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  Another ‘maybe’ shrug.

  ‘You can’t stay here, Louise. You just can’t. Another week? Out of the question. Think of Anna. Think of yourself. Food, clean clothes, a proper bathroom, proper bed…’

  ‘Sounds like a plan to me, girls,’ Washburn said. An arm around each sister, he rocked them gently, looking down at the tops of their heads. ‘What do you think?’

  Louise Rennie looked directly at Hirsch as she answered him. ‘I think if Paul comes back, we might be okay. And if he doesn’t it means they’ve got him.’

  30

  AS HIRSCH HEADED away from the creek, past Craig’s camp and out along the track, it occurred to him how unwise it would be to hand Wayne Flann over to the Homicide Squad in Redruth right now. Or even to Sergeant Brandl. As soon as the arrest was made public, everyone would get wind of the Rennie girls. Flann himself would probably broadcast the story that he’d merely been looking for them and how come Hirsch wasn’t telling anyone he’d found them? Meanwhile if a killer was still lurking, time was an issue. Taking Flann down to Redruth, booking him in and answering inconvenient questions would eat too much of it. The sooner the girls were secure, the better.

  Reaching the wagon wheel at the turnoff and seeing that he had two signal bars, Hirsch pulled over and called Bob Muir. Flann immediately began shouting and kicking the wall panels.

  Hirsch muted the CCTV. Now he could hear Bob’s voice in his ear: ‘Well if it isn’t the local law.’

  ‘Are you at home?’

  ‘Working in the shed.’

  ‘Are you free for a couple of hours? I need you to babysit Wayne Flann.’

  Muir didn’t waste time on incredulous questions. ‘Where?’

  ‘What used to be the lockup.’ A room at the rear of the Tiverton police station, now used for storage but still fitted with good locks and a barred window.

  ‘When?’

  ‘I’ll be there in half an hour,’ Hirsch said.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘He knows you,’ Hirsch said. ‘Sit in a chair, read a book, talk to him, give him water and food. I don’t want him hanging himself with a shoelace.’

  ‘What’s he done?’

  ‘Shot Mrs Rennie and her son.’

  A pause. ‘Okay.’

  ‘See you soon,’ Hirsch said, but he’d lost his signal.

  Clear in his mind now, Hirsch turned onto the Tiverton road and cranked up the speed. Using the old hayshed as a marker, he glanced out of the other side window and caught a brief glimpse of Flann’s ute down beside the creek. He’d secure it when he got back. Have a forensic team test it for blood traces, fibres; stolen goods from the night of the shootings.

  He drove on, his mind turning to Rosie DeLisle. Would she help him hide the girls? What if she played it by the book? Or went into full-scale major-operation mode, informing everyone—including a work colleague who might happen to let it slip to a Sydney colleague involved in the original witness protection betrayal? Better to turn up in Adelaide unannounced, he thought.

  He checked his phone: still no signal, and it stayed that way until he was ten minutes from Tiverton. On three bars, he pulled over again. Flann kicked the side panels. Finding Gemma Pitcher in his contacts list, Hirsch texted the photo of his prisoner in cuffs, saying: Wayne locked up. Safe 2 come home.

  Soon after he pulled back onto the road, his phone rang. Gemma’s number on the screen.

  He tucked the Toyota into a farm gateway and accepted the call. ‘Gemma.’

  ‘You’ve really got him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know what he done, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Adam says if you can get into Wayne’s phone there are some photos.’

  ‘Ah. Excellent.’

  ‘He can’t get away?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They won’t let him out? You know, on a technical whatever?’

  ‘No.’

  A long pause. In the lockbox, Flann yelled and kicked the walls.

  Gemma said, ‘Adam was with him, but he never shot no one and he didn’t know Wayne would do it and now he’s scared he’ll go to jail.’

  ‘I’ll look after Adam, that’s a promise,’ Hirsch said. ‘But the three of you need to come in. Everyone’s worried.’

  Another pause and Gemma said, ‘Maybe tomorrow.’ Then she was gone.

  With Flann’s phone stowed in the office safe and Flann secure in the old lockup, supplied with Pepsi, a microwaved supermarket pizza and the company of Bob Muir, perched on an Ikea garden chair, Hirsch got behind the wheel again and headed out of town. His phone rang: a number he didn’t recognise.

  ‘Paul?’

  Sergeant Brandl. Should he tell her about the Rennie girls and Wayne Flann? Not yet. ‘Yes, sergeant?’

  ‘I’m on an incident-room phone. Apparently we had a call from a truck driver an hour ago.’

  ‘Truck driver…’ Hirsch said, and he knew at once. The air grew chill around him.

  ‘A hay carter from Tamworth. Seems he wandered into his local cop shop to say he’d only just heard about the Rennie kids. Said he was on his way back to New South Wales on Christmas Eve after delivering a load of hay to a station out east of Tiverton and gave a lift to a couple of kids who might have been them.’

  ‘An hour ago? Sarge, I—’

  ‘He gave the coordinates.’ She recited them to him. ‘Can you check it out? I can’t spare anyone. Inspector Kellaher’s gone back to the city, Sergeant Dock’s at lunch, I have no idea where our Sydney friends are, and the children and I are flat chat.’

  Hirsch accelerated, driving with one hand on the wheel, the Toyota juddering on a narrow road shouldered with talc-like dust and loose gravel. ‘Who talked to the truckie, sarge?’

  ‘One of the support staff. I’ll put her on. Let me know how you go.’

  There were phone-fumbling sounds. Hirsch pictured one of the civilians at a desk in the town hall, logging information into a computer. He said, ‘Hello?’

  ‘What can I do you for?’

  ‘Sergeant Brandl said you took the call from the truck driver?’

  ‘From someone at the Tamworth police station originally, then the truck driver, and when I realised what he was talking about, I passed the phone to one of the Sydney detectives.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘I think his name’s Hansen.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Took off straight away.’

  An hour ago. ‘Did he say where he was going?’

  Hirsch could hear a shrug in her voice. ‘To check it out, presumably.’

  ‘Alone, or with Senior Sergeant Roesch?’

  ‘That one?’ scoffed the woman. ‘She came barrelling up a few minutes later, wanting to know where he was off to.’

  ‘And she also left?’

  ‘Just grabbed the coordinates and took off. Rude cow.’

  To head off Hansen before he hurt the girls.

  Hirsch tried calling Roesch. No answer and his signal kept cutting out. He reached for the radio handset—no, the cord was still cactus.

  The minutes passed. He increased speed; the temperature gauge rose—the radiator, he thought. Cleaning off dust and chaff was on his to-do list, which was long. Cleaning the radiator had been on it for at least two months now.

  The sun beat down. Mirages shimmered, vanished, renewed themselves further along the road. The distant hills were grey-blue, the closer hills mottled: dead grass, a dirt underlay and stone reef striations. The Toyota shuddered on the corrugations. Dust boiled in his wake. Then he was braking, swerving, straddling a lizard. He sped on, checking the rear-view mirror. No roadkill, thank god. He’d been responsible for a few squashed creatures in his time and wasn’t yet blasé about it, unlike the locals.

  Finally he was slowing at the wagon wheel and bumping down the track to Craig Washburn’s caravan—where a car was parked. One of the patrol cars on loan to the investigation; driven, presumably, by Hansen. No sign of Roes
ch’s rental car. Hirsch got out, locked up and headed for the creek.

  Then stopped. One hand went to the butt of his service pistol.

  A gunshot. Curiously flat, as if contained by the creek, but with an echo that snapped around the sky.

  31

  BUT THE SHOT had come from the direction of the old ruins, not the dugout. Hirsch thought about that; decided it made sense. Downstream was all untamed nature, and city-boy Hansen would have been drawn by instinct to signs of civilisation—the old ruins—after searching Craig’s camp.

  Had he stumbled on Craig and the girls? Had something persuaded them to leave the dugout? Or was Hansen shooting it out with Roesch? Had Roesch parked at the ruins and walked downstream?

  Hirsch thought all of these things in an instant but, before he could take another step there was a shriek—a man’s voice—followed by a flurry of shots, so rapid they spelt panic or anger. Or sheer enjoyment.

  Another shriek—unearthly, despairing. Hansen? Craig Washburn? He ran, and as he ran the shrieking faded, dissolving into something more like keening: a sound of loss, or of grief. No other voices.

  Arms spread for balance, Hirsch picked his way over the stones. Faster when he reached a stretch of sand, slowing at pools of brackish water collared by bulrushes. At each bend he’d pause to dart a quick glance at the stretch ahead. No sense in tearing blindly around a corner and getting a bullet in his belly. But there was no sign of Hansen. Surely he could hear Hirsch coming?

  He powered on, dreading the next bend, and the next, his shoes clicking and rattling on the impenitent stones. There was silence for some time, then a low, distressed moan, close by now. Reaching the next bend, Hirsch stuck his head around. A shot whanged past his cheek, spitting dust and grit into his eyes.

  ‘Jesus.’ He jerked back, reeled, sat.

  Touched himself gingerly. A trace of blood on his fingertips; a coarse paste of dust and tears in the corner of one eye. He blinked, trying to make sense of what he’d just seen: Hansen, wearing shorts, sandals and a short-sleeved shirt, on the ground, propped on his elbows. No one else.

  Unholstering his gun, he called, ‘Rob?’

  A pause, and Hansen croaked, ‘I thought you were Vita coming for me.’

  Hirsch thought about that. He said, ‘Where are the girls?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘What was all the shooting?’

  Hansen moaned. ‘A snake bit me. More than once.’

  Hirsch’s insides curdled. He found himself listening—for what, he didn’t know.

  ‘You shot it?’

  ‘Killed it.’

  ‘Rob, could you put the gun down? I’m coming to help you.’

  ‘What if there’s another one?’ fretted Hansen, sounding loosely wrapped. ‘What if there’s a mate?’

  Keeping his tone mild and even, Hirsch said, ‘Look around. Do you see another one?’

  A pause. ‘No.’

  ‘Okay, I’m coming. Don’t shoot.’

  Hirsch chanced a quick look first. Hansen was still on his back, the pistol loose in one hand, looking down along his body to his sandalled feet, where the snake was draped sinuously over the bloodied creek stones. A potent-looking force even in death.

  Hansen turned to Hirsch. Startled by the grimness etched in the man’s face, Hirsch ducked.

  ‘I’m not going to shoot you,’ Hansen said, looking down at the snake again.

  Hirsch reholstered his gun. ‘Okay.’

  He crossed the ground, crouched, removed a little Glock from Hansen’s slack fingers, all the time with one eye on the snake. The head looked hacked about—pistol bullets at close range—but he recognised it as a brown, one of the most poisonous on the continent, a metre and a half long and almost as thick as his forearm. More deaths from a brown than any other snake. And to be bitten several times…

  Hansen had shot himself in the foot, too.

  Hirsch stood up, stepped over to the snake. Steeled himself, and flipped it away with his shoe.

  ‘I must’ve trod on it,’ Hansen said, trembling, dusty tear tracks on his cheeks. ‘It just kept biting me, so I shot it. I don’t feel very good.’

  Hirsch crouched again, put a hand to Hansen’s forehead. Clammy. He examined the pale legs: a mix of scratches and puncture wounds.

  Hansen said dazedly, ‘Help me stand. I’ll drive myself to hospital.’

  Hirsch pressed gently down on his shoulder. ‘You need to keep still. Movement increases the blood flow.’

  Hansen screwed up his face. He seemed to be breaking down. ‘Have you got a knife? Cut open the bites?’

  ‘They don’t do that anymore.’

  ‘Ambulance.’

  Hirsch felt his jitters vanish, a cool pragmatism settling in him. Hansen would probably die: too much venom, too late, too far from medical help. ‘Rob, I need to know: you shot Lavau, and you’re here to shoot the kids for some reason?’

  ‘What? No!’ In all of his wretchedness, Hansen was shocked. ‘Not me. Roesch. I need to get to them before she does.’

  32

  HIRSCH CROUCHED, WONDERING if he and Hansen were about to become the fulcrum of each other’s worlds. He shaded Hansen’s face with his hat, and asked the question.

  ‘Why?’

  Hansen’s voice weakened. ‘The older girl can ID her as the one who shot her father.’

  And I showed her a photo of Roesch sitting on my sofa, Hirsch thought. No wonder she was on edge.

  Hansen, staring dazedly at the snake, now looked up at Hirsch. ‘Do you know where the girls are? Have you always known?’

  ‘Found them this morning,’ Hirsch said. He explained about Craig and the dugout.

  Hansen coughed. ‘They’ve been there the whole time?’

  ‘Yes.’ Hirsch paused. ‘Rob, I need to see they’re all right.’

  Hansen was agitated. ‘I know she’s coming,’ he said, the words tangling on lips and tongue. ‘You need to watch out.’

  Hirsch glanced back along the creek, undecided. Hansen—or Craig and the girls? ‘I’ve got pressure bandages in the car. I’ll run you to hospital. But I need to check the dugout.’

  ‘Go,’ Hansen said, rallying, then he leaned to one side and vomited neatly, unfussily, a thin gruel that darkened the dirt. The acrid smell rose. He lifted his head to Hirsch and croaked, ‘Go.’

  Hirsch stood. ‘I’ll be right back.’

  Hansen gasped, ‘Feel pretty bad, mate. My head. I’m going to chuck again.’

  Hirsch had no knowledge of the mechanics of snakebite death. Given the amount of venom in Hansen, a cardiac arrest of some kind? Very soon? He squeezed Hansen’s shoulder. ‘I’ll call an ambulance, we’ll meet it halfway.’

  Call triple-zero as soon as he had mobile reception, is what he meant. He couldn’t radio it in, with the HiLux’s radio still fucked. A repair job for Bob Muir…Christ, why was he thinking that at a time like this? ‘Sit tight,’ he said. He placed his hat gently over the flushed face.

  Then he ran, checking the grass and the dirt the whole way: snake-watching ingrained in him now. And as he ran, he recast Roesch’s second visit to his little suite of rooms behind the police station. She’d been trying to get him on-side and Hansen offside. He was supposed to distrust Hansen, and warm to her because she’d confided in him. And she’d have wanted him close, because he was closest to everything that had happened. He’d met Denise and her youngest kid, he’d found the bodies. For all she knew, he was hiding something or unwittingly holding some key information. A person steeped in secrecy and manipulation would expect secrecy and manipulation in others, he thought.

  Stumbling past the caravan—still no sign of Roesch’s car—he continued downstream to the dugout. Waiting a moment, hoping they’d heard him, he called softly, ‘Craig? Louise?’

  Nothing. Gone already. Or lying there dead. Sick, jittery, Hirsch clambered up the hand- and footholds. Reached the lip of the dugout, chanced a quick look in. Empty. Climbed down again.

  Th
ey must have left as soon as he’d driven off with Wayne Flann. Louise and her poker face. Despite his fine words, she knew why Vita Roesch had come. She knew it wasn’t finished.

  Hirsch had to trust them to be safe, to be wise. He ran back to the HiLux and bumped along the creek bank to where he’d left Hansen. Fished around for the pressure bandages and bottled water and slid down into the creek where Hansen lay unmoving.

  Dead.

  Hirsch checked for a pulse, but it was unmistakeable. Hansen lay in the loose, collapsed attitude of death, flat on his back, eyes open, head angled to one side. He’d vomited again: a crusty mess of it around his mouth, down his shirt front and on the ground. And he’d evidently tried to call for help: one hand, slack in death, nursed his mobile phone.

  Hirsch retrieved it, the movement animating the screen, revealing Hansen’s final action. Not calling. Recording.

  Hirsch took out his own phone, checking automatically for reception, and began to photograph the dead man and the site of his death. The legs, the riddled snake, the blood-splashed stones. Then he hauled Hansen up the bank and draped him along the back seat of the HiLux and strapped him in. He glanced uneasily along the creek. There was no need to rush now—not for Hansen. But Roesch…

  He’d call for backup when he had a signal. Right now he needed to find Craig and the girls.

  They would have run downstream, not back to Craig’s camp—the first place someone like Roesch might look—so he drove along the creek as far as he could go. Wayne Flann’s ute was parked in a patch of dead grass—both doors open, windows down, curiously. Hirsch got out, approached cautiously: no one inside it, no loose ignition wires. The ground was baked too hard for shoe prints, but that didn’t mean the girls and Craig hadn’t been here. Meanwhile, any evidence it might contain could be contaminated or degraded by the sun, the wind and the dust that forever lifted from the plains. He wound up the windows, shut the doors.

  The terrain beyond the ute was impassable, the creek petering out. Hirsch felt the perversity of the day: a sense of control removed from him; of waiting for something worse to happen. All he could think to do was drive, and he found himself bumping along in Flann’s wheel tracks across the dirt and grass to a gate on the Tiverton road, the smell of vomit hanging in the air.