Many of them held the same suspicions as me about some of their number. I kept hearing about violent things Richie had done to people who’d brought drugs onto the mine that weren’t his. The girls seemed particularly afraid of him and his pack of sunbaked dogs.
As our dangerous suspects list grew, Whitt and I wandered between the cabins of the all-stars of violence and gun offences on the mine. These were dark-eyed, lanky men sitting alone in their dank, stinking accommodation areas or laughing in closely huddled groups in the rec room.
We had no legal right whatsoever to ask these men if we could go through their things. But the implications of refusal were clear. As we confronted them, they looked around the faces at the tables with them and knew a rumour about their guilt could be halfway across the mine within an hour. Whitt and I crawled under beds, pulled boxes down from cupboards, pushed aside bags of clothes.
The day wore on. By midday, the journalists at the gate, having had no luck gaining entry to the mine or comment from the bosses, had begun to creep down the side fences, trying to engage miners in the truck yard and accommodation blocks. No one would talk, but I saw some miners taking business cards. I kept my head low, not wanting to be recognised.
‘I wonder if there’s money on the table,’ I murmured, shielding my eyes from the cameras.
‘If the miners are smart, they’ll wait until three. Reporters will start scrambling for an interview for the six o’clock news.’
Two reporters started tailing Whitt and me along the fence line, noticing that we were not in miners’ uniforms. With the arrival of the press I’d taken to wearing my black baseball cap, and I pulled it down deeper as they started calling out.
‘Hey! Are you guys with the cops?’
‘They’re good,’ I murmured.
‘It’s you,’ Whitt said. ‘You’ve got cop written all over you.’
‘What? No I don’t!’ I straightened my shoulders.
‘You keep touching your gun,’ he said. ‘They’re thinking, “Either that woman’s got a gun back there or her jeans don’t fit.”’
‘No they’re not. They’re thinking, “Who’s that very ordinary woman and what’s she doing with that antiques dealer?”’
Whitt gave a small, weary laugh. I liked the sound of it. I might have enjoyed it for longer if it hadn’t been interrupted by gunfire.
Chapter 81
THE GUNSHOTS STARTED just as we were rounding the corner to the big empty space before the chow hall. They were rapid shots, splitting the air in painful cracks. Whitt and I hit the edge of the supplies building. I looked over and saw the two journalists were crouching against the fence, the camera already rolling. Along the wire I could see the other journalists were running across the sand towards us.
‘Fucking idiots.’ I drew my gun. The camera turned to me as I waved at them. ‘Get down! Get down!’
Miners rushed past us. Whitt and I jogged in a crouch towards the chow hall. A young girl ran outside, smacking into the glass door with her shoulder, splintering the glass. I could hear chairs and tables being knocked over.
The gunfire stopped. I could smell cordite in the air, but also the distinct taint of rotten eggs that took me back to my childhood, summer nights and New Years. I knew even before we burst through the doors of the chow hall that something was wrong. The room was clear.
I walked to the buffet and picked up the spent string of a row of red firecrackers. The giggling and snickering of the men at the far window drew my eye. Three of Richie’s crew members, with the snake-eyed man himself standing at the back of the crowd, his phone up, filming. The men bolted as I stood there like a fool, my gun by my side.
‘Wow.’ Whitt took the string from me. ‘That’s pretty low.’
A man in plain clothes ran into the chow hall, a huge camera by his side. It seemed I only twitched, but my nerves were so raw, and I was so angry, that the sight of him triggered an animal reaction in me. For half a second, I saw a gun, and then I realised my arm was out and my pistol was aimed at the journalist.
‘Whoa!’ he said. ‘I’m sorry! I just hopped the fence. I wanted to see –’
‘You hopped the fence?’ I put my gun back in my jeans. ‘Right. Put that thing down. Get out some ID. I’m citing you for trespass.’
‘You’re what?’ The cameraman laughed. ‘You can’t be serious.’
I knew what I was doing was stupid, and petty, but aside from chasing Richie and his crew down, yelling for them to get back here like a schoolteacher chasing a crew of naughty boys, I had no course of action. I did not know how much longer I was going to be able to stand my inability to act in the face of a cowardly sniper who was picking off people like ducks. I needed to do something. When I gripped the guy’s bicep I dug too hard and he yelped.
‘You don’t have to say anything, but anything you say may be taken into evidence and used against you. I’m escorting you off the premises, where you’ll be issued with a citation to appear in court.’
Whitt grabbed the camera and popped the memory chip as I led the cameraman out. The crowd of people who had been scared out of the chow hall were watching, along with a dozen journalists. The rage in my chest was so hot and painful I couldn’t focus on anything else, couldn’t stop myself rushing down this foolish path. I couldn’t back down now.
As I was marching the cameraman across the yard, the cameras focused in on my face. I’d drawn attention to myself in the worst way possible.
‘Harriet . . . Harriet Blue?’ one of the journalists called. ‘Hey! Isn’t that Detective Harry Blue?’
Chapter 82
‘CAMERA CREWS INVESTIGATING the murders of several employees at a mine in remote Western Australia were met with police resistance today. An officer involved with the case laid trespassing charges against a cameraman for illegally entering the property,’ the newsreader said. ‘Seven Network news cameraman Simon Windell was escorted off mine grounds by lead detective Harriet Jupiter Blue after an incident inside the mine startled reporters in attendance.’
Gabe shifted in the bed beside me, sitting up taller against the pillows, his thick arm around my neck.
‘What did they just say?’
‘They said I arrested a journalist.’ I exhaled cigarette smoke out the open window beside me. ‘I did.’
‘No, they said Harriet Jupiter –’
I glanced sideways at him. ‘That’s my name.’
Gabe looked at me in the dark, his eyes sparkling. ‘Jupiter?’
‘My mother was a prostitute and a drug addict,’ I said. ‘What the hell did you expect?’ I punched him in the ribs.
We watched as footage shot from outside the fence showed me leading the cameraman away from the chow hall.
‘News crews at the mine were shocked to discover Detective Blue, who has not spoken publicly since her brother Samuel Jacob Blue’s arrest this month for the Georges River Three murders.’
More footage of me, waving off the cameras after I’d shown Simon Windell out of the mine gates. Reporters hollered at me on the screen but I put my head down and walked off, safe within the boundary of the mine. An image of Sam flashed on the screen. The picture of us together in the sunny garden.
‘Samuel Jacob Blue has not yet entered a plea for the murders, nor are police commenting on whether the killings are linked to his sister’s investigation in Western Australia.’
I grabbed the remote from Gabe and switched off the television at the end of the bed.
‘Linked?’ I snapped. ‘If these killings here are linked to the Georges River killings, who the hell do they think’s doing them? Sam’s in fucking jail!’
‘They’re just sensationalising,’ Gabe yawned. ‘Murders are more exciting when they’re linked.’
As the boss of a large crew of miners, Gabe Carter had a small, run-down donga to himself. He’d set the bed up near the dusty window, where he could sit propped against the wall and drink coffee in the morning. I lay on his chest and watched the lights flashing
on the big crane in the centre of the mine while tapping the ash of a well-earned smoke out the window.
‘How could I have been so stupid?’ I said. ‘Now my cover’s blown.’
‘You’re being too hard on yourself.’ He stroked the soft hairs at the nape of my neck. ‘You were sending a message to the journalists that you’re not taking any shit.’
‘They came out here for footage of a killer being arrested, and what they got was me frogmarching one of their own off the mine for hopping a fence. It looks bad. Not only am I not supporting my brother back in Sydney, I’m not even doing my job here.’
‘Harry, you’re –’
‘Killer. Hunter. Dark. Vengeance.’
‘What?’
‘Killer. Hunter. Dark. Vengeance,’ I said, twisting the hairs on his chest as I thought. ‘Danny Stanton wrote those words in one of his notebooks. If I can’t find the gun, I need to figure out what connects all the victims. Did those words mean something? Are they the key piece of information I’m missing?’
‘Yow!’ Gabe snatched up my fingers from his chest hairs. ‘Those are attached!’
‘Oh. Sorry.’
We lay in silence in the cool sheets, the night outside pulsing with the leftover heat of the day. Initially, the faintest touch of Gabe’s skin, even from that very first handshake, offered so much refuge from thoughts of what was happening back home. But that comfort seemed gone now. That first night in the desert, he hadn’t known who I was or what was happening in my brother’s world. How could he not wonder what I knew, what involvement I had in what Sam had supposedly done? I curled away from him, but he pulled the arm tucked beneath me tight and pressed his lips to my ear.
‘Stop thinking about Sydney. You’re only out here in the first place because you’re trying to stay away from all that trouble back home.’
‘Are you reading my mind now?’
He reached up and tucked a black curl behind my ear. ‘If you try hard enough, you can forget anything outside the fences exists. I’ve been doing it for years. Forget the press. Forget your brother. You can’t do anything about that now. Just focus on what’s going on here.’
I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the mine in the middle of the desert as its own planet in a vast, sandy universe. For a moment, I latched onto that lie, and my big bad world felt slightly smaller.
Chapter 83
BY TEN O’CLOCK that night Gabe had fallen asleep beside me, his internal clock matched exactly to the shifts he worked each day in the mine. I crept out of his bed and went back to my own donga to find Whitt. There was a note on his bunk saying he’d gone into town. For a moment, panic racked me, and I stood frozen in the dark. Maybe all the officers on the case had gone into town. Most of the press were probably staying at the hotel there. They’d pressure Whitt and the cops for details on the case. They’d know everything before I even got in the car to leave the mine.
I walked to the car, trying to breathe evenly. This was what I did. Expected the worst. Put no faith in the abilities of others. Of course the other cops wouldn’t talk to the press. Of course Whitt would never reveal anything sensitive. These people were professionals.
I spotted Whitt at a table at the back of the pub with two of the female officers.
‘Is it true?’ he asked. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
‘Is what true?’
‘Jupiter?’ The corner of his mouth twitched. ‘Is your middle name really Jupiter?’
I sighed. The cops beside him giggled. I sat down and poured myself a glass of wine from the bottle that was on the table and drank it dry in three gulps.
‘What’s the news of the past few hours?’ I asked.
‘Well, one of your little working-girl spies came running to us with a very exciting find.’ The cop’s nametag read Beckett. She put her mobile phone in front of me. There was a picture of a black plastic case under a messily made miner’s bunk. ‘Looked good, too. The owner was Ethan Formosa. Food stores guy, worked with Hon. Couple of serious assaults on his record.’
‘Did you check it out?’
‘We did.’ The shit-eating grin hadn’t left Whitt’s face. ‘Plenty of resistance on the part of Formosa. He did not want that case opened in front of the other miners hanging around the donga at the time. No, sir.’
‘So what was it? Was it a gun?’
The officers around the table paused, looking at each other. ‘Goddamn it, Whitt, speak up.’
‘It was, uh.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I believe they call it a gimp outfit?’
The other cop, Shae, snorted hard, covered her mouth.
‘There was a zipper mask,’ Whitt said, struggling to maintain his composure. ‘Some straps and buckles. Some . . . implements. There was a . . . a pump, of some sort.’
‘Alright.’ I sat back in my chair and poured another wine. ‘I get the picture.’
‘The girls’ searches also turned up four other heavy-duty black cases hidden around the mine,’ Beckett said brightly. ‘Two flutes, a saxophone and a bassoon. I wouldn’t have thought there’d be so much musical talent in a place like this. We could start a band.’
‘The Dusty Miners,’ Shae said. ‘With special guest, the Masked Gimp.’
The three burst out laughing. The tension of the past few days had finally cracked in Whitt. The weariness in his features had lifted. I was grateful, suddenly, to the women at his side. In this job, it was impossible to remain bent by the graveness of the situation at all times. That kind of dreariness could kill you. I had seen it do its magic on older officers, when the laughter tank emptied and no joy came, even when times were good. I wasn’t there, yet. I knew I had good humour in reserve, but it didn’t feel safe to let any of it out yet. If I did, I’d quickly remember what was happening back home, and the guilt would come. Taking solace in Gabe’s arms was all I could manage right now.
I went to the bar to get another bottle of wine, without announcing where I was going. I did that when I was deeply involved in a case, started being rude, distant, forgetting the rules of good company. Pops noticed it, called it my ‘Action Mode’. I missed him desperately all of a sudden, heading towards the bar in the dark hall. And it was in this sorrow cloud that I failed to notice the first arm that reached out from nowhere.
A man in front. A man behind. There was a warm, hard hand that came up around my mouth and another attached to an arm that wound around my waist and dragged me backwards.
Chapter 84
THE MUSIC IN the main bar was so loud even I didn’t hear my scream. I was being dragged backwards up a tiny staircase and was then shoved forward into one of the musty bedrooms on the first floor.
The bathroom light came on, and with it my defences. The voices of a hundred rape victims came back to me from across my career. The ones who’d fought and the ones who hadn’t, their voices alive in my imagination, reliving those first few moments when their safety was taken away.
Bite. Scratch. Twist. Kick. Gouge. Do whatever your body will allow you to do. Just don’t let them get you in the car – the room – the basement.
The moment I started fighting, the man who had me in his arms dropped me heavily on the tiles of the big shower cubicle. The nozzle above me was dripping steadily. The floor under my hands and jeans was wet.
Richie hung in the doorway with my black service pistol in his hand, plucked at the last moment from the back of my pants. Two of his men stood in the bathroom, their eyes flicking to the stubble-covered sink, the stained tub, the cracked mirror and the terrified cop. The musty smell of their male bodies filled the room.
Richie waited as I surveyed my situation. I knew two of his crew were missing, probably guarding the door. The floor was vibrating with the music from below. No one was going to hear me. No one was going to come looking for me. I was unarmed, and outnumbered. This is what pure, wild terror feels like.
‘Don’t say anything,’ Richie said, as though I was capable of it. ‘Just sit and think ab
out all the things we could do to you right now. Be imaginative. Don’t just picture us dragging you out there onto the bed, holding you down. Look at the bathtub. Think about me filling it up halfway and drowning you in it. Think about what tools I might have to play with. Can you imagine those things, Bluebird?’
I tried to get air deeper into my lungs. Richie pointed at me. All his gentleman-thief swagger was gone now. His eyes were empty.
‘You’ve caused me a lot of trouble here, woman,’ he said. ‘From the moment you came along, you’ve been a fucking nuisance. People stopped buying. Then more stopped when your little friends arrived yesterday. A stream of cars left here in the past forty-eight hours, and most aren’t coming back. These are my roads, yet they all got through without paying the toll. You know why? Because I had two idiot cops sitting on my back like fleas.’
Richie crouched before me. One of his crew, a lanky blond man with tattoos on his hands, smiled when I caught his eye.
‘My income right now is zero,’ Richie said. ‘Somebody’s got to pay up.’
‘Whitt is going to come looking for me,’ I said.
‘Oh yeah. They tell you to say that, don’t they?’ Richie murmured. ‘First they say, Fight for your life. Don’t let them get you away from the herd. Then they say, Tell ’em you’ve got a disease. Tell ’em you’re pregnant. Tell ’em your boyfriend will be back any minute. Then they say, Tell ’em things about yourself. Make yourself a real person, so they won’t kill you when they’re finished.’
He laughed. ‘Well, your boyfriend’s not coming, Bluebird. And you ain’t no person to me. But I won’t hurt you. And neither will my guys. You know why? Because we don’t have to. You realise now that all your clever fighter-girl antics – they haven’t got you anywhere. You’ve been strutting around like you’re some wildcat cop who doesn’t take no shit. Well, look at you now. You’re fucked. And I think that for someone like you, that’s just about the worst thing I could ever do.’