Never Never

  ‘That’s what it looks like.’

  ‘So what did he go there for? If he didn’t walk, he must have driven. Why drive out into the middle of the desert?’

  ‘No idea,’ Whitt said.

  ‘If he did drive, why didn’t the search teams find the car?’ I said.

  ‘Which car?’

  ‘Any car. Say Danny drove into the desert alone, and died somehow. Why isn’t the car still there?’

  ‘Good point.’ Whitt made some notes.

  ‘If he drove with someone, and that someone drove the car back, who the hell was that someone and what did they do to Danny?’

  ‘Exactly.’ Whitt nodded.

  The darkness and softness of my pillow felt deliciously safe. Even straightening up again, opening my eyes to the room, seemed too much of a threat to my psyche. If I could just hide in the pillow, I might not think about Sam. Cold, callous Sam, covered in the defensive scratches of women he had abducted and . . .

  ‘What’s wrong with you, then?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘Well there’s no time for being tired. Let’s go grab you a coffee at the chow hall, and then we’ll –’

  Whitt’s words trailed off. On the radio in the next room, the chatter and advertising had broken and the theme song of the six o’clock news sprang to life. I heard Whitt’s bunk creak, and when I looked up, he was gone.

  Chapter 35

  I LEAPT UP and ran out of the donga after him. Half of me was driven by Whitt’s strange behaviour, and the other half was snatching gratefully at a distraction, any distraction, from my thoughts about Sam.

  ‘Hey!’ I called. Whitt was already halfway across the accommodation yard when I caught up to him. ‘Hey, what are you doing?’

  ‘Oh, I just thought I’d get you that coffee.’ He laughed uneasily. ‘I thought we should go, and then I thought I’d just go myself and –’

  ‘Cut the bullshit, Whitt.’ I shoved at his shoulder. ‘You think I haven’t noticed you disappearing like a fucking ninja every time the news comes on? What the hell are you up to?’

  ‘Up to?’ he scoffed. ‘I’m not up to anything!’

  ‘You disappeared last night just in time to miss a cute little news report on your former partner, Detective Carmody.’ I poked him in the chest this time. ‘He got an award. Strange thing though, some other guy got an award, too. His partner of fifteen years.’

  ‘Cops can have two partners, Blue.’

  ‘Not in my department they don’t.’

  ‘You’re being very nosy.’ Whitt straightened. ‘I don’t think it’s fair. There’s no reason for it.’

  ‘Oh, I just want to get to know you better, Whitt,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you tell me more about that back injury?’

  ‘Actually, that’s a good idea. Why don’t you tell me why you’re out here?’ he said. ‘We never got to that, did we? Let’s get into it. Let’s get into a long, deep discussion about Sam, whoever he is, and why you’re having such a difficult time getting to talk to him on the phone. Let’s have a discussion about why your phone was lighting up all night long. Why are you getting so many calls? Who’s calling you?’

  ‘You’re an arsehole.’

  ‘I’m an arsehole?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And a liar.’

  ‘That’s hardly an answer to my questions, Harriet.’

  ‘I’ll answer your questions when you answer mine.’

  We stared at each other in the fading afternoon light. Some miners had stopped nearby to watch the fray, and as we fell into angry silence they shuffled on, disappointed we hadn’t come to blows.

  Chapter 36

  I TOOK SOME time off from Whitt at the very edge of the mine, watching as the great red sun sank below the horizon. Though only three days, it felt like a month since we had arrived at the camp, and my heart was heavy with guilt that I’d made so little progress on finding out what had happened to Danny, Tori and Hon. Amy’s eyes as she finally let the concern for her sister overwhelm her tortured me. They were the eyes of someone facing a future maybe completely free of answers.

  Tell me she’s not down one of those holes.

  All I knew was that Danny’s death felt sinister. And I didn’t believe that Tori and Hon had taken off on their own account. The meagre physical evidence we had so far on Danny pointed not to a young man who’d got cabin fever and wandered out into the desert on his own. Someone had taken him out there.

  And from his message in the notebook, it seemed to me like he hadn’t wanted to go. Had the others met the same fate?

  I sat on the stairs of an empty donga and browsed around the internet on my phone, testing the theory of the Earth-Soldier activists and their apparent ‘terrorism’.

  As it turned out, there was such a thing as ‘ecoterrorism’: violence threatened or carried out in the name of saving the environment. I glanced at cases of ‘tree-spikers’ in the Amazon during the 1960s and 70s, who secretly hammered iron nails into the trunks of trees that tore apart the chainsaws of loggers. In some cases, this had caused the loggers serious injury, and tree-clearing programs had been stopped out of fear of deaths. There were plenty of groups accused of ecoterrorism for setting fire to mills, power plants and animal testing facilities without care for who might be inside. I searched for convictions, and there were plenty.

  Marie Mason, twenty-two years in prison for burning down a research facility working on genetically modified crops.

  Daniel Gerard McGowan, seven years in prison for burning down a lumber mill.

  The FBI website described how members of two organisations in the US, the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front, liked to threaten and stalk individual employees of companies they opposed. They’d send letters to company officials threatening the families of the men they employed.

  The EarthSoldiers themselves were an organisation with environmental and political protesters across the globe. There were EarthSoldiers chaining themselves to logging equipment in Tasmania and more of them chasing down Japanese whaling ships in the Indian Ocean. There were EarthSoldier activists camped out in the desert in African countries, trying to disrupt bands of poachers. The pride of their website was their ‘live’ protest coverage. Visitors to the website needed only to click and they could view real-time footage of several EarthSoldier protest sites.

  I tried to view the webcam coverage under the title ‘Operation Desert Storm: Western Australia’. A text message from a journalist interrupted the loading of the stream.

  Detective Blue, 60 Minutes producer Tony Gardener here. I’d like to offer you $400,000 for an exclusive interview on Sam. Let’s talk!

  I pocketed the phone in disgust.

  Chapter 37

  OUT IN THE desert, I saw a light.

  It glistened just once in the dark, a flash of something circular, like a lens in a pair of glasses sparkling at just the right angle in the moonlight. I stood staring at the spot where I’d seen it until my vision blurred, but I didn’t see it again. It must be the activists, wandering back to their camp from the fence. I glanced back towards our donga in the distance and decided I didn’t need Lieutenant Liar’s help on this lead. I walked along the fence to the gate, glancing up at the CCTV cameras as I headed out into the dark.

  I’d been a night wanderer as a kid. I was as moody and acid-tongued as most people my age when I was a teenager, but I was also exhausted with the game – the foster-system cycle that put my brother and me with young parents with big dreams. Couples in their twenties, looking to do something ‘different’ and ‘daring’ by adopting a pair of troubled teens, would take us both on for a few months’ trial period. Sweethearted Sharon and Dashing Dave from Mosman, their eyes gleaming with hope that one day Sam would call Dave ‘Dad’ and I’d break down in gratitude to Sharon for saving me from my destructive self.

  The placements always went the same way. Badly.

  Sam would give Daddy Dave one too many hateful stares
over the top of his paperback novel, headphones screaming in his ears, and Sharon would become uncomfortable with a certain look Dave gave me as I lounged poolside in my bikini, and our new happy family would crumble.

  So I’d walked at night to escape the pretending. If they locked me in, I climbed out the windows to tour the streets. I liked to know I could escape, physically, if I needed to. That they could shuffle me around, but they couldn’t cage me.

  The desert wind whipped my hair as I rose out of my memories and back into the present. I hadn’t realised how far from the camp I’d strayed. I looked back in the direction I thought the mine was, but saw only blackness. I must have been walking downhill, I decided, and lost the mine over the rise of rocky land. I turned and walked back the way I’d come, but in what felt like ten minutes there was still no sight of the lights of the mine.

  I must have been turned around somehow. I stopped in the dark and listened to the howling of the wind.

  The wind had been coming from the east when I left the camp.

  Hadn’t it?

  The sky was mottled with fast-moving clouds. My mouth was bone dry. Where were the activists? If I called, would they hear me? Did I want them to hear me?

  I’d tucked my gun into the back of my jeans as I’d left to be away from Whitt, a habitual thing I did when I was feeling like the world was against me. I was glad to have it. My gratitude swelled when I heard footsteps nearby, the sole of a boot crunching over slippery rocks.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I yelled, drawing my weapon.

  ‘I can see you,’ a voice whispered.

  Chapter 38

  ‘STOP WHERE YOU are!’ I yelled.

  ‘I give up,’ Gabe Carter laughed. ‘Don’t shoot.’

  The moon peered out from beneath the clouds, and I recognised his burly figure in the dark.

  ‘Oh, Jesus. What the fuck is wrong with you?’ I pushed him hard so that he stumbled backwards.

  ‘Sorry. I couldn’t resist. I saw you when you came over that rise there.’

  ‘I’m lost,’ I admitted. ‘Hopelessly lost.’

  ‘I thought that might be the case. Luckily, I’m willing to assist. I’ll show you the way back for . . .’ He looked at the sky. ‘Oh . . . a hundred bucks?’

  ‘I’ll give you a hundred stitches if you don’t shut up and take me home.’

  ‘Come on.’ He took my arm. ‘This way.’

  We walked in the darkness, up over rises and down into valleys. I’d followed a gentle slope and gone around a curve, he told me, probably letting the stars lead me as they shifted across the sky.

  ‘What the hell are you doing out here?’ I asked.

  ‘I like to walk at night. See the stars. It makes me feel . . . free, I guess. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘I think I do.’

  I had no idea I’d travelled so far. It was frightening to have been so lost in my own thoughts, creeping further and further into danger like a swimmer being pulled out to sea by a smooth current.

  ‘It’s like an ocean out here,’ Gabe said, as though he’d read my thoughts. ‘Can’t tell the distances in the dark. No landmarks. Well, not unless you’re trained to see them.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Over there,’ he said. ‘That’s Venus. The yellow one by the horizon. If you head that way, you know you’re going west.’

  ‘I can’t see where you’re pointing.’ I blinked. ‘It’s pitch black out here.’

  His warm hands fell on my shoulders, travelled down my arm, and I smiled secretly as he lifted my hand straight out. His big, hard fingers encased mine, taking my index finger and guiding it towards the distant planet.

  ‘That way,’ he said. ‘The yellow one.’

  ‘Ah, right.’

  ‘That’s Venus. That one’s Saturn. If you follow that one, you’re going south-west. The Square of Pegasus is to the north, there. That lot over there is the Southern Cross.’

  ‘I know what the Southern Cross looks like. It’s on the bloody flag.’ I elbowed him in the stomach.

  ‘Alright, genius. So now you should be right to find your way home, then.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ I said, smiling. ‘You can lead on. I hate to interrupt a guy when he’s doing a good job.’

  I followed the big shadow before me, strangely happy. Was I actually laughing with this man in the middle of the desert, even with all that was going on back home? Was I really thinking about his warm hands on mine, when all around me my life lay in ruins?

  Over a rocky rise, the orange lights of the mine rose bright and inviting. My mood plummeted when Linebacker emerged from his guard station as we arrived back at the gates.

  ‘You two.’ He pointed at us, and then the ground. ‘Here, now.’

  As we approached his office, I noticed Gabe’s outfit. He was wearing a black tracksuit and heavy black boots.

  ‘You were out of bounds,’ Linebacker snapped. ‘Do you have any explanation for it?’

  ‘Well, I was just taking a walk,’ Gabe said, ‘and I happened to run into Detect–’

  ‘You have no official explanation for your infringement. No special approval,’ Linebacker said.

  ‘Infringement?’ I scoffed. ‘Mate, don’t get your utility belt in a twist. We were only going for a walk.’

  ‘Aren’t you only here on the camp because one of our miners went for an unapproved walk into the wilderness?’ Linebacker sneered.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘As a matter of fact, I’m not.’

  ‘He didn’t walk out there?’ Gabe asked.

  ‘No. He drove. Or he was driven. It’s unlikely but nonetheless possible that he flew. But he did not walk.’

  Linebacker stomped back into his tiny office block, slamming open the door and muttering to himself. I noticed a huge black rifle with a gigantic scope leaning upright in an electronic case bolted to the floor by his desk. An iron bar slid through the trigger, and a ring around the gun’s barrel meant it couldn’t be released from the case without a code. It must have been the thing he used to hunt the dingoes.

  ‘I’m writing both of you up,’ Linebacker said, reappearing with a large blue notepad.

  ‘Writing us up! For what, a detention? Give me a break.’ I turned and started walking. Gabe followed.

  ‘This is going in the incident log. I’m compiling an official report!’ Linebacker yelled after us. ‘A detailed summary of the type and regularity of security breaches!’

  ‘Loser,’ I told Gabe. ‘Complete loser.’

  ‘Aw, come on. It makes him feel important,’ Gabe said. ‘He thinks he’s at the forefront of everyone’s safety. He’s the thin blue line between us and the black abyss.’

  Chapter 39

  THE SOLDIER STOOD nearby and waited in the pitch dark of the tunnel while the traitor came to her senses. The walls of the tight space were illuminated within his night-vision goggles, the poorly braced walls and roof of an exploratory tunnel a long way from the main vein of the mine.

  As she came to from the dull blow to the back of her head, Amy groped in the dark before her. She even swiped at her own eyes with the back of her hand, terrified she was blind. Soon enough the rich, damp smell of the earth hit her, and she realised she was deep in the mine. From the sheer heat she had to know she was far from the moonlit surface.

  The Soldier shifted, and Amy twitched at the sound of rocks crumbling beneath his boots. Her mouth was open and her chest heaving with terror. The Soldier took no joy in seeing her terrified. For the sake of the code, he needed to give her the same chance he gave the others. He was a fair man – a man with principles.

  As she was a woman, his duty would be particularly difficult tonight. Crossing through Torkham, it was the two women he’d encountered there who had haunted his dreams in the early months of his deployment, not the dozens and dozens of faceless men and boys whose beards and bright smiles made them all blend into one.

  It had been a good trick. The younger of the women had been standing outside the c
rude house on the side of the road with what must have been her mother, holding armfuls of cheap plastic flowers and bags full of sheer pira. The two were waiting for the rabble inside the house to get into the cars and leave for the wedding. The young woman was garbed in traditional royal-blue and fuchsia robes trimmed with gold. She’d smiled so sweetly as the first of the convoy units stopped to watch the peasant family emerging in all their finery.

  The young bride had taken out six soldiers herself with the bomb vest, getting right up close to the first vehicle’s driver window by offering the sweets. The mother had killed two more and disabled a tank travelling second in the line. The women always came up with the best ruses. They’d fake helplessness as their donkey lay by the side of the road, luring good men to their deaths. They’d run screaming from packs of men, robes torn, pretending they’d been raped and escaping into the arms of the enemy. They’d send their young sons and daughters forward to beg for water, strapped with dynamite.

  The Soldier’s detachment had slaughtered the phony wedding family. But the justice they served was too late.

  He shook those bloody memories away now and tossed the mining helmet at Amy’s feet. He came to attention and cast his eyes away from her as he prepared to give his instructions.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she wailed.

  ‘If you reach the surface before me, I’ll let you live,’ he began.

  ‘What the fuck?’

  ‘The tunnel in which you stand runs east–west on bearings zero-seven-zero and two-five-zero respectively,’ he reported, his voice filling the small space. ‘At its shallowest, the tunnel is one-point-five-six kilometres below sea level, and at its deepest is one-point-nine-nine kilometres below sea level.’

  ‘What the fuck is this?’ Amy staggered, clutching at the walls in the dark. ‘What the fuck!’

  ‘Four hundred and eighty-one metres along the tunnel running east, your weapon is waiting.’ He swivelled, and pointed down the tunnel behind him as though she could see him. ‘Four hundred and eighty-one metres along the tunnel running west, my weapon is waiting. We’re greenlit, soldier.’