Kash had tried to convince me all evening that Adeel Taby, Zac’s father, was a worthy avenue we needed to be looking into. Ektor Corp, the company he worked for, had its hands in oil and gas extraction in the Middle East, and there were rumours of the company’s interest in arms dealership. I reminded him that I was in charge. We’d made a deal. Taby’s parents didn’t interest me as suspects.
I pressed open the diary again and touched the tiny, fluid handwriting, ran my fingers over the printed images of mass shooters glued onto the pages. The handwriting didn’t look like Zac Taby’s. But I wasn’t an expert on that. The diarist and Zac shared a propensity to push overly hard on the paper, dent the pages, make it difficult to read the words in the left-hand side of every page.
The diarist had made a close analysis of the actions of Elliot Rodger, who’d killed six people and injured fourteen others on a rampage through Isla Vista, California. Rodger had stabbed his three housemates, then gone after young women in a sorority house nearby, punishing any women he could find for all the sexual rejection he’d faced in his life. The diarist’s commentary was more critical of Rodger’s killings than it had been for the other shooters. There was a list of ‘mistakes’ on the right-hand side of the page, under a map of the killer’s route of terror through the city.
Most victims random, not personal.
Undignified video confessional before shooting. Sounds desperate.
High-risk initiation – could have been caught after stabbing housemates.
I made a note to check what sort of counselling services were available in the area, both to teens and adults, and what the levels of depression and suicide were in the region. The diarist seemed particularly interested in leaving a good-quality manifesto of their ideas and complaints, their reasons for doing what they were planning to do. They would only plan on doing that if they didn’t see themselves being around to talk about those things in the aftermath.
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold attacking kids at their high school who had taunted them. Elliot Rodger attacking girls who had rejected him. I googled Seung-Hui Cho and watched excerpts of his video manifesto on YouTube.
You have vandalised my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option.
These young men weren’t trying to inspire people. Each of them would kill themselves after their attacks. They wanted vengeance. It wasn’t terrorism. It was payback.
I shifted my papers around, found my phone and looked through Whitt’s email from earlier in the evening about meeting Tox. A tiny smile played about my lips. My heart had been aching to be home, and now I had a new reason to dream of myself there. The incomprehensible partnership of Whitt and Tox: a man who never went anywhere without a personal manicure kit, and a man who I’d seen walk around with blood all over his shirt for two straight days. Wherever the two went with the leads I had given Whitt, one of them would meticulously gather the tiny breadcrumbs of every possible scenario while the other walked ahead of him, kicking down doors and shoving people out of his partner’s path.
When my phone rang, I expected it to be Whitt, but it was a number I didn’t recognise. I walked out to the front porch and sat on the step looking at the stars.
‘Harry,’ a voice said. ‘It’s me.’
My heart twisted in my chest.
Chapter 37
THE LAST TIME I had seen my mother had been on the street corner outside my apartment in Pyrmont. Her hands had been wrapped in bandages, and her hair had been a thin, burgundy nightmare. A fresh tattoo on her neck. She’d wanted to live with me. I’d had to turn her away. She’d stayed overnight with me before, but I’d awakened to find all my valuables and cash gone and my front door wide open.
I didn’t know what to say to her at first, now that she was on the phone. I had tried to contact our mother when Sam was first arrested, but she hadn’t responded. I’d wondered if she was dead. There was not a centimetre of the Australian landscape that wasn’t saturated with the media coverage of the Georges River Killer and his dramatic capture. I looked at the stars and sighed.
‘Are you there?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘How can I help you, Julia?’
‘I wish you wouldn’t call me Julia,’ she said. ‘It’s bad manners.’
‘Is there something that you need?’
‘I don’t need anything, baby. I’m calling to see how youse are. You and Sam.’
Why don’t you take a guess?
‘We’re fine,’ I lied. ‘Was there something else?’
‘I tried to go to the courthouse today, but I was too late. They’d shut the doors. I want to visit Sammy but I’m not on his visitors list. Can you get him to put me on?’
‘You’re not worried you’ll be arrested as soon as you walk in the door?’ I asked. ‘You’ve still got warrants out.’ My mother’s crimes of choice were burglary and car theft. She was wanted in four states.
‘I need to see him.’
‘Well,’ I sighed, ‘you could give it a shot.’
‘I’ve been crying for days and days,’ she sniffed. ‘It’s been hard to contact youse both. After I saw the headlines, I was just fucking out of it. You know? I just lost it, mate. I went to bed and I pretty much haven’t been up in months.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘I can’t believe this. Any of it. How has this happened?’
‘That’s what we’re all trying to work out.’
‘Well, I’m ready to do my part now, ay? I’m ready to help you both through this. It’s the least I can do.’ She drew a deep breath, allowing me to prepare myself for the grand show of generosity that was about to come. ‘They’ve asked me to do a spread in Her Weekly. It’s paid. I want to donate some of that money to Sam’s legal fees.’
‘You …’ I felt heat rush up into my mouth. ‘You what?’
‘Some magazine lady called me. They want to do a four-page spread on my story. It’ll be me and some photos of youse when youse were kids. Some stories about raising you both.’
I was speechless.
‘They’re offering forty thousand dollars,’ she sniffed. ‘So I thought, you know, five or ten grand of that could go to you and Sam, help out with the lawyer or whatever.’
‘You can’t do this,’ I said. I was standing now, my mouth opening and closing, the words failing to come. ‘You just … can’t, Julia. I mean, what the hell are you going to say? Sam and I … we were practically toddlers when we left your care.’
‘Harry, it’s not like I didn’t have any say into how youse were raised. I always knew where youse were. I called. I called dozens of times.’
I couldn’t breathe.
‘Harry, are you there?’
‘Julia,’ I said. ‘Listen to me very carefully. Her Weekly isn’t interested in how you raised us and what lovely children we were. They’re not going to paint this as some beautiful tragic tale of a misunderstood woman and the perfect little angels who were stolen from her by evil Child Services. They’re going to represent you as an irresponsible junkie and the two of us as institution rats with violent backgrounds.’
‘No they’re not.’
‘Yes, they are.’ I gave an angry laugh. ‘Anything else would be a lie!’
She was silent. In the background of the call, I could hear a television playing, a man shouting.
‘Julia, they’re going to sit you down and wave money in your face and get you to confide in all the awful stuff you’ve done over the years. And then they’re going to use that as evidence to suggest Sam is guilty.’
‘Harry, my life is really hard right now. I don’t expect you to understand, you being a fucking copper and all. You’ve been trained to hate people like me.’
‘OK,’ I said, ‘I’m hanging up now.’
‘I need that money, Harry. I’m going to use it to start again. I’ve met someone, and we’re going to start a business together. This is the one, Harry. I can feel it. He’s not like the others.’
I didn’t say anything.
‘I have always loved you, Harriet.’ She gave a sharp, furious sigh. ‘I have always loved your brother. Doesn’t that count for anything? Jesus Christ, I don’t know how you ended up such an ungrateful bitch. I’m doing my fucking best here.’
I hung up, gripped my hair. I wanted to howl into the night. It was like my brother was sinking in quicksand. Every time I thought someone was coming along to help me free him, they only kicked more sand at him. The more he struggled, the deeper he got. I knew if too many people joined the crowd trying to bury him, I’d never get Sam out alive.
Chapter 38
IN THE MORNING we paid a visit to Theo Campbell’s friend David Lewis, to see what he thought about the former police chief’s death. The younger man had seen Theo that afternoon, climbed the roof of his little farmhouse with him and accepted his help in fixing some broken tiles. Lewis had of course heard the news already and seemed bewildered. The last person to see the victim before a tragedy is often haunted by what has happened. David repeated words I’d heard often, that Theo had seemed fine, that he couldn’t believe he watched his friend walk off so casually to what would be such a violent death.
The sun was high and blazing as we pulled in to the Campbell driveway. Olivia Campbell opened the door to us, her hands red from wringing and her eyes puffy. She had the reserved dignity of a cop’s wife, her outfit put together and her hair neatly pulled into a tight bun. A woman who carried on in the face of adversity, at least in terms of appearance, someone who never let the cracks show. There was a framed wedding photograph of the two of them just inside the door. Theo was broad-shouldered, tall and bushy-browed. I went to the doors that looked out onto the backyard, watched the family cat as it toyed with a dead locust by the edge of the lawn.
‘It’s drugs,’ Olivia said as she and Snale settled on the lounges. ‘People are saying it’s terrorism, or it’s related to the diary they found. But I’m telling you, it’s some drug gang that’s got him.’
Snale and I exchanged glances, shocked. I didn’t know what I’d expected. Some small talk about Theo, about how Olivia was coping. But she launched straight in. Kash looked sceptical. He stood at the bookcase, looking over the tattered paperbacks there. He zeroed in on a copy of the Qur’an like a hawk and seized it from the third shelf, as though he’d find the answer to Theo’s demise there.
‘What do you mean, drugs?’ Snale asked gently. ‘We’re on top of the drug situation in the region. We don’t have any gangs out here.’
‘Theo said was running an undercover sting,’ Olivia explained. ‘See, we went to bed one night, maybe a month ago, and I woke up at around midnight and Theo wasn’t beside me. I went to the front windows and looked out. I saw him talking to Jace Robit and his crew. I asked him what was going on when he came back inside. He wouldn’t tell me much about it. He said he thought there was drug activity going on. Ice production.’
Snale shook her head ruefully, disbelieving. I came and settled on the edge of the couch.
‘There is ice around here,’ Snale told me. ‘Softer drugs, too. Lots of weed. But any amphetamines are mostly brought through by the truckers heading to Bourke, about four hours out. Bigger town. People buy it at one of the local pubs there, we think, to keep themselves running until the next round comes through.’
‘It’s only small amounts?’
‘The kids use it recreationally. They’re bored. There’s nothing to do out here. We’d know if anyone in town was manufacturing it. Something like that would be difficult to hide. And there’d be no point in making it. You wouldn’t be able to sell huge amounts of it out here. Ice is made in the cities, where you’ve got a chance of blending in.’
I remembered the wonky-toothed, narrow-bodied man with the rifle, Jace. His little gathering of similarly sun-worn types.
‘Robit has a cattle property on the south side of the valley.’ Snale pointed.
‘Was Theo sure it was drugs they were manufacturing?’ Kash asked Olivia, who looked up, red-eyed. ‘Or was he just suspicious?’
‘I don’t know.’ Olivia wiped her nose on a well-used tissue. ‘I only saw them that one night, and I didn’t ask for any more details. I remember them all standing out there on the road. Their headlights were all on. The forensic officers, they told me that whoever killed Theo had been pacing around near him. Had him tied to a chair.’ She fought back tears. ‘Maybe it was some sort of interrogation, see whether he’d told anyone else.’
I wandered into the office while Snale comforted Olivia. This was obviously Theo’s domain. There was a cracked leather desk-chair and an old, dusty laptop, a collection of brass nautical navigation equipment on the desk in desperate need of a polish, more books. I went and sat in Theo’s chair, looked out the window onto the bare lawn. There were papers on his desk. A half-finished memoir of a rural police chief’s life. Zac Taby had said that diaries were for little girls, but Theo Campbell had spent hours upon hours reflecting on his long career, setting down his personal history in these pages. I flipped through and caught the occasional word. Honour. Evidence. Tragedy. Arrest.
‘He would have told Snale about an undercover operation,’ Kash whispered from the doorway. He was still holding the Qur’an like a much-loved teddy. I watched him go to the bookshelves here.
‘I agree,’ I said. ‘If farmers were making ice out here, there’d be no need to run an undercover sting. Just go raid their properties. Ice manufacture is expensive. Complicated. And it reeks. How on Earth would they hide the smell? Besides that, there isn’t a big enough market for it out here. I can understand how the truckers get away with it. Some city drug dealer gives them a package and they slowly sell it off, town by town, all the way across the country. But cooking it out here? It would be stupid.’
‘It might have been a one-off,’ Kash mused. ‘Make one big batch, take it to the city, sell it and make a fortune. Pay off your debts. Theo found out and was trying to talk them down, so they killed him.’
‘And the diary?’
Kash stared at his feet.
‘Maybe it was a decoy,’ he said.
I hadn’t thought about that. That someone might have constructed the diary to throw us off. It wouldn’t be hard. A few late evenings sketching, doodling, noting down tidbits from what was perhaps a passing interest in spree killers. Maybe the diary had nothing to do with Theo Campbell’s death. Maybe his was a straight-up drug-related killing.
A guilty little zing of excitement ran through me. If I could wrap this case up as quickly as that, I could go home to Sydney. Sure, I wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near my brother or the courthouse, but I would at least be closer to him. All of that was calling me. Conduct a raid on Robit’s place. Find something. Anything. Lock up him and his cronies and be done with it all. Ignore the possibility that the town was in further danger, that someone here was planning a day of reckoning. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am – some quick arrests and the six days I had to wait to go home would become zero.
I realised I was shuffling idly through the objects in Theo Campbell’s desk drawer. Pens and little notepads. I shoved the desk drawer closed and a plastic ruler wedged itself in the gap. I tried to yank the drawer back open but it stuck, the plastic biting into the wood. I threw my weight backwards and the drawer shunted open, rattling the desk, causing a flush wooden panel at the front to flop open.
Kash and I looked into the cavity the panel had revealed.
My hopes of leaving dissolved.
Chapter 39
I KNELT AND peered into the dark slot in the side of the desk, ten centimetres wide, crammed with black plastic. I pulled out a package. It was as big as a shoebox, wrapped tightly in duct tape to form a lumpy rectangle.
‘Christ, she was right,’ I breathed. I took a pair of scissors from the desktop and began to carefully slit open the side of the package. ‘What do you think it is? It’s heavy. Might be black tar.’
Kash knelt beside me. I could smell the swe
at on him. That morning, I’d woken to the sound of him huffing back and forth across Snale’s lawn, stopping, dropping and pumping out push-ups to timed beeps from his phone. Snale had been standing at the windows to the porch, enjoying a coffee, watching the show. Kash’s bare chest glistening with sweat in the new pink light of sunrise.
I slipped a small bag out of the package. A heavy, dusty brown rock about half the size of a golf ball. I opened the bag and took out the rock.
‘Brown rock heroin,’ Kash said. ‘I’ve seen it over there in northern Africa. Dirty stuff from back-shed kitchens. Goes cheaper than black tar.’
‘Guess again,’ I said. I spat on the rock in my palm. ‘This rock’s only brown on the outside.’
I rubbed the top layer of dirt from the nugget. The gold shimmered, dull yellow and porous in the light.
‘Whoa!’ Kash snatched the gold from me. I rolled my eyes and took another rock from the package. ‘That is one massive piece of cheese!’
‘That’s about two ounces you’re holding,’ I said. I crossed my legs and took out my phone, looked up a converter on Google. ‘About a thousand bucks on the market right now.’
We looked at the bag between us. I weighed it in my hands. I guessed I was holding about two kilos, or seventy ounces. Approximately eighty thousand dollars’ worth of precious metal.
‘What. The. Hell.’ Kash looked at me. ‘You think it’s legit?’
‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘You can’t buy it like this. This is right out of the ground. So, what? Campbell’s taken it out of the ground, or someone he knows has? This is not his retirement nest egg. I’m betting it’s not even declared as a personal asset for tax purposes, if he’s got it squirrelled away like this.’
‘How does he have so much of it?’ Kash asked. ‘You couldn’t find this much all in one go. It must represent years, decades, of fossicking with a metal detector.’