But I knew what had drawn me here. This was the last place I’d seen Amy. I decided that I wasn’t going to sleep, not with my mind in this kind of turmoil. I needed to look here, even if I was stopped eventually and told to get my arse out of the working section of the mine before I got myself killed. If it looked like I knew where I was going, surely they’d ignore me. I took a hard hat from the rack, signed in casually at the safety station and started walking through the upper tunnels of the mine.
I searched every face that passed me in the dark, nodding grimly. Just off to meet a witness. Nothing to see here. They were all so young. I found myself wondering how so many parents felt about their young sons and daughters going off for such dangerous work, so far away. But maybe I was projecting my youthful fantasies about parents and their concern for their children onto these kids. After all, I had no idea what it was like to be someone’s girl on the cusp of adulthood. Calling Mum to tell her I’d made it home after a big night out. Letting her buy me things for my first apartment.
Maybe real parents weren’t that needy. I didn’t know. If we’d had real parents, what would they be going through now with Sam locked up, men and women in my own police force putting together evidence for his first committal hearing? My fantasy parents, when I envisioned them, were older than they should have been. Wide-eyed, frightened, pulling back the lace curtains as journalists banged at the door.
I imagined protecting them from the press. Telling them to keep the door closed, not to listen to the terrible things they were saying on the news. Me being their hero in this terrible time.
But, no. I was alone. There was only me to decide how to handle this, and so far I hadn’t made any clear decisions at all. Pops had forced me out into the middle of nowhere, where I’d quickly almost got myself and my partner killed, before jumping into the lap of the first guy to make a half-decent joke in my presence.
The miserable criticism trailing through my mind was interrupted by the sound of a yelp. A high-pitched wail of surprise, a pause, and then a scream.
I stopped dead in my tracks. I was deep inside the mine now, alone in one of the major veins coming off the entrance cavern. A long row of gold light bulbs hung at my side. Their glow barely penetrated a narrow exploratory tunnel blocked with a wooden barrier that read ‘NO ENTRY’.
I stared into the emptiness, trying to pick out anything beyond the barricade. Had I really heard a scream, or was I just stressed out of my mind?
I grabbed at the torch on top of my helmet, clicked it on. It didn’t work. I must have grabbed a helmet from the rack waiting to have their lamps recharged. I glanced back the way I’d come, wondering if I’d be able to find my way back here if I went to the main tunnel to call for help.
The scream came again. I drew my gun.
Chapter 56
I’LL KILL YOU! I’ll fucking kill you!
The words rang through the tiny tunnel, bouncing off the dark walls. The Soldier watched Detective Blue’s silhouette in the entrance to the exploratory tunnel, actioning her gun and flicking the safety off.
He pressed play on the small recorder in his hand. Amy’s scream was shrill.
Help! Someone help!
‘Who’s there?’ Blue called.
The Soldier crept backwards slowly, around the curve of the tunnel. When he was sealed in darkness, he pulled his night-vision goggles down and switched them on. A soft whirr, followed by a grey cloud floating just before his eyes.
Then she emerged there before him, creeping forward in the soft earth, one foot before the other, her hip leading and gun out straight, double grip, ready to go. The slow, deliberate movements of a spider. The Soldier liked to see her like this, in attack mode. He walked backwards, taking bigger strides until he was at a good distance. With the recorder in his pocket, muffling the scrabbling sounds of the rewind, he went back and pressed play again.
Help! Someone help!
He stopped, pressed himself against the wall of the tunnel and watched her creeping towards him, blind. One of her hands left the gun and reached out, and as it did he noticed the minor tremor, the only part of her body that wasn’t taut like a wire, ready to snap. He could even see the muscles in her neck flexing, a single vein bulging at the side of her sweaty brow. She edged closer, was almost on top of him, her eyes white hollows in the light of the night vision. It was torturous to watch her pass without reaching out. Giving her a little flick. A sharp little pinch.
He must have breathed too hard, because she turned swiftly, grabbed blindly in the dark.
‘Where are you?’ she said.
‘Right here,’ he answered.
The Soldier kicked at her shin and sent her tipping forward, followed up with a smack across the face. Her gun flew into the tunnel. She sprawled in the dirt, but like a good boxer she wasn’t down for long. She lunged at his legs, and he couldn’t help but let a laugh slip from him as he fell into the dirt with her.
Funny little tiger. She couldn’t resist a good old brawl.
But this was not her game.
The Soldier pulled his torch from his belt and cracked her over the head with it.
She went out like a light.
Chapter 57
WAR WAS A complex thing. Not many people understood it as well as the Soldier did. He walked along the tunnel slowly, dragging the unconscious Detective Harriet Blue by her ankles. He glanced back at her, as though he could talk to her, as though he could teach her with his thoughts. Her arms and hands trailed over rocks and bumps behind her head.
There were scientific aspects to war, he thought. Strategic calculations. Risk versus reward. Probability, expectation, information management. You could measure war in its millions of variables, pitting optimal environment against available technology, levels of training and quality of leadership. But it was the moral variations within war that interested the Soldier. How the battlefield could develop or destroy loyalty. It created heroes. It created traitors.
The world needed war.
As he dragged her towards the hole, the Soldier had many important decisions to make. He’d made them on the battlefield plenty of times. Should this man die? That was a question he must have asked hundreds of times. He’d stormed through trenches and underground bunkers, spraying bullets, being sprayed himself, dust in his eyes and blood on his jacket and men screaming all around him.
They’d cleared rooms in hot houses one at a time, massacring the enemy inside their bases. As he’d moved from room to room with his team, he’d sometimes looked down upon an enemy soldier struggling on the ground with a bullet in his guts.
Should this man die?
Sometimes he’d pulled the trigger. Sometimes he’d let them suffer, let the kill credit go to someone else. Sometimes, if he’d admired something, like the cut of their clothes, how they handled the pain, how they’d thrown themselves in front of the women as the shooting began, he’d move on, the trigger un-pulled.
He stood and watched Detective Harriet Blue coming to her senses, rolling onto her side, gripping at her bloody head. Watched her grope in the dark, remember where she was, rise suddenly to her feet, hands out, trying to decide what had happened.
Should she die? he wondered.
He did admire her very much. She was a good adversary. He was enjoying playing with her.
Before he could decide, she seemed to hear him there and ran at him. He grabbed her hair and slammed her into the ground, fell on top of her, dragged his torch back out of his belt.
He held her head steady by a chunk of her hair and clicked the torch on. Made sure she got a good look at the hole in front of her, the endless depths, the dark.
That’s where you’re going, bitch.
He picked her up, stepped back, and threw her.
Chapter 58
I SLID ON the earth and grabbed out. My hands gathered dirt until they locked onto a wooden plank marking the very edge of the hole. My eyes were clouded by purple explosions of light, the torch burning through my
night vision like wildfire. I held on tight. My legs kicked at nothing.
‘Coward!’ I snarled. ‘Cowardly piece of shit!’
My arms were shaking. I knew he was still there in the dark. If he kicked my hands I was gone. I’d fall down there into the abyss.
There are also black holes. Amy’s voice was in my head. Some of those holes are kilometres deep.
I could hear my own cries echoing down through the depths. I hung on and waited for him to finish me.
But the sound of him walking away cut through my own panicked breathing. His footsteps gave me the strength to find a foothold, to claw my way up onto my belly. I lay on the ground and breathed, still clenching handfuls of dirt as though I’d fall if I let go. I knew if I screamed, the tunnel would carry my voice to him.
‘I’ll find you!’ I howled, my voice trembling. ‘I’m coming for you, arsehole!’
Chapter 59
I PUSHED AWAY the horrified men and women who tried to crowd around me at the entrance to the mine. I must have looked pretty bad, because phones were picked up and directions were given. I didn’t care. I marched straight back to our donga. Whitt had obviously been called, because he came out in only his stripy pyjama pants, his bullet-grazed arm sporting a thick white bandage.
‘Jesus,’ he said as I came towards him. ‘Blue, are you –’
‘No. I’m not. He’s here. He just – I was – in the mine.’ I couldn’t catch my breath. My chest felt tight. I knew this was shock. I’d seen it plenty of times in my line of work. If I just pushed through it, it would go. I thumped my chest with my fist, tried to get the air moving. ‘There’s a hole. The killer.’
Shock is unique to each individual. Some people go into hiccups. Some people’s teeth start to chatter. Some people collapse, go catatonic. The body can’t handle the total terror overload, the adrenaline dumped into the veins. I coughed and straightened up.
‘Blue, sit down.’
‘No. No. The killer. He’s here.’
‘Sit down!’
‘I want – a radio!’
Whitt grabbed both my shoulders and looked at my eyes. He spoke very slowly.
‘You have a hole in your head the length of my index finger.’
I looked at him. He held up a finger in front of my nose.
‘Oh.’
I sat down on the front steps of our donga. Whitt ran inside and brought me a handtowel, which I pressed into my forehead on the right-hand side. I couldn’t feel the wound at all. My pain sensors were switching off all over my body. I felt cold.
‘What’ll I do?’ he asked.
‘Evacuate the mine. Put the camp – into lockdown. Get the bosses back here. Call me a medic. Get my phone. Find Gabe. He’ll help.’
Whitt ran up the stairs and into the donga to find his phone. News of the attack had spread, and miners were steadily creeping from their dongas to glance over at me. I saw two of the Bilbies in the window across from me. I waved, unable to decide if I was more embarrassed or infuriated. When I bowed my head, I saw my shirt and pants were soaked with blood.
Chapter 60
I REMAINED ON the steps of the donga, letting the medic come to me. I wanted to send a message to the miners. Yes, there’s a killer out here. The danger is real. Everything is not business as usual.
My clothes were covered in dirt and half my face seemed to be a bloody mask. When the medic finished wiping my cheeks and neck, the sterilised cloth was saturated with red.
‘Number one,’ she said as she threaded a stitch through my scalp. ‘I think it’s dumb that you won’t come back to the med block with me. There’s dust and shit getting into this wound.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ I said, my eyes closed. ‘I’ve never seen “Death by Dust” on the front page of any paper.’
‘It’s not only that.’ She pulled the stitch tight, the base of her gloved palms resting on my brow. ‘I think you should be in a chopper to Perth. You need an MRI. You could have a skull fracture.’
‘I don’t have a skull fracture.’
‘How do you know that, genius?’
‘I’ve had my skull fractured three times in the ring. I know what it feels like.’
‘So you’re a boxer, then? That explains a bit.’
Footsteps, and Gabe appeared in my field of vision. He took in the wound on my head.
‘Holy shit!’
‘It’s fine.’
I’d taken a few blows over the years, so I wasn’t particularly worried about my head. However, Gabe’s expression took me back to those early years. A good beating looks worse on a woman. Depending on the family you come from, most of the time it’s a shocking sight.
The nurse let me go and I cracked my neck. When I looked up, Whitt and a man in slacks and an immaculate white shirt had joined Gabe before me.
‘Harry, this is David Burns. He’s the operational officer on duty.’
I offered my bloody hand. He stared at it in horror.
‘Well –’ I let my hand drop – ‘I suppose I should have expected you to be just as welcoming as you were when we arrived.’
‘I apologise, Ms Blue. The management team has been particularly busy this month.’
‘It’s Detective Blue.’
‘I’m appalled at this,’ Burns said, his eyes wandering over my head wound. ‘Am I correct in saying you were somehow accidentally unaccompanied in one of our operational areas?’
‘Oh, I was intentionally unaccompanied,’ I said. ‘I asked for help finding Amy King a good nine or ten hours ago. I haven’t seen a single man on search detail. I assume that wasn’t an accident?’
Burns puffed out his chest. ‘I didn’t send out a search detail, Ms Blue, because there’s no evidence to suggest –’
‘There is now,’ I said. ‘I saw Hon’s hat.’
Gabe and Whitt looked at each other.
‘Before the killer threw me into the hole,’ I said, ‘he was kind enough to turn on his torch and show me where I was going to end up. I looked down the hole and saw an Australian flag hat hanging on the side of the shaft. Caught on a root or a rock or something. The same dorky flag hat Hon Lu is wearing in a photograph I collected from his crime scene.’
Burns scoffed, looking away. ‘You mean his bedroom?’
‘Yes, when someone’s been murdered, we generally call the last place they were sighted a crime scene.’ I smiled. ‘Because we think it’s the scene where a crime occurred.’
‘Alright.’ Whitt stepped forward nervously. ‘Play nice. The least we can do is shut down the mine, ensure that everyone’s safe, and take a look down the hole.’
‘The least we can do is nothing, Mr Whittacker,’ Burns said, his hands in his pockets. ‘This investigation has, from the outset, been a farce. Everyone is safe. And running an excavation mission in search of – what, clues? – is a ridiculous suggestion.’
‘Bodies, you idiot.’ I stood up, possibly too fast. ‘We’re looking for bodies. I think Hon and Tori are down there. Maybe Amy too. If you don’t approve a search I’ll climb down there my fucking self.’
‘Ms Blue,’ Burns said, ‘you’ve suffered a serious head injury. I don’t know what you think you saw –’
‘It’s Detective Blue, you dickless ape!’
The medic snorted loudly then tried to cover her smile.
‘Your stories don’t make sense,’ Burns continued. ‘You’ve wandered without authority and without escort into a restricted area of the mine, endangering both yourself and my staff, and you’ve concocted this story about being . . . attacked? You’ve not seen this alleged attacker, and yet you claim to have seen a hat in a hole which you think is evidence of –’
‘I’m going to kill this guy,’ I told Whitt calmly. ‘If you don’t get him away from me, right now, I’m going to strangle him with his tie.’
‘OK.’ Whitt took Burns by the shoulder. ‘Mr Burns, why don’t we have a chat over here . . .’
When Gabe touched my shoulder I recoiled in shock. My
skin felt electrified.
‘The rest of the leadership team are supposed to fly in tomorrow morning,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we just leave it for tonight?’
‘Leave it?’ I said. ‘Leave it! Yeah, sure, we just leave someone’s missing kid down a dark hole in the middle of the –’
‘I know.’ He nodded, rubbing my shoulder. ‘You don’t have to convince me. I’m with you all the way, Harry.’
‘At least someone is,’ I said. ‘This place is . . . It’s heartless. Fucking heartless. If the management don’t get on board, Gabe, more people are going to die. I guarantee it.’
Chapter 61
MY FISTS HIT the bag in the rec room with a satisfying whap, the impact sending shockwaves up my forearms, towards my shoulders, through my chest. I twisted and gave the bag a couple of deep hooks to the side, bounced back and punched my imaginary foe’s face square-on. It was pretty easy to lose myself in the workout. I had plenty of sparring partners to imagine. I was knocking Nigel upside the head for arresting my brother. I was giving Linebacker a sucker punch to the gut for chastising me like a child. I was slamming my fist into Burns’s kidneys, imagining the man doubling over, sinking to the mat as the pain ripped through him.
When I turned around, three miners were hanging in the doorway to the rec room, staring at me. I spat on the floor and reached for my water bottle.
‘Want to take a picture?’ I snapped.
The men disappeared.
As I walked back to my donga I spotted Shamma and another EarthSoldier girl by the fence line, hidden from view behind a huge forklift. They were crouching, using binoculars to look across the ground between the machine’s tyres towards the transport yard. I followed their line of sight, but couldn’t see anything. When I popped out from behind one of the forklift’s huge tyres, both girls yelped in surprise.