No Safe Place 21f10

NO SAFE PLACE

JENNY SPENCE

First published in 2013

Copyright © Jenny Spence 2013

Excerpts from T.S. Eliot are reproduced with the permission of Faber and Faber Ltd publishers.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that isters it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Arena Books, an imprint of Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

Email: [email protected] Web: www.allenandunwin.com

Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia www.trove.nla.gov.au

ISBN 978 1 74331 332 9

eISBN 978 1 74343 454 3

Internal design by Lisa White Set in 12.5/19 pt Minion by Midland Typesetters, Australia

For my mother, Patricia Maie Walsh 1915–2005

Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

Acknowledgements

1

I wake at dawn to the call of a lone magpie. The breeze through the open window bites, and I pull the covers over my head and wish my way to Canton Creek, where the birds sing all day. If I lived at Canton Creek I might be someone who rises at dawn to go running over the stony ridges, scaring up kangaroos and cockatoos, my breath making little white clouds in the frosty air. Or maybe I would sleep late, waiting for the sun to creep through the stainedglass windows of my hand-made house. Either way, I would be answerable to no-one.

This city is full of people like me who dream of escape. My parents and their optimistic friends thought they could get there. They formed what they grandly called a collective and bought a hundred hectares of scrubby land, goldfields land, where the soil is thin and poor and the rain can hold off for years. Now I’ve inherited their share in Canton Creek, and it’s my turn to dream as I drift through the long weeks and short weekends, neglecting housework and bookkeeping in equal measure, nagging my daughter Miranda to get her life organised, wondering when I’ll ever be free to live the way I want.

In my fantasy life at Canton Creek I would spring out of bed on winter mornings and stoke up the firebox, still aglow from the previous night, my brain buzzing with ideas for the great novel I would be writing. There would be no Soft Serve Solutions, no boss like Derek Sing, and especially – I groan inwardly when I think of what Monday morning has in store for me – no Surinder Kaur.

My reverie is interrupted by the click of the front door, and I automatically glance over at the clock by my bed. Six-twenty. Relief swamps me as I realise that I’ve been half-awake for hours, listening for that click. My night has been haunted by visions of Miranda, stepping out uncertainly from some bar onto the streets of Brunswick, tracked on her wavering path home by hostile eyes. But

even as I let go of my fear it’s replaced by annoyance with her for staying out so late. Now she’ll sleep all day and leave me to do the house-cleaning, as usual.

Ah well, at least when Miranda sleeps all day I have the place to myself and can do what I please. Yesterday I even did some shopping and had lunch with my oldest friend, Carol, who with four kids and all their commitments rarely has time to catch up.

I can’t get back to sleep, so I sit up and contemplate my Sunday. There’s a layer of grime on everything, and I doubt Miranda’s even thought about washing her clothes and packing. Months ago my unpredictable daughter nominated to do this term’s teaching prac unit at a country school. Now she’s got cold feet about spending two weeks out of the city, but it’s too late to change her mind and she’s supposed to be driving my car – another great knot of worry lands in my stomach – down to Augusta Creek today.

Miranda’s natural enthusiasm will kick in once she gets there, but like many urban kids she has a terror of country towns, imagining they won’t have heard of espresso coffee, rap music or Pink.

How about that, I think, noticing that she’s dragged out all her dirty clothes and sorted them into piles for me. Very thoughtful. I step over one of the piles and turn on the shower. It’d teach her a lesson if I ignored them and she had to go off to the country without any clean clothes. It’s time she grew up.

But all along I know that after my shower I’ll start the washing off for her. It’s either that or tackle the pile of documents I need to go through for my horribly overdue tax return.

My mind rebels and strays once again to Canton Creek, where in my fantasy life I’d be outside the tax system and Miranda would be transformed into an idyllic daughter, serious and responsible, with a nice boyfriend who delivers her home, with old-fashioned courtesy, well before midnight.

2

It’s Monday morning and monochrome commuters cluster at the tram stop. The grey sky is reflected in the slick grey surface of the road. It’s a John Brack painting, except for the mobile phones pressed to everyone’s ear. There’s a cheerful ding as the tram bears down on us.

I find a seat facing forward near the front, and sit down. The girl next to me is perched on the edge of her seat, her knees gripping a yellow fibreglass cello case. She is so close I can see faint streaks of grime on her neck and the coarse pores of her plump cheeks. If Renoir were to hurtle through a time warp and see her he would be entranced by the unexpected grace with which she lifts both arms to gather her heavy dark hair and wind it into a knot, revealing a soft white neck. For a moment the generous lines of her body mimic the curves of her cello case. The advertising stickers on it pick up the strong contrasting colours in her cheap blue and purple fleecy jacket. Renoir would be yearning for his palette.

I think a lot about artists. In my dream life at Canton Creek I would be writing a book about Vermeer. My favourite Vermeer paintings are like scenes from a story. Beautiful, unpretentious domestic situations, glowing with colour, with something mysterious going on just outside the frame. Vermeer’s own story is just as tantalising, as so little is known about him.

The tram pulls to a stop at Bourke Street and we all lurch to our feet. As the girl leans forward to pick up her cello, her too-short jacket slides up to reveal mottled white flesh and buttock cleavage, below a broad yellow belt which balances the glow of her cello case. Gauguin materialises beside Renoir, and they chatter excitedly. Then the crowd closes like the Red Sea. Girl and cello are gone.

I need to make a couple of calls this morning, which means I can put off the moment when the office swallows me up. I make my way towards the glossy high-rise building that houses the Department of Water Resources and make a call to reception. Surinder Kaur comes down to the lobby to sign me in. We fuss around with security badges, then make small talk in the lift.

As usual Surinder, impeccably dressed in a western style business suit with a bright sea-green shirt, makes me feel shabby, even though I’m wearing my good black pants and a new beige cashmere jumper. The colour of the jumper suddenly looks drab. I never see clothes like Surinder’s in the shops I can afford, and I suspect she gets them hand-made for her in India. Half a head shorter than me, and much slighter, she has a vivid, pretty face and a glossy black braid that hangs below her waist. Her eyes, today, are also sea-green, and I have to remind myself not to gaze into them. She has several pairs of jewel-coloured lenses which she wears with matching shirts, and I find them oddly disconcerting.

Surinder is a perfect bureaucrat: smart, ambitious and good at getting her own way in meetings. We treat each other with guarded respect, both slightly baffled by the other’s job. Over the last couple of years I’ve transformed her section’s incoherent procedure documents into a simple, logical information system which her staff are supposed to be maintaining. However neither they nor Surinder seem to be able to get their heads around it. The idea is to achieve what’s laughingly called a paperless office. We go into a meeting room, where a pile of printouts is sitting on a table, and I eye them apprehensively.

“Just a few changes, Elly,” Surinder says encouragingly. “We think maybe two, three weeks’ work?”

“You should be making the changes yourselves. That’s what all the training I gave you was for,” I murmur, wishing I could forget said training session at which the audience muttered disconsolately while Surinder smiled and nodded

enthusiastically at the back of the room.

“We’re so happy with your system we think it’d be a pity to mess it up – much better if you look after it,” says Surinder, her eyes flashing green as the lenses catch the light. “All the new information is here – and I have budget approval.”

She inclines her head towards the printouts. They must have dredged up the old files and edited them, and I know from past experience that the job of sorting out the bad English and moving it all into the new system once more will be mindnumbing. I can just see Derek, my boss, rubbing his hands with glee at the thought of how much he can charge them.

I’d intended to go straight to my next appointment after Water Resources, but I’m so frustrated I catch a tram down Bourke Street to our office. Soft Serve Solutions is on the second floor of a seedy building just off Spencer Street. Derek is on the phone as usual, and when I catch his eye through the glass partition and mime talking he holds up fingers to indicate that he can see me at eleven o’clock. I’ll just have to wait.

Derek puts teams of specialists into organisations that prefer to outsource their IT. Some of the work that’s generated is back at the office, where the programmers develop and update customised software. My main job is to make sense of what they’ve done and write it all up. Most of the programmers are half my age, and they’re late starters, so there aren’t many people in the office. A few can be found in the lunch room, eating cereal and flicking through The Age. I make myself a coffee and let their talk, peppered with acronyms, wash soothingly over me until Derek looks in and tells me he’s free.

I follow him to his office and shut the door behind me. “I quit,” I announce.

“Okay, okay,” he says. “Unless?”

“No more Department of Water Resources, or whatever they’re calling themselves today,” I say. This particular department is always splitting, reforming and restructuring, and has had half a dozen names since I started working for it.

Derek’s smooth Chinese face doesn’t change. We both know this is an ambit claim.

“Well, okay,” I relent a little. “At least get me a sub-contractor. You can get someone to do their shit-work for even less than the pittance you’re paying me.”

“I suppose that make sense,” he concedes.

“Plus,” I add hastily,realising I haven’t pushed him hard enough, “you’ve got to give me some better work than this. I’m supposed to be a technical writer. That means writing stuff, not dealing with all this other crap.”

His eyes on the computer screen, it’s obvious he’s scrolling through emails.

“Hmm,” he says. “There’s this job in Sydney. Maybe . . . no, sorry. Not writing.”

“Sydney?” He’s playing me like a violin, I know. “What would I be doing?”

“It’s another government job. But you said no more government work.”

“Derek!”

“All right, only semi-government anyway, editing some development application. Environmental impact, that sort of thing. Coal industry. You’d have to be up there for a couple of weeks.”

“For Christ’s sake, Derek. Who were you going to give this to?”

“I was thinking maybe sub-contractor, someone based in Sydney,” he its.

“You could have mentioned it,” I say, huffily.

“Well, just thought . . .” He’s on the defensive now. “There’s your daughter . . .”

“She’s twenty-one, Derek. Forward the email to me and I’ll consider it,” I say before stalking out of his office, hardly more mollified than when I went in.

But still. Sydney!

3

It’s stopped raining and there’s some sunshine outside now, so I decide to walk to my next job. Leaving my raincoat at the office, I stride past the green haze of the Flagstaff Gardens and make my way to the narrow back street in West Melbourne where Carlos Fitzwilliam lives and works. Carlos is the star of Soft Serve, a brilliant programmer who works entirely on his own . Carlos wouldn’t be his original name – neither would Fitzwilliam, for that matter. Like many of his tribe he has made himself an avatar for real life, something like the avatars he uses in game-playing.

The battered-looking door of the converted leather factory is three inches of solid steel. Carlos fears invasion and he’s got a lot of up-to-the-minute electronic equipment he doesn’t want to be stolen. I hate to think what he paid for it all. The door swings silently open as I approach it. Carlos would have known I was coming as soon as I turned into the street. He might even have tracked me all the way from my office.

As I enter he waddles over to greet me holding a steaming latte from his industrial-strength coffee machine in one hand and a brioche from our favourite French bakery in the other.

Inside, it’s clean, white and bare. Apart from the minimalist kitchen, and a bathroom somewhere, the building is one big space: long, high and a bit wider than the average terrace house. Tall glass doors at the back lead out onto a tiny brick-paved yard with access to a lane. Carlos opened the doors for me once when I insisted on putting some stuff in the recycling bin, but I don’t think he ever goes out there himself. When I tell him he should try to breathe real air now and again, even get some sun on that dead-white skin, he just gives me a funny look, eyebrows raised and lips pursed, and changes the subject.

The apartment itself could be sunny and pleasant if he allowed it, but he keeps all the doors and windows bolted and the blinds pulled right down, relying on skylights and halogens for the limited light he needs.

This place is perfect for Carlos, with every surface taken up by computers and related equipment. Even the enormous television screen is likely to be displaying lines of scrolling code, with whatever movie Carlos is watching banished to a small display in the corner. Carlos barely distinguishes between his paid work, mostly writing and adapting software for Derek’s clients, and the electronic games he plays. Like all my programmer colleagues, he plays complicated adventure games as though his life depended on the outcome.

A separate array of screens reveals what Carlos takes most seriously of all, and how he knew when I’d be arriving. Carlos has somehow devised a program allowing him to run feeds from numerous CCTV cameras around the city through his main computer. The screens show endless flickering streets and building lobbies, with icons that flash whenever something unexpected happens. Several twenty-four-hour news broadcasts run soundlessly in separate windows on another screen, and there are tabular displays of data, most of it incomprehensible, endlessly rolling through a couple more.

With all of its expensive equipment, along with tales of Carlos’s legendary programming skills, my colleagues think this place sounds like paradise and are horribly envious whenever I tell them I’m coming here. Most of them haven’t seen it, except in the background on Webcam, because Carlos doesn’t welcome visitors. I don’t think anyone is allowed in besides me, Derek and his lifelines: the people who deliver food and the grave Korean couple who come once a week to clean the place from top to bottom while he hovers unhappily nearby.

My colleagues haven’t seen Carlos in corporeal form either, because Carlos

doesn’t go out. Ever.

I used to find Carlos a little spooky. He seemed to know everything about me before I knew it myself. When I mentioned I’d bought a new laptop, he said: “I don’t know why you keep buying Dells. You should let me build you a laptop.” And I hadn’t even mentioned the brand. Similarly, when we started working together and I said something about living in Brunswick, he said: “Some of those little streets in Brunswick are nice. You’re in one of the best parts.”

Now I’ve got to know him better it doesn’t seem so strange, because Carlos checks up on everyone, particularly the rare few people he allows into his sanctuary, but it’s still a bit weird to feel him looking over my shoulder, so to speak, whenever I do anything that leaves an electronic trail.

I wouldn’t say it, but I think there’s more than self-preservation in the way Carlos keeps tabs on me, the way his eyes follow my every move when I’m at his apartment, the solicitous hand he places lightly on my back as he ushers me to a comfortable seat in front of his largest computer screen. He’s about my age but looks ten years older. His hair, greying and thinning, is tied back in a scrawny ponytail, but his brown eyes are gentle and, for all his paranoia, guileless. Every time I’ve seen him he’s been dressed the same way, in a baggy black t-shirt and shapeless black jeans. And from the sour smell that emanates from him he doesn’t seem to have many changes of that outfit. The company pays him huge amounts of money, in line with his value, but I guess he only spends it on things that matter to him.

We get down to work as he runs through his latest masterpiece, an addition to one of Derek’s smartest and most popular bits of software. Several companies are willing to pay lots of money for it, and they’ll be pretty happy with what Carlos has come up with.

“Wow, Carlos,” I say. “I never imagined I could get excited about a parsing engine, but this is really clever.”

To his vast amusement I take notes by hand in an exercise book. But although he scoffs, he knows that my method works for me, and he won’t allow anyone else to write about his stuff. We’ve made a good team for three years now. In fact he’s been dropping hints about me leaving Derek and setting up a business with just the two of us. Much as I respect Carlos, the thought of working here with him every day makes me feel claustrophobic.

While I explore his software on my own and take more notes, Carlos busies himself doing half a dozen other things. He’s got a chess game going with an unseen opponent on one computer, he’s up to some staggeringly high level in an adventure game on another, he’s ingesting a steady stream of music CDs and he’s engaged in several cryptic online conversations. He swivels and scoots around in a specially reinforced office chair, like a bee attending to a flower garden, in his element.

At the same time he’s chatting to me, eager to give flesh to his ghostly visions of the outside world.

“Been to the movies lately? Seen anything good?”

“You’ve probably seen all the stuff that’s out,” I say, gesturing towards his big screen.

“There is a slight lapse,” he grins. “Some of them aren’t even digitised yet.”

“You don’t say.” I laugh. “My neighbour Jason was annoyed that he couldn’t buy a pirate version of the latest Baz Luhrmann in Bangkok. I told him I’d heard that it wasn’t even finished yet, and he just said ‘So?’ ”

“That’s the neighbour who works in the Supreme Court? Has he told you anything about that Athena Resources swindle?”

“He’s just a lowly clerk, Carlos. All he talks about is his next holiday and the woman in HR who’s got it in for him.”

A display changes on one of his screens, and he zooms in for a better look. There’s a map of Texas with some annotations in gobbledegook.

“What are you tracking there?” I ask. “The killer behind the grassy knoll? Proof that they never landed on the moon?”

“You may scoff,” he says, “but those guys who stole the moon rock from White Sands in New Mexico had it analysed before they put it back, and it came up totally terrestrial. I’ve got the data somewhere.”

“Oh, right.”

“What’s Miranda been up to?” he asks.

I squirm whenever he mentions Miranda. And I always get the impression he knows exactly what she’s doing. To avoid personal talk, I start griping about the Department of Water Resources. For some reason Carlos has always been very interested in anything to do with water, and he’d been quite excited last year when I told him I was putting their procedures online.

“Carlos, it’s the most tedious material you can imagine. Paper clips and fire drills,” I’d said at the time.

“Well, you never know. There could be gold dust,” he’d replied.

He’s always on the lookout for ‘gold dust’, by which I assume he means anything dodgy or scandalous. He hadn’t bothered to ask me for a copy of the procedures, though, and we hadn’t pursued the conversation. Today he’s not terribly excited to hear that Surinder’s people have added more information to the system, so he may have hacked into the site and seen for himself that there’s nothing interesting.

“Derek should drop Water Resources,” he says now. “They’re going to be closed down in the next eighteen months, and all those people will be out. Derek should be going for that tender with the Bureau of Meteorology.”

“I don’t know where you get this stuff,” I say, “but if you want to give Derek advice you should tell him yourself.”

He’s not listening, his mind still on water.

“Do you ever do any work for Water Conservation and Catchment since the Water Department was split up?” he asks.

“No, even though Derek has had the Water Department contract for ages, I’ve always worked with Surinder in her department,” I reply.

“Well, there might be something interesting there. I’ve found an anomaly. Don’t you love that? Like Finding Nemo: ‘In an anemone.’ I’ve watched that DVD a thousand times. Special director’s cut. Doesn’t make sense, does it? Director’s cut of an animated movie? You’d think they’d plan it all in advance, frame by frame. No dispute about what’s in and what’s out. ‘In an anemone’.”

As he talks he rolls past the shelves that hold his precious DVD collection, and his hand hovers lovingly over the special boxed sets before it moves on to his chess game and sends a bishop shooting out in pursuit of his opponent’s queen.

“Yeah, an anomaly. You’d be interested,” he says, wheeling himself close to me. He has this habit of invading your personal space. I press back in my chair.

“That public servant who disappeared on the mountain was from Water Conservation and Catchment,” he says. “He was on a bushwalk, just checking out his kingdom, so to speak. They tried to track him by triangulating the signals from his phone? Said they knew where to look? Huh.”

Carlos does seem to know a lot of stuff from behind the scenes that he probably shouldn’t, courtesy of his obsessive hacking, but sometimes I lose patience with

his conspiracy theories.

“Carlos, if you’ve got something, spit it out.”

“Got nothing yet. Just an anomaly. But I’ll give you an analogy.”

He looks up gleefully. “What if someone sends you hunting an asp, but they know what you really need is an anaconda?”

“Carlos, that’s a metaphor, and you only said it because you’re playing with words!”

“Possibly. But here’s you thinking I was an analphabet!”

I have to laugh. And I’ll have to look up analphabet when I get home.

I finish my notes and pack away my exercise book.

“Do you want to have lunch?” he asks. “There’s a great Vietnamese that does home deliveries.”

“It’s a nice day,” I say teasingly. “We should get something and have it in the park.” He shudders. “Seriously though, I’d love to, but I’ve got stacks to do at

the office. I need to scope out this Surinder thing so I can insist that Derek es it on to some contractor.”

“Okay. Well – I’ll Dropbox the screen captures . . .” he says, gesturing at the computer I’ve been working on.

“Sure, Carlos. Thanks. It’s all great stuff, as usual.”

“When will you be back?”

“Possibly not for a few weeks. I might be going to Sydney.”

His interest is aroused. “What would you be working on in Sydney?”

I immediately regret mentioning it. “Some development application for the coal industry. Derek only just told me about it. He’s sending me the email.”

“The coal industry? Who’s the job for? Elly, I’ve got something I think you should . . .”

“No, Carlos, it’s just an editing job. I really have to go.”

I make my escape, and breathe the fresh air with relief. The rain is still holding

off, and there are a few people strolling through the streets, enjoying the respite. A man is hovering in a doorway on the other side of the street, possibly trying to decide if it’s safe to go out. He raises his head and looks around. When he sees me watching him he puts up the hood of his jacket and hurries away.

4

On the way back to the office, I get a text from Miranda:

1 horse town weird adults gr8 kids

I smile at her message. So she got to Augusta Creek in one piece, and has already started work. The part of my brain that’s reserved for worrying about her relaxes.

Have a nice lunch I reply.

wd if you cd get real food here is her huffy response.

Back at the office I find a comfortable corner in the lunch room where I can eat the soup I’ve bought for lunch and have a flick through the paper. At the pool table, India is playing The Rest of the World and thrashing them, as usual. Ravi and Sam, for India, are watching attentively while Viet Lei, for the Rest, lines up her shot, giggling. Chang, her partner, lounges by the window, talking on his mobile.

“I’m going to bounce it off the cushion and into the middle pocket,” declares Viet Lei. Sam sniggers. Chang, waving his free hand around, takes no notice. “Wah, wah,” he says into the phone.

Viet Lei’s ball wobbles back and forth across the table, knocks a couple of the opposition’s balls out of position and disappears into a corner pocket. Sam and Ravi confer, frowning.

Luke sidles up to me – tanned skin, white teeth and dreadlocks.

“How’s Carlos? Any new stuff?”

Between mouthfuls of soup I try to describe the latest electronic gear Carlos insisted on showing me. Squeals of excitement come from the pool table as Viet Lei, on a roll, wipes the floor with India.

I spend the afternoon fielding emails, outlining the updates of Carlos’s software, writing a proposal for the dreaded re-hash of Surinder’s material and daydreaming about Miranda’s country experience. I imagine her meeting some brooding young country type, like a nice Heathcliff. Even Heathcliff as written would be an improvement on some of the company she’s been keeping. I see her in a picturesque rural school-house with apple-cheeked kids gazing adoringly at her, or sitting at her feet under a spreading peppercorn tree – no, get a grip, Elly, it’s winter. Perhaps a big roaring fire in the schoolhouse, Miranda with her hair blowing and an armful of logs . . . I see her falling in love with the quaint country community and deciding that this is the place for her, she can’t wait to get back after she’s qualified, there’s a little miner’s cottage on the edge of the town that’s ridiculously cheap and . . .

I wish I could stop imposing my own dreams onto my daughter. The truth is I don’t know what fantasy is right for her yet. All I know is that she’s placed a faltering foot on the path to her future, and I lie awake at night worrying about

where it might take her.

*

At last it’s time to go home to the luxury of an empty house. The same morose people from this morning crowd onto the tram, the white of the cables snaking into their ears the only relief from their black and grey clothing, the tinny beat of the bass line leaking through like a tap dripping. No cello girl to provide a splash of colour.

I don’t mind. I’m thinking about the nice solitary dinner I’m going to have with Sunday’s leftovers, and playing with a book idea in which Vermeer fakes his own death and travels to London with John Evelyn, the intrepid seventeenthcentury diarist and founding member of the Royal Society. Vermeer’s got his own fantasy: to start a new life without his crippling debts and the mother-in-law from hell, Maria Thins. Something goes wrong, though. He completes one painting – a jewel waiting to be discovered in our century – and dies.

But when I think it through that plot seems corny, and I’ve got a weird feeling that I’ve already read that book. Better start again.

It’s drizzling and nearly dark when I get off the tram. I pull up the hood of my raincoat and hug my bag close as I turn into our narrow street. Cars are already parked on both sides, dripping branches overhang the footpath, and I walk in the yellow pools of streetlights on the road. Cats wait expectantly on front verandas, and here and there neighbours greet each other as they fumble for their keys. Jason, who lives directly opposite me, whizzes past in full cycling gear, then I see him up ahead at his gate, un-strapping the panniers from his bike. Headlights wash over me as a car turns into the street and I draw to one side of the road. I hear it close behind me, but it seems to be moving very slowly. The headlights

give me a long, long shadow, extending crazily the length of the shimmering street.

My house is a single-fronted terrace, nestled up against its mirror image. As I step onto my front path – there’s no gate – my next-door neighbour, Mabel, darts out. She’s thrown a shapeless old cardigan over the faded garment she wears to do her cleaning – her house-dress, she calls it. I groan inwardly. Mabel’s a goodhearted old thing, but I’ve tried all sorts of tricks to sneak in without her spotting me, especially on cold nights like this when all I want to do is pour myself a glass of wine and put my feet up.

“Oh, Elly!” she carols. “I’ve . . .”

Then she makes a little “Ooof” sound and slumps forward, knocking me onto my back. I land heavily on the rough, wet path, with Mabel sprawled on top of me. She gives a little cough, then goes quiet.

Heart thumping and winded by the fall, I can’t move because of Mabel’s weight. I hear a car accelerating, then the sound of running footsteps.

“Mabel!” I gasp. “Can you please . . .”

But she doesn’t move, and I struggle to get into a position where I can breathe. Looking down, I see my raincoat has fallen open and my front is wet. I hold up a hand and look at it in the fading light. It’s dark and sticky.

The screaming is getting closer and next thing Jason appears and half drags Mabel off me. He holds his hands up in front of his face and they’re dark and sticky too.

I gaze down at Mabel who lies twisted on the wet path, her legs still sprawled across mine. The top half of her cardigan is a crumpled, shiny, dark, wet mess. I see her face properly for a moment in the streetlight. Her eyes are open, her mouth is slack and there’s a trickle of blood running down her chin. I twist my head away, knowing already that it’s a sight which will haunt me for a long time.

“Jason! Jason!” I shout, struggling up and grabbing him in an awkward embrace. “It’s okay. Come on. It’s okay.”

It’s a pretty meaningless thing to say, but it does the trick, and he stops screaming. My brain still isn’t processing what I’m seeing, but one thing is clear. Poor old Mabel is lying dead on my front path, and I’ll never again come hurrying in through my gate on a freezing night, rain burrowing like needles under my collar, or sit on the veranda with a glass of wine exchanging gossip with neighbours in the balmy summer dusk, or stand on the path with the hose, coaxing my straggling pot-plants into life, without seeing her staring eyes, her obscenely gaping mouth, her ruined house-dress and her blood on my hands.

5

Once I begin to take in what’s happened, I start shaking and can’t stop. Rocco, Jason’s partner, takes control, putting a blanket around my shoulders and making me sip a cup of horrible sweet tea. The street soon fills with police cars and ambulances, and all the neighbours stand together in little knots, talking in awed whispers. Things like this don’t happen in quiet neighbourly streets like ours, especially to someone like Mabel. The worst thing you could say about Mabel is that she’s nosy. Surely no-one is going to kill her for that?

The two nervous young policewomen who were first on the scene holster their pistols, thank God. I was really scared when they were waving those around, jumping at every unexpected sound.

They keep repeating the same question, and they won’t stop because I can’t give them the right answer.

“How many shots did you hear?”

“I didn’t hear any shots,” I answer for the tenth time.

It was when they first mentioned shots that I started shaking. Obviously I was in shock before then, and my brain wasn’t really functioning. But suddenly it all came together: the car, the blood, the hideously random nature of it, poor Mabel suddenly pitching forward into my arms. It was on a cold night just like this, all those years ago, on my way home from the university to my North Fitzroy hovel, that I found the streets blocked by police cars, flashing lights everywhere and

huddles of anxious people standing in the drizzle. Seven people were dead in Hoddle Street – ordinary people like Mabel, like me, like Jason on his bike. It turned out that the shooter was exactly my age. My friend Pete ed him from Melbourne High School. Since then, a car backfiring, a sudden shout can set my heart thumping, and now this has happened there’s a sick feeling of inevitability.

“Has anyone else been shot?” I ask, but they won’t tell me anything.

Finally the younger police officer pats my hand when her colleague isn’t looking and says, “No, there’s no other reports. Looks like you’re the only ones.”

It hits me then that my right arm is hurting and I look down and see that the sleeve of my raincoat is ripped. Soon after, the paramedics lead me to one of the ambulances, then suddenly Carol is there, a sane, familiar face at last, and she gets into the back of the ambulance with me.

When we arrive in casualty I assume we’ll have to wait for hours, so I’m impressed when they put me into a cubicle where I can lie down. Someone gives me a shot while I’m not looking, and I stop shaking, and suddenly feel very tired. Nurses fuss around stripping off my bloody clothes and cleaning up the nasty-looking graze on my upper arm. I groan when I see the chunk torn out of my new cashmere jumper then look up and realise Carol has tears in her eyes.

“’S all right,” I croak. “It was an awful colour.”

She blows her nose. “Don’t you know how lucky you were? It went right through Mabel and somehow just missed you. Well, nearly.”

It’s not often I see Carol upset and I’ve known her nearly all my life. We’re the same age, but she’s more like a big sister. We pretty much grew up together, playing in the bush at Canton Creek while our parents made mud bricks and tried to get their vegetables to grow in the stony soil. In the communal shack they never finished, loose sheets of corrugated iron crashed and shrieked in the whistling wind. Our parents and their friends drank red wine and argued politics into the night as we whispered secrets to each other in the rickety attic, huddling together for warmth.

Carol’s whispering now. “Elly, what’s this about? Did you see who it was?”

“No, it just came out of nowhere.”

“Is there anything . . .” She’s searching for words. “I mean – you’re not in any trouble, are you?”

“Me?”

“Or . . . or Miranda?”

My brain feels like cotton wool, and I can’t grasp the idea she’s put in there.

“But . . . it was just random,” I say. “Wasn’t it?”

Once I’m cleaned up the nurses announce that they’re going to keep me overnight. I assure Carol I’ll be okay and she should head home to the kids. She asks if I’m sure then gives me a hug and tells me she’ll be back in the morning.

I’m drifting, half-asleep, but there’s a man in the cubicle, and the nurses are trying to order him out.

“Just a few questions,” he’s insisting. “This is a homicide investigation. It’s very important that I speak to her tonight.”

Eventually he wears down their resistance and the nurses dissipate.

I peer at him groggily as he introduces himself as Detective Senior Sergeant Something from the Homicide Squad.

“Now then, Mrs . . . Ms . . .” he says, flicking through the notebook in his hand.

“Elly,” I say.

“How many shots did you hear, Elly?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake! Your colleagues have already asked me that a thousand

times.”

“I’m sorry. I need to get the full story from you myself. I know it’s tedious.”

“Okay then, I didn’t hear any shots. Is that all?”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to offend you, but not everyone recognises gunshots when they hear them.”

“Tell me, Senior Detective . . .”

He says a name, but in my woozy state I forget it straight away.

“ . . . did anyone else hear any shots?”

He gives a wry little shrug then says, “Okay, can you tell me what you did hear?”

“Sure.” I know my speech is a bit slurred, but I can still rely on my memory. “The swish of Jason’s bike tyres. The sound of a car behind me. Mabel calling out to me. Her going ‘Oof’. Running footsteps and screaming – that was Jason coming over. A car driving off.”

“Can you describe the car?”

“No, it was behind me the whole time. I didn’t turn around, and Mabel had fallen on top of me by the time it went past.” I’m starting to sound a bit hysterical, but Senior Sergeant Something marches right on.

“What about the driver?”

“How could I have seen the driver if I didn’t see the car?” I ask with exaggerated patience.

“Hmmm,” he murmurs, looking a bit dejected.

“It was the person in the car,” I say, wanting to help him.

“What was?”

“The shooter. You know, what do you call it? The perp.”

“The ‘perp’? Which cop shows have you been watching?”

I blush a bit. It did feel a bit silly coming out of my mouth.

“Anyway, how do you know?”

“Well, the car was behind me, and it could have ed me but it didn’t. Then it was exactly level with me when . . . when it happened. So the person in the car would have seen what happened, and if it wasn’t them they would have stopped to help wouldn’t they, not accelerated away?”

“Some people don’t want to get involved,” he says. “Still, I’m pretty sure you’re right, if only because the car would have stopped anyone else from getting a shot at you at just that moment.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Hmmm?”

“Why on earth would someone do this?” I say, starting to shake again. “This is one of those random drive-by shootings, right?”

“We will investigate that line of enquiry,” he says carefully.

“And what other lines of enquiry will you investigate?”

“Well,” he says, “naturally some of my colleagues are investigating Mabel.”

“Mabel?” I say, incredulous.

“We do like to find out more about the victim,” he explains.

He meets my gaze for a moment and I notice he has nice eyes, for a policeman – a sort of deep blue-green.

“But maybe you prefer to use Ockham’s Razor,” I say, the fact I’m not automatically adapting my language to the listener showing how tired I am. Usually I take a professional pride in doing that.

“Precisely.” He gives a little smile. “So let’s cut to the chase.”

I’m too foggy to be surprised that he knows what I’m talking about, but I’m grateful that I don’t have to spell things out. Soon I really won’t be able to keep my eyes open.

“Sorry,” I manage. “Can’t help you with that either. I’m just a younger Mabel. No jealous lovers, no shady dealings, no money, no drugs. Can’t think of anything else.”

“That’s the basics,” he says. “Not in line for an inheritance, something like

that?”

“I wish.”

“Is there anything at your work? Anything sensitive? Political?”

“Hardly. You wouldn’t believe how boring my work is. I do have access to government documents, but they’re mostly about policies and procedures – like how often they stock the stationery cupboard.”

“No lovers, you say. Is there an ex?”

“My ex-husband died years ago.” I say, then interrupt him as he

starts to make sympathetic noises. “No, no, I would’ve murdered him if I’d had the chance, but probably not vice versa. Well, not unless there was money in it.”

My mind drifts back to Max, the bastard. It would have been nice if he’d left me a nice little inheritance instead of a pile of debts. And they weren’t the sort of debts you could ignore.

The policeman is looking at his notebook again.

“So there are . . . what . . . just two of you in the house? You and your daughter?”

“It couldn’t have anything to do with her,” I say quickly.

“Does your daughter look anything like you?”

“No.”

“In bad light? It says here you were wearing a raincoat, with the hood up?”

I have to it that Miranda and I are similar enough in build. But I know my daughter. She might have some questionable friends, but there’s no way she’s involved in anything like this.

“Look, Miranda’s just headed down to Augusta Creek for a couple of weeks for a student-teacher prac,” I say. “Can you just leave her out of it for the moment?”

“All right,” he concedes. “But we may need to question her when she gets back. That’s about it, really. I don’t suppose you’ve had anyone like . . . a stalker? Funny phone calls? Someone who’s been getting too close for comfort?”

Carlos immediately pops into my mind. Carlos inside my personal space, Carlos making it his business to know everything about me. But I don’t want to talk to this cop about Carlos. The thought of any kind of police invading Carlos’s

sanctuary and trying to talk to him in the language of the real world is just impossible. It would be the worst kind of betrayal. Besides, Carlos is not that kind of stalker; the idea is ridiculous.

“No . . . no, of course not,” I say, shaking my head, my expression neutral. In my befuddled state I don’t trust my ability to explain Carlos to Detective Senior Sergeant Something.

“Well,” he sighs. “Usual routine . . . I’ll leave you my card . . . here, see? Please call me if you think of anything. You’ll be asked to give a statement in the morning anyway.” He consults his notebook. “Once you’re discharged you’ll be staying with . . . Ms Brennan?”

“Who? Oh, Carol. Did she organise that? I suppose so,” I say, feeling relieved because the thought of going home doesn’t appeal. “So you think I shouldn’t . . . Is my house a crime scene?” The words sound silly when I use them in real life.

“That’s right, Elly.” He’s quite solemn. “Chequered tape and all.”

He’s not making fun of me, is he? No, this is his job.

“There’ll be a team from forensics there tomorrow, and they’ll need your permission to go into the house,” he says, his face serious. “But Constable d’Alessandro will be back in the morning to arrange all that, and to take your statement. I’m going to let you get some sleep now.”

I want to ask him more questions, but my addled brain won’t co-operate, and then he’s gone. Whatever the nurses gave me does the trick, and I slide into oblivion. It’s only towards morning that spectres come swooping into my dreams and force me to turn my head and look through the rents they have ripped in the sky, to face the horrors that lie on the other side.

6

I’m woken by the whirring sound of my phone vibrating on the bedside cupboard. It’s Miranda.

“Mum? Oh my God, are you okay? You didn’t answer at the house.”

“I’m fine, love . . .”

“Where are you? My friends on Facebook are saying there was a shooting in our street. It’s on the news, but they’re only saying Brunswick. They’re saying two women were killed!”

“Is that what they’re . . . ?”

“Were you there, Mum? Do you know who it was?”

“Oh love, I’m so sorry. It was Mabel, poor old Mabel.”

“Oh Mum! Mabel!” she sobs. “Why would anyone . . . Oh, poor Mabel. What happened? Who was the other person? Did you see anything?”

“Listen love, don’t say anything for a minute, okay? I was there, the other person’s me, but I’m okay . . . No, don’t say anything. It just grazed my arm. I’m at the hospital, but I’m . . . Miranda! Shoosh! I’m fine. Carol’s coming to pick me up any minute now.”

“Oh Mum, God Mum, oh God,” she’s saying. “I’m coming home!”

“No, Miranda, no! You stay right there, I need you to stay there.”

I talk to her for a while till finally she’s calm.

“Listen, love,” I venture. “They’re asking me all sorts of questions, just . . . just in case it wasn’t random. It’s just routine, they have to consider every possibility. They’re even checking out Mabel, to see what enemies she had.”

This elicits a giggle.

“So . . . umm . . . the detective investigating asked me to think of every possible reason anyone might, you know, have it in for me. Couldn’t come up with much. But they might ask you too.”

“Me?”

“It’s just . . . I had my hood up, you see. And I was just about to go into our

house. Whoever it was could’ve thought I was you. Just conceivably.”

There’s a silence.

“Miranda?”

“That’s really creepy, Mum.”

“This isn’t my idea. The police have to consider every possibility, no matter how unlikely.”

“Mum, I know you don’t like some of my friends.” I wince. “But if I was getting into something really heavy, I think now would be the time to tell you, right?”

“Right.”

“God, Mum, I don’t know anyone like that. I might have scored an E now and then at a party, but who hasn’t?”

I relax a bit. If there was something specific on her mind she’d be swearing her innocence a lot more vehemently than that.

“All the same, love, don’t go telling everyone on Facebook where you are,

okay?”

“Come on, Mum, I’m very private.”

“I don’t think your generation knows what privacy is,” I say.

Not long after I hang up the younger policewoman from the previous night arrives and there’s endless paperwork to sign. She’s on her best behaviour, though she insists on addressing me in police-speak. They must do a special course in it at the police academy. She’s a bit put out that I refuse to sign the brief statement until I’ve corrected all the spelling and grammatical mistakes, but she’s very polite about it.

Before I have to tackle the hospital breakfast, which looks like the indefinable stuff you get on an international flight, Carol reappears with a few clothes she had the foresight to snatch from my house last night, including an old coat of mine Miranda left lying on the kitchen table, along with a lovely lightweight merino scarf I tried to persuade her to take. In no time we’re back at Carol’s place in Blyth Street.

Carol’s kitchen has always been a place of calm and sanctuary, anchored by the presence of Carol sitting at the head of the table, directing operations as her family orbit around her. As we attack coffee and croissants a variety of breakfasts to suit different diets are made and consumed, lunches are prepared and scooped up, daily schedules are reported, compared and recorded on electronic devices, and one by one her kids kiss her, then me, and cast themselves off into the world for the day.

Only then does her husband Rick appear, ambling down the stairs with a battered briefcase in his hand. As I go over my story again he makes soothing noises but I don’t think he really takes it in. Present-day events are a lot less real to him than the distant past, and I can see his mind is on something else, possibly his ten o’clock archaeology lecture. After grazing briefly on breakfast leftovers he bestows the ritual kiss on both of us, then wanders off to catch the tram to the university.

Carol hangs around, glancing at her watch occasionally.

“Have you thought any more about what happened?” she asks.

“I’ve thought of nothing else,” I reply, “and this cop came asking questions after you’d gone. But really, what could I possibly have done to provoke this? Or Mabel?”

Carol shrugs.

“How’s the arm?” she asks.

“Hurts like hell.”

“The hospital gave us heaps of painkillers.” She holds up a box. “You can take two every four hours.”

“I hate that stuff,” I say grumpily. “It makes me feel woozy. I’ll have some when I want to sleep.”

“Well, a nap’s not such a bad idea,” she says firmly. “You need recovery time, you know. Trauma’s pretty tiring.”

“Okay, Doc,” I say, grinning at her. She’s actually a psychologist, but her medical knowledge seems endless.

“Just have a nice, relaxing day,” she says. “We’ve got some good DVDs. I’m sure you’ll be able to work the thing.”

“I’ll be fine,” I say. “Go and look after the real crazies. I’ll see you tonight.”

Finally I’m alone, stretched out on the couch in Carol’s comfortable, chaotic living room. They even have central heating. There’s a whole shelf of DVDs, but it’s a bit of a dilemma today. I usually like to lose myself in a gripping, edge-ofthe-seat thriller, but right now that idea has lost its appeal. She’s got “Inception”, which is certainly worth one more viewing, and some good TV series, including every episode of “The Wire”, but I’m too jumpy to embark on something like that.

I notice my computer in the corner – Carol must have grabbed it when she got some clothes from my house – so I check out the news online. All the reports say is that one woman was killed and one seriously injured, with no hint about our identities. Curious. Is this the hand of Senior Sergeant Something, making sure the shooter doesn’t know whether or not he’s succeeded?

I send off a quick email to Derek to tell him I won’t be in. All I say by way of explanation is: “My neighbour was shot last night – check out the news – and I got caught up in it. Will tell you everything tomorrow.”

Now’s the time Carol would tell me to relax and put the whole thing out of my head. I don’t want to think about it. I shouldn’t think about it. Carol even had the foresight to bring the book I’m reading from my bedside so I can lose myself in that. By a stroke of luck I didn’t read Wolf Hall when everyone else did – probably because I’m so obsessed with the seventeenth century I didn’t want to read about Henry the Eighth and his lot in the sixteenth – so now that I need a major diversion, it’s there.

But I hear again the roar of a car accelerating, and I feel the cold metal of the gun as if it were in my own hand. He – and I’m assuming it’s a he – aimed at one of us, and suddenly there were two. There was a confusion of bodies going down, arms and legs flying. He’s bound to read the news and find out we were both hit. Will he care?

I don’t want to think about it, but of course I do.

There are three possibilities, or maybe four. I try to rank them in my head.

One: It was random. He had the car, he had the gun, he just wanted to shoot someone. He cruised along the street, following a shadowy figure in a hooded jacket, playing with the gun, maybe practising his aim. The figure turned in at a gate – it was now or never.

Two: He was after Mabel. Maybe he was on the way to her house and she darted out, making it easy. But why would anyone want to target poor old helpless Mabel? Maybe she had money stashed away somewhere and one of those nephews of hers couldn’t wait to inherit. No, number two goes to the bottom of the list.

Three: He was after me. He saw me walking down the street, but I had my hood up, so he wasn’t sure it was me. He didn’t know me well, but he knew where I lived, so he waited to see where I was going. But why me? That’s the part that doesn’t make sense.

Four: He thought I was Miranda. Whatever she might say, I don’t know what dark corners Miranda has explored.

After thinking about that possibility for a while I firmly push Miranda to the bottom of the list, even below Mabel, and go back to number three. The car creeping down the street. Me, oblivious and hidden by the hood of my raincoat before I betrayed myself by stopping at my gate.

But why?

When Max died, it turned out he owed money to some pretty dodgy people. I was looking over my shoulder for a while. As far as I know I paid everyone off. Even if I hadn’t, it was nearly fifteen years ago. Even criminals must have a statute of limitations, and in any case, I wouldn’t be much use to them dead. As I discovered, with those people it’s just business.

It’s got to have been random, I think with relief. It’s obviously number one.

None of us are the sort of people things like this happen to, so it was random. Who knows what goes on inside the head of someone like that? But he’s gone now, and it’s over. I can relax, rest, watch DVDs, like Carol said.

But I can neither relax, rest nor muster the enthusiasm to watch a DVD. My brain’s still working: thinking, speculating. What if it was number three? Is there any way I could be the target of a killer?

I think of the questions Senior Sergeant Something asked me last night, looking for some sort of reason. There’s nothing in my personal life, which has been pretty uneventful lately. None of my friends have been in any trouble that I know of. As for work – I mentally tick off the jobs I’ve been doing the last few months, but they all seem pretty bland. I did a couple of tenders for Derek and I know he has rivals for some of that work, but knocking me off isn’t going to improve their chances. There were those procedure documents I edited for the Family Court – that place has got a bit of exposure to nutters – but again, nothing I did could possibly have offended or threatened anyone.

My arm is throbbing. I browse through the DVDs and consider “Inception”. Carlos, typically perverse, hated it. We had a long argument about virtual worlds and the nature of dreams, and I suggested that to him the whole world was virtual, since he views it at one remove, like Plato’s cave dwellers.

I pace around the room thinking about Carlos. Carlos is a wild card, and the police are going to find out about him. If they’re looking for a stalker he’s certainly a candidate, and if they find out how weird he is they’ll be rubbing their hands. How can I make them see that he’d never do anything to harm me?

Anyway, Carlos knows more about my life than I do. Regardless of what Carol said about taking it easy, I have to go and see him. Maybe there’s something

lurking in the corners of my life that I haven’t thought of, something I’ve brushed past without noticing, and he can help me find it. Hell, maybe he’s already investigating this, one jump ahead of the police.

7

Out of respect for Carlos, I ask the taxi driver to drop me off at the shopping centre a couple of blocks from his apartment. It’s one of his rules not to give his address to a taxi company because it creates an electronic record of his whereabouts. I’ve no idea why this should matter to him.

It’s hard to avoid breaking another Carlos rule about not arriving without warning because I just can’t think what to say in an email. This is way outside the usual parameters of our encounters, which are always dictated by work, but I know he’ll be able to see me approaching and I’m confident he’ll let me in whatever he’s doing.

Nevertheless, the door doesn’t open as I approach, and when I ring the bell there’s no response though my silent image is probably appearing from different angles on half a dozen screens. I wave my arms pointlessly.

Even Carlos has to go the bathroom I think; but I saw a button for his intercom in there once, so he could buzz me and tell me to wait. So that’s not it. I pull my mobile out and dial his number. It rings for a while, then goes to voicemail.

I’m close to tears. This would be typical Carlos behaviour if anyone else came calling, especially uninvited. He doesn’t let people in, he doesn’t answer his phone. But this is me.

Carlos never goes out. Carlos sleeps, but he has alarms to tell him when his perimeter has been breached. Does Carlos get sick? It’s possible, given his

lifestyle. But Ockham’s Razor tells me not to look for coincidences. Something is wrong.

I go around to the narrow laneway that runs behind the building. Just wide enough for one vehicle, it’s cobbled with bluestone, strewn with rubbish and muddy after the recent rain. It’s not hard to tell which fence belongs to Carlos, because it is higher than the others, with several strands of barbed wire on top. The fence and the wide gate are steel. As I approach I see something odd. The gate opens inwardly, and it’s not quite shut.

I stand there, my heart hammering. The silence is profound, until I gradually become aware of the distant hum of traffic, a mechanical whine of industry a few blocks away and a sort of low static sound which could be coming from inside Carlos’s place.

“Carlos?” I call in a quavering voice. Nothing.

The gate moves a little when I push it, but then there’s something jammed against it. There’s not enough of a gap to see, so I push a little harder. Now the back of the building is visible. The tall glass doors are wide open, and through them I see the shocking sight of Carlos’s sanctuary laid open, raw and exposed, with chairs and monitors overturned, screens flashing random error codes and cables strewn about like entrails.

Then I look down to see what is blocking the gate, and I stagger back into the lane.

Dark blood has seeped over the stone step and mixed with the mud and ooze

between the cobblestones. I see my footprint where I’ve stepped in it. On the other side of the gate, and now imprinted on my eyeballs, Carlos lies twisted like the figures from Pompeii, his legs splayed as in flight, his despairing face raised to the sky, one arm reaching out towards me in supplication.

I grope for my phone with shaking hands, every instinct screaming at me to call Miranda and tell her to run, to hide, to find the deepest cave, the place furthest away from here, from me.

It takes several fumbling attempts to dial the number on the card Detective Senior Sergeant Something gave me. A brisk voice answers “Lewis”, and I’m not even sure it’s him.

“I’m . . . This is Elly Cartwright,” I stammer. “From Brunswick.”

“Yes, Elly.” He’s suddenly alert. “What’s wrong?”

My tongue is thick and I have trouble getting everything out. Once I’ve explained where I am, he says: “Okay, Elly, now listen carefully. Go down to the other end of the lane – not the way you came in – and wait at the corner. I’m coming to get you. Stay out of sight, okay? I won’t be long.”

I feel a stab of fear at that, and the wait at the end of the lane seems interminable, though it’s actually less than five minutes before I hear the distant wail of sirens and Detective Senior Sergeant Lewis pulls up in a dark green Subaru, flanked by police cars spilling out officers dressed in that combat gear they wear these days.

“Can you point out the place? Down there, with the wire on top? Okay, just wait here with Constable Tong.”

“Tell them not to push the gate,” I say. “Tell them he’s . . . he’s . . .”

But Lewis is already running down the lane with a couple of young cops.

“Don’t worry,” says Constable Tong, patting my shoulder. “They know what to do.” Middle-aged, she radiates inner peace and reminds me of my mother. I want her to put her arms around me and let me cry and cry.

We watch them milling around the gate and peering through the crack. Lewis is giving orders to the uniforms, and talking on a mobile phone. A couple of minutes later he’s back by my side.

“This is going to take a while,” he says. “How about you and I go get some coffee and you can tell me what’s been happening here.”

I glance back. “What are they going to . . . ?”

“They’re waiting on some equipment. We’ll come back.”

We drive to a hole-in-the-wall café behind the market, and I slump down in the seat while he goes in to order. My arm is hurting and my eyes feel scratchy, like I

haven’t slept for days.

Standing at the counter, Lewis reminds me of someone, maybe Liam Neeson? He’s taller than the people around him, and has an easy grace. The barista seems to know him, and even a couple of the other customers are exchanging friendly remarks. I wonder how he could get to me so quickly? Does he cruise the city with a train of police cars, looking for trouble?

“So, talk to me,” he says once he gets back into the driver seat and hands me my coffee.

“Before I say anything, I want police protection for my daughter.”

“Huh? Where’d that come from?”

Suddenly I think I’m going to cry. I start shaking all over again.

“Hey!” He gently takes the coffee from me and puts it in the holder between the seats. Then he takes my hand and holds it in both his. He has long fingers.

“Hey, c’mon, it’s okay, we’ll take care of it. Where did you say your daughter was again?”

I pull myself together. “She’s a student teacher doing an internship at Augusta

Creek, down in Gippsland. It’s only a small town. She’ll be there for a couple of weeks.”

“Look, if you’re worried, it’s probably the best place for her. I’ll have a word with the local cops. Any strangers in town, they’ll stick out like the proverbial. Anyway, how’s she involved in this?”

“She’s not! I’m not!” I reach for my coffee. “Nothing makes any sense, but I’m starting to feel like Typhoid Mary. I just feel like . . . I don’t want anyone I know coming anywhere near me.”

“We’ll sort this out,” he says. “Help us do our job. For a start, tell me what’s going on here. Who is that, behind the gate?”

“His name is Carlos Fitzwilliam, or at least that’s the name he goes by. He’s got a brilliant mind, a bit crazy I guess, and he’s sort of re-invented himself. He and I sometimes work on projects together. This is his place.”

“Does he live there alone? What about family?”

“He’s single. The way he tells it, he’s got no family at all. He grew up in institutions and foster homes, hence the name.”

Carlos always seemed bitter on the subject of the families who took him in, though I suspect he would have been a difficult child.

“The name?”

“He had a surname from his main foster parents, but he’s rejected that. All he knows about his birth parents is that his father was called William – hence the name Fitzwilliam.”

Lewis looks blank.

“It means ‘son of’,” I say. “Fitz, I mean. You know, Fitzjames, Fitzgerald and so on.”

“Fitzroy?”

“That’s a special one. It means ‘illegitimate son of the king’.”

“Is there a girlfriend? Boyfriend?”

“Highly unlikely. He’s a loner, to put it mildly.”

“So,” he says. “You were there because . . . ?”

“I just wanted to see Carlos before you people got to him,” I explain. “He’s kind of dysfunctional.”

“And why would we get to him?”

“Maybe you wouldn’t. I don’t know. But you were asking those questions last night, if there was anything like a stalker. Carlos wasn’t like that, really, but he was a very obsessive person. I . . . I sort of get uncomfortable about things he knows about me,” I say hesitantly. “People go on about Asperger’s, they like to label everything. But he wasn’t Asperger’s, he was just . . . Carlos. Amazing brain, but probably what you’d call a sociopath, definitely agoraphobic – did you study psychology at the police academy?”

“Sort of,” he says and grins.

“We do computer work,” I say, trying to keep my explanation as simple as possible. To give Lewis credit, his eyes don’t glaze over. “Carlos writes – wrote – computer programs, but not in the office because he insists on working from his own place. He’s kind of freelance anyway, but he does nearly everything through the company I work for, Soft Serve Solutions. He’s not the sort of person to go out looking for clients. Anyway, he’s so good at what he does, my boss Derek wouldn’t care if he wanted to work in a submarine, or in Antarctica.”

“And you work with him, writing these programs?” asks Lewis.

“No, I kind of write the instructions that tell people like you and me how to use the programs. You know, like manuals.”

“That stuff?” he snorts. “I thought it was all written by robots, or monkeys.”

“I know most of it reads that way,” I say, “but there are a few lone voices in the wilderness, like mine, trying to get a hearing.”

“They must pay you a lot.”

“I wish. But the other thing about Carlos,” I continue, “is . . . was . . . he was kind of the eye of the city, and he seemed to be watching me a lot of the time. CCTV, looking into my s, that sort of thing.”

Now he’s interested.

“After last night, I thought he might know something . . . or he might have seen something.”

“You should have left it to us to talk to him. We’re the professionals.”

“No, you don’t understand. I haven’t explained Carlos properly. He was a recluse. He wouldn’t have let you in, and he would have got into a panic if you’d tried to force your way in. You’ve seen his place from the back. The front is impenetrable, and it’s all guarded and monitored. Apart from me and Derek I don’t know of anyone who could get in there to see him face-to-face.”

“Evidently someone did,” he says, but his phone must have started vibrating just then, because he stops speaking and pulls it out.

“Lewis,” he says, his voice curt.

He listens for a minute then starts the engine and we go back to the lane behind Carlos’s place. I shrink at the thought of that mound by the gate, but they’ve got the front door open. Through the gaping back of the building, I can see some sort of vehicle like a fire truck squeezed into the alley, and the whole place is swarming with people in white overalls and bootees.

“Sorry, but you’ll have to put these on,” says Lewis, handing me the same overalls and bootees.

Kitted out, we move warily through the building. The devastation is not as great as it looked when I first saw it. Most of the surfaces are smudged with black, but that’s the fingerprint people. Some of the computers have been prised open and their innards strewn about, as I saw before, but the other electronic equipment is untouched.

“It’s a bit messed up,” he says. “What do you think? Has he been robbed?”

“Well, they haven’t touched his sound stuff and it’s worth a lot more than the computers,” I say. “There might be a laptop missing – he must have had one – but I’m not sure. But mostly they’ve ripped parts out of the main computers.”

“Parts?”

“Well, I’m not an expert, but I think it might be the hard disks.”

I peer into the open computer cases. There’s definitely something missing from each one, but I can see other peripherals, like the RAM modules, still more or less in place. I point one of these out to Lewis.

“See this?” I say. “Every computer has a bunch of these, and you just have to pull them out.” I’m about to demonstrate, but he raises a warning hand.

“Better not touch anything,” he says.

“Oh, okay. Anyway, these little bits of RAM are very portable and worth quite a bit, but they haven’t been stolen.”

“But you think the hard disks were? Are they valuable?”

“Not especially. It’s what’s on them that counts.”

“And what would that be?”

“Well, everything,” I say. “The inside of Carlos’s head. The stuff he was trying to protect with all this security.”

Lewis makes a call to Derek because I don’t trust myself to speak, and Derek agrees that some of the guys from the office would have a better idea than me of what’s been done to the computers. An hour or so later, Luke and Steve Li arrive, wide-eyed. A small dark woman dressed in a sharply tailored suit brings them in an unmarked police car and ushers them inside. The ambulance has been and gone and I’m leaning on Lewis’s car, drinking what feels like my tenth cup of coffee.

After a few minutes I wander inside and catch Luke’s eye. He’s ghostly in the same white jumpsuit and gloves as the rest of us.

“You’re right, Elly,” he says. “All the hard disks have gone. Steve’s trying to get some history off that box over there, because it’s still running, somehow.”

Steve looks up briefly then bows his head over a computer in the corner, his fingers flying over the keyboard.

“Would that be useful?” I ask.

“Probably not. It just might give us an idea of what he’s been working on.”

In the kitchen, the coffee cups and plates Carlos and I used yesterday are still sitting in the sink, alongside several empty Coke cans. There’s also a clean plate

with a knife and fork neatly crossed on top.

On the floor just inside the front door there’s a red and white carton labelled Pizza-licious. Luke flips it open.

“That’s funny,” he says.

Lewis comes over with the woman who brought Luke and Steve.

“Elly, this is Detective Senior Sergeant Webster.”

Webster shakes my hand, but her eyes are unfriendly.

“Lewis says you’re familiar with this place? When were you last here?”

“Yesterday.”

Suddenly they’re both very interested. There’s a kind of stillness around us, and I realise that some of the techs working nearby have stopped and are listening in.

“Yesterday?” says Lewis.

I Carlos lying by the gate, that arm like a branch of a fallen tree reaching out towards me.

Is that rigor mortis?

8

Now we’re at the police headquarters in St Kilda Road, in an interview room. Lewis and Webster are sitting opposite me. If they play the good cop, bad cop routine, I know who’ll be who.

Lewis says: “Would you please describe your visit to Carlos yesterday?”

“Sure.” I scan my memory, then start. “I got there at about 11.45. Carlos opened the door because he was expecting me and he could see me on his security cameras . . .”

They let me tell the whole story, their faces expressionless.

“And how was Carlos when you left him?” asks Lewis.

“Normal.” I squint into the past, trying to if there was anything out of the ordinary. “He was thinking about having lunch.”

“And it was 12.45 pm when you left?” says Lewis.

“Or thereabouts.”

“Can anyone that?” asks Webster.

“Well, I got back to the office at about one, and it’s a fifteen-minute walk.”

“And where did you spend the afternoon?” says Webster.

“In the office. I left at about five, and you know what happened after that.”

“Do I?” she says, her voice cold.

“For the benefit of the tape,” says Lewis drily, “Ms Cartwright was one of two victims of an unidentified gunman in Ellen Street, Brunswick at approximately 5.35 pm yesterday. She was taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital for treatment to a gunshot wound to the upper arm and spent the rest of the night there.”

Webster writes all this in a little notebook, then suddenly looks up at me.

“So he made coffee for you?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“You said he was waiting for you with a cup of coffee because he knew just how you liked it?” she says.

“Well . . . yes, sure. He did that every time I went there.”

She’s playing with her pen on the desk, then she points it at me. “Would you say you had a close personal relationship with the deceased?”

“No, actually, I wouldn’t.”

“But he was waiting eagerly with coffee for you ‘just the way you liked it’. To me, that suggests a certain degree of intimacy.”

There’s something so pompous in her manner I can’t help laughing. She goes red, switches off the tape recorder and stalks out, slamming the door.

“What’s with her?” I ask Lewis.

He glances at the tape to make sure it’s off.

“Try not to get up her nose,” he says in a low voice. “This is her investigation, and she has to start by ruling you out.”

“Me?”

“Cherchez la femme, and all that?”

“But that’s ridiculous!” I say.

He shrugs. “Just gotta let her work through it, Elly. Right now, she’s got a dead man, two coffee cups with your fingerprints probably all over one of them, and your ission that you were there yesterday, which is going to be in roughly the right time frame.”

“Well sure, but why would I . . . ?”

“Some sort of lovers’ tiff? Elly, most murders are domestics, and most victims know their killer. All her training is telling her to look at you.”

“But not if I’m obviously innocent, surely.”

“Nobody’s obviously innocent.”

“I don’t think Ms Webster likes me,” I complain. “Can’t you investigate it? I don’t want her.”

“What do you think this is, a hairdressing salon? We share it around, and I’ve got the Mabel case.”

“Well, it’s obviously the same killer.”

“Obvious, maybe,” he concedes, “but the only link so far is you. Webster has her own ideas about that.”

He goes out of the room, leaving me to figure that one out. They can’t think I shot Mabel and myself yesterday – even Agatha Christie couldn’t come up with a way for that to happen – so what’s on their minds? Do they think I was so deranged by yesterday’s experience that I raced over to West Melbourne today and attacked Carlos?

No, wait – Carlos has been dead for hours. Rigor mortis. If I killed him, it would have been yesterday, while I was there. In fact, it can’t have been long after I left. What if I’d stayed for lunch, I wonder. Somehow, irrationally, I imagine that I could have saved him, helped him defend his fortress. I might have seen the killer at the door and warned Carlos not to let him in. An absurd image pops into my brain of a shadowy figure on the CCTV screen, a hat pulled down over his eyes, one hand on the gun in his pocket.

But that’s not what the killer looked like. He wore a Pizza-licious uniform and a silly red cap.

I wish I’d seen his face. Now, more than anything, I yearn for it. I wish I had glanced around, last night, at that creeping car. It was later, it was dark. He’d been to West Melbourne, and he was coming for me. He couldn’t be sure that woman in a raincoat with the hood up was me, but he knew where I lived so he followed patiently, watching to see if I would stop at that gate. What if that had been Miranda coming home? I think, horrified.

Images of that silly red cap, that face at the door, would have shown up on Carlos’s screens and been saved to his hard disks. All gone now.

They both come back into the room and sit down.

“Tell me about Carlos’s girlfriend. Did you know her?” says Webster.

“He didn’t have a girlfriend,” I say patiently.

“How can you be sure?”

“I would have known if he’d had a girlfriend.”

She leans forward. “But you say you didn’t have an intimate relationship with him.”

“How is this helping to solve Carlos’s murder?” I say, struggling to stay calm. “What’s some mythical girlfriend got to do with this?”

“Jealous, are you?” For the first time, Webster looks happy. Lewis is gazing into space. I do some yoga breathing.

“Are you following up the pizza carton?” I ask.

“I beg your pardon?” She frowns.

“You did see the pizza carton on the floor, didn’t you?” I say. “The one that had a folded newspaper in it, and no sign of any pizza?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well,” I say, “when Carlos ordered home delivery, which was pretty well every meal for him, he’d get his plate ready, with a knife and fork crossed on top. I saw that in the kitchen.”

“Shit,” says Lewis. “You said Carlos wouldn’t let anyone in.”

“That’s right,” I say, “except when he was hungry. He would have had to open the door for the people delivering his food.”

Webster gets up without a word and leaves the room again.

I don’t feel particularly optimistic – she’ll probably think I planted it.

9

Hours later both Webster and Lewis have disappeared. Constable Tong takes me to a sort of canteen, where I get a sandwich and some coffee, which I take out into a courtyard. Because it’s way past lunchtime there aren’t too many smokers hanging around, so I’m able to find a tolerable corner and turn on my phone. There’s a string of messages from Carol, ranging from increasingly concerned: “Sweetie, you are having the world’s biggest nap. How many of those pills have you taken?” to downright furious: “So I race home to organise a stomach pump or whatever. Where the hell are you?” There are texts from Miranda: mum pls call me lunchtime 12 2 1 , then where R U call me after 3 please mum. There’s also a voicemail from Derek: “Elly, what happen to you? Luke say police take you away. Elly, you been arrested?”

I text Miranda: Will have big talk tonight. Please trust me and wait for my call.

I call Derek. “So Luke and Steve are back?” I say.

“Yeah, we’re all pretty shock here. No-one getting any work done. How come you were there, Elly? I thought you stay home today.”

“It’s a long story, Derek. I’d rather tell you tomorrow. I’m still at the police station right now.”

“What’s happening to this city, Elly? That murder right in your street, and we have the break-in here, and now this terrible thing with Carlos! Did you really find him?”

“Yeah. I don’t want to talk about that just now, Derek. What did Luke and Steve say about the computers?”

“Luke say the killer pull out all Carlos’s data. Everything. When you coming in?”

“Tomorrow morning, I promise. We’ll know more by then.”

“Okay, see you then.”

“Wait a minute!” The penny drops. “What break-in, Derek?”

“Last night. Someone broke into the building, try to get into our office.”

“My God, Derek! Did they get in?”

“Course not. I like to see someone get through our security.”

Derek is proud of his state-of-the-art locks and alarms, and I think he’s quite pleased that someone’s finally bothered to test them out. But I’m reminded of something else.

“Derek, did Carlos send in his backup yesterday?”

“Yeah, the courier come at about three o’clock. We put it in the safe.”

“Can you call the police and tell them that? Ask for Detective Senior Sergeant Webster. Thanks, Derek.”

Well, that should take care of DS Webster’s suspicions. In line with his general paranoia, Carlos always burned his most important files onto a CD every Monday afternoon and sent them to Derek for off-site storage. He always used the old-fashioned non-rewritable ones, so the contents could never be tampered with. When the stack of CDs in the safe gets too big they go off to some bunker or other, happily paid for by Carlos. So I wasn’t the last person to see him alive after all.

Now I have to ring Carol. She picks up on the second ring.

“Elly! Christ, what are you . . .”

And I start crying. It’s sudden and devastating, like a dam bursting. I can’t say anything for a minute, while she rants at me, then realises something is wrong.

“Elly?”

“I’ll text you,” I gasp.

“You will not! Don’t you dare hang up!” She’s in full command mode. “Come on, take a few deep breaths.”

Constable Tong has reappeared and put an arm around me, and I manage to calm down and tell Carol what’s happened.

“I’ll come and pick you up,” she offers.

“No! In fact, I’m coming to get my stuff. You’re not going to be involved in this.”

She starts to argue, but I’m adamant.

“Carol, someone might be watching me. If they are, I want them to see me get my stuff and leave your place. It’s not just you, it’s Rick and the kids. I don’t want anyone to think I’m staying with you.”

“But what will you do, where will you go?”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll see you soon, if the crazy lady cop here doesn’t arrest me.”

More time es, with lots of coming and going, before Igor from Rush’n’Around confirms that our regular courier saw Carlos alive just after two yesterday, when she picked up the CD that he sends into the office every Monday. Webster reluctantly accepts that I’ve got an unassailable alibi.

“So now will she finally agree that it’s the person who killed Mabel?” I ask Lewis hopefully. “You can prove it was the same gun, can’t you?”

“Could do, if it was a gun. Sorry, Elly. Not official yet, but Carlos was stabbed, and his . . . in the end, his throat was cut. He was trying to get away, out the back.”

Tears come to my eyes at the image of Carlos in terror, driven from his sanctuary, trailing his lifelines, the cables that connected him to the only world that was real to him.

“What about this CD?” asks Lewis. “What’s on it?”

“It’s just his off-site backup,” I explain. “He burns all his new code for the past week and sends it to the office to be stored. Derek’s got a stack of these CDs in his safe.”

“Don’t they store that sort of thing on the Internet these days?”

“This is Carlos,” I say. “Did I mention he was paranoid? He wouldn’t put his code on the Internet for some Carlos-like person to find. Anyway, have you checked out the pizza carton?”

“You were right. No sign of any pizza. He had ordered the Monday Special from Pizza-licious, but about five minutes later the order was cancelled.”

“Do they know who by?”

“No. They don’t record calls like that, and no-one had any recollection of it.”

“Were there fingerprints on the carton?”

“Stacks, but I doubt if we’ll get anything useful. The box was a bit battered – probably came out of a recycling bin somewhere. My money’s on the so-called delivery guy wearing gloves.”

“Yeah, of course,” I agree. “And Carlos wouldn’t get suspicious when he took the box, because that newspaper stuffed inside gave it just the right weight. But then he would have realised it was cold.”

“Do you think he’d notice something like that?”

“Carlos was really cautious,” I explain. “It’s not like it was justified. It was

almost like he lived in a fantasy world, like one of those games those nerdy guys play. You know, like he wanted to think people were after him, just to give his life a bit of excitement. You saw what a fortress his place was?”

“So that makes him look pretty interesting as a target. Webster’s trying to find out more about where he got his money, and maybe who his enemies were.”

I feel immensely tired. Where do I start with someone like Webster? Would she be interested in anything I might tell her?

“We’d better get you home,” says Lewis. “We’ll get the local police to keep an eye on your house for a few days, if it makes you feel better.”

“Somehow, it doesn’t,” I say. “What I want to do is pick up my things from my friend’s place, but then I want to be taken somewhere else. Discreetly.”

I explain my plan. He raises his eyebrows, but makes no comment, except to say: “Okay, I’ll take you to Brunswick myself.”

There’s little conversation on the trip to Carol’s house because Lewis is on the phone. I gather from his cryptic contributions that they haven’t got a suspect for who shot Mabel, but they’ve found a stolen car that was abandoned a few streets away.

“Was that the car?” I ask in a brief interval between calls.

“We don’t have much of a description,” he says. “But it was in the right place at the right time, and it’s been expertly wiped.”

“Expertly,” I repeat. “And there was a silencer on the gun, wasn’t there? Do you think this was a professional, some sort of contract killer?”

He keeps his eyes on the road. “We’re not ruling anything out,” he says.

When we arrive at Carol’s, she’s waiting anxiously to hand over my stuff. She’s added a few useful things from the stash of clothes she hopes will fit her again someday. We hover around the front door for a few minutes.

“This is Detective Senior Sergeant Lewis,” I say. “Carol Brennan.”

“Mike,” he says, holding out his hand.

“Hi Mike,” she says, shaking it briefly. “Listen, Elly, are you sure about this? We really need to talk.”

“Let’s have lunch tomorrow. Have you got time?”

“Of course.”

We make our arrangements, then Lewis and I get back in the car and head to St Kilda Road. I use his phone on the way. As we drive into the basement car park I take the battery and SIM card out of my own phone and drop them in my bag. From now on I intend to be under the radar.

A curly-haired young cop is waiting with a police van. I climb in the back and we ease out into the peak-hour traffic. Once we’re past the city and heading west I squeeze through to the enger seat.

“Constable Macintyre, is it? I hope you don’t mind doing this,” I say.

“Nah, it’s great. I get to drive the van home and back again in the morning. Beats public transport.”

“Where do you live?”

“Box Hill.”

“God, this is right out of your way!”

“It’s okay. The boss thought I should do it, because of my dad.”

“Your dad?”

“He’s the Senior Sergeant at Augusta Creek.”

“Ahhh!” So this boy’s father is keeping an eye on Miranda. Suddenly I feel enveloped by warmth.

“Do you know the place?” I ask. “Did you grow up there?”

“Nah. City boy. Dad just took the post a couple of years ago, when he and Mum split up.”

The image of a rosy-cheeked mother serving up pie in a cosy kitchen dissipates, and I see the dejected country cop hunched over a lone counter tea. Steak and chips.

“Good place, though. I go for the odd weekend – do a bit of rabbiting with Dad.”

The two men stride into the bush in boots and plaid jackets, at ease with each other. Nice-looking lad. Perhaps Miranda . . . ?

“There’s some weirdos down there, though. Hippies and greenies. Dad says it’s worse than the city sometimes.”

Or perhaps not.

My long, unruly hair makes me pretty recognisable, so before we reach our destination I pull out my merino scarf and drape it over my head and neck. Then I get Constable Macintyre to let me out in the heart of Little Vietnam, opposite the Footscray Market. Pedestrians give the police van a wide berth and I wait until he’s well out of sight before I merge into the crowd and stroll round the corner.

In the main drag, I wander in and out of a few takeaways, as if trying to make up my mind where to go for a meal. I don’t think I’m particularly good at this, but the idea is to keep changing direction so I can have a good look round and see if anyone is following me. The only other European I see is an old lady with painfully swollen legs, hobbling home with her shopping cart.

Eventually I stroll into the Khá Sen Restaurant, about halfway down the block. It’s brightly lit and emanating good smells. The laminex-topped tables are well scrubbed, ready for business, with an array of spicy sauces in little bottles set out on each one. Inside it’s empty apart from a couple of sombre Vietnamese men hunched over bowls of noodles in a corner. There’s no-one behind the counter, but a buzzer announces my arrival and Lily Ng, the owner, comes bustling through the plastic strip curtains at the back.

“Elly! You really come!”

She gives me a big hug, her smooth dark head fitting neatly under my chin. I can see a few streaks of grey, but other than that there have been no signs of ageing in the eight years I’ve known her.

When I was freelancing as a kind of information consultant I did some work for a smarmy operator called Freddie Tranh. At first I was impressed by his spiel about setting up low-cost software systems for his own people, tailored to their sometimes peculiar business practices; and that was more or less what he did. But the sting was that he deliberately customised everything, unnecessarily in my opinion, to make his clients dependent on him, then charged them exorbitant maintenance fees. Lily and her husband Du run a small printing business next door to the restaurant, and they were paying off both buildings. The website Freddie set up for them was much more complicated than it needed to be, and Lily and Du were struggling to pay his bills. Instead of adding the high-priced information system he was recommending, I stripped the whole thing back and helped them to get out of their contract with him. It only took a couple of afterschool sessions to teach their oldest son Nam, then fifteen, how to maintain the system.

Because the job took so little of my time I allowed Lily to pay me a reasonable amount, so she didn’t lose any face; and at the same time I helped her with the costings to convert the numerous spare rooms behind and above the two buildings into short-term accommodation. This has turned into a nice little earner for the family. I don’t know how many one-room flats they managed to fit in, but the two buildings have been knocked together and extended with corridors and staircases like a game of snakes and ladders. If your taste in decor runs to downtown Saigon and you like Vietnamese food, it’s an ideal place to stay: close to the Footscray Market and station, and less than ten minutes to the city. As Lily prefers not to trouble the tax department with her additional income, it especially suits cash-paying customers who appreciate not leaving a trace.

Now Lily leads me back through the building. A small boy, her youngest son Oscar, has materialised and is dragging my bags despite my protests.

“I have best room for you, Elly,” Lily says happily. “Quiet, like you say. You

don’t pay me one cent.”

“Now, we’re not going to argue about that,” I say firmly. “I pay my way, Lily. But I tell you what, I’d kill for a bowl of your pho.”

“You got it,” she says. “You eat in kitchen with family tonight. We catch up, okay?”

We climb to a big attic room at the back. It’s nice, with a wide dormer window overlooking rooftops. The bathroom is tucked in under the roof, and there’s a kitchenette in a cupboard. Naturally Lily has brightened up the room with plastic flowers and some colourful Buddhist pictures from her collection, but the bed looks comfortable and there’s a little table I can use for my computer.

“It’s great, Lily,” I say. “Thanks so much.”

“I didn’t know what you like for breakfast,” she says. “You give Oscar a list and he go to the store for you.”

“That’s a great idea, thanks.” I turn to Oscar. “Is that all right with you? What about your homework?”

“It’s all done,” he says shyly.

“He good boy. Class captain this year!” says Lily, managing a matronly hug before Oscar flees.

10

I’m left alone for a while before it’s time to eat, so I to my work using Lily’s wireless router. Now I can use Skype to make phone calls that can’t be traced in a hurry. Miranda is first.

“Mum? Are you using Skype? I’ve left a million messages on your phone. Have you lost it?”

I explain what’s happened as best I can. I choose my words carefully, but I still have to rein her in now and then.

“Oh Mum, no! But why? What’s happening? Are they going to try and shoot you again?”

“I don’t know, Miranda, I don’t know what all this is about. I saw Carlos yesterday for work, now all this is happening.”

“So you think the person who killed Mabel was trying to get you? What, are they going round whacking everyone at Soft Serve?”

I feel a jolt of alarm, thinking about Derek and the others.

“No,” I say. “I don’t think that’s likely.”

“But it must be something to do with your work. You don’t have anything to do with – like – classified stuff, do you?”

“No, nothing like that at all. It’s got to be that Carlos found out something he shouldn’t, and they think he told me.”

“You’ve got to get police protection! Or . . . like . . . a bodyguard. Can you get a bodyguard?”

“I don’t think . . . I think that would cost a lot of money, love.”

“Oh Mum, what are we gonna do?”

“You’re not going to do anything – just stay well away from me until this is over. Don’t go home until I tell you it’s safe. Don’t call my phone. You can send me emails at my work address, and I’ll call you often, okay?”

“Okay. What about you?”

“I’m just going to stay out of sight until the police catch this person. I’m not telling anyone where I’m staying. You spread that around, all right? You don’t know where I am.”

“Are you at Diana’s?”

She knows me pretty well. Diana is the friend I would normally turn to in a crisis. “Miranda, for God’s sake! No, I’m not!” I tell her now. “It really is safer if you don’t know where I am, so you’re not going to know. It’s much better that way. Anyway, how are things with you? What’s the place like?”

“The people I’m staying with are really nice, only the food is overloaded with carbs, so I don’t know how I’m going to survive. And the guy . . .” she lowers her voice “. . . has sausages for breakfast! With two fried eggs! But the school’s great, and the kids are really sweet. It’s only been two days and Gareth and I have both had little girls sidling up to us saying ‘You’re the best teacher ever’.”

“Gareth?”

“The other intern. He’s from Monash.”

“Oh! It must be nice to have another student there.”

“Yeah, he’s okay.”

This cheers me up considerably. When bad thoughts come later on I’ll be able to console myself with visions of Miranda and a gentle young man with fair hair and a beard – did I have a teacher who looked like that? Surely not, they were all sour old shrews – bending together over a desk to correct the wobbly writing of an earnest child with pigtails and gingham dress. No, better update that image –

they’re in the schoolyard playing kick-to-kick, girls at one end and boys at the other, laughing in the bracing country air.

After I hang up I think about what I said to Miranda. If this is not some crazy vendetta against Soft Serve, then maybe it is about something Carlos found out? It wouldn’t be surprising if his nosiness got him into trouble. I think back to what he talked about while I was trying to get my work done. He was interested in the Athena Resources swindle that’s before the courts at the moment. He perked up when I mentioned the job in Sydney, in the coal industry, and I got the impression he was going to tell me something about that. And what was the other thing? Oh yes, that guy who disappeared on the mountain last year – Carlos said there was an anomaly.

While I’m searching for the news stories about that case I call Omar.

“Hey, Elly! Where were you today? Big dramas in the office.”

“Yeah, I heard. Omar, I was wondering if you could do me a favour. Are you driving in tomorrow?”

“Yeah, course.”

Omar’s van is his pride and joy and he drives to work every day, even though parking near Soft Serve is a nightmare.

“Could you pick me up on the way? What time do you leave Sunshine?”

We work out a time and a corner where I’ll be waiting. It’s about five minutes’ walk from the Khá Sen.

It’s time for dinner in the warmth of the restaurant kitchen. The family lives several blocks away in a neat double-fronted weatherboard with beautifully maintained gardens at the front and back where they grow all the herbs for the restaurant; but they still converge here every day at six. Du closes up the printing shop and comes in with whoever is currently working for him. Uncle Van, who has always been with the family although his relationship to them is obscure, takes over the cooking for any early customers.

Lily sits at the head of the table and steaming bowls appear in front of her. She sniffs, tastes and gestures until all is to her liking. She then serves the food and es it around. I’m sitting on one side of her, and silent Du on the other. The children sit in their proper order on both sides, ranging in age from Anh, now in her early twenties with a baby on her knee and a husband, probably the young man helping Uncle Van; down to Oscar. The younger children are alert to operations at the stoves, leaping to their feet from time to time to help.

The food, as always, is sublime, and not much is said as we all shovel in the first helping. Then Lily and I begin the usual formalities.

“How your daughter? She doing good?”

“Yes, she’s great. Nearly finished her course. She’ll be a teacher by the end of this year. What about Nam?”

“He’s in America. Big shot at Google now. They need him over there.”

I’m not sure if Nam is a big shot, but just getting a job at Google is something many of my workmates dream about. He was a delightful boy, and I’m proud of my small contribution in giving him a bit of English tutoring in his last year of high school.

We go on through the achievements of her children, which takes some time as there are six of them, all highly accomplished and diligent. I tell her a little about what I’ve been doing at work, but we avoid the subject of why I’m here. Lily assumes that this is delicate, and I just don’t want to talk about it. In this kitchen, washed with white fluorescent light, the outside world does not intrude. Chatter rises and falls, competing with the crackle and whoosh as woks flare. There are sudden flurries of activity, and Lily occasionally breaks off mid-sentence to bark instructions, but there is an overall sense of tranquillity. For the first time since I walked down my street in Brunswick, I feel safe.

11

I go back to my room and sift through the search results about the man who disappeared on the mountain. Peter Talbot, that was his name. In the first weekend of October last year he was camping with a group in the Upper Yarra Park, when he went off on his own up something called the Doctor Creek Track and never came back. The early news reports were optimistic. He was an experienced bushwalker, he was well equipped, and he had his mobile phone and a PLB.

I look up PLBs – Personal Locator Beacons – to see how they work. I’ve heard of EPIRBs, but it looks like that term is misused, and a bushwalker is more likely to have a PLB. They’re lightweight, less expensive and easy to use. The beacon uses GPS and triangulation to find the person, but it has to be explicitly set off. This makes it potentially less effective than finding someone through their mobile phone, because a PLB is useless if you’re unconscious, or can’t reach it.

Carlos mentioned triangulation, too. That is something I know about, because I had to write about it for one of the telcos last year. It’s obvious when you think about it that your phone sends out signals all the time, checking to see if there are transmitters within range and picking up messages. But not everyone realises that this means your mobile phone is traceable even if you don’t use it. Even if the signal is too weak for you to make a call, there’s some signal, and the nearest transmitter can sense your phone.

I think about my own phone, sitting in my bag with the battery and SIM card removed. That’s really the only way to make sure it’s not traceable. Even like that it worries me, and I’m going to put it in Derek’s safe tomorrow and leave it there.

Imagine a circle on a map, with the transmitter in the centre and you and your phone somewhere on the edge. A searcher can calculate the radius of the circle by measuring the strength of the signal your phone is sending to the transmitter. Now the searcher looks around for the next closest transmitter, measures the strength of the signal to that transmitter, and draws another circle. Where the two circles intersect, they should find the phone. It’s not quite as accurate as one might like – maybe a fifty-metre margin of error – but it’s pretty good. In city areas, that is. In remote places, where the transmitters are far apart, it’s less reliable, and you’ve got a search area that can be a couple of kilometres wide. That’s because the two circles might not intersect at all, so you just have to look at the area where they come closest together.

Still, it should have helped them find Peter Talbot. He set off on a three-hour walk about mid-morning and hadn’t returned by nightfall. His friends – Patrick Donnelly, Suresh Chandra and Brian O’Dwyer – reported him missing late in the day.

The signals the searchers picked up from Peter Talbot’s phone showed that part of the way up he’d strayed from the track, which was steep and ill-defined, into a rough area full of gullies and steep drop-offs. He didn’t use his PLB. His phone signals stopped sometime during the night, indicating that his battery had gone flat, and the temperature dropped below freezing. They searched for three days but they couldn’t find any trace of him. In the summer his day pack was found at the bottom of a gully, a couple of kilometres downhill from the track he should have been on. The PLB was stowed inside. They never found his mobile phone.

An article in one of the Saturday papers held forth on the folly of walking alone in treacherous conditions as it reconstructed Talbot’s downfall. The journalist imagined him confidently striding the wrong way, then a stumble, maybe a trip on a tree root or a loose rock, then over the edge, crashing down the steep slope. It seemed the tumble didn’t kill him or they would have found his body right

there; but he must have been badly enough injured to be disabled and disoriented, and in the sub-zero temperatures he wouldn’t have lasted long. He must have lost the phone and the vital pack on the way down, then crawled for some time searching for them, or trying to find a way back to the track, before being overcome. He may have fallen into another gully, or just got himself into even denser bush. In any case, he managed to move so far from his starting point they couldn’t find his body. Case closed.

That night, cocooned in my attic room, I sleep soundly though towards dawn I dream about Lewis. He takes my hand and leads me out of a Bosch painting of writhing bodies spattered in blood, doing hideous things to each other. We walk together down a long laneway flanked by steel doors. Then he disappears behind one of the doors and I can’t find him because they all look the same. Next thing I’m being chased by Detective Senior Sergeant Webster on a bicycle. She’s green like the witch in The Wizard of Oz, and if she catches me she’s going to cut my throat. I try to run, but can only move in slow motion because my feet are stuck in viscous, blood-soaked mud that’s oozing up between cobblestones.

12

I wake up shivering and for a moment I don’t know where I am. The light coming around the synthetic curtains is all wrong. Everything seems so strange I wonder if I’m still dreaming and I close my eyes again, willing myself back into my own bedroom with my good worn Persian rug, white cotton sheets, and the print of Vermeer’s Seamstress on the wall. But it’s no good, I’m at Lily’s, and though DS Webster isn’t chasing me and there’s no cobblestones oozing blood, Carlos and Mabel are both dead and my life could well be in danger.

I steel myself to get up, but the room is very cold. Lily turns off the heating at night and all the residual warmth is long gone. Finally I force myself out of bed and shower and dress as fast as possible, still chilled to the bone.

I can hear signs of other people in the building: water running in the pipes, staircases creaking; but Lily’s other guests are very discreet, and when I come out of my room I don’t see anyone else.

In preparation for the day, I’ve shoved a couple of patterned silk scarves into my bag and arranged a merino scarf around my head hijab-style. Someone like me would be pretty conspicuous in this neighbourhood, but now nobody will look twice. I leave carefully by the back entrance, which gives onto a garbage area and a car park, and walk purposefully, head down, to meet Omar in his van. Although I’ve never seen this vision in purple metallic paint before it’s easy to recognise, because he spends a lot of time describing it in loving detail to the other guys.

“Hi!” he says, as I jump in. “Whatcha doing around here?”

“Staying with some friends,” I say. “I had some trouble at my house, and I can’t go back there for a while.”

I’ve decided I’ll have to explain things to Omar, because I need to ask him to keep quiet about where he’s picking me up. He’s very impressed by my story.

“You and Carlos must’ve been into something really heavy!” he says enviously. “Derek never tells us anything. Anyone else working on it?”

“No, Omar, I swear it’s nothing to do with work. I only went to see Carlos about his new parsing engine. Nobody could possibly find that threatening. I think it’s all some huge mistake.”

“I reckon it’s terrorism,” says Omar. “Carlos hacked one site too many, or maybe those Romanians found out something.”

“Romanians?”

“You know, all those guys on his payroll. Ask Steve Li.”

By now we’re approaching Spencer Street, and I’ve got another favour to ask him.

“Omar, your access card gets you into the car park, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, but I’m not allowed to park there.”

“I know, but can you drop me, then drive out?”

He sees the point, so I slide down in the seat and he gets me into the building without being visible. That’s if there’s anyone looking. I go up to our floor in the goods lift, and it’s a good fifteen minutes before Omar appears. He must have to park miles away.

The mood in the office is sombre and Derek has summoned everyone to a meeting at ten-thirty in the lunchroom. He coughs up some cash – most unusual for him – so Viet Lei and Luke go out and buy takeaway coffee for everyone. Finally we all assemble in the lunch room. The whole company is there, even the Russians Nick and Anna, who have been working at a client site for so long I’d almost forgotten about them.

Ravi and Vijay have the decency to put their pool cues on the table and abandon their game. They Sam, Chang and Omar on the stools at the back of the room. Sunanda and Viet Lei sit with me at the table where we often have gossipy lunches together. Sunanda has only been back at work for a couple of weeks after her recent wedding. I her joy when she came in the day before to show us the elaborate decorations painted on her hands.

Miranda’s remark rests like a lead weight in my stomach. Maybe this is something to do with Derek’s business after all? Are all these people in danger?

“I don’t know too much more than yesterday,” says Derek. “But maybe best if we have a big talk now, get it out of the way. We all got work to do.”

There’s a slight murmur of discontent at that. We all know Derek is a hard man. But he raises both hands defensively.

“Just listen, okay? Part of what I want people to do, it’s finding out more about what Carlos has been getting into, see if we can figure out why this happen. In a minute, we’ll get Luke to tell us what he knows. First, though, I think we should hear from Elly.”

I glance around. People are sneaking looks at me.

“Putting it together,” says Derek, “Elly was the last person here to talk to Carlos. She went to see him on Monday to look at the updates to the parsing engine, make some notes. Later on, seems he did his backup like always, called the courier. His disk arrive in the office Monday afternoon and Sunanda logged it in. Right, Sunny?”

She nods.

“So yesterday Elly went back to see him again.”

Faces turn to me expectantly.

“It wasn’t about work,” I say. “I thought Carlos might be able to help me. You probably saw that thing on the news, the old lady who was shot in the street? Well, it was right outside my house.”

Exclamations and questions break out. “In Brunswick?” “Is that where you live?” “Did you see it?” “Did you know her?”

Finally I have to ask for silence.

“Look, I’m still trying to sort out exactly what happened. It was someone in a car, they sort of followed me down the street. It was a real shock, and it . . . it seemed possible it was really aimed at me.” I sense incredulity. Good old Elly? “I was going to see if Carlos had any ideas. He always seemed to know what was going on.”

“Some lady cop was here, asking us all about your relationship with Carlos,” says Viet Lei.

“Relationship?” I snort.

“Sam told her you’re one of the few people he’ll let in to his place.”

“Yeah, but you must have told her I didn’t have a relationship with him? For God’s sake. Carlos?”

They look at me, their young faces blank. To them, the lives of people over forty are a mystery. I decide to let it go.

“Anyway,” I say sadly. “Carlos didn’t open the door, so I got worried. I found him dead in his backyard. It looks like he ordered a pizza just after the courier left, and someone pretended to be the delivery guy, so he let him in. Then he realised straight away, and he tried to run.” My voice quavers. I look up and see that Sunny is crying.

“Derek says someone tried to break in to the office,” I continue. “All these things must be connected, but I don’t trust the cops to figure out what it’s about. That bloody policewoman, Webster, doesn’t seem interested in anything that’s not in her textbook.”

Once again they’re all talking at once.

“Come on!” I say, feeling like a school teacher bringing a class to order. “Just let me finish. Someone trashed Carlos’s place but it didn’t look like they were after stuff they could sell. I thought Luke and Steve should go over and have a look.”

“Yeah, so the cops came and got us,” says Luke. “None of the sound gear was taken, and that’s, like, the best German stuff, and some of it is definitely portable. What the killer did, he just ripped the hard disks out of all the boxes. Must’ve taken a while because some of them had to be unscrewed. And there was no laptop, iPad or phone anywhere around. Carlos would have had all those, wouldn’t he?”

I nod.

“It looked to us like he was after all the data,” continues Luke. “Either there was something there he wanted, or he was trying to destroy everything Carlos had. But he must have known there’d be backups. And in Carlos’s case, backups of backups.”

“Looks like he knew about the backup Carlos sent to the office,” I say. “Don’t you think that’s why someone tried to break in? To do the same thing here?”

Derek looks horrified at the thought. He wouldn’t be too upset about burglars stealing his money or his computers, but the thought of someone stealing data from him is inable. After a while, he says, “What would someone want with Carlos’s data anyway? The stuff he was working on wasn’t such a big deal.”

We think about that for a while.

“Carlos himself was worth more than anything he had on his hard disks,” muses Sam.

“Yeah,” says Ravi. “They could kidnap him, or something, and make him work for them.”

“And why would anyone want to kill Elly?” says Sunny.

“Could be someone got a grudge against this company,” says Derek. “We don’t know what they’re going to do next. Maybe we all better be careful.”

There’s some uneasy shuffling and murmuring at this. People start speculating about Derek’s rivals.

“I don’t like those guys at Horizon,” says Ravi. “Haven’t you beaten them for a few tenders lately?”

“Or what about that Serbian contractor you sacked last year?” says Nick. “That guy was psycho. You should tell the cops about him.”

Trust Nick to bring that up. Nick is pessimistic and prone to angry outbursts, though his workmate, plump, placid Anna can always keep him under control. They make a good work team, too, his wild creativity balanced by her razorsharp logic. But he’s highly critical of anyone else who’s erratic, especially if they do work similar to his.

I the Serbian. Derek didn’t exactly sack him – just didn’t renew his contract, on Nick’s recommendation, because his work was inconsistent and his behaviour unpredictable. I did hear raised voices in Derek’s office when he got his marching orders, though why that would lead to him targeting Carlos and me rather than Derek and Nick seems a bit of a stretch.

Derek lets everyone go on for a while, talking off the tops of their heads, airing whatever theories they’ve been cooking up. Omar brings up his terrorist idea, but

he doesn’t mention Romanians. Steve Li keeps his mouth shut, as always, but after a while he whispers something to Luke.

“Steve’s looked at the CD,” says Luke. “It’s got Carlos’s work on it, but there’s also a dump of some files he’s been looking at in his own time. Steve says it looks quite interesting.”

Eyes turn to Steve who remains silent, so Luke continues.

“Carlos had been hacking some interesting sites. He’d saved a few databases. Looks like he was trying to analyse them.”

“Hacking?” Derek explodes. “You guys know our rule about hacking.”

"Carlos was off site,” Luke reminds him.

“We don’t want to mess with data he got through hacking,” says Derek uneasily. “Anyway, we don’t know what he was doing with it. Without his hard disks, we don’t have any history.”

“You were looking at one of his computers that was still on,” I say to Steve. “Did anything show up in the RAM?”

“Just a chess game,” says Steve, “against someone with a Ukrainian IPP.”

It’s not hard to believe Steve could look at the string of numbers that constitute an IPP address and deduce where the is.

Steve whispers again. Luke says: “There’s a few log files on the CD.”

People start asking questions, and I raise my voice to be heard.

“We shouldn’t be talking about this. If Carlos found out something it’s dangerous to know, we need to keep it quiet.”

“Okay,” says Derek. “I’m gonna take this off-line and make it a project. Luke and Ravi, you’re not too busy right now, so you’re both on it. Go through what Carlos was working on, in his own time as well as mine, and report back to me. I give you a couple of days, charge time to the company. Everyone else, back to work.”

I’m not happy to be excluded, but my reaction is eclipsed by Steve Li, who’s showing signs of agitation, high drama for him.

“Steve wants to work on this too,” says Luke.

“No way,” says Derek firmly. “Steve’s full-time on Synergy 3.4. We’re too close to release date.”

They negotiate. Steve calms down immediately, knowing what the outcome will be.

“He’ll work extra hours,” says Luke.

“He might have to anyway.”

“He’s only got three criticals left.”

“They all top priority.”

“It’s cool, Derek. It’ll all be done.”

“Hmmmm.”

Inevitably, Derek concedes that Steve can the project as soon as he’s finished his last lot of bug fixes. Like Carlos, Steve is too valuable to the company not to get his own way. In fact, although he looks like a fifteen-yearold schoolboy and is pathologically shy, his ability means he’ll be Carlos’s natural successor.

As we’re dispersing, I say quietly to Luke: “There was one thing Carlos

mentioned to me. Let me come to one of your meetings and I’ll tell you what I can .”

“Sure. Maybe after lunch? I’m gonna get the guys together right now to work out a rough plan.”

“Omar said Carlos had Romanians on his payroll,” I say. “Do you know anything about that?”

“Wouldn’t be surprised. I wish I could afford Romanians,” says Luke, then sees that I don’t get it. “Okay, Elly, it’s like this. If you’re really into gaming, you spend a lot of time on the lower levels, fighting your way up to where it starts getting interesting, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, people like Carlos, with plenty of money and plenty of other stuff to do with their time, don’t want to be trudging round endless dungeons fighting monsters just so they can build up their strength and collect their weapons, so they pay someone else to do it. Preferably someone in a country with low pay rates.”

“Romania.”

“Yeah. There’s a whole industry over there.”

“So he could have had them doing other stuff, besides playing his games for him?”

“It’s possible. If I were him I’d have farmed out anything tedious and repetitive.”

“God, I could do with some Romanians myself.”

“Yeah, they’re cheaper than Indians, but Indians are better at English, of course. Hey, Steve,” he says. “Did Carlos use Romanians?”

“Nah, Ukrainians,” says Nick, having heard the last part of our conversation. “Ukrainians charge about the same as Romanians, and he found some guys he liked. I did a bit of interpreting for him at first, but their team leader spoke good English.”

“So he wasn’t just playing chess with them?” I ask.

“Nah. Those Ukrainians are pretty good. They can find out just about anything for you.”

“So,” I muse, “would we have any record of his dealings with the Ukrainians?”

“Unlikely,” says Luke. “No reason why he’d back up emails or online conversations. But we’ll have a good look anyway.”

“Ukrainians, Romanians.” I shake my head as Luke and I head for our desks. “You guys always surprise me.”

“Steve’s got this great team in Bali,” says Luke. “They maintain his website and do a bit of code cutting for him. Best thing is, he and his girlfriend go over for a holiday twice a year and he gets it off his tax.”

“Steve has a girlfriend?” I say, incredulous.

13

When I get to my desk, the voicemail light is blinking. It takes me the rest of the morning to go through all the messages, which fall into three categories: friends who’ve heard about Mabel and are anxious about me, whether or not they realise I was involved; work acquaintances who have heard about Carlos and are inquisitive; and people I don’t know who don’t say why they’re calling. One of the last messages is from Constable d’Alessandro, telling me that the police have finished examining my house and it’s fine for me to go home now. There’s nothing from the other cops.

Even though the police don’t see any problem with me going home, I’m not prepared to risk it until I work out what’s going on. I wish I knew the order in which things happened. Did he kill Carlos that night, after he’d missed me? Maybe he didn’t even know he’d missed. Or did he kill Carlos first, and then stalk me?

Either way, if he tried to kill me once, whatever the reason, why wouldn’t he try again?

I decide to call Lewis.

“It’s Elly Cartwright,” I say.

“Ah,” he says.

“Nice to talk to you too. So what’s happening? What have you found out?” I ask.

“Ummm. Best if we talk in person. Where are you right now?”

“I’d rather not say. But I can meet you somewhere in the city this afternoon. If you give me a time, I’ll text you an address.”

“Okay. Make it two-thirty.”

I turn back to my computer, and try to do some work. I’ve got two or three small projects to finish off before I have to think about my next major piece of work, which was supposed to be the update of Carlos’s software. When Derek settles down we’ll have to decide what to do about that.

I also make a list of the phone messages I’ve received from people I don’t know, with their numbers, and print it out. Then I borrow Ravi’s phone and text the address of a café in Exhibition Street to Lewis. Instead of g it, I just add “two thirty” at the end.

Some of my colleagues are in the habit of going out to lunch together at a pub in Spencer Street. When they start to make a move, I pick up my coat and one of the patterned scarves and drift over.

“You coming to the pub with us, Elly?” asks Chang.

“Nah, just going your way,” I reply, tying the scarf over my head, Audrey Hepburn style.

We leave the office in a tight group and walk down Spencer Street together. When we get to La Trobe Street, I detach myself and jump on a tram that’s headed downtown. I squeeze into a corner seat facing backwards and watch the doors. The only other people who get on the tram are a couple of young Chinese women with a baby in a stroller. Nevertheless, I get off at William Street and duck into the Flagstaff Station, where I catch the first city circle train that’s going. Once the train’s moving, I go through to another carriage.

I get off at Parliament, wearing a different scarf and with my coat now folded over my arm, and walk down Little Collins Street to the alley behind Carol’s building. The back door is propped open as usual during business hours to accommodate smokers, who hover furtively in the lane, indulging their habit.

Carol is lucky enough to have professional rooms in a highrise where several floors are occupied by a large, old-fashioned finance company which provides a canteen for its employees. We often meet here. There’s nothing fancy about the food, but if you only want a soup or a toasted sandwich you can’t beat it for price and privacy. Most people who buy lunch here must take it back to their desks, because the cavernous space is never more than a quarter full.

Carol is waiting for me by the counter.

“Toasted cheese and tomato okay?” she says.

I nod, and hug her without speaking. It’s so good to see her, broad and

dependable, both feet on the floor. She’s always been there in my life from as far back as I can . When my mother was dying and I sat by her hospital bed day and night, it was Carol who would appear beside me, handing me food, cups of tea, messages from the outside world. Sometimes I would doze off, and when I woke she would be sitting in the chair on the other side of the bed. We didn’t talk, my mother’s rasping breath the only sound in the room.

Now we receive our food and take it to the lounge chairs in the corner.

“I don’t know if you should be out and about,” she says.

“A scarf isn’t much of a disguise. You haven’t been at the office, have you?”

“Yes, but I’m being careful.”

“How’s the arm?”

“Actually, I think the dressing needs changing, and I’m a bit worried about going to the hospital. Have you got first aid stuff up there?”

She groans.

“Okay, we’ll do it after this. I really ought to take you to hospital and have you itted. To the psych ward.”

“We’ll have to make it quick. I’m having coffee with that Senior Sergeant Lewis, at two-thirty.”

“Getting a bit chummy with him, aren’t you?”

“He seems to have a few brains, for a cop.”

“You didn’t recognise him?” she asks.

“From where?”

“He’s a local.”

“No way,” I say.

“Him and his wife. They usually go to the farmers’ market. They were at that jazz thing in the park last year. They’ve got that kid. The changeling.”

It all falls into place. Now I know why he looked vaguely familiar, though I hadn’t seen him that much. It’s usually his wife on her own: the sweet-faced woman with the monster child, big for his age, angelic-looking in repose, but he doesn’t stay like that for long. People are polite, and of course you have to feel

sorry for her, but there’s a ripple of dread when they turn up at any event. The child has some sort of autism and it must be extreme because he doesn’t speak, just grunts. Every now and then he goes berserk, and as he gets bigger and stronger it’s obviously getting harder for her to control him.

Last night’s dream flashes through my mind. It’s been a long time since I felt myself soften when I thought of a man or said his name. Lewis might have peeped over the barricade of my defences, but this has knocked him back down for good.

I feel stupid, but Carol is her usual tactful self and pretends not to notice.

“How’s the investigation going?” she asks.

“Well, I don’t know how the police are getting on,” I say. “But all my workmates are upset about Carlos, and they’re going to try to figure out what happened to him. Whoever killed him, they tried to rip off all his data, but we’ve got a backup of some of it, so we’re going to analyse it.”

“Don’t the police have IT people? Won’t they do that?”

“Oh, shit.” How can I have been so stupid? “Can I use your phone?”

“What’s wrong with yours?”

“If I carry it around it shouts ‘Here I am’ to anyone who’s looking for it.”

I call Derek.

“Derek, you’d better make a copy of that backup. The police might come and want to take it away.”

“We already did, Elly. We thought they ask for it straight away, but nothing yet. I don’t hear from them at all today.”

I hang up and give the phone back to Carol.

“What sort of people are you dealing with?” she asks worriedly. “Do you really think they’ll be tracking your mobile phone?”

“The fact that Carlos is involved suggests it could be something high-tech. Also when he ordered that pizza, someone must have been listening in. And Carlos would have had all sorts of security to prevent that – he was so paranoid – so they’ve circumvented that. That’s how they got to him. Someone pretended to be the delivery guy, and Carlos opened the door.”

“What do the police think?”

“Well, there’s this female detective who wanted to implicate me in his murder,

despite all the glaring improbabilities, because it was statistically likely. Then they noticed that Carlos had all these fortifications and security systems, so they seem to think: pimped-up place, must be a drug dealer. Carlos! We’ve told them the hard disks from all the computers were taken, but they don’t seem terribly interested. I guess when they do get around to looking at his backup they’ll be expecting to see nice neat lists of his customers, or suppliers.”

“And what do you think is there? On the backup?”

“No idea, really. A clue, if we’re lucky. It’s just a theory – that he was digging somewhere he shouldn’t have been digging.”

“But – you know – what happens then? If you and your tech-head friends dig in the same place?”

“We’ve just got to be very, very discreet, and if we find anything, we tell the cops straight away.”

“I don’t know.” She’s worried. “I just wish you could stay out of it.”

“So do I. But I’m already in it.”

“Hey, you want to write, Elly. Here’s your plot, if you can solve the mystery.”

“I want to write serious books. Not detective stories.”

“Oh, like Vermeer time travelling?” says Carol.

“That was just an idea I was playing with! A sort of allegory,” I reply.

“Oh, an allegory,” says Carol.

“It’s about sensibility. Come on, Vermeer had a fascination for technology. Who wouldn’t want to give him a look at our world, see what he thought?”

“He’d be bowled over,” Carol agrees. “But I reckon he’d throw away his paintbrushes and become a cinematographer. Think what a loss to the world that would be.”

“Well, who’s to say it would be a loss?” I ask, playing devil’s advocate.

“You, for one,” she says, grinning.

“Oh, all right.”

“But maybe that’s it,” she says. “Carlos knew what you were interested in. Maybe he tracked down a lost Vermeer for you? Got too close?”

She’s trying to cheer me up, but I go along with it.

“Yes, the one that was stolen from Boston must be somewhere. There’s still a multi-million dollar reward on it. That’s the sort of money people kill for.”

“I’ve got one word for you,” she says. “Michelangelo.”

“How do you mean?”

“I read an article on the net about how in his early days, Michelangelo was a bit of a forger. He’d make pretend classical sculptures and bury them, then have someone dig them up and ‘discover’ them.”

“Oh yeah, I’ve heard that. The irony being that those statues are worth a whole lot more nowadays if they’re recognised as being his.”

“So,” she says, smiling. “What if someone bought a job lot of statues looted from old Europe for one of those bad-taste nouveau mansions, and it turned out one of the statues was a Michelangelo?”

I laugh. “Let’s both move to the country and write books. You’ve got a good start on your plot there.”

The subject moves on to our kids until we finish our food.

“Come up and I’ll do your arm,” she says.

“I just feel so bad about Mabel,” I say in the lift. “I want to go to her funeral, but I don’t know how I can face her family.”

“Nobody’s going to blame you!”

“They should. Whatever this is all about, that bullet was meant for me.”

“Elly, Mabel’s innocence doesn’t make you guilty. The only guilty person is whoever pulled that trigger. You didn’t contribute to that.”

Carol unpacks a pair of thin surgical gloves and puts them on. She peers into the first aid kit for the other things she’ll need, then peels off the bandage. Underneath my arm looks swollen, bruised and seeping pus, but Carol nods with satisfaction.

Before touching the wound, she puts another pair of sterile gloves over the first pair. All the instruments she uses are in special sealed packs and she handles them delicately, making sure nothing touches a sullied surface. Her gentle handling hurts, but I keep my mouth shut and think of it as a penance.

“They did this for Mum,” I say. “In the hospital.”

“What injuries did she have?”

“Her legs were all ulcerated,” I say. “Bad circulation, once her lungs started closing down. I watched the nurse give her morphine, then she changed the dressings, like this. So scrupulous. Not one germ could have got in.”

“It makes you feel better, seeing them treat her well.” Carol works carefully. No morphine for me.

“She died that night.”

“Even so.” She smiles and finishes wrapping my arm, nice and neat.

14

I leave Carol’s building by the back entrance, the scarf over my head again, and go to one of those tiny phone shops to buy myself a cheap pre-pay phone. At another little shop I pick up a couple of pairs of thick socks.

When I get to the narrow café, there’s no sign of Lewis. I take a seat in a booth with my back to the wall, and almost immediately he slides in beside me. We order coffees.

“You okay?” he asks.

I give him a suspicious sidelong glance, wishing he’d sat opposite, not next to me. If he gets too friendly I won’t respect him. I can’t even find a role for him in any of my fantasies, unfortunately. Now I know about the saintly wife, I’d have to cast myself as the villain.

“I’ve been better,” I allow.

“I need to warn you,” he says. “I don’t know how much longer we can keep the media off you.”

“So you’re keeping them off me?”

“Well, yeah, in that we’re playing down your involvement and not telling them anything about you.”

“Thanks. Why are you doing that?”

“Well, once some journalist twigs that you were connected with two murders on consecutive days they’ll be all over it, and that’s going to impede our investigation. It’s just self-interest, Elly.”

“Ah. Well, some of them might be on to me already,” I say, pulling out the list of messages and putting it on the table in front of us.

“What’s this?”

“I’ve been bombarded with messages about this, and some of them are from people I don’t know. I thought you might like to go through them.”

“Haven’t you got a PA or something?”

“Ha bloody ha,” I say, unsmiling. “No, what I was thinking was, in among the journalists trying to dig for their stories, what if there’s someone . . . you know . . . If the shooter’s still after me, wouldn’t it be a good way to try to make ? Maybe trick me into meeting somewhere? Or even just checking to see where I am?”

He frowns. “That’s a bit far-fetched.”

“But you could check out those numbers, couldn’t you? See who they belong to? If it’s not a legitimate journalist, you might follow it up.”

“Hmmm.” He doesn’t seem keen. “We don’t really have a lot of resources.”

“Lewis, I’m scared to go home. You are taking that seriously, aren’t you?”

“You can call me Mike, you know.”

There’s a sudden stunning crash. Before I know it he’s pushed me down and half risen. I see his other hand go under his jacket. Then there’s a babble of raised voices and a laugh. Lewis subsides as a waiter kneels to pick up a steel tray and gather broken china.

“Yeah, I’m taking it seriously.”

I laugh with relief. Now I know why he sat next to me, both with our backs to the wall.

“So where have you got, with Mabel?”

“There’s not much I can tell you,” he says. “It’s what’s not there that’s interesting. As you might , we found a stolen car a couple of streets away. It matched the descriptions a couple of your neighbours gave – not very reliable descriptions, I might add – but it was clean. Really clean. Whoever drove it wore gloves and was very careful not to leave any trace. It’s not that easy to do that.”

“When was it stolen?”

“Only that day, from North Carlton, while the owner was at work.

Moving on. There were two shots. Sure you want to hear this?”

I nod.

“The first bullet went into the back of Mabel’s head and stayed there. That one was enough to kill her. The second shot went through her left lung from the back, ed through her body, grazed your right arm, then embedded itself in the wall of your house. He fired the two shots very close together, so we knew it was what we call a semi-automatic, and the tests confirmed that. And there are signs that he used a silencer.”

“What does all that tell you?”

“I guess just that he knew what he was doing.”

“And can you trace the gun?”

“Well, the way it works, if we had the gun we could prove the bullets came from it. But just having the bullets doesn’t get us far.”

“He’d get rid of the gun, wouldn’t he?”

“That depends how confident he is.”

“So you do think he’s a hit man?”

“I’d be happier about that if you or Mabel were a more likely target. This whole Carlos thing, Elly. Have you got any other strange friends you haven’t told me about?”

“No, I swear. Carlos is the key. Whoever killed him, they must think he told me something. But the trouble is he didn’t.”

“So if you did know something damaging you’d be telling other people right now, wouldn’t you? So there’d be no point in killing you after all this time.”

“I can see the logic of that,” I say. “But can I count on him to see it?”

“I wish we could say we’ll catch him for you,” he says. “But this kind of guy is slippery. I’d rather it was one of the other kinds.”

“The other kinds?”

“You know. Jealous lovers. Thrill killers. Cheap crims. Our usual customers. They haven’t got two brains between them and they leave a trail a mile wide.”

“More what you’d have expected in Brunswick.”

“Hey, don’t underestimate Brunswick. Epicentre of the whole Moran war, for a start.”

“I guess that’s so. But those people tend to leave innocent bystanders alone, don’t they?”

“Usually. My colleagues did hope that Mabel might have some connections. Her brother was a graduate from the Bluestone University.”

“Aha. I often wondered if her husband had been inside. She never talked about him.”

“No, apparently he shot through with a younger woman. Local scandal about twenty years ago. Living in Broome under another name until ’05 or thereabouts. Dead now. Her nephews are known to us, but nothing major.”

“Yes, they seem decent types. They used to come around occasionally, take her out. She’d sit out the front all dressed up for hours, waiting for them.” I study my hands, wrapped around the warm coffee cup.

“Are you going to the funeral?” I ask. “Do real-life police do that?”

“Yes, we do. It can be interesting to see who turns up. I don’t suppose you’ll be there?”

“I want to. I owe her that.”

“It should be safe enough. Obvious police presence, and all that.”

“And how’s the Carlos case going?” I ask. “Are you involved with that?”

He nods. “Well, strangely enough, it’s also a very clean killer.” I keep my mouth shut. “No fingerprints, no hairs or skin samples.”

“He went into the backyard,” I say. “Were there footprints?”

“The old size ten boot?” He smiles. “There were, actually. Size eleven gumboots. Prints right through the flat. We found the boots in the next street, in a wheelie bin, with a pizza delivery cap and jacket.”

“Blood-stained?”

“Of course. No fingerprints. No gloves either – they could have traces of DNA, so he’d burn them somewhere else.”

I think of the nurse, tending my mother’s legs with her thin white gloves. So patient, so tender.

“So you know he takes size eleven.”

“Or less. Why make things easy for us?”

“And you know it’s the same person.”

“What was that thing you mentioned, Elly? Ockham’s Razor? Well, that, or common sense if you like, tells us the two cases are linked, but we have to look at the evidence. And we haven’t got any evidence of the link yet, except the fact that you were in both places.”

“Carlos did mention something,” I tell him. “He was interested in that guy who went missing on the mountain last year.”

“Which one?”

“You know . . . Peter Talbot? He went bushwalking up near Warburton on his own, and he disappeared. It was in the news for days. They tried to trace him through his mobile phone signals, then they found his pack in a gully months later. Didn’t you guys investigate that?”

“Well no, because it wasn’t a homicide. What would that have to do with Carlos?”

“He was just nosy. He thought there was something wrong with the way they searched. ‘An anomaly,’ he said.”

“But what was his interest? Did he know Peter Talbot?”

“No, it’s nothing like that. He had all these conspiracy theories that just seemed wacky to me – always looking for cover-ups. And he loved data, the more obscure the better. If he came across something about those mobile phone signals he would have gone over it, looking for anything that wasn’t quite right.”

“Weird guy.”

“Sure. But could you look into it? It’s the only thing he mentioned when I saw him.”

“Well . . . okay,” he says, though I wonder if he really will.

“Is there any chance you could give me a lift back to my office?”

I ask. “I’ve got work to do.”

“Sure.”

We pay and go out. His car is parked in an outrageously illegal spot in Little Collins Street. Bloody police. Bloody Lewis. I hate the feeling I have that I’m safe when I’m with him. I’ve built a life where I’m not dependent on anyone. Even in the fantasy life I dream about I don’t need anyone, happy in my solitude. He’d better not open the car door for me.

He doesn’t.

15

Back at the office, Luke, Steve and Ravi are closeted in the small meeting room. I knock on the door and go in without waiting for an answer. Luke and Steve look up with uncanny synchronicity. People make jokes about them being coned twins. They look very different, obviously, but their voices are almost the same – not that Steve’s is heard much. This is probably because they went through school together, one of those very academic private boys’ schools – Melbourne Grammar or Scotch College or somewhere. I think they may have boarded together from an early age. Steve’s parents live in Singapore and Luke’s family are anything from squattocracy to Riverina Mafia, depending on who you listen to.

“You’d better watch out for Derek,” I say to Steve. “You’re not supposed to get involved with this until you’ve finished Synergy.”

“It’s okay,” says Steve. “He’s gone out to see a client.”

“Great. So where are you up to? What’s on the CD?”

“Well, a whole lot of stuff,” says Luke. “Hard to say what’s worth looking at. Some of it’s personal, so we’re putting that to one side. Some of it’s databases, which is good, but it’ll take a bit of work to sort out what they are because he’s lumped them all together. He saved a few emails, so that’s good news.”

“Could we get into his other emails?” I ask.

“Hello!” says Luke. “Have you met Carlos? Do you think he’d have let anyone know his ?”

“I know I’m kind of like your granny,” I say, “but even I’m aware that Carlos used our mail server for a couple of his addresses. It occurs to me that there might be something in our general backups that would help. Wouldn’t there be metadata on the emails he’s saved? If we put that next to our data, maybe Steve could do some reverse engineering and identify his stuff in the traffic that’s gone through?”

Steve’s already out of the room, which I take as an affirmative response.

“Meanwhile,” I say, “I think Carlos was investigating the disappearance of Peter Talbot while he was bushwalking in the Warburton Ranges last year. I don’t know if you it? He was from Water Conservation and Catchment, and there was a big search for him. Carlos said there was an anomaly in the triangulation data for his phone. Can you see if you’ve got anything on that?”

“What else did he say?” asks Ravi.

I recount my conversation with Carlos, word for word. Having a retentive memory is useful sometimes, though my brain can feel awfully cluttered by the end of the day.

“Hunting an asp when they know you need an anaconda?” says Ravi. “Is that really what he said?”

“It’s a bit literary for Carlos, isn’t it?” says Luke.

“Ah well, he thought of me as literary,” I say, not adding that Carlos was always looking for ways to impress me.

“What’s literary about asps and anacondas?” demands Ravi.

“Shakespeare,” I explain. “Cleopatra. She supposedly killed herself with an asp. He seemed to be suggesting that Talbot didn’t kill himself – i.e. that it wasn’t his own carelessness that killed him – but that there was some sort of predator involved. The anaconda.”

“A predator!” Ravi’s eyes light up.

“The human sort,” I add hastily.

Sunny puts her head around the door.

“Derek alert!” she says.

“It’s okay,” says Ravi. “Steve’s back at his desk.”

“Just swing by there, would you Sunny?” says Luke. “Make sure Steve’s got the right things showing on his screen?”

She gives him a thumbs-up sign and disappears. I slip out of the room too.

“Mouth shut, Ravi,” I warn as I go.

He nods vigorously. It bothers me that these guys are enjoying this so much. It’s like they’ve been in training all their lives, reading and watching the most convoluted thrillers they can find, longing for a mystery adventure of their very own.

By the time Derek comes in everyone is at their desks, heads down. Steve is firing off emails at a great rate, including one to me, cc’ing Derek, telling me he’s close to fixing the final bugs in the software update he’s been heading up for the past three months, which means that various new features which were looking uncertain are now going to be included. I’m going to be busy updating the guide, a job I could do in my sleep. Unfortunately I can’t get settled into any of my comfortable daydreams today. I keep glancing around the office at Steve, Ravi, Luke and the others. They’re all so fresh-faced, eager – and vulnerable. I wish I could lock them up in this office where they can fight monsters made of light and never have to deal with the horrors of the real world.

At the end of the day I ask Derek for a lift to somewhere outside the CBD. He keeps his Mercedes in the basement car park, so it’s an ideal opportunity for me to get out of the building without being observed. I wrap my scarf around my head, and rely on that and Derek’s tinted windows to see me through.

“Just drop me at a station out of the city,” I say as he points his remote at the garage door. “Clifton Hill would be good. Then you can get onto the freeway.”

“Okay, where you staying?”

“Somewhere else. I’ll catch a train from Clifton Hill.”

We clear the building and settle into the traffic crawl.

“So how are you going to manage without Carlos?” I ask him.

“It’s gonna be a different company,” he says. “I don’t know yet. Gotta talk to some people.”

We both think about that for a while.

“What was Carlos doing?” he says suddenly. “He must have been dealing with some bad people. Why he doing that?”

“I don’t know, Derek.”

“What, those guys think this some kind of game? Bad people kill you.”

“Do you have any ideas, Derek?”

“I don’t know. But I tell the guys, no hacking. Then they see Carlos, number one hacker. So cool. What they gonna do?”

“Carlos wasn’t out to do anyone any harm,” I say. “He was just inquisitive. I don’t know why anyone would be that upset at his nosiness, and it’s hard to see how they would have known. He knew how to cover his tracks.”

“Yeah, well, make sure the guys don’t get carried away. They only look at the data he got, right? No hacking on their own.”

“Well, you’d better put me on the project, Derek. Come on. I need to keep an eye on them.”

“Okay. I can’t stop you anyway. But just a couple of days, right? This is all bad for business. And you make sure nothing happen to Steve Li.”

I think I’ve got enough to keep me awake without Steve, but I’m going to worry about him anyway.

“You in early tomorrow?” asks Derek.

“Sure.”

“Good,” he grins. “I got a surprise for you.”

Derek drops me off in Hoddle Street, which feels inauspicious given its history. There’s a lot of traffic and instead of crossing the road to Clifton Hill Station I slip into the park and walk back towards Queen’s Parade. It’s getting dark, a still, sharp night, and I haven’t had any proper exercise for days.

There are a few people on the streets, heads down, their minds on home, and after a while I’m confident no-one is following me. Once I warm up and get into a rhythm I enjoy the walk, threading my way through the streets of North Fitzroy, time-travelling back through my student days, glancing through the windows of houses where I once lived in shabby rooms, went to parties, fell in love, stayed up all night drinking cheap wine and pontificating on the meaning of life. I met Max when we were both idling in Europe, and we settled in Sydney for a while. I didn’t move back to Melbourne until the whole disaster with him forced me out of the house we’d bought up there. The haunts of my youth were no longer accessible, so I see them now through the starry eyes of nostalgia.

After Rushall Crescent I move into the lovely reserve along Park Street that follows the former railway line. There’s a broad path under dense willows where people are walking, running and cycling through yellow pools of light. A possum scuttles from one tree to another, and the last harsh cries of birds settling in for the night drown out the hum of traffic noise. Wrapped in anonymity, I walk on and on, my eyes on the path, trying to stay out of the way of cyclists who swoop silently up behind me then glide past, their tail lights winking.

While I walk, I think about water. Is Peter Talbot’s disappearance the key to all this, and could it be something to do with water? Blue gold, they call it. Our

forebears suffered and struggled and failed for lack of it. Visionaries bargained and traded and raided the river systems for their great irrigation schemes, not realising that this land could go for years without rain. It’s one big market now, and the waterways are all connected, if only in theory. People can buy and sell their water rights, present and future, up and down the country. When the rains come in Queensland and a great head of water starts creeping south, moving down the map at walking pace, spreading across the inland and filling the cracked beds of rivers and lakes, that bounty from the sky already has someone’s name on it. It’s pre-sold. Like Napoleon’s army marching to Moscow, the great torrent is cut down as it comes, and by the time it reaches the Murray and Victoria there’s not much left. Sometimes, rarely, there’s too much and it drowns the parched land; but far more often there’s not enough. For every year of stunning, gushing floods there’ll be ten years of drought.

And the less water there is, the more it matters. Does it matter so much that someone might kill for it?

On the far side of Melbourne, rain falls in the eastern mountains. If we’re lucky, it ends up in the reservoirs, and we get it in the city. But other people want it too. Isn’t there some dispute with forestry in the Warburton catchment area?

Startled, I look around and realise that I’ve automatically turned into Lygon Street; I’m already in the southern part of Brunswick heading towards home. I stop, gazing north, and imagine walking up through those back streets, opening my front door and stepping into my little house. I hover in the shadows, exiled. This is how it feels to be a ghost, yearning to return to the world of the living.

I turn left and thread my way to Jewell Station, where I can catch a train to North Melbourne, then another to Footscray.

16

Once I’m back at Lily’s I feel confident enough to eat out the front of the Khá Sen Restaurant. Little faces peep through the plastic strip curtains, and as soon as I’ve finished my noodle soup I’m visited by Lily’s younger children one by one, each with some kind of English homework to show me. I suspect their work is already much better than that of their classmates, but I find things to improve because that’s what’s expected. Afterwards, Lily comes out with a flask of jasmine tea and sits with me while I tell her how clever all her children are.

After we’ve got through that and Lily’s beaming, I say, “Do you have any friends who do house-cleaning, maybe around Brunswick?”

“Sure, Elly. I get you good price. You want regular house clean?”

“No, actually it’s just a one-off.” I’m not sure how much to tell her. “I had to leave my house a few days ago, and I can’t go back there myself. It doesn’t really need cleaning, but there’s food in the fridge that will go off, and I need some more clothes, and a few other things.”

“You okay, Elly?” she asks, putting a gentle hand on mine.

“I’m fine, Lily. I’m just a bit . . . I don’t know if you watch the news, but my neighbour got killed right in front of me, and I’m scared.”

“Someone want to hurt you?” She’s concerned.

“I don’t know. Probably not, but I don’t feel safe about going home.”

“It’s okay. You okay here.” She pats my hand. “My friend Mai get your stuff.”

“You’re an angel, Lily. Could I talk to her? I’ll tell her how I want her to do it.”

Back in my room, I try to find out more about Peter Talbot. I can’t find his name on the Water Conservation and Catchment website, but public servants tend to be anonymous, and I have no idea what his role was. I’ll have to wait and see if the team have found any information about him on Carlos’s CD.

All I find that’s of interest is a blurry photograph of one of the friends who were with him, Suresh Chandra, comforting the missing man’s partner, Fiona.

Fiona. Cherchez la femme. There are a few Fiona Talbots in Google, but none that could possibly be her.

There’s a light tap on my door. I leap up and stand next to it, my heart thumping.

“Who is it?” I call gruffly.

“I am Mai,” comes a quavering voice. “You want I clean your house?”

I open the door to a timid Vietnamese woman. She’s about Lily’s age, shorter and plumper. I greet her effusively and make tea for her before explaining what I want her to do.

“The thing is,” I say, “I’ve seen people who clean offices. They take away all the rubbish in big plastic bags.”

“Yeah, sure.” She nods vigorously. “I do that too.”

“So when you get my clothes, I want you to put them in the same kind of bag. That way, when you bring them out, it just looks like more rubbish.”

“Hmmm! So no-one know I getting your stuff?”

“That’s right, Mai. But I want you to be careful. If anyone asks about me, how to me, you can give them this phone number.” I get out one of my business cards and underline the office number.

“You sure that okay?”

“Yes, it’s my number at work. I think they’ll know it anyway.

The main thing is it’ll get you off the hook. If they want to know how you’re getting paid, tell them the money goes into your bank .”

“I tell them it not their business!”

“Yes, Mai, quite right. You tell them that.”

After we agree on an hourly rate and Mai has left I go back to the Internet. The Warburton catchment area, where Peter Talbot went missing, provides a major part of Melbourne’s water supply. That makes sense, because it doesn’t rain much anywhere else. And it turns out I was right about there being an issue. It’s about logging. Politicians keep making, then breaking, promises not to allow logging near the Warburton catchment area. With increasing incredulity I read the arguments about logging old-growth forest in catchment areas. The logging itself reduces the water quality and cuts down the flow of the creeks and streams. Old-growth trees use water more efficiently than young trees, leaving more to run off into the reservoirs. The newly planted trees need a lot of water to get started. And what’s it all for? Wood chips, for paper and cardboard, ground out of those beautiful giant mountain ash forests.

I close my web browser in disgust. I don’t want to read any more about greed and stupidity tonight. There’s just time for a quick chat with Miranda on Skype before I turn in.

“Oh Mum, I’m absolutely wrung out!” she moans. “There’s so much preparation, and the lesson plans take longer than the lessons.”

“I’m sure you’ll get a brilliant report,” I reassure her. “Are you getting on well with the other teachers?”

“Yeah, they’re great. We go to the pub after work. It’s one of those cute country pubs.”

“Sounds nice.”

“The local cop was hanging around trying to chat me up. What a loser. He’s – like – fat, and at least as old as you. Everyone thought it was really funny.”

I squirm. “I’m sure he was just doing his job. New person in town and all that.”

“Come on, Mum. You sound like Miss Marple.”

That wouldn’t be such a bad thing, I think, as I put on both the pairs of socks that I bought today, testing my Dad’s theory that if your feet are warm the rest of you will be okay. Trouble is, even in the socks my feet feel like ice under the inadequate blankets in the cold room. I curl up and pretend I’m back in my own bed, but my mind’s still racing.

Maybe I’m wasting my time with Peter Talbot. There was no hint in any of those stories that anyone thought his disappearance was fishy – not even that careful code they use to suggest the person might have topped himself. Just because Carlos happened to mention him . . . but there must have been lots of other things he was prying into. He mentioned the Athena Resources case too, but

surely there’s nothing new to be uncovered there. It’s the usual sorry story of company directors making free with their shareholders’ money then hiding behind complicated business structures and claiming to be broke, while they’re still driving around in BMWs and living in Toorak.

Desperate to switch off, I read Wolf Hall for a while, trying to imagine life in a world where itting to rational thoughts can earn you the most hideous punishments. How did we ever find the courage to move on?

17

Omar picks me up on the same corner the next morning. I’m wondering if it’s safe to keep doing this. Although I’m making it up as I go along, I do know that it’s better not to form habits or do anything predictable.

“If we do this again,” I tell him, “I might get you to pick me up somewhere a bit different.”

“Sure,” he says brightly. “I don’t mind coming to get you. Are you staying with Nam’s folks?”

“Why do you say that?” I ask, my heart dropping through the pit of my stomach.

“Just a guess. You’re old friends, so . . .” He takes his hands off the wheel and spreads them wide.

“How did you know?”

“Nam’s a good mate. We play poker together. Asian poker. Just socially,” he adds hastily. “You wouldn’t want to take on the big guys. Anyway, your name came up once when I was talking about work, and he’s known you since he was a kid, so . . .”

“Yeah, well. Small world,” I concede, trying to sound casual.

This is not good. I thought I was being so clever, staying with Lily, and my cover has already been blown by Omar, of all people. He’s not going to go around broadcasting it, but I’m shaken. Maybe I’d be a lot easier to find than I thought.

When I step out of the lift, there’s a young man with straggly fair hair lounging in the visitor’s chair by my desk. I’ve seen him somewhere before. As I approach, he jumps up to shake my hand.

“Elly?” he says. “Scott. Derek said you’d find a possie for me.”

“Me? Did he?” I say, shaking his hand automatically. “What are you working on?”

“Some kind of content management system? Department of Water Resources?”

It all comes back to me. “Oh, wow! Derek got you! That’s great.”

He shrugs modestly. I interviewed Scott as a young graduate two or three years ago and wanted to take him on as a sort of trainee, but I couldn’t convince Derek to pay him what he was obviously worth. It’s hard to find Scott’s combination of talents, so I’m delighted to see him now.

“If you’re willing to do this job with Water Resources there might be some more interesting work coming up,” I tell him. “We’ve got a lot of developers now and lots of documentation is needed.”

He smiles, non-committal, and I wonder what Derek has told him. I make an appointment for us to meet with Surinder at twelve, so I can introduce Scott and get his security clearance organised. Then I take him around our office to introduce him to everyone before leaving him with Sunny so she can organise a computer and a for him.

Finally I can sit down at my desk and check my emails. There’s a stream of messages from Steve Li, who’s not in the office yet. He’s been analysing the metadata on the emails in the backup CD, most of which is gobbledygook to me, but following my suggestion he has been looking for matching metadata in the mail going through our mail server. Through the night there are messages in which he reports on a series of breakthroughs. First he managed to identify the Carlos messages on our server. Then he discovered that the text of the messages was encrypted, and despite several attempts he couldn’t crack the code. He verified that Carlos used our server to communicate with his Ukrainian buddies. Then he discovered that several of the messages had attachments, which were not encrypted. He’s saved all the attachments in a folder on our server.

I open the folder and start looking through the attachments, which are bewildering. Some of them are tables of numerical data in a format that I don’t recognise. Some of them appear to be bank details, but there are no names attached, just identity codes. Others are unreadable binary files.

I continue through the rest of Steve’s later emails, sent in the wee small hours, and see that he’s clearly more excited than I am by this material. He includes some cryptic directions to Ravi, who’ll be taking up the mantle this morning. It seems like they’re making progress – even if it’s not obvious to me what the progress is.

I spend some time explaining the Department of Water Resources job to Scott, and just before twelve we get a taxi from the back entrance to take us downtown. Scott is subjected to the usual security rituals, then we repair to the conference room with Surinder who is her usual charming self.

Surinder goes through a well-practised spiel about the department. Scott takes copious notes and I half-listen, my mind drifting down to the street below. Was I careful enough, arriving in that taxi? What if my unseen enemy has lots of minions watching all the places I’m likely to go to?

I get jolted back by the realisation that Surinder is talking to me.

“Rosemary,” she’s saying, “our newest water engineer. Have you met her, Elly?”

“Oh! Umm – I don’t think I have, actually.” I’m trying to imagine what a water engineer does, and I picture bridges and great meccano-like structures all made from shimmering water. I think I’m a bit sleep-deprived.

“She’s working with Patrick,” continues Surinder. “Scott will need to meet with them.”

“Patrick?”

“Yes,” she says patiently. “Patrick Donnelly.”

“I don’t think I know him either,” I say. Where have I heard that name recently?

Surinder looks at her watch and finishes up. We follow her meekly to the next floor so that Scott can be photographed for a security , as he’ll be spending a bit of time here. While we’re waiting, I get a chance to talk to Surinder.

“You’ve been here a long time, haven’t you?” I ask. “Since before the restructure?”

“Sure, Elly. Six years now.”

“Did you know Peter Talbot?”

“Who?”

“Peter Talbot. He worked for Water Conservation and Catchment, and he went missing in the bush last year.”

“Oh, yes, I . A few of the people around here knew him. They were pretty upset.”

By the time Scott comes out I where I’ve heard that name.

“Maybe we should both meet Rosemary while we’re here?” I suggest. “And – um – Patrick too?”

Surinder takes us to an office a couple of floors down and introduces us to an earnest young Asian woman.

“Sorry,” she says. “Patrick’s just gone outside for a smoke. You want to wait?”

Surinder looks at her watch with a little frown, so I say, “No, it’s okay. Maybe next time.”

Surinder bundles us out of the building, her mind on her next meeting, and my head’s swivelling in all directions as we step into the street. I spot him huddled in the next doorway, a wiry man in his mid-thirties with straight brown hair and carefully trimmed stubble, cradling a cigarette.

“Scott,” I say, “there’s a great coffee place halfway down the block on the lefthand side. Can you go on ahead and order me a latte? I’ve got to have a word with someone for a moment.”

He looks dubious. “Do they have soy? I’m a vegan.”

“I’m sure they have everything. I’ll be there in a minute.”

I move in on my prey. This would be easier if I were a member of the great fraternity of smokers.

“Hi,” I say. “You’re Patrick, aren’t you?”

He looks up. His face is pale and pinched in the cold, his eyes red-rimmed through the haze of smoke.

“I’m Elly Cartwright. I’ve been working on that information system for Surinder. She said you had some new stuff to put into it?”

“Oh, yeah, there’re those enhancements to the flood forecaster that we thought should be documented. Rosemary’s the one you should talk to, really.”

“Okay, sure,” I say. “I’ll get onto her next time.”

He puffs his cigarette and gazes morosely into the distance.

“Someone told me you were a friend of Peter’s?” I say casually.

“Yeah. Did you know him?”

“Not well,” I say. “He was more like a friend of a friend. Do you think they’ll ever find out what happened to him?”

“I doubt it,” he says. “That’s pretty dense bush up there. We tried searching for him before we hiked out, but we nearly lost each other.”

“We?” I say, wide-eyed. “You were there?”

“Yeah. Didn’t you know? There were four of us camping up there, but the weather was pretty lousy. By the time we lost Pete there was no-one else around to help us look for him.”

“How did it happen?”

“Well,” he says, “Suresh and me, we’d planned a big walk on the Sunday, fullday. But Brian and Peter had to get back to Melbourne, so they were just gonna do the Doctor Creek Track. It only takes about three hours there and back.”

“I see.”

“Only when we left, Brian had the mother of all hangovers. He’d really pushed the boat out the night before. You know what it’s like – four blokes away for the weekend.”

“I can imagine,” I say, nodding and smiling.

“So they were just hanging around for a while until Brian felt better. But he kept throwing up, so Pete went up on his own. He was a bit hung-over too, and he really shouldn’t have gone. It was wet and cold, and the tracks were in pretty poor shape. Brian blamed himself, but hell, the guy was practically comatose. He was still asleep in his tent when we got back, and we all got a hell of a shock to find Pete was missing.”

“Peter had his phone, didn’t he? What happened when you tried to call him?”

“We had to walk out to raise the alarm, because there’s virtually no coverage in there; and then we just couldn’t raise him.”

“Brian,” I say. “Is he another workmate?”

“Nah, Brian’s an old mate of Pete’s. I think they went to school together. They were like brothers. Brian was in a bad way. Distraught, you know.”

“Oh yeah, I think my friend knows Brian. Is he another engineer?”

“No, he’s one of those personal trainers. I think he works at Paths to Fitness, somewhere in the city.”

He’s stubbing out his cigarette, so it’s time to go.

When I get to the café, Scott’s sitting patiently at a table out the front, half frozen, with a cup of black coffee and a latte in front of him. He’s put the saucer on top of the cup to try to keep it hot for me. Too late, I that this is a straight-down-the-line Italian place with a prominent sign out the front reading: ‘No skim, no soy, no decaf, don’t ask.’

18

After lunch I get a chance to catch up with Luke and Ravi. I’m now officially on the Carlos project for a couple of days, so we can gather in the meeting room without worrying too much about Derek.

“Okay,” says Ravi. “There’s a whole heap of triangulation data in the backup. What the Ukrainian guys have been doing, they’ve been analysing it.”

“Yes!” I say.

“So the date stamp on the raw data they worked on was for a Sunday morning in early October last year. That’s what you’re looking for, isn’t it?”

“Sure is.”

“In this attachment, which came in last week, they’ve done some conversions and interpolations and overlaid GPS data, to come up with the route this guy Talbot must have taken. They’ve even plotted it graphically on a map,” he says and brings it up on the screen. The map shows Talbot’s route deviating from the path he should have taken. There are labels at a few points showing map coordinates and times.

“What are these?” I ask.

“They’re the more reliable readings,” he explains. “The path kind of s the dots.”

“Well, it’s consistent with what I’ve found out,” I say. “That’s where they looked for him, and that’s where they eventually found his day pack.” I point out the location on the map. “No anomalies there.”

“Not yet,” agrees Luke. “What else have we got, Ravi?”

“Gold!” says Ravi, his teeth flashing white in his dark face, his fingers flying over the keyboard. “Have a look at this. It was in the backup.”

He brings up a huge database table. We’ve all seen something like this before. It’s a master list of bank s.

“Now look here,” he says, collapsing it down to a header page.

“Mercantile Mutual Online Trading Bank,” reads Luke. “I’ve never heard of that before.”

“Neither have I,” I say.

“Neither has Google,” says Ravi.

“That’s odd,” I say. “Is it real?”

“Seems to be because these look like real s, and a lot of money is going through some of them. It’s just obviously very private and very discreet.”

“Have you found names for these IDs?”

“Does the sun rise in the east?”

“Are you going to surprise me?” I ask.

“I think I am,” he murmurs, scrolling rapidly. “One of these s does belong to Peter Talbot. All I’ve got here is a snapshot of data for the first half of last year, but have a look at it.”

There’s a list of deposits which we look at with awe.

“If that’s his salary I’m ing the public service,” says Luke.

“Have you added it up?” I ask.

“Well,” says Ravi. “I can see roughly two million dollars going in just with the information we’ve got here. Most of it is in a regular monthly payment, but occasionally there’s another big payment, so I’d say there’s multiple sources. We don’t have an balance, so it could have started earlier than these dates. If it kept going he must have had a hell of a lot by the time he disappeared.”

“Carlos had this?”

“Yep.”

“And there are quite a few s in this table, aren’t there?”

“That’s right.”

I look from Ravi to Luke. They’re practically dancing with excitement.

“Listen, you can talk to Steve about this of course, and I’ll report to Derek, but not a word to anyone else. Are you listening?” I say as their bright eyes look at me. “I know the others are going to ask what we’re finding out, but there’s information here that’s dangerous to know. Please be very careful.”

“Hey!” says Luke. “You can count on us. Right, Ravs?”

Ravi nods. They both look ready to cut their hands and swear an oath in blood, if boys still do that. Somehow, despite their proclamations, it’s still a game to them. But they play to win, so I’ll have to be satisfied with that.

I get my phone out of the safe, reassemble it and search out the numbers I want. Having the phone functional for that short time makes me feel horribly exposed, like Frodo when he puts the ring on, and I feel the malevolent eye of Sauron on me. I’m not game to use Bluetooth to copy the numbers across to my new phone, in case there’s some way they can intercept that, so it’s a pen-and-paper job.

Using the office phone I call the biggest Paths to Fitness gym in the city and ask for Brian O’Dwyer. They’ve never heard of him.

Omar gives me a lift home, but I get him to drive into the basement to pick me up, and I climb into the back of his van for the first part of the trip out of the city. It’s fitted out with a mattress and opulent cushions, and smells of incense.

“I’m not going to see anything I shouldn’t see back here, am I?” I call.

“Hey, I take my mum shopping in this car!” he says indignantly.

I get him to let me out in a quiet area a couple of streets away from the Khá Sen.

“Pick you up here tomorrow?” he offers.

“No, thanks anyway. I’ve got something to do in the morning. Tell Derek I’ll be in just before lunch.”

In my room, I’m expecting to see a garbage bag stuffed with clothes. Instead, there’s a stack of neatly folded items on the bed, and some items on hangers on the back of the door. Everything that could be ironed has been ironed, and my shoes have been polished and are lined up in pairs on the floor. Mai obviously takes pride in her work, and she’s going to have a role in my future fantasies.

I get a chance to thank her after dinner, when she s me and Lily for jasmine tea in the restaurant.

“Oh, Mai,” I say. “I hope you didn’t spend too much time cleaning. My house probably wasn’t as tidy as it should’ve been.”

“No, all fine, all fine,” she smiles. “But maybe bathroom better if you use different product? I leave list in kitchen.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, you buy stuff on list. Next time I clean your house, much better.”

I wonder what sort of toxic chemicals she favours, then I feel guilty. For all I know she’s into white vinegar and bicarbonate of soda.

“So did anyone knock on the door?” I ask, to change the subject.

“Just Telstra guy.”

“A Telstra guy?”

“Yeah, you know, they want to offer you special deal on phone and Internet. I just tell him you not there.”

“Hmmm,” I say, a bit nervous but also thinking they do come round quite often, leaving calling cards in the letterbox. “What did he say then?”

“He want to know when you’ll be home. I tell him I don’t know, I’m just the cleaner. He say, ‘She be home tonight?’ I say, ‘I don’t know.’”

“What did he look like, Mai?”

She shrugs. “Just Anglo guy, you know? Glasses. Grey hair, bit too long.” She moves her hands around her face.

“Right. Thanks, Mai. You did really well.”

“I think he still there when I leave.”

“Are you sure?” My heart lurches.

“Not real sure, but there was car parked a little way down the street, and someone sitting in it. Looked like him, without the glasses.”

“Not a Telstra van?”

“No, not Telstra.”

I’m chilled at the thought of someone watching Mai as she emerged from my house, innocently clutching a bag of my possessions. Sometimes I think he doesn’t exist, but sometimes I think he’s everywhere, and that he sees through all my pathetic attempts to fool him. He knows what’s in the bag and he knows that Mai will lead him straight back to me, here among these people who have endured their own trials and created this haven through hard work and perseverance, which they are sharing with unquestioning generosity.

“It’s okay, Elly,” says Mai. “I clean two more houses after that. North Carlton, Kensington. Telstra guy didn’t show up. No cars like that one.”

I reach across the table and give her a big hug. Lily laughs and they exchange a few pithy remarks in Vietnamese. They’re probably having a joke at my expense, but I don’t mind.

They settle in for a gossip and soon after I thank Mai again and slip away to my room to go through some old information stored on my computer. My history with the Department of Water Resources goes back a few years, though I’ve only worked directly with Surinder and her team, and I’ve saved all the documents I edited for them. This is probably illegal, but it’s innocuous stuff, and represents a lot of work that I don’t want to have to repeat. Too often I’ve come back to a site to find they’ve lost or deleted all the work I did last time and I have to start again from scratch, so now I keep backups of everything.

There’s a stack of old organizational charts, and I’ve got some that date back to the time before Water Conservation and Catchment split off into a separate department. It struck me as a particularly pointless restructure, since they’d only amalgamated a couple of years before, but what would I know?

Peter Talbot’s name appears a couple of times, before the split. He seems to have been an environmental engineer, specialising in water modelling, which is presumably a meaningful concept to engineers. Once again I visualise translucent blue shapes hovering in the air. Talbot was at team leader level in the charts: the sort of person who might have become a project manager with his next promotion. His income would have been good – better than mine, I think grumpily – but not fantastic, and certainly not anywhere near the level in the Ravi showed me.

Brian O’Dwyer draws a blank when I Google him. Well, there are lots of Brian O’Dwyers, but not the one I’m interested in. Idly, I check the white pages online to see how many B O’Dwyers there are in Melbourne. To my surprise, I can’t find any. It’s too late now to call any more Paths to Fitness gyms, but I make a list of all the branches in and near the city.

I go back to the blurred photo of Fiona with Suresh. Is there something overintimate in the way his arm goes around her shoulders? But if I’m going to start suspecting Suresh, where does that place Patrick, who was with him all day?

It’s possible that they were all in on it, Fiona included. If so, what was I doing, introducing myself to Patrick like that? Did he stub out his cigarette and reach for his phone, eyes narrowed, as he watched me walk away? I’ve got to be more careful.

Having reached the limit of my resources as a detective, I sort through the stuff Lily brought, losing myself in the pleasure of having my own things again. It’s already cold in my room, and I put on a few extra layers of clothing and think sadly of the super-efficient gas heater I had installed in my house last winter. That gets me thinking about the beauty of the familiar, the ordinary, the everyday, and I wonder why I always seem to want what I haven’t got. All I want now is my life back.

Before turning in, I set up the cheap mobile phone I bought yesterday and program in the numbers I need. Just Miranda, my closest friends Carol and Diana and a couple of people at work. After a moment’s hesitation I add DS Lewis, but I fervently hope I won’t need him again the way I did the other day. I log onto the work server and email my new number to Miranda, stressing that it’s for emergencies only. I know her idea of an emergency is not necessarily mine, but I can’t bear the thought of her not being able to me.

19

The day of Mabel’s funeral dawns grey and dismal, with an icy wind that slices through to the very bone. Dressed in my best dark suit, with a burgundy shawl wrapped over my head and shoulders, I the morning commuters at Footscray Station and let the incoming tide take me to Flinders Street. It’s going to be a roundabout journey, but I’ve got time to kill and I’d rather get lost in the crowd.

It’s still early when I get off the train, so I put on dark glasses and take the Degraves Street exit to Flinders Lane. After buying a takeaway coffee I wander down the alleys sipping it, checking on whether the street art has been replenished since the latest purge by the council. I’m pleased to see it’s slowly creeping back. Finishing my coffee, I thread my way back to the station for the half-hour ride to Fawkner.

The cemetery is right outside the station. I don’t like the look of the set-up. There’s parking by the entrance, then a long, exposed path to the cluster of chapels in the distance, with plenty of hiding places on either side for anyone with ill intentions. Luckily I’ve timed things well and am able to a knot of people heading towards the action, providing me with plenty of cover. The crowd huddles together against the bitter wind.

I squeeze myself in between Jason and Rocco, both resplendent in fine dark Italian wool overcoats and scarves. The other neighbours are more down-market, in padded parkas and polar fleeces. They all greet me with the nodding sympathy usually reserved for the chief mourner.

Apart from us it’s a predictably dismal turn-up. We’re ed by a minibus

loaded with pensioners, Mabel’s Bingo buddies, who’ve come for the outing as much as anything. They pile out in the car park next to the chapel, bundled into old overcoats, the lapels shiny with egg-yolk and old grease stains. The men wear beanies, the women look anonymous under wilted hats and scarves.

In front of the chapel a couple of pinched-faced middle-aged women, possibly distant relatives, are making conversation with an apple-cheeked young funeral celebrant who gives the impression this may be his first funeral. Or maybe he’s the one you get with the pensioner’s discount. Mabel’s two nephews, big cheerful fellows with rapidly receding sandy hair, are standing with the undertaker. Their names escape me entirely. One is accompanied by a broadhipped wife with bleached-out hair and lipstick on her teeth. Pam? Sandy?

I stick close to my scrum. If anyone’s looking, all they’ll see is an amorphous bunch of people. We hover, eager to get in out of the cold.

“You okay, Elly?” asks Rocco, who specialises in niceness. “Sleeping all right?”

“The days are getting better, but the nights are still pretty tough,” I say. “How’s Jason?”

“He sure needs some TLC after what he’s been through.” Rocco stretches out an arm without looking, and Jason snuggles in. “I’m taking him to Bali for a nice little break in a couple of weeks.”

I’ve known them for too long to be indignant. If Jason’s thirst for drama nourishes their relationship, who am I to criticise?

“Rocco, have you been working at home?” I ask. “Has anyone from Telstra been coming around, offering deals?”

“Not lately,” he frowns. “Why, do you want to change?”

“What about you, Alf?” I ask my other neighbour, who spends a lot of time at his front window. “Have you seen anyone knocking on doors?”

“Can’t say I have,” says Alf. “But there was a Chinese lady scrubbing your front steps yesterday when I was going up the street. You coming back soon?”

Before I can answer, the nephew with the wife reaches us, doing the rounds: there’s some hand-shaking and general murmurs of sympathy.

“Thanks for coming,” the nephew says to me. “Aunty Mabel would have been real glad. She thought the world of you.”

“I feel terrible, Frank,” I say, the name miraculously darting into my brain. “I think whoever shot her might have been aiming at me, and Mabel got in the way.”

“Sort of threw herself in the path of the bullet?”

“Well, I suppose in a manner of . . .”

“She was a heroine, Auntie Mabel.” His voice catches. “A great lady.”

He moves on, his wife clinging to his arm. I see them talking to his brother a little later, the two men waving their arms and forming images in the air, discussing their aunt’s noble act. They exchange a long hug.

These places are usually pretty well organised but the previous mob runs over time. The guest of honour must have been pretty popular, because the car park is overflowing, and now and then we can hear different voices inside, having their say, with more laughter than seems decorous. At last the doors are thrown open and a lot of ancients stream out, talking animatedly and waving walking sticks. As we shuffle in to replace them, I’m aware of a couple of uniformed figures taking up positions at the back, and a tall figure in a dark overcoat. Lewis.

It becomes clear as soon as the service begins that this is going to be a generic funeral, run by the undertaker and the young celebrant, neither of whom has any idea who Mabel was, or even how she died. “Taken into God’s embrace” is not the phrase I would have used. If God suddenly found Mabel’s bulky figure hurtling into his arms drooling blood, as I did, I imagine he would have got quite a fright.

As the celebrant drones on, my mind wanders back to my parents’ funerals, within two years of each other. I spoke at both, determined to do them justice and capture the essence of their lives, once so full of hope and love, ending in hospital beds with a last harsh breath. I still the raw emotion on the upturned faces as I touched on the more poignant details of Dad’s life. And at Mum’s funeral I was almost drowned out by wringing sobs from Charlie, the last remaining member of the Canton Creek collective, who sat in the middle of the

front row, gazing up at me with fierce concentration.

After what Lewis had told me, I was hoping someone would fill us in on Mabel’s life, but instead we endure the blandest of services, mercifully short, followed by the inevitable Twenty-Third Psalm as Mabel’s coffin rumbles through the automatic doors to the furnace at the back. In no time we’re queuing up to file outside again.

Lewis is by the door as I come out, and I sidle up to him.

“Any luck with those phone numbers?” I ask.

“Elly!” he says. “Hey, I didn’t recognise you.”

“That’s the general idea.”

“Don’t worry,” he says. “We’ve got eyes everywhere today. Maybe you can help me put names to some of these faces?”

“Not sure about the oldies,” I say. “We could be working with a master of disguises. But the rest are pretty straightforward.”

I give him the names I know, and he takes discreet photographs on an iPad and adds voice notes. This method seems to put him a step ahead of his colleagues

with their little notebooks.

The nephews shake people’s hands as we come out, but there’s a sudden flurry as the incongruous tones of the Simpsons theme fracture the mood. The other brother – Murray – moves a couple of metres away, and we all hear him hissing into his phone.

“You’re a bit bloody late. No, don’t bloody . . . Where? Oh, for Christ’s . . . Yeah, that’s us. All right, but shake it up. Jesus, woman. This way!” he says, looking up and waving.

We all look towards the point where the road from the entrance branches, heading towards the different chapels. A taxi is doing a U-turn and a woman is nearby teetering on ridiculously high heels, looking around. She spots Murray and waves back, then starts tottering across a broad stretch of gravel towards us.

I watch the woman, paralysed. She’s about my height and build, with a mass of wavy dark hair halfway down her back, just like mine, though the colour looks a bit unlikely. She’s dressed in a sort of parody of mourning: little black hat with a veil pulled down over her face, black mini skirt and a short black fake-fur jacket. Her long legs are encased in lacy black stockings.

She’s me, in a parallel universe. Me, if I didn’t favour practical clothes and comfortable shoes. Me, face covered by a veil that hints at a disguise. Me, oblivious, out in the open, shouting Come and get me.

Frank’s wife scowls. Murray grins, pleased with himself. I grab his arm.

“She shouldn’t be here!” I stutter. “Tell her to go back!”

“Huh?” He’s putting his phone away.

The woman is taking a short cut across the gravel towards a little bridge that leads to the chapel. There are graves on her left, but a dense stand of eucalyptus trees on her right. Anyone hiding in those trees would have a clear view of the chapel, the road, the bridge and the car park. And her.

There’s no-one else around, apart from our little group. I run back to Lewis.

“Get her out of there!”

“What! Elly, you don’t think . . .”

Nobody’s doing anything. The only cover is a bit of a hedge, which the woman’s already ed. I start running towards her, gesturing wildly, yelling.

“Turn around! Go back!”

She takes a few more steps before noticing me. Then she hesitates, wobbling. There’s a sudden disturbance on the ground in front of her. One or two little

stones fly up, just missing her ankle. I change my gesture to a sideways movement and scream at her.

“Run! Run! Get behind the hedge!”

She stops, irresolute, then takes a hesitant step to one side, and starts to turn. I reach her in a flying tackle. Her head jerks and her feet are momentarily lifted from under her, then I’m sprawling on top of her on the rough ground in a horrible parody of Mabel’s end.

The woman’s cheap black coat is tickling my face and I can smell her stale musky perfume. I raise my head and look away, back towards the others. No-one else has moved except Lewis and one of the uniformed cops, who are running across the bridge and into the trees. Lewis has a gun in his hand, but there’s no sound.

Then I hear a muffled voice: “Get off me, you fucking bitch! What the fuck are you doing?” she gasps, bucking and kicking at me.

I scramble to disentangle myself and we struggle to our feet. Murray comes forward to help her, and she starts giving him an earful. Some of the others are edging towards us, but there’s a general air of embarrassment, and no-one is looking at me. I notice guiltily that my victim has big holes in her black lace stockings, and I pray she won’t look down any time soon.

The other policeman comes through the small crowd and starts pushing people back. He’s engaged in a hands-free phone conversation, and as soon as he gets everyone heading back towards the chapel he goes down on hands and knees and

starts scrabbling around in the gravel. I stay back, reluctant to the others. He looks up.

“Could you please wait by the chapel, ma’am?”

“Yeah, sure. I’m just going.”

I hang around.

“What are you looking for?”

“It’s possible a shot was fired,” he says grudgingly.

“I think it hit the ground right in front of her,” I say helpfully. “See that mark there? Could it have ricocheted?”

There’s a fairly obvious gouge in the gravel now that he knows where to look.

“Please, madam,” he says. “I’ll take it from here.”

The other officer has come back and is rounding up the mourners and herding them into the car park beside the chapel. The pensioners have elbowed their way ahead in any case, and are stampeding for the toilets.

I tag along, still disinclined to talk to anyone. Murray’s girlfriend shoots scowling looks back over her shoulder. Jason is sobbing, and Rocco is also giving me the occasional glare.

Lewis materialises beside me.

“Lost him.” He’s out of breath. “He had a car in that other car park, near the station.”

“Did you get a good look at him?” I ask, my mouth dry.

“Just a figure in a long coat. Bastard sure can run.”

I shudder.

“Sorry about that.” His voice sounds a little shaky. “I honestly never thought he’d have the nerve.”

“Why didn’t you shoot at him?”

“No point shooting at someone running through trees,” he says. “That’s a really difficult target. Think about it.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” I start drawing mental diagrams. “Brownian paths, and stuff.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Now what?”

“Constable Dimitriou found a bullet embedded in that sign over there. That’ll be the one that ricocheted off the path. We’re getting forensics up here to see if there are more. If he went for a head shot and missed, it could have gone a long way.”

“Will you be able to see if it came from the same gun?”

“It wouldn’t. He’d have to use a long-range rifle for this.”

“Yeah, of course.”

The funeral celebrant and the pensioners are climbing into the minibus, and Jason and Rocco have cadged a ride. Frank and his wife are standing by a big four-wheel drive plastered with ‘Carn the Bombers’ stickers. I move forward to shake their hands again.

“We’re having a wake at our house,” says Frank. “You’re very welcome to . . .”

The blonde bombshell overhears.

“If that crazy bitch is coming . . .” she starts.

Lewis steps over and shows her his ID.

“Detective Senior Sergeant Lewis,” he says. “And you are?”

“Barbara Bobbins,” she mutters.

“Please don’t leave the scene until Constable Dimitriou has taken your details, Ms Bobbins. We may be needing a statement from you.”

“Huh? Watcha want a . . .”

“There was a man with a gun over there,” he says, gesturing towards the eucalypts. “He took at least one shot at you, and if it weren’t for Ms Cartwright here you’d probably be dead by now.” He runs a finger across his throat and Barbara’s eyes bulge.

“Looks like a bullet hit the ground right at your feet,” he says. “It’s thrown up

some stones, shredded your stockings. Pity about that.”

He takes my arm and turns towards his car. Murray runs after us.

“Hey! Did you catch him?”

“Not yet.”

“Is this something to do with Auntie Mabel?

“We’re investigating. Just watch yourself. We’ll get back to you,” says Lewis before unlocking his car and gesturing me towards the enger door. I slide in obediently. He puts his foot down and speeds between graves decorated with riotous plastic flowers out into Sydney Road.

I explode with laughter. “Sorry,” I gasp, trying to stop. “Sorry . . . That woman! Sorry.”

“You missed a golden opportunity there,” he says mournfully.

“What?”

“Could have got him off your back forever. No great loss to the world, either.”

I scream with laughter again. But it doesn’t take me long to get over my hysterics and come down. Right down, because now I know the phantom who’s been stalking me is real, and I didn’t get him off my back.

“Why did we leave?” I ask. “Shouldn’t you be back there, investigating?”

“It’s all in train,” he says. “Dimitriou and Jones can manage without me for a while. Thought I’d get you out of the danger zone.”

“Now you see why I’m being careful,” I say.

“Yeah, well I’d better warn you,” he says. “In some people’s view this is going to reinforce Mabel as the original target.”

“Mabel?”

“Strong link between Mabel and our charmer back there.”

I bury my head in my hands.

20

Lewis drops me at the office and insists on escorting me right up to our door. I don’t protest. Even with him close beside me, his head swivelling in all directions, the back of my neck prickles, and I wonder how I’ll find the courage to emerge from the building at the end of the day.

I go straight to the rest room, pull off my scarf and take a long look in the mirror. I’ve never played around much with my appearance. My hair is heavy and can be a nuisance, but the few times I’ve had it cut short I’ve felt naked, and nothing seems right until it’s grown back. This is my identity, gazing back at me, and I resent the cold logic that tells me I have to give it up.

Back at my desk, I open a few work files and try to get busy, but my heart’s not in it. There’s no-one in the cubicles around me, so I pick up the phone and start calling the Paths to Fitness gyms on my list.

The replies become grindingly predictable. Brian O’Dwyer? Sorry, never heard of him. Brian who? No, sorry, but they have very good instructors. Would I like to up? They’ve got a special on this month. No, sorry, no Brian O’Dwyer. They have a Brian Patterson. No. No. Am I a member? They have a great deal for new this month. And so on.

Hoping Derek hasn’t noticed how little work I’ve been doing the last few days, I gaze morosely at my screen and start flicking through emails. There’s an unopened one from Derek himself but it’s not a rebuke, it’s about the Sydney job.

Sydney, I think. No-one need know I’m there. The others are working on the investigation and they’ll find whatever there is to be found. I could remove myself from the firing line. Just the thought makes me breathe a little easier.

I’m browsing through whitepages.com, looking to see if I’ve missed any Paths to Fitness gyms, when another name catches my eye. Fitness Tracks. It sounds like a gym, but I’ve never heard of it. A quick search shows that it’s a lifestyle enhancement centre in Collins Street, catering exclusively to the busy corporate sector. In other words, an expensive gym.

Patrick Donnelly could have got his wires crossed. I dial the number.

“Brian O’Dwyer?” says a bright young voice. “I’m so sorry, he’s moved to Sydney. Can someone else help you?”

I’m shaking, and I have to make a huge effort to pull myself together.

“Oh, um . . . No, it’s a personal call,” I manage. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know he . . . I don’t think he said anything about moving.”

“Well, you know Brian,” laughs the receptionist. “There’s some gorgeous chick and she lives in Sydney, so off he goes. He’s still got the same mobile, but.”

“Oh, ah . . . I lost my phone and I didn’t have my s backed up,” I say. “Have you got his number?”

“Are you a member here? What did you say your name was?” Her voice is a little sharper now. The phone is burning my hand, and I drop it into the cradle.

Brian O’Dwyer is in Sydney. Suddenly it doesn’t seem like such a haven after all, but still . . . If I’m careful, if I make sure nobody knows I’m there, maybe I could turn the tables. Maybe I could stalk Brian O’Dwyer.

I wish I knew what he looked like.

Derek is in his office, absorbed with something on his computer screen, and I walk straight in.

“Is that Sydney job still going?” I ask.

“Sure, yeah,” he says. “I’m trying to find someone now.”

“I think I should do it,” I say. “Could you get me organised to start on Monday?”

“Should be fine,” he says, looking a bit startled. “They want it done fast.”

“I think I’m in danger, Derek,” I explain. I describe what happened at the cemetery.

“You’re right,” he says. “Right thing to do, you get out of town. We sort this out.”

“One thing though, Derek. I think it’s best if I work under another name.”

Our eyes meet briefly. Derek knows that I know he once had another name himself. When he came to Australia it suited him to change his identity. I have no idea why, and I’ll never know, because I’ll never ask. He knows I won’t pry, and he knows I’ll never mention it.

“You got a CV in this other name?” he enquires.

“Give me five minutes.”

I go to my cubicle and fire up my computer. It doesn’t take long to change a few details on my CV. Thinking up a new name for myself takes longer. I send it all off to him, then start trawling through the latest messages from Ravi and Steve Li.

Steve has been busy. He’s very interested in the bank that Talbot was using. Judging by the information he’s sending me, what really interests him is how Carlos discovered it and how he got into it, and he’s been having a look himself.

Worried, I send off a hasty message:

“Steve. Please just concentrate on the Carlos data and possibly the email traffic. No hacking yourself. Understood?”

He’s quick to reply:

“No worries, Elly. But plenty of dodgy stuff there. Talbot was pretty tame. Are we chasing the right anaconda?”

“It’s all we’ve got,” I type. “But keep your eyes open for anything about his wife, Fiona. And Brian O’Dwyer.”

I spend a couple of hours organising my work and handing over all my odd jobs to Scott, who seems keen enough. It’s hard to tell with his dour manner, but he seems pretty focused. After that I call a brief meeting with Luke, Ravi and Steve, so I can tell them what happened at the cemetery and explain why I’m going.

They’re awestruck, excited and a little envious. As usual I feel like knocking their heads together. They’d react in exactly the same way if I told them I’d got down to an advanced level in the dungeon and was gearing up to fight a minotaur. But I need their help, and their thirst for adventure doesn’t seem to affect their reasoning powers.

“Ravi,” I say as we’re dispersing. “You don’t happen to know a Suresh Chandra, do you?”

“Don’t think so,” he says. “What, is he about my age?”

“Older,” I say. “Mid-thirties at least. He was with Peter Talbot on that walk.”

“Ah. Well, I’ll ask around.”

“Be careful, Ravi,” I say. “We don’t know who’s involved in this, and we don’t want to expose ourselves.”

He puts a finger to the side of his nose and flashes me his brilliant smile.

I ponder whether to tell Lewis what we’ve found out. The trouble is, what we’ve been doing thus far isn’t exactly legal, it doesn’t constitute evidence against anyone with the possible exception of Peter Talbot, who seems to be dead, and it hasn’t taken us one step forward in finding our killer. Worse, Lewis would inevitably tell us to cease and desist, and that might make things awkward when we didn’t.

Without any notice, Webster visits the office in the afternoon, flanked by a couple of plain-clothes cops I don’t recognise, probably the police IT experts. They’ve come for the backup CD, which Sunny meekly hands over.

“Hi,” I say, waylaying Webster on her way out. “How’s the investigation going?”

“Ms Cartwright, isn’t it?” she says coolly, though we both know damn well she knows my name.

“Carlos had a lot of friends here. If there’s anything we can do to help . . .”

“We’re conducting a very thorough investigation,” she says stiffly. “When we make an arrest you will be informed.”

Oh, thanks very much, I think, standing aside to let her .

I send Sunny and Viet Lei to the market with some money and detailed instructions. They come back giggling, having bought me a cheap blue parka with a fake fur-trimmed hood, a large overnight bag and a few other bits and pieces. They’re just in time, because Derek’s on his way out to see a client in Richmond, and he’s waiting impatiently for me. I thank them and grab the stuff before running after him.

“Okay,” he says in the car. “Sydney all sorted. You start on Monday, address in York Street. You’ll see it all in email. I suppose you want some cash for expenses?”

“Yes, that’d be good. I’ll have to come back to the office after the hairdresser.”

“Nah, not safe. Go to pub, I’ll get the guys to bring it to you. They love that. Think it all a game anyway.”

“Great, Derek, thanks. Tell them I’ll be there around six.”

The hairdresser in Richmond es me on to a third-year apprentice, my penalty for making a last-minute appointment on a Friday. The girl tries her utmost to convince me a screaming platinum blonde colour would look better than the subdued shade I’ve chosen, but she approves of the haircut that I’ve found on the Internet and printed out, and her hands are quick and deft. Two hours later she stands back proudly, holding up a hand mirror so I can see the full effect, and I go through a pantomime of surprise and delight.

A bit after six o’clock, clad in my blue parka with the overnight bag on my shoulder, I wander into the down-market Spencer Street pub that we favour. A group of my colleagues are clustered at one end of the bar, and I hover at the other end for a while, trying to look everywhere without making it obvious. The Friday-night crowd is at its peak, and the crowded bodies give me good cover as I move in.

“Is this the Carron Tavern?” I ask Chang.

He smirks, then does a double-take and elbows Sam. I’m aware of a flurry of activity in the group as Chang turns me towards the door and starts earnestly giving directions, pointing and explaining. There’s a minute tug on the strap of my bag.

“Thanks so much,” I say. “I really appreciate it. Thank you.”

I leave quickly. Despite the short blonde hair, or maybe because of it, I feel naked and exposed. But I have to psych myself up, so I walk with as much confidence as I can around the block to the nearest station, and flee the city.

Before the train gets to Footscray I unbutton the hood from the parka and wrap one of the new scarves around my head, hijab-style. I’d rather not risk having my new persona seen here. Nor do I want remarks on my appearance from the Ng family, so I grab a takeaway from one of Lily’s rivals and take it up to my room.

The package that was slipped into my bag is satisfyingly thick. I count out two thousand dollars. It’s typical of Derek to keep a lot of cash secreted in the office safe, trusting his own security more than the bank’s; and it’s great for me. I won’t have to give myself away by using plastic for quite a while.

I have fun browsing the net, looking for somewhere to stay in Sydney. Using a credit card might give me away, so I can’t do the usual online booking. Instead I track down the phone numbers of places that will take cash. I narrow it down to Surry Hills and Newtown, then start making calls. The apartment I find is small and ridiculously expensive, but everything else about it is perfect.

When I call Miranda she’s in some noisy pub and I can’t get any sense out of her, so I write her a chatty email, saying I’ll be seeing her in a week or so. It’s a coded way of telling her where I’m going. When her teaching prac’s over she’s heading off to Sydney to stay with her cousin and do whatever awful things they get up to.

I send Carol a briefer email, just telling her I’m okay. Then I sort out all my stuff and pack it into the new overnight bag to make sure it’s going to fit.

With my little world under control I climb into bed, spread all my coats and scarves over the top and, still chilly, fall into an uneasy sleep.

21

Late on Saturday morning, old Footscray emerges from the suburban streets and congregates around the station. There’s still an ethnic Australian population after all: they just shop at the big twenty-four hour supermarkets and get their fast food from McDonald’s. Football season is well underway, and few AFL teams have a more faithful following than the Bulldogs of Footscray. It’s a sea of red, white and blue as the fans set off to cheer their champions. Cosmopolitan Footscray is well represented too, and I know if Nam were here he’d turn out, like me, in a regulation beanie and scarf to the throng. In my case, though, it’s just camouflage, bought cheap at the market yesterday.

The anticipation is palpable as we push onto the train, even though as far as I know Footscray is pretty low on the AFL ladder. The atmosphere is so beguiling I almost wish I were going along with them. Maybe in a different, simpler world I would, though I don’t know what my Dad would say, seeing me in any colours other than the black and white of his beloved Collingwood.

“Who are we playing?” I ask a tattooed veteran with two excited grandsons.

“Hawks,” he replies gloomily. “We’re gonna get done like a dinner.”

That’d be okay, then. Dad wouldn’t mind me ing the Bulldogs against Hawthorn. The teams are all pretty homogenous now anyway, players traded back and forth whether they like it or not, but the spectators haven’t changed. Dad reserved a special hatred for the Hawthorn fraternity, whom he saw as a bunch of silvertails, while the Bulldogs in his view were a good, solid, workingclass team.

The football fans pour off the train at Southern Cross. I remove my beanie and scarf and stuff them into my bag, pull up my hood and continue on to Parliament Station.

It’s a pleasant day, and I the tourists strolling through the lovely Treasury Gardens, accompanied by the twittering of birds. It always feels like London to me. On the far side, I let myself be absorbed into a group meandering along the footpath iring the pretty houses of East Melbourne. At just the right moment I slip into the lane that runs behind Diana’s place.

I walk quickly up the lane, then crouch for a while between the wheelie bins and the fence, watching the street that I’ve just left. A few people stroll past, but they don’t turn their heads. Cars without slowing down. Would I know? What am I looking for?

At last I straighten up, tap in the code and slip through Diana’s back gate. Her cat, stretched out in a spill of sunlight on the garden wall, raises his head like a sphinx to gaze at me disdainfully.

Diana is at the kitchen window, startled. She moves to open the door.

“How about you!” she says, giving me a hug, then standing back. “I like the hair.”

“Oh!” I say. “I try not to think about it.”

“No, it looks good. Spunky.”

Diana’s approval comforts me. She’s effortlessly elegant herself, with smooth, prematurely silver hair that emphasises the flawlessness of her skin and somehow makes her look eternally youthful. Her clothes are always soft and layered, with subtle colour variations. All my best things are her hand-medowns.

When I was fourteen, my parents finally relented and let me apply for a scholarship to a boarding-school in Melbourne. I was desperate to get away from the stultifying country high school I was at and the girls who teased me about my hippie parents and my strange clothes. Things weren’t that much better in the city, where I discovered the class system for the first time. It had never occurred to me that there was such a thing or that I would be somewhere near the bottom of it. But then Diana’s parents went on an extended trip to Europe and she came into the boarding house for a term. For reasons that mystified me at the time she took a liking to me. We never did have the midnight feasts I’d dreamed about, but we got up to a lot of innocent mischief and I had a friend for life.

After Diana’s parents came home we spent a lot of weekends at each other’s houses. She loved Canton Creek, regarding the rough conditions and lack of electricity as charming, and she got on well with the other kids in the collective, Mark and Carol. It eventually dawned on me that her family was richer than I’d imagined people could be. Their house was vast and ornate, with rooms that didn’t seem to have any purpose other than to contain beautiful things gleaned from trips to exotic places. There was a downside – there’s always a downside – in that if Diana wanted to see her mother she had to make an appointment. I don’t know what that does to a person’s character, but she grew up with a fierce sense of loyalty to her friends.

Now she draws me into her warm living room, where the Saturday papers are spread out on the round dining table, inherited from some gracious ancestor.

“You haven’t had lunch, I hope?” she says. “I went mad at the market. There were so many good things to buy. I can’t possibly eat it all.”

“Where’s Harry?”

“It’s the end of the semester,” she says. “I think he’s gone to the snow with Rachel. He’s hardly ever here anyway.”

Harry’s sporadic presence don’t trouble her. He’s a tranquil boy and they adore each other.

“Miranda’s gone bush,” I say, “kicking and screaming.” I describe Miranda’s last-minute panic about going to a country town and we laugh. Diana’s a sort of indulgent aunt to Miranda. Her own daughter, Chloe, is a few years older. I guess Chloe would be about twenty-four now. When was her birthday? Yes, she’d be twenty-four. If she’s alive.

I sigh with pleasure as Diana starts pulling little packages out of the fridge and brings down her big orange squeezer. For a few hours, at least, I’m determined to put my troubles aside.

Over a lunch that consists of small helpings of delicious things – breads, cheeses, pâtés, little quiches, some fantastic dark quince paste and fresh orange

juice – and between occasional excursions into gossip and other personal musings, I fill her in on what’s been happening.

“This is serious stuff,” she reflects. “Your crime ionel I can understand – sort of. But one thing that stands out about you and Carlos and especially poor old Mabel is that you’re all completely harmless. What could motivate someone to want to do that – to be able to do that? In such a cold-blooded way?”

“Balzac said it was love and money,” I say. “The two reasons why people kill.”

“Well, we can forget about love,” she says. “But I think money covers a pretty wide spectrum these days.”

“Gain, anyway,” I say. “Profit.”

“So there’s this Talbot character with two million in a mysterious bank ?”

“Yes, there’s Talbot. But he’s dead.”

“Could be dead.”

“Supposed to be dead.”

“Could be something in that,” she muses.

“Two million’s a lot of money,” I say. “Enough to kill for?”

“I don’t know.” She gestures vaguely. “I’d say most people in this street would be worth at least two million. I doubt if they’d think it’s enough to kill for. You and I wouldn’t think it’s enough to kill for.”

“You and I wouldn’t think any amount was enough to kill for.”

“True.”

She starts grinding coffee. The smell wafts through the room, making me giddy with anticipation. I start on another tack.

“What’s really important? What would people keep secret, so secret they might kill to avoid people finding out?”

“Dirty deals, I suppose,” she says. “But people aren’t worried about being shamed. People don’t seem to feel shame anymore.”

“No, they don’t, do they? And if they’re CEOs of big companies they seem to

get huge payouts whatever they do. However bad it is.”

“Yes,” she says. “And for all we know, there might be a lot fewer people wearing concrete overcoats as a result.”

“There must be a class of secret where the dirty deal gets spoilt if people find out. That’s the sort of secret they’d want to protect because the dirty deal has to be abandoned and someone loses a lot of money.”

“That would satisfy Balzac,” she agrees. “So what would said dirty deal be about in the world of water resources?”

“Oh, you name it. Rigged tenders. Anything environmental. A contract to build a desalination plant when there’s clear proof that it’s overpriced and unnecessary.” She smiles at that. “Misuse of water allocations,” I continue. “Just about anything to do with water in this state is open to corruption.”

“Yes, Elly, I’ve heard you mention water before,” she says.

“Yes, well you just wait and see when we find out how chummy earned his two million dollars. It could well be in that area. It certainly wasn’t from doing overtime, or moonlighting in a bartending job with good tips.”

“You keep your head down while you’re in Sydney,” she says, pouring the coffee.

“I will. Which brings me to the big favour I want to ask you.”

She’s only too happy to do what I want, and we get onto the Internet and book a flight for me in her name. She then insists on giving me her Qantas Club card.

“If you show this when you check in you won’t need ID,” she explains. “It’s okay, they don’t know what I look like. You can even go to the lounge if you want. The food there’s better than what they give you on the plane.”

I don’t think I’ll have the gall to go into the lounge, but I take the card gratefully. Then I get into my bank and transfer the cost of the ticket into hers.

“Done,” I say.

“I don’t suppose you could have a teensy look at my computer?” she asks. “It seems to be a lot slower than when I bought it.”

“No problem,” I say and start the istrative programs while she clears away the lunch things and puts on some music.

I work steadily in Diana’s lovely book-lined study overlooking the back garden, surrounded by photographs of her beloved family: John, Chloe and Harry. Anyone who sees Diana as privileged, with her family money and this house inherited from her grandparents – “I could never sell it,” she said to me once.

“It’s the only place I was ever happy when I was a child.” – would have a pretty distorted view of the world. She found her soulmate in John, and he was perfect for her; then within two years she lost him to cancer and Chloe went through one of those mysterious changes that cause beautiful children to destroy themselves and break their families’ hearts. One minute she was the perfect daughter, adored and adoring; next minute she was staying out all night, lying and stealing. You didn’t have to be a social worker to know what it meant, especially the stealing. Chloe grew pale and thin, and was careful to wear long sleeves to hide the tracks on her arms. Finally Diana confronted her. There was a lot of screaming and Chloe ran off into the night, taking nothing with her.

I stay far too long at Diana’s. She potters around, tidying up, reading the papers, looking over some documents for her job with a non-religious aid program, leaving me to do whatever I want. I fix her computer, then immerse myself in the papers for a while too. I flick through her New York and London Book Reviews. I see there’s going to be a Turner retrospective in the Tate, and I have a little daydream about going to London next year. I could go back to that wonderful room in the National Gallery with the two Turners and the two Claudes. They say when Turner first saw Claude’s Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba he wept because he thought he could never paint the sky like that. But then he did it with Dido building Carthage.

“To Carthage then I came,” I muse sleepily. What happened at Carthage? Something bad, no doubt. Lines like that from The Waste Land seem to punctuate my life. “April is the cruellest month.” Well, not this year. This year it’s June.

If Miranda gets a job and moves out, if I work extra hours and stick to a budget, there’s no reason why I couldn’t go away. I calculate it all out in my head. That’s what the warmth and security of Diana’s lovely house is doing to me; instead of wondering whether I’ll survive another day, I’m now planning a whole year into the future.

I don’t mention going overseas to Diana, because I’d love her to come with me and I know she won’t. She doesn’t like to travel these days, because she’s afraid she won’t be there if Chloe comes home. No-one says what we all know: Chloe won’t be coming home.

Diana goes for her walk, but I don’t dare go outside the house with her, so I stretch out on the couch with the cat and doze. Before I know it she’s back, opening a bottle of wine, with irresistible cooking smells coming from the kitchen.

“I really should get going,” I murmur.

“Now, it won’t hurt if you just help me eat a bit more of this food,” insists my seductress.

More time es. We eat, drink the wine, talk, laugh and watch a DVD before I manage to summon enough will-power to leave.

“It’s cold out there,” she protests. “Go in the morning.”

“No,” I say firmly. “It’s a rule. I’ve made a rule. No staying with friends.”

I pick up the blue parka and start putting it on.

“Well, you’re not going out in that,” she says, taking the parka from me and disappearing upstairs. I go on collecting the rest of my possessions. A minute later she reappears with something draped over her arm.

“Where’s my jacket?” I ask.

“In the ragbag, where it belongs.” She helps me into a beautiful long crimson wool coat.

“I can’t take this, Diana. This is your good coat!” I gasp. I have lusted after this coat for a couple of years.

She shrugs. “You have rules, I have rules. I’ve already bought its replacement, so it has to go.” Diana has a zero-growth policy for her wardrobe: every time she buys something, she throws something out. This creates conflicts of interest for me when she asks my advice, as I’m the main beneficiary. She goes into the hall and comes back with an equally beautiful black cashmere coat.

“Oh, I see!” I stroke it. “I’m glad you didn’t consult me.”

22

With Diana’s coat wrapped around me, I slip out the back gate and walk quickly down to Wellington Parade. There are a few restaurants and hotels down there, and it’s not long before I pick up a cruising taxi to take me back to Footscray. I get the driver to drop me near a big new apartment building in Barkly Street and wait until he’s out of sight before I double back along the street towards the Khá Sen. Smiling to myself at the thought of Diana’s horror, I pull out the Bulldogs beanie and jam it down on my head.

It’s late, and there are few people around. Not much night life in this part of Footscray. The Trocadero, where my grandmother used to go dancing, is a ghostly shell. Everyone walks fast, like me, heads down, eager to get home and out of the cold.

I walk straight past the Khá Sen. It’s closed, and the doors onto the street are locked and bolted. There are no lights on. The other unseen guests don’t hang around at the weekend. They have homes to go to.

My key will get me in through the back door, so I slip into the car park in the street behind. The back entrance to the building looks horribly exposed, and my heart contracts as I consider it. A watcher would have many places to hide if he wanted to stand in the shadows and wait for me. I pull the beanie further down over my ears, walk quickly to the door and let myself in.

On the upper landing, just before the last flight of stairs to my attic, there’s a window overlooking the street at the front. I wait until the automatic light goes off, then peep out.

The street is deserted, apart from a young Vietnamese couple holding hands as they hurry towards the station. There’s a cold mist floating around the street lights. I’m about to go when something catches the corner of my eye. Was that a movement? I peer towards a narrow alley opposite. It’s dark. There’s room for someone to stand there, unnoticed, and watch this building. Did I just spot a shift in the light, as though someone has moved their arm a little carelessly, changing position?

I watch and wait. My senses are dull, and I wish I hadn’t drunk that wine. Fear paralyses me. The staircase rises behind me, and the lone light bulb mocks me, ready to leap into telltale life as soon as I move.

Eventually my wits return, and I look around for the movement sensor. Careful to avoid it, I reach up and remove the light bulb, then tiptoe up the stairs and into my room. The blind is up, and there’s just enough light in the room for me to take stock. Everything is just as I left it.

I sit on the bed, shivering in the dark, listening. Did the stair creak? My bag is at my feet, still packed with all my things. I know I can’t stay here any longer. The shadows are closing in. I count out the money I owe Lily and put it on the pillow, pack up my computer and hoist my possessions onto my shoulders. Then I creep back down the stairs and replace the light bulb.

It takes me a while to get out of the building, avoiding motion sensors and automatic lights, and I eventually emerge from another door onto the car park and scurry into the next street. It’s started to rain, a fine drizzle. I half walk, half run past houses and parked cars, then crouch behind a tree and wait, looking back the way I came. Nothing moves. I stand up and walk, fast, putting as much distance as I can between myself and the Khá Sen, the back of my neck prickling. When I think it’s safe to pause, I dig around for my umbrella and put it

up. It’s raining hard now; my hair is plastered to my head, and the bottoms of my jeans are sodden.

At one point I look around and realise I’m heading in the direction of Lily’s house, so I abruptly change course. I don’t really know where I am, but somewhere in front of me is the city. In my mental map, though, there’s a great wasteland between here and there. I’ve seen it from the train, and I’ve never crossed it any other way. I picture myself, a desperate little figure, toiling across that wilderness through the dark, in the freezing rain. Wasn’t it once called the Dudley Flats? Wouldn’t it be a kind of marsh in its natural state? I think of the Cambridge fens and how they used to swallow up people who strayed from the path.

I could get to one of the railway stations from here, but they’re too brightly lit, and so are the trains. I’m beyond that now. I’ve crossed to the dark side of the road, a fugitive, and I don’t want anyone to see my face. I wish I could find a hole or a cave somewhere and crawl into it, curl up and pull Diana’s coat over my head, and just wait until the end of winter. But if I stop the spectre that’s pursuing me will catch up.

I’m reminded of the old Persian story about a man who comes face to face with Death in the marketplace at Baghdad. Death gives him a look of startled recognition and the man fears his time has come. He runs all the way home, saddles his best horse and rides like the wind through the night. At dawn he reaches Samarra, just as the gates of the city are opening. There among the throng is Death.

“What are you doing here?” gasps the man.

“Waiting for you,” replies Death. “That’s why I was surprised to see you in

Baghdad yesterday, as my appointment with you is here, this morning.”

I wish I could call Lewis. My hand closes around my phone. His number’s there. If I called him maybe he would arrive, miraculously, in minutes, with his retinue of police cars. I could tell him I saw someone watching me from across the street. He wouldn’t doubt me. He’d take me somewhere warm and safe, and everything would be all right.

And where would that warm safe place be, Elly? I have to get myself out of this.

Again my brain reboots, and I realise I should go back towards the busier areas. Maybe where the taxi dropped me off, or beyond that to the hospital. You can always get a taxi near a hospital. I work out a rough course.

Ten minutes later I’m peeling off my damp coat in a taxi. The driver, a young Sikh with a clipped beard and a turban, regards me incuriously in the rear vision mirror. He doesn’t care what I do as long as I don’t mess up his cab. I ask him if he can take me out to the airport then fold the coat carefully and put it in my bag before struggling into a denim jacket and putting the Bulldogs beanie over my wet hair.

“Your mob had a good win today,” he remarks as I pay the fare at the airport.

“Oh, did we?” For the first time I notice the brown and yellow Hawthorn emblems adorning his taxi. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be sorry.” He counts out the change. “Our boys played like a bunch of sissies. Too much hand-ing and fancy footwork. You’d think they’d learn.”

I go into the international terminal with my overnight bag on my back, both straps over my shoulders. At a glance, if anyone was scanning grainy CCTV footage, it might as a backpack. Most of the check-in counters are closed, but there are a few people around. There are always people who look like me, down-at-heel backpackers with early flights to catch or connections to make, saving on a night’s accommodation. We’re barely distinguishable from the homeless people who hang out here all the time, nowhere else to go.

I find an out-of-the-way corner which is occupied by a Middle Eastern family, the men with heavy moustaches, the women veiled. A number of children are sleeping on and under a row of seats, protected by a barricade of luggage, much of it in those ubiquitous striped plastic bags. The men squat on the floor, playing cards. The women sit protectively over the children, occasionally whispering to each other. They have blankets and pillows, and seem to be settled in for a long wait. As I drift close their heads turn, wary dark eyes scanning me. Seeing nothing threatening, they look away and take no more notice. What cataclysm in their lives has caused them to fetch up here, surrounded by their possessions in bags and bundles? I hope fervently that they’re not waiting to be deported.

In a secluded spot between this stoical group and the far wall I lie down, using my bag as a pillow and Diana’s coat as a blanket, and wait for this long night to end.

23

Sydney is a miracle. When I emerge from the station at Newtown, the sun is shining and people are walking around in t-shirts, some girls even wearing cotton dresses and flimsy sandals. The usual European tourists are showing off their spray-tanned legs in shorts as they clutter King Street, puzzling over the GPS on their phones.

I put on sunglasses and drift along the street, revelling in my invisibility. The directions I was given were good, and I soon find the incense-scented shop, give money to the owner and pick up the keys. She explains how to find the entrance to my flat in a narrow side street.

The flat is done out in brown and cream, the compulsory colours of the day, but the bed has clean white sheets and a patch of sunlight falls across it through the double-glazed window. It’s got a well-equipped kitchen and televisions in the living room and bedroom, both with DVD players. I strip off, put nearly all my clothes in the washing machine, and take a long hot shower. Then I crawl into bed, warm at last, and fall asleep.

When I wake it’s early afternoon. Hunger drives me out into the street, where there’s a dizzying selection of cafés to choose from, many with open fronts or tables on the footpath. I let the smell of coffee draw me to one that’s not too crowded, find a small table that’s out of public view and order something from the all-day breakfast menu.

An extended family settles in nearby. The father and son are both tall and lean, the son very Scandinavian-looking with smooth skin and cropped fair hair. His young wife chatters in Swedish with their child, a tiny white-blonde girl.

The child suddenly squirms out of her mother’s arms and runs past me, tripping over my feet. Before she hits the floor the young father swoops, swinging her into the air with the sort of easy confidence Max could never manage with Miranda.

“Watch out, Olga!” he says, revealing himself to be Australian. “You’re all over the nice lady.”

“Nice lady!” says the little girl, beaming at me.

“She’s fine,” I say, longing to lift her from his arms and feel those sticky fingers on my face. You’re hardly allowed to look at children these days, let alone touch them.

The grandmother catches my eye and smiles, giddy with love for her offspring.

Another young woman arrives. She’s also very tall, head-turningly beautiful and pregnant.

“Sorry we’re late!” she cries. “Giancarlo’s parking the car.”

Why, I wonder, do other family’s lives seem so idyllic from the outside? They probably have just as many problems as I do. Well, maybe not quite as many, because they probably don’t have somebody trying to kill them just at the

moment. But looking at them makes me yearn for a future when another woman might smile indulgently at me and Miranda, some sweet son-in-law and a beautiful child of our own.

I wonder again what happened to the Middle Eastern family at the airport. They were gone when I woke up, surrounded by a forest of legs, my head throbbing and a bitter taste in my mouth. I hope they moved on to a better chapter in their own sad story.

I pay my bill, find an overpriced supermarket where I buy food, other basic supplies and even the Sunday papers, then saunter back to the flat and get settled in. Soon my washing is hanging all over the place and my computer is set up and connected.

Steve Li has somehow got access to Talbot’s mobile phone records. He’s got me worried again. This data was definitely not on the Carlos backup, so he must have been hacking on his own, unless he’s got some other good explanation. What he’s found out is that the payments into Talbot’s coincided with calls that Talbot made to a landline in Sydney. He would make a call to the number a few days after each payment. Steve’s traced the number to a company which also has an with the Mercantile Mutual bank. He can’t see which the regular payments to Talbot came from, but there has to be a link.

The company is called Sutherland Investments. I write down the phone number and an address in Castlereagh Street.

I push my computer away and make a nice herbal tea. There’s plenty of that in Newtown. Drinking it, I flick through the Sunday papers, but they’re trashier than ever, with nothing to grab my attention. In my mind, I’m putting together a sequence of events.

Every month for the period we’ve been looking at, someone puts money into Peter Talbot’s . A few days later, Talbot calls Sutherland Investments. Was he telling them the payment had gone in? Was he giving them something, information presumably, that they’d paid for in advance?

Then Peter Talbot disappears. Was someone from Sutherland Investments involved in his disappearance? If not, what happened when they didn’t get his regular phone call?

We don’t know yet whether that money is still sitting in the , untouched, or whether it’s been taken out. I ponder the possibility that Talbot is still alive somewhere, enjoying his ill-gotten gains. Maybe he thinks two million is worth killing for. Maybe he found out, somehow, that Carlos was prying into his affairs. Maybe he’s prowling the streets of Melbourne, in disguise – I think of the alleged Telstra guy with his glasses and overlong hair that sounds like a wig – trying to tie up loose ends. I wonder who else down there might be in danger.

I send an email to Steve Li:

Steve (a) What did I tell you? NO HACKING!!! (b) Notwithstanding (a), have you found anything on Fiona or Brian O’Dwyer? We need to find out how Talbot made that money. Did you see any other s like his – i.e. regular deposits to individuals building up like that?

But please, please BE CAREFUL! Elly

Shadowy figures shimmer in front of my eyes. Peter Talbot, clutching his money. His attractive wife, Fiona, with his friend Suresh. Brian O’Dwyer, who’s somewhere here in Sydney. A personal trainer. He’d be fit and strong, well able to chase an innocent victim down and cut his throat; well able to outrun a group of police in a cemetery.

I wish I knew what Brian O’Dwyer looked like.

I open Wolf Hall. Anne Boleyn’s sister, widowed and ambitious, seems to be trying to seduce Thomas Cromwell. She’s clearly got some ulterior motive. Will he succumb?

24

On Monday morning I take the lift to the eighth floor of a shabby building in York Street and announce myself to the haughty girl – I wouldn’t dare call her a receptionist – who’s minding the front desk. After several minutes a young man with collar-length dark hair, a shiny grey suit and pointed-toe shoes springs into the foyer and holds out his hand. I feel a stab of disappointment. Just once I’d like to work with someone my own age.

“Hi!” he says. “I’m Brett. We’re still getting set up for you.”

“Jane Elliott,” I say, matching his firm handshake. “Sorry for the short notice.”

He doesn’t comment on the name. Why should he? Only a brain crammed with trivia like mine would immediately see Jane Eyre toiling across the cold drenched moor, fleeing Thornfield, her mind made up to be called Jane Elliott henceforth so no-one will ever find her.

“No, no, it’s great that you could do it,” says Brett, leading me through the security door and past the usual cubicles and glass-walled offices. “We’ve put you in here.”

He ushers me into a small office with a view through a narrow gap to Darling Harbour, a glimpse of water. There’s a single desk with a pile of documents on it, and a young Chinese guy is setting up a PC.

“Hi,” I say. “I’m Jane.”

“Albert,” he says. “I soon have this ready for you.”

“This is nice,” I say. “I usually get a broom cupboard, or a corner of someone’s desk.”

“Oh, yeah,” says Brett. “We’re actually in borrowed space because we’re not really part of the Department, and the Department itself is on the move. Half of them have already gone to Parramatta, and the rest are moving to another building in George Street soon. So there’s lots of room here at the moment.”

“Great,” I say.

“It’s a pity you won’t be with us when we move to Darling Harbour. We’ve got some fabulous offices there, just being fitted out.”

“Sounds good.”

“Fabulous,” he repeats. “We’ll be moving in a couple of weeks.”

“So I’m not too clear on the organisation here,” I say. “Are you with the Department or not?”

“Me personally?” His hands flutter around as he launches into his spiel. “Yes and no. Technically I am, but I’ve been seconded to the Commission for this project. Helena Banfield asked for me specifically.” He bristles with pride. “You’ll meet Helena later today. She’s fabulous.”

“Fantastic. And what’s Helena’s role . . . ?” I start, but such is his eagerness that he interrupts.

“Well, of course, she’s on the Board, but to my mind she is the Board. She’s the only one who’s proactive. The Commission is a State Government initiative, as you know, that’s responsible for reviewing major project applications that are environmentally sensitive. We call them 3As. There’ve been some high-profile rejections recently, and some important business interests are feeling the pain. So the Board is a kind of nursemaid, if you like, that makes sure all the Ts in the applications are crossed and the Is are dotted, and so on.”

“Does that mean the Board is representing business interests?” I ask innocently.

“No, no, heavens no. We’re above all that. We’re just here to make sure no-one’s wasting their time, you know? It’s no good for anyone if applications go in and they’re going to be rejected.”

“I see.”

“So they run everything past us. It saves everyone time and money in the end. Including the Government. And it avoids bad publicity, so if this one goes

through quickly everyone will be happy.”

“So. This one?” I say, looking at the pile of documents.

“Top priority, this one,” he says, following my gaze. “It’s a very important new mine, a consortium between a major Australian investor and a Chinese company. Cutting-edge technology, of course. Two hundred jobs in the rural sector. This will be a groundbreaker in of clean coal mining, and should put a stop to all those objections up there on the Liverpool Plains. It’s all in here,” he says, tapping the pile.

“Top priority?” I repeat.

“Yes. Sorry, we’re pretty close to the wire here. Red faces everywhere if we don’t get it in by the end of next week. Two or three of the contributors have been holding up the works – no matter how loud you scream, they just take their own sweet time. But everything’s been checked and double-checked,” he assures me. “It’s really been through the wringer. It just needs a final polish before submission.”

“So I suppose submission is just a formality?” I say.

“Well, yes,” he agrees. “But we’re still very strict. Some of the top people in their fields have put their names to all the bits and pieces you’ve got there. All the studies have been done, and written up and signed off, so we can be sure everything is kosher. Your job is just to do the final edit and make sure it’s properly laid out, no inconsistencies, no typos. All the individual sections have already been thoroughly proofread, but it’s surprising what comes out when you

put it all together.”

“Indeed it is,” I say, looking at the pile without enthusiasm.

“There’s a CD there with all the files on it,” he continues. “The contributors were given guidelines for structure and typefaces and so on, but they didn’t all follow them. The style guide’s on the CD too.”

Flipping through the pages, I can see already that the contributors had wildly different ideas about structure and typefaces, but I’ve done this kind of thing before so I expected that.

“So I guess that’s it,” he says. “If you just want to get settled in, Albert will arrange your and give you your details.”

Albert looks up with a toothy grin, his fingers flying over the keyboard.

After about half an hour, Albert says I’m all good and finally I’m left alone to stretch out and enjoy the unaccustomed luxury of an office to myself. Then I get myself organised to start work.

The day es uneventfully. The job is pretty simple – just correcting a whole lot of bad formatting and bad English. I won’t need to know anything about coal mining, which is just as well, but there are some figures in the results of some experiment they did, and I’ll have to check those.

At lunchtime I go up Castlereagh Street to the address given for Sutherland Investments. It’s a smallish office building, with a board in the foyer listing the tenants. There are a couple of outfits that could be investment companies, some financial advisers, some lawyers and a few ants. No Sutherland Investments.

Afterwards, feeling safe behind my dark glasses, I roam through the main part of the city. Only the veneer has changed since I lived here several years ago. All the modern shopping malls that I seemed to have been pulled down and replaced by newer ones. It’s hard to see the point. The shops are mostly the same as the ones in Melbourne, selling the same stuff. I keep my eyes open for good coffee shops and lunch places.

Before my hour is up I go back and call a few high-priced gyms, like the Hyde Park Club, and ask if they’ve got a trainer called Brian. I’m assured of the virtues of Brendan, Andre, Samantha and Chris, but there’s no Brian.

The office is very quiet, and the few people who are there seem to be preoccupied with their own affairs. I come upon knots of them in intense discussions, which stop abruptly when they notice me. I hear the word “restructure” now and then. Some of them are printing out their CVs and looking at employment websites, so I think there’s a bit more happening than just a move to Parramatta.

Brett pops in a few times to see how I’m going.

“Helena won’t be in after all,” he tells me towards the end of the day. “She’s had to dash up to the Hunter Valley. She’ll be here on Wednesday.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“She’s dying to meet you,” he says reassuringly.

Is she, I wonder? People like me are usually invisible in an enterprise like this. Get in, get the job done, get out – that’s usually my style. I’ll only be noticed if I make a really obvious mistake. Then again, they seem to be in a rush, so she may want to personally push things along.

The day es and if I can’t say it’s enjoyable, at least it’s relaxing as I settle into a rhythm of work and let myself daydream a bit.

Maybe when all this is over and I get my life back I’ll move to Sydney for a while. Miranda will be independent next year, and I could rent out my house and get Derek to find me a long-term assignment in Sydney on expenses. I could do some easy work like this during the day and write every night – or maybe early in the mornings. Some people do that. I’m not really a morning person, but I can change.

When I come out of the office at five-thirty it’s dark and the clear sky promises a cold night. The winter evening settles down. The trouble with choosing Elliott as my faux surname is that I can’t get the poetry of my differently-spelled namesake, TS, out of my head, especially when I the crowd of evening commuters flowing into Town Hall Station. So many. I had not thought death had undone so many.

The train is packed, and I think about walking home in future. It’s not that far and it would fit in with my plan to have a nice, quiet, unassuming, inconspicuous life here, waiting for some solution for my problems to present itself.

Back at the flat, there’s another email from Steve.

Hi Elly Can you find out Fiona’s surname? It can’t be Talbot.

Had a quick look at bank. No for Brian O’Dwyer. Did see something though. Someone took $100k out of Talbot’s 3 days after he disappeared. Only got a few months of extra data, but more money transferred out – $300k, $50k, $500k.

Can’t tell where money goes when it’s withdrawn. Impenetrable bank codes.

What did Steve not understand about NO HACKING? But this information takes my breath away. Could Talbot be alive? If he isn’t, who else had access to his ? I wish we could find Fiona and see what she’s up to these days. If she’s the one who’s taken the money she must be spending it on something visible.

We’ve all done a good day’s work and I’m feeling optimistic. I plug in my Skype headphones and spend a pleasant evening talking about nothing much with Carol, Diana and Miranda, all of whom want to know vastly different things about Sydney. Afterwards I indulge in escapist television, which I can watch tucked up in my nice warm bed.

That night I dream about Lewis again, betrayed by my unconscious, and find myself lying awake in the small hours, thinking about him. It’s ridiculous anyway. Even if he were not emphatically off limits because he’s married, he’s a policeman – about as different from me as he could be. Oh, great, Elly. You can add intellectual snobbery to your other vices. In any case, Lewis seems noticeably smarter than others of his ilk. I’m reminded of my grandpa, who didn’t make it to high school and worked in a stinking tannery in Collingwood all his life, but was one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever known. He read the complete works of Dickens and loved to quote from them – even enjoyed a bit of George Eliot until someone set him straight on who she was.

25

On Tuesday morning I’m with the commuter throng again, squeezed like toothpaste out of Town Hall Station into the Queen Victoria Building. If I were still in Melbourne I’d find this scary, being jostled on all sides.

Coming up the escalator to street level I feel a vibration at my hip. But my phone’s in my bag. My hand creeps into my coat pocket, and my heart jolts and starts going like a train. There’s a strange phone there.

I sneak it out and take a look. It’s bright blue and flashing.

1 new message I press the button.

It’s from Luke. What the hell!

dymocks george st 5 mins

I look around wildly, but of course there’s no sign of him. What’s he playing at, for God’s sake? I should just ignore this little game, but I’m already heading for George Street.

As I’m walking into the Dymocks bookshop the phone vibrates again in my hand.

cafe upstairs

It’s up one end, with old-fashioned booths. Luke’s grinning face peeps out from one, dreadlocks bobbing around. I slide in opposite him.

“Luke, what on earth are you doing?”

“Good trick, huh? I always wanted to do that. You played it pretty cool, Elly.”

“Well, I knew the game. I’ve seen those Jason Bourne movies too. You could have just called my regular phone, you know.”

“Can’t be too careful,” he says, clearly very pleased with himself.

I was right: this is a real-life extension of the computer games he’s into, and he thinks he’s a high-level player.

“Luke, why are you here? This isn’t a movie. This is serious stuff.”

“I know, Elly. You didn’t think we’d just cut you loose, did you? You need someone to watch your back.”

“With respect, Luke, I don’t think you’d be the most . . .”

We’re interrupted by a waitress, who arrives with a pot of tea and sets out two cups and saucers.

“Do you want to order something, Elly?” asks Luke.

“Sure. Latte, please,” I tell the waitress.

As she leaves, Steve Li appears beside Luke.

“All clear,” he says.

“Oh, no,” I say.

“Not me,” says Luke, taking up the previous thread. “Someone inconspicuous. Someone invisible. And who’s more invisible than Steve?”

I’m shaking my head.

“Think about it,” says Luke. “He looks like some Asian school kid, right? He’s got a reversible jacket in his backpack, a baseball cap and a beanie or two. Who’s going to look twice at him?”

“No, no, no, never. I told Derek I’d watch out for Steve,” I say. “He’s like a stained-glass window.”

“Now who’s in a movie?” says Luke triumphantly.

Steve pipes up: “ ‘My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.’ ”

“Look,” I say, “it’s not true that people think all Asians look the same. Anyone who’s on the alert will notice Steve following me around.”

“You didn’t,” says Steve.

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve been following you since lunchtime yesterday. Just for practice,” he says, unable to wipe the grin off his face.

“That’s impossible!”

“Newtown’s a nice place. Good choice. I hope we’ll be going to some movies at the Dendy while we’re here?”

I have to laugh.

“Derek doesn’t know about this, does he?” I say. “How did you two get up here?”

“There’s some work that needs doing for Anderson and Magee,” says Luke. “Steve told Derek it’d be better if he was on site, so he could suss it out, get to know the system.”

Anderson and Magee is an important client, and Carlos always looked after them. Derek will be anxious to keep them happy now.

“And you’re here to do the talking?”

“That’s right, but just for today. I have to go home tonight.”

“I don’t know about this,” I mutter, just as the waitress brings my coffee.

“Come on, Elly,” says Luke. “Where’s the harm? Steve’s just gonna keep his distance, make sure you’re okay. We’ll all sleep better at night. Believe me, you won’t know he’s there. No-one’s gonna know he’s there.”

Steve pushes a memory stick across the table to me.

“There’s an exe on that,” he says. “Put it on your work PC. It’ll send a message to my phone when you log off at the end of the day. And let’s say one o’clock lunch? I’ll be watching your building.”

I’m still looking dubious.

“Forget about me,” advises Steve. “You’ll only hear from me if there’s trouble.”

“All right, if you insist on doing this I can’t stop you,” I say eventually. “But I’m warning you, I like taking long walks.”

“Hey!” says Luke. “This ain’t Carlos. This is the new model.”

“Hmm,” I say. “Well, make sure you stay right out of sight, Steve. I think my chief suspect is Brian O’Dwyer, and he’s somewhere here in Sydney.”

“Wow,” says Luke, looking around hopefully. “What do we know about him?”

“Almost nothing,” I say. “If we’re lucky the other stuff might lead us to him. Steve’s doing the digging.”

Steve grins, then swigs the last of his tea and jumps up.

“I’ll be seeing you,” he says. And then he’s gone.

Luke pours the rest of the tea into his cup.

“Steve says you checked out the address for Sutherland Investments. Dead end?”

“Hard to say. They’re not on the notice board, but there are lawyers and ants in the building. They’re a shifty lot.”

“Yeah. Not unrelated to dodgy banks. But not much we can do at this stage.”

“No. How are things at the office?”

“Grim. I think Derek’s really worried about business. What was the deal with Carlos? Were they in some sort of partnership?”

“Shrouded in mystery, Luke. On the whole I think Carlos was just what he seemed: a highly paid individual. He didn’t want to be bothered with business stuff. But Derek knew his value, and they had a good relationship worked out.”

“Yeah. He won’t find another Carlos. Hey, Elly, what do you think about those

withdrawals from Peter Talbot’s ?”

“Yeah, that’s really interesting,” I say. “He could be alive somewhere, couldn’t he, living off his money?”

“That’s possible,” says Luke. “But that first 100K really struck me. Like, he disappears, presumed dead, and straight afterwards someone gets a hundred thousand dollars.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Well, what if it was a hit? It’s a nice round figure to pay someone to take him out, isn’t it?”

I think of the killer in Brunswick, a silencer on his gun, expertly wiping down the stolen car he used. He’s resourceful. He used a knife to kill Carlos, a longrange rifle to hunt me in the cemetery.

“It doesn’t quite add up,” I say, “but if Brian O’Dwyer’s a contract killer we’d all better be bloody careful.”

I put my cup down. “I’ll start drafting a report for Derek tonight and email it to you so you can add anything you think is relevant. We still haven’t found anything that ties in with Carlos, have we?”

“Not directly, but I keep feeling we’re on the edge of something. Write the report, but let’s give it a few more days.”

“Derek isn’t likely to give us an extension, and you guys have gone through everything we have. What else is there to find?”

“Ravi won’t give up,” he insists. “He’s spending all his spare time on it – not Derek time.”

“Could he do it at home?”

“He could, but the work servers are more secure than anything off-site. Just a few more days.”

“It’s your call, but be careful of Derek. He won’t be happy if you do anything illegal on his computers,” I say and push the new blue phone across the table. “Surely I don’t need this.”

“Yeah, you do. If anything happens, that’s the number Steve will use. Keep it super secret. You and me and Steve, we’re a cell.”

“Okay,” I say, thinking they’re rather sweet, really. We get up and head downstairs into the main part of the store.

“You go out first,” he says. “No point being seen with me. I’ll watch your back.”

“Thanks, Luke. I do appreciate this,” I say before striding off quickly. Sometimes the youth and enthusiasm of the guys I work with really gets to me. It reminds me of those Christmases when I have to avoid the main entrance of the Myer department store because it’s taken over by a horde of young musicians. They stand in baggy shorts, feet planted firmly apart, tearing into Mozart with the verve and vigour with which the music was originally written. It always brings tears to my eyes.

Work calms me down and I spend another routine day. I get deep into the technical detail of the document, which is Greek to me, but I still check the calculations and make sure that the scientific expressions make sense and that all the terminology is consistent. You don’t have to be Einstein to recognise the odd typo in some scientist’s waffle, and by the end of the day I’ve had to call a couple of the contributors to authorise some corrections.

At lunchtime I make a conscious effort not to look over my shoulder for Steve Li. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the thought of him shadowing me as I wander the city, but I do feel strangely comforted. In theory my pursuer won’t look for me in Sydney because he won’t know I’m here; but I can think of a dozen ways that could go wrong.

After work, as threatened, I walk all the way back to Newtown. It gives me a chance to think. I’ve promised to fill Derek in on what we know, which is not much. What I know personally is that whoever is after me will keep trying, if he gets a chance, until I can remove the reason why he wants to kill me.

So, what’s the reason? He must have thought Carlos told me something. But I would have had plenty of opportunities to this information on, so I don’t see

why I’m still a threat. Unless he thinks I know something without understanding its significance. That’s possible. Maybe by now he knows I haven’t ed the information on, because there would be repercussions for him.

What else have we found out? That someone else died. Peter Talbot. He got paid a lot of money, then he disappeared. And Carlos was interested in that.

We know that some people are running a very sophisticated online bank that doesn’t show up in search engines, and that a company was using that bank to pay Peter Talbot for a service that wasn’t part of his official job. We know the company isn’t where it’s supposed to be, and that someone has been accessing Peter Talbot’s money.

So did my nemesis kill Peter Talbot, and does he think Carlos found out? Was someone lying in wait on that mountain, or did Brian O’Dwyer follow his best buddy up the track and fight with him, smashing his head on a rock? I don’t know what sort of person Talbot was, but O’Dwyer is probably physically capable of that. He’d also need to cart the body off into the distance, hide it exceptionally well.

What would O’Dwyer’s motive be? At some point after that, he removed himself to Sydney in company with a “gorgeous chick”. Was that Fiona? Maybe they’re both up here, spending Peter Talbot’s money.

I reach home and let myself into the flat. Is Steve behind me? Did he check to make sure no-one followed me home?

I put my things down and start pulling food out of cupboards, preparing my

dinner.

That’s if Peter Talbot really is dead. It’s always a bit suspicious when there’s no body. It would be easy to disappear with that amount of money, but maybe he didn’t go very far. Maybe he’s sitting in some sort of bunker, sifting through data, watching endless images on CCTV, running facial recognition software on the footage from trains and railway stations until he gets a match – look, there! My face, or my facial type, showing up more often than is statistically likely on the Footscray line. He dispatches minions to the stations, and eventually one picks me up and tracks me to Lily’s. Then he waits, late one night, in the shadows.

My thoughts are interrupted by the strange buzzing made by a phone vibrating on a table, and I jump in fright. But it’s not the new super secret blue phone, it’s my other one. Ravi.

“Elly? Are you near your computer? I’ve found the anomaly.”

26

I’m looking at the last photograph in the series, the phone forgotten in my hand. It’s Talbot himself, at arm’s length, slightly crooked, smiling triumphantly into the camera. Behind him is a glorious panorama of mountains.

He’s bearded, gingery, not a care in the world.

“Elly?” Ravi’s tinny voice from my phone. “What do you think?”

“How did you find this?”

“Steve said the wife’s called Fiona? So I was going through some crypted emails between Carlos and the Ukrainians, and I noticed ‘Peterandfiona’ in one of the links. It got me to this Flickr site. So when I saw the pictures, I wondered if they’d checked out the geotags.”

“And?”

“I checked them out myself. Elly, that last picture was taken from the top.”

“Ravi, go back a bit. Where do you find geotags?”

“It’s part of the metadata of a digital image. Like the camera and exposure information, that anyone can see. You just have to interrogate the file a bit more to get the geotags, but if the picture was taken on a device with GPS they’ll tell you the time and geographical coordinates.”

“How do you get to that data when the image is on Flickr?”

“Don’t you worry about that, Elly.”

I flick through the sequence of images again. There are about a dozen, starting with an image of an untidy camp, taken from above. There are no people to be seen except Talbot in the last one.

“He’s on his own, isn’t he?” I muse.

“It’s not something you could prove,” says Ravi, “but I’m sure. The way he’s holding the camera out to get that shot of himself.”

“So what we have here is a sort of pictorial record of his journey, only he sets off up the path and goes all the way to the top?”

“That’s right. I’ve overlaid it on the other map to show where it deviates from the path that his phone suggested. The times aren’t compatible, either. He was at the top about five minutes before he supposedly went off the path, about an hour further down.

I’ll send you the composite image, if you like.”

“You’re a gem, Ravi.”

I keep going back to that last carefree picture. Talbot in his domain.

“Maybe it’s not him?”

“Elly, this is his Flickr stream. You can check out his wedding photos if you like.”

“Okay, okay, it’s him.”

“It’s an anomaly all right,” says Ravi.

“Does the metadata tell you what kind of device was used to take the pictures?”

“Oh yeah, sorry. It was an iPhone. The signals they triangulated were from an iPhone too.”

“Is it possible to identify the phone?”

“No, that’s not recorded. But if we look at his phone we’ll soon see if it was his. There’d be a spike in the amount of data transmitted on that day, if the pictures came from his phone.”

“How come you guys have access to his phone records?”

“I’ve got a mate who does it. It’s his specialty.”

“How soon could Talbot have ed the pictures to Flickr?”

“Well, if you’re doing it from a phone, the smart way is to set up an automatic link. You have the set up, take the pictures and select the ones you want as you go. Then as soon as the phone can see a network they just get sent.”

“Reception was bad up there.”

“Yeah, don’t forget phone links and data links are different. Data links tend to be better.”

“Right,” I say. “Can you find out more about that? It might be important to know where the phone was when the happened. If it was still on the mountain.”

“Sure thing,” he says happily. “I’ll tell Luke and Steve about this, too.”

“Okay. Great work, Ravi. Thanks.”

I chop garlic and pour olive oil into a heavy pan, but my mind is far away, trying to make sense of what I’ve just seen. How can a guy who strayed from the path and fell down a gully pop up on top of the mountain he was climbing? On the other hand, if someone stages his own disappearance, is he going to post photographs of himself on Flickr?

Damn the police, I think savagely. Do they even know what century they’re in? For all I know Peter Talbot is on Facebook, happily reporting from Ibiza, and it hasn’t occurred to them to look.

Leaving my pasta sauce simmering on the stove I have a quick look on Facebook myself, but no luck. I lurk on Facebook with all my data hidden, but people can still find my name. I trawl through numerous Peter Talbots, but the one I want doesn’t even have an , which puts him in a tiny minority these days.

My dinner nearly burns while I’m wasting time on this enterprise and I dish it up, setting aside extra sauce for tomorrow night’s dinner and salad for lunch, if I can to take it; but I eat without tasting anything, my mind still going round and round, forming and discarding ideas. Is the triangulation data wrong? Has someone faked it? Who would be in a position to do that, and how? I think of more questions to ask about geotags. Is the time dependent on the time set on the phone? Could we be looking at some sort of Agatha Christie fiddle, where clocks get reset? And if so, why?

Something Ravi said about Peter Talbot pops into my mind.

“This is his Flickr stream. You can check out his wedding photos if you like.”

What an idiot I am. Talbot’s Flickr photos will tell me a lot about him.

I whiz through interminable bushwalks and camping holidays before I find his wedding album. Patrick Donnelly appears once or twice in the crowd: not such a close friend, then. I spot Suresh in the wedding party along with two more men. Surely one of them is Brian, but which one? They both look unremarkable.

Peter Talbot is not a great one for labelling his photos, and Flickr doesn’t have the face-tagging that’s so handy in other social media. But there are a few captions, and finally my efforts are rewarded. Here’s a family grinning sheepishly at the camera: dressed-up parents, a teenage son and a girl in a bridesmaid’s outfit, the image of Fiona. It’s captioned The Davis family.

I’m still logged in to Facebook, and it takes only seconds to find Fiona Davis. The carefree photograph, possibly taken around the time of her wedding, tells me it’s definitely her.

Fiona’s clearly one of those people who keep their Facebook page up to date with their latest random thoughts, and she has lots of like-minded friends who are given to gushing over her entries, including some painfully sentimental tributes to Pete a few months ago on what would have been his birthday. I marvel that people are so willing to expose their whole lives to any stranger, like me, who wants to have a look. It makes me feel grubby and I’m about to stop spying on her when a status update from a month ago catches my eye.

Sold the flat!!! Time to move on.

My scalp prickles. Was this a precursor to her moving to Sydney in company with Brian? But it doesn’t take long for her faithful friends to set me straight.

Cheer up, Fee . . . Hear your moving in with your mum she’ll be happy . . .

Oh Fiona, your lovely flat! I’m sure it won’t be long before you get your own place again You go gurl – best decision yet Yay, Fiona! Life’s too short for mortgages.

I do close the page now, embarrassed and ashamed. It’s still possible that Fiona has constructed an elaborate smokescreen, that she has Peter’s money stashed away somewhere and is patiently waiting before she starts enjoying it; but the overwhelming impression is of a bereaved woman, lost and bewildered, who can’t meet the mortgage payments on the conjugal flat and is falling back on her parents.

It’s time to sleep on this, but of course I can’t sleep, and I spend an uneasy night half-dozing. Somehow my editing work and the technical data I’ve been grappling with merge with the triangulation tables I glimpsed last week and what I imagine geodata looks like, and I can’t seem to escape from pages of endless numbers scrolling round and round before my eyes like an old-fashioned newsreel.

So I suppose I do sleep, in a way, though I wake with gritty eyes and a terrible headache. But I have thought of something I can do. I wait until eight o’clock, then I call Scott.

“How’s it going at Water Resources, Scott?”

“Oh, fine. They’re all pretty nice.”

“That’s good. Any problems?”

“Nothing major. There’re a few things I think could be easier, if I knew the short cuts.”

“Send me some questions in an email, and I’ll see what I can do.” I’ll be glad of a bit of a diversion, I’m thinking.

“Scott,” I say carefully. “There’s something I need you to do for me.”

“Yeah?” He’s already wary.

“That guy Surinder introduced us to the other day, Patrick Donnelly? I need you to ask him something. Can you get the phone number of a friend of his? The

name’s Brian O’Dwyer.”

“Is this about work?”

“Not really, but it’s important. Don’t tell him it’s for me, though. Listen, O’Dwyer’s a personal trainer. Say your girlfriend wants to hire him, or something like that. I don’t care what you say. I need his number. It’s got to be his mobile.”

He’s not happy. “I’m not really on speaking with Patrick Donnelly. I only met him for a few seconds.”

“Scott, do you like working for Soft Serve? Do you think you’ll want to stay on?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“When we first interviewed you, I pushed really hard to get Derek to hire you. It’s not just because you’re talented. There’s also a thing about company ethos. We help each other.”

“This isn’t something illegal, is it?”

“No! God no, Scott. In a way it is for work.” That’s stretching the truth a bit.

“Ask Luke next time you’re in the office. But the way we operate, sometimes someone asks you to do something unusual and you just do it, okay?”

“Yeah, I see. Okay.”

“Good. I need it ASAP. And send me those questions as soon as you like.”

“Okay. Thanks,” he says bleakly, and hangs up.

Poor Scott. Well, let’s see what he’s made of. If he wants to be part of the company he’d better not let me down.

I wonder if he’s any good at pool.

27

Concentrating on work is hard while I wait for news. Frustratingly, I get an email from Scott just before lunch with a neat list of technical questions related to his work. There’s a note at the end saying: Patrick Donnelly not in today.

I send a curt reply: Call his mobile

A swift reder comes back: Not listed

I don’t hear from Ravi all day. I know there’s no point hassling him because he’ll tell me as soon as he knows something. Anyway, it’s just as well because I want to keep my theory to myself until I have a chance to check it out. I turn it over and over in my mind, testing it for credibility, my thoughts only half focused on the words on the screen in front of me.

Almost imperceptibly the text I’m editing has progressed from scientific mumbo-jumbo to English-language waffle as we approach the meat of the document, and in the middle of the afternoon I start to see dimly what it’s all getting at. The contentious thing about this coal mine is that they are going to tunnel down through the water table. Alarm bells ring in my head. Through the water table! I don’t know coal, but I know water. In particular, I know this water. It’s the water that falls in Queensland in great abundance and soaks the earth, then starts creeping south as though you’d flicked it at a map stuck on the wall. Some of it comes all the way down to Victoria and South Australia through the Murray Darling river system, filling the inland lakes in those rare good years; and a lot of it plunges underground, into the huge aquifers under central New South Wales. In those vast black-soil plains, with no mountains to trap rain clouds, there’s a miracle of agriculture, irrigated by the plentiful water from the

aquifers. If only we had this in Victoria.

I scroll back through the technical stuff. What they’re showing here is how they’re proposing to sink mine shafts past the level of the aquifers without damaging them. You’d need an iron-clad guarantee, and a promise isn’t good enough. I think immediately of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. Going down that deep is dangerous because if aquifers close to a coal seam are breached all sorts of horrible pollutants will get into the whole system. Aquifers are sometimes referred to as connected waters. There’s no such thing as polluting them just a little bit.

So they’ve developed a new technology for getting down there safely, and they sank a number of experimental holes and reported on the excellent results. Yesterday I went through all the repetitive technical data under some eminent scientist’s name, not really understanding what I was looking at; and now I’m starting on his conclusions.

Skimming these ten or so pages, I see that the results of the testing were overwhelmingly positive. I’m a little surprised at this, partly because I would have anticipated a few problems, but also because I didn’t expect to find things so clearly and concisely expressed. Knowing how bad these boffins are at documentation, I expected this section to need a lot of work, so I’m pleasantly surprised to find it’s well laid out and quite readable. He hasn’t followed the guidelines, but he’s actually used proper heading styles, and used them consistently, so it’s going to be very easy to get this into the right format.

If he had followed the guidelines properly I’d probably find myself skipping this bit. When a piece of documentation looks really authoritative in the first few lines you can usually assume that there’s nothing wrong with it. But I do like to get things perfect, so I start going through it.

That’s when it strikes me that there’s something odd about this section. It looks impressive, but it doesn’t quite make sense. If anything, it reminds me of the essays that the less conscientious of my profession ghost-write for students who are looking for good results. It’s almost as though the writer has gathered a bunch of documents from an Internet search and pulled out a sentence from this and a sentence from that. In fact, here’s a whole paragraph that I could swear I’ve seen before in some of my other work. It’s got a convoluted structure, but the grammar is correct. I have a conviction it’s something I untangled myself, and not so long ago.

I look back through what I’ve done already. No, there’s nothing like this in the earlier sections. There’s something strange going on here.

Strictly against the rules, I slip Steve’s memory stick out of my bag and plug it into a spare USB port on the computer. I save the file onto it, then reach down to pull it out again.

“Everything all right?”

I jump. Brett is at my elbow. Did he notice?

“Yes! Fine, fine.”

“Sorry about Helena.” I’d forgotten about his promise. “She’ll definitely be in tomorrow. There’s a board meeting in the afternoon.”

“Oh! She might be a bit busy, then?” I say hopefully.

“Yes, but she and I are going to be taking you to lunch. There’s a divine sushi train in the old GPO building. You’ll love it.”

My heart sinks.

“How’s the document going?” he asks. “Getting through it?”

“Yeah, I’m right on track,” I say. If there is something odd, I’m going to keep it to myself until I’ve had a chance to find out what it is.

At the end of the day I’m eager to get home, so I decide to spare Steve the long walk and try the bus, which turns out to be maddeningly slow. I don’t know if he’s on a bus behind me or what, and we haven’t worked out a protocol, but as we crawl past the university I send him a text:

Can’t stand this. Getting out and walking.

I jump off the bus and stride down King Street, not looking behind. He’d just better be able to keep up.

At the flat, I copy the file from the USB to my computer and start searching through my stored files for a comparison, starting with Water Resources. I can’t

find an exact match, but there’s still something familiar about some of the syntax, something I should be able to .

I to our work server and trawl through the archives there, broadening my search. I’ve worked on other environmental studies, and we usually keep a backup of the result. But I can’t find anything. Frustrated, I grab my coat and go out in search of the Thai takeaway with the ridiculous name that I noticed on my first day.

Finishing off an indifferent Pad Thai with not enough chilli, I fire off an email to Scott:

Please search for EIS documents at Water Resources in the last 3 years with any one of the following strings . . . Send me anything you find.

I add a couple of phrases copied from the suspect paragraph. I hope he knows how to do a proper search, but he’s so prickly I don’t want to get his back up by explaining what to do.

On the way back from the Thai takeaway I notice a music and video store that is selling DVDs at throwaway prices, so I buy six for twenty dollars. Back at the apartment, I quickly wash my few dishes and get into bed with Aliens, one of my guilty pleasures; but I’m asleep long before my favourite scenes come up.

28

In the morning, there’s an email from Ravi saying: No spike from Talbot’s phone. How do you figure that?

I reply: Keep your friend on standby. I’m hoping to get another number for him to check.

I resist the temptation to call Scott and apply pressure, because I’m pretty sure it won’t work. If I hassle him too much he’ll get into a huff and quit altogether, leaving me back at the Department of Water Resources, among my other woes.

At work, I plough on through the document, but not without looking up the author of the study that’s got me wondering. It’s a Professor Bartholomew from one of the engineering departments at Newcastle University. He seems to be the author of a lot of obscure academic studies, the sort of things you’d expect from a professor. I have a quick look through a couple of PDFs. Of course they’re on subjects that are incomprehensible to me, but English is English. Most of the professor’s work – to borrow from George

Orwell’s review of Finnegan’s Wake – is in a language other than English. It doesn’t increase my respect for him. However difficult the subject, it’s still possible to write about it in a manner that’s lucid and readable. Look at Stephen Hawking.

I skim through the fishy bit of my document again. Definitely English. And definitely signed off by the good professor.

There’s a flurry of movement in the corridor that goes past my office to the boardroom, which is on the corner commanding the best view. A silvery little laugh. I move my chair to where I can catch a glimpse. Three or four Asian men in suits move past, accompanied by a slim young woman with a great mane of tawny hair. She’s wearing an expensive suit showing off her bony knees, and killer heels. This has to be Helena. Trailing along in the rear is Brett. They out of view, then I hear the boardroom door closing. A moment later Brett reappears and starts heading back slowly, alone. I quickly turn my head back to the screen.

Brett es my office without looking in. I quickly check my work email. Yes! there’s something from Scott.

Okay, here’s the number for that O’Dwyer guy.

Your friend Donnelly likes to talk, doesn’t he?

No joy on those documents yet. Trust me, I’m looking.

Are you going to answer my questions?

Stung, I compose an apologetic email with answers to all his technical questions, which had completely slipped my mind. I send O’Dwyer’s number to Ravi, then I sit looking at my email display, transfixed. The magic number winks and blinks at me. If I dial it, then somewhere in Sydney, maybe not far from here, a phone will ring and a hand will reach out.

Trembling, I turn my own phone to Private, tap in the number and wait to hear Brian O’Dwyer’s voice. To my disappointment, all I get is the “This mobile phone is switched off” message.

I’m hard at work again when Brett taps at my door.

“Helena’s tied up with the Chinese,” he says apologetically. “They’re nutting out a few issues before the board meeting.”

“Oh?”

“So she suggested that I take you to lunch. She’s really sorry she can’t make it . . .”

“Oh, well, really . . .” I’m searching for an excuse.

“It’s on her. She’s got this great expense .”

I can see he’s quite keen, so I think what the hell. It’s only 12.15 though and Steve might worry, so I say:

“Okay, meet you by the lift in two minutes?”

“Sure.”

I send an SMS to Steve: Going to lunch now with colleague at old GPO Martin Place I think.

Brett and I emerge into sunshine. It’s been raining and the pavement is slick, reflecting the blue sky and the silhouettes of hurrying city workers. Bunches of lunchtime runners pop out of buildings like little puffs of smoke and float up towards Hyde Park. Brett fusses with the fastenings of a smart belted raincoat as we walk.

“I hope it’s not too early for you?” he says. “The place gets pretty crowded by one.”

“No, it’s fine.” I’m enjoying being out in the freshly-washed air.

“Anyway,” he goes on, “the board meeting starts at two sharp, and I have to be back. Helena might need me.”

“Those Chinese guys aren’t anything to do with the Board, are they?” I ask.

“No, no. They’re from Green Dragon Resources, part of the consortium. Helena’s working closely with all the parties in this, like I said, making sure everything’s done properly. If people on the Board have concerns she makes sure

she’s across that in advance, and she gets input from Green Dragon.”

It all sounds innocuous, but this so-called independent commission is working pretty hard to make sure the application goes through. I wonder what motivates Helena. Maybe it’s all wonderful and she’s out to save the planet.

We go down some stairs in the beautiful old GPO building and find spots at a long sushi bar. I let Brett make the selections, insisting that I like everything. He grabs plates without pausing to look at their price codes and we tuck into some very expensive sushi.

“Will you be at the board meeting?” I ask.

“Not in the meeting as such,” he concedes. “But I’ll be on call. I’ve prepared all the papers, and I have to be around in case there’s anything else Helena needs. We’ve got a little signal that we use, if she needs me. She dials my number, then hangs up straight away. It’s very discreet.” He smiles, thinking about it.

“So you said you’ve been seconded to the Commission for this project? What’s going to happen when it’s over?”

“Not sure yet. Nothing’s set in stone. One thing’s certain, though. I’m not going to Parramatta!” he says and gives an exaggerated shudder.

“I suppose you’d like to keep working with Helena?”

“Oh yes, that would be fabulous. We’re planning to have a little talk about that when she’s got time.” I don’t fancy his chances there.

“So you’re not a western suburbs boy, Brett?”

“No way. I’m buying a nice little studio apartment at Potts Point. I got in just before the first home-owners’ grant cut out, lovely little Art Deco place, and I’m going to renovate as soon as I’ve got a bit of equity.”

Now we’re on comfortable ground. In Melbourne you can talk to anyone about the footy; in Sydney it’s real estate. We exchange views for a while on good areas to invest in, though I find my knowledge of Sydney is woefully out of date. I hadn’t realised Redfern, St Peters and Zetland are now desirable areas; and I discover that those little apartments clinging to the cliffs at Bondi are completely out of the question, no matter how small and old they might be.

He, in turn, asks me some personal questions, to which I give inventive answers. Jane Elliott has a similar background to my own, but I can’t give her any credentials that are too easy to check up on, so she’s worked for a number of companies that have gone out of business as well as spending several years in London and Singapore. Singapore is a bit daring, as I’ve only spent three days there in my whole life, but luckily he doesn’t show much interest.

It’s funny how one lie leads inexorably to another, and I do feel a bit guilty about deceiving poor mild-mannered Brett. In addition, I’m probably breaking some fairly serious laws by doing this job under a false identity. But on the whole, morally, I’m taking the utilitarian view that I’m not doing anyone any harm, and my intention is to keep myself alive; so I’m not going to onish myself, and I

might as well play the game as well as I can and enjoy it.

After Brett pays the hefty bill we stroll through Martin Place.

“So what did you study, Brett?” I ask politely. “Communications, something like that?”

“Well, I started off doing engineering,” he confesses. “I wasn’t much good at it . . .”

He launches into a long and complicated story about failing subjects and dropping subjects and changing courses, but I’m not really listening because my mind has gone off at a tangent. The mention of engineering has made me why Brett makes me feel slightly uncomfortable. It’s because he reminds me of my first serious boyfriend, someone I met in London just after I’d left home. Laurence had that same pale face and longish, floppy hair. He came from one of those ancient aristocratic families, where you suspect the blood has thinned over the generations. I really didn’t want to be reminded of him.

Brett rambles on, using his hands to emphasise the point as we walk up King Street. Laurence was an engineer, just graduated from Oxford, of course. His family had a girl in mind for him, someone whose family was listed in Debrett’s. He took me home for a weekend once, some horrible pile in Bedfordshire, and they froze me out. The good school I’d gone to in Melbourne was suddenly of no consequence.

When I fled from that relationship and met Max I thought I was getting back to reality, but by then I didn’t know what reality was.

Why does engineering resonate in my brain? There’s something I’ve been trying to since last night. It’s one discipline I haven’t had much to do with – except that one time . . .

As soon as we arrive back at the office Brett practically sprints off down the corridor in search of Helena.

I can’t wait until tonight to work, and I can’t to our office computer from here because of their firewall. I fire off an email to Ravi, much like the one I sent Scott, but this time I ask him if he can have a look at a feasibility study for an engineering company I worked on a couple of years ago. Not about water, or coal, or the environment. It was all about heat exchangers. I had to practically write the wretched thing myself, once they’d explained to me what heat exchangers were.

Then it’s a matter of waiting, checking my email every few minutes, trying to work. There’s coming and going in the corridor: older men in suits, a couple of matronly women. A trolley comes past with afternoon tea. There’s orange juice, pastries, fruit, chocolate biscuits. Later I see it waiting by the lift to be picked up, the food only half eaten. The other occupants of the floor make little forays, scurrying out to make lightning raids on the windfall. I’m a bit tempted myself – sushi’s not that filling – but by the time I make my mind up there’s nothing left.

The board meeting is over and Brett has disappeared, along with Helena and all the board . They’ve probably gone for drinks, or something, and he’s managed to tag along. I pack up and leave the office, opting for the long walk again.

29

Halfway home I get a call from Ravi.

“That number checks out, Elly. Big data spike for the day in question.”

“Yes!”

“Also, I’ve found your document. I’ve emailed it to you.”

“That’s great, Ravi. Thanks.”

“Elly, I think it’s time you told the rest of us what you’re up to. I don’t even know whose number that was.” He sounds hurt.

“Yeah, of course. I just didn’t want to waste people’s time if it was nothing. What’s the best way of doing this?” I ask.

“Skype hook-up. Where are you now?”

“On my way home. Give me an hour.”

“Okay. Just be by your computer and I’ll give you a call.”

I’m not sure what to do about Steve, but I suppose they’ll work it out. Ten minutes later I get a text from him: i’ll bring food

Good. I let myself into the flat and open up Ravi’s email. The engineering document is the right one, just as I it. I line it up next to the professor’s document. Yes. There’s a paragraph in each where almost all the text matches, word for word. It’s one of those chunks of business writing that don’t actually say anything. It might sound learned, but it’s waffle. So why is it here?

Possibility one: the professor did this. Couldn’t be bothered writing up his results properly? Thought that nobody would read it anyway?

Possibility two: the professor did write a conclusion, but someone has deleted it and substituted this rubbish.

The only reason they’d do that would be because they didn’t like what he wrote.

There’s an unfamiliar buzzing noise. It’s the first time I’ve had a visitor, and I fumble to let him in.

“Who’s watching your back?” I ask, joking.

“My girlfriend,” Steve says seriously. “We’re going to see a movie after this.”

“Oh! I didn’t realise she was up here with you. What does she do?”

“Engineering at La Trobe. Semester break,” he says, setting out Thai food he’s bought from a place I haven’t heard of while I go backwards and forwards getting bowls and implements from the kitchen.

“Right! What year?”

He gives me a funny look. Of course I know Steve is older than he appears, but he looks so young it’s hard to keep it in mind.

“She’s on the faculty.”

We start eating the food, which is fiery, just the way I like it.

“This is great!” I say. “How do you find the good places so fast?”

He shrugs. “Connections.”

“Where are you staying, anyway?” I ask.

“Not far away.”

He’s not the greatest communicator, Steve.

“Nick’s trying to get hold of you,” he says, suddenly ing.

“Nick! What for?” I ask, surprised.

“Dunno. But Derek won’t give your new number to anyone.”

“People at work can have it. Send him a text.”

Ravi calls me on Skype, and we’re away. Ravi and Luke are lounging in the meeting room at the office, using the wide-angle camera that’s set up there, while Steve and I crowd together in front of my screen so we can have a face-toface meeting.

“I’ve got a rough agenda in mind,” I say. “There are two separate items, and I want to get the newer one out of the way first. Okay?”

“Okay.” They look understandably mystified.

“I don’t know what to make of this. I’m working on an application to construct a coal mine up here, a big new project, and I came upon a section of it – a pretty important section – that I thought was a bit dodgy.”

They start to look uncomfortable. Of course Elly, notorious greenie, would be suspicious of a coal mine.

“I got a strong feeling it was cobbled together from other bits and pieces. It even had a bit that I thought I’d seen before in one of my projects. So I’ve been trying to find that document for the last couple of days . . .”

They’re mystified.

“. . . and today Ravi found it for me. I’m not exaggerating this. It’s the same text, word for word.”

“So what are you saying?” asks Luke.

“It’s like . . . it’s sort of like there’s a bit of the report that’s missing, and someone’s quickly faked this stuff and put it in to fill the gap. I think they’re counting on the fact that no-one reads this stuff properly.”

“Does it matter?” asks Luke.

“I need to think about that and try to figure out what’s going on,” I say. “I just wanted to explain to Ravi why I asked him to find the document, okay?”

“Okay,” they agree.

“Right,” I continue. “So leave that with me, and I’ll see if I can find out any more at this end. Now, the other business. You all know about Ravi’s big breakthrough, finding Peter Talbot’s Flickr photo stream that shows him on top of the mountain.”

“Yeah, go Ravi,” says Luke, and we all applaud. Ravi assumes a modest expression.

“And further, we’ve found that those photos were sent from an iPhone, but there was no data spike on Peter Talbot’s phone?”

Everybody nods.

“Well, I got Ravi to check out another number, and he’s just told me that there’s a data spike on the relevant day coming from that number. The interesting thing is that the phone with the spike belongs to a guy called Brian O’Dwyer, Talbot’s best mate, who was on the bushwalk too. He was the only person in the camp when Talbot set out on his walk.”

“The phones were switched,” says Ravi.

“Looks like it. So we have to ask ourselves how that happened.”

“If they both had iPhones it could have been accidental,” says Luke. “Talbot just picked up the wrong phone.”

“Sure,” I say, “but how did O’Dwyer get his phone back? And if he didn’t, why didn’t he say that Talbot had it when they were trying to triangulate the signals?”

“Awesome,” says Ravi. “Let’s go hunt down Brian O’Dwyer.”

“Not so fast,” I say. “It’s time we handed this over to the police.”

Ravi agrees to put all the electronic evidence together, and I have the unenviable task of calling Lewis and owning up to all the illegal activity that went into obtaining it. It’s also time for me to write my promised report to Derek.

Heady with success, Steve and I toast our victory with mineral water. There’s not much else we can do, because he doesn’t drink at all and I’m not about to get stuck into champagne on my own.

Before he leaves, Steve asks for copies of the strange document that’s bothering me at work and its clone. I put them on his memory stick and give it back to him.

Less than five minutes after Steve’s gone my phone rings.

It’s Nick.

“Elly? Nobody tell me you’re in Sydney.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry Nick. Trying to lie low for a while.”

“Yeah, that’s good, Elly. Listen, I’ve been talking to these people I know in Ukraine. The ones did the work for Carlos. They got me worried.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

In his rich Russian accent, he explains. The Ukrainians have organised themselves into different specialist groups, and the mob that Carlos was dealing with outsourced all the phone stuff, analysing the triangulation data, to a group who do that kind of work. This second group, it seems, are not at all fussy about who they work for, and Nick’s , one Yevgeny, doesn’t have much time for them.

Nick’s been fretting about who was intercepting Carlos’s calls to his pizza provider, since Carlos thought his phone system was secure. Nick asked Yevgeny to find out if these other Ukrainians might have been involved.

“He tells me could be, this is exactly the kind of thing they do,” he says. “He ed they mentioned another client in Australia. So Anna and I scraped up a bit of money and got Yevgeny to give them another little job. All they had to do is just look at some phone numbers and tell him if they’ve seen them before.”

“What, would they do that? What about client confidentiality?”

“These guys are mercenaries, Elly. They’ll do anything.”

“So, what numbers?”

“Well, for a start we gave them Carlos’s number. And bingo, they had it.”

“These people were sitting over there in the Ukraine, intercepting his phone calls? They can do that?”

“You got it, Elly. Curse of the digital age.”

“For a start, you said? Were there other phone numbers?”

“Your number, Elly. They had your old mobile number.”

I can’t breathe. I’m holding the phone to my ear, and I’m paralysed.

“That was good move, Elly, shutting down that phone,” says Nick. “They could have tracked you anywhere.”

I’m shaking now. All that time I was right. Even though that phone is now in pieces, sitting in Derek’s safe, I feel eyes on me.

I struggle to speak, my tongue thick. “They haven’t . . . This phone. They wouldn’t have this number . . . ?”

“No, nobody got that number!”

“Sorry, Nick. But what if they get this number? Can we find out?”

“Sure, Elly. Look, we’re not going to tell them the number, because we can’t trust them. But we do a deal with them. If that particular client gives them a new number to track, they’ll let our friends know. How about that?”

“Will it cost money?”

“Carlos had an with our friends. There’s still some credit.”

“Is there enough in the to get these other guys to tell us who their client is?”

“They wouldn’t go that far. Bad for their business.”

“Couldn’t Yevgeny hack into their server or something?”

“Hey, Elly, they catch you doing that in Ukraine, it’s lights out. No, the important thing is to make sure he finds out if they start tracking you. Okay?”

“Okay. Thanks, Nick.”

Another uneasy night looms. But this phone is pretty secure, with so few people knowing about it. There’s really only Derek, a couple of other work people, and my closest friends. I might have given it to Brett, but he hasn’t put it on any kind of s list where I’m working. I might be getting the impression that something is being fiddled somewhere to get that coal mine through, but I don’t think it’s Brett’s work. That innocence can’t be an act.

Just to be on the safe side, in case I have to get rid of the phone in a hurry, I program all the numbers that matter to me into Luke’s super secret blue phone.

Then I start composing my report for Derek, setting out the whole story the way I now see it. I include a copy of Talbot’s wedding photo, wondering again if one

of those two groomsmen is Brian O’Dwyer. Mai’s description of the Telstra guy could fit either of them, once you add glasses and a cheap grey wig. The shorter one looks a bit more muscular, a man of action. If Brian’s a personal trainer he’d be fit. Someone chased Carlos down, grabbed him from behind, a powerful stroke across his throat.

I can’t think about that anymore.

I put the whole thing aside and get into bed with another of my cheap DVDs. My selection is like a sentimental journey through that period of Miranda’s childhood, holed up with her in a tiny flat, where we would snuggle up together and watch the eight-thirty movie, whatever it was. Eventually someone gave us a cheap VCR player and we acquired a few tapes. We played The Princess Bride until it fell apart. I watch it now, chuckling. “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” Oh, sweet revenge.

30

I’m dreading the call to Lewis, but I’m also looking forward to it. I put it off for a while, then take courage over my first cup of coffee in the back booth of a nice little café I’ve discovered in York Street.

“Lewis,” he says sharply after a couple of rings. My mouth is dry and I can’t speak.

“Who is this?” he asks, quite gently. He probably has informants who need to be handled with care.

“It’s me,” I say. “Elly Cartwright.”

“Hey! The long-lost!” He sounds pleased. “I don’t believe I gave you permission to skip town.”

“Well, you should have arrested me when you had the chance.”

“Stay put and I’ll send out a posse. Where are you?”

“That’s classified. Listen, I’ve got something for you. I asked you to check out Peter Talbot, the guy who disappeared in the mountains?”

“Yeah, sorry, we couldn’t really . . .”

“Don’t worry about that. We think we’ve found out what happened to him.”

“Elly, the police don’t really like it when the general public start trying to do our work for us.”

“Yeah, I’m sure, but listen, there’s a CD coming over to your office this morning with some evidence on it. I want you to get your IT guys to go through it with you. It’s going to show you that the triangulation data the searchers used when they looked for Peter Talbot came from his phone all right, but he didn’t have that phone with him. He had another phone, and he took it with him to the top of this mountain.”

“How would you know that?”

“Well, see, he must have found out pretty soon that he had the wrong phone, but it probably didn’t bother him. So he set it up to process the photos he was taking.”

“Process?”

“Yeah. I saw you with that iPad, so maybe you do something similar. You set it up so that the photos you take get sent on automatically? He was sending his to a

Flickr , his Flickr photo stream, and they’re still there. Lewis, each one of those photos has a bit of data attached to it called a geotag. It shows exactly where and when the picture was taken. You can use the photos to track him all the way.”

“What was that about triangulation?”

“They used triangulation to search for him,” I say patiently. “But they were triangulating his own phone, the wrong one. The two phones went in different directions.”

“How do you know it was him who took the photos?”

“He’s in one of them. Have a look when you get the CD. It’s one of those pictures you take of yourself, holding your phone out and using that turnaround button on your phone, you know?”

“So whose phone was it?”

“It belongs to Peter’s mate, Brian O’Dwyer, the last person to see him alive. They both had iPhones. O’Dwyer could easily have switched them without Talbot noticing.”

“You think he’s implicated?”

“Hell, yes! He must have known Talbot had the wrong phone, and he doesn’t seem to have said anything. Find out what happened afterwards. Did he get his own phone back? If so, how? Do you see what I’m saying?”

“If this Talbot guy stayed on the mountain, how did the pictures get out?”

“The way the technology works, they get transmitted automatically if the phone is within range. The person holding the phone might not even know it was happening.”

“Hmmm.”

“Look, Lewis, if Talbot’s dead, they looked in the wrong place for his body. It could be up near the summit. That’s where he took the last picture.”

“You can call me Mike, you know.”

“Just look at the material, okay? Carlos found out about this.

We’ve been retracing his steps.”

“Why didn’t he do something with it?”

“I think he’d only just got onto it. He was still checking it out, figuring out what it meant. And there’s more. Talbot was into something dodgy, something that was earning him a lot of money on the side. That’s why Carlos was interested in him.”

“What sort of something dodgy?”

“Well, again, we don’t know. But there’s this shady bank, and when we looked at their records . . .”

“Elly, Elly . . .” The message gets through, and I shut up. “I didn’t hear that, okay? Let’s just stick with the mountain and the phones for now.”

“Okay, but can you look for his body?”

“If there’s enough there for a new search, sure. I can’t promise anything, but we’ll have a look at this CD. Okay?”

“Okay, good.”

“All right. But I’ll need your number. You’ve got it blocked.”

“Oh, sure.”

I give him my number and that’s it. Friday morning. Will they take notice of this? Will they look today? I can’t bear the thought of going through the weekend with this whole question hanging. What if O’Dwyer finds out we’re onto him? If we’re right, he must have found out before, and I still can’t imagine how.

Steve calls me as I’m heading back to work.

“Do people work late at your office?”

“I doubt it,” I say. “The place is deserted at the best of times.”

“Good. I need you to work back tonight, and let me in when everyone’s gone.”

“Steve! I can’t do that!”

“Yeah, you can. I want to take a look at a few computers there, see what’s what with this funny document of yours.”

I dread to think what would happen if we get caught, me with a false identity and all. But it will certainly take our minds off the agonising wait for news about the Talbot affair, and I’m beginning to realise that there’s something immovable about Steve when he gets an idea in his head.

“Okay,” I say, resigned. “Let’s talk at lunchtime.”

We work out the details over the phone while we’re eating a Vietnamese lunch, sitting at opposite ends of a little food court near Woolworths. Steve suggests the place with an SMS as I’m leaving the office, and I stand behind him at the counter, then order the dish he’s having. I’ll be going back there again.

I on what Nick told me about the Ukrainians. Steve is fascinated, and wants technical details about exactly how it’s done.

“I don’t know that!” I say. “Talk to Nick.”

Afterwards, I take a long walk around and through Hyde Park. There’s no more rain but the weather’s turned cold, and it’s like a Melbourne winter’s day. The difference here, though, is that the freeze doesn’t seem to last.

When I get back, I recheck the figures that lead up to the professor’s bogus conclusions. I’ve been in two minds about whether to him, but now I’m looking for an excuse to make an innocent query about this earlier section, steering clear of the other bit. It takes a while, but eventually I find something: two sets of figures from different sinkholes that are identical. Could someone have accidentally entered the same figures in two different places? It’s been done before.

I’ve been given a s list with phone numbers for all the contributors, and I try the professor’s mobile first. It gives a long beep, and I get a recorded

message informing me that the number is no longer in use.

That’s annoying. I look at the date on the s list. Okay, it’s six months old. And the report is nearly a year old. These things do take time. People do change their mobile numbers.

Next, I try the landline number next to the professor’s name. All indications are it’s the university department where he works. You never know where these professors are in real space, with secondments, sabbaticals and all the perks they get.

After a lot of rings a tired female voice answers, and I ask to speak to Professor Bartholomew.

“What’s this concerning?” she asks, a little more sharply.

“It’s about a report he wrote,” I say. “It’s included in a study that I’m editing. I have some questions.”

“Could I have the full title of the report, please?”

I read it out to her.

“Date?”

I oblige. I can hear the tap-tap of computer keys. There’s a pause.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “There’s no-one here who can help you with that.”

“Can’t I speak to the professor?”

“Professor Bartholomew is on extended leave.”

“Well, is he at another university? Do you know how I can get hold of him?”

“That’s extended sick leave, Ms . . . ?”

“Ca . . . Elliott, Jane Elliott.”

“Professor Bartholomew is seriously ill, Ms Elliott. I’m afraid there’s extensive brain damage. He’s not expected to make a full recovery.”

“Oh, I’m really sorry. I had no idea. Was it . . . Is he . . . Was it a stroke?”

Her voice is a little softer now:

“It was a car accident. Several months ago. I’m sorry, but I can’t give you any more details.”

“Of course, thank you for telling me. I’m sorry to have troubled you.”

I put the phone down and stare at it, not focusing. Then I start searching through news archives. But there are car accidents all the time, and they rarely give the names of the victims. It doesn’t look like Professor Bartholomew was important enough to get a news story of his own. There was something on the New England Highway in January, where the male driver had to be cut from the wreckage and was in a critical condition with head injuries, but then there was another male driver a week later, thrown from a car on the Pacific Highway just north of Newcastle. Either of those could have been him, and that’s just assuming it happened somewhere near the scene of the crime, so to speak.

There’s something spooky about this. Either Professor Bartholemew wrote that odd section of his report in a deliberately obfuscating way, for reasons I can’t guess at; or someone else substituted that junk for whatever he wrote – something detrimental to the project? Something concluding that the promised technology wasn’t going to work?

And now Professor Bartholemew is conveniently off the scene.

As I’d expected, people start leaving early, and the office is pretty much deserted by five o’clock except for one of two IT contractors, who are probably trying to keep their hours up. Brett looks in on his way out.

“Working hard, Jane?”

“Yes, I’m staying back tonight until I’ve finished this section. Gotta stick to that deadline.”

“That’s great. The sooner you get through it the happier we’ll all be. See you on Monday, then.”

At six-thirty on the dot the last contractor goes past my office to the lift. I stand up, stretch and follow him out. My idea was to get something to eat, but everything seems to be closed, so I just call Steve as arranged and he follows me back to the building. He’s wearing a puffy jacket and a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. As I let myself in he comes up behind me, pretending to fumble for his security card. The door swings slowly shut and he grabs it just in time and slips in. We ride up in the lift, not looking at each other.

There are no security cameras on our floor, so I take him through and show him Helena’s office.

“What about this other guy, the one you had lunch with?” he says.

“Brett? He seems pretty harmless.”

“Better check him out too.”

“Okay,” I say. “Whatever you think.”

He plugs memory sticks into both computers and sets to work, running from one to the other. The s don’t seem to hold him up for long. I retreat to my office, where I can set up the appearance of working and keep an eye on the lifts, just in case.

To the time, I pull my report to Derek off the cloud and try to get it finished. He’ll be pleased to hear that we’ve figured it all out and decided to hand the investigation over to the police. I can’t tell him everything the guys have been doing, so I’m carefully implying that all the things we’ve discovered were in the files on that CD. I don’t mention the I’ve had with Steve, either. Derek would be appalled at the notion of Steve as my self-appointed bodyguard.

I get so absorbed in the report that it takes me a second to realise that I’ve just heard a “ding” from the lift lobby.

I grab my phone and press the Last Call button.

“Someone’s coming,” I hiss.

I move as casually as I can to the door of my office, in time to see Brett stepping out of the lift. My heart stops.

“Hello!” I say. “I thought you’d gone.”

“I’ve just been for a few drinks with some mates,” he says. I can smell it on him. “And I ed I bought a jacket today, forgot to take it with me.” He gestures towards the open office at the end of the corridor, where he has his desk.

“Oh!” I laugh. “I’m always doing that. Is it for a special occasion?” I add, backing into my office as I talk so he’s forced to move with me.

“Well, never know. Might wear it over the weekend.”

“Oh, right. Got something nice planned?” I’m not going to be able to hold him any longer.

“Nothing special.” He inclines his head. “Better grab it and get going.”

Now there’s someone coming along the corridor: a slight figure in a blue and yellow raincoat, walking quickly with his head down.

“Oh, there goes See-yu,” says Brett. “See you, See-yu.” He giggles.

The figure gives a little wave without turning his head and es on towards the lifts. I think I might breathe again sometime soon. Brett walks carefully down the corridor to his desk.

Much later, after I get home, I call Steve.

“That was a stroke of luck, the raincoat.”

“I know. It was just hanging there on a hook. I’ve seen an Asian guy coming in and out of your office, wearing it. Thought I might get away with that.”

“Yeah, I’ll have to get it back to him somehow. Drop it off to me when you bring Miranda, and I’ll go in extra early on Monday.”

“Sure.”

“Did you get much?”

“Enough. It’ll take me a while to go through it.”

“Steve, I haven’t had a chance to tell you, but the author of that document, that Professor Bartholomew, was in a car accident a few months ago, and he’s got irreversible brain damage. That seems a bit sinister to me. It’d be good if you could find out more about it.”

“News archives?”

“I tried that, but no luck. I thought there might be some police records.”

“That’s a big ask, Elly. What happened to NO HACKING, all in caps?”

“Of course, you’re right. God knows what would happen if you get caught.”

“Elly, I won’t get caught.”

“Okay. Be careful. Oh, I suppose I don’t have to tell you that.”

“That’s right. You don’t.”

I hang up, smiling, and get into bed for a big dose of Wolf Hall. I think I’ve earned a reward for this week’s work, and I have a feeling my troubles are nearly over.

All in all, even though there’s a bit more work to be done, I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself.

The Greeks call that hubris.

31

I’m enjoying a late lunch on Saturday, papers strewn everywhere, after stocking up with good things from the Marrickville Market, when my phone trills.

“Mum? It’s me.”

“Ah, good. Look, we need to be really careful when you come up here, so I’m going to give you some instructions, and you have to follow them precisely. Are you with me?”

“I guess so.”

“We’re not going to be safe until all this is over, love. It won’t be too long now.”

“Is it . . . Mum, would I be able to get some stuff from the house? I’d only be there a minute.”

“Absolutely not! Don’t you go anywhere near the house!”

“Well, what if I got a friend to . . .”

“No, Miranda. If anyone goes to the house they could be followed, and that could lead someone back to you, and then to me. Now, when you get off the plane, this is what you’re going to do . . .”

She’s unusually meek and obedient, and I think I’ve finally got through to her regarding the danger we’re in. The thought of her going to the house gives me palpitations, and I hope I’ve got that through to her.

I go back to the Saturday papers. The real estate section confirms what Brett told me about prices, and there’s a gossipy page about who’s buying and who’s selling in the smarter suburbs. One Helena Banfield, described as the “go-getter CEO of energy consultancy Graphite Holdings” is buying a million-dollar flat in a beautiful warehouse conversion in Woollahra. Energy consultancy? This could well be the Helena Banfield I’m working for. It fits in with the designer clothes and the general impression of an ambitious woman.

Restless, I decide I have to get out and about. To be fair to Steve and his girlfriend, I start a debate via SMS about where we might go. I also warn Steve that I’m going to be wearing a blue headscarf and dark glasses: you can’t be too careful.

As a result, although I never actually catch sight of them, they accompany me on a ferry ride to Cockatoo Island, where we take in an avant garde installation of video art, a quick visit to the Art Gallery, which is about to close, and a surprisingly good blockbuster action movie in the expensive seats at the Entertainment Quarter. After that I manage to find a bus back to Newtown, where I’m not the only enger still wearing dark glasses after sundown. I send Steve a last message:

You can do what you like now. I’m not going to stir again.

On Sunday morning Miranda arrives at my apartment in a state of high excitement. She has dressed for the occasion in a trench-coat newly acquired from Savers, our favourite second-hand clothes shop, and a red beret. Like my workmates, she’s finding this great fun.

Later, she tells me all about her cloak-and-dagger journey from the airport. She followed my instructions to the letter, catching the airport train and sending a text to the number I gave her. “Second carriage from back”, it read. Then she snapped a picture of herself and sent that to the same number.

“When we stopped at Circular Quay,” she tells me, “this Asian kid got on and sat next to me. Honestly, Mum, I never thought he’d be the connection! I was looking round for someone like, you know, Johnny Depp. Then he whispered in my ear, like, ‘Do what I do. Stay a few metres behind.’ ”

They get off the train at Town Hall, switch to another platform and take the next train. He says: “Get off at Newtown and turn left,” then disappears. She doesn’t see him again until she’s wandering, uncertain, along King Street. He walks briskly towards her from the opposite direction, now wearing a blue and yellow raincoat with the hood up. As they’re about to come face-to-face he turns into a narrow side street. She hesitates.

“Come on,” he whispers.

They arrive at my place together. Miranda shrieks when she sees me, and I grab her for a hug and then introduce them properly. I don’t usually mix my work and private lives, and Derek is the only person from work Miranda’s met before.

Miranda exclaims about my clothes and hair as Steve watches on nonplussed.

“She’s not used to me looking like this,” I explain to him.

“I love it!” she says. “It makes you look so much younger. It’s a bit freaky. But if you’re going to go that way you should have the hair even shorter, and – you know – really, really blonde. Like Annie Lennox.”

“I don’t think so!” I say, putting the kettle on. “I’m growing it back as soon as I can. I want to be me again.”

Once we’re all sipping tea I ask Steve, “Did you get much on Friday night?”

“Yes.”

“Any ideas?” I prompt.

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“Too soon yet,” he says with a shrug, and I know I’m not going to get any more out of him.

Miranda looks from one of us to the other.

“Do you mind telling me what you’re talking about?” she inquires.

“Don’t you worry,” I say. “You’ve come here for a holiday. I promise I’ll tell you the whole story when it’s over.”

Steve finishes his tea and rinses the cup. “Enjoy Sydney, Miranda.”

“I will. Thanks for the escort.” She gives him her brightest smile, and he’s gone.

“So, do you want to hit the streets?” I ask Miranda.

We prepare to go out for coffee, and Miranda insists on refining my disguise. To my consternation she’s brought a couple of wigs that belong to a friend. I think they look awfully fake, but once I’m wearing the long chestnut one with her trench coat and beret it doesn’t look too bad. She completes the effect with some bright red lipstick, which makes my whole face look startlingly different.

Coffee stretches to lunch, then Miranda wants to stroll up and down, windowshopping. There are tempting winter sales on everywhere. I go along with her,

feeling absurdly safe behind the über-chic veneer that’s so unlike me. Miranda is appalled to find that I won’t use my credit card, and I’m careful not to let her know that I’ve still got a substantial amount of cash. She does coax me into trying on a clingy knitted dress in a beautiful cobalt blue.

“Mum, if you don’t buy that dress I’m never going to speak to you again,” she declares. Amazed at how good it looks, I buy the dress and squeeze out the money for some boots Miranda’s fallen in love with; which of course was part of her strategy.

All afternoon Miranda keeps me laughing with stories about Augusta Creek, the kids at the school, the other teachers and the inhabitants of the town.

“What happened to Gareth?” I ask. “You didn’t mention him after the first day.”

“Oh yeah, Gareth,” she smiles. “He wasn’t bad looking, and the kids loved him. Course, he’s got a bit to learn about discipline. He’s not as tough as me.”

“It’s all that bar work,” I say, hanging on every syllable.

“I suppose you had me teamed up with him?” she says.

“Course not!”

“Mum, he’s engaged.”

“Drat!” I give her a shove. “You’re not looking hard enough.”

We giggle like schoolgirls, tottering along the footpath.

“I can picture you at work now,” she says, as we make our way back towards my flat. “Are there many guys like Steve?”

“In what sense like him?”

“You know, running round doing your bidding?”

“Doing my bidding? I don’t tell him what to do. We work together.”

“Oh, I thought you were his boss. It must be just your bossy manner.”

“What! Who are you talking about? I’m the least bossy person I know.”

“Yeah, right!” She’s laughing. “You’re a total control freak.”

“So I suppose I should have let you run across the road when you were little, just to show I was a nice laid-back hippie mum like your Grandma?”

“Grandma was cool,” she says. “Wouldn’t she have loved this?” She waves her hand around. We’re just ing a tiny triangular park with a miniature bandstand, where a folksy band is playing with more enthusiasm than skill. I think one of those instruments is a sitar. An unshaven man wearing a dress is swaying to the music, his eyes shut, oblivious to his surroundings. There are girls walking by in Indian dresses with tinkling bells, wafting incense. A couple of young families with strollers and dogs have stopped to listen. Two men in their sixties with long grey hair, one sporting a beard and a woven headband, are locked in an earnest discussion, waving their hands around. The sun is low in the sky, and a rich golden light slants across the scene.

We stroll back with our arms around each other. After another cup of tea she gets her bags and I take her to the station and put her on the train with far too many instructions.

“It’s okay, Mum, I know how to get there,” she says patiently.

“Okay, give my love to Sarah and don’t stay out too late at night.”

“Mum!”

When our children were young, Diana and I agreed that if one of us died, the other would take responsibility for her children. We put it in our wills. It was the only option that made sense, and Miranda and Harry were like brother and sister anyway. As for Chloe – in those dark days when she first disappeared I felt it

very keenly, being a kind of standby parent, and I know I’ll never be entirely free of her.

But now our kids are all over twenty-one, and theoretically they’re on their own. As the train carries Miranda into the night and the bond that holds us together stretches thin, the fear that stalked me in Melbourne returns for a moment, and I look around uneasily for CCTV cameras. At least she’s out of it.

32

Monday promises to be a long day, especially as I go in early to return the raincoat. As I had predicted, the office is empty at eight o’clock in the morning.

I work doggedly on the environmental impact sections of the application, going through long lists of plants and checking the spelling of botanical names. Whenever I get to a descriptive bit I ponder it, looking for anything odd, but everything I find seems to be above board.

My phone is stubbornly silent. I keep checking news sites on the net, just in case.

At ten-thirty I go out for a coffee. On the way back my phone vibrates. It’s an SMS from Steve: Have you seen news The lift takes an eternity. My screen has locked and it takes a couple of goes to get my right. At last, I see the headline:

“Human remains found in Yarra Ranges National Park”

It’s a brand new story and there are hardly any details yet, but at least it says the “remains” – I hate that word – were found by searchers, not by bushwalkers, or accidentally in some other way. So Lewis did send someone up there to look, I muse, breathless with excitement. I start pointlessly trawling through every news site on the net, but of course they all have exactly the same story, with exactly the same lack of detail.

I send an SMS to Steve:

It’s got to be him. Can’t wait for more info.

But wait we must. As the day wears on the story gradually takes shape. The gender of the body is not known. Speculation grows about the hiker missing since late last year. Talbot is named eventually and the story of his disappearance is rehashed. The police refuse to confirm or deny anything, nor is there anything specific about where the body was found. But I know it’s Talbot and I feel a weight starting to lift off me.

At lunchtime Steve and I buy sandwiches and adjourn to Hyde Park for lunch. I find a nice spot in semi-shade on the grass with my back to a tree, while he prefers to sit on a park bench about thirty metres away. We talk on the phone while we eat.

“What about your James Bond mission?” I ask. “What did you find out?”

“I think Brett’s clean,” he says. “But I don’t know about Helena.”

“Why? What did you find?”

“She doesn’t keep many files on that machine. She’s careful. But I think she’s working for that consortium.”

“That wouldn’t surprise me.”

“I’m gonna tap her email.”

“Oh God, Steve, you can’t do that!”

“Only way to find out what she’s up to.”

“Did you find out anything about the professor’s accident?”

“Yeah,” he says. “It was on the F2, the main freeway north, in the first week of February. Lost control of the car, went over the edge. There are places where there’s quite a drop, but some trees broke his fall, and he survived.”

“Nasty, though.”

“Alcohol involved.”

“Was he alone in the car?”

“Apparently.”

“What did you say the date was?”

“February sixth or seventh, I think.”

“He signed off the document on the fourth,” I say.

“Fishy.”

“What it looks like,” I muse, “is that he wrote something different, something they didn’t like, and signed it off. So then he had his accident, and it left them free to substitute this other stuff before everything got reviewed and finalised.”

“‘Them’ being?” he asks.

“Don’t know. Somehow, I think it’s not Brett, but I’m not so sure about Helena.”

“You think she wrote the dodgy bit?”

“Possibly, but it’s like – it’s quite cleverly done, like it was done by a professional writer.”

“Like you?”

“Exactly,” I say. “I’m ashamed to tell you this, but I got manoeuvred into creating a fake document once. The company I was working for was financed by an R & D grant, and they hadn’t done the research. Then someone found out they were getting a flying visit from the auditors, like, the next day.”

“Tricky.”

“Yes, so I had to put together this fifty-page research paper. I just got a list of the vocabulary that would be in it and pulled stuff off the net, more or less at random. I made sure each paragraph started well, peppered it with the right words and formatted it beautifully.”

“They bought it?”

“Sure did. The auditor flipped through it, nodding, and gave it a big tick. I’m positive he didn’t read a word.”

“And you reckon this is the same sort of thing?”

“Yeah. There are probably people who do that all the time. I’d imagine it pays pretty well.”

“It figures. And the document you’d seen before could have popped up if you were searching on something like ‘white paper engineering’.”

“Exactly. Stuff like that lives on the net forever, like garbage in space.”

In a way I’m glad I’ve got this little puzzle to keep my mind occupied. I’m starting to think about going home, back to dear old Melbourne with the trams and the drizzle and the possums in Royal Parade when I walk home from work. I’m missing my little house and my neighbours, even Alf, the bigoted old bastard. I wish Lewis would call me. The police are so bloody careful. It’ll take them weeks to officially identify that body, but they must know who it is by now. There must be stuff – clothing, stuff in his pockets. Would he have O’Dwyer’s phone? I wonder what happened to that.

That night, Steve sends me a cryptic SMS:

She talks money with someone called danielg. Big sums. Ever heard of him?

I reply: No. What else have you got?

But there’s no response. I shouldn’t be surprised. Steve only communicates when he’s got something worth saying.

33

Tuesday offers a cloudless sky and a forecast of twenty degrees. I decide to wear my new blue dress while I’ve got the chance, and bounce into the office.

In contrast, Brett’s looking miserable. Another promised visit from Helena has come to nothing.

“I got these concert tickets for tonight,” he says, disconsolately. “I’ve been telling Helena about it for weeks. She was pretty excited.”

“And?”

“She told me she loves the ACO, but she’s found out Richard won’t be playing, and now she’s suddenly got too much work on. I should have checked.”

He looks abject. There must have been some cutting words.

“She only goes because he’s so sexy. I don’t think it’s the music at all.”

I don’t know what to say. I don’t really know what he’s talking about.

“So do you want to come? It starts at eight o’clock.”

I nod weakly and he brightens a little and shows me on Google Maps where to meet.

At about ten my phone vibrates with a message. I glance down and see that it’s from Lewis.

Where can you get a decent cup of coffee in Sydney?

What’s he up to? I message back the location of my café in York Street. The reply comes swiftly.

Ten minutes?

OK I type back. I consider just slipping out before thinking better of it and sending a quick SMS to Steve.

Lewis is at the café before me, sitting with his back to the wall as usual, talking on his phone. He looks up when I come in and pretends to nearly drop the phone as he takes in my new hairstyle and the gorgeous blue dress.

I grin, then betray myself by blushing.

“Hey!” he says.

I sit down opposite and deal with an over-efficient waiter. Once we’re alone, I demand an explanation.

“Well, looks like you might be on to something with this O’Dwyer character. Looks like he might be able to help us with our enquiries, so to speak.”

“Aha!”

“We’ve tracked him down in Sydney, and I’ve wangled the trip up to be there when they collar him.”

“That’s great! What evidence did you find, with the body?”

“I’m not allowed to tell you that, Elly! Cause of death unknown, etcetera.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Okay, but this doesn’t go any further. Looks like blows to the head with a rock. And the body had been hidden. It couldn’t have got to where they found it without someone putting it there.”

“Right.” I feel a chill at the thought. “Near the summit?”

“Yeah, just a little way down the other side. There isn’t a track, but it’s not too hard to get down there.”

“Any phone with the body?”

“No.”

“So what happens now?”

“Well, O’Dwyer’s living in a flat in Elizabeth Bay. He doesn’t seem to have a job, but some of those fitness trainer types just work cash in hand, so maybe we’ll him on to the taxman when we’re through with him. Anyway, the local cops will bring him in and we’ll put the hard word on him, see what he’s got to say about this phone business.”

“That’s great, great.” I hope there’s someone to play bad cop.

“We’re a bit mystified about the motive,” says Lewis. “No hint he’d been playing up with the wife, or anything like that.”

“Hmm,” I say. “It could be money, but I can’t talk to you about people’s bank s, right?”

“Right,” he nods emphatically.

“But you could check to see if O’Dwyer’s got more than he should have, can’t you?”

“Yeah, we can do that.”

The waiter brings coffee and we drink it.

“Anyway, how’d you know I was here?” I ask.

“Hey, give me some credit. I’m a detective!” He’s looking pretty happy. “This coffee isn’t bad. Nearly up to Melbourne standards.”

“Nearly,” I agree.

He walks back towards the office with me, but after a couple of blocks I touch his arm.

“I’m still taking precautions,” I say. “I think we’d better separate here.”

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll call you later, let you know how it went.”

I go down the steps of the Queen Victoria Building and take a circuitous route underground, past Town Hall Station and around the block, finally approaching the office building from the opposite direction. I don’t look round, but I know Steve’s nearby and he’ll see if anyone’s behind me.

I send an email to Steve, Luke and Ravi:

I’ve just talked to Lewis, the cop. It’s definitely Talbot’s body they’ve found and, off the record, it is murder and O’Dwyer is chief suspect! They’re about to pick him up for questioning.

Another long and frustrating wait follows. I get congratulatory messages from Luke and Ravi, but nothing from Steve. I’m going to have to make a decision soon about this dodgy document, and I still don’t know who I should talk to about it. Not Helena clearly.

At about five-thirty I get another SMS from Lewis:

Leaving work soon?

The idea of sticking around until it’s time for the concert has crossed my mind, but any excuse to get out is good enough for me, so I reply: Right now. See you

in McDonald’s, corner Park and Pitt.

I gather up my things, put my coat and scarf on and go down into the gathering darkness. He’s hovering just inside the door of Macca’s, lost in the hungry throng.

“Is this where you eat?” he enquires.

“Hardly,” I say. “Just looking for some protective cover.”

“You’re getting good at this,” he says approvingly.

“Hope so. What’s happening?”

“Not a lot. Turns out they can’t lay hands on our friend until tomorrow. He’s flying back from Bali overnight.” He makes it sound like a crime.

“Bali?”

“Yeah. He seems to have some sort of part-time gig over there, training rich Americans at some health spa,” he says, sounding disgusted. I can’t help laughing.

“They should have sent you over there to nab him. You could have had a bit of therapeutical massage on the side.”

“Yeah, right. Well, I suppose I’d better let you get home.”

So! Poor Lewis is at a loose end in Sydney – nobody to have a drink with.

“Actually, I’m going to a concert, but I’ve got a couple of hours to kill. I thought I might grab a bite to eat somewhere. Would you like to come along?”

He looks doubtful. He was probably thinking more of a drink in one of those pubs near Central, the older ones that still look like public lavatories. I bet that’s where cops go.

“Don’t worry, Lewis. Your virtue is safe with me.”

“I dunno. If you’re still wearing that blue dress . . .”

I spoil the moment by blushing again.

“Come on,” I say. “I don’t know anywhere decent in the city, but we can get a bus to Glebe.”

“Forget buses. I do get some perks,” he says leading me to an unmarked police car parked up against a Clearway sign. I shake my head in disbelief.

I know Steve’s resourceful, but I don’t think he should have to leap into a cab to follow us out of the city, so I send him a quick SMS:

Should be safe with Lewis until 8. Will be at concert at Angel Place. Hope you managed to get ticket.

In the meantime, I hope he appreciates a bit of free time. It can’t be that much fun trailing around after me.

We go to a nice café I know in Glebe Point Road. It has good food and it’s popular, but there’s a whole string of back rooms that are relatively quiet. We order food and drinks. For the first time since my night with Diana I indulge in alcohol, but it’s only a light beer. Any more and I’d disgrace myself by falling asleep during the concert.

Lewis turns out to be good company. There’s an unspoken agreement that we won’t talk about the case that’s brought us together, and I’m glad to forget it for a while. I tell him briefly what I’m doing in Sydney, but keep my misgivings about the job to myself.

“What about your daughter?” he asks. “Is she still in Augusta Creek?”

“No, that’s finished. She’s up here for a few days, staying with her cousin in the

Cross.”

“Getting up to mischief?”

“You bet.”

“It’s funny to be more worried about your girl when she’s in Augusta Creek than when she’s in Kings Cross.”

“Well, her cousin Sarah has worked her way through university, and a couple of years of a PhD, doing bar work in Oxford Street and Kings Cross,” I say. “I reckon she knows every bouncer in that part of the world, and they know her. Everywhere those two girls go they’ve got big blokes in dark glasses out in the street, watching out for them.”

“It’s something, I guess.”

“Yeah. I’d rather she was in a nunnery, though.”

I’m very conscious of the issue of his son, his damaged child, but I don’t want to take that next step towards intimacy.

“So are you from Melbourne originally?” he asks.

“I was born there, but I grew up in the bush,” I tell him. “We lived in Castlemaine, but my parents had some land just out of town, at a place called Canton Creek, and that’s where we spent all our free time.”

“Gold country?”

“Absolutely. There were old mine shafts everywhere. Great place for kids to play.”

“Mine shafts?”

“Yes, some of them were really deep,” I say. “Scary. There was one area where we were absolutely forbidden to go. We used to dare each other to run through it.”

“Yeah, I like the bush,” he says. “Grew up in the inner city, myself. Never really got away from it. We lived in Collingwood when I was a kid.”

“So you’re a Magpies er?” Now we’re on familiar ground.

“No, though I’ve got a soft spot for the old Pies. You’ll never guess who I barrack for.”

“Hmmm. Richmond?”

“Nope.”

I voice my worst fear: “Hawthorn?”

“Do me a favour!”

“Well, we could be here all night,” I complain.

“Okay. Cheer, cheer the red and the white.”

“The Swans! They’re not even a Victorian team!”

“They were when I was a kid. They were when my Grandad played for them, when they were South Melbourne.”

“Wow, I didn’t realise I was out with the aristocracy.”

“He only got a couple of games with the seniors, but that’s my family’s claim to fame.”

“Well, it’s something to brag about with your kid.” There, I’ve said it now. “I mean, I suppose you don’t . . . I mean you . . .”

There’s a silence. He looks at me enquiringly, and I feel about as big as a snail.

“I’ve seen you around Brunswick with your family,” I say. “I didn’t recognise you at first.”

“I do brag about it,” he says. “My Grandad. With Toby. See, the only way I can play it is to treat him like a normal kid. I know he doesn’t act normal, and he can’t help that. He’s kinda trapped in a world he doesn’t understand. But somewhere in there there’s just a scared little kid.”

“Yes, of course.” I keep my eyes down. “Yes, I think that’s what I’d do, too.”

“He’s a good kid, when he can manage it.”

There are a million things I could say, and there’s nothing I can say. I could reach over and touch his hand, but I won’t.

He’s the one who changes the subject.

“So, are your parents still in the bush?”

“No, they’re both dead, but I’ve still got the land. Well, a share in the land. It was a sort of commune. I’ve got a funny old shack that they built, but one of these days I’m going to build a proper sustainable house and move up there, get out of the rat race.”

“Sounds good. What’ll you do there, contemplate the meaning of life?”

“Something like that,” I say. “Read books. Invite friends to stay. Commune with nature.”

“I used to go up that way a bit in my early days on the force. I was in the drug squad for a while and there were a fair few people in those parts communing with nature one way or another. They don’t grow much stuff in natural conditions these days – it’s all under lights in attics in the suburbs.”

“I know. I’ve never really been into all that,” I say. “My parents smoked a lot of cigarettes and the other stuff – naturally grown, and it was pretty strong. Dad died of heart disease and Mum had a pretty awful lung cancer, and they were both only in their sixties. So I decided none of that was for me.”

It’s time to make a move because I’ve arranged to meet Brett at a quarter to eight. I get up and put my coat on.

“No more blue dress,” he says.

“Now, now,” I say sternly.

“That colour,” he says. “It’s what those old masters were all after, isn’t it? The ones you see in Italy, like Titian?”

“You don’t mean to tell me you’ve been to Italy looking at art?”

“Only on TV,” he says, taking my arm to steer me between the crowded tables. I find this a bit distracting. “What, are you into art too?”

“Just a bit,” I it. “I’m kind of obsessed with Vermeer.”

“Ah, yes.” We’re out in the street now. “That is a sort of Vermeer blue, isn’t it? Like in that book, Girl in Hyacinth Blue.”

“Now you have surprised me,” I say. “I loved that book.”

“Yeah, it was good.” He grins at me. “Policemen can read, you know.”

We get into the car.

“Something tells me you weren’t always a policeman,” I say. “Did you start life as something else?”

“You got me there, Detective Elly,” he says, doing a perilous U-turn in a narrow street.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“What did you start life as?”

“That would be a builder’s labourer, as I recall.” He’s enjoying this. “Hey, when you build your sustainable house I could come up and help you.”

He drives so fast into the city I’m scared to distract him by asking any more questions. I press back against the seat, more poetry running through my head.

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the age which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose garden.

Jane Eyre never had this problem. Neither did Mary Anne Evans, for that matter.

Lewis drops me off in George Street at the end of Martin Place. I watch him go, smiling. Who would have picked Lewis as a reader? Or that he’d even know who Vermeer was? At least this dinner will give me something to .

You gave me hyacinths a year ago; they called me the hyacinth girl.

Eventually I find the entrance to the City Recital Hall. Brett is hovering anxiously, easily spotted over the heads of the audience mingling in the foyer, most of whom are shrunken with age. He has a glass of wine in his hand and his eyes are darting everywhere, looking for people to greet. If Helena comes to these things to see the mysterious Richard, I think Brett may have some sort of networking motivation. I wave to him and we make small talk before the bells start ringing to go in.

The concert is a revelation. The orchestra, mostly strings, is led by a small Russian woman in bare feet, who plays the violin as though her life depended on it. The others follow her on a journey that starts deceptively quietly, then builds in dizzying waves of energy until they’re all sawing away in unison, filling the hall with glorious sound. They play pieces by composers I’ve never heard of, and do things with their instruments that I didn’t know you were allowed to do. They sing and stamp. Whoever Richard is, I don’t see how he could be as sexy as the dark-haired viola player with the mohawk.

We go out at interval because Brett wants another drink, or maybe because he

wants to do some more schmoozing. While he’s fighting his way to the bar, I spot a familiar face across the crowded foyer. This was always going to be a hazard. I turn my back quickly, but she’s onto me.

“Elly! Is it really you?”

It’s bloody Judith Masters, one of my tormenters from school. She wouldn’t give me the time of day back then, what’s she doing fawning over me now?

“You look great, Elly! Love the hair. I’ve had to cover up a bit of grey, too. Not fair at our age, is it?”

She’s gone for the shade of platinum the hairdresser wanted to use on me. It doesn’t look good with her florid complexion.

“You look great too, Jude,” I say in my sincerest voice, noting with some satisfaction that she’s put on a lot of weight. “What are you up to these days?”

“Oh, I’ve got a little gallery in Double Bay. More of a hobby, really. What about you?”

“I’m in computers,” I say, and watch her eyes glaze over. “Something terribly technical.”

“You were always so clever,” she says, looking around. “Angela,” she calls, spotting someone more important. “Must dash, Elly darling. We should catch up. I’m on Facebook.” And she’s gone.

Brett has reappeared.

“Wasn’t that Judith Frampton?” he asks, impressed. “Russell Frampton’s wife? Is she a friend of yours?”

“Oh, just someone I went to school with,” I mutter, cursing inwardly.

“She called you Elly.”

“It’s a nickname. Sort of a school custom. From Elliott,” I explain.

“Oh, I see.” He nods, thinking it out. “What was her surname?”

“Bullen.”

“Right. So her nickname was . . .”

“No, Brett. Sorry. I made that up.”

Mercifully, he spots someone he knows and his attention is distracted.

“Daniel!” he says. “Hi!”

“Oh, hi!” says a stocky man, fiftyish, bald head with a fringe of dyed black hair. “Where’s Helena? I was hoping to see her.”

“Pressure of work. We’re getting very close on a major project, and she’s just everywhere at once. The music’s fabulous, isn’t it?”

“Yes, quite memorable. I don’t know who else could get away with doing a Magnificat without voices.”

“Quite, quite.” Brett nods sagely. “Oh, Daniel, this is Jane Elliott. She’s up from Melbourne to do some work with us. Jane, this is Daniel Gleisman.”

We shake hands and murmur pleasantries until the bells start ringing again.

“Well, give Helena my best,” says Daniel as he starts to drift away. “Enjoy the rest of the concert, Jane.”

“Friend of Helena’s?” I ask, as we make our way back to our seats.

“Actually, he’s her ant,” whispers Brett. “I’ve got a few small investments of my own and I’ve been thinking of getting him to do some stuff for me. Helena says . . .”

But the lights have gone down and there are disapproving mutters around us, so he takes the hint and shuts up.

The second half of the concert is just as exciting, and my thoughts don’t return to Daniel Gleisman until Brett has disappeared down George Street in a taxi and I’m making my way into Wynyard Station. He’s bound to be the danielg Helena has been exchanging emails with, but there’s something else about that name that’s niggling at my memory, and I’m mentally sifting through all the lists I’ve come across in the last few weeks, trying to where I’ve seen it.

I don’t have an answer by the time I get home, but I send a quick SMS to Steve:

danielg probably Helena’s ant Daniel Gleisman. He was at the concert.

Then I go to bed, hoping that sleep will work its magic and the memory I’m looking for will rise to the surface.

34

When your computer’s been on for too long it gets sluggish and starts running slowly. It’s because some of the tasks that you start and stop in the course of the day don’t finish cleanly, leaving little bits of unnecessary activity that run around pointlessly taking up resources. We call that memory leak. The only way to fix it is to reboot, getting rid of the unwanted processes.

The human brain is a bit like that, or at least mine is. By the end of the day it’s cluttered up with unfinished thoughts and half-baked ideas; but after a good night’s sleep it seems to sort itself out and be ready for a fresh start.

In the morning I’m still not sure, but I’ve got an idea I know where I’ll find Daniel Gleisman’s name.

If Lewis is about to collar Brian O’Dwyer, depending on how that goes, it just might be safe for me to go home soon; but before I leave Sydney I have to deal with the issue of the doctored document. There’s no way I’m going to speak to Helena, because I have a strong feeling she’s implicated, and I don’t know anyone else except Brett. It looks like I’ll have to bring it up, as delicately as I can, with him. He’ll be shocked and he won’t want to believe that there’s anything wrong, but he will tell me who I should talk to.

Once I’ve spoken to Brett he’ll go straight to Helena, of course, but she’ll find out sooner or later anyway. The important thing is to get it out in the open.

I think uneasily of Professor Bartholemew and his “accident”. Do things like that

really happen? Are Helena and her cohorts – possibly Daniel Gleisman, probably not Brett – ruthless enough to falsify the professor’s report and then casually eliminate him? In a way I can understand how someone like Brian O’Dwyer could kill his mate for his money and then – if I’m right about this – hunt down anyone who might expose him. But this other thing seems coldly impersonal, like a business decision.

If I’m going to blow the whistle I’d better do it quickly, then get out of Sydney before they make a business decision about me.

I bundle up my computer and shove it in its bag, leave the flat as soon as I’m dressed and take the train to Wynyard. From there, I thread my way through to Castlereagh Street and the building that I found on my first day. To my annoyance, it’s locked.

I look at my watch. In my eagerness, I came out very early, and it’s still only ten to eight. The building probably opens at eight. I’d better not hang around outside because, if I’m right, it’s possible that Daniel Gleisman will arrive for work at any minute and see me here.

I cross the street and find a café a few doors up. It’s got a narrow bar with stools in the front window, and I order a coffee and sit there, watching. Ideally, I’d love to see Gleisman arrive and go into the building, leaving it safe for me to saunter into the foyer and have a look at the list of names on the directory of companies there.

Eight o’clock comes and goes. People start to trickle into the building and I start calculating the odds of Gleisman arriving in the minute or so it would take me to go in and have a quick look at the board. Then I consider the probability that it’s not even his building, and recalculate the odds in the light of that. Then it occurs

to me that there might be a basement car park, which would have him bying the entrance altogether, and I cheer up considerably. Finally I accept that I’m going to go in anyway, so I figure I might as well go now.

I cross the street and stride purposefully towards the building. Just as I’m level with the entrance I see Gleisman coming towards me. He sees me at the same time, and recognition dawns. I think my knees are going to give way.

“Hello again!” he says pleasantly.

“Hello!” I say. “Small world!”

“What brings you to this part of the city?” So he knows where our office is.

I clap my hand to my jaw.

“I broke a filling yesterday. Terrible luck, away from home. A friend’s dentist managed to fit me in . . .” I gesture vaguely down the street. Always stick close to the truth when you’re telling a lie. That happened to me once, in Brisbane. Surely there’s a dentist somewhere around here.

“Oh, well. Good luck.” He’s turned into the building, preoccupied, and we part company.

I keep walking without looking back. My legs are trembling. I didn’t tell Steve I was doing this, and I feel naked without him. I imagine Daniel Gleisman has come back out of the building and is standing watching me with gimlet eyes, noting my confusion, checking to see where I go. If I turn my head, like Lot’s wife, all will be lost.

When I’m far enough away I call Steve.

“I want you to check something out.”

“Now?”

“Before work would be good. I might need you at lunchtime. Did you get my message about Daniel Gleisman?”

“Yes.”

“He’s in that building in Castlereagh Street. The one where we looked for Sutherland Investments.”

“Hey!”

“ants often have a board outside their office with a list of the companies they represent. I can’t go in and have a look, because he’ll recognise me. Can

you do it?”

“Sure.”

“We need all the names.”

“On it,” he says and hangs up.

Keeping my head down, I walk quickly to the relative safety of the office. The plane from Bali landed an hour ago, but I don’t expect to hear from Lewis. He’ll fill me in when he’s good and ready. Meanwhile, I’ve got to prepare my case for Brett. This isn’t going to be easy.

As if to thwart me, he doesn’t come in until mid-morning. He walks past my door glued to the phone, and spends the next hour running around printing and copying documents. Finally I manage to corner him by the fax machine.

“Brett, I need to talk to you,” I say. “There are some irregularities in the report. We might need to talk to someone on the Board.”

“Irregularities?” he asks, frowning.

“There’s some stuff I want to show you. I think there’s something seriously wrong with the application.”

“I’ve got to get this fax off,” he says. “I’ll come into your office in a minute.”

“Okay. I can show you what I’m talking about.”

A few minutes later he comes into my office, looking apprehensive.

“Okay,” he says. “What’s wrong with the application?”

“The whole section about the experimental shafts through the aquifers. The Professor Bartholomew section. It looks to me as though the results have been tampered with, and there are signs that the original report, the one he signed off, has been replaced with a ring-in.”

“What? Why would anyone do that?”

“The only reason I can think of is that the experiment was a failure. Maybe that’s what he really said in his report.”

“Wait a minute, Jane, you can’t say that.”

“Did you know that Bartholomew had an accident just after he signed off the report? That he’s now in a coma?”

He goes to the door and looks out. There are people walking up and down the corridor. He comes back and gives me a worried look.

“Brett, I’m not just saying this. I really want to show the evidence I’ve got to someone responsible.”

“I’d better call Helena,” he says.

“No, not Helena,” I say. “She’s – um – she’s too close to this, Brett. Can you give me some other names? Who’s in charge of the whole thing?”

“Listen, there’s an important fax coming through. I have to grab it before those other idiots see it.”

My phone vibrates, distracting me. Brett slips out.

It’s a message from Steve.

U R right sutherland investments and several others sending to ravi to check out

This is making my head spin. Is everything connected? I thought I had hidden myself away from the Peter Talbot business, but I’m still right in the thick of it.

Daniel Gleisman, and by extension Helena are also embraced by the tentacles of this mysterious bank. I glance uneasily at the door, wondering if I’m making a big mistake by talking to Brett.

As if summoned by my thought he comes bustling in.

“Look, this is too sensitive to talk about here,” he says. “I’ve got to go down and do an inspection on the new office at two. Why don’t you come with me? You can bring your computer and show me what you’ve got down there, and we’ll decide what to do about it.”

“Okay, but don’t mention this to anyone, okay? We don’t know who’s involved.”

“Of course,” he says. “Best to be discreet.”

“No-one at all,” I say. “Are you clear about that?”

“Yes, of course, Jane,” he says. “It’s just you and me.”

“Right.”

I send an email to Steve:

“Going to lay it all out to Brett at new building, Darling Harbour, leaving here just before 2. He seems pretty shocked. You’d better stay on us.”

While I’m waiting, I copy all the files onto my laptop and arrange everything so I can easily demonstrate the issues that are troubling me. There are some blank CDs in the drawer of my desk, and I put a couple in my computer bag, just in case. Next, I have a play with the super secret blue phone. Luke and Steve couldn’t bring themselves to buy the cheapest technology, so it’s actually quite a neat little machine. It’s got an effective voice recorder, which I can put onto one of the programmable keys, and it’s got a slide mechanism. This means that with my hand in my pocket I’ll be able to discreetly unlock the phone, touch a button and start recording my conversation with Brett.

At half-past one I get something from Lewis. Just a two word SMS:

got him

Am I the only person in the world who uses punctuation in text messages?

35

Brett lopes along, chattering about last night’s concert. I suspect he’s been reading reviews and he’s trying out some unfamiliar idioms on me. There’s something manic about his mood in any case, and he’s determined not to talk about the business at hand. But his hands are shaking, and I can tell he’s trying to hide his nervousness.

We go down steps to a narrow road at a lower level. The building really is right on Darling Harbour, opposite a row of bars and restaurants which face the water’s edge. Most of them are closed at this time of day. Half the office buildings are construction sites, like the one we’re approaching. It’s hard to tell if the area is new, or just in a constant state of refurbishment. The only people around are construction workers in neon yellow jackets.

The foyer of the building is empty, the marble facade finished but covered in a layer of dust.

“It’s okay, says Brett. “They’ve got one of the lifts working.”

We step in and he taps a code into a control , then presses 24. The lift is fast, and takes us to the usual lobby with big windows at one end, offering views back over the city, and double doors at the other. He taps in another code and takes us into the unfinished office space.

“It’s going to be fabulous,” he starts. “We’ve got the boardroom in there, and . . .”

“Brett,” I say, unzipping my computer bag. “Can we look at my stuff first, and do the grand tour later?”

“Okay,” he says reluctantly. “You can set up in the little meeting room, through here.”

I follow him into a small room with a dazzling view of the inner harbour. There’s a round table and a couple of mismatched swivel chairs. My hand is on the super secret phone, ready to turn on the recorder, when I feel it vibrate.

It’s a message from Steve.

run

I look at the tiny word with incomprehension for a second.

“Brett.” My voice is hoarse. “Did you tell anyone about this meeting?”

“Well, just Helena.” He’s edgy, defensive. “I had to say something to . . .”

I’m stuffing my computer back into its bag and heading for the door.

“We have to get out of here, Brett. Come on. Now!”

“Jane, don’t you think you’re being a bit . . .”

“Please, Brett, come with me!”

He shakes his head and sits down on one of the chairs.

I run for the lift lobby. As I get there, I can hear the “ding” of the sole working lift about to arrive. I look around wildly. Just past the bank of lifts there’s a little tea room, in darkness, its door ajar. I slip in there and press myself against the wall. My phone vibrates again.

The lift doors open and a man steps out wearing a construction jacket. I can just see him through a crack in the door. He raises his head and looks around, as though sniffing the air, then he turns towards the double doors and I can’t see him anymore. A couple of seconds later I hear the faint click of the double doors closing.

I feel pure terror. I can’t breathe, I can’t move. It was the way he moved his head. This is like vertigo.

I peep out. The lobby’s empty. I creep towards the lift, but something’s wrong. The lift doors should have closed by now. He must have locked it off.

My phone vibrates with a message: north stairwell

How do I know which way’s north? I make a dash for the nearest fire exit and slip through the door. It’s on some sort of vacuum system and I can’t make it close without a loud click. I start running down the stairs, then the view through the window in the lift lobby. Water. It was on my left when I went through the fire exit, and that means I’m in the south stairwell. I grab the phone, pressing “Reply” as I run.

I hear the door above me opening.

“Elly?” Steve’s voice is in my ear.

“I’m in the wrong stairwell!”

“Keep going. Level 18.”

I can hear clattering footsteps above me. He’s going to be faster than me. I run, skipping stairs.

Somewhere below me I hear another door open. I keep running. How many levels? Footsteps above me, an open door below. Round and round.

Suddenly Steve appears, grabs my arm and pulls me through a door. Together we

drag it shut. The mechanism resists us, and we can both hear running footsteps on the stairs, then the click as the door locks in place.

“Quick!” He’s running, and I stumble after him.

“The lift . . .” I stammer.

He takes us into another corridor where there’s a smaller lift, buzzing unhappily, Steve’s jacket stuffed between the doors.

“Service elevator,” he pants. “Probably take us to a back entrance.”

Our pursuer is stuck in the stairwell now. Even if he propped open the door at the top, it would take him too long to get back up there. He’ll run all the way to the bottom.

“He might come out right next to us,” I say.

“Yeah, but we’re faster.”

The lift feels painfully slow. As soon as it stops we burst out into a back lane littered with wheelie bins and rubbish skips. Steve belts along and I puff in his wake, not looking back. The lane seems horribly long. At last he disappears around the corner, and as I follow I risk a quick look back and see a flurry of

movement. Fear gives me speed and I take the steps two at a time, my legs screaming in protest. We run across the road, dodging cars, then round a corner and up a shorter, steep stretch into a busier street. There are people here, and taxis. I flag one down and leap in.

Steve steps back.

“Come on!” I gasp, holding the door open.

He shakes his head.

“North shore,” he tells the driver, and slams the door.

I twist around in disbelief to see him strolling casually back the way we’ve come. He’s already got a baseball cap on, and he seems to be chatting on a mobile phone.

“Where to on the north shore?” enquires the driver.

“Milsons Point please,” I say, almost hyperventilating.

As we’re approaching the Harbour Bridge I get a text:

U R clear

I gradually recover my breath, but my brain is in turmoil. The moment when he stepped out of the lift and raised his head to look around plays over and over in my mind. I’d forgotten seeing him that day in West Melbourne, but the image must have burrowed into my memory. Just a man who looked at the sky, as if to check for rain, then put the hood up on his jacket and hurried away. Just someone in the street, I thought, but he was watching Carlos’s house, waiting for his opportunity. And now he’s here.

What have I done? I’m like the man in the story who fled to Samarra, only to find Death waiting there.

I climb the steps at Milsons Point Station, my legs like lead. While I’m waiting for a city-bound train my other phone rings. If it’s Brett, I’m going to drum into his head once and for all that . . .

“Elly?” It’s Nick. “ what I told you? Time to get rid of that phone.”

Now I start shaking, and every instinct tells me to hurl the phone away and run in the opposite direction. But I need to do this right.

I cross over to the other platform and wait for the next train to Hornsby. In the four long minutes before it comes, I delete all my personal information from the phone. I leave it turned on but set the profile to Silent.

When the train finally arrives I get on and prowl up and down through the carriages. Luckily for me, Sydney trains tend to be old and clapped-out. It doesn’t take me too long to find a seat that’s starting to fall apart. It’s a quiet time of the day, so there’s no-one to observe me when I sit down and stuff the hated phone far into the deepest fissure.

I get off the train at the next station and cross over again. I don’t breathe easy until I’m on the bridge, knowing the phone is well on its way to Hornsby.

The train takes me through the city and I sit frozen in my seat, my eyes fixed on the doors. At last we get to Newtown and I slink through the street to my refuge. I’ve never given Brett or anyone here any hint of where I’m staying, and thanks to Steve I’m confident no-one’s ever followed me home. But even so, I know that things are closing in on me again.

I’ve seen the killer at last. He’s still after me, and he’s not Brian O’Dwyer.

I SMS Steve: Can you hire a car for me?

sure will be there about 6 comes the immediate reply.

I duck out, heart thumping, wearing a different headscarf and looking fearfully around, a sense of foreboding overwhelming me. Making for a two-dollar shop I’ve seen, I buy a striped plastic carrier bag. A refugee’s bag. Into it, I pack all the possessions I don’t need with me. I copy the files, our evidence so far, onto a spare USB stick and put that in as well.

The rest of my things, the bare essentials, go into my overnight bag. I take a change of clothes, a couple of scarves and beanies, Diana’s coat and Wolf Hall, in case I find myself with time to spare. I’m still a long way from the end of the book, but I’m starting to wonder if Thomas Cromwell is ever going to actually get to Wolf Hall. Right now, the likelihood of that seems roughly equivalent to my chances of moving to Canton Creek.

While I’m waiting I tidy up the flat, put the sheets and towels through the wash and take out all the trash. It’s the most soothing thing I can think of to do.

As soon as Steve arrives I say: “Steve, it was him. He killed Carlos.”

“Him? In Melbourne?”

“I saw him outside Carlos’s place, that day,” I say. “I didn’t think anything of it – but that was him.”

“Figures,” he said. “He did a sort of double take when you came down the street, like he’d been expecting someone else. So I kind of sauntered along behind him . . .”

“Oh, Jesus, Steve!”

He grins happily. “Anyway, when you went into that building he sort of looked around, then he went in after you.”

“Oh, God!”

“Yeah. So I kinda knew, that’s what I was there for.”

“Steve, I love you!”

He looks alarmed.

“Hey, you know what I mean,” I add. “Anyway, how did you find that way out so fast?”

“There was a plan in the foyer, safety thing I guess. Showed the service elevator, so I figured that would do.”

“Brilliant. Oh, God. Helena must have set it up. Brett called her and told her we were going there. I don’t understand. Somehow, she and Gleisman are connected with all that other stuff, Talbot and so on.”

“I always thought Talbot was the wrong anaconda.”

“Maybe. Anyway, I can’t stay here and I can’t go back to Melbourne, so I’m going to go to the source. There must be someone up there, on the Liverpool

Plains, who knows what really happened when they did those tests. I’m going up there to find out.”

“I should come,” he says, looking worried for the first time.

“No, Steve, you shouldn’t. You’re a great shadow here in the city, but you and I would make an odd couple, travelling together in those parts. We’d be noticed.”

“I guess.”

“I’ve packed up everything here, and I’m paid up until Saturday. I’ll give you the spare key. You can sort things out if I don’t manage to get back.”

“All right.”

“I’m down to the super secret phone now. They were onto my other phone, and I had to get rid of it,” I say.

“The Ukrainians?”

“Right. Nick called me.”

“Who do you think got your number to them?”

“Brett must have given it to Helena,” I say. “He was one of the few people who had it. He told her I was onto this scam, and she must have told him to get me out of the office and down to that empty building.”

“And she called the killer,” says Steve. “The same killer. It’s like it’s a business, and he’s the fixit guy.”

“That’s exactly what I thought!”

“And in this business,” says Steve. “You’ve got Helena and Daniel Gleisman and Sutherland Investments.”

“And Peter Talbot was on the payroll too,” I say. “Is Ravi checking out Gleisman’s clients?”

“Sure,” he says. “I wish I’d got a picture.”

“Of the killer? Steve! You weren’t trying to take a photo, were you?”

“He wouldn’t have known.”

“You can’t be sure of that! Those phone cameras make a little click. He would

have been onto you like a shot.”

“Nah. Mine’s on silent. But he turned the other way just when I had it lined up.”

He shows me a couple of images on his phone: a neon yellow jacket, the back of a shaved head.

“The bastard,” I say. “We’re going to get him.”

I call Lewis, but it goes to voicemail.

“This is Elly,” I say. “I’ve seen the killer. He nearly got me. There’s something I have to do right now, but I’ll call you tomorrow and tell you everything.”

“You know,” says Steve after I’ve hung up. “That story you told me, about the fake document you wrote, and the one you’ve found here. There must be a bit of that around.”

“Must be,” I agree.

“People doing that would get paid pretty well,” he continues. “But it would have to be discreet.”

“Like, they’d get paid through something like the Mercantile Mutual Bank?”

“Something like that.”

“So you think Talbot was providing some sort of equivalent service and getting paid for it?” I think about it. “It wouldn’t be documents because he was an engineer, and engineers can’t write.”

“I’m an engineer,” says Steve.

“Sorry. Anyway, I reckon Peter Talbot’s job would have given him opportunities to manipulate the truth to order.”

“Yeah. Worth a thought.”

I consider waiting until I hear from Lewis, but there’s a knot of fear in my stomach. I’m not going to breathe easy until I’m out of Sydney.

36

The car is parked in the side street. Steve melts into the night, and I get in with my overnight bag and my computer and examine the controls.

It’s a very smart little car, and it’s got GPS. I should have known Steve would go for the best. I’ve never driven anything with GPS. Experimentally, I tap in Acacia Ridge.

“Drive thirty metres and turn left,” instructs a calm, accent-free female voice.

I’m ridiculously tickled at the confidence of this little machine. Not only does it know the whereabouts of a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, but it has no hesitation in launching me on a direct path that will take me straight there. None of this human “Well, let’s work out the best way to get across the harbour, then get out of the city, then head north and try to figure out which turn-off to take . . .”

I follow the instructions and set off through the city and over the bridge. Even so, it’s a while before I fully trust the GPS and I have a real tussle with it somewhere around Roseville. The Sydney freeway system starts off in grand style, then peters out, and it’s always difficult to find a good way to get onto the Pacific Highway far enough north to avoid the worst of the suburban traffic. The GPS claims to know how and I think I know better, so I get hopelessly lost for a while.

“Turn right, turn right, turn right,” insists the GPS.

Finally, like a naughty child who’s been forced to see reason, I give in to authority, and everything comes good. Suddenly I’m on the F3 going north with all the late commuters and the early interstate truckies, the car’s running smoothly and I can relax. I turn on the ABC and listen to a phone-in quiz show, shouting in frustration at the participants who don’t know the answers I know, and the host who’s too quick to give them clues. As the Gosford turn-off approaches the quiz finishes, and I suddenly realise how exhausted I am now that adrenaline has stopped pumping through me. It’s a long way to Acacia Ridge, five hours’ driving according to Ms GPS, so I take the Gosford turn-off and not long afterwards spot an anonymous motel that will be ideal for the night. They happily accept cash, and show me to a clean, unassuming room. I’m not expecting anything beyond basic sustenance, so it’s a pleasant surprise when I go into the restaurant and find a comprehensive Indian menu.

There’s a complicated deal for getting an Internet connection so I don’t bother. We’re in the lee of some hills and my phone has no reception. I turn it off to save the battery. All my communications can stay on hold until I come back with answers, if indeed I can do that. Meanwhile, I need to try to get some sleep after the strain of such a terrifying day. I thought I was close to the end of this nightmare, but now I’m getting tangled up in unravelling loose ends.

All my thoughts were focused on Brian O’Dwyer. I was convinced that he had killed Peter Talbot, that Carlos found out and that O’Dwyer killed Carlos and was stalking me. But he was safe in the arms of the law when I went down to Darling Harbour, and now I don’t know anything anymore.

But I do, I reflect. Peter Talbot really is dead, and O’Dwyer is still the person most likely to have killed him. But how can they be connected to the man at Darling Harbour, the man outside Carlos’s house, the man who – I’m positive now – killed Carlos? It’s just like before. The only link is Carlos himself.

I think back again. Carlos was digging up stuff about the Mercantile Mutual Bank. I thought it was because he had found something suspicious about Talbot’s disappearance and was trying to find out more about Talbot; but what if it’s the other way round? What if Mercantile Mutual was his starting point and he was looking around for anything interesting about its clients? Gold dust.

Mercantile Mutual and Talbot are also connected to Sutherland Investments, and that leads us to Daniel Gleisman, and to Helena.

Helena. The fixer. She seems like one of those people who don’t do things themselves, but they get things done. She wants to head the project I’ve been working on while she swans off and does her own thing, so she keeps Brett in thrall to do all the work. She wants a document falsified: she gets an expert to do it. She’s displeased that I may be close to finding her out: she sends someone to eliminate me. Did she also send him after Carlos?

Cherchez la femme.

I curl up for a long session with Wolf Hall and it’s surprisingly comforting. I don’t spend the night being chased down endless staircases or being burnt at the stake, though I do hear a phone ringing somewhere early in the small hours and leap out of bed, convinced it’s Lewis. It’s only when I’m standing in the middle of the unfamiliar room, looking dopily around, that I that I turned my phone off.

37

I’m on the road again in the early morning mist, letting the GPS direct me back onto the freeway, then north towards Newcastle. It’s a bright sunny day by the time the GPS directs me to turn left onto the New England Highway. I’m greatly relieved to find civilisation soon afterwards in the form of a café strip at Maitland. I take my computer with me and study some maps over two welcome cups of coffee.

Acacia Ridge is a bit off the New England Highway, just before you get to Quirindi, the capital of the Liverpool Plains shire. I’ve chosen it because it’s the closest thing to a town within cooee of the excavations done by Professor Bartholomew and his team, which seem to be somewhere out to the west. I know roughly where it is on the map and I can find place names nearby, but the satellite view on Google Maps doesn’t show much in the way of buildings. This is a distinction you learn if you spend time in rural Australia. You can go to a place that appears as a nice red dot on the map with a promising name like Welcome Creek, perhaps, or Paradise. But when you get there, all you find is a corrugated iron hall, loose sheets flapping in the wind, or a tumbledown brick chimney with a few scattered timbers, charred and weathered, and an ancient apple tree grown into a tangle.

I’m hoping that at Acacia Ridge they can tell me where to find the shafts and any locals who worked on them; or if not, that they can direct me to some other place where there are people who can.

It’s a long, long road and I’m glad I’m driving it in the morning, not in the afternoon with the sun in my eyes. Paradoxically for Australia, the country improves as I go west. I prosperous farmlands, comfortable houses with European gardens, picturesque towns with Scottish names: Lochinvar, Allandale, Dunolly. Ahead are Aberdeen and Scone. Somewhere out of sight on my right is

the Hunter River, and when I finally cross it at Singleton it’s broad and deep.

This is beautiful country. Deep, rich, dark soil – the legacy of some ancient volcanic activity – is combined with ample water. It’s too early for spring crops, but the chequerboard patterns on the hillsides show how carefully and profitably the land is being cultivated. I vineyards, olive groves and dairy farms. It couldn’t be more different from my part of Victoria with its sparse trees and thin, prickly undergrowth. Still, being out here makes me homesick, nostalgic for the smell of dust and eucalyptus.

It’s past lunchtime when Acacia Ridge presents itself on a straight, narrow bitumen road. There’s just a few houses, some obviously empty, a handful of boarded-up shops in a main street that’s seen better days, and a ramshackle general store. About a hundred metres further down the road there’s the merest suggestion of a long-gone railway station opposite a one-storey pub. The place is deserted.

I pull up outside the pub. I’m not sure if there’ll be food on offer or not, but they must get people stopping by occasionally. Inside, there are a couple of old codgers sipping beers and watching some sort of rural report on the widescreen television. A woman comes out from an inner room and looks at me with mild surprise. She’s middle-aged with wispy hair patchily dyed red, bulging out of stonewashed jeans and a fleecy top with a faded multi-coloured print.

“Sorry, love. Been waiting long?”

“No, it’s all right,” I say. “I just walked in. Don’t suppose you’re still serving food?”

“I could do you a steak sandwich, I suppose,” she says generously.

A steak sandwich would be pretty low on the list if I had a choice, but beggars can’t be choosers, so I nod.

“That’d be great, if you don’t mind. And a bitter lemon while I’m waiting, thanks.”

She pours the drink, then disappears. I sit on a stool and size up the old blokes, who’ve shown no interest in anything so far except the bottoms of their beer glasses. After a while the woman comes back and starts wiping the bar. Either I’ll be getting a very well-done steak, or she’s got someone else working on my lunch in the kitchen.

“Nice out?” she enquires.

“Yes, lovely,” I say, pleased to be given an opening. “It was a bit misty when I started out, but the sun’s nice and warm now. I hear you often get good weather up here.”

“Oooh, it can get cold,” she says. “Real cold.”

“Real cold,” agrees one of the old blokes, not looking at us.

“Hot in the summer though?”

“Boiling!” she says.

“Boiling!” says the old guy. We all nod.

Here goes.

“I think my ex might have been up this way last summer,” I say. “I’m trying to track him down.”

The woman looks sceptical.

“He’s not in trouble,” I say. “We just need to sort out a few things. He’s a bit forgetful about stuff like, you know, forwarding addresses.”

“I dunno,” she says.

“He drifts around, but his sister told me he had some work up near Quirindi, with some mob from Newcastle University,” I say.

They all look blank.

“Bloody exes,” says our hostess. “My daughter’s went all the way to Coober Pedy. Last heard of. Maybe you should look there.”

The other old guy, the silent one, gets up slowly and painfully and brings both glasses over to the bar for a refill. He digs deep into both pockets and counts out a small pile of coins.

A young woman with a whingeing toddler firmly attached to one leg comes through with my steak sandwich. It’s enormous, with a mountain of shredded lettuce and plenty of tomato sauce. I look at it with dread, but when I take a bite the steak is excellent, juicy and succulent and done to a turn.

“Aileen,” says the older woman. “Have you ever heard of people from Newcastle Uni doing some work around here?”

“Don’t be a dill, Mum. They were those people digging those holes out Lonely Plains.”

“Oh, them. With the nutty professor.”

“Sounds right,” I say. “The sister said some professor gave him the job.”

“Them, yeah,” says the older woman. “Young blokes had a drink here a few times. I only seen the prof once. They reckoned he was a teetotaller. All young

blokes, though,” she adds, giving me an appraising look as if she’s thinking ‘cougar’. I gaze levelly back at her.

“Up themselves,” sniffs Aileen.

“Never seen anyone else with them,” says her mother.

“Saw Fred Hollis with them once or twice,” contributes the old bloke, who’s been all ears.

“She’s not after a local, she’s after someone from out of town!” shouts our hostess. God knows why she would imagine he’s deaf.

“Who’s Fred Hollis?” I ask.

“Yeah, whatever happened to Fred Hollis?” asks Aileen.

“Wasn’t it his land they were digging up, out the Lonely Plains road?” says her mother.

“No, Jean, it was further out, right out the end,” says the old bloke. “But I reckon he was doing a bit of work for them. He was pretty short of a quid there.”

“There you are, then,” says Jean. “You can always go out and ask Fred Hollis.”

“Where would I find him?” I ask.

“He’s out the Lonely Plains Road. Now, you go straight through out of town on the main road. It’s not the next turn-off to the left –”

“He’s sold up,” interrupts the other old bloke in lugubrious tones.

“Who says?” His mate is incredulous.

“He could be right,” says Aileen. “I haven’t seen Fred’s truck around for a couple of months.”

“That’s bullshit, Frank. I’d have heard about it,” says Aileen’s mother, affronted.

Frank shrugs and sips his beer. “He’s gorn,” he says flatly.

“I might as well check him out anyway,” I say. “Maybe he hasn’t settled yet?”

Jean gives me elaborate directions, glaring at her antagonist, who returns his attention to the bottom of his beer glass. I pay for my lunch and go out into the suddenly chilly afternoon, but then a thought strikes me and I go back.

“You said that professor was a teetotaller?”

“That’s what the boys said,” replies Jean. “And when he came in here he had that same soft drink you had.”

They all look at me accusingly. Even Frank looks up from the bottom of his glass.

“Hot day in summer,” he says indignantly. “A man’d want a beer.”

38

Following Jean’s directions, I find the badly-marked turn-off for Lonely Plains Road a couple of kilometres further on, and swing the wheel to the left. The narrow road is sealed for a few hundred metres, then settles into a corrugated unsealed boneshaker. At least it’s rained in the last day or so, and there’s no dust.

On either side there’s beautiful farmland, fallow at this time of year, with lovely mature trees at the roadside. Birds reel and dive after insects. I see galahs and other parrots I can’t identify, a flash of iridescent turquoise on one of them. A hawk drifts overhead.

They told me Fred’s house would be the first one I’d see, and I nearly miss it. The roof is only just visible off to my right, surrounded by dark green foliage, and I’m past his entrance before I notice it.

I back up and get out of the car, surveying the gate. There’s no mistaking the shiny chain wound around the post, and the big new padlock. The letterbox is bulging, mostly with junk mail, but when I look inside I can see a few bills in there as well.

I didn’t come all this way just to turn around, so I climb over the gate and walk up the long driveway.

The house has an abject look, the paint on the front door peeling, weeds growing up between the pavers on the front path. The place must have been in Fred’s family for two or three generations, a once-gracious homestead with wide

verandas, tall European trees for shade, an orchard and a veggie garden, now a sea of dandelions.

The curtains are drawn but they’re sparse, and I can see through to the unfurnished rooms, with bits of rubbish strewn here and there. Fred’s well and truly gone.

I walk back to the car and drive further. There’s another farm, the house not far from Fred’s across the paddocks. The gate’s shut but not padlocked and there’s no sign of life. A tractor sits in a half-cleared paddock. Beyond that, there’s not much at all. Land that looks as though it should be productive has been neglected. Scrubby, native trees are growing back here and there, and a couple of fences have seen better days. The road itself is starting to fail when I come upon signs of digging, off to the left: little heaps of gravel, some steel stakes left lying, a bit of rusted equipment whose purpose is unclear.

I squat and examine the scanty evidence. Any holes that were dug here have been filled in again. There’s water seeping out of the base of one of the piles, but there’s plenty of water lying around in puddles from the rain, so I couldn’t say that means anything. I take a few pictures with my phone, but I can’t imagine what use they’ll be.

I notice the phone’s got no reception out here. That’d be right – Steve and Luke got me a good phone with a cheap carrier. It wouldn’t bother them, because they never leave the city.

Reluctantly, I climb back in the car, turn around and head back the way I came.

As I’m ing Fred’s gate I see an old ute approaching from the opposite direction. We both move over to give each other space on the narrow road, and each raise a finger in the universal country greeting. In my rear vision mirror, I see him turn into the driveway after Fred’s and stop to open the gate.

I brake so hard I nearly go into a skid, then carefully do another U-turn and stop outside where the man drove in.

He’s grey-haired and scrawny, and could be any age from fifty to seventy. I walk up the drive, setting off a cacophony of barking from his dogs, chained to a shanty town of kennels. He’s pulling bags of fertiliser and cans of petrol off the tray of the ute, and he goes into freeze-frame when he sees me.

“G’day,” I say, a bit self-consciously.

“The highway’s that way.” He points. “Where ya headed?”

“Yeah, I’m not actually lost,” I say. “I was looking for your neighbour, Fred.”

“Fred? He’s moved. Sold up.”

“Yes, I saw that. Looks like I missed him,” I say.

The man goes on unloading his ute and I stand watching.

“I was hoping Fred could tell me a bit about that work they were doing up the road, digging those holes. Apparently he had something to do with it?”

“What, you from the university?”

“No, from the city. I’m working on the report, writing it all up. My name’s Jane.”

“Oh, yeah. Bob McLeod. Pleased to meetcha.”

He finishes unloading everything and straightens up.

“Yeah, I don’t think Fred knew that much about what they were doing. He told me it didn’t make much sense really,” he says and sets off round the side of the house. “Wanna cup of tea?”

He doesn’t wait for me to answer. In normal circumstances I wouldn’t follow a strange man into his house, but compared to what I’ve been dealing with I can’t conjure up any fear of Bob McLeod. We go up a couple of steps and through a tattered screen door into the kitchen. It’s spartan and shabby, but reasonably well organised – the kitchen of a single man. There are dishes in the sink, but they’re just today’s accumulation: he’ll do one big wash-up tonight. The lino floor is worn and stained, but it’s not dirty. All the crockery is old, cheap and chipped. At least it’s warm. He probably piled wood into the firebox before he went into town.

He pulls the kettle to the front part of the stove, where it starts chattering immediately, then puts tea leaves in an ugly brown china pot. Meanwhile, he goes on talking.

“See, Fred really just ran messages for them. When they needed stuff it’d get delivered to Quirindi or somewhere, and he’d drive in and pick it up. Or he’d go off and get food for them, or he’d take people to the airport at Tamworth. He reckoned it was a great lurk. Easy money. He’d pretty much given up on the farming, old Fred.”

“Then he sold up?”

“That was the biggest joke of all. The company that’s wanting to put in this mine, they paid him top dollar for his land, and Fred reckons the mine’ll never go in.”

“Really?” I say. “How come?”

He pours tea into thick white mugs.

“I don’t know the ins and outs of it. Something about those holes they dug. It was supposed to show some new way of mining they was gonna use. Only Fred reckons it was a disaster.” He chortles. “Every time he went out there, some new thing was goin’ wrong. Water getting in, sides collapsing – you name it. They wrote it all up, it was all very proper.”

“Right.”

“That’s why he couldn’t believe it when they went ahead and bought his property. Settled real quick, too. Big money.”

“Lucky Fred,” I say, sipping my scalding tea. “Where is he now?”

“He went to Perth. His daughter’s there. Couple of kiddies.”

“It’ll be pretty quiet for you here.”

“Yeah,” he says, looking shifty. “Looks like I might be making tracks meself.”

“Did they make you an offer too?”

“It’s not the mining company. Some other crowd. Graphite Holdings, they’re called. Nice looking young sheila – real city type. I don’t honestly know why they want the place, but I’m not complaining.” He grins, showing bad teeth.

“So you’re sick of life on the land?”

“Sick’s the word,” he says sombrely. “It’s me prostrate. I’m too far from the hospital here, and the doc says I shouldn’t be living on me own.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” I say. “But they’ve got great treatments these days. You’ll be right.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be right.”

I’ve ed why Graphite Holdings rings a bell.

“This young city sheila,” I say. “You met her, did you? Was her name Helena?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Helena. Came up here with her feller, both wearing that RM Williams clobber.” He chuckles.

“Did you catch the bloke’s name?”

“Nah, dunno who he was.”

“Right.”

I get up and rinse my cup in the sink. “Well, thanks for the tea. I’d better be on my way.”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t get up. “Sorry you missed Fred.”

The dogs don’t bark again when I reappear at the top of the drive, just watch me with narrowed eyes. Then I hear a shout behind me.

He’s holding a thick brown folder. It’s stained, tattered on the edges and tied up with string.

“Maybe you should take this,” he says.

“Yeah?” I walk back to meet him.

“Fred thought it should stay in the area, but now I’m going I don’t know who’d want to look after it. Maybe it should be with that report thing?”

“What is it?” I ask.

“This is how they wrote it all up out there,” he explains. “See? For each one, they’d write in all the figures and stuff, and someone would sign it, and someone else would witness it. All done proper, like. Fred witnessed a lot of them. They did two copies of this, and they put it all in their computers too.”

“How come Fred had it?”

“The prof asked him to hang onto this copy in case someone came back to redo any of the work, so they’d have all the results there. But no-one ever came back.”

With trembling hands I take the folder from him.

39

With the folder tucked in my bag behind the seat I’m suddenly very afraid. In this open, deserted country I feel exposed and vulnerable, and I can think of a dozen scenarios in which Helena and her minions could find out that I’m on the road with the professor’s real report.

I breathe a little easier when I get back onto the sealed road, but it’s still pretty quiet and I feel conspicuous. My plan was to stay the night in Quirindi, but when I get there and see how small the town is I decide against it. I stop on the outskirts and take stock.

In my imagination, if I turn back I’ll come face to face with pursuers racing up from Sydney, so I adopt my usual strategy of going sideways. The bird’s-eye view on the GPS shows a minor road that will take me east onto the New England Highway.

“Well, what do you think?” I ask it. “Is it a decent road?”

The modulated voice is silent on this subject.

I figure out how to set the route.

“What do you reckon now?” I say.

“Drive three kilometres and turn right,” is the bland reply.

Before too long I’m onishing my heartless guide. The road is narrow, in poor condition and utterly deserted. Darkness falls, and I drive on and on. At one point another car comes up behind me and hovers there, insistent high beam headlights in my rear vision mirror. My hands start shaking and I’m too scared to pull over and stop in case he’s come to kill me. I’m fumbling to turn on my phone, panic-stricken when he pulls out to overtake, his horn blaring angrily and I realise he’s just a hoonish country driver who’s annoyed because I was going too slowly for his liking.

At last I emerge onto the highway, and not long afterwards the welcome lights of Tamworth spread out on the horizon. There’s a string of motels, and I choose one at random. Not surprisingly it has a country music theme. The sluttish girl at the desk accepts my cash without looking up from her Facebook, and I resist the temptation to write June Carter, Tammy Wynette or Mavis Staples in the . Instead, I give Diana’s name and address.

There’s a room service menu, so I call up and order the country vegetable soup. Then I get out my computer and find the section of the report that has all the details corresponding to the contents of the brown folder. It doesn’t take long to what I knew I was going to find: most of the results have been fiddled. The professor was free and honest with his handwritten assessments, and I suppose the correct information was entered into the computer at the time. But the results in the report I was given are completely fictitious.

I push my computer aside and turn on the television to catch the seven o’clock news. There’s a knock on the door and I jump up and mute the television.

“Who is it?” I call, trying to keep my voice steady.

“Room service.”

It’s the same girl, and she takes ages fumbling with dishes and stainless steel covers. When I turn back there’s a familiar building on the screen but with crime-scene tape plastered around it and police going in and out. An ambulance is in the background and a man in a suit, surely a senior detective, being interviewed. Water glistens behind the building. I dive for the remote control and get the sound back, but only in time to hear the reporter say: “Police are investigating. David Coleridge, Darling Harbour.”

There’s a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach and I scramble for my phone, which I’ve forgotten to turn back on. It takes ages to fire up. Four messages. I ignore that for the moment and call Steve.

“Where’ve you been?” he says.

“Out of range. Is it Brett?”

“Must be. They found him this afternoon. Electricians. They’re looking for you.”

“What! Me?”

“Get on the net,” he advises.

I’m shaking, but I have to pull myself together. If I were a drinker maybe a whiskey or brandy would help, but in my case it would finish me off. I go out to the desk and negotiate a couple of hours of Internet access.

Steve’s right. They’re not naming Brett or saying how he was killed, but there are “suspicious circumstances” and they’re looking for a woman who was known to have been in the building with “the deceased”. One of the news services even has a blurred picture of me – it’s the ID photo they took when I started the job.

God! Has the girl at the desk seen this? No, probably not, and anyway she was so preoccupied with her Facebook, and then with the dishes, I don’t think she even looked at me.

I feel sick. Poor, innocent, idiotic Brett. I was angry with him for selling me out, but I was the one who led him into a trap. Why didn’t I drag him out of there when I had the chance? And what kind of monster would just walk in there and shoot him without hesitation, just because he was there?

Somewhere in the building a door slams, and my heart starts pounding like crazy. I can feel my palms go clammy, and I stand in the middle of the room clenching my fists and trying to breathe. Be rational, Elly. I think back over my journey from that building to here, and my rational mind tells me that I haven’t left a trail to follow, and I don’t think I’ve endangered anyone else. Jean and the old blokes at the pub? Bob McLeod? If anyone asks them questions, they’ll have no reason not to give straight answers, and they’ve got no idea where I am now. I’m safe and anonymous here.

I fight down the fear, and in its place comes rage. My tormenter is no longer a shadow. I’m not going to him in the street and wonder, is it you? I know what he looks like now and I want to catch him, and what I really want is to kill him.

I’d also like to catch Helena, with her neat little figure and her blow-dried hair, and get my hands around her throat and howl obscenities into her carefully made-up face. I think she has a splinter of ice in her heart, like the servants of the Snow Queen. Maybe I could shake it loose and make her see what she’s done.

I call Steve again.

“I’ve got what I came up here for,” I say. “I want to give all the material to someone on the Board. Can you figure out the best person, and get their address for me?”

“Sure. When will you be back?”

“Middle of the day tomorrow.”

“I’m going home tomorrow,” he says. “I’ve got a three o’clock flight booked.”

“You can take the car to the airport, if I can get the timing right.”

“Right. Listen, Ravi wanted to tell you something. You asked him to check out that Suresh guy?”

“Oh, yeah. Not relevant now,” I say.

“True. He couldn’t find Suresh anyway, but it turns out Omar knows someone who knows someone who knows Brian O’Dwyer.”

“Omar?” I say.

“Omar knows some serious poker players,” says Steve. “Apparently O’Dwyer was in trouble about the time Talbot died. He’d lost a few games and he owed some people a lot of money.”

I shudder. I know what that’s like. My unlamented husband Max racked up his debts through gambling. O’Dwyer would have been very keen to find himself some money before he got his legs broken.

Steve and I make arrangements for the handover, then I settle down with Wolf Hall for a while. It’s a relief to be back with the sixteenth century and Thomas Cromwell’s graceful handling of the tragedies in his own life. Unfortunately, though, I can’t help seeing Helena whenever Anne Boleyn appears, so it’s hard to warm to her as a character. I bet Helena screams and throws things when she doesn’t get her own way. I hope I can make her do that.

It’s going to be a long drive tomorrow and I try to get an early night, but I’m just kidding myself. When I do sleep it’s just a doze, haunted by Brett’s reproachful face. Finally I dream that I’ve refused his invitation to the concert, but I’ve realised too late that I have to get there because something terrible is going to happen, and I can’t find the place. George Street turns into a country road with abandoned diggings, and there’s no-one to ask. I wake up disoriented in the strange room, hearing the rumble of trucks on the highway, and realise that it’s time to move on.

At dawn I find a truckies’ café and fortify myself with scrambled eggs on toast. Steve has texted the name and address of one of the female Board , Margaret Carlisle, saying she was once an independent federal MP and is known for being progressive. I put her Wollstonecraft address into the GPS, and it’s cheerfully accepted.

The radio helps to keep me grounded as I drive on and on through prosperous farming country, retracing my journey down the New England Highway. I reward myself at Maitland with a brief coffee stop, then I pick up the freeway and the semi-trailers converging on Sydney.

When I come off the freeway at Hornsby I start looking out for a Kinko’s, but it’s a while before I spot the familiar sign. Ignoring protests from the GPS, I pull off the road and find a semi-legal parking space. With my dwindling cash resources I get printouts of all the documents I’ve been carrying and make two copies of the contents of the brown folder. Then I buy a document wallet and bundle a complete set of papers into it, adding a CD on which I’ve copied everything I’ve got in electronic form.

Margaret Carlisle lives in a classic gorgeous leafy north shore street. Her house is on a battleaxe block. No doubt it has stunning views of the water from the back. I park on the street, right in front, and walk down the long, steep driveway, clutching my package.

She answers the door herself, and I recognise her from the day of the Board meeting. Late sixties, tousled grey hair, solidly built but fit. From her clothes it looks as though I might have interrupted her yoga practice.

“Yes?” she says, looking suspiciously at the package under my arm.

“I’m not selling anything,” I say, then laugh nervously. Bad beginning, Elly. “People selling something always say that, don’t they?”

I start again. “Ms Carlisle, my name’s Eleanor Cartwright. I was hired as a contractor to work on the application for the new mine at Lonely Plains, the Green Dragon Resources project? My job was to do the final edit, but I noticed some discrepancies.”

“Discrepancies?” She frowns.

“Yes,” I plough on. “So I’ve just been up there, to Lonely Plains, and I’ve found evidence that there’s fraudulent material in the application.”

“Now wait a minute,” she says. “Who did you say you are? Didn’t you say something about a final edit?”

“I know, it might seem a bit above and beyond, but if you’ll listen to what I have

to say, and let me show you what I’ve got, I think you might be interested.”

“You’d better come in,” she says, not too enthusiastically.

Before I’ve finished she’s pacing up and down her stylish living room. I’ve taken her through the contents of the brown folder, and given her a copy, along with everything else. She picks up the phone and starts dialling.

“I’ve got to keep moving,” I say, getting up to go.

“Just one call,” she says. “George? It’s Meg. Listen, that 3A – it’s crap. There’s a woman here with evidence. She’s dug it all up. You were dead right about Helena Banfield . . . Look, I’ve got to get off the line now, but can you organise a board meeting ASAP? . . . Yes, today would be fantastic . . . George, I’ll leave it in your capable . . . Yes, talk to you later. Bye.”

“That’s great,” I say. “It’s important that everybody sees this stuff, and that it’s publicised. Just be careful about Helena until that happens, okay?”

“Don’t you worry about Helena!” she says, her eyes flashing. “I never liked that woman. I just hope we’ve got enough evidence here to put her behind bars.”

“Me too.” I shake hands with her and leave.

In the car I look at my watch, then I call Lewis.

“Elly! Where’ve you been?”

“Here and there. Are you still in Sydney?”

“Yes, there were complications.”

“That’s good. I’ll be in the city in half an hour. Do you reckon you’d have time to come and arrest me?”

“You bet.”

40

Steve Li is waiting on the corner as arranged, all his possessions in a backpack at his feet. I pull over and jump out. As he gets into the driver’s seat I open the enger door and drag out my own stuff.

“See that brown folder on the seat, Steve? That’s got to go with you. Take it straight to the office and put it in the safe, okay?”

“That’s the evidence?”

“That’s it. But I’ve got a copy, and I’ve given one to Margaret Carlisle. We’re just about there!”

He gives me a thumbs-up and drives off. I stand there grinning like a maniac, then I’m aware of someone behind me. It’s Lewis.

“Isn’t that someone from your office?” he asks curiously.

“What’s he doing here?”

“Long story.”

He holds up a pair of handcuffs.

“Ready?”

I gasp, which is just what the bastard is after.

“Have you had lunch?” he asks, when he’s stopped laughing. “Is there anywhere good around here?”

We walk through Hyde Park to Oxford Street. I’m glad of a chance to stretch my legs after the long drive. On the way, he fills me in on the Peter Talbot story.

“Once we put some pressure on him, Brian caved,” he tells me. “He doesn’t seem to have much between the ears. He still had the same phone!”

“You’re joking!”

“Nope. He’d found Talbot’s photos and deleted them, but he had no idea they could still be retrieved. This is not your high-tech villain. I felt like a real dickhead asking him how he’d set up Carlos and what he did with the hard drives. He couldn’t understand the questions.”

“So did he say why he did it?”

“No, that’s the trouble. First he said they went up the track together and had a fight, only we pointed out there was a bit of pre-planning. Then he made up some story about Talbot getting him fired from a job he had at some sports shop, but it turns out he got caught swiping money from the till.”

“I’ve heard he was short of money. You should check that out.”

“Yeah, that would figure. My feeling, though, is someone put him up to it, only he’s not saying who.”

“Did he know Talbot had a lot of money?” I ask.

“No suggestion of that.”

“Hmm. Well, in the end, did he tell you exactly how he did it? Or have you worked it out?”

We’re standing outside a little Italian place in Oxford Street that looks reasonable appealing.

“Should be all right,” he says.

I nod and we go in. After a quick look at the specials board we both order minestrone.

“So, Detective Elly,” he says. “How do you think it went down?”

“Well,” I say. “Brian fakes a hangover so he can’t go on the walk with Peter. Either he swaps the phones or, if they don’t look exactly the same, he hides Peter’s phone and when Peter’s frustrated looking for it he says, ‘Here, take mine’. He never realises that Peter’s set up an automatic link to Flickr because Peter’s high-tech and Brian’s low-tech. How am I doing so far?”

“Pretty good. It was a straight switch. Peter must have noticed as soon as he started taking photos, so he would have just set up Brian’s phone the way he wanted it.”

“Right.” I go on. “So Peter heads up the track, and Brian stays out of sight some way behind him. Brian stops at one point to take Peter’s phone off the track and hide it – he probably came back later and took it further into the bush, buried it or threw it down a steep gully or something?”

He nods.

“So then he catches up with Peter, who must have spent some time at the summit – maybe stopped and had his lunch – and bashes him, probably with a rock.”

“Right on all counts, Elly.”

“Good.” I say, smiling at him.

“He’s locked up in Sydney while the legals are sorted out, then I’ll be taking him back to Melbourne,” he says. “But then the plot thickens. Typhoid Mary strikes again.”

Without warning my face crumples and tears start flowing. It’s the sleepless night and the long drive. In a flash he’s round the table and holding me. He’s wearing a leather jacket and it has that nice Dubbin smell.

“Sorry, sorry,” he’s saying. “Always shooting my mouth off. Just call me a bloody idiot.”

“No, no,” I sniff, trying to pull myself together. “You’re right, it’s my fault, it’s me. Poor Brett. It was my fault.”

The tears keep coming and he holds me tighter. This won’t do. I pull away gently and grope around for a serviette to wipe my face. He withdraws a little but stays next to me, looking worried.

“It’s him,” I say, once I can speak. “The same killer.”

‘The killer from Melbourne?” I’m not sure if he believes me.

”I know it’s him,” I say. “I saw him outside Carlos’s place the day he was killed. The same man.”

“How did he find you? And how did this Brett guy get involved?”

“For a start, this isn’t really about Talbot,” I explain. “Well, it is, but the reason Carlos was interested in Peter Talbot was that Talbot was doing something dodgy to earn extra money, and being paid through this dodgy bank.”

“What bank?”

“Mercantile Mutual. It’s an online bank that seems to be set up for dirty dealings. Carlos stumbled on it, somehow, and he was nosing around. We know that because he had some of the bank’s information, including Talbot’s .”

“Okay.”

“So he started investigating Talbot’s disappearance thinking it must be, you know, no coincidence, and he did find something suspicious about that, which led us here. But it was really because he was investigating the bank.”

“And you’ve been doing the same thing? Is that how they found you up here?”

“No. I came to Sydney because I thought I’d be safe, and I’ve been working on this project, and there’s something corrupt going on – I’ve got all the evidence here.” I show him a stack of printouts.

“Someone’s falsified a report to get approval for a new coal mine. It’s worth a lot of money to some people up here, including this woman called Helena Banfield. For a start, she’s been buying up land, supposedly to sell it on to the coal people once the thing’s approved.”

“So she’s behind the false report?” He’s trying hard to follow, so I try to slow down.

“Yes, she’s on the Board of the organisation which is supposed to be assessing the application to develop the mine, but she’s also in the pocket of the developers. So I decided to tell all to Brett, who was the sort of supervisor of the project.”

“Right.”

“He suggested we go down to that building in Darling Harbour to talk in private. They’re setting up new offices there. Of course I should have smelled a rat. He’d run straight to Helena, you see, and they were setting me up.”

“Jesus.”

“I don’t think Brett had any idea what he was doing. He just worshipped Helena,

and whatever she said was fine by him. But when we got there, this guy came after me.”

“Oh, shit, Elly. How did you know?”

“I had someone watching my back. I’ll tell you about him eventually. The killer, Lewis. He must be a professional, like you said. It turns out there is some connection between this business and our friend Talbot, and whoever is behind it seems to employ various shady people to do their dirty work. I’m guessing Helena set him onto me without having any idea who I was, but he recognised me from Melbourne. Anyway, I got out of there and Brett wouldn’t come, but I thought he’d be all right. By that time I was starting to think he was one of them after all.”

“So you went to ground?”

“That wasn’t exactly what I planned, but I wanted to find out what was going on, so I went up to the Liverpool Plains. Which was just as well, because now I’ve got the full story. I’ve already handed over a copy of everything to Margaret Carlisle, who’s on the Board, and I’ve got this extra copy for you.”

“Doing our job for us again, Elly?”

“I want to go home, Mike.”

He gives me a big smile.

“Did you get a good look at the guy?”

“Oh, yes. I saw him.”

“Well, we’d better get out to Parramatta and start going through the formalities.”

“Parramatta?”

41

It’s actually not that far to Parramatta, especially the way Lewis drives. The police headquarters there are pretty swanky, better than what they’ve got in Melbourne, but I’m not too impressed when I see the computer system. I sit with the Identikit artist and he builds up a rough likeness of the killer from my description, but then he es me a stack of loose-leaf folders full of photographs and asks me to go through them.

“You’ve got a stack of good criteria there now,” I remark. “What software are you using?”

He gives me an unfriendly look.

“Can you just look through these files and let me know if the face comes up?”

I spend what seems like hours going through page after page of pictures, none of which look much like my nemesis. Meanwhile a young female constable slowly and painfully types up my statement.

Eventually we reach some sort of ime. The public service mentality seems to pervade here as well, especially as it’s Friday, and a lot of people have turned off their PCs and gone home. No-one seems to know where Lewis is – indeed, noone seems to have heard of him. My spirits are low and I’m contemplating how I can get the hell out of there and catch the train to Newtown when Lewis pops up.

“All done?” he asks brightly.

“Looks like it.”

“I’ll give you a lift.”

He’s transferred to a rented car, which is in the basement car park.

“I’m gonna drop you off and go to the airport,” he explains. “This is it for me. They’ll be holding O’Dwyer up here for weeks with all the red tape, so I’m going home.”

I feel a stab of disappointment, but also relief. My guard has been crumbling, and I don’t trust myself to spend another evening with him. I give him the address and settle back, weak with exhaustion.

“You didn’t find him, did you?” he says, unusually serious.

“Nothing like him,” I say. “Don’t you people use facial recognition software?”

“Limited access. Applications have to be filled in in triplicate. That sort of thing.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“’Fraid so.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.” He’s driving a little more carefully than usual, looking thoughtful. “There’s something about this guy that rings a bell.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Can’t put my finger on it. I can think of a whole lot of killers it wouldn’t be, but that’s no use to you.”

“Anyway, in my book Helena is the real villain,” I say. “If she paid him to silence me it didn’t work, so surely she’ll call him off now.”

“You’d think so.” He’s watching the road. “But it won’t hurt to keep being careful, okay?”

“Sure. Anyway, I’m going home tomorrow, so if he’s still looking for me up here he’ll be out of luck.”

“Right. Good.”

He drops me off in the narrow street and there are cars banking up behind, so we don’t linger. I go into the tidy flat, my modest striped bag still sitting where I’d left it, and call Miranda.

“What time’s your flight tomorrow?”

“Nine. Are you still in Sydney?”

“Yes, but I’ll go back with you, if I can get on the plane. I’ll see you at the airport. I suppose you’ll be getting an early night?”

“Oh, sure, Mum.”

After we organise a few details and say goodbye I email Diana and ask her if she could book me a seat in her name on the nine o’clock flight. That done, I put a scarf over my head, then go out and prowl the streets of Newtown. In the end, I eat at one of the places where Steve got good takeaway and go to a French film at the Dendy. It’s a weepie, and I come out with sore eyes, barely able to stagger back to the flat. Not wanting to use the sheets again, I sleep on top of the bed, wrapped in the doona, and don’t stir until the alarm on my phone wakes me.

42

At the airport Miranda, hair stringy and eyes puffy, is monosyllabic. No need to ask how she’s feeling right now, though she swears she’s had ‘the best time’ in Sydney. She sleeps all the way to Melbourne.

For my own part, there’s a steadily increasing sense of euphoria. My heart swells with love as we sweep over the flat basalt plains west of Melbourne then bump down under grey drizzle at Melbourne Airport. I don’t say anything as we wait for Miranda’s luggage, of which, as usual, there is far too much.

One of Miranda’s friends, a pleasant plump boy called Tariq, picks us up in my car. I don’t recall being asked that he could use it, but all’s well with the world today. I’m a little less agreeable when the fuel alarm starts beeping, but at least we’re still in the airport precinct and close to a place where we can fill up. None of us has enough cash, so I get out my credit card. I really don’t think these people will be still trying to track me through things like that. I can’t see why I’d be worth the effort now.

I feel a pang when we reach the house, but Mai has cleaned away all traces of that terrible night – in fact the whole house is unnaturally clean. Someone has even been watering the pots on my front veranda.

I notice a small package on the kitchen table. It looks like a CD mailer in a courier’s satchel.

“What’s that doing there?” I say.

“Oh, yeah,” says Miranda, cringing. “I meant to tell you. Some bloke brought it in. Mabel’s nephew.”

“Her nephew?”

“Yeah. They were cleaning up her house and they found it with her mail.”

“But I told you not to come here.”

“It was just for a minute, Mum. I’m sorry.”

I pick up the plastic courier bag with the familiar Rush’n’Around logo.

“You should have told me about this,” I say.

“I know, but it’s nothing, Mum. We had a peep inside. It’s just a DVD of some movie from one of your nerdy friends.”

I open the package. Inside is something that looks like a DVD of Inception. There’s also a note.

Hi Elly

I found this particularly interesting, and I’m sure you will too.

Make sure you watch it before you go to Sydney.

Keyser Söze

Keyser Söze? Oh, Carlos. He always insisted on using Rush’n’Around because he trusted Marina. I’ve got her mobile number in my computer. I catch her on the way to rehearsal – she’s in some kind of folk band.

“Hi Elly!” she says. “I’m not working today.”

“That’s okay,” I say. “I wanted to get you while you’re not at work anyway.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s about the last job you did for Carlos.”

“Right,” she says cautiously.

“Marina, I know Carlos sometimes gave you extra deliveries, just for him. For cash. You wouldn’t have mentioned anything like that to the police, would you?”

“I couldn’t, Elly. My boss was right there.”

“Thought so.”

“But you got it, didn’t you? The package, that day?”

“Yes, it’s okay.”

“There was an old lady out the front. She insisted I leave it with her and she’d take care of it for you.”

“Yeah, it’s fine, Marina. I got it. Thanks.”

Poor Mabel. Poor, interfering old busybody Mabel. I never asked myself why she was lying in wait for me that cold evening when she should have been inside in front of the telly, already eating her tea, the heater going full blast. She’d spotted Marina with a delivery for me and swooped, full of importance, taking it upon herself. She was starting to say something to me when the shot silenced her. She wanted to tell me that she had something for me, so that I’d thank her, and let her know what a good neighbour she was, that I didn’t know what I’d do without her.

“It’s just a DVD,” Miranda says again after I hang up.

Well, no. It’s not a DVD and it’s not Inception, though it’s convincingly labelled. Carlos’s note was carefully worded to make that obvious, and of course he knew I’ve got this movie and have watched it several times. What I’m holding in my hand is a CD, Carlos’s favoured medium for reliable data storage.

I turn on my computer and slot in the disc. A list of files pops up, headed by one called AardvarkAspAnaconda.txt.

It is, of course, a message for me:

Hi Elly If the job in Sydney is that 3A application that Derek’s been offered, there are some things you should know.

Some time ago I got a tentative approach from a rather interesting company. In the absence of a name I’ll call them Darkside Inc. This company is kind of like the flip side of Soft Serve Solutions. They employ contractors who are prepared to do anything at all for the right price. Obviously they need IT specialists, and someone thought I might be interested. Guess they heard I don’t have any principles.

Anyway, I told them politely no, but since then I’ve been very carefully checking them out. Of course the approach was anonymous, but the guy wasn’t as clever as he thought and dropped a couple of clues, and I’ve managed to find out a bit about them.

For understandable reasons a lot of their work is in unpopular areas: they help tobacco companies fight claims for damages, they cover up evidence of asbestos exposure – that sort of thing. And of course they get plenty of work on projects that are environmentally suss.

They seem to do their financials through a very interesting online bank called Mercantile Mutual that I’ve also been checking out. There’s been a fair bit of noise recently that I think relates to the Green Dragon Resources consortium that’s trying to get that coal mine approved – a lot of money going through various s. There’s a woman called Helena Banfield who seems to be part of Darkside’s inner circle, and she’s on the board that’s expected to approve the coal mine, so I suspect skulduggery. You may me mentioning Peter Talbot, who went missing in the Warburton Ranges? He was on Darkside’s payroll – it looks like he was falsifying EIS reports for logging companies. My theory is that Banfield recruited him. There’s a high-priced resort in Bali where she’s been three times in the last two years, and a close friend of Talbot’s works there, so they could have met through him.

So keep your eyes open and let me know if you spot anything unusual, but be VERY, VERY CAREFUL. These are pretty heavy people, and when I say they’ll do anything, I mean ANYTHING. I’ve been able to hack into their s without being spotted, but I wouldn’t want anyone else to try it. They’ve got some pretty cool ice in place.

I’ve put the main stuff I’ve discovered on this disc. Just keep it safe somewhere, in case we ever need it.

Good luck, and – be careful!

Carlos

Tears are streaming down my face as I fold the note back up.

“Mum?” says Miranda. “Is it bad? Have I done something wrong?”

I look up. Her eyes have filled with tears too.

“No, love, no. It’s okay.” I put my arms around her.

What would have happened if I’d known this? I suppose it depends what’s on the CD. I would have been alerted to Helena, not that it took me long to suspect her in any case. Would I have gone to that building with Brett? Would Brett be alive today?

There can’t be any moral sense in which Miranda, by not understanding the importance of this package, could be answerable for Brett’s death. Or for mine, if it had gone that way. What was it that Carol said? The person responsible is the one who pulled the trigger.

I get my phone out and call Steve.

“We’re not quite finished,” I tell him. “Can you get hold of Luke and Ravi and meet me in the office?”

I also call Lewis.

“I shouldn’t disturb you on your day off,” I say.

“Who has days off?”

“Oh. In that case, would you like to meet my fellow conspirators, and see some new evidence I’ve got?”

I drive in to the office and park in the basement. We’re allowed to do that on weekends. I’m the first one there, so I occupy my time copying the disc for Lewis and printing out Carlos’s message.

Steve and Luke arrive with Lewis in tow, and I introduce them all properly. Ravi’s gone skiing, so it’s just the four of us. We go into the meeting room.

“I had already given everything to Detective Senior Sergeant Lewis,” I tell the others.

“Call me Mike,” he murmurs.

“But now I find I’ve got a whole lot more stuff from Carlos. This is probably

what the killer thought he’d told me.”

I explain how the CD arrived and read the message to them.

“Wow,” says Luke.

Steve takes the CD without a word and disappears with it. Lewis drums his fingers on the table.

“I’ve heard rumours about this organisation,” he says. “I thought it was just talk. Nobody’s ever come up with any evidence.”

“It’s awfully plausible,” says Luke. “If you think about it, it sort of fills a gap, doesn’t it? Call it a black hole. Everyone needs services, on both sides of the law. And I can imagine them approaching Carlos because he was sort of asocial.”

“They must cover the whole spectrum of bad people,” I say. “There’s whoever it was who doctored that document, and Peter Talbot of course – what he did for them must have been pretty lucrative for someone, when you look at what he was paid. But there’s also someone who organised the professor’s car crash, and of course, there’s our killer.”

“Some good tech people, too,” says Luke. “They were pretty quick to notice when Carlos started snooping around.”

“What was that about ice?” asks Lewis. “He says they had some cool ice?”

“Yeah, a pretty bad tautology,” I say. “It’s just – you know – security systems. Programs designed to keep out intruders, and alert you if someone’s snooping around. Carlos would have tiptoed in, but obviously not quietly enough.”

“Carlos thought he was infallible,” says Luke. “But there’s always another level in the game, isn’t there?”

Steve puts his head around the door.

“Better come and look at this,” he says.

We follow him into the big team room. He has three screens on his desk, and they’re all showing CCTV footage of the front of Carlos’s building and the street around it.

“This is him, isn’t it?” Steve says to me. He’s frozen the film at a shot of the killer, his hood down, glancing towards the camera.

“He wasn’t careful enough,” I say with satisfaction.

“I don’t think Carlos particularly noticed him,” says Steve. “He just wanted to back up his footage for that day.”

“It’s a good image,” says Lewis. “This should help us find him.”

“What else have you got?” asks Luke.

“Just preliminaries,” says Steve. “Some stuff we already had, triangulation etcetera, and there’s more bank data. Helena, Gleisman, yes, multiple s for both. Some evidence about Talbot. Resources list: a few IT people, some of whom we know. That Serbian guy’s in it – Nick’ll be happy – that could be how they heard of Carlos. More stuff we’ve never heard of. Better get back into it.” He turns his back on us and addresses his keyboard.

“Smart guy,” says Lewis as we go back to the meeting room. “Is he always like that?”

“Not usually so verbose,” says Luke. “If this stuff’s been obtained illegally, what are your options?”

“It’s delicate,” says Lewis, “but we’re investigating quite a few murders here, so we can dig into all sorts of records. It’ll help tell us where to look.”

He looks at me.

“The guys in NSW are building the case against Helena, and it’s going to take a while, but for the moment she’s taken off somewhere and no-one knows where she is.”

“Right.” Of course I want Helena caught eventually, but I like the idea of her being on the run, her life turned upside down. Pity there’s no invisible assassin to add an element of terror.

“ you said there was something funny about O’Dwyer?” I say. “That it looked like someone put him up to killing Talbot?”

“Yeah,” says Lewis. “You don’t think . . .”

“They knew each other,” I said. “You saw what Carlos said in the letter. Helena met a friend of Talbot’s at a resort in Bali – that has to be O’Dwyer. Then he kills Talbot, and someone gets hold of Talbot’s money.”

“But we don’t think that was O’Dwyer,” says Luke.

“No, but your theory that the first hundred thousand taken out of Talbot’s paid for the hit? O’Dwyer had gambling debts, and it seems he could have been getting desperate.”

“Desperate enough to kill his best friend?” says Luke.

“Could be,” I say, “especially if he was besotted with Helena. What I heard was, he went to Sydney after some ‘gorgeous chick.’”

“And you think Helena got the rest of Talbot’s money?” asks Lewis.

“It’s feasible,” I say. “She’s been buying land in the coal mine area, presumably looking to make a profit. She’d need money for that.”

“Well, we can investigate that,” says Lewis.

“Great,” I say. “And there’s another thing you might want to investigate. Professor Bartholomew, the author of the report that was doctored? He crashed his car while drunk, according to police records, but apparently he didn’t drink. I don’t know if that’s a North by Northwest scenario, or maybe this sinister organisation has some cops in it?”

“North by Northwest?” Lewis looks a bit hunted.

“Don’t mind Elly,” says Luke. “She’s assuming you’re up with the company culture. You should probably be flattered.”

“It’s probably bent cops anyway,” I say. “It’s one of Hitchcock’s sillier ideas, to force alcohol down someone’s throat then put them behind the wheel.”

“They would need cops, as well as lawyers, ants . . .” says Luke.

“. . . such as Daniel Gleisman,” I say. “Steve made a list of the companies he represents. That’ll tell us a lot . . .”

“Now, listen,” says Lewis. “This is a matter for the police from now on, okay?”

“When they get around to it,” I say. “When all the paperwork is signed off?”

“I mean it,” he says. “It has to be done right, for the courts. If DS Webster gets a whiff of what you’ve been up to she’ll be around here with a charge of withholding evidence and a warrant to seize all these lovely computers. Time to take a break, Elly.”

“All right,” I say. “But you can’t stop us giving you the odd hint if we find out any more.”

“Fair enough. But you just keep a low profile until we catch this killer, okay?” He’s serious now.

“I will,” I say. “But surely no-one’s going to pay him to come after me now.”

I hand over the CD and we part company. Outside, the rain’s all gone and it’s a glorious day with a hint of spring. I wonder if the golden wattles are in flower

yet.

43

Miranda’s in the kitchen, her hands wrapped around a mug of coffee, when I come in with food from the market and start throwing together some sandwiches.

“It’s probably still safer to stay away from the house,” I say. “I’m going to get some more money from Derek on Monday, then you and I will find somewhere out-of-the-way to stay until this is completely over. But until then, I was thinking – why don’t we go up to Canton Creek? No-one will look for us there.”

“Great,” she says. “The air up there is the best hangover cure.”

“So you’ve got a hangover?”

“No! I’m just saying.”

“Okay, great. It’ll be like old times.”

We pack our warmest clothes and stuff our doonas into the back seat of the car, along with the bags of food I’ve bought. Miranda also brings her pillow. She makes herself comfortable and hands out the sandwiches as I thread my way through to the freeway, looping back a couple of times until I’m sure no-one is following.

“Do you think Charlie will be there?” she asks sleepily.

“Sure to be,” I say. Miranda’s always had a soft spot for Charlie, who’s been a sort of uncle to the children and grandchildren of the Canton Creek collective. “I don’t think he ever leaves the place these days.”

“Good,” she says. “I’ve been teaching the kids pottery, and I want to ask him some stuff.”

She’s quiet for a while, and I think she’s dozed off.

“Do you know,” she says suddenly, “kids still play that game, ‘Charlie over the water, Charlie over the sea’? They play it in the schoolyard, just like we did.”

“Really? We played that when I was at school. ‘Charlie came to my house and stole a cup of tea.’”

“That’s not right!” she laughs.

“No? That’s what we used to sing.”

“I used to think it was about our Charlie,” she says, yawning. “I used to wonder

why there wasn’t any water around his house.”

“There’s no water anywhere these days,” I say. “When the drought broke all that rain filled the dams, but half of it’s gone already.”

But there’s silence. She really is asleep this time.

I drive the route I know so well, ticking off the towns, unseen these days, on my mental map. The land is different from New South Wales in a way I can’t define, the trees stringier, struggling, the undergrowth thin. In winter the eucalyptus trunks are dark and damp. In summer the air crackles. Right now, as I’d hoped, there’s a haze of yellow from the golden wattles, just coming into bloom.

We go through Castlemaine and turn onto the back road. Yet another hobby farm has popped up as the area’s popularity spreads, but there’s still a buffer of bush protecting our land, and when we get there it’s hard to believe we’re only a few kilometres from town. There are still no outside services. My parents and their comrades chose not to connect electricity or phone lines, never dreaming that there would be mainstream alternatives to these things within their lifetimes. Charlie is still mystified at the notion of a wi-fi connection to the Internet, but he has one, solar powered. He also has a mobile phone and a Skype . For all that, though, coming onto this place is like entering a time warp and for me, it’s also coming home.

The gate hangs crookedly open, as always, and the track is rougher than ever. We turn off into the first valley and pull up at the communal house, which looks neglected and forlorn, the rusted iron sheets peeling away here and there, the recycled leadlight windows coated with dust. Inside, there are bat droppings all over the table and floor, but nothing’s managed to get into the big tin trunk where we store the mattresses, cushions and lamps.

“Better do a clean-out,” says Miranda, wrinkling her nose.

“Yes,” I say, then step outside and look up. The colour is already leaching out of the sky, and I can feel a chill in the air. “We need to get a fire going, too. You start sweeping and I’ll collect some firewood.”

I sling a hessian bag over my shoulder and go up through the trees behind the house, gathering handily sized pieces of dead wood as I go. When I come back with the first load Miranda’s happily sweeping, humming nursery rhymes to herself, like when she was a little girl. I smile with contentment and set off again further up the ridge.

From the top I can see smoke from Charlie’s fire. Beyond that, the far-off gently rolling hills are serene and unchanged. The mist is already rising, though it’s only mid-afternoon.

The phone in my pocket nudges me. A message. Of course, with this cursed thing I’ve probably been out of range since we went through Digger’s Rest, but up here there’s a sweet spot for reception.

It’s not just one message but several. And they’re all from Lewis.

“Elly? Call me when you get this. We think we know who the killer is. Elly, the thing about this guy is he doesn’t leave any witnesses. No-one alive has ever seen him. Don’t go anywhere he can find you. Stay away from your house. Elly, you need to go somewhere safe and stay there until we catch him. Call me!”

“Elly? Where are you? Did you get my message? We think the reason this guy came after you the first time is because you saw his face. Listen, you’re not safe. Call me and let me know where you are . . .”

I drop the bag of firewood and run down the slope towards the house. It’s like one of those dreams where you try to run but your legs will only move in slow motion. “Don’t go anywhere he can find you.” He took Carlos’s hard drives. Carlos was obsessed with me. Carlos would have known about this place. He probably had maps, pictures, all sorts of stuff.

It feels like this is never going to end, never. We’ll need to go to Bendigo or further, to Echuca, tonight. I’ve got enough cash for one night in a motel. After that, I’ll send Miranda away somewhere.

A thin trail of smoke rises from the chimney and the broom lies abandoned by the open door. I leap over it.

“Miranda! We have to . . .”

She stands frozen by the fireplace. He’s behind her, one arm around her, almost protectively, the other holding the gun that’s nestled in her hair. They both watch me come in.

“Mum.” Her voice is husky. “I’m sorry.”

“Tell me what you want,” I say, terrified. “I’ll do anything if you just let her go.”

There’s a sliver of ice in my heart. Maybe I somehow caught it from Helena. Through all my emotional turmoil I know one clear logical fact: he is going to kill us both.

“I want his name,” he says. His voice is ordinary, even pleasant.

“What?”

“Someone saw me. In Sydney, in that building. Someone told you I was coming. I need to know who it was.”

He wants me to give him Steve. That’s why he hasn’t killed us yet. But he’s not as clever as he thinks. If he wants to use Miranda to bargain with me, he shouldn’t have let her see his face. He should have worn a mask, or a balaclava or something, to make me think he would let her go.

“I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you!” I say. “Just don’t hurt her!”

He smiles thinly and gives Miranda a little push towards me, at the same time moving around so that he’s between us and the door, the gun pointed steadily at us. In the instant that he’s distracted I slide my hand into my pocket and press a button on my phone.

“Why did you try to kill me in Sydney?” I ask.

“Just business, sweetheart,” he sounds bored. “Whatever the agency says.”

“Did you recognise me, from Melbourne?”

“Took a minute, but you’d need more than a haircut to fool me. Now, give me that name.”

“Mohammed. I don’t know his last name.”

“Are you fucking serious?”

Miranda stiffens beside me. She’s stopped shaking, which I take as a good sign.

“Look, I hired this guy from a security company to watch out for me. You had me scared. I’ve got all his details in my phone,” I say, gesturing towards the door.

“In your car?”

“No, we’ve got a solar power station up on the ridge.” Will he buy that? “I put it on the charger up there. I’ll go and get it.”

He hesitates for a second. “We’ll all go,” he says.

We set off up the slope behind the house in a tight bunch. There’s a narrow track, defined by forty years of meanderings over the land. He makes me and Miranda walk side by side, while he follows close behind.

The track goes uphill through scrubby eucalyptus forest, mostly regeneration. The spindly trees are no more than one or two metres apart. The ground is stony and covered with dead wood, bush litter and some sparse undergrowth. Miranda and I know this route well because we’ve so often walked it at night, by torchlight. We’ve even walked it by starlight.

“Why did you kill Carlos?” I ask as we walk.

“Who?”

“In West Melbourne.”

“Oh, fatso.” His tone is sneering. “Didn’t he squeal!”

I stop and turn. “You piece of shit!”

He laughs. “Keep walking, sweetheart. Like I said, it was just business.”

I pretend to stumble on a fallen branch and go down on my knees. As I come up I push Miranda in front of me, so we’re now in single file.

It’s only taken me a minute or so to think through all the possible ways this can go. Miranda and I have got a tiny chance, a sliver of a chance, if we can split up. Even then, a number of things will need to go our way. Firstly, reaction time: he’ll have to decide which of us to go after. It won’t take long, but it will give me a start. Second, normal psychology will need to work over logic. Logically, he should probably try to catch Miranda; then he could reel me back in. But I’ve been his quarry for a long time, and he thinks I’m heading for a phone that I can use to call for help; so I think he’ll go after me. Third, I’m relying on Brownian paths. I think they’re what got me here in the first place: little twists of fate that change everything. I Lewis telling me back in Fawkner Cemetery, aeons ago, that it’s useless trying to shoot someone through trees. Once the bullet is deflected by the first tree it can go anywhere, but it would take a fluke for it to go anywhere near its target. He might be firing at me, but he’s not going to hit me.

I feel sick as we come to the fork in the track. If Miranda’s not quick enough, she’s dead. We’re both dead.

I lean forward and speak clearly into Miranda’s ear.

“Over the water,” I say.

We reach the fork.

“Now!” I yell.

She takes off like a hare on the left-hand path which leads to Charlie’s house. I run straight up the slope through the densest area of trees. I can hear him behind me.

I’m ahead of him when I reach the top of the ridge, then I’m flying down the other side, following an invisible path. He’ll think I’m zigzagging to avoid being shot, but there’s more scrub on the hillside here and a lot of erosion. I’m running where the ground is firmest, and if he comes after me in a straight line he’ll find it harder. He might even fall, if I’m lucky.

He doesn’t fall, but I’m still ahead when the ground levels out and I head into the wilderness of coffee bush. How often have we cursed this coffee bush, an opportunistic native plant that has taken over the areas once cleared by gold miners. The dense, green, feathery fronds are over head-height, and once I’m in it he can see movement, but he can’t see me. Nor can he see the dry creek beds and collapsed rabbit warrens that make progress difficult across this area – if you don’t know the country, which I do.

When I get to the other side, I think I’m a little bit further ahead. This is the worst bit, because I have to cross another small ridge that’s pretty exposed. I can’t look back, I just have to count on him still being caught up in the coffee bush.

As I fly across the ridge I feel something whoosh past my ear. Jesus, he’s a good shot, I think, a terrible weakness coming over me. This isn’t going to work.

Then I’m among scrubby trees again. They’re not as dense here. I have to weave a little, but not too much. I need to draw him along a path that I can see clearly in my mind.

We’ve reached the old gold mine fields.

I run on faith and memory. When we were kids, I was the best one at this. Mark and Carol used to whoop with delight as they watched me, but when we got older they’d plead with me not to do it. Some of the mine shafts are obvious, and there are paths made by animals that run beside them; but some of them are hidden in the undergrowth. Their depth varies. A few were filled in, several were abandoned before much digging was done, but there are at least half a dozen that are frighteningly deep. We worked out a route to take in the deepest ones, and we’d time ourselves racing across it. Like a hurdler, I did it by getting my stride length just right, so I could fly straight over the top.

Am I kidding myself that I still know the way after all these years? Is my memory that good?

I find myself doing a little shuffle by the Casuarina tree and I feel a tiny bit more confident. Then I’m off.

He’s not far behind me. I hear cracking noises as more bullets hit trees around me. My path isn’t straight, but if he gets any closer he won’t miss me. I’m more than halfway through now – maybe three more deep shafts to go.

I’m through to the far side when I hear it. He doesn’t cry out, but there’s a cracking and rustling of breaking branches, and I turn my head in time to see dust billowing and foliage hitting the ground and something surreal: his gun, flying up in a graceful arc and landing on the ground halfway between me and the broken shrub.

There’s no sign of him.

I tiptoe forward, trembling, and snatch up the gun. I can see the hole, which is exposed now. I don’t know how deep this one is. There’s a profound silence.

I should creep over to the edge and peer in, to make sure. But I can’t do it. My nerve has gone, my legs have turned to water. If I go near the mineshaft I’m terrified a hand will come out and snatch my wrist, or my ankle, and drag me in. I slump down where I am, my back against a tree, holding the gun in both hands, pointing it steadily towards the hole and wait, my mind empty.

After a short time, or maybe it’s hours, I hear the thwack, thwack of a helicopter overhead.

44

He didn’t die. They pulled him out with a fractured skull and two broken legs. I wanted to kill him, but I don’t know how I would have dealt with having that on my conscience. However savagely just, it would have brought me down to his level.

“He’ll wind up in a Victorian prison,” says Lewis. “They’re queuing up with murder charges all over Australia, but we get first dibs. The issions you recorded on your phone are very helpful, especially the Carlos one.”

“I’d rather he was further away,” I say.

“What you’d rather is that he never gets out,” says Lewis.

“How long will it be?” I ask, picturing myself as an arthritic pensioner, looking over my shoulder once again, sleeping rough.

“A long time. And anything can happen while he’s inside. A guy like that would have a lot of enemies, so he’ll probably need to be in high security. For his own protection.”

“Safe in the arms of the law?”

“In theory. As safe as he can be.”

“They do make an effort, don’t they? To make sure nothing happens to them?”

“They do. As with Carl Williams.”

Everyone knows the story of Carl Williams. He only had with two other prisoners, but that was enough. Well, let this bastard take his chances.

“What about Darkside Inc?” I ask. “Have you found out much about them?”

“Let’s just say that thanks to Carlos we have insights,” he says. “We now know the organisation exists – it’s not just a rumour. But it’s sort of gone underground. That’s the way it seems to operate. It’s able to disappear, and nobody knows anything.”

“What about Helena and Gleisman?”

“We cracked O’Dwyer, and you were right. He would have done anything for Helena, but he was a bit sour when we told him about the rest of the money she got from Talbot’s . She and Gleisman are banged up, but they seem to be small fish. We still have no idea who the major players are, and they don’t know either. People only know the operator next to them in the chain of command. It’s a very secure model.”

“And the bank?”

“Vanished. Beauty of being online. It still exists somewhere, obviously, but it’s invisible again until someone like Carlos stumbles on it.”

And heaven forbid that that should happen.

That’s it now, with Lewis. He’s come to see me at the office to give me this last update, and we both know it wasn’t even strictly necessary. But there are no more excuses for us to meet, and I’m not going to see him again.

We go out into weak sunshine. As usual, he’s parked right in front of the building, next to a big red ‘No Stopping’ sign.

“Well, thanks for everything,” I say feebly.

“All part of the service,” he says.

If he were someone else, maybe a work colleague at the end of a big job, we’d give each other a hug. But he’s a cop, so we don’t do that. Instead he gets into the car and opens the window.

“Stay out of trouble, Elly. And if you ever need me . . .” He holds up a hand in the universal phone gesture then starts the engine.

I nod and smile. He drives off quickly, which is good. I wouldn’t want him to see tears in my eyes.

I can put a clone of him in my fantasies. There’s no harm in that.

45

Derek organises a funeral for Carlos. I don’t know what the celebrant makes of it. I stay right out of the arrangements, and the guys from work do everything. Some of them forces in the eulogy, and there’s a continuous projection on a big screen at the back that’s just lines and lines of code.

It’s all I can do to distinguish the different programming languages, but I do shed a tear when I recognise a chunk of Perl. Carlos was always wanting to show me his Perl scripts because he was tremendously proud of the elegance of his syntax, and I was always making excuses to avoid it. It wouldn’t have hurt me to indulge him once in a while.

After the service, a colourless man in a suit buttonholes me.

“You’re Eleanor Cartwright?”

“Elly,” I reply.

“Dennis Crowne. We represent Mr Fitzwilliam. There’s a matter that requires your attention. Could you come to my office tomorrow some time?” He hands me a card. “McCutcheon Crowne, Solicitors”, it reads.

“I’ve got some time now,” I say. “Do you want to go and get a coffee somewhere?”

“I would need to see you in my office,” he says stiffly. “Would two o’clock tomorrow be suitable?”

“Oh. Okay.”

I’m mystified. Could Carlos reach out from beyond the grave and make more trouble for me?

The next day, at two, I present myself at a musty little office in Collins Street, all wood ling and horsey prints. Hardly Carlos’s style, but he probably never went there.

Dennis Crowne sits at a heavy varnished desk and burbles on in legalese about trusteeships, estates and legatees. I can’t have been concentrating when he started, because for all my facility with language I can’t make sense of what he’s saying.

“Wait a minute,” I say. “Sorry. Did Carlos make me an executor of his will?”

“Certainly not!” He looks a little shocked. “That could represent a conflict.”

“How come?”

“It’s not customary for the chief beneficiary to be named as executor. In the event, Mr Fitzwilliam was quite happy for . . .”

“Chief what?”

“Sorry, Ms Cartwright.” Finally the penny drops for both of us. “I thought you were aware that you are the chief beneficiary of Mr Fitzwilliam’s estate.”

There’s a letter addressed to me, kept along with the will.

Dear Elly,

Knowing the difference in our lifestyles, which you keep not-so-subtly reminding me of, I’m guessing you’ll be around to read this letter and find out what I’ve decided to do with my not inconsiderable assets.

Now, before you get on your high horse and start protesting, just consider. I’ve got no family, as you know. I’ve got no close friends. Derek doesn’t need my money. I’m not the type to give it all to charity. All I can do is spend it, as I did in life, in the way that gives me the most pleasure. And what gives me pleasure is the thought that I can help you. Why not? I don’t know anyone more deserving.

If you really want to get snooty about it you can give it away to the whales or the lost dogs, for all I care. But don’t say I didn’t try!

Yours in eternity

Carlos

The bastard! He’s got me crying, right there in Dennis Crowne’s office. Of course, Dennis Crowne’s seen it all, and he just sits quietly waiting for me to compose myself, then he starts pushing bits of paper across the desk, murmuring:

“Now, if you’d just sign here . . . and here . . . and here . . .”

Two weeks before I venture to West Melbourne to size up Carlos’s place before I put it on the market. I take Miranda with me. Big mistake.

“Oh, Mum!” she says, practically swooning. “I’ve seen this place in a dream. If I could live somewhere like this . . .”

“You’d have to pay me some rent,” I say sternly after she’s finished.

“Anything! Anything!”

I won’t tell her until she gets herself a job, but the rent will just be the council rates and other fixed expenses. For now I tell her she has to understand it’s only for a couple of years, until she gets on her feet. And of course she’s in complete

agreement.

I give all the electronic gear away to Steve, Luke and Ravi, telling them they can do what they like with it.

“Are you sure?” says Luke. “Some of this gear’s worth a lot of money, Elly.”

“You lot saved my life,” I say. “What’s that worth? Oh, and you’d better give some of it to Nick, too.”

I thought that was the bulk of it, but bank s keep turning up with enough money in them to pay off my mortgage. Then I discover Carlos had a healthy superannuation , with me as beneficiary. I don’t know where it’s going to end. Derek has some codes in the safe that he says relate to offshore s. Just take them to Switzerland, he advises me, and let them sort it out.

I finally finish Wolf Hall. Well, they get to Wolf Hall and I get to the end of the book. But the story doesn’t end there after all. After a sneak preview on the Internet I can see I’ll have to read Bring up the Bodies, and there’s another one after that. It doesn’t look like things go well for Thomas Cromwell. If he’d known what was in store for him, I wonder if he would have had the courage to continue. Well, he probably had some idea. The best I can do is imitate his forbearance, and be thankful for what I’ve got.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Louise Thurtell, for making the phone call every new writer wants to receive, and for her insightful editing; and to Ann Lennox, for completing the job so meticulously. Thanks to my agent Gaby Naher and my dear friends Tina Smith and Tamara Winikoff who all give me invaluable . Above all, thanks to my soulmate Bruce, our wonderful children Tom and Jessie, and our beautiful and inspiring granddaughters Sigrid and Ariana.