‘If I was you guys, I’d be keeping an eye on those whores,’ Amy said. ‘They’re nasty pieces of work.’
‘I found them pretty helpful,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ Amy snorted, ‘they’re pretty good at making you feel like they’re doing you a favour. If they were talking to you at all, it would have been to find out what you know.’
‘Why would they care what we’re up to?’ Whitt said.
Amy stopped and pointed a light bulb at us.
‘Three or four months ago a guy from the engineering department screwed one of those girls and didn’t pay the bill. I heard the Bilbies got together and drove him out into the desert, dropped him off at sunrise in his boxer shorts. No shoes, nothin’. Guy gets back into camp five hours later with second-degree sunburn and heat stroke.’ Amy shook her head, disgusted. ‘Not so helpful that time, were they?’
Chapter 29
WHITT ENGAGED AMY in some general chit-chat while I jotted down in Whitt’s notepad a list of enquiries I would make. I needed to know the full names of the Bilbies and their criminal histories, and whether the story about the miner who hadn’t paid his bill was true. The medical centre could tell me that. If Tori had left her wallet and phone behind when she disappeared, that was a bad sign. But a possible sighting of the phone in the possession of one of the camp prostitutes wasn’t solid enough to pursue.
I followed slowly behind Amy and Whitt, writing in the dim light of the new bulbs.
‘So this is what you do all day?’ Whitt asked. ‘You replace light bulbs?’
‘Yeah. Pretty mind-numbing, right? It’s the power surges. They happen all the time. Surge hits a particular line and it blows the lot of them.’ Sweat was running down Amy’s neck as she reached for the bulbs. ‘Cheaper to just replace the bulbs than reconfigure the electricals.’
‘This mine does a lot of things the cheap way,’ Whitt commented.
‘You’re not wrong.’
Halfway along the isolated tunnel, we came upon another tunnel blocked off with a wooden barricade.
‘What’s down there?’ I pointed into the dark.
‘Nothing,’ Amy said. ‘That’s an exploratory tunnel. The miners went down that way looking for uranium ore, and didn’t find any.’
‘Looks dangerous.’ Whitt squinted into the blackness. ‘It’s not even lit.’
‘Lit? They should be destroyed. But that costs time and money, mate, which the bosses don’t like to waste. Instead of filling them in, the miners just block off the unused tunnels.’
‘Do people go into them?’
‘Oh, I’ve seen people go into them,’ Amy smirked. ‘Good place for a secret snuggle. But most people know not to go too far in. It’s dangerous. Trip over and knock yourself out in one of those tunnels? Ain’t no one gonna find you.’
‘How many of these tunnels are there?’ I asked.
‘Who knows? I’d say dozens. I heard some of them come up in the desert. But that might be bullshit.’
‘Wait. So you’re telling us that if you could find an entrance to these tunnels, you could get into the mine from the desert?’ I stopped in my tracks. ‘Just about anyone could?’
‘You could, but you wouldn’t.’ Amy walked on. ‘No one would want to get in here that bad. The exploratory tunnels aren’t braced. The chances of collapse are pretty high. There are also black holes – tunnels that stop going horizontal and drop straight down. Some of those holes are kilometres deep.’
Amy stopped, looking at the bulbs in her hands. I saw what might have been a wave of hurt and loss sweep over her. She was a tough girl, but for a moment her lips pursed. I could tell she was trying to hold back what were obviously terrifying thoughts.
‘I hope she’s not down one of those holes,’ Amy said finally. She lifted her eyes to me. ‘Tell me she’s not down one of those holes.’
Chapter 30
EMERGING INTO THE stark light of day was painful. I slapped Whitt’s notebook against his chest, feeling dejected. Amy saw us to the mine entrance, where a drawn and tired-looking Richie was making a deal with a young miner. Richie glared at me through the eye that wasn’t swollen shut with bruises, and then turned that glare on Amy as she went back to work.
‘The more people we talk to out here, the lower my mood gets,’ I told Whitt, cracking my worn knuckles. My joints were already starting to ache from the pub brawl the night before. Soon the pain would spread to my wrists, if I didn’t find those pills. It felt like nothing was going right.
‘Our potential crime scene just increased pretty dramatically,’ Whitt sighed. ‘The search parties looking for Danny went out over the desert. But they didn’t go underground. Is it possible the dingo that brought his foot back to camp found it in one of the tunnels?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it. It sounds like an awful way to die,’ I said. ‘Let’s not get distracted, Whitt, because at this point there’s no evidence that the tunnels have anything to do with our case.’
‘I wouldn’t dismiss them so quickly,’ Whitt said. ‘I mean, where did Tori go that night when she left the rec room? We know she didn’t leave the mine by any of the official entrances, or the security team would have caught her on CCTV. What if someone took her out of the camp through the tunnels?’
‘Amy said the exploratory tunnels are dark and dangerous,’ I said. ‘If someone was using them to come back and forth from the camp, they’d have to know them very well.’
‘And who does that sound like?’ Whitt said, nodding at something over my shoulder. I turned and saw the Earth-Soldier activists. They rattled the fences as a group of miners walked by, their fingers hooked in the diamond wire and eyes wide with anger.
Chapter 31
LUNCH WAS JUST as appetising-looking as breakfast had been the morning we arrived at the camp. I stood gazing at the sausages swimming in oily, translucent juice, slowly baking in the overhead lamps of the steel buffet.
‘What’s the standard allocated portion of these . . . meat sticks?’ I asked the caterer.
‘You can have two of those snags, if you want,’ she drawled.
‘What about this potato-scented glue?’
The lady put a hairy arm on the counter.
‘You think that’s the first joke anybody ever cracked about the food here, honey?’
‘What joke?’
She narrowed her eyes at me.
At our table, Whitt peeled the lid off another of his Boy Scout Cuisine delights. It was butter chicken with basmati rice. Butter chicken was a down-and-out favourite of mine back in Sydney; my treat whenever I lost a case, or my perp got away, or my victim failed to testify against her attacker. The smell of it made something in my stomach twist. I munched on my dry sausage.
‘Sitting there staring at me like that won’t make this meal taste any less amazing,’ Whitt said, stirring his rice.
‘Maybe it’ll do something for the flavour of mine,’ I said.
He leaned over and scraped some of his butter chicken onto my plate. I had to remind myself that he was a spy and a liar, and not my friend, as I gratefully accepted the food.
‘How’s the case?’ Gabe Carter said as he dropped into the seat beside me. His plate was full of camp food and his helmet was caked in dust.
‘Two words. Blake Korby,’ I said.
‘I know that name,’ Gabe frowned.
‘Miner. Engineering department. The medical centre staff just confirmed that he was treated for severe blisters, sunburn and heat stroke a few months ago. A little birdy told us it was because he tried to rip off the Bilbies, so they dragged him out into the desert and made him walk back.’
‘Ah, yes, I heard that.’ Gabe nodded. ‘I was on leave at the time, so I wasn’t here to see it, but I heard it was bad. I don’t think it was over money, though. I think he got a bit rough with one of their girls and they wanted to send a message.’
‘Maybe we should be taking a closer look at them,’ I said.
‘I
don’t know.’ Gabe shifted uncomfortably. ‘I don’t know if that helps you guys at all. Those girls are not what they’re cracked up to be.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean they’re good people. Some of them come from some very rough circumstances, and when they act out it’s because that’s how they were taught. I don’t think they’d ever kill anyone. None of them are that vindictive.’
I’d got to know plenty of prostitutes in my work back in Sydney, and Gabe was right – half of the working girls I knew were gentle people caught up in the wrong life. But the other half, I’d learned, were like anyone else living on the edge of society. Dangerous and desperate, the kind of people who would do anything to survive.
‘How do you know so much about these ladies?’ I asked. I was surprised by my sharp tone. ‘You use their services?’
‘No!’ Gabe laughed. ‘Not me. No thanks. I know it from chatting to them. That Beth, she likes a glass of wine and a good gossip just like anybody else.’
A smile crept over my face. I quickly dropped it as soon as I felt it form.
‘Tell us about those activists, then,’ Whitt said.
Gabe’s face darkened. ‘Now there’s a bunch of proper suspects,’ he said.
Chapter 32
‘I’VE ALWAYS BEEN very wary of the EarthSoldiers,’ Gabe went on. ‘I think they’re smarter than people give them credit for.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Well, firstly, they’ve been out there for eight months.’ Gabe pointed to the desert. ‘Sure, OK, some of their people have been swapped out for new people, but their overall presence hasn’t let up. If you ask me, anybody with the money and resources to survive out there for that long shouldn’t be underestimated.’
‘Why don’t the camp bosses just send a security detail to shoo them away?’ Whitt said.
‘They’ve tried. But the activists keep their camp mobile, so whenever Linebacker gets a security detail together to go and chase them down they’re not where they were last time. They know the desert. They know how to get in and out of this mine. They know which pieces of equipment to take down, and when they’re going to be left unguarded.’
‘They sound like a wily bunch,’ I said.
‘You don’t know the half of it.’ He leaned forward. ‘Linebacker got a team onto them once and pinned them down in a cave out there. His guys come bursting in with guns and torches, and sure, maybe they were a bit heavy-handed. They’d been hunting the activists for weeks. They got excited. Well, disaster strikes when Linebacker’s team realises the activists are running a live blog.’
‘A live blog?’
‘It’s called Operation Desert Storm. Cute, right? They run cameras in their camp 24/7. These cameras feed video to the EarthSoldiers website. The website counts how many days they’ve been out here, fighting the cause against the mine. People all around the world can tune in at any moment and see what they’re up to, whether they’re sleeping in the sand or protesting at the gate or whatever.’
‘Pretty powerful fundraiser, I imagine,’ Whitt commented.
‘I don’t know.’ Gabe shrugged. ‘All I know is there was plenty of upset after footage of Linebacker’s team storming the activists’ camp hit YouTube. One of the girls got pushed to the ground and hurt her ankle. Even CNN picked up the video. They threatened to shut down the mine. The orders now from the bosses are that no one touches the activists. They’re red-hot.’
The door to the chow hall slammed and Linebacker himself came creeping in, the wiry security guard going straight to the coffee station to survey the dwindling supply. While Whitt and I watched the man with apprehension, Gabe smiled and raised an arm in a friendly salute.
‘Aaron!’ he called. ‘Aaron! Borrow you for a minute?’
Linebacker shuffled over, his hard hands brushing uncomfortably at the front of his immaculate uniform.
‘Aaron Linbacher, you’ve met Detectives Blue and Whittacker?’
‘Meh,’ Linebacker grunted.
‘The detectives are interested in hearing about the Earth-Soldiers.’
‘The EarthSoldiers?’ Linebacker looked away, disgusted. ‘Terrorists. Insurgents, the lot of them.’
‘That’s a bit of a heavy accusation,’ Whitt said. ‘Can you really call what they’re doing “terrorism”?’
The older man glared at Whitt and folded his arms across his chest. ‘Terrorism is ideologically motivated violence or threat of violence,’ he said. ‘It is cowardly behaviour designed to intimidate.’
‘I know what terrorism is,’ Whitt said, smiling. ‘I just don’t see the violence or threat of violence in what they’re doing.’
Linebacker bristled. ‘On 5 April this year a three-tonne steamroller over in the E7 quadrant malfunctioned while it was being used to surface one of the equipment roads,’ Linebacker said. ‘Our engineers inspected the machine and found that the brake cable had been sabotaged.’
‘The brake cable and the accelerator cable in those things look sort of the same,’ Gabe said. ‘It’s possible the activists got their wires crossed.’
‘That’s not the point!’ Linebacker snapped. ‘Doing something that recklessly endangers the lives of others for an ideological cause is terrorism! I talked to the fence group after the incident and told them what they’d done. Told them someone could have been killed. You know what they said? Huh?’
‘What?’ I asked.
‘They said, “Close the mine, and no one gets killed.”’
Chapter 33
THE HUNTSMAN SPIDER had taken up residence on the wall above my pillow, a hairy brown star hanging in a cork sky. When I turned on my phone, I found it full of messages about Sam. I’d been keeping the device on silent so that no one would hear the almost ceaseless bleeps that had started with the first news reports. I had sixty-two missed calls. The message list was full of phone numbers I didn’t recognise, journalists from every paper in the country. I lay on my bunk and read them as Whitt talked with Forensics in Perth about Danny’s foot.
Some of the messages were kind, careful enquiries. Some were not.
How does it feel to know your brother is a serial killer?
Harriet, can you comment on Minister Boyd’s call re bringing back the death penalty for Sam?
Detective Blue, were you/Sam sexually abused in foster care system? Possible motive for killings? Please reply!
There was one number I did recognise. Julius Dean’s mother had been a foster carer who had taken Sam and me on for a short period when I was eight years old. Julius had been eight as well, and very understanding of our strange ways – the anxiety about food I developed from being lumped in with hordes of hungry, unwanted kids in homes all across Australia. The plans my brother and I were constantly making to run away.
Julius, Sam and I had been friends until we had been moved on to another family. He’d come to visit me as I’d lain awake some nights in the fold-out bed in the back room, a bad sleeper himself as a kid. We’d talked about his mother. I’d lain awake after he was gone, imagining what it might have been like to have one of my own. I recognised now, as an adult, that the boy Julius had probably had a crush on me. Without knowing how long I’d be in his life, the boy’d probably been taken with the new and interesting little girl who’d come to live with him, with her stories of families and schools far away. I’d either ignored it, or been oblivious to it at the time. I’d never had childhood crushes. I knew I’d never be anywhere for long.
They brought Sam in here for a medical exam, Julius’s text read.
I sat up. How could I have forgotten? Julius was an outpatient doctor at the Prince of Wales Hospital! They would have brought Sam into the hospital to be physically processed. They’d have photographed him, taken samples of his fingernails, blood, skin, urine. If an insanity plea was on the table, an MRI and CT scan, as well as a physiological exam, had probably been ordered by Sam’s lawyer. I texted Julius right back.
What should I know? How wa
s he?
Julius replied almost instantly. Big scratch on neck. Many small scratches on forearms. Consistent with fingernails. Old enough to fit with death of last victim. I’m sorry, Harry.
My hands were shaking as I wrote back.
How was he? I repeated.
Cold, Julius wrote.
I put the phone away and sat cracking my aching knuckles.
Chapter 34
WHITT ENDED HIS phone call.
‘Alright,’ he said, looking at his notes. ‘Danny’s foot tells us a bunch of things that might be very useful. Firstly, blood and tissue samples had a normal isotonic intracellular level.’
‘English, please.’ I stretched out on the bunk, my face in my pillow.
‘His blood plasma levels were normal. When you suffer dehydration, your plasma levels drop. His didn’t. He also had normal electrolyte levels – the sodium in Danny’s blood when he died was steady.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘So it’s reasonable to conclude he wasn’t out there, wandering around the desert, lost, for any significant period of time.’
‘What if he was, and had water with him?’
‘I thought about that. If he had water, that accounts for his normal electrolyte levels. But listen to this: the team took samples from the mine sand when they collected the foot. The sand in and around the mine has high concentrations of the airborne chemicals produced by the mining equipment. Carbon. Petroleum. Ethanol. The sand in the desert is chemical free. So if Danny was out there for any major length of time, the sand in his boot would have been mostly chemical free. Deep-desert sand.’
‘And it wasn’t?’ I said into my pillow.
‘No, it wasn’t. There was a thin layer of deep-desert sand, enough to suggest he walked around a little. But not enough to suggest he walked all the way out there. Or that he was there for hours and hours.’
I turned slightly. ‘So if he didn’t walk from the mine, he got into the desert by other means. And he was only there briefly before he died. Not long enough for his boots to fill up with deep-desert sand.’