‘OK, I’m with you.’
‘I think these guys acquired that gold from somewhere illegally,’ Kash said. ‘I think Theo Campbell found them with it, and he took it off their hands. We know from what Bella Destro said that Chief Campbell didn’t always play by the rules. He might have stopped them on the road. Or maybe they were acting weird and he was snooping around them for drugs. I don’t know. But somehow he discovered them with it, and decided he’d just take it.’
‘Hmm.’ I nodded along.
‘Now the guys have got a problem. They need to get rid of Theo Campbell. But there are seventy-five people in the town and they’re no angels. They’re likely to be the first suspects. How do they get rid of Campbell and control the circumstances around the investigation?’
‘Control the circumstances?’
‘I’m talking war tactics.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. In hostile situations, you strategise to control how your enemy thinks and reacts, bait them, feed them false information.’
‘They constructed the diary,’ I said. ‘Used it as bait to make sure we’d connect it with the bombing on the hill. They provided us with the answers before we asked any questions. We went looking for an angry teen.’
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘We’ve been totally distracted, looking for vengeful young spree killers in training. Lone-wolf terrorists. They put Zac Taby right under our noses.’
‘So why kill him? He was a great suspect.’
‘Maybe they weren’t after Taby.’ He shrugged. ‘Any of us could have got in that car. Maybe they weren’t planning on any of us actually getting in. Zac got into the car at night. It was dark. In the daytime, someone would have looked in and seen those gas bottles in the back seat. It’s possible they were just trying to scare us. Make us evacuate the town.’
‘Eighty thousand dollars is a lot of money,’ I said. ‘But it’s not much shared between four men. And if the whole goal was the get their rocks back, why didn’t they take them?’
‘Maybe what we found at Campbell’s house is just the tip of the iceberg,’ Kash said. ‘Maybe there’s so much gold they could all start new lives on it. And Theo Campbell was threatening to bring all their grand plans crashing down.’
I stared at the house before us. A little fibro shack in the middle of a hole in the middle of nowhere. I could imagine the temptation presented to people like these, scraping out a living from the hard earth. Zac Taby had wanted to run away. Did these men hear the same call of the horizon?
‘Remember how the gold was packed?’ Kash said. ‘Wrapped in black plastic. Bound with duct tape. Why wrap it like that? Because you want to store it, disguise it, and ship it.’
I sat up and grabbed the criminal record sheets we’d printed out that morning for the crew inside the house.
Jace Robit. Domestic assault. Robbery. Possession of a prohibited substance.
Frank Scullen, assault, grievous bodily harm, theft.
John Stieg and Damien Ponch both had records for fraud. There were also domestic assaults, the complainants their wives.
Kash was right. These men were not the town’s most upstanding citizens. They had every reason to want to get away from this life, and the willingness to do it in an underhanded way.
‘So what are they going to do?’ I said. ‘They’ve already killed two people. They think we’re well down the wrong track in the investigation. Are they just going to leave quietly?’
‘I don’t know,’ Kash said. ‘It worries me that they removed the massacre plan page. Maybe they just thought it was too much. But maybe they …’
He sighed, his voice uneven.
‘Maybe they’ll try to go out with a blast,’ he continued. ‘A smoke screen. Slip away in the chaos.’
The microphone crackled.
‘I sure as fuck hope so!’ someone shouted. ‘I hope he suffered big-time, the little … I tell you what, this place would be better off with a quarter … its inhabitants. Seventy-five was far too … many. Seventy-three now. We’re getting closer to perfect.’
The microphone crackled and went silent. I thumped the speaker sitting on the console between us.
‘This thing is rubbish,’ I said. ‘We need to get closer.’
‘I’ve already conducted a risk assessment,’ Kash said. ‘This is our most effective reconnaissance base. We can do another assessment in forty-seven minutes, if the wind changes, maybe.’
I listened quietly to Kash’s reasoning, then opened the car door and got out. Kash was behind me by the time I got to the edge of the property, crouching in the bracken.
A handful of locusts, disturbed by my presence, fluttered up and around me. The sun was immediately blazing on my already burned face. I shielded myself against it and crept to the wire fence, to a collection of rusty steel drums.
‘Don’t get us killed, Harry,’ Kash murmured as he crept up behind me. ‘This is Jace’s property. If he shoots us he’ll have three witnesses to tell the cops it was self-defence.’
‘What if I kill them?’ I said. ‘What are you gonna say?’
He rolled his eyes at me, shifted forwards and signalled for me to wait. His combat tactics would get us up beside the house without being seen. I held on to the back of his belt, waited, sweating, for him to move.
He pointed forwards and we rushed into the field towards the house.
Chapter 87
THE GRASS WAS waist high. I huffed with exertion just keeping up with my partner. Though my injuries from the explosion had been mild, it taken a lot out of me. We flitted across the field and stopped short beneath a window. Kash checked under the house and then flattened on the ground and started crawling underneath on his belly. It was hard to commando-crawl with a broken arm. I dragged myself forwards with him, sweat sticking the dust to my cheeks.
The floorboards creaked a metre above our heads. I twisted onto my side and lay in the dirt, watching my partner’s face, his glasses fogging with condensation.
‘It’s not going to be a problem for much longer,’ someone said. ‘We get whatever the hell we can over the next couple of days, and then we go.’
‘Your wife’s going to be the one that’ll give us trouble, Johnno,’ someone else said. ‘Does she have any idea what we’re doin’?’
‘Nah, mate. No way. She doesn’t have a clue. If any of youse touch her, mate, I’ll fuckin’ stab ya.’
‘Do as he says,’ someone said. It sounded like Jace. ‘Leave her alone. We don’t want anyone drawing attention to us until we can get everything into place. After it’s done we’ll be outta here.’
Kash and I stared at the dirt between us, listening to the micro-sounds as they came through the boards. Someone flipping the cap off a bottle of beer, the hiss of the compressed air escaping. Someone was standing right over us, causing dust to trickle down into our hair.
‘I know this probably sounds weird,’ a voice said. ‘But do youse ever, I dunno. Have you ever thought about maybe stayin’ once it’s over?’
‘Stayin’? Here? Mate, are you nuts? This place is a fuckin’ shithole. We’re talkin’ about changin’ everythin’. Why the fuck would you want to stay?’
‘I guess I feel like I would kinda miss my kids, you know.’
There was silence. The men moved around, open and closed doors. There was a horse race playing on a television or radio somewhere. At least two of them fell to cheering the horses on. Groans of joy or sorrow, I couldn’t tell, as the race ended.
‘What time do you want to go out there tonight, then?’ someone said.
Jace Robit replied. ‘Usual time. Get out there at eight.’
Kash and I looked at each other. I saw movement out on the road and twisted slightly, squinted in the light.
‘Oh, shit.’
‘What?’
‘Digger. The town dog. Look.’
Out on the road, the plump grey mutt was trotting along on its own, tongue waggling limply between its jaws. No clue where it was going, no sign of where it had
come from. I knew that if there was one thing that dogs got excited about, other than food, it was humans lying on the ground. If the dog saw us, our risk assessment score would be through the roof.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
‘Oh God, don’t let it look over here,’ I breathed. I heard the floorboards above me creak. ‘Don’t move. Don’t look at it. Maybe it won’t see us.’
As is typical with my luck, I chanced a look at the road just as Digger was glancing over into the shadows beneath the house. The dog stopped short, lifted her head, sniffed the air. I fancied I saw her smile as she began to bound towards us.
‘Shit!’ Kash seethed. He sprang to his hands and knees, unsure of what to do. ‘Fucking thing!’
The dog was running at us, barking with joy. I heard the men in the house above us shifting, moving to the front of the house, following the commotion.
Chapter 88
‘GO,’ I TOLD Kash. ‘Get to cover. I’ll distract it.’
Kash scampered to the back of the house, around the brick foundations, and disappeared between the long grass. Digger slammed into me, a flurry of licking and happy barks.
‘What is that thing doing?’ I heard Jace sneer from above me. ‘Fucking dog.’
I clamped my hands around the dog’s muzzle. She gave a happy growl, tried to play-bite the cast on my arm.
‘What’s it got?’ someone asked from the couch. ‘A roo?’
‘Dunno. I’ll go have a look.’
I crawled around the foundations, looking for somewhere to hide. If Jace Robit found me down here, he’d know I’d heard their plans to ‘change everything’, to abandon their kids and wives. A group of men fleeing after a dramatic act, whatever it might be. If he found me now … I gripped the bricks, tried to contain the rising panic.
I looked up. There was a narrow gap between the brick-work and one of the wooden beams that crossed the bottom of the house. Just wide enough to snuggle in to, just deep enough to hide in. I didn’t know if I was strong enough to crawl up into it, to hold myself wedged in the space. But I had to try. I gathered a handful of the dry, powdery dirt from beneath me.
‘Sorry, dog,’ I whispered. I flung the dirt in the dog’s eyes. The animal yelped, twisted sideways. I put my feet into the gap beside the bricks and pulled myself upwards.
Digger was blinded and ran out from beneath the house, trying to scrape at its eyes with its paws. Already my broken arm, braced against the wooden beam, was screaming with pain. I closed my eyes and held my stomach in, thought about stone, concrete, solid things. I was a part of the house. I was invisible. I heard Jace Robit walking down the porch stairs mere metres from me.
Something was crawling along my side. Something big. I hoped it was a locust. At least a huntsman spider, those big, hairy but harmless creatures. I prayed silently that it wasn’t a red-back. Its needle-like legs were creeping slowly up my armpit, over the top of my shoulder.
‘What’s wrong with ya? Ya stupid mongrel.’ Robit’s feet appeared beside the dog. He crouched and I tucked my head up against the floorboards. My legs were starting to shake. I shifted my weight from one to the other, pushing hard against the walls of my little hidey-hole with my arms. I could hear the man breathing, feel his gaze wandering over the dirt beneath me. Sweat was rolling down my ribs, collecting in the front of my shirt. The crawling thing walked across my ear and over my temple. I squeezed my eyes shut as it wandered over the bridge of my nose. The urge to scream was all-consuming. Exhale. Scream. Relax. Fall. Give up, Harry. You can’t do this.
I heard Jace’s leather boots creak as he stood.
‘Get moving, idiot.’ He kicked the dog until it began to trot away. Jace sniffed and spat as he climbed the stairs back up to the house.
I collapsed onto the ground with a thud and peeled the spider from my hair, flicking it away. An enormous red-back. It rolled in the dust, oil-black legs wiggling, righted itself and crept away.
Chapter 89
WHITT STOOD BY the table at the very back of the police briefing room as the officers assembled in the chairs around him. Tox stood beside him, slowly devouring a Mint Slice biscuit, examining the treat closely between bites. It took all of Whitt’s resolve not to knock it out of his hand. His nerves were frazzled, and crumbs were falling all over the floor. Whitt needed control, perfection, now more than ever.
He’d learned little more about Tox’s deadly reputation, the murders he was supposed to have committed as a child. The man’s records were sealed, and rumours of the event varied wildly. It seemed far more fashionable to simply join the masses and hate Tate ‘Toxic’ Barnes than it was to be certain of the facts. Whitt was certain he didn’t hate Tox. But he was far too nervous to like him, either.
‘Alright, listen up,’ Chief Morris said. The squat old man commanded the attention of the room. Young officers who had been laughing and chatting turned around in their seats. ‘We’ll make this short so you can get back out on the road. We’re getting a lot of calls from members of the public who have seen men fitting the EFIT description of McBeal’s abductor. You’re doing a good job attending to them. We’re hoping to hone the search now with some new information we’ve just received.’
Tox seemed to get part of his biscuit stuck in his throat. He thumped his chest with his fist. Whitt winced.
‘Forensics have done a sweep of the Pinkerton Hotel. Even though we’ve restricted the analysis to the underground basement where Caitlyn was kept, there are still hundreds and hundreds of prints, and we can’t tell which ones are relevant. It’s taking time to narrow them down. We’ve been fast-tracking the prints through the national database and some interesting characters have started turning up. We’ve shown their pictures to Caitlyn, but she hasn’t identified anyone. It’s likely some of these guys might have changed their appearance since they were last in contact with police. Some of the photographs are very old.’
Six images sprang onto the screen. All white men with the dazed, tired look of inmates appearing for mugshots, their mouths downturned and eyes distant. Three were bearded. One wore thick-framed red glasses, smiling with missing front teeth.
‘Take a good look,’ Chief Morris said. ‘Some of these guys are off the grid. Long-term addicts, ex-cons. This one, Regan Banks, has a murder charge from fifteen years ago. This one, Malcolm Donovan, does too. All the others have served time. Robberies, assaults, that sort of thing. But one of them might be our guy. You’re going to split into teams and each track one of these guys down, bring them in for questioning.’
Chief Morris pushed a button on a nearby laptop and another screen full of dead-eyed men appeared. Someone was walking through the tables handing out printed copies of the faces.
‘We need to nab this guy before he does any more damage. This isn’t over, people,’ Chief Morris said. ‘Not by a long shot.’
‘I’m gonna split off,’ Tox said through the remnants of a second biscuit. ‘Gotta go check on Harry’s place. You wanna come?’
‘No, I’m going to stay here.’ Whitt rubbed his face, pushed his fingers into his eye sockets and massaged the muscles there. It had been twenty-four solid hours since they found Caitlyn McBeal. Thirty-six or so since he had slept. They had been out most of the day driving around, following operational calls, running in and out of buildings looking for men with shaved heads. His temples were throbbing. ‘I’m going to put my head down in the coffee room so I can be here if they get a call.’
‘Right.’ Tox gave Whitt a slap on the arm and yanked his flak jacket off. He dropped it on the tabletop beside his partner. ‘I’ll be back later.’
Whitt watched his partner go without knowing that he wouldn’t be back at all.
Chapter 90
IT WASN’T OVER for Regan.
He stood by the windows of the discount electronics store and watched the pictures flashing on the huge flat screens, ran a hand over his shaven skull. Twelve men the police wanted to speak to in relation to the abduction of Caitlyn McBeal, and p
ossibly the Georges River killings. In the top right-hand corner of the screen, he saw his own face. Regan was sunken-cheeked and scruffy-haired in the picture, wearing the beard he’d grown in remand to try to make himself look fiercer than he really was. A wide-eyed teen being photographed for intake at Long Bay Correctional. He remembered the corrections officers taking the shot, fifteen years earlier, how terrified he’d been. He’d been able to hear the catcalls down the hall from where he stood. The men, waiting for him.
It had been an apprenticeship in pain. Years learning how to take it, how to experience pain in so many unique and creative ways. When they’d come for him on his last days, Regan had looked at the man in the mirror on the wall of his cell. A master of suffering.
As he’d left the cell block that had been his home, Regan had felt his muscles tightening, hardening. He’d walked through the administration block to collect his belongings and felt his fingers lengthen to talons. Through the transition cages, he’d felt black wings unfurling from his shoulderblades. In the car park where they left him, free to go wherever he pleased, his eyes had begun to burn with bloody, furious tears.
Regan realised that all along, he’d been designed to evolve into the thing he was now, this monster. His time in prison had been a natural steeling process. An incubation period. A thing as hard as him needed to be forged. All goodness needed to be squeezed from it. Empathy. Passion. Weakness. Standing there in the parking lot in the dark, the distant sounds of the waves crashing against the cliffs beyond the prison, he closed his eyes and remembered Sam Blue. All the time he’d been locked away, Regan hadn’t dared call his friend’s face to his mind. He’d been afraid of the fury that would come. The bloody memories. He remembered Sam, and knew only that he needed to find him.
Regan stood looking at his own face on the television screen now. Inevitably, the news story shifted and there he was. Beautiful Sam, with his downcast eyes and hollow cheeks.