The Sharp End 
By GABRIELLE LORD 

GABRIELLE LORD'S first novel, Fortress, was translated
into six languages and made into a successful film.
Since then she has published a number of best-selling
novels including Tooth and Claw, Jumbo, Whipping
Boy and Bones. She is currently adapting Bones for
the screen.

CORONET BOOKS
Hodder and Stoughton


for Roger
Copyright © Gabrielle Lord 1998

First published in Great Britain in 1998 by Hodder and Stoughton

A division of Hodder Headline PLC
First published in paperback in 1998 by Hodder and Stoughton
The right of Gabrielle Lord to be identified as the Author
of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A Coronet Paperback
10 98765432
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by
any means without the prior written permission of the publisher,
nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover
other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition
being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to
real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 340 71766 1
Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Polmont, Stirlingshire
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Mackays of Chatham PLC, Chatham, Kent.
Hodder and Stoughton
A division of Hodder Headline PLC
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
I want to acknowledge the tremendous assistance I
had from Chris Davies and John Murray. Without the
generous sharing of their experiences, this book couldn't
have happened.

PROLOGUE


BOOLABIMBIE, 1847

Mara caught the little one in her arms and swung him
high out of the water. The baby shrieked with laughter,
knowing this game. His laugh rippled through his fat belly and
Mara's own laughter came up to meet his. His huge brown
eyes shut tight as they both plunged under water, then they
opened and looked straight into hers. Bubbles exploded from
their mouths as they whooshed to the surface where they
bumped into Wanda and Nan who had splashed in to join
them. Up on the overhang of rocks from where the waterfall
thundered into the swimming hole, she could see the dogs
looking down at them, working out how to get down and
into the water.

'Give him to me!' Nan called over the roar of the smoking
water and Mara swung the baby over. Nan grabbed him and
he went for her breast, sucking the whole nipple in. Nan
held him and, as she looked down at him, her face became
reverent. 'Oh you beautiful, you beautiful,' she murmured,
standing in the cooling water while he fed, and he gazed
into her eyes, sometimes forgetting to suck, milky with
satisfaction.

It was a hot day and the water here was clear, even with
the kids' splashing and the strong currents from the waterfall,

because the floor of the river was paved with smooth stones.
Away from the turbulence of the falls, now only about a third
their usual size, the water became almost invisible, so that it
looked as if the fish were drifting through air. Despite the
drought all around, this hole was still quite deep. The rest of
the lower river was only a chain of drying pools, shaded by
the huge river gums.


A cloud of gnats swarmed near the shallows. The afternoon
was getting on. They should pack up and get home, Mara
thought, before the storm. She could smell rain and the sky
was becoming darker as huge thunderheads towered in the
south. By the time they picked up the rest of the food it
would be near dark, the kids would be tired and hungry, and
the rains would have finally arrived.

'Okay,' she called out. 'Come on, you lot. Out.'
She knew it was only the first call. It usually took three or
four such commands. Sometimes she and Nan had to pretend
they were packing up and leaving without them before the
kids would finally get out of the water. Soon, she knew, that
wouldn't work with the bigger ones anymore. They knew
this country like they knew the inside of their mouths and
could come or stay as they chose, independent of adults.
'Come on. Out now. We need to get going.'
She saw Nan, wading towards the bank with the baby,
turn and look back at her with the beginnings of a frown on
her pretty face. The dogs started barking. A Willie-wagtail
swooped and snapped at insects near the edge of the water.
Mara shivered. A huge roll of thunder echoed across the sky
and she looked up. Clouds were starting to move; the wind
was pushing the tops of the trees.

And there was something else. At the same time, Mara felt
something moving, shaking the land and moving up through
her feet from the stones on the riverbed; something besides
the shuddering crashing of the waterfall. Cattle or horses.
Heavy, fast hooves. The dogs were going crazy.

Let it be just cattle, she prayed. Or unbroken horses racing,
spooked by the wind. But her senses indicated something else.
Let my ears and my feet be wrong this time. Please.

'Come on!' she screamed and the kids knew that tone in
her voice. They were swimming and plunging towards the
bank. 'Hurry. Now!'

As she scrambled up the bank, Mara looked around. There
was nowhere to hide. Why didn't I make one of the kids sit
up a tree as lookout? she thought. What are we going to
do? Because it was horses. Horses with riders. Heavy, fast
hoofbeats. She could hear them quite clearly now, crashing
down the slope through the last of the thin trees near the
upstream waterfall.

'Scatter!' she yelled to the others. 'Go in different directions.'
And the kids reached out for the shore and scrambled
up the banks, slipping and sliding and finally disappearing
over the top. A wild crack of lightning and the thunder crash
followed only a second or two later as Nan reached the bank
and turned, leaning back, stretching out her free arm to help
her sister. The eyes of the baby in Nan's arms were wide with
alarm. Now Mara could hear the voices, the yells and curses
of the men. She heard the white dog shriek as a bullet tore
through his rib cage and lungs. Then the other dog yelped.
She couldn't move.

'Take my hand. Take it!' Nan screamed.

For a second, the two sisters stood frozen, staring into each
other's eyes. The dogs were silent, the sound of gunshots
more sporadic. Mara grabbed the outstretched hand, and
started to step up the bank. But the sound of a shotgun,
very close, deafened them. Nan's hold on her sister's hand
loosened. Mara screamed to see that her sister's arm and the
left side of her chest had opened in a bloody mess. Nan's huge
eyes widened, then she silently fell back into the water. The
baby splashed in beside her.

'Oh no oh no oh no? Mara screamed. She grabbed the baby
as he sank and pressed him against her waist, trying to support
the body of her sister with her other arm. Nan floated with
her head underwater, the gaping wounds in her waist and
back turning the waterhole red. Mara tightened her hold on
the baby, relieved that he wasn't crying, and tried to turn her
sister over.

More shots rang through the hot afternoon. Mara heard
one of Nan's big boys calling out for the little ones to run
as fast as they could, then his voice choked off into silence.

Mara looked at the baby. His legs and arms hung down
against her body as if he were asleep. He was not bleeding.
There were only a few red-rimmed holes in his neck.

Across the waterhole, she heard a tiny sob and turned to
see her niece crouched in the water near the opposite bank,
clutching at reeds.

'Dive down!' Mara called to her. 'Stay under the water.
Under!'

The child's terrified face disappeared and Mara turned back.
She was still clutching the dead baby; tears ran down her face
and she tried to control her convulsive sobbing. This was not
the time for grief. She crouched near the water's edge, not
knowing what to do next. Her legs had no strength to run.

It was quieter now. The shooting had stopped. If she
could just get her eyes above the bank level, she thought,
and see what was happening. She looked back at the other
side of the waterhole. Her niece was still invisible. She crept
out of the water, after softly releasing the body of the child
to float next to his mother. Red water ran darkly down her
arms and chest. She took hold of a twisted root to help her
up, because her legs were dragging. Give me strength, she
prayed. Please let me get up here safely. She hauled herself
up, and just as she could raise her eyes above the level of
the bank she screamed in terror, because the boots next to
her face belonged to Hunter Wetherill. He was just standing
there, waiting for her. He raised his rifle. His hard blue-white
eyes sighted the centre of her forehead. He was grinning like
a demon. Behind him, the eucalypt leaves whipped in the
howling of the storm wind.
'No!' Mara screamed. 'No!'

Slowly, Wetherill lowered the gun and held out his hand.
Again, Mara couldn't move. The man still reached for her but
she remained immobile until the huge hand closed around her
motionless arm and she was hoisted the rest of the way up the
bank. She saw her nine-year-old nephew shuddering in death
on the ground nearby. Her heart was bleeding inside. She
could feel its red tide filling her body and her mind. A death
song came from her lips, bursting out of her like the spurting
of blood. Wetherill released his grip on her wrist and she
slipped to the ground beside the dying boy. Her strength was
ebbing. The first drops of hard rain struck and the dust smoked
around them. Although her own body was unharmed, Mara's
death song became louder because all around her she could
feel the others -- their shock, their unreadiness, the terror of
their dying. They were calling to her; sister, sister, help us.
But there was nothing she could do and her own death was
on her as her heart broke.

Minutes later, Hunter Wetherill finished doing what he
had wanted to do. He stood up, rebuckled his belt and picked
up his gun. But Mara was already dead. In the reeds across
the waterhole, her niece raised her head so that just her eyes
and the top of her head broke the water. She saw Hunter
Wetherill stand and drag her aunt's slender body to the edge
of the bank, saw the body slither back into the bloody water
to join her own dead mother and baby brother. Before the
sobs burst out of her afresh, she ducked back under the
reedy water.

Now the rain was pounding the ground, cutting little channels
in the river banks, turning the surface of the swimming
hole into molten pewter. After the first hour of rain, branches,
small bushes and sticks swirled down new-cut watercourses
into the swimming hole. The water, now densely covered
with foam and debris, was continuing to rise. Little Wanda
still shivered in the reeds. After the second hour, sections of
the banks started to collapse, sliding into the water. Wanda
finally managed to get out of the water, severely hypothermic.
By the third hour, the swimming hole had vanished and was
now just part of a roaring, flooding torrent as the river found
itself again and ran along the bed it had carved eons ago.
At the base of the biggest river gum, its bark gouged by
Hunter Wetherill's shot, Wanda lay, almost dead, as the rain
continued to beat down.


ONE

Harry Doyle had just sat down for dinner in the white-and timber-toned kitchen when the call-out came. Although
it was nearly nine p.m., the airconditioning wasn't really
coping with the heat of a late November evening and a wall
oven. Meg threw the spoon into the baking dish and gravy
splattered the white tiles above the stove in the classic blots
and exclamation marks of bloodstain patterns, with one long
drop reaching the adjacent wall and landing on Hannah's first
grade drawing of 'Mum, Dad, my big sister and me' with its
caption 'the dogs' mispelled as 'the bogs'.

'Shit!' Meg swore as the mobile rang. Hannah and Alison
looked at each other as their father reached for it, and Police
Dog Asgard, the young shepherd Harry was minding for an
injured mate, stopped licking his balls on the rug. Harry's
own partner, Police Dog Razor, sat pressed against his pack
leader's boots.

'Yes?' Harry answered, putting his fork down.

It was Ray Gosling, his keen, young ex-army constable.
'Someone from the Drug Squad particularly asked for you
to check out a warehouse,' Ray told him. 'Amphetamine
factory at Fairfield. It's all cleared and secured. They made
five arrests.'
'Why do they want me?'

'They want to make sure there are no other drugs on the
premises. The partner of the bloke in charge saw you and
Razor in action a few months ago. The sergeant's name's
Burgess. Do you remember him?'

Harry grunted. He remembered 'Handbags' Burgess -the sort of police officer that gives the job a bad name, nicknamed
because he has to be carried by the rest of his colleagues. 'Give
us the address,' he said.

Meg washed up in silence, her back turned to him while
the girls wiped up for all they were worth. Harry took three
hurried mouthfuls, standing up and swallowing. 'It's beautiful,
love -the
lamb.'

Meg banged a pot into the drying rack. 'I've had a cow
of a day,' she said, looking as if she were about to cry. 'The
father of a boy I'm counselling just barges into my office
at lunchtime and starts abusing me. I race home to cook
something specially for you and then this happens.' She flung
the dishcloth back in the sink and left the kitchen.

Hannah was suddenly hugging him, distressed by her
mother's anger, and Harry kissed the top of her head,
leaned over and took the dog harness off the hook. 'Go
and see how your mother is,' he said to Hannah as Asgard
rushed over to him, circling with excitement. Harry rested
his hand on Razor's head. 'I'm sorry, old fella. I have to take
the youngster. You know that, don't you,' he said, fondling
the old dog's ears. Razor's dark eyes looked up at him, radiant
with intelligence.

'Sit,' Harry commanded Asgard before slipping the harness
over his shoulders. Razor's eyes watched every move his
master and the young dog made. Am I imagining it, Harry
thought, or have Razor's shoulders slumped? 'Wait,' he
commanded them both.
Hannah joined him again, squatting in front of Razor,
telling him that it was all right, that he was the best dog
in the whole world. And she should know, Harry thought,
because they had both arrived in his house on the same day
-the
baby that hadn't been planned, the new puppy that was
to live with them.

'She's on the front verandah,' Hannah said, 'just sitting
there.' Harry nodded. He knew that lately it was best to
leave his wife alone at times like this.

He still had his work clothes on, boots and all, and was
ready to go except for his weapon. He went into the small
room he used as a home office, where documents and papers
covered the desk beneath a Hans Heysen print of dairy cows
in the morning mist, unlocked the cupboard above the desk
and lifted the gun out, the metal still warm. Usually he
strapped it on automatically but tonight he looked hard at
it: the neat .38 Smith and Wesson police special, on the way
out and due to be replaced by the smart German Glock. He
took a couple of Meaty Treats from their packet in a drawer
and secured them in one of the pockets of his navy overall.
He touched the new message stick he was making and the
feathers on each end lifted and resettled, as if remembering
flight. It was a piece of eucalypt, about a foot long, with
one large fork, like a 'Y' lying on its side. He'd sanded it
all over until it was as smooth as skin. The photograph near
the door, of Razor tucked up in Hannah's doona, sheepishly dressed in her hooded red raincoat from a time when he had
been forced to play various characters from fairy tales, usually
made him smile.

By the time he was ready to go, Meg had returned to the
kitchen.

'What time will you be home?' she asked.

At least she was talking to him, he thought, even though
the question was a set-up. 'I can't really say. You know
that.'

She was shovelling his uneaten dinner into the dogs' dishes.
Both dogs looked hard at the roast lamb but neither moved
because they only ate on command.

Finally, she turned round and looked at him. The frown
lines on her forehead were permanent fixtures now; her fine
dark eyes never seemed to smile anymore. Harry felt guilt
and anger together.

'I'll be home as soon as I can,' he said, as his wife resumed
her position at the sink. Razor was straining after them,
although his training made him stay as Harry and Asgard
stepped outside. 'Good boy,' Harry called back to him over
his shoulder. Something moved heavily in the densely twisted
grape and wisteria vines that grew over the shed and pergola
and Harry smelled possum.

The dogs' yard, with its concrete, hose-down exercise
space and the kennels they never used, took up the far
end of the outside area. The remaining space comprised a
neglected, overgrown garden which Meg did her best to keep
under some sort of control.

Hannah ran out with them and waited while Harry dropped
the back of the wagon for Asgard to jump up. 'Oh good
boy, good boy, good boy,' said Hannah, snuggling her face into
the dog's chest and neck, squeezing handfuls of his fur as he
stood in the back. 'Can we keep him, Dad?' she asked.

'No, Hanx,' said Harry. 'You know that. His handler
wouldn't be able to part with him. You're just missing
Blade. He'll be home soon.'

Harry's other dog, the youngster who was gradually replacing
eight-year-old Razor, was at the vet's with a mystery
virus.

Harry turned, sensing eyes on his back, to see Meg standing
at the kitchen door. 'There's a few of us going for drinks
afterwards tonight,' she called after him. 'I could be late.'

Harry tried to read her but her energy was tight and pulled
back, with something else hiding behind the anger. 'What
about . . .' he started to say, putting his hand on Hannah's
shoulder.

'Alison's got study to do. Hannah will be fine with her.'

His wife's face and body were pulling away from him, even
though she was facing him; eyes narrowed, mouth set. He
wanted to ask her where she was really going, what she was
going to do, but somewhere he sensed he already knew and
his heart died a little more. He turned away, and Hannah
caught his sadness, trotting beside him as he got into the
wagon. She wouldn't look at him, but stared at the ground.
In the rear-vision mirror he saw Razor nose open the kitchen
door and come out to join them. 'You look after old Razor,'
he told Hannah. 'He'll be feeling a bit sad.'

She nodded, still without looking up. 'Bye, love,' he said,
starting the ignition.

'Dad?'

'Yes?'

'If something happens, can I take Blade? You'd still have
Razor.'

'What do you mean "if something happens"?' he asked.

A Willie-wagtail twittered in the moonlight. 'That bird
must think it's still day,' she said.

'What can happen?' he persisted.

She shrugged. 'Just things.'

He slammed the door and Hannah stood with her hands
behind her back watching him.

'Nothing's going to happen,' he told her through the
window as he turned the wagon round towards the road. He
drove out of Botanical Avenue, took a right-hand turn, then a
left onto Anzac Parade with its Moreton Bay figs and poplars.
Dedicated to the soldiers of the First World War, it was the
major roadway that joined the eastern and southern suburbs
to the city of Sydney. As he drove along, he remembered
how years before, when he'd been a division cyclist, he'd
had to pick up an old drunk from where he'd been wedged
between the buttresses of one of those trees. He'd squashed
the old fellow into the sidecar and they'd gone back to the
police station with the drunk roaring and singing at the top of
his voice, enjoining Harry to sing along with him. Normally,
the memory would have made him smile. But not tonight.
He glanced at his watch and estimated it would take him
about fifty minutes at this time of night to get to Fairfield.

Turning out of Botany Road, he considered the annoyance
of these call-outs. Still, they were no worse than when he was
in Homicide, and they -were much easier to handle. He and
the dogs did their business and then they came home. That
was it. Harry didn't want to spend any more time investigating
what people could do to each other. He didn't want to work
with that, or in that. He didn't want to walk into a crime
scene anymore and find a woman with her head looking
like a steamroller had flattened it into the lino and then
spend hours with the man who had done it. He didn't want
ever again to have to look at twelve-month-old twins with
their matching jump suits and cut throats. He didn't want to
talk to killers anymore in the soft, empathetic tone that had
earned him a nickname he hated hearing from anyone these days. He didn't want to know the killers' minds as well as
he did. When he spoke with them they told him things they
wouldn't tell other people. They signed confessions because
he seemed to understand that what had happened was not
their fault. His success was partly because he could sense
things about them they couldn't deny -his
gift of noticing
things that other people failed to see -- and partly because he
knew how to stage an interrogation to skew the odds in his
favour. Now life was simpler, and he liked it that way. But
he was tired out, and glad that it was only a factory and not
a mountainside that he was heading for. Running kilometres
after a dog on a hot trail became increasingly demanding with
each year.


It was completely dark when he got to the factory in a
suburb near Fairfield just fifty minutes later. It was even
hotter here, further west. Nothing stirred in air that was
sulphurous and acrid. Bunting drooped dejectedly around
the used-car yard across the road. Not far from here was a
place Harry remembered well from an arrest he and another
young officer had made twenty years before, where they'd
run on foot for over two kilometres until they'd caught and
pinned the offender against the slogan-painted wall. After
years in the cops, almost every suburb becomes haunted with
memories of crimes and criminals.

Harry noted an unmarked Commodore parked outside the
factory and parked his vehicle around the corner, out of sight.
Then he got out, opened the back for Asgard to jump out,
and walked over to the Commodore with the dog loping on
the lead beside him, Harry pulling him away from the stench
of tomcat against a garage. Asgard was nearly three, a little
older than the absent Blade, and training up well.

Inside the Commodore, 'Handbags' Burgess waited in the
passenger seat, nursing his beer belly. 'Took your time,' he
said.

'What's the story?' Harry asked, and waited as Burgess,
shirt gaping, struggled out of the car.

He looked at Asgard, then at Harry -a
long look. 'Nice
dog. Is he any good?'
'He's good.'

Burgess moved to pat Asgard's head but looked up. 'Does
he bite?'

'Yes,' Harry lied, and Burgess snatched his hand away.

'I saw you when they busted that crack outfit near
Canterbury,' said the lanky driver, nodding to Harry as he
walked around the vehicle to join them. 'Coupla months
ago.'

Harry couldn't help picking up Burgess' sloppy energy
oozing in the area between them, so he called Asgard to
attention and they stepped inside the sledge-hammered door.
Harry paused there, studying the large, long area of the factory
floor, about the size of an Olympic pool. Asgard shivered by
his side, all high-tensile energy.

In front of them, fluoro factory lights hung from a low
ceiling over a long benchtop littered with plastic containers,
bags and smudges of greyish powder. Down the other end
of the space, near a locked Roll-a-door, was a truck stacked
with industrial drums partly concealed under a tarp. Harry
stood a moment, processing the raid from the evidence of his
senses and from the dusty floor and surrounds: the scuffling;
the punches thrown; the slide on the floor where the punch
had connected; the nose bleed; the fall; people hurled to their
stomachs with their arms cuffed behind them, or dragged out
and cuffed, some of them wearing sneakers, one barefoot;
the heavier boot prints of the arresting officers. He picked up
traces of Asian and Caucasian foods and bodies, sweat, chemicals
and the smell of cheap aftershave. Every human being has
a distinct body odour comprised of many notes, like a dense
musical chord, as complex if not as pretty as French perfume.
A person's health, sex, occupation, diet, emotional state and
environment all go to make up an idiosyncratic body odour.
A dog can discriminate even between identical twins.
A bloody hand print near the lintel showed where someone
had tried to pull away one last, desperate time. A crushed,
wide bloodstain was visible on the wall nearby with a faint
halo of blood spray along one side. Harry looked to the
ground outside the door and noticed the smears. It was like
watching an action replay, he'd tried explaining once to Meg,
in the old days when she had still wanted to hear about his
work. All the factors came together in his mind and he saw
it almost like a film.

'You knocked them around a bit,' he said to a surprised
Burgess. Asgard barked once, as if agreeing.

'Bastards tried to get away,' said Burgess. 'One was a real
smartarse.'

Harry couldn't resist. 'The one you king-hit and threw
out the door?'

Burgess just stared at him.

'So why am I here?' Harry said.

'We're not sure it's only speed. Could be other drugs.'

Harry nodded. He cast Asgard on his lead, like a fisherman
casting an enormous fly line. 'Go and get it,' he told the
dog, and Asgard was on the job immediately, signalling
'boracic acid.'

'Good dog, good dog. He's picked up the amphetamines,'
Harry said.

'Great,' Burgess spat in contempt. 'The fuckin' fumes
nearly killed us when we first came in.'

Asgard had unreeled about ten metres of his line and was
halfway down the length of the factory's bottom floor,
signalling with excitement.

'Hang on,' Harry said, following the dog. Asgard was
standing barking, looking up at a tall metal filing cabinet.

'What's he on about?' Burgess asked, strolling up behind
them.
'It's not boracic acid this time,' said Harry, noting that
Asgard had dropped his hindquarters a little lower than his
shoulders, and that they were swinging with his wagging
tail. Each dog had a different body language, but Harry had
worked long enough with Asgard and his handler to read this
dog almost as well as his own.

'What then?' said Burgess, shoving his hands in his pockets
and rocking backwards and forwards on his heels. Harry
couldn't help thinking of Humpty Dumpty. 'Has he found
something in the cabinet?' Harry didn't answer but glanced
at the ceiling. It was lined with some sort of fire-resistant
material fitted together in squares.

Burgess started pulling out the drawers of the cabinet:
jars, bottles, rubbish, a kid's rubber ducky. He squeaked
the toy in front of Asgard. 'Gun dog,' he said, throwing
it to the ground. Asgard paid no attention to it, but
Burgess failed to notice that. 'There's nothing here,' he
said, angry. 'That dog's having a fucking lend of you.'
He turned to the lanky driver standing near the deserted
distribution counter. 'I thought you said this was a good
idea.'

'Anywhere else?' Harry asked Asgard, ignoring the other
man. The young shepherd pulled away again on his harness
and raced over to the truck. He circled it, stood up against
it on his back paws near the drums, jumped down again and
barked loudly, with lowered hindquarters, a wildly wagging
tail and his Alsatian grin.

'Good boy, good boy,' Harry told him, coming up to him
and smoothing his ears, slipping a Meaty Treat into his mouth.
Again Asgard pulled away and Harry went after him, with
Burgess puffing behind.

'What is it now? Does he want to chase trucks, stupid
arsehole dog?' But Asgard now stood barking and wagging
at the bottom of the staircase. 'There's nothing up there,'
said Burgess. 'We checked it out.'

'Right,' said Harry. But he followed Asgard up the stairs
to the upper floor all the same. The lights were already on in
what looked like a storage space. There were cartons and bags
of chemicals, more of the big drums, and Asgard was running
around, yapping at the drums in the right-hand corner.

'Is it LSD?' Burgess was getting excited. 'They often use
these places to make more than one drug.' His raid was
reaping more than he'd expected. 'I'm bloody pleased I called
you in,' he told Harry. 'On my operation.' Harry noted the
lie and the possessiveness.

Asgard had finished his run of the top floor and was circling
around, pleased with himself, moving between his handler
and the drums. He made a few nosedown journeys around
the flooring just to make sure, but he'd already told Harry
everything he knew. 'Thanks, mate,' said Harry, going to
the drums Asgard had shown him and pulling a marker pen
from a top pocket. He marked each of the three drums with
a cross. His face didn't change, but he could feel the muscles
considering a smile.

TWO

did that man say to you?' Hannah asked as her mother
straightened up.

'What man?' her mother frowned.

'The father of the boy. The one you were telling Dad
about.'

Her mother's face cleared. 'Oh,' she said, 'that man,' taking
Hannah's hand, leading her back into the bedroom, to her
desk. 'He was very angry,' Meg said, 'because I'd asked Matt
-the
boy -to
write a list of the things he would like to see
change in his family if he could wave a magic wand. And his
father read it.'

'But why did that make him angry?'

'He didn't like some of the things Matt had written. They
were very straightforward.'

'Like what?'

Her mother smiled and kissed her again. 'Oh you, Hanky-panky,
always wanting to know everything.'

'Well?'

'Some other time, darling. I'll be late otherwise.' Then
she walked down the hall, passed her husband's office and
closed the front door behind her. It was a dark brick, 1930s
house, similar to the others in the street. Rooms opened off
a central hallway, which was decorated with an arch halfway
down its length and then opened out into a lounge room and
the kitchen area.

Hannah waited until she heard her mother's car fade into
the distance. Then she trotted back to Alison's room to find
her sister putting dark red lipstick on her mouth, her pale
face framed with black hair.

'You look like a witch,' said Hannah. Ali poked her tongue
out. 'Are you going out?'

'I might. Or we might come back here.'

'You've been smoking.'
'Will you have your bath and do your homework?'
'Sure,' said Hannah, laughing. 'You sound like Mum.'
Her sister groaned. 'Don't say that. I don't want to sound
like her.'

'When you're a grown-up, promise you'll always tell me
everything that I ask you?' said Hannah.

'Always,' said her sister. 'Now, how do I look?'
'Sort of witchy but in a nice way. Can I come with you?'
'Don't be silly, Hankers. You're eight years old.'
'You'd better be home before Mum gets home or there'll
be shit.'

Ali pulled her shoes on, kissed Hannah briefly on the
forehead, said 'See ya,' and then was gone.

Hannah went to the kitchen where Razor lolled in a
corner. 'Come on, old fellow. You can come onto my
bed.' She unplugged the telephone, replacing the line with
the one that reached into her bedroom, where she plugged
her modem into the computer. She clicked on her Internet icon, waited a second then entered her security password. The
familiar electronic squeaks were followed by the sound of the
line ringing. She logged on almost immediately, then went
into the secured Kid Chat relay that her parents had vetted.
Various conversations were going on, but Hannah wasn't
interested in them. 'Hanx has joined Kids Chat' appeared
on the screen, announcing Hannah's electronic, nicknamed
arrival. The other chatters continued. Hannah waited. Maybe
he was out. Or asleep. Or maybe he was having one of the
adventures he'd told her about -helping
the police get the
men who'd robbed the bank at East Hills last week, or in a
helicopter rescuing stranded skiers, or diving on shipwrecks.
Her friend Richard was the most exciting secret she had ever
had. She hopped onto the bed and Razor jumped up with
her, even though Mum wouldn't let the dogs get on the beds.
'Just this once, Mister,' she crooned into his ears. 'You can
come up because they've all left you. Poor boy. They've left
you all by yourself.'


A little while later, a flickering on the monitor screen caused
Hannah' to glance up from the book she was reading; his
nickname and the line of words she'd been waiting for
appeared. 'Flakman has joined Kids Chat.' Great. He was
there. She jumped up to talk to him. Razor jumped off
the bed, walked around in a circle and jumped back on
it again.

'Where have you been?' he asked.

'Where have you been?' Hannah countered.

'Out on an adventure,' he wrote. 'Let's go into a private
room.'

'Sure thing,' said Hannah. The screen changed and the
other conversationalists were no longer present. In the private
room, she continued. 'Tell me about the adventure.'

'I can't. It's top secret.'

'I don't think kids do things that are top secret.'

'There are a lot of things you don't know.'

'Give me a clue.'

'I can't. What have you been doing?

'Nothing much. Just school. Helping with the dogs.'

'Tell me about the dogs.'

Hannah told him. But she wasn't quite honest because she
knew already that Richard hated cops. So far, she'd avoided
telling him what her father did.

'One day,' he typed across the screen in her bedroom, 'you
and I will meet and have great fun and adventures together.
You miss out not having a brother.'

'You're not telling me anything,' Hannah sent back. 'It's
really, really awful around here lately,' she told Richard. 'My
parents fight all the time. Or they don't talk. It's horrible
when they don't talk to each other. But it's worse when they
do. Mum just goes ballistic.'

'Mine was a real bitch,' said Richard.

'What happened to her?'

'She went away.'

'Didn't you even care?'

Richard answered with a silly smiley-face symbol.

'Were you glad? I would be really sad if Mum or Dad
left. But lots of kids have separated parents these days. I
could live with Mum during the week and go and stay
with Dad at the weekends. No, I couldn't. He'd take the
dogs. Anyway, it's just horrible lately. Mum's supposed to
be a school counsellor.'

'What do you think about my idea?' Richard asked her.

'I think it's really cool.'

'I could post you some money,' he said. 'You could tell
me what you wanted to do. We could do anything. You just
have to tell me what day you want to do it and I'll meet you
wherever you like.'

'Great,' said Hannah. 'I could just go off to school -ha ha -- and come home at the usual time. They'd never
even know.'

'They'd never even know,' his answer repeated, signing
off from the screen with the smiley face again.

Hannah hugged herself with secret excitement. One day
soon, everyone would be doing Maths and History and standing
around in the hot playground at school and she would be
off having fun with her secret friend. It was the secrecy that
really delighted her. She knew that everyone had to have
an important secret. Mum wasn't allowed to talk about the
kids she counselled in the schools. Dad wasn't supposed to
talk about his police cases either. Hannah only knew about

Alison's boyfriend because one of Hannah's school friends
had seen them cuddling in his car after school.

Razor jumped off the bed and went to the door, listening
and whining.

'What is it, Mister?' She knew from his body language
that it was a family member coming home. If it had been
a stranger, he'd be barking his warning bark and prancing at
the door. Either Mum or Alison. She heard the key in the
front door and it was Alison's shoes she could hear coming
up the hall.

'You're early,' she said to her big sister, secretly relieved.
She worried that one night Alison would not get home in
time and she wouldn't know what to tell Mum or Dad. It
was the same at the swimming pool. Although they went
together most hot afternoons after school, Ali always left her
on her own to go and sit and smoke cigarettes with people
Hannah didn't know and who didn't go to school. Hannah
didn't mind too much. She was a top swimmer and there
was usually someone she knew to play and talk with.

Alison didn't respond and went straight to her room and
shut the door. Hannah went to it and thought for a moment
she might knock. But instead she turned away and went back
to reclaim her bed from Razor.


THREE




Meg lay on her side, away from him, staring at the nautical
painting on the wall above the stained timber desk. It
was as safe and dull as the other furnishings of the four-star
hotel. Max was dozing beside her. She looked at his handsome
face, the lashes long on his cheeks. Things had gone very fast
since that night at the end of first term, when the class had all
gone out together to celebrate and he'd been sitting beside her,
chatting with everyone but holding her gaze just a little too long
whenever he spoke to her. And then the shocking surprise as
he'd leaned over, when the rest of the group were at the snack
bar, and kissed her suddenly on the mouth. She had been too
taken aback to say anything. When the others had returned
with their plates, there had been a new energy between the
two of them, as if they were in a conspiracy. Which, she had
to admit to herself now as she glanced again around the hotel
room, they most certainly were. Their attendance at the art
classes was infrequent. Most weeks they met at the hotel and
spent the time making love. Once or twice they'd gone out
for dinner instead, but this had been too dangerous as far as
Meg was concerned. 'Anyone could see us,' she had said to
him. 'So?' he'd challenged. 'I don't care.' And he'd leaned
across the table and kissed her hard in public.
Meg knew that a lot of the heightened excitement of the
affair was due to its forbidden nature, the dangers of discovery,
the infrequency of their meetings, the intensity of the
sexual encounters, the unreality of relationship ungrounded
in ordinary dailiness. But I can't give him up, she thought to
herself. Not yet.

His hair had fallen across his forehead and she gently
brushed it back. His eyelids flickered and, suddenly, he was
looking straight at her. There was an intriguing quality about
his eyes that eluded her; sometimes she could read them, other
times they were distant.

He was speaking to her. 'Have you said anything to
him yet?' He leaned over to get one of the clove cigarettes
he sometimes smoked, lit it up and leaned back
against the bedhead. She turned around to rest against his
naked chest. His heartbeat was normal again and she listened
to the steady pulse, comparing it to her own faster
rhythm.

'No ... I think he knows, though,' she said, staring
sightlessly at the pastel-coloured print of the Cutty Sark.

'How?'

'He picks things up from me.' She thought of the early
days with Harry and what had drawn her so strongly to him:
his exquisite aliveness, his awareness, the way he listened so
intently, his acute sensitivity to her moods and even the
sudden movement of her unsaid thoughts.

'Picks up what?'

'He's like a dog. He notices everything. He sniffs and sees
things other people don't. He knows things. He knows when
I go to say something and change my mind. I'll be about to
say something, then I'll decide not to and Harry'll say, "What
was it?'" It occurred to her then that Harry hadn't done that
for some time.
Max looked down at her. 'People can't read minds,' he
said. But she thought he looked worried.

'Why?' she wanted to know. 'What's in yours?'

The velvet iris fibres of his eyes seemed to shrink, and there
was a flicker of the skin of his face. She'd caught him out,
she knew, thinking something he didn't want her to know.
God, she thought, I'm getting like Harry. 'What is it?' she
said, frightened now.

He looked away and ashed the cigarette. 'I want you to come away with me. You and the kids. You could paint all
day. You'd never run out of inspiration.'

Meg lay looking at him. 'I can't work you out,' she said.
'There's something--'

'What? Don't do your bloody school counsellor's number
on me.'

She put her hand up to his face and softly stroked the brows
and eyelashes, the short nose, the furrow underneath it that
ran to his lips, parted now and attempting to bite her finger.
'That's not possible,' she said. She paused and thought. 'But
there is something about you. You excite me. But under the
excitement,' she continued, 'there's something else you do
to me.' He had drawn her finger into his mouth and was
nibbling it.

'What's that?'

She wouldn't answer. Then it would be real, it would
be true. It was best the way it was -- just a spice, a twinge
in the lowest pit of her belly, sidling near desire. She took
her finger away from him and leaned over to pick up his
handsome wallet. She opened it so that the bills fanned out.
'You're rich!' she joked.

'I wish,' he smiled. His business card fell out and she picked
it up, running her finger over the embossed details. 'I used to
be rich,' he said.
'"Max Wolansky, ImportsExports",' she read from the
card.

'Yes?' he said.

'I wonder what they did at class tonight?'

'She said something about perspective last week,' he told
her, and she remembered, looking down the length of his
body under the sheet. She concentrated on the little bump
that nestled near his left groin. She put her tongue out and
started to circle his nipple, giving it little bites. As she worked,
she was gratified to see the bump start to enlarge and lengthen.
Anything to put the fear out of her mind. Sex would do that
for awhile. Max put the cigarette down and reached over for
the Scotch, drinking from the bottle, tilting his head back like
a man in a movie.

'I feel like your third drug sometimes,' she said. 'You drink
too much.'

He put the bottle down, took another condom from the
open box on the bedside table, and leaned over, cupping her
left breast, pulling her closer. 'I do a lot of things too much,'
he said. 'Come here.'

Because they'd already made love awhile ago, all she had
to do was enclose him by pushing onto him with a little
grunt as they lay on their sides, facing each other. He
tipped his pelvis backwards then rammed forward to fill
her properly. She rubbed the top of her chin on his soft
hair. They swayed together in a gentle rhythm until she felt
herself start to melt.

'Get on top of me,' she whispered, rolling over onto her
back. And he did, pushing himself home and into the waves
of her building orgasm. He covered her gasping mouth with
his and she sobbed silently into him, subsiding. Then he
withdrew.

'What's the matter?' she said.
'Nothing,' he said. 'I just don't feel like going on.'

'But look,' she said. 'You do.'

'I want to finish myself,' he said and started to masturbate.

'Don't,' she said. 'I hate it when you do that.' She jumped
out of bed. 'I told you I'd go if you did that again.'

'Come back,' he said. 'Don't go. Please.' But he was
lurching and jerking around his cock, moving faster.

'I don't like it. It's not right for me,' she said. 'I'm
going.'

He was straining towards orgasm, the muscles in his neck
tightening as he tried to grab her with one hand. But Meg
was dressing quickly.

'Don't go.' His movements now were short, brutal tugs.
'Please don't go!'

He was arched and coming as Meg slammed the door
on him.


Burgess followed Harry and the dog downstairs. The driver
came back inside, tossing a cigarette behind him out the door.
He nodded to Harry.

'I've got a uniform organised for the door,' the driver said
to Burgess. 'Did you find anything else?'

Burgess looked at Harry, unsure.

'We might have more than amphetamines,' Harry told
him. He was aware of a tightness around Burgess as he
leaned to smooth Asgard's ears. 'How many arrests did you
say you'd made?'

'Five slopes.'

The tightness Harry could sense in Burgess was increasing
in the silence. Finally he spoke to him, keeping his voice soft.
I don't know how you want to do this. You might want to
call in more backup.'

The driver looked at him as if he was unhinged. 'Backup?'

he looked at Burgess then back at Harry, who was winding
Asgard's harness closer over his hand as the dog sat panting
against him.

'In the ceiling above that metal filing cabinet,' he indicated
'and under the truck and under the stairs. And in the drums
that I marked for you on the next floor.'

'What?' said Burgess. 'What about them?'

Harry smoothed the ears of his dog, considering.

'Why didn't you just pull it out? What's all this fucking
around?' Burgess snarled.

The band of constriction Harry sensed in Burgess' chest
now felt hard and dangerous. 'You want to be careful,'
Harry heard himself saying to the heavy man. 'Your heart's
not in real good shape.' He usually didn't let on about how
he could sense things like this, and shut up, having said too
much already.

Burgess' eyes widened. 'What the fuck are you talking
about?'

'Like I said, I don't know how you want to do this. You
might need backup.' Asgard suddenly yawned and licked his
chops as his handler continued. 'At least another six people
are hiding on these premises.'

Burgess and the driver stared at Harry and then at each
other.

'It's your operation,' Harry said. 'I'm going home.'


Meg perched on a stool in Dell's neat kitchen and listened
to the loud tick of the clock. Country and western music
played softly on the radio and she could hear Dell talking
with her ten-year-old, telling him it was only Meg and
everything was all right. 'I'll leave the door open,' Meg
heard her friend saying to Jack. 'Then you'll get the light
from the hallway.'
'I'm sorry,' said Meg as Dell came back to the kitchen. 'I
didn't mean to wake him up.'

'He wasn't asleep. Do you want a drink?' she asked.

Meg shook her head. 'No.'

Dell moved a pile of half-finished dresses with huge, full
skirts from a chair and hung them safely away on the back
of a door. 'Sit down on that, Meg. It's more comfy.'

'They're beautiful,' said Meg. 'I love that soft mushroomy
pink.'

'Bridesmaids,' said her friend. 'I'm doing a wedding again.
Swore I never would.' She grinned. 'It was a political
decision,' she said, 'so I changed my mind. The flower
girl's has a ten foot long train. I'm terrified she's going to
end up strangling herself on it.' She poured Meg another cup
of tea, made herself a wine and soda and sat at the kitchen
table opposite Meg.

'I've got to finish it, Dell.'

Dell raised an eyebrow. 'I've heard that one before.'

'No, really. He did it again tonight.' She leaned forward
so she could whisper.

'Variety?' Dell suggested.

'No,' said Meg. 'It's not for variety. His first choice
is masturbation. It gives him the greatest pleasure. I just
know that.'

'I'm sure Masters and Johnson would just call that sort of
thing variety.'

Meg shook her head. 'Feels more like Kraft-Ebing to me,'
she said.

'Who's that?' Dell wanted to know.

'Some old expert on perversion that I read in my student
days. About a thousand years ago.'

'But he does want you,' her friend persisted. 'He wants
you and the kids to go away with him.'
Meg sighed. 'I don't think he really knows what that means.
I know he keeps saying it.'

'Why don't you try some time together?' said Dell. 'Just
a few days. Before you call it off. What have you got
to lose?'

Meg stood up and her friend stood as well. The two
women put their arms around each other. 'Thanks, Delly.
I don't know what I'd do without you.'

The too,' said Dell. 'But if I had a gorgeous, rich hunk who
wanted me to run away with him and who didn't mind the
bloody kids, I'd be off like a shot.'
The women walked to the door together. 'How's Harry?'

Meg shrugged. 'Same as usual. Doesn't talk, just looks.
Sometimes I get the feeling he's sniffing me over.' She
paused. 'He hasn't spoken to me in years. Really talked, I
mean. It's like he's taken a vow of silence.'

'Harry the monk,' Dell laughed. 'Ken was the same. They
stop talking. It's part of the job description. They only talk
with each other. Then they even stop doing that. "No-one
else understands," Ken used to say. I'd say "Give me a
chance." But he never did. All he wanted from me was
sex and cooking. Not conversation. I'd say "Why don't
we ever talk about anything?" And he'd sit down and he'd
say "Okay. Talk. Talk now.'" Dell shrugged to show the
hopelessness of it.

'Harry used to talk, a long time ago. But I've never
forgotten that around the time we married he told me
something weird. He reckoned he had a lock-up in his
mind -- of things he never wanted to think about again,
let alone talk about.' Dell looked inquiringly at her friend. 'I
asked him if there were a lot of things in there, and he shook
his head. He said no, only a couple, but nothing could be
done about them and they could never be let out. I used to
imagine these two barrels of deadly toxic waste lying at the
bottom of the Atlantic, under about seven miles of ocean.'

'Did he ever talk about the shooting?'

Meg shook her head. She buried her face in her hands,
then dragged her hair back away from her face, sitting up.
'Not to me. But by then I'd stopped asking questions. Now
I
think he's put me and our marriage in that lock-up too.
He won't discuss it.' She paused, feeling an overwhelming
sadness. 'Doesn't do anything except work and make those
bloody message sticks.'
'Are they part of his Koori heritage?' Dell asked.

Meg shook her head and laughed. 'He's got no interest in
his heritage whatsoever. God, I'm more interested than he
is, and I'm pretty well pure Anglo-Saxon. The truth is, he
first saw them at a North American Indian craft exhibition
we went to with the kids, and for some reason got inspired
to make one. Then he made another. And another. It's like
an obsession with him. He doesn't do anything with them,
just makes them. He never talks about his early life, or about
his mother or his childhood. He reckons I'd start doing a
psychology job on him.'

'Of course you would!' said Dell, laughing.

Meg shrugged. 'Maybe.' She almost smiled. 'Yes,' she
admitted, 'I would. I might get some insight that way. The
only thing he's ever told me is that his mother was supposed
to be descended from some famous sorcerer -- a "clever man".
Some historical figure. But it might be just a story.'

'If he's told you that much he might--'
But Meg interrupted her, shaking her head. 'That was in
the old days when we still talked, still listened to each other.'
Her voice was low. 'You know, Dell, Harry used to listen to
me so keenly that it was like . . .' she searched for the right
words '. . . like huge doors opening up deep inside him to
receive me. He's completely closed against me now. You
know how it is.'

'I do,' said Dell sadly, divorced two years before.

'Oh golly,' said Meg, looking at the yellow and white daisy
clock above Dell's country-style sideboard, 'I'd better dash.'


Meg opened Dell's front gate and closed it behind her. She
headed for her own, next-door, before remembering the stuff
she'd meant to bring in with her. Returning to her car, she
lugged her art folio out of the boot, even though she'd have
no need of it at home during the week and would have to
lug it back into the car again. It made her feel less of a liar,
this piece of physical evidence that she was enrolled in an art
course, that she did spend three hours a week doing a mixture
of life drawing, composition, oil and acrylic techniques and
art theory. Some nights. She rested the folder briefly on the
top step and looked at her house. It was a neat bungalow,
but the front yard needed tending. Weeds grew among the
gerberas along the front of the house and the box hedge
around the post and rail fence was ragged and untrimmed.
A few roses bloomed, but the bushes needed cutting back.
The sound of an aircraft overhead made her look up. When
the hot westerlies blew, the flight path for incoming air
traffic was right over her place. The huge craft lumbered
overhead, its landing lights flashing, seeming to hang low
in the air, impossibly slow. Meg thought sometimes she
could practically see the faces of the passengers through
the porthole windows. She looked again at the rundown
front garden. I don't have time, she thought. A family, a
demanding profession as well as a house to run. Not to
mention being a member of a twenty-four-hour operational
police base. There's never any time to do the things I really
want to do. I'm always tired. She lifted the folder again and

went inside, feeling an unaccountable sadness. She and Harry
had bought this house with such hope. He'd been married
briefly when he was very young, just as she had been, but
this was the first real home for both of them.

Razor wagged down the hall at her, speaking only once to
greet her as she closed the door. Then he sniffed at her. 'Go
away,' she said, guilty. He ambled down the hall and nosed
open Hannah's door, vanishing inside. Meg dragged the folio
into the living room and went into the kitchen to get a drink
of water. A pile of window envelopes waited on the bench.
Bills. She opened them, threw the envelopes into the bin
and placed the bills in a pile. She went to check on her
youngest daughter. Hannah was sound asleep with the light
on and Razor was sitting next to a huge teddy bear. 'Have
you been on that bed?' Meg scolded him.

She went over to her daughter and kissed her, covering her
with the sheet. The moo-cow clock kicked its heels to jump
over the moon at half past eleven on the bedside table. The
screensaver on Hannah's computer continued to send silent
shooting stars into the darkness of the room until Meg moved
the mouse. The menu came up so she closed the screen and
turned the light off. As soon as she'd left the room, Razor
padded over and jumped back onto the bed and Hannah
turned in her sleep to settle him down.

Meg tapped on Ali's door and opened it. 'It's late, Alison.
Put the light out.'

'Okay.'

She looked at the seventeen-year-old face with the hard
red on the soft mouth and heavy lines around her eyes. Alison
was beautiful, Meg thought, and completely closed to her.
Until last year, Ali had been an outstanding athlete, brilliant
at the cross-country event, who had loved to run with Harry
and the dogs. She could run the legs off her husband and
keep up with the dogs for hours on end. But something had
happened. Something had made Alison shut down.

'Is everything all right?' she asked her daughter.

Alison shrugged.

Oh Ali, Meg thought. What's gone wrong with us? She
heard the wagon pull up and started undoing her blouse,
hurrying to the bathroom. But Harry had inexplicably used
the front door and suddenly he was there, in the hall. Meg
pulled her blouse together and clutched the clean towel
tightly against her chest.

'Meg,' he began, but the softness in his voice only increased
her guilty feeling of unease, and she ducked to avoid him,
going into the bathroom, leaving him standing awkwardly in
the hall.

Asgard raced ahead into the kitchen and was sitting at
attention beside his dish, knowing he'd done very well when
Harry came in and opened a tin of pet food for him. Asgard
pounced on the food the second Harry gave the order. 'Good
boy, good boy,' Harry said automatically. He left the kitchen
and walked through the living room, down the hallway to
his office, passing the bathroom where Meg was showering.
Harry took his gun off and locked it away. On the desk was
the message stick he was currently making. He ran his fingers
over the sanded wood. The grain of timber pleased him with
its striations and curves. Termites or some sort of borer had
made scribbly indentations along one side, and these were so
complex that in some places it almost looked like a mysterious
language of glyphs.

He had drilled holes along the wood at uneven intervals.
On the longer side of the fork, he would wrap leather
thonging, leaving several lengths about fifteen centimetres
long and finishing them with feathers and beads. He would
set crystals and interesting stones in the holes he'd made.

Finally, he would finish the job with a clear varnish. This
timber was the soft fawn colour of a very young joey, Harry
thought. When he came to decorating it, he decided, he'd
keep to those warm colours of the eastern grey kangaroo -- the fawn, the gold, the black -with
some dark glistening
beads, echoes of the mighty disembowelling back claws and
shining eyes. Maybe some lines of red, black and white paint,
a touch of earth brown. He looked at the finished one where
it sat on the cupboard. This was a big shank of dark timber
that he'd stained ebony so that it looked like the femur
of some extinct beast from a peat bog. He'd decorated it
with sombre-coloured feathers and leather thonging, adding
a knob of glittering pyrites -- fool's gold -- into an excised pit
in the wood. An ancient king might have wielded this, he
thought. The phone rang and he prayed it wasn't going to
be another call-out. It wasn't. It was only the Confessor.


Meg was pretending to be asleep when he climbed in beside
her warm body, which smelled of soap and talc and toothbrush.
Harry lay in the dark, listening to his wife's breathing.
He remembered how he'd fallen in love with her body
scent, its brunette spiciness and undercurrent musk. Lately,
her scent was different. She was using a heavy new perfume,
not the light florals she usually favoured. He'd noticed new
underwear in her drawers. But the biggest giveaway was the
scent picture he'd discerned earlier in the hall -the
whisky
and the clove cigarettes, the acid sweat and the yeasty stink
of another man's semen -now
all washed down the drain.

The huge river gum still stood on the rising land on the
other side of the river. Over 150 years of growth had
almost completely closed over the holes gouged in the trunk,
and only the lumpy mounds of creamy scar growth, barely
discernible from the undamaged areas unless an observer
were to look very closely, indicated where the injuries had
been. Not far from the original two-roomed dwelling of
1843, the great-grandfather and his two sons had built the
double-storeyed Italianate house -- in 1887, when prosperity
allowed. The rise of the land protected it from the worst of
the western sun and the westerly winds, and it looked quite
grand from the road, with the French windows of its many
bedrooms opening out onto the verandahs that encircled the
house. The house faced north-east, and the land ahead of
it sloped quite steeply down to the river flats, permanently
watered by the property's huge frontage to a tributary of
the Lachlan River. On the rise behind the house, 120 years
before, Great-grandfather Wetherill had planted two ebony
trees, one each for his children, but they had never been
harvested for their black gold because over the years everyone
had forgotten what they were. Now they were just two old
trees surrounded by other exotics -copper
beeches, oaks
and maples -- as well as the indigenous wattles, eucalypts and
casuarinas. The original two-room dwelling, now used as a
toolshed and storage area, contained the skeleton of the old
sulky, dusty with spiders' webs among a great deal of rubbish.
One day someone was going to get round to restoring it.
He passed the manager's house, about a kilometre away to
the north-west, and drove up to the homestead. He wanted
to get inside, do some work and get out before Ralph, due
to leave in a few days to work in Queensland on another
property, knew he was there. After Ralph left, the place
would be empty except for himself, and that suited his plans
perfectly. Underneath the tarpaulin cover on the back of his
utility vehicle were more provisions and more ammunition,
and he didn't want anyone around while he unloaded that.
He went up to the front door and opened it. The smell
of damp and locked-up house hit him. Rain always seeped
through the window frame in the large front bedroom
upstairs. He had repaired it a few times but the water
came in from the roof as well and that was a huge job.
There was hardly any money left now in the account.
He'd sold most of the stock, and once the stud herd
went the place wouldn't be producing anything except
tussock grass and rabbits. Huge erosion gullies had split the
paddocks, cutting their way towards the river. Sheet erosion
had rendered the once-fertile river flats almost barren except
for prickly weeds that not even rabbits could kill. Ninety per
cent of Ralph's work was pest control.
My father would turn in his grave, he thought, if he could
see the place like this. The thought made him smile.
He made his way through the house, opening up rooms
and windows. It was hot outside but the interior of the house
was always cool, especially downstairs. He went up the long
staircase, where once highly-polished and carved rosewood
bannisters still showed under the dust. Both upstairs and
down, most of the furniture, spotted with mildew, was just
useable. A woman's touch, he thought wryly. That's what's
needed here. He walked right through the house, past the
parlour, the living room, the dining room, the old back
room that used to have the billiards table in it, past the two
small downstairs bedrooms and finally down to the kitchen: a
stone-floored area, part of the original house and redecorated
by his mother in the 1950s. The cupboards were the same
sickly pink and blue he remembered from his childhood. On
one, there was even the mark his father's boot had made when
a kick had gone awry and scraped the cupboard door instead of
connecting with him. You're not kicking anyone now, you
old bastard, he thought. He went straight through the kitchen
to the back door, unlocked the bolts and the deadlock, and
walked outside. The dark laundry buzzed with flies and an
odd chattering. Something stank dead in there. He stepped
inside and waited a second or two for his eyes to adjust. Folded
in their membranous cloaks and hanging upside down, were
twenty or thirty fruit bats. A dead bat lay on the ground,
and the floor was coated with excrement. As he watched,
two of them scolded and fought for a better toehold on
the old lines that ran across the area just under the ceiling,
held in position by a system of cleats and small pulleys. He
picked up the stinking corpse and took it outside, swinging
his arm, throwing it towards the family cemetery past the
spot where the summerhouse and the lawns had once been.
Bits of rotten bat flew off behind him as he hurled the stiff
body and the crowd of flies rose in the air. The cemetery lay
towards the right of the house, back from the river, tucked
near a small rise. Ancient briars obscured the headstones and
rusty iron bedheads filled the gaps in the hundred-year-old
wrought iron fence around the family plot. He never went
there. He remembered the story about the flood of 1899.
How the river banks had been washed away and the ground
of the cemetery so undermined by rising water that one of
the newly dead great uncles had been disinterred and washed
back home again to the steps of the summerhouse where he
lay with one rotting arm protruding from his split coffin.
He returned to the house, passed through it again to the
front door and outside to the ute. He undid the tarp and
started unloading, using a trolley.

At the end of the day, the preparations were almost complete.
He stood back and looked at his work, then returned to the
sitting room and opened the cabinet. A woman was supposed
to come up to the house once a fortnight to dust and generally
keep an eye on things, but there was no discernible evidence
of her visits. Dust lay along every surface and the old gilt
mirror that hung above the fireplace reflected an image of
himself as a misty ghost, marred with black spots. He took
out the bottle of brandy, poured a drink into one of the little
crystal glasses from the credenza and tossed it back, looking
at the photographs on the mantel above the fireplace: his
father in his uniform; mother in a studio portrait, looking
less frightened than usual; grandfather in his moustache with
his young bride overwhelmed by family lace. A few cameo
portraits of other relatives collected dust on the marble surface
where the ugly red Venetian glass vase still held centre stage.
He looked at his reflection in the speckled mirror beside it,
adding his own image to that of his family. 'Fuck the lot
of you,' he toasted. He thought of the family he should
have had. He thought of the man who had cheated him.
He poured another brandy and took it back with him to
the kitchen, his mind red-black with hatred. He finished it
and hurled the empty glass against the door. But it hit one
of the panels of patterned pink glass that ran either side of the
drying timber. Glass shattered and splintered, spearing in all
directions. He swore and kicked it into a pile in a corner.

Late in the evening he was in the utility and on the road
again. He took the turn off the highway to the small airstrip
too hard and fast and nearly skidded into the banks on the side
of the road. He liked night driving. He had a huge bullbar on
the front of the ute and any creature stupid enough to collide
with him was skewed, already dead in the air, onto the side
of the road. He liked the thump and hurl of a road kill. There
was an excitement in the shudder. Stupid animals would sit
by the side of the road, eyes luminous in the high beam, and
then, right at the most fatal time, they'd decide to jump or
run under his vehicle.
And right there in his headlights, as if he'd conjured it,
was a big kangaroo. 'Move, stupid,' he said to himself. But it
didn't. He drove straight ahead. Its dilated eyes were suddenly
rushing towards him. He felt the huge smack and shudder as
the bullbar collected the large body at speed. The ute swerved
and righted as he corrected the near skid. He didn't bother
to look back. Now, all he really had to do was fly back to
Sydney, pay Pughsie the down payment to grab the first one,
and the rest -- well -- the rest would be a piece of cake.
No-one noticed the man in the dark blue sedan next
evening as he drove slowly past the Dog Squad buildings
and the exercise yards. The driver easily picked out Harry
Doyle among the other men, slowing the car almost to a stop,
watching as Harry leaned over a blond Alsatian. Then the man
put his foot down, changed up to second gear, missed it, tried
again and picked up speed.

Harry swung around at a noisy gear change from the road
outside, but all he saw were the rear red lights of the car
vanishing into the night. Training took place in a well-lit yard
out at Bass Hill where the Dog Squad had its headquarters.
It was still hot, and the workout was hard on the men and
the dogs. The buildings, kennels and runs occupied a couple
of hectares, with the airconditioned administration block and
its dusty front garden giving on to the main road, and the
dogs' quarters and yards at the back. There were two new
man-dog units fresh out of training school and the two new
dogs responded well. You don't have to train the dogs, Harry
thought. Just the men to understand and support their dogs'
deft skills.
He turned his attention back to the dogs as they went
through their paces, tails wagging despite the heat: up and
over the smaller hurdles, urged on by their handlers, through
the tunnel, up the jungle gym and across the bars at the top,
over the sloping roof section, through the long pipe, up and
over the section of two-metre fence, across a ladder lying
prone on the ground, and up another one leaning against the
wall of the training area. Light-faced Blade, the two-year-old
he'd picked up from the vet that evening, sat with him and
Razor, also watching. In time, the younger dogs would
learn to jump through hoops, across teetering footholds,
along narrow ledges. As the bond of trust grew, those dogs
would pretty well go through fire for their handlers. 'Good
boy, good boy]' and some fondling from the handlers kept the
dogs keen and eager to please the man they saw as leader of
the dog pack. An active dog was sometimes rewarded with
a 'tug of war', playing with their handlers for possession of a
toy. Police dog recruits were as rare as their handlers; only
about one in a hundred pups had the right combination of
boldness and aggression without savagery, gun steadiness and
the desire to get out front and lead. Applicants had to pass
a gruelling three-day trial. All training simply enhanced or
supported the animals' natural capacities and instincts. All
dogs track by nature. Tracking, hunting, and bringing the
prey back to the home base is what a dog does in the wild.
There is only one area where a dog's training goes against a
natural instinct -and
that is in the matter of food refusal.

It was the Germans who had perfected the working dog
-initially
not bred for beauty. Different breeds had been
trialled but handlers kept coming back to the shepherd as
the best all-round dog. Bloodhounds might have somewhat
keener noses, but when it came to climbing, bloodhounds
weren't too keen. Nor were they particularly speedy over
distances. Bloodhounds were favoured by certain American

K-9 units, but almost always there was a man and a shepherd
close behind, for the bite. The powerful Rottweilers, too, had
their advocates. 'But,' Harry's sergeant had told him in the
early days, 'after you've had to lift a Rotty over nine fences,
you never really want to see him again.'

When Harry had applied to join the Dog Squad eight years
before, it was not much older itself. He wanted to work
with animals again, he'd told the sergeant who interviewed
him. He wanted to get away from Homicide, away from
murderous humans and back to animals. He liked their
honesty, the way they lived in the moment, their simplicity.
A good dog never gave mixed signals. A good dog never
smelt wrong. The sergeant had liked Harry's strong policing
background, but also his familiarity with working dogs, his
childhood on the big station, his tour of duty in Vietnam.
Harry was accepted and Razor the puppy was given to him
to bring home on the day that Hannah was born.

A police dog lives in the home of its handler -- the
operational base. Twenty-four hours a day. It is a deep
relationship based on the principle of the pack, with the
dog perceiving its handler as dominant dog. The training
works with natural instincts -tracking,
hunting, retrieving from
the ancient days of the dog pack. 'You never punish a
puppy for being a puppy,' he told Meg once, taking the ruined
Italian sandal away from Razor, 'anymore than you'd punish a
kid for being a kid. Give him something he can chew.'

A police dog pinpoints a scent using a cone-shaped pattern.
After he is 'cast' in his harness, he will run around until he
finds the scent, then, like an oscillating pendulum, he will
swing back and forth in smaller and smaller arcs until he's
homed in on the track -that
place where the scent picture
is brightest and strongest. The apocrine glands of the mature
human being, unlike the other sweat glands, are activated

only by emotion. These glands are distributed all over the
body and secrete a fluid that rapidly breaks down, becoming
odorous, when the person is in a high state of excitement.
Knowing that a large police dog and his handler are hot on
your heels creates a strong trail for a dog to follow, more
especially because there is a large concentration of apocrine
glands on the feet of all mammals, including humans.
As well, the dog follows a complicated weave of odours
-the
ground scent, which might include crushed herbage,
insects and other factors, as well as the human scent. Wherever
he treads, the quarry releases minuscule traces of sweat,
possibly other body fluids, invisible skin flakes, and the
myriad scents of his life: his workplace, his aftershave, his
soap, his washing powder, his girlfriend's perfume, his cat,
his cat's flea powder, his mother's medication, the smells
picked up from his vehicle, the lawn he trod on earlier,
the cedar chest his socks are folded in, his clothing and his
nationality. Different national diets quite naturally produce
different personal scents.
With young Razor, Harry learned to become a man-dog
police team; or rather, he learned to interpret what Razor
was telling him about tracking as Razor searched property
for drugs or other substances. He started to recognise all
Razor's idiosyncrasies, the way he 'talked' in his body language.
After awhile, Harry barely needed to say anything;
the dog picked up his intention almost at the same time
Harry had the thought. In this way they became like one
animal, joined together by the flexible harness line, moving
and picking up the scent picture together. Harry's sense of
smell, always extremely keen, became more finely tuned with
Razor's tuition.
'I've worked with tracking dogs before,' he told the
sergeant. 'In Vietnam. I want to do it again.'
In Vietnam the dogs detected anti-personnel weapons and
land mines along the track. They hunted down the men their
handlers called 'the enemy'. Sometimes, after a firefight, it was
deemed necessary that no survivor should slip through to the
village or the bunker system ahead and warn the others. The
black labrador is a bold, keen dog and it doesn't 'speak'. Bred
as a gun dog, the black labrador knows how to stalk and point,
how to freeze, how to stay steady around gunfire. The hardest
job, as always for the handler, was keeping up with his dog.
No matter where the enemy tried to hide, the big labrador
found him. What happened after that was also inevitable.
A company with a dog team slept better than any other
fighting unit, knowing they had a sentry keener than any
human curled up with its handler. Men shared their rations
with their animals; medics attended the dogs' wounds with
as much attention as they'd give a man. An injured army
dog was Casevacced out just like an injured man, lifted on
a stretcher and flown to safety. No-one begrudged them.

It was Blade's turn to run the obstacle course. He baulked
at the pipe, refusing to go through it. And he turned away
from the ladder, until Harry had practically lifted him over it.
The dog was not working to his full potential, Harry knew.
It was not only the after-effects of the virus. The dog was
upset because of the way things were at home. It's affecting
the dogs, the kids, Harry thought. It's getting to me, too. Two
shots rang out and Harry jumped. Then he relaxed. The boss
must have decided to do some further training with them.
Lumbering towards them from the far end of the property
like the Michelin tyre man was the senior constable, unrecognisable
in a protective suit. Made of similar mesh to seat belts,
this fabric was extremely tough, its fibres designed to recover
from the holes and bite marks inflicted on it. The constable
staggered closer and fired another round from a snub-nosed
.38. 'Ya bloody mugs. Try and get me. Come on, ya bastards.'
It was clear from his face -the
only bit of him showing -that he was enjoying his role. 'Mug coppers,' he sneered.
Blade stiffened but sat at attention by Harry until the
threatening figure was less than fifteen metres away. The dog's
brilliant eyes followed every move but he remained completely
motionless, except for the energetic tremor running
the length of his body. When the constable raised his pistol
to fire again, Harry leaned forward, whispered the attack command
and slipped the harness. The Alsatian leapt through the
air, flying at the gunman's elbow. His jaws closed on the firing
arm as he danced on back legs, growling and snarling, tearing
at the arm holding the weapon. The constable shook his arm.
He punched Blade with his free hand. He did everything he
could to throw the dog off. Blade gripped tighter, growling
deeper and more fiercely. As he spun around, Blade spun with
him. No matter what he did, that dog hung on tighter.
'Throw the gun down!' Harry ordered. 'Now!'
The constable did so, and at the same moment Blade dropped
off his arm and sat at attention, white fangs centimetres
from the constable's crotch. 'If you remain perfectly still,'
Harry said, 'the dog will not harm you.'
'It's hot in here,' the constable said. 'I want to scratch
my balls.'
'I wouldn't,' said Harry.
The two figures remained motionless except for Blade's
heaving flanks and lolling tongue. Some tiny nicker of movement
in the constable, imperceptible to the men watching,
caused Blade to jump at him again, seizing the fabric near the
throat. Again the constable froze. Again Blade sat at attention.
It was a rare offender who would take on jaws backed up by
pressure of 300 pounds per square inch.
Harry called him back, and he came bounding over. 'Good
dog, good dog,' Harry said, squatting to pet him and reattach
the harness.
'That's what we want,' said the senior sergeant to the two
new men and their dogs. 'From attack to docility as fast as
that. An uncontrollable dog is no use to us.'
If the quarry tried to hide up a tree or a building, the
dog was trained to sit beneath the hide and bark. Like all
the police dogs, Blade would only attack on command or if
his handler was threatened. The attack command was kept
as secret as a cop's PIN number.
After the formal training was over, Harry looked up to see
the senior sergeant coming over, wiping the sweat from his
face. 'That young dog,' Matthews said, indicating Blade as he
pocketed his handkerchief, 'he's off tonight.' Matthews was
a big man who kept fit shooting feral pigs from a helicopter
harness during his holidays.
Harry nodded. He opened the back of the wagon and the
dogs jumped in.
'What's wrong with him?' Matthews wanted to know.
'He's okay,' said Harry. 'He's just over a virus.'
'Everything all right at home?' Matthews said.
'Fine,' said Harry.
Matthews looked hard at him, reading him. 'Our lives
depend on those dogs doing what they're trained to do.'
Harry nodded again.
'See to it,' said Matthews.

On the way home, Harry decided to take the dogs for a run;
not so much for their sakes, but for his own. He liked to
run late in summer when it was cooler, and at forty-seven,
he knew he was slowing down.
He had permission to train the dogs on partially-cleared
army reserve land that also had creek flats to provide open
grassland. His night vision had always been good. He let the
dogs off their harnesses and took off after them, noticing how
they went over hidden obstacles. He ran easily behind them
and ahead of him the bush fell silent. The scent picture was
damp forested area amid residential and industrial land -the dank, uriney smell of stale water and old oil. He noticed the
brief, fresh smell of fungus as his feet hit some soft rotting
timber underfoot. There was a night-flowering native climber
whose name he didn't know layered in the still, cooler air
above the creek. All he could hear was the distant sound of the
freeway and the frogs further up the creek who were not yet
alarmed by their arrival. A plover shrieked and a half-moon
was rising, momentarily reflected in the creek water as he ran
past. He shivered despite the heat. Half-moon in water was an
image he didn't like. It shone too close to the lock-up in his
mind where horrors lay. Sometimes they twitched, stirred by
certain images and situations.
Harry loped along in his easy style, relaxed, using only
the necessary muscles. He was aware of the strength of his
bones and sinews and it felt good. The dogs started the
climb into the timbered area where the creek rose and
Harry followed, slowing a little in response to the terrain.
He needed to go bush, he thought. To get away from
criminals and amphetamine factories and smoggy cities. To
have a break from Meg whom he could never please these
days. Maybe take Hannah. He imagined fishing at the river
at Boolabimbie and passing on to Hannah all the things he'd
been told in the old days when he was her age, about the
river, the surrounding country and the skies. But hell, he
realised, she would know all that from the Internet. That kid
probably already knew more about the world than he did.
The uphill run didn't seem to worry the dogs at all. They
bounded and jumped effortlessly, picking their way with their
snouts and eyes through brush and fallen timber. At the top of
the rise, Harry called them and they came to sit at attention
with him. He could see the headlights on the freeway, and the
clustered lights of the housing estates on the other side. As he
remained still, he became aware of the different scent picture
here: dryer, hotter air, spicy and sharper. Ten years ago, on a
night like this, Harry had gone to meet an informant, who'd
promised to name names. Harry remembered the smell of
eucalypt in the night air, the way the door had opened
before he'd even got halfway up the path, the man in the
doorway framed and backlit, and the way the man had swung
around with the handgun silhouetted upwards into the firing
position. In one movement, Harry had dived sideways off the
path and fired.
But he didn't want to think about this now. He turned
his attention to the dogs and they looked around, sensing
his movement, tongues lolling. Half-moon shone on white
fangs and Harry hardened his mind as he pushed another
memory away. Except that in this memory the scent picture
was not the spice of eucalypt and a suburban Sydney garden
on a summer night but putrid tropical rainforest near Nui
Dat, and next to the half-moon reflected in a swampy pool
a gutted woman was dying on the ground, and someone was
getting up off her.
Harry spoke a short, sharp command to the dogs and let
them run free back down the hill.

He drove the wagon into the yard at the back of his place
and parked it near the dogs' pen along the fence. He went
round to let Blade and Razor out of the wagon and Asgard
greeted them, standing on his back legs in the wire run. It
was nearly eleven and Meg's car was in the carport. The

dogs bounded into the kitchen with him and he went to get
the Meaty Treats they liked. He was giving them the 'eat'
command when Hannah suddenly appeared in the kitchen.
'What are you doing up at this hour?' he said.
'I was waiting for Blade. I want him in my room. And I'm
too hot,' she added.
Harry gave Blade another treat and ruffled his ears as the
last aircraft before the curfew flew over the house towards
Sydney Airport. Outside, Asgard barked at it.
'Was he good tonight?' Hannah asked.
'He was the best,' her father said. 'He showed two new
dogs how it's done.' He felt bad lying to her.
'Why can't Asgard come inside?' she asked.
'It's better for him to stay out there. Dogs are territorial
and we don't want fighting.' He noticed the way she clung
to Blade and he picked up the wave of fear and sadness that
pulsed out of his daughter.
'What is it?' he said. 'Why aren't you sleeping?'
'I have to have Blade with me. He helps me sleep.'
'Why aren't you sleeping?' he asked again. 'What's frightening
you?'
His daughter's eyes looked into his. 'I hate the way you
and Mum don't talk to each other. And I hate it when you
do talk. I can hear things in my room.'
Harry noticed how skinny she was. And it wasn't just the
unfillable thinness of pre-adolescence. It pained him to think
she might go the same way as Alison, and be lost to him as
well. There were shadows around her eyes that a child only
had when she was sick or in pain. He put his arms around
her and she hugged him back.
'It's all right, Dad,' she said. 'Don't worry. I'll be all right.
It's just sometimes I don't like everything.'
He felt at a loss. He knew there was a capacity in him to talk
to her but he found it extremely difficult. So he took her hand
and led her silently back through the house to her room.
'What is it?' Meg appeared, wrapping her dressing-gown
around herself, her face pale and anxious. 'Why aren't you
in bed, Hannah?'
'I'm going, Mum.'
Harry and Meg looked at each other over the child. 'She's
frightened,' said Harry.
'I am not,' said Hannah.
He went back to the kitchen to lock up, stopping on the
way to look around the half-closed door at the sleeping form
of his elder daughter. He was uneasy about her room. Strange,
hostile scents. Leather. A man he didn't know. Cigarette
smoke, very faint. Brought home on her hair and clothes,
other scents he didn't want to know about. When she was
four, Alison had said she was going to marry him when she
grew up and Mummy could be their baby. She had adored
him and it hadn't mattered that she was not his child. She'd
been two when he and Meg had married, the result of
Meg's brief, unhappy first marriage. The ex-husband lived
somewhere in Perth, remarried with another family. Alison
had never known another father apart from him. Now she
barely looked at him, let alone spoke to him.
Immense loneliness welled up inside him, like a swamping
wave. He felt alienated and isolated from every other human
being. He let Razor come in and walked outside so that Razor
had to turn and follow him back out again. Asgard pranced in
the dog pen along the back fence and Harry walked over to
him and petted his ears. Behind them, Razor pawed at the
screen door, opened it, and went back inside. 'You'll be going
home soon, mate,' Harry told Asgard, who licked his fingers.
The air was still and hot, filled with cooking smells from the
Asian restaurants along the main street and petrol fumes from
Anzac Parade. Harry longed for the aromatic smell of a hot
night in the scrub. He looked up at the sky, searching for signs
of a change in the weather. The stars were dull here, on the
edges of the city, not like the great cloudy masses of radiance
they'd displayed to his boyhood gaze. Once he'd known the
skies of his childhood like he now knew his backyard: the
way the constellations moved throughout the hours of night,
the way they swung in their greater migrations through the
seasons of the year. The scent of wood fire, yellow box, came
to him, and he could have been back at Boolabimbie, 300
kilometres away to the north-west of Sydney, in the hut with
his mother and the stockman she lived with. Harry recalled
the enclosed verandah that had served as his bedroom, and
how he'd always positioned himself to go to sleep with a star
shining straight down on him through a small hole in the
corrugated iron of the roof above him. It had satisfied him
in the same way tracking did. Some deep faculty in him was
filled and satisfied by following the dog -- even to exhaustion
-to
the quarry and bringing him home. It was that essential
quality, only found in one in a hundred men or dogs. Both
handlers and police dogs had to have it.
'That dog is not allowed on the bed.' Meg's voice interrupted
his thoughts and he went back inside and locked up,
checking all the downstairs windows and the front door,
stopping at Hannah's room.
Meg was holding up the cable that plugged into the
phone. 'What's this? You've been on the Internet again.'
Harry looked at his wife, whose anger was now directed at
her daughter.
'You said I could,' Hannah reasoned. 'You said I could
have five hours a week.'
Meg started rolling up the extension lead. 'I don't know,'
she said. 'I don't know about this Internet. I don't even have
it at work. It's all going too fast. Anything in the world can
come pouring into my house.'
'It's just stuff, Mum. Information. It's like a library. Just
because you don't know about it, you don't have to worry
about it.' Her bottom lip quivered but she wouldn't cry.
Harry went to her, picked her up and put her into her bed.
'Come on Hanka-panka,' he said. 'You're overtired.' Blade
padded over to the side of the bed.
'You always say that,' she said through tears. 'Just because
I'm not doing something you want me to do.' He was aware
that Meg had vanished, leaving him to deal with Hannah.
'Look,' he said, 'I'm overtired too. I've had a hard day.
So's Blade. He wants to go to sleep.'
'And Sarah said she doesn't want to be my friend anymore,'
said Hannah, bursting into a wail.
'She'll change her mind about that,' said Harry, arranging
the sheet over his daughter.
'No she won't!' Hannah shrieked in a voice that indicated
she was at the end of her tether. 'You don't know what it's
like to have a best friend who doesn't want to be best friends
anymore!'
He sat on the edge of the bed and took her hands. She tried
to pull away at first, refusing to be comforted, but eventually
let her hands lie still in his.
'When I was a little boy,' he said, those magic words that
Hannah loved to hear, 'my best friend was Angus. We did
everything together. Like you and Sarah. We rode horses,
we camped out in the bush.' Hannah's eyes were wide with
listening. 'His father owned the property and my father
worked for him. But Angus's father used to beat him.'
'Why?' said Hannah.
'He used to drink too much and get violent.' Harry
remembered terrible scenes, terrible beatings.
'And then what happened?'
'Angus eventually got taller than his father and hit him back
one time. And the old man never touched him again. Not
physically.'
'Then what did you do?'
Harry smiled. 'You know the next part. We went to the
Vietnam War together. Two country boys. And when we
came home, everything had changed. Australia had changed.
And Angus wasn't my friend anymore.'
'Why?'
'He did something that I couldn't forgive.'
'What?'
Harry looked at his daughter -her
concern, her puzzled
frown. He would never tell her. He would never tell anyone
what Angus had done. He stood up and leaned over,
kissing her goodnight. 'Questions, questions. You'll make a
great cop.'
'Grown-ups are weird,' she said, turning away from him.
'You start to tell me things then you stop. So does Mum.'
'You don't have to know everything,' he said to her.
'There are things I wish I didn't know.'
'When I grow up,' she said, 'I'm going to know everything.
And I'm going to tell my kids everything.' She rolled back to
face him.
'Dad? Will you make me a message stick? A special one
just for me?'
Harry was touched. 'Would you really like one?'
'Yes, with some beautiful purple athemist crystals on it.'
'I'll make you one,' he said, suppressing a smile. 'Complete
with athemists.'

Meg could hear the low voices of her daughter and her
husband as she wiped down the kitchen counter. Hannah
loved hearing about the things Harry had done when he was
a boy. Once she had, too. She walked to the kitchen door and
went outside. Asgard was curled up on some sacking under
the roof of the dog pen and he watched intently as Meg sat
on one of the two swings Harry had built for the girls years
ago. She swung gently back and forth, remembering times
gone by when they had sometimes sat here together in the
hot nights, with a beer, gently rocking on the swings and
talking. She could see the dull glow of the lights of the city,
five kilometres away, reflected in the night sky low on the
horizon. Overhead was a turbulent sky but it hadn't rained for
months and the air was charged. Meg felt immensely lonely.
She sighed and stood up and went back into the kitchen. She
dialled Max's number.
'Hullo?' he said in his anonymous, downwards inflected
voice.
'It's me,' she said. 'I want to see you soon.'
'Haven't you just seen enough?' he teased.
Meg shook her head. 'No,' she said, 'I haven't.'
'That's easily arranged,' he said and she could hear the
longing in his voice. She rang off.

Harry climbed into bed and felt his wife lying awake beside
him.
'Did you go out tonight?' he asked her. Her scent picture
was bland tonight.
'Yes,' she said. 'I went over to Dell's.'
He couldn't smell Dell anywhere. Just his wife's own
brunette smell -- the nightie, food scents, the washed cosmetic
late-night smell he knew so well. Her secret scent was faintly
there, too, and he turned away from her, knowing that it
didn't flower for him anymore.
'I was thinking,' Meg said, 'of how you used to listen to
me once. Now you don't even talk to me.' Harry knew it
was safer to stay silent.
'You should have come with me to that counsellor last
year,' she continued in the dark. 'But you wouldn't.'
How often he did things like that, he thought. Just grabbed
something out of the resentment box and tossed it at him. He
didn't answer, just lay there with his eyes open, sensing a shift
in his wife, a decision taken, something deep changing.
Perhaps I should have, he thought. But I didn't want to
talk to some stranger about very private things. 'Nothing I
ever do is enough,' he finally said. 'I am always a failure
to you.'
'That's the longest speech you've made for about a year.'
His wife's voice was hard, defensive against the pain in
his voice.
'It won't happen again,' he said, further hardening his
voice. He heard her eyes blinking in the darkness. I've given
up, he thought.
She felt him very still beside her, as if he were watching
and waiting for her next move. 'But you don't care anymore,
do you?' said his wife. 'I wonder if you even care
about the kids. I don't think you even care about the job
anymore. All you care about these days are the dogs . . . the
precious dogs.'
He turned away and closed his eyes. 'I don't know what
to do either,' he said finally.

Harry was just about to pull a huge codfish out of the river
at Boolabimbie when a bird started screaming at him. He'd
never heard this bird in his life and he turned and grabbed
the phone, instantly awake.
'Yes?'
'We've got a situation.' It was Arnold Peake, assistant to the
Area Commander. 'We need the dogs. Some crazy holed-up
in a house at Strathfield. He took a few pot shots at the
uniforms when they tried to go in.'
Harry got the address and hung up. In situations like this, a
dog could be very helpful, and more and more patrol leaders
were using them. If the offender came out shooting, as they
sometimes did, a dog could disarm him faster and more
effectively than a man. The subject might be bitten, but
that was certainly preferable to the use of lethal force, and
while the offender was dealing with the dog he was unable
to deal with the police. Should he somehow elude the police,
having a dog on the spot meant that he could be tracked down
almost immediately.
It was 4.40 a.m. and the house had cooled down. Harry
swung his legs over and sat on the edge of the bed. Meg
stirred and said something incomprehensible then resettled
and Razor padded in, sitting at attention beside him. 'We've
got a job, mate,' he told the old dog. Razor's ears pricked
and stayed up, swivelling at his master's movements.
In the corner of the bedroom Meg had leaned her major
art work for the term, a brilliant abstract of light, darkness and
colour. In the dimness, it looked as if tiny spirit faces peered
out of the thick swirls of paint. Harry showered, washed his
hair, shaved and dressed.
Blade and Razor sat by the kitchen door, already waiting
for him. He decided that Asgard needed the experience but he
took Razor too because the old dog was a steadying influence
on the spirited blond youngster. 'Next time, Blade,' he said.
'You look after the women.'
Blade stood at the kitchen door watching the other dogs
jump into the back of the wagon on Harry's command. Their
gear was already stowed and he checked their harnesses and his
weapon, fastening it down. The sun was rising behind him as
he drove west, skirting the city, joining the Parramatta Road
near Sydney University.
He had no trouble finding the place, a gracious, tree-lined
parade off Strathfield Road, because the streets were
cordoned off all around for a one-kilometre radius. Police
vehicles formed barricades, while curious neighbours and
bystanders looked on from a distance. Harry drove across
the footpaths, around the police vehicles and found the man
in charge. Two streets formed the long horns of Bromeliad
Crescent, where the unknown gunman was holed up in
number six. Harry was waved through to the small group of
State Protection Group men in dark blue overalls and boots.
He parked the wagon on the footpath and gave both dogs
a drink from the big jerry-can. He ordered Asgard out and
left the top half of the back of the wagon open, because it
was going to be a hot day. Razor slumped down again and
poignandy tilted his head between his paws, looking up at
his pack leader. Harry touched Razor briefly on both paws
in a superfluous command to stay.
Harry recognised negotiator Clive Wren. With Asgard
obedient beside him, he walked over. 'What's the story?'
he asked.
'We got a call from the neighbours about midnight,' Clive
said. 'They thought they'd heard a shot. There'd been fighting
and arguing earlier in the week and the local uniforms had
been over to have a chat.'
'What did they find?'
'A woman who said there was nothing the matter. Just a
routine domestic tiff'
'Who is she?'
Clive shrugged again. 'Elizabeth May Golding. She said
there'd been an argument with her boyfriend earlier but that
everything was A-okay now.'
'And the boyfriend?'
'She gave his name as McEwan. He wasn't there at
the time.'
'What about the weapon?'
'We're not sure yet. Some sort of semi-automatic. Black
gun, maybe,' said Wren, using the M16's nickname. 'It's been
too hot round here to be hunting up close for cartridges.
We've got blokes in both next-door properties as well as in
the house that abuts the backyard.'
'Have you made contact with him yet?'
'We had a chat on the phone. He's considering coming
out, he said. But he doesn't know when. He said he needs
time to think.'
'What about the other person?'
'We don't know. We don't know much yet. Her son's
being interviewed. The neighbours. Usual stuff'
'What are you planning on doing?'
Clive shrugged. 'The usual. Tell him we'll consider every
request he makes. Agree with everything he says. Don't laugh
at his jokes and basically bore the mad bastard stiff until he
walks out. I've got a gut feeling the hostage is dead and he
hasn't got a clue what to do next.'
'Where's the boss?'
'Somewhere round,' Clive shrugged again. 'He's trying to
get some more intelligence on this clown. The name we've
got doesn't show up anywhere. He's a cleanskin.'
Harry walked Asgard around the police vehicles until he
could get a good look at number six: a large sandstone, brick
and timber single-storey house in Federation style, blinds and
curtains drawn, with verandahs and a small round tower with
a witch's hat roof at the southern end. Dark, well-established
gardens set back behind a stone wall enclosed the property.
About a million dollars worth or more these days, Harry
estimated. A driveway ran up to a small, closed garage
on the right-hand side. Dense hedges along the fencelines,
where wrens whispered, hid the house from neighbours on
either side.
Harry and Asgard approached the property on the left of
number six where two Tactical Control men, bulky in flak
jackets, waited next to their vehicle. Harry remembered from
his days with Homicide how too much police work involved
simply waiting.
'I'll take the dog and go down round the back,' Harry told
them. 'See what's doing down there.'
'There might be a couple of our blokes round the back,'
said the heavier of the two. 'Don't let them shoot you.'
Asgard trotted ahead down the side passage of number
four and Harry followed him, noticing the jumpiness. There
was no doubt that the absence of his usual handler and the
trouble at home was showing up in the dog. Dogs and kids,
Harry thought. They pick up on everything going down especially
when no-one talks about it.
At the back of the place he found a timber-decked patio
with barbecue furniture and a small in-ground pool. A Willie-wagtail
dived around the pool, chasing insects, and he heard
the snip of its beak. The scent picture here was ammonia, lawn
clippings, blackened sausages, rust, diesel and the fragrance of
cypress pines on a hot summer morning. Any early moisture
was quickly drying, sending vapours away. And there was
something else: a scent that teased and eluded him. He
concentrated. The hairs on his forearms started rising in
instinctive fear. He felt the same crawling up his spine and
neck, under the sweat in his heavy overalls. It was right there,
the impression of a scent memory, like the memory of a dream
that dissolves in the same action of conscious mind trying to
examine it. He swung around, but there was nothing. Asgard
was intent on him, alert to something that was important to
his handler. His intelligent hazel eyes looked into Harry's.
'Just some old something, mate,' Harry told him. An aircraft
droned high overhead heading for Bankstown Airport, and
the scent ghost vanished.
At the hedge that formed the southern boundary, Asgard
stood up on his hind legs as Harry squinted through to
number six. Do you want me to go through? Asgard's body
language asked him. 'No. Stay,' Harry said. He could see a
little more of the outside area of number six -the
lush garden,
crowded with perennials, geraniums, overgrown shrubs and a
savage-looking aloes plant with thigh-thick monstrous spear
leaves. Bees buzzed in a bottle-brush and he could smell
honey on the wing. There could even be a wild hive
around, he thought, the odour was so strong. Apart from
a blue wren and two little brown females hopping through
a collection of pots, nothing moved in number six. He and
Asgard waited, watching through the hedge. He heard the
phone ringing in the siege house as he made his way back
down the side passage of number four.
'Please answer the phone,' Harry heard Clive call out in
his level, steady voice. 'We can sort this out, mate. Just let
anyone else come outside and then we can talk easy.'
When it happened, it was so fast that he understood only
later how it had all gone so wrong.
Harry crouched, tensed in every muscle, ready to spring,
because he'd noticed the front door move. He felt Asgard
shudder with excitement beside him and tightened his customary
hold on the harness line. Harry had a split-second
glimpse of something the size of a lemon flying sideways
out of the open doorway to land in front of the house; of
a man taking cover behind a large elm tree; of a short, thick
weapon.
'Grenade!' Harry shouted. Instinctively, he dived with
Asgard behind another of the sturdy elms. 'Get down! He's
lobbed a grenade!'
The explosion erupted in a vivid orange flame and black
smoke. In the shocked silence, Harry and the dog raced
through the smoke past the star-shaped pattern on the driveway.
Harry had seen the man heading for the opposite fence
and he and the dog crashed through into the sedate gardens
of number eight, smashing vegetation, crushing seedlings,
splashing through a small wire-covered ornamental pond.
He got a glimpse of the man just before he leaped over the
back fence; noted his low crouching run, and saw the armalite.
Harry unfastened his holster as he and Asgard scrambled over
the fence. Suddenly the man turned and stood his ground,
aiming the weapon at Harry. Harry crashed rolling to the
ground as he dived behind a corner. He stayed covered for
a moment, then cautiously looked around. The offender
had dropped into his crouching run again. Harry drew his
weapon, released Asgard's line and held him by the collar.
'Stop!' he commanded. 'Or I'll shoot. Drop the weapon.'
The offender kept moving and Harry was about to release the
dog when he saw the glint of a knife. Asgard, too toey, didn't
wait for the attack command. He shot through the air to fasten
on to the right arm of the offender. The armalite fell from
the man's grasp, but Harry sensed the knife thrust and heard
Asgard's yelp. He charged forward, saw the offender pick up
the armalite, and jumped sideways again, taking cover. Asgard
dropped to the ground then staggered to get up again while
the man raced towards the back of the siege house. Harry ran
after him, ducking past an overturned deck chair. 'Stop or I'll
shoot,' he yelled again. He stood and fired -once,
twice then
continued to run after the man. The place was going
crazy with shouts and orders and swearing. In Vietnam, the
air would be full of lead. But this was policing in a civilian area.
In a war zone, soldiers keep firing. Police cannot. 'Collateral
damage' -the
acceptable civilian dead and injured that are
part and parcel of a combat firefight -is
not tolerated in the
suburbs in times of peace. Harry raced after the gunman,
who had disappeared over another back fence. Harry heard
a whimper and turned to see Asgard dragging himself across
the ground towards where the man had vanished. Harry ran
past the injured dog and crashed through the hedge, looking
each way, but all he could see were other police, all doing
the same.
'This way, this way!' Harry ran across the hedge. There was
no-one in number eight or on the footpath. Nor in ten.
'Spread out,' he could hear the boss yelling. 'He's just
here. Let that ambulance through.' Ambulance officers were
already attending to someone lying on the ground near the
fence, not far from the crater.
Harry ran back to Asgard, who was lying near the hedge,
heaving. Let the others find the mad bastard, he thought.
He squatted beside the dog, pulling his belt off, making a
tourniquet. Asgard's tail flickered in an attempted greeting.
But there was nothing Harry could do. He could hear the
whistling of a lung wound and blood bubbled from the hole
with every breath and heartbeat. A stinking jungle pool, lit
with a half-moon, rose in his mind at the agonising sound.
Another severe cut had opened up the area above Asgard's
right eye and blood poured over the snout and onto the
ground. Harry picked up the dog and ran with him, weaving
between vehicles, ducking police officers who continued to
run towards the siege house. He'd noticed a doctor's surgery
in the street. But Asgard was dead before he pushed open
the door.
Harry drove home with Razor, and Asgard in a body bag.
The house was empty; Hannah and Alison were at school,
and Meg at work. When he went round the back of the
wagon to let Razor out, Blade barked from the dog pen
to greet them, and when Razor ran over to the younger
dog his tail was tucked under his hindquarters. The old dog
was distressed. Blade seemed listless and dry-nosed, so Harry
took the dog's temperature and the result decided him to
take Blade straight back to Don Rawson.
'I'll keep him a little while,' said Don. 'Get this temperature
down and keep the fluids up.' Harry said goodbye to Blade,
who licked his hand and looked reproachful through a
wire cage.
Back home, Harry gave Razor a drink and washed down
Asgard's bloody harness, dreading the thought of ringing
his owner.
He went into his study and locked his weapon away,
brushing past the message stick so that it swayed slightly
on the leather thong that suspended it from the ceiling. Any
handler hated losing a dog. Asgard's name would go up on the
honour roll at the Dog Squad. 'PD Asgard. Killed on duty 22
November 1996.' Something from the morning's events also
troubled him: an elusive scent and the escaped offender.

He drove to the Dog Squad with Razor and pulled up near
the fenced-off pen where a batch of new puppies were climbing
all over their patient mother as she rested in the shade.
Opposite was the row of kennels, as big as stables, where
the dogs rested when they weren't out on a job, and just
like stables each animal's name was painted on the door.
'Harry. What happened?' Ray Gosling came out of the
office building. 'Arnold Peake's been on the phone. Wants
you back to track that guy. Or will I go?'
Harry considered. Ray's dog, PD Javelin, was a first-class
animal. It would be a good idea to let Ray do this. But he
shook his head and went back to the wagon.
Ray followed him. 'Shit,' he said, when he saw the bloody,
dead dog in the body bag. 'Ron's going to take it hard.'
'Put him in the freezer. Ron'll want to bury him. Razor
and I'll go back. I've got a score to settle with this bastard.'
Back at the siege house the police presence was still
considerable. Physical Evidence people were packing up
their boxes of tricks and leaving.
'We lost him really quickly,' Peake was saying as Harry
got out of the wagon. He went round the back, opened it,
and Razor jumped down. Harry harnessed him and the two
men and the dog walked into the house, past the claypan
left by the grenade. Harry smelled human blood and Razor
became agitated beside him. He'd picked up Asgard's scent.
Razor sniffed at the spot near the hedge where Asgard
had struggled to breathe. Harry let him discover what had
happened; watched him, sniffing, jerking and barking around
the dark stain, now drying in the sun and covered in flies.
Harry squatted and soothed him.
'Only had him for a coupla blocks and then we fucking
lost him,' Peake was grizzling behind him. 'The media's
going crazy. Wanting to know how one man gets through
the State's finest. Short of turning the suburb into a war zone
... I told them we can't actually do that.'
Outside the house, Harry let Razor meet the people
present. Running from one to another, the dog checked
them all out, sorting them from the complicated scents
of ambulance officers, antiseptics, explosives and stretchers.
Then Harry took the dog to where he'd seen the gunman
stumble after the grenade and just before he'd crashed through
the fence. Razor immediately pulled away on the lead and
took off. 'Good boy, good boy,' Harry told him. 'That's
the bad guy.' Razor scrambled through the hedge, dragging
Harry after him. A few half-circles and Razor dropped
his hindquarters, sweeping his tail round and round like
a corkscrew: Harry read Razor's tail. 'I've got him,' that
circling tail said. 'I'm right onto him.' The dog took off
through gardens and yards, hardly aware of the scared faces
at windows. Within a minute or two, Harry recognised the
pattern of autonomic flight.
When we are afraid, Harry thought, we all behave in the
same way. You haven't got a clue yet where you're going,
have you, he thought to the escapee. You're just getting the
hell out of here, trying to put as much distance between you
and the crime scene in the smallest amount of time. So he
wasn't at all surprised to follow Razor across the road to a
house nearby and make for the right-hand side, even though
that side was blocked by a high gate and on the other was
a nice, easy driveway. But you didn't take that, did you?
he thought to himself. Because you're in flight mode on
foot and following an ancient, universal brain pattern, you
will invariably go down the right-hand side, even if there's
barbed wire in the way. I've followed you so often. I know
how you go until you start thinking again.
Razor was jumping and dancing at the gateway. Harry
gave the old dog a leg up and followed him over. Down the
right-hand side of the garden out the back, over the fence
again. You take an initial left turn, like I saw you do at the
hedge after you'd lobbed the grenade. And from then on it's
right all the way. Until the next stage. And I know that, too.
Razor tugged him along through the driveway and out at the
front of the next house. They crossed another road and Razor
made another right-hand turn into a little lane. Strathfield's
gracious mansion zone had given way to a mix of housing
and light industrial of a modern era. Running down the lane,
Razor danced to a halt where a large exotic tree overhung
the back walls of what looked like factory buildings. 'You
would,' Harry cursed, and Razor scrambled up and over the
fence, squeezing himself between the top of the timber and
the scratchy boughs of the tree. Harry grunted and lugged
himself over.
Behind him, he was aware of the thudding of the State Protection
blokes, keeping up with him because they were fit as
buggery. He imagined the swearing and the out-of-condition
complaining of the support cops behind them. Harry dropped
over the fence, grazing his right hand on the rampant thorns
of a blood-red bougainvillea that was growing up the tree.
Razor tracked around the tree and stopped, signalling 'He
had a rest here'.
So, thought Harry. You went to ground here, did you,
and had a bit of a think about things? Eighty per cent of all
urban tracks terminate within four blocks. You are running
true to form.
The faint ghost of memory stirred. It was a rainforest tree;
he didn't know the name of it, but he'd seen them before
in Vietnam, or ones very similar. The hairs at the back of
his neck prickled and suddenly it wasn't a game anymore.
Where did you go? Harry wondered.
Now their quarry had switched from the unconscious
flight path syndrome back to his own idiosyncratic pattern.
Razor, barking excitedly, pulled him towards the back of the
buildings -'Prestige
Buttons and Fasteners' -running
up to a
door marked 'Trade enquiries only'. Harry opened the door
and the dog went in, leading him through empty corridors
until he stopped outside a door marked 'Men's toilet'. Harry
swung around, hearing thudding feet, but it was only Arnie
Peake, purple-faced, followed by another, younger man.
'Get and find the owner. Or the manager,' Peake gasped.
'Get them out of here.' The young man obliged and vanished
along the corridor.
'What've we got?'
'Don't know,' said Harry, thinking of a grenade in a small
space. 'But I'm not going in until I do.'
When the State Protection mob kicked the door in eight
minutes later, there was no-one at home. Razor led them to
one of the cubicles then sat and barked loudly, his whole
body shaking. Harry looked up. The manhole in the ceiling
gaped. 'Shit!' said Peake, who had come up behind him.
'We can tear the ceiling to pieces,' said Harry, 'or try and
pick him up outside again.'
They ran through the building, past gaping employees
in white overalls and the agitated manager who was being
pacified by a police constable. 'If he came out on the roof,'
said Harry, 'he's got to have either jumped down somewhere.
Or . . .'he paused as he went outside into the morning again.
He looked down both sides of the Prestige building.
'Or what?' said Peake, following him, extremely puffed
out and pissed ofF. 'He can't fucking fly.'
Harry noticed that the gap between Prestige Buttons and
the next building was close enough for someone to jump.
If he was fit and desperate. Or perhaps only desperate. 'He
started working this out under that rainforest tree,' Harry told
Peake. 'That's when he stopped being unconscious. Started
thinking again.'
Arnold Peake looked at him. 'I knew you Dog Squad
blokes were weird,' said Peake. 'What are you talking about
unconscious?'
Harry and Razor tried to pick up the trail again. But a
strong wind had blown up from the west and the roads and
footpaths were stinking with the smell of tar, hot metal and
petrol fumes. Razor arced around, trying to locate the trail
again. Then when he'd covered the area, he drooped. 'Scent's
gone,' he signalled.
'Boss wants you back at the siege ranch,' Peake told him as
he and Razor hitched a lift in a car. 'Wants you to check out
the inside of the house.' He shook his head as if this was one
of the strangest requests ever to come from a senior officer.

The siege house had been taped off around the inner perimeter
of the crime scene when Harry approached. 'The ambos
reckon he'll probably lose an eye,' he heard someone say as
they passed through the group of police clustered round the
grenade's crater.
Razor trotted up the sandstone steps and into the cool,
well-furnished interior of the house. 'There's no-one here,'
said Peake. 'It's been searched thoroughly.' Harry nodded.
The scent picture was floral: polish, dust, expensive timbers,
cedar and rosewood as well as faint traces of other things
Harry couldn't identify. The two of them moved around the
open-plan rooms, Razor acquainting himself with everyone
there. With the gunman's scent in his repertoire, Harry was
waiting for him when he signalled 'someone else'. Harry
nodded. The faint fragrance of perfume was the other scent
he'd noticed.
'Find her,' Harry told the dog.
Razor tugged on his lead, hot on the trail. He found her everywhere. 'She sat here quite recently,' his signals
told Harry. He followed her all around the house. In the
mauve and white bedroom, the bed was unmade and the
woman's cream nightgown was on the floor. Harry nodded
and patted Razor. They'd had a fight here, he thought. The
bedside table was overturned and a lot of jars and bottles lay
on the floor near the dressing-table. Dying roses lay on the
floor near a vase. Harry squatted and felt the carpet. It was
dry. So, not last night.
'I'm heading back,' said Peake. 'There's nothing happening
here.'
'There's a woman here,' said Harry. 'A woman came here
and she hasn't left the premises.'
Peake looked at him and then at Razor, who was sniffing
at a corner of the room, pawing an active alert. 'She's down
here,' the dog told him.
'She's down there,' Harry told Peake. Peake stared. Razor
was scratching at the lavender carpet and Harry went over.
He squatted down and saw where the carpet didn't quite join
the cedar skirting board. He peeled it back and there it was,
the neatly crafted brass ring, nestled in its housing on the top
of the trap. Peake came over to look with several others as
Harry pulled the carpet completely away from the entrance.
'Well, bugger me,' said Peake.
Harry lifted the brass ring and pulled the trapdoor open.
There was a light down there. The scent picture was dust
and wine cellar and fungus and cold, old air.
Harry let Razor race down the steps and followed him.
There was very little blood on the front of her blouse and
the marks on her skirt were from the dusty cellar floor. The
woman lay on the cellar floor surrounded by neat racks of
wine. A naked bulb shone mercilessly into her blind and
staring eyes. But the wide eyes didn't reflect back. The
aqueous and vitreous humours were clouding and already
the corneas' surfaces were starting to dry.
Back at headquarters Harry rang Ron, who had already
heard the news about Asgard.
'I'm sorry, mate,' Harry told him. 'He was a good dog.
But he jumped before I gave the attack command. There
was nothing I could do.'
The afternoon was baking hot, close to thirty-eight and
with no cooling breeze. Ray Gosling and PD Javelin were
out on a job and a probationary constable was cleaning out
the kennels. The constable sprayed the puppies in their run
and they squirmed and yelped with pleasure.
In his office with its lumbering, inefficient airconditioner,
Harry wrote up the morning's incident. If he'd still been
in Homicide, his work would just be beginning. But he
was Dog Squad now and his job was finished. Never again
would he have to spend hours and hours with deadened,
brutalised killers and maimers, questioning them, empathising
with them, trying to experience their points of view, coming
almost to understand why they did the things they did, sitting
up late in small rooms with overflowing ashtrays and empty
coffee cups. That was behind him forever. He blessed the
dogs for this, and went home to get some sleep.
in the bedroom, he drew the curtains against the heat and
turned the airconditioner full on, so by the time he'd
finished his shower, the room had cooled down. He lay
down in his underwear. On the wall beside the bed was
one of Meg's watercolours of Nelson Bay, a delicate wash
of gold and turquoise with children playing in the sand. He
dozed. Sometimes, he'd start from his sleep with racing heart,
unable to remember what dream figure had terrified him.

He woke to a slamming kitchen door. Hannah appeared at
the bedroom door, home from school, dragging her backpack
along the floor with Razor wagging beside her.
'Hullo. Where's Blade and Asgard?'
Harry swung his legs over the side and sat up. He patted
the bed beside him. 'Come and sit here,' he said. 'I've got
some sad news.'
'Oh no,' she said, tears springing to her eyes, knowing
already. She wouldn't climb on the bed, instead stood facing
him squarely with her wide eyes.
'He was too brave and an armed man killed him,' he said.
'Blade's okay. Don's keeping an eye on him for me.'
'Poor dog. Poor Asgard. He was just doing his job.' She
cried her full-throated Hannah roar at the injustice of the
world and tightened her grip on Razor's fur.
'Hanx, some people don't care what they do. They don't
care if they hurt people or animals. Listen,' he said, standing
up and leading her out into the kitchen. 'Don Rawson said
we could pick your best friend Blade up later.'
'I hope you get that man,' she said fiercely, turning to him.
'He must never hurt Razor or Blade. I need Blade to keep
me safe at night. And Razor is my twin dog.'
Harry looked at her again. 'What is it?' he asked. 'What is
it that you're afraid of?'
Hannah shrugged. 'I don't know. I just worry at night.' She
continued to hold the big dog. 'I can't sleep. You know.'
He did and was ashamed of himself. He changed the
subject. 'Would you like to come out bush with me? During
the holidays?'
Hannah sniffed and rubbed tears away with her sleeve.
'That's ages away. Ages and ages.'
'It'll come round. It always does.'
She vanished from the doorway and soon he heard the soft
chattering of her computer.
Hannah e-mailed her cousin in Adelaide. Her mother's
sister, Ingrid, had three children, and Diane was only a year
older than Hannah. 'Hi Di,' Hannah wrote. 'Thanks for your
letter. We're okay here. Asgard was killed on duty. He was
a dog Dad was minding for a friend in hospital. Ali thinks
she's the coolest person in the world, but she's not. I've got
this friend called Richard who is on the Chat line and we
have fun. One day you'd better come over and we can all go
out together. See ya. Love Hannah.' She pressed 'Send' and
off it went, vanishing through the optical fibre at the speed
of light to wait until her cousin switched on her terminal
and checked her mail. Just on the chance that there might
be a letter, she checked her in-tray. A few musical chords
played by her computer accompanied a message 'You have
new mail'.
She felt a thrill of pleasure and hit 'Open'. She read the
letter and it made her feel very excited. She wanted to answer
it immediately, giving her postal address so that he could send
the money as soon as possible. Mum would be home any
minute now and it was better that she wasn't still on the net
by then. But she just couldn't bear to wait till the next day.
She hit 'Reply' and wrote: 'Hi, Richard. Thanks for the
letter. My postal address is 55 Botanical Avenue, Kingsford.'
Harry dozed a bit more but the ghost memory was still
stirring, drifting with him in and out of consciousness. He
deliberately sat up, blinking, and got up.
It was the ghost scent from this morning's siege and the
pale woman lying shot through the heart on the cellar floor of
the million-dollar Strathfield house that kept haunting him.
He'd arranged to meet Gentleman Jim Coates from Physical
Evidence for coffee and a catch-up that day, so he rang to
check if Jim was still available. He and Jim still kept in touch
about once a month.
'Sure,' said Jim. 'All the crims of New South Wales have
given me their word there'll be no misbehaviour for an hour
or so today. Meet me at the usual place, usual time.' It was
an old habit never to mention placenames over the phone.

Harry waited for Jim at a cafe with tinted windows on
Oxford Street, taking in the chaotic scent of traffic fumes,
perfume, disinfectant, food with a predominance of onions,
the delicious smell of coffee roasting. This place had a
courtyard and an exit out the back, so that if anyone came
in that you ¦wanted to avoid there was a way to disappear.
Jim walked in and sat down. 'I heard about the dog,' he

said. 'Are you all right?' Harry nodded and they ordered
coffee and cheese melts.
'That Strathfield siege,' said Harry, looking out the window
at a derelict man deep in conversation with the pole he was
leaning against. 'What have you got?'
'There's,a lot involved,' said Jim. 'You don't get a siege,
a murder and a grenade attack in one place as a rule. We're
still sorting through all the bits of wire. Major Jack Baker says
the grenade was an M26. Used in Vietnam. He's chasing up
where it was issued. It appears that the woman had been living
in the cellar for some time. There was food down there and
some plumbing had been done -connected
up to the drains
to give her a bathroom. She had a toaster and a kettle, some
tins of food, water -- that sort of thing.'
'Living down there or imprisoned down there?' Harry
asked him.
'Not possible to say for sure,' said Jim. 'But, yes, imprisoned
more likely. Why would you live in a cellar when you had a
whole house?'
The waiter came with the coffee. Harry sipped his. 'There'd
been a fight in the bedroom,' he said. He remembered the dry
carpet and the dead roses. 'Maybe they had a fight some days
ago and that was when he decided to lock her up. Maybe the
neighbours could hear her yelling from the cellar.'
'Why are you interested in a crime scene all of a sudden?
And an offender? I thought you were finished with all that,'
said Jim.
'I am,' said Harry.
'We had an interesting fire last week in Paddington,' said
Jim. 'Antiques place. You would have loved it.'
Two youngsters walked past the window, hair dyed like
rosellas and tiny rings in their eyebrows. At a table nearby,
a couple sat in silence, staring at the passing parade.
'Tell me about it,' said Harry, biting into his melt while
it was too hot and burning his tongue.

'He'd used an accelerant,' said Jim. 'Soon as I walked in,
I could see where he'd splashed it around.'
What arsonists didn't realise, thought Harry, was that
whatever accelerant they threw around, burned more deeply
than anywhere else, so an investigator could clearly see the
carved-out pattern of the splashes.
'But it took me a while to work out how he'd started it.
He was in Wollongong by the time the fire was raging.'
'Some sort of timing wick,' said Harry, venturing the
melt again.
'I found this neat little spiral of ash,' said Jim, indicating
with his finger on the table. 'Completely untouched. Still in
perfect order. About that big.' He drew the spiral on the table
with the tip of his forefinger. 'Suggest anything to you?'
Harry thought a moment. He chewed the rest of the cheese
melt and swallowed it, wiping his mouth on the paper napkin.
'Mosquito coil,' he said.
Jim beamed. 'Exactly. By the time it had burnt to the
end and set the wick into the petrol alight, he was down
the coast, sleeping like a baby. I did one of your tricks and
pulled a mosquito coil out of my pocket when we questioned
him. You should have seen his face. He practically burst
into tears.'
'See,' said Harry 'they don't consider that although it might
be their second or third crime, or even their twentieth or
thirtieth, for us it's crime scene 200 ... or 2000.'
'I don't like the sound of the joker who got away from
you at Strathfield,' said Jim.
Harry called for the bill. He didn't either. Something
haunted him, a pattern he recognised about the way that
gunman had covered the ground between the house and
the hedge; the way he moved. He'd talk to Jim about it
later when it was clearer in his mind.

He and Hannah picked up Blade and drove home. Meg was
nowhere to be seen but Alison was there, sprawled on the
lounge watching a game show.
'Ah?' he said, and the pencilled eyes turned and looked
straight into his.
'What?'
Harry wanted to ask her what she was so angry about but
thought he already knew. What do you want from me? he
nearly asked, ashamed that he didn't know the answer.
'I just thought maybe you'd like to do something on the
weekend. With your mum and me and Hannah.'
Alison didn't answer immediately, simply looked at him
with her cool eyes as if he had suggested the most disgusting
thing in the world. 'I don't think so,' she said, turning her
attention back to the canned laughter.
He had a couple of rostered days off due to him, so while
he cooked tea for himself and the girls he wondered what he
would do with the time. Meg rang to say Dell was shouting
her a meal at the golf club, an early birthday present.
'Meg,' he said, reminded, 'I want to take you out for
dinner.'
'That'd be nice,' she said. 'We haven't gone out for dinner
for ages.'
Harry grunted and hung up and it rang again the instant
he put it down.
'I need to talk to you, Harry,' came the thin voice. 'I killed
that woman. The Archons were practising chemicals on me.'
The voice almost faded away.
'Tell me about it,' said Harry, sitting on a stool next to the
griller with a fork in the other hand.
'I had to kill her,' said the Confessor. 'The Archons
told me.'
'I see,' said Harry.
'I didn't want to do it, but they said God wanted it done.
I am but his trusted servant,' the voice wavered. 'I must carry
out the will of God. We are but vile sinners who must do
His bidding.'
'I suppose that's one way of looking at it,' said Harry, pulling
the griller out and jumping as he was stung by hot fat.
'In His will is our peace,' said the Confessor.
'True enough,' said Harry, turning the chops, placing them
in neat rows, curled together with their tails all facing the same
direction.
'I just needed to tell someone about it,' said the Confessor.
'I am guilty and I need to be punished.'
'Well,' said Harry, 'I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make a
full report of your confession to me now and someone will
come down shortly and take a statement from you. Where are
you living at the moment?' He pushed the tray back under
the griller.

'Soon I will be living in the Kingdom of Heaven?' the
voice queried. 'But now I am living with my brother who
has been released from Inferno land. And we are preparing
for a new guest for the feast.'
'That's nice,' said Harry. 'But if you would just give me
the address
The Confessor's voice changed. 'I have to go. He's coming.
Goodbye.' And he rang off.
Harry put the phone down and poked the potatoes. They
were ready. He drained the peas, stirred in some butter, sliced
up some tomato and served the chops and vegetables onto their
plates, calling out to Alison and Hannah to come and get it.
'Yum. Curly tails,' said Hannah, picking up, then immediately
yelping and dropping the hot chop. Alison sat in silence and
picked at the peas. Glossy, jet-black hair looped like curtains
on each side of her pale face. Harry thought of a woman
lying dead with a small hole next to her sternum. He looked
at the older girl's gothic whiteness, the fine skin over the
bones and tendons of her hands. As a child, she had followed
him everywhere. Now, she fiddled with a chunk of potato,
squashing it into a paste.
Hannah had already eaten one chop and was working her
way through the tail of the other. She smiled at him. But his
attention was still with Alison. 'You're too thin,' he said to
her. 'Why aren't you eating?'
'She wants to be a supermodel,' said Hannah.
'I'm not hungry.'
'Everyone gets hungry. The bloody dogs get hungry--'
'I am not a member of a dog pack,' said Alison, turning
her scorn on him. It was so exactly like something Meg might
have once said to him that he was silenced.
'Well I am,' said Hannah. 'And Razor is my darling, darling
twin brother.' Razor came over at the sound of his name and
pushed his snout into Hannah's lap. She nuzzled him.
'Hannah, don't do that while you're eating,' said her sister.
'Don't they have mothers in dog packs?' Hannah asked.
'Of course they do,' he said.
'She means Mum's never home,' Alison interpreted, and
stood up to take her almost untouched meal to the sink.
Hannah looked up and frowned at her big sister.
'You think you know everything. But you don't, Ali.'
She slipped off her chair and went into her room. Ali didn't
know about Richard, nickname the Flakman. Only Di in
Adelaide knew about Richard, and even she didn't know
much. Richard was her special secret.
Harry wiped down the sink, hanging the tea towel up to dry.
Alison had vanished into her room and he could hear the
head-banging rhythm of her latest CD. He went down the
hallway and knocked on her door. 'Please turn that down,
Ali,' he was yelling when she suddenly did so and his voice
was exposed, roaring her name.
Across the hallway, Hannah looked round from the computer.
'Shouldn't you be doing homework?' Harry said to her.
'Mum wouldn't like you doing that now.'
'Mum's not here,' said his logical child. 'Do you mind
too?'
Harry shrugged. His mobile rang and he went into his
office, brushing past the message stick to answer it. It was Gentleman Jim.
'We've got some more on the gunman, Padre,' Jim said,
using Harry's nickname from the old days.
'Don't call me that,' said Harry.
'I do apologise. It just slipped out. John Thomas McEwan.
Age forty-eight. Businessman -whatever
that means. The
woman was shot with a pistol -- a Tokarev. Neat little Russian
piece. You don't see many of them around. Distinctive crimps
on the cartridge. The commies used them in Vietnam. We've
had the dead woman's son in here again in a real state.
Reckons he's going to go after this guy.'
Harry sighed. 'You know a lot of them say that for awhile.
Talk to him. Let him talk to you. He could give you a lot.
What else do you know about this McEwan?'
'He's got an unrestricted pilot's licence. The address on
that is Brisbane. But there's no record on him in Queensland.
The deceased was a good style of a woman, from what
we've got -- an ex-teacher who had a small business selling
cosmetics and lingerie in peoples' homes. She'd been
involved with our fellow for about a year. The son only
met him once.'
'Why are you telling me all this?'
'To increase your curiosity. We wish you'd come back.'
'I'm not curious anymore,' said Harry. 'Shooting Franco
changed all -that.' He paused. 'But there is something you
should know. I saw how he moves. Tell the blokes to be
very careful if they get close up. This guy's done a lot of fire
and movement drill. He moves like a professional soldier. My
guess is he's seen active service. You might be going after a
crazy vet.'

Meg waited in the pastel motel room, staring at the floral
prints on the wall, until she heard his car pull up. When
she opened the door to his knock and he came in, her heart
lurched because he was so good-looking, a little taller than
Harry's 190 centimetres, with a tanned face and dark hair just
a little too long to be neat. He put his arms around her and
she pushed her face into his breast and armpit, smelling him
through his leather jacket and pushing both it and his shirt
away so she could lick his skin. But he put her gently to one
side and moved past her, to fall on the bed.
'Get us a drink, will you?'
So she went to the bar fridge and made herself a brandy
and a Scotch on ice for him. She brought the drinks over
and, kicking her shoes off, joined him on the bed.
'I'm going up to Maldon in the next few days,' he said.
'And then I want you to come up and see how you like it
there.' He took a long drink and put the glass on the bedside
table. 'Come here,' he said, pulling her down to join him.
'I can just see you,' he said, 'sitting up in the north room.
There's a huge old room upstairs overlooking the gardens and
the river. French windows fill it with light all day. I'd make a
fire for you in the fireplace, and leave you alone to work. Or
you could sit outside on the front lawn in a shady hat. Like
one of the Impressionists.' He laughed at that and she looked
hard at him. He was preoccupied, edgy. His restlessness was
irritating her. She looked at the handsome face and suddenly
realised how little she knew him.
'Max. I . . .' She stopped.
'You what?'
'I don't know anymore. About whether I should go.'
He turned to her then and she encountered something in
his eyes she'd never seen before. It vanished as she looked.
'You'll come,' he said. 'I know that.'
Meg took a mouthful of brandy. 'I think I should take
some time for myself. I don't think I should just go from
one man to the next.'
His laugh wasn't pleasant. 'Why the hell not? Every woman
I've ever known does exactly that.'
'I meant I think I should give myself some space. I still
have an eight-year-old daughter. Alison would be all right.
But Hannah would have to come with me.'
He leaned over and kissed her, softly parting her lips with
his tongue. Maybe, she thought, I've been too hasty. She
found herself returning his kiss; his beautiful mouth excited
her. I don't have to call it off right now, she thought. Soon
she forgot that she was thinking of calling the whole thing
off, forgot that she had decided to warn him that if he ever
did that business again it would be over for good. Instead,
she rolled over into him and started unzipping his trousers.
Next time, she thought. I'll make a decision next time.

Hannah tried to drag the big dog higher up the bed and
Razor, understanding her intention, clambered up to be
beside her. She wrapped her arm around him, sniffing his

good, clean, doggy smell. She heard her mother come in the
front door, heard her high heels clatter down the polished
boards in the hall, past their bedrooms, past the little room
that her father used as an office and into the lounge area near
the kitchen.
'Do you realise what time it is?' Razor sat up at the sound
of her father's voice.
'Yes.'
Razor flopped back down again. Hannah turned over and
pulled the pillow over her head. She kept her attention on
the plan that she and Richard were making. If she left early
in the morning, at the same time she normally left for school,
and made sure she was back by four, no-one would know the
difference. She could put shorts and t-shirt in her school bag
and change. She wasn't a hundred per cent sure that Richard
was a rich kid, although he said he was. But if the money
came in the mail, she would know. And she would go.
'I don't know what I want to do,' her mother's voice
intruded. 'If I knew, I'd do it.'
'There's someone else, isn't there, Margaret?' Razor pricked
up his ears again, alert to the distress in his pack leader's voice.
'Don't even think about lying. I can smell him. I've been
smelling him for months.'
She heard her mother rush down the hall into the bedroom,
heard her father's footsteps following. Don't, don't don't, Hannah begged silently. Just leave her alone and it won't
get worse. Please, please don't.
But her father's voice was raised. 'I've been running this
family on my own for months,' he was saying. 'Cooking tea
as well as working all hours with the dogs--'
'Fuck the dogs!'
Hannah was shocked. She had never heard her mother
swear before.
'If you'd paid as much attention to your "wife or children
as you do to those fucking dogs . . .'
Hannah started crying, cradling Razor, covering his ears.
'Don't listen to her,' Hannah sobbed into the dog's warm
body. 'She doesn't mean it. She doesn't mean it. You are a
very good dog. You are.'
Then came her father's angry footsteps down the hall to
her room, dragging her mother with him. Hannah shrank
into her bed, fearful. Her door swung open. Suddenly her
parents were there, blocking the doorway to her room. Her
mother's eyes were wide with fright and anger. 'Look. Look
what you're doing!' her father yelled, switching the light on
to reveal Hannah sobbing into Razor's wolfish fur. 'Look at
her. Look at your daughter.'
'Stop it, Harry. Stop this!' Her mother struggled to free
herself from her father's grasp. 'Let me go! Stop it! Will you
let me go?'
Her father swung them both round and tried to open Ali's
door across the corridor, but it was locked. With Meg still
tightly held, he bashed on Ali's door. 'Ali doesn't eat,' he
yelled at the closed door. 'Ali's starving herself. Ali locks
herself in her room and doesn't eat. You're a bloody school
counsellor. Just look at these kids.'
'Harry will you stop this immediately. You're frightening
everyone.'
'Frightening everyone? I'm frightening everyone? How do
you work that out?'
Her mother broke away from her father and came into
Hannah's room. She leaned over Hannah, smoothing her
hair. 'Don't cry, darling. He's just upset. Please, don't cry.'
'Why shouldn't she cry?' her father was yelling. 'She's got
plenty to cry about.'
'I'm only crying because Asgard is dead!' screamed Hannah.
Her mother stood up and went to the door, switching the
light off, going out into the hall, her voice low and hard.
'Harry, stop this immediately or I'll take the girls and go
right this minute.'
'Why don't you do just that?' he yelled back. 'Piss off with
your fancy boyfriend and give me a break. You're never here
anyway. You're always out.'
'Oh Jesus Christ don't you start on that one! There were
months I'd go without seeing you. You and your precious
bloody dogs.'
Hannah heard Ali's door open across the hall. She jumped
out of bed with Razor following. 'Come on,' her sister
whispered opposite, beckoning. And Hannah scuttled across
the hall and into Ali's room. Ali locked the door again and
Hannah climbed into the warmth of her sister's bed.
'It's okay, it's okay.' Ali got into bed and cuddled her until
Hannah's sobbing decreased.
'I hate it when they fight,' she told her big sister.
'I know. I do too.'
'And I hate it when Mum gets those phone calls. You
know the ones I mean.' In the darkness, Hannah felt her
older sister nodding. 'But you're big,' she went on. 'You're
nearly grown-up. You can go out and everything. You can
even leave home soon. What will I do?'
'You can come and live with me in my flat.'
'Could I?'
'When I get one. Sure.'
'And the dogs? And my computer too? I'd have to bring
that because I have this friend, Richard . . .' She hadn't
intended to say all that, but the thought of leaving everything
familiar jolted her.
Their parents' fight had subsided and all seemed quiet
again. In the hall, Razor scratched at the door. Alison got up
again and opened the door. Razor's ears and tail cast pointed
shadows across the floorboards of her room. 'Oh all right,'
Alison finally said. 'Come on in, you big dog.'
'He is not a big dog, not the way you say it,' said Hannah.
Razor climbed up on the bed with them and in the
silence they heard their mother's voice from somewhere in
the house. 'I remember years of not seeing you. Of doing
everything on my own.' It's true, Ali thought. But why did
you marry a man who was always out on the job?
'Do you think Dad worries about that man that he shot?'
Alison didn't answer.
'Ali, tell me. Do you?'
'I don't know,' said her sister. 'It was a mistake. Maybe he
just doesn't think about it.'
'What about in the war?' Hannah continued. 'Do you think
Dad killed people then?'
Alison shrugged. 'I don't know. What makes you want to
know something like that? Why are you thinking about that
right now?'
Hannah didn't answer for a moment. 'They don't ever
talk about anything really important,' she finally said. 'They
just talk about stuff that doesn't matter. Or they yell at
each other.'
After a minute Alison became aware of the steadiness of
her sister's breathing. Hannah could do this, she recalled. Just
suddenly go to sleep almost mid-sentence. 'Go back to your
own bed, Hanks, before you go to sleep. You're getting too
heavy for me to carry back.' In her arms, Hannah was almost
asleep, breathing softly again except for an occasional jagged
in-breath, the last vestiges of the storm of crying.
Down the hall, Meg and Harry faced each other across the
kitchen table. He was ashamed now of how he'd dragged Meg
through the house, pushing her into her daughter's bedroom,
trying to force her to see things the way he saw them, tossing
her about with his careless strength. He knew why he dared
not really think of her with the other man, why he preferred
to leave it in another part of the lock-up in his mind. He only
had to move towards looking at that, and his head and chest
started the buildup and his hands and fingers started folding
into fists. And that was the basic reason underlying all the
others for leaving Homicide and the interrogations. Because
he comprehended exactly why the murderers that he spoke
with did as they did. 'You'd just had it up to here, didn't
you,' he'd say to them in his soft voice. 'I know what that
feels like. Little girl looking at you like that, with all her hair
hanging down, screaming at you. Pretty face all screwed up. I
know why you just had to stop her. Had to smash her head.'
And they'd raise their heads and give him a sideways look in
the eye and know he wasn't bullshitting. Now, he glanced at
Hannah's school painting, showing the four of them walking
hand-in-hand with the dogs. Once we were happy.
'Those years with Homicide,' Meg said. 'You were always
out. You know, I thought that shooting would turn out to be
a good thing in the end. For us, I mean. I thought you would
have more time with the kids and me when you started with
the dogs. I thought it would be nice for the kids to have a
dog live with us. You wouldn't have to be sitting up all night
questioning people like you used to. But it's no better. In fact
it's worse. You're always on the job just the same.'
'You knew that,' he said. 'I told you that. I told you over
and over. You said it was okay. You said you didn't mind.
You knew it came with the job. Jesus Christ you said you loved me!' Harry's voice mixed anger, bewilderment and
disbelief.
'That was a long time ago, Harry. We can't go on like
this. I can't live with a man who's closed down.'

He knew what she was saying. He was silent about the
past, about what had happened to him in his earliest days, in
Vietnam, and the silence extended into the present. I don't
tell anybody anything, he admitted to himself. It's like I've
always lived in a war zone. I don't tell anyone about the
life I live in here, in my mind, the truth about my mother
and my father. I have never told these things to anyone.
Of how I was taken away and put into that terrible place.
My mind has no-go areas where certain things are dead and
buried and I've been silent so long, I can no longer speak
of them.
They sat in silence looking away from each other until
Harry, leaning back in his chair, noticed where Hannah had
written 'Mum's birthday' on the calendar for tomorrow's
date. He closed his eyes. He'd completely forgotten. He
leaned forward and Meg turned to look at him. 'Meg,' he
said, 'I can book a table at Beppi's tomorrow night if you
want. We can
The phone rang then and he grabbed it up, still looking
at his wife. Her face had softened. Then he turned his full
attention to the caller, nodded, and noted down an address,
ringing off.
'Out near Bathurst,' he said to Meg. 'A woman. A dead
woman and a missing child.'
'Great,' she said. 'That's really great. It's half past ten at
night and you can do the bolt again and be a hero.' She
slammed out of the room and down to the bedroom. Once,
a long time ago, she would have cried.
Harry rang Ray Gosling and told him, picking up the
switch-blade knife lying on the top of the filing cabinet
while he spoke. It was no longer than his palm, operated
with one hand by holding it between thumb and forefinger,
developed for paratroopers who might find themselves stuck
in trees with one arm out of commission. Harry sidled the
blade open and shut with his thumb. When he'd finished the
conversation, he sUpped the folded knife into his pocket It
felt like a talisman.

SEVEN

The flight to Bathurst took less than an hour but it was
well after midnight by the time Harry and Razor were
met at the airport by a couple of the local cops. Dark-haired
Ayoub and stocky Brennan introduced themselves, and Harry
and the dog climbed into their vehicle. The scents in the car
were mostly the beefy body scent of Brennan and the subtle
Middle Eastern scent of Ayoub.
'I remember you,' said Ayoub. 'I heard you lecture in
Sydney a few years ago. About your investigation into that
little girl's death. Penrith.'
Harry nodded. He couldn't remember Ayoub, but often
there were fifty people at the policing lectures.
'Then we went out to visit the government analysts' labs.
You wouldn't credit it,' Ayoub continued. 'All he does, this
pathologist, is cut the crotches out of women's panties and
take samples. Then he makes slides out of them. That's his
job. All day long, cutting the crotches out of women's panties.
Piles and piles of panties. Imagine it. All day long. Snip, snip.
Pass the panties.'
Brennan pursed his lips. 'What if they were wearing
crotchless knickers when they got raped? Then what'd he
do?'
Ayoub looked across at his mate and rolled his sheik's eyes
upwards. 'I don't believe you sometimes. Crotchless knickers
when they got killed.'
'Plenty of molls wear crotchless knickers,' Brennan insisted.
'I remember we picked one up last year and she was only
wearing crotchless knickers and these high heels under a big
coat. She'd been raped and ¦when one of the young blokes
asked her if she'd mind turning it on for us, she hit the bloody
roof. Females.' He shook his head.
Harry interrupted. 'I've got a dog here. What's the job?'
'Looks like a rape murder,' Brennan turned from the
wheel. 'The woman had a three-year-old child with her
and he's nowhere to be found.' He turned back again. 'We
don't know whether he was taken by the killer or if he's taken
off into the scrub. That's why the boss wanted the dogs. We
don't know what we'll find.'
'We haven't touched anything,' Ayoub added. 'The doctor's
been and gone and so have the crime scene people. We
can get someone to take her away once you and the dog have
done your tricks.'
Bathurst lies beyond the Great Dividing Range that separates
the inland from the coastal cities of New South Wales. Its wide,
gracious streets, laid out by Governor Macquarie, are fronted by
fine nineteenth century buildings in among the fast food outlets,
many of the former reflecting the prosperity of the gold rush
of the 1860s. Even now, flecks of alluvial gold turn up in the
rivers and creeks around Bathurst and Sofala where graziers and
small farmers run cattle and sheep, and raise crops. Harry had
grown up around this area. He remembered that only several
years ago two lucky diggers had turned up a nugget worth tens
of thousands of dollars. Bathurst's rich grazing western plains,
watered by die Macquarie River, 205 kilometres from Sydney,
lie between and around undulating hills dotted with farms.
As they drove through the wide main street, the big
country town was almost deserted except for a group of
youngsters, hanging out at a corner cafe. They drove all
the way through town until they were on unlit road, the
headlights on high beam picking out the reflective trim on
road posts. Occasionally, the bright reflections were the eyes
of some nocturnal animal on the roadside.
'Christ, I need a beer,' Brennan muttered. 'I'm dry as a
dead dingo's donger.'
'Mind if I smoke?' Ayoub asked, and Harry suddenly felt
old and surprised by the new breed of young cops. He didn't
answer and Ayoub lit up. They drove through the night in
silence along the dark bush roads. Some desultory calls on
the radio and the hum of the engine. Harry could hear Razor
foxtrotting in the back, keeping his balance.
About five kilometres out of town on the Eglinton side,
Brennan turned off the tar and almost immediately they
were at a gate where a white-painted four-gallon drum on
a straining post showed the name 'Peacehaven'.
'Here we are,' said Ayoub, turning in with the headlights
still on high beam. 'The place's a bit of a madhouse,'
said Brennan as they bumped up the driveway. 'Volunteer
searchers and the State Emergency people have been
everywhere looking for the little kid. Just as well it's not
winter.'
'Is it the woman's kid?'
'Grandson. She was minding him for a few days.'
'What about the parents?'
'They were in Queensland on holidays. They're on their
way back,' Brennan added. 'The woman's been living out
here rent free helping out at the Schofields' house,' as if
everyone, including Harry, would know who the Schofields
'And what about them?'
'They're straight up. Their place is about half a mile over
there. They were both asleep in bed when we arrived. Heard
nothing, saw nothing.'
'Who found her?'
'Her boyfriend dropped in for a bit of nooky after the pub.
Says he found her like this and rang us. He's in a bad way. He
was pissed as a parrot when he got here and the doc gave him
some dope as well to calm him down. He passed out on us.
He was a cot case. We'll have another chat with him in the
morning when he's back.'
Ayoub checked in his notebook. 'Name's Faye. Murray
Faye.'
'Do you think it's him?' Harry asked.
Ayoub shook his head. 'I've got a feeling. He would have
had blood all over him and this guy was clean; paralytic,
but clean. Whoever did this was cool. Mind you, I could
be wrong.'
Brennan turned around again. 'What? I can't believe I'm
hearing this. You could be wrong?'
'Just drive the car,' said Ayoub.
The lights in the house were on and the crime scene police
had rigged up their own system when the three men got out
of the wagon. In the distance, Harry could hear whipcracks
ringing out like shots. 'Here's the dog,' he heard someone
needlessly say and turned to see a group of State Protection
brutes strapping up and locking on pieces of weaponry.
Harry walked blinking round the back and let Razor out,
clipping the lead onto his harness. Razor instantly looked
around, taking it all in, his nose and ears working full pelt.
Harry stood and did the same. The glare from the police
lighting hid the starry night that had overarched them on
the drive out to the murder house. It was a neat timber i
bungalow with a front verandah and a little patch of lawn
with fruit trees at the front. French windows gave onto the
verandah and one of them was half-open. The scent picture
here was rural: softly moving fresh air currents as the earth
cooled for the night, the spice of eucalypts, a faint overlay
of orange blossom and the honest smell of livestock -- cattle
and some horses.
'Okay, boy. Let's do some good.' Razor trotted ahead, nose
down, then up, looking around. Harry stepped up onto the
verandah, noting the ancient timbers. He stepped through the
open French window and there she was on the floor at the end
of the bed, spread-eagled in front of him, a large black pool
drying around and under her upper body. The scent picture
here was old house, stale fireplaces, faded meals, a woman's
toiletries and the septic tank on occasions. And human blood.
Her blood-soaked nightdress covered her head and upper
body, and she was naked from the belly down. Harry noticed
a little healing nick on her left shin, where she must have cut
herself shaving. She was wearing novelty slippers -- huge white
fluflballs with pink fabric toes stitched onto the end, a ladylike
monster's feet. Between her legs was a bloody mess. Her right
arm was outflung with a plastic bag over the hand, the other
was hidden under the fabric of her nightdress. He introduced
Razor all round so that he could sniff, record and file the scent
of everyone present at the crime scene. Then he looked very
carefully around the room. It wasn't long before he noticed
a few things that troubled him. On the dressing-table was
an old-fashioned silver-backed hairbrush and mirror set, its
comb missing three ivory teeth in a sequence he remembered
perfectly, even after twenty-five years.
Harry's heart started pounding. It couldn't be. He pulled
surgical gloves on and opened the drawers of the bedside
table, sifting through the contents until he found a passport.
But it was. The passport photo had been taken several years
earlier, but it was her all right, smiling out at him with the
same slight tilt of the neck, the same expression of defiance
that had always given her an edge, made her seem more
attractive than she really was.
'We've got the ID already,' said Ayoub, watching him,
but Harry hardly heard. He dropped the passport back into
the drawer and shut it, taking a few moments to compose
himself, the blood ringing in his head, before he turned his full
attention to the job. He was a man-dog unit and he was here
to find this woman's killer. He saw a hairdryer on the bed, still
attached to the power point. He saw a lighter square of floorboard
near the bed, indicating that something that had been
standing there for a long time had recently been moved.
When Razor sniffed the woman, he drew back with the
little start that dead humans elicited from him. But then he
trailed nose down to a spot on the rug and barked loudly,
indicating something exciting, turning to tell the leader of
the pack.
'What is it?' Harry asked, frowning.
'Here,' Razor indicated, looking at the rug. Then he
stopped barking, sniffed again, sat back and once again
spoke loudly.
'Are you sure?' Harry asked him.
'I'm sure,' Razor signalled.
'Well done, good boy.' Harry went over and petted him.
'Very good boy.' He fondled Razor's velvety ears.
'What's he done that's so good?' Brennan asked, sounding
like a jealous kid.
Harry took another long look at the woman. He glanced
around the room again then returned his attention to the
sprawled figure on the floor. She seemed so small in her silly
slippers. He shook his head. Something was very wrong.
'Is this exactly as her boyfriend found it?'
'That is correct,' said Ayoub. 'The doc covered her face up
again,' as if that was the explanation Harry had wanted. 'He's
not used to this sort of thing. The usual bloke's away.'
It takes awhile to get used to this, Harry thought. After that
it wasn't long before such a scene was the subject of black
humour that was unfit for any ears except those of other cops
or death professionals. Then, some time after that, somehow
it ceased to matter anymore.
He squatted and leaned over and with the tip of his little
finger he lifted the sticky nightdress. Her face had gone.
But he recognised the shape of one delicate ear that was
not completely flattened. And her dark hair, now matted and ruined by violence. And there was the little mole on
the side of her neck. He let the nightdress fall again. His
heart was still pounding uncontrollably. It had taken him by
surprise, this deep, personal reaction. He breathed deeply and
once again forced his mind to concentrate on the job he was
there to do. 'Something's wrong,' he said, straightening up.
'You bet something's wrong,' said Brennan. 'A perfectly
good woman's been knocked. That's what's wrong.'
Brennan is young and hasn't been to as many violent
rape and murder scenes as I have, Harry thought. Must be
hundreds over the years.
'And a little kid's somewhere out there frightened to
buggery. Or he's already dead. Or he's with a person capable
of that.' He indicated the faceless woman on the floor.
'It's odd,' said Ayoub, looking at Harry in agreement.
'Vicious attack and no sign of a struggle. Nothing upset,
everything neat and tidy. My bet is we won't find anything
under those fingernails.'
'And she's got her slippers on,' Harry pointed out to
Ayoub. Ayoub looked at him a moment, considered and
nodded. Brennan looked from one to the other, trying to
work out what was going on.
Harry studied the blood spatters on the wall nearest the
ruined face. 'She was on the floor when he did this. You
can see, the up and the down of his blows quite clearly
reflected here.'
Brennan looked at the blood patterns and then looked
at Harry.
'He was with Crime Scene and Homicide,' Ayoub explained.
'Find out what's been moved from there in case it's
relevant,' Harry said, pointing to the lighter square of wood
on the floor. 'If he's done what I think he's done, there
won't be much use looking for prints, but you never know
your luck.'
Ayoub nodded again. 'I'll call you,' Ayoub said, 'if we find
anything interesting.'
Then Harry walked Razor through the house checking
it out, making sure it was quite empty. He glanced into .
the three-year-old's room. The white cot with a large blue
rabbit in it stood in a corner and farmyard animal prints and
toys were neatly displayed on shelves and bookcases. They
walked through the rest of the house, out the kitchen door,
checked the area behind the house and then came back to
the front lawn area.
Harry cast Razor around the front of the house and he
quickly found something to interest him. He set off with
Harry following in a steady lope away from the house
where Janette Madden lay outraged and dead. Janette, Harry
thought. Janette. He asked the dog to rest a moment and
Razor sat to attention, waiting. Ayoub and Brennan came
up behind him.
'We'll follow you with the musclemen,' Brennan jerked
his head in the direction of the SPG men, 'in case you run
into him. We don't know whether he's armed or not. We
can't take any chances.'

Harry jogged along with the torch behind Razor through
the scents of the early hours of the bush, following the track
of little Julian Madden. Small creatures scuttled sometimes at
their passing and the moon was setting low in the west. A
shiver went through him despite the heavy overall and the
steady pace.
Razor's nose-down movements and gestures told the story
of a little child, wandering first one way then another; sitting
down, perhaps crying; standing up again, walking a little way,
stopping, walking again. Or was it the deliberate track of
a cunning man, trying to confuse them? Harry knew that
the tricks undertaken by clever quarry were always aimed
at confusing the handler because there was really no way of
avoiding a shepherd's snout.
Now they were moving through semi-cleared forest with
tall, thin gums rising above regrowth and scrubby bushes.
Here and there, the perfume of native pea flower came to
him and the scents of fox and kangaroo. His torch picked up
fox scat marking the side of the trail. The low night sounds of
cattle carried through the still air, and they were close enough
to Boolabimbie for Harry to imagine he could smell the scent
picture of that place: the cedars; the huge, dark magnolias;
the monkey puzzle trees that grew on the lawns in front of
the house; the two ebony trees that stood at the end of the
garden, planted by the great-grandfather; the rope swing over
the river that young Harry and Angus had jumped onto and
hurled themselves across like Tarzan.
That was a long time ago, Harry thought. It is not time
to be thinking of the past. But in this night light it was
unavoidable.
Harry deliberately brought his attention back to the armed
men behind him who kept up with his steady pace as he kept
up with Razor. They went down an incline to a little creek,
crossed it and started moving up again. The country was
getting steeper and wilder, low foothills with rocky outcrops
and crumbling shale. Harry skidded a couple of times but
Razor's four sure feet kept up their steady rhythm. Then
the track went down again, towards the creek. Again he ¦wondered if this was the frightened, aimless wandering of
a lost little boy or the deliberate ploy of a murderous man.
Sometimes, he imagined he was accompanied by thin,
smoky ghosts among the trees, figures that flitted in and
out of his peripheral vision. In Vietnam, it was always at
the peripherals that you first saw them, casting your eyes
like he now cast a tracking dog, in wide arcs, sweeping the
landscape, always on full red alert. Looking for the slightest
movement that wasn't part of the normal sway and bend of
an Asian forest nightscape. Trying to sweep the terrain each
side, ahead and downwards as well, for the telltale, too-heavy
'cobweb' that meant the shine of moonlight on fishing line,
used as a trip-wire attached to a booby trap. Trying to walk
on the outer edges of feet swollen and throbbing from fungus
infections, heat and misuse. Trying to make as little contact
with the earth as possible, always expecting the horrific flame
spurt and roar of the explosion that cut men in half as they
stepped.
He felt the tension start building in his chest at these
thoughts, and deliberately brought himself back to the present,
to the hunt that was now leading him along the creek.
Behind him, he heard someone trip and curse in a harsh
whisper. Razor suddenly propped. Then sat and barked.
'Good boy, good boy,' Harry whispered. He strained his
eyes along the creek but it vanished in blackness a little way
ahead, in shadows too deep for the setting moon to penetrate.
He turned to the panting detectives behind him. 'Okay,' he
told them. 'About fifty metres ahead. Tell the State blokes.'
An hour later, Shane Speck, who had leopard-crawled in
near perfect silence for sixty metres, his weapon at the ready,
found an exhausted three-year-old boy, asleep under the ferns
near the turn of the creek. An hour after that, Ray Gosling
arrived with Javelin to pick up the offender's trail and Harry
and Razor went home, getting a lift from a National Parks
and Wildlife ranger, flying to Sydney as the new day dawned.
By the time they had landed at Bankstown and collected the
wagon, Harry found himself stuck in peak-hour traffic as
he drove towards Sydney, arriving, exhausted, to an empty
house. He took his work overalls off and stuck them in the
washing machine, unloaded his .38 and locked it away in the
wall safe in his workroom. He'd picked up a hamburger at
Maroubra Junction for himself and he ate that while he fed
the dogs.
Blade still wasn't looking too bright and was happy enough
to curl up, snout to tail, in the less-favoured corner of the
lounge. Harry went to bed and slept deeply. He woke with
a gasp of fear. For a moment, he thought some dark figure
had slipped below eye level. Then he woke properly and the
dream slipped away. All he could remember was that it was
terrible, it was violent, and somewhere, someone was bashing
Janette Madden's head flat on the floor.

Harry slept for four hours, waking in the early afternoon. He
drove back to work via the railway end of the city where
he knew there was a shop that sold crystals. He parked
the wagon in the shade across the street from the shop
and went over to it, selecting three deep-purple amethyst
I crystals for Hannah's message stick. Now all he needed

keep an eye out for a well-shaped piece of
to do was
timber.
By the time he reached Bass Hill, the dogs were relieved to
get out of the vehicle and trot with Harry over to their shady
kennels. Razor walked straight into his and flopped in the
relative coolness. Blade wanted to play and Harry had to push
him into the kennel, closing the bottom of the door behind
him. He checked that both dogs had plenty of water, walked
back to the office building and went down the hallway to his
own room. With the airconditioning full on and the crystals
shining on his desk, he spent a few hours catching up with
the endless paperwork of policing.
At five-thirty the phone rang and it was Meg. 'Where are
you?' she said.
'Oh shit,' he said, remembering. The silence at the other
end of the line was ominous. 'I completely forgot,' he said.
'I'll come straight home and get ready. We can still find
somewhere nice.'
'By the time you get back from Bass Hill it'll be nearly
seven.' His wife's voice was hard. 'Harry. Let's just drop the
whole idea.'
'But it's your birthday,' he said.
She rang off without another word.
He collected the dogs and drove home, calling in at a florist
for an expensive bunch of white roses, elegant in shape but
without fragrance, tied with white and silver ribbon.
When Harry walked in the kitchen door, carrying the roses,
Meg was sitting hunched over a takeaway Chinese meal and a
glass of wine.
'I thought we were going out,' he said, putting the flowers
down on the table beside her. She picked them up, sniffed
them, and put them down again, her fingers briefly touching
their cool beauty. 'Thanks,' was all she said.
'Where are the girls?' he asked.
'Ali says she's studying at Amanda's place. Hannah's in her
room. Allegedly doing homework.'
'What about tomorrow night?' he said. 'We could go out
tomorrow night. It was the Bathurst thing. Pushed everything
out of my mind.'
'I've got something on tomorrow night,' she said, and
he felt anger starting to rise because he felt she was being
perversely difficult. He was on his way to have a shower
when she called after him. 'I've been thinking,' she said.
'Yes,' said Harry, stopping halfway down the hall and
coming back, 'so have I.'
'It'll be the Christmas holidays soon,' she said. 'Maybe if
I take Hannah and go away somewhere on my own for
awhile.'
Harry felt his hands tighten into two fists. He deliberately
released them but did not come into the kitchen again,
standing instead by the door. 'Who's the man?'
Meg didn't answer.
'Who's the man, Margaret? Either you tell me or I'll find
out. It's up to you.'
Meg looked up at him and he didn't like what he saw
in her eyes. 'It doesn't matter,' she said. She started crying.
'It's over.'
Harry watched his wife. Her shoulders, her whole body
shook with uncontrollable spasms. Once, he would have tried
to comfort her. But not now, and not over this issue. When
the sobbing had subsided she lifted her head. He suddenly
saw how terrible she looked,-as if she hadn't slept for days.
She looked old and plain and full of grief. He didn't know
what to say now.
'Maybe that would be a good idea,' he finally said. 'I
thought I might take Hannah bush for awhile. But I can

m

do that another time.' He left the kitchen where his wife
still slumped at the table and had a shower. Then he went
into his workroom, closing the door, imagining the house
empty of his wife and younger daughter with only the
presence of silent, haunted Ali drifting around. And now
he had another ghost to deal with, that of Janette Madden.
He put the three new crystals on the shelf above his desk and
mindlessly polished the message stick he was making, while
somewhere, in a silent, dream-like world in his imagination,
the people he had killed swayed like sea grass -graceful, nameless Vietnamese men and women; tubby little Franco,
who had made the mistake of opening his door from the
first rung of his stepladder, brandishing the drill he was
working with, so that Harry thought he saw a tall stranger
in the doorway levelling a dangerous weapon into the firing
position. And now Janette. Did she die because of her
connection with him?
He put the message stick down and realised that at the
moment the only person he felt any connection to in the
world was an eight-year-old girl. And a couple of dogs. The
gulf between himself and Meg seemed to widen and deepen
by the day.

'The shooting happened because everything was different
that night,' he'd said to Jim Coates before the inquiry.
'And anything different from the routine always makes me
suspicious. It's not just the job. It goes a long way back.' A
long way back, he thought, to when I was a tiny child, and
they were coming for me.
He continued. 'We were always on the lookout for something
different: silence in the jungle when there should have
been the usual bird and insect noises; a different smell, or
the absence of some odour that was always around. Anything
different meant you could die in the next few seconds. You've
got to notice if the animals are silent then sniff the air. Like a
beast.' He paused then went on. 'Usually, Franco contacted
me himself and I always checked with him before I went
to meet him. But this time, his wife called me. That was
the first difference. And when I rang to check with him,
he wasn't available. That was the second. I almost didn't go
at all. But I was desperate to get that second name and his
wife said he was going to tell me who else was involved in
the Marrickville Tab shooting. But because of this feeling of
things being different, I'd automatically unfastened my gun
even before I started walking up the path. Then when he
opened the door and it looked like some stranger swinging
a gun round to me . . .' Harry looked into his friend's eyes
'. . . my response was instinctive. It was like being in a
firefight again. When I'm confronted with an armed man,
I'm trained to react instinctively. That's what drill is all about.
I did months and months of army drill and then police drill
-trained
for automatic response. I acted in exactly the way
my drill sergeant would have wanted. And now a man is dead
because of it.'
Suddenly Franco loomed up in memory. Harry remembered
the terrible cry. 'Why, Harry? Why did you do this?'
Franco was such a little man, not even five feet tall, and he
had seemed so much smaller then, crumpled bleeding on his
doorstep, the question dying in his throat, and his outflung
arm and the cordless drill in his loosening fingers.
Jim stayed quiet. He sensed his friend had something
more to say.
'Once,' said Harry, 'just before we met up with D445 that
was a VC company we fought with -1 smelled someone
behind me and I swung around with my Ml 6 levelled and
I'm looking straight into the eyes of a young VC. He had his

Ma

B

weapon levelled to fire at me. But for some reason he didn't.
Neither did I. We both just stood there. In that moment, we
were just two men. Then I shook my head. I was telling him
'Let's not do it'. And he shook his head too, like he was
saying 'I won't kill you either', and he just melted back out
of sight. Yet years later, I shoot Franco without thinking. I
don't understand why I was so different in that situation when
I was geared to war. I wonder if that VC soldier ever thinks
of me. Like I think of him. I really hope he made it.'
Jim was surprised to see that Harry's eyes shone with tears.
'Do you think he'll make up for Franco?'

He turned his attention to the message stick again while its
fellow, suspended from the roof by fine leather, softly moved
its feathers at his passing. 'You can't imagine what it was like,'
he had said to Jim, 'just sitting there waiting for the ambos,
with his blood all over me and that stupid drill lying there.
I had to sit with him. I couldn't leave him alone like that.'
He sanded the timber a bit more, noting the wavy grain of
the wood and the way it surged and looped in places like the
whorls of fingerprints. In his mind, Franco dying in his blood
in his own hallway triggered another memory from Vietnam
of a VC soldier dying of a chest wound while Harry and a
black labrador stood and waited. Harry brought his mind
back to the present and the simple task in hand. Previously,
he'd drilled one small and one deep hole at each end of the
piece of wood. It was shaped very roughly like a bullock's
femur, knobbed unevenly at each end. In his drawer was a
small packet of beads and crystals that he'd gathered from
different sources. There was even a small piece of alluvial
gold that he'd panned from the river years ago. Now it
was stored in a phial. Maybe the time had come to use
the tiny nugget of pure gold on a message stick. He emptied
the beads and crystal mixture out onto a sheet of paper and
shook them gently so they spread around. Carefully, with a
fine paint brush, he separated the blues and the whites until
he had a small pile of each. Then he poured glue into each
drilled cavity in the wood. He waited a little and then started
to drop the beads and tiny crystals onto the gluey coating of
the tiny caves. They hit and stuck. Just like a shepherd, he
thought.
Although the departmental inquiry had cleared him, he'd
almost resigned. 'It was like,' he'd said to Jim later, 'the whole
of the fucking department was against me. I felt like I was one
of the bad guys and, apart from you and a couple of other
mates, the organisation just wanted to distance itself from
me. All that talk of loyalty was bullshit. We're expected to
be loyal, but they shaft us whenever they think we've become
a problem for them. Those academics at the top, they forget.
They're too far removed from the sharp end of policing.'
He heard his wife's footsteps come towards his room,
pause at the door, then move on, into the bedroom. He
heard her go into the bathroom and run a bath, and the
sound brought him back once again to the present moment.
He turned the message stick in his hands. Soon, the inside
surfaces of the scooped-out holes sparkled like the insides of
a thunder egg when it is broken open to reveal its Aladdin's
cave of treasures. In the bigger one, and just off centre, he
stuck a perfect, clear shaft of quartz. He placed the message
stick carefully down on his desk to dry. The quartz crystal
glittered like an ice shard.
When his mobile rang it was Ray. He was on his way back
from Bathurst. The trail of Janette Madden's killer had been
lost in a sudden thunderstorm that had blown up, flooding
the ground with torrential rain, causing creeks to overflow
their banks. 'He's got the devil on his side,' said Ray.

asu

We've got some results from last night's crime scene,'
said Ayoub down the line to Harry. 'Thought you'd
be interested to hear. I'm in Sydney picking up the physical
evidence receipts. Let's meet.'
Harry grunted. The reason he'd left Homicide was exactly
because he was no longer 'interested to hear'. Awhile later,
Ayoub arrived. He wanted to see the dogs, so Harry gave him
the tour. As they passed the kennels, each occupant barked
and stood up at the door to greet them.
Finally, they stopped near the run where the bitch and her
puppies played. 'The rug had been moved and we had a good
look under its new position,' said Ayoub, leaning over the
wire run where Clotho lay back and puppies tumbled and
fell all over her. 'We got enough in the cracks. He'd washed
that part of the floor because that's where he shot her.'
'The dog told me that,' said Harry. 'About under the rug.
And then he's dried off the washed patch with the hair dryer.'
He clicked his fingers over Clotho and she jumped up and
came to nuzzle his hand, shedding puppies.
'That is correct,' said Ayoub, leaning over and patting
Clotho's head. 'Nice dog.' He straightened up. 'Ballistics
said she was on the floor when the bullet hit her. Why
did he deface her? Didn't he want us to know about the
shooting?'
'That's why he obliterated her head,' said Harry, petting
Clotho's intelligent face.
'That is correct. But we found the hole in the wood. We
dug the cartridge out.'
'He's a cool fellow,' said Harry. 'Just taking his time with
the hair dryer.' They turned away from the puppies' run and
went to look at the exercise yard.
'Her boyfriend could've arrived on the scene at any time,'
Ayoub agreed as they walked through the yard, past the
ladders and leaning timbers that the dogs used to climb and
jump from.
'Do the dogs have to crawl through that?' Ayoub asked,
looking at the length of ceramic pipe running across the yard.
Harry nodded. 'It wasn't a rape murder,' he said.
'How did you know that?' Ayoub wanted to know.
'When you've seen 200 violent rape murders, you know
what one looks like. This one didn't look like any of the
others I'd seen.'
'Yes,' Ayoub agreed. 'The bad guys should study a few
hundred crime scenes if they want to set something up that
looks right. He's used some heavy, blunt instrument to smash
her with. Same between her legs.'
Harry nodded. 'When they smash the face like that--'
'Yes,' said Ayoub. 'I think I know what you're going to
say. That the killer and the victim know each other. The
worse the disfigurement, the closer the relationship.'
These are hard truths to hear, Harry thought. 'But in this
case,' he continued, 'the killer might be just trying to hide
the fact that he shot her.'
'Funny way to hide something,' Ayoub said. 'Making sure
we'd take a closer look.'
Harry grunted. 'She opened the door to him,' he said. 'She
wasn't frightened. She gets up and she puts her slippers on and
walks to the door. Lets him in. He doesn't have to render her
unconscious at the door. She knows him, trusts him. Seems
quite happy to see him. Leads him into the bedroom. No
worries.'
The two men left the yard and made their way back to the
low buildings of the Dog Squad. 'But just inside the bedroom
door,' Harry continued, 'he knocks her down and shoots her
as she lies on the floor. And she still doesn't know anything
is wrong until she wakes up on the other side.'
They walked into the meal room and Harry opened the
fridge. He pulled out two cans of beer and offered one
to Ayoub.
'Thanks,' said the other. He pulled the ring off and threw
it in the bin. 'Do you believe in an after-life?' Ayoub wanted
to know.
'I don't believe in anything,' said Harry, opening his
own.
'I don't know,' said Ayoub. 'My girlfriend's into past lives.
She's got some interesting things to say on the subject. She
can remember living in the fourteenth century.' He took a
swig on his beer. 'That's nice on a hot day,' he said.
'I can remember living on the fourteenth floor,' said Harry.
'When I worked with Homicide.'
'There might be something in it,' said Ayoub. 'Lots of
people talk about past lives. Then,' he continued, abruptly
getting back to the subject, 'he moves her, cleans up the blood
on the floor where she first goes down, wipes it off the varnish,
dries it with the hairdryer and pulls the rug over it. Then
he smashes her head in to hide the fact that she was shot.'
'That's what was going through my mind,' Harry said,
'when I first suspected it was a setup.'
'Maybe he didn't know her,' Ayoub offered, 'but he knows
something about profiling so he wants us to think he does know her. So he spreads her head out like that knowing we'll
concentrate on her nearest and dearest instead of him.'
Harry shook his head. 'If it's a set-up, he knows her,' he
said. 'Otherwise there's no need to hide it. You don't go to
the trouble of setting up a false story unless you don't want
the true one to come out. I don't suppose there were any
prints?' he added.
'That is correct,' said Ayoub. 'One of the guys went to get a
drink of water from the outside tank and poured himself what
looked like a glass of blood.' He looked at the can of beer in
his hand. 'The killer chucked the clothes he used to wipe the
floor into the tank. There wasn't much water in it.'
Harry grunted. 'What about whatever object he used to
bludgeon her with?'
'We haven't found it. Must've taken it with him. Arnie's
got some botanical traces as well,' said Ayoub. 'Some mortar.
Some pink glass. And some organic stuff -animal
shit or
something. It's all been sent off to the experts.' Ayoub
crushed his empty can with one hand and neatly flicked it
into the wastepaper basket. 'I'd better hit the toe,' he said,
glancing at his watch.
After Ayoub left, Harry drove home with Blade and
Razor panting in the heat even though he had the wagon's
airconditioner turned up. After attending to the dogs, he went
into his office and checked his diary for the following week.
'Shit,' he said out loud. He'd forgotten he had to give a lecture
to Crime Scene detectives the following day. He picked up
the message stick. The glue had hardened and the little crystal
spear caught the light.
He looked out the window, thinking of two dead women.
One almost untouched except for a small, fatal hole in her
heart. Another one over 200 kilometres away without a
face. With a mess between her legs. You couldn't get two
such different MOs, he thought. You couldn't get two such
different kills -one
short, sharp and straight to the point,
the other messy and blundersome. Yet each of these men
had been acceptable to the women.
He put the message stick down. The Strathfield killer
had maintained a relationship for a year with an attractive,
educated woman. And the Bathurst killer had been invited
into a lonely house in the country at night by a woman
living alone.

Next morning he went into Physical Evidence at the Police
Centre in Goulburn Street -the
huge, grey, concrete fastness
around the corner from the notorious old 'Hat Factory',
erstwhile home of the defunct CIB and built on the slope that
eventually levels out at Eddy Avenue and Central Railway.
There was no sign of the crazy man Harry remembered as
haunting the area, who could only endure looking at the
world through his cherished piece of broken green glass held
up to the traffic and to passersby.
Inside the doors, Harry nodded to the two security guards
on the front desk, walked through the security gate and
went up in the lift, carrying his lecture notes and box of
slides. On the fifth floor, Gentleman Jim was waiting for
him. 'Do you want a coffee before you start?' he asked
his friend.
'Make that a Scotch,' Harry joked. He did not relish public
speaking.
Jim's phone rang as he was walking out the door. He
turned. 'Answer it, will you Harry,' he grinned. Harry
identified himself and took the message for Jim. It was the
commander from the Strathfield siege. He rang off, glancing
up to read the poster on the wall, the famous statement from
the Institute of Criminology in Lyons:

Wherever he steps, whatever he touches, whatever
he leaves, pounds en unconsciously, will serve as silent
witness against him. Not only his fingerprints or his
footprints, but his hair, the fibres from his clothes,
the glass he breaks, the tool mark he leaves, the
paint he scratches, the blood or semen he deposits
or collects -all
of these bear mute witness against
him. This is evidence that does not forget. It is
not confused by the excitement of the moment.
It is not absent because human witnesses are. It is
factual evidence. Physical evidence cannot be wrong;
it cannot perjure itself; it cannot be wholly absent.
Only its interpretation can err. Only human failure
to find it, study and understand it can diminish
its value.

Jim returned with the coffee. He handed a blue mug to
Harry.
'That phone call was Strathfield,' Harry told him. 'McEwan
isn't his name. They've traced him back to a woman who
knew him before he was McEwan. They found a flat he
uses and some personal papers including pilot's licences in
the different names. They're checking those now. So we're
still in the dark about who this joker is.'
'Great,' said Jim.
'What about the physical evidence?' Harry asked.
'It's all still with the experts,' said Jim. 'Various traces. Some
sort of mould.' He paused. 'The important thing is that the
same glass also turned up at Bathurst.'.
Harry leaned forward. 'The same glass,' he repeated.
Jim nodded. 'In the bad old days,' he said, 'it'd tell me that
one of our fellows had been present at both crime scenes with
glass on his big boots. But not these days.'
'It's a link,' said Harry. 'But you couldn't have got two
such different MOs.'
'Anyway,'Jim said, 'it's too early to jump to conclusions,
but it's interesting.'
'It certainly is that,' Harry said. 'How's the missus?' he
asked as he finished his coffee.
'I wouldn't know, mate. I only see her when I pick up the
youngster. How's Meg?'
Harry put his mug down and looked at his friend. 'She's
okay,' he said levelly. 'Doing art classes.'
'That's nice,' said Jim.
Harry stood up, gathering his notes and slides together. 'I'd
better go and give my lecture.'
The two men walked out of the office. 'Does the green
glass man still hang around here?' Harry asked.
Jim shook his head. 'Can't say I've seen him recently.'
'Does the Confessor still ring you?' Harry asked at the life.
'He hasn't done for awhile,' said Jim. 'I think he got
to like you more than me because you used to listen to
him.'
'Do you know where he's living these days?' Harry asked.
Jim shook his head. 'Why?' he asked.
'He rang me and confessed to the Strathfield killing,' Harry
told him.
'He would,' said Jim. 'He used to confess to everything
when he was ringing me.' The lift arrived and the doors
opened. Harry stepped inside. 'It wasn't just that he rang
me,' said Harry. 'He added some details that were very
uncharacteristic. About himself and his brother.'
'That's a good sign,' said Jim. 'Taking an interest in family
life. Maybe he's getting better.'
'I don't think so,' said Harry, and the lift doors started
to close.

'I've been asked to talk to you,' Harry addressed the group
of detectives in the lecture room, 'about a successful investigation
I was part of some years ago.'
A technician had set up the video unit for him and all he
had to do was operate the console in front of him. He picked
up the folder of notes and put it down again. He'd given
this talk so often over the years that he practically knew it
by heart.
'About ten years ago,' he said, 'a schoolgirl, Helen Semple,
was found on the banks of the Nepean with her neck broken
and her head bashed.'
He looked around at his audience -policemen
and women
attending their compulsory lecture. Some leaned back, frankly
bored, in their chairs; others stared at him as if daring him to
challenge them; one or two had pens poised over notepads.
He encountered the eyes of a pretty young woman in the
front row and continued.
'Bob Brewer from Penrith, whom some of you might
know, called me in because I'd had some success "with
interrogation techniques that Jim Coates and I had been
working on. Bob had a suspect in the case of Helen's
murder but it was all circumstantial and the suspect was
denying everything. The suspect's name was Ronald Pugh
and his record was mostly petty crime. Malicious damage.
Theft. But he had been a suspect in a rape case three years
before Helen's death. That time it was a thirteen-year-old
girl. It didn't go anywhere.
'I went out to Penrith,' Harry continued, 'and met the two
detectives who had been assigned to the murder investigation.
They told me that ten-year-old Helen got off the school bus
after school, crossed the road, walked towards the bridge, and
that was the last time she was seen alive. Several hours later,
she was found along the river bank. She'd been raped and
killed. Skull fractured. There was a beaten track along the
river banks; not an official path, and Helen wasn't supposed
to use it. She was supposed to stay on the path beside the
road and cross the bridge using the pedestrian walkway. It
was only a ten-minute walk to her place.'
Harry showed the first slide. Helen Semple lay on her
stomach wearing her school uniform, legs gently bent, with
arms outflung either side of her slim body. Her head was
partly covered by the large sandstone block that had crushed
it. From under the sandstone block, one fair plait, ending in
a ribbon, nestled into her shoulder. Harry became aware of
the focused silence in the room.
'The PM report,' Harry said, 'indicated a broken neck
as cause of death. You'll notice that one shoe is on.' The
coloured slide showed the other shoe near her small foot.
'Her pants were on inside out,' Harry said. 'And there was
blood on them.' Harry clicked on to the next slide. 'That's
the bus stop where she got off,' he said, 'and you can clearly
see the river below and just make out the track she was found
on if you look to the left of the slide.' There was a murmur
in the room. 'We've got some television news footage here
too,' said Harry, and he switched it on at the console.
The screen behind him lit up and he stepped out of the
way to reveal a rough track, inclining towards the river,
leading through straggly bush. 'Notice the clearing and the
fireplace to the right of the track,' said Harry, over the silent
film. A dreary place for a barbecue. The fireplace looked like
it hadn't been used in a long time. 'There is the short cut she
wasn't allowed to take,' said Harry, indicating the beaten track
along the river. 'And that's where she was found.' The footage
showed the river banks, covered with long, dry summer grass
and police standing around. 'We did a pretty good search of
this area. Bags and bags of stuff. Mostly rubbish. You can see
all the grass seeds on the front of her clothing quite clearly
here. Yet there was no debris on her back. What does that
suggest?' he asked the group.
'That she'd been killed elsewhere and dumped,' someone
called out.
Harry nodded. 'That's right. She'd been raped too. We
suspected the killer had done this in a vehicle.' He switched
off the news footage and clicked another slide. He paused.
'I then found out that the suspect didn't have a car. Because
he'd lost his licence. Prescribed Concentration of Alcohol.
When I heard that, I also wanted to know when it was that
he'd lost his licence, and found that it was three years before,
just after the alleged rape. Does this suggest anything?' He
looked around. The policewoman in the front row spoke.
'Behaviour often becomes marked after a violent crime,' she
said. 'Heavier drinking, geographical moves.'
'Good,' said Harry. 'Among the people we questioned
when Helen was killed, Pugh's name kept coming up. He'd
been working in the Nepean area on contract with the
council, poisoning lantana and English broom. We knew
he'd spoken with Helen on at least one occasion. A neighbour
of the Semples remembered the incident very well because
Helen had been wearing her costume for the Christmas play.
She was the Christmas fairy. Little silver and white tutu.
Little ballet slippers. A red ribbon on the top of her hair.
Helen's neighbour recalled Pugh walking right down from
where he was working to chat to her.
'I asked the interviewing detectives what was the first thing
the suspect had said when he was asked if he'd committed
the crime. And they told me. I went through the transcripts
of the original interviews and checked up so as to be sure.
Jim and I had started to notice a few things about lies and
lying. Humans seem to prefer to tell as much of the truth as
they can, as if attempting to convince themselves of their own
innocence. They just leave important bits out. I particularly
wanted to see what Pugh had said when Bob asked him if
he'd killed Helen.'
Jim had slipped into the room and was standing down the
back and Harry opened his folder and started to read. 'So,'
said Harry, 'I looked up the record of interview.' He looked
up. Every person was looking at him, waiting.
'"Question",' Harry read out. '"Ronald Pugh, did you
kill Helen Semple?"' Harry looked up at the audience again
before reading Pugh's reply.
' "Answer: There's no way I'd kill a kiddie with a rock like
that.'" Harry paused to let that sink in, then turned to the
whiteboard and copied out the words he'd just read.
He put the marker pen down and turned round to face the
room again. 'That's when my guts told me he'd done it. That
he'd killed her.' He looked around the lecture room because
it was clear now that he had everyone's attention. 'So then
I set things up with Jim Coates.' He nodded at his friend
down the back and several people turned round to see him.
'Jim,' Harry asked, 'would you like to come up and tell these
people what happened next, seeing as you were there too?'
Jim came up, relaxed and perfectly at home in his world,
and Harry envied him that ease and gracefulness. Jim leaned
casually on the desk behind him as he spoke.
'Harry here asked me to set up the interrogation room
in a certain way late one night,' he said. 'And I did as
he said. There's a technique to successful interrogation just
like there is for anything. Harry and I had worked out a
routine together. We wanted to create an atmosphere like
the courtroom does. We wanted to use what we had in order
to give ourselves the best chance of breaking Pugh. No-one's
going to admit to a murder unless they have to. Harry wanted
one of the police exhibits from the case set up in a big carton
so that Pugh wouldn't see it straightaway. I'd also created a
pile of folders with different reports and Pugh's name written
on them. It looked like we'd gathered an enormous amount
of information on him in connection with the killing. Then
I used the material we'd developed from the profilers to write
up the sort of man the killer could be -on
the board, so that
Pugh could read it when he came in.'
Jim turned and started writing on the whiteboard: 'Male.
Age 19-33. Troubled childhood, absent father, unstable
mother. Work: unskilled or semi-skilled, history of unemployment,
poor literacy skills, divorced or separated, problems
relating to opposite sex, drifter, difficulties with peer friendships,
loner, non-joiner. Local knowledge of area used as body
dump. Previous records for rape, PCA, petty crime. Drives
older sedan or utility.'
Jim turned from the whiteboard and faced the audience
again. 'Harry and Bob Brewer brought Pugh in around
midnight,' he said. 'Harry, maybe you should take over
from here?'
Harry walked up behind the desk again. 'Ronald Pugh
was getting very nervous by this stage,' he told the group.
'We'd driven from Penrith in a police car with him in the
back with Bob Brewer. You know what this place is like at
night,' he said, indicating the Police Centre. 'It seems bigger.
The lighting is dimmer because a lot of the sections that don't
do shift work are closed up. Nighttime is psychologically the
time for secrets. Pugh was spooked by the time we got him
in the room. He read the points Jim had written up on the
board and the first thing he said was, "I don't have a car."'
Laughter filled the room.
'I thought I was halfway there,' said Harry, 'if Pugh was
this defensive this early. And the other thing I noticed was
how Pugh was staring at the carton with his name on it.
'So I started on my line. Here is the record of interview.
This is one of the first videoed interviews, by the way; now,
as you know, it's standard operating procedure. I told Pugh
I wanted to tell him a story. And this is how it went . . .'
Harry switched on the footage and sat down in a spare
seat. It was eerie to see himself up there on the wall, ten
years younger. Someone wolf-whistled. The room filled with
his soft voice from ten years ago as he spoke to Pugh on
the screen.
On the 23rd of September, a little girl called Helen Semple
was walking down Airlie Drive on her way home from school. She
stopped and had a chat with Mrs Saunders in number 145. Helen
was wearing a cute little ballet dress that showed her frilly pants
because she had a part in the school Christmas play. She had bright
red lipstick on her lips the way little girls do when they're pretending
to be grown-up. There was a man spraying weeds on the other side
of the road and he couldn't take his eyes off this pretty little girl with
her long blonde hair and her red ribbons and red lips. He made sure
he was in her path when she continued on her way and he had a
chat with her. He was the sort of man who didn't have much luck with women. He'd been married very briefly. But that didn't last.
Of course, it was the woman's fault. She was a bitch, wasn't she?
Good riddance, I'll bet. There were very few women who appreciated
this fellow. But this little girl seemed to be different. She seemed to
like him. She stopped and had a chat with him, too. And we all
know what that means, don't we Ron? Although girls pretend that
they're not interested, we know the truth about the bitches, don't
we, Ron? Prickteasers, the lot of them. She was a very friendly,
popular little girl and she chatted with this man. But she did more
than that, didn't she, Ron? She was a real little tease, wasn't she? The video image of Pugh showed the narrow man leaning
forward, listening to every word Harry was saying. She was making eyes at the man, wasn't she? She was a real little flirt; not
innocent at all. . .
A few people in the room shifted in their chairs, uneasy.
. . . And the man knew that. He knew that very well. So on
she went on her merry, flirty way and he thought he'd really like
to have sex with her. Not only that, he knew that really she wanted
to have sex with him. He couldn't stop thinking about her. He had
fantasies about her. I know for a fact that this man played with himself
while he thought about that little girl. Pugh was really bug-eyed
now. He was staring at Harry.  should add by the way that
this man had already got away with one rape in another city, Harry continued. Or what they call rape. Probably just another
lying bitch pretending that she didn't want it. Anyway, one day
the following week, when this man was driving to the pub -oh, I forgot to tell you, this man didn't have a licence, so he shouldn't
have been driving, but he used to borrow an acquaintance's car in
exchange for the occasional joint. Pugh was looking at Harry like he was some sort of witchdoctor. And his body was
shrinking away as if he wanted to vanish, all the time with
his wide eyes fixed on Harry, and this gave his body a weird and crooked twist. When this man was driving to the pub, Harry
went on, who should he see but the same little flirty girl getting off
the school bus just down the road. Well, he knows that she's going
to be thrilled to see him so he stops the car and invites her in and
what do you think? She plays hard to get. But he can see just how
much she wants it so he forces her into the car. It's not a difficult
thing to do and that road is never very busy at the best of times.
'Where are you taking me?' she asks, as if she doesn't know.
The man drives off the road and into a little clearing just off the
track that nobody ever comes to. He makes that little girl undress and
he rapes her. Then everything seems to go wrong. She's screaming
and fighting and he realises there's only one way to shut her up. He
didn't have murder on his mind at all. But suddenly, there it is. It's
his only way out. To control the situation, he pretends he's going
to let her go. This calms her down and she probably even promises
never to tell anyone what happened. It was clear to see on the video that there was a little tic going very fast near the outer
corner of Pugh's left eye. His face was ghastly pale. He was
absolutely riveted.
Harry froze the frame on the screen. 'See how engrossed
he is. Remember that. The guilty ones always are,' Harry
told the equally engrossed audience. 'The innocent ones are
yelling blue murder by this time at this sort of talk. But the
guilty ones fall absolutely silent, mesmerised. Because they're
so amazed at how you're getting the reconstruction right.'
Harry pressed 'Play', and on the screen the younger Harry
was once more talking to Pugh. So she starts getting dressed again, this little girl, thinking that she's soon going to be home and
this will all be over for her. It will, but not in the way she thinks.
Because as she runs down the track to go the short cut home along
the river, the man follows her and looks around for something to stop her with. On the video, Harry stood up and went over to the
big carton. Slowly, he opened it, peeling back the four flaps. There's no-one around on this track, although the man knows he's
got to be quick because someone might come along at any moment.
But then he found this, didn't he, Ron? Out of the box, Harry lifted a heavy, sandstone block and put it on the table next to
Pugh. The video camera easily picked up the beads of sweat
that had popped out on Pugh's forehead under the lights of
the interview room.
Harry turned away from his image on the screen and looked
around at the room full of detectives. They were enthralled.
No-one noticed him looking at them. He turned his attention
back to the screen images.
In the video, Pugh strained forward, staring at the rock as
if it were about to address him. His breathing was shallow and
panicky. The little tic grew faster; it was almost a perceptible squint. The man hits the little girl on the head with this from behind, said the screen image of young Harry. Down she goes and one of her shoes flies off because she hasn't even tied them up, she's in that
much of a hurry to get away. The rock stuns her, but she's not dead.
So do you know what he does? He breaks that little girl's neck. Just
as if she's a chicken in the farmyard. Then, just to make sure she's
good and dead, he drops that rock on her head. Then he races back
up the track to the barbecue clearing, jumps in the car and is at the
pub, a little bit later than usual. And it's as if the whole thing
hasn't happened at all. Harry stopped.
In the lecture room, there was no sound, no movement.
Everyone was transfixed by Harry's performance. In the
video, young Harry had moved up to be very close to
Pugh. His voice was almost a whisper. You see, Ron, said Harry, like a conspirator, it's not a question of whether you did
this or not. You know that. And I know that. We know you did
this. And you know we know. We've got physical evidence which
I'll tell you about in a minute. But most importantly, you told us
yourself that you did it in your statement. In your own words.
Pugh stared at him. He shook his head vigorously, but
then stopped, listening again to Harry. The thing about liars, the onscreen Harry went on, is that after many years of dealing
with them, I've learned a few things about them. They like to tell
the truth. Now, I know that sounds funny. But you think about
it. When you're lying, it's always a good strategy to tell most of
the truth but just leave little bits out. Like a gentleman who comes
to mind told me recently, he walked into his house and saw his wife
lying strangled on the kitchen floor. All of this was perfectly true. But
it turned out later that he'd just decided to leave out mentioning the
fact that he'd strangled her just after he'd walked into the house and
just before he'd seen her lying on the floor. Telling almost the truth
saves you the trouble of making something up completely. Much easier
to hold on to under questioning. So when you were asked outright
'Did you kill Helen Semple?' what did you say? You said . . . Harry turned around and picked up the original record of interview . . . You said, 'There's no way I'd kill a kiddie with a
rock like that.' That's what you said. Because you didn't kill her
with the rock, did you? You broke her neck. You could proudly say,
'I wouldn't kill a kiddie with a rock' and somehow feel you were
speaking the truth, because in your own twisted way you were.
Harry froze the video, feeling awkward watching himself.
'I think that's about enough,' he said.
'No,' said several voices. 'Let's see the rest of it.'
Harry looked at Jim, who nodded. He restarted the video
and stepped back to watch his younger self at work. With blunt-force trauma . . . sorry, he was saying on the screen, I'll
put that in layman's terms. Where something like a rock has been
used, there's always blood splashes and tiny spots, too small often
for the eye to see. Those spots are on your shoes, on the trousers
you were wearing. We know your blood type and we know Helen's.
Those shoes of yours are with our scientists. We know you did it. The
only thing that's going to help you now is if I can tell the sentencing
judge why you did it. Because I understand, Ron. I really do. Here Harry's image on the screen was almost touching Pugh, they
were so close. His voice was a low, soothing murmur. You never meant to hurt that flirty little girl, did you? You can tell
me, Ron.
Ronald Pugh had collapsed over the table and was sobbing like a child. You just wanted to have some fun. And you thought
she did too. But it all went terribly wrong. She mucked everything
up. Carrying on like that. Really, you could say it was all her fault.
So if you sign here, when it gets to court we can talk to the judge
and put your point of view across. It was an accident, wasn't it,
Ron? Manslaughter. But not murder. We know you never meant
to kill her.
Pugh was sobbing.  never did mean to hurt her. She got me into
a state. All that screaming. I had to stop her. I had to, I had to.
Harry stood up and froze the image on Pugh's face. 'Any
questions?' he asked.
'You sounded like you were blaming the little girl,' said a
young man down the back of the room, 'the way you were
talking to that crim.'
'I have to start thinking like he does,' Harry said, 'to
convince him that I really know everything he's done. And
most killers want to find someone to blame. Once I started
to see that, I started to see how their minds worked. It
would have to be the victim's fault. I knew from his point
of view it had to be her fault. I knew a few things already
about the case just from reading the facts and looking at the
photographs and the crime scene. And reading his transcript.
I knew it wasn't planned. It was a rape of opportunity. I knew
he'd never intended homicide. He'd have brought a weapon
with him.'
He looked around. A woman down the back raised her
hand. 'How did you know he told her that he was going to
let her go?' she asked.
'Because she'd been allowed to get dressed again,' Harry
said. 'She'd pulled her pants on inside out in her panic.
She hadn't done up her shoelaces properly. That charade
of re-dressing made her think that the nightmare was nearly
over. All she would have been thinking about was how to
get home as quick as possible. So while she was running
away down the track, sobbing, blind with tears, her shoelaces
still undone, he caught up with her, looked around, saw that
sandstone piece, picked it up and bashed her from behind
with it. People found her on the track. It was assumed she
was taking that route home when she was attacked. But she
wasn't.'
'What would an innocent man have said to the question
"Did you kill Helen Semple"?' the pretty young woman in
the front asked.
'He'd've said something equally straightforward like "No,
I did not," or "No, I didn't kill Helen Semple",' said Harry.
'Notice how people talk when they're denying something.
If it's complicated and indirect, it should alert a good investigator.
Learn to notice,' he told the group.
He switched off the slide projector. 'We were able to tell
Helen's mother that she didn't disobey her. She was walking home on the top road like a good girl, the way she'd told her
mum she always did. She was walking home the safe way and
she still met Pugh.'
'If there are no more questions,' Jim said, 'let's put our
hands together for Harry Doyle.' Brief clapping and it was
almost over. But the pretty young woman in the front row
put up her hand.
'I've got one more question,' she said.
'Yes?' Harry asked.
'If you were so good in Homicide, why did you leave and
join the Dog Squad?'
There was a silence in the room. Harry looked at Jim.
'Personal reasons,' he finally said. He saw two men down the
back lean their heads together and surmised one was telling
the other about Franco. For a split second, he considered
making a public announcement about it, like a confession.
But the moment passed and the detectives moved out of
the room and Harry gathered up his things, aware that his
armpits were soaked. Public speaking always had that effect
on him. The challenge in the young woman's question had
also rattled him.
Jim walked with him towards the lifts. 'I still think about
Pugh,' he said. 'And the time we bumped into him after the
case. Do you?'
Harry recalled the incident -coming
suddenly face-to-face
with Pugh as he was being taken from the cells beneath the
Police Centre and loaded into the prison van.
'You cunt, Doyle,' he'd yelled. 'You never had a thing
on me. There was no physical evidence, you lying piece
of shit.'
Pugh had strained against his restrainers, his body dense
with malevolence.
'I'm going to get you, Doyle,' he'd screamed. 'No matter
how long it takes, I'm going to get you. I'm going to hurt
you bad.'
Harry had stuck up two fingers as the Corrective Services
van accelerated past him and away. 'Piss off, you sick bastard,'
he'd yelled to its departing rear.
'Yes,' said Harry, ten years later. 'I think about it from
time to time.'
'They all make threats,' said Jim. 'Never amounts to anything.
Come back to my office and have lunch with me.'
'Give me an hour. There's something I want to do first.'
As they went down in the lift, Harry tried to recall anything
he could about the man with the grenade and the armalite at
Strathfield. All he could get was an impression of a soldier in
a war zone -the
weaving, ducking run, the practised combat
manoeuvres. Then there was the matter of that odd, fleeting
odour. Ten thousand different scents, Harry remembered,
was, according to recent scientific thinking, a conservative
estimate of what the human system could discern. Smell was
the least researched sense. It was only quite recently that
he'd read about the importance of the olfactory process in
homing pigeons as part of their process of finding their way
back home. At Strathfield he'd hit on some subtle note, but
it was too slight to have registered properly in his brain.
He left Jim and went along the hall to another of the
Crime Scene Support offices. He had a chat to the leader
there and they made a phone call. In a few minutes, Devlin,
the forensic hypnotist, walked in. Harry knew him from the
old days. He'd seen the extraordinary information that could
be elicited in a deeply relaxed trance state -information that had sometimes provided invaluable leads. They found
a quiet room and, after the pleasantries, Harry told him why
he was there.
'Can you put me under?' he asked finally. 'I want to recall
as much as I can.' Harry shrugged, seeing Devlin's surprise.
'I joined the Dog Squad because I just didn't want to know
anymore. But this guy's got on my wick.'
Devlin sat opposite Harry, looking steadily at him. 'Okay,'
he said. 'Just take a nice deep breath. And another one. And
just one more.' Harry obliged.
There was a soft knock and Jim came in. 'So this is where
you got to. Can I sit in?'
Harry didn't mind so Devlin started the induction again,
beginning with the muscles at the back of Harry's neck all
the way down his body. He felt himself let down into a softer
state. He felt his belly soften and his breathing become regular
and even pleasurable. The distant ringing of the phones
worked in Harry's favour.
'Every phone ringing just allows you to go deeper into a
state of relaxation. In fact,' Devlin's voice softly told him,
'every noise you hear, whether it's near or far, whether it's
in this section or whether it's the sound of an aeroplane
over the city, will only serve to allow you to go deeper
and deeper.' Harry was aware of himself folded around a
place of deep peace and stillness, completely relaxed and yet
poised and alert to Devlin's voice and words.
Devlin took him back to the lawn at Strathfield, the
cotoneaster hedge, the door opening, the man coming out
in combat mode, lobbing the grenade. Over and over the
scene he went.
An impression of dark hair, an impression of age -forties, but youthful, very fit. 'He's been a soldier,' he said, his voice
barely audible. 'And there's something else.'
'Would you like to tell me the something else?' Devlin's
measured voice.
'There's something familiar in the scent picture.'
'What's a scent picture?' Harry heard Devlin's voice from
a long way away.
'It's the term the dog people use,' said Jim. 'For the total
picture of a place. All the different smells and traces. Air and
ground scent.'
'Can you tell me more about the scent picture?' Devlin
now asked him.
Harry shook his head. 'There's something. There's something
that's important. And I just can't get it.' he shook his
head. 'No. It's useless. It's too faint. It's too fleeting. It's just
like a ghost. Vanishes.'
'Let's have a closer look at that smell, Harry.' Devlin's
voice. 'That smell that you just can't quite get. I want you
to amplify it. By ten times. Then by twenty times. Where
have you smelled it before?' Devlin's voice, calm, soft and
surrounding.
The scent grew stronger and stronger till it filled Harry's
nostrils. 'It's like a bar late at night. It smells like something
you might get in a bar.'
'Tell me more.' Devlin's steady voice. 'Is it a bar? Does it
smell like a bar you know?'
Harry concentrated. He slowly shook his head. 'It's not a
place,' he said. 'It's something like alcohol. But it's not any
particular drink. In a crowded bar you might notice it. Or
sometimes when I've interviewed suspects I've been aware
of it. But mixed with other smells. I don't know what it is
by itself. It's not pleasant.'
Nothing else came to him. So Devlin brought him out of
the trance and Harry sat up straight, looking around. 'Well,' he said, 'that was nice. But I didn't get it. I didn't get the
damn thing. Whatever it is.'
Harry went with Jim back to his office. Jim walked over to
his sealed, double-glazed window and looked out, and Harry
wondered what he could see from there. The Police Centre,
constructed of grey concrete, proofed against civil unrest, had
narrow ledges outside the windows. Jim's office was on one
side of a rectangular light well in the middle of the building
and there was no view. Just outside Jim's window, a pair
of pigeons had made their nest and the female was sitting,
brooding, eyes almost closed, while the male rested further
along the windowledge.
Jim had covered the bottom of the window with a cardboard
screen so that the pigeons would not be alarmed by
movements inside the office.
The phone rang almost as soon as Harry walked in. It
was Ayoub from Bathurst. Jim grunted and listened. 'Harry
Doyle's here. I'll put him on.' He got up and went to the
window.
'We've got some more on the Bathurst crime scene,'
Ayoub told Harry.
'Tell me,' he said.
'The little boy couldn't help us much. Seems he was woken
up by a big noise -that's
all he said, "big noise bang" -and climbed out of his cot, found his grandmother like that and
wandered away. He's with his parents now. But the cartridge
turned up,' said Ayoub, 'and it comes from a thing called a
Tokarev--'
'--a rare little pistol that the commies used in Vietnam,'
Harry finished for him.
'How the fuck did you know that?' Ayoub asked, forgetting
his manners. 'Well,' he continued, somewhat deflated,
'we know it's the same gun that was used at your Strathfield
scene. Ballistics got a perfect match.'
'We might be looking at two offenders,' Harry said, 'using
the same gun.' He looked up at Jim who was following the
conversation.
Ayoub continued. 'We've got tiny slivers of broken glass,
too. The expert tells us it's a rose-coloured glass, old style,
probably Victorian, no longer made, and has an embossed
pattern on it.
'From his rose-coloured glasses, maybe.' Harry couldn't
resist.
Ayoub rang off and Harry and Jim looked at each other.
'It's him again,' Harry said. 'Strathfield and Bathurst. Same
killer.'
A Russian handgun. Rose-coloured glass. Harry leaned
back in the chair, taking it all in, turning his attention to
the bigger picture of two dead women and their killer. The
information started unrolling in his mind. He couldn't help
himself. It was just automatic, like the old days. 'He can
maintain relationships with women,' he said. 'They're both
killed in their own homes. He seems trustworthy. The sort
of man a woman lets into her house late at night when she's
alone with a small child. He knows how to be gentlemanly
and well-behaved.'
'Nice to be murdered by a gentleman,' said Jim, coming
back from the window and sitting down behind his desk.
'We'd better start talking to anyone who knew the dead
women, and try and track down that one particular gentleman
friend they had in common.'
Harry nodded. 'He shoots one woman in a cellar, clean
through the heart, facing her fair and square. That's a tough
thing to do,' Harry said. 'Unless you're in a state of rage.' He
paused, refusing to allow a memory out of the lock-up in his
mind. 'Or cold, hard hatred. Then he holes up for a while,
lobs a grenade, gets away from me, kills the dog, jumps from
rooftops, travels to Bathurst while all the time avoiding New
South Wales' best and finest who are supposed to be right up
his arse, goes to an isolated farmhouse, gets invited in, knocks
the woman down and shoots her with the same gun he's used
at the first murder, moves her body, cleans up where she fell,
smashes her head up, smashes her up between the legs and
disappears again into the bush. I want to know what's going
on. It just doesn't make any sense.'
Jim raised an eyebrow and looked at his friend. 'He shoots
two women,' said Jim. 'He gives it to us by using the same
gun. But then he tries to make the next killing at Bathurst
look like sexual assault. Why?'
'Maybe it was,' Harry suggested. 'Maybe there was a sexual
element. We can't know what was in his mind while he did
that. Even though there's no semen showing up. Maybe he's
a nearest and dearest staging things to look like a stranger.'
'Maybe he's a stranger staging things to look like a nearest
and dearest.'
'But she let him in,' said Harry. 'She put her slippers
on and she let him in. She turned her back on him. She
felt comfortable with him. I want to talk to her boyfriend.
I want to know if he knew there was another
man on the scene. I'll talk to Ayoub again and line that
up.;
Jim nodded, but he was pursuing his own thoughts. 'He
creates two completely different murders, but uses the same
gun,' saidjirri.
'It's now you see me now you don't,' said Harry. 'He's
playing.'
'What have you got so far?' said Jim, like in the old days.
'Highly organised,' said Harry as the information came to
hand. 'Older person. Military training, obviously. Combat
experience in Vietnam so that'll give us an age group. I'd
be looking for an officer.'
'How do you work that?'
'You said there were pilot's licences in different names.
Okay, they're bodgy, as we know, but I'm pretty sure it
means our man actually is a pilot. And that he does have
an unrestricted licence. That indicates to me someone who
is not only intelligent,' said Harry, 'but someone who can
apply himself to long study commitments. And complexity.
Ever had a go at aviation navigation?'Jim grunted.
'He's skilled in the use of weapons. So far, he's used a
handgun, an assault rifle, a knife and a grenade,' Harry
continued. 'He was able to do a spot of bush carpentry in
that cellar. So he's an allrounder. Could have grown-up in
the bush or spent a lot of time in the bush because that's where
he headed. He's probably got a good employment history. He
could run his own business. He's well-built, presentable. But
this part's cheating,' he added, 'because I've seen him.'
Now Harry stood up and went to the window. The
brooding pigeon fluffed up her feathers and resettled. 'But
he's hard to read,' he said. 'He's a real odd one. This is not
a serial killer. He knows his victims very well.' He paused.
'I'm thinking of the way he flattened her head at Bathurst,'
he said to Jim eventually. 'I don't think in the end he was
trying to hide the bullet wound with those postmortem
injuries. Maybe that's what was in his mind at first, but
then I think smashing her up felt so good it became part
of his gig. And you know what that means. He's escalating.
Getting more practised at it. The violence is increasing.' He
considered a moment. 'I think you'll find he has or had a
very difficult relationship with his mother. That his mother
tried to dominate and control him. And that he hated her.'
He briefly thought of his own mother, but put her out of his
mind straightaway. He made a decision. 'I've got a couple of
days due to me. I want to go back. I want to talk to Janette
Madden's boyfriend. And I want to take the dog back to the
Bathurst crime scene. We might pick something up. You've
got my mobile number. Ring me when you ID him.'
'What's happened to the man who doesn't want to know
anymore,' Jim said a moment later, 'about killers and why
they do it?'
'This is different,' said Harry, and hesitated for a moment.
'There's something you should know.' He was aware of Jim's
gaze, intent on him, listening like a good cop.
'Janette Madden used to be Janette Doyle. For about
eighteen months. The marriage broke up not long after I
got back from Vietnam.'
'Shit,' said Jim. 'I didn't know you'd been married before.'
'It was a long time ago,' said Harry, sitting on the chair
opposite his friend.
'Two dead women,' said Jim. 'And one of them your
ex-wife.' He paused. 'When did you last see her?'
Harry considered. 'I haven't seen her for twenty-five years.
There were some letters around the time of the divorce.
We didn't have any property. Then I lost track of her
entirely. I heard she'd gone to New Zealand to live with
her second husband. That must've been eighteen, twenty
years ago.'
'And since then?'
'Since then, absolutely nothing.' He noticed his friend's
shrewd eyes, observing him. 'It'll be very easy to check my
whereabouts at the time of the murder. I was at home.'
Jim's face relaxed. 'Harry. You know how it is.'
'The nice way of putting it is to say "We need to eliminate
you from our enquiries".'
'Yes,' said Jim. 'But I wasn't going to try that on with
you.'
Harry stood up.
'We need to stop this bastard, Jim. It'll be three dead
women otherwise.'
'You said "we", Harry,' Jim pointed out. 'Just like the
old days.'

He said goodbye to his colleagues in the city and drove home
through the worsening Sydney evening traffic. The sky was
dull with pollution and he could smell hot metal, exhausts
and petrol fumes, mixed with food odours and hot tar. He
could smell the dogs and their gear. He could even pick out
a little bit of Hannah and the green and red frog sweets she
liked. But the lost scent still eluded him.
When he got home, he checked Blade and found that his
temperature was normal. He gave the dog a dose of vitamins
prescribed by the vet and then packed up the wagon. Razor
wagged around after him, like a kid.
When he was ready, he rang Matthews, the senior sergeant
back at the Dog Squad.
'Is your other dog operational yet?' Matthews wanted
to know.
'Another few days should see him ready for work. I've got
a few days owing. I want to go back to that Bathurst crime
scene,' he said. 'Ask a few questions. Sniff around a bit.'
'Bit late for a dog. It was washed out.'
'It's good exercise for the dog. I want to look around. This
bastard owes me.'
He rang off. The unfinished message stick lay along his
desk like a trophy from some alien war and he briefly touched
its smooth surface on his way out. There was some gear he
needed to pick up from the Dog Squad.

Meg opened the little, low gate next-door on her way home
from work. The afternoon was hot and the light summer dress
she was wearing stuck to her armpits. She walked round the
back of the neat weatherboard in its quarter-acre garden, and
past its above-ground pool. Jack wasn't around. She opened
the flyscreen. 'Dell?'
'In here, hon,' called her friend. Meg heard the sound of
a sewing machine and walked into Dell's tiny sewing room,
crowded with fabrics, patterns, tins of beads and pins and the
bulging albums Dell used to record and display her work for
potential customers. Meg picked one up and opened it at
a bridal party. She closed it again. A tall fan kept the hot
afternoon air moving, and lifted the layers of the fabric her
friend was stitching. Dell wore little white cotton gloves, so
with the billowing clouds of fabric swirled and folded around
her she looked a bit like the cat who ate the cream.
'It's gorgeous,' said Meg, not touching it, aware of her hot,
sweaty hands.
'Yes,' said Dell. 'It's gorgeous. Over a hundred dollars a
metre. If they spent as much on pre-marriage counselling as
they do on the dress and the reception, they'd have a great life
together. But, you don't know that at the time, do you?'
Meg went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. She
sighed. 'You can't know until you know.' She came back
to the doorway of Dell's little sewing room. The fan lifted
a swathe of lighter fabric that Meg supposed was for lining.
'Harry's going bush for a few days. And I'm almost sure I've
decided to call it off with Max.' She wanted to cry but
couldn't.
'Meggie, you won't be cross with me if I tell you I've
heard you say that before.'
Meg shook her head. 'I know I'm indecisive. But I don't
know what's going to happen next. It's not just a question of
Max or Harry -I
mean it's not just a choice between men
-I
feel I'm at a real crossroads.'
Dell looked up. 'Does Max know you're thinking like
this?' Meg shook her head.
The kettle started murmuring and Dell got up and went to
the kitchen, pulling her white gloves off, with Meg following.
Dell took the tea things out, opened the fridge for milk, put
the good cups on the tray because she had a visitor.
'I'll tell him next time I see him. He didn't show up for
our last date. I waited at the hotel and he didn't show.'
'Something important might have come up.'
'I don't care how important. You can always leave a
message at a hotel. Always. That's what hotels ilk for. Maybe
he's dead. Anyway, it's not only that.'
'I'm sure you'd have heard if he was dead,' said her practical
friend, making the tea. 'Look,' she said, 'you and Harry could
make a go of it. He's not a drunk and a womaniser like Ken
was. You've just let things slip, you two.'
Meg sat on a stool and Dell passed her a cup of tea,
sitting opposite at the kitchen bar. 'We've hardly spoken
for the last few years,' said Meg. 'I mean apart from stuff
like who's going to pick up the kids, or who'll be home
first to take something out of the freezer. He's just closed
down on me. I was so pleased when he got out of Homicide
-- until I realised what the Dog Squad meant. It hasn't made
him happy.'
Then close up on women because women keep poking
at them,' said Dell. 'I know that for a fact. My father closed
down like that and Mum never let up on him. He just went
silent. Harry's like my dad. Maybe that's why I went for
the fast-talking sexy ones like Ken.' She sipped her tea,
put the cup down and raised an inquiring eyebrow. 'And
maybe Max?'
She went back into the sewing room and came out with
part of the bodice and a strip of seed pearls. She put her white
gloves back on and started stitching by hand.
'I don't know,' Meg said. 'That's the truth. I must have
been crazy to think I could just go off with him like that.
I don't know what I was doing. But it seems like a dream
now.' Sitting in Dell's ordinary kitchen with the sound of
distant traffic and Indian mynah birds squabbling outside, the
affair with Max seemed an impossible dream, a film script
she'd got mixed up with.
Dell continued to sew tiny seed pearls in a strip onto the
bodice of the dress, frowning with effort. 'I don't know why
I ever thought dressmaking would be an easier way to make
a living than nursing.' Then she continued with the previous
conversation. 'A womaniser,' she said, 'usually doesn't want
the woman and her kids to move in with him. Quite the
opposite.'
'I don't know if he's a womaniser,' Meg shrugged. 'What
do womanisers do? What do men do, or want? The kids are
hurting. I'm supposed to be a counsellor, know how to deal
with this sort of thing. When I talk to Alison she looks at
me as if she dislikes me. And I have to be honest and say
I often feel the same way. I sometimes wonder if I should
have been a mother. I didn't have the foggiest clue about it.'
She finished her tea.
'It's always easier with other people's problems than with
your own,' said Dell. 'Everybody knows that.'
Meg nodded, looked away then back again. 'I feel better,
having made the decision to finish with Max. God, I'll miss
him. My body is in love with him. You know how it is. I
haven't felt a thing for Harry for ages.' She suddenly started
sobbing and Dell dropped the strip of seed pearls, got up and
put her arms around her friend, holding her, smoothing her
hair. After a few minutes, the shuddering spasms eased and
Meg pulled a man's hankie out of the pocket of her dress and
blew her nose.
'You could sort it out with Harry,' said Dell. 'You could.'
'I don't know anymore. Feels like the relationship between
us is dead. Dell, there are things Jwant to do. A portrait of me
and Hannah. Go to Florence. For Christ's sake, I'm forty. I'm
tired of living on a twenty-four-hour operational police base,'
said Meg. 'It's too much. Even on an oil rig people get time
off. It's impossible, living like this.'
'Have you talked to Harry about this?'
'I tried the other night.' Her eyes flashed. 'You know what
he said? We'd have to take several things into consideration
if I wanted a separation. You know why?' She made a sound
that was half bitter laugh, half contempt. 'Because of the dogs. The bloody dogs.'
A few minutes later, she opened her kitchen door and
stepped inside. The white roses drooped in their vase because
the water level had fallen, and a listless Blade came over to
greet her. She topped up the rose water and blew her nose.
Hannah ran out at the sound and dropped down beside
the dog.
'Dad says I have to keep an eye on him.' Then she looked
at her mother. 'Mum, what is it? You're crying.' This was so
shocking that Hannah stood frozen, staring at her mother.
Meg shook her head, blowing her nose again. 'It's nothing.
It's just . . .'
Hannah couldn't speak. They looked at each other uselessly.
'Please don't cry, Mum. You mustn't cry. I'll tidy
my room. Right now. You come and look in a minute.
It'll be really tidy.' Hannah turned and raced away down
to her room and Meg could hear the explosion of energy as
doors and cupboards opened and slammed and furniture was
straightened. Meg went to the door of her daughter's room
and looked in. Hannah was wildly hurling things around,
slamming drawers shut, blindly pushing things out of sight.
She went to her daughter, bending down, and caught her
mid-shove.
'Don't, darling. It's okay. It's got nothing to do with you.
Truly.' Hannah moved into her arms and Meg slipped onto
the floor, leaning against the bed, rocking the two of them,
as if Hannah was a baby again. She wondered where Max
was, and tried to imagine what she would say to him.
'Mum, I've got a friend.'
'That's nice.'
'He wants me to ..."
Meg heard the phone ringing. Max. She just knew with
every cell in her body that it was Max.
'Hang on, darling. I'll get the phone. Then tell me.'
It was him. 'I'm so sorry,' he said. 'Something came
up. I must see you. Tonight. Meet me tonight at the
hotel.'
Meg considered. I can't do it over the phone, she thought.
It's too brutal.
'Max,' she said, and her voice faltered, 'you stood me up.
You can't do that to people.'

'I tried to get a message to you,' he said. 'I was out
of range.'
'Aren't I important?'
'I'll explain,' he said. 'I promise. You'll forgive me.'
'I just don't think things are working out between us,' she
said, feeling like some idiot player in a daytime television
soap. How on earth could things 'work out' between a man
who couldn't be pinned down and a woman who already
had a husband and two children? But she didn't say that.
At the other end of the line she had the sense of something
huge opening up, the way she sometimes thought she could
hear the unfathomable depths of coaxial cables swinging in
blackness at the bottom of the sea. 'Max?' she said. 'Are you
still there?'
'Yes,' he said. 'I'm thinking.'
She heard Harry pull up outside. 'I can't talk now,' she
said. 'Harry's just arrived.'
'I don't care,' he said. 'I'll deal with him. Maybe if he
knows the truth--'
'He already knows, for heaven's sake,' said Meg. 'Don't
make everything worse than it is.'
'Worse? How can I make it worse? You're having a change
of heart. This doesn't change anything,' he was saying and she
thought he must be mad. 'I'm coming round as soon as I can.
We've got to talk. I just couldn't get to ring. I felt dreadful,
knowing you were waiting for me.'
'I've got to go,' she said. 'Goodbye.' And as she put the
phone down, her husband walked into the kitchen.

Harry looked at Meg's face and wondered why the blood
had drained away from it.
She was only wearing a sarong loosely around her body
and her dark hair spread out over her shoulders behind her.
He wondered what she was thinking about, and knew that it
wasn't of him. The airconditioner rattled in its housing. 'I'd
better go,' he said.
'You want to get away from me.'
'There's that,' he said. He yearned to be able to say
something more, something that would be true and satisfying.
The phone rang and he picked it up and barked, 'Yes?'
'The Archons are up to something,' said the Confessor.
'They're buying new clothes. Little angel dresses. He's
expecting a visitor,' said the voice.
'Not now, Milton,' said Harry. 'Ring me tomorrow.'
'You should know,' said the Confessor. 'It's your business
too.'
'How do you work that out?' Harry asked.
'I know your name,' said the Confessor, 'and so do the
Archons. They want to practise more chemicals on me.
And more electricity. They want to practise something on
you, too.'
'Milton, I can't talk now.' Harry hung up. He went into
Hannah's room where she was sitting at the computer. Razor
was lying against her legs while she worked and Harry could
see she was upset.
Hannah clicked the mouse and the screen went blank. She
pushed Razor away from her legs. 'You're too hot, Mister,'
she said.
'What are you doing?' he asked.
She shrugged. 'Just talking on the net.'
'Who do you talk to?'
'Lots of people. All over the world. World Wide Web
chat.'
Harry shook his head. 'Do they say anything worthwhile?'
he asked.
'Yep.' He could tell she didn't want to tell him anymore,
that she was holding something back. He noticed her beautiful
profile, her soft full lips, the top lip like her mother's.
'When I get back--'
'Where are you going?'
'I want to borrow my dog back again,' he told her. 'Just
for a day or two. If that's okay.'
She smoothed the side of her face against Razor's glossy
neck. 'He's my beautiful twin brother with extra serves of
ears. And he loves me.' She rubbed Razor's ears between her
fingers. 'Why do you want to take him?'
'There's a matter I want to look into.'
'You are talking like a cop,' she said, tightening her hold
on Razor. She suddenly thought that maybe what she was
planning was not a good idea. Maybe Richard should meet
her family first. Maybe the time had come for her secret
friend to become a family friend. She felt uncomfortable,
holding this huge secret.
'Dad--' she began.
'What, Hanks?'
But she didn't say anything. Maybe soon, she'd tell Dad.
'Dad,' she said instead, 'you can take this good dog. And
tell me what you were going to say -- about when you
get back.'
'I was going to say we'll have a good talk. About things
in this family.'
Her eyes looked steadily into his. He saw gratitude and
relief. 'That would be good,' she said. 'I hate the fights and
when you don't talk.'
'We'll sort it out. I promise you.'
She threw her arms around him and he was alarmed at the
vehemence of her hug.
He went into his office and called Bathurst to leave a
message with Ayoub that he'd meet him the following
morning, then turned around because he sensed Meg standing
behind him in the hall doorway.
'Harry?' she said. 'What are we going to do? About us?'
'We'll talk about it when I get back,' he said. He put out
a hand towards her, hoping for some sign of truce. Her face
was hard and lined and it was difficult for him to recognise
the sweet woman he'd teamed up with all those years ago.
'It's not me who's otherwise--' he stopped short, thinking
better of making the remark, letting his hand drop to his
side again.
'Where will you stay?' she said, a little softer.
'I'll sleep out,' he said. 'I'll take the mobile. But I might
not always be in range.'
'You've never been in range, Harry,' she said. 'Never let
anyone get close.'
It wasn't true, he thought to himself, remembering his
boyhood and Angus and the days at Boolabimbie before
Vietnam.
'Meg,' he said. 'We'll talk when I get back.' But his wife
turned her back on him and walked away.

It was dark by the time he drove through Lithgow and he
stopped at Mount Lambie to give Razor a break and a drink
and to buy a hamburger.
When he reached Bathurst, he took the Eglinton road and
made his way back to the property where Janette had been
killed. As he passed, he noticed there were no lights. He
would have another look in the morning. He wondered
briefly what would become of the tiny boy, and his memories
of what had happened in the house at Bathurst. He had seen
something so horrible that night that he had preferred fleeing
in the darkness to staying with his murdered grandmother.
What nightmares would he suffer all through his life and
The Sharp End 151





never really understand because stupid and well-meaning
adults would presume that he was 'too young to remember?'
The suffering caused by one murder rippled out from the
central violent act, he thought, into other lives, harming
many people. What business did the killer have with the
women? he wondered. What relationship was there that
brought them into collision? Why had he tried to set it
up to look like something it -wasn't? He hadn't bothered at
Strathfield. Two dead women linked by a Russian handgun
and near invisible shards of rose-coloured glass.
He drove a little way past the property and discovered a
bridge over a meander of the Macquarie. On the other side
picnickers had made an ad hoc trail along the grassy river
bank. He took the wagon down off the road and drove
a little way along the river. He looked around and saw a
good campsite further down, where the steep banks opened
out onto a smooth area, like a small beach. Harry estimated
he was about five kilometres north of the farmhouse where
Janette had been murdered. The fragrance of stringybark filled
his nostrils. The headlights showed the opposite bank about
twenty metres across a barely flowing river. He unlocked the
back and Razor jumped out, bounding like a pup down the
bank. Harry pulled out a groundsheet and a sleeping bag, a gas
ring and a billy. He locked the vehicle and made his way down
the slope to the grassy clearing. Stars shone on the surface of
the river and, as his night vision started to restore itself, he
squatted, listening and sniffing. The frogs were silent. The
scent picture was dry grass and dew beginning to form on
surfaces. From off the river came a movement of air, too light
even to be called a breeze, a stirring that raised the smell of wet
clay soil, ducks, freshwater fish, newly cut lucerne, the distant
highway and the smell of cattle. Small crickets chimed in the
grass and a plover shrieked from the river flats on the other
side. Harry could hear the tearing of grass and chomping of
a large herbivore -a
horse from a paddock nearby, its scent
mingling strongly with that of fresh cropped grass.

When his eyes were accustomed to the night, he stood and
went towards the edge of the river. Razor was running up
and down along the water's edge, sniffing and tripping on all
the different odours. Harry pulled out his torch and flashed it
onto the damp soil near the water. He saw the tracks of a large
goanna that had come down to the river to drink. Nearby was
a graceful, plait-like track that he remembered as the mark of
an echidna. It was a good watering spot, although a little too
exposed for the smaller, more vulnerable creatures. He dipped
his billy into the water and rinsed it, then half-filled it. As he
stood up, he stopped and squatted down again. Just over from
the marks left by the other animals were the tracks of a huge
kangaroo, bigger than he'd ever seen in his life. He judged it
to be a male from the length of the clear print of the back
foot: nearly thirty centimetres. He estimated it would have
to stand over two metres high, taller than a tall man.
Sitting in the silence of the evening and reading the
ground like that turned him back to Vietnam and the
tracks that indicated the passage of enemy soldiers burdened
with heavy materials; the way he would distinguish
tracks made by fresh walkers from those made by exhausted
walkers. This was helpful in calculating whether they'd
hit on a group that lived nearby or one that had penetrated
the area from another region. It was easy to see
whether the quarry was running. He learned to study the
water that gathered in a footprint, calculating how fresh or
how stale it was depending on the cloudiness or clarity of
the fluid.
The scent of cigarette smoke drifted down from the
road, bringing him back to the present. Cigarette smoke
is detectable up to 400 metres away. He looked around but
didn't see anyone.
In Vietnam, Harry could smell the enemy -- their latrines,
their cooking, their cigarettes -- much earlier than anyone
else on his patrol. Different diets make different shit. And
even before his nose had sensed it, he would be aware of the
sudden influx of flies that indicated death nearby or enemy
latrines. In Vietnam, Harry had learned that stealth was their
greatest ally, a stealth made easier, despite the encumbrances
of their heavy equipment and painful feet, by the fact that
to make a noise could, and did, result in sudden death. He'd
learned to notice that rust spots appeared on opened tin cans
within about twelve hours; learned to judge the severity
of a wounded man's injuries as much from the way his
footprints moved and the way his blood fell onto the jungle
plants as from how severe the bleeding was. Heightened by
the dark exhilaration of combat and the adrenalin of terror,
of never knowing whether the next breath might well be
your last, Harry had learned to notice, to see and to smell.
From these visual and olfactory clues, his mind had started
making pictures in his head, a bit like the cinema, of who and
how many enemy soldiers had moved through this pathway,
and how long ago, and whether they were sweating with
exhaustion and heavily burdened, or whether they were
fresh and carrying only their arms. It was like an automatic
process. He didn't have to make it happen. His mind just
filled with collated information and he was very rarely wrong
in his projections. It was a skill that had become invaluable in
the days he worked with Homicide at crime scenes.
He went up the bank a little and spread his groundsheet
on a level area. He lit the gas ring and put the billy on it
to boil. He lay back on the groundsheet and looked at the
stars. The Pleiades shone in the northern sky, near Orion.
He knew them also as the seven sisters who had fled from
a warrior bent on ravishing and had jumped up into the sky
for safety. A hazy circle round the moon meant rain in about
three days, according to his calculations. The river made soft
sounds that were at first inaudible but, as his senses stilled and
opened out, became quite clear. A fish jumped. A bull called
out in the distance. He made tea in the billy and pulled out
the cooked chicken he'd purchased in town. After he'd also
had his tea, Razor curled up beside the leader of the pack.
Harry pulled out the sleeping bag and lay on top of it, legs
crossed, looking at the stars, thinking that he hadn't felt so
good, so peaceful, for a long time.
NINE



At five-thirty next morning, Harry was making billy tea by
the hushed river. The sun was shining over the horizon,
making pink swathes of early-morning radiance on the long
dry feed that edged the hills and in the soft mist that covered
the river further downstream. On the other side of the river,
upwind, Harry saw a young fox trotting along the ridge. It
froze and stared at him, then turned away and trotted out
of sight. In the same moment, Razor caught its scent and
barked ferociously.
He made his tea, and bird calls, silenced by Razor's voice,
once again filled the air. Harry identified noisy miners,
magpies, pied butcherbirds, lorikeets and the high-pitched
piping yelp of a brown hawk. By the time he was drinking
his tea, dew was already steaming and vanishing. He squatted,
watching it. He felt the best he'd felt in years. His mind had
calmed and straightened out. The bush always did that for
him. As he gazed around, he noticed a perfect piece of timber
for Hannah's message stick: a piece of eucalypt branch fallen
off a tree. He went over to it and broke off the smaller
branches, leaving a well-shaped 'S'-bend about a foot long.
As he put it on the floor in the back of the wagon, he thought
of his children and how they would grow away from him, as

indeed one already had. And that was as it should be. In the
long run, he thought, I am only responsible for myself.
Back at the campsite, he jettisoned the last mouthful of
leafy black tea, watching it arc in amber droplets and hit the
ground. He looked up and saw that the hawk had perched in
the eucalypt nearby. The smaller birds cried out as they flew
from the clump of flowering mistletoe where they'd been
feeding. The bird of prey sat alone now in the tree and the
clean scent of morning made Harry hungry. He swiped the
side of his face; the flies were already a worry.
After packing up, Harry drove into town and had a
hamburger for breakfast. Then he picked up Ayoub from
his flat and the two of them drove to an address across
the railway line. A flatmate of Janette Madden's boyfriend
answered the door when they knocked, scratching his balls
through his jeans, saying they'd better come in and not to
worry about the mess. In the lounge room, Harry took in
the scent picture: stale cigarettes, alcohol, and the closed-in
smell of three untidy young males living together.
'He's just coming out now,' said the man. And there it was
again, as he spoke -something
that reminded Harry of the
ghost scent he'd touched on at the first crime scene; the odd,
sharp something in the air. Just as suddenly, it was gone again.
'What do you coppers want?' Murray Faye had come in
with a cup of tea from the kitchen. 'I still can't believe it,'
he said. 'Who would hurt her?'
Faye gave them more details. He'd been employed as a
storeman at a Sydney supermarket but had been retrenched
and decided to come up to the country for awhile. He and
Janette Madden had met six months ago at the local pub.
Although she was quite a bit older than he was, she was a
very attractive woman and they had become intimate quite
quickly.
'She housekept for the Schofields in lieu of rent for the
cottage and worked part-time at Karrawonga. That's the
name of a property out of town. On the river. Janette used
to cook for them a few days a week.'
'Yes,' said Ayoub. 'We've made a few inquiries there
already.'
'Did you know of any other boyfriends she might have
had -- or maybe used to have?' Harry asked.
'Her ex,' said Faye. 'I think he visited once or twice.
Stayed awhile at the house. But that was before I knew her,'
he added.
'What was his name?'
Faye shrugged. 'Dunno,' he said. 'Businessman of some
sort. They were on together when she lived in Sydney.
Before she came up here to get away from it all.'
Now you are really away from it all, Janette, thought Harry,
with your earrings and your tilted head and smart mouth.
Faye had his head in his hands. 'Christ, I really can't
believe it,' he said. Harry looked around the messy room,
at the motorcycle posters on the walls, plates and cushions
on the floor, the tumbled surroundings of undomesticated
males sharing a house. 'She didn't talk about him. Not to
me, at any rate.' Then he looked up. 'She did say he was a
pilot so he must have had a quid, that one.' Something in
the inflection and grain of the voice alerted Harry.
Faye was a good-looking young man, tanned skin and
exceptionally vivid green eyes. Harry looked at him more
acutely and noticed something about the nose and forehead.
You're Koori, aren't you?' he said, but it wasn't a question.
'You're a cop, aren't you?' Faye snapped back. 'So what?'
"What brings you here? Into this town?' Harry persisted.
"I can go where I like.'
'I'm not arguing about that,' said Harry. 'I simply want

m

to know why here. Why this town? Why Janette Madden?'
Murray Faye looked hard at him. The vivid eyes were
narrowed now. He lit up another cigarette, looked at it,
realised he already had one going, lying on an ashtray, shook
his head slightly and decided to talk to Harry.
'I come up here with a couple of other young blokes.
Karrawonga's a sort of halfway house for urban blacks who
want a break from the filth of the city. I come up here to
get some clean air. Do some hunting. Fishing. Get away
from the pub life. The cigarettes.' He looked wryly at the
cigarette in his hand and the other one burning into a long
ash on the glass ashtray. 'Father Bill runs the place. Janette
worked there a coupla days a week helping out with the
cooking and cleaning.' He suddenly stopped talking as grief
choked his voice, then collected himself.
'I used to know Father Bill,' said Harry. 'He must be a
hundred years old now.'
Murray suddenly grinned. 'Yeah, about a hundred. He can
still break up a fight, that one. Mean left for an old fella.'
'Thanks for talking to us,' said Harry. Murray looked at
Ayoub and then back at Harry with his level, green-eyed
gaze. 'I only talked to you,' he said.

At ten that morning, Harry called Razor back. The dog
was going round in circles, stopping and sniffing at various
interests. They'd gone back to the house where the murdered
woman had lain spread-eagled on the floor in her novelty
slippers. Razor had picked up something there and followed
it to the river banks, about two kilometres from the cottage,
where the trail stopped. Harry reeled the dog in and they
went back to his vehicle, parked behind the house. Harry
drove back to a bridge and crossed the river. A fire trail ran
up the ridge on the hill that overlooked the river and he
took it, occasionally getting a glimpse of the murder house
across the wide expanse of brown water. He left the vehicle,
harnessed Razor, and the two of them walked downhill back
to the edge of the river. Harry and the dog patrolled the river
banks, going east and west along the water's edge. Razor
picked up on different interesting animals, but none of his
body language signalled recent human tracks.
At 10.47 Harry pulled into Bathurst's main street. He
left Razor in the wagon and went to the police station.
Neither Ayoub nor Brennan were in. Ayoub was expected
back after lunch.
'He's out at the retirement village,' said the desk sergeant.
'Suspicious death.'
Harry decided to drive out and meet Ayoub there. The
desk sergeant gave him directions.

The Lady Joyce Cahill retirement village was set on twenty
hectares of what had been pastoral land, foothills country
about a kilometre from the outskirts of town. It had its own
nursing home as well as units, dormitory-style accommodation
and a communal dining and activities centre. Harry
followed the signs along the driveway to Reception and
found a parking spot in front of dense old camellia bushes
that would shelter Razor from the increasing heat of the sun.
He walked up the steps, across the black and white marble
verandah, and stepped through the grand entrance into the
airconditioned interior. Reception was housed in the original
homestead, since renovated and partitioned into serviceable
office spaces. The scent picture here was complex, with
top notes of flowers and disinfectant, and an underpinning
odour of urine and old, worn clothes. There was also the
unmistakable hospital scents of polish and methylated spirits.



Harry went to a doorway signposted with a little street sign
and walked into a comfortable room. Large bay windows
gave on to the gardens and elderly people sat around tables,
reading newspapers or chatting. Gracious marble fireplaces
now housed sensible slow combustion heaters, and the carpet
reminded him of an RSL club.
'Can I help you?' asked a wispy woman who had been
bending over a table close to an old woman.
'I'm looking for a police officer, a John Ayoub, who I
believe is on the premises.'
'And you are?' Her thin eyebrows rose and stayed aloft
until Harry answered and showed his warrant card.
'He'll be around with the doctor. In unit eleven. I'm Mrs
Lindgrun.'
Harry followed her out of the building through a side exit,
across a small rose garden and into a modern-looking wing,
where tiny units with even tinier garden patches ran in a long,
low building, like a motel. He stepped inside, following Mrs
Lindgrun. He could hear Ayoub's 'that is correct' almost
immediately and they turned into a unit where a very old
woman lay dead in her bed, her white hair drawn into a
knot on the top of her head. Ayoub nodded at him as Harry
stepped inside and the doctor was packing her bag up, about
to leave.
'She had an early visitor,' said Ayoub. 'And he left. A staff
member found her about two hours ago. The doctor says
she's only been dead a few hours.'
The doctor put her bag down. 'Look at this,' she said. She
turned the sheet down and revealed the old woman's neck.
Dull purplish bruises could already be seen on the fragile skin.
'Living to ninety so that somebody can strangle you.'
Harry made a non-committal response. This was nothing
to do with him. The world was a nightmare and he knew
this more than most people. He became aware that the doctor
was speaking, looking at him intently -- a pretty woman in her
forties, with short, glossy hair. 'The first time I ever had to
pronounce someone dead was in a room like this,' she was
saying. 'I sent all the relatives out and put my head on the
woman's chest. Then I wasn't so sure. I thought I could
still detect a faint heartbeat. I listened. And then I noticed
a ceiling fan going round, making a slight click each time,
I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to make a mistake
and then have to call all the family in and say, by the way,
your grandmother's not dead after all.' She suddenly stopped,
as if embarrassed that she'd said so much to a stranger. People
did this with him, Harry knew. Told him things like that.
'In this case?' he said to her, indicating the still figure of
the old woman.
'No doubt at all,' agreed the doctor. 'She's going over to
the PM man now.'
He was just about to follow Ayoub out of the room when
he noticed the name on her locker -- Vera Wetherill. 'Auntie
Vera,' he said, without meaning to.
'Pardon?' said Ayoub. 'Nothing,' said Harry. 'I used to
know someone with that name.'
'There are a few Wetherills round here,' said Ayoub. 'Used
to be a big name in the district.'
Harry nodded. 'Yes,' he said. 'I used to know one or two
of them a long time ago.'
'They seem to come to grief a bit more often than other
people,' Ayoub said.
Harry considered. 'Big families often do,' he said. 'More
of them to get into trouble.'
Harry looked at the dead woman again and remembered
Auntie Vera forty years ago. At fifty, she had been an imposing
figure, stout with dyed red hair in a frizz, contained by
tortoiseshell combs. Angus had hated her. She would come
and stay when his mother was incapacitated or sent away to
'have a rest'. Like her brother, Aunt Vera controlled and
dominated everyone around her.
Harry suddenly heard Razor barking, and excused himself.
When he got to the vehicle, Razor was causing a commotion
in the back of the wagon. Several staff members stood around,
not quite knowing what to do. He was jumping and dancing
against the window, barking like crazy, his tail whizzing
round in the circular twist that meant 'I'm onto something
important'.
'What is it?' Harry asked, opening the rear to let the dog
dance out of the back of the wagon and onto the ground,
his nose honing in on a scent. Harry frowned and clipped the
harness onto him. Razor was charging back up the steps and
into the entrance of the hospital. Harry ran after him through
the reception and office area, across the ugly carpet and onto
the lino of the corridor. He hardly noticed the surprised faces,
or the secretary who came up to him. I don't believe it, Harry
thought, as he ran to keep up with Razor, his mind racing too
as he tried to make sense of what was happening.
'You can't bring that dog in here,' the secretary said as
Harry and Razor ran past. Down the hall they went, back
into the room where the dead woman lay, and where Ayoub
and the doctor were still talking near the doorway. Razor's
nose vacuumed the floor past them and went right up to the
bed where the old woman lay.
'Really?' said Harry. 'You sure?'
Razor sat and barked. He couldn't be surer. Then he
jumped up, standing against the bed, nosing the sheets near
the woman's neck.
'What's going on?' asked Ayoub.
'Get this animal out of here,' demanded the secretary from
the doorway. 'Animals are forbidden in this section. Please.
I must insist.'
But Harry and Razor were out the door, straight past her,
and down the hall again, Razor pulling hard on his harness,
Ins tail indicating the freshness of the trail he had hit. Out
the front door again, and down the steps, around the side of
the long dormitory wing to a section of gravelled roadway
signed 'Visitors Parking'. Razor went right up to a spot and
stopped. Right damn slam in the middle of the parking area.
He whined and cried and went round and round in circles,
looking up and whimpering with frustration. Then he sat and
barked while Harry stood panting. He was starting to get the
picture.

That same morning, 205 kilometres away in Sydney, Hannah
woke excited, because today was the day. She pushed Blade
gently off the bed before Mum could wake and knelt up
to look out her window. The sun was shining through
next-door's flowering cherries, the red leaves glowing next
to the robinia's acid lime green. She hopped out of bed
and opened her drawers, taking out a new pair of shorts,
her favourite t-shirt with the dogs' photo on it, and her
smart sunshade. She squashed them into the bottom of her
backpack then ran to have a wash.
At breakfast, Mum was quiet and Dad's chair was draped
in one of Alison's cobwebby shawls. Alison herself was still in
bed. She never ate breakfast with them. Hannah could hear
Her heart beating in the silence. She took a guarded look at
her mother's face. You could see, she thought, that Mum
had been crying a lot. But at least she'd stopped now. Hannah ¦'i;ped that whatever terrible thing had happened to make her
mother unhappy would go away. Maybe she was sad because
Alison was so thin. Or that she herself was troublesome. She
felt guilty about her plan for today, the meeting at Circular
Quay where Richard would be waiting for her, the surprise
he'd planned. He'd promised that she'd be back in plenty of
time to catch the bus back home, just like any other day.
'I'm going shopping straight after work today,' Mum
was saying. 'So you come home on the other bus with
Alison, will you?' Her mother looked at her. 'Did you hear
what I said?'
'Yes,' said Hannah.
'What are you so down in the mouth about? I thought
you liked coming home with her.'
'I do,' she said. 'But the big girls won't talk to me.'
'But you'll have Ali.'
Hannah nodded. It didn't make any difference to her plan,
really. As long as Mum didn't notice that she would be first
getting off the city bus to join the regular one. And Mum
would hardly notice that, because both bus stops were round
the corner and down the road.
'Aren't you going to work this morning?' she asked her
mother.
Her mother sighed. 'Not till later. I had a meeting with
a family but they cancelled. Said they'd rather deal with it
themselves.' They got themselves into this mess, she was
thinking, by dealing with it themselves. Maybe this family of
mine needs help, too. I am a trained counsellor with a degree
in psychology, she told herself, competent in and practised
with many therapeutic techniques. We can deal with this,
she told herself firmly. It will have to start with me.
Hannah slid off her chair and took her plate to the sink.
'Don't worry about doing that,' said her mother. 'I'll do
it before I go out. Bang on Ali's door when you go past,
will you?'
Hannah did, then opened the door and peeked in. Only
Ali's dark hair could be seen spread over her pillow in wild
skeins. Hannah withdrew and closed the door, banging
on it again. There was a groan from the bedroom and
eventually Alison came out, dragging herself to the bathroom,
and Hannah could hear her coughing and splashing in the
shower.
Hannah put on her uniform, school shoes and socks,
cleaned her teeth and brushed her hair. She slipped her gold
locket into her pack, and her see-through plastic purse with
the ten-dollar note in it and some coins, and the forbidden
drop earrings. She could change out of her studs when she
had her shorts and t-shirt on. She zipped up the backpack.
Her small unsmiling face stared back at her from the photo
on the bus pass attached to the straps. Blade stared at her
while she made these last-minute arrangements. She hugged
him and he wagged back and woofed a couple of times, just
like his old self.
'Bye, Mum,' she called from the front door.
'Bye, darling. Remember to get Ali's bus.'
'I will, Mum. Bye.'

At Circular Quay, Hannah went into the Ladies and changed
her clothes. Her school shoes and socks didn't look too bad
with her shorts. She put the earrings and the sunshade on,
her hair cheekily pushed back by the sunshade and the
earrings bouncing as she moved. Maybe I'll be a model,
instead of Ali, she thought. If I lose some weight. She was
thrilled to think that in a little while she'd be meeting her
good Internet friend and e-mail correspondent, Richard, age
thirteen, already nearly two metres tall, dark eyes and hair,
interests -- surfing the waves and the net, films, computer
games and having fun with other kids.
Hannah left the Ladies and crossed the road, waiting,
according to their plan, in the first bus shelter. It was just
nine-thirty. Richard couldn't miss her in the dogs' t-shirt and
sunshade that she'd told him she'd be wearing. Excitedly, she
scanned the passing faces. But they were all grown-ups and,
of course, they didn't notice her. Grown-ups only notice
kids, Hannah thought, when they're doing something the
grown-ups don't approve of. Or when they don't stand up
for them on buses. Or when they're very tiny and cute -- they like to pat us and carry on. One boy who might have
been thirteen was firmly in the grip of his mother, and he
was fair. Hannah waited.

Meg agreed to meet Max at the motel they'd used a couple
of times before finding a hotel that pleased them more. She
had to whisper on the phone, worried that Alison might hear.
Her older daughter shambled out of her room and into the
bathroom as Meg hung up.
'You're very late,' she said. But Alison was busy in the
bathroom and either didn't hear or decided not to respond.
Meg made herself a cup of coffee and stepped outside in the
backyard with it. The wisteria and grape vines were at the
height of their summer tangle and the pergola was sagging
under their combined weight. The little garden needed
watering and Meg picked up the hose. My house is in
disorder, she told herself. She turned the water on the daisies
and lavender bushes and a wave of fragrance was released as
she did. Blade bumped his way out of the kitchen door to
see what she was doing. He's a young and vigorous dog,
she thought. In his prime. Unlike me. She walked to the
end of the yard dragging the hose and looked back at the
house. It was undeniably shabby. Paint blistered and lifted
along the timber of the pergola that adjoined the kitchen.
The grape vine had become completely uncontrollable and

was nourishing over the roof, obscuring the tiles. Then
Alison wandered out, still in her underwear and with her
hair still wrapped in a towel, and paused to rub Blade's fur
with her foot.
'Put some clothes on,' Meg said and immediately regretted
it. It seemed she never said anything to her daughter lately
that wasn't critical or interrogatory.
Alison looked straight at her. 'I don't want to go to school
anymore,' she said. 'I hate school. I want to leave.'
'And do what?' said Meg.
'I don't know,' said Alison. 'It's so boring. None of the
teachers like me.' I'm not surprised, thought Meg, and then
was ashamed of herself. 'What's the point of all the bullshit
we learn? How is it going to help me in my life?'
'You'd have to get a job,' said Meg.
'Where?' shrugged her daughter. 'There aren't any round
here'.
'What do you plan to do then?' Meg was feeling the anger
mounting. 'You can't just hang around here, sleeping all day
like you do in the holidays.'
Then an awful thought occurred to her. She put together
Alison's antisocial ways, her secretiveness, her lack of appetite.
'Alison,' she said, 'you're not on drugs, are you?'
She was surprised at her daughter's burst of contemptuous
laughter. 'Really. I can't believe I'm hearing this. How
pathetic,' said Alison, wrapping the towel tighter around
long hair and disappearing into the house.
Meg followed her inside. 'Why is it pathetic?' she demanded
to know.
'Because,' said Alison, turning around to face her, 'this
whole family's fucked and all you can think of is that I must
be on drugs!' With that, she went into her room and closed
the door.
Meg stood in the kitchen. Her daughter had said something
that, painful as it was, came uncomfortably close, and she put
the untouched coffee down and went to Alison's door. She
tapped. 'May I come in?' she asked. 'I only want to talk
with you.'
'No,' said her daughter. 'You start offjust wanting to talk
and next thing you're yelling at me. Go away.' Then she
added, 'Please.'
'Alison,' said Meg, feeling foolish talking to the timber
panels of the door. 'I don't know how to talk to you anymore.
I don't know what to say to you. I feel I don't know you.'
The door suddenly opened and Alison stood there in her
black weeds, her tangled hair and dark red lipstick and the
strange scent she used, smelling of witchcraft. 'You've never
bothered to find out,' said her daughter. 'You think you're
so perfect with your school counsellor stuff. So how could
you know what to say to a stranger?' Then she stepped past
her mother, slung her school backpack over her shoulder,
walked down the hall and left the house.
Meg ran to the front door, wanting to say something to
help, but she couldn't think of anything.
Meg went back to the kitchen. God, what am I going
to do? she asked herself. I'm supposed to have wisdom
and I don't know what to do with my own daughter.
Why is she so difficult? She sat at the table and flung her
arms out, laying her head on them. She tried to remember
how it had been for her at seventeen. Not very good,
she remembered, and at least she'd known her father. It
must be so hard for Alison, Meg realised anew, to have
an unknown father somewhere in the world who made
it very clear, day after day of a lifetime, how unimportant
his child was to him. She wondered briefly if she
should try to contact him. But what realistically could a
stranger offer Alison after all these years of neglect? Maybe
she should talk to her daughter about Jeff, discover what
Alison's feelings were. It would be something. A line of
communication at least.
An hour later, she drove to the motel in a nearby suburb. It
was far enough away, she hoped, for her not to be recognised
by anyone she knew, because it was used primarily by visitors
from the country.
She parked her car next to Max's dark blue sedan. The
mid-morning shimmering heat was oppressive here, only a
few kilometres from the coast. She went into the reception
area, feeling guilty, adulterous and clumsy. An enamelled
receptionist with hard red nails and black eyebrows glanced
up at her.
'Mr Wolansky?' Meg asked.
The receptionist flashed a false smile. 'Suite six. To the
right.' And Meg went down the pastel hall, with its pastel
prints and armchairs that nobody sat in, to the door and
knocked.
'It's not locked,' he said. He was already in bed, waiting
for her.
Meg came in and closed the door, staying away from him.
'Max. We've got to talk.'
'Yes,' he said. 'Later. Come here.'
'No, now,' she said. He heard the tone in her voice and
sat up, patting the space beside him.
He looks very tired, she thought. Tired and sad. Like me.
She wanted to run to him, snuggle up to him and make love
and forget everything that was in her mind. But she stayed
where she was.
'I want to say good bye,' she said. 'I want to say that this
is the last time I'm going to meet you.' Then she burst into
tears. He didn't move, just lay there, looking at her, watchful.
She pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and blew her
nose with it.
'It seems that all I do these days is cry,' she said.
Max sat up in the bed and regarded her. She was too
distressed to notice his expression. 'I've offered you a new
life,' he said in a soft voice. 'A chance most people never
have. These tears of yours are completely optional,' he
said.
'You are very naive,' she said. 'You don't think I could
just turn my back on my whole life and run away with you
to some fairyland where we'll be happy forever? This is the
real world,' she said.
'Ah. The real world,' he repeated, swinging out of the
bed. 'The real world is what you make of it. I've been
working towards this real world for many years. You wouldn't
know about that. You've just drifted through your life like
most people. Letting things happen to you. First one thing,
then the next. No plan. No bigger picture. Passive, weak,
pathetic--' He grabbed a handful of clothes and pulled his
trousers on. 'And now that you've had a play around with
me, and I've become an inconvenience to your horrible
suburban life, you're getting scared and you want to get
out. So you come here and make the grand announcement.
"This must stop."'
'Max, I--'
'I don't want to hear it.' He turned to her while he pulled
his shirt on and she was stunned at the rage that blazed in
his eyes.
'Max, you said -- right at the beginning -- no strings,
remember? I told you I was married with two children.
"Just a lighthearted affair" -- they were your very words.
No promises, no conclusions. You said what's the harm in
an artistic affair? Then you seemed to become more deeply
The Sharp End 171

involved. And I did, too. For awhile. You wanted me to
leave my marriage. Now you're changing the rules.'

'Life changes the rules,' he said bitterly, coming closer to
her, leaning over her. 'You can't do something like this
without changing everything. Did you really think you could
have an affair with me in a neat little box--' he grabbed her
hard between the legs '--and not let it affect the rest of your
life? The rest of your family? You don't know who I am. You
know nothing about me. Who's naive now?'
Meg turned to go. She was stunned at the anger and hatred
in his face. She couldn't bear to be there a second longer. She
went to the door and opened it.
Max swiftly came over and slammed it shut again, grabbing
her arms, pressing her up against the door. His face was
distorted and much too close.
'You don't know anything,' he hissed. 'Nothing, Meg
Doyle.'
With all her might, she pushed against him. 'Stop it. Let me
go,' she said. It was hard to breathe, he was pressing so heavily
against her. In his variety of mood changes, she'd never seen
this dark violence before. 'Max. Please.' Then her own anger
overrode her confusion. 'This is an assault,' she heard herself
say and it sounded stupid.
'You bet it is,' he said in her ear, pinning her two wrists
above her head, shoving the fingers of his left hand between
her legs, hooking up into her body painfully hard through
her clothing. 'Now,' he snarled, releasing her as suddenly,
'get out.'
She almost fell to the floor but managed to scramble
to her feet again. She couldn't bear to look at him and,
wrenching the door open, she was out, running down
the hallway, past the blonde with the raised black eyebrows,
and back to her car, trying to control the sobs,
until she finally unlocked the door and climbed in. She
sat there, shaking and sobbing, tears running down her
face, until her hands were able to start the ignition and
drive home. ¦

TEN

Harry cast Razor all around the car park and its surroundings.
But it was clear that whoever Razor had hit on
was no longer in the environment. Razor was sharp enough to
follow someone in a car if all things were equal. Harry had tested
him years ago on a colleague with a half-hour start who was
picked up mid-paddock by a trailer and then driven a kilometre
and a half away to the nearby farmhouse. Razor hadn't missed a
beat, staying nose down after the trailer's tracks straight to the
front door of the farm. But here in this car park, there were
too many cars, too many cross tracks, too many people.
Harry ran lots of information through his mind and tried
to sort it out as he took the dog and went back to his vehicle.
He installed Razor who stood panting in the back, looking
at him, circling and whimpering.
Ayoub was standing waiting on the step of the reception
area as Harry came up.
'The dog was onto something,' said Harry, 'but we lost
it in the car park. I want to know who was visiting this
morning. Is there some sort of visitors' book?'
Mrs Lindgrun heard him say that and smiled. 'It's not a
dub,' she said. 'Only the staff have to sign on. But I usually
know who's coming and going.'
«
'I want to know who was Mrs Wetherill's visitor this
morning.'
'She rarely had visitors,' said Mrs Lindgrun. 'Apart from
the clergyman.' She was flicking through a card index. 'I
didn't notice the visitor this morning. Ask Sonia. She looks
after the comings and goings of that wing of the building.
The next-of-kin is a grand-nephew. Lives in Sydney. He's
never come near her as far as I know. That's families for
you.' She sniffed her disapproval. 'The first time he'll hear
from us about her is to hear that she's dead.'
Mrs Lindgrun called for Sonia, who arrived at the reception
area within minutes. 'I didn't really pay much attention,' she
said. 'All I can say is that it was a man.'
'Tell us anything you can remember.'
'Colouring? Age? Height and weight?'
Sonia shook her head. 'I was going round with the medication
trolley. I was concentrating on my list. I just said good
morning to him like I say to anyone I pass in the corridor. I
barely looked up.'
Ayoub took her details and she promised to ring him if
she thought of anything else that might be helpful. 'No
matter how tiny,' said Ayoub. 'And my suggestion is that
you improve security around here. These people are very
vulnerable.' He turned to Harry. 'I'll go back to town and
alert the hospital.'
Police in surrounding towns were already on alert, Harry
knew, and the main roads east, west, north and south were all
being checked in what was building to a State-wide manhunt.
But this man was a pilot and it was harder to police the air roads.
The two men walked out together. 'I believe it was the same
man,' said Harry. 'The killer from Strathfield and Bathurst.'
'What?' said Ayoub. 'What are you talking about, the
same killer?'
'The dog,' said Harry. 'The dog was very excited. He knew
that smell in the hospital room from recent experience. He
picked it up.' Ayoub looked at him with a frown as they
walked towards their vehicles. 'We already know he varies
the MO. A shooting, a bashing and now strangulation.'
Harry sighed. 'I should tell you,' he said, 'that there's a
connection between these women. Janette Madden used to
be my wife. For eighteen months in 1972. When I was in
Vietnam.'
'I didn't know you'd been to Vietnam,' said Ayoub.
'I don't tell people these things,' said Harry, 'because in
my estimation they're not relevant and happened a long
time ago.'
Ayoub pulled out his notebook and jotted something
down. Then he looked up again. 'You said a connection
between these women,' he said, waiting.
'The woman in there,' Harry said, indicating the long
building of the nursing home where the dead woman lay,
'I used to know her when I was a kid.' Ayoub waited
patiently. 'I grew up about a hundred it's from here, on
a property near Boolabimbie. My family worked for the
Wetherills. That woman was a relative. Used to stay at the
homestead sometimes, when Mrs Wetherill, the squatter's
wife, was taken away for a rest.'
Ayoub considered. 'So they're connected through you.'
Ayoub's sheik eyes narrowed under their heavy brows. 'A
connection to one victim is odd. But two . . .' he shook his
head. '. . . two is nearly the trifecta.' He noted something
further on his small pad. 'Why didn't you mention this at
the first crime scene? That you'd been married to her?'
Harry considered. 'At that stage I wasn't seeing it as
anything more than the sort of nasty coincidence that happens
in our line of work. You know -young
bloke called out to
a motor vehicle accident and it's his wife and kids mangled
in the car? I'm only telling you this now in case it means
something later.'
'Like what?'
Harry laughed. 'We won't know till later, will we?'
Ayoub went round to the driver's side of his car and opened
the door. 'And you reckon the dog has suggested to you that
this might be the same bloke that did Strathfield and Bathurst?'
Harry nodded. Ayoub didn't look convinced. 'I don't know if
a dog's word is good enough,' he said, getting into the vehicle.
'Can dogs take the stand?'
'By the time we get this joker to court,' said Harry, 'we'll
have a mile of evidence. The dog won't come into it.'
Ayoub nodded to him and switched on the ignition.
'Harry,' he said. 'I know you're a good cop. But this is my
turf and until I find hard physical evidence to say otherwise,
there's no reason to think this woman's death has anything
to do with Strathfield or Bathurst. Leave this to us. You're
Dog Squad now.'
'I trust my dog's responses,' said Harry, 'like I'd trust a
partner's. It's like my partner told me something. I have to
pass it on to you or I have to follow it up myself
'Yeah, well, thanks,' said Ayoub. 'You better do that.' He
looked for a moment as if he was going to say something
more, but then Harry sensed him change his mind. He backed
the car out, and drove away.

Harry drove back to the river bank just a little upstream from
where he'd camped the night before, parked the vehicle
under a yellow box that gave some shelter from the sun and
walked towards a picnic area with low timber seats, a fireplace,
and a bronze council plaque set on a square of pebblecrete. On this site in 1878, he read, Troopers Daniel Scroggie and Edward
Templeton were killed by the outlaw Paddymelon. Underneath this were the names of those who'd erected the memorial, the
local aldermen and the Mayor, Gregory Edward Templeton.
So you got a couple of troopers before they finally got you,
Paddymelon, Harry thought, because it wasn't the first time
he'd heard about that man, outlaw to one tribe, hero to the
other, and Harry's ancestor, according to his mother. He
heard another car pulling up, heard the voices of Mum,
Dad and kids. Harry wanted to be alone, so he went back
to his vehicle, nodded to the family group who were noisily
spreading a picnic over a rug on the ground and covering it with plates. He drove a little way along the bank, towards his
earlier campsite. Behind him, he could hear the kids from the
picnicking family splashing and yelling, their voices carrying
along the water course.
Where he now sat, the river in the early afternoon was still
and silent, a paler brown than the dark rivers and streams of
Vietnam. The birds were silent in the midday heat, conserving
their energy for the twilight feeding session. Cicadas and grasshoppers filled the summer air with fizzing sound. He let
Razor out of the back of the wagon to roam at will while he
sat under a huge river gum and dozed in the singing heat. He
could smell the hot metal of his own vehicle and there was a
whiff of Razor, who needed a bath. The scent picture here
was midday summer: pungent with eucalypt, fragrant with a
nearby pepper tree and, somewhere, the scent of hay-cutting
-all
contributing to his reverie. Something in the layout of
the river and the trees that overhung it reminded him of
the swimming hole at Boolabimbie, a hundred kilometres
to the north-west. His unconscious swiftly did the rest, and
a memory filled his mind.
That Paddymelon, he was a clever man.' He could almost
hear his mother's grainy, throaty voice. 'A real runaway
bugger. His real name was Mungiebah. In those days before
the Law was pretty well finished, the missionary says to him,
"God tells all men are equal and you must become equal to us
whitefellas." That Paddymelon tells him "You don't want me equal, you wa.nt a servant." And he just rides away with some
other wild young fellers. He killed some bullocks belonging
to the old boss, Hunter Wetherill. (Our people used to call
him 'Cockatoo Nose' because he had a nose like a galah.) All
the good eating animals -- the kangaroos, the wallabies, the
emus -were
killed or driven away for the old boss' cattle
to use the grass. Those bullocks were good eating and there
are so many of them. They brought the kidney fat on their
spears to give to old Cockatoo Nose and his sons in the way
of saying thank you for the bullock feed, but Cockatoo and
his sons started shooting them out of the house so they all
rode away again. And some of them got killed. Cockatoo
Nose and his two sons they rode out with the policemen and
killed a lot of people for eating the bullocks. Take them out in
the bush and just do 'em in. And they killed the women and
the little babies too. Down in the river-hole near the waterfall.
Only one little girl got away. Paddymelon's little girl. She told
what happened at the waterhole to the old people. When she
grows up she tells her children about that terrible day. The
stories come down that way, you know that. And we never
forget them. We don't write it in books, we keep it here.
I've shown you the marks on those trees the bullets made.
Pretty well closed up now, but my old auntie and uncle they
saw those marks clear when they were little children.
'In those days they were trying to quieten down the bush
blacks, bring them in, but the policemen never found old
Paddymelon because when they chase him, all they see is
a big kangaroo, biggest one they ever see and he just hops
away from them. They made plenty of threats against him,'
his mother used to say, 'but they never got him because he
was a sorcerer, what we call a "clever man". My grandmother,
old Wanda, she used to say that Paddymelon was her father.
Might be he'll always look after you. The police say they
killed him dead. But I don't know about that. Maybe that's
old Paddymelon over there.' And Harry remembered staring
in wonder at the kangaroo his mother had spotted, almost
invisible in the long grass among the tree stumps, with only
the outline of its ears betraying him. 'They say they shot him
dead. But they never got him,' his mother had said. 'Not his
spirit. Always they were threatening him.' Sadness again filled
his heart.
He shifted mental and physical gears. Threats are something
all coppers have made against them, he knew. The only one
he really remembered as having some sort of serious weight
behind it had been the child-killer, Ronald Pugh. He could
see the face and figure of the man and remembered the
dramatic collapse that he and Jim had engineered all those
years ago. In fact, he thought, this spot was very like the
river banks on which little Helen had died. Same long
dry grass, same barely discernible track along the banks,
following the curve and wind of the river. As he became
quieter in himself, he became aware of a sound that made
him immediately think of Vietnam and hot, stinking jungle
days. It was the distant buzzing of swarming blowflies. He
stood up and looked around, hearing Razor bark.
'Where are you, boy?' he asked, following the sound from
the clearing towards a steep section of the river banks. Then
he had to climb down, leaning ridiculously backward to
maintain his balance on the slope. It seemed Razor had
found something interesting about a hundred metres away
from the big river gum, and Harry stamped through the long
grass and came up to the spot. At first, he thought it was
a bundle of rags, because all he could see at first was some
yellow and blue fabric, with a nursery print of ducks on a
pond. But even before he came up closer, he could see the
cotton was stiff and stained with dark, dried blood. Razor was
circling and dancing, but as soon as the pack leader came up
he sat and was silent. The object lay on a bald patch of earth
surrounded by a few woody weeds. Harry poked the fabric
with a stick and hundreds of blowflies rose and resettled. The
fabric covered something solid but quite small, about the size of an old-fashioned flatiron; exactly the size in fact, as Harry
discovered when he lifted a piece of blue material on one side
to reveal the curving edge of the rusted antique. His memory
jumped back to the empty cot in the nursery where Janette
Madden's grandson had slept. This was a sheet from the cot,
he realised. And here, he was certain, was the weapon that
killed her. Harry felt a shiver of fear run down his back,
starting at the base of his skull, and he looked around startled,
because he knew that bloody bundle hadn't been there last
night when he'd camped there. The killer must have dumped
it that morning, because otherwise Razor would have warned
Harry during the night. He reached for his mobile.

Later on in the afternoon, Harry stood with Ayoub and
watched while the photographer framed up shot after shot
of the bloody bundle on the ground. 'The Schofields said
there were two old flatirons in the house,' said Ayoub, 'and
we could only turn up one. Now we know where the other
one got to.'
The sun was lower now, and the worst heat of the
afternoon had passed. Flies still swarmed and Harry was
continually waving his hand in front of his face, while Razor
sniffed around.
'I suppose he dumped it from a vehicle,' said Ayoub,
looking around at the grass. It was flattened from being
used by campers and picnickers over the years. 'No-one'd
take any notice of him. People are always stopping at that
picnic area a bit further back.'
'You'd wonder though,' said Harry, 'why he'd take the
trouble to carry the thing away with him and then come
back and dump it here.'
Ayoub grinned. 'You're the expert. You work it out.'
Ayoub, the photographer and the weapon went back to
Bathurst together, leaving Harry and Razor working the
area where the dumped weapon had lain. Razor cruised
around, sniffing, returning and moving away again until
he picked up something very definite. His tail started its
distinctive corkscrewing and his hindquarters dropped in
concentration.
'What is it, mate?' Harry murmured to him, taking up the
slack on the harness, trotting along behind him.
It was an easy trail at first. Harry had no difficulty keeping
Lip and Razor loped along, nose down, tail signalling that
ne v as covering the track easily. Harry was cautious. Somewhere,
and not too far away at the other end of this trail,
linked to him by subtle ground scents, was a man who had
already killed three women. Others may not think so, thought
Harry, but I'm certain it was the same man. Razor knew.
As they trotted along through the scrub, Harry tried to
make sense of the man he was tracking. He knew that
there was no such thing as a 'random' killing. Human beings never do things without a reason. It might appear random
to an outsider, with some, unlucky stranger targeted by a
nmatic. But when you got right down to it, Harry knew,
there was always the killer's own logic. He might not be
aware of why that particular person was selected. In fact, if
he were aware, he'd have access to such self-understanding
that murder would probably not be necessary. One of the
things Harry had come to see in his time in Homicide, and
in his discussions with Meg in the days when they discussed
such things, was how killing was the most extreme form
of acting out. So why had this killer targeted these three
women? And how important was it that two of the women
had a connection with him, Harry Doyle?

ELEVEN





When Meg arrived home with the shopping, it was half
past six and the house was hot, still and quite empty
except for Blade who had padded in behind her. She put
him out again and he wagged over to the open door of the
pen, flopping down in the shade of the grape vine.
'Hannah? Ali?' Her voice echoed. But there was no-one
home. The pool, she surmised. If I hadn't had such a difficult
day, dealing with Matt's angry father, reassuring him that
'wish list' was not a personal attack on his father, nor
had inch an attack been encouraged by the school counsellor,
Meg thought, I might have the energy for a swim myself.
Meg heaved the bags onto the kitchen table and collapsed
in a chair for a moment. She was grateful for this time to
herself after the unexpectedly awful scene at the motel.
Remembering the hatred and the contempt of Max's voice,
his face, his gestures, brought tears of anger and humiliation
and made her heart beat faster. She went to the fridge and
poured herself a long drink of iced water, taking it into
the living room where she lay on the floor in the relative
coolness.
It was over. Really finished now. No possibility of re-seduction,
of reconciliation. Not this time. She lay on the

floor staring at the pattern on the ceiling, feeling relief that
it was over, and for the very first time allowing that the spice
underneath her attraction to Max was fear. It had always been
there, and she had always known it, but she had never wanted
to examine it,.nor take it to its logical conclusion: that lust
and fear combined in her to make of her affair with Max
an exciting, glamorous and dangerous cocktail. A woman is
allowed a little indiscretion, she told herself. But Max was
more than that. He had touched something deep and dark
in her. And some of the things he'd said, although hard for
her to hear, had come very near the bone. She had wanted
excitement, a little spice in her life. Just a little danger. Sex
is always dangerous, she knew that. Anything can happen
once those boundaries are crossed. Worlds wobble on their
axes, rules are smashed. Some extraordinary piece of cosmic
machinery swings around into a new place and an unnoticed
ratchet engages an alien gear. The compass needle flickers.
Nothing can ever be quite the same again. She should have
known that. She did know that. And yet she'd played it
out like a naive schoolgirl, thinking that she could have
the excitement of the affair and not have the consequences
that sex, of necessity, brings with it.
But now it was over. Why is it, she wondered, that we
human beings always end these things in pain and rage? Why
can't we just be reasonable? Maybe, she thought, Harry and
I can work something out. But she had no energy right
now. She felt drained and emptier than at any other time
in her life. I need to heal, she thought. So does this family.
She thought of her husband, of his silence and his reliable,
everyday thereness that had seemed so boring once she'd met
Max. On the table, the white birthday roses were now fully
open and Meg couldn't remember if she'd even said thank
you for them.
She got up, went to the phone and dialled her husband's
mobile. The cool recorded female voice told her that the
mobile was switched off or out of range. Like Harry, she
thought. Like us. Like me. I have been switched off from
him for a long time now.
She went into the kitchen and started preparing tea for the
three of them, unpacking the vegetables. It's been my blind
spot, she thought, that's been keeping me from realising that
.my problems in Alison are really problems in me. And in
Harry. This truth was so basic to counselling children that she
almost laughed at the way she'd been unable to see it. With
some humility from me, she thought, the divide between
myself and Alison might be healed. And then, when Harry
comes home, there might be a flow-on effect.
Meg started washing lettuce and rocket. She sliced tomatoes
and cut her finger, standing at the sink sucking the
wound. Then she walked around with her finger stuck up
in the air like an idiot as she opened drawers with the other
hand, trying to remember where she'd last seen the bandaids.
Finally she found one. She wrapped it around the cut and
wiped the drops of blood off the floor. It's just as well Harry's
not here, she thought, to make some injudicious remark about
bloodstain patterns.
Meg opened the freezer and made sure that there was a
packet of fish fingers, which for some unaccountable reason
were the ultimate favourite food of her youngest daughter.
Alison didn't have any favourite food at the moment. She
seemed barely to eat at all.
The phone rang and she picked it up, expecting Ali's voice.
'Yes?' she said.
I need to tell Harry something,' said the thin voice. 'It's
urgent.'
Who is this, please?' asked Meg.
'I can't talk to anyone else,' said the voice. 'I must talk to
Harry Doyle.'

'Harry Doyle is not available. Can I take a message?'
The sound of sobbing on the line surprised Meg. 'I'll take
a message,' she said. 'I'll make sure he gets it.'
'Have they practised chemicals on you?' the voice asked
her, and Meg suddenly realised who it was,
'Do you want me to give him a message or not,' she asked
impatiently. But the sobbing caller had hung up.
This house is impossible, she thought angrily, dropping the
phone again. It's not only a twenty-four-hour a day police
operations base, it's also a phone-in centre for the alienated.
Meg went back to the sink and dried the leafy greens in a
clever German whizzing bowl. It was while she was waiting
for the centrifugal spinning to stop that she noticed the things
on the line. She felt a small coldness in her chest. Underwear
and the two swimming costumes, the two big beach towels.
The girls weren't at the pool.
She left the salad and ran next-door, hardly bothering to
knock. 'Dell, Dell,' she called. Her friend looked up from
the lounge where she was sitting with Jack, watching the
early news.
'Have you seen the girls?'
Dell got up and shook her head. 'No,' she said. 'Jack?'
Jack looked up from where he was sitting on the floor.
'They didn't come home yet,' he said. 'I was waiting for
Hannah to go to the shop with me. They might have gone
straight to the pool.'
'No. Their things are on the line.' Meg's voice was harsh.
'They're not at the pool.'
There was a terrible silence filled only by the television
reporter's voice telling of a new sporting world record. Meg
felt the terror then. Where are they, my daughters?
She ran out of Dell's house and back into her own with
Blade barking outside, having picked up the charged atmosphere
in his territory. She looked around the kitchen and
the living room for a note. She went into Alison's room and
the chaos there. Nothing. Hannah's room also gave nothing
.away. She ran out the front door and stared up and down the
road, which showed nothing but its normal late-afternoon suburban, blazing red and scarlet callistemon blooming
on the nature strips, a few cars. She ran back inside and tried
to ring her husband again but the same cool female told her
the same cool message. 'Damn you, Harry!' she screamed,
slamming the phone onto the counter.
Dell was suddenly there. She put her arm around her
friend. 'Listen, calm down,' she said, putting the kettle
on. 'You're over-reacting. Stop being a cop's wife. Stop
imagining the worst. They're probably just out somewhere
doing something.'
'Where?' Meg demanded. 'Doing what?' She realised how
emotional she was being and how her concern for the girls was
fuelled by the ugly scene with Max. And she was aware
of the guilt. Bad mother guilt.
Tru sorry, Dell. You're right. I'm upset. I already was
upset. And then they go and pull this stunt on me.'
Suddenly there came the sound of the key turning in the
front door lock. Meg wheeled around in relief. 'That's them
she said, running down the hall.
Alison came in, turning to close the door behind her.
You're drunk,' Meg said. 'Where's Hannah? Where have You been?'
Alison's eyes widened. The alcohol had flushed her face
the whites of her eyes. 'With someone who cares
about me.'

 «

'Where's Hannah?'
'How should I know?' said Alison, and that carelessness
combined with Meg's own frustration and rising fear  caused Meg to raise a hand and slap her daughter very
hard across the face. Alison's head jerked with the force
of the blow. She caught her breath and stood, eyes wide
with horror and shock. A red mark was already starting
to become visible across her cheek and Meg's own fingers
stung with the force of the slap. Alison burst into tears,
pushed past her mother, ran to her room and slammed
the door.
Meg could hear the sound of violent sobbing. She ran to
the door. 'Alison, please. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Ali, please. I
didn't mean it. It just happened. Please, Ah.'
She became aware of Dell's hand on her arm. 'Come on,'
whispered her friend. 'Leave it be for awhile.' Shocked, Meg
let herself be led back into the kitchen where Dell had made
tea. Still in stunned silence, she sat on a stool while Dell
poured her a cup.
'Where is she? Where's Hannah?'
'Have this, and then we'll go and make a few inquiries.
Come on. Drink this up.'
Meg realised her mouth had dried up completely. She
moistened her lips and drank some tea. 'There'll be a simple
explanation,' Dell was saying. 'She's probably off playing in
someone's yard.'
Meg slid off the stool. 'I'll go and ask Alison if she was on
the bus.'
Dell put an arm out and intercepted her. 'I'll do that,' she
said. 'You stay here.' Meg did as she was told and waited
till Dell came back. When she did, her friend's face was
oddly pale.
'What is it?' Meg asked, the fear rising up again.
'Hannah didn't go to school today, Meg. So she doesn't
know.'
'Where did she go?'
'She doesn't know.'
There was a knock on the back door. It was Dell's son Jack
leading a little girl by the hand. 'Come in, love,' said Dell to
the two of them.
'Mumn,' he said. 'I was talking to Sophie and she wants to tell
Mrs Doyle something.' The little girl nodded. Jack looked at
her again. 'She said Hannah wasn't on the bus this afternoon.
Didn't you, Soph?'
Sophie nodded. She seemed quite overcome.
'Maybe she got a different bus. A later one,' said Meg,
wanting to shake the silent child. But Jack and Sophie stood
there, wide-eyed, looking at the women.
'Sophie said she wasn't on the bus at all,' Jack reported.
'Not in the afternoon and not in the morning.'
'Sophie, is this true?'
Then Sophie looked up and the expression in her huge
eyes would haunt Meg for years to come. 'Mrs Doyle,'
Sophie whispered with great effort, 'Hannah wasn't at school
today.'
Meg covered her ears with her hands. Someone was screaming 'No! No! No!'
Harry followed the gently sloping terrain towards the
foothills, holding Razor's line. The dog ran along ahead
of him, twisting his tail in its distinctive chase pattern. The
trees cast long thin shadows behind them as the western sun
blazed low in the sky and, although the afternoon was still hot,
the air already had that inland softness that denotes evening
isn't far away. In the bush, birds were making the most of
the daylight. Harry saw a tiny fire-tail finch dart away from
him and realised it was years since he'd seen that particular
bird. The scent picture here was much dryer than down
near the river flats, with the dusty smell of rocky hillside,
woody weeds and eucalypts. He noticed a small leguminous
red and black pea flower trailing vine-like across the ground
in places, and many of the native shrubs displayed their tiny
creamy blossoms, fragrant only in the quieter air of twilight.
He stopped for a break, to catch his wind. It was suddenly
very still, very silent. There is an eeriness that descends on
the bush in the brightness of late afternoon, a special haunting
that people from northern countries might not understand. It
is a hushed waiting in the heat.
Then he decided to press on. After another ten minutes,
he turned and looked back the way he'd come. Although
he couldn't see it for the timber, he knew that the river
was now hundreds of metres beneath them. A crow jeered
as it flapped overhead and Harry instinctively looked around
for its mate. Crows always move in pairs, he knew. Then
he turned back to the trail again because Razor had run on
ahead and was barking loudly with excitement. Something's
changed, Harry thought when he heard that particular tone in
the dog's voice. He paused and unfastened his holster. Then
he went forward.
He didn't know this country at all and it nearly cost him his
life. Just ahead of him the track suddenly stopped at an open
area of dusty earth, with just some low scrub, leading to a
slightly raised rock formation, boulders piled on top of each
other like giant's blocks. Razor had unwound all the line and
was invisible, although Harry could hear him just beyond the
tumbled rocks. Harry leaped up onto the tallest of the rocks
and then jumped sideways and back in shock. Instinctively,
he gripped the rock, peering down. He had almost jumped
into thin air. Beneath him, an abyss opened. He was standing
right at the edge of a cliff that dropped away in a sheer fall,
to the densely wooded forest far below. Razor was running
backwards and forwards the length of his line along the edge
of the precipice, indicating that the trail stopped. He danced
again a bit too close, and dislodged a shower of tiny stones
that fell and bounced over the cliff, falling silently hundreds
of metres to the valley floor. Harry called the dog to sit beside
him, back from the edge. Keeping his centre of gravity low,
Harry cautiously climbed forward onto the rocks again and
looked down. Perhaps his quarry had made the same mistake
Harry had almost made, and stepped over those rocks, and
dropped into eternity. He craned over as far as he dared,
very close to the edge. Vertigo threatened and his mind
started to do a spiral dance. He edged back to feel a little
safer. He could only see the walls of the cliff down to a
depth of about twelve metres then it fell away underneath
him in an invisible concavity. But perhaps, underneath the
very spot on which he was standing, his quarry was hiding
even now, waiting for him to go away.
Harry looked along the edge of the cliff to his right, then
looked closer. On one of the rocks of the tumbling formation
that hid the drop was what looked like a scrape mark shining
on the surface of the rock. He crawled to the spot to examine
it closely. He thought he could discern just the barest mark,
such as might be made by the steel tip of a boot. It was not
impossible that the man he was hunting had eased himself
down over this precipice and somehow managed to climb
down to disappear underground. Or the scrape mark might
have been the last desperate flailing of a man who had lost his
balance and was already doomed to plummet over the cliff.

Two hours later, Harry sat with his back safely against a big
leatherjacket tree, resting. It would be much easier and safer
for the offender, Harry conjectured, to climb a little way
down that cliff, wait until the police were off his heels,
then climb back up the way he already knew, than attempt
a descent down that cliff wall. Harry decided he would wait
here with the dog. What goes down must come up.
A three-quarter waning moon was starting to rise through
the tangle of boughs and leaves and Harry shivered despite
the mild evening. Razor lay resting, occasionally twitching
his snout. Harry was thinking of a story that had haunted him
when he was a boy, of a man waiting through the night for
a deadly cobra to rise out of nowhere in the night. Then his
memories were back in the jungle near Nui Dat and sitting
waiting in the pissing rain. Those operations were from four
to six weeks in length, with a week in between. Day after
day of creeping through the dripping, stinking country, with
blistered, festering feet and chafes and rashes covering almost
all his skin. Scrub-bashing had its own pattern: moving for
about fifty minutes, a brief rest to send a locstat, and then
on again. If the halt was for any longer than five minutes,
there was a security drill that became automatic, with the
lead section spreading out and covering from ten o'clock to
two o'clock, the middle section covering from ten to six
o'clock, and the rear section taking care of the area from six
to two o'clock. Machine-guns and sentries were posted. 'If
you forget that this war is a war without fronts or flanks, if
you forget -- even for a second -- that this war surrounds us like
the jungle surrounds us, you will die,' his trainers had told him
over and over again. 'Stay alert, stay alive,' he'd been told. He
had been drilled, over and over again, in fire and movement
battle drill until it had become automatic; the same drilled
movements that had made him recognise a combat survivor
in the man from the Strathfield siege.
In the end it was like second nature to be always searching
his arcs of vision, ready to fire in whatever direction his eyes
were following. Harry recalled the way the rain had just
dropped out of the sky at the same time every day, so
that a change of clothes was a waste of time, the clean
clothes looking exactly like the discarded ones in minutes.
He remembered the leeches, which had seemed untroubled
by the repellent they all used to douse trousers and socks. He
remembered one man waking up screaming with revulsion
because a leech had somehow slipped through the seam of
his closed eyes during the night and gorged itself under
his eyelid.
He recalled dragging himself through the driving rain and
the chafing of the weight on his back, exhausted, slashing the
grass that formed walls ahead of them. He recalled how they
used to pool their rations, he, Angus and Max, and make a
half-decent meal out of Australian bully beef and American
dehvdrated chile rations and rice. He remembered how you'd
had to dig a scrape and shit in front of whoever was on the
machine-gun, the sudden firefights that had happened even
if you were in the middle of having a shit, and the instinctive
dive into mud; or if you were on patrol and fully loaded when
you dived, how the weight of the pack would almost knock
you out as it slammed into the back of your head as you hit
the ground.
When the artillery was called in by the signaller and their
own. shelling started, Harry would lie low until it was quiet
again, not wanting to die in friendly fire, being bounced
off the ground by the reverberation of the shells when
they hit. He remembered the screams for a medic in the
sudden, shocking silence once the firing had ceased, then
the automatic defence formation they would make around
the medic and the badly wounded man; the constant strain
of never knowing what had happened until after it had
stopped happening; the way he would attempt to piece the
story together, working it out, step-by-step.
The scent of the beads of red resin that bled through the
bark of the leatherjacket brought him back to the present
and he wondered why he was going over this old, dangerous
ground again. Why this, suddenly and now? Then he came
to see that squatting here, keeping an eye on the rim of the
cliff, was stimulating his memories of the abandoned bunker
systems he and the black labrador had sometimes entered,
following the trail of a wounded enemy soldier. The VC
soldiers were aggressive, brave and formidable enemies who
were able to move at what seemed an unbelievable pace
despite their squatting stance, like martial arts experts, firing all the while. He thought of the afternoon they'd suddenly come
upon a group of five heavily loaded men and a woman and

their group had cut down the woman and four of the men.

Then Harry had taken the black dog and followed the trail of

the wounded man he'd seen staggering into the buffalo grass.

He remembered finding him almost at the same moment as

the dog, nearly walking on top of him. Seeing how things

were with the VC soldier, it was not in Harry to take any

further action. He and the dog had simply waited for the

enemy soldier to die. All the man's attention and remaining

energy were being expended in trying to breathe, despite the

huge leaking hole in his chest. It bubbled and sucked as his

ribcage heaved with effort. Harry and the dog waited. The

man's exhausted eyes flickered up to Harry's face. The fingers

of his right hand moved. Was it a last desperate search for a

weapon? An attempt to speak? The bubbling breath went

out in a long sigh from which there was no return. As the

face of the enemy soldier had stilled in death, Harry had

felt something happen in his own mind. In that moment,

Harry had felt that he had no idea about what he was doing,

or even who he was. It was like some huge weird turn of

the entire universe, with this event at its centre, so that he

thought that nothing would ever be the same for him or for

the world again.

He remembered trying to write about this to Janette about
this man's death and what an important event it had
been for him. It was as if a light had flashed on somewhere
in his mind while the VC soldier died, had shone briefly
so that in that space of time he'd suddenly understood
everything, then as suddenly the light had gone out again,
leaving him once again in the dark -- in the stinking mess of an
abandoned bunker in a war zone in an alien land. 'Weapons,'
his instructor had told him, 'are designed especially to be
used against the three targets: armoured vehicles, aircraft
and people in green baggy skins who hide.' He had found
himself thinking of the weapons' designers and manufacturers
safe in their engineering shops in the civilised countries of
Europe, designing and making these things, going home to
luxury houses, luxury women and unmaimed children. He
had wondered if they ever considered the works of their
hands. Harry had prayed there was a special place in hell
for arms' manufacturers. But he couldn't talk about things
like these; not with anyone, far less a woman. It had not been possible to write about these things to her and the
tone of his letters had always been false and superficial, as
if he hadn't wanted her to know what things were really
like over there. He'd found her letters the same. The rain
had spoiled a picnic at Nielsen Park, she'd write. She'd been
getting hassled by people who were anti-war, so she'd stopped
saying where her husband was. She'd just say he was away

working.

He thought of the two days' steady drinking in the
bars of Vung Tau, and the bar girls, and the way the
adrenalin-charged shivering of excited terror was merely
replaced with the tremor of drunkenness. There was no relief
from the feelings engendered by their daily combat activities;
no outlet for the fear, the horror, the perverse, awful things
that happened day-by-day. Or the equally terror-filled days
and nights out on patrol in which often nothing happened,
but anything could. And these two terrors operated all the
time, month after month. There was no release. No relief.
Men used tranquillisers and alcohol, pushing the horror down
further into their bodies and minds. Some men became
walking time bombs. Almost all stopped caring. The questions
went through Harry's mind and tormented him. Am I going
to be able to handle the next contact? Will I panic? Will I
disgrace myself in my own eyes and the eyes of my comrades?

Please don't let me fall to pieces, he remembered praying to
the nothingness.
He remembered shy Max Wolansky and the way he treated
the bar girls as if they were his mates' sisters back home.
He remembered his first shock on discovering the cruelty
in Angus and the way he mistreated the women, buying
them and abusing them. And further, the shock of the day
Harry had discovered Angus reading Janette's letters. 'They ,
should be for me, these letters,' he had said as Harry snatched
them away from him. And that's how Harry had discovered 
that Angus had been in love with Janette -- the accusations 
of treachery, charging Harry with betrayal; the fist fight in 
the bar that followed as Angus's seething resentment finally
broke out. 'You've taken everything away from me, Harry
Doyle, you bastard. You've taken my woman from me.' And
Angus pulling a knife and being dragged off him by Max and
the others.
He remembered the only other time Angus had spoken to
him after that, just before they were flown back to Sydney.
Angus looked up from a book of Roman history he was
reading as their company waited for the transport to arrive.
'Do you know what the Romans did to traitors?' he asked,
looking around at everyone except Harry. 'They put them in
a sack with a dog and a snake and threw them over a cliff.'
After they'd come back to Sydney, Harry had never seen
Angus again.
Was it the loss of his boyhood friend and not just the
crazy hell of combat in Vietnam that had changed him
into the closed-up man he had become? Or did his secret,
closed-up self come from an earlier time, from the terrible
days when the government agent had searched the place
for him and found him covered by a blanket under the
bed, and had driven him away screaming with his mother
running along behind the car, sobbing and calling his name
and falling further and further back along the road until
the dust hid her from his terrified eyes? They were cruel
days and nights in the institution for children like him. He
recalled the brutality, the lack of love. No wonder he had
withheld himself from both women and men all his life. He'd
increased the barrier between himself and Janette when he'd
come home from Vietnam. He didn't tell her about the
terrible enmity that now existed between himself and his
childhood friend. He couldn't bring himself to think about
the appalling thing Angus had done, let alone talk to anyone
about it. He couldn't tell her about the moment when he'd
seen one of his mates cutting down a tree, the axe slipping
accidentally and hitting the ground so that a hidden Claymore
mine was detonated. Seeing a man you'd just shared a joke
with disintegrate, right before your eyes, in a three-metre
blaze of flame, earth, vegetation and nails is something that
is hard to forget. Claymore mines are very good at their
work. Weapons that maim are as highly regarded in warfare,
he had learned, as weapons that kill. One dead man is one
dead man. But a maimed man is very bad for morale. He
screams. He is mutilated. He is hideously obvious. He strikes
fear, terror and horror in the hearts of other soldiers. And best
of all, he requires another two men to carry him out of the
arena. Three men are no longer available for the fighting.
Helicopters have to be called in; fighting is interrupted; the
patrol's whereabouts pinpointed.
I have good reason to be silent, Harry thought. How many
men have stood and waited for another man to die and
looked into his eyes? How many men have shot someone
and then had to sit with him, as I had to do with Franco,
till the ambulance came? Then there were the disbelieving
questions while the Physical Evidence people photographed
and videoed his dead informant and the bloodstained hall,
the cordless drill and the fallen stepladder. It will take a very
big explosion, he thought, to blow the safe of my mind.
I know I should be more open with Meg, he thought, but
knowing something and knowing how to actually carry it out
are two very different tracks. Harry realised he'd been holding
his breath, and exhaled. He allowed his mind automatically
to begin processing information about the case in hand,
blotting out the memories of the war and the death of
Franco. The facts were that he was hunting a killer who was
well presented, intelligent; a killer, whom he believed, despite
Ayoub's scepticism, had killed three different kinds of women
in three different kinds of ways; a killer who was contained
and controlled enough to fly aircraft and study navigation;
who had smashed a woman's face to pulp; who, despite the
risk of being discovered, had held on to the weapon he'd
killed with, only to come back, a mere river-crossing from
the scene of his crime, to dump the bloody thing; a killer
who had a strange acidic odour that Harry remembered
from somewhere but couldn't place; who contaminated
crime scenes with Victorian rose-coloured glass. A killer
with combat experience, and who used an unusual handgun
favoured by the communist forces in Vietnam just to tease
interest; who had visited his ex-girlfriend in the country and
had made himself familiar with the local countryside; who
had known all the time about this sudden precipice and its
underhang, and of how he might use this to his advantage.
A killer to whom Harry was in some way linked, through
a murdered ex-wife and a boyhood 'auntie'.
Harry shivered again, because something was starting to
come together hazily in his mind. No, it couldn't be, his
brain said. It couldn't be that. He wouldn't do that. But his
mind kept up its relentless processing and suggesting. His
scalp started crawling as the information unscrambled itself
and started to fall into an orderly pattern. And then the
memory of Angus raping the dying woman in the jungle
rose up like a hideous ghost, and the horror of his erstwhile
friend's action and of the whole war seemed to explode into
an idea about the identity of the person he was following,
so grotesque that it shocked him into making a funny little
sound out loud, like a sob. He remembered the time he'd
wet his pants near Nui Dat when something jumped out of
the jungle at him. Because chill fear poured like dark smoke
through his heart. A killer who might deliberately lay a trail
for someone pursuing. A killer who knew the pursuer would
be Harry Doyle. A killer who wants to take me away from
my base and separate me from backup. And in that terrible
moment, Harry Doyle knew who it was; knew who he was
up against. Oh Jesus, he almost whispered, while the universe
yawed sickeningly. Oh Jesus no.
In the same moment he saw how he'd been manipulated
by someone who knew exactly how to send out mixed signals;
first this, then that, knowing that any intelligent investigator
would be fatally intrigued and fascinated, would be drawn in
even closer. He tore the mobile off his belt and switched it
on, yanking the aerial out. 'No service,' he read.
A bitter scent touched his senses. He swung around, heard
Razor bark suddenly in alarm and went for his weapon. But
it was too late. Something crashed down on his head. The
day stopped.
Nine p.m. The mobile phone you are ringing has been switched off or is out of range . . . Meg slammed the unit down on the
counter again. 'He's still off somewhere being a hero while
his daughter goes missing,' she screamed. Then she turned to
Dell who stood helplessly near the window. 'Where is she?
Where is my child?'
Dell remained silent. Earlier, she'd gone into town with
Meg, who'd wanted to get moving and had insisted, late in
the day though it was, on talking to Jim Coates in person. It'd
given her something to do, something to focus on that seemed
helpful. Now, there was just this waiting. Every friend had
been contacted, every conceivable person and place where
Hannah might have just possibly -no,
impossibly, because
she was always loathe to leave the dogs, even for a night decided
to sleep over. Alison was still walled up in her room,
refusing to come out, refusing to talk to anyone. Dell ran
between her household and Meg's next door, fielding the
phone, calling people who might be helpful and trying to
comfort her inconsolable friend.
'Where can she be? Who's got her?' Meg whirled around
the room, unable to be still, the agitation and the frustration
building until she was almost demented. 'What's happened
to her?'
'Listen to me,' Dell finally said. 'These questions are not
helpful. We can't know any of this. You're only torturing
yourself asking questions like that.'
The phone rang and Meg pounced on it. It was Kathy
Gore, mother of Celia, Hannah's best friend at school. 'Celia
wants to tell you something,' Mrs Gore said.
'I'll put her on.'
'Mrs Doyle?'
'Yes, Celia. What do you want to tell me?'
'Well, see, Hannah was teasing me and I knew she was
going to do something because she said she would have some
very big news to tell me on Friday. And I begged her and
begged her but she wouldn't tell me anything else. She said
I'd have to wait but she gave me a clue.'
'What was that?' Meg's heart jumped.
'She said "CQ". That's all she ¦would say. She wouldn't
tell me anymore because she said it'd give it away.'
Meg thanked Celia and hung up. She turned to Dell.
'"CQ",' she said. 'That's what Hannah told her.'
'Are they someone's initials?' Dell asked.
'Celia didn't know.' She thought. 'We don't know anyone
with a surname starting with "Q".'
Meg went into Hannah's room for the twentieth time.
She looked through books and boxes of papers and toys. She
opened drawers and looked at their contents again.
'She never intended going to school,' she had told Jim
Coates. 'She must have taken her dog t-shirt and her earrings
in her school bag, because they're missing from her room-She's
planned this all the time. But where would she go by
herself like that?'
'Maybe she made a plan with a friend,' Jim had said. 'At
her age, they like to have secrets and plan things together.
Tomorrow we'll check with the local schools. She may have
made friends with someone from another school -- on the bus
or at the local shops. It happens.'
Meg had rung Hannah's class teacher, Miss Webb. 'Yes,'
said Miss Webb, 'there were three children absent from the
roll today: Hannah, Debbie Lahood and Matthew Shapiro.' It
didn't take Meg long to track them down. But both children
had been at home sick all day, according to their mothers;
nor did they know anything about Hannah.
Now she waited with Dell. Jack sat cross-legged on the
floor, watching television, occasionally turning to look at his
mother and her friend with wide, worried eyes.
'There must be something I can do,' Meg said, wiping
silent tears away. 'I can't stand this sitting around while my
little girl's missing. Where could she have gone? Why didn't
she go to school?'
Jack turned around to look at her. 'Auntie Meg,' he said.
'Yes?' Meg said, hardly noticing the voice of the child who
was not hers.
'Hannah must have been going to meet someone. She
only wore her earrings when she was going somewhere
really special.'
Meg looked at him. His serious ten-year-old face was intent
on her. 'That's right, Jack,' she said. 'Someone. Someone
special.'
'And,' said Jack, 'she must have been meaning to come
home at the ordinary time.'
'Why do you say that?' asked his mother.
'Because,' said Jack, 'she told me we'd go to the shops when
she got home from school and she was laughing. And I think
she was laughing because she knew she really wasn't going to
school at all.'
'So maybe she's just got lost,' said Meg. 'Maybe she went
somewhere and she got lost.' But the tears welled up out of
her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. 'But who? Who would
she go with? She knows the rules so well.' Meg noticed that
Jack's eyes had shifted from her and were now looking at
a point just past her. She turned around to see her older
daughter, ghastly pale, standing in the doorway.
Despite her fear and grief, she was appalled at the sight of
Alison's suffering. She stood up and went slowly towards her.
Alison's eyes were red from crying and her face was splotched
and swollen. Meg could still see the angry red mark her hand
had made on her daughter's face.
'Mum,' Alison whispered, 'I'm sorry. I didn't know.'
Meg threw her arms around her daughter. 'No, I'm sorry,'
she told her, and they stood together, each trying to comfort
the other.
'I didn't go to school either,' AH said. 'I didn't think
Hannah knew. I didn't think she'd copy me. It's my fault.'
'Who?' demanded her mother, not hearing her. 'Who do
you think she'd go with?'
Alison shook her head. 'I don't know. She didn't tell me.'
Then she left the room and Meg could hear her moving things
around in Hannah's room. Then she crossed the hallway to
her own room and returned with the fat, pink diary with a
locked golden clasp. 'I think you should look in here,' she
said. 'Hannah used to often write in this.'
Meg slowly took the book from her older daughter's hand.
She'd forgotten about the pink diary. 'Where was this?' she
asked Alison.
'In my room,' said her daughter. 'Hanks asked me to mind
it in my locked box. She was scared you'd read it.'
'Why?' Meg's voice was nearly a scream. 'What was in
it?'
'You know,' said Alison uncomfortably, 'kids' stuff about
life and parents.'
'Did you read it?' asked her mother. Alison shrugged and
started crying again. Her sobs became uncontrollable and
Meg found herself to be unaccountably angry, wanting to
shake her to stop. ' Why?' she said. 'What's in it?' But Alison
kept shaking her head. The pink diary seemed to be burning
Meg's hands, until she looked down at it and saw that she
was crushing her fingers against it in a compulsive grip that
was hurting her.
Alison's sobbing subsided. 'It was so . . .' she stammered '. . . so innocent.'
Meg started tearing at the book, cutting another one of
her fingers on the unfinished metal of the now-broken lock
so that blood smeared the false gold. She opened it and sat
down to read it. She started with today's page, but there was
nothing written on it.
She turned back to the previous day. Nothing there, either.
She flipped through until she came to a section towards the
front. She started reading it.
 hate it when they fight. I hate it when they don't speak to each
other. I just want them to love each other. I wish they wouldn't
fight. I wish Mum wouldn't be so horrible to Dad always nagging him. As she continued reading it, her heart almost broke. But
she forced herself to keep going. I hate it when she is always so angry with him and with the dogs too. It is not their fault because
they are only dogs and they can't help being police dogs and Dad
can't help being out all the time and working with the dogs.
Meg closed her eyes and pressed the book against her
body, rocking with sorrow. Please, darling Hannah, she
prayed. Please be safe. Please come home and be safe and
I promise I will never be horrible to anyone ever again.
Would you take this,' she whispered to Dell. 'I can't bear
to read it just now. Just tell me if there's anything that might
be helpful.'
'There isn't,' said Alison. 'I already went right through it.
She only wrote in it for a few months after her birthday.
Then it just stops.'
Dell quickly went through it, turning the pages until she'd
finished. She closed it.
'It's mostly about the dogs,' she said. 'Mostly family stuff.
You know, personal.'
Meg clutched the diary again. Jack had crept up closer to
the television screen until his nose was almost against the glass.
His silhouette was outlined against an American sitcom.
'The other night, when you and Dad were . . . um . . .
arguing with each other,' Alison began, 'she came into my
bed.' Alison glanced across at Dell and then at her mother as if
to check whether this was allowed, under the circumstances.
It was, so she continued. 'She said something about when I
moved into my flat.'
'What?' said Meg.
Alison looked helpless. 'We often used to talk about how
she could come and live with me.'
'Live with you?' Meg's eyes widened. 'Hannah wanted to
go and live with you?'
'What I'm trying to tell you,' said her daughter, 'is that she
asked could she bring her friend to visit. I think she said his
name. I think it was Richard.'
There was a profound silence, broken by stilted, canned
American laughter from the television. Into this whole new
world that Meg knew nothing about, a world where children
made plans she knew nothing about, where they wrote down
their pain but couldn't tell her, was now another unknown a
stranger called Richard.
'Who is he?' Meg said. 'Richard who?'
'I don't know. She only said Richard.'
Meg cast around in her memory. 'We don't know a
Richard.'
There was another silence. 'She did,' said Alison.

It was a terrible night. Meg wandered around making cups
of tea that she couldn't drink, and even after taking the
sedatives that Dell pressed on her, she only dozed for a
couple of hours after two in the morning. Alison kept
waking and walking round the house. Meg tried ringing
Harry over and over, until she became almost hysterical and
Dell had practically confiscated the mobile. Dell and Jack
stayed overnight, snuggled together on the double airbed
in the lounge room, and there was a second or two in the
early morning when Meg looked at her sleeping friend and
her safe ten-year-old son and found herself hating them. All
night she'd been thinking of someone called Richard.
She rang Jim Coates at six, knowing that he'd be at
his desk.
'It's something,' he said, noting the name. 'We'll ask
around the schools again. You never know.'
At seven, Alison came out. 'Mum,' she said, putting her
arms around her mother, 'I'm going to help you find her.
I'm going to ask everyone she knows in the world about this
Richard.' Meg tightened her hold. She couldn't speak for
fear of the uncontrollable sobbing she could feel at the back
of her throat, threatening to explode. She just kept nodding
and blinking. She picked up the phone and dialled a number
she didn't ring very often.
Dad?' she said when he answered. As decently and briefly
as she could, she told her father the news and promised she'd
keep him informed. She imagined him going into his shed anu mixing up some more paint and painting the already
immaculate fence yet again. Or going round pruning bushes
that were already perfectly shaped. No wonder I married
another man who doesn't say anything. The thought of Max
jumped into her mind, hurting with a series of 'if only's as
the thoughts ran away with her. If only I'd decided to take
Hannah and 'go to his place, she'd be safe now. Or if only
I'd decided to move out and spend some time on my own
in a flat or unit. Hannah would be safe now and none of this
nightmare would be happening.
Dell and Jack had gone back to their place for showers and
breakfast and the house was horribly empty without Hannah
there in the morning. Blade kept going into her room and
tracking her smell round the house.
'Why didn't we track her?' said Alison. 'Get one of Dad's
mates? We should have done that yesterday. Maybe we would
have found out what bus she went on.'
Alison grabbed Blade's harness and he sat still while she
put it on. Then they ran down the hall together, out the
front door, out the front gate, Blade's nose on the ground
and his hindquarters the way he slung them when he was
hard on a hit.
Outside, he went up and down the street, up to the bus
stop, past it, taking Alison with him, until he'd reached the
stop across the road where the city bus left. His hindquarters
straightened. He stood up and looked around, then dropped
his nose once more. But he'd lost it.
Alison took him home. 'Blade says she went on the city
bus yesterday,' she told her mother. 'The city bus,' was all
she could say.
Late in the morning, Alison made them some toast and
tea and sat at the table, watching her mother staring at
the telephone. When it rang, Meg nearly knocked it to
the floor.
'Harry?' she said. But it was Jim Coates.
'I think you should come into the city,' he said. 'I want to
talk to you. A woman's coming in this morning who thinks
she might have seen Hannah yesterday.'
'Where?'
'At Circular Quay. She's coming in to look at the photograph.
You should be present. Eleven-thirty. Have you heard
anything from Harry?'
'Harry? No, I haven't heard anything from Harry. He's not
here. He's never here.' There was a silence at the other end
of the line and Meg allowed her angry breathing to subside.
'Eleven-thirty,' she said. 'I'll be there.'

Meg and Alison took the lift to Jim Coates' office. Jim was
waiting as the doors opened, and escorted them with his
security card through the various doors until they reached
his section. In a bag, Meg had brought some of Hannah's
clothes, a pair of shorts almost identical to the pair she'd been
wearing the day before and Alison's t-shirt with the dog print
on it, exactly the same as Hannah's, except for size. Hannah,
Meg prayed. You must be all right. You must be safe. You
must be. And she willed her strength through the world to
wherever her daughter was.
When they got to his room, Jim took the bag of clothes,
put his arm round Meg in an avuncular gesture and ushered
her and Alison in to where there was a woman already sitting.
Fortyish, soft ginger hair and a pair of white plastic earrings.
Meg's eyes fixed on the upside down photo of Hannah lying
on the desk. 'Meg, this is Maureen Mackie. This is Meg
Doyle, Maureen. And her elder daughter, Alison.'
I'm so sorry,' said Maureen Mackie. 'It's terrible about
your little girl.' She looked at Jim. 'I've told him what I can
remember.'
Meg stared at the woman. She was trying not to scream out Tell me. Tell me what you know. Tell me right now.
'Tell us,' Jim invited in his gentle tone. 'Tell us what
happened.'
'Like I said to you,' Maureen Mackie said, 'I was waiting for
the bus and I noticed this little girl--' she nodded towards the
photo '--standing waiting. I thought, why isn't she at school
because she looks the same age as my Sarah. I'd just missed
the bus so I had to wait twenty minutes. The little girl kept
looking out for someone. You know how you can tell when 
someone's waiting for someone. Anyway, I saw her looking at any kid that went by and thought, maybe she's waiting for
a brother or sister and I stopped even thinking about it until
this man came up to her.'
'A man?' Meg's voice was barely audible.
'And he says, "I'm Richard's father and you're both in a
lot of trouble." That's exactly what he said. Then he went
on to say that she had to come with him and he was going
to take her home to her father and she'd be in trouble for
wagging school.'
'What happened then?' Meg's voice, again barely there.
'She started crying and she went away with him.'
Meg could contain herself no longer. She'd been sitting
on one of the other chairs, next to Jim's desk, but at these
words she collapsed onto the desk and the sobs ripped out
of her. All she could say was her daughter's name, over and:
over, broken by the terrible sobs. Alison knelt beside her,
holding her, rocking herself in her own pain. 'Oh Mum,;
please. Please. Please, Mum.'
Jim stood up and ushered Maureen Mackie out of the
room, closing the door behind her, coming back to wait
patiently, pulling a box of tissues out of his drawer, no
stranger to despairing tears. He didn't have to wait long.
Meg blew her nose vigorously, wiped her eyes and sat up
straight.
'Sorry,' she said.
'You don't have to be sorry,' said Jim. He went to the door
and called out to someone to do him a favour and bring in
three cups of tea.
'We got a reasonable description of the man. It's gone out
everywhere.' He looked at Meg then at Alison. 'Why isn't
Harry here?' he asked.
Meg lowered her head and was silent a moment. Then she
raised her eyes to Jim. 'He's gone out bush for a couple of
days. I've tried phoning him. He's out of range.'
Jim turned to Alison. 'Alison, would you mind leaving
us alone for a minute? I want to talk to your mother in
private.'
Alison stared at him and then at her mother. 'Why?' she
said. 'Why shouldn't I hear what you're going to say? Hannah is my sister.'
'What I'm going to say isn't about Hannah,' said Jim. 'It's
. . .' He stopped and spread his hands on the desk. A young
clerk came in with three styrofoam cups in a box trailing tea
bag strings, together with a container of milk and packets of
sugar. 'It's personal. That's all,'Jim said.
'What?' Meg said. 'What is it?'
Jim got up and went over to close the door behind Alison.
'Meg. You should know that Harry's missing. The Bathurst
police found his wagon early this morning but there's no trace
of him-or the dog.'
'What?' Her voice was a stifled scream. Jim sighed and
sat down. Behind him, one of the pigeons' heads bobbed
along the ledge outside, above the makeshift modesty board
of cardboard.
Meg's mind wobbled. She tried to fit this in somewhere but

 '

there was too much distress concerning Hannah. She shook
her head. 'What are you telling me? It's Hannah who's gone
missing, not Harry. Am I going crazy or are you?'
Jim was patient. 'Meg. Listen. Harry's wagon turned up
outside Bathurst. We don't know where he is. The local
cops searched the area around the vehicle. There's some very
dangerous, cliffy terrain and he may have fallen. He may be
injured or worse. Or something else.'
'What do you mean "or something else"?' Meg heard an
odd tone in her own voice that sounded unfamiliar.
'With your daughter going missing at the same time, there
could be a tie-in. Do you see what I mean?'
Meg was still unable to respond. Hannah. Harry. What was
happening? She tried to fit the two things together. 'Are you
trying to say that Harry has something to do with Hannah
going missing?'
Jim stood up and walked over to the window. The female
pigeon was brooding on the nest and the male sat dozing'
further down the ledge, the surface of which was covered in;
bird shit and embedded feathers that fluttered in the breeze.
'What we've got to look at is whether the two disappearances
are linked in some way.'
Meg's voice was at first angry. 'Why would Harry want'
to take Hannah when he's got her all the time? It doesn't-make
sense.' Then contemptuous. 'He's out with that dog.
He's not missing. He's out doing some hero routine. How can a man with a goddamn police tracker dog be missing?' Her mind was spinning. The hysterical edge to her voice had
shocked her.
'Are you all right?' she heard Jim say from a long way away
as she stared sightlessly at the metallic sky behind the pigeons,
dazed with pain.
'No,' she said softly through the darkness that presse'
around her, 'I'm not all right. The only thing I care about
right this moment is getting my daughter back safely. Damn
Harry Doyle.'
Then she burst into tears again and Jim Coates put his arms
around her and held her. Alison opened the door suddenly
and Meg turned to her. 'AH,' she said, and her daughter
ran to her.

'What was the private conversation about?' Alison asked her
on the way home. Meg stared straight ahead, driving the
car through the traffic. 'Your father,' she said steadily. 'He's
missing. According to Jim.'
Ali's clear grey eyes looked straight into hers. 'No he's not.
Hannah is missing. Dad is out in the bush with Razor.'
'That's what I told them.'
'Mum,' wailed Alison, sounding like a little girl again,
'what are we going to do?'
When they arrived home, Dell had made a late lunch for
them but neither Meg nor Alison could eat. The three of
them sat, mostly in silence, waiting for the long afternoon
to be over. Outside, the world was filled with the ordinary
late-afternoon noises of the bus changing gears down the
road to negotiate the corner, the everyday suburban sounds
of children playing and arguing in the playground near the
bus stop, the familiar afternoon calling of local birds before
they become silent as the twilight deepens. But inside Meg's
head, turmoil and confusion whirled. Maybe Harry had taken Hannah, as Jim suggested, in some psychotic state.
It happened, she knew, but it still wasn't credible. Parents
don't kidnap their own children when they live with them
every day.
She rang Jim Coates. 'There's no way,' she said to him over
the phone, private in Harry's study, 'that Harry has anything
to do with Hannah going missing. Why would he take his
own child? He just wouldn't do that. I know Harry.'
Jim didn't say anything, just let the silence itself echo her
words until Meg felt the shame herself. She didn't know
Harry just as she didn't know Max. Just as she didn't even
know herself.
On the television news, Meg could hardly bear to see the
mockup model of Hannah that the police had set up in
the bus shelter at Circular Quay and the curious passersby
who variously stared at it or ignored it altogether. Police
are following several leads, the newsreader said, looking up
conspiratorially.
'What leads, you damn fool!' Meg yelled and got up and
switched it off.
'"C.Q." is Circular Quay,' she said, as it dawned. 'Hannah
had arranged to meet Richard at Circular Quay. She wasn't
lured away. It was all set up.'

FOURTEEN



The phone rang and Meg knocked it to the floor in her
eagerness to snatch it up.
'Yes?' she said.
'Watch the television,' came the thin voice. 'You'll see
her. The Archons told me.'
'Who told you what? Who will I see? What are you talking
about? Tell me! Answer me! Hello? Hello?' She slammed the
phone down again.
'Who was that?' Ali asked.
'Some damn lunatic,' said her mother, 'who rings Harry
up all the time and confesses to everything. He told me to
watch the television.'
Alison jumped up. 'Mum, he might know something,' she
said. 'What else did he say?'
'Just rubbish,' said Meg. 'He's a paranoid schizophrenic.
Delusions, obsessions. I can't deal with him at this stage.'
'But maybe he knows something,' said Alison, grabbing at
a straw.
Her mother's look was enough, although Meg went on
to explain. 'They're part of every police force. Crazies and
"weirdos who either confess to everything or offer to give
distance.'
Alison jumped up. 'I can't stand this just sitting around
when I could be doing something,' she said. 'I'm going out.'
She longed to see the man she was in love with and ask him
what to do, until she suddenly remembered that Mick had
a brother called Richard and her mouth went dry. She sat
down again, weak in the legs.
Meg looked at her pale daughter. Her family had been
halved. Now there is only Ali and me, she thought.
'Mum?' Alison's voice interrupted her. 'I know a Richard.
He's at school. He's . . . he's . . .' She was about to say
something more, but there was too much of a charge around
the words, so she let her voice taper off.
'We'll have to tell Jim,' said Meg. 'I'll ring him now. What
do you know about this Richard?'

Meg and Jim stood on the doorstep together. 'Just don't say
anything,' said Jim. 'I'll introduce you and that's it. Let them
make any assumptions they want to.'
He rang the doorbell.
Mrs Blunt, in white shorts and tennis shoes, answered the
door. 'Yes?' she said, hesitantly, looking from one to the
other as Jim introduced himself and Meg and showed his
warrant card. Mrs Blunt was a pretty woman with a tanned
face, bright blue eyes and soft, fawn-gold hair.
'We'd like to have a chat with you, Mrs Blunt and maybe
talk to your son Richard.'
'Why?' she said, frowning and alarmed. 'Is something
wrong?' But she ushered them into the comfortable house
with picture rails and floral carpet and a wipe-over satin-finish,
lounge suite in gold.
'We're looking for anyone who might be able to help us
with our inquiries into the disappearance of Hannah Doyle.',
Mrs Blunt nodded. It was clear she knew about Hannah.
Meg's heart missed a beat at the formal sound of her child's
full name. Most people in Australia know that name now,
Meg thought, and her eyes brimmed with tears.
'We believe,' Jim continued, 'that your son Richard might
be able to assist us. Could we speak to him?'
Mrs Blunt looked scared. 'What could my Rick have to
do with that? What do you mean "assist"?' But she turned
and called out, 'Rick? Could you come here a minute?'
Richard Blunt came into the room and Meg stared at
him. Is it you? she wondered to herself. Are you Hannah's
friend?
Richard Blunt was a podgy sixteen-year-old whose brown
eyes slid away from any eyes that attempted to engage them.
It was an odd trick he had, Meg thought, of moving his eyes
almost into contact, but then slipping away, in a wavelike
motion. It was, Meg knew from her own work, the behaviour
of a shamed child.
Jim went through the introductions again and Richard sat
beside his mother whose tanned legs were primly placed
straight together.
'Do you know Hannah Doyle?'
Richard nodded.
'How do you know her?'
'From the school bus,' said Richard. 'She's one of the little
kids. She's got an older sister, Alison.'
'That's right,' said Jim, glancing to see if Meg was handling
this all right.
'And how well do you know her?'
Richard shrugged. He looked up at Meg then at Jim.
'Answer Mr Coates,' said Mrs Blunt, and Meg could hear
the hidden tears in the woman's voice.
'She's just a little kid that goes to the primary school. What
do you mean?'
'So there's no special friendship between you?' Meg
couldn't help asking, and Richard Blunt shook his head.
Meg couldn't decide if he was just very uncomfortable at
being questioned, or if he was lying. There was something
else going on in the boy's mind, she guessed. But he seemed
genuinely perplexed by the questions.
Mrs Blunt stood up and left the room for a minute. When
she came back, she was crying. She held out a little plastic
wallet and key ring in front of her. She couldn't look at her
son. 'I found this,' she said, handing the wallet to Jim, 'in
Ricky's room yesterday. I didn't know what to do. Ricky,
tell me. Tell me how you got this.'
Meg's heart contracted. She tried to swallow but her mouth
had dried up. Jim studied the plastic wallet and then handed
it over to her. It was Hannah's: a key ring at the end of a
clear plastic container in which Hannah had a photograph of
herself and Razor. Meg looked at the podgy youth with the
bad skin. She flew at him. But before she could grab him, Jim
had firmly restrained her. 'What have you done with her?' she
screamed at Richard.
The youth shrank back, even more pallid. 'I didn't do
anything. I just found this and some money in Mick's car.
I just found it. I never saw Hannah, I swear.'
'Who's Mick?' Jim wanted to know. Richard looked at
his mother then at Meg. Then he looked at Jim.
'Mick is my other son,' said Mrs Blunt. 'Richard washes his
older brother's car sometimes for pocket money.' She looked
more closely at Meg. 'Who are you?'
'Tell us,' Jim repeated, still holding Meg firmly. 'Tell us
where we can find Mick.'
Richard indicated Meg with a half-lifted hand, but didn't
address her directly. 'Her other daughter,' he said of Meg.
'Her other daughter's going out with him.'
'But Mick's married.' Mrs Blunt looked as if she were
about to burst into tears. 'He can't be going out with anyone.
Sally and him, they've got a lovely little baby. They're happy
together.'
Richard looked defiant. 'He meets her down at the pub.
They go to a mate's place. Sally doesn't know. Nobody
knows. Except me. And now you do.' Mrs Blunt sat down
suddenly.
'What do you mean? My other daughter?' said Meg, not
taking it in properly, focused only on Hannah.
'I need your older son's address,' Jim said and wrote it
down. Then he turned to Meg. 'I'm taking you home now,'
he said to her. He made a call to the detectives who were
investigating Hannah's disappearance. They would arrive at
Mrs Blunt's house within minutes, he was told. 'In the
meantime,' he told Mrs Blunt, 'get your other son over
here to wait for them. It will be less embarrassing for him
than if we go to his house. We need to know how he came
by this.' He slipped the key ring photograph into an envelope
and put it in his pocket.
In the car, Meg sat trembling in the passenger seat. 'I
shouldn't have taken you with me,' said Jim. 'It was completely
out of order.'
'Everything's out of order,' she said. 'Everything's rotten.
I
can't bear how it is. I wish I was dead.' She felt dead, she
thought, except for the great gaping hole where her daughter
was missing. She cried and rocked herself.
'Don't you dare speak like that,' she heard Jim's angry
voice. His strong arm pulled her towards him. She could feel
his fingers digging into the muscles of her upper arm. 'We need you. We all need you. We've got to find out who's got
Hannah. With Harry missing in action at the moment you're
all we've got. So for your little girl's sake, no more talk like
that.' He released his rough hold on her and Meg sat up. She
found she was shivering despite the heat. The cold she was
feeling came from her heart.

Alison and Meg sat at the kitchen table. Blade curled in the
corner, pulling his head in tight, like a reined-in horse, to
lick his chest. He turned to attack a flea on his back, pulling
his nose back in wrinkles to bite it.	¦«
'Stop that snuffling!' Meg screamed at him, and Alison 
put her hand gently on her mother's arm. Blade suddenly
barked and ran out of the kitchen down the hall, skidding :
in his greeting of someone he knew. Meg ran after him and
opened the front door. But her heart sank again as Jim Coates,
who had pulled up outside, shook his head, indicating he had
nothing positive to tell her. She stepped back to let him in and
followed him down the hall to the kitchen. 'I've just come
from talking to Mick Blunt,' he said and looked at Alison,
who had gone bright red. 'Do you want to tell your mother
what's going on with you?'
Alison froze, looking from one to the other, then she ] slowly nodded.
'Tell me what?'
'Mick Blunt,' said Alison. 'Urn. Mick is... he's, well, he's
my boyfriend.'
'Do you mean you're having sex with him?' Meg said
finally. 'A married man?'
Her daughter nodded.
'Oh,' said Meg.
'He says you dropped your bag in his car last time you
were together and everything spilled out,' said Jim.	¦¦
'Yes,' said Alison, remembering, 'that's true.' She remembered too how Mick hadn't been able to get rid of her quickly
enough that time. Now she felt completely ashamed.
'Alison,' said Jim quickly. 'Do you have anything to do
with Hannah's disappearance?'
The shocked silence that met his words and Meg's and
Alison's stricken faces made Jim wish for a moment that
he had never been in the job. Alison's face had gone from
red to white. 'Of course I don't!' she screamed. 'She's my
little sister.'
Jim, what are you saying?' Meg said, grabbing his arm. 'It's
not like that with those two. It's never been like that.' She
hugged her sobbing daughter in her arms, kissing her hair,
soothing her. 'It's okay, darling. It's okay.'
'Sometimes I have to ask real bastard questions. It's my
job.' Alison's outraged response was exactly what he'd have
expected from a loving sister. 'We've got to cover every
possibility. Are you okay, Alison?'
Angry eyes glanced momentarily into his, and he walked
over to the window, turning towards the two women, leaning
against the sill. 'I don't think Richard Blunt's got anything to
do with this. I think he just held on to the key ring because
it's a handy thing to have. His room was full of the usual
stuff that horny sixteen-year-old boys are interested in. Big,
busty women. Not little girls. He's not the Richard we need
to find.'
'But why would you have had Hannah's key ring?'
Alison shrugged. 'I don't know. Our stuff gets mixed up
sometimes. I might have used her keys ages ago and kept
them ever since. She can always get in using Dell's if she gets
home and no-one's here.' Then she started to cry again. Meg
moved towards her and they embraced, brought together by
their common need. 'I'm so sorry, Mum,' sobbed Alison.

The too,' said her mother.
Alison struggled to find a tissue. 'Here,' said Gentleman
Jim, 'use this.' And he proffered his big man's handkerchief.
'Why is it?' asked Meg, using the handkerchief after Alison,
'that men's handkerchiefs are huge and they never cry and
women's handkerchiefs are tiny useless little scraps and we
cry all the time?'
'Some men cry,' said Jim.
'Mum,' said Alison. 'Jim?'
They both looked at her. 'I know that crazy people ring
you police all the time with advice and stuff, but I think we
should tell you that Mum had a phone call from a fellow
who rings Dad and wants to confess. He rang just when the
bit about Hannah was on the Channel Nine news.'
Jim looked at Meg and she nodded, agreeing with Alison.
'If it's the one I think it is, I know him too,' said Jim. 'He
took a shine to me years ago, then preferred Harry because
Harry used to listen to him. I'll chase him up. It could mean
something that he rang when that news item was on. It means
he knows that Hannah is connected to Harry.' He made a
note to himself on his notepad.
'And another thing,' said Alison. 'You've got to try the
Internet. Hannah was always chatting on the chat lines,' she
said. 'That's where you've got to look. That's where you'll
find Richard.'
Meg looked at her and then at Jim who knew very little
about the Internet.
'Great,' sighed Jim.
An hour later, slim, tanned, designer-dressed Travis from
ADU Technology, looking very much at home despite the
surroundings of an eight-year-old girl's bedroom, scrolled
through the contents of Hannah's computer. Meg sat beside
him, watching without comprehension as he manipulated
data on the screen. Travis kept up a stream of consciousness
chatter under his breath, with occasional verbal peaks breaking
through. 'Yup,' he said from time to time in a colourless

voice, tinted with American values. 'Okay, okay. Yup.' And
his words would drop into the unvoiced and only his mouth
would silently move. Jim sat on the other side of the monitor
and Blade sat at the door, his head to one side, watching every
move. Dell brought in cups of tea and Alison stretched out
on Hannah's bed, pressing a big white bear to her face, crying
into its fur.
'I should have talked to her more, done more things with
her. She was my little sister.'
Meg looked over at her daughter, hidden behind the white
bear. 'Ali, don't blame yourself. If anyone should have spent
more time with Hanks, it was me. I'm her mother.'
'Give it a rest, girls,' said Jim, uneasy at the conversation
and trying to concentrate on the fast-moving screen.
'Yup, yup,' chanted Travis. 'Here we go. Faves, faves,
faves.' He seemed to speak a completely alien language in
his all-purpose accented voice. Meg stared at his glossy hair
and handsome tanned profile, unable to tell what nationality
Travis was, nor whether he was straight or gay. His Ken-doll
features were oddly unlived in as if, despite his beauty, he
had no soul but was a self-invented presentation; gymmed,
saunaed, buffed, dressed by advertisers, hair done by whoever
was the most modish and expensive coiffeur. Beside him,
Gentleman Jim looked a little rumpled and beautifully real.
Meg wondered why she'd never noticed what a good-looking
man Jim Coates was. Then immediately felt guilty that she could think such a thing at such a time.
Meg,' said Jim, turning away from the screen, 'we are
worried about Harry. We're treating his disappearance as
suspicious.'
Meg stared at him. 'If you knew what things had been like
round here,' she said, 'you'd know it isn't.'
'Isn't what?'

'Suspicious.'
'Yup, yup yup,' Travis interrupted in his soft little voice. 
'Okay, and okay. I've got her bookmarks, you betcha.' Then
he got the Chat Line entrance up on the screen and a cursor
blinked in a window. Travis turned to the women. 'Does
anyone know her password?'
Meg stared at him blankly. Alison shook her head.
'Does she have a nickname? Sometimes people just use a
known nickname.'
'We sometimes call her Hankers, or Hanks,' said Alison,
with tears breaking her voice. 'And Hanky-panky, sometimes.
Panks. Pranks. She's had heaps of names. Dad used to call her "Joey" for awhile. And then when she started getting
taller, "Roo".'
Travis started out. But each time the computer growled
at him. 'Invalid password', the screen reprimanded.
'It's so typical that Harry's taken himself off at the time we
really need him,' Meg said and blew her nose to hide the tears
that threatened her.
Travis didn't miss a beat. 'Here we go,' he said. 'I tried
different spellings and variations. Her password is "Hanx".
And here's a list of the faves. We might find something 
here.' The computer showed that she'd only dipped into 
a few, favouring the Kids Chat over all others. 'Yup,' he
said. 'Okay. The "Richard" person might well be on one
of these. He could have told her during a chat that Richard
was his real name, or they might always have chatted under
nicknames. That's what people usually do.'
'I don't know what people usually do,' said Meg. 'I don't ;
know what's happening.'
She wiped her eyes and stared at the screen. Travis had
called up a column of names in a vertical box -- Hannah's
chat lines. 'Kids Chat, Cool Dudes, Play School, Baywatch,

The Klub,' she read. She was aware of Ali and Jim also leaning
forward to look. She stared harder.
'Hanx has joined Kids Chat,' the screen said as Travis
entered the chat show. The line of chat moved quickly
down the screen. Meg tried to read it but it was going too
fast and made no sense, as other chatterers contributed. At the
moment, it seemed Batto and Funster were swapping what
looked like insults in chat-chic language, incomprehensible
to newbies.
'There's no Richard here,' Meg heard herself say. 'There's
no damn Richard here!'
Her voice rose to a scream. Ali grabbed her and hugged
her, aware of the tension in her mother's body. 'What
are we going to do now?' Meg was saying. 'There's no
Richard here.'
'Does your daughter use e-mail?' Travis asked.
Meg looked at him. 'I don't know,' she said.
'She does, Mum,' said Alison. 'She e-mails Di and Abby
in Adelaide.'
Meg suddenly had a surge of hopefulness. 'Maybe that's
where she's gone. She loves Diane. She used to say that Di
was her sister but they mixed the babies up in the hospital.
She might be trying to get there right now.'
'Mum,' Ali's voice was gentle, 'Hannah wouldn't do
that.'
'Yup, yup, yup. I'm going to check her e-mail now,' said
Travis. 'Okaaaaay.' And he hit a few keys and the screen
changed to the e-mail InOut tray. He started checking it,
letter by letter.
Jim put a hand on Meg's shoulder. His voice was deep and
steady. 'We're going to check it all out,' he said. 'Anyone
who's contacted her. We'll trace them through their providers
and we'll talk to every single one of them.'
'But she said "Richard",' said Alison. 'She told me
"Richard" and the Mackie woman heard that man say,
"I'm Richard's father".'
'You must realise,' said Jim, 'that we suspect that whoever
took Hannah is no kid. The eight-year-old daughter of a
policeman is not going to go away with a stranger. We
believe the man who claimed to be Richard's father is
actually the person who took her. We believe that line was
just to get her into a vehicle. Soon we'll have a computer face
ready using Maureen Mackie's description. I want you two
to come in and have a look at it. We're matching it against
pictures of any crims that Harry had a hand in putting away
or that might otherwise have a grudge against him.'
'I've got a grudge against him,' said Meg.
'Mum, don't.' Alison's voice touched her, with its lovej
and its tremor, and the harshness of her voice softened.
'This whole family,' said Meg, sinking down onto a chair because her legs would no longer carry her, 'we're all over the place. We're a mess. I knew that yesterday before all!
this happened. I knew this house was in disorder. All these' secrets. All these clandestine relationships.' She turned on
Alison, fuelled with new anger. 'You're out half the day and
night having something you call a relationship with some
bloody married man. Hannah's off talking to I don't know who. Your damn father is away God knows where.'
There was a long silence. Ali finally raised her head and]
met her mother's eyes. She looked her full in the face, no
longer a child but an equal. 'And you, Mum,' said Ali levelly.
'You, too.'
It was a shock to see the knowledge in her daughter's eyes.
'You too, Mum,' Ali continued. 'You have someone else.
And Hannah knew about it, too. We both knew, although;
we never said anything.'
Meg sat stunned. She became aware of Jim looking at her
in a very particular way. 'I think,' he said slowly, 'that we
need to speak in private, Meg.'
'Who's Diane?' Travis asked as he opened up and scrolled
through the e-mail file. The atmosphere in the room changed.
Meg and Alison remembered again that there was a stranger in
their midst. 'That's our cousin that Mum was talking about,'
Alison told him, because her mother was sitting with her head
in her hands, silent and ashamed.
'And Mardi?'
'I didn't know she wrote to that bloody woman!' said Meg,
suddenly sitting up. 'Is she writing to her?'
'That's Mum's stepmother,' Alison said. 'She married our
grandfather.'
'Cool grandma,' said Travis. 'Not many grannies I know
who are into using email.'
'She's not a grannie,' said Meg. 'And she is not my
stepmother. She's a sharp little go-getter who married my
father.'
'What happened to your mother, Meg?' Jim asked.
'It could be Mardi,' Meg said. 'I didn't think of her. Maybe
that's where Hannah is.'
'What about your mother?' Jim repeated.
'She was discarded, like so many women,' said Meg. 'And
now she's dead.'
'I don't see,' said Ali, suddenly angry through her tears,
how you can be so horrible and judging of Mardi when
you've been doing the same thing. You want to discard
Dad. I know you do. You know what it's been like round
here lately.'
Meg, stung, was about to answer when Jim stood up.
Alison,' he said, 'please stay with Travis and help him with
the e-mail letters. Meg, let's step outside for awhile.'
In the kitchen, Jim stood near the back door where Harry
liked to stand and look out at the weather or the stages of!
the moon. Meg sat hunched in a chair. She'd caught sight
of her reflection in a small round mirror that hung near the!
doorway to the lounge room and she was shocked at how
dreadful she was looking. She thought she would die of the ] pain of loss as it welled up from deep within her and flooded,
her again. If my beautiful Hannah is not returned to me, I
will suddenly be an old woman and die. Harry, what have
you done to us? It seemed to her that it was her husband
who had caused all this misery somehow. It all seemed to
be his fault. Damn you, Harry Doyle, she thought. Where:
are you and what are you up to?
She became aware that Jim was asking her where the drinks
were and what she wanted, and she somehow managed to
tell him and he opened the cupboard and brought out the!
brandy. He poured her one and put it down in front of her,
returning to his position near the back door.
'Now,' he said, 'I think you need to tell me a few
things.'
'Max wouldn't have anything to do with this,' she said from!
a long way away. 'He couldn't be less involved.' It seemed to
her that the whole Max affair now belonged to some other
woman who lived far away in another country, or was just
someone she'd read about once in a book.
'Anyone who is involved with any member of this family;
could have something to do with this,' said Jim. 'You of all people must appreciate that. Especially anyone involved
in an adulterous relationship.' Meg winced at the word. 'It
gives us a motive straightaway. You can see that. Did Harry
know what was going on?'
Meg raised her eyes to his. She nodded. 'He knew there
was someone. But he didn't know the name.'

'I find that hard to believe,' said Jim. 'Knowing Harry. He
would have made it his business to find out.'
'You don't know Harry,' she said. 'Nobody knows Harry.
There are some things he just doesn't want to know.'
'Name please, Meg.'
'It's over,' said Meg, choking over a superstitious feeling
that the words she was saying might pertain to Hannah's life.
'It's finished.'
'Name, please. 'Jim had taken out his notebook. He had the
sad, tired look around the eyes of the long-serving detective eyes
that had seen too much for one lifetime. He looked like
a stranger to her now, just another interviewing cop.
'His name,' she said finally, 'is Max Wolansky.'
'Address?'
'He stays in motels when he's in Sydney,' said Meg. 'And
he has a property in the country. A small place near Maldon.
I never did pay attention. Jim, it was only an affair. I always
had misgivings.' She heard the lack of truth in her words and
felt ashamed of herself. She hadn't always had misgivings,
she reminded herself. At one stage she had been seriously
considering going off with him. It seemed incredible to
her now.
'How can I get in touch with him?'
Look, I don't have his number. He always used to ring
me. Or he'd give me different numbers where I could contact
him. He was always travelling. He's a businessman.'
'What's the name of his business?'
'Same as his. Max Wolansky ImportsExports. I've got his
business card here somewhere.' She looked around as if the
card might suddenly come to light.
'How did you meet?'
'We met at art class.'
'Which art class?'
'Meredith Park High. Adult education runs them using the
classrooms at night.'
'They'll have a roll,' said Jim. 'I'll pick it up from there.
Did he ever make any threats -remarks
-about
Harry or
any member of your family?'
Meg shook her head. 'Of course not. He said he was
going to take me away from a man who didn't appreciate
me. But that's hardly a threat.' She could hear the defiance
in her voice.
'Go on,' said Jim, and Meg continued. It was good to have
something else to focus on, to get angry about; something that was not the terrible pain of Hannah's absence.
'He said I could bring the children with me. He'd take
care of us all. He said he just wanted me to be happy.'
'I see,' said Jim.
'He told me he'd never had a family,' she said, 'and he,
wanted us. He said he loved me.' She felt embarrassed and:
stupid now, quoting these soap opera words. 'He said he'd'
never met a woman like me in his life and he wanted me.'
Adding this extra part didn't help.
'So he wanted you to leave Harry. You wouldn't happen;
to know his date of birth?'
'I do,' said Meg. 'I do. He was born in 1947,' she said.
'Eighth of November. He's a Fire Boar.'
Jim stared at her.
'Dell asked me to find out. She's into Chinese astrology."
'I see,' said Jim and noted it down. Then he looked up.
'You said it was over. What happened?'
'I told him I didn't want to see him again.'
'Why?'
'I changed my mind. I realised I didn't know him. I was.
living in a dream. I came down to earth.'


'What was his reaction when you told him this?' asked Jim,
sensing blood.
But she couldn't say.
'Go on.'
'He was really upset. Very angry. He pushed me around,'
she said finally, ashamed, 'when I met him for the last time.'
'What did he do?'
But Meg shook her head. She couldn't bear Jim hearing
about the humiliation, Max's fingers jabbed between her
legs. 'He just pushed me against a door. He was angry.
Understandably. I'd just called it off.' She realised she was
defending her ex-lover and she stopped.
'From what you've said, we most definitely will want to
talk to Mr Max Wolansky,' said Jim, flicking the notepad
closed and pocketing it.
Alison's voice called from the other room. 'Mum. Come
here.'
Meg and Jim both went to the bedroom. Travis was
sitting at the screen beaming away. He had a wide, dimpled,
white-teethed puppet's grin. 'We got him good,' he said.
'Yup, yup, yup. We've got Richard for you. She must have
done what he told her because there's only this one letter left,
but at least we've got that. And that's all we needed to get his
e-mail address. Here's Richard.'
Meg threw her arms around him and kissed his android
cheek while Jim looked at the screen and read: Hi, Honey Hanx. Thanks for writing to me. Now i'll write to you and you can
write back. But you must always delete my letters. And your replies
to me, too. Is that a deal? We don't want to leave our letters lying
around for nosey parker parents to find in our systems. Write to me
soon and I will reply. Bye bye from your good friend, Richard. And there was his address at the top: 'RixNetserve.com.au'.
'Got him!' said Jim. He grabbed his phone.
Harry was aware of a huge pain behind his eyes and the
sense of being jammed up against some large warm
object. His mind was coming and going in waves, with
an odd ringing and echoing sensation like moving out of
anaesthesia and returning to consciousness. More and more
of him was waking up to extreme discomfort. His nose was
filled with the stench of dog and he realised that the warm
object pressing into him was Razor, and that the two of them
were being bumped along. As he came round even more, he
thought at first he was paralysed. He couldn't move. Then
the tightness all around him, and the fact that he could barely
move because of compression, the smell of rope or hemp, the
harsh weave pressing hard against the skin of his face, made
him realise that he and Razor were wedged together in a large
sack. They seemed to be lying on the back of a moving truck
or ute, with something else, perhaps a weighty tarp, covering
them. Harry groaned. His mind tried to piece together what
had happened. He remembered hearing Razor's sudden yelp
of pain. He remembered knowing to stay back from the dog,
even though instinctively his body had started in a forward
movement towards his partner. Then as he was swinging
around with his gun in his hand, something had hit him
on
the back of the head, something that must have come upwind
behind them. Now, in this confined and painful place, he
was starting to become aware of every part of himself. Blood
itched sticky on the back of his head. I should be dead, he
thought to himself. Then he passed out again, only to return,
aching and terrified. There was nothing on his right hip; his
weapon was gone. Then a horrifying realisation hit him and
sweat broke out all over. He's taking me to bury me. This
bastard thinks I'm dead, too. He's knocked us both, me and
the dog, and he thinks we're both dead and he's loaded us
into the back of a utility and he's taking us to another, desolate
place where he'll dig a shallow grave. In spite of the bleeding
and the pain of his head, Harry started struggling. That was
when he realised his hands were immobilised. He felt panic
start in the pit of his guts. A new cascade of blood rushed from his head. He passed out again.

The utility came to a halt near some earthworks. A sign that
had been used as shotgun target warned trespassers not to
enter, that this was the property of Rio Blanco Mining Ltd.
Hills and mounds of dull grey subsoil loomed in towering
walls, dwarfing the ute and the driver as he got out of the
car, leaving the ignition running. He went around to the
back of the ute and dropped the back tray. He climbed up
into it and heaved and shifted the heavy, blood-stained sack
in the back.
'Here we are, Harry. This is where you get off.'
He pulled the dead weight to the very edge of the tray,
so that the heavy sack hung over the back. He climbed back
into the ute and manoeuvred it back and forth until the
back of the tray jutted over a deep gouge in the earth. He
jumped from the cab and peered down the shaft. Blackness.
He picked up a stone and held it over the mine's entrance.
Then he dropped it. He craned to hear. Finally, a slight but
very satisfying sound, perhaps a splash, from thousands of feet
below. He grinned. He jumped back up onto the tray. The
sack lying near his feet moved and made a muffled sound. But
the words were indistinct because the sack was squashed up
against the side of the ute. The man leaned over the moving
sack and gave it one mighty heave. Then he booted it with
a foot. It rolled off the tray and disappeared into the gaping
mouth of the shaft.

The State manager of Netserve, once the right channels
had been cleared, gave Detective Inspector James Coates
the physical address of RixNetserve.
This turned out to be a serviced office space in a building
in Kent Street. Jim took the lift to the fourth floor, a long
corridor with frosted glass office doors variously described
as housing podiatrists, a clockmaker and repairer, an office
supplies agent, a spiritual healer and a travel agent. Jim's
heart sank as he saw number eleven, the door behind which
Richard Fellowes was supposed to have his registered office.
Old mail lay around on and under the doormat. It didn't
look like anyone had been there for some time. Jim found
the manager of the office suites and his heart sank even
further when he was told that Richard Fellowes had done a
moonlight flit and hadn't been seen for several days, although
he owed three weeks' rent.
I don't think Fellowes was his real name, either,' said the
manager, opening the office with a skeleton key.
You surprise me,' said Jim as he pushed the door open.
The manager switched the lights on and the two men
looked around the small room. There was a desk, two grey ng cabinets, both empty, as Jim quickly discovered, and
one easychair in a corner. A stack of magazines were piled ;
beside the chair. Jim pushed the top one aside with his shoe to reveal pornography. 'Business must have been slow,' he
said. 'What sort of business did he have?'
'He was supposed to be providing office services -- photocopying,
faxing, laminating, binding, resumes, that sort of
thing,' said the manager. 'But who's going to come up to the
fourth floor for that? Needs a good clean up,' he said, looking
around. A dirty coffee mug with a ring of dried, flaky coffee 
at the bottom sat on the desk with bills and newspapers from :
several weeks ago. Jim looked round and found a plastic bag
with some old takeaway cartons in it. He fished out the plastic 
trays and the spoon and put them in a plastic bag, together
with the coffee mug and the unopened mail. 'I'll take these,'
he said. 'Do you want a receipt?' The manager laughed.
Back at the Police Centre, Jim handed the plastic bag to
a junior officer, Gary Stokes. 'See what you can get off
these,' he said to Gary. 'Fingerprints, whatever. Any leads;
from the bills.'
Gary looked displeased, then, seeing the look in his boss'
eyes, nodded reluctantly.
Jim started his search for Max Wolansky. He could find no
police record. He spread his net further. There were several';
Wolansky's in the phone book and he noted them down. ?
He was on the phone to the RTA when Gary Stokes walked;
into his office.
'I'll get back to you,' his contact at the RTA said, 'when
I've chased him up.'
Jim rang off. 'Will you ring the witness, Maureen Mackie,
and ask her to come in? I'll tell the forensic hypnotist we'll!
be needing him.'
'Sure thing,' said Gary, leaving the room as Jim picked up
the phone to ring Devlin.

SEVENTEEN



Meg had turned Harry's office upside down. The message
sticks were thrown to the floor, the drawers pulled out.
She went through his papers like a wild thing. Alison stood
in the doorway, shocked.
'Mum,' asked Alison, 'what are you doing? What are you
looking for?'
Meg straightened up. She saw that she had handfuls of paper
clutched in her fists. She wasn't sure what she was doing. I
need to collect myself, she thought. My little girl needs a sane
woman. She dropped the papers and sat at the desk, slumped.
They both jumped when the phone rang. Meg picked it up.
'Hullo?' she said, hoping it might be Harry. When she heard
who it was, she looked guiltily at Alison.
'Please forgive me, Meg,' he said. 'I was crazy at the
thought of losing you. I just lost it. I've never cared about
any woman the way I care about you. I've heard about your
little girl. I'm so sorry. Please let me help you find her.'
Alison had stood up and was walking out of the room. But
her mother beckoned her back. She stood in the doorway,
undecided.
I know a lot of people, Meg,' Max was saying. 'People
hear things and know things. I could help if you'd only
let me. I could help you get your family back together again.'
Meg felt a wave of relief. She had an ally. She had a friend.
She was not alone anymore.
'Max,' she said. 'Oh Max.' She thought of his strong arms
and reassuring heartbeat. His intelligence and sharpness. His
lazy worldliness. She could deal with his temper later, she
thought. For a second she couldn't speak. Then she composed
herself. His earlier actions seemed only a peccadillo, given the
extremity and hugeness of her present emotional pain. 'Please
Max,' she said. 'Harry's gone off somewhere. I don't know
what to do. The police want to talk to you.'
'Of course they would,' he said, as if it were the most
natural thing in the world, and his reasonable voice calmed
her somewhat. 'Because I'm involved with you they'd need
to talk to me. I'll contact them straightaway. Then let's get
together and work out a way to get your little girl back to you.
I've got money. I can organise a reward. Someone must have
seen or heard something. I'll be with you as soon as I can.'
'When's that?'
'Tomorrow. At the latest.'
'Hannah could be dead by then.'
Meg heard the pitch of her voice and was startled.
'Meg, Meg. It's going to be all right.'
'How can you say that?' she screamed.
But he'd rung off.

EIGHTEEN

a phone rang in Jim Coates' office and he hurried back To where he was waiting for the Kb just in time to
catch it.	¦  any
'Physical Evidence?' the voice asked.
I believe Harry Doyle used
to work in that section?'
Yes said jim.'Have you had any news of him?
'Do you know him?' asked Ayoub, 'from the time he
worked there?'
'I know Harry well, said Jim.
'No news of him,' said Ayoub. 'But he said something
that's been on my mind. I wanted to pass it on now that
his daughter's missing. Any news on that?'
'Nothing,' said jim.
'We had a murder here,' Ayoub said.
'I know,' said Jim. 'The physical evidence has been sent
on to the experts.'	(	, ,
'I'm not talking about that one,' said Ayoub. An old woman was killed in a nursing home up here yesterday
morning. Looks like strangulation. Harry Doyle had come
out looking for me and he and the dog happened to be there
at the crime scene. The dog went apeshit. Ran all through
the nursing home and then out again.'
'I'm not involved in that case' said Jim. 'I can put you on
to the bloke in charge.'
'No,' said Ayoub. 'I want to tell you what Harry said. He
said that the dog told him the person who strangled the old
woman in the home was the same person who did Janette
Madden. At the farmhouse.'
'Harry said that?'
'That is correct,' said Ayoub. 'And I told him I could see,
absolutely no reason for him to assume that.'
'But the fact that he said this is worrying you now?''
said Jim.	.]
'That is correct,' said Ayoub. 'And Harry Doyle's vehicle
still out there near the river. That's over twenty-four hours,
think he's tried to track the nursing home killer with the dogs?
Maybe he's got into trouble. Had a fall.' He paused. 'And
spoke to his sergeant at the Dog Squad. He said there'd been
domestic problems.' Ayoub was silent awhile and Jim waited
'It's been on my mind,' Ayoub finally said.
'It's also possible he connected with the killer,' Jim said.
'That's been in my mind, too,' said Ayoub. 'You see, he:
once was married to Janette Madden.'
'I knew that,' said Jim.
'And the woman murdered in the hospital -Vera
Wetherly
-- she had some sort of association with Doyle, too.' Ayoub
paused. 'Two women he knows get knocked and then He
goes missing. And then his little girl. Looks very bad.'
Jim didn't like it one bit. 'Could you organise a search
party?' he said. 'With your local blokes?'
'I'm half of them at the moment,' said Ayoub. 'And I'm
out like a lizard drinking. This area is terribly under-manned
Everyone is flat strap with their own work plus this state-wide
search for Janette Madden's killer. Otherwise I'd take a bit of
time and ask around.' He paused. 'Even though I didn't really
see any connection myself I can't get it out of my mind.'
Jim considered. 'I can't possibly come up myself,' he said.
'We're throwing everything at the kidnap down here.'
'All I can do up here,' said Ayoub, 'is widen the terms of
the search so that we're not only looking out for the offender
but for Harry, too.'
'The name,' said Jim with his pen poised, 'of the dead
woman again?'
'Vera Wetherill,' said Ayoub and rang off. As Jim put
the phone down, Gary Stokes knocked at his door and
came in.
'Fingerprints couldn't get anything useful from those things
you found in Fellowes' room,' said Stokes. 'Few half-prints,
nothing conclusive.'Jim felt himself slump in disappointment;
the night had suddenly become darker. There were good
reasons to be worried. The offender might have switched his
attentions from women Harry once knew to Harry himself.
And then to Harry's daughter.
Jim got up from his desk. If this dark interpretation of the
facts wasn't correct, there'd been several times in Jim's career
where he'd been summoned to the body of a colleague, dead
by his own service revolver. He peered over the cardboard
strip that hid the pigeons. The female huddled on the nest
with the male snuggled up beside her. Pigeons knew how
to do it. Humans had much more trouble, Jim thought. It
was the reason why he lived alone these days, with an aviary
and a garden. He went to his locker and took out his clothes,
then went down the hall to the showers.
Under the steaming water, he tried to make sense of it all.
Harry is right, we're dealing with someone who has killed
three women; and who is still out there, despite a large-scale
alert; and who may well have tangled with Harry Doyle; who
may well have taken eight-year-old Hannah. Jim decided to take it to the brass.


Forty minutes later, he drove up to Harry's house. All the
lights were on in the house as if Meg were defying the
night. Jim walked up the path and from inside the house
he heard Blade's half-bark; Blade knew Jim quite well. Meg!
came to the door before he'd knocked, with Alison close:
behind her.

'What is it?' called Meg, noticing the slowness of his "walk,:
the way he moved. 'No!' she screamed. 'No!' Blade barked
sharply.

'It's okay, it's okay,' Jim said, grabbing her hands. 'We
haven't heard anything more about Hannah. But we've done
some follow-up on RixNetserve.' He followed her and
through the hallway, the lounge and into the kitchen.

Meg looked ashen in the bright light, neglected and sic
'And?' she was saying. 'And?'

'We've got a name: Richard Fellowes. We're checking
out. We're getting a description of the car and the man from
the witness. Devlin will use hypnosis to try and get a picture of him. We're getting closer to him, Meg.'

'I want my daughter back. I want my little girl. O;
Hannah.'

Meg buckled at the knees in front of him. Jim grabbed her
and held her tight. Alison clutched her and the two of them
clung together, contained in Jim Coates' strong arms.

'Meg,' he said, once he'd got her sitting down, 'we
worried about Harry, too.'

Meg turned to look at him. Jim had seen many womens
eyes in his day, read many conflicting emotions and stories
in them -of
love and hate, contempt and hopelessness.
what he saw in Meg's eyes was exhaustion; a don't-care-anymore
despair.

'What about Harry?' she said.

'He may have gone after a violent killer.'

'That's his job,' said Meg, and her voice was dull. 'That's
what they pay him for.' Then angry life flooded it. 'If Harry
Doyle puts his job before his family -as
he always has done
-that's
something for him to look to. If it's got him into
trouble, it's not before time. Jim, I've got enough to bear
right now. I can't even think of Harry at the moment. By
all means, do whatever you think is best about your buddy.
But you get out there and you do everything on heaven and
earth to bring my Hannah back to me.'

She saw Jim to the door, then let Alison take her back to
the kitchen and make another pot of tea which she didn't
drink. She sat, staring into nothing, saying nothing. Alison
sat with her.


Harry ached back into consciousness. He felt as if he were
hanging suspended between heaven and hell, and the
stench of dog piss filled his nostrils. He blinked his eyes
open but everything was still black. A huge pain, located
somewhere on the back of his head, was opening and
deepening with every throb. Full consciousness returned
and he started to realise certain things. The two of them
were squashed up together hanging somewhere, perhaps
caught by tree roots or jagged rock. He realised, too, that
Razor was not the only one who'd pissed himself.
All around him was silence and blackness. Even the night
is full of sound and scents, he thought. This deep silence was
terrifying and, despite the sweat of fear that covered him,
he shivered. There were none of the night noises that he
would've expected and the scent picture was disturbing: a
damp, metallic, very cold subsoil smell; a smell that he associated
with the continuous absence of sunlight. He imagined a
thick grey mud stratum would smell like this, cold and dead.
Or ancient rocks, formed millions of years ago and laid down
before the dinosaurs. When he strained his ears, he thought he could hear a humming, but it might just have been his
own system, the blood still circulating in his injured body,
the spinal fluids ebbing and flowing up and down and around
his bruised brain.
And then suddenly he integrated all the information and
understood where he was. Not long after he'd joined the
Dog Squad, he and Razor had been winched down a mine
shaft to search for a small girl, and this dank absence of sound
and ground smells was the scent picture of a mine shaft. He
remembered the little body Razor had led him to, not far
from the vertical entrance shaft, and how he'd attached the
dead child to a stretcher and sent her up first, waiting in the
torchlight with Razor to be winched up again.
Harry despaired. His pinned arms hurt like hell in some
places, were numb in others; rope seemed to have been
wound round and round his body, pressing his arms into
his sides, so that he was squashed in an absurd attitude of
military attention. His belt had been stripped of weapon,'
torch, ammunition and cuffs. All that remained were his]
useless keys on their ring. But, he thought, if I can somehow,
bend and wriggle a hand into the pocket on my right shin
I might be able to get hold of that little one-handed knife.'
Flexibility was not one of his strong points, and under these
conditions it was even more difficult to manoeuvre. Almost;
the moment he went to move his body in an effort to carry
out the plan, he had to stop. The bag they were in had slipped
a few notches. He froze with fear.
'Razor? Mate?'
Razor stirred and Harry felt the warm heaviness against
his leg. Then the dog whimpered. Harry tried stirring
but the same heart-sickening lurch of the bag that contained
them stopped him dead again. He imagined them hanging
over an abyss, held only by a tiny natural ratchet, where
movement endangered their stability and moved them closer
to the final death-plunge. Then he realised that Razor
started chomping and shaking at the bag, attempting to chew
himself out of their prison.
'Just go easy, mate,' Harry begged the old dog. 'Real
easy or you'll have us go the big drop.' Razor's biting
movements continued and their container slipped another
few centimetres. 'Still!' Harry commanded, and Razor froze
at the command.
Harry thought about their situation. Angus had wounded
the two of them, thrown them in the bag, then driven
them to this place, wherever it was, and dumped them
down a mine shaft, as if they were a weighted bag of
kittens. That odd, fleeting odour that had eluded and teased
him he now recognised as acetone, the smell of someone
who drinks too much, whose body is always processing
too much ethyl alcohol through the breath and through
the sweat glands. It is a smell that Harry had met in bars
and clubs. He'd met it in people. Janette had sometimes
exuded it. He'd noticed it most recently in Murray Faye's
flatmate. Angus had already developed that acrid note to
his personal scent picture in Vietnam. And over the years it
had become stronger. So strong that Harry's supersensitive
nose had noted it, but not been able to classify it, outside
the Strathfield siege house as Angus had taken the police
by surprise with his grenade attack and his smart, practised
combat manoeuvres. Angus Wetherill, his childhood friend
turned murderer. Rapist and murderer. Harry remembered
the curses. He recalled Angus screaming at him in Vung Tau
that Harry had 'taken everything' from him; Angus trying to
kill him with his bare hands.
Angus!' he shrieked in the blackness. 'Don't do this!' He
realised it was madness, this yelling into nothingness. But it
Served some need.
you murdering bastard!' Harry roared into the blackness.

'--ring bastard, ring bastard,' echoed the blackness around
him.
Something had started Angus on a hunting and killing
expedition. First, the woman at Strathfield, whose death had
been the bait; then Harry's first wife, the woman he believed
should have been his own; finally, Vera Wetherill had died, as an act of revenge on the Wetherill family, a stand-in killing
for Angus's father, for he was unable to murder the already
dead. And he'd made this trail of death unique enough, weird 
enough, to intrigue Harry Doyle, leading him away from
home into the bush. Away from his family and his base.
Razor had started chomping again and Harry froze anew
as the bag started jolting. Then he felt Razor go very still.
'What is it?'
Harry put it together. Razor has worked it out, he thought.
He's got his head out and he's realised that his head is-sticking
out of a bag suspended above nothing in a crevasse
to nowhere. Razor is taking it in. He heard his dog whimper
in the darkness. 'Okay, okay,' Harry said. 'Just cool it. Don't
do anything rash.'
He'd managed to get to a crushed kneeling position in the
bag by moving with great care. He strained and strained, but couldn't get his hand into the pocket. It was hopeless. Gravity
squashed them both down, almost immobilising them by their
own weight. They would just hang there until they died of 
dehydration. Already Harry was feeling the pain of thirst. The '
bleeding had eased but he'd lost a lot of fluid. It would be
better to die quickly, he thought, by moving until whatever
is holding us breaks or slips. At least it will be quick, not drawn-out like this, hanging in nowhere, slowly dying.
He thought of Hannah, his darling, of Alison who used to 
be, and of Meg who no longer loved him. He wondered if 
he and Razor would ever be found, and thought it was most:'
unlikely. Australia had thousands and thousands of secret,
shallow graves, Harry knew. Under brush and under fallen
timber, murderers dump their kills, perhaps digging a token
scrape in the hard soil, more usually just pulling fallen scrub
and tree branches over the stiffening body. Within minutes,
insects gather. In just a few days, weeks, scavenging animals
have stripped it of its identity and sex along with the flesh and
skin, until nothing but rag and bones remain, slowly taking
on the hue and texture of their surroundings until they too
become invisible to the casual observer. The chances of him
and Razor ever being found down here were minuscule.
He thought again of his family -- of Hannah, of Alison, of
his wife. Would she be sad or relieved? Would she take up
again with the man she'd said she was 'over'? What would
happen to his children? Tears pricked his eyes as he thought
of Hannah. He thought of Alison when she was a little girl
and his heart nearly broke. He remembered the way Meg used
to look at him, drowsy with love, after she'd just melted down
in his arms, and the way he used to kiss her on the forehead,
resting with her a moment before his own climax. It was so
long, he thought, since they'd made love like that. What a
mess I'm leaving, he thought. What a mess I've made of it
all. I never meant it to happen like this. I didn't think my
life would end up like this. This is it.
He hadn't really thought about death much. Sometimes
he'd wondered if he'd be killed on the job. But he knew
he'd be more likely to die in a motor vehicle accident than
die working. He thought of the men and women he'd killed
in Vietnam. He remembered the VC man whose eyes he'd
looked into as he'd waited for the man to die. He thought
of little Franco and his stupid Black and Decker cordless drill.
seemed that their spirits were here, not with mockery or menace but with inevitability. You are joining us now, Harry
Doyle, as each person born onto this earth must join us. Harry felt tears run down his face. It wasn't really grief so much as anger and frustration that this was how it was to end.
And then on top of that, something else occurred to him.
Angus would go after Meg. Angus would take Harry's wife just as he thought Harry had taken his. If he went after Meg, he'd have to do something about the girls. Harry felt the chill of horror as the realisation became stronger. He wants my family. He wants the things he believes I took from him. I've got to get out of here.
An extraordinary surge of strength rippled through his
bound body. He stretched and strained and was suddenly-able
to get two fingers down into the pocket in his overalls,
He prayed that Angus had overlooked the flat little knife,
not much bigger than a bottle opener. He reached until he
thought his arms would come out of the socket, then felt
a thrill of triumph. His fingers touched the top of the little.
one-handed knife.
Razor was biting again at the fabric of the bag, pulling and
shaking his head, like a shark. 'Sit still,' Harry commanded.
Sweat poured from his cramped body. The effort of moving
those fingers and getting the knife in the right position was
the hardest work he'd ever done. He was grateful for the weekly workouts with the dogs, the long endurance trails
they'd covered over the years, the fast sprints, the steep
inclines, the sheer hard work of the sort of policing with
which he'd been involved. Slowly, touch by touch, he turned it with the tip of his fingers until he'd coaxed it into position
between his thumb and forefinger. He pressed down with his thumb until he felt the blade unfold and move into its armed position. Now he had hold of it in one of his bound hands. ,
His body shivered with effort. He must get free. He must. His 
family would die if he did not. But his hand, tied against his
flanks, couldn't move into a working angle. Harry groaned
aloud. He must get away yet he couldn't move the hand that
held the knife. Somehow he would have to shrink his body
so as to loosen the ropes. He expelled his breath, deflating
his lungs until they were emptied. Then he started to push
against the bonds, continuing until he felt nauseated from the
chafing and the effort. The rope didn't seem to be yielding at
all. He wanted to cry. Instead he roared with frustration. The
sound and movement of his body shifted the bag and loosened
some small stones that rattled away until, a long time later, the
faint sound as they hit their final resting place came to his ears.
He rested a little more then strained again. Nothing gave; the
bonds seemed as tight as when he'd first become conscious.
The knife in his hand was useless to him.
Razor started howling in dejection. It was a terrible sound,
echoing in the darkness.
Hannah huddled in the darkness. There was no way out
of the cell she was in. She wasn't sure how long she'd
been locked up here in the secret cupboard, nor how long
it had been since he'd tricked her into the car, pretending
he was taking her home. First they'd gone to a house and
sat in the car and beeped the horn until another man had
come out and joined them in the car. The other man had
called Richard's father 'Ron'. Then they'd all come to this
other house.
'Where's this?' she'd said when they pulled up outside a
house in a road somewhere under the Harbour Bridge.
'Come on, young lady,' Ron had said, 'we're going inside
to get Richard.'
It wasn't until it was too late, and Hannah had hesitantly
gone inside, looking around, that she'd sensed there was
something very wrong in all this. The other man they'd
picked up had gone and sat down in the kitchen of the
old house. Hannah could see there was something wrong with him, too, although in a different way. He'd stared at
her, said 'Hullo', but after that had been silent, had just sat
there, watching what happened as Ron seized her and easily
overpowered her. 'Help me!' she'd screamed to the other man.
'Help me.' But he'd just stared at her with a funny look on
his face. Then she'd really known the truth: that she'd been
stolen away by a man with evil in his mind and brought here
to this place with a crazy man. Then he'd locked her in this horrible little cupboard.

She'd started to scream.

All that seemed ages ago. She had been allowed out of the
cupboard to go to the toilet and Ron had given her a sleeping
bag in there and she'd even been able to sleep for awhile.

She must get away. She was very hungry. Maybe it was
past lunchtime, maybe even dinnertime. Her tummy rumbled
and the thirst was starting to dry her mouth. She could hear
the noises of traffic and of aircraft overhead. She knew that ¦
just a little way away was the ordinary world, where people
came and went, crossed at the green man, went into shops
and chatted on buses. This place she was in was like another
world, a terrifying dream world.

She wondered now if there had ever been a Richard at all,

or if Ron had tricked her from the very beginning. She knew

that there were men who did dreadful things to little children.

She knew that Ron must be one of them. Everything she'd

ever heard her father say, everything she'd ever read about,

all her own instincts told her this. She must plan and plot.

She must scan for any opportunity to get away, to take them

by surprise.

She started to cry. I'm only a little girl, she cried to herself.,]

Only gleams of light filtered under the door and through the

side between the hinges. It wasn't much, but as her eyes
acclimatised it was something. How can a little girl get away

from big men? she wondered. It was quite hopeless. But the

minute she'd come home from school, she knew, Dad would
get the dogs and be after her. But it would be very hard by
now. The bus would've had hundreds, perhaps thousands of
different scents on it. She started crying at the hopelessness
of it. She slept a little, nodding off, coming back into the
nightmare of the cupboard. I have to get away, she thought.
Whatever else, I have to get away from these men.

'I want to go to the toilet,' she called out. There was no
reply. She
started bashing on the door, crying and yelling.
'Let me go to the toilet! Let me out of here! Can't you
hear me? I want to go to the toilet.' She slumped back. She
felt around. If they didn't let her out, she'd just pee in their
bloody cupboard and they could clean it up. 'I'll do it in here
if you don't let me out,' she told them through the door.

Now she could hear the other man talking with Ron.
Their voices were raised as if in argument, but she couldn't
hear what they were saying. The silence that followed was
terrifying, then she heard someone at the door of the cupboard.
She tensed with fear. He was coming back.

The door of her prison opened and Ron peered around to
see where she was. Hannah gathered up all her strength. She
prayed to Razor. 'Help me be a police dog. Help me be as
fast and strong as you are.' She was shuddering with energy
and terror and the desire to be free, all curled up ready to
spring. She flew at the crack of light as it widened, leaped
up and pushed past Ron. She made a dash for the doorway
but his huge hand grabbed her and she was caught, crushed
against his body, her head at the side of his face.

Hannah screamed in fear and frustration. With all her
strength, and without even knowing where her mouth was
in relation to the man's head, she used the most powerful
weapon at her disposal and closed her strong teeth around his
ear, biting with all her strength. His shriek nearly deafened
her. He dropped her and again she made a bolt for the kitchen
door. The other man was Still sitting at the kitchen table, just nodding his head and saying something. He didn't try to stop
her. Hannah was out through the kitchen door and halfway
down the hall when the shrieking man behind her pounced ¦
on her again.	
'Let me go! Let me go!' she cried. He slapped her hard over"
the head and dragged her back to the cupboard, despite her  wild kicking. He pushed her in savagely and slammed and'" locked the door.
'Little bitch!' he said. 'I'll teach you!'
The seated man watched as his brother rushed back out again, hand clapped over one ear, blood pouring down
face and chin, wetting his shoulder. He looked in horror
at his red hand.
'Little bitch, little bitch,' Ron was shouting. 'She bit me
Indeed, half his ear was hanging down in a bloody mess
against his face and he danced in pain around the room
'I'll have to go to a doctor. A hospital. I'm disfigured.' seated man remained still and watched, as he always did since
he'd moved in with his brother. 'Look at all this blood. She'
spoiled everything.' He slammed out of the kitchen and was
gone. His brother remained in his chair and waited.
'Please?' Hannah was pleading through the locked dor
having heard Ron's departure. 'I promise I won't try and run
away. Please let me out. I want to go to the toilet. Really. This
time I really do.' But he was too scared of Ron to do anything.
Then he looked over and saw a little pool starting to spread
out from under the door. The little girl had wet on the floor.
Ron would be so angry, he thought. With them both.
'They've been practising chemicals on me,' he told
the child behind the locked door. 'The Archons are mad
The Archons are very angry. They will destroy anyone who
stands in their way. They practised chemicals on me and they
will hurt you too.'
'Let me out!'

The muffled voice from the cupboard touched him, but
he dared not do as she asked. The Confessor stood up. He
shuffled over to the telephone. He picked it up and dialled
Harry's home number again. No-one answered. There was
no-one home, he thought.

Meg looked at the artist's picture of  the suspect, drawn from Maureen Mackie's description;
the likeness of the man who had taken Hannah. She looked
at the staring eyes and the down-turned lips, the scraggly hair.
It looked like all the faces of all the crims she'd ever seen.
She studied it for a few moments, then shook her head. It
meant nothing to her and she handed it back to Jim.
'I don't recognise him either,' said Jim. 'It might be
someone Harry worked on by himself, but we were almost
always partners.' He put the picture down on the desk.
Then Jim was ushering them out of the office and the
three of them started walking down the hall to the room
where Devlin had set up his interview.
'Hypnosis,' Devlin was telling the woman as they came to
the door, 'is no more than a state of deep relaxation. There's
nothing magic about it. There's nothing special about me.
I don't have any strange powers. I'm just here to facilitate
you as you enter a state of deep relaxation.'
Maureen Mackie was now sitting in a reclining chair
with Devlin seated opposite her. Jim ushered Meg and
Alison into the room behind the woman, where they sat close together. Alison had her arm around her mother. Jim
Coates remained standing, leaning against the wall near the
doorway.
Devlin moved his chair to be a little closer to the woman
while maintaining a respectful distance. Clipped onto both
their collars were small microphones. Except for those, and
the fact that one of the detectives from the Crime Scene
Support Unit was sitting with a video camera not far behind
him, Devlin, in his long-sleeved shirt and navy and maroon
tie, could have been the manager of a small business about
to have a heart-to-heart with a staff member.
'All I do is speak to you,' he said. 'I offer you words
suggestions -- and you accept them if that is what you want
to do.' Devlin was starting the induction process already
Jim realised, with his subtle leaning forward, and his slight emphasis on the phrase 'deep relaxation.' 'I don't have control over you,' Devlin continued. 'I'm just an ordinary
man who has certain skills that may help you achieve total
relaxation. Do you have any questions?
Maureen Mackie leaned closer to him as if she were about
to say something.
Devlin noticed. 'There's something worrying you,'
he said in his soft voice. 'Let me put your mind at rest"
What is it?'
'It's just that . . . well, I've never been hypnotised before
And you hear such stories about it. I'm worried that-might--'
She stopped.
'Yes?' Devlin's steady non-reactive voice.
'I was waiting for someone at that bus stop. Someone
my husband doesn't know about.'
Devlin nodded. 'Are you worried,' he asked her,
you'll say something in hypnosis about this person, or
some other way give away secrets?'
Maureen Mackie looked very relieved. She nodded.
'Maureen,' said Devlin. 'Hypnosis isn't a truth drug. You
won't say anything more to me than you would if we were
having the same discussion without hypnosis. The only
difference is that you will be deeply relaxed and in this
state you might recall tiny details that could be helpful to
our search for a missing child.' His voice had slowed down
noticeably. 'But you will only tell me what you want to tell
me. You will only tell me details related to our inquiry.
That is why you are here. Nothing more. Your secrets are
safe and will continue to remain safe.'
Maureen Mackie leaned back in the comfortable chair. 'As
I count you down into a state of deep relaxation, Maureen,'
Devlin's hypnotic voice intoned, 'you may notice certain
things. Your eyes may start blinking. They might start
watering. This indicates that you are relaxing deeper and
deeper. You may wish to close your eyes so as to experience
this beautiful state of relaxation even more fully.'
Maureen Mackie's eyes blinked several times and then
closed. Her eyelids nickered. Devlin counted her down
from one to ten, describing what might happen to the
large muscles of her back, neck and head if she relaxed.
The woman leaned more heavily into the fabric of the
chair. When Devlin was satisfied that she was deeply in
trance, he started his questions. He took her right back
to the day before she went to Circular Quay. He asked
her to describe what she was doing. It was going to be a
long session.
Someone tapped Jim on the shoulder and he turned,
pary Stokes gestured him outside. 'Call for you,' he said.
it's someone from the RTA.'
Jim left the hypnosis session and went to his office. He
Picked up the phone.
Jim Coates here.'
Alison could be an adolescent and difficult. I have never really
looked. It was as if she had never seen her older daughter until
this moment. She tightened her hold on Alison again.

I can't get hold of the letters,' Maureen Mackie was saying 'Round
letters. Maybe a "Q"? An "O"? I don't know.'
'Let's leave the number
for awhile, Maureen. Let's concentrate on the man
you saw with Hannah. Can you see him in your mind?' es I can,' she said. 'I can see him right now.'

'Darren here, mate. No joy for you on Max Wolansky
Magda Wolanski is the best I can do.'

'Thanks anyway,' said Jim. He rang off and went back
to the room where Devlin and Maureen Mackie were
going through the events of the morning before she left
on the train.


Half an hour later, Maureen Mackie's mind was again waiting
at the bus stop at Circular Quay. 'What can you see?' Devlin
was asking.

'People. People going here and there. Standing around
waiting.'

'What else? What do you notice that draws your attention?'


'A car.' The woman's voice was almost inaudible. 'A ca
is pulling up.'

'What do you notice about this car?'

'I don't notice much at first. I feel a bit cross that it's
pulling up at a bus stop.'

Behind her almost inaudible voice, a tape played
ambient music. Her head hung to one side; her hands
on her lap. She looked to be deeply asleep.

'Tell me about the car,' Devlin's soft voice matching the 
woman's.


'It's a dark colour a
dark green.'

'A dark green,' Devlin repeated. 'Can you tell me anything
about this dark green car? What state is it from?'

'New South Wales.'

'How do you know it's from New South Wales?'

'I can see the number plate.'

'Tell me more about the number plate.'

'I can't really make it all out. I'm more interested
in watching the little girl and the man now.'

'Right. We'll talk about that in a moment. But just
now, we want to know about the car. That car. The
registration.'

'I can't see the letters.'

'Start where you can.'

'I think there's an eight,' she said. 'And a one and a
seven. I think it's one, seven, eight at the end. Yes. One,
seven, eight.'

'One, seven, eight,' Devlin repeated. 'Anything else you
can tell us, Maureen, about the registration of that car?'

'Now I can see the letters. There are three letters in front
of the numbers.'


'Good, Maureen. That's really good. Just relax now and
take a deep breath.'

'That bastard,' she said softly. 'I know what he's done.' Her
breathing became hard and she shifted uneasily in trance.

'Just relax, Maureen. You're doing very well. Tell us
anything more you remember about that car's registration.'
There was a silence. Meg realised she was gripping Ali too
hard. She loosened her hold and Ali looked at her. In that
moment, with all the agony about Hannah and the fury about
Harry, Meg found herself looking into her daughter's eyes. I
don't think I have ever consciously looked into Ali's eyes like
this in my life, she thought. Not since she was a baby. Not
since she became an adolescent and difficult. I have never really looked.

'Good, Maureen. Now I want you to freeze the image
of that man in your mind. Take a photograph of that man's
face. Can you do that?'
The woman sighed. 'I've got him now. He's got a
baby face'.'
'You can help us find that baby face. In a minute I'm
going to ask you to look at a television screen we've set
up here. There'll be a blank face on that screen and features
to choose from: hair, forehead, eyes, nose and mouth. I'm
going to ask you to start choosing features that are most like
those of the man you saw with Hannah. You can use the
mental photograph you've taken of that man to select the .
features that are most like his. Take your time now. We
can start any time you want.'
'Let's start now,' said Maureen Mackie.
Jim beckoned Meg and she followed him out of the room, 
away from Devlin's soothing voice and the blank face on the« colour monitor.
'This could take awhile,' he said. 'You should go home
now. I'll let you know the minute we know anything.'
Meg wanted to stay, but she looked at Alison. Her older
daughter was exhausted, with dark rings under the eyes and
a grey tone to her face. 'Yes,' said Meg. 'We'll go home
But you must ring me the moment you . . .'
Jim put his hand on her arm. 'I swear. The minute we''
got a face, I'll ring.'
As soon as he'd organised a car for her, he went back
to his office and opened some of the mail in his tray. There
was a certificate from the expert botanist who'd analysed
some of the material from Strathfield and Bathurst. In his
opinion, some of the fragments of leaf matter came from an
exotic tree -- the ebony tree.


The phone was ringing as Meg opened the front door.
She rushed in and picked it up. 'Jim?' she said. 'Is that
you?'
'I think I took the little girl,' said the thin voice.
'Who is this?' Meg's voice was a shocked whisper.
'I couldn't let her out,' said the voice. 'She made a wet on
the floor. I'm sorry. The Archons are too strong for me.'
'Stop ringing me, you crazy!' she screamed and started to
cry. 'Get off this line. My little girl's been stolen!'
'Please,' said the voice, and in spite of her own pain and
anger Meg took in its pleading tone, 'Please get your little
girl. He's gone to the hospital. Please get her before he
comes back.' Then there was a click and he was gone.
'Come back!' Meg screamed. But all that answered her
was the long engaged beep. She slowly put the phone down
and turned to Ali.
'What, Mum? Who was it?'
'Oh Jesus,' Meg whispered to her daughter. 'I think he
knows something. I think Harry's mad old Confessor knows
something. I think he knows where Hannah is. I think he
wanted to help me.'
She grabbed the phone again and rang Jim. She told him,
word for word, as well as she could remember, what the
Confessor had just said.
Listen,' said Jim, 'we'll get a trace on your line. If he
rings again, the security people in Telstra will get onto him.
you'd better stay there in case he rings again.'
Jim put the phone down, then called a mate in Telstra
who said he'd do the job straight away, pending the relevant
authority. Jim Went through the records-He was hoping that he would See something or make a connection that
would help, But he couldn't remember the Confessor's
name. He called out for Gary Stokes but he was out
checking recent releases from psych units and prisons, so he
put young Kerryann Fish on the job.
'We're looking for someone whose nickname is "the
Confessor.",'Jim told her. 'He's more of a pest than anything.
I don't know if he's got a record. We want his full name.
His first name is . . .' Jim paused. 'It's an unusual name.
Some famous writer's name,' he said. 'Like ... I don't
know -Dante
or something. It's urgent.' Kerryann nodded
and started work.
Jim went back to the interview room down the hall and opened the door. Nobody turned to see who it was because
Devlin and the Crime Scene detective, who had left his
seat behind the video camera, were focused on the printer.
Everyone was waiting for the result of Maureen Mackie's
description to materialise in the printer tray. Maureen herself,
now out of trance and alert, also stood watching as the first
edge of photographic paper inched out. Dark wispy hair
was all that could be seen at first; then the forehead; then
wrap-around sunglasses; the nose, fleshy and curved; the area
between the nose and lips, completely covered by a thick,
Stalin-type moustache. Only the outline of the bottom lip
could be seen.
The printer stopped and Devlin scooped the portrait up.;
He turned it right way up. Maureen Mackie stared at the
podgy-faced man.
'Is this like the man who drove the green car?' Devlin
asked.
Maureen Mackie was slowly shaking her head and Jim
felt himself droop in disappointment. All those hours wasted
resources that might have been put to better use. But
then he saw the expression on Maureen Mackie's face,
The woman was shaking her head in amazement
disbelief. 'I can't believe it,' she was saying. 'It's exactly
like him. It's exactly like the man who took the little
girl.'
Jim stared at the face. 'I've got a feeling I know this joker,'
he said, picking up the picture. He stared at it and his mind
raced through the different men he'd interrogated, trying to
find a match.
While Devlin escorted Maureen Mackie downstairs to
organise a car for her, Jim took the picture and the registration
number down to media liaison. 'Get this out to everyone,'
he told them. 'Someone apart from one woman waiting at
Circular Quay must have seen this bastard.'
He went back to his office, passing the open area where
Kerryann Fish was sitting in front of the monitor, checking
out nicknames, but she shook her head at him to show that
she hadn't yet found anything helpful. Jim went through
into his office and stood for a moment, leaning his forehead
against the glass of the window. The two pigeons huddled
together on the ledge. Somewhere out there, in the city,
was this man who had taken Hannah. And he was presently,
if the Confessor was really on to something as Meg believed,
at any one of the various hospitals around the city. But at
least now they had a face and a car registration.
Jim rang the Dog Squad and eventually tracked down the
sergeant in charge. He spoke of his concern about Harry and
felt a bit better when he heard that Ray Gosling was already
on his way to the Bathurst area to see if he could get a lead
on his missing colleague. Jim rang off. Two men, Jim was
thinking. One somewhere in the bush with Harry Doyle
quite possibly on his trail and another one, somewhere in
Sydney, possibly at a hospital. Or are they the same man?
There was nothing he could do, right at this moment, about
Hannah. About Harry. He recognised that he was exhausted.
Maybe his brain would work better after a rest. He sat on his
chair and leaned back. He had no trouble sleeping anytime,
anywhere. He'd dozed beside hideously mutilated bodies as
he waited for colleagues to arrive at crime scenes. Jim was
asleep in seconds.

Harry strained again and this time the pain from his chafed
wrist made him roar. But the ropes were looser. He'd
been chafing himself and wriggling and straining for what
seemed like ages because the image of Angus harming his
family had given him some sort of preternatural endurance
and strength. This time when he gripped the knife again,
he found he was able to push his hand up in an awkward
angle and touch one layer of the rope that secured him.
He wriggled his toes and ankles to bring some life back
to feet and legs grown numb from the pressure. He could
only make a tiny movement with the knife, no longer than
fingertips. But it was a movement, and it would, he hoped,
eventually wear down the rope, strand by strand. But the
injuries to the skin of his wrists were militating against him,
becoming hot and inflamed. Once the tissue swelled, it
would make movement impossible. He scraped harder and
harder. Razor whimpered from time to time or gave voice
to a desolate howl. Every now and then a shower of little
stones would fall from above his sacking prison, to tumble
into the silence below. When that happened, Harry froze
a moment before resuming his persistent scraping,
and continued to saw away with the little one-handed knife
in this almost impossible fashion. If I do get free, he thought
to himself, what do I do then? Do I try and cut myself out
of the bag? Do I hold on to whatever projection it is that is
delaying the free fall of this sack? Will Razor make it or will
he plummet as I free myself? Razor, perhaps picking up his
pack leader's thoughts, wriggled around and howled anew, a
sad, penetrating sound that echoed through the shaft. Again,
Harry squeezed ankles and calves together, wriggled his feet
up and down, trying to encourage more circulation. Then
he froze. The bag had slipped another notch on whatever
was holding it from the yawning mouth of the shaft. Surely
it would give any minute. He had to move quickly. He
sliced away at the rope, only stopping now to strain against
it, filling his chest, pushing with all his might against the
constraints of the bonds. One last time. Nothing happened; Harry slumped in despair. He strained to make another tiny
scraping motion, stopped, tugged hard against his bonds and
his hands separated.
Harry roared with exhilaration, a hoarse, primitive sound
He pulled one arm up and tugged at the rope that still twisted
around his body, trying to unwind it. His other arm felt cold
and dead, lacking circulation, and with his free arm he rubbed
some life back into it. Eventually he was able to shrug the
rope lower and his hands were free. With the little knife
he made a careful opening high up in the bag, where he
hoped the weight of himself and the dog would not cause
the fabric to rip, and pushed his face through the hole.
It was such a relief to have this small freedom that
he felt tears come into his eyes. He felt triumphant. But
that feeling quickly ebbed as he blinked and looked around
with eyes that were very keen now, having been in darkness
so long. High above he could see the opening of the
shaft, almost a pinhole, showing the paler grey that was
drifting Down here, and all around him, he could see the ancient
timber hoardings that must have formed the housing for the
now-vanished platform lift, in whose space he and the dog
were now suspended. Cautiously, he cut the sacking a little
more. It started to rip and he roared in shock. But it stopped
as suddenly, having hit the strength of a seam. Now he was
hanging half out of the sack, clinging to the fabric for dear life,
and Razor was scrabbling at his knees, trying to claw his way
out 'Sit still,' he shouted. Your life could depend on the obedience
and response of your dog, he heard his training sergeant say from
long ago. Razor obeyed immediately. 'Good dog, good dog,'
he said. Cautiously, he put a hand down and petted Razor's
big ears. Then he put his arm out and reached above the
sack, over his head. By twisting around and feeling along
with his fingertips, he could feel that he and Razor weren't
caught on some tree root or jagged rock but on some sort
of metal frame. He continued to creep his fingers along until
he could get a handhold on what felt like flaky, rusted metal,
gradually increasing his pull on it, testing its strength. Finally,
he let it take almost all his weight. The sharp corrosion cut
into his hand, but the metal held firm. Somehow, he had to
get himself out of the sack, lift himself up, get himself into
a safe position and then try to get Razor to safety. Then
he had to find a way up out of the shaft. He had lost
his torch somewhere in the engagement with Angus. His
weapon, cuffs, baton and dump bag had all been removed
from the rings on his belt. All he had was himself, his dog,
a useless set of keys and the little knife.
Harry started to consider the plan of action. He had
already had all the luck due to him in this lifetime with
the rusty metal projection that had broken their fall some
way down the mine shaft. Slowly, he raised one arm again
took hold of the metal projection that supported the
sack. Beneath him, he felt the fabric of the bag start to tear
again. He froze. With great care, he raised his other arm.
It was almost impossible to manoeuvre, and he was thankful
for a lifetime of chin-ups and push-ups, of constant running
after dogs, of being forced over fences and gates and through
thick brush, of having to lift heavy, unwilling dogs high up
over fences. His daily work demanded that he keep up with
a dog. Now, he realised, this daily endeavour to stay as fit
as a police dog just might save his life.	
He felt the throbbing pain of the wound on his head
and the burning sensation in the skin of his bloody wrist.
It seemed to Harry that he was in a combat zone again,
he felt the adrenalin rush of battle. Angus had wanted
to take him alive. Had wanted to throw him in a sack with
his dog. And toss him alive down the mine shaft. 'You
bastard, Wetherill,' he cursed. Razor whimpered and pawed
at his legs.


The Confessor couldn't bear to hear the little girl anymore.
'Stop it!' he called to her. 'Just be good. Just be quiet. Be
good or I'll have to punish you.' But the little girl would
not be quiet. She kept yelling out, begging him to let her
out. The Confessor stood up and looked at the locked door
and remembered how it was to be locked up like that. They
used to do it to him all the time in the hospitals. Two or
three nurses would grab him and drag him down into the
time-out cellar. People were always locking him up, since
he was a little boy. 'Stop that noise,' she used to say in
the Home. 'You shut up or in you'll go, my fine sir.
Into Matron's cubbyhole until you're a good boy. You
must learn to be a good boy. It's for your own good,' she used to say.

The Confessor shuffled a little closer to the door. 'You
must learn to be a good boy,' he said to the door. The little
girl was kicking the door. But it was a good strong door, he
knew that, and he'd never been able to get out either.

'It's for your own good,' he told the door. He put his
hands over his ears because she was crying again. He could
not bear to hear her crying like that. 'Stop it!' he yelled.
'You must stop it!' He shuffled away towards the kitchen
door. I will go away, he thought, and this noise will stop.
He opened the door and went out, locking it behind him.
The cries could not be heard out there in the street.
Ah, that was better. The Confessor sighed with relief. But
the Archons stirred in his mind. 'Useless, stupid good for
nothing,' they started telling him. 'You're fit for nothing.
You're just rubbish. What are you? What are you?' 'Rubbish,'
he muttered to himself as he made his slow way down the
street. 'Rubbish is what I am. Must learn to be a good boy.'
He was pleased that the terrible noise had stopped. He might
go back to ward seventeen again and stay there for awhile
because these days they didn't lock up. They gave him pills
and he could be unconscious or dreamy and the voices of the
Archons sometimes left him alone when he was there. There
was that freckled young nurse who listened to him. Harry
Doyle and the young nurse on ward seventeen were the two
people in the world who listened to him. The Confessor
felt in his pockets for loose change because here on the
corner was a public telephone and he could tell everything
to Harry Doyle. But Harry Doyle was not home. Only his
angry woman was there. The Confessor reconsidered. He
decided to go to ward seventeen and make the phone call
from there.

The ute rattled over the roads. All he needed to do
now, Angus thought, was meet up with Pughsie and
pay him the rest of the money. He remembered his nine
months for assault and the good luck that had put him in
with Pughsie, who liked to boast about the long sentence
he'd almost served and then torment other men with his
constant reminders that he was coming up for release. In
the prison print shop, where they'd worked for the state for
twenty-four dollars a week, it hadn't taken long for Angus
Wetherill and Ronald Pugh to discover that they both had
issues concerning Harry Doyle. Angus recalled Pugh's ugly
down-turned mouth glistening when they'd talked over the
plan. Jail was a great place, Angus had discovered, for hatred
to harden into vengeful action.

Soon he'd have half of the Doyles accounted for. That left
only the woman and the older girl. The older girl, Angus
knew, wasn't a Doyle by birth. Maybe he'd let her off. Maybe
he wouldn't. This must be how God feels, he thought. I'll
take you, and you. But perhaps not you. Then again, I just
might change my mind. Angus smiled. That left the woman,
he thought to himself. The woman is definitely mine. The
stupid, stupid bloody woman. He noted the kilometres to
Sydney. He put his foot down.

I can't stand sitting around like this,' Meg said. 'I've got
to do something.'
She and Ali had dozed fitfully, still fully dressed, sleeping
in the living room next to the telephone that would not
ring. Meg hoped Max would ring again, or better still arrive,
beautiful and remorseful, to help her in this desperate hour.
But she accepted that Max was not reliable. 'I'll be there as
soon as I can,' he'd said and that would have to do.
Blade uncurled from his rug behind the kitchen door and
ambled in to greet them, tail low and barely wagging, and Ali
ruffled his ears absent-mindedly. He was almost recovered
from his viral infection.
They'd woken well before dawn and sat in aching silence
as the east lightened and then pinked. Not a breath of air
stirred; it was going to be another hot day. Meg sat sipping
the coffee that Ali had made for her, ignoring the toast on
the plate beside it. She looked across at Alison sitting in the
big armchair next to her and put her hand out to take her
daughter's. Too many emotions tangled inside her, leading
to tears.
'Ali. You've been so good to me. And I've been such a
shit of a mother to you since you stopped being little. I sort
of ignored you because I didn't know what to do. I gave my
attention to Hannah because she was easier, littler. I don't
understand why I did that. I just wish I'd had the wisdom
to know what to do. But I didn't, Ali. I didn't know what
to do so I'd yell at you instead. I've been a hopeless mother
to you.'
Ali's eyes filled with tears. 'Don't say that,' she said.
Meg leaned over and kissed her and they rocked in each
other's arms.
'I've got to do something, Ali, to bring Hannah home. I
can't bear this sitting around. I can't sit and wait like Jim says.
I've got to do something to help my girl. I'm her mother.'
'Like what?' Ali put her coffee down and went into the
kitchen to find something to eat. Meg followed her and
leaned over the kitchen sink, washing her face in cold water.
She straightened up and Ah passed her a towel. Meg rubbed
her face. She seemed to have lost weight, Ali thought, almost
overnight. There were shadows around her mother's mouth
and eyes which she'd never seen before.
'I'm going to ring around the psych hospitals,' said Meg.
'Track down the Confessor. He knows about Hannah. If
he hasn't got her himself he knows who has. He said "He's
gone to the hospital. Please get her before he comes back."
Maybe he's talking about himself; giving us a hint. Did he
take Hannah and is now telling us that he's giving himself
up?' Ali looked at the cereal and milk she'd poured in a
bowl, then pushed it away. 'Maybe,' Meg continued, 'it's
his crazy way of connecting with Harry. Taking his child.'
'I wish Dad would come home,' Alison suddenly said.
And Meg had to bite her tongue because she'd been about
to say something thoughtless like 'He's never here when I
need him'.
'Do you think something's happened to him? Why doesn't
he ring?' Ali was yearning, Meg could feel, for reassurance
and tenderness. I have been so hard, she thought to herself.
Preoccupied lately with myself and my messy life. 'I don't
think anything has happened to him,' she said in a level
voice. 'I think he just needed to get away. Maybe he's
thinking about a divorce.'
Alison turned to face her mother fair and square. 'And
don't you even care?' she said. Meg bit her tongue and the
'not much' that was ready to trip off it. 'I am thinking about
Hannah at the moment,' she said, and got away with it.

A little while later, Meg had made a list of phone numbers.
She dialled the first one.
'Hullo,' she said when they answered, continuing almost
without hesitation, 'this is Detective Sergeant Margaret
Doyle from Child Protection.' She saw the look on Ali's
face as she went on. 'We're looking for an informant whom
we believe may help us in our inquiries about a missing child.
Hannah Doyle.' Her voice cracked on the last two words
and she collected herself quickly. 'We only know him by
nickname: "the Confessor". He has no criminal record. It's
important that we know his whereabouts.' Ali watched as
her mother talked a Little more then rang off.
'The woman I spoke to had heard of him through other
staff members,' Meg told her daughter, 'but he's never been
admitted to that hospital so there are no records there.' Her
heart had lifted  just a little because she was taking action,
on the trail.
'Mum, it's an offence to impersonate a police officer.'
Alison looked down at her fingernails and then back up
at her mother. Meg left the phone and went to where Ali
now sat, hunched and sad and anxious, on the edge of the
sofa, and sat beside her, putting her arms around her older
daughter. Alison had picked up some nail clippers and was
cutting off her witchy black nails.
'I've been a member of a twenty-four-hour on-call
specialist police unit,' said Meg, 'for nearly ten years. I
deserve the rank.' Alison smiled. 'I swear,' said Meg, 'to
do everything in my power to bring Hannah safely home,
and that makes me a sworn officer. I'll do anything, Ali,'
she said.
Ali nodded. 'Yes,' she said to her mother. The too.'
'What are you doing?' Meg suddenly noticed as Alison
clipped the last one.
'There,' she said, examining her hands. They were short,
square hands, capable and strong. 'I don't need them anymore,'
she said. Then the terrible thought she had previously
dared not entertain forced itself into her consciousness,
demanding. 'Mum?'
'Yes?'
'What if Hannah is already dead?'
Meg's heart contracted to hear the words, but once they
were out in the air, they seemed to lose just some of their
terrible, tormenting energy, and instead of being charged
with unimaginable horror, now seemed to be laden with
the deepest sadness.
'If that is the case,' said Meg, aware of how tightly she
was holding herself against the pain, 'we'll get the person
responsible and they will pay.' She looked out the window
at the suburban scene and the bougainvillea flourishing purple
blooms. 'They will pay,' she repeated.
Two hours later, she had a name and an address. 'It's only
the last known address,' the night supervisor told her, 'and
it's pretty old. Psych patients tend to move around a lot.
But it might give you another lead,' she said. Meg noted
the name and address. Soon, she would track this crazy man
down. She would be reunited with Hannah. 'You've got to
ring Jim,' said Alison. Meg rang and Jim wasn't there but
she left the name and last known address of the Confessor
with Gary Stokes.
'Jim's gone home,' he said. 'For a sleep. He's worked
nearly three shifts in a row. But I'll get onto this,' Stokes
promised.
Meg put the phone down. 'Ring him at home,' Alison
said, and Meg tried but there was no answer.
'He might be dead to the world. He might have pulled
the phone out. He might be anywhere.'
Meg went into the bedroom and pulled out a light tracksuit in a dark blue colour. She put her walking boots
on. A new energy flowed through her, activating her. Her
heart throbbed and she felt better than she had at any time
since Hannah's disappearance. Then she went into Harry's
office and unlocked the gun safe. She drew out the little
steely automatic .45 that Harry always kept at home, fishing
around in his desk drawers until she'd found the ammunition.
She loaded the magazine and pushed it home into the butt.
She put the weapon on 'safety' and carefully placed it in the
pocket of the tracksuit.
She went outside and into the shed where the dogs' harnesses
were stored, glancing at the empty place where Razor's gear
usually hung, wishing she had a more experienced dog to
work with. Blade was flighty and not fully trained, she knew,
and only just over a viral infection. But he was courageous.
She pulled his tackle off the wall and came back inside.
Blade, keen to work but somewhat puzzled as to why
the dominant bitch was harnessing him, sniffed the air for
enlightenment.
'Let's go,' Meg said. And they did.


Jim had been asleep for only a few hours when he was
woken by his mobile ringing.
'Yes?' he said, rubbing his stinging eyes and trying to
hear properly despite a head echoing with exhaustion.
These sorts of hours were too much for him these days,
he thought.
It was Gary Stokes. 'Boss? Brian from Fingerprints wants
to talk to you. He's coming in now.'
'I'm on my way,' said Jim. One day, he thought, I'll get
out of the job and I'll play golf and go to the club for lunch
and have dessert. 'Anything on Harry?' he asked.
'No. Nothing. His boss said he'd had words with Harry
about the family situation last week. Harry told him he
was going bush for awhile. Harry's wife rang. We've got
a name and the last known address of that crazy who used
to ring you. You were spot on about it being the name of
an author; it's Milton -Milton
Pugh.'
'Milton,' said Jim. 'Not Dante.' And he wondered how
Meg had done it.
'Come again?' Stokes asked.
'I can't do anything about it just now. Get someone to
drop round and check it out.'

When Jim got back to his office, he made coffee. His phone
rang and it was Security downstairs telling him that Brian
Foveaux was on his way up. Jim checked the pigeons. One
egg had rolled out of the nest and lay broken on the ledge; the
female sat on the other two while the male huddled asleep.
Jim knew from his colleague's face that it was bad news
the moment Brian walked in.
'I was on my way to an interview at College Street,' he
said, 'so I thought I'd bring the results in person. It's about
as bad as it can be.'
He opened a folder and took out several enlarged photographs
of finger-and
partial thumb-prints. 'We got a lot of
points of similarity,' he said, dropping the photographs on
Jim's desk. Jim picked one up, noting the ridges and whorls,
the swirling pattern of human skin. 'Richard Fellowes turns
out to be a geezer with a very nasty record,' said Brian. 'I
reckon you can kiss that little girl goodbye. His real name
is Ronald Vincent Pugh. Mean anything to you?'
Jim gripped the desk. 'Jesus,' he said. He knew there
had been something about that face. Brian Foveaux stared
at him. Jim was remembering the late night scene at the
Police Centre ten years ago, and the training video he almost
knew by heart with Harry talking in his soft, complicit way
to Pugh; the almost hypnotic trance his voice created as he
reconstructed the last few moments of little Helen Semple's
life on the banks of the Nepean River. Then another scene
almost immediately came into his mind, of the underground
car park and a handcuffed man, his baby face distorted, being
pushed into a Corrective Services van, screaming vengeance
and hatred, he picked up the phone to ring Meg. Ronald
Pugh. Milton Pugh. He put it down again.
'Harry Doyle put him away for a long time for the murder
of a little girl,' said Brian. 'I checked with Corrective Services.
He got out last month.'
Jim sprang into action. He called Gary. 'What's the latest
address we've got for this bastard?' asked Jim, handing him
the photographs. Gary Stokes vanished. Again, Jim picked
up the phone and dialled Harry's number. Nothing. Just
the answering machine. Jim put the phone down, ashamed
of the relief he felt. But then immediately concerned. Why
wasn't she by the phone?
Gary came back. 'Ronald Pugh gave his mother's address.
Little Windmill Street, Millers Point.'
'Let's go,' said Jim, grabbing his jacket. 'Get as many
people down there as we can. You come with me,' he
said to Stokes. 'Tell Kerryanne to keep trying to get onto
Meg Doyle. Someone line up an ambulance.' He put his
jacket on. 'No sirens.' He grabbed a shoulder holster and
went to the safe for his gun.

Meg parked down the road and on the opposite side to the
address she'd been given for Milton Pugh. It was a small
weatherboard cottage in a street in Mascot. Aircraft roared
overhead and the heat rose from the tarmac in shimmering
mirages.
'That's it,' she said. A low brick fence ran across the front of
the yard, where several old rose bushes struggled to breathe
in air filled with the fumes of Avgas. 'You stay here, Ali,
with Blade. He might be frightened of dogs.' Alison nodded
and looked up at her mother, her hair pulled back and no
make-up on her face, like a little girl again. Meg walked up
the path and up a couple of steps to the front door -- timber
and frosted glass and cobwebs. She knocked and waited. Nothing
happened. She knocked again, and this time she discerned a figure
moving down the hallway towards the front door. The door
opened a little way and a face peered at her. It belonged to a
middle-aged man with pale blue eyes and waxy white skin like
a nun's. Meg had the impression of a hidden child, terrified and
waiting.
'I'm looking for Milton Pugh,' she said.
'Yes,' the man answered.
'Does he live here?'
'Yes,' he said again, but the door remained in the same
position, almost closed with the frightened, white face staring
around at her.

'May I come in?' Meg asked.

'Yes,' he said without moving.

'The door,' said Meg. 'You'll need to open the door.'

'Yes,' said the other, opening the door.

Meg hesitated then stepped through and started to walk down
the hallway. The house was very dark inside, and then Meg
realised it wasn't just because she'd come in from bright sunlight.
Meg could see a little way into the three rooms that opened off the
hallway and each room was filled with boxes and piles of groceries,
stacked floor to ceiling. Similar boxes lined the hall on either side,
only leaving a narrow passage through the middle. It was like some
crazy supermarket, filled with unwieldy piles of breakfast cereals,
biscuits, tinned foods, boxes of tins, cake mixes, packets of sugar
and flour. She turned around and the man stood uncertainly in
the doorway behind her, staring at her.

'I'm looking for Milton,' she said. 'You told me he was
here.'
'Yes,' he said again, clutching at the front of his shirt with a
thin, pale hand.

'Are you Milton?'

Again, the man nodded. 'Yes,' he said. He stood slumped,
silhouetted against the cloudy glass, head bowed.

Meg had entered the lounge room. All around her towered
more hoards of food. Now that she was closer, she could see
that many of the boxes were rotting or chewed and the contents
spilled in little pyramids on the ancient floral carpet. She felt
confusion, frustration and anger all mixed together.

'You rang my husband'sphone,' she said. 'Harry Doyle. You
said someone had gone to the hospital and that I should come
and get my little girl before he got back. You spoke to me.
Don't you remember?'

'Yes,' he said.

'For God's sake!' screamed Meg. 'Can't you say anything
else except "yes"?'

'Yes,' he agreed, and Meg suddenly realised with shock that
he could not.

There was a noise from the front of the house and a very
fat old woman in a purple dressing-gown suddenly squeezed
between two towers of ancient groceries.

'And who are you?' she demanded. She had the same waxy
indoor complexion as the man at the door.

'I'm looking for my little girl,' said Meg, almost in tears. 'I
was told Milton Pugh lived here. He rang me. And so I came
here. I want to talk to him because he might know something
about my daughter.'

'Poor dearie,' said the old woman, and her face was suddenly
soft. 'Families are such trials, aren't they? But Milton doesn't
live here anymore. He and my nephew Butterscotch here used
to fight all the time.'

'Did he say where he was going? Do you know where he
lives now?'

The deafening roar of a low-flying aircraft rattled the house
and Meg stood in the dark room, among the ruined stores of
food, hopes completely dashed.

'He was here, day before yesterday, just for a visit,' Butterscotch's
aunt finally said, as the thunderous noise eased. 'But he
left yesterday morning. I don't know where he was going.'

Meg looked down the hall to the door where the defeated
man was still standing, uncertainly holding the door.

'You wouldn't have any idea where he might be, where he
might go?' Meg asked as she walked to the door.

The old woman considered. She pulled her dressing-gown
around her and followed Meg down the hall, opening the door
wider, allowing Meg to go out.



'I think he usually stays at his mother's house.'

'Do you know where that is?'

'Good heavens, no,' she said. 'Somewhere. He wanted me
to send his mail on.'

Meg felt she couldn't take another step. She'd had a taste
of hope but now there was nothing but this dead end of
old groceries, eccentricity. She couldn't bring herself to say
goodbye, simply turned and made her way down the cement
path to the car.

Alison saw her mother's face and put a hand over her mouth
as Meg -walked around to the driver's side and got in. 'What are
we going to do now?' she asked.

Meg closed her eyes against the tears she could feel building,
and tookup the car keys. 'I don't know, Ali. Go home and wait,
I suppose. There's nothing we can do.'

She had no energy. Even putting the key in the ignition and
starting the car seemed inordinately hard to do.

She was pulling away from the kerb when she noticed the
purple dressing-gown flapping out of the house and the fat
woman running onto the footpath behind the car. The old
woman clutched the purple fabric together with one hand,
awkwardly waving a small white paper in the other. 'Stop!
Stop!' the woman was calling. Meg slammed on the brakes,
the car jerked to a stop and Blade fell in the back, slipping and
sliding to regain his balance.

Meg jumped out of the car and ran back. 'This is the
forwarding address,' said the woman, waving it. 'I remembered
where I'd left it.' And she put an envelope with an address on
it in Meg's hand. Meg looked at the painstaking letters, a little
spidery, as if the hand that formed them had trembled as it
wrote. Nineteen Little Windmill Street, Millers Point, she
read. The address of the Confessor's mother.

'And will you tell Milton something for me?' said the old
woman, wrinkling her face up against the hot sun. 'Tell him
no mail ever came. Not one thing.'

Meg thanked her and ran back to the car. Her heart was
beating hard.


Meg had passed the house in Little Windmill Street three
times, driving round the block to get a good look from all
angles. It was a nineteenth century terrace with a back entry
giving onto a narrow lane. It had a run-down paling fence on
sandstone footings, with a rotting wooden gate almost covered
by a choko vine.

Meg and Alison pulled up a little way down the road from
number nineteen and on the opposite side. Meg reached for
the mobile and rangjim.

'We're on our way!' he yelled when he heard where they
were. 'Stay in the car!'

'Sure,' Meg lied and rang off. She turned to her daughter. If
this house was as weird as the one she'd just left, she didn't want
to take any chances. 'Listen, Ali. You take Blade,' she said, 'just
in case, and wait outside that back gate in the lane.'

'Just in case of what?' Alison asked, alerted by her mother's
manner.

'Just in case it's helpful to have Blade out and ready. You'll
be safer than if you had a gun. Blade will go for anyone who
even thinks about touching you. I'll go in the front,' she said.
'But I want to be first in there. I want to know first-hand what
he knows about Hannah. I don't want any police frightening
him or pushing me away from the scene.'

'I don't know the attack command,' said Alison, almost in
tears. 'I wish Dad was here. Why isn't he here?' Blade was
pulling on his harness.

'Trust the dog's judgement,' said Meg. 'Blade will know
what to do. He won't let anyone hurt you. Just hold tight to


the harness. He's trained to protect whoever is holding him.'
The two looked at each other.

'Let's go,' said Meg. 'Let's get our baby back.'

She jumped out of the car. Alison took hold of Blade's
line and he dropped out of the car, looking around, sniffing,
immediately interesting himself with the job. Meg watched as
Alison disappeared round the corner. She gave her daughter
a moment or two to station herself at the back of number
nineteen, then she opened the rickety gate and walked up to
the front door.

The house looked neglected. Vines covered the rusted iron
of the front verandah and paint peeled from the exterior walls.
She peered through a window to the left of the front door.
Inside, she could see an untidy bedroom, old cheap furniture,
a naked globe hanging from the ceiling. She wondered what
she'd say to the Confessor, how she'd communicate with him, while she banged on the door. 'Open this door!' she yelled. And
then she heard it. Hannah's wail. Unmistakably the sound of
her daughter's voice. Meg's heart turned inside out. Hannah.
My darling. 'Open this door!' she screamed, bashing the door
panels with all her strength. 'Hannah! I'm here!'

'Get him away from me!' she heard her younger daughter
cry. 'Somebody help me! Get the police. Get my father! Get
me away from him.'

The voice was suddenly stifled. Meg's heart pounded in her
ears and her whole body was suffused with some red-hot, then
white-hot energy. It burst through her body, triggered by
the terror in her daughter's cry. It channelled down through
her spine, electrifying her legs. Meg didn't know how it
happened until later but she had smashed through the glass
of that dirty window, arced off the bed like an Olympic
gymnast and was on her feet running down the hallway.
Somewhere, she was aware of Blade going crazy out the back.

'I'm here Hanks!' she screamed at the top of her voice. 'Where
are you?'

'Mum!' screamed Hannah. 'Mummy!'

The terrible note in the last screamed word made Meg draw
the weapon. She fumbled to take the safety off. If I see him, I'll
trill him. But when she did see him, he was coming out of what
seemed like a dark cupboard, grabbing his trousers at the front
as she came into the kitchen. Meg stopped short, panting. She
raised the weapon instinctively in front of her, because now he
was shambling towards her. Half his face was bandaged and he
held his head stiffly to one side so that he looked like something
from a horror movie.

'Stop right there, you bastard!' she screamed. 'Stop or I'll
shoot.' She levelled the pistol at him, using her other hand
to support her trembling grasp. 'Hanks!' she screamed. 'Are
you all right? Where are you?' But the bandaged mummy kept
coming at her, his black eyes boring into hers, smoking with
hatred and rage. Then Meg became aware of a horrible noise
coming from him. His heavy little red mouth was open and he
was growling like an animal. In spite of her charged state, the
guttural snarl froze her. Meg was aware of the hackles of her
neck and spine rising. And in that moment of immobilisation,
he had somehow evaded her, springing sideways to vanish out
the kitchen door.

'Mum!' Hannah was running at her and Meg barely remembered
to drop the gun before catching her daughter up in her
arms -- laughing, crying, sobbing, choking all together. 'Mum,
oh Mum. I'm sorry, I'm sorry!' Hannah was sobbing.

'It's all right, it's all right,' was all Meg could say, choking
and crying together. She held her daughter tightly as they
walked, almost falling over because Meg had completely
gone in the legs. Out of the kitchen they went, down the
dirty hall and into the sunlight as Jim Coates' car, blazingly

white in the sun and followed by two others, screeched to a
halt outside.
Ronald Pugh stumbled out of the kitchen and down the
overgrown flagstone path, ducking to one side to avoid colliding
with the clothes. A thorny lemon tree scraped the bitten
side ofhis head and neck and he yelped with pain. As he reached
the back fence, he could hear someone in the hallway of the
house behind him, yelling out his name. Pugh grabbed the bolt
lock that closed the wooden gate in the back fence and slid
it open. He was still growling and holding his bandaged ear
as he shoved the gate open, knocking Alison to the ground.
Alison screamed, recovered, and slipped Blade, who leaped at
Pugh's throat.
Pugh bellowed and punched out, hitting Blade viciously.
Blade's teeth closed on the bandage, ripping it off before he
dropped, stunned by the blows. Pugh kicked out at him,
shouting, and Alison ducked, rolling over the ground to get
away. Meanwhile Blade, confused and in pain and with his
handler sprawled out on the ground, flew through the air again,
sinking his fangs deeply into Pugh's neck, the momentum
throwing them both to the ground. Pugh struggled, kicking
and punching, but Blade danced like a fighter, savaging the
neck, growling through his clenched fangs, maintaining his
grip. Alison got to her feet, shaking and shocked, as a brilliant
sheet of arterial blood arced out from Pugh's neck onto the
fence, painting the grey timber transparent crimson. Pugh's
racing heart pumped his body empty through the severed
carotid artery, so that by the time Jim Coates had run through
the backyard and appeared at the gateway in the fence, Blade
was sitting at attention beside the prostrate figure like a good
dog, Alison was shaking and ashen-faced but firmly holding
Blade's line, and Ronald Pugh was dead.


I don't want a doctor to look at me,' Hannah wailed
as she sat in the bath. 'I'm not sick. And I want Dad and
Razor to come home now. Why isn't he here? I want you to
get Blade back from the dogs' hospital. I want him tonight.'
Meg dribbled warm water down her younger daughter's
back and Alison sat on a stool. 'Okay, darling,' said Meg. 'No
doctor. And I promise we'll getBlade back tomorrow. Donjust
wanted to keep him in overnight because of the deep bruising
where that man kicked him.'
'Why didn't Dad come and get me?'
'He's away, darling,' said Meg, feeling the anger at her
husband building again.
'That horrible man was going to hurt me. He locked me
up in a dark cupboard. He didn't even care. But he didn't do
anything to me,' she continued, 'because I bit him and then
you got there. But he was going to. He kicked Blade. I was so
scared, Mum.' The tears ran down her face again. My beautiful
girl, thought Meg, and her heart ached. I have failed to protect
my child.
'I knew when we got to the place,' Hannah was saying, 'I
knew he wasn't Richard's father. But he was too strong and
he pushed me in that cupboard.' She burst into tears again. 'I

thought he would kill me. I thought I ¦was going to die and I
would never see you or Ali or Dad or the dogs again.'

Her wail filled the bathroom and Meg grabbed the towel
and wrapped her daughter in it. 'Oh Hannah,' she said. 'I'm so
sorry. I'm just so sorry.' She held her child close to her heart. 'I
don't know what I would have done if anything had happened
to you.'

Hannah pulled away and looked at her mother, her
expression outraged and stunned. 'He came back again after
I bit his ear nearly off. He was all bandaged and he was trying
to get me. I just punched and kicked and I didn't care what I
did to him. I got very strong. But I was so frightened. Because
he was much stronger. I hate him. I'm glad he's dead. I'm
glad Blade killed him. Now he can never hurt me again.'
Hannah looked so small and sweet with her hair flattened on
her head and her wet eyelashes in points like stars. Meg felt
the love rise up in her. And the fury that anyone could want
to hurt her.

'Where's Dad?' Hannah demanded again, as if she'd forgotten
he was away. 'I was waiting for Dad to come and get
me with Razor.' She started crying again, waning heartbroken
sobs, and Meg held her and soothed her. She dried and
powdered the small, shaking body, the round bottom and
the slender back.

'There, Hanky-dory,' said Alison. 'You're all iced and
ready to eat.' But Hannah continued to wail, refusing to be
comforted by their old icing sugar game. 'Dad's gone bush for
awhile,' Alison attempted to explain again.

Hannah looked from one to the other. 'Why?' she asked.
'Doesn't he even care that I was kidnapped? Doesn't he even
care that a man was going to rape me and kill me?'

Alison looked over her sister's head at her mother. Meg
looked stricken. All she could do was put her arms around
the distressed little girl and hold her against herself until the
sobbing subsided.

'He does care, darling,' said Meg. 'He just doesn't know.
He's out of range.'

'He's my father and he should know,' sobbed Hannah. 'I
want Dad,' she cried over and over. 'I want him to come
home.' Her grief was enormous and seemed to Meg to contain
all the suffering of her life.

Later, when she'd cried herself out, Hannah told everything
again to Jim. 'And the other one, the funny one,' said Jim.

'The Confessor,' said Meg. 'I'd forgotten all about him.
I wouldn't have been able to get Hannah back if it hadn't
been for him. I owe him the life of my daughter. I want to
see him, Jim.'

'I never realised the Confessor and Pugh were connected,'
said Jim. 'Looks like Ronald was sick and violent and Milton
was sick and mad.'

'Happy families,' said Meg, and not all the bitterness was
aimed at the Pugh brothers. I must get my own house in order,
she thought to herself.

'I've got a whole lot of stuff my blokes collected from the
crime scene in the car,' said Jim. 'I want to get it sorted out as
soon as possible. There may be something we can do for poor
old Milton now that his brother is dead.'

Hannah didn't want to go to bed, but finally they persuaded
her.

'I don't want the computer in here,' she said. 'I want you to
take it out of my room. And I want to sleep in the big nubbler.'

Meg and Alison looked at each other. Hannah hadn't used
that name for her parents' double bed for years. 'Okay,' Meg
said. 'In you go.' And they put her to bed in her parents' room
with the light on and the door open, so that they could hear
her if she called out.
Dell had come in from next-door and she and Jim were
chatting quietly on the couch. 'I think we could do with a
drink,' said Jim and Dell went to the sideboard, pouring the
brandy into four glasses, finding ice in the freezer and bringing
them out. Meg put her arm around Alison, and her daughter
cuddled up to her.
Finally, Jim stood up. 'I'm going home,' he said. 'I'm
going to sleep for ten hours. We can do your statement
tomorrow.' He kissed her briefly, patted Alison's arm and
stood up. 'Meg, we want to leave someone here with you,
twenty-four hours a day.'
'No way!' she said. 'I'm not having some other cop in my
house clumping around in his big boots. It's bad enough being
married to one.'
Jim tried again. 'Meg, unless the experts prove that Pugh
is our man, I have to assume there's a man out there who's
already killed at least two women, probably three -two
of
them connected to Harry.'
'Look, Jim, I don't believe Hannah's disappearance had
anything to do with the deaths of those other women. Ronald
Pugh is good and dead. And I'm exhausted and I'm having
a bath and going to bed.' Jim went to speak again and Meg
stopped him. 'I've got a nice little automatic .45 that I know
how to use, and tomorrow I'll have Police Dog Blade back on
the job.'
Meg put Jim out the door and peeped in on Hannah on the
way back. She was asleep, with her mouth slightly open and
one hand, like a salute, on the pillow.

Alison and Meg stretched out on the floor, leaning their
backs against the lounge room furniture. Meg closed her
eyes and gave thanks that Hannah was safe at home. I have
been impossibly lucky, she thought.
'Mum?' Ali said.
'Yes, darling?'
'Do you think you and Dad will stay together?'
Meg caught her breath. 'I don't know,' she said. 'I haven't
really thought about it just lately.'
'What about your other man?'
Meg raised her knees and sat straighter against the lounge.
'My other man,' she said, 'was someone I met at art classes. He
is no longer my other man.' She looked away. It felt indecent,
talking like this to her daughter. 'You know things haven't
been good between me and your father for awhile.'
'It's been awful for us, too,' said Alison. The and Hannah. I
think--' But she stopped and Meg was alerted, knowing that
her daughter had stopped talking in order not to say something
that might hurt. 'Tell me,' she urged. She remembered Alison's
bravery and reliability of the day, taking the young dog like that,
guarding the back entrance of Ronald Pugh's house of horror.
'I want to hear what you think.'
Alison drew herself up too, and wrapped her arms around
herself. Then she reached for her glass. 'I think Hannah only
got involved with that creep through the Internet because of
what was happening here.'
Meg felt the truth of what her daughter was saying and
it hurt. Tears filled her eyes. She picked up her drink and
sipped it.
'When I was waiting there at the back of the house,' Alison
said a little while later, 'I was really scared. Even though I had
Blade, I was scared. But once that man came out and kicked out
like that, something happened in me. I wasn't frightened. I was
just exploding. I can't explain it. I just knew what to do. How to
slip Blade, how to get out of his way. Mum,' she said, and there
was concern as well as pride in her voice, 'I really liked that. It was an amazing moment for me. I think I want to do it again.'
'When Dad comes home,' Meg said to her daughter, 'we're
all going to sit down and talk. Talk about what we want. What's
important to us. But this time, we're all going to listen to each
other. No arguments. Just listening. No trying to be right. No
trying to make someone else see another point of view. None
of us know each other. I don't know you, Ali. You've never
told me about you. I've just assumed I know you and Hannah.
But this time we're all going to listen to each other and hear
what it's like for you to be you, for Hannah to be Hannah. And for me to be me.'
A slight noise made them look up. Hannah was standing in
the doorway in her pink and white spotted pyjamas.
'What is it, darling?' said Meg, getting up from the floor.
'And Dad too,' said Hannah. 'Dad has to tell us all the things
he won't tell us. And Dad has to listen to us, too. And you have
to let Dad talk, and not fight against what he says like you always
do. You have to listen too, Mum.'

Harry crouched on the rusty framework. Once out of the
sack, he'd been able to haul it up, even though Razor had
seemed heavier than it was possible for a dog to be. Now Razor
huddled near him, whimpering from time to time. 'Stay quiet,
boy,' Harry told him. I'm weak, thought Harry. I need water
badly. I need to eat.
He rested as he tried to work out what to do next. Towards
the top of the shaft there was a little light and he could make out
the bricks that lined the sides. He could see their irregularities
and he hoped and prayed that these continued all the way
down, because they were his way out of this place. Then it
was no longer possible to see any lower down the shaft because
the light cut out. He put his hand out, but he couldn't touch the
side. He moved as far as he dared, never knowing if and when
the projection that they were caught on would hold fast. He
would have to feel his way.
He had done worse jobs than this. He remembered the time
he'd had to climb under the foundations of an old house to
bring out a suicide and how searching about in the blackness
with the appalling stench of decay all around him, his fingers
had pressed into too-soft human flesh, sickeningly warm from
the activity of maggots. There was a chance he could climb out
of this pit. The alternative was to sit there and starve to death.
Or slip over the edge and into the depths below. He looked up.
Right in the middle of the entrance to the shaft, all those dozens
of metres above, a single star shone down. Harry felt his eyes fill.
The star wobbled and swam as he looked at it. It took him back
to the memory of his childhood bed, after his mother had found
him again and brought him back home, those days he would
not let himself think of, far less talk about. He remembered his
mother showing him the star as she tucked him in, now that
he was safely back. She told him the story of the seven sisters
who had jumped up into the sky to evade their pursuer and
how they shone down still, safe forever from capture.

'And those people, they won't ever get you again, either,'
she'd whispered. 'You're safe here. We're safe here. This is
a good place. This Joe Doyle, he's a good man and a good
worker.'

His mother's face came into his mind: her too-rare joyous
smile; her laugh; her courage; her grief; her warm, shy goodness.
The way her face would squeeze up when she yelled at
him, which she often did.

I have to get out of here, he told himself anew, from this pit,
while a killer stalks my people. He thought of his wife, thought
of how things were no longer good between them, and vowed
to change that. He would make peace with Meg. He thought
of his daughters. If he got out of there, he would ask them what
they needed from him. Then he felt around and found that
there seemed to be absolutely no handhold for him.

His helplessness washed over him, disarming him, and he
sobbed -the
deep, tearing sobs of a man who hasn't cried
since he was a child, the creaky sounds of unused chords and
ligaments moving stiffly. Help me, he asked his mother. Help
me to get out of this place and go home. I have to get home.
He wiped his face, crouched down again and started taking off
his boots.

Meg was exhausted. She and Alison were nearly asleep on
the floor. 'Come on, possumpants,' she said to Alison.
'It's beddy-byes for you.' She supported her sleepy daughter
down the hall to her bedroom.

'Tuck me in, Mum,' said Ali. 'Like when I was little.'

When Meg tucked her in and kissed her, Alison suddenly
grabbed her. 'Mum,' she whispered. 'I keep seeing that man
with Blade jumping up on him and tearing his throat. All
that blood. I can't get the picture out of my head.'

Meg held her. 'It must have been terrible for you to see
that. Ali, I wish you hadn't seen that. I wish none of it had
happened. To you and Hannah.'

Alison put her arms around her mother. 'It's okay, Mum.
It's okay.'

Finally, Meg kissed her again and stood up.

'Do you want something to help you sleep?' she asked.

Alison shook her head and Meg was about to close the
door when Alison called out, 'Leave the door a bit open,
Mum. And leave the hall light on.' Alison hadn't made that
request for many years.

Her own body was about ready to drop, Meg realised, but
her head was still spinning like Alison's with crazy, strobe-like

images from the day: of Hannah in that filthy cupboard,
running towards her, screaming; of Pugh's eyes blazing and
the inhuman growling that rasped in his throat as he came
towards her in that nightmare moment.
Meg ran a bath, took a sleeping tablet and lowered herself
gratefully into the hot water. In awhile, she started to experience
the effects of the drug. I'd better get out, she thought,
before I drift off in the bath and catch my death. But despite
the agitation in her mind, there was a new understanding.
Since Hannah's kidnapping and return, it was as if her whole
world had swerved about and realigned itself. She wasn't sure
if it was only an effect of the sedative and the lavender oil
in the bath, but a new softness now seemed to fill her heart
so that she could almost imagine herself getting it together
with Harry again. She did not share Jim's concern about her
husband's absence; long-serving detectives always have a dark
view on the world. There was no way Harry would suicide.
Of that she was entirely certain. He'd gone off like this once
or twice before, she remembered, in the early days of their
marriage, when he needed to get clear about something. He'd
just go bush and return days later, freer and refreshed. When
he came home -if
he came home -she
would listen to him.
Maybe he would listen to her if she dropped her long list
of complaints and sued for peace. Maybe right this minute
he was wondering, just as she was, whether there was any
point in continuing with a marriage that had become nothing
more than a prolonged battleground. Maybe quite soon, she
imagined, she would be living only with the kids, like Dell;
maybe starting to go on dates with men again. This made her
giggle into the washer. Then she felt the giggle change to sobs.
She cried a little while and then splashed warm water over her
face. She decided that whatever happened with Harry, she
was going to tell him the truth -about
herself, about the
affair she'd had, about her life and what she wanted, what
she needed. Not in the old angry way of wanting him to do
something about it, but in a new gear, just so he'd know the
truth about her and she could get on with it. She was thinking
of him when she heard the doorbell go. She heaved herself out
of the bath and wrapped a towel around her dripping body.
'I'm coming, I'm coming,' she told the door, sure it would be
Harry, deciding that there would be no talking that night, but
tomorrow, after a good night's sleep, it was essential that they
work out what they were going to do, whether the marriage
could continue.
She opened the door. 'Oh,' she said. 'It's you.'

As Jim turned into his street, he suddenly felt wide awake.
He knew it was the adrenalin charge of exhaustion, but he
also knew there was little point in him going to bed. He
knew this state of his -physical
exhaustion chafing against
mental agitation. His concern for Harry was growing. The
events of the afternoon and evening hadn't dulled that. The
late Ronald Pugh had most likely been planning his revenge
in jail for over a decade. Now Pugh was dead. That was that.
Hannah was safely home and the pressure had eased. But he
would have to make sure whether or not there was any link
between that and Harry's disappearance. Pugh might not have
acted alone.
He pulled up outside his block of flats and sat a moment,
considering. The building was in darkness apart from the
downstairs hallway light and the little glowing rows beside
each flat number on the security intercom. He rubbed his
eyes and blinked. A couple walked past, entwined, and Jim
sighed, indicated, changed gear and swung his vehicle around
again, heading back to town. If he couldn't sleep, he might as
well start on the physical evidence collected from the house
at Millers Point and start writing up the events leading to the
death of Pugh. In the morning he'd ask Meg and Alison to
come in and do statements. And he'd have to track poor old
Milton down and try to make sense of whatever he had to say.
It was clear he'd known something about the kidnapping.
He drove to the Police Centre, nodded to the security
desk, used his card to get through to the lifts and rode up
to his floor, carrying the various bags and envelopes with
him. The corridors were dimly lit and he was the only
person on his floor. Jim opened the security door of his
section with his card, switched the lights on and went into
his office.
He put some music on and looked over the cardboard strip
along the window. The male was on the nest, brooding. The
female was nowhere to be seen. He pulled on a pair of thin,
white rubber gloves and started going through the papers
they'd found at Ronald Pugh's place: bills, letters, large
exercise books filled with clippings, pornographic magazines,
a couple of knives, and videos without commercial packaging
which promised to be interesting if you liked that sort of
thing. Jim didn't.
He grouped the collection in various piles on his desk.
He glanced through the papers. As he sorted, he noticed a
message lying in his in-tray which Gary Stokes must have left
for him: 'Max Wolansky,' he read. 'DOB 8. 11. 47. Killed in
action, Vietnam, 6.7.72.' Jim stared at the name and read it
again carefully.
He put the piece of paper down, his mind racing to work
this through. As he did, he noticed that one of the envelopes
taken from the Millers Point house had a name and telephone
number scribbled on it. Jim picked it up because it was the
name that had drawn his attention. He dialled the number
scribbled beside the name.
'Hullo, Martendale Hotel,' a professional telephonist's
voice answered him. 'How may I help you?'
Jim identified himself. Meg had told him that she and Max
Wolansky met at hotels and motels. 'I'm looking for Max
Wolansky,'Jim said. 'Is he staying with you?'
There was a delay while the receptionist went to look. It
was just possible there were two people born on the same
date with the same unusual name. Otherwise, Meg had been
having an affair with a ghost. The unease in Jim's guts grew
stronger. It was not uncommon for criminals and others who
wanted well-documented aliases to use the details of the dead
to obtain a legitimate birth certificate. Who, then, had Meg
been involved with? Jim's mind processed possibilities. He
wanted to ring Meg straightaway but the clock on the
office wall showed 1.45 a.m. This was not a good time to
ring anyone, particularly Meg, and not about this particular
subject.
His mind started putting it all together. Ronald Pugh had
the phone number of a Max; Meg had been involved with
a Max. There was nothing necessarily criminal about using
another name, unless there was proven intent to defraud.
Bedding another man's wife could hardly be called that,
thought Jim, or a lot of the male population of the country
could be prosecuted. But Jim's sixth sense would not stop
nagging him.
'Hullo?' said the receptionist. 'Mr Wolansky isn't with us
at the moment. But he does stay here from time to time.
We could take a message and give it to him next time he
stays. I couldn't give you the address over the phone. Security
reasons, sir. But you could come in with your ID and talk to
the manager.'
Jim thanked her and rang off.
If Pugh had been involved with the same Max Wolansky,
it meant a nasty connection to Harry's family that Jim did
not like one bit. He cursed himself for not having insisted on
protection for Meg. He moved fast to the lifts, down to the car
and drove up out of the ramp onto the streets. There was little
traffic except for Oxford Street, where people thronged and
shops and clubs were open. A man with acid-yellow spiked
hair, fantastically clad in lime green lycra, put out his tongue
lasciviously at Jim as he made the right-hand turn up towards
Taylors Square.
Jim drove towards 55 Botanical Avenue, his anxiety
increasing with every kilometre. As soon as he turned
the corner and started the drive down to Harry's house,
all his sense jumped into red alert. Meg's car was parked
out the front and light streamed onto it and onto the
lawn of 55 because the front door was wide open. Jim
swung to a halt, jumped out of the car, raced up the
steps and inside.
'Meg? Meg?' There was no reply. Jim went through the
house, looking and calling, checking the rooms. Hannah was
snoring with her arms around a huge teddy bear. Alison also
was soundly asleep but stirred as he looked in. There was no
sign of Meg.
'Where's Mum?' Alison called, coming out of her room,
pulling on a long football jersey. 'Maybe next-door,' she
suggested to Jim. 'Maybe she's with Dell.'
But Dell, alarmed and wrapped in her green towelling
dressing-gown, shook her head when the two of them
knocked on her door and asked her. Jim ran back to his
car and called the local police. 'I'll get some people round
here straightaway,' he told Alison. 'To do a thorough check
and stay here with you.'
'But where is she?' screamed Alison.
Jim took hold of her shoulders. The young girl was shaking
uncontrollably. 'What's happening to my family?' she said.
'Where's my mother? Where's my father?'
'I don't know,' he said. 'But we're going to do our
damnedest to find out. Wherever she is, she hasn't been
gone long. We'll find her.'
'I'm going round to the vet,' said Alison, gulping down
sobs and straightening herself up. 'And I'm going to get
Blade back. I want to know where you're going. I want
to go with you.'
'Alison, that's impossible. You know that. Stay with
Hannah. She needs you.'
'I can get Dell to stay with her,' said Alison. 'I mean it. I'll
wake up Don Rawson. I'm getting the dog and I'm coming
with you. I'll take Mum's car.'
Jim started to say something. Then he went back to the car
and radioed for the address of the Martendale Hotel. While
he was waiting, Alison came out of the house, down the steps
and stood by his car.
'Martendale Hotel,' said the operator, 'corner of Blackett
and Darlinghurst Roads.' Jim noted it down. Only a few
suburbs away back towards the city.
'I want to come with you,' said Alison. 'I know where
that place is.'
'Not possible, Alison. You know that.'
'Okay,' said Alison. 'Okay.'

Meg didn't know where she was. She was lying in the back of
a utility vehicle with a tarpaulin over her, jolting over roads at
high speed. She could smell the bush. Her mind replayed the
scene of only a few hours ago, at her doorstep. 'Oh,' she'd
said. 'It's you.' She'd been so surprised she couldn't speak
and the effects of the drug had slowed her responses.
I got held up,' he'd said. His handsome face was clouded
with tiredness. 'But here I am. I'm completely at your
disposal. You look very beautiful in that towel.'
Meg had stood there, not knowing what to do, what to
say. She knew now she was a thousand light years away
from him.
'Aren't you going to ask me in?' he was saying, with his
slight smile. But Meg had looked steadily at him.
'Max,' she'd finally said. 'I don't want to see you again.
I told you that. Your behaviour at our last meeting was
unforgivable. Unacceptable. It's over. You've got to accept
that. It's late. I'm buggered. I got Hannah back. Everything's
changed. Too many things have happened.'
He'd pushed his hair back as he stood supplicant on her
doorstep and she caught his personal scent -- a sharp, male
sandalwood. 'Please, Meg,' he said, 'I couldn't get here any
earlier. I had this deal happening. I just couldn't get away.'
His dark eyes looked into hers. 'You are beautiful,' he said.
'I want you.'
Meg said nothing, her stomach fluttering and her breathing
edged with excitement.
'You were pleased to hear from me, on the phone. You
can't deny that. I could hear it in your voice.'
'I don't deny that, Max,' she said. 'My little girl had just
been stolen. I was desperate for some help, some support.
Harry was God knows where. But you didn't show. You
offered all this help from your exalted position, your friends,
your money. The grand gesture. But you didn't show, Max. I
got my girl back by myself. With the help of my other daughter.
I tracked the kidnapper and we went in there and brought
Hannah back ourselves.' She thought his face darkened, but
blinked again, trying to clear her mind of the tranquilliser.
'But Meg, remember the things you said,' he was pleading
now, 'the experiences we had together . . .'
She thought of the nights of lovemaking, the delirious
excitement, the crazy way she'd abandoned herself to this
man. Her traitor body quickened. 'I had great sex with
you,' she said. 'But sex is only sex and life is much bigger
than that.'
She saw his face change as he started to see she really
meant it this time. She drew the towel closer around herself
and prepared to close the door. She didn't like the way
his expression was hardening. She remembered their last
meeting, his contempt, his assault on her. She put her hand up
to the doorhandle, ready to close it. 'I'm sorry I got involved
with you,' she confessed. 'It was a mistake. I was naive and
vain. I didn't know myself and I feel I was a fraud. What you
said the other day hurt me but it was the truth. My motive
was mere adventuring. Curiosity, excitement. It wasn't love,
and you know that as well as I do. I am very sorry if I've
hurt you.'
She saw the anger drawing his brows down, saw the way
his handsome mouth had started to curl. She couldn't resist
a parting shot. 'Max,' she said, starting to close the door, her
mind surprisingly active despite the leaden relaxation of her
body, aware that she wasn't really angry with him, that she
was already detaching from him, 'Max, you're a fraud. You
say grand things. But you don't follow through. Any woman
who got involved with you would come a poor third -no, fourth -to
your Scotch, your exotic cigarettes and your
business deals.' She thought of his sexual preference and
smiled. 'Max,' she couldn't resist saying, 'you're a wanker.'
She remembered Max putting his foot in the front door as
she was closing it, grabbing her, flattening her against the wall,
his hand over her mouth. Then he'd done something painful
to the side of her neck and she must have blacked out because
the next thing she knew, she was in the situation in which
she now found herself, jolting along, lying on an old rug,
with her hands and feet bound and her mind half stupefied
with narcotics. 'Max!' she screamed. 'Let me out! Let me go!'
But her voice was lost in the noise of the engine and the rush
and bump over rough roads, the occasional sounds of other
vehicles and the roar of passing trucks. 'Max? she screamed again. 'Stop this! Let me go!'

Harry dozed for awhile, on and off, trying to build up a bit
of strength after his ordeal in the sack. He rested leaning
against Razor, taking some comfort from the old dog's warm
flanks. Later he woke, stiff and sore, to see pre-dawn light
shining down the shaft. He could see the mossy bricks up
the top and, by feeling around and stretching out as much
as he dared, he managed to find a fingerhold and then a
toehold. Now, he was a metre or so higher than the rusty
surface where Razor whimpered. The dog would have to
wait until Harry could bring back the necessary equipment
to winch him out.
'Mate,' he said to the dog. 'I'm going to climb up out of
here and then I'm going to get help for you. I'll be as fast as I
can. Wish me luck.' Razor barked sharply, sensing a parting.
Harry hauled himself up further. He found a fingerhold,
dug into it, and then was filled with fear as his fingers
slipped off the mossy brick. For a second, he swung there
one-handedly, until he could bring the other arm up again.
Painfully, he hauled himself up until he could find another
toehold. Beneath him, Razor whimpered again. 'It's okay,
boy. Just sit. Wait.' He knew the dog was thirsty, hungry and
exhausted. He knew it from his own experience. Somehow,

he had to find the reserves of strength to claw his way up and
out of this place. The thought of Angus Wetherill harming
his family gave him an extra burst of adrenaline-charged
strength.

Harry continued to inch up the bricks, toehold by painful
toehold, sometimes almost losing his footing on the slippery
surface. He willed himself to cling to the mine shaft walls.
Sometimes there was good purchase for his searching fingers;
at other times, only the slightest surface angle presented
itself. Whenever there seemed to be no hold at all, Harry
rested, staying where he was, recovering what remained of
his strength. Then, by feeling around on each side, he would
find some small irregularity on the brickface and, inch by inch,
Harry Doyle slowly made it towards the top. After he'd gone
some way up the shaft, Razor started howling somewhere in
the darkness beneath him. Harry knew how he felt.


At the Martendale Hotel, Jim showed his warrant card and
badge. 'It's a very serious matter,' he said. 'The kidnapping
of a little girl.' The purple-lipped redhead behind the long
polished counter responded by calling the night manager,
very dapper with his shaven head and earring. 'We saw it
on the telly,' she said. 'That poor little kid. She's one of the
lucky ones who come home.'

Jim waited while they consulted the records.

'I'll also want a list of any phone calls he may have made
while he was here, too,' said Jim. 'Print out all his details for
me. I'm quite happy to wait.'

Within half an hour, Jim had what he wanted. He thanked
the young woman and the night manager and left.


Alison put on the blue overall in her father's office. In the
living room a young police officer sat reading a magazine.
The overall was far too big for Alison's slender body, but by
rolling the sleeves back and tucking the surplus length of the
trousers into her bush-walking boots, and by tightly belting
the zipped up waist with a plain black belt of her own, she
was able to make it fit. Blade sat and watched her. She picked
up his harness from the desk.

Earlier, the vet had handed him over with a scolding. 'I
want to see your father in the morning,' he said. 'It's not like
him to push a dog like this.'

'He's not my father,' said Alison. 'Blade's needed for a
job.' The police officer, summoned by Jim, had arrived at
her house just as she was bringing Blade home.

Now, Alison pulled her hair back from her face and pinned
it up. She looked at herself in the mirror in the bathroom and
thought she still looked ridiculously young. If my real father
were here, she wondered, what would he do? What would
he say? All she really knew about him was that his name was
Jeff Kruger and she had a photo of him and her mum in which
he looked a bit like a young Michael Douglas. Mum had told
her that her father had sent money for a few years after she
was born.

Alison walked down the hall to her parents' bedroom
and found a jacket of her mother's to wear and the car
keys from the bedside table. Blade followed her into the
room and sat beside her while she picked up the phone
and rang Mick's house, something she had never done
before.

Hullo?' he said when he came on the line.

'It's me,'she said.

Oh Jesus,' he said. Then his voice dropped. 'What are
you doing ringing here at this hour? What am I supposed to
tell Sally?'

I don't know what you're supposed to tell Sally,' she said.


'I need someone to help me do something really important.
I need your help, Mick.'

'Don't be silly. I can't talk now.' She heard his voice
change. 'Yes, yes,' he was saying. 'I'll get straight onto
it the minute I get to work. I'm so sorry you've been
inconvenienced.' Then he hung up.

Inconvenienced, Alison thought. She wanted to cry but
she put the phone back gently and looked at herself in the
mirror. If I were a dog, she thought to herself, I'd go round
to your place, Mick Blunt, and I'd jump at your throat. The
shocking scene of Blade savaging Ronald Pugh replayed itself
through her mind and she had to sit down suddenly. The
shaking in her legs subsided and she stood up and went back
to the living room where the young police officer looked up
from reading a double-paged spread in a magazine with the headline I poisoned my sister and married her husband.

'I'm taking the dog for a walk,' said Alison. 'I'll take him
in the car to the oval.'

'I don't think that's a good idea,' said her minder. Her
stern blue eyes encountered Alison's as the two young women
considered each other.

'I'm safe as houses with this fellow,' said Alison, turning as she
spoke. 'And you can't stop me.' But as she walked down the hall
and out the front door, she could hear the young woman speaking
to someone on her portable. So she moved quickly to open the
door for Blade to jump in, climbed in and started the car, leaning
over to strap Blade in with the seat belt. She switched on the
head-lights, backed out of the driveway, buckled her seat belt
and took off. She drove till she came to the Martendale Hotel and
parked some way down the road and on the other side just like she
knew Harry would have done. Jim's car was outside the hotel and
Alison switched off the ignition and the lights and waited.

Harry dragged himself up, his fingers reaching for the next
irregularity. He didn't think he had much more energy left. His
head was whirling with pain and dizziness. The injury throbbed
in time with his racing heartbeat. Sweat ran down between his
shoulder blades and itched on his sides. Far beneath, he could
hear Razor whimpering but he didn't have the strength left to
waste on words. Above him, the dawn was breaking, flushing
the sky a pink gold.

He thought he was hallucinating because he seemed to
hear whispered words in a language he no longer understood.
Soft voices seemed to urge him on. Sometimes he
even dared to try turning his head, so sure was he that there
was someone behind him. Sometimes he thought he saw
flashes of light and lifted his head painfully to look up. But
it was only the sky, moving from pink to gold to amber to
the harsh white light of day that shone in a block of light
above him.

His nose caught the scent picture above the ground -- the smell of kangaroo, of eucalypts and fragrant heath. A
blowfly stormed his sweating face and he spat it out. Then
another. The decay of the brickwork was worse the further
up he got, more exposed to the weathering elements, and
he was forced to stop time and again to pick out the least
treacherous path. Sometimes there seemed nothing to hold
on to, nothing to take the weight of his blundering foot or
desperate fingers as they tried to find a supporting surface
before it crumbled away. He'd discarded his boots so that
he could use his toes for maximum grip, but they were city
reet now, unused to the exposure of bare skin, and he was
sorry he'd discarded the protection of his boots. He knew
he was leaving a trail of blood behind him and each step was
almost impossibly painful.

It was the sounds that helped him. He could hear laughter


and people talking. If I can just keep going, he thought, if I
can just make the last few metres out of this pit, those people
will have cars and phones. I can get the muscleheads from the
SPG. I can get Jim. I can get the works and throw them at
this bastard. The dogs, the whole damn pack of us, can come
down like a ton of bricks on Angus Wetherill.

The people's voices were getting louder up there. He
could hear the squeals of children and laughter of women.
Half-remembered words and phrases came to him. Harry
craned his neck to look up at the opening of the shaft.
He had to blink the sweat away. Hot sun streamed down
towards him and it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever
seen in his life. He talked to Razor who wasn't there; he
talked to his kids, to his wife. 'I'm nearly there,' he told
them, as he lifted swollen and bloody hands to haul himself
up the last section. 'Help me,' he called to the people. 'I'm
here. I'm down here.' But they couldn't hear him.

Using the last of his strength, Harry hauled himself up
to part of a timber construction that formed a shelf not far
beneath the opening. He lay there, drenched with sweat,
every muscle aching, his head splitting. He gathered his
resources for the last bit. It was easier going here. Now he
climbed awkwardly through masonry and soil until his head
and shoulders lifted above the opening of the pit.

The people were suddenly quiet. I must have frightened
them, thought Harry. He looked around. There was no-one
there. It was a desolate, grey landscape that lay around him,
smoothed by machinery years ago and dotted with weedy
regrowth and heaps of mullocky rock; a desert of subsoils,
clays and rubble. Beyond that was bush. He looked around
again, wondering if the people would come over to him
from their hiding place. As he lifted himself out and rolled
onto terra firma for the first time in many hours, he thought
the whole earth shifted. Then, exhausted and injured, he lost
consciousness.

When he finally woke, the sun had crossed the sky. He sat
up and looked around. There were no people; there never
had been. He'd been hallucinating and now his head had
steadied to a dull ache behind the eyes. He needed water
badly. He needed a dog. More than anything, he needed
backup and a weapon. A voice somewhere in his mind said This battle has no fronts, no flanks. One lapse in security and you're dead. He needed clarity, not this dull muddle in his mind.

Harry looked around. There was no jungle here, just dry,
dusty bushland. He studied the ground around him. Dead
country. Old mined country. Now that he had no dog to
lead him, he tried to read the country the way he had in his
youth. For the first little while, it was like picking up a book
in a language he used to know but hadn't spoken or read in
years. Then, as he looked and observed, bits and pieces started
coming back to him: the phrasing of trees, the sentences of
landform, the punctuation of a fire trail and clearings made by
humans. The whole picture seemed to waver in front of him,
then settle into place. It was as if he'd been looking at some
chaotic 3-D image but now had his focus perfect, so that an
amazing picture was taking shape before him. He noticed the
marks of hundreds of animals, the trails of insects, lizards, and
saw the scuffle where a hawk had taken a goanna. He noticed
the random action of the wind in the dust, where it bent grass
stalks over like compasses to draw tiny arcs on the-topsoil. He
saw in his mind the wombat blundering along the road, head
down, nosing along. He saw the tiny kite-like marks of bird
tracks, and started to read their cuniform language: parrots and magpies on the ground. He saw the characteristic conical
holes dug by bandicoots. He saw the base of a tree, burnt by the constant urination of feral dogs, then he noticed the


tracks of two wild dogs and, from the width of the straddle,
surmised how fast each animal had been moving. He saw the
long marks left on saplings by the teeth of rabbits or hares. He
noticed the tiny scats of different creatures and then started to
become aware of the movement of the creatures themselves
in trees and hollows. He noticed the way the wind moved
the leaves and lifted the soil in blurred ridges on the clay.

Clearly now, he saw the recent tyre tracks of the utility,
nice and clean in the soft surface dust, showing on top of
all the other marks and scratches in the sand. He saw the
double tyre track where it had driven over itself and then
away, and his eyes followed the track past the dusty arena
and into the straggly bush. He followed it to the edge of the
mining area and into the surrounding bush. The scent picture
here was poignant and familiar. Behind the spicy smell of dry
sclerophyll forest, was another smell.

Harry sat down again, cut lengths of fabric from his trousers
and tied this around his feet. They were a mess of cuts and
abrasions, but swaddling them gave some protection. It was
many years since he'd been able to go across this sort of
country barefoot. Following the utility was easy. As the
land-reading skills came back to him, he could almost see
it in his mind's eye, the way he could reconstruct a crime
scene, bumping along the road just ahead of him. He saw
where it had pulled over to the shoulder and stopped. He
saw where Angus Wetherill had climbed out of the cabin
in his boots and walked over to a big eucalypt, placed his
legs apart, made himself comfortable, and pissed against the
ground at the base of the tree. The soil under the tree still
clearly showed the pool that once had formed there, soaked
in then dried. He saw Angus's boots walking back to the ute,
climbing in, and saw the ute start to move away again, back
into the centre of the dusty fire trail. Angus had taken off

too fast here, Harry saw, because the back wheels had spun
in the dust.

The land sloped away from the dirt track and Harry left
the fire trail and the ute's tracks to follow the slope. As he
stumbled through the straggly bush, he saw the tracks of
many animals and he knew that water must be close by.
He thought he could even smell it. He noticed the track of
a huge kangaroo and wondered if it was the same fellow he'd
noticed at the earlier camping spot. Once, his eye had been
keen enough to distinguish individuals. Backup, an internal
voice warned. Don't do this alone. Get to a phone. Get to a
dwelling. Organise backup. But the knowledge that this was
familiar territory silenced the insistent voice.

With his inner eye, he saw the shy marsupials sneaking
along the ground, going to the watering place, cautiously
sniffing the wind to pick up the scent of any predator. Harry
looked around, smelling fox strongly. Then he noticed the
narrow-straddle red fox track ahead of him, leading down the
slope. It was getting very steep and now he could see water
lying below him -- a narrow creek that had cut its way through
the hillsides aeons ago. It was only a few more minutes before
he was there, on all fours like any other creature, the marks of
his knees and hands obliterating the other tracks, drinking and
splashing his face, washing his hair back, taking in as much as
he could. He looked around for Razor and it took several
seconds for his mind to recollect. Razor would be thirsty too,
but he was in the cool depths of the shaft and if he stayed still,
he'd be all right for awhile. If he was smart, he'd know to lick
any moisture off the brick walls.

Harry made his way back up to the fire trail again. His head was spinning with effort. He picked up the ute's tracks again
and started loping along in their wake. As he went along, the
fragments of physical evidence fell into place in his mind and

started making up a picture of the crime scene he was heading
for; the pinkish mortar that mad old Wetherill had mixed
one day to mend the crumbling stonework that supported
the western verandah; the bats that used to fly in at night
to eat from the fruit trees of the century-old orchard; the
ebony trees; and the pink Victorian glass of the old kitchen
door where he'd often waited until Angus was allowed to
come out. The smells all started coming together in his mind:
the orchard, the tall glossy English hedge, the pastoral and
agricultural smells of the house and the 1840 cottage used
as a storehouse for ancient equipage, the sulky that rotted in
a corner.
Backup, warned the voice again. Get to a base. Organise security. But all the scents and odours and esters that went to
make up 'home' converged on him. Despite his exhaustion,
he felt euphoric. This was the safe place his mother had found
for them. He wanted to cry; he wanted to laugh because
even though he had no strength, his spirit wanted him to
run and shout for joy. As he loped over a rise, the valleys
spread out before him began to take on a startling familiarity.
The remembered scent picture was overwhelming. It was
calling him. In a flash, he had it all in his mind. Memories
of his childhood were so strong that they pushed everything
else away. He could hear the mysterious whispering again.
Compelled, he followed the ute's tracks, knowing where
they were leading.

When Security rang from downstairs to say there was a
technician from Telstra waiting to come up, Jim went
down himself to greet him. 'We got that trace on for you,'
Wayne said. Jim nodded. 'And we got the names and addresses
matched up for you,' Wayne added, eyes smiling through a
pink birthmark that stained the upper part of his face 'of the
calls made by your party at the Martendale Hotel.' They
stepped into the lifts. 'Here they are,' he said, passing Jim
some pages of computer printout.
Jim studied the list. The doors opened and he and the
technician walked out.
'Come in,' he said to the technician as he went into his
office. 'Take a seat.' But the technician was staring at the
cardboard rampart running along the windowledge, then
walking across to peer over and see the pigeons.
Oh that,' said Jim. 'It's to stop everyone gawking at them.'
Wayne drew back and gave Jim a look.
Jim sat at his desk and turned over the pages, glancing
down the numbers. He wasn't surprised to see the name
aQd number of Elizabeth Golding, the woman murdered at
trathfield. Nor was he surprised to see Janette Madden also
snowed up. There were records of several calls to an address

at Boolabimbie. And calls had been made to 55 Botanical
Avenue, Harry Doyle's house.

The technician was tapping on the glass, wanting the
pigeons to look up at him, when Jim called in Kerryann
Fish and asked her to escort Wayne downstairs. Then he
rangjohn Ayoub at Bathurst.

'What do you know about a property at Boolabimbie called
Maldon Downs?'

Jim waited on the phone while, 200 kilometres away, Ayoub asked around. Then his voice returned to the phone.

'Hullo?' he said. 'Boolabimbie is about another hundred it's
northwest of here, near Cowra. Maldon Downs is a historic
property and it's been in the same family since settlement.
Family called Wetherill. The present owner discourages
contact. Very run-down and usually uninhabited except
for the manager, but he's usually away. There's been some
activity there lately, according to local gossip. The house itself
can't be seen from the road. It's pretty isolated.'


Harry had walked until it was too dark to make sense of any
tracks or landmarks then taken shelter for the night beneath
a small rock overhang. In the morning he'd woken stiff and
hungry but with the same relentless urge driving him on.

For the first few kilometres the trail rolled on over the
scrubby hills, then dipped down to follow the course of a
dry riverbed. The steep banks hid the surrounding country
from view so effectively that for awhile Harry began to lose
his bearings. Then, suddenly, the tyre tracks veered up and
over a rise and the house was right there before him, its
cluttered memories and scents crowding his exhausted brain.
I'm home, he thought. After all this time.

Harry circled the house. The ute wasn't there, just as he'd
known because he'd noticed fresh tracks, doubling over the

ones he'd been following on the driveway, this time heading
away from the house towards the front gates. Angus had come
here, then left again. But Harry kept low just the same, his
ears tuned for the sound of the ute.

The house was smaller, meaner and more crumbling than
the image in his memory. He had imagined the grand sweeping
driveway with exotic trees lining it. Instead, although
many of the trees were still growing, in front of them was
only a dry patch of open ground, overgrown with weeds and
thistles, beyond which the house rose darkly. The place was
neglected; stones were being gradually blown away back into
dust. The timber frames of the top verandahs were decaying,
sections of them fallen away like missing teeth in a mouth. He
went round the back and noticed the stench of bats and their
droppings. Call for assistance, warned the inner voice. Do it
now. But Harry was heedless as he made his way painfully past
the homestead and towards the station hand's house where
he'd lived as a boy. Broken windows, the front door half
hanging off and the verandah piled with rusting tractor parts
didn't deter him as he walked inside. Light streamed from
the ceiling. Much of the sky shone in now where once only
a star had been visible. He walked into his mother's room.
He saw the wallpaper the station hand had pasted up for her
on one wall only, never getting around to finishing it, done
in a fit of remorse -sprigs
of lily of the valley, against a soft
grey background. Now it was stained and peeling. Although
he was exhausted, grief still hit him hard and he had to lean
against the crumbling wall. I've pushed all this away, he
thought to himself. I have denied myself. This is where I
grew up. This is the place that made me, he thought. This is
the place she brought me to after she'd stolen me back and want to see her again. I want to ask her about my father.
He hobbled out of the cottage and towards the back of the

homestead of Maldon Downs. The stone-fruit trees in the old
orchard were heavy with rotting fruit and windfalls steamed
in piles underneath, glistening with busy flies.
The back kitchen door had been smashed, as he knew
it would be, and shards and spears of rose-coloured glass
glittered on the ground. Carefully, Harry reached in through
the broken glass and pulled the bolt sideways. The stench of
petrol hit him then. He opened the door, grinding it over
powdered glass. Someone had kicked most of it into a corner
but he was careful all the same. He went further inside. Get to the phone, said the voice. Call Ayoub for backup. Do it now. But he felt he was in some sort of dream, a protected,
sacred space, with the past and the present merging into
this moment, coming together in him. He made his way
through the kitchen and into the main body of the house
where he could almost hear old man Wetherill stamping
down the staircase with his heavy, angry tread. He could
almost hear Mrs WetheriU's clipped little high voice, asking
him if he'd like a biscuit. It was still as he remembered it,
but meaner, smaller and oddly dark. The smell of petrol was
overpowering; the scent picture obliterated by the fumes.
Someone must have spilt a lot of it in here, he thought. He
cautiously went towards the centre of the house and towards
the hallway, moving through the two little rooms, probably
maids' bedrooms a century ago, that lay between the kitchen
and the grander rooms of the front of the house. Again he
wondered what was obscuring the light. Then he came to
the back side of the stairwell and, ahead of him, the hallway
led to the large parlour and dining room.
Harry stood still. Because now he could see the hallway
and into the rooms on each side of it. What he saw chilled
him to the bone, while the stench of petrol nauseated him to
the point of faintness. In every room, sheets hung from the
ceiling, spilling like sails hung up to dry from the manholes,
falling to the ground where they were heaped in piles or
twisted into ropes to snake along the floor, out the doors
and into the hallway, to return through another door. In the
lounge room, with its two doors that gave onto the main
hallway, he could hardly move for the shrouding sheets that
hung everywhere. There was a four-gallon drum in the centre
of the room and someone -- Harry had no doubts now who
that someone was -- had swathed the drum with the long,
rotting curtains dragged off the dirty windows, so that the old
curtains made contact with the looping sheets. He went back
out into the hallway again and looked upstairs. The bannisters
were draped with mildewed bedding, blankets and sheets.
Along the hallway, wallpaper bowed off the wall onto the
floor. He walked carefully up the stairs, and saw where petrol
had been splashed and soaked on all the old mattresses that
rotted in the several bedrooms whose doors stood off their
hinges. He went back down again on stairs that threatened to
give way with every step, noticing the muffled footprints he'd
left with his bandaged feet on the bare boards each side of the
worn carpet runners in the centre of the hallway, following
the doused sheets back into the dusty parlour where mad old
Wetherill, his wife and Aunt Vera looked down at him from
their portraits on the wall.
The long curtains around the French windows, rotting
into strips, all fed onto the twisted up sheets that in turn
ended up in a bucket of petrol. Okay, said the inner voice. Move now. Get backup. Give your location. He looked around for something to use as a weapon, an instinctive and useless
gesture considering he was standing inside a huge, primed
bomb. Behind another hanging sheet he saw the telephone and, pushing the grey fabric aside, he picked it up. His head was ringing from adrenalin and petrol fumes. As he dialled
emergency, he thought he heard a sound. He looked up
and lifted a corner of the sheet. Nothing. Just the slightest
movement of the shrouds hanging down from the ceiling
near the doorway to the hall. As he waited for the operator
to answer, he noticed his own footprints smeared in the dust
of the hallway boards. Harry's heart contracted in shock and
fear. Because beside his own blurred prints were the fresh
tracks of sharply defined boots, the same boots that he'd seen
on the fire trail road. Almost at the same nanosecond that he
made the connection, someone spoke.
'Put the phone down, Harry.'
Angus Wetherill stood in the doorway, holding the neat
little Russian Tokarev in one hand and a cigarette lighter in
the other. All he'd have to do was flick the lighter where
he stood, Harry knew, and the volatile fumes suspended all
through the house would explode around them both. Harry
froze with the phone halfway down.
'Can I help you?' said the emergency operator's tiny voice.
'Hullo? Hullo? Hullo? Is there anybody there?' There was
a pause and she squeaked again. 'I cannot hear you and
I am terminating this call at O-eight-hundred hours and
twenty-seven minutes.' There was a click and the bleat of
the engaged tone on the line.
He and Angus stared at each other in silence. Harry found
himself taking a deep breath. Somewhere, he'd always known
they'd have to see each other again. Angus still looked
remarkably youthful, as if life hadn't touched him. With
one hand, he pushed thick hair back from his forehead in
a gesture Harry remembered well. Slowly, Harry put the
phone down.
'Good,' said Angus. 'That's the way.' He relaxed and
lowered the lighter. 'You're tough, Doyle. Anyone else
would be dead. But not you, you black bastard.'
Then Harry heard an odd noise. It sounded as if it came
from far away. Perhaps it was the hallucinations of his climb
coming back to him. It sounded like a woman, but a
great distance away. Almost under the ground, under the
earth, trapped and wailing. He immediately thought of the
Strathfield house and the dead woman in the cellar. 'Who
else have you got here, Angus?' Harry asked, dreading the
answer, knowing he'd left his home base unguarded.
'Guess,' said Angus and Harry didn't have to. 'She's here
with me, Harry. She was ready to leave you and come with
me. But then she changed her mind. Just like Janette did.
Women. You can't trust them. Just like you can't trust
best mates.'
'What are you talking about?' Harry said.
'We had great sex, Harry. Me and your wife. You should
ask her about it sometime. If there is any time.'
Harry felt the rage rise up in him. Rage and fear together,
adding to the fumes already in his head. He practised staying
as calm and quiet as he could. 'What do you plan on doing,
Angus?' he asked.
'I'm going to ask you to come down to the cellar with
me,' said the other. 'Everything's ready. I had planned on
having your little girl here, too, but that didn't happen after
all. You can't trust rock spiders.'
The silence between them seemed to open out into
something deep and ancient in that crazy house with the
hanging sheets and the petrol fumes. Harry's mind rallied
and gathered itself. This was life and death.
'You can't think you can do this and get away with it,'
he said in his old soothing voice. 'You'll get caught, Angus.
You'll rot in prison.'
I've already rotted in prison. You saw to that.'
'How do you work that out?'

'If I'd married Janette, my life would have been different.
None of the other things would have happened,' Angus said.
'After I'd got back from Vietnam, things would have gone
right for me -the
things that went wrong and ended me up
in prison. You stuffed me right up from the start.'
'Angus,' he said, trying to make a little time, 'you're not
thinking straight. You're not making sense.' Harry remembered
conversations he'd had with old crims. 'You do the
crime,' they used to say, 'you do the time.' Do the crime,
do the time. But some people never seem to notice that they
do the crime.
Harry's mind was racing. If he could muster enough
strength, he might be able to take Angus with a tackle and
grab the lighter. But Angus, as if reading his mind, had taken a
throwing knife out of his pocket, and Harry remembered how
good he'd been with those, slicing lizards in half on the walls,
impaling frogs; he remembered the sudden death of Asgard.
'Come on,' said Angus. 'She's waiting for you.'
He came up closer, but not too close. 'Turn around and
go back to the kitchen,' Angus ordered. 'Slowly now, very
slowly.' Harry did as he was told, pushing his way past
the hanging sheets out into the kitchen, wincing at the
petrol fumes.
When he got to the kitchen, he thought of making a run
for it. But then what? And he couldn't leave Meg here alone
in this place.
'Now lift the handle of the cellar door,' Angus was saying.
'Remember, Harry, how we were never allowed down there
because the old man kept all his booze there?'
'Yes,' said Harry. 'I do remember.'
'Lift it up,' Angus ordered. 'Nice and easy.' Harry leaned
over and did so, kicking shards of pink Victorian glass to one
side. He noticed without interest that he'd left a smear of
blood from his ruined foot on the flagging of the kitchen
floor. As soon as the trapdoor opened, the scent picture came
up to him: dead air, cold and still, with the scent of mould
and mushrooms and dusty spiders' webs. And something else.
Meg's scent drifted up.
'Max, please,' her voice from the dim cellar. 'Please let me
go back to my children. Please, Max. Don't do this.'
'Climb down, Harry,' said Angus.
Harry climbed down, trying to think, trying to find a
way out. At the base of the ladder, he looked around. It
was a low-ceilinged bunker, much larger than the cellar at
Strathfield, and a naked low-wattage globe shed sickly light
on shelves of storage. There was an earthen floor, and an open
drain had been dug along the length of the area, following
the slight natural incline of the land. Angus had made four
rough, square frames, a bit like bedsteads, raised some way
off the ground, with a trench cut beneath them.
Harry's heart contracted in horror. Human being frames,
he realised; like coffins for the living, to confine people in,
with holes cut beneath them to take waste away, a further
refinement on what Harry now realised was the practice run
at Strathfield.
Meg was already cuffed to one tresde and only her left
hand was free. 'Harry,' she said. 'Harry.' She was past crying.
Harry stood there, shocked at the sight of his wife.
'I'm so sorry,' Meg was saying before she turned away from
him. 'He's crazy,' she said. 'He planned to take us all away,
me and the kids, and kill you.'
You were going to come with me, Meg, of your own
free will.' Angus's voice was hard and triumphant behind
Harry. 'To start a new life, away from a man who failed to
appreciate you. Don't you remember?
'I want you to get into that nice little structure I've made
for you, Harry, and cuff yourself in.'

'I won't do it, Angus,' he said.

'Yes you will. I'll hurt your wife if you don't.' He went
across to where Meg lay like a sacrifice and grabbed a handful
of her hair. She winced and closed her eyes. Then they were
wide open again.

'Why are you calling him Angus?' said Meg. 'Do you
know him? Is this Angus?' Her eyes were dilated with fear
and horror. 'Are you Angus?' she said. She strained but there
was no escaping.

'Get down, Harry,' said Angus, ignoring her.

Again, hopeless, Harry did as he was told, climbing onto
the coffin frame.

'Snap on the cuffs. First on the leg, then the arm. That's
the way.'

This is breaking every rule, thought Harry. Never allow
yourself to be immobilised. He despaired.

Angus leaned over and snapped the cuffs around Harry's
other arm. 'Good,' he said. 'I always wanted a happy family.
But you betrayed me. You stopped me having my own.'

'That's absurd,' said Harry. 'People like you can't have
happy families. You bring your own shit with you.' He was
surprised at his own words.

But Angus wasn't listening. 'If I'd married Janette . . .' he
was saying.

'You murdered Janette!' Harry roared. 'And the woman
you lived with at Strathfield. And old Aunt Vera, Some
family man.'

Angus continued to ignore him. 'So I've had to make do
with yours. I was going to set you all up down here, in a nice
little bunker where you'd be safe. I put food away for you
all. I was just going to keep you all for awhile until I worked

out what I'd do next. But then things changed. The woman
changed her mind. Just like Janette. She wouldn't come. I
don't like losing control of things I've planned. The kid got
away from Pughsie.'

'A dog tore his throat out,' said Meg. 'And all the time you
pretended you were concerned. You offered your support.
And I believed you. How can you talk about "betrayed"?'

'I think it would be better for you to be quiet now,' said
Angus. 'Both of you.'

'Can't we talk about this a little, Angus?' Harry asked, in his
soothing voice. 'Surely we can talk, man-to-man, and leave
the women out of this. This is between you and me.'

Angus turned on him, looking down at him. 'Yes. It is
between you and me. You are the person who destroyed
my life.'

'Oh, for Christ's sake,' Meg couldn't help herself. 'You
can't blame other people for your miserable life.'

'You did, you bitch,' he said, swinging round on her. 'You
did exactly that. You were waiting for the handsome rich man
who would take care of you. And you thought you had him
for awhile. I remember some of the things you told me about
Harry. You blamed him for your miserable life.'

And Meg was shamed into silence.

There must be something I can do, Harry was thinking,
desperate and helpless. Something.

'You always judged me, Harry,' Angus was saying. 'I always
felt those eyes of yours. Those bloody eyes looking at me,
judging me, always making me wrong. I'd look up and I'd
see your eyes.'

If you're talking about what happened in Vietnam,' said
Harry, 'these things happen. You could still get help. Even
though you've killed people. Post-traumatic stress disorder.
You might find that you could get help and not be held
responsible for all this. You might end up doing your time
in a hospital.' He tried to indicate the surrounding situation
with his cuffed hands. 'I would even take the stand on your
behalf. I know what you suffered when you were a kid. I
remember your father, remember the beatings.'
'Suffered? What are you talking about? My father was a
great man. And my mother was a saint. My father taught me
to be a man. He taught me how to be tough.'
Angus started walking away towards the ladder. 'I don't
need help. I just want to be free of your judgement. I was
going to go down with the ship but I've changed my mind.
I'm flying to another state. There are other dead men's names
I can use. I've kept some money. Dealing -with you at last will
change my luck, Harry Doyle. I know it. I've been planning
this a long, long time.'
Then he climbed up the ladder out of the bunker. Just
before he closed the trapdoor he leaned in, crazily upside
down. 'By the way,' he said, 'I've got another M26.' Then
he was gone and the trapdoor slammed down.
He must have hidden the ute down the road, thought
Harry, watched me until I'd gone inside the house and then
crept in on foot behind me, knowing the petrol stench would
cover him. He closed his eyes briefly. He was exhausted.
Then he rallied. 'My keys,' he said. 'On my belt. See if you
can reach them. My handcuff key.'
Meg strained and stretched, but it was useless. Harry and
his key ring were impossibly out of reach. 'I can't,' she sobbed,
falling back, closing her eyes. Then she opened them again.
'What's an M26?' she asked.
'A grenade,' he told her. 'This place is a bomb. He's primed
it with petrol. He'll throw a grenade in from outside.'
'And then?'
'Then the whole place goes sky high.'
'What about us?'
Harry opened his eyes. 'If we're not killed in the explosion,
we'll burn. If we survive that, the sheer size of the blaze will
suck up all the oxygen down here. We'll asphyxiate.' His
mind filled with images of all the dead and all the ways of
dying he'd investigated in his time.
'We're going to die, Harry.'
Harry could see no way out of this one and tears pricked
his eyes.
Meg noticed.
'You're crying,' she said. 'You've never cried in your
life.'
'Not in front of you,' he said, and that silenced her. She
looked away again. 'I'm thinking of old Razor,' he said, 'who
will starve to death down a mine shaft.'
'Where were you, Harry?' Meg was saying. 'When I
needed you. When Hannah was taken?'
'I was on the job,' he said. 'I was tracking this bastard. But
he got me instead.'
Meg started crying then, deep sobs, a sound that tore
Harry's heart. He thought of Alison and Hannah whom
he'd never see again.
'The girls,' she said, as if reading his thoughts.
'I've got to find a way out of here,' he said.
'There is no way out of here,' she said. 'This is it. Talk to
me, Harry. Tell me something about yourself.
'I used to tell you once,' he said. 'But you wouldn't listen.
You criticised me. Tried to make me over. So after awhile,
I shut up.'
'That's too easy, Harry.'
'That's why I never tell you anything, Meg. You can't help
yourself. You can't hear me. So I shut up.'
'Here we are still squabbling,' she said bitterly. 'We're
about to be blown to bits but we're still fighting about who's
right. That's marriage.'
'That's our marriage,' he said.
There was a silence.
'Tell me what happened with Hannah.'
Meg told him the full story of how she and Alison and
Blade had got Hannah back. He turned to look at her, his
brave, amazing wife who wouldn't love him. And in turn, he
told her about Angus Wetherill and this place and the war.
'That name -Max,'
said Harry. 'That was the name of one
of our company who was blown up by a Claymore mine.'
'He used a dead man's name,' said Meg. 'And I fell
for him.'
'He must have set you up,' said Harry. 'Joined the art classes
to get to you. Done a deal with Pugh to get Hannah. All the
time working on revenging himself on me.'
Meg closed her eyes. It was all so awful. It was all so insane.
'I brought him into our lives,' she said. 'It was my doing.'
'He would have got in somehow. It was his lifetime plan.
He said so.'
'No,' she said. 'All this mess ... I caused it. Instead of
looking at the ninety-eight per cent of a person that's good, I
only look at the two per cent that I think should be different.
I did it with you. I did it with Alison. I would have started
doing it with Hannah once she got to the stage of wanting
to be different from me.'
Harry wasn't listening. 'He did something in Vietnam. He
raped a woman. When she was dying. I saw it happen and I
could never speak to him after that.'
'He's going to win,' said Meg. 'All that cruelty and
vengeance is going to win. And I helped.'
Harry looked across at her. She wasn't far away. He
stretched his fingers out to touch her, and she turned and
saw what he was doing and stretched out her free hand, but
their fingers, no matter how hard they stretched, just failed
to meet.
'Maybe we should pray,' said Meg. 'But I don't know how
to. Harry?'
'My mother used to pray,' said Harry. 'She taught me some
prayers.'
'You've never talked about her,' said Meg. 'Why?'
'I was ashamed of her,' said Harry.
'Why?' she asked.
'When I was little, I didn't worry. About being Koori.
Her grandmother was one of the Achumenra people, she
used to tell me. And she was descended from a famous
"clever man". I used to like hearing that. But as I got
a bit older, I just didn't want to know about it. I went
to the little school at Maldon, the nearest big town from
Boolabimbie. We learned all about the brave explorers and
the noble white doctors and missionaries who tried to help
the primitive, treacherous blacks. I didn't want anyone to
know what I was. People have thought me to be all sorts
of different things over the years -Black
Irish, Spanish,
Maltese, Greek -and
I let them. Once I got away and
went to Vietnam I never went back home. I just kept quiet
about it. Never told anyone. After awhile it was like it was
someone else's story. I thought it didn't mean anything to
me anymore.'
'Where is she now?' asked Meg.
'She married some old bloke years later and moved away
to Maldon. She didn't want to go too far from her people's
country. But I never visited her.'
There was a sharp, flat crack somewhere above them.
Harry recognised the sound. The other grenade. Now he
could smell the fire upstairs. He imagined the blazing sheets,
taking the fire to the roof, the huge updraught billowing into
the sky. Was the air thinner down here already?
'I'd do anything to see her again,' said Harry. 'Speak to
her. Ask her forgiveness.'
'I'm sorry, Harry,' Meg was saying. 'So sorry for all the
hard things I've said in our life together. I failed to do the
thing I advise other people to do. I didn't listen.' She smiled
weakly. 'I have to be chained up in a cellar in a house that's
about to blow up before I can see a few things.'
'I'm sorry I was so closed down. And I'm sorry I failed to
protect you and my family,' said Harry. 'He planned things
so that I'd follow him away from all of you. And I did.'
'Cops and school counsellors,' she said, 'see the world in
a completely different way.'
'They'd have to,' he said. 'They come at the world from
different directions.'
'Worlds within worlds,' she said. 'Like you and me. Never
the same world. The same bed, but a different world.' The
scent of burning was getting stronger, the roar of the fire
above them like an approaching aircraft.
'Harry, I'm really scared. My whole body is shaking.'
'So is mine.'
'What were the prayers your mother taught you?' she
asked.
'I can't remember,' he said. 'Meg, I'm sorry.'
'My children,' she said. 'I will never see them again.'

Ray Gosling sat up in the front of the wagon with Jim as
passenger and Police Dog Javelin dancing and circling
in the confines of the rear. Behind them, in the other car,
were Ayoub and Brennan and two other officers from nearby
Maldon. As they turned off the road and into the driveway
of Maldon Downs, Jim leaned forward.
'Step on it,' he yelled as they bumped over the uneven
surface. He could see smoke over the rise, the black smoke
of an accelerant.
Ray was driving as fast as he dared and the second car
was bouncing along almost on their tail. As the wagon
topped the hill, Jim's heart sank. In front of them, the
homestead of Maldon Downs was blazing. Rolls of black
smoke unfolded around and above the two storeys. Fire
tongued out of the downstairs windows and curled upwards.
The wagon skidded to a halt close enough for Jim to feel
the heat on his face. Ray jumped out and opened the
back for Javelin, snapped the harness on and the two of
them raced away around the side of the building towards
the back. As the second car pulled up behind them, Jim
could hear Ayoub yelling to base to hurry up with the Fire
Brigade.
The fire roared at the front of the house and the temperature
was horrendous. But the back section of the house was
still undamaged; the fire hadn't taken hold yet where there
were flagstone floors and granite walls. Ray and the dog
disappeared round the back of the house and Jim ran through
the heavy black smoke after them, aware of the sound of
another car coming down the driveway. As he turned the
corner, he saw that the back door to the house was open and
Ray and Javelin had vanished inside. Jim followed them.
'Harry!'Jim yelled as he went in as far as he dared. 'Are you
there?' Past the kitchen, he could barely see through rooms
dense with smoke and the roar of the fire was deafening. 'Is
there anyone here? Ray?' he shouted. 'Where are you?' Jim
had to turn away, the heat from the centre of the house too
intense for him to stay.
Ray and Javelin suddenly appeared beside him out of the
smoke and Ray's brows and hair was scorched. 'I can't go
any further,' Ray yelled over the noise of the blaze. 'There's
nothing we can do. Get out of here.'
In the house, fire zipped along the floor of the hallway following
the petrol-drenched fabric, past rooms where flames
were burning through the ceiling joists to the next storey,
flaming up the sheets into the manholes. A jet of flame
jumped the staircase and exploded in the air of the landing.
Another fiery runner blazed along the hallway towards the
back of the house out to the kitchen. It turned into the
flagstoned room and ran along the floor, lapping at the
paintwork of the cupboards. It filled the doorway from the
hall with its blistering radiance.
Outside the back of the house, Ray and Jim watched.
'I think we should get a long way back,' said Jim. 'It's going
to go up like world war three.' They found a place to stand
near the derelict orchard, with the heat still burning their
faces. Fruit bats squeaked and flew past them, blundering in
the smoke.
'What if Harry's in there?' said Ray. His anguished face
tried to see through the pall of smoke and the hectic light
of flames.
Black smoke was rolling and spreading all around them.
Through the noise of the blaze Jim heard Ayoub yelling,
'Hey! You can't go in there! Come back. Stop! Stop that
woman!'
Jim was horrified to see a slender figure running with a dog
towards the same door they'd just exited. Then he realised it
was Alison running with Blade, holding her arm up in a futile
attempt to shield her face from the inferno. For a second, her
slight figure was backlit by deadly light. Then she vanished
into the house. Jim started running towards the kitchen again,
screaming her name.
Inside, Alison took no notice. Smoke blinded her. 'Mum!' she was screaming.' Where are you?'
In the kitchen, she was almost overcome with smoke
and she screamed as the glass door of a cupboard suddenly
shattered.
'Mum!' she screamed again, blinking, eyes stinging, frantically
peering through the smoke. The roar of the inferno
was terrifying, and the heat penetrated the thick fabric of
her overall. Blade went nose down straight to the trapdoor
ring and Alison dropped to her hands and knees, following
his cue. Around her in the kitchen, the fire was starting
to take hold. Flames danced on the painted surfaces of
the cupboards and played up towards the ceiling. Blade
whimpered at the trapdoor ring. Alison was tugging at
it, trying to pull it back, when suddenly it gave way. As
she opened it out her mother's voice penetrated the roar
of the fire.
'We're down here. We're cuffed. Please get us out of
here!'
'Mum! I'm coming,' screamed Alison. She stumbled down
the ladder, looking around as she did, and her mind, pristine
with terror, immediately comprehended the situation. Black
smoke was spilling down past the ladder, moving into the
cellar from the opening where Blade barked furiously.
'Darling, it's you,' sobbed her mother as Alison ran to
them.
'The keys on my belt, AH!' yelled Harry. 'Get them.'
Alison grabbed at Harry's belt, trying to pull the key ring
off. But her fingers weren't working. 'I can't get it off!' she
screamed. 'It won't come off!'
'Take it easy,' said Harry in his soft voice. 'Just squeeze
and lift.'
Alison pressed the clasp open and pulled the bunch of keys
away from the black mesh. She knew the cuff key and her
fingers closed on the narrow needle of steel.
'Get your mother out of here,' said Harry as she separated
the cuff key from the others and stooped to free her mother.
As Alison's fingers fumbled with the key, Jim and Ray
suddenly appeared at the top of the ladder. Hellish light
shone above them as the fire claimed the kitchen. Blade's
barking became hysterical and, somewhere, Javelin joined in,
howling.
'Thank God,' said Meg,' She freed her hand and snatched
the key. 'Get out of here now,' she commanded. 'I'll do
the rest.'
'But Mum--'
'Do as you're told!' Harry roared. 'Get Blade and get
out.'
Alison scrambled up the ladder, turning once near the top.
'Hurry,' she screamed at them. 'Please!' Then she disappeared.
Meg scrambled out of the frame and had Harry free in
seconds. Jim grabbed her, and Ray helped Harry up and
the four of them raced over to the ladder with Jim in the
lead. 'Follow me,' said Jim. 'Stay close behind and move
quickly.'
Jim put his head out of the trapdoor to confront a solid
wall of flame. He hauled himself out, feeling the terrible heat
on his skin. Smoke filled his lungs. He coughed, then held
his breath, grabbing Meg's hands, lifting her and swinging
the two of them out the door in one movement. Behind
them, Ray and Harry scrambled low along the floor, crashing
through the door to the outside a half-second later.
The four raced past the blazing laundry building and, as
they did, there was a deafening roar and the little huddle of
people, with the reflection of the flames flickering in their
eyes, turned and watched transfixed as the entire length of the
roof collapsed. No-one spoke as the back section of the house,
including the kitchen they had just vacated, disappeared under
a rolling, roaring wave of flaming roof and masonry. Maldon
Downs homestead had disintegrated.
Meg, Alison and Blade stayed the night at the local motel,
courtesy of the owners, with Blade allowed a special
place in the laundry. Meg attended to the blisters on her
daughter's face and fingers and ordered food that they left
almost untouched, quite unable to eat. Ray Gosling and
Javelin dozed in the wagon outside their unit, keeping an
eye on things. At Meg's insistence, Harry spent the night in
the local hospital where his shredded feet were dressed. Jim
Coates dozed in a chair beside him.
In the morning, Harry's boss rang. 'Take a few weeks off,'
Matthews said. 'Spend some time with the family. Look after
yourself'
Meg and Alison arrived and, together with Jim, helped
him out of the ward and down the corridor. He was limping
between his wife and Alison, with Blade trotting behind,
when Ayoub and Brennan pulled up outside in Harry's
wagon. With them was Razor. They had worked with
a couple of local rock climbers who'd gone down the
mine, secured Police Dog Razor and winched him safely
back up. Then they'd fed, watered and washed him. When
Ayoub lowered the back of the wagon, Harry squatted and
Razor flew into his arms. Then Razor and Blade caught
up with each other, sniffing, circling, barking in delighted
reunion.
While Meg, Alison and the two dogs waited for the men
in Meg's car, Harry took Jim aside for a word. 'While Angus
Wetherill is on the loose,' he said, 'I want twenty-four-hour
protection for my family.'
'It's already been organised,' said Jim. 'Hannah and Dell
are having a four-star holiday, courtesy of the state.'
Harry gripped his friend's arm. He didn't have to say
anything.
During the drive back, the state-wide search for Angus
Wetherill was in evidence. At two roadblocks when Harry
showed his warrant card, they caught up with the latest.
No-one had seen Wetherill since he'd left town, heading
west. Police searching the burnt-out property had found the
original set of registration plates from Angus's vehicle but
¦were still pulling over all fawn utilities as a precaution. It
seemed, however, that Angus Wetherill had slipped through.
All reports of stolen vehicles in the area were being checked
out. 'I know Angus,' said Harry. 'I know what he'll do. He'll
lie low. He's a good bushman. Wait till the heat is off. Then
make his move.'

Jim drove into the underground car park of the serviced
apartments in Darlinghurst and Harry followed in Meg's
car. Jim and the family went up in the lift, while Blade and
Razor were fussed over by the concierge's wife downstairs.
Hannah and Dell were waiting for them and Hannah's joyous
welcome when her father, mother and big sister walked
into the room almost knocked Meg off her feet. 'Mummy,
Mummy,' as she snuggled her face into her mother's breast.
Then she hugged her father.
'Where are the dogs?' she wanted to know.
Harry told her.
'You must never go away again, Dad,' she said, 'because
you nearly lost me and then we nearly lost Mum.'
They all had lunch together, sitting in the building's private
courtyard with the dogs flopped out under the table. Meg
went out shopping with Harry while Jim stayed at the
apartment. When she came back, she made the kids' favourite
lasagne and Harry sat with a rare beer.

There was no sign of Angus Wetherill and, after two days, the
family moved home again. As Harry got out of the wagon at
55 Botanical Avenue, he thought the scent picture had never
smelled so good. A gang of honeyeaters, perfect with their
black and yellow markings, was disturbed by their arrival and
rose from the top of a large grevillea.
He let the dogs out of the back and reached in to pick up
the S-shaped piece of timber for Hannah's message stick.
'I'm going to make a vegetable garden,' Meg announced
as she walked right through the house and out to the back.
'And a flower garden. I'm going to fix up this yard. I could
plant something lovely over the dog pen and soften the whole
look of the place.'
She looked around at her family and her heart filled with
love. Harry saw something in her face and was touched. He
leaned across. 'Come inside,' he said. 'There's something I
want to show you.'
'Oh yeah?' said Alison. And Hannah giggled. .Razor went
to follow Harry, but Hannah grabbed him for a hug.
'In here,' said Harry, as they walked down the hall and
Meg followed him into his study. As they walked in, the
phone rang again and Harry picked it up, putting the piece
of timber down, hesitating just a fraction, aware that Angus
« etherill was somewhere on the planet.
'He doesn't live here anymore and the Archons told me
you were dead,' said the Confessor.
'No, Milton. You see that I'm not.'
'Can I speak to him?' Meg was signalling. Harry nodded
and passed the phone to her. 'Milton?' said Meg. 'I'm sorry
I called you crazy last time we spoke. I was out of my mind
with distress about my little girl. I want to thank you for your
help. I wouldn't have found her without you.'
There was a pause on the line. The Confessor's voice
changed from the thin, hesitant voice she knew. 'I am a
person,' he said in a man's strong voice. 'A human being.'
'Yes,' said Meg, handing the phone back to Harry. But
the Confessor had gone.
Overhead, the sound of an aircraft approaching and the
whiff of benzine resolved Meg to buy a thankyou card for
Milton and send it to the address where no letters had ever
been forwarded.
Harry picked up the uncompleted message stick and took
out the phial with the tiny gold nugget in it. Meg watched
as he dropped strong glue into a small hole he'd drilled some
time previously. Carefully, he picked up the small shiny lump,
where it sat for a moment, golden on his fingertip, then he
dropped it onto the glue, where it settled and sank into place
immediately. Harry carefully put the message stick down
again on his desk.
'I didn't tell you everything back there,' he said, and she
shivered, remembering the hours she thought she was going
to die alone, unforgiven, unheard and never see her girls
again. 'The saddest thing about me being ashamed of my
mother,' he said, 'was this.' He looked up and Meg saw that
his eyes were soft with tears. 'Fair skinned children like me
were taken away when we were little kids.'
Meg looked at him in astonishment. 'You?'
'I was taken when I was two or three -- I don't even know
how old I was -- from where we were living in New South
Wales and shipped interstate. Kidnapped by the government
agent. Put in an orphanage in South Australia. They wanted
to separate us completely from our families and make us into
useful labour. For the first time in my life, I knew what it
was like to be hungry and cold. It's where I first experienced
cruelty. And hatred. Maybe one day I'll be strong enough to
look at what else happened in that place. My mother -she must have only been about nineteen or twenty at the time -- she walked all the way across the country somehow with her
sister. That's where she met the stockman, Joe Doyle, and he
was allowed to visit me in the orphanage and take me out for
a walk. The warders wouldn't let us go with our mothers. It
was against the law. But a strange white man was considered
all right. My mother and her sister were waiting for us near
the edge of town and the four of us went on the lam. I'll
never forget the moment I saw her face again after all that
time. I can only remember bits and pieces of that time. We
moved back to New South Wales and Joe and my mother
got work at Maldon Downs. That was the place I always felt
was home.'
'I had no idea,' she said. 'I thought you'd always been
at Boolabimbie.' She went to the window and looked out.
The honeyeaters were chiming in a bunch on top of a red
callistemon. She turned back to her husband and her voice
was low. 'I don't know much about the people I claim to
love, do I? Even though I know that to love someone is to
know them. I don't know much about you,' she said. 'About
anything.'
She touched the message stick and was surprised at how
smooth and soft the polished timber felt under her fingers.
She looked into her husband's eyes and out the window again.

The honey eaters had gone, but a nectar-laden breeze wafted
into the house from the brilliant callistemon blooms.

'I thought I was going to die yesterday in that cellar, Harry.
I'd got Hannah back only to die down there.' She looked at
him and felt tears soften her own eyes. 'It's like I've been
given another chance. And not just me. This whole family
has been given another chance. To really live. To learn about
each other. And you and me, too.'

Harry took her two hands in his and she gazed into his eyes.
'That place they sent us little kids,' he said, almost in a whisper.
'It was a terrible place. That's where I first learned silence. There
was no-one to hear me then. It became a habit. It wasn't just the
job. Maybe my silence drove you towards another man.'

'Maybe,' she said. 'But I have to say that much of it came
from my own restlessness and lack of satisfaction with myself'
I need to learn more about myself, too, she realised.

'Can you let the business with Max go?' she asked after a
moment.

Harry released her hands and went over to the window,
staring out. 'That was Angus Wetherill, not Max,' he said
finally. 'Max was a good man.'

'Harry. I don't know if I can forgive myself right now for
that, but I could learn to listen to you,' she said. 'Just as you
are. Not try and change you.'

'I've got some time off,' he said. 'Maybe we could all go
away for awhile. I want to track down my mother. I want to spend some time with her.' Meg nodded. 'And I want to find
out about my real father. I never knew him. I want to know
his story. His country. Why he deserted us. If he's alive or
dead. What happened to him.'

Meg looked at her husband in surprise. 'That's amazing,'
she said. 'So does Alison. She told me this morning. Would
you mind?'

Harry shook his head. 'I'll help her,' he said. 'That's
something we can do together. It's important to know these
things. Where we came from. What sort of people made us.
What their stories were.'

Meg saw the goodness in her husband's face, the kindness
in his eyes that she'd stopped seeing in the years she'd judged
and blamed him. She remembered something a lecturer
had said years ago; that the potential of a human being is
unlimited. It had sounded impossible to believe then, but
she was starting to understand. Human beings are designed
for deep connection, she thought, and if we fail to get that,
we go mad. I went more than a bit mad, she thought.
And Alison "was going that way too, until I learned some
humility. And Hannah. Reaching out to strangers instead
of her parents. She understood the softness that lay behind
her husband's guardedness; realised that his lock-up defence
system had been completely appropriate.

'What now, Harry?' she asked. 'You and me?'

'No more secrets,' he said. 'Let's be fair like Hannah says.'
He took up the message stick again and the feathers lifted
softly with the movement. The tiny nugget of gold looked
as if it had been there forever, washed into the seam of the
timber by some archaic flood.

'Yes,' she said. 'It's the unsaid things that haunt us. The
unsaid and the unknown. They still have power to hurt us.
Generation after generation.'

'This is for you,' he said, giving her the varnished stick
with the alluvial gold in it. 'Because you are a good woman,
and because you are my wife.'

Later, they went into their bedroom and made love like
they hadn't for a long time.

Just as Harry was gently kissing Meg's forehead, the phone rang. For the first time in his life as half of a man-dog unit

in a twenty-four-hour a day operational police base, Harry
decided not to hear it.

Six hours later, he and Jim and Razor sped west along
the highway. A suspect utility and a driver answering the
description of Angus Wetherill had been seen by a sharp-eyed
constable in a small town not far from Maldon, buying fishing
tackle. It was dusk and the evening was closing in with the
sharp fall in temperature that occurs without the influence of
the coast.
In the township of Durham, they talked to the young
constable. 'There's really only the highway,' he said, pointing
to the map on his desk. 'These little roads here only go to small
towns. If he takes the back roads he still has to get back on the
highway if he wants to get to a major centre.'
'He's arsey coming back so close to Boolabimbie,' said Jim.
'No,' Harry shook his head. 'It's exactly what he'd do. It's
the last place anyone would think to look for him.' He's going
to ground, Harry thought, where he feels safe, while he waits
to make his next move. 'He's probably booked on a flight at
a major centre,' he said. 'He'll wait till he thinks we've got
bored checking airports for some other dead man and then
he'll fly out of the country.'
'Where do you think he might hide out?' said Jim, thinking
of the burnt-out shell of Maldon Downs.
'He liked to fish when he was in strife,' said Harry. 'He'd
go down to the river and he'd set up a few lines. Sit on
the bank and have a whisky. Sometimes, he'd keep casting
a spinner, over and over.'
'Where're the best fishing spots around here?' Jim asked.
Harry looked at the map spread out on the counter then at
his colleague. 'Come on,' he said. 'I know where they are.'
Jim drove along the highway, following the wandering
Boolabimbie river. Harry maintained a sharp look-out for
any sign of a possible lay-by. Harry hoped his hunch was
right, and hoped even more fervently that they would have
the good luck to see the reported vehicle again. Razor pushed
his snout past the passenger seat and Harry gently pushed him
back; then, with a tremendous shock, he suddenly confronted
the fawn ute, standing a little way off the other side of the
road, quite plainly in view, not far from a bridge that he'd
noticed on the constable's map.
'That's him! That's the ute.'
Jim immediately slowed and indicated to make the necessary
turn, craning his neck to see. Harry leaned over and picked
up the radio.
'We've got a suspect utility off the highway, facing east,
just past the Gimpy Creek bridge and turn-off. We're going
after him.'
But Jim was finding that he had to pull over to the left
and let a string of cars go by before he could make the
U-turn. 'Come on, come on,' he muttered, then, 'Oh shit,'
because the ute's lights had come on over the other side
of the road and it had started to pull away fast, vanishing
behind them.
'He's seen us,' said Harry. 'The bastard's seen us.' He
grabbed the radio again and Razor grunted in the back.
'Suspect utility now driving east along the highway. We're
on him.'
Jim finally made the turn, but by the time they'd settled
down and cleared a rise, the ute had taken its anonymous place
somewhere ahead of them in a string of moving vehicles.
Only the tail lights were visible.
Where are you, you bastard?' Harry asked. Then one of the vehicles in the group about a hundred metres ahead
suddenly made a left-hand turn off the road. 'That'll be him,'
Harry yelled.
'How do you know? What if it's not?'Jim said.
'It will be. We've interfered with his plan so he'll be
running on unconscious flight pattern and he's right on track
with that lefthand turn.'
Jim accelerated and took off, passing two vehicles and
tucking in behind another. 'That's the turn,' said Harry,
indicating a narrow bitumen road turning off the highway,
signposted 'Ellersley 6 kms' together with a graphic depicting
'Caution Kangaroos'.
Jim nearly overshot the turn-off and had to break and
swing the car, skidding on the gravel as he did. Ahead of
them, speeding down the Ellersley road, they could see the
red tail lights of the ute. 'Be ready for a right turn now,' said
Harry. 'If there's one available he'll take it.' Almost as Harry
spoke, the utility made a sudden right-hand turn which Jim
repeated moments later.
'Be ready for another,' said Harry. 'Two or three. Then
he'll go back to a left.'
Jim glanced at him. 'How do you know this?' he asked.
'Because even though he's Angus Wetherill, he's a human
being,' said Harry. 'And we're all hard-wired the same.'
Now Jim was flat to the boards but failing to make any
ground because the ute had raced away ahead of them,
recklessly speeding.
'I'll never catch up with him,' Jim shouted. Harry could
see the sweat on his friend's face gleaming in the dashboard
light. The night roared past them outside at speed; Jim's hands
whiteknuckled on the wheel. The needle on the speedo
was wavering in the red, at 160 kilometres per hour, when
suddenly the utility ahead seemed to shudder in the middle
of the road, partly explode in a spray of brilliant diamonds,
veer wildly, then skid right onto the shoulder, bouncing and
rocking off the road, collecting a wire fence on its way.
'What's he doing?' yelled Jim, wrenching the wheel to
avoid overshooting the place the ute had left the road,
wrestling to follow it. 'What's the bastard doing?' The utility
continued to bounce along in a nearby clearing, over granite
outcrops and piles, until it collided with a young sapling
sprouting from a rock, spun round and stopped with its front
wheels halfway up an embankment. One headlight still shone
crazily up into the trees.
Harry jumped out of the car and let Razor out, hooked the
line onto the harness and the old dog drew away fast, pulling
Harry along with him, racing towards the crashed utility. 'This
is the one,' his body language signalled. Harry took a firm hold
of the line in his left hand, steadied the dog, unfastened the
holster and drew his weapon. Angus Wetherill would not
get any chances this time. This was high country they were
in, rugged terrain and well-known to both Harry and Angus.
Boolabimbie was tucked dozens of metres beneath them in
the valley to the left. Harry ducked out of the headlights of
their vehicle, crouched down and waited with Razor. He was
aware of Jim doing the same beside him. Ahead of them, lit up
by their headlights, the cabin of the ute was rocking wildly.
'What's he doing? What the fuck's going on?' Jim's voice
was a harsh whisper.
They moved in closer, keeping low, almost right up to the
ute where they took cover behind a rocky outcrop. Harry
heard the sound of a distant watercourse. 'There's someone
else in there with him,' said Jim. In the heavily shadowed
interior of the utility, it seemed two figures struggled.
Come out of there!' yelled Harry. 'Put your hand out
of the window. Open the door using the outside handle. Do it now!
Slow.'
Thumps and bangs came from the cabin and more sprays of
broken windscreen glass caught the light. 'Angus Wetherill!
Out of there now!' Harry shouted. But the struggle in the
ute continued. Then came a terrible, choked-off scream. As
Harry and Jim watched, the passenger door opened a little
and a glistening red hand flopped out.

The scent picture here was of hot metal and engine fluids
leaking into the night, but there was something else that
reminded him of a war zone after a battle.

'What's going on?' Jim repeated. Harry squinted, trying
to see. He could smell the steamy odour of stomach wounds
and the stench of alcohol. When the door suddenly banged
¦wide open, Harry jumped with fear. He slipped Razor, who
stood beside him awaiting further orders and shivering with
readiness, and raised his weapon into firing position. Then
he realised what was happening.

'Jesus,' he whispered, lowering the weapon. A huge,
twisted kangaroo, with one paw dangling useless, sprawled
out of the ute's now wide-open door into the circle of
light, struggled to its feet, hobbled sideways, then jumped
crookedly and vanished in darkness. From inside the cabin,
the man's red hand fell further out, slowly followed by
the arm and shoulder, until finally, with an extraordinary
and chilling grace, gliding in the mess of his own bloody
disembowelment, the rest of Angus Wetherill slid out upside
down onto the earth.


Jim, Harry and Razor went back to the beginning of the
skid marks on the road. Harry shone the powerful torch on
the ground. He studied the kangaroo tracks and tyre marks
until the pictures started coming to his mind. It was the same
big animal whose tracks he'd noticed at the spot beside the
river where he'd camped for the night. By the time Harry
straightened up, he had it all. He turned to Jim as the story
unfolded in his mind.

'This big fellow is standing in the middle of the road ..."
he said, showing Jim the place of collision, the beginning of
the skid, the blood spray pattern from the impact'. . . frozen
by the headlights of the ute. But Angus Wetherill just drives
straight at him. See there? No attempt to swerve. He knows
the bullbar will deal with this fellow. But instead of the
bullbar throwing him off sideways onto the roadside, the
roo somehow gets tangled up with it and comes flying over
the top of the bonnet, crashes through the windscreen into
the cabin, starts kicking and flailing around, trying to escape.
Back legs like threshing machines; claws like razors. Angus
Wetherill's trying to regain control of the vehicle. Trying to
stop it, to get out away from this monster with the big claws
slashing everywhere.'

The two men followed the careering track of the ute back
to the rocky embankment against which it now rested. Water
dripped from the radiator.

'But the more Angus struggles to get away,' Harry said,
'the more terrified and aggressive that big fellow gets. One
final kick and the kangaroo lays him open from arsehole to
breakfast.'

They had come round to the driver's side of the vehicle
and now stood by the body of the dead man where it lay on
its stomach. Harry saw the molten gleam of viscera under the
collapsed body. He felt nothing but relief in that moment,
that it was over after all these years. The end of the hatred.
For both of them.

Jim went to the car to radio for assistance while Harry and
Razor headed off into the scrub to deal with the injured beast,
following the blood trail.

 The sound of the watercourse became louder with every


step they took, and from the lay  of the land and his own
local knowledge, together with the familiar scent picture,
Harry suddenly understood where they were. This was the
high country directly above the Wetherills' property, Maldon
Downs. The watercourse he could hear ended in the very fall
that cascaded over the precipice in summer and down into
the swimming hole of the Boolabimbie River. It was where
he and Angus used to swim together in the shade of the giant
river gum, with the overgrown scars of ancient shot pellets
puckering its smooth white surfaces.

Harry found the kangaroo a few minutes later. It stood
panting in the beam of the flashlight, with its broken paw
and twisted pelvis, proud and stunned, blowing a red bubble
from its snout with every breath, no longer able to move.
The beautiful eyes in the kangaroo's stern, long face seemed
to stare straight into Harry's. He stood a moment, panting
with it. 'I'm sorry, brother,' he said, raising the weapon to
dispatch it. But the creature's eyes were filled with luminosity
and Harry found himself staring back into them, through
to another place. It was as if his eyes, ears and nose -- so
much keener now than they'd ever been -had
found yet
another dimension. Around him, the whole night seemed
to swing, pulsing in slow waves, and within his own body
he sensed an inner undulation that moved in time, touching
every organ, every cell. He lowered his weapon, unable to
fire, and the eyes of the kangaroo dilated, the luminosity
growing as the pupils relaxed. This was the third time in
his life he had gazed into dying eyes. Now the data that
his senses offered him increased in ever-widening circles,
like the ripples on an inland sea, and moved outwards to
encompass every tree, every mountain, the stars and beyond,
into unknowable darkness.

Harry's mind widened and opened out so that for a second
he thought he might tip over backwards into infinity. And
in that moment, Harry knew that nothing was the way
he'd thought it to be. He knew now that a huge mystery
surrounded and included him, everyone and everything,
including Angus Wetherill and himself, including the kangaroo
and the earth and the universe. Nothing was left out.
Nothing was lost.

Then the kangaroo coughed, and gently toppled dead at
his feet in a graceful tangle. The holographic vision faded
and Harry was just a man standing with a dog in a dark place.
He shone his flashlight on the dead kangaroo. I will take your
skin, Harry thought, and make something precious out of it to
remember this by. And then I will find out where she's living
and take it to her as a gift. I'll ask her what my real name is.
I'll bring my children to meet her and together we'll go back
to the swimming hole and see if we can still see the marks
of the shotgun pellets on the big river gum and I'll tell her
about this night and how the big kangaroo finished that old
business. She can teach me how to pray again.

Harry looked up at the stars, and the seven sisters blurred
as the tears filled his eyes.


The End.