack had not camped out at all, despite having spent hundreds of dollars acquiring all the gear. Secondly, his avowed reason for coming had been to get fit, but he’d hardly turned a crank. No one, even after extensive inquiries by the police, came forward to say they’d seen him riding his bike, except for the second day, when the Kakadu park workers had picked him up. Interestingly, too, the police investigation had been able to track his movements mainly through his credit cards, which he’d used extensively from the time of his arrival in Darwin. It could have looked to a suspicious mind as though he was trying to leave a trail. Either that, or he was completely innocently touring around the Top End.

And there was a time gap. For three days between his checking out of the MGM Grand and reappearing at Annaburroo there was no explanation. No credit card bills had surfaced for those days. Where had he gone? What had he been doing? What had he used for money?

While I was sitting, staring out the window, mulling over all this, the phone rang. I looked at it for a moment, surprised. Who would be ringing me here? Perhaps it was Sergeant Davenport, I thought hopefully.

It was Sandy. Hysterical with anger.

“Daniel Kinner, what the fuck are you doing?” she burst out.

“Hello to you too, Sandy,” I said.

“You shit! I want you to come home now,” she said, ignoring me. “You have no right to … to interfere, to stick your bloody self-righteous nose in my life. I don’t want you to. You’re an interfering bastard.”

She stopped, seeming to run out of insults.

I didn’t reply, largely because I couldn’t think of anything to say. Part of what she said was true: I was here because she’d cut me out of things at home.

But there was more to it than that. I felt compromised, guilty. I’d betrayed Jack. If something had happened to him because he knew what I’d done, I wanted to at least make an effort to help him.

There was also the way that the police at home – Sarich, in particular – had treated me made me feel that I had to do something to clear my name.

While I tried to think of what to say, I heard her suck in a deep breath. “Look, Daniel, I’m sorry,” she said, struggling to control herself. “It’s just, I can’t handle all this. It’s all too much.”

“I understand that, Sandy,” I said. “I’m trying to help, actually.” I couldn’t help a bit of irritation creeping into my tone.

“But you can’t,” she gasped, her voice sounding a mixture of exasperation and exhaustion. “Can’t you leave it to the police? That’s their job. If they can’t find Jack, what makes you think you can?”

“Because I know him,” I said, immediately. “I’ve already got some ideas that they haven’t covered. There are some gaps in what they’ve done. At the Casino –“

“I don’t care!” she cut me off. “It’s not your problem, Daniel,” she snapped. “If anyone should be up there looking for him, I should. I’m the one he ran out on. I’m the one he ripped off.”

“You’re the one who had an affair,” I cut in.

She gasped, shocked that I could be so cutting. “With you!” she hissed, at last.

“Yeah, that’s right,” I said. “And that’s why I’m here. It was wrong. I’m going to put it right.”

Sandy lost it. “You fucking pompous shit! You get back here! You fucking stay out of it! Just …” Again, her voice strangled to a halt. She was unable to speak, so great was her fury.

I took the opportunity to cut in. “I’m not going to discuss this with you, Sandy. You’re … you’re being fucking illogical.” I hung up the phone.

My hand was trembling, afterwards, with tension and anger. I called the hotel operator. They placed a bar on the phone, so that no calls would be put straight through to my room. “Just take messages,” I said. “If I want to call them back, I will.”

I made one more phone call, leaving a message for Sergeant Davenport. Downstairs, in the lounge, surrounded by calm and orderliness, I ordered a strong coffee. It was relaxing, sitting in the dim expanse of comfortable chairs and low tables adjacent to the reception area and foyer, sipping my coffee, watching other people. This place was a little hub where the spokes of so many lives intersected, fleetingly, randomly, with mine.

It was a meeting place. Those waiting for someone sat, or stood and paced, invariably glancing regularly at their watches and at the hotel’s extensive, grand entrance. As others entered, they made their way to the reception desk, to check in or to collect their room key. Their purposeful steps clicked and tapped crisply across the marbled floor.

The mobile phone brigade was much in evidence, devotees standing ostentatiously, some with headsets looking as if they were talking vigorously to themselves. One, dressed a la mode in a conflict of tropical colours, even had two. He swapped speedily from one to the other, eyes flicking around the foyer to ensure that everyone could see he was so important that he needed two phones.

Touts for tours and other tourist activity centres cruised the foyer, selecting likely targets and trying to convince them to purchase a day’s guided excursion, or a fishing charter or an air-flight … They all wore cheap, tawdry imitation uniforms vaguely military or naval that suggested efficiency and expertise. Or that was the intention. The effect was more lost participants looking for a fancy-dress party.

There was a collection of boutiquey shops to one side. Apart from the newsagent, which also sold cheap souvenirs and postcards, the other shops seemed deserted. The staff stood disconsolately at the doorways, as if they would suddenly dart out and grab a passer-by, dragging them inside to buy something.

I wasn’t expecting to see anyone I knew, so it was a surprise, when I did. A shock, really. I’d probably not have recognised him, either, but for his unfortunate attitude, which made him unmistakable.

Gone was the natty suit, but Sarich’s arrogant, aggressive pushiness survived even the jeans, T-shirt and denim jacket in which he looked as comfortable as if he wore a Mardi-Gras outfit. I was too far away to make out what he was saying, but he was engaged with some sort of altercation with one of the staff at the reception desk. Surprise, surprise.

There was a solid-looking bloke standing with him. His appearance screamed “cop”: serious suit, tight, high haircut and restless, suspicious eyes. The predominant emotion at this point, however, was embarrassment. I wondered if he’d come with Sarich from Melbourne.

For a moment, I thought of going over, but discretion – for once – prevailed. I sat back to watch the fun. A succession of suited and waistcoated staff came and went. Finally, my acquaintance of last night, the tall, saturnine Reimerthi arrived, earpiece still in place. He moved smoothly up behind Sarich, who was leaning over the counter. Sarich hadn’t heard him, and turned in surprise when Reitherthi grasped his arm, just above the elbow.

Sarich tried to pull his arm away, but Reimerthi was implacable. Sarich increased the effort, but Reimerthi, although his face remained expressionless, simply turned and began to move away from the counter, with Sarich.

After a moment when he looked as if he didn’t know what to do, the big cop moved after them.

Reimerthi retained his grip on Sarich’s arm, speaking quietly to him. For a moment, I thought Sarich was going to explode, but with an obvious effort, he restrained himself. He walked with Reimerthi, across the foyer, heading for the anonymous doorway I’d been taken through, the previous night. As they reached the door, Reimerthi allowed Sarich to precede him. Sarich jerked his arm free.

I was impressed. No one watching would have seen anything at all. Reimerthi was very good.

Back at the reception desk, the staff who’d been accosted by Sarich stood, watching his departure with undisguised venom. One of the waitresses from the lounge area sidled over, obviously to ask what had happened.

When she returned to her patrol, I waited till she was nearby and ordered another coffee. “What was all that fuss about, before?” I said idly, indicating the reception counter.

She snorted, “The gentleman was wanting information about one of our guests, sir,” she said. “Hotel policy is not to divulge room numbers, unless a guest authorises it.”

“Ah,” I said. I wondered whose room number Sarich had wanted. Actually, I thought I might know.

Later, after a couple of pretty average coffees, I wandered back up to my room. The message light was glowing. Half expecting Sandy to have called back, I dialled the operator. She had. Three times. The message I was interested in was from Sergent Davenport, though. Her, I called straight back.

“Sorry I was out,” I said. “I was drinking coffee and studying human nature.”

“The endless conundrum,” she replied. “Come up with any answers?”

“I learned that the leopard can’t change his spots,” I said.

“Apart from the fact that leopards aren’t human,” she said, “I think that’s been proved before.”

“This leopard’s human,” I said. “More or less.”

“Anyway, enough of this idle chit-chat,” she said, “I’m busy. What can I do for you?”

“Well, I noticed that your data only covers the Northern Territory,” I said. “What about South Australia?”

“Ah. Good get,” she said. “Officially, you see, there are no unexplained disappearances in South Australia – or at least, so few that they aren’t worth recording.”

“And unofficially?” I asked, as she paused.

“Unofficially, there’s a strange pattern,” she said. She hesitated, and then said, “But I’m not sure I want to get into that with you.”

I cleared my throat, changed the subject a little, “Can I ask whether any of the investigations into Jack’s disappearance focused on the three days between when he left Darwin and when he turned up at Annaburroo?”

There was a long silence. “What three days?” she asked.

I explained.

“We thought it’d have taken him that long to ride there,” she said at last.

“No way,” I said. “I’ve ridden with Jack. Unless it was really hilly, he’d have done it in a day, easy.”

There was a lengthy silence. “I think we need to talk,” Davenport said. “Perhaps I’ll take you up on that coffee.”

When I disconnected. Davenport had agreed to meet me in a café not far from where she worked. In the meantime, I’d wanted to explore another idea I’d been pondering over my coffees. Why had Jack come up here? If it were not for bike riding, was there another, compelling reason?

Why Darwin, at all? Why not somewhere more accessible, or with more readily available creature comforts? Or overseas?

No, there had to be a reason why he’d chosen Darwin. Knowing Jack, I reckoned the reason would be a who, not a what. Thinking back over the many conversations we’d had, I knew Jack was deeply dissatisfied with his marriage to Sandy. Could the belief that she was having an affair have pushed him to do likewise? Was there someone here to whom Jack had come?

The most likely contact Jack would have had up here would have been business. I rang the head office of Jack’s business in Melbourne.

“Wholesale Flowers International,” said a sing-song telephonist’s voice, “How may I help you?”

I explained that I was a Melbourne florist who was opening a new outlet in Darwin and wondered whether they had a subsidiary operation or associate company up in the Top End.

“Certainly, sir,” she said. “The company is called ‘Blooms’.” She even gave me the address, phone number and Internet URL. Very obliging.

I didn’t have time to even stand up before the phone rang again. I looked at it for a moment, before I remembered that it could only be the operator, because no one could ring straight through.

Graeme Brewer could, though. How was I, this morning? Could he have a quick word? It was phrased as a request, but it wasn’t one I felt I could refuse.

Chapter 48

September 2000

Melbourne Sun-Herald, Sept 1st, 2000

NURSE ESCAPES HIGHWAY HUNTER

Alice Springs nurse Jennie White was today resting with friends after her escape from the man dubbed the “Highway Hunter”.

The Sun-Herald has raised concerns over the number of unexplained disappearances – mainly of young people – along the Northern Territory’s famous Stuart Highway. This road connects Australia’s far north – the “Top End” with the southern cities of Adelaide and Melbourne.

Miss White was abducted as she waited for a sick friend at a temporary toilet block. They had been attending celebrations at the Barrow Creek races together.

Lindy Hofer, 24, said that she caught a glimpse of the man who attempted to kidnap her friend. “I was terrified,” she said, “I screamed out for help. But no one came.”

Ms Hofer was relieved that her friend had come to no harm, but concerned at the lack of action by police. “It took hours before anyone even came. By then he’d have been long gone.”

Ms White’s attacker tried to subdue her with chloroform, before dragging her away and tying her with plastic cable ties. She was able to escape while her kidnapper went for his car because she held her breath, inhaling only a small dose of the anaesthetic. She was also able to reach a pocket knife to cut her bonds.

The delay in police response was explained by Area Co ordinator Garry Rolfe. “It’s a lot of ground to cover,” he said. “We had people in Barrow Creek, but they weren’t notified at the time.”

Road blocks at Wauchope and Ti-tree failed to find anyone answering the description of the man provided by Ms White.

Police would like to hear from anyone who saw a light-coloured four-wheel drive with a canvas-covered rear tray in the vicinity of Barrow Creek on the weekend of August 27th and 28th. Information can be given through the Crime Stoppers hotline.

“Someone must know this bloke, or his

car,” Garry Rolfe says. “If you do, call us –

straight way.” Sergeant Rolfe urged people

not to act on their own, but to contact

police. “This feller’s a lunatic,”

Ms White … lucky he said. “He needs to be caught.

Highway Hunter – report page 4

The boy spent the first few days after his return feverishly reading the newspapers for information about the events at Barrow Creek, but apart from a flurry of articles in the first few days, there was nothing that caused him concern. After a week, he drove the ute to Alice Springs with a Honda 250 dirtbike tied on the tray. Leaving the car at his motel, he rode the 150 k’s back out past Aileron to where he’d stashed the Landie. He approached with caution, driving straight past, at first, behaving like an off-road adventurer.

Having satisfied himself that there was no one around, he returned to the vehicle and dragged off the dusty tarpaulin. The motor started easily, once he’d re-inserted the rotor arm, which he’d removed as a precaution.

He drove straight back to the highway and headed south, to Alice Springs and big town anonymity. He had thought carefully about his next step and even though he was terrified, he went through with it anyway. It might be risky, but he wanted to know what was happening. Anyway, he was smarter than the dopey cops.

From his motel, he rang the number on Sergeant Kimberly Davenport’s card.

When she answered, he introduced himself, apologising for taking up her time.

“That’s OK, Mr Cook,” she said, voice a bit wary – she probably remembered the sleazy line he’d left her with, last time, he thought. “What can I do for you?” she asked.

“It’s probably nothing,” he said, “but I’ve been reading the papers about that Barrow Creek thing – the search for the vehicle? We’ve got an old Landie at the servo, in Marla – do you think I should take it in? Get it cleared, like, checked off?”

“At Marla?” she said, sounding surprised.

“Yeah, it’s just an old bomb, really – we use it for picking up old spare parts, dumped wrecks – local errands, that kind of thing.”

“Oh, well, sure – take it in, get it checked off,” she said, sounding as if she didn’t much care either way.

“At Alice?” he persisted.

“That’s probably the nearest place,” she agreed.

“It’s just, I’m not that sure it’d make it there and back,” he said, forcing a laugh. “Any chance someone could come out?”

“Probably,” she said. “One of the highway patrols could do it.”

The boy made a face. He’d been hoping she might come.

She seemed to sense what he was thinking. “It’s not my area, actually, Rob,” she said. “There’s a Task Force that’s dealing with this investigation. They need to handle it.”

“Oh. Right,” he said. He knew not to push. “I understand,” he said. “I only rang you because I had your card and it seemed too trivial to go through Crime Stoppers and all that over this old bolt bucket.”

“No, you were right to call,” she assured him. “I’ll contact them and get someone to drop by. OK?”

“Thanks,” he said. He wondered what she looked like. Could you tell someone’s looks from their voice? he wondered. He liked her voice. He considered a trip to Darwin, soon. It had been a long time since he had been that far north. He could take a holiday. Maybe even catch up with Sergeant Kimberley Davenport. After all, she’d dropped in at his home – shouldn’t he return the favour?

The promised patrol did come, late in the afternoon, nearly two weeks later. One of the iridescently-coloured patrol cars pulled in. One of the officers disappeared straight into the store, the other came over to the workshop. The boy was in the office, going through the day’s takings, matching the cash and credit card receipts to the till tally. As always, after the boys had stuffed up the invoices and receipts, it was taking an age to get them close to balancing.

He looked up when the light in the office darkened. He’d seen the car pull in, so there was only polite inquiry in his expression.

“I’m lookin’ for Rob Cook?” the police officer said.

“That’d be me,” the boy said. He got off his stool and came round the counter, extending his hand. “You boys come for a look at the old Landie?”

“Yeah. You called it in? That right?”

“Yup.” The boy led the way round the back of the workshop to the shed in which the Landie was parked. He raised the roller door with a clatter. The vehicle looked dilapidated and unkempt – the boy had made sure it did. Its appearance suggested it hadn’t moved in years.

The officer sidled into the narrow space, trying not to let his uniform touch the filthy vehicle.

“:Jeez!” he said. “Does this go?”

“Yeah. I can start her up, if you want,” the boy said, moving forward.

“Nah, don’t bother.” He glanced in the covered rear section – which looked cluttered with greasy engine parts – and carefully exited the shed.

“Thanks for callin’ it in, Rob,” he said. “Don’t think we’ll be troublin’ you any more.”

“No worries,” the boy said, jerking the door back down. “Just wanted to help.”

Minutes later, the patrol car roared off, its occupants sipping at a couple of free coffees and munching ruminatively on some pastries from the store. The boy raised his head from the accounts and watched them, face impassive.

A week later, the Landie was back in action, cleared out – but not cleaned, of course. It was just on the cusp of night. Not quite day, yet not yet night time – the light vague and uncertain. The boy had driven up the highway heading for Erldunda, and the turnoff to Uluru. He didn’t have a special aim, tonight. Sometimes, it was enough to drive, the growl of the engine, the shift and sway of the creaky old Landrover body on its high, springy suspension. Dressed in his hunting outfit, the boy felt the familiar stir of excitement suffuse him.

The road slipped beneath the tyres. The boy watched, head turning, as all the lives flashed past him; sleek cars with cocooned families; utes and four-wheel drives – many in worse shape than his; huge trucks and road trains. Inside each, little lives slipped along, looking at the world outside their vehicle as if it was a show on TV, somehow not quite real. Sometimes, they found it was all too real. Unlike the TV action, real life could hurt.

When he saw the old Kombi up ahead, he hesitated, at first. He remembered the driver, from earlier that day. Young bloke, from Melbourne. Miserable because his girlfriend had dumped him. Worried about his shitty old car. The boy smiled and floored the accelerator, hearing the old engine roar and a spurt of black smoke emerge from the tailpipe. But in the mirror, he saw the driver give him the finger, his mouth wide with an angry gape.

The boy’s brows drew together. He shook his head. You didn’t do that. No way. Not to him.

He’d helped that bloke too, when he’d stopped, in that clapped out Kombi. The oil seals and rings were going, but the boy hadn’t said that. “You’ll be right,” he had said. “Those old things go forever.”

Once he’d left the struggling Kombi in the distance behind him, the boy chose a strip of the highway just over the crest of a slight rise, with a wide shoulder and tall, straggling bushes. In this light, the gloom at the base on this, the western side of the road, was profound. With the cars for shelter, no one would see anything, even if they did pass.

As it happened, not a single vehicle came by. The boy prepared himself: hat on, with its long, straggling wisps of greasy hair over his own short hair. He made sure that he had his capture kit ready. He swerved left and stopped hurriedly.

By the time the Kombi came over the brow of the hill, the boy was waiting, waving his empty water bottle hopefully in the air. He felt the tension like a band across his chest, but it eased and vanished as he heard the engine note change, as the driver slowed down.

“Water!” he mouthed, as the car drew abreast of him and then he walked up behind the vehicle as it pulled off the road, the wheels crunching on the gravel, the dust it had drawn along whirling in eddies around the boxy rear-end of the van.

He stood just behind the door, as it opened, so that the driver didn’t get a good look at him. The shades and hat, with its ragged, sewn-on hair did the rest.

“Got any water, mate?” the boy asked. He tried for a humorous note, but made his voice deeper, more coarse than it usually was. “She drinks water like a bloody camel, that old bomb o’ mine.”

The driver emerged from the Kombi van, pushing his sunglasses high on his head. That was good – they’d be out of the way. The boy could see a mess of clothing and gear strewn from one end of the inside space to the other, as if packing was a process in which everything outside the car just got thrown in, any old how. “Yeah, sure,” he said, smiling at the boy uncertainly. Perhaps he was wondering whether the boy remembered the finger.

The boy stepped back, so the driver could precede him. They walked to the side, sliding door of the Kombi. The sun was low, just a feral red gleam on the horizon, its last embers scorching the wisps of cloud.

It was still warm beside the road, bitumeny heat radiating from the tarmac.

The boy followed the driver. His hand slipped into his pocket, where the chloroform pad waited in its ziplock plastic bag.

“Might be hot tomorrow,” the driver said.

The boy was irritated. He didn’t want to talk. He needed to focus. “Yeah, could be,” he said, brusquely.

As the driver jerked open the side door with a scraping groan, the boy moved in behind him, one arm ready to clamp his arms, the other to press the chloroform pad over his face.

The driver seemed to see or hear something, because he started to turn his head and move his hand, as if to wave off an insect. But the boy’s hand pressed firmly over his mouth and nose, and as he started to yell, the driver took a huge breath. They toppled forward, the boy landing on top of his prey, in the messy rear of the Kombi. This made the driver’s efforts at escape even harder. Within moments, his struggles became clumsy and uncoordinated and then stopped altogether.

It was the work of moments to immobilize his arms and legs – no mistakes this time. Nice and tight. Nothing left in the pockets. Then a quick look up and down the highway. He heaved the Kombi driver in the back of the Landie and drove it quickly off the road, behind the fringing bushes.

With a change of clothes and carrying a small holdall, the boy climbed into the Kombi. It started reluctantly, but clattered to life eventually. He had to wait for a pair of cars to pass, one travelling right behind the other, as if drawn along by its predecessor. After they were out of sight, the boy pulled out and drove away up the highway.

He left the Kombi just past the Erldunda roadhouse. From it he took the driver’s wallet, some binoculars and a camera. The boy left the rest, not locking the vehicle. Hopefully, it would be ripped off before daylight, which would confuse the trail even more.

He hitched back to where he’d left the Landie. Even if there was an investigation and someone remembered, he was travelling the wrong way. He altered his appearance – silver-rimmed spectacles, a neat shirt and slacks, tie and jacket. It would make the chances of anyone connecting him with the Kombi driver’s disappearance slim.

Buoyed with elation, he talked animatedly with the bloke who picked him up. The man was middle-aged, paunchy, with a heavily jowled face. The boy couldn’t stop talking, chattering excitedly to the driver, who smiled and encouraged him, eyes glancing repeatedly to his left, to watch his passenger. The boy directed him to a road junction a couple of k’s away from the Landie. A row of tired letterboxes lined the road.

“Just here,” the boy said. “They’ll be along to pick me up from home.”

“Sure,” the man said. “Listen,” he said, as he stopped the car. He reached out a tentative hand and laid it lightly on the boy’s leg. “You wouldn’t like to ride a bit further, would you? I could bring you back. We could …” the man hesitated, “have some fun together.”

The boy sucked in a breath. His anger was so fierce it clouded his sight. It was as if a shroud had been flipped over his head shutting out the sun. He pointed at the man with a hand that shook feverishly. “You … disgusting … thing!” he stammered. “I should fucking kill you! You –“ He stopped, he reached for the bag at his feet, remembering only as he touched it that his hunting gear was back in the Landie.

He flailed for the door handle instead, hardly hearing the man’s words, as he tried frantically to escape.

“Look, I’m sorry,” the driver said. His floppy, folded face looked almost as if he was about to cry. “I made a mistake, I didn’t mean to offend you … I just thought …” his voice trailed off.

“I should fucking report you,” the boy said. “I should take your number plate down, and tell the fucking cops.”

“Don’t,” the man said. Even though the boy still held the door open, he put the car in gear and drove off, the tyres spurting dust.

“Pervert!” the boy screamed. “You fucking creep!” But the car was gone, pausing briefly far down the road, so that the driver could lean across and slam shut the passenger door.

The boy took a long, unsteady breath. He hitched his bag across one shoulder and started walking, back to the Landie.

By daylight, he was sleeping soundly, at home.

Far below, in the stygian darkness, Julian Bailey awoke to a dawn where there was no light at all. The first of many.

Chapter 49

August 6th 2001

Graeme Brewer’s office was exactly as I’d left it the previous evening. Brewer sat behind the desk, white shirt still looking fresh and new, with a different bow tie. Carl Reimerthi stood to one side of the desk, watching me expressionlessly.

I nodded a greeting. Reimerthi slightly inclined his head. No smile. No greeting.

“Mr Kinner. Thanks for stopping by.” Brewer rose and leaned across the desk, waving me to a chair that was positioned slightly to the left of centre in front of his desk. Something in the management manual about that, I thought, snidely.

“Did you have any luck with the video stuff?” I asked. I reckoned if anything had come up about me from Sarich, he’d ask. It had. He did.

“Well, yes and no, sir,” he said. “We have some information, but we also have a few concerns. It appears you may have misrepresented your position in this.”

“I don’t think that would be right,” I said.

“If I told you that we have met with a Mr Sarich and that we have spoken to the wife of Jack Treuwin, would that change your … opinion?” he said, his lips stretching in the smile of a gambler who thinks he has a full house.

I shrugged. “Not really,” I said. “Sarich is a cop from Victoria. I’d not have the faintest idea why he’s here. I’d be amazed if he was doing it officially. There was an investigation into Jack’s disappearance in which I was framed and cleared. Sarich knows that.”

Brewer nodded, but glanced at Reimerthi. “Can someone verify that?”

“Sure. Ring Ross Clayton, at Mornington CIB. He was Sarich’s partner. He’ll tell you. I have no idea what Sarich is up to.”

Before I’d finished speaking, Reimerthi was leaving. The office door closed smoothly behind him.

“Mrs Treuwin didn’t seem too happy with you either,” Brewer said. His expression was bland, but I could see a sharpness in his eyes that revealed his interest.

“No, she’s not too happy with me,” I said. “Look, Mr Brewer, what I told you was true. I was … am a friend of Jack’s. The truth is that I feel I did the wrong thing. I had an affair with his wife. That’s why she’s … pissed off with me. One reason, anyway. Now he’s disappeared. I feel … culpable. As if he is running away from a situation I partly created. It might sound stupid, but if something’s happened to him, I want to know that I at least tried to … to –“

“Debt of honour?” Brewer asked gently.

I winced. “Dishonour, really,” I said. “But yeah. It feels like I should be here, asking questions. Doing something.”

“And Mrs Treuwin doesn’t want you doing that?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “Mrs Treuwin doesn’t want anything to do with me, anymore – which is fine. But this is about Jack and me, not her.”

Brewer nodded slowly, leaning forward in his seat, elbows resting on the desk, hands clasped just under his chin. “Well, sir, I can see that,” he said. “I can sure understand how you feel, Mr Kinner. But Mrs Treuwin’s attitude does make it difficult for us, you know.”

I was about to ask why when, with a soft knock, Reimerthi re-entered the room.

Brewer looked at him, eyebrow raised.

“I spoke to Senior Sergeant Clayton,” Reimerthi said. “He confirms that the Victorian police have no interest in Mr Kinner as a suspect in Mr Treuwin’s disappearance. He says that for all the good he’ll do, Mr Kinner is welcome to wander round the Territory until he’s blue in the face. He also has no idea why Mr Sarich is up here.”

Short and sweet. I looked at Brewer. He looked back at me, and then at Reimerthi.

“Mr Kinner,” he said at last. “I think I’m going to show you that tape.”

I started to thank him, but he held up a hand. “I think that it’ll solve your dilemma,” he said. “I’ve seen it. I would think it might explain why we all think you should go home.”

* * *

I met Kimberley Davenport at an airy waterfront café – newly-finished in polished steel, chrome and glass; typical of Darwin’s tourism-Mecca-metamorphosis. The owner was anything but nouveau, and the food and coffee, were excellent, according to Davenport.

She wasn’t far wrong. I sighed, after the first sip.

“What?” she asked, looking across the table her tone slightly defensive.

“No, no – it’s good, that’s all,” I said. “The first decent cup of coffee since …”

“Don’t say it!” she cut in. “Every time someone comes here from the South, all we ever hear is that you can’t get a decent cuppa, or a cold enough beer … Fed up to the back teeth of it, we are.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Consider it un-almost-said.”

“I haven’t got all that long,” she said, glancing at her watch. “Can you explain about the three days?”

I told her. It was only a hundred k’s or so to Annaburroo, where Jack’s first overnight stop had been. Even at the slowest pace, considering his level of fitness, on good roads, with no huge hills, that trip would have taken him five hours, at the most. He’d have done it in a day.

“So,” she said, “what did he do for three days? Where did he go?”

“I think I can answer that, too,” I said. Brewer’s security experts had excelled themselves. What they’d presented was a series of excerpts, spliced together, from the gaming rooms over the nights of Jack’s stay. Every night, for some of the evening, he’d wandered into the casino. He’d watch some games, have a small flutter for a while on the roulette or at vingt-et-un. He’d even found himself in the ring as spinner, flipping the two-up coins high into the air in front of a hysterically vociferous crowd.

The cameras showed him moving through the other gamblers, soft drink in hand, a perpetual smile on his lips. The reason for the smile was probably the svelte brunette who rested her hand lightly on his forearm. She laughed at him in the two-up ring, made her own bets on the roulette table, stood behind his chair at the blackjack. The body language was unmistakable. Here was the reason for Jack’s trip to Darwin, and his disappearance, probably, whether he knew about Sandy and me or not.

“Did Brewer know her?” Davenport asked.

“He didn’t say.” I sipped my coffee. “But how hard could it be? Darwin’s not Mel-“

“Don’t say it!” she snapped, but her lips curved in a smile.

I grinned back. I liked Davenport. “Anyway, if you find her, you find him, I reckon.” I changed tack. “Tell me about your strange pattern,” I said, reminding her of a comment she’d made the previous day.

“Ah, she said. “Well, there were quite a few disappearances south of the border, until 1993. That year, you might remember –“

“There were none,” I said.

“That’s right,” she said. “The official explanation is that ’93 was the result of better policing.”

I snorted, and Davenport smiled wryly.

“My explanation is that whoever is responsible for a number of abductions which show clear similarities in pattern was unable to operate for that year. Maybe he was sick, more likely, in jail – or maybe he had to go away. Whatever, he took a year off. But I think he did come back. But since then, he has operated exclusively in the Territory. His pattern has became more settled: similar victims – gender didn’t matter, but age, nationality, appearance – and the circumstances in which they disappeared – all those things match up.”

“There was something I notice from your list too,” I said, “isn’t there a steady increase? There was one a year for a while. Last two years, it’s been three.”

Her eyes crinkled again in a smile that I found pleasurably disturbing. “You’re quite sharp, aren’t you?”

“I have my moments,” I said, mock-modestly. “Few and far between, but they are there.”

“You’re right, though,” she said. “I asked a bloke in Adelaide, when I was down on a course, last year.” She hesitated, took a breath. “He reckoned it was typical of serial offenders that they start to come unravelled. They need to get the kick more and more often to obtain the same thrill. So there’s an increase in frequency, and often, in violence.”

“So why is there not a huge manhunt?” I asked. “Surely this is a bloody top priority?”

Davenport looked down at her cup. “Officially?” she asked, glancing up from under a tousled fringe. “Officially it’s pretty much a figment of a hyperactive female imagination.”

Davenport returned to her work, armed with a print-out of a picture of Jack with the brunette at the casino. I sat in the coffee shop, for a while, staring out over the expanse of Darwin Harbour. To my left was the Novotel, a hotel exactly like the one I was staying at, with its own clutch of busy people barging in and out, all hurrying on their way to somewhere. I thought about how I’d travelled six thousand kilometres for pretty much the same view that I enjoyed from home. This one was a bit further north, that was all. It got a tad warmer here, in summer, too. And a bit more rain.

I thought about what to do. I should just walk away, at this point. Leave the finding of Jack to Davenport and the Darwin police. But that didn’t feel right, either. He’d be arrested and prosecuted for fraud over the missing money from the businesses.

But I still felt that perhaps my inability to say “no” where Sandy was concerned might have pushed Jack in a direction that he wouldn’t have otherwise taken. That made his situation partly my fault too.

I’d not told Davenport everything. Perhaps Brewer would tell her what he hadn’t told me – the identity of the dark-haired woman. But she’d have to ask him first. I already knew who she was.

In between my meeting with Brewer and Reimerthi, I’d visited the hotel’s Internet facility. After I checked my email, I’d found the “Blooms” site quickly. It gave a run-down on the business, its stock of flowers, arrangements for ordering, the range of its operations, information about flower-arranging and preserving cut flowers. And its staff. There was a whole section devoted to the people who worked for Blooms. Margot Sorenson was the Managing Director. She was also the brunette on Jack’s arm. I’d recognised her the moment Brewer had shown me the video tape.

Sighing, I stood, at last and began to walk. I’d intended going back to the hotel, but found myself standing outside a building also recognisable from its photo on the Internet. It was on the way back to my hotel, anyway, on the eastern edge of the CBD. Not far out of the way.

I pushed open the wide glass door beside huge roller doors and entered a small reception area. The building was actually a large warehouse. The front section had been partitioned off with modular walls. A counter had been set up in front of wide windows covered with reflective film, so that the interior was shadowy. Above the windows was a large sign with purple letters, edged in gold, in flowing script: “Blooms”, it said. The area around the counter was filled with many buckets and tubs full of bunches of flowers. I thought idly about buying a bunch for Kimberley Davenport, but decided it was probably a bad idea. Away to the left of the counter, the partitioning stopped, and through a large gap – for vehicles, obviously – I could see a long corridor lined with cooler rooms and darkened areas filled with the spindly silhouettes of flowers and shrubs.

Moments after I entered, a girl emerged from a door at the right of the counter. “Can I help you?” she asked. She wore a white blouse and blue skirt, and had long, frizzy blonde hair.

“Mmm. I’m looking for Ms Sorenson,” I said, looking round, curiously.

“Did you have an appointment?” she asked. She didn’t even look at the diary open on the desk. She knew I didn’t have an appointment.

“No, I don’t,” I said. “I’m a friend of … I know a friend of hers, that’s all, and I just thought I’d look her up while I’m in Darwin.” I paused, then said, “I’m from Melbourne.”

“Margot’s pretty busy, this morning,” she said. “If you leave your name, I could get her to call you.”

“Actually, I do have a message to deliver,” I said. “It’s pretty urgent.”

She sighed, flicking back a hank of hair that had cascaded over her shoulder, threatening to avalanche her face. “Is this business, or a personal matter?”

“It’s something that I’d like to discuss with Ms Sorenson, that’s all,” I said, smiling more or less politely.

“It’s alright, Rebecca, I’ll talk to the gentleman. Could you bring us some coffee?” The speaker stood in the half-open doorway which led to the office area. The security cameras hadn’t done her justice. Margot Sorenson was stunning. She wore her dark hair long, and it framed a face that looked as if it liked the sun. She wore a light lipstick, which accentuated a mouth that obviously smiled a lot – not that it was at this moment. The makeup made her look more sensuous than a more garish colour would have. Her clothes were simple and stylish – a smart and elegant dark blue dress and low-heeled shoes. The only jewellery she wore was a gold chain at her neck.

She stood to one side of the door, motioning me to precede her.

I followed her directions through an expansive office area. There were four or five desks, each with a computer screen and keyboard. In the middle, there were four Laminex tables that had been pushed together. Chairs were arranged all round – a conference area in the middle of the office. Instead of leading me into a private office, Margot Sorenson sat at this set up.

I was surprised, but took a chair around the corner from her. “Now, Mr Kinnner, how can I help you?” she asked.

I nodded, smiling. Of course she knew who I was. “Brewer?” I asked.

She shook her head, “Really, Mr Kinner, you should know by now that Darwin’s a small town. Not like Melbourne,” she said, watching me carefully.

I smiled, hearing my own words come back at me. “Sure. Ms Sorenson –“

“Margot, please,” she said. “I feel as if we know each other, in some ways.”

“I’m glad you feel like that,” I said, accenting the ‘you’. “Anyway, I guess I wanted to talk to you about Jack – even get a message to him, if possible.”

Her face grew still. “Mr Kinner, Jack’s missing. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know why you’d think I would.”

“The security film from the casino, for one thing,” I said.

“What does that prove?” she asked, eyebrow raised.

“Prove? Nothing, I suppose,” I said. But …” I hesitated, and then plunged in, “to me it strongly suggests that the reason he shot through from Melbourne was because of his relationship with you.”

“Relationship?” she smiled. “Mr Treuwin is an old friend and a business associate, but there’s no ‘relationship’ –“ her fingers crooked around the word, “between Jack and me other than that. If anyone’s told you something different, they are mistaken.”

I felt my face grow hot. Having seen the scenes from the casino’s security cameras, I’d automatically leapt to the conclusion that I’d caught Jack out. I tried now to remember what it was that had made me feel so sure. Nothing they’d done had been overtly suggestive.

The girl, Rebecca, arrived with coffee. She’d been pottering around a short distance away, at a well-equipped café bar, and the coffee, made with a little espresso machine, was good. Her face was carefully expressionless, as she placed the cups in front of us, but I knew she’d heard most of the conversation.

Margot Sorenson continued, “I went with Jack to the casino – but that’s no more than what I do for many important clients – from Australia and overseas. If you watched the footage from other nights, you’d have seen me there with many other visitors.”

I squirmed, trying not to let my discomfort show. “The fact is, though,” I said, “that Jack has disappeared himself, not been abducted.”

“Is that a ‘fact’? she asked, again using her fingers to put the inverted commas around the word.

“Yes it is,” I said, doggedly. “He came up here to drop out of sight – and spent most of his time in Darwin with you. And then he vanished.”

“So?” she said.

The word almost floated in the air between us. I sensed then that I was exactly right. She did know a lot more about Jack than she was saying. That single word was a challenge: you can’t prove anything, she was saying. And neither I could.

She saw it in my face, and smiled slightly. She was completely in control – knew exactly what she was doing. “If you did find Jack, what were you going to say to him?” she asked.

I thought for a moment. “I wanted to apologise,” I said. “And to warn him that … they’re after him.” I shrugged, “And you, I guess.”

Margot Sorenson raised her eyebrows again. “After me? Why? For what?”

“As a connection with Jack,” I said. “Like me, they assume that he’s hiding, and that you know where he is – and the money.”

“Money?” she asked, and for the first time, I saw some genuine puzzlement in her eyes.

“There’s about five million missing from Jack’s businesses,” I said. “And the police and the banks want it back.”

Chapter 50

July, 2001

Road to oblivion?

[pic]

|By Crime reporter Liam Davidson |A spokesman from Tourism NT insisted that visitors to the Territory |

|The pilgrimage up the Stuart Highway to Australia’s “Red Centre” is a |were far safer here than in cities like Sydney or Melbourne. However, |

|trip that many Australians have made. It’s almost mandatory for the |local investigator Carl Reimerthi, for one, disagrees. Mr Reimerthi’s |

|average Aussie family. With improvements to roads and good, cheap |son, Julian, vanished in September 2000. The Kombi van in which he’d |

|accommodation, it has never been easier, or more safe. Or has it? |travelled over 3,000 kilometres was discovered abandoned near |

|A Sun-Herald investigation suggests that far from being the safe |Erldunda, south of Alice Springs. “My son isn’t a runaway,” he said. |

|family holiday destination the brochures and government tourism |“And he’s not the only one, either.” Mr Reimerthi lives in Darwin. He |

|authorities claim, the “red heart” of Australia is more of a “dead |believes he can pressure Territory police and government officials to |

|heart”, for many. |discover the truth about what happened to Julian. The narrow escape of|

|Since 1990, the Herald-Sun has found at least 10 travellers – probably|British tourist Jennie White should have served as a warning, he |

|more – have disappeared from various points along the highway route. |claims. “It’s not about runaways,” he says. “You look at the numbers. |

|Senior Northern Territory police refused to comment, claiming that |There’s someone hunting young people up and down that road. It’s the |

|most “disappearances” turn up within days or weeks of being reported |road to nowhere, and nothing’s being done about it.” |

|missing. |FULL STORY p3,4 |

|According to Sergeant Kim Davenport the number of people who truly “go|Lisa Blair, 26, worked at |

|missing” is very small. “For the thousands of travellers who visit the|Alice Springs’ well-known |

|Centre and the Top End, there are only one or two who seem to drop |“The Palms” restaurant as |

|out,” she said. Most often, those who do go missing turn up days – or |a waitress. Bright and |

|weeks later, she says. “The reasons that people drop out are many and |popular, Lisa intended to |

|varied. Sometimes it’s because they’re hiding from something. Often |study nursing at Adelaide’s |

|it’s a broken relationship. They just need time out,” Sergeant |prestigious Children’s |

|Davenport said. Darwin Mayor, Councillor Paul Barlow agreed. “The fact|Hospital. She was |

|is that you’re safer in the Top End than you are in the big cities,” |persuaded by friends to go |

|he said. “You’ve got more chance of being mugged or robbed in Sydney |on a weekend trip to the |

|of Melbourne than anything happening here.” |Devil’s Marbles, 500 |

|Information obtained by the Sun-Herald, however, suggests that for an |kilometres north of Alice |

|increasing number of travellers, “dropping out” has become permanent, |Springs. It was to prove |

|not just going “walkabout”. |an unlucky decision. Lisa Blair was last seen walking towards the |

|Gone missing … |public phone booth, situated beside the camp offices. She wanted to |

|Amy Roper, 34, recently divorced mother of two, wanted to “get away |ring her parents to wish them a happy anniversary. She was happy and |

|from it all”. |positive, looking forward to her course commencement in June. |

|The sale of her house meant |Larry Vines, 31, was a |

|that she could afford a holiday. |keen traveller. Having |

|Joining in a group would allow |worked for a labour |

|her to meet some new people |recruitment and training |

|and see a part of Australia she |firm for ten years, Mr |

|hadn’t visited before. Happy |Vines finally used his |

|and outgoing, she quickly |accumulated Long Service |

|made friends. She was last |Leave to set off on the trip |

|seen outside the Barrow |of a lifetime. He was due to |

|Creek Hotel on March 16th, |meet his fiancée, Amelia |

|2001. Ms Roper had been cel- |Trent, in Darwin at the end of |

|ebrating the birthday of one of the group and wanted a short walk for |September, 1996. He dep- |

|fresh air, before returning to the group’s accommodation. Her divorce |arted from the Heavitree Gap Resort in Alice Springs, on September |

|had been amicable and she “adored” her two children. |21st. Mr Vines has not been seen since he bought petrol at Tennant |

|Kylie Adams and Anna Katsiakis |Creek that afternoon. Security camera footage shows him relaxed and |

|Despite their ob- |happy. There is no known reason to explain his disappearance. |

|vious differences, |Martin King was 24, and had cycled from Adelaide straight up the |

|Kylie Adams, 28 |Stuart Highway, heading for Darwin. He booked in at the Kings Canyon |

|called her friend |Resort, pitching his tiny cycle touring tent in the camping area. His |

|Anna, 27, her “twin”. |trip had been eventful – he was caught in a violent storm near Marla, |

|From the time they |which damaged his bike so badly that it required welding. He was |

|met, at school toget- |determined to make it, however, and pushed on. He sent joyful |

|her, the two were |postcards to his family from Uluru (Ayers Rock) and emailed home some |

|almost inseparable. |of the |

|With Anna’s wed- |many photos he took with |

|ding, planned for December, 1999, the two knew that things would have |the new digital camera he |

|to change. Their “road trip” from the flat they shared in North |bought for the trip. From |

|Adelaide up to meet Anna’s fiancé in Darwin was to be a “final fling”.|Kings Canyon, however, he |

|They wanted to do everything “the right way”. Staying in the best |disappeared. His family has |

|rooms and living the high life, the two disappeared from the Yulara |heard nothing. No trace has |

|Resort, near Uluru (Ayers Rock) in October 1999. |been found of his tent or |

| |the special touring bicycle he |

| |had custom-made for his trip. |

Chapter 51

August 7th, 2001

I had returned to the hotel a bit bemused, after my visit to Margot Sorenson. Her demeanour was completely unshakable. She wouldn’t openly admit to any knowledge of Jack Treuwin’s movements outside those days he’d stayed in Darwin between leaving the hotel and appearing at Annaburroo.

Yes, he had asked her to accompany him to the casino. Yes, he’d stayed with her for a couple of days before he left – on his bike, according to her. But after his departure from Darwin, she hadn’t seen or heard from him at all. She said.

“You know the police will check your phone records, don’t you,” I’d said, provocatively.

She was unfazed. “They can check whatever they want. The police won’t find anything, and you won’t find anything.” Her eyes narrowed in anger either feigned or real, “Everyone would be better off taking his disappearance seriously and trying to find out what happened to him.”

Her mouth talked the talk – concern for Jack’s fate – but her eyes didn’t convey the same message at all. There was nothing that I was going to do that would shake her. In any case, the eyes had it that it was none of my business – stay out of it. That was advice I was hearing a lot. Why wasn’t I listening?

Afterwards, I thought about ringing Sergeant Davenport. I decided against it, on the grounds that once she found that I’d withheld from her the identity of Jack’s woman-friend was and then visited her before the police did, I might not exactly be flavour of the month.

Instead, I drank a beer – Cascade Premium, Tasmania’s finest – sitting beside the pool in Darwin, the diametrically opposite geographic point. I watched the other holidaymakers working hard at relaxing. Some of them were certainly easy to watch. Some were certainly successful at relaxing, too.

The morass of information bogged my mind even there, in the sun by the pool. I couldn’t leave it all alone. So many details, so many pieces which seemed to fit one part of the puzzle, but didn’t. I remembered an old saying one of my teachers used frequently: if you add up all of what you know to be true, take out anything that doesn’t fit and what’s left must be the truth – however unlikely it seems.

I knew that Jack had disappeared. I knew a lot of money had, as well. I knew Jack had arrived in Darwin and spent some time with Margot Sorenson. He’d certainly looked as if he was enjoying it. I knew Jack had made a series of overnight stops between Darwin, Kakadu and as far south as Matarankah.

Beyond that, I knew nothing. I didn’t know for sure that Jack arranged his own disappearance. I didn’t even know for sure whether it was he who had stripped the company he owned bare. Sandy was a Director as well. Theoretically, it could have been her.

There were too many possibilities – but not enough solid information.

Too many maybes. Maybe Sandy was in cahoots with someone else. I rolled the word around in my mind: cahoots. Maybe there were a series of cahooters with Sandy as another victim. But who? Who else had access to Jack’s business finances? His accountant? Surely the police would have checked that.

I was running round – blundering round – like a headless chook getting nowhere, upsetting everyone. Sandy didn’t want me looking for Jack. Margot Sorenson didn’t either.

Maybe Margot Sorenson knew where Jack was. If she did, her attitude made it plain that she wasn’t going to tell me – which implied that Jack didn’t want me to know. That was self-evident, really. No one travelled the breadth of the country and disappeared deliberately – if that was what he’d done – just to re-emerge when someone came looking for you. Especially someone like me.

And if Jack had been abducted – and at this stage, I doubted it – I wasn’t going to find him, if the police hadn’t been able to.

All of which added up to me wasting my time. Which was what everyone had been trying to tell me.

By the end of the afternoon, I’d booked myself in at the Gagadju Crocodile Holiday Inn, at Jabiru for the following couple of nights. I’d hire a car, I decided, and spend a few days being a tourist. Bugger Jack. I’d come this far, I might as well make the most of it.

Kakadu was an awakening. I drove the two hundred-odd k’s early the next morning. The hotel had the hire car ready and waiting. I stopped at Annaburroo, just to see where Jack had overnighted. It was completely innocent: a nondescript roadside motel with unexceptional accommodation in ordinary rooms. I didn’t stay.

However, the whole experience of visiting Jabiru was exhilarating. Perhaps it was because I let go for the first time since I’d arrived at the Top End. Or maybe the sheer magnificence of the physical environment had an impact. Certainly, from the limpid, clear-as-glass waterholes, river trips between beetling cliffs and through hidden lakes fringed with broad-leafed water plants with bright pink flowers, sheer, brilliantly coloured rocky outcrops and sudden, secret, ragged-edged valleys it was a step into a different world.

In this world, the questions were more black-and-white. The vagaries of human behaviour; the whims of emotion and circumstance were replaced by unarguable truths: if you made a mistake, you died.

The people who lived out here had embraced this hard-edged attitude. They propounded information about their home with the fervour of evangelists. These were philosophies in which they devoutly believed.

Don’t swim in anything except the hotel pool. Don’t go anywhere alone. Tell someone your plans. Arrange check-up calls and rendez-vous. If you get lost, sit down and wait.

One of the guides even mentioned Jack, which was ironic. “One bloke,” he said, voice dripping with contempt, “’E come out ‘ere with a fancy dancer push-bike. ‘E’s got all the lates’ campin’ gear. But ‘e didn’t tell no one where ‘e was goin’, see? ‘E made ut from Darwin ter here – gawd knows how. Then ‘e got a lift through to Pine Creek, on the Alice Springs Road. An’ that’s it. They found ‘is camp, but the feller’s gone. Now some people will tell yer,” he laid a finger beside a red and peeling nose, “that he got kidnapped.” He snorted with derision. “That’s bullshit, that is – pardon the French, ladies. I’ll tell yer wot’s ‘appened ter him, ladies ‘n’ gents - he’s wandered off from ‘is campsite – chasin’ a bloody bird or somethin’, and –“ he snapped his fingers, “- it happens as quick as that out here. Yer lost, and that’s it. An’ no one’s gunna never find yer. If yer dunno what ter do, you’re a gonner out ‘ere, folks. Out ‘ere, you either foller th’ rules – or yer croc-feed. It’s that simple.”

The point was most amply made by the staff at a crocodile farm. We tourists stood behind an impressively barred metal fence whose top angled forbiddingly inwards over the crocs’ enclosure. Inside the fenced-off area, a large water-filled pool separated viewers from a too-close association with the crocodiles. Most of the inmates lay on an expanse of sandy ground on the far side of the water.

A pair of khaki-clad, capable-looking types arrived, let themselves through a locked gate onto a wooden stand which overlapped the water. The senior of the two, who held a long pole with a noose at the end, wore a microphone attached to his shirt. We were regaled with a polished patter, followed by a performance involving a bucket of grisly-looking bits of beast. Part of the atmosphere was generated by a large rifle, which was ostentatiously placed in a rack beside the assistant. The implication being that, in the event of something going wrong, he would immediately dispose of the problem.

Across the expanse of murky water, half a dozen scaly crocs watched with languid interest. When a bloody remnant was noosed and swung out, however, the response was immediate. Several of them used their absurd little legs to lever themselves into the water. They sinuously weaved through the dark, weed-streaked surface to where they could lunge at the proffered meat, ripping it from the pole with suitable savagery. Plenty of oohs and aahs from the audience.

All was proceeding according to script when one of the creatures – apparently having decided that there were better ways of obtaining tucker – exploded out of the water right next to the man holding the bucket. Its torso broke through a wooden rail, so that it reached halfway onto the wooden platform. There was a flurry of spray. The bucket went one way, the assistant the other, almost knocked into the water. The keeper with the microphone leapt for the steel mesh fence behind him. In a flurry of frantic panic, the two keepers somehow wound up perched on the fence. The bucket and its contents spilled into the water, and disappeared beneath the surface, where swirls and occasional splashes suggested a violent fate. Throughout all this, the rifle stayed right where it was.

When some semblance of order had returned, the gentleman with the microphone – whose utterances through the attack on the bucket had been unscripted and very earthy – said to his partner, “Don’t you never take your fucking eyes off them bastards! Never – you hear me?”

We all did. It was good advice.

Alarming tour episodes notwithstanding, after two very enjoyable days, I headed back to Darwin. I’d just check out and head back home, I decided. No point in staying on – might as well leave well enough alone and do what everyone wanted me to do.

The trip back to Darwin was uneventful. In the car, music of the commercial kind filled the controlled, cooled atmosphere and the wild miles flowed past, beneath the wheels.

Once back at the hotel, I collected my keycard and a sheaf of phone messages. Five from Sandy: straight in the bin. None from Sergeant Davenport. I took a risk anyway. I phoned her, and was put straight through.

“Thanks for the tip-off,” she said, immediately, voice cool.

“Oh, yeah. Sorry about that,” I said, lamely.

“No, that’s fine.” Sarcasm dripped from every word. “It’s always great to get to talk to someone who’s already been hassled by a rank, blundering amateur. Makes them so uptight and uncooperative. So my job’s an absolute pleasure.”

“But did you think she knows where he is?” I asked.

Davenport didn’t answer.

I sighed. “Look, I am sorry. I’m going home – that’s what I rang to say. I’m booked on a flight tomorrow.” That was a slight exaggeration, actually. “I was calling to ask if you’d have dinner with me tonight for my last night here.”

“You must be joking!” she said.

“Treat it as an apology,” I said. “Tell yourself that it’s the least you deserve for all the aggravation and heartache.”

“Heartache!” she snorted, but I could hear a smile in her voice. “That’ll be the day.”

“What harm could it do?” I said. “I’ll be gone tomorrow, out of your hair, and you’ll have at least a nice meal to show for your pains. Besides, I really do appreciate the way you helped me out. I’d like to say thanks.”

She sighed. “OK. The head says no, but the stomach says yes.”

I arranged to pick her up – I still had the rental car. I went to find Carl Reimerthi. I reckoned if anyone would know a really great restaurant in Darwin, he’d be the man. He knew everything.

Chapter 52

August 7, 2001

The boy sat in his car. Not the Landie – he’d retired it. The way things were, it was just too dangerous to do any more captures in it. The word was out. Everyone was talking about the white four-wheel drive with the canvas-covered rear. If anything went wrong, it was the first kind of vehicle that’d be stopped. The first to be thoroughly searched.

It was a time bomb, a trap waiting to snare him. But the boy was too smart. That wouldn’t happen. With planning and cunning, you always stayed one step ahead. So he’d taken the old Landie from the shed at the roadhouse and kept it at the house in Mintalie. It was only temporary. He was preparing to take it to a disused mine tunnel. He’d have to dispose of it permanently, somehow, but that could wait. It was safe enough. No one was going to come looking for it, anyway.

He was driving a new Holden ute. It was his pride and joy – a gleaming, elegant sophisticated beast. He’d gone for the best of everything. The colour was a dark, charcoal grey. The windows’ tinting was almost as dark as the panels, so that the whole car was a solid chunk of darkness. Inside, you felt cool, remote. It was as if you moved through the world at one remove, watching, but not touching or being touched by anything.

He was sitting now in the street that Kim Davenport – Sergeant Kimberley Davenport – lived in. He had been cautious at first, about following her. But she never appeared to worry about anything like that. She moved through the world with an airy, casual confidence. Anyway, as her street was quite busy and lined with blocks of flats and townhouses, his car, with many others that regularly parked there, occasioned no notice at all.

Tonight, the boy had parked right outside her house. Secure in the darkness of the cab, he’d be able to see and not be seen. Even if he was, the plates were fake: he’d used a set from an old wreck Alex had brought into the workshop to cannibalize for spare parts.

He’d been to Darwin many times, now, planning his capture of Sergeant Davenport. Most weekends, he either drove up – or flew. He’d done that on a number of occasions. Gradually, he built up more information about her. Her lifestyle, habits and routines.

He had used the oldest trick in the book to get his first sight of her. He’d paid cash to a florist to have a bunch of flowers delivered to the front desk of her office. While the boy sat in a well-populated waiting area, she had emerged from a keypad-operated doorway to collect the beribboned bunch. He’d smiled inwardly at the look of frustrated impatience on her face. She probably believed it was her workmates playing a prank, or her current interest overstepping the mark (or misjudging the target, more likely – she wasn’t a ‘flowers’ girl, he found out later).

He’d been pleased with what he saw. She was much taller than he’d imagined. By far, she’d be his tallest capture. But he was entranced by her tousled blonde hair and the quirky smile that so often flickered at her lips. She wore no make-up, which was disappointing. The boy thought that he would change that, once he started to train her.

She was fit and strong. He liked to watch her lithe, athletic walk. She ran several times each week, a scruffy little blue heeler running at her heels, and swam or rode a bike regularly too. Even in her uniform, the boy could see the swell at breast and hips that hinted at the excitement that lay beneath for him to discover.

She lived alone, in a simple, white-painted brick bungalow that nestled – the odd one out – from the utilitarian outlines of the blocks of communal flats. She didn’t have a steady relationship – anymore, anyway. Most often, she would go out with groups of people, mainly fellow policemen and women. The boy had followed her occasional dates with interest. They tended to be simple and perfunctory – especially at the conclusion of the evening, when she would simply say goodnight and exit quickly and composedly, walking with a steady, unhurried stride to her door and letting herself in.

Once, there had been a man she’d seen four or five times, while the boy had been around. The relationship had seemed to be becoming quite serious. The boy had decided that he needed to intervene, but something had happened, and by the next weekend, when he’d come back, she had resumed her normal, solitary, almost insular, lifestyle.

Once he found her home, the first thing he’d done was get rid of the dog. She left it, each day, in a fenced-in enclosure that must have been a tennis court, but which was no longer used. The dog had water, food and shelter – a kennel under a triangle of green shadecloth stretched across one corner. It had been a simple matter. He had waited until she was gone for the day, and gone to the court. The dog had been interested, and come over, tail wagging. The boy had dropped some dry dog food through the fence. When the dog had begun to snuffle up the spilled bits of food, he’d shot it, using a handgun he had bought from one of the truckies.

On many occasions, he had broken into her home, when she went out for the evening. Hours of watching her had enabled him to know, for example, that when she went out with her girl friends, it would be a late night. Hours of reconnoitring the house and garden, learning her territory, planning. There was no front fence, but the back garden was large – containing the tennis court. It was also lushly planted with thick bushes and shady, overhanging trees. There was a high wooden fence at the sides and rear.

Using the cover of the fences and shrubbery, he’d easily been able to closely inspect the door locks. For a policewoman, the back door lock was most unsuitable: a simple sprung latch that he’d opened with a plastic-covered card.

Consequently, the boy had spent a lot of time inside, too. Wandering around her house was the most exciting thing he’d ever done. He resolved that for his next capture, he’d follow the same routine. The feeling of being “inside” her was almost overpowering.

The kitchen and laundry area had taken little time. He learned that she was organised, but not fanatical about housework and cleanliness. The living area contained a shelf of music CDs and a wall that was a wooden bookcase filled with books – mainly paperbacks. There were quite a few lurid thrillers and the thick fantasy novels that the boy hated. Some of the books were obviously training manuals for courses she was studying: techniques of detection, law texts and manuals dealing with physical fitness and self-improvement. The boy looked at them briefly, thought that he should read them, but gave up. His reading skills were now competent, but not advanced: too many missed days at school.

The bedroom held him spellbound. In fact, he had lost control of himself, to the extent that he’d taken a trophy – been unable to resist the temptation – from her lingerie drawer.

The array of clothing in the solid, dark-panelled wardrobe in one corner of the room was nothing like those he’d taken from the old man’s house, so long ago. Many of the clothes were very staid: functional and smart, rather than dressy and feminine. But there were still a few dresses, whose colour and sensuous material hinted at a side of Kimberley Davenport that liked softness and seduction. The boy felt his heart lurch in his chest at the thought.

That time, he sat for so long in her room that it was only the sound of a car outside that brought him back to where he was. The boy panicked, leaping to his feet. He stood in the hall, heart beating wildly. Would she come in the front way? Or the back door? Only when he heard her shoes scraping on the paving stone steps at the front did he move swiftly down the hall, through the kitchen and laundry. He was still closing the back door as Kimberley Davenport let herself in at the front. The sound of the front door opening, he hoped, drowned any noise he made exiting.

Perhaps she had heard something, maybe she was simply cautious. She had come to the back door and opened it, standing silhouetted in the light from the laundry behind her. She had stared out into the garden, but the boy had been deep in the shrubbery, and stayed absolutely still. After a long, silent stare, she had gone back inside and closed the door.

It was only back in the car that the boy had realised that he still clutched a pair of her panties in his hand.

After that time, he had been more careful. He never stayed long, always put things back exactly as he found them and entered and exited with a key. That was his best effort. The second time he’d tried to get in, he found she had installed a security chain on her back door. The front door was much too exposed to break in, so he had used some pliers to remove the glass louvres from the rear toilet window and slithered in like that. Being slender, and agile, that hadn’t been difficult. Once in, his first task had been to search for a spare key. He found it in a kitchen drawer – conveniently labelled. He hadn’t even had to take it. A quick trip to the late night hardware store had been enough to get a copy made, so that the original was right where she had left it, by the time she returned.

Which meant that he could let himself in and out the front door whenever he wanted.

Caution was still his first priority. He always waited until absolutely dark, until there was no one in the street that he could see. He would walk straight up to the front door, key ready, and be inside before anyone watching could be sure of anything – if they were watching.

The master-stroke, he thought, had been the purchase of a blonde wig, which he wore with jeans, white shirt and flat boots. In the dimness of night, anyone watching who knew Kimberley slightly might simply assume he was her.

For months, he went to Darwin almost every weekend, with occasional longer stays, when he took a week’s “holiday”. The garage went on, with or without him, just the same. If he seemed more remote, almost uninterested in the running of the business, none of his employees cared: it meant that he was less picky than usual, and that was sometimes a blessing.

Gradually, he prepared his capture. It would be after a night out. It would be on a Friday – giving him the weekend before anyone realised that she was gone.

He would hide in her house until she was asleep – the spare room contained a table, with a computer, as well as some filing cabinets and bookshelves with folders and other papers. The built-in wardrobe in this room contained only a few clothes that overflowed the rack in the bedroom. There was ample room for the boy to sit in there and wait. Patience was one of his most well-developed abilities. A hunter had to be able to outlast his prey, if he was to be able to strike only when the moment was right.

The boy watched in the side mirror, as a car slowly turned into the street and made its way along. The driver went past Kimberley Davenport’s driveway, but then stopped and reversed, before moving forward and turning up it, to stop behind her car.

The boy watched as the driver – a man – stepped out of the car, stretching, as he did so. He was tall, but lacked the deep gut and hippy swagger of most of the policemen Kimberley Davenport had partnered before. The boy flinched, involuntarily, as the driver’s gaze swept the street, passing over the car in which he sat, and then returning for a second look. The boy sat perfectly still. The tinted windows meant that no one could see anything inside, in this light, but the boy still felt a nervous frisson move up his spine.

Then the front door opened and Kimberley Davenport emerged. The boy stared. She wore a dress he hadn’t seen before; light and strapless, with a tight bodice that emphasised her shoulders and breasts, but with full skirts over her hips and legs. The man made some comment, because he saw her laugh and curtsey.

He walked back and held the car door for her, which caused more amusement.

Watching the car drive off, the boy felt the raw anger suffuse him. It was the glowing heat of the hunter who sense his prey is being stalked by some other creature. The fury of a beast that will fight for his quarry.

He started the car, forcing the tumult of feeling into his gut, where it pulsed as energy. The big V8 throbbed as he moved after the other car. He wanted to see where they went. Then he’d come back, make his preparations.

And wait.

Chapter 53

August 8th, 2001

Finding Kim Davenport’s house wasn’t difficult: Darwin’s layout was not extensive, and her directions were succinct and easy to follow. I drove slowly down her street, which was quite wide, but lined with parked cars, which made seeing the house numbers a bit tricky. In fact, I went past her drive, and had to reverse to drive into it.

I stood and stretched before I approached the front door. I’d spent a few hours in the car, today – and not enough, recently, on the bike. My back felt stiff – compacted, as if the hours of sitting had squashed the vertebra together. Parked directly outside her house was a gleaming, dark-coloured ute, with dark-tinted windows. Bad colour at night, I thought. No one’d see you.

I heard a noise and turned as Sergeant Davenport came out, locking her front door behind her.

I have to admit that I gaped. She looked glamorous and sophisticated, in a vibrantly-coloured dress with a fitted top section and full, swaying skirts. My jeans and open-necked shirt seemed suddenly scruffy and unkempt.

“Wow!” I said. “I should have brought my dinner suit!”

She gave a small pirouette and a mock-curtsey. “Just because we live a long way from civilisation doesn’t necessarily mean that we can’t frock up when the occasion calls.”

“Not at all!” I said. “I just wish I could do justice to you!”

“Ah, you scrub up alright – for a Southerner,” she smiled.

I opened the car door for her – black-tie manners, at least – reversed out, and headed back into the city.

“So, where are we off to?” she asked, turning to face me.

“It’s a surprise,” I said. “I don’t even quite know what it’s going to be like. Wait and see.”

I drove to Cullen Bay. We were met at the marina by a smartly-dressed man in a vaguely nautical suit who escorted us to a smallish motor launch. We selected glasses from a silver tray at the head of the gangway. Before we stepped aboard, a lurking photographer insisted on taking our picture together. We stood on the dock, whilst he fussed around, setting up the shot. Just as the flash went off, a car accelerated behind us, with a burbling roar. I glanced back, annoyed. A dark car moved swiftly out of the parking area, its brakelights glowing ferally in the gloom. The photographer insisted on a second take, as the car’s headlights had spoiled the first shot.

The tender piloted us out, across water whose darkness sparkled with the jewelled reflections of the many lights of the city, to an elegant motor yacht, The Koomolara. A maitre-d’ met us at the top of the steep flight of steps that led to an open deck at the stern of the yacht. Before us was an area that was obviously used as a dance floor, when occasion called. On the far side, retractable walls at the rear had been folded back. Four dining tables, topped with snowy tablecloths, whilst under cover, were set out in the open air. With soft candles lighting each, and only small bulkhead lights at the sides, the impression was of four small hemispheres of golden light enfolding gleaming white circles.

Kim Davenport gave me an ironic look. “No strings, eh?”

Since I hadn’t had the faintest idea what Reimerthi had chosen to surprise me with, I could only shrug. “I’m a stranger in this town, lady,” I said, in my best “aw shucks” accent. “Ain’t this the Darwin Macdonalds?”

“So – what do you do when you’re not wandering around Australia’s tropical north searching for lost friends?”

We were seated at one of the tables, and a white-coated waiter was bringing a couple of Cascades. I noticed that the lighting had the effect of making each table into a little island of light beyond which there was only dimness. In any case, only one of the other tables was occupied.

“I’m a journalist of sorts,” I said.

“Of sorts?” she raised that interrogative eyebrow.

“Mmm.” I explained how I’d fallen into my part-time career as a sort of poor man’s Woodward, or Bernstein.

She laughed. I noticed that she wore earrings: small globes of pearl, which swung, catching the soft light, as her head moved. She also wore lipstick and soft tones of colour to highlight her eyes. “What are you looking at?” She touched her hair, self-consciously.

“The earrings,” I said. “I didn’t mean to stare – I guess it’s the transformation from the efficient, no-frills Sergeant Davenport to … this.”

“Kimberley,” she said, laughing. “Off-duty Kim. A sort of reverse Superman.”

“Super woman, actually,” I corrected.

“Whoops!” Kim laughed at herself. “I get so used to trying to … suppress anything vaguely feminine, in my job. It’s a relief to be able to relax and indulge – especially knowing that it’s not going to get back.”

“Get back?” I sat back, as a waiter brought our beers. We raised our glasses, toasting each other.

“That’s so good,” she said, sighing. “It really hits the spot, after a long day. Week.”

“Don’t see many women who drink beer,” I said.

“Goes with the territory,” she said, smiling at the pun. “Getting back … most of the men I meet are in the Job, so anything that happens in the social environment also impacts on the work environment. I have to spend all my time making sure that whatever I do as Kim doesn’t interfere with the ability of Senior Sergeant Davenport –“

“Superwoman,” I put in.

“Supercop,” she agreed, “to do what she has to do. I made a few mistakes, early on. Didn’t realise that the guys were trying it on – treating me as a body and a face, as a conquest, not as a colleague. Dumb. I should have sussed it much sooner.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Well, when I made it clear that I wasn’t just going to root my way up the ranks, there was – well, there were two reactions. One was a subtle readjustment at work. Suddenly, I was competition, and the guys don’t like to have girls as rivals for positions they want. The solution from upstairs was to dead-end me in Missing Persons.” She sat back, sipped at her beer, smoothing the condensation down the curved sides of the glass.

“What was the second reaction?” I asked.

“Oh, some harassment,” she said. “The usual stuff – porn emails and letter, stories spread around about that I was either a slut or a lesbian.”

“What did you do?” I asked. “I mean, did you complain?”

“I didn’t know for sure who it was,” she said. “There were a couple of blokes I’d been out with – and one ended badly. I know he sent me some revolting stuff, though he’s always denied it. And I think he killed my dog.” She paused, swallowing. “But you have to be pretty sure of your ground, in this job, before you go upstairs and complain about another officer. Especially if it’s something like this. They put you through the mill.”

“And, of course,” I said, “if you dress like a woman, you’re leading them on.”

“Exactly,” she said.

“Why stay?” I asked. “Not time to move on?”

She leaned back in her seat, looking at me speculatively. “Would you ask a man that?”

I smiled, “Yeah, I would,” I said. “I’d ask anyone that. It’s obviously been suggested to you.”

Kim laughed, “You’re quick, alright.” She swallowed the last of her beer. “Yeah, everyone’s said that maybe I should just jump. Or relocate. But I just can’t do that. One,” she held up a finger, “It feels like giving in. I think I can be a good cop. More than that, I think that if I can get into a position of administrative authority, I can start to change that culture. The second thing is that I want to show that for a woman to succeed in the Job you don’t need to be a dyke, or a bimbo, or turn yourself into an imitation bloke.”

“Hmmm,” I leaned forward, extending my hand. “It’s been nice knowing you, Lady Quixote.”

Kim shook it firmly and did the eyebrow thing again, “Is this the fearless Aussie Bob Woodward talking?”

“Well, yeah, it is,” I said. “I’ve fought situations like this with people like you a few times. Sometimes, in a specific situation, we’ve won. But all that means is that we get the law, and occasionally public opinion, to support what we have aimed for. But for the people involved, the cost – personal and professional – is almost always more than they can afford. I also wonder whether the bastards who have caused the situation in the first place change one iota.”

Kim stared at me, an intense, challenging look. “Pardon me, but that seems pretty defeatist.”

I shrugged, “I suppose it does.” I tried to retreat a little. “It doesn’t mean that you don’t fight – that I don’t. I guess I feel that often it’s me who loads the gun and fires the bullets, but I don’t get hurt in any of the battles.”

“Maybe that’s because you’re not fighting for what you believe,” she said.

“I believe in it,” I protested. “I wouldn’t do it, if I didn’t.”

“Wouldn’t you?” she asked. “Not for the glory?”

I snorted. “The glory! Yeah, right!”

“Come on,” she said, eyes narrowed shrewdly, “I know some journos. Ego’s a big part of it.”

I shrugged, not finding the right words, feeling I should be explaining myself better. “I know a few journalists like that as well,” I said, carefully. “I guess that I like to think that because I haven’t taken the big bucks, and gone for the byline at a big paper, I’ve somehow remained true to the principles that I started with.” I shrugged, “Whether that’s true or not …”

“Surely there must be some kudos, surely, for the champion of the little people.”

“Not really,” I said. “Certainly not in the Bernstein and Woodward way. Some satisfaction comes from knowing that you do help some people, sometimes. I still have to be careful – sometimes you can lose a lot more than you win. But every now and then there’s one where you think: good result. It’s undoubtedly true that if this stuff is dragged into the light of day, it often means that it can be prevented somewhere else.”

“There you are!” Kim grinned at me, pushing her hair back behind her ear, “You are a believer.”

“Not like you are, though,” I said. “You got the wounds. I just talk the talk. Others carry the scars of my battles.”

“Oh well, mine are only flesh wounds,” she said, airily. “Nothing too serious.”

“Is it still going on?” I asked. “Or has it got better?”

“Oh, it –“ she stopped, then started speaking again. “It was better,” she said, emphasising, ‘was’. “But there’s some weird shit happened since I broke up with Rob – that’s the last one, who sent the porn,” she explained.

“Weird like what?” I asked.

“Weird, like I came home one night and someone had been in my house,” she said.

“You caught him?” I said.

“No,” she shook her head. “I think I just missed him. But the back door was open, and there was some stuff in my house that had obviously been … gone through.”

“What, you got ‘robbed’?” I smiled.

“Yeah, good one,” Kim’s smile was a bit strained. “No. But I have had stuff stolen since then – clothes, you know, stuff like that.”

The penny dropped. “Oh boy,” I said. “Have you told anyone?”

She looked away. “Yeah, I rang Rob. He denied it. Said I was harassing him!” She gave an embarrassed laugh. “The thing is, I’m not sure how the stuff is going missing. I thought it was being taken from the washing line. But …”

“Change the locks,” I suggested.

Kim sighed, “Yeah, I’ve been going to do that. It’s just such a hassle.” She smiled at the look on my face. “I do take precautions,” she said.

I raised my eyebrow at the innuendo.

Kim grinned cheekily. “Not those precautions,” she said. “Deadbolts, security chains – I’ve even started keeping a record of the cars in the street, so I can run checks on the number plates … see if there’s anyone that doesn’t fit.”

“And change the locks,” I said.

“You’re worse than my mum,” she complained.

“Better safe than …” I said.

“Yeah, yeah, thanks, Mum,” she said.

I took the hint and talked about other things. I found her easy to talk to. She was direct, with a straight-ahead sincerity that was very engaging. The angularity and brusqueness that characterised her at work was softened. The result was a piquant personality I enjoyed very much.

After coffee, as she accepted my portion of the chocolate selection they’d left us, she sighed. “I probably shouldn’t say this,” she said, “but I honestly can’t remember an evening I’ve enjoyed as much as I have tonight.”

“It’s OK,” I said, “I won’t let it go to my head.”

“That would make you a very rare bird, for a man,” she smiled.

“Woah!” I held up my hand. “None of that sexist claptrap here, that you very much!”

“Sexy?” she said, “What’s wrong with ‘sexy’?”

“Nothing,” I said, my voice changing tone, as I looked at her directly.

She laughed at me. “Don’t you start,” she said.

“It’s an involuntary reflex. Kicks in after two beers.”

“Sometimes less,” she said. She pushed back her chair, reaching for her bag. A waiter appeared to whisk the chair away, as she stood. “However,” she said, “I have enjoyed this so much that I will voluntarily drive you out to the airport tomorrow, for your plane.” She glanced at me, as I came round to take her arm as we returned to the tender for the ride back to the marina. “If you like, that is.”

I smiled. “I like. What about coffee first, at that place we went to the other day?”

“Brilliant. When? What about ten thirty-ish?”

I was surprised. “Great! That’d be really great, Kim.”

“It’s a date, Daniel,” she smiled mischievously.

“Gosh, another one,” I said. People will talk!”

“Let ‘em!”

I held her arm, as we descended the steps and sat on the tender. The air wasn’t cold, but we sat close enough that I could feel the curve of her hip and shoulder against my side. It was contact firm and sincere, not flirty; genuine interest, not just teasing promise. The thought of coffee in the morning brought a pleasurable tightness in my belly.

I parked the car back in the rental area, poked the keys in the return slot and headed for the elevator and my room. I was tired. Dining in a luxury floating restaurant in enchanting company can be exhausting work. I felt pleasantly sleepy, walking down the corridor to my room.

I swept my electronic card through the scanner in the door. I was vaguely aware that the door diagonally across the corridor was opening. I didn’t have time to even turn. Something launched into my back, pushing me forward, smashing into the half-open door and then through it. I sprawled onto the floor.

Later, I remembered an initial sensation of removedness, as if what was happening was occurring to somebody else, but being perceived by me from their perspective. Most of the sensations like pain, or nausea and distress came afterwards, more reflectively.

I tried to twist round, to see who it was behind me – though I knew, or thought I did, from the first. A hand grabbed me fiercely behind the neck, forcing my head down into the carpet, thumping my face into the floor. I felt the fibres, the dust-embedded texture and the smell of cleaning fluids and hot, electric vacuums. I splayed my hands, trying to push up against the pressure.

He kicked my wrists, viciously hard, and then dropped a knee in my back. I felt that, alright. All the nerves came alive, rioting at the abuse.

Flat onto the floor, I couldn’t even curl up to protect myself. Systematically, he began to beat me, kicking into my sides and stomach. He flailed first at my head and shoulders, then my legs and groin with some kind of rod.

I don’t think I ever became unconscious, but at some point, my mind retreated inside me to the point that what was happening in the world outside – to me – ceased to be relevant to it. I was vaguely aware of when it stopped, and also that someone was moving around the room. But breathing seemed to have become a difficult and complex task; one that required an inordinate amount of attention.

At some stage, my eyes – which had remained open – registered a person, in the mirror that occupied the wardrobe door, floor to ceiling. It was someone familiar, but strange – shouldn’t have been here. But awareness of who it was, and what that might mean, was days away.

Chapter 54

August 8th, 2001

The boy sat in the darkness of the wardrobe in the spare room – her office. Around him, her clothes hung, many in the filmy plastic bags from the drycleaners. The scent of her perfume still managed to eke its way through, filling his senses, despite the mothballs, and dust and dry cleaning fluids.

The time stretched out. Despite his stillness, the boy felt vibrantly alive. The nerves crawled through his flesh, energising each limb, each section of his body. It felt like he was constructed from a ball of snakes, uncoiling; sending flickering tongues through the air to taste danger – and excitement.

He was aware of his tumescence, feeling his hardness and strength, and revelling in it. But he made no move to touch himself, savouring each thrilling moment of this, the end of the hunt. Tonight would be his greatest capture.

He heard the car pull into the driveway and looked at his watch: it was after two in the morning. He felt a flare of irritation. But the lateness meant that when she did sleep, she would be tireder, less likely to be awoken by any noise he might make. She had been away with the stranger for a long time, though.

He moved carefully to the window. It was at the side of the house, and afforded him only an oblique view of the side pathway. He could see only the passenger side of the car. The door didn’t open. Streetlights reflected off the window, making it impossible to see into the car’s interior. The boy glanced over his shoulder, through the doorway to the hall, wondering if she had alighted before he had managed to get to the window. There was no sound of movement on the porch or at the front door, though.

They must be talking. Or something. The boy felt a proprietary anger suffuse him: how dare she! She was to be his. She would be punished for this. When the time came, he would remember her fickleness. After ten minutes and forty seconds, both doors opened. He watched as the stranger came round to help her from the car.

The boy had seen her with men before, but the man who had taken her to the marina was a new face. The boy shrugged: it didn’t matter. After tonight, she’d not be seen again by anyone except him. She would be his, for his eyes to feast on. His alone. He would feed and be fed by her. She would slake his thirst. She would satisfy his desire – as, he silently promised, he would hers. He would be the only light in the darkness of her skies. He would be the single star in the black hole of her universe.

He heard the soft mumble of voices at the front of the house and silently retreated to the darkness of the wardrobe. He put out his hand in the darkness, checking that his capture bag was exactly where he had left it, with all that he would need.

He raised his head, like a wild animal listening for the sounds of its approaching prey. In the darkness, he slipped the white mask over the lower section of his face. Cloth and chloroform bottle in his hands. The time it was taking her to enter her home was a torment: a single off-key note sustained and repeated to ears hypersensitive to melody and harmony. At the same time as it was agony, it was ecstasy. Each moment that prolonged the fulfilment of his fancies ratcheted the climactic peak higher and higher.

He imagined what she might be doing that was taking so much time. Perhaps she loved the strange man. Perhaps they were kissing, now – perhaps fucking, like the men and women in the magazines he kept in the cavern beneath his house. In those images and stories, the women were insatiable, the men satyrlike in inventiveness and endurance. The boy imagined Kim now, unable to control her lust for the strange man, on her knees, in submissive supplication to his male power, and its embodiment: his cock.

She might be rammed against the wall, her legs spread wide to accommodate the instrument that would penetrate, impale her, subdue her, fill her. Her mouth would be open, lips bright with paint and passion, as she panted breaths of lust and lasciviousness. The stranger’s face was blank, a void. Only her features fuelled the boy’s mind.

The sound of the key in the front door scratched across the boy’s fantasies to violently that he shuddered, feeling the sound as raw as a scar across his skin. He gasped, put a hand out, touching the enclosing walls of the wardrobe to return the world that whirled around him to stability, to stillness.

He jerked his head up again, listening intently; hearing their voices indistinctly through the open door.

“… coffee,” he heard her say.

For a moment, he panicked, thinking she had invited the stranger in. The slut! Would she seduce him on this first night?

There was a mumble of the stranger’s voice, from which he could make out nothing, except for the final word, “… tomorrow.”

There was a pause, then – at last – the door shut. After a few moments, the car started, reversed out of the driveway, and drove off accelerating smoothly away. The boy held a breath, until he heard her footsteps. First, the heeled shoes she had worn on her date, then just the padding thumps of her feet down the polished wood of the hall. He smiled, as she checked the back door and rattled the chain. He listened to her movements in the kitchen; the clatter of dishes and rustle of papers as she tidied up.

Then she moved back to the front room. The boy heard her saying something softly to herself, but couldn’t make out what it was.

He froze, in shock, when the light came on in the study. She had never, in the time he’d been watching her, come in here after a night out. She picked something up from the desk and went back out into the front room, turning off the light, as she did so The boy relaxed, hearing her move to the bedroom. She would undress now, he knew. She would shower before bed – she always did.

When he heard the water start to spatter against the shower screen, the boy silently started to move. He poured a generous amount out the liquid-filled bottle onto soft cloth pad that would ensure she stayed asleep. The ties he would use on her wrists and ankles he placed near his knees. It was a shame to use the vicious plastic ties – sometimes it left such terrible marks when they struggled. But it was foolproof – as long as his prey had no knife, he thought, remembering the girl at Barrow Creek. He considered the hat and wig that he usually wore, but left them in the bag. It would be dark. He wouldn’t need camouflage.

Soon she would finish her shower. She would go to bed – naked. He knew she slept naked. He was looking forward to seeing her there, when the time came to take her. Then he would walk her house, a silent spirit, but a force so powerful he could control her world. He would become her world.

That was when it all went completely wrong.

The light snapped on in the study and then, almost without pause, flooded into where he crouched. He looked up in shock. She stood, naked, holding the dress she had worn, in a plastic cover and on a coat hanger, ready to return to the wardrobe.

His reactions were fast – he leapt up, out, reaching for her. But she was quick, too. She swung the door shut, so that it threw him off-course. Instead of landing on her, the boy stumbled sideways. His flailing hand, though, caught her ankle, so that she stumbled, as she turned and ran for the doorway.

The boy scrambled to his feet. His breath sounded like surf, in his head. It felt as if his heart was about to burst from his body. His hands, as he reached for her, were trembling violently.

She was slower to rise than he. The boy scrambled to sit astride her. He grasped her arm, trying to pull her hands together. In the bag strapped round his waist, there were extra ties, but the chloroform pad was still in the wardrobe, out of reach. He couldn’t reach for the zipper, to take out the linked ties he had already prepared.

She had obviously stunned herself as she fell, but he saw her eyes focus on him – saw too, that she recognised him immediately. His panic intensified: it was all ruined – and she knew who he was!

With that awareness, came also the realisation that she was stronger than him. She effortlessly broke his grip on her forearm, with a practised twist of her wrist.

Their hands waved, almost comically, as he tried to regain his grip on her hands, whilst she tried to avoid his grasp. Then she hit him. The shock of the blow was almost worse than the pain. Her hands spiked out in a fast, sharp, spearing strike that caught him right below his ribs.

The boy reared back, falling across her legs. The agony was extraordinary – it felt as if he couldn’t breathe, as if his lungs were paralysed.

He was unable to do anything, as she extricated herself from beneath him and stood up. He was still gasping, hardly able to breathe, as she opened a drawer in the desk. She turned and with a practised movement, ratcheted handcuffs on his wrists. He began to gasp, feeling a fog of panic engulf him.

For a second, Kimberley Davenport knelt beside him, checking that he was able to breathe. Then she left the room. The boy heard the water in the shower, which had been left running, stop. He could feel his heart lurching, like a motor about to break free of its bearings.

She returned, a few moments later, with a robe on, and a phone in her hand. She also held her police weapon. She pointed it at him, without particular force or emphasis, and said, “It’s Rob Cook, isn’t it?” When he didn’t reply, she continued, “Well, Mr Cook, what’s all this about?” She smiled – an ironic grimace, without amusement. “Is it just me? Or is this a hobby of yours?”

Perhaps it was the shock of seeing the gun, but the boy’s mind, which had frozen, began to work. He wriggled back, slightly, until he could feel the desk against his back. Although his breathing had eased, he manufactured some more wheezing breaths, and gasped only, “Water … please?”

She shook her head impatiently, mouth an angry line, but turned and placed the phone on a set of shelves by the door. He heard her footsteps, padding on the bare boards, down the hall to the kitchen, where he heard a tap run. As soon as she was out of the room, the boy reached under his shirt and unzipped the bag. There was the Taser gun. Even with his hands cuffed, he was able to grip the solid black heft of the butt and withdraw it from the pouch, holding it between his thighs, concealed under the folds of his shirt.

She entered the room cautiously, gun raised and ready, but relaxed, when she saw that he hadn’t moved from the floor. She held out a plastic cup. “Now just sit nice and still,” she said. “Don’t make me nervous, OK?”

With the gun pointed directly at him, she eased forward and placed the water beside his leg, within his reach. “There. Now just drink that, and stay nice and still,” she said. “I’m just going to call in the cavalry.”

She picked up the phone and began to dial, eyes on the raised keys of the handset. She couldn’t watch him and dial, and the boy took his hands out from under his shirt, holding the gun with both. She sensed his movement, but by the time she looked up, he had the gun pointing at her. Even so, her reflexes were extremely quick. Her hand jerked her own weapon at him, even as the Taser darts hit her, high up on her chest, at the base of the throat

The boy watched as everything unfolded before him. Again, he felt removed from the events: her eyes flared with shock, then rolled white. She fell immediately, but not before the gun in her hand fired. The boy felt a giant hand slap his head.

Then, there was darkness.

Chapter 55

August 8th, 2001

The hotel security system was good – which I already knew. I knew nothing of another guest seeing the half-open door and me lying sprawled over the floor, bloody and still. Apparently, I was conscious – more or less. Indeed, Carl Reimerthi later told me I carried out a whole conversation with him, about various things. I remembered nothing of it, little of the attack that had preceded it.

I knew who I was and what I was doing. I knew about my search for Jack. I answered questions directly afterwards, giving my home address and phone number. I recalled all of this, when the hotel’s doctor visited me, in hospital, late the next morning.

But of the actual attack, I remembered nothing. I knew that it had happened – the physical evidence alone was … convincing. But from noticing something moving behind me as I opened my door, to seeing Carl Reimerthi standing behind the ambulance paramedic, I could recollect absolutely nothing.

I did remember that I had a date for coffee that morning, with Kim Davenport. I asked Reimerthi to ring her and make my apologies. I was surprised – no, disappointed, later that day – when she hadn’t called. I became concerned when Reimerthi came to my room and said that there was no one at her home. He had been unable to contact her, so he had driven past her house that afternoon, on his way to visit me and go to work. At my insistence, he rang and then left a message on her mobile phone number.

Perhaps, I thought, things had happened at work that required her urgent attention.

By the end of the day, I began to think something was very wrong. I rang the office number on the card she had given me. There was no answer at all: not only was she not there, but there was no one there to answer her phone.

Reimerthi tried to ease at my worry. It was only a coffee. Maybe she forgot. Maybe she had something else on. Lots of maybes.

I wasn’t going to say I thought that it had been more than just an agreement to have coffee. There had been a kiss, as well. Not a full-on, no-holds-barred kiss, but one that had definitely said that coffee, at least, was a sure thing.

However, my concern remained something that I could do little about. I’d suffered cracks to at least three ribs and my left wrist had been broken. The wrist was in plaster, but there was nothing that could be done about the ribs, apart from pain-killers. As well as making sleeping uncomfortable and difficult, this kept me in hospital and in bed. As well, although there were no breaks, my face was swollen and had a raw, sandpapered look, because of the way he’d shoved my head into the carpeted floor. A straight line of bruising ran down my right cheek from the edge of the door catching my cheek. The area around my legs and hips was black and blue. Although I’d sustained no permanent damage – according to the doctor – I’d find walking distinctly uncomfortable for most of the next week.

Saturday passed in a welter of pain relief medication, of varying strengths. Sunday was no different, except that I was released from hospital and went back to the hotel. Graeme Brewer insisted that I stay free of charge, in a suite kept for highrollers, normally.

No message of any kind had arrived from Kim Davenport. I’d rung the switchboard number of the police headquarters where her office was situated several times. The receptionist told me that there was no one who could help me, because that area was unmanned over the weekend.

I asked whether there was anyone there who knew Kim sufficiently well to be able to find her.

Over the phone, I heard the woman make a strange sort of noise. Then she said, “There’s Senior Sergeant Fairway, I s’pose. But he won’t be in until Monday.”

“Can’t you give me his number?” I asked.

“No, I can’t,” she said. I could hear the irritation creeping into her voice. “He refuses to allow that kind of information to be divulged to the public.”

“What about voicemail? Or an email address?” I asked.

With a sigh, she gave me a number where I could leave a message – to get rid of me, more than anything else, I think.

I composed what I wanted to say pretty carefully. “Hi, Senior Sergeant Fairway – My name is Daniel Kinner. I’m journalist from Melbourne. I had an appointment with Kim Davenport yesterday morning, which she missed. I am just concerned that I can’t contact her. Thought perhaps someone should just check on her. Thanks.” I left the hotel’s number, in case he wanted to contact me.

I didn’t want to put her in a position where her reputation or competency was compromised, but I couldn’t believe that she would have made no contact, under the circumstances. Something must have happened.

The reply, when it came, was interesting.

I was being interviewed, in my hotel room, by a pair of detectives, Sanderson and Leidel. Reimerthi was in the room too, representing the interests of the hotel. They’d had the courtesy to wait until the doctor said I was OK – although apart from anxiety about Kim, the drugs kept me relatively comfortable.

I had told them about my dinner with Sergeant Davenport, mentioning several times that she’d missed our appointment and had been unable to be contacted since. They ignored this information. I had painstakingly gone through the return of the car and entry to my hotel room up to the time of the attack.

“You saw no one?” Leidel sat at the end of the bed, wearing a garish Hawaiian shirt. His partner, Sanderson, sat on my right with the window behind him. Reimerthi stood just inside the door, listening.

I shook my head.

“No one in the car park, just hanging round? No one in the lobby or corridor?”

“No. I sort of half-noticed that the door across the hall from mine was open a bit, but, you know, you don’t look in – especially at that time of the night,” I said.

Leidel nodded. “So, what happened next?”

“I remember being pushed from behind, and hitting the door,” I said. “But that’s it, I’m afraid.”

His look was sceptical. I didn’t blame him.

I felt frustrated too, because there was a niggling feeling that I knew more. I could remember clearly opening my room door. Then there was an impression of light from an open door behind me, and of movement, but the attack itself remained a complete blank. It wasn’t then that I’d seen something. But I couldn’t piece together when and what it was.

“It’s quite common,” the doctor had told me. “Often when people are concussed – or even severely traumatised, their mind just seems to erase a particular experience.”

“Will I ever be able to remember it?” I asked.

He shrugged, “Maybe some. Probably not. Sometimes, an event will occur that sort of jogs your memory and something will surface. Most often, patients don’t recall anything.” He gave me a look, “Are you sure you want to remember it?”

“You’re probably right,” I said. “It’s just that I keep thinking that I know something about … it, something I need to recall.”

“That makes sense,” he said. “There’s a gap – maybe you don’t like the feeling that something’s been ‘stolen’ from you – part of your existence has been erased, for you, perhaps?”

“Yeah, maybe that’s it,” I said.

The two detectives prodded around what I did remember: Which room had the door open? Had I noticed anyone following me? Did I know anyone with a reason to do this to me?

At this point, the penny dropped. “Wasn’t it just a robbery?” I asked.

They glanced at each other. “No, Mr Kinner. Nothing was taken from your room, as far as we can tell.”

“Bloody hell,” I said. “I don’t really know anyone here.”

That wasn’t strictly true. Jack was around somewhere. But he couldn’t have done this, I thought. There might have been people back home who’d want to thump me – but not here. Except Sarich, I remembered – but that had been days ago. And why he would do it was beyond me. There was no way Sarich would have crossed the whole country just to work out his frustrations on me. If he’d wanted to do that, he could have easily done it before I left home to come here, couldn’t he?

Anyway, Sarich was a cop. If I told them I suspected one of their fellows, I’d probably alienate their sympathies completely. So I said nothing about him or Jack.

They were making preparations to leave when the door, which had been closed, was suddenly opened. Reimerthi, who had been leaning against the wall behind the door, moved quickly and smoothly to his right, hand close to the lapel of his jacket.

There was a strange moment, as everyone froze: the man standing in the open doorway, the two detectives who’d interviewed me, Reimerthi and me. Sanderson and Leidel were first to relax. “G’day, Rob,” Sanderson said. “What are you doing here?”

The man in the doorway, gazed around. His eyes were sparkling with intensity, his body almost fizzing with tension. “What am I?” he asked, shaking his head, as if trying to get rid of an irritating insect. “What are you? What’s going on? I’m looking for some dickhead called Kinner.”

I recognised him at once. He was the man who’d been with Sarich during his altercation with the hotel staff over – I knew now – their refusal to tell him my room number.

Everyone looked in my direction. “That’d be me,” I said.

He glanced at me, and got a shock. He visibly changed gear: he knew who I was, too. “Right, well what’s this bullshit about Kim Davenport?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said. “What bullshit?”

“You left a fucking message on my voicemail, didn’t you?” he asked. The anger was still evident in his voice, but there was curiosity, too.

“Ah,” I said, understanding. “Is your name Fairway?”

“Yeah. And I don’t like being jerked around,” he said.

“Who’s doing that?” I asked him, not understanding his reaction. “Kim’s disappeared, and I was told that you were a friend of hers and might know how to contact her.”

Leidel made a stifled noise, which earned him a glare from Senior Sergeant Fairway.

“Hardly a friend,” he snarled. “If I never saw her again, that’d be fine.”

I suddenly twigged: Rob. Kim had been worried about an ex called Rob. And I’d called him in to find her. “Well, she’s disappeared, apparently,” I repeated. “So you may well have got your wish.”

He stared at me, belligerently. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I think something’s happened to her,” I persisted.

“What the fuck is that to do with you?” he asked. “And why the fuck should I care?” The other detectives moved uncomfortably. Reimerthi raised an eyebrow – for him the equivalent of a gasp of surprise.

I felt a surge of my own anger. “If she’s missing, you should all bloody care. She’s one of you, a cop, after all. She was worried about someone stalking her, who broke into her house. Someone who killed her dog. Someone who was sending her porno –“

“Don’t start that shit with me,” he spat. “She’s a fucking nutter. She’s given me enough grief with that bullshit. If she’s dropped you flat, well that’s the kind of dipstick bimbo she is. I won’t be losing any sleep over where she is. You want her – you find her. I don’t give a rats’ arse.” He stared round at the others in the room and stalked out, slamming the door shut behind him. Or trying to. The pneumatic closer hissed and softened the force of his exit so that the door simply closed.

Reimerthi looked at me. “I think you’ve been told,” he said.

“What’s his problem?” I looked at the other two detectives, who shrugged. “Can’t you guys do something?” I explained again why I was concerned. “So what do we do?” I asked.

“About what?” Sanderson said, shrugging. He glanced at his partner. “Fact is, that’s the rep she’s got: a bit of a fruitcake, you know – blows hot, then stone cold.” Leidel nodded.

“Yeah, but –“ I began.

Leidel interrupted me. “Look, what have you got? She didn’t show up for coffee, that’s it. It’s the weekend. Maybe she went away. If you want, you can make a report, but I’m betting she’s at her desk, first thing Monday morning.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but closed it. What was the point?

After they left, Reimerthi took his leave too. “Get some sleep,” he said. “They’re probably right. When I went there last night, her car was there, but the house was dark. She’ll have gone out. Ring her in the morning.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said, tiredly. “Thanks.”

He nodded and left the room.

I lay back. I supposed the reason I wanted to think that something had happened had much more to do with my own need to believe that I meant something to her than any real fears. I closed my eyes. Within seconds, I was asleep.

Chapter 56

August 8th & 9th, 2001

The drive home was horrendous.

The boy had come round – he’d only been unconscious for a minute or two, he realised later – to find himself lying on the floor of Kim Davenport’s office. The carpet next to his head was stained: red, sticky blood on the top and a brown colour at the edges of a puddle of blood from a wound on his head.

She – his quarry – was lying where she had fallen as the Taser dart hit her. The breath rattled stertorously on her throat. The boy felt a rushing surge of anger at her. That she could do this to him!

After a few minutes, he felt well enough to push himself to his feet. He had to clutch at the edge of the desk, head down and eyes closed, while he tried to dispel the dizziness that threatened to send him to the floor again.

Her feet kicked, and a moan told him that she too was beginning to rouse from the effects of the Taser’s darts. As quickly as his fumbling fingers could do it, the boys slipped the ready-made cuffs over her wrists. He didn’t even bother to release the metal cuffs, which pinioned his own hands. Then he did the same to her feet. The two gossamer filaments that connected the gun to the two Taser probes he collected and zipped up with the gun in his pouch.

Only when she was secure did he look for the key to his bonds.

He couldn’t find them. He jerked the desk drawer right out, pawing through its contents and the other two below it. Her moans were becoming louder and more coherent: mumbles that sounded like words. He took the black bag from the cupboard in which he’d been hidden and took out some elastic surgical tape and fastened a wide band securely over her mouth.

He went back to his search, but could find no keys that might fit the cuffs. When he turned to look at her, her eyes were open, watching him. From the expression in them, she would have like to have had her gun back.

“Where are the keys to these, Kimberley?” he asked, kneeling down beside her.

She didn’t reply, just glared at him. “You should tell me – it’ll only be worse for you later,” he said.

The boy briefly looked in the house’s other rooms. The pain that gripped his head made coherent thought difficult. When he stood in her bedroom, he paused, before turning on the light.

There was something wrong. It was minutes, as he stood there, hand on the light switch, gazing at the dim shapes of her bed, the bedroom furniture and her discarded clothes, before he realised what it was.

He hardly needed the light. It was day outside.

Cautiously, he moved to the window. The streetlights were still on, but their sickly yellow glow was unnecessary, so light was it outside. He crouched, wondering what the chance was of being able to carry her out to the car without being seen.

He shook his head, wincing at the pain the action caused him.

There was a flapping sound outside, and a man wearing a ragged white T-shirt and baggy shorts trotted by, a lolloping dog ambling along in his wake.

The boy considered bringing the car into the driveway, but ruled that out too. It was bad enough that it was parked directly outside her house. Putting it in the drive would increase the chances of someone noticing and remembering it.

He sat on the bed, thinking. Should he just cut his losses and flee? He couldn’t leave her. She had not only seen him. She knew who he was. Besides, after all he’d been through, he wanted to take her home more than ever. He could simply stay in the house for the day, and wait until dark.

If anyone came to the door, he could simply keep still. If there was no reaction, surely they would go away.

Her car was parked under the carport at the rear of the house. Perhaps he should move it. But he abandoned that idea too. What if someone saw him in her car, and recognised it? Too dangerous. If he just lay low, anyone who came, would just assume she had been picked up – as she had been the previous evening.

He went back to the study and checked on her. The plastic cuffs had cut deeply into the skin of her wrists and ankles. Clearly, she had been trying to break free.

“You can do that as much as you like,” he said, voice sombre. “All you’ll do is hurt yourself.”

He ripped some more tape from the roll and, despite her resistance, securely taped it over her eyes, leaving only her nose clear, for breathing. Then he dragged her into the bedroom and tied her next to the bed, using her own stockings to bind her ankles and neck to the legs.

He found some Panadol in the bathroom, which he took to ease the headache that was splitting his head. Then he climbed on her bed, cuffed hands and all, and slept.

* * *

It was late afternoon, when the boy woke. It took a few moments for him to realise that the bed was shaking, and a few more before he was sufficiently aware to roll to the edge and look down at her. She had been struggling for some time, he realised. The tape over her eyes was half dragged off. She had rubbed her face against the floor until she had been able to dislodge it enough that she could see. Her face was red and raw from her efforts. Despite his warning, she had struggled against the ties that secured her wrists and feet. The unforgiving plastic had cut deeply into the skin. Her robe had been dislodged, so that the boy could see her breasts and the light, downy hair at her crotch.

He found the sight of her, bloodied and vulnerable, arousing; felt himself becoming hard.

With that, the ache in his head returned full force. There seemed to be a corridor of pain that tunnelled through his skull, from just above his right ear, to somewhere near where his head and neck merged. He rolled over, sitting on the edge of the bed.

She stopped her efforts at escape, when she saw him looking at her. Her eye stared up at him, hatred undiminished. There was almost an expression of challenge in the way she refused to break away from his gaze. He held out his hands, still linked by the silver metal cuffs. “Key,” he said. She didn’t answer. Just started at him. In the end, he leaned forward and refastened the tape over her eye.

He took more of the analgesic. It was still light outside, but it was the gentle, soft light of late afternoon. The boy knew that in a few more hours, he’d be able to leave. No one had come to the house. At least, no one had disturbed his rest. As the ache diminished, he returned to the study and packed up his capture kit. He placed the bag beside the sofa, ready to leave.

He turned on no lights, in case anyone was watching. In the laundry, he found a plastic bucket and some bleach, in a bottle. He poured the liquid straight from the bottle, liberally over the patch of dried blood on the carpet in the study. Scrubbing with a hard-bristled brush, he tried to remove as much as possible of the stain. He replaced the desk chair. One of the wooden legs had become crooked, during their struggles. The boy straightened it, so that it looked as it had. He placed it carefully over the top of the damp area where he’d tried to scrub away the blood that had come from his wounded head. The drawers and their contents he replaced in the desk.

Finally, he sat on the sofa in the lounge room, head back, eyes shut, a cool cloth over his eyes, waiting for it to become fully dark.

A crunch of shoes on the paving of the path to the front door brought his head up. He listened intently. Someone was walking around the house, outside. The boy unzipped the pouch he still wore at his waist, extracting the bottle and pad. He slipped off his shoes and padded through the house to the bedroom, standing alongside her. She hadn’t heard anything, but he could see her body tense, as he stood beside her.

After a short interval, there was a crisp knock on the glass panel of the front door. The boy watched as the sound electrified her. Before she could react, he knelt astride her, pinning her legs, and had the pad firmly clamped over her nose. In a few moments, her struggles to thump against the floor diminished and then ceased.

There was a second knock. The boy stayed where he was, listening as the person outside walked around the house to the back door, on which he also knocked. He held his breath as the handle rattled, but the door was locked and secured with the chain.

The visitor retraced his steps down the drive and out to the street. The boy stayed right where he was. Only after fifteen minutes of absolute silence did he stand and move softly and carefully through the house until he could peer through a slender gap in the curtains of the front room to the street outside. It was quite dark – the streetlights were glowing – but at only seven-thirty, there was still plenty of movement in the street outside. The boy settled back in his seat, waiting. He twisted the cuffs round his wrists, back and forth. He’d searched the whole house for the key, but couldn’t find it anywhere. He’d have to cut them off, when he got home. It was inconvenient, but not really a problem.

It was quite still at eleven. At midnight, having made all his preparations, the boy opened the front door and went over to the car, stepping on the paving stones all the way. His black trainers made no sound, and left no trace. He unlocked the car, undid the elastic ties that secured the semi-rigid cover of the ute’s tray and put his capture bag inside.

He took a long, unhurried look up and down the street. Nothing.

He returned to the house and picked her up. She was still unconscious, her breath a steady snore through her uncovered nose. He’d dragged her through and up into an armchair. Now he simply knelt and draped her over his shoulder, before standing and going to the front door. A quick check and he stepped out, catching her feet on something that fluttered to the floor, as he did so. The boy glanced down, but there was no time to fuss. He pulled the door to behind him and moved quickly down the drive to the street.

Another quick look, then across to the ute. He lifted the cover, bent forward and shucked his load into the special space he had prepared. A heavily padded wooden barrier prevented her from sliding around. Webbing straps secured her against a cushioning foam mat. He placed the nozzle of the Camelback drink bag in her mouth, poking it through a hole in the tape. He re-tied the cover back down, slipping the elastic loops over small plastic knobs.

Minutes later, he had left the maze of residential streets in which her house was situated and was driving steadily along Vanderlin Drive. Once on the Stuart Highway, he smoothly accelerated, feeling the engine’s power speed him towards home and safety.

He drove for as long as he could, using tablets and cans of Red Bull to stay awake. The pain in his head grew worse and worse – especially in the daytime. Despite the tinted windows, the glare from the sunlight seemed to send spears of agony shafting into the back of his skull, where they ricocheted around. Once, when the sun caught the window or mirror of another car, and reflected the light into his eyes, the pain was so intense it almost sent him careering off the road.

He pulled over, into a shadowy lay-by and rested, eyes closed, after only three hours. He simply couldn’t continue.

After an hour’s broken sleep, he drove on. In the early dawn, he pulled into a 24-hour truck stop just outside Katherine and bought some Panadol, taking three with some soft drink. It didn’t stop the headache, but made the pain at least bearable for a while.

Somehow, he made it to Alice by the following evening. He took a risk, and pulled into the motel he commonly used. He reversed the ute right up to the front door. Once inside, he collapsed on the bed and either slept or lost consciousness.

In the darkness of early dawn, he fumbled out of a fog of sleep, disoriented and weak. He felt shaky and feverish, as if he had a flu. He took another three Panadol, drank two large glasses of water and a Red Bull. Outside, there were only two other cars in the parking area, none near his cabin – deliberately chosen as the furthest from the reception office. As he walked to the ute, he stopped to listen, but heard nothing from the back of the ute. The car burbled quietly into life and in the darkness, he eased back out onto the road and kept heading south: next stop, Mintalie, and home.

Chapter 57

August 9th, 2001

I felt much better when I opened my eyes on Monday morning. Until I moved, that is. The bruises seemed to have hardened like rust throughout my body, so that each movement of my arms and legs or twist of my trunk seemed to make a creak of pain, as if I was in need of some lubricant – emollient, really.

Some things, at least, were clearer for the night’s rest – to me, anyway.

The first concerned Kimberley Davenport. I’d gone to bed convincing myself that my ego had tripped me up. I woke feeling the opposite. She had trusted me from the first. Showing me the information she had collated from her work had been an indication of an early connection. The dinner, with all its romantic under- and over-tones had truly been a progression from that. Therefore, something had happened to her.

Standing in front of the full-length mirror inside the wardrobe door, I eyed the sight that my body made. Or fright, really. I struggled into some underpants and shorts, but the prospect of putting on a shirt was something I’d have to work myself up to.

Reimerthi’s knock saved me. Shaking his head, reluctantly, he held the shirt behind me. I gingerly eased my arms into it, while he pulled it up and over my shoulders.

I talked about Kim, working my way through my thoughts of this morning. When he’d graciously helped me put shoes and socks on, Reimerthi stood up. “Ring her,” he said.

“I have,” I said.

“Try again.”

I did. The woman on the switchboard put me straight through to her office. The phone rang out. “I’ll try her home again,” I said, without any expectation that she would answer.

Reimerthi nodded. He had the knack of waiting. His patience seemed inexhaustible. I’d watched him while the policemen were interviewing me. His stance was always relaxed, yet there was a sense of readiness. Most people jiggle, or shift from foot to foot and fidget when they are waiting. Reimerthi just waited and watched. When it was time to move, he moved. I remembered how he’d walked Sarich away from the hotel desk. He acted effectively enough when he had to.

There was no answer at Kim’s home phone, either. “See?” I said, banging the handset back down.

Reimerthi shrugged. “It may not mean anything,” he said.

“Carl,” I said, “there is something missing from my room. I had a folder of information. About Jack Treuwin’s disappearance, and this “Highway Hunter”. It’s gone.”

“Nothing else?” Reimerthi asked.

I shook my head.

Reimerthi’s dark eyes seemed to reach a decision. “May I use the phone?” he said.

“Sure.” I moved aside.

He dialled a number and waited for a second. “It’s Carl,” he said. “Yes. He’s … recovering. He is worried about the woman.” He paused, listening. “The one from the police. Yes, I am,” he said, then again, “Yes. I will,” he finished. Reimerthi replaced the phone and moved to the door. He opened it and looked back at me. “Coming?” he said.

“Where?” I asked.

“We’ll go to her house,” he said. “Maybe you can see if something’s not right.”

“What’s your story, Carl?” I asked, as he drove.

Reimerthi looked at me and smiled, a brief curve of the mouth that never even went close to his eyes. “What do you want to know?” he asked.

I cut to the chase. “Why are you helping me out?”

“Why not?” He looked at me, eyes serious, which took the flippancy from his comment. “OK. Three reasons. One, Clayton liked you. He said you were a straight arrow. Straightish, anyway,” he said, as I raised my eyebrow at him. “Two, I just like to take a shot at a windmill every now and then.” He paused.

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“Well, maybe she is in trouble,” he said. “Someone should do something. If something’s happened to her, we’d better suss out what.”

He didn’t say ‘before it’s too late’. It didn’t need to be said, really.

“And three?” I prompted.

Reimerthi looked at me without speaking for a long moment. “I have … an interest in this sort of thing.”

I waited, but he kept his eyes on the road and didn’t offer any more information.

Kim’s house looked very suburban and ordinary, in the daylight. Reimerthi and I knocked on the front door and waited. There was not a sound from inside. I followed, as he moved from the front porch and walked round the side of the house. Her car was there, under the carport.

“Is that the same place it was when you were here before?” I asked.

He nodded. His face seemed to have sharpened, eyes darting around the garden, looking at the rear of her house. “Wait here,” he said. He walked carefully over the scruffy lawn to the back door, and then moved along the rear of the house. After a close inspection of the overgrown, weedy flower beds, he moved away, deeper into the tangle of trees and plants that choked the back yard. I glimpsed him walking round the tennis court, weedy and covered with dropped leaves.

Eventually, he came back over to me. “You might be right,” he said. “Someone has climbed in at that window there.” He pointed at a small, louvred window. “The metal on the glass is bent, - and you can see the marks from his feet, on the wall. And someone stood over there, crouching or hiding.”

“When?” I asked, stupidly. I didn’t ask how he knew.

A smile ghosted across his lips. “I can’t say,” he said. “The locals might be able to, but I’m not that good. Might be a long time ago, but I don’t think so. Since you say she missed your coffee date, maybe that recent.”

“So,” I said. “What now?”

Reimerthi looked at me, his face studiedly blank. “You should go back to bed,” he said. “That’s probably smart. You need to rest.”

I was surprised. “But what about her? What about Kim?” I said. “Sounds like you reckon someone’s been stalking her.”

“No, I didn’t say that,” he said. “I say that someone has been waiting, over there – but I don’t know who, or when – it could be innocent, a child playing, even.”

“Or, she could be missing, or murdered because someone’s been stalking her,” I persisted.

“You should leave this for the police,” he said.

“What? Can’t we do something?” I asked. “I mean, you said before –“

“I said before that we should check it out,” he said. “We’ve done that. It doesn’t look good, so we should call in the experts.”

“No.” I made a decision. A stupid one, but the more we’d talked, the more I’d felt a need to act suffuse me. Being sensible, being reasonable was intolerable. Doing something would make me feel better. “You go back,” I said. “I’ve … got a couple of things to do here.”

“Like what?” Reimerthi gazed at me. He shook his head, let out a gusty breath. “This isn’t a movie. You’re not Spiderman, you know.”

I shrugged. “Carl, something’s wrong. I know it. You know it. She wouldn’t just disappear. She’s either in there, or gone. If she’s in there, she might be sick or … anything. And if she’s gone, it wasn’t voluntarily. I have to know.”

“And?” he looked at me, eyebrow raised.

“And I reckon the answer – or part of it – is in there,” I said.

“And you’re going in there,” he said. Reimerthi nodded, not needing my confirmation. “So what will you do – break in the door?”

“Yep. What’s it matter?” It was bravado, of course.

“And if the police come? What will you say to them?”

“If she’s in there, hurt … or whatever, I’ll tell them I found it like that,” I said.

He shook his head again, resignedly. “Wait here.” He walked off, towards the side of the house. “Watch the street, he called over his shoulder.

I started to call after him, but something in his stride told me to back off: leave well enough alone.

I watched the driveway for a few minutes, but he didn’t appear. I turned away, to look up and down the street. It was quite long and straight. Most of the buildings along its length were apartment blocks, rather than houses like Kim’s. I wondered whether doorknocking, to find out who had known Kim, and whether anyone had seen anything unusual would be at all useful. The car I’d noticed the other night was nowhere in evidence, although I scanned the street for its sleek, dark-on-dark outline.

I turned, hearing a rattle and clunk behind me. “Come in.” Reimerthi stood in the open front door.

I glanced up and down the street and then walked quickly up the path and into the house.

“How’d you do that?” I asked.

Reimerthi just shrugged.

Inside, we started to look around. I don’t quite know what I’d expected. The house was very much decorated as Kim’s personality dictated. There was a wide, high wall of bookshelves in the lounge room – onto which the front door opened. It was full of books: many novels, but a few that related to aspects of police work. The walls were hung with a few framed prints, bright, modern abstracts and a couple of aboriginal dot-paintings that looked genuine.

There was a dining table there, too, but its polished surface was covered with books, and lined notepads covered with neat, sloping handwriting. Perhaps she had been studying. I moved on – I could come back to this later. There was a good quality TV and stereo system, and a tall metal holder full of music CDs.

Beside the stereo, directly in front of where the lounge room turned into the hall, was a metal pole. Obviously installed to replace a wall that had been taken out to open out the area, its angular lines had been disguised by climbing plants, whose pots sat at the base of the pole. They had been carefully trained so that they twined around it, almost to the ceiling. There were many other pot plants through the house. They all looked a bit the worse for wear, as if they hadn’t been watered for a while. I’d do it, before we left, I decided.

A doorway led off to the right, into a hall. Reimerthi led the way. “She’s not here,” he said.

But she had been. The bedroom was tidy – some underthings on the floor near the dresser – but the bed had been slept in: the sheets were tousled. I pointed that out.

“Yeah, but when?” Reimerthi said. “You don’t know if it was last night or last week.”

I just glanced into the computer room, initially, and as it looked undisturbed, kept moving towards the rooms at the rear of the house. Something niggled at my mind, though. I stopped, went back. The room smelt funny.

In a corner of the room, on the floor near a partly-shut wardrobe door was a crumpled plastic bag. In it was the dress she had worn when we’d had dinner together. It was wrinkled, now, and the wire of the coat hanger was twisted and bent.

I crouched down to pick it up, and paused again. There was that pungent smell, again.

When I moved the chair away from the front of the desk, I could see a large wet patch on the carpet. Someone had used some kind of bleach to clean something off the carpet.

“Carl,” I called, “look at this.”

He moved into the room and bent low to look closely at the carpet, especially those areas furthest away from the centre of the wet section. Then he looked at the desk, and the chair. “Mmm,” he pointed to some small, brownish spatters on the cushion of the chair, and the drawers at the right hand side of the desk.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Blood, I’d say,” he said. He was still poking around the desk, looking at the wall behind it, starting at the floor and working higher. “Someone probably lay there for a while, so the blood puddled – you’d find quite a lot still there, under the carpet. But they got hit too – that’s why there are those droplets. And –“ he stopped, “someone’s fired a gun in here, too.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“You can smell it, even with all that bleach,” he said, “and then - here.”

‘Here’ was a small hole in the plaster or the wall behind the desk. “The bullet’s in there,” he said.

“Shit,” I moved forward, staring at the little hole. “Can we get it out?”

“What for?” he asked.

“You know, all that matching stuff,” I said.

“The police, not us,” he said. “That is their job.”

“But what happened?” I asked. “Who got shot?”

Reimerthi stepped back and gazed around the room. “Whoever fired the gun must have stood over there.” He pointed near the doorway. “The target was here –“ in front of the desk, “- and got hit. But not serious.”

“How the fuck do you know all that?” I asked.

He explained. Guessing from the position the bullet had ended up, looking at the angle of the gouge in the wall, he’d approximated the people in the room. There wasn’t enough blood for a major wound.

“You’re not just a pretty face, Carl, are you?” I said.

Reimerthi gave his self-deprecating shrug, “It is my business,” he said. “I need to know this stuff. Once, I did, anyway.”

I waited, watching him, but he said nothing more. “So now what?” I asked.

“We look a little more, then go,” he said. “And then we tell the police.”

In the bedroom, on the side of the bed furthest away from the door, I saw brownish streaks on the carpet and smaller stains a few feet away. Reimerthi nodded. “Someone tied up there,” he said. “Tried to get away. Struggled till the ropes cut.” He held out his wrists, motioned towards his ankles.

“He’s got her, hasn’t he?” I asked.

Reimerthi nodded.

At the front door, I stopped. On a hook on the wall was a hook. Below it, on the floor was a small coloured notepad with a pencil attached by a string. I picked it up, thinking to replace it on the hook. The front page was covered with a list of letters and numbers. Car licence plates – you could tell by the grouping: three letters, three numbers.

“Look at this,” I said.

Reimerthi took the list and scanned it. He stepped outside, glanced left and right, and strode across the front lawn and up the street. I left the door slightly ajar and waited on the porch for him.

When he came back, he nodded. “I think perhaps she was onto whoever was hanging round,” he said. “Many of these numbers are the same as the cars out there. We can assume that these are the locals, and check the rest. Maybe she wrote down the odd one out.” He tucked the pad in his pocket.

“Weren’t you going to let the police do it?” I asked.

Reimerthi shrugged. “Sometimes they need a little nudge along,” he said.

“So we’re going to –“ I began.

“I will give this list to someone I know,” Reimerthi said, “and he will find out about the cars and their owners. If it looks promising, we have … a contact at the NT police who might help.”

“Won’t that take time?” I objected. “She might be in danger.”

He looked at me, and his mouth tightened, a little impatiently, “I know that,” he said. “I have told you that I think she is in danger, not ‘might be’. But the best people to deal with this are the police. We have done what we can. In fact,” he gave me a flat stare, “more than what we should have.”

The look said “back off”, but I’d been wanting to ask something for a while - since I’d become certain that Kim had been kidnapped. “Who is he?” I asked. Then, knowing how stupid that sounded, I amended the question, “Is it this “highway hunter” bloke, do you reckon?”

Reimerthi shook his head. “I d not think so. This is wrong, for him. He is a man for the road – takes tourists, people from caravans, tents. This –“ he gestured round the house “– this is different. This looks like someone that she knew, perhaps. Someone who hated her? I don’t know. The police will find out.”

I couldn’t just back off, though. “Carl,” I said, “has it occurred to you that it might be a policeman who has done this?”

Chapter 58

August 10th (i)

The boy had never been so glad to see his house. He stopped in front of the workshop. It was a sunny day, but cold. The bitter wind swept off the endless expanse of the desert to the west, bringing with it a gritty, spiteful viciousness. The boy shivered at its abrasive touch, feeling the goosebumps break out after the warmth of the car’s interior. His head hurt so much that he could barely see. He fumbled at the padlock that secured the big sliding door. Whether it was his hands becoming cold or the pain from his head, he dropped the keys twice before he was able to open the lock and jerk the door open so that he could drive in.

Once the car was inside, the boy sat for a time, head tilted back against the padded rest, eyes closed, drinking in the stillness inside the car, inside the shed. The sound of the wind outside made the aluminium panels creak and groan against the nails that secured them to studs and rafters, but everything was at one remove from him, one step away from his ravaged senses. He floated.

A rhythmic thumping brought him back to full awareness again. His prey was kicking against the side of the ute tray, again, believing that he had parked somewhere, trying to attract attention. Let it kick. It would learn, soon enough.

The boy opened the door and made his way across to the house. He skidded his bag, a garishly coloured nylon affair covered with sporting company logos and festooned with straps and zippers, across the floor towards his bedroom door. Plenty of time to unpack that later.

Transferring his captive to the training cage was easy – even with the pain of his head. In fact, a couple of the red tablets one of the truckies had sold him, coupled with the elation he always felt at the conclusion to a successful trip, meant that he practically felt as good as new.

Another dose of chloroform to quieten her again, and he felt good enough to lift over his shoulder. He strode up the stairs to the house and down through the opened trapdoor into the tunnels. Once he had the trap shut behind him, the lights on and her secured to his work table, it was as if everything which had seemed to be unravelling had at last come together.

He used a pair of razor sharp shears to cut the robe from her, so that she was revealed to him. Her wrists and ankles were badly cut up. She had clearly continued to struggle to free herself long after she must have known it was useless. She was a strong one, he could see that. Training her would be a pleasure. A pleasure.

The boy gazed at her, arrayed before him. Her hands were raised high over her head, wide leather wristlets holding her securely without risking further injury. Her legs were bound to the lower extremities of the table, spread wide, so that he could inspect every inch of her.

He carefully checked her, rolling back her eyelids to ensure she was properly unconscious, before he started to prepare her. Tonight, when she was like this, it was an opportunity to get things ready for when he could start the training.

He washed her carefully, using a sponge and bucket of warm water infused with a soft, scented soap. He put an antiseptic salve on her wrists and ankles. He checked her fingernails. She’d painted them recently – probably for her dinner date, but they were chipped and torn where she’d struggled to escape. He cut them short. Using battery-operated electric hair clippers, he shaved off all her hair: head and crotch. He removed her earrings – the only jewellery she wore – and then buckled on some wide leather cuffs to wrists and ankles. He saw that he would have to check that the sores did not become infected. He shook his head, irritated. He made sure her hands were secured behind her, and connected by a short loop of cord, to a leather belt around her waist. A short chain clipped to metal rings connected the two ankle cuffs. Finally, he slid the skintight, black leather hood over her head, drawing the laces tight at the crown of her head, where she could not reach it. He buckled up the chinstrap and closed the apertures over each eye, though the mouth aperture, he left open.

Once she was ready, he picked her up off the table and took her to the cage. Made of steel mesh welded to a solid steel frame, the cage sat off the floor by about two feet. Its grids were wide enough for the limbs of the creatures that lived in it to poke through, if they were not careful. Some blankets were piled on a thin rubber mat on the base, providing a resting place of sorts. That was all.

He pushed her in, laying her on the blankets and mat. Then the boy locked the door and left, turning off the lights as he went. He wouldn’t return for two days.

Even after a full night’s rest, the boy felt terrible, next morning. He’d crashed, after he’d come back up. It was as if the drugs that had kept at bay the tiredness from the enormous drive home and the driving agony of his head stopped working, as if a switch had been flipped. Shutting the trapdoor seemed to unleash a wave of agony and weariness so great that he almost dropped where he stood.

Somehow, he’d made it to the bed. His sleep was wracked with dreams that were like being awake, but unable to move or stop the terrible assault of images. As always, he was running, scrabbling to escape something that pursued him, along that straight, barren road. He wanted to hide, but there was nowhere, unless he left the track and ventured into the bushes. And there, the shadowy lithe silhouettes of sharp-toothed razor-clawed evil lurked, effortlessly keeping pace with his frantic, staggering steps, weaving through the clutching scrub, their sharp white teeth snapping in the dangerous gloom.

When he woke, finally, it was like surfacing from being underwater. The boy blearily tried to read the glowing green numerals on the electric clock across the room on the plain wooden dresser. It took long minutes before he could get his eyes to focus and then work out what the numbers meant. When he tried to stand to go to the toilet, a wave of nausea overwhelmed him. He barely made it to the basin. He braced himself, hands on the porcelain rim, shoulders wracked with spasms. He vomited nothing from a stomach that leapt and wrenched like a live thing in his guts, trying to escape.

The morning crept timidly into the room around the edge of the thick, rubber-lined curtains the boy had installed over every window. Pallid lines of light edged the drapes, hardly daring to disturb the gloom inside. The boy wanted to simply lie there and wait until he felt better. He knew, however, that he must get up. He had said he’d be back at the workshop today, and needed to be – to preserve the appearance of normality, at least.

With three Panadol Fortes inside him, the pain in his head was bearable. The boy laughed off the snide comments of his employees.

“You’re the only bloke I know who gets a tan on a trip to Adelaide in August!” Charlie, the newish young aboriginal apprentice, was as cheeky as buggery.

The boy summoned a smile from somewhere, “It’s not a problem you’re ever going to have to worry about, Charlie,” he said.

“That’s good, boss!” Alex snorted a gust of derisive laughter. Charlie was some sort of cousin of his, and Alex seemed to think it was his job to keep the young feller under control. Charlie was bright and capable enough. But the boy could already see that he was itching to be working somewhere where he could spend the money he could earn – and get some money without working as hard as he had to out here.

The boy spent most of the day in his office, trying to sort out the tangle of paperwork left after his absence. Alex was a capable mechanic. Smiling toothily, he provided a good impression for the steady stream of tourists from the South – Sydney and Melbourne – making their pilgrimage to the Centre. Office work was something Alex found impossible. His formal schooling had been better than many of his family, but he still read haltingly and found the complex arithmetic of taxation and time sheets a chore absolutely beyond him. When the boy went away, the bills, invoices and time sheets simply piled in the plastic tray in his office, awaiting his return.

At the end of the day, the boy sighed, shoving his chair back on its casters, stretching his legs straight out under the desk. Alex drew down the rollerdoor with a rattle of chain and roar from the huge drum of linked metal slats. The others had gone, dismissed by Alex. Only Charlie was left, waiting in Alex’s car, a well-maintained F100 that the boy had found second-hand, and which Alex had bought from him. Now he repaired and maintained it himself, careful not to lend it to his many brothers and sisters whose attitudes to vehicles were much more laissez-faire than his.

Alex tapped on the window and waved as he crossed the forecourt to the car. He wore smart jeans and a bright plaid shirt. Charlie was smartened up too: must be a party somewhere, the boy thought. “Thanks, Alex,” he called. “See you tomorrow.”

The boy sat at his desk, head cradled on his hands in the quietness. They never invited him to the many parties, dances and social gatherings that they attended. The boy had been concerned, at first, thinking that they disliked him, or knew something about him and didn’t want him to attend. But he’d come to realise that Alex, in particular, practically revered him. When he had been considering marriage, it was his boss he’d come to ask for advice. The boy was the boss, however. Work and play didn’t mix and Alex and Charlie were careful to keep the two sides of their lives separate. As, thought the boy, am I.

His mind wandered, and his fingers gently pressed against the bandage that covered the torn skin and bruising on the side of his head. The swelling was slowly subsiding, even though he was still in considerable pain – especially if he stood up fast. But he had decided that a doctor or hospital was out of the question. They might recognise the wound for what it was, and ask difficult questions. Or worse still, say nothing to him and report it.

The boy thought back over the events of the last few days. What had happened with the woman had been bad luck. That she would come where he was hidden was unbelievable. She would pay. She would learn not to upset him. She would learn that to please him was not only her mission in life, but also the path to her own pleasure. Pleasure. He considered her, waiting for him, in the darkness. Pleasure. And pain.

Chapter 59

August 10th (ii)

The line between sleep and wakefulness was usually clear. Unless she dreamed. But dreaming wasn’t like this. Ever. She felt nothing. No, that wasn’t quite true. The inside of her mouth was dry, tongue swollen and sticky. She swallowed with difficulty, hearing her ears click, freeing up her mouth. She held her head up, listening. Her senses were awake, that wasn’t the problem. It was that there was nothing for them to sense.

Memory worked though.

The man in the wardrobe. That gun-thing. Being tied up, lying on her bedroom floor. The cloth over her mouth and nose. Darkness. Being in the car, for hours. Rolled around. Thirsty. Hot, and cold.

Now, this.

Darkness was total. She was lying somewhere. Her hands were behind her hips, but she couldn’t separate them. It hurt, when she tried. She tried to bring them down to her feet, so that she could pass her feet back through her linked arms so that they were in front of her. She couldn’t lower her hands, though. They were attached to something at her waist.

Even with her eyes open, she realised, there was simply nothing to see. No shapes in the darkness; no shades of shadow. Was she blindfolded? Her head felt wrapped. Bandages? Her hearing was somehow remote, her ears were covered, somehow. She opened her mouth, exploring. There was an opening over her mouth, the edges rough; serrated. She shook her head, trying to dislodge the covering, pressing her face against the floor she was lying on. It was no good, the surface was slippery and tight to her face and head.

She turned her attention to where she lay. She could feel rough, woolly material against her skin. Blankets? She was naked, and a little cold. The prickly, coarse cloth beneath her was rumpled and smelt musty and of old sweat. She stretched out her legs gingerly, trying to determine the boundaries of the space she was in.

Under the blankets she was lying on was a mat of some sort: something relatively soft, but beneath it, she could feel an uneven pattern of hardness and spaces where the mat bulged through. Her toes encountered metal bars, when she stretched out. If she stretched her hands out behind her, she could feel a barred grid as a wall, too. Wriggling onto her back, she pushed her foot down through the floor bars, at the edge of the mat. It went straight through: she could feel nothing underneath the bars. Was she suspended, hanging in the air somewhere?

In her imagination, she saw herself lying in a cage, hanging from a wire, swaying over a dark, impossibly deep hole. Perhaps her movements would be enough to snap the wire. Maybe it was rigged so that if she moved, it would release and spill her into the void.

She felt her heart thump, the beats almost shaking her body with their force. She began to retch, stomach roiling and clenching. Her mouth gaped wide, as she was caught in the spasms of her fear. Nothing came up, however.

Finally, the wracking agony grew less violent and stopped. Gradually, she was able to calm herself, trying to breathe evenly and to mentally smooth the muscles of her legs, arms and torso, which felt as tight as piano wire. The flutterings of her panic were still in her belly making the muscles across her abdomen, sore and cramping from her vomiting, quiver tremulously.

She began to talk to herself, anything to make a sound, create a reality that wasn’t dependent on sight – or touch, which had so frightened her. “OK, Kim. What do you know?” She wriggled a little on the blankets, trying to use the limited movement of her hands to shift the blankets to make the padding more comfortable. It wasn’t much of an improvement. “You know that the prick that has you here – wherever here is – is called Rob Cook, and that he owns a servo in Marla.” Her voice boomed dully in her head, trapped by the coverings over her ears.

She tried to listen after each speech, in case someone was there, and she got a reaction. She could hear nothing through the head covering, however. While she thought of it, she tried to ascertain what it was that encased her head. It took a few minutes, but she worked it out. “A bondage mask. You’ve got me in a bondage mask, you fuck.”

She listened again, but it was hopeless. The only thing to do was to focus on the senses she had that she could use. She rolled over, so that she was braced on her knees and shoulders. Using her head, she raised herself up, lifting her hands away behind her until they encountered more bars: thin but strong. Steel, she thought – like that steel mesh builders used when they made reinforced concrete. If she gripped the bars and hung, she could feel them flex a little. They had obviously been welded or secured to stronger bars to make the cage solid.

Cautiously, she rocked from side to side. The cage didn’t shift. Obviously it wasn’t suspended, but supported from beneath. Cautiously, she poked her foot back through the cage floor. She couldn’t reach far enough, though. The bonds on her ankles stopped her, and the squares of the grid weren’t large enough for two feet to fit through.

“Which reminds me,” she said aloud. With her fingers, she tried to explore the wrist bindings. They were some sort of leather strap, but she couldn’t work out how they were fastened. A cord led from a ring in the middle of the chain that linked her wrists up to a belt that was fastened round her waist. She bent her knees and arched her back, trying to move her feet up behind her, so that she could work out how her feet were connected. It was a stretch, but she could reach and with her fingers feel enough to know that they were similar to the bindings on her wrists. “Those bondage cuff things,” she said aloud. “Mr Cook, you’re a bit kinky, you are.” She tried a joke. “Honestly, you didn’t have to go to all this trouble. If you wanted a date, you just had to ask.”

She couldn’t carry it off, though. Her voice began to quaver, and she had to lie still, breathing deep breaths through her nose, suppressing a sob that threatened to burst free. She had the feeling that if she let this one go, she’d not be able to stop.

Time became another non-sense. She had no idea how long she had been in the cage, or whether it was night or day. She had no way of measuring the passage of time. She thought of counting, but the prospect started the swelling of panic once more. An image of her reaching a number in the tens of thousands – of being left where she was, imprisoned without food, water or anyone knowing where she was flashed into her head.

She shook her head banishing these fears. They were treacherous. Their main danger was that she might become so afraid that she would stop acting. Without everything that in her normal life said who she was, she had resorted to doing two things to retain her sense of who she was.

She started to talk her way through every detail she could remember about herself. She recited her address, phone numbers, birthday … every scrap of information about herself and her family she could remember. She started with the most mundane facts and gradually turned it into a journey through her life. She recalled her earliest birthday, her parents’ pride when she graduated from the Police Training Academy, the best present she had ever received …

Eventually, the main points, the “facts” became a chant, a mantra, a rhythmical song of herself. “I am Kimberly Anne Davenport. I am 29 years old. I was born in Melbourne. I am 178 centimetres high. I live at 27 Helmswood Street, Darwin.” She concluded, each time with “My body is trapped, but my mind is free.” Saying this over and over again seemed to help.

She felt that she was losing time, too. Somewhere, normal life was continuing. Ordinary people would be going about their ordinary daily routines. She believed it must have been a few days since she had been abducted. That meant that she would be missed at work. People would be searching for her. She told herself that they would find her. Must find her.

The absence of sensation made the difference between waking and dreaming disappear. As she tried to stretch her mind to do what her limbs could not, she escaped so completely that the return, the reality of a darkness so intense that her eyes hurt: phantom strain, because there was no light.

In addition, she began to feel violent pangs of hunger and thirst. When she tried to lick her lips, to moisten them, her tongue felt sticky and clumsy in her mouth. She tried to think back to her last meal: the dinner on the boat with Daniel Kinner. It had been an evening to remember. In more ways than one, she thought, with grim irony. It was gritty thoughts like this that helped keep her strong. If you can laugh at something, you can make it small, diminish it. She was determined to control this, not let it overwhelm her.

Although she’d initially shied away from the prospect, she eventually started to consider what might happen to her. That Rob Cook was the Highway Hunter she had no doubt. He was too organised. This whole arrangement was far too well devised to be spur-of-the-moment. She knew, of course, that none of the victims of the Highway Hunter had ever been seen again, once they’d disappeared. That meant that, in the end, he would kill her. Or try to.

She tried to imagine what he would do, when he finally came for her.

She knew enough, from her work profiling the victims of this and other serial kidnappers, to know that they operated to very set routines. Each developed his own – because they were almost exclusively men – very detailed process for using his victims. Since in only a very few instances had victims escaped or the perpetrators been caught, the data on what provoked these people, or on what basis they selected their victims was sketchy. But she knew it was all about control. The damaged and fragile minds that selected and preyed on others, without exception, had experienced trauma of such a magnitude that there were whole areas of life with which they were unable to cope.

While many of them carried on “normal”, day-to-day occupations with varying degrees of success, most of them were unable to function in close interpersonal relationships. Perhaps she would be able to use that, play on his vulnerability until she could somehow turn the tables and escape.

She knew he’d be a loner. She knew he’d have a whole fantasy routine scripted for her that he wanted her to fit into, conform to. She would just have to be quick to decipher what it was that he wanted and work out how to give enough of it to him that she could stay alive … and sane.

“My name is Kimberly Anne Davenport,” she began again.

Chapter 60

August 11th

Back at the hotel, Reimerthi left me in the foyer, veering off towards the nondescript door that led to Graeme Brewer’s calm, understated office. I pushed the lift button, intending to go up to my room, but a voice called out from the registration desk.

“Mr Kinner?”

I turned. One of the girls was waving a bright yellow envelope. Standing in front of her was a scruffy-looking bloke I didn’t recognise. “This gentleman has just dropped this off for you,” she said.

“You sure you got the right bloke?” I asked, wondering what this was about.

“Sure. I never forget a face,” he said, winking, accenting the “I”. The man was wearing a sleeveless jacket, vaguely military, with lots of little pockets that zipped and buttoned down. Under it was a white T-shirt, worn over flapping long pants whose legs also had an oversupply of pockets. A raffish three-day growth adorned a receding chin. “The other night? At the boat? Gangplank photo ringing any bells? A-beautiful-lady-not-your-wife, perhaps?”

I remembered him. I’d hardly seen his face, given that he’d hidden it behind a huge camera and a bright flash. “Oh, sure,” I said. “How’d they turn out?”

“Great, great,” he said: automatic response. “You were a very photogenic couple.”

“Of course we were,” I said dryly. “And you’re right, she’s not my wife, but since I don’t have one, that’s not such a problem.”

He got it, glanced sharply at me and dropped the bullshit. “No offence meant. These are proofs,” he said in a rattling monotone that said he’d been through this a thousand times before. “They’ve even got ‘proof’ stamped over them. It’s in black indelible ink, so don’t try to remove it, you’ll just stuff up the photo. If you want to order more, the sizes and prices are in the envelope.”

I flipped open the packet as he started to turn away, but he stopped and swung back.

“Oh yeah,” he said, “one set of yours was ruined because of some dickhead in a car behind you – remember? I put those in anyway – you can have them for nix.”

“Thanks,” I said automatically. I opened the envelope. In it were four photos. There were two different sizes showing Kim and I standing beside the rails of the gangplank that led onto the dock from which we had caught the tender out to the Koomolara.

I stood studying the top one. How was it that pictures like this showed so much, yet so little? Two people, dressed smartly, standing formally posed – yet relaxed, you could see that in the faces and eyes. There was nothing there of the past, and nothing to show how ironically significant the gangplank we stood on would become.

I flicked through the others. And stopped at the dud. The flash had gone off as the car behind us had swept around a curve. The vehicle’s headlights had washed off the white side of a boat moored nearby, and lit us starkly from the side, making the colours look garish and artificial. The camera flash, however, had caught the car perfectly. I recognised it at once. Or thought I did. If it wasn’t the ute I’d seen parked outside Kim’s house that night, it was exactly the same.

I felt a surge of excitement. Had it followed us there? Was this the stalker? The impact of the flash had thrown some light in through the car’s front, tinted window. It was nowhere near enough to reveal the driver, but enough to show a shadowy figure, face a pale oval, peering out of the window towards where we stood.

What was most interesting was that the car’s number plate was captured in clear, sharp detail: South Australian plates, GRX 578.

I went over to the receptionist again. She smiled at me, “Are they any good?”

I had to think for a moment, before I realised what she was talking about. “Oh, yeah,” I said. “Brilliant.”

“Mark’s a bit of a character,” she said, smiling, “But he’s a very good photographer.”

“No, they’re great. I wonder if you could page Mr Reimerthi for me?”

“Certainly, Mr Kinner,” she said. She stepped aside to a house telephone and spoke softly into it. “If you wait in the lounge, Mr Reimerthi will find you there.

In the lounge, I ordered a coffee, and then made it two. I was just taking the first sip from my execrable latte when Reimerthi spoke from behind me. “Is that for me?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I haven’t got long,” he said, lowering himself into the lounge chair opposite. It was like watching a spring coil itself.

“It’s OK,” I said. “I just need to get that list of car regos we found.”

He slid his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket and brought out the pad. “Why?”

I slid the photo across the table. “This car looks exactly like one that I saw outside Kim’s place when I picked her up to go out to dinner.”

“So?” he studied the picture. Then he got it, looked up at me sharply. “You think he might have followed you?”

“Could be,” I said. “If his number plate is on that list …”

Reimerthi ran his finger down the list of numbers on the pad, flipped over the top page and stopped his finger halfway down the page. “It’s here,” he said.

I felt a surge of excitement, “That means –“

“It means only that this car has been in her street and at Cullen Bay Wharf when you were both there too,” he said, voice even. “We must find out, if we can, where this car is from.”

“What do you mean, ‘If we can’?” I asked.

Reimerthi tapped the pad with his fingers, “If it was me, I’d be using false plates,” he said.

They were, of course. When Reimerthi returned to the lounge, he said that he had contacted a friend in the S.A. Roads who relayed the news that the plates belonged to a 1974 Holden HQ panel van. It was registered to an address at Marla, a town on the Stuart Highway, in the north of the state.

“Is it worth phoning?” I asked.

Reimerthi shook his head dismissively. “No way,” he said. “It’s either going to turn out to be derelict or stolen. There’s no point. Leave it to the police – they will track it down.”

“Will they?” I asked. “They didn’t seem too fussed about it before.”

“I said to you,” he replied, “that through the casino here, there is a man I can talk to who will make sure this information is taken seriously.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but he put his hand up to forestall me. “Look, I know how you are feeling,” he said. “It is hard to accept that there is nothing that you can do that is useful, especially when you feel a sense of urgency, and no one else seems to. But I tell you, Daniel, I do know exactly –“ he emphasised the word “– how you feel. And I tell you that the best thing to do is to give what we have to the police, and to wait. They will be convinced by this, I know. They will act, and it will be fast, when they do.”

I shut my mouth and subsided. He was right. I knew he was right. “OK,” I said. “But let me know what’s going on. I want to know, alright?”

Reimerthi nodded. His eyes were sober. I could see that he did, as he said, understand how I was feeling. I remembered his comment of yesterday, when I’d asked him why he was helping me. “I have an interest in this sort of thing,” he had said. I wondered just how personal his interest was.

Reimerthi left, taking the pad with him, and I ordered another coffee.

The lounge, with its comfortable, tropically cool ambience was moderately busy. Around me, I could hear the hum and burble of quiet après lunchtime conversations. They were accompanied by the discreet clatter of cutlery on plates and the occasional ting as a glass belled musically at the touch of another in toast.

It was sophisticated. It was hedonistic. It was intolerable.

I hadn’t eaten since early that morning, but I just didn’t feel I could eat.

Most of it was my anxiety over Kim. It had been three days now since our dinner on the Koomolara. Three days that for her, must have been filled with torment and anguish. If she was still alive. I tried not to allow thoughts like that to creep into my mind, but they kept ambushing me.

I’d wondered about her chances out loud to Reimerthi earlier. He’d been matter of fact. Almost callous, in fact. “If she is alive, she may well wish she was not,” he said.

Comforting not at all.

The other part of my lack of appetite came from nervous agitation. I felt almost sick at the thought of food. I wanted to do something. The only way forward was though the list of registration numbers that Reimerthi had taken to pass on to the police. I agreed with Reimerthi that it was unlikely that the original owner of the number plate that had been on the car would know anything about what had happened to it. I wondered if it was significant at all that the original car had been registered to an address at Marla. How could I find out? Who would know about cars down there?

I got up and wandered over to the row of telephones. Underneath the shelves on which the handsets sat, there were collections of phone books, both local and some interstate ones – Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia. In the South Australian one, under ‘M’, I found the Marla Roadhouse and Caravan Park.

From my room, I rang the number.

“Marla Roadhouse,” a flat, very Australian male voice said, “can I help you?”

“I hope so,” I said. “Look, my name’s Daniel Kinner. I recently met a bloke at a caravan park who said he came from Marla. He recommended you for a visit – do you have any accommodation free?”

“Oh, I think we can fit you in, Mr Kinner” the voice replied, with cheerful and discernible irony.

“It would be for tomorrow night,” I said.

“Wouldn’t matter when it was, mate. It’s not the Gold Coast – we’ve always got room. Tomorrow will be fine. What sort of room would you like?”

I arranged a cabin with an en-suite, and then said, “The bloke I met gave me his name and number on a piece of paper, but I lost it. He was driving a very distinctive car, a very dark grey Holden ute with tinted windows –“

“Rob Cook,” the man interrupted me. “Very proud of that car of his. Owns the local servo. Down in Adelaide were you? He was just down there this last week, he said. Nice of him to recommend us. Well, we’ll see you tomorrow, right?”

“Right,” I said, “and Mr Cook lives in Marla, does he?”

“No, he’s out at Mintalie,” the helpful man said. “About forty k’s due west of here.”

It had to be him. Rob Cook. He certainly hadn’t been in Adelaide last week. If he was lying about where he had been, it must be because he had something to hide. I found Mintalie easily enough on one of the road maps I’d bought for my drive over to Jabiluka. It was a long drive almost two thousand kilometres – past Alice Springs and well into South Australia. At least two days by car. Or …

I spent some more time on the phone. It was not the peak tourist season, so bookings weren’t as frantic as they could have been. Even so, I couldn’t get a flight at all to Uluru, but had to settle for one early the next morning to Alice Springs. There, I arranged a hire car. Marla was only four hundred kilometres or so from Alice Springs. Mintalie was a faint pink squiggle away. I’d be there, with any luck, by tomorrow afternoon.

I decided that I’d not check out of the hotel. I had a feeling that if Reimerthi knew what I was doing, he’d not be happy. Best I let him find out later.

Chapter 61

August 12th

By the time the boy was able to go back down to see his captive, she had been down there for the best part of three days.

He used a tiny LED-light torch to enter the cavern where her cage was as quietly as possible, and then threw the switch that lit up the large, bright 200-watt lights in the ceiling. The lights here were independent of the house, sustained by batteries that he kept charged religiously. Sometimes, the generator failed, or a fuse blew, and down here was not the place to be when that happened. He studied his captive.

She had heard something. Even with the mask on, she had sensed some disturbance that alerted her. Now, she might even be able to see tinges of light creeping through the folds of the mask she wore. She crouched still, listening, with her head cocked, trying to hear. “Who’s there?” she said, voice husky and raw.

The boy said nothing. He stood beside the cage, holding a small, plastic watering can with a long spout. He knew that she would be desperate for water, after this length of time. Knew too that he would have to ration how much she drank, otherwise she would be sick. He watched her, without moving, until he saw her tense muscles start to relax again. Then he reached through the bars of the grid to grasp the strap at the back of the leather mask that covered her face, jerking her head up.

She gasped with fright, resisted, and then as she felt the splash of water spurting from the container, stopped and opened her mouth wide, gulping down the liquid as it splattered in and around her mouth.

She was looking thinner: three days without food had given her a pinched look at the tummy, he saw. Not that she had been carrying much spare flesh beforehand. The boy remembered one of his earlier captures: a tiny girl, Lauren. He hadn’t known as much about this then, and in trying to secure her obedience, he’d gone too far. After a week without water, she’d fallen asleep. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to wake her. It had been a waste. But he was much better informed now.

He’d done research into how a larger body mass affected the ability to withstand deprivation. He’d read with interest the story of a boy who’d survived for three weeks in the Himalayas with only a chocolate bar – and snow to melt for drink. Drink was the key, he knew. Different people were capable of enduring the deprivation of many things, but thirst always brought them to their knees.

This one gulped avidly, head swaying from side to side. He played with her, making the stream of water miss her mouth, to spill down her body, or to splash off her shoulders and back even. He knew she’d feel the cold, later, when he left.

The boy put the water container down. He unbolted and then and swung open one end of the cage. The rattle of the metal had her tense again, knowing that something was happening, but unable to see, or tell what it was.

“Who’s there?” she said again, head angled back. She crouched, uncomfortably, her pinioned hands meant that she was unable to support her upper torso. The boy passed a metre-long pole in through the open end of the cage and attached the clip on the end to a ring on her head covering. She cried out, and tried to jerk away from the pressure he applied, pulling her towards the door. She swore at him, “I know it’s you, Cook,” she said, her voice hot and trembling with anger and outrage. “You’re a weak prick! You arsehole!”

The boy ignored her. He manoeuvred her backwards, until she reached the edge of the cage. She could feel that there was nothing behind her, and that her legs were hanging over a drop, but she didn’t know how far down it was. From behind her, he guided her foot onto the first step.

She kicked out, of course, but she was off-balance, and disorientated – and the boy was expecting it. He slashed the crop he held across her back, the sound of it hitting her skin a slapping crack. She screamed, in shock and surprise, but made no more efforts like that as he helped her climb down until she could stand. She was a bit unsteady, at first – she hadn’t used her legs at all for the best part of a week, after all.

But once she was more steady, the boy used the lead-pole to walk her to where he had cemented a post into the floor of the tunnel. It was almost as tall as he was, and had a universal hinge on the top to which the boy clipped his end of the pole. The other end, attached to her head mask meant that she couldn’t move, except in a circle around the post. The boy flicked her with the crop until she learned to walk in a circle around the post. She swore at him again at first, but when that only earned her a series of good smacks, she became silent. He kept her going for fifteen minutes: not only would the exercise do her good, but it helped establish a sense that he was in control, like the trainer of some circus animal. And that was a good comparison, the boy thought.

He stepped back after a while, watching while she maintained her tentative walk around the pole. He admired the muscles in her thighs and buttocks, the way her breasts moved as she walked. He used the digital camera to take some pictures.

He moved away to the cage. Underneath it was a flat, wide tray full of gritty sand. He removed her faeces, and sprayed some ammonia on the rest. Then he unclipped the pole from the post, and positioned her close enough to it that he could clip first her helmet and then the cuffs on her feet to short lengths of chain.

When she was secure, he used a bucket of warm, soapy water to wash her down. He took special care with her vagina and anus: it was important that this region, most of all, be kept healthy and clean. Since she had no hair, the task of cleaning her down was much easier. In the early days, he had found it difficult – and sometimes dangerous – with long hair, and pubic hair. Easier to keep it all off.

She endured this in total silence. Even when he had deliberately rubbed hard where he knew she was … sensitive, she simply stood there, trying to pretend it wasn’t happening. The boy smiled. They were so predictable – all of them.

After she was clean and dried off, he opened the flaps that covered her ears. “Welcome to your life, Kimberly,” he said. She said nothing. “You can say, ‘Thank you,’ if you like,” the boy said. She still said nothing. He slashed the crop across her hip. She heard the whistle as it whipped through the air, and began to blurt out the requested phrase.

“Thank –ya!” She twisted away as far as her bonds allowed her, fearing a second hit.

“You will find it much more … enjoyable here if you try to be obedient, you know,” the boy said. “The more you fight, the more you suffer. The more you try to please me, the more you will please yourself.”

She opened her mouth, and he could see the angry words welling up in her, but she visibly controlled herself and said only, “Thank you.” Then she swallowed, and asked, “What should I call you?”

“That’s good,” the boy said. “You can call me ‘sir’ or ‘master’, for the present. Perhaps, when you … when we know each other better, we will find something more suitable. For now, that will do.”

She had surprised him. He had expected that she would continue to fight, to resent and reject his attempts to mould her. Her complaisant attitude was encouraging. For a moment, the boy was tempted to take the blinkers off her eyes, to allow her to see him. But caution prevailed. He had never done that before. Always, he had waited until submission was real, total. He glanced in the mirrors he had arranged along one wall. There would be other times, he knew. Plenty of them. And it wouldn’t be the first time one of them had tried to lull him into a sense of security.

As he considered her, she spoke again. “What do you want me to do … sir?” she asked.

The boy slapped her – lightly – with the crop, making her jump. “I don’t want you to talk unless I ask you to,” he said. “If I wish you to do something, I will … tell you.”

He had an idea. He selected a heavy, plaited leather leash from an array that hung on the wall and clipped it to the ring on her mask. He made sure he had the crop in his other hand and then unclipped the pole from her. Now he only had the leash. With gentle pressure, he urged her forward. “Come with me,” he said. “There is something I want you to do.”

He led her over to where he had built up the floor, using wooden pallets on top of which he had screwed flooring. A series of bright rugs covered this surface, and cushions and a large mat occupied all the rest of the space. Bright, gauzy hangings obscured walls that consisted of plaster sheeting glued straight to the rock, and painted. The boy had seen many houses in Coober Pedy and Lightning Ridge constructed using these techniques.

He spent the next hour arranging her on the cushions, in a variety of lurid and – he thought – alluring poses. She did whatever he asked. He could tell, at times, that she was close to rebellion, but she maintained her control. The boy pushed her harder. More suggestive poses. He made her use a vibrator, open herself for his prying lens.

“Please sir,” she said, at one stage, “can’t I take this thing off my head? I could really look good then, couldn’t I?”

“No,” he said at once. “You must keep it on for now. In time, I will permit you, perhaps.” The boy felt good. He kept touching himself, feeling his hardness. But he wouldn’t touch her. No matter how she pleased him. No matter how she … wanted him, he would not give himself to her, not this first day.

But gradually, the boy began to be afraid. She moved as he told her, but he suspected not just reluctance, but revulsion. He realised in the end that she would do anything he asked. If he demanded she open her body to him – in whatever way, she would simply acquiesce. But not because she knew his mastery. He understood now that she was doing this to make him drop his guard. He knew that the instant she was able, she would turn on him.

He had to break her, he realised, before she tried to break him. He put the camera away, deleting every single image he had taken. All false. Picking up the leash, which he had disconnected for the photos, he quickly grasped the strap at the top of the mask and reattached the leash. He dragged her forcefully across to the cage, making her stagger and reel to stay on her feet.

“Sir!” She gasped and stammered, “What have I -? Shit! What have I done?”

He remorselessly pushed her up against the opening of the cage.

“Please,” she said, “not back there! Isn’t there somewhere else I could be? I won’t escape – I’ve done what you asked. Please?”

He slashed her buttocks as hard as he could with the crop, back and forehand, until she was forced to clamber up, awkwardly with her still-bound hands, using the steps. Once she was back inside, he pulled her along until she could perch on her sleeping mat.

He grasped her head again, and just before he closed up her ear apertures, snarled, “I know what you were trying to do. You bitch! You can’t fool me. I will be your Master. I will.”

She still tried to protest, but he ignored her.

Once she was secure, he moved away and sat in his watching chair. For a while, she thought he was still there, and blurted out her abject apologies for the way she might have offended him. Eventually, she stopped and seemed to wait, body tense, head tilted back, as if she were listening again.

When she finally believed she was alone, he watched as she cried. She started to say her name, and then burst into harsh, hoarse sobbing. She cried for a long time.

Finally, she began to speak again. “My name is Kim Davenport,” she said. His heart swelled, felt full: sad and powerful, at the same time. These were tears he knew. He’d cried these tears himself, in the past. When she was ready, he would teach her. When she was ready, she would know everything – do everything, and truly give herself to him.

At last, he rose and left, switching off the light. In the stygian darkness, only the whining and muttering of the creature he left behind escaped through the black velvet in the tunnel behind him. He didn’t even bother to shut the barred gate.

Chapter 62

August 12th

“My name is Kim Davenport. I live at …” She could get no further. Kim felt the hopelessness of her situation swamp her. She had tried to do what the textbooks recommended: play the game. Do what he wants – BE what he wants and you will survive.

When every fibre of her body just wanted to kick, bite rip him to bloody pieces, all she could do was act as submissive and as docile as she could. To find that she hadn’t managed to achieve anything was the most degrading thing of all. It felt as if she had abased herself for nothing. She couldn’t even contemplate even now, the things she’d done. The only way had been to divorce her mind, believe as if – locked in her prison of darkness – it was someone else’s body that was being suborned.

It was such a handicap not to be able to see his face. She would have been able to tell, watching his eyes, whether he’d bought her act or not. Not seeing his reactions, she’d lost her own ability to play the role. Her eyes turned inwards in revulsion at what she was doing. He’d sensed that. He’d known, and become angry, throwing her back in the cage.

Gradually, Kim regained her fragile control. The first thing she did was to recite the whole of her mantra. It took her a few times through before she was able to go through without dissolving into tears, or into quivering fear, as the reality of her situation and her probable fate came home.

She believed now she was on her own. No one would know where she was. There was no connection between her and Rob Cook. No way for anyone to discover what had happened to her for days. She knew that eventually, someone would have wanted to know why she was not at work. They’d have entered her home, and probably even work out that there had been a struggle of some kind. But she was a long way from home, she knew. The length of the drive, even tied and dopey as she had been, told her that. She must be in Mintalie, she thought. She remembered from her visit that was where he lived, so it made sense that he would have taken her there. Or nearby, anyway. Whatever, it was a long, long way from Darwin.

She remembered the multitude of abandoned mines and workings near Cook’s house, and knew that she must be in one of them. Perhaps a fossicker would wander in and somehow stumble upon the place he was keeping her. She knew this wouldn’t happen. He’d have made sure of that. She was on her own. The only way she would emerge from this was through her own efforts.

“What do I know –?“ she began, speaking aloud, to hear the dull, distorted rasp of her voice through the hood. But she stopped the question in mid-sentence, suddenly wondering whether he was still nearby, listening. Or whether, perhaps, he simply had a microphone rigged, so that he could hear what she said of did whether he was there or not. What do I know now that I didn’t know before?

She completed the question in her head. I know I am in a cage that is a few feet off the ground. I know the floor is of some kind of stone, or cement. I know he is very experienced at this. There was no way I could have escaped, the way he manoeuvred me before. I know that he is right into the power and control aspects of this. It’s important to him to be the master. It’s important to him to believe that I believe that. It was because he didn’t believe I was sincere that he lost it at the end.

She lost her train of thought for a moment, realising that the little water he’d allowed her to gulp hadn’t really assuaged her thirst at all. The way he’d poured the water so that she’d had to try to follow the stream – as if he was teasing a pet, she realised. Anger suffused her once again. With a huge effort, she bottled up a tantrum of rage. She just wanted to burst, so great was the pressure. Only the possibility that he was watching, or listening stopped her. Instead, she made pathetic whining noises. If he was there, let him think she was beaten. She’d wanted to ask him for another drink before he’d left, but the way things had ended, she hadn’t had the chance. She doubted whether he would have obliged her, anyway.

She realised that he was deliberately not feeding her, and that giving her only small amounts of water would make her more amenable to his demands. She remembered a training session on anti-terrorism techniques where an instructor had detailed the way some of the Middle-Eastern terrorists had used deprivation of food, water, sleep and light to control and manipulate their hostages.

How could this knowledge help her? She knew that all the previous victims of the “Highway Hunter” had never been found again. Which meant that he’d killed them. All of them. There were obviously a million places nearby to hide the bodies where the chances of anyone ever finding them were tiny. It was certain, therefore, that he had the same fate in mind for her.

So how could she make him see her in a way that he hadn’t seen any of the others?

She had to plan, to try to conceive what he would do next and work out in advance how to turn it to her advantage. It might take weeks, she told herself. You have to be prepared to lie low for as long as it takes. The thought of what that might mean began to force a sob from deep inside, but she ruthlessly quashed it. She couldn’t spare the water for tears.

There was an alternative that she briefly considered. She could fight him. That too might prolong his interest – until he found her breaking point. The problem with this, she knew was that, inevitably, he would break her – or kill her. It was just a question of which came first.

No, the only realistic chance of survival lay in working out what lay behind this twisted and deadly fantasy that he’d acted out so many times, and then to work out what she could do to use that knowledge to live where everyone else had failed.

She knew that for most offenders like this, the seeds of their behaviour lay in their childhood. Sometimes the trigger lay dormant for years, until something set it off, resulting in a killing spree or string of horrific crimes that seemed to erupt from nowhere.

Others, however, carried out their obsessive crimes under a façade of normality that made them almost impossible to detect. They worked side-by-side with people who never guessed at the secret, monstrous life that lurked beneath the surface of their workmate. Sometimes, they were even married to people who had no notion of their partner’s hidden alter ego.

Rob Cook, she thought was probably one of these. He was obviously able to carry out the role of a successful local businessman. The community of Mintalie was already full of enough misfits and others who didn’t want much scrutiny of their lives – past or present. Amongst them, he probably passed for normal.

Kim wondered what his childhood had been like. She imagined growing up on a town like this. She knew from the case studies and statistics that sexual and physical abuse was a certain factor.

How could she use her knowledge to influence his behaviour? How could she make herself safe?

There was a danger in this, too, she realised. If, once she started, he realised that she was trying to manipulate him, his reaction might be even more extreme. The first step had to be to – somehow – disguise her abhorrence enough to convince him that he was succeeding in his attempts to control her attitudes and behaviour.

Perhaps she should initially resist. Making him believe that he had conquered her spirit might mean that he wasn’t as suspicious. It might mean some unpleasant experiences to endure. How much worse can it get? Kim asked herself. She felt the tears well up again. The answer to that particular question was one she didn’t really want to contemplate.

She had tried turning her mind to something positive. If she focused on pleasurable things, or memories far away from her present circumstances, this sometimes helped to make what she was going through bearable. Thinking about escape only made things worse. The desire to be free was uncontrollable, once she let it out of that tiny locked box where she kept the flickering ember alight.

She thought of her family, and her home, when she had been a little girl. She called to mind every detail of her bedroom: the pictures on the wall; the bookshelves; the wardrobe doors covered with cut out photos of pop stars. She started to think of birthday parties, drifted onto remembering her last night in Darwin.

She wondered what Dan had thought when she hadn’t shown up for coffee. She imagined him flying out, as he had said he was, back to Melbourne. He’d have been pissed off, of course, but once on the plane, he would go on with his life. He’d forget her. Never imagining hers was on hold, warped and perverted in this vile hole.

The evening on the boat had been an idyll. What she felt was close to euphoria Certainly bliss wasn’t too strong. She had virtually floated into her house. So many things had been a struggle since she had taken the job in Darwin: fitting in to the ethos; being female and a senior officer; relationships … Daniel Kinner had initially seemed like just another hassle – a dickhead poking his nose where he shouldn’t have. In fact, to be honest, that’s what he had been, she thought. But – and in this case, there had been a “but” – from her first meeting with him, Kim had felt an attraction. He’d been … interesting. If only …

Not that it would have gone anywhere, of course. I mean, carrying on any sort of relationship from Darwin to Melbourne … As her Mum used to say, that was a “G.I.” relationship: “geographically impossible”. Still, her initial attraction hadn’t been wrong – and her recent experiences had been making her doubt her radar, where men were concerned. As a new resident in Darwin, she had known very few people slightly. In the police force, the opportunities to meet people were limited … Pretty much you socialised with people in the Job, because they were the only ones who really understood how you felt. It was a bunker mentality that – most of the time – helped keep you strong.

In her case, though, since the only men she met were those she worked with. The warnings against mixing her personal and professional lives had proved bitterly apt. She had allowed herself to believe that the reason she was being asked out so frequently was that women like herself – bright, attractive and successful – were uncommon, up here.

The reality was that, from the moment she had arrived, some of the local Lotharios had placed bets amongst themselves as to who would be the first to “put her away”. She’d never forget the feeling of revulsion she had felt when Rob Fairway, furious at her rejection of the more … tasteless expressions of his desire for her, had let the secret slip.

For weeks, she’d been almost embarrassed to go to work. A long, long-distance conversation with an old friend from home had convinced her that if embarrassment ought to be felt it wasn’t her that should be feeling it.

The point at which it had turned around was when Ozzie Sanderson had asked her out. He had been one of those who’d pursued her vigorously earlier. He’d grabbed her arm, and asked as she’d passed through the detectives’ office. Sensing the listening ears nearby, Kim had stopped, turned and looked at him, raising her eyebrow sardonically. “Why, Oscar,” she’d snapped, “I didn’t know you were interested – or have they raised the odds?”

Walking unhurriedly from the room, the absolute silence she’d left behind her had been music to her ears.

It had been a victory or sorts. It was that that she needed now. Determination, resilience and the ability – whatever it took – to bounce back.

Even if the evening on the boat had been a moment that meant nothing more, she needed those oases now to assuage a thirst that was more debilitating than the physical lack of water.

Chapter 63

August 13th 5:00 – 5:15

The dust swirled up in a chalky, choking swirl as I halted in the stony, bleached space between a very large, silver work shed and a stone cottage, which nested above on a small knoll with a truncated, rock-strewn slope behind it.

I was tempted to go over to the shed to see if the black ute was there, but a glance at the house’s facing windows, which glowered at me, with a brooding, almost menacing intensity, made me decide to try knocking on the door first.

There was a prying, spiteful wind. Wan afternoon sun gave little heat, and the chill sucked the warmth from my body. I shivered. Darwin had been much hotter, and the only jacket I’d brought was a light slicker that was buried deep in my bag.

I could see no signs of life. The windows were curtained, and the door – solid, panelled and unpolished, in a heavy, pale timber – remained shut, as I mounted the stone steps. The walls were of the red and grey stone whose weathered striations stuck out like half-buried ribs from the scarified soil nearby. It was solid, all right. It looked as if it had been forced up from beneath the ground, in one eruption of consolidated rock. The closed-off windows and the door appeared impervious, ready to deny entry or exit. The effect was of rock and earth that had been moulded and shaped into a vault: what might be locked within?

There was no knocker or bell. I clenched my fist and rapped my knuckles sharply. The door absorbed the sound: only dull thunks resulted. I tried again, harder, with only a little more success. The house didn’t appear large. I guessed if anyone were in there, my efforts would have been noticed.

I turned, my back to the house, gazing over the outlook. The bone-white, curling ribbon of the driveway wound away like a strip of planed wood, peeling around the rocky knoll to lose itself in a maze of old mines and pyramid-shaped mounds of discarded stone. The sallow, dusty stone wavered and rippled even in this frigid wind, leached of life, piles of vomit from deep in the earth. There were no trees or even shrubs in view. Sparse pockets of leached grass tufted some of the rocky knolls and mounds. Their dead, cratered, craggy contours stuttered away, a confusion of baked, frozen, petrified waves.

I walked back down the rough, rock steps. At my car, which ticked as the engine cooled, smelling of hot oil, rubber and dust, I paused, glancing back at the house. It looked as if there was no one here, as if he’d locked up and gone away somewhere. I wondered whether my trip might have been a waste of time.

I looked over at the huge shed. I thought I might as well check, since I was here. I tried the left hand of the shed’s two large sliding doors. With almost no resistance, it slid slightly open. Parked inside, I could see the indistinct shapes of vehicles and machines. It was quite light inside, because of the rows of clear, corrugated plastic panels in the roof.

Once the shed door was partially open, though, I hesitated. Behind me, the house watched, with a brooding, ominous intensity. I poked my head inside, dismissing my hyperactive imagination. For form’s sake, I called out, “Hello? Anyone there?” There was no reply, of course.

I glanced back again and stepped inside. It was the neatest, cleanest vehicle storage area I’d ever seen. The concrete floor was painted and swept, the parking spaces for each piece of machinery delineated and labelled in yellow paint on the floor. The workbench was cleared; tools hung on hooks in front of their outlined shapes on a board mounted on the wall above the work area.

Directly in front of the doorway was a painted rectangle with a faint, oily smear staining a large patch of old carpet. Nothing occupied the space. It was the only vacant position. The ute? There was a motorbike with huge, spring-loaded front wheel forks and a yellow tractor with an excavating shovel on the front. Other cultivating and excavating implements stood in defined areas. Whoever lived here was fanatical about order and tidiness.

A strange brick room in one corner got my heart racing. It had a wooden door, with a huge lock, but there were gaps round the edges, and a sign on the door warned of explosives. I peered through and called out softly, but reckoned the shed contained exactly what it claimed to.

I didn’t stay long in there. The huge, tinny space, the air supercharged with heated fumes of dust, fuel and chemicals seemed imbued also with an air of dull menace: something lurking, but dormant.

It was weird that a place as simple, as mundane as this equipment shed could practically make me shudder with a sensation of imminent threat – of danger.

The sheets of tin ticked and moaned, at the relentless assault of wind and sun, as if they were writhing to escape the nails that secured them to the rough, splintered timbers that framed the building.

I retreated, heading back to the car. The ground between the shed and my car appeared warped and buckled, as if it strained to hold beneath its flaking, scabrous surface, some hidden secret. I shook my head. The area where this man had built his home seemed diseased, the surface pitted by excavations that might have been the exploded sites where pussy discharges from deep beneath had sprayed the surroundings with the poison of their detritus.

In the hire car, with the engine running and the heater maintaining the temperature inside at a more civilised level, the tinted windows returned the outside world to the harmlessness of a movie-scape. Behind the glass, it was only pictures on a screen: real somewhere, but not capable of reaching out to touch, to scar.

I gave up waiting. I would come back later, I decided. I turned the car around and drove back down the winding track. The urge to look behind me was almost irresistible. I had an overwhelming sense that I was being watched. Or perhaps, that I was driving away when I should have persisted.

I went back to the store where I’d obtained directions to the house. Perhaps the woman there would be able to let me know whether Cook was away from home. If he was, I didn’t know what I’d do. In Darwin, I had been certain that he had taken Kim. My plan had been to find him. Now that I was here, I didn’t quite know what I could do. Even if I had found him at home, he’d hardly have confessed all and given up, would he?

I’d thought I would be able to call in the police to free her. The plan, such as it was, seemed stupid and impetuous. Was stupid and impetuous.

Following the winding track, as it weaved through the abandoned workings, back the way I’d come, I had a bit of a scare. At one point, there were large two stones, balanced one atop the other, in the middle of the track. I’d not noticed them, as I drove in, because they were positioned on a curve, so that they were more of an obstruction to vehicles travelling the way I was going. As I rounded the bend – not going particularly fast, I almost careered into them. With a scatter of stones, I braked hard, swearing aloud at the shock. I pulled over to the roadside, wanting a closer look. Out of the car, it was like stepping into a vacuum: the air sucked every atom of warmth and energy, leaching it from my body.

I went no closer than a couple of metres away from the boulders. Just in front of the balanced pile, what I’d taken for a shadowy indentation was, in fact, a hole in the road surface. Even from where I was, I could see that beneath the surface, there was a quite deep cavern – part of an old mine working, perhaps – that had collapsed, as the back-filled soil subsided. The large, stacked rocks were evidently a warning to people using the track to give the site a wide berth. It might have been a sign that was widely recognised here, but I’d almost missed it. You’d not want to be unfamiliar with the area, or to have been driving fast or carelessly. Especially at night.

Back in my car, I got lost, somehow. The area covered by the opal leases occupied such a sprawling expanse, with every mound of pallid, symmetrical stone looking like the next and the last, and each gaping pit a clone of its neighbours.

Eventually, I cautiously edged around a bend. On the skyline, a strange motley of machines rattled and roared. Dust and exhaust fumes spewed into the air in a dirty plume that the wind stretched away across a cavernous, empty digging. A filthy and incredibly battered station wagon was parked nearby, a bored blue heeler lying in the shelter offered by a car wheel well.

I halted and got out, a wary eye on the dog. He paid me no attention, just yawned and gnawed industriously at his elbow. To my right, a man manoeuvred a front-end loader to scoop up a huge pile of the grey, discarded stone. He moved over to a metal funnel and tipped a portion of his load into its maw. Beneath its smaller aperture, a conveyor belt clattered, carrying the stone that dribbled down along to a box-like room through some dangling black rubber strips. From the other end, the stone emerged to scatter down a steep decline, into the same pit it had probably come from in the first place.

The driver of the loader saw me, and gave a short wave. He was dressed only in a check shirt over a tattered blue vest, shorts and workboots, despite the chill. I stood and watched while he tipped the rest of his bucket load into the funnel. Then he reversed the machine away and turned it off. It made only a small difference to the noise level. When the last of the stone had passed through the hole in the side of the shed, a rudimentary door opened in the side and a second man emerged. He glanced around, saw his partner, climbing down from his loader, and me. He stepped down from the box he’d been inside, and went to the end of the conveyor belt. A moment later, the rattling blast of metallic noise ceased.

In the aftermath, the deadness and cold, the absence of noise and life seemed all the more oppressive. The wind moaned softly across the exposed ridge. Away in the distance, another engine roared fitfully. The first man eyed me carefully as he crossed to the car door. Reaching inside, he took a small parcel from the doorless glovebox and leaned against the car while he rolled a cigarette.

The second man came closer. I could smell the sweat and dust well before he reached me: the small box he’d been inside must have been like a sauna: he was absolutely soaked. “You right, mate?” he asked. He walked past me and took an old plastic orange juice container full of water from the open rear section of the car. I watched, as his throat worked while the contents gurgled like water going down a plughole.

Following their directions, I found my way back to the sprawling struggle of ragged-looking and dilapidated buildings that was Mintalie. It was an opal-mining town without any of the tourist-and-tawd veneer of a place like Coober Pedy or Alice Springs. There was no “main street”, no shopping precinct. The houses were scattered amongst a sparse fringe of tired, dusty, scrubby bushes, the highest of which barely reached the eaves of the buildings that huddled miserably at the base of the ridge of sharp, scarred rock that shadowed them.

The roads were simply wheel marks that twisted in and out of the bushes and buildings. Whenever someone wanted to go somewhere, they simply appeared to have driven directly there, making a new pathway on a whim. Perhaps, I thought, they spent most of the time drunk. That would explain the crazy convolutions of the tracks - and the occasional abandoned vehicle adrift in clutching wavelets of wind-thrashed sand.

If a normal car left the commonly-travelled surface, it quickly ground to a halt, the wheels cracking the brittle crust to flounder in a red sand so fine that it could barely be crossed on foot, let alone traversed by car.

There was a large expanse of baked and blown earth where a dozen or more vague tracks merged. On one side, a large fuel tank stood on a rusting stand. Opposite was an obvioulsy abandoned motel, windows covered over with large sheets of roofing tin, a sign still standing high overhead. “Borgert’s Hotel”, it said, “serves ice-cold Victoria Bitter”. Not any more.

A good hundred metres away was the general store. Its exterior was also emblazoned with beer signs. It wasn’t an inviting prospect: despite the façade being of native stone, with a deep, cool-looking veranda, it had a tawdry, unkempt appearance. It was a bit like an old boxer – gone a few rounds too many and failed to dodge a few good hits. The woman I’d asked for directions, as I’d passed through earlier had been garrulous and inquisitive. I was sure that, with a bit of encouragement, she’d have plenty to tell me about Rob Cook.

Chapter 64

August 13th 5:05 – 6:05

The boy stepped through the metal sally-port in the huge roller door that he’d pulled down using the loops of chain at the side, closing it behind him. He rattled the small door, ensuring that it was securely shut. Stooping, he picked up the red, metal toolbox he wanted to take home.

It was early – just after five, and Saturday afternoon. He’d sent everyone else home at twelve, and stayed on, catching up on some book work – not that he was focusing very well, or doing very much. His head hurt terribly, despite the tablets he had been taking at regular intervals throughout the day. There wasn’t much to do. Petrol for the odd car, and a couple of phone calls from locals asking him to order a part in, or service their vehicles. He wanted to leave early, so that he’d not have to peer right into the sun as it set, on the way home.

It was a measure of how badly his head wound was still hurting that he didn’t even notice the man until he spoke. “Are you closing then, mate?”

The man was quite short, the boy thought, at first. Despite the cold, and the bitter wind that whipped off the concrete paved forecourt, the man wore a suit, but carried the jacket over his shoulder and no tie. His hair was cut short, dark and crisp. His cheeks were darkening with the shadow of his beard. He was lean, sharp. He inserted himself into the boy’s space, making him take an uneasy step back.

“Yes. I’m just leaving,” he said.

“You couldn’t help me with a bit of petrol, could you?” the man asked.

His face was composed, but a tautness at the edges of his eyes suggested tension, even, the boy thought, anger. His neck began to prickle with apprehension. The boy gestured dismissively. “Already closed down the pumps and locked them off, I’m afraid.” He began to move away from the door, towards his ute, which stood in front of the office, ready to go. “You could try the caravan park,” he said. “They sometimes have a bit.”

The man moved deliberately, to stand in his path. “Look,” he insisted. “I need petrol now. I have to get to Mintalie tonight. I’m with the police.” He paused, his face becoming intent, somehow watchful. “I’m on police business.”

The boy’s legs locked. His mind told him to take the next step, go around the man and get away. Nothing happened, though. He stared out across the emptiness beyond his waiting car. The air in his lungs felt like a bubble of molten rock. Perhaps he should ask for the man’s ID. His voice wouldn’t do it, though. Carefully, he said, “Well, if it’s police business, I’d better open up again.”

The man’s still, secret face tightened, as if he heard currents underneath the boy’s fragile control. The boy saw the nerves jumping around the mouth, and at the edges of the man’s eyes. He noticed, too muscles tensing in the man’s hand, as it gripped his suit jacket, his fingers twitching, clenching. “Thanks, mate,” the man said. He motioned at the bandage the boy had fixed over the raw scar on the side of his head. “Hurt yourself, did you?”

“Yeah.” The boy gestured at the workshop, “I’m always taking skin off in this place.” The boy moved sideways, heading across to the office, ushering the man towards it with his hand, as he did. The man went with him, not following, as if his movements were linked to the boy’s. “What’s the problem at Mintalie?” the boy asked, the sounds of the words like wire in his throat. “We don’t get much out here apart from the odd pub brawl or road accident.”

The man’s face tightened. It was as if something watched the boy from behind those dark sunglasses, assessing, calculating. Dismissively, he said, “Just making some inquiries.”

The boy felt the fever of fear bring a rash of wetness out over his torso. The world was skewed. Part of him wondered why the policeman was alone. It could only be that the cop was travelling to Mintalie because of him. Why else would they go there? But how had they found out about him? Why hadn’t he been arrested already?

The man’s voice, flat and level with that peculiar monotonousness cops can adopt, interrupted his thoughts. “Looking for a bloke. A couple, actually.”

The boy turned, as the man reached into the breast pocket of his suit coat. “Know this feller?” he asked.

The photo was of a man and a woman, sitting at a table in a coffee shop. The boy knew it, on the waterfront in Darwin. He also knew the couple. The woman was Kimberley Davenport, now safe in the darkness. Her partner was the man she had spent her last night in Darwin with. The boy looked at the policeman’s face, trying to mask the panic that brought bile to his mouth and raced his heart in agonising, uneven lurches.

“No,” he said. “I don’t know him.” But his voice sounded strange, even in his own ears.

He began to turn away, to open the office door, but the man grasped his arm, pulling him round. “Bullshit,” he said. “You know him. I can see it in your face.” The tone was abrupt, flat; a cop’s drilling, arrogance.

The boy pushed open the door. As the man jerked his arm again, he fumbled the keys. They fell to the floor. The boy stayed where he was. If he bent over, he thought, he’d throw up.

The man hesitated, then let go his grip on the boy’s arm. “Sorry, mate,” he said, voice conciliatory – the boy could hear the effort to relax. He bent down, reaching for the boy’s keys. “I’m trying to –“

The boy’s action was involuntary. He lifted his metal case, swinging it up and back down so that, as the man began to stand, the case cracked into the base of his skull, where his neck began.

It was like cutting a puppet’s strings. The man puddled on the floor, the tension gone, his neat clothes now crumpled, draggled. In his formlessness, it was as if what had animated him – the anger, the tension – had been excised, leaving nothing. The boy listened, hunched over, while the sound of his breath rasped, a hoarse sound like sawing wood in the tiny, glass-and-timber –walled office.

When he was able to, he looked around, through the front windows, out across the concrete desert of the apron, past the sentinel petrol bowsers to the café and store. A family emerged from between the sliding doors, children clutching sticky, bright ice creams which struck the boy as incongruous, because it wasn’t hot. Their mother harried them towards the heavily loaded station wagon. Tucking his wallet into his jeans pocket, her husband checked his stride, glanced over at the deserted petrol station. Noticing that the doors were closed, he looked surprised, and glanced at the watch on his left wrist. Then he shrugged and continued to the car, balancing a white polystyrene coffee cup in his left hand.

The boy watched, as they folded themselves back into their car. The engine started with an asthmatic cough. It moved forward, slowly, at first, and then faster, as it crossed the dusty scree at the edge of the road and accelerated along the black tarmac, vague eddies of dust slipping sideways into the stifled, stunted bushes at the side of the road.

Driving home was foul. Because the sun was edging down towards the horizon, it shone beneath the layer of cloud that had kept its heat away all day. At this altitude, its brightness was such that the open land either side of the road shimmered, as if it were glazed. In addition, the boy was travelling straight into its glare, following the stony strip of the road whose pale dust seemed almost white. The road practically glittered, sending shards of light to spear into his skull through the pissweak shields of his glasses. The loose stones rattled and roared under his wheels, each corrugation another arrow into his reeling head.

As he drove, the boy tried to think what he could do with the man. Not just a man. A policeman. And he had a name, now. Sarich. Funny first name – Arujak.

Standing in the doorway of his office, the boy had been, for long minutes, unable to move – unable even to think. Finally, almost without volition, acting on instinct, he had opened his red toolkit. Using the familiar black cable ties he’d secured Sarich’s hands firmly behind his back. His breathing was fine. The boy wound black electrician’s tape over his mouth, winding it right round his face, so that it couldn’t be dislodged. He dragged Sarich behind the counter, so that he wouldn’t be seen if someone glanced in through the front windows.

The boy had searched Sarich’s suit coat and found his wallet, then. He looked through it. Sarich was attached to the fraud squad, according to the Victoria Police cards he carried. The boy shook his head: another riddle. What was someone from the Victorian Fraud Squad doing looking for him, in Mintalie? When he had moved the hire car into the old shed out the back, he’d looked through Sarich’s luggage, as well.

He wondered why Sarich was renting a car. Why wouldn’t he be driving a police car? The fact that it had been driven from Darwin, reinforced the boy’s certainty that the police were somehow onto him. But why would a Victorian cop be working in the Northern Territory? At first, it seemed that there was nothing in his bags that concerned the boy. Maps, a couple of magazines, a lined pad with a half-written letter; nothing to do with him.

When he’d seen, at the bottom of a soft, leather overnight bag, a couple of manila folders, his heart had lurched. The documents inside the first mainly concerned some Victorian businessman who was supposed to have ripped off a heap of money, when his businesses went down the gurgler. There was a Darwin connection – the businessman had disappeared near there. The link to the boy came because some of the newspaper articles collected in the folder speculated that he had been a victim of the “highway hunter”. The boy’s lips curled with disgust. There had been many news articles, over the years. At first, reading about himself, the boy had been intrigued, even quite proud. But the inaccuracy of their speculations, and the half-baked mass-appeal psychology that turned “investigations” into lurid, titillating shlockers had made him contemptuous. He looked thoughtfully at that article, and others similar, relating to previous disappearances. He rubbed his aching head. Had the policeman somehow stumbled onto him while he was investigating this embezzlement and disappearance case?

The other folder was personal: a big collection of statements from bank accounts, all of which had Sarich’s name as either sole investor or joint account holder.

He flicked through the rest of the papers in the folder, and stuffed it back at the bottom of the bag, finding nothing more that might touch on him. The bag and suitcase he tossed into the back of the ute. He reversed it close to his front door. The tray cover was semi-rigid, able to be flipped up.

With the door unlocked and the tray ready, the boy gazed over at the front windows of the general store. Nothing moved, but the sun’s glare made it impossible to see in anyway. Knowing that the ute’s position would obscure most of his movements, the boy quickly bent and lifted Sarich, arms under his legs and shoulders. In only a few seconds, he’d dumped him in the cushioned section in the back of the ute that he had installed for Kimberley Davenport’s capture and snapped the cover down with its elastic ties.

Minutes later, the door was locked, the alarm was on and the boy was heading for home. Straight into the setting sun.

He stopped off at the store, just as he always did. Not to do so would certainly have drawn a remark from Steff. The woman noticed everything, and thought she knew everything about everyone. Usually that amused the boy. When she flirted with him, in her heavy-handed and lewd manner, he sometimes toyed with a fantasy of taking her. There he could teach Steff how she should behave. There she would lose some of that weight she was always moaning about. There she would find out just how wrong her ridiculous assumptions about him were.

Not today, though. The last thing the boy was feeling was amusement as Steff fussed over him. She had put on a few kilos, over the years, and discontent and too much booze had turned the corners of her mouth permanently down. Her hair was still ridiculously long – all the other local women wore their hair short because the dust and heat made it too much fuss. Steff insisted on retaining her crow’s-wing black mane. It was as if it represented something of herself that she just couldn’t let go.

“Oh, Rob, I was hoping you’d stop by,” she said, when he came in. She squeezed out of the cash register booth and came over to him. She put her hand on his arm, which she constantly did, and which he hated.

“Why’s that?” he asked, when she didn’t continue.

“Does there need to be a reason?” She smirked at him, in a parody of a conspiracy, “Isn’t being my favourite customer enough for you? You want more, do you?”

“No way, Steff!” he said, plastering a desperate smile on his lips, “You’re much too much woman for me!”

“Oh, go on!” she pushed at him, her hand sliding across his abdomen. “You need a lotta woman! I know you!”

The boy tried to escape, to change the course of the conversation. “Is there any mail for me?”

“No, nothing, but like I was saying, did your friend find you?”

The boy’s head screamed, but he spoke calmly. “What friend?” he asked. Her mind was so addled by alcohol and the anti-depression drugs that she boasted about having been prescribed for her “Terrible depression” that getting information out of her was like chasing a crazy rat round a maze.

“Some feller,” she said. “Said he met you on holiday, and that you’d told him to drop by. Nice, though, manners, you know. Bit of a gent.”

The boy considered. Who could be looking for him? Must be the cop. It was too much of a coincidence that Sarich should have turned up at Marla and someone different here. But Sarich had said he needed the petrol to get to Mintalie. That proved he was lying. “Was he going to hang around?” he asked, keeping his voice casual.

Steff shrugged. “He didn’t say,” she said.

The boy could tell from the way her eyes flicked away that she wasn’t telling him something. Which probably meant she’d given directions to the house. He’d best get straight home. Check that Sarich hadn’t managed to disturb anything. Not that he’d have been able to get in. The stone house was a fortress, now. “Well if he comes back, give me a ring,” he said, smiling.

“You know who it is then?” she asked. She was watching him carefully, her gossip’s nose knowing that there was something awry, but not what.

“Oh, could be any one of a few people.” The boy grabbed the plastic bags she’d filled as she talked and turned away. “You know how it is at those places – you say “Drop in”, without really meaning it, and sure enough, someone turns up!”

“Yeah, like in-laws,” Steff smirked. “’N’ then you can never get rid of ‘em!”

“Oh I don’t know about that,” the boy said, pushing open the door and stepping outside. “I’m good at getting rid of people when I want to.”

“Well, I hope you’ll be able to get rid of him, if you want,” she smirked. “’Cos he only left about … fifteen minutes ago.”

The boy stopped, blinking in confusion. It couldn’t be Sarich. Were there two of them?

“That got you,” Steff smiled her sleaze’s smile. “Wanna hide out with me for a coupla hours? We could find a way to pass the time, I bet.”

Chapter 65

August 13th 6:15 – 7:15pm

The boy drove quickly up the track. The roads that twined in and out of the mounds of workings looked almost identical, but he drove with relaxed certainty. Close to the track leading up to his house, he turned away, following vague tyre marks off along the ridge until he crested the knobby spine. Here he had a vantage point from which he could look out over the abandoned workings and back and across to where his house perched on its own rocky mound.

He took some binoculars from the glovebox. From here, he could clearly see the car, parked in front of the workshop. There was no sign of the driver, however. The boy wondered if the man was waiting in the car. Or maybe he was prying around, trying to find a way in. He stared across the distance, eyes watering in the chill of the wind.

As he watched, though, the man moved. He was standing on the front porch. His stillness and the angle of this perspective had hidden the intruder, at first. He walked down the steps that led to the front door. Standing by the car for a few minutes, he stared back at the house. The boy wondered what he was doing. What could he see in the empty windows and firmly-closed door. Then he looked over towards the shed. The boy tensed.

When the man walked over to the shed door and slid it a little way open, the boy felt violated, invaded. His territory, his space had so long been a safe zone. The stone house had begun as a child’s retreat – a hiding place from the evil that surrounded his everyday life. Now, all these years later, he still regarded it in that way.

There was nothing he could do now, however. He had to get rid of the unwelcome guest in the back of his car before he could deal with the next threat. He started the car, turned and headed further along the track, heading back down into the maze of workings. Some were relatively recent, and were still regularly picked over by noodlers. Others – the older claims – were gradually being reclaimed by weeds and stunted bushes. Although nothing would grow in the pale grey shale that made up most of the discarded stone, dust and seeds born by the wind, conspired to provide a meagre sustenance for the most persistent, hardy plants.

Many of these claims were derelict, the tunnels either collapsing or filled with water. The most dangerous ones – that people knew about – were boarded over, or had warning signs.

It was to one of these that the boy took Sarich. The sign was not necessary – the tunnel was good. The boy had used it for various things – storing the carcases of his captures, when they were no longer useful. He’d also, on two occasions, had more than one to house. Since separation and isolation was vital to proper training, he’d had to find a second place to keep the creatures, from time to time.

He drove down onto a graded stone ramp that led to a series of black apertures in the rock face. Outside the one he wanted, was a red and white sign: Warning: roof unsafe! Do not enter! It was a very good sign, if the boy said so himself.

The area was deserted, of course. This part of the diggings had been one of the first discovered, and the opal had been completely exhausted. The owners of the claims were long gone. Having extracted whatever they could from the earth, they simply left the trenches and tunnels to fall derelict. Just beside where the boy stopped his car, was a regular square hole, in the bottom of a shallow dip. It went straight down, and its depths were inky black – and impenetrable: it was filled right to the top with absolutely clear, still water. Anything might be down there.

The boy halted the ute near the entrance to the old tunnel. The aperture was easily three metres high, so that heavy digging machinery could be driven straight in. Carrying Sarch’s bags, the boy made his way into the tunnel. About ten metres in, the boy had to squeeze past his white Landie. It was covered with tarps and chained up so that no one could stumble on it and drive it away.

Beyond the car, the tunnel roof became much lower: not quite two metres. The boy even had to stoop to avoid places where the rock of the tunnel roof bulged down. He quickly checked that everything was as he had left it. Halfway along the drive, he had erected a steel mesh barrier. It was padlocked, but the boy opened it and swung the steel grid wide.

At the far end of the tunnel was a roofing prop cemented into place. From a box the boy took out some chains and metal cuffs. He looped these through heavy metal staples screwed deep into the pole. Leaving a small lamp hanging from a hook, he returned along the tunnel.

Outside, the light was going quickly, Evening took forever to come out in the centre. The wide plains allowed the light to fade reluctantly, so that the dark was forced creep up, with stealthy guile. Only when it appeared that this soft, delicate light would remain, did darkness pounce.

Among these workings, while the ridges and tips of the discard piles might still be bathed in light, the depths of the holes became gloomy and cold early in the afternoons.

The boy took his Taser gun from the red tool box and cautiously opened the tray cover. Sarich glared at him from his padded prison. His eyes were very dark, the boy thought, almost black. The boy could almost feel the hatred in those eyes as a physical heat. He ripped some tape from his roll and in spite of Sarich’s efforts to prevent it, stuck a wide band straight across his eyes.

He hoisted Sarich over his shoulder, for the first section. But as the roof dipped, he dropped him to the lumpy floor and dragged him by his feet. Sarich grunted angrily, kicking out, as his shoulders and head bumped and scraped along the uneven surface. The boy dropped his legs and kicked him back, sinking his workboot into his unprotected side.

Sarich didn’t see it coming, of course, and even through the tape, his cry of surprise and pain was loud. The boy kicked him again, before picking up his feet and dragging him onward. He’d have to learn, just as they all did. He was planning ahead already. At first, he’d thought this was a problem, but now, with the girl as well, he saw that there were possibilities.

When he reached the end, the boy replaced the zip ties on Sarich’s hands and feet with the metal cuffs. Then he cut the ties away. They’d already marked his wrists severely, partly because the boy had tied them tightly, and in part because of Sarich’s struggles to get free.

He positioned Sarich so that he was sitting at the base of the post, hands cuffed and chained around it and through a metal staple. His feet were similarly attached: he could sit crouched where he was, but he couldn’t stand, or even stretch out his feet.

The boy wanted to ask Sarich many questions. But he knew that if he tried to talk to him now, it would be no good. Sarich was too angry. He would come back later, once he’d sorted things out back at home. A little persuasion and he would know exactly how much Sarich had found out.

He put out the lamp – eliciting a protesting grunt from Sarich, who could sense the absence of light even through the tape. There was a water container just inside the metal grid. The boy lifted it and shook it to make sure there was plenty there. Yes. He’d come back and talk to Mr Sarich a little later.

Before he started the car, he retrieved his capture bag from the back of the ute, placing it on the seat beside him. He gunned the engine and headed back home, in the last of the light. He wondered whether the man in the car would still be there; considered how best to play it.

It depended greatly on who it was, and why he was there. If it was a cop – a partner of Sarich’s, for example, it could get tricky. He almost stopped and turned round, thinking that he should go back and get the truth out of Sarich – find out what they knew. It was someone suss, that was for sure. Telling Steff that he’d invited him to drop in after meeting in a caravan park was a red light that said, “I’m after you.”

The boy knew that game very well. Hunters sometimes became hunted. Survival meant being quicker and more deadly than your rival. He unzipped the bag as he drove, and placed his Tazer gun on the seat next to his leg.

He was disappointed at the potential for interruption to his schedule. His training of the new creature had been going so well. After an unpromising beginning, she was beginning to really please him. She was intelligent and understood intuitively what it was that he was trying to achieve.

They had so much in common. So much to learn about each other.

Chapter 65

August 13th 6:55 – 9:30 pm

The sting had doubled in the wind’s vicious assault on the west-facing façade of Rob Cook’s stone cottage, by the time I returned there. There was still no sign of the black utility in the shed. The whole place appeared absolutely undisturbed. I looked at my watch. It was almost seven. It would be dark very soon. Perhaps he wasn’t coming home. My headlong rush here was feeling more desperate and futile.

Eventually, I’d found my way back into Mintalie proper, and the relative sophistication of the store. It had a low, spreading expanse of cobbled-together corrugated iron and weatherboard extensions that hung together behind a frontage of solid native stone. Initially, there was no response to the electronic watchdog that whined somewhere in the darkness of the doorway behind the counter, as I entered.

I examined the array in the soft drink fridge, passing up the tortured relics that had been baked into leathery dehydration in the food warmer. There was still no movement from the residential quarters behind the counter, but I thought I could hear a television or radio.

Eventually, I opened the fridge and took out a soft drink, which I opened and sipped at, while I browsed through the newspapers that piled with some bedraggled pap magazines on a bench along the wall just inside the door.

I found a two-day old article on Kim’s disappearance, in a Darwin paper. The headline (“Missing-person cop missing”) pretty much covered the journalist’s angle: the woman who was supposed the find missing people had disappeared herself. The tone made it sound as if Kim was just the kind of person to have this happen to her. “Sergeant Davenport has had some difficulty in acclimatising to her duties.” I wondered where the writer had found his information. Not from anyone either friendly to Kim’s cause or who took her disappearance seriously.

However, this would have appeared before Reimerthi had contacted anyone with what we’d found out. Perhaps the more recent articles would have become more sympathetic. I hoped so.

“You going to pay for that?”

I turned. The woman who’d told me – in great detail – how to find Rob Cook’s house stood beside the laminex counter. Her arms were folded across her chest. The chattiness and warmth of my earlier visit were gone. Now I had the frost.

“Yeah,” I said. I extracted some coins and placed them on the counter in front of her. “By the way, I followed your excellent directions to Rob Cook’s house – but he wasn’t there. You don’t know if he’s gone away again, do you?”

“No.” She squeezed her arms across her chest, making a platform with her fleshy forearms under her breasts. She almost added something more, but pinched her lips together and stared at me with a beady suspicion.

“No, you don’t know, or no, he hasn’t gone away?” I asked, smiling winningly at her.

“He’s here,” she said, the inflexion rising defensively. “He was here about a half hour ago. If you were at his house, you’d reckon you’d have found him.”

I raised my eyebrows. I reckoned I would have, too – if he’d gone there. Strange. “I was there for a while,” I said, “but when I knocked and couldn’t get an answer, I tried to come back here – but I got lost.” I shook my head at my dumb, city-slicker stupidity. “I had to get two blokes I found in this weird machine to tell me how to find my way back here.”

“Oh, yeah, like a little room with a conveyor belt?” she asked, showing a glimmer of interest.

“Yeah,” I said. “Weirdest thing – and a digger shovelling stone onto the belt thing.”

“That’s Rob’s, that thing is – it’s called a noodling machine,” she said.

The two men working the machine had explained its operation in some detail, but I didn’t want to stop her talking, now that she’d started to open up again. “Right,” I said. “And Rob owns it?”

“Yeah. He just leases it out, now. It’s a regular income, and he don’t have to break his balls doin’ the work.” As she said “balls”, she glanced at me archly.

“Lucky Rob,” I said. “The rest of us just have to … break ‘em or starve.”

“Tell me about it,” she said. “See this place?”

I said I did.

“Bought this as a partnership,” she said, embarking on a regular and rote-learned diatribe. “Do you see any partner? No you don’t,” she answered her own question quickly. “And why because he’s down that bloody pub with all his piss-pot mates while I earn the money that he pisses away.”

“Oh, it’s a great little store,” I said. “So friendly – you knew exactly where to send me. You obviously know just about everything that goes on round here.”

“Well,” she preened a little. “This is, like, the hub, you know? Everyone comes in here, so I try to make it a bit welcoming, a bit of a chat – lets the customer know you’re interested in them, not just their money, right?”

“Right. Mr Cook – Rob – a regular customer?”

“Sure is. Every night he stops in here. Except when he’s away on one of his trips.”

“Does he go away a lot, then?” I asked.

“Oh,” she considered. “Quite a lot. You know, trips to Alice for business, but he usually goes camping a couple of times a year. He says he likes to meet people in those caravan parks. Personally,” she pulled a face, “if I’m going away, it’s comfort and luxury I want, not a tent and flies and grotty people with snotty kids.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said. “Mind you, Rob seems to really enjoy meeting people like that – I mean, that’s how I met him.”

“Yeah, I s’pose,” she said. She sounded a bit doubtful. “It’s not like Rob’s the life of the party or anything. I mean, he and I are, you know, pretty close.” She held out her two plump, ringed index fingers side by side, “But I’d not say I know him that well, really. He’s a …”

“Closed book?” I prompted.

“Yeah, sort of,” she said. “I mean, I’ve invited him for dinner with me – my bloody husband wouldn’t turn up don’t you worry about that – hundreds of times, right? He’s never come, not once.” Her eyes widened, to show me how incredible it was that anyone could pass up the prospect of a dinner with her. “And he’s never asked me to come to his place,” she said. “Not once.”

“Amazing,” I said.

“Which makes it strange that you say he invited you to drop in,” she said. “’Cos I’d have said he wasn’t a “drop in” person, not at all. Once,” she leaned forward, imparting a confidence, “I drove up there, because there was an urgent message, from his garage, you know? I tried his home phone and his mobile, but it’s hopeless out here, so there was no answer, right? So, out of the goodness of my heart, I went up there, drove, you know, knock on the door – I was just gunna poke the message under if he wasn’t there – and there he is.” She motioned me closer. “He treated me like I had spat in his soup,” she said. “Opens the door, and it’s “What are you doing here?” – I felt like I did when me father caught me wagging school! Oh, he’s a bit of a strange one, Rob Cook.”

“But you’re pretty good friends,” I said.

“Oh, yeah, we talk,” she said. “Like I say, you have to attract people if you want to make a business work. So you have to look after yourself. You are your own biggest asset,” she finished, pushing her assets in my direction, just in case I missed the point.

“You are so right. Look I might just drive back up there, see if he’s back yet.”

“No worries – do you want me to ring, see if he answers the phone?” She gestured towards the dark doorway behind her from which the ceaseless mutter of the TV could be heard.

“No, don’t worry about it – you’ve been most helpful,” I said, easing the door open.

“Hang on!” she blurted, as I was about to escape. “You’re not a cop, are you?”

I froze. “No, why?” I said.

“That’s just what they always say,” she said. “You’ve been most helpful, Mrs Donaldson – just when they’re about to nail the villain.”

“You’ve been watching too many TV shows,” I said, winking at her as I left.

It was quite dark, as I drove back to Rob Cook’s house. I wasn’t sure quite what I should do. I was even more confident, after listening to “Call me Steff” talking about him that this was the creep who had Kim. He wouldn’t know who I was, but if I went knocking on his door at this time of night, I would certainly arouse his suspicion. Out here, after dark, strangers didn’t knock on your door. Just didn’t happen.

The question was, should I do it anyway? If I put him under pressure, he might panic. That might mean that he would run. It might also mean that, feeling he had nothing to lose, he would kill Kim – if he hadn’t already.

He was home alright. As I drove cautiously up the curving track around the rise on which the house was built, I could see lights on everywhere. The curtains were drawn back from the windows and the door to the large shed I’d glanced into before was open wide enough so that I could see the rear of the black ute framed by the glaring silver panels of the doors. In the glare of my headlights, the car looked like a negative: a pool of blackness in the bright lights.

I stopped the car and sat for a moment, watching first the house and then the shed doorway. I felt exposed and vulnerable. Nobody emerged from either place. It was silly to stay where I was. If I was to maintain the façade, I’d have to go through the motions.

Once out of the car, the feeling of danger increased. Reaching back into the car, I switched the headlights back on, so that they illuminated the shed doorway again. If he did come out of there, he’d be blinded by the lights. I sidled over towards the shed, keeping a careful eye on the house. There was no movement at either of the two windows, and the door remained shut. I stood beside the shed doorway and looked inside.

The ute, parked on its painted square, was brightly lit. The rest of the cavernous interior was shadowy and eerie, packed with the silhouettes of the other machines and vehicles. It was hard to hear anything inside, as the wind was still blowing strongly, making the metal sheets of the walls creak and groan as the building flexed with the gusts. I called out, “Hello – anyone in there?”

There was no reply, of course. I felt like an idiot. I was hunting a kidnapper, and I was behaving like I’d dropped over for afternoon tea. I dropped all pretence. I entered the shed with my back against the door, sliding sideways, moving swiftly along the walls. When I reached front-end loader tractor that was in pieces, I noticed a meaty-looking hammer that was resting on the bucket. I picked it up and hefted it. I had no other weapon. It would have to do. There was no one in the shed. I checked the ute. Although the bonnet was still quite warm, there was no one inside it.

That left the house. I held the hammer against my leg, so that it was concealed by my pants. Part of me kept wanting to pretend that this was going to turn into a silly mistake, and that Rob Cook would appear, smiling quizzically when I appeared at his front door step, having prowled through his garage like James Bond, clutching hammer purloined from his shed.

I raised my hand to knock, but there was no need. It was not only unlocked, but slightly ajar. This felt more and more like a trap. I realised – with a rush of embarrassment – that by blundering into a tiny township like Mintalie asking questions about Rob Cook and driving round, in my new-looking hire car (every other vehicle in the town looked to have lived hard) that he would, of course, have heard about me.

The result? He could either have run or stayed to fight. I stood at the doorway indecisively.

Perhaps he had gone. Maybe that’s why everything was left wide open, like this.

But all the vehicles were still there, in the shed. If he’d done a runner, he would have needed a spare. Idiot! He ran a garage. He probably owned dozens.

It made no difference. I had to go in. Maybe Kim was in there.

I pushed open the door. It was very heavy, but swung back without a sound. In front of me was a large living room that opened out to my right. Left were two doorways. Both were shut. The lights were on in the living area, and I could see a crack of light from under one of the closed doors.

I edged forward, until I could see around an unfinished brick arch just inside the front door. On a large brass hook, a bright blue and orange backpack hung, ready for use. Below it was a warm, vest in yellow Polartec. Beyond the arch was an expanse of open floor with a few plain, leather-covered lounge chairs spaced in an arc facing a large, very expensive-looking TV, video and stereo. Behind it was a serving bench that divided this area from a small kitchen. There were no knick-knacks on the few shelves or cupboards, no photos or pictures on the walls. It might have been a hotel room, except that most hotels tried to imitate a homey atmosphere. This place was so Spartan, it looked like a display home.

There was nowhere anyone could be hiding except behind the kitchen bench. I figured that was unlikely, but crept across the floor, wincing every time there was the faintest creak. The kitchen was empty. A knife block stood waiting, with an array of deadly-looking blades. I decided to stick to the hammer. Its heft felt more solid, reassuring.

Acting on the theory that the lit door was where I would be expected to go first, I opened the second door. Inside was an office: built-in desk around the walls, some shelves with manuals and magazines and a very large display case. Arrayed under the glass were a series of very large handguns. I tried to lift the lid. It was locked. I tried the door beneath it, at the front. Locked too.

Maybe I could smash the glass. But then what? They’d probably not be loaded – which he’d know. An expensive-looking bike stood along the wall. Its paintwork gleamed; chain and gears were perfect.

I retreated, closed the door and stood outside the lit one, listening. Not a sound. I carefully turned the handle, and then flung the door wide, leaping back round the corner, as I did. There was no reaction whatsoever. I peered around the door jamb. Bedroom. Empty. Where was he?

I turned back towards the living room. There wasn’t even another doorway. Every house had a front door and back door, didn’t they? I thought. I walked across to the kitchen, still trying to walk as if I was stepping on eggshells. There was a very large set of cupboard doors that I’d taken for a pantry. I boldly swung them wide, hammer at the ready. Inside was a narrow space with a washing machine on one side, a dryer above it, and a doorway straight ahead.

I nodded to myself, gripped the handle and tried to open it. It was locked. Deadlocked.

This was nuts. If he wasn’t inside the house and wasn’t in the shed, then where was he?

Perhaps he had bolted. Or perhaps he was outside, close by, watching me. A creep of fear spiked up my back, closely followed by a surge of anger. The prick was playing with me.

I went back outside and down to the shed. I looked through it carefully, but there was no hiding place anywhere in there. The floor was concrete slab, and solid as the rock it was built on.

I lifted the tray cover on the back of the ute and found a long, narrow, padded section along one side. It stank of sweat and urine. I stood for long minutes staring down into that disgusting hole, trying – and failing – imagining what it must have been like, travelling from Darwin in there.

I grabbed the keys out of the ignition of the ute and the dirt bike and put them in my pocket. I didn’t really know what I was doing. I just seemed swept along, impelled by a rising wave of fury.

Back inside, I walked round the house idly tapping things with the hammer. I left marks, but what the hell. He was obviously house proud: there wasn’t a thing out of place or dust or mess throughout the whole place. Perhaps he would come running to save his precious bench tops.

I wondered about turning on his computer, but decided not to bother. It would be password-protected, and the answer wasn’t there. I thought it through. He could have had a getaway vehicle and be gone, but I didn’t think so. He’d surely not have gone without his guns, if nothing else.

In the bedroom, I noticed that there was a roll of cloth which had been thrown untidily against the wall. It was the only thing out of place in the whole house. Nothing else was a hair out of place. I picked it up. It was a square of matting with a picture of Uluru – Ayers Rock – on it. I held it, thinking. I paced round the small room, inspecting the floor. It was a patchwork of older floorboards together with sheets of particle-board. One of these was between the bed and the far wall. I stood on top, trying to rock back and forwards. It didn’t move an iota.

On my hands and knees, I could see a metal rod flush. It was inset with the surface, but the edges had been worn slightly, obviously through repeated use. My fingernails were too short, but the smallest knife from the block in the kitchen did the trick. Up came a flat-topped metal hook. When I pulled upwards, the whole section of flooring hinged up. A long rod was attached, so that, as I raised the door, it fell free, until I could put its end into a small groove at the side of the opening.

Underneath was a large hole with a set of wooden steps angling away into the earth. They were very steep – almost like a ladder, but at least a metre wide. I knelt down and peered as far as I could down and along the tunnel. It was pitch black. From the limited light overhead, I could see were the rocky walls of a tunnel extending away from the bottom of the steps.

I sat back on my heels, wondering what to do. This was it, alright. But what was waiting for me down there?

If Kim was still alive, I had no doubt that this was where she was being kept. I knew what I ought to do. Go and get help. But who? The only person I knew around here was Mrs Call-me-Steff back at the store. She didn’t exactly inspire confidence. Police and any other help would be hours away, and by then, anything could have happened.

I left the trapdoor open and went back to the main room, looking for the phone. The socket was on the wall beside the kitchen bench, but there was no phone. Coincidence? No way. He was down there. He was waiting. And he’d made sure I couldn’t phone the cavalry. Now, I thought, was one of those times Jack had always been talking about where a mobile phone might have come in handy, although I remembered Call-me-Steff saying they didn’t work too well out here.

Now what? Back to the hole in the floor. Nothing for it but to go in. Couldn’t go get help. Who knows what he might do then? He knew I was here. Might be waiting down there. Might have a gun. Might be outside, waiting for me to go in. But Kim might be there. Nothing for it. Have to go in.

First, I made a trip out to the shed outside. I’d seen a big plastic torch hanging just inside the doors. Carrying it, I turned off all the house lights and went back into the trapdoor room. I stood on the top step. The tunnel yawned below me, filled with darkness, like a pool of black. I carefully took my shoes off, thinking I would be able to move more quietly. I gripped the hammer tightly and eased down the steps, staying close to the left hand side. The air smelt: an earthy, dusty closeness. I held the torch in my left hand, out from my side, the hammer cocked and ready to swing over my shoulder.

At the bottom of the steps, I crouched, listening. It was, I thought uncomfortably, as still as a grave. I pointed the torch the way ahead and switched it on. The bright, white beam cut the darkness: a swathe of shocking brightness that arced down what looked like the main tunnel. It was quite long, and curved left, so that I couldn’t see to the end. A second, smaller tunnel led left. It didn’t look as if it was used very often: it was narrower, and there was heaps of dust and rocky debris on the floor. I inspected it with the torch to see if I could see tracks, but it was impossible to tell. I walked a few paces along, shining the torch ahead. It wasn’t far. I quickly saw a solid wooden wall at the end. Dead end.

I turned back. I looked back at the steps. The gentle light from the bedroom, beckoned me. Resolutely, I turned the light off and I started edging along the main tunnel, deeper into this lair.

I tried to walk with my left side touching the wall. This didn’t work: the tunnel walls were very rough – as was the floor. I kept hearing the spatter and clatter as I bushed against lose dust and stone. In addition, I stumbled and lurched because of the uneven floor. I gave up, and switched the torch back on.

Breathing was hard: my lungs were like cement bags in my chest. I felt like I’d just run a race. Every second, I expected to be challenged or attacked. But nothing moved at all. I flashed the torch behind me every few seconds, in case he had entered the tunnel behind me.

After only fifteen metres or so, I could see that there was some kind of open space ahead. There was a raised floor of some sort; a table in the middle and a cupboard against the right hand wall. The curve of the tunnel meant that I still couldn’t see right inside.

The smell of the place was foul. Earthy, but with a stale, acrid sting that was like the smell of a pound, where penned animals wait to be claimed, or to be mercifully killed. Vaguely chemical, offensively sweet smells overlaid these scents, as if someone had sprayed cheap perfume or air fresheners everywhere.

I kept going. If anyone was down here, they had to know I was coming. I took the silence and stillness to mean that no one was. It looked as if the bugger had gone. I moved more quickly along the tunnel, a sense of failure tightening my throat. When the torch beam lit the whole area at the end of the tunnel, I stood still, struggling to accept the scene.

The tunnel broadened into a more or less oval space. In the centre was the table. Now that I was close, I could see the timbers it was built of, solid and thick; mortared into the floor. The surface, a huge, thick slab of wood, had ringbolts that protruded, at intervals. The surface was stained and pitted with marks and the scars of cuts and gouges.

To my left, on a raised floor built up by more pallets, was a garish arrangement that looked like a bordello bedroom. A mattress was covered with bright sheets. Bright, gauzy cloths draped the walls behind it. To one side, three huge mirrors were mounted, so that the occupants of the bed could view themselves. It looked almost comical: tawdry and horribly sleazy. Yet there was about it, too a feeling of vicious, desperate, ugly lust.

On the wall behind the table was a sadist’s tool board. Hanging from hooks, whips, clubs and various straps and ties hung together with clamps, wires and tools: pliers and pincers. As well, there were saws and butcher’s knives which gleamed wickedly in the slicing light of my torch.

In the mirrors, I noticed that there was an area gouged out to my right and behind me. A sold wooden post was cemented into the floor. Behind it, I saw the cage.

Raised off the floor of the cave by solid steel legs, it was constructed of steel mesh, each section of the grid about four inches square. It was about three feet high and five long. Beneath it was a wide flat tray, filled with coarse, grey sand. In the cage was a humped pile of grubby blankets on a rubber mat that covered much of the bottom of the cage. At first, I thought it was empty. But the blankets began to move. I almost vomited. There was someone inside.

I had no idea it was Kim. Only after the grotty bedding fell away, could I see that it was a woman. I began to hope. And to fear. She was completely naked, and her head encased in a black helmet that covered it entirely, except for her mouth. Her head was cocked, as if she was listening, though the helmet must have prevented her hearing much at all. She was balancing on her knees, hands somehow pinioned behind her back. I could see black straps around each ankle.

She spoke; purred, in an alien, sultry voice, “Is that you my lover? Have you come to fill me up at last? Please, let me give you what you want.”

Still, she listened again, and I tried to speak.

The answer came from behind me, though. “I’ll be right with you my slut. As soon as I deal with this shit.”

I spun around, the light from the torch arcing round the bare, rough walls. In the opening behind me, through which I’d recently walked, a garish figure stood poised. He was dressed completely in black, including a strange mask, which covered the top section of his face. He too held a torch, which he aimed at my eyes. With the same hand he pressed a large switch in the wall. Bright lights set in the ceiling filled the cave with garish light. In his other hand, he held a gun, aiming it at me.

The lights, brilliant and sudden, blinded me, after the darkness. There was a flash, an instant in which I was somewhere else: a face, a half-familiar shape through a strange window …

My hand jerked, without volition, it seemed. I hurled the hammer, and threw the torch straight after it. The hammer missed, hitting the wall with a clatter, but the torch hit his arm. It knocked the gun away, just as he fired. The gun coughed, and spat two strange threads that curved harmlessly at the roof and fell, like streamers. The man in the mask snarled at me, an unintelligible sound of rage and frustration. I stepped forward, but he twisted away, slamming his other hand against the switch that he’d just used, plunging us back into absolute darkness.

“You arsehole!” I shouted and lurched towards him. I missed in the darkness, however. I lurched into the edge of the opening hard enough to rattle my teeth. I staggered sideways and fell, hearing his footsteps recede away back up the tunnel.

“What’s that?” I recognised Kim’s voice, normal, now, but terrified. “Who’s there?”

Chapter 66

August 13th, 9:30 pm – 10 pm

The boy ran back up the tunnel. He was so disoriented that he smashed his shoulder against the tunnel wall. Once back at the steps, he stopped and listened, in case there was someone following him back up the tunnel. There was no sound, though he thought he could hear the mutter of voices. He fumbled for the box under the switch and removed the fuses. That’d stuff them up!

He had recognised the man at once. It was the one who had been with her on that last night. The one in the policeman’s photo. How had he come here? The boy felt wings of panic flapping, darkening his mind. The policeman’s presence at Marla had been terrifying – but dealt with.

But that this man had somehow traced him right here was incredible. Everything was coming apart. He had to escape. He had to get away. He slipped, as he scrambled up the steps, painfully scraping his leg. The boy paused. He was trembling. He fought to regain some control. A wave of energy filled his mind. He would get the Uzi from the gun cupboard. That would fix everything. He bowed his head, deliberately calming his breathing, trying to regain control over muscles that fizzed and twitched spastically.

How had it all gone so wrong? Arriving at his house, he had been vastly relieved to see that the car and its occupant had gone. He’d been overconfident, he knew, believing that he was safe. He had thrown open the car door, leaping up the steps two at a time. The front door, of course, was unmarked: no one had entered his domain. His anxiety had been at such a pitch though, that he had thrown his capture bag, with the Tazer inside, next to the kitchen bench and gone straight to the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

Instead of rolling up the mat, he’d roughly pushed it to one side, letting himself through the trapdoor and down into the tunnel. Standing at the bottom of the steps, listening, he had heard no sound, no disturbance down the tunnel. His breath, pent up, hissed from his aching chest.

He waited for a minute or more, in the darkness, calming himself. Finally, he had smiled, relaxed. He ascended the steps, propping the trapdoor open whilst he discarded his work clothes and robed himself ready to return to the tunnel.

He had been part way down the steps when he’d heard the sound of a car halting in the driveway below the house. He remembered that he’d left the front door open and unlocked. The capture bag and gun was near the kitchen bench. The rest of the guns were locked in the study. That sense of things slipping into chaos threatened to overwhelm him.

He propped open the door. Through the front door, he peered at the car below. The driver was a dark silhouette. The boy jerked his head down, as the driver looked quickly up towards the doorway. The car headlights were on the open door to the work shop, and the driver was cautiously edging towards the gap.

The boy backed away. He looked around the room. What to do? Perhaps if there was nothing to see, the intruder would look around and leave. It was a forlorn hope. He picked up his capture bag: at least he would have the Tazer. As he retreated, he caught sight of the phone. He quickly unplugged it. Back in his bedroom, he softly closed the door.

Underground, he moved not along the main tunnel, but behind the steps. He’d be trapped, if he waited in the main tunnel. He didn’t know, yet if the man was armed. The narrower space there was choked with plastic bags and other luggage, which had belonged to some of his previous captures. He squeezed through, until he was obscured from anything but a determined exploration, and waited, listening for the telltale sounds from the floorboards over his head.

It was still going wrong. But he could salvage it all, yet. He had to remain in control. His hands gripped the sides of the steps so hard that he thought his fingers might have marked the wood. He fought to make his breathing steady and even. At last, he felt calm enough to move. There was no movement from behind him, in the tunnel. He placed his feet deliberately on the steps, preparing to exit through the trapdoor, which the man had left open. Before he could emerge, however, he heard a creak of the floor, and then a voice at the front door – which was still wide ajar.

“Hello?” A man. “Is anyone here?”

The boy shook his head, in utter disbelief. How could this be? The man down below must have brought a partner? But then why would this one be asking whether there was someone inside? He would know.

The boy contemplated going to the door and trying to brazen it out. Quickly, he shook his head. Crazy. With his head wound and dressed as he was, that could only make things worse. Besides, it could not possibly be a casual visitor, here at this time of night. It was more trouble, for sure. Best to retreat and escape.

“Daniel?” the man called. The boy heard the floorboards protest as the man carefully entered the main room.

The one in the tunnel must be this Daniel, and this second man knew him, knew he was here. The boy eased himself back down the steps, collapsing the prop and gently lowering the trapdoor. It would not gain him much time, but it might make a little difference.

He glanced back along the tunnel. It was all still and impenetrably black: no signs of movement. Moving deftly around behind the steps, he pushed back between the piled bags of clothing. Beyond that, the tunnel narrowed and the roof sloped down. This was the second exit, he had found, all those years ago – a pump outlet, or air exhaust. He had widened it a little in sections, so that he could get through. But it was now a tight fit, in places. At its far end, there was a wooden barricade. The boy moved the diagonal bracing piece away, and then pulled two of the baulks of wood down, so that he could squeeze past. They toppled, and made a resonant clunk, as they fell.

But he was out. The night was very dark, too. The wind had only brought with it a veil of wispy cloud, but it was enough to shroud the stars, and there was no moon, yet. It didn’t really matter. The boy knew the area by day or night. He moved away from the entrance carefully, as another thought came to him: he knew there were at least two of them – but what if there were more? What if it was the police?

He thought about it, but decided it was unlikely. No sirens and flashing lights, no smashing in the door with guns and shouts announcing who they were. Not police. Then who?

The man in the tunnel had been with Kimberley in Darwin. Daniel. What the fuck was he doing here? And who was the other man, up in his house?

The boy became another shadow, ghosting across the scree and through the stunted scrub that dotted the sides of the hillock. He worked his way back around to the front of his house, coming at it from below and behind the workshop. The house lights were still off, but he could see a torch moving around inside. Two cars were parked in the gravelled area in front of the workshop doors. It meant that he wouldn’t be able to get the ute out in a hurry. Perhaps, if the keys were in the other cars, he could take one of them. He shook his head. He had a better plan. His motor bike was ready. It would be easy to manoeuvre past the other cars. Then he would go to where he had stored the Landie, and head for the bush, for a while.

The boy crouched beside the workshop, trying to work out what to do next.

He could get away, that was certain.

But when whoever was up there contacted police with what they found, it would all be destroyed. He felt the frustration and anger well up in him. A black flood, it made him want to scream at these invaders. His beautiful, beautiful world would be destroyed by these … He thought, for a moment, that he would vomit, but the torchlight on the steps of the house forced him to control his heaving stomach, hand pressed tight across his lips.

He watched, as the man walked down the steps, back to his car. His movements were unhurried, fluent, purposeful. He opened the door and leaned in. The boy’s gaze sharpened. He recognised the black shape the man gripped in his right hand. The gun’s sleek, metal edges catching the splashes of torchlight. He straightened and shut the car door. The boy grimaced, as the indicator lights flashed. The man had locked it, pocketing the keys.

It might all be wrecked, but he could get away. Once he made it to the Landie, he could go bush – for weeks, if need be. Then, he would be able to get away and start again. He wished he was able to get to his guns. If he had the Uzi, he’d be able to put things right. That’d fix the intruders up. Once they were dead, who could ask questions? Who would even know they had been here?

He was struck by a wonderful idea. It would mean destroying his home himself. But he could ensure that no one would escape to tell anyone what they knew. One eye carefully on the house, he edged along the side of the workshop until he reached the half-open door. Once inside, he moved quickly to the bench, feeling for the hook underneath, where the keys to the explosives shed hung.

Chapter 67

August 13th: 10 pm – 11:30 pm

In the pitch black after the weird figure in his black outfit had doused the lights and fled, I lay winded. My still bruised and battered body protested vociferously at this newest insult.

Kim spoke again. “Who’s there? Who is it?” She paused, then raised her voice, “Is someone there – I’m trapped. Please help me.”

I rolled onto me knees. “Kim, it’s me, it’s Daniel,” I said. “Hold on, I’ll get you out.”

She didn’t reply. I said again, “It’s Daniel, Kim. I’ll have you out in a minute.”

“I’m OK,” she said, “I’m in here.” Her voice sounded vague, uncertain. I wasn’t sure she’d heard me. I kept talking, while I felt around, along the rocky wall, trying to remember where I was, in relation to the switch I’d seen the man in the black mask press. I found it, but pressing it did nothing. Shit. “I’m just trying to find the lights, Kim. Just hang on, I’ll only be a second.”

I tried sweeping along the floor with my hands, trying to find the torch that I’d thrown. I couldn’t find that, either. “Shit!” Frustration welled up in me.

I stopped. I could hear a noise. When I realised what it was, my throat closed up. Kim was crying. In the darkness behind me, she sobbed, the sounds muffled by the horrible black hood that enveloped her head. God! I felt shithouse: I was irritated! “It’s OK, I’m coming,” I rasped, throat hoarse. I gave up on the torch. It was probably broken, anyway. I fumbled my way over towards the sounds she made. It was completely dark. There wasn’t a vestige of light, which was eerie. Usually, even in the darkest room, or on a cloudy night with no moon, it’s still possible to discern shapes.

My fingers brushed across the bars of the revolting cage. I put a hand through, to reassure her, and felt her flinch at the touch of my hand. I felt instead along the edges, feeling for hinges or a catch. “It’s OK,” I said again. “I’ll have you out in a minute.”

The grid was welded together. My fingers traced the solid, sharp edges of the melted metal, testing the rigidity of the bars he’d bent into shape. At one end, I found a gap between the bars of the top and the end. Down one edge, there were rings that acted as a hinge. At the other, with relief, my fingers discovered first a conventional hinged tongue and groove latch and then a piece of string attached to a split pin that I was able to wriggle free. I had been worried there would be a padlock on it.

Once I had the doorway at the end open, I reached in, to guide Kim’s feet back, so that she could get out of the cage. Her foot lashed out, as soon as I touched it, glancing off my arm. I realised that she still hadn’t understood what had happened. I edged around the cage, to the other end, putting my head close to the bars, I spoke loudly and slowly. “Kim! It’s Daniel. I will get you out. Don’t fight!”

Finally, she seemed to understand. “Daniel?” she said.

This time, when I gripped her ankle, to help her out, she edged back, until I could lower her feet. Gradually, she straightened her back. It must have been agony, after so long hunched in that revolting cage. I patted her shoulder, tentatively, and then had to hang on, in a hurry, as she slumped back against me.

She began to cry again. I could feel her body shaking with the sobs. I closed my eyes, feeling my own tears prickling, threatening to spill over.

I lowered her to the floor, and then felt around the hood that masked her head, trying to work out how it was attached. Eventually, I found the buckles at the side. Once I had the straps undone, I tried to pull it up, off her face. It was still too tight, however. I stopped when she moaned, and shook her head. More exploration with my fingers found some laces at the back. She kept muttering something, over and over again, while I tried to work it out. It took ages in the dark to find the ends and work the knots undone.

Finally, the encasing black leather loosened and fell away. I pulled it up off her head and flung it away.

She shook her head violently, and then said, “Daniel? Daniel?”

“Yes, Kim,” I replied. “It’s me. It’s OK. You’re safe now.”

Except that I knew we weren’t.

I knelt on the ground just holding her. Every few seconds, her body would tremble, as if she was cold. But when I asked her, she said she wasn’t. I offered to get her a sheet from the bed I’d noticed over the other end of the cavern, but she clung to me, making it clear that I wasn’t to move. “Why’s it still dark?” Kim’s voice shook a little. Dark was something she’d hate for ever, after this.

I put my arms around her, hugging her. Gradually, she started to talk a little. She asked how I’d found her. “Long story,” I said. “I found your list of number plates. That started it.”

She was quiet for a few minutes. “His car was on the list?” she said.

“Yes.” I hesitated, “I think he’d been planning this for a long time.”

Again, when she spoke, her voice shook. “He – he’s been doing it for a long time,” she said. “His name’s Rob Cook. I think he’s the highway hunter.”

“I knew it was him,” I said. My stomach fluttered, “But not that he was … the hunter.” Reimerthis had been wrong. The hunter had changed his routine. I wondered briefly whether this was where Jack had ended up.

“We’d better try to get out of here,” I said. “What if he comes back?”

She tensed. “I thought … he was gone.”

“Not exactly,” I said. “He might well be coming back. We’d better try to get out of here.”

Together, we found the bed. I dragged off a sheet, draping it over Kim’s shoulders. She tied it, so that she could move with relative freedom. I also fumbled round – with Kim holding my hand all the way, until I found a stick of some kind. I’d noticed it on the bench as I entered the cavern. I’d no idea where the torch or the hammer had ended up.

Still feeling our way along the wall, we tried to follow the main tunnel back the way I had come. It was very difficult. The darkness was so profound that each movement was a test of nerves. Kim held tightly onto my right hand, as I used the stick to poke in front of my feet and tap the wall with my other hand.

We were making steady progress – trying to be as quiet as possible, in case he was coming back or, worse still, waiting for us along the tunnel.

It was impossible to make no noise, though. I knew that if he was there, he’d be able to hear us coming. But what else was there to do? Waiting at the end of the tunnel until he did come back seemed stupid – and pathetic. At least this way, we were taking the initiative. Kim had said, tears starting again, that she’d not go back in the cage. He’d have to kill her.

“Over my dead body,” I’d said, trying to make a joke. But she couldn’t see me smiling weakly, in the dark, and it sounded sombre, instead.

About halfway along the tunnel, I reckoned, I thought I heard a voice calling out, ahead. I squeezed Kim’s hand, and stopped moving, to listen. About fifteen metres in front of us a flash of light – obviously a torch – lit up the steps that led back up to the bedroom. Kim let out a small, involuntary moan.

I turned and hugged her tight, feeling her body trembling. I pressed myself against her, at the same time, trying to urge her to retreat back the way we’d come. But she wouldn’t go back. She’d come this far away from the nightmare, and there was nothing on earth that would make her go back down that tunnel, now.

I twisted to face the tunnel entrance, and the steps. What to do? Try to hide? Or go on the attack?

I raised the stick. If he poked the torch down, or jumped down himself, I’d throw the stick and jump right after it. I freed my right hand from Kim’s. She clutched at my shirt, holding onto that to maintain contact.

As silently as I could, I crept forward another metre or so, Kim following: a shadow where there were none.

The person holding the torch came right up to the trapdoor. The light shone down on the steps, angling to try to see where the tunnel led. We were far enough back that it didn’t penetrate anywhere near us. If he came down, though, he’d see us at once. If he had a gun …

The hand holding the torch descended, twisting to angle the beam further along the tunnel, while the person holding it tried very hard to see as far as he could without exposing himself.

He seemed to give up. The torch disappeared, and I heard the scrape and skid of boots on the wooden floor.

I crept a few feet closer to the opening, my stick held high over my head, ready to smash anyone who came down the steps.

There was a bump and a rattle, followed by a cry. “Jesus Christ!”

Running steps clattered across the floor, and then something came hurtling down the steps, something with a torch that waved wildly, before the hand that held it let go and it clunked to the stony floor. Above, the trapdoor, its prop knocked away, thumped down with a woof of air. In the moment of silence, I recognised the man who huddled at the bottom of the steps, holding his leg.

Before I could say a word, however, there was a sharp crack overhead. Instinctively, I ducked, but the noise was followed by a rumbling sound that I seemed to feel, rather than hear. Dust started to fall from the walls and roof of the tunnel we were in. The noise from overhead was an unearthly cacophony.

“Move!” Reimerthi said. “Quick – in case the trapdoor collapses!”

I grabbed Kim’s arm. “What -? Who is that?” she gasped. It was all happening a bit too fast. And a lot too crazy.

“Carl Reimerthi,” I answered Kim. “What the fuck are you doing here?” I snapped at Reimerthi, as we scuttled further away from the trapdoor and steps. “And what happened up there?”

Kim and Reimerthi spoke at the same time. “Who is he?” Kim asked.

“The answer to your first question –“ Reimerthi paused as a loud explosion accompanied by a rumble prevented him from speaking. When the noise overhead had stilled, he continued softly, “The answer to your first question is that you are so predictable, and to your second, your friend up there has some explosives that he is playing with. I don’t think he likes us.”

Kim tapped my shoulder. “Who. Is. He.” She said, glaring at me. I smiled. Some maniac upstairs was blowing up the whole place, and she was getting feisty over Reimerthi.

“Carl Reimerthi – Kim Davenport,” I said. “That’s Sergeant davenport, to you,” I said to Carl. “Carl’s a security dude for the casino in Darwin. I have no idea what he’s doing here.” I looked at him, eyebrow raised.

“Well,” Reimerthi stopped speaking again, as something overhead made a groaning sound, followed by a grinding that meant that more dust sifted down, flouring our heads and shoulders in the torch’s yellow glare. “Well, Ii stupidly passed on an address belonging to a registration belonging to a ute that happened to have parked outside your house,” he nodded at Kim, “shortly before you disappeared.” And I told –“ he ceased speaking again, cocking a wary eye at the roof, which seemed to be making some odd noises. “We should do this later,” he said. “Can we get out of here?”

“Not back that way,” I said, gesturing down the tunnel behind us.

“OK.” Reimerthi shone the torch around, spotting the tunnel with all the debris that led off to the right, as we looked at the steps. “I guess that leaves that way.”

We followed his lead, as he moved back towards the steps and then quickly across and into the second tunnel. He stopped after only a few metres, though. “Whoah,” he said. “This goes nowhere.”

“Shit. Are you sure?” I could feel Kim’s anxiety start to climb again, behind me. Hell, I could feel my own.

“yeah. Nowhere to go.” Reimerthi flashed the torch around and up onto the rock above us. This tunnel led nowhere. “Best to go back.”

We retraced our footsteps, stumbling a little in the uncertain light, because of the stuff that littered the floor of this section of the caves. Back at the junction, Reimerthi aimed the light at the trapdoor. It bulged down, as if there was a weight above that was gradually increasing the pressure until the hatch would burst open. “We won’t be going that way,” he said. “Are you sure there is no way out down there?”

“Pretty sure,” I said. I turned to Kim. “Did you -?”

She shuddered. “I didn’t get to look around very much,” she said. “He kept me in the dark, most of the time.” She stopped. I didn’t ask about what happened when the lights were on.

Reimerthi nodded. “I will look, just to be sure,” he said.

Kim and I didn’t say anything, but she drew close to me as his light, swaying from side to side, moved away down the tunnel.

When he returned, five minutes later, he said nothing. Our gazes met, and he gave a half-shake of his head. The grisly room, with its meticulously arranged paraphernalia was beyond words. Beyond explanation. Beyond understanding.

He was carrying the hammer I’d taken, and my torch. As well, there were some knives and spikes he’d found. He caught my glance. “It may well be that we have to dig.”

I nodded, swallowing. “Does that torch work, then? I asked. “I threw it at him.”

Reimerthi shook his head. “No, but we can use the batteries, once this one …is no good.” The rock that surrounded us, which had seemed as fragile as eggshells minutes before, now enveloped us with vaultlike oppressiveness.

I felt Kim take a shuddery breath, standing close beside me. “Seems strange that he wouldn’t have an escape route,” she said. Her voice was tremulous. I could tell that it took a great effort of control to speak.

“She’s right,” I said, at last. “I can’t believe that, given the way he’s set this place up, he wouldn’t have had a way out.”

Reimerthi blinked, looking at me. “Did you say that you threw the torch at him?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “When I found Kim, he appeared behind me.”

“So he was down here,” Reimerthi said.

“Yeah, so what?” I said.

“So he didn’t come past me, and I have been at the house for quite a while,” Reimerthi said. “But when I was inside, he came from the steps at the front, and threw his bomb in the door.”

“Which means there’s another way out of here,” I said.

Reimerthi pointed, “Well it’s not down where you came from, or there –“ looking along the short tunnel. He aimed the torch beam towards the steps. Through the slatted timbers, a jumble of overfilled plastic bags and loose clothes piled in profusion almost to the roof. “Has to be there, then.”

With a nervous eye on the trapdoor, which still transmitted the odd crack and teeth-jarring squeak, we edged past the steps, Reimerthi at the front, then Kim, then me. He pulled free a bag and passed it back. Kim gave it to me and I threw it behind me, allowing plenty of room for more.

Gradually, Reimerthi cleared the clutter away, revealing a narrow tunnel, the roof of which dropped to an alarmingly small hole. We eyed it with misgivings. “It’s got to be that way,” he said. “There’s no other option.”

“It’s going to be tight,” I said. “But we have to get through, that’s all.”

Chapter 68

August 13th: 11:30 pm – 12 midnight

The boy watched in a strange mixture of awe and anger, as his house collapsed in on itself. The explosion had focused inwards and upwards, because of the strength of the stone walls. As a result, the roof had been thrown into the air, and had disintegrated, as if fell back to earth, crushing everything inside, and smashing two parts of the walls so that they toppled outwards.

A pilar of dust and smoke was swept away by the wind that still whipped strongly across from the western desert. The house gave out groans and creaks as the timbers, stone pillars and sheets of metal settled and slipped.

At least, he thought with satisfaction, whoever was in there was dead, for sure. He wondered about the two people in the tunnel, the girl and her would-be rescuer. Probably, the tunnel roof would have collapsed when the house collapsed. The trapdoor wouldn’t have been strong enough to support the roof falling in. He had prepared a second bomb, though. Smiling, he approached to where he thought the trapdoor would have been. Lighting the fuse, he threw the second bomb in at the glassless front window, so that it rolled under a large section of tin roofing that covered where his bedroom door had been.

He was safe down by the workshop, when it went off. Again, there was a flash that lit up the surrounding rocky scree, and a thunderous crack. Pieces of roofing tin, wood and fragments of stone were hurled into the air. Some came spattering down on the shed roof, like hail, or shrapnel.

The boy considered what to do next. He could try to get his ute out, but decided, reluctantly, that he would have to abandon it. Apart from the fact that it was far too distinctive, it just wasn’t suitable for what he needed to do over the next few weeks: go bush, and lie low.

The first thing to do was to get the motorbike out. Then he could go back to the cave where he had the Landie – and the policeman, he remembered. A swoop of excitement lurched through his stomach. He could have some fun yet, tonight. Someone had to pay for the loss of … all this. He might even lose the Marla service station, as well as his house and secret cavern here. All his belongings – money, cars, everything.

It depended. If he could get away, pretend he’d been elsewhere, when this happened, maybe he could come back, as if nothing had happened? Start again. Claim it on insurance!

He shook his head. No. If the policeman had found him, and the others, it was over. Time to run, start again, somewhere else.

How had they found him, so fast? First the policeman, in Marla, then the other two here – right at his door. Mind you, he knew full well how they’d found his house. That big-mouthed bitch at the store. God, he’d just love to teach her a thing or two. Bitch. Fucking bitch.

He checked the bike’s petrol tank was full and then jerked it over, so that the stand flipped up, out of the way. A helmet, jacket and goggles hung beside it, on hooks. It took only one lunge to start the motor, with a roar that echoed and blatted round the tin walls of the workshop.

Carefully, he weaved past the tractor and the ute, until he could make his way through the doorway and out into the night. The second explosion had started a fire, he saw. A few tongues of flame were licking up around the edges of some of the sheets of iron roofing. Smoke billowed black and angry into the cloudy sky, whipped away by the infuriated wind.

The sight lit the smouldering resentment in the boy. He couldn’t do anything about the police. But he could get the cunt who’d pointed them right to his door. If he went and got the Landie, he could go round and collect her. He clambered off the bike, resting it back on its stand, and walked quickly back into the shed. He filled a small bottle with chloroform, from the container on the workbench, and stuffed it, with a clean workshop rag, down the front of his leather jacket. A handful of black, plastic cable ties went in each side pocket.

Quickly, he walked back to the bike and mounted. As he edged past the two cars and started down the driveway, he slowed. From the elevated curve of his driveway, he could see the headlights of cars following each other from the direction of the town, heading towards him. Obviously, the two explosions and the fire, which, despite the sections of roof which overlapped most of the wreckage, was taking hold, had attracted attention from the few inhabitants not too drunk to stand.

The boy accelerated down the drive. He needed to make sure he was past the intersection with the Mintalie track before they reached it. He made it easily. He accelerated straight across, and part way down a steep decline which led to some other old claim workings. Spinning the bike back around, he crept back up the slope until he could watch the entrance to his property.

A minute or so later, four vehicles came steadily along the dusty track. On the back of the first car, a battered ute, one man was shouting directions to the driver.

“Whoah!” he thumped the roof of the cab. “Go right!” He leaned forward, to shout at the driver’s window, “I think it’s Rob Cook’s place!” Four cars followed, the last of which had a large steel-riveted tank on its tray, together with a two-stroke pump. The boy snorted. They’d be lucky to put out a campfire, with that set-up.

Turning to face the cars behind, lit by the garish beams of their headlights through the spumes of dust, the man standing on the back of the leading car waved his hands frantically, indicating the entrance to the driveway. “Rob Cook’s place!” he screamed, excitedly. “I reckon it’s on fire!”

Brilliant, Einstein, thought the boy disgustedly. The prospect of these dullards walking around his place, maybe even in the remains of his home, if they managed to put the fire out, filled him with such fury he felt sick again.

“It’s all down to you, you bitch!” he muttered. He imagined darling Steff, playing the coquette to the inquisitive policeman. “Oh, yes, I know everyone round here. I’m very close to Rob Cook. He’s a special friend of mine.” Accent on the word “special”, making it blatant, smutty innuendo.

He remembered the time she’d used the excuse of a supposedly urgent phone call from the workshop at Marla to call round to his house. Casually appeared at his front door in one of her too-tight, too-short slut skirts, and a top that her tits practically fell out of. If he hadn’t already had a … guest, and if he hadn’t been worried that she might have been stupid enough to boast to someone about where she was going, he’d have taken her right then. Then she’d have got to know him, alright.

Well, Steff, he thought, revving the Honda’s engine, tonight’s your lucky night. You are going to be my “special” friend. He’d have to improvise – he hardly had anything in the tunnel where he’d stored the cop. But he was sure he could come up with a few entertaining ideas. Even without being able to take the time to train them properly, sometimes a little pain, or fear, was quite enough to achieve … satisfactory results.

He considered going to get the Landie, but decided against it. It would take too long, and besides, it would be too easily noticed and remembered, if anyone happened to see him driving into Mintalie and back, with Steff.

He could carry her on the bike, he reckoned, even once she was unconscious. With her hands tied, sat astride the bike in front of him, he could take her back to the mine quickly. And if anyone happened to be out on the roads, he could slip behind a house, or a bush before they even knew he was there.

He accelerated out onto the Mintalie track, heading back in the direction from which the convoy of cars had come. He gave the bike some hoof, feeling the exhilaration fill him. He was going to beat them again, he knew it. Everything had worked against him. It had all fallen apart – and yet, and yet he was still free, still ahead of them. They couldn’t catch him, because he was so far above and beyond them.

He came around a curving left-hand bend, the second-last before the long, sloping hill down to the township, he knew. Only at the last second did he see the two large rocks balanced on top of each other, at the apex of the curve, directly in his path.

He tried to make his turn tighter, felt the back wheel start to slide. As he straightened, the bike flipped back, as the front wheel caught, and twisted. Together, the boy and his machine hit the roadway, and slid straight towards the gaping black hole immediately in front of the two rocks. The boy felt himself sliding along the dust and gravel, but the helmet and jacket protected him. But his right leg slid into a hole that appeared in front of him. The boy grunted in agony: his slide stopped, and then the bike smashed into him. For a second, movement ceased. Then, with a shushing sound, the whole roadway around them collapsed, swallowing both boy and bike.

Chapter 69

August 14th

“But why,” I asked Reimerthi, “did you suggest that we just backed off and handed it over to the police?”

Reimerthi shrugged. “Judgement call,” he said. “I was wrong, it seems. I felt that I needed to step back, because of Julian.”

I nodded. We were sitting in the lounge, at Borgert’s Hotel. It was almost five in the morning. Outside, a grey, insipid light was unveiling the unprepossessing sight of Mintalie’s central expanse. From the windows, we could see the store, lights blazing, even at this hour. Steff was bustling round in the hall outside where we were sitting. She was in her element: organising, directing. When we’d arrived, she had spirited Kim straight off for a shower, even offering her some of her own clothes.

A mini-bus load of police from Alice Springs had arrived an hour or so ago. Wally Borgert, his normally lugubrious expression replaced by one of incredulity, sat behind the bar on his customary stool while his staff rose to the occasion, finding food and coffee for the crowds of police and inquisitive locals who casually dropped by as the rumours ricocheted around the town like balls in a pinball machine.

Squeezing along the tunnel had been hard. Kim had gone first. She was recovering some of her resilience. As the slightest among us, we decided that she’d have the best chance, as the aperture started out small, and looked as if it became narrower, further along.

I could see from her face that she was anxious, but from the set of her mouth, I knew she wanted to do it. Needed to, probably. Reimerthi gave her the torch, but she said, “No. I won’t need it – and it’ll just get in the way, probably.” She swallowed. “You’ll need it in here, if you can’t get out too.”

I gave her my shirt, to protect her body from some of the rocks she’d have to crawl over. The sheet she had wrapped round her would catch on too many projections. Reimerthi shone the torch as well as he could ahead of her, while she lay flat, and edged herself along. From where I stood, it was like watching her swallowed by the rock.

After a while, we heard her call, but couldn’t make out what she said. Reimerthi knelt down, his head and shoulders in the aperture. “I think she is through,” he said. “I will try next.”

He passed the torch back to me, and did what Kim had done, lying flat, and using his forearms under his body to move himself along. It was tight. I could hear him grunting with effort. The torch showed his feet scrabbling against the stone for purchase. Gradually, though, he disappeared from view.

Which left me.

I was no taller than Reimerthi, but considerably bigger in the shoulders. Even bending to crawl into the initial section, it felt like the rock walls closed in, gripping my body in an encircling grip. I removed the jacket I was wearing, leaving me in only a light t-shirt. The torch, I paced in front of me, so that I’d be able to push it ahead, as I edged my way along.

I tried to use my arms, as they had, but couldn’t. There just wasn’t enough room for me to go through with my arms under my torso. I retreated, sitting on my haunches, thinking. There was a scrabbling, and Kim’s voice, sounding dead and muffled, called, “Can you make it?”

I leaned down. “Not sure,” I said. “I’m going to try a different position.”

I lay flat again, this time with my arms stretched straight out in front of me. This way, I had to work my way along using my toes to push, and wriggling my torso like a snake. The tunnel became narrower and narrower. I felt a sense of panic engulf me. My body was slick with sweat, my breathing coming in harsh, gulping gasps. The torch shone ahead of me, but the roof of the tunnel forced me to drop my head. My feet jerked spastically, body clenching, but I couldn’t move. I heaved against the stone, which gave not a millimetre.

I began to panic. I tried to push myself backwards, with my hands. Kim’s voice came from just in front of me. “You’re right, you’re right. It’s just this bit. Breathe out and work your way forward.”

”I can’t,” I gasped. “I can’t go … forward. Or back.”

“Breathe right out,” she repeated. “Stretch out your hand. You can feel mine, if you reach forward.”

Blindly, because I couldn’t raise my head, I stretched out my arm. Sure enough, her fingers grasped mine. In reaching forward, I seemed to free up my shoulder. I dug my toes in, edging myself forward, inch by inch. The tunnel kinked round to the right slightly. Once I had my upper torso past that section, it widened, until I was able to bring my arms under my body and crawl along more normally.

Kim reversed up the tunnel in front of me, holding the torch. I glanced down, and when I looked back up, she was gone. I blinked, and realised that I’d come to the end of the tunnel. It was so dark outside that it was almost like being still in the tunnel. Except that the claustrophobic sense of confinement was gone. The air was bitterly cold, and tainted with the smell of dust and smoke. I sucked it in. It was like breathing helium. The sense of inflation, elation was overpowering. Kim was in front of me as I stood up. I grabbed her in a bear hug, kissing her exuberantly.

“Wow!” she said, laughing. “Now I know how to fire you up!”

I let go. “Thanks, for that, in there,” I said.

She smiled. “Hey, it works both ways,” she said.

R eimerthi cleared his throat. We picked our way awkwardly around the rough, broken ground. I realised that we were making for the front of the house.

“What if he’s still there?” I asked Reimerthi quietly.

Reimerthi slipped his hand under his shirt. I glanced down at the gun he produced. “He will not find us unprepared,” he said. There was steel in his voice.

When we cautiously approached from behind the huge workshop garage, however, there were at least half a dozen men silhouetted against flames that were licking up the stone pillars. We watched from the shelter of the shadows. Reimerthi gestured, moving forward. “He’s not there. Let’s go out.”

I had come to the same conclusion. The men had been trying to approach the house, but the heat as well as the way the roof had collapsed in on top of the building made it impossible to enter, let alone discover if anyone was inside.

As we picked our way across the gravel towards my car and Reimerthi’s, one of the men noticed us. “Hey!” he shouted, pointing at us. We made a very strange sight. Me in t-shirt and shoeless, Reimerthi wearing a dusty suit – even his tie was still there, and Kim in my shirt and nothing else at all.

There were some crazy, frustrating minutes while we tried to explain what had happened. Eventually, Reimerthi’s insistence that they needed to call in the police brought a reaction. “This is the Darwin policewoman who was kidnapped,” he said. “Call the police in Alice Springs. Tell them you have found her.”

We cadged a lift with the rearmost vehicle. The driver was a lean young man with cropped hair and a short beard, who kept muttering, “I don’t fuckin’ believe this,” as he drove. On the way back to Mintalie, we passed the two rocks, which marked the hole in the road. The driver swerved sharply to the right. “Shit!” he said. “That fuckin’ hole’s bigger than …” he stopped, with a sideways glance at Kim. “Wasn’ that big b’fore,” he said. “Must of fallen in some more.”

He took us to the hotel, and kept banging at the side door until an irritated face appeared in the glass panes. It belonged to the hotel owner, who took some time too to appreciate that something pretty amazing was going on.

Once inside, things settled down a little. Steff came and whisked Kim away. Reimerthi and I sat quietly talking. The reaction of the police in Alice Springs was electric, and sparked an urgency around us, as the locals at last began to understand what was going on.

Reimerthi had quietly explained that his son had disappeared, whilst driving to meet him in Darwin. But given the circumstances under which Kim had vanished, he hadn’t seriously connected the two. “This is not his … method,” he said. “For some reason, he has changed what he does. But,” he shrugged, “when I was unable to find you all day, nor the next morning …” he raised an eyebrow at me, smiling lopsidedly, “I rang the airlines and checked their bookings.”

I shook my head, in mock outrage. “What an invasion of privacy!”

I left the task of telling the police who arrived what had happened to Reimerthi. Kim had briefly appeared, on her way to one of the many empty motel rooms. The prospect of a bed was far too tempting. I wound up in the room next to hers. I had a quick shower. My weariness seemed suddenly to wash over me like a breaking wave. I made it to the bed and fell into it.

I seemed to imagine someone else crawling in with me, but I never woke up enough to be sure.

Chapter 70

August 17th & 18th

There was no awkwardness about returning to Darwin – in any aspect.

A plane was chartered to transport the three of us, as well as several members of the crime scene investigation team which had spent three days sifting through the remains of Rob Cook’s house, and widening the hole we’d emerged from so properly examine the secret cavern.

We’d had to briefly re-visit the scene to explain what had happened. On the way out, we drove past a huge truck and a bulldozer, working in tandem where the road had collapsed. They pulled off, so that we could squeeze past. Where the sunken section of the road had been, there was now a mound of stones and gravel that the dozer was spreading over the area.

It was gratifying to see the expressions of disbelief on the faces of the officers once they squeezed in the way we’d come out, to see for themselves the scene inside. The bags we’d had to move aside turned out to contain the belongings of many of Cook’s victims, including some items that were identifiably those of Carl Reimerthi’s son, Julian. Of the bodies, apart from the bloodstains on the bench, there was no trace at all. The officers were speculating that the task of examining the thousands of disused tunnels and mounds might take months.

There was a huge amount of speculation as to where Cook himself was. The police were still in the process of searching the area, but there were so many claims, so many shafts – many of which were completely or partly flooded – that it might take a miracle to find him, if he lay low.

Before we landed, Reimerthi turned to me. “I have spoken to Brewer,” he said. “He wants you all to stay at the hotel. As his guests.”

I glanced at Kim, who nodded. “I don’t think I’m quite ready to go back home just yet,” she said.

I grinned at her. The dream I’d had turned out not to have been a dream at all. I’d woken – eventually – to find Kim snuggled up next to me. It was a great way to wake up. She said that she’d come in and asked if she could share my bed, because she hadn’t wanted to be alone. According to her, I’d not only agreed, but I’d had a conversation with her. News to me!

So we continued to cohabit, at the hotel. Mind you, the suite that Graeme Brewer put us up in had three bedrooms, so we could have stayed in separate beds, if we’d wanted to. But we didn’t. Kim slept badly. She would wake during the night with a start that shook the bed. We kept a light on, so that the room was never completely dark.

For a few days, we used the hotel’s excellent security staff to ensure that the press were kept at more than arm’s distance. The story was blazoned across the country, of course. I had a very pleasant conversation with my editor, Mark Adams. He unconditionally offered me my job back – with a raise. He also agreed, when I asked him, to act as an agent of sorts, so that we could tell our story under our conditions, in our own way. I insisted on three conditions: one TV interview, one print interview and a press conference. That was it.

I received a large envelope from the police investigators, who’d found my folder of information about Jack’s disappearance on the seat of Cook’s fancy ute. There was a second folder in there as well, in an identical yellow cover. But I didn’t have time – or the inclination – to look at it for quite a few days

Both Kim and I were “do it” people. A few days of collecting our thoughts was enough. The process of coping with what had happened would take months, years, even. But life had to go on.

Reimerthi drove us out to Kim’s house. He had organised a cleaning team to go through the whole place, and also – at the amazing Graeme Brewer’s insistence – to have a new lock and security system installed.

He parked out the front. There was a moment’s hesitation before she opened the door with a brisk certainty and walked ahead of us both. She inserted the key and threw open the door.

Instead of walking in, though she turned and looked back at me, with a serious expression.

“What’s up?” I asked, feeling some misgivings.

“Don’t you want to carry me over the threshold?” she said, archly.

The cleaners had done a great job. There was no sign of her last night here at all.

We ordered takeaway, forcing Reimerthi to stay and share it. I told him afterwards that I’d take a taxi back to the hotel. With a tiny shake of his head, and a wry twist of his lips, he drove away, hand raised in farewell.

Once the door was shut, I felt my heart accelerate. I was standing in the lounge, watching her, as she snicked the deadlock shut and hooked a security chain on. Brewer’s team had also installed an intrusion detection system that sent silent alarms out of anyone broke into the house while Kim was away. Not that we needed that right now, of course.

I tried to think of something smooth and sophisticated to say. No need. She stayed facing the door for a long moment, and then turned quickly. In one long stride, she was in my arms. Kissing was like flames mingling in a fire. She moved forward, urging me towards the bedroom. “Love me,” she said. So I did.

It seemed amazing that two people could come from where we had been, go through what we – or, more particularly, Kim – had gone through, and discover something like this. Maybe, I thought, lying beside her, watching the streetlights shining through the curtains, making a patchwork of shadows on the ceiling, maybe it’s because of all that.

I thought of the time I’d spent with Angela. I remembered the illicit, frantic fire of Sandy. And turned to lokk at her. Kim’s eyes were open. She had a half-smile as she watched me. “Worth a penny?” she whispered.

“Hardly that,” I said. “I was marvelling that, after all this, we’re still here.”

“What, here, here?” she asked.

“Yeah. I mean, we meet from across the country, have one date, you get yourself kidnapped … and it still works out.”

“Works out? Says who?”

“Says me,” I said. “You know, boy gets girl.”

“’Scuse me? I had it figured that, in this case, the girl got the boy,” she said.

“Fine by me,” I said. I kissed her.

We lay there and talked for hours. I wasn’t that fussed about going home. She wasn’t that committed to living in Darwin. Her superiors had been making highly complimentary “promotion” noises, at the same time as they told her to “take her time about coming back to work.” Which might have been considerate, or might have been department-speak for: we don’t know what the hell to do with you.

“How do you feel about living here?” I asked.

“Oh, I’ll sell it and move,” she said. “But it’s not a big deal. It’s a house, that’s all. It’s me that has to live, and I swear that no one will ever do that to me again.”

I raised an eyebrow at her, but her gaze was fixed on the ceiling, intense, calm, resolved.

I left it alone.

“What about you?” she said. “If we stay here, what’ll you do?”

“Well,” I said slowly, “I’ve been giving this a bit of thought.” I paused, collecting what I had to say together. I needed to get it right. “I’ve had a couple of offers of jobs – TV journo and one with the Territorian. So staying here wouldn’t present any real difficulties. It’s not as if I have any particular ties down South.”

She propped herself up on and elbow. “But?” she said.

“But there’s something I have to deal with at home,” I said.

She looked at me, a level, assessing stare. “This would be a woman?” she said.

“Not that way, but yeah.” I lay back, looked at the ceiling and told her about me, and Sandy, and Jack. I kept just one thing back. Mostly because I didn’t quite believe it myself.

When I’d finished, she said only, “Wow.”

“So,” I said. “I think I need to go home and speak to her.”

“You should just give it all to that cop you said, the angry man’s partner,” she said. “You don’t owe her anything.”

“You’re probably right,” I said. “But I just can’t do it like that.” I turned to watch her, afraid that I’d stuffed it up.

Kim lay back, sighing. “OK,” she said, at last. “But I’m coming too.”

In the morning, I got on the phone early. I got us seats on an early flight the following day. Kim said she wanted to do some shopping, and that she needed time to pack and get organised. I went back to the hotel to pick up my own stuff, and check out.

“We must get you a mobile phone,” Kim said, as I left.

“They’re for –“

“Don’t start, and don’t argue,” she said. She dug in her handbag. “Take mine. I might want to call you.”

“Why?” I said. “I’ll be back in an hour or so, max.”

“I might just need to hear the sound of your voice. To comfort me.”

I sighed, in mock resignation. “Better humour the little lady, I suppose,” I said.

There was a message for me, at the hotel. In an envelope was a card with the Blooms logo. The message was brevity exemplified: “Call me. Please. Margot Sorenson.”

From my room, after I’d thrown my belongings in the suitcase and couple of bags I’d brought, I did.

Margot Sorenson’s voice sounded a little different. “Thank you for calling, Mr Kinner,” she said. “I was wondering whether you could come and meet with me.”

“When?” I asked, glancing at my watch.

“Now, if you can make it,” she answered. “At the office – where you came last time.”

I shrugged. It wouldn’t matter much if I detoured via her office on the way back to Kim’s. “Sure,” I said. “What’s it about?”

“I have something to show you that may be of interest,” she said. Then she hung up.

I took a taxi, this time, and when I alighted at Blooms, sent it on to Kim’s with my luggage. Apart from a small travel bag I kept with me.

The receptionist was the same girl, golden hair as profusely crinkled as before. She smiled her professional smile at me again, and showed me through to the office area, with its large conglomeration of meeting tables. We didn’t stop there, however, but went to a closed door, where she knocked.

“Come in,” Margot called.

She held the door open and I entered. There were two people there. One was Margot. The other was Jack. I’d been more than half expecting Jack to be there. But it was Margot who held my horrified gaze. She had been savagely beaten up.

Chapter 71

August 18th

Margot sat in a comfortable chair behind a polished wood desk whose surface contained only a phone and a single rose in a tall glass vase with a bulbous bottom. The rose’s petals were white, but the edges were purpled. Her elegant sophistication had been replaced by bandages and bruising. It was rude, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

“What on earth happened to you?” Then the penny dropped. “Sarich?” I guessed, answering my own question.

Margot Sorenson nodded, but Jack answered. “Hi Dan,” he said. He had been perching on a corner of the desk, but got up as I entered, and extended his hand. Automatically, I reached forward to shake it. The whole scene seemed stagey, unreal. “Yeah,” he said. “Sarich, and his partner.” He moved to Margot’s side of the desk, so that he could reach for her hand, and hold it. “She did more than he did.”

I wanted to be sick. “Sandy?” It was a question, although I really didn’t need to ask. I knew. I’d understood it in the cavern under Rob Cook’s house. I’d had a flash of realization in the darkness that had illuminated a memory. It had taken me back to a glimpsed image, lying semi-conscious on the floor of my hotel room after Sarich had worked me over. In the mirror, I’d seen Sandy. She had been watching me, half-smiling. Her expression was revolting: a look of salacious excitement.

Somehow, her identity hadn’t registered at the time. Whether I was concussed or had simply suppressed the knowledge, it had only surfaced days later.

Jack nodded. The first thing that I noticed about him was that he had lost a lot of weight. That aspect of his trip north really had worked. He had changed his appearance in other ways, too: dyeing his thinning, fair hair dark, and cutting it very short, almost a crew cut. To balance that, he’d grown a quite healthy beard, which changed the shape of his face.

Margot looked at the desk. Her fingers gripped Jack’s hand tightly. “Yes. The bitch did it,” she said. I understood now why her voice had sounded different. Her jaw was broken. She could hardly move her mouth.

“I am so sorry,” I said. It was something, anything to say. I wanted to mention that they’d attacked me too, but my injuries had been slight, by comparison with what Margot had obviously been subjected to. Sandy’s intention had been deliberately spiteful.

Jack shook his head. “Dan, it’s not your fault. It’s not about you. It’s –“ he sighed, “about Sandy. And money. And me.”

Margot made a small noise in her throat. “No. It’s not the fault of either of you. It’s those two … “ she couldn’t find the word. She shook her head in distress. Jack stroked her head.

“No,” I said tiredly,” It is about me too.”

Jack looked at me, puzzled. “Dan, this … It’s been a long time coming,” he said. “It doesn’t matter –“

“It does, Jack,” I said. “It matters to me.”

He looked at me as if I was crazy. “What does?” he asked, at last.

Margot shook her head, her gaze fixed on my face. She got it.

“Sandy and me,” I said. I met his eyes. “She was, we were –“

“Jesus Christ!” Jack sputtered. “Not you too!”

“I thought you knew,” I said. “I thought that’s why you set up that dud account thing in my name.”

He laughed, with real, though sardonic, amusement. “No,” he said, at last, “I did that because I figured it’d be so obvious you’d been set up. It had to go through someone not me, so you were my escape hatch.”

“But why, Jack?” I asked. “Why did you have to do it at all?”

“Don’t you get it, Dan?” he said. His hands made agitated movements in the air. “She’s a killer. She’s been after me for months now,” Jack said. “At first, it was just her, and just the money. But then she met that mongrel cop. He was something in the fraud squad. Obviously it was good training for ripping people off … and worse.” He glanced at Margot. “She … was a huge mistake,” he said. “She’s a very … troubled lady, Sandy.”

Margot made that derisive noise again, and muttered something. It sounded suspiciously like “She’s a vicious nutter.”

Jack glanced sideways at her, and moved his hand on her shoulders restlessly. “Initially, as long as I just screwed … you know,” he looked embarrassed, “one-night stand things, she didn’t mind. She hated sex with me. In the end, I hated it with her, too. It was always … nasty.” He stopped, swallowed hard.

I remembered Sandy talking about Jack’s overnight stays, the nights at the casino, the films and football games he stayed in town for, and suddenly understood what he’d been doing.

“What we ever had was bullshit,” Jack said. “She acted a part, until I married her. Then gradually the truth of what she was emerged. It was like peeling off a mask, and seeing what was underneath. She was scary.”

“What about the girls?” I asked.

Jack looked at me, bemused. “They’re not my daughters,” he said. “I’ve got no idea where or who their real father is. Sandy might. I’ve left Jetta money to look after them. They’re better off with her than anyone else, that’s for sure. Sandy doesn’t want them.”

“I … I don’t know what to say, Jack,” I said.

“Look, don’t blame yourself too much,” Jack said. “I think I told you once, Sandy used sex as … a lever. A way to get people – men – to do things. God help us, most of the time, we fell for it. Anyway, that’s how it was for me. The girls were part of that too.” Jack ran his hands over his spiky scalp, as if surprised by the feel of his hair. “I’d been told I couldn’t have kids. When she told me she was pregnant, I was surprised, al right, but I thought … Well then, it was inconceivable to me that she could have, you know, done that. But when Mindy came, I got myself tested.” He shook his head, again. “It was conclusive. I can’t father kids. I couldn’t believe what she had done. But she just denied it. Insisted they were mine, and refused to discuss it.”

Jack shrugged. “I don’t know. You look back, and think, ‘What was I doing?’ But it was just easier to go with the flow. And you kid yourself, every time she … was nice, I’d say, maybe we’ve turned the corner. And years go by. But then I met Margot,” Jack said. “And it all blew up, overnight. Sandy knew.” He just looked at me. “I got home from a trip, same as always. I was so stuffed. But I’d had the most amazing week of my life up here.” He looked down at Margot again. “Anyway, I walked in the door, and Sandy just stared at me, one look. She said, ‘Who is she?’ It didn’t matter how many times I denied it. She wouldn’t let it go. Later, I noticed she was going through a lot of money. She’d always been a director of the business. When we started, she did the books, so she knew how it was set up. After that I had a string of close shaves in the car – and once someone shot at me, on my bike, at work.” I remembered his story of the bloke in the white car who’d tried to run him off the road. Remembered I’d had a narrow escape not long afterwards. Jealous Sarich? I wondered.

Jack shrugged. “I just decided that it was time to get away before it was too late,” he said. “I tried once to talk about separation.” He shuddered. “She just stared at me. She said, ‘I’ll never just let you go, Jack. You’re mine. You will never leave me,’ she said. It wasn’t as much the words, but ... the way she spoke, you know. Scary. She was as cold as cruelty.”

“Why did you tell her about the Darwin plan at all?” I asked.

“I didn’t!” jack looked affronted. “What, do you think I’m an idiot? There was no bike ride. I was just going to skip. But she found out about the post office box in Dromana, and raided that, one day. Found a couple of booking confirmations, and it was all over, red rover! So I made up the ride story. In the end, I didn’t even tell her when I was going. I set it all up at work, went off as usual one day, and just kept going. Airport, here.”

I shook my head in amazement. “Did you know what was happening back at home?”

“Did I?” he grinned. “She went apeshit. I cleaned out every fucking cent I could get quickly. Used her signature whenever I could, so she’d be too worried about staying out of a cell herself to fret about me. But she sent the cop after me. He is a clever bastard, I’ll give him that. He got hold of a shitload of stuff I never thought they’d find, and came straight up here, after me, for the rest.”

“He flew up using my name,” I interjected.

Jack continued, nodding, “I’d already planned to disappear on the road.” He gave me an amused glance. “You gave me that idea. Make it look as if the nutter got me. Nearly did, too. He found me, in Darwin, but I shot through straight away. I was petrified. I thought I lost him, at Kakadu. So once I got to Mataranka, I went and set up the bush campsite, killed a ‘roo to make it look bad …” he looked down. Margot met his eyes. “I don’t know how, but Sarich found me. I was so lucky. I was about ten yards away, in the bush – having a crap, actually – when he appeared. One minute I’m on my own, the next, he’s there, with a freaking big gun. I shit myself.” He laughed at himself. “Well, no, I couldn’t. But I panicked, ran for it, and he started firing this thing – sounded like a bazooka – through the scrub after me. I just ran like a bloody rabbit. God knows how I didn’t collide with a bullet!

I got lost. I’d hidden a little trail bike out there a couple of days earlier, but I got completely bushed. I had to sleep under a tree – fuck it was cold. I even rang Sandy. I tried to tell her to call off the wild man, said I’d come home, but the fucking phone dropped out,” he smiled up at me. “You always said those things were for wankers.”

“It was a joke, Jack,” I said.

“Anyway, next morning, I had a stroke of luck. I found the track – came out on it about ten yards away from the bike. I rode it all the way back to Jabiru. Non-stop. Stayed there under a different name for a week. Margot met me there. She’d booked the cabin. Haircut and dye job, a pair of glasses and a bit of a beard and I was a new bloke, sort of.”

“So did Sarich think he got you?” I asked.

“Don’t know. I suppose. He came straight back to Darwin, and they cleaned me out,” Jack said. “Sandy must have helped him, but they just moved millions out in about two days. By the time I got back here, they’d gone through everything like a dose of salts.”

“But you still had a fair bit,” I said.

“Oh yeah,” Jack smiled. “I mean, I always knew they what they were up to. But, you know, I didn’t expect … didn’t know how far they were prepared to go.”

“I don’t blame you,” I said. “And then, just as you’re thinking they were out of your hair, so it would settle down and you could start to live your new life, I come charging up here, asking questions and upsetting it all again.”

They both smiled at me. “Yeah,” Jack said, ruefully, “And Sarich came straight after you. The last thing they wanted was anyone asking questions about what had happened to dear, departed Jack. For all Sarich knew, I was lying somewhere out where he’d found me with about fifty bullet holes in me.”

“So Sarich wants to find me, presumably because he thinks I know where you are.”

“Yeah. Same for Margot, after you visited her,” he said. “Don’t blame yourself,” he said quickly, and Margot shook her head as well. “It’s the way they are, those two. He’d have got onto her, just as you did.”

“So where are they now?” I asked.

“We think Sandy’s gone back home,” Jack said. “But no one knows what’s happened to Sarich. He flew to Alice Springs a week or so ago. He hired a car, apparently, and no one’s seen him since.”

“Well, I don’t know where he is,” I said, “But I have something that he had. It belongs to you, as much as anyone.” I opened my travel bag. I placed Sarich’s folder on the desk. I’d looked through it carefully. It listed bank accounts, plus account codes and passwords for the money he and Sandy had spirited away. “It’s a wedding present,” I said, smiling at them.

I looked at my watch. It was almost four. “Jesus!” I said. “I’ve got to go.”

Chapter 72

August 19th, 2001

Margot phoned for a taxi. Standing outside, waiting, I thought I should have phoned Kim, to let her know why I’d taken so long. About to turn and go back into Blooms, I remembered Kim’s mobile phone. It was in the bag I’d used to carry the folder that I’d given Jack and Margot.

I took it out and turned it on. Kim had said that if I used the memory and selected “Home”, it would phone her house. I did it.

She picked up the phone immediately. “Oh Dan,” she said. In those first two words, screaming with false, brittle brightness, I knew something was badly wrong. “I’m so glad you called. Your friend’s here, from Melbourne. Sandy. She’d like a word.”

“Shit! Are you OK?” I asked quickly.

But it was Sandy who answered. “Of course she is, Daniel, darling,” she said. Her voice was light, but I could hear the febrile tension humming under the surface. “We’re just having a nice cup of coffee here, waiting for you. It would be really nice if you could come here. I need to talk to you. Don’t be long – and don’t bring any friends, either. That would be a mistake.”

“Don’t do anything, Sandy,” I said, as firmly as I could. “I’m on my way. Don’t do –“

She’d hung up.

With immaculate timing, the taxi arrived.

All the way to Kim’s house, I debated what to do. I fingered the mobile phone I still held. Reimerthi? Could I get him to help? But how? What if that just pushed Sandy into doing something terrible? And where was Sarich? If Sandy was with Kim, Sarich must be somewhere close by.

The key might well be finding out what she wanted to talk to me about. As long as she thought I had something that she wanted, maybe we could yet escape.

Talking to Jack and Margot had reinforced a lesson I’d been slow to learn. Discovering what I’d almost believed I’d hallucinated in the hotel room mirror was true had been chilling. But hearing that Sandy and Sarich had tried to remove Jack in various ways – subtle and completely blunt – meant that trusting her at all was stupid. It was clear that when she wanted something, Sandy went for it and brooked no interference. All I could try to do was use her obsessive focus on what she wanted to try to gain an advantage, somehow.

I almost wept for Kim. After all she had been through, here she was again, caught up in the same nightmare.

As I put her phone back in my travel bag, I had an idea. Maybe there was a way I could make Sandy think I could give her something she wanted.

Kim’s house still had its look of bland suburbanity. Its suburban appearance was very misleading, I thought, snidely. It should have looked more like Dracula’s castle, or the Amityville horror house, or something. As I paid off the taxi driver, I glanced across the street, to see if Sarich was loitering somewhere, just making sure I did it the way Sandy had told me to. If he was watching, though, he was keeping a very low profile. It seemed strange. I’d not have said that subtlety was Sarich’s strong suit.

The front door was slightly ajar. I stepped quietly onto the porch, but a sharp voice from inside commanded, “Come in. Close the door behind you.”

The curtains and blinds were all drawn, so that it was gloomy and dim inside. I stood just inside the entrance hall, blinking to adjust my eyes to the low light.

“Lie down. Now.”

I could make out Sandy’s shape across the room, but I couldn’t see where Kim was.

“Why?” I asked.

“Just get on the floor, Dan. I have a gun here.” She did. I could see her moving it sinuously in the air. “And your girlfriend,” she sneered. She made “girlfriend” sound like something vile. “Dan Kinner in love. Who’d have thought it? So cute.” “Love” and “cute” were Americanised, the vowels drawn out in an exaggerated drawl. “Hands behind your back, Dan,” she snapped, when I was finally stretched out on the floor.

“Sandy, there’s really no need for any of this crap,” I said, temper rising. “Just tell me what you want, piss off and leave us alone.”

“Oh, Danny, Danny,” she said. “It’s not so easy as that, I’m afraid.” I heard her steps quickly cross the room. She pressed the barrel of the gun into my neck. I felt the cold metal of handcuffs snick tight around my wrists.

I tried again, suppressing my anger. “Sandy, this is not necessary. I can give you what you want, but not like this.”

She stilled, jammed the barrel of the gun hard into my neck again. “Where is he, then?” she hissed.

“He?” I tried to figure out what she was talking about. “You mean Jack? What do you want with Jack?”

“Fuck Jack,” she snarled. “What have you done with Arujak?” She pronounced it A-roo-shak. Like Clayton had. The penny finally dropped. When I’d found her in her house, I had thought she’d muttered her apology to Jack. “Are you Jack?” I had misheard. She’d been trying to say Sarich’s Christian name. “Where is he, you arsehole?”

I tried to think of what to say. Tried to think of what to do. And where was Kim?

Sandy stepped back, still pointing the gun at me, she backed away. “Get on your knees. Get into that chair.” She indicated a cane armchair, next to the bookshelves across the room.

I rolled over, until I could balance on my knees and shuffled over to the chair. Once I was seated, I saw Kim. She was sitting on the floor beside the pole with the plants climbing all over it. Her hands had been cuffed around the pole, her legs stretched out on the floor in front of her, either side of the pole, booted feet splayed wide. Her mouth was stuffed with a large wad of cloth, with which Sandy had gagged her. I tried to smile at her, feeling tears close to my eyes.

She winked at me. I closed my eyes, amazed at her courage. After all that she had gone through, to be coping with this was unbelievable. If she could, I had to.

“Now, dickhead Dan,” Sandy continued. She strolled across to Kim. “Here’s the situation. I realise you’re not too bright, so I’m going to spell it out for you, one word at a time.” Standing behind Kim, she dropped the barrel of the gun until it pointed straight at the top of Kim’s head. “You came up here like fucking Galahad looking for my dick-led husband, which was the last thing anyone wanted – including him, as it turned out. So Arujak and I had to fucking drop everything and come up here before you screwed everything up worse than you already had. Then you talk to the stupid slut Dickbrain was fucking, and suddenly go running off to Alice Springs. Obviously, dear, darling Jack was unfortunately still alive. So Arujak has to follow you down there. Where, it turns out, you run into some madman –“

I blinked. Sandy calling Rob Cook a madman seemed a more than a bit rich. I wasn’t going to point this out, though. I was still trying to figure out where she was going, and how I could get her onto what I could give her.

“Some madman, which makes you both heroes. Then you come back, but no Arujak,” she said. She stopped speaking. The room seemed to fill with a cold menace. Jack’s comment about Sandy being as cold as cruelty came back to me. “He went looking for you, Dan. But only you came back. Where’s Arujak, Dan?”

There was only one answer. “I don’t know, Sandy. I swear, I never saw him. I know where all your money is, though.”

Her face, always so calm and controlled, lost all expression. It was like watching a human turn into a wax dummy. “Where’s the money?” she asked, at last.

“There’s a folder, in that bag,” I said, nodding at the pile of luggage I had taxied here from the hotel. “In the folder there’s a list that records all the accounts, the code numbers and access passwords.”

She crossed the room, unzipped the bag, and glanced at the outside of the folder. She obviously knew what Sarich had kept in it. When she turned to face me, she was white, and trembling. “Where did you get this, you fucking shit?” she hissed.

“The police gave it to me,” I said, truthfully.

That stopped her. She gazed at me thoughtfully, and sauntered back across to Kim, holding the bulging folder. “But how did they get it?” she asked. It wasn’t really a question she was addressing to me. It wasn’t a question I could answer, anyway. This was something she obviously hadn’t considered. I could see the possibilities rattling around in her mind. Perhaps the police had arrested Sarich. But what for? And how had they found out about him? That thought, of course, led back to me.

I tried to head her off. “Take the money and run, Sandy,” I said. “You don’t have to do any of this. Just go. You’ve got what you really wanted. Take it and get out of here. That’s smart.”

She didn’t speak, for long minutes. She merely stood in the darkness, staring at me, her face a dead white oval. Kim restlessly drew her legs up, so that she was hunched around the base of the pole, making herself as insignificant as possible. “No, Daniel,” Sandy said at last. “That’s not the way it can be. This isn’t all that I want. You took something from me, so you have to lose something too. That’s what’s fair.”

“Sandy …” I tensed. I realised that she had stepped over some kind of emotional cliff. There was a look of implacable serenity on her face. She extended her arm straight down, so that her gun once again almost touched Kim’s head. I tried to imperceptibly wriggle my hips forward, so that I could charge out of the chair, across the room. It was hopeless, I knew. Sandy would pull the trigger long before I got anywhere near her.

She raised an eyebrow at me, mockingly. She knew exactly what I was thinking.

Knowing what she was going to do, I did it anyway. Before I could even get out of the chair, I heard the muffled crack of the shot.

I screamed, a terrible sound of fury and agony, knowing that I was much too late. Hopeless, helpless.

Sandy was already reeling backwards by the time I cannoned into her, crashing her away from Kim, into the stereo equipment on the shelves behind her. I frantically writhed around, trying to pin her down with my body. I desperately tried to make sure she didn’t get off a second shot, hearing a distant shouting, shouting for help myself.

“Daniel!”

I stopped. It was Kim’s voice.

“Daniel, get away from her!” Obediently, I rolled away, until I was clear of Sandy. She lay against the wall, sprawled, ungainly, ugly. Dead. The gun, I now saw, was lying a metre or so away, where I had obviously knocked it as I cannoned into Sandy. From the way she was lying, I’d broken her neck.

Kim was sitting calmly next to the pole, completely unhurt.

“But how -? Did she miss you?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

Kim held out her hand. In it was a tiny, silver gun. “She didn’t shoot,” she said. “I did. I told you no one was going to catch me out like this again. I only bought it today, too.” She took a deep, shuddering breath and suddenly burst into tears.

I shuffled on my knees until I could crouch next to her. Tears of overwhelming relief welling out of me, too.

After a long time, I got her phone. We phoned Reimerthi. It seemed the best thing to do. He could fix just about anything.

Chapter 73

… ever after.

From Jetta, some of Sandy’s background had emerged. Ross Clayton told me quite a bit more, about Sarich, as well. Brought up in a remote, isolated, abusive environment, abandoned by her mother, she must have lost any capacity to understand – or care about – the feelings of others. Her entire focus was on self-preservation. From the moment she suspected that Jack was serious about someone else, he’d placed himself in danger.

Perhaps she only saw Sarich an instrument to remove Jack and keep the security of her life. Or maybe she’d somehow been drawn to the same darkness in him that blighted her own life. Sandy had met Sarich at the same time as me – through the art class. He’d been trying – at the insistence of his Police Force psychologist – to develop a “sensitive” side after the collapse of his marriage. I half remembered him: not his appearance, just the sense of anger that emanated from wherever he was in the room.

I was confused about Sandy’s motives in beginning affairs with us both. Did she want to use me, as she used him? Was it to flaunt her relationship with me in Jack’s face, if necessary, as a way of demonstrating the extent of her power? Or was she confirming in her own mind the weakness and pathetic dependence men had for sex. Or her control over them, through its use. Who knows?

Once she realised that, in Sarich, she’d discovered a soul-mate, of sorts, the problem of Jack arose. She wanted to be with Sarich. But the money was with Jack. Sandy hated not having money. She’d spent years, apparently, living on the streets, as a prostitute. It was there that alcohol – and other drugs – got its claws into her. Sarich had a simple solution to the presence of her husband. His aggression, coupled with his background in the police made arranging an accidental death for Jack seem pretty straightforward. He’d run him off the road, tried to shoot him – even contacted a contract hitman.

But, at Sandy’s insistence, he had resorted to more subtle methods. They needed the money, and the fall guy. Jack’s trip north had provided him with a fantastic opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: get me – whom he’d discovered as a rival through following Sandy – out of the way, by incriminating me in Jack’s supposed murder. It had been Sarich who had reported the anonymous tip – which had come, ironically, I supposed, through Sandy. She had been outraged to discover her authority on payments to an account in my name! It had been Sarich, too, who claimed that there was airport security camera footage of me travelling to Darwin.

With the attention firmly focused on me, Sarich could slip away up north, find, and actually remove Jack. As it happened, even though it hadn’t gone to plan, Jack had disappeared, presumed dead, and the “Highway Hunter” had borne the blame. They had thought they were home and hosed. With Jack out of the way, Sarich and Sandy had completely pillaged his companies. They knew that Sandy might be closely watched, but as the weeping victim of a callous, thieving husband who had abandoned her, no one would treat her harshly – especially with Sarich as the main investigator.

We eventually found out what had happened to Sarich. One of the teams investigating the area around Rob Cook’s house had entered an abandoned mine tunnel. At the far end, a man’s body had been discovered, his feet chained, and handcuffed to a thick pole. Sarich had died with no food or water. His wrists had been dislocated, hands broken, in his desperate efforts to escape the cuffs that secured him to the pole.

No one could understand how he had wound up there. Somehow, his path had crossed that of Rob Cook, and somehow, Sarich had ended as the “Highway Hunter’s” last victim. When Clayton told me, I’d even felt sorry for him. It was a terrible way for anyone to die.

Of Cook himself, there was simply no sign. It was as if he had disappeared completely from the face of the earth. An intensive manhunt over huge areas of the Northern Territory, and large parts of South Australia failed to find any trace. There were hundreds of reported sightings, of course, from places as far-flung as Port Kembla in New South Wales; and Kalgoorlie, across the Nularbor. None of these came to anything. There was much excitement when security film at an all-night service station in western South Australia seemed to show him, in a peaked cap, getting fuel for a dusty white four-wheel drive with a canvas-covered rear. There was a moment when he’d looked directly up at the camera which, when I watched it replayed on the TV news, sent chills up my spine. But, as Kim said, after you looked at it a few times, it didn’t even really look like him. Could have been anyone. It didn’t come to anything, anyway.

We’re living down here, at my place, for now. I brought Kim down to stay while I sorted out what I would do with the house and about my job. On the upstairs veranda, overlooking Port Philip Bay, I stood behind Kim, so that she was snuggled up against me, leaning against the balcony rail.

“I saw an estate agent today, about putting this place on the market,” I said.

“Mmmm.” Kim snuggled closer against me. “Did you do it?”

“No,” I said. “I arranged to have a valuation done. Said I’d think about it.”

She didn’t say anything. The sun was almost gone. Clouds low on the horizon had sliced its disappearing shape, elongating it, so that it appeared more like a glowing egg, melting into the far off, lumpy black You-Yang mountains. A streak of reddish-gold stretched in a burnished path right across the water. It wasn’t a time for speaking. We just watched, wordless, while the light diminished, and the colours deepened and congealed into darkness.

When the sun was completely gone, Kim said, “There’s no hurry, you know. We could stay here a while, and see how we feel.”

“About what?” I said.

“Oh, everything,” she said. “Life. The universe. Us.”

“Oh, that,” I said. “That stuff’s easy. You could marry me.”

“I could,” she said. A quirky smile teased at her lips.

“Well?” I said.

“Well, that’d be one down, two to go,” she smiled.

I looked at her, raised one eyebrow. “Yeah,” I said, “but that’s the tricky one.”

Epilogue

The ‘roo’s carcass, ripped and torn by the truck, cooled quickly, in the darkness. The smell of her blood, coppery, and pungent, permeated the night air. It drew the hunters and scavengers, like flies to a corpse.

They moved in to feed, deeper darknesses in the dark. So subtle were their approaches, that it almost looked as if the ripped and ragged flesh reanimated itself, jerking and flopping on the still-warm bitumen. Sharp teeth, however, ripped and slavered at the fresh meat. Possessive growls and occasional scuffles told a story of contest and domination.

When the faint tremors of the freezing air, and almost imperceptible vibrations in the road warned of an approaching vehicle, the predators would sink back to the shadows of the roadside, to wait until darkness shrouded their actions again.

By morning, what bloody remnants were left still afforded an attractive opportunity for the hunting birds. Vast-winged eagles glided down, to clumsily alight on the road. In an ungainly waddling motion, they hopped, wings semi-furled, until they could grip the killed ‘roo with gnarled, fierce-clawed feet, heads dipping, so that their savage beaks could shred the meat from the splintered bones.

After them, the lesser birds of prey, the hawks and falcons, waiting, in a rough, fluttering circle for the chance to snatch a scrap for themselves. Approaching vehicles meant a reluctant, clumsy take-off, for the larger birds. They would sweep in a slow, haughty arc, landing on a whited, dead tree branch until they could safely return to the feast.

When the sun and wind had turned the fresh, bloody meat to a leathery, congealed mass of matted fur and sinew, the lesser scavengers would move in. Hoarse, melancholy-sounding crows hopped and scratched, waiting with weary patience for the fierce, vicious-beaked hunters to depart before moving in to peck and quarrel over the dusty, desiccated remains.

Far out, across the arching expanse of barren terrain, the ‘roos lay up for the day in a jigsaw puzzle jumble of fractured stone. Later, they would venture out, foraging across the sea of grass, scratching for the choicest, most tender roots. They’d go where the whim led them, where the grass was greenest. Even if that meant crossing the highway of the hunters.

Always, some went searching, but never returned.

The end.

← David Baxter, July 15th, 2003

-----------------------

Amy Roper: Mar 2001

Julian Bailey Sept, 2000

Tara Miller: May, 1998

Barrow Creek

Jennie White attacked: Aug, 2000 - escapes

Larry Vines: Sept, 1996

[pic]

Amy Roper – “adored her kids”

Meredith Lewis: July, 1997

Lauren Craig: December, 1994

Devil’s Marbles

Larrimah

Kylie Adams & Anna Katsiakis: Oct 1999

Jack Treuwin’s campsite

• Lisa Blair: March, 1995

Martin King; Sept, 1998

[pic]

[pic]

Martin King – no trace

[pic]

Larry Vines … to

marry soon

[pic]

Lisa Blair – no reason to go

[pic]

Kylie and Anna … inseparable.

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