Table

of Contents
Praise for Voodoo Doll
Praise for Vodka Doesn't Freeze
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Epilogue
About the Author
Praise for Voodoo Doll

'Clinical psychologist turned thriller writer Leah Giarratano

brings a wealth of professional experience to her art . . . a page-
turner, note-worthy for its expert characterisation and often
chilling psychological veracity.'

The Age

'Voodoo Doll is more chiller than thriller. It's cleverly plotted and
crackles along at an electric pace. I'm sure Giarratano has a
growing fan base and it's great to see local talent getting an
outing.'

Good Reading

'This is a seriously good read. Giarratano is taking on the big

guns, and winning.'

MX Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney

'I suspect a series. Bring it on.'

Sue Turnbull, Sydney Morning Herald

'Voodoo Doll is the follow-up novel to the best-selling debut,

Vodka Doesn't Freeze, and it's an absolute cracker . . . So lock all
your doors, snuggle up under your doona and get ready for a
thriller that you won't be able to put down.'

Newcastle Herald

'Plumbing the depths of her experience . . . Giarratano's writing

has an air of authenticity missing from the work of her peers.
Creepy, nasty and oddly compelling, it's definitely not light
reading.'

GQ Australia
Praise for Vodka Doesn't Freeze

'There's a true-crime relentlessness about Vodka Doesn't Freeze

that suggests it's been written from the heart by someone who
really cares deeply about child abuse.'

Sue Turnbull, Sydney Morning Herald

'Giarratano writes with a style that immediately grabs and holds

your attention, diving unerringly to the heart of each scene and
describing it in full, no-nonsense detail. Her characters are filled
with flaws that beg to be examined more closely and she satisfies
this need, laying bare the good and the bad in equal measure.'

www.crimedownunder.com

'Particularly nasty crime fiction that threatens to keep you awake

at night can always be dismissed with that hoary old chestnut "It's
only make-believe" . . . No such comfort with a debut book by
Leah Giarratano.'

Lucy Clark, Sunday Telegraph

 Voodoo
Doll
LEAH GIARRATANO
 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search
engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the
statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act
1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and
retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random
House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text
may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights
and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Voodoo Doll

ePub ISBN 9781864715408

Kindle ISBN 9781864718041
Voodoo Doll, although inspired by real Australian crimes, is a
work of fiction. All the characters in this book are fictitious and
any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, is purely
coincidental.

A Bantam book
Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060
www.randomhouse.com.au

First published in Australia and New Zealand by Bantam in 2008

This edition published by Bantam in 2009

Copyright © Leah Giarratano 2008

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or

transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search
engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory
exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968),
recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval
system without the prior written permission of Random House
Australia.

Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be

found at www.randomhouse.com.au/offices

National Library of Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

Giarratano, Leah.
Voodoo doll.

ISBN: 9781863255899

A823.4
Cover illustration by Superstock
Cover design by blacksheep-uk.com
Typeset by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Printed and bound by Griffin Press, South Australia
 For Joshua and the rabbit:
we forever run together through
every page of this book.
 Thanks to our Aussie diggers – our defence forces
and emergency services. When it feels like nobody
cares, remember there are millions of us in silent salute.
'. . . in a real dark night of the soul, it is always
three o'clock in the morning . . .'

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

 Prologue
FACE MASHED INTO the carpet, Joss concentrated on breathing. If
he kept his chin tucked into his neck, it reduced some of the
pressure from the boot pressing down onto his cheek. Swallowing
was out – his bottom lip was crushed flat against the rug,
preventing him from closing his mouth. He let some more saliva
trickle out; a wet patch had already formed under his cheek.

He angled his eyes to the left. He'd seen only three of them, all
in balaclavas – the gorilla now standing on his head, the small,
wiry one guarding the front entrance, and the fuckwit terrorising
the women in the loungeroom. But he knew there were four: he
could hear the screams of his host, Andy Wu, coming from the
back of the house. Each scream was preceded by a dull thwack, a
sound Joss already knew he would never forget.

He searched for an option; knew he had none. Not yet anyway.

He tried to ignore the point of the machete, inches from his
forehead, and focused again on his breathing.

Andy's wails were fading. From the room next door, Joss heard
his wife, Isobel, her voice trying for calm, reasoning. Andy's
wife, Lucy, was moaning, a low, animal keening. He'd heard
nothing from the children upstairs. They had to still be asleep.
God, he thought, please let them stay asleep.

All sounds suddenly stopped.

A pair of black combat boots appeared in the doorway and

walked towards Joss. Each step upon the polished floorboards left
a red imprint. Horrified, mesmerised, Joss watched the boots
draw closer. They stopped in front of his face. The blood on the
boots filled all of his senses. He could taste it.

'Watches, wallets, phones, jewellery. Get them all.' Boots spoke

to the man above Joss.

The gorilla removed his foot from Joss's face. 'Did he open the
safe?'

'Now what do you think?' Boots answered. 'We're ready to go.

Go and make sure everything's okay in there.'

Joss felt the attention of the man in the boots shift downwards.
His head free, Joss was able to incline his face upwards a little.
When his eyes reached the dripping machete above him, he
dropped them back to the carpet.

A boot nudged his shoulder.

'That your wife in there? Isobel? Is that her name?'

Joss considered the weave in the rug beneath his face.

The boot cracked into his head. Joss felt his left cheekbone
snap.

'Nah,' Joss managed, pain gyrating through his head. 'Met her
here tonight.'

'Nice.'

'Um, thanks?'

'Smartarse, aren't you?'

Shit, Joss thought. 'Look. I just want this over.' He rode a wave
of pain with each word he spoke. 'We just want to be safe. You
came here for money.' He kept his eyes down; this guy was just
waiting for a reason.
 'Hmm. So give me your wallet, phone and watch.'

Sixteen minutes earlier, Joss had been helping Andy Wu, his
wife's boss, clear away the remains of the barbecued dinner Andy
had served them in his courtyard. The Wus' two children and his
own little angel had been carried upstairs, leaden weights, sound
asleep.

When Andy, on his way back into the kitchen, had dropped a
ceramic platter onto the concrete, the crack was like a gunshot,
and Joss had automatically hit the ground, rolling off the path.
Reactions like that usually embarrassed the fuck out of him.
Tonight, it had given him ten seconds to take in the sight of Lucy
Wu with a fifty-centimetre blade held to her throat, a black mask
behind her emerging like a piece of the night. Joss had scrabbled
through his pockets. With an awkward twist of his arm, he had
managed to throw his wallet into the bush behind him.

Lucy's eyes had bulged, silently screaming. While the intruder

had motioned Andy to his knees, Joss had carefully taken his
mobile phone from his shirt pocket and palmed it. He had been
about to throw it to join his wallet when another pair of eyes and
a glint of steel materialised in the night. Joss had dropped the
phone onto the lawn. When he'd stood, signalled to rise by the
machete, he had stepped on the mobile, and pressed it lightly with
his toe into the night-wet grass.

Now, face down on the floor, he carefully lifted his wrist to

show his watch to the man above him. Moving slowly, he
unclipped the heavy silver band and lay the watch next to him on
the floor.

'I don't carry a wallet,' Joss said.

'Sure you do.'

'I don't need one. I've got a company card. I didn't bring a
wallet tonight.'
 'Your phone then.' The voice was flinty.

Joss felt the man above him tensing. From the corner of his
eye, he saw the blade leaving his line of vision. This guy was not
going to accept that Joss had nothing at all on him; he was going
to use this as an excuse for more blood. Joss inwardly tightened,
preparing himself to roll.

'Công an!'

Joss knew the Vietnamese words from his childhood – police,

danger! It came from the skinny one at the front door.

He heard the man above him exhale. He sounded disappointed.

His voice flat, Boots directed the other men. 'Out the back.'

To Joss, he said, 'None of you will move from this house for
thirty minutes. I may not have your ID, smartarse, but I can find
you through these people. If you go to the cops we will be back.'
He paused. 'Hell, maybe I'll come find you anyway.'

Anger overriding his training, Joss could not stop himself from
raising his face to meet the man's eyes.

All the air left the room when their eyes locked. A millisecond
later, Joss prayed he had been able to mask his shock of instant
recognition, but he knew the intruder would have heard his gasp,
seen his pupils dilate.

The man above him laughed when Joss dropped his eyes back
to the ground.

Over the roar of blood in his ears, he barely heard the men
leave the house. He hoped that the man in the boots would take
his reaction for fear; that he hadn't noticed the nonverbal cues that
indicated recall, identification.

The problem was, Joss could recognise those cues, and his
hammering heart told him he'd seen them mirrored in the other
man's face.
 1
'GODDAMN IT!' JILL Jackson's toe caught the edge of a metal filing
cabinet. She hurled the half-packed archive box across the room,
coloured manila folders and white sheets of paper trailing an arc
through the air behind it. 'Ow. Shit. Ow!' Clutching her bare foot,
she hopped through the room, her face a warning.

Scotty knew better than to say anything, but his eyes danced.

Jill dropped into a chair, cradling her foot. 'I think I broke my
fucking toe.' She rocked backwards and forwards in her seat,
biting her bottom lip and grimacing.

Scotty waited a few moments then approached cautiously.

'Give us a look.'

'Don't touch it! It's broken!' Jill waved her hand in front of her,
motioning him away.

'Oh, you'll be right, Jackson,' he said doubtfully, watching

darkness already suffusing the white skin on the top of Jill's foot.

She looked up at the man towering above her, and to her

horror, her eyes filled with tears.

'Oh come on, Jill, it's going to be okay.' Scotty reached out to
touch her, then stopped. He moved his hand up to run it through
his hair, then finally shoved it in his pocket.

'It's not.'

'Are we still talking about your toe?'

 'I don't want to go.' She swiped viciously at a tear before it
spilled from her lashes.

'It's a big promotion, Jackson. Think of the pay rise. Shit, I

wish it was me going.'

'No you don't. And I don't care about the money. I was just
starting to feel . . . ' She wanted to say 'safe', but Jill didn't
disclose that sort of thing so easily, even to her partner, who was
closer to her than her own brother.

'Yeah, I know,' said Scotty. 'But what else can you do? Anyway,
it's only a secondment. You'll probably be back here with me and
Elvis and the gang in a couple of months.'

They both knew that was unlikely. Job rotations within the
New South Wales Police Force were not often reversed, and Jill's
new seniority meant there would be little scope for her to easily
rejoin the Maroubra detectives.

They stared at one another for a moment. Then silently they

resumed packing.

It was a Sunday in late September, and the first day in five

months that the temperature had climbed above thirty degrees. Jill
and Scotty both wore thongs, crusty with sand from the beach
down the road. The morning sun glowing through the dirty
windows managed to paint even the dung-coloured walls of the
detectives' office in an optimistic light; dust motes danced in the
sunbeams. It was gorgeous out there. No way would anyone be in
here unless they had to be. Jill needed to pack up, but Scotty
didn't have to be there.

Jill swallowed the sob in her throat. She had never cried so
much as over the past few months, which surprised her, given that
she hadn't felt this secure for twenty years. The previous April,
she'd ended the life of the man who had abducted and raped her at
the age of twelve, and since then the dread that had nested in her
gut had diminished significantly.

The past months had not all been tear-filled, though. Jill had
also found herself laughing more than before, and on waking,
some days, she had experienced sensations that had taken her a
full morning to identify: spontaneity, joy, hope.

And then she'd been promoted. Again. Her rapid rise through
the force had never previously thrilled or dismayed her. She'd
accepted accolades with the same numbness with which she
ignored the jibes of those she passed over. Twelve years ago,
coinciding with her graduation from the academy, the force had
implemented a merit-over-seniority promotion system. Many
rising through the ranks had found the harassment and abuse of
the dinosaurs being left behind too much to bear, but Jill thought
little of it. She had not been wounded by the rumours – that she
gave the best head in Sydney; that she had a cousin sleeping with
the commissioner; that she was the token female, advanced only
for political reasons. The lies never breached the Teflon cocoon
she had spun around herself in adolescence.

But it felt different now. Since the death of the man who had
abducted her, she was beginning to feel again. She'd even been on
a holiday. For most people, a trip away signalled nothing of major
importance, but it had been Jill's first trip away. It was a vacation
from her fear and rigidity.

But a new job meant a new partner, and a new partner would
mean new risks. The next team would want her to socialise, drink
with them. Of course, her reputation for avoiding such activities
would have preceded her, but cops always liked to find out these
things for themselves. Her armour felt rusty: she wasn't sure she
could fit into it anymore.

'So where are they basing the taskforce?' Scotty asked her.

'Liverpool.'
 'No shit.' It was hardly the eastern suburbs. 'So you're going to
bust the home invasion gang too now? You going to leave some
of these crews for the rest of us?'

Jill had once busted an outlaw motorcycle group cooking meth

down the coast. It was how she'd made sergeant. With the recent
clean-out of a local paedophile ring, her superiors had
acknowledged her gang experience with this secondment.

'Yeah, well if you blokes would get off your arses, I wouldn't
have to do it all for you,' she said, smiling as Scotty feigned being
shot through the heart. They'd closed the paedophile case
together.

She sighed and put the lid on the last archive box.

'Looks like we're pretty much done here.' Scotty's voice

sounded tight. He'd caught her change in mood. It was time to
leave.

Jill tested her sore foot on the floor; it took her weight. It
seemed her toe was just bruised. She glanced sideways at Scotty,
feeling suddenly awkward.

'Thanks for helping, Scott.'

'Yeah, no worries.' He brushed his sandy fringe from his eyes

and shifted from one foot to the other, staring at her. It seemed
like he had something else to say.

'What?' said Jill.

'What?' he replied.

'Why're you acting like that?'

Instead of answering, he reached into his pocket and withdrew

a package.
 'I don't want it,' Jill said, backing away, shaking her head.

'I got you something.'

'I said I don't want it.'

He stood there, self-conscious, his hand stretched out. Jill knew

she was being childish and cruel, but she felt unable to be
gracious. She hated surprises. She hated endings. The rock in her
chest pushed its way up towards her throat. Why couldn't things
stay the same for just a while in her life?

The tissue-paper wrapping of the parcel rustled as Scotty's

hand shook a little. Jill hugged her arms around her waist to stop
herself moving towards him. She wanted to hold him, or punch
him.

'You look like a wanker,' she said.

'This wasn't how I saw this going, Jackson. Shouldn't you be

squealing and hugging me right now?'

'Oh give it here then,' she muttered. 'I don't squeal.'

Jill knew that when she moved from Maroubra police station
she and Scotty would remain friends, but it wouldn't be the same
when they were no longer working together every day. This gift
symbolised something ending. She kept her eyes on his hand and
took the package.

'What is it?' she asked.

Scotty just waited.

Jill picked carefully at the ribbon holding the package together,

hoping to delay this. Her fingers became more forceful when the
bow knotted, and finally she scrabbled at the tissue.

'Careful,' he said.
 The soft paper fell away, and in her hand sat a heavy pendant
on a chain. It looked old: a butterfly, studded with yellow and
amber stones, its wings licks of green glass. It perched atop a
small clear circle, studded around with the same glowing stones.
Jill drew in a breath and stared at Scotty.

'It's a, um, magnifying glass,' he said. 'And a butterfly. It's

meant to mean that you're beautiful and smart.' He said the last
part in a rush, his eyes on the floor.

'You did not make that up.' Jill was incredulous.

'Nah,' he agreed, grinning, 'My sister did. It's nice though, eh?'

'Yeah. Ta. Now let's get the rest of this crap into the car so
we've still got some weekend left.' Her cheeks hot, she shoved the
necklace into the pocket of her boardshorts, grabbed a box and
left the room.

Favouring her foot, a box under each arm, Jill stood in the
hallway outside her unit, leaning her head against the door.

'Need a hand there, Jill?'

Mrs Williamson from next door. Jill had lived here for two
years and had learned her neighbour's name only in the past three
months. Another change.

'Thanks, no. I'm right, Margaret,' said Jill, putting the boxes
down and fishing in her bag for her keys.

This was the final trip. Scotty had hauled the majority of her
belongings up in one load. It would have taken her at least three
trips. He'd left her reluctantly, but she'd known he'd bail when she
told him she wasn't interested in lunch. It took a lot of food to
keep Scotty going.

She pushed the boxes inside with her good foot, and dumped
her bag next to the others inside the front door. She scowled at
their intrusion in her otherwise uncluttered apartment. Grabbing a
remote from the dining table, she buzzed open the motorised
blinds, and walked straight onto the balcony, slipping through
before the blinds were fully open. She tasted the smell of the sea.

Her niece, Lily, last time she'd visited, had said the white-
capped waves looked like cream on blue jelly.

Maroubra beach was a carnival today. Spring rendered

Sydneysiders a little manic, the warm breezes blowing in some
kind of magic – promises of holidays, Christmas, pool parties,
heat. It seemed there were babies everywhere, and in every park,
pairs of ducks hovered around ducklings struggling through the
grass.

However, with the rise in the temperature came a

corresponding increase in violence. The new season's energy
triggered hysteria in some. Sunshine on the weekend was as good
an excuse as any to crack a beer at ten a.m., instead of waiting
until four. In homes without air-conditioning, tempers were
tinder, the heat combustible, alcohol fuel. The flames ignited
when the residents realised that the promises whispered on the
winds of spring would not be kept.

At least they've given me a couple of days before starting the

new job, Jill thought, moving back into the unit, her eyes
blinking, adjusting from the sun on the balcony. Time to try to get
used to everything. She didn't think she'd ever even been to
Liverpool, although she'd seen the signs off the motorway when
travelling out to her parents' home in Camden. Liverpool was
fifty minutes' drive southwest from Maroubra, Scotty reckoned.
For the first time, a departmental vehicle was parked in the small
garage under her unit block. She'd had to sell her old gym-set to
get it in.
 Jill squatted down with the boxes on the floor. Where did all
this stuff come from? Newspaper cuttings, personal files,
downloaded articles related to past cases: these could all go, she
decided. None of this information had been important enough to
leave with the departmental files. She sat cross-legged with the
paperwork, creating a pile she could take back down to the
garage, to drop off later at her parents' home to be burned. She
stopped when she came across a framed photograph. Jerome
Sanders and his family smiled up at her. Jerome's mum had sent
this, with two dozen roses, last May after Jill had rescued him
from the same man who'd abducted her two decades earlier. She
moved the photo over to a small pile of things she would keep.
With a sigh, she flipped onto the same pile the clippings related to
the current Sydney home invasion spree. In its clear, sealed
folder, this morning's newspaper article landed face up.

Police Establish Home Invasion Taskforce

Doctors at Liverpool Hospital advise

that the latest victim of the crime gang
terrorising residents of the western
suburbs remains in a serious, but stable,
condition. The 52-year-old Green Valley
man suffered massive injuries to both his
legs during the vicious knife attack
yesterday evening. His family remains at
his bedside.

Local Area Commander Lawrence

Last this morning announced the
establishment of a taskforce to capture
the gang believed responsible for at least
five brutal home invasions over the past
two months.

'The violence is escalating,'

commented Superintendent Last, 'and
our priority is to catch these offenders as
 quickly as possible.'

Superintendent Last admitted that

police have few leads as to the identity of
the crime gang, who clothe themselves
completely in black, wearing full-face
balaclavas.

For the residents of Sydney's west, the

decision to dedicate an investigations
team to the invasions is welcome, but
overdue.

'We can't sleep at night,' commented

Kay, a Bonnyrigg resident, who did not
wish to be further identified. 'I bet they'd
have caught these people by now if this
was happening on the North Shore.'

Jill realised she could barely see the newsprint in the gathering
afternoon gloom. She snapped on a light and stretched her neck.
Too tight. How long had it been since she'd last worked out? No
more than a couple of days, surely?

Until five months ago, she had hardly missed a day's training
since she was fifteen. When she'd taken her holiday, however,
she'd given herself a break from her punishing weights and
kickboxing routine. Trouble was, when she'd come home, she'd
found it surprisingly difficult to start up her routine again. She
really should get back into it right now. But she was hungry, she
realised, and she needed a shower. She rubbed her hands, grubby
from the clean-up, across her stomach, then stripped off her tee-
shirt and walked into her bedroom.
 When she dropped her boardshorts to the floor, the butterfly
pendant dropped from the pocket and skidded across the granite
floor tiles; it hid somewhere under her bed. She frowned in its
direction, tempted to leave it there. Eventually, she bent to
retrieve it, suddenly worried for the glass and stones. She held it
up to the light, where it spun in her hand. Perfect. Nothing like
her. Where would she ever wear this? She rarely wore jewellery,
lived in tee-shirts and jeans whenever possible.

She held it to her throat in the mirror, scowled at the dainty

prisms juxtaposed against the scales-of-justice tattoo on her
shoulder, and the scars on her nipples, inflicted before she'd even
developed breasts. She'd give it to Lily.

She knew she wouldn't.

She mentally relived Scotty watching her accept the pendant,

his whole body a question. Already, she regretted her brusque
acceptance of his gift. She wished she could explain to him that
kindness from others felt like a threat. She'd like to have told him
that her fleeting feelings of warmth towards him were blasted ice-
solid before she could even identify them. Although she was
beginning to realise that these defence reactions might now be
unnecessary in her life, she could no more control them than
articulate them. It only made it harder that Scotty seemed to know
these things without her having to say anything.

Jill tucked the pendant into her underwear drawer, nestled it in.
She shook her head and walked naked into her bathroom.
 2
JOSS SLICED THE last crust from Charlie's Vegemite sandwich and
wrapped it carefully in cling film until the bread could no longer
be seen through the swathes of plastic. It occurred to him that his
little girl might never be able to get her lunch out of the wrapping.
He smiled, warmth spreading in his chest as he imagined her
conscientiously trying.

'Someone will help her at preschool,' he told the sandwich, as

he tucked it with a mandarin into her yellow lunchbox. He
snapped the box closed, and as he'd been privately doing since
she started school, asked the smiling sun on the front to keep his
little girl safe. He smoothed the tape upon which her name was
printed in Isobel's neat writing. Charlie Rymill. Her mother's
surname. Good.

Joss had always hated his name. Throughout his thirty-four

years, his first and last names had jockeyed for the position of
most despised. For the first thirteen years of his life, his first
name had held a slight degree of street cred, associated in some
way with hashish, but he kept his double-barrelled shocker of a
last name to himself whenever possible. No one was going to run
in fear from Joss Preston-Jones for godsakes.

At thirteen, when the voices had told his mother to throw

herself in front of a car, Joss's grandparents had put him in a
private school. There, 'Preston-Jones' was completely
unremarkable, but 'Joss' had earned him more than one bashing.
After school, he'd joined the infantry corps. Within a couple of
months, his peers had learned not to exploit the many
opportunities to ridicule either name. He had a reputation for
never knowing when to stop in a fight.

Since the home invasion at Andy Wu's, Joss had never been
more thankful that Isobel had retained her own surname when
they'd married, and that they'd given it to Charlie. Those psychos
had never learned her full name – Isobel tossing her handbag into
the boot of the car before heading into Andy's place for dinner
had meant that the offenders had no ID for either of them.

Well, nothing formal.

The worry tape in his mind took up where it had left off before
he fell asleep the night before.

Then his girls walked into the kitchen.

Shiny was the first word that came to mind. Charlie's golden
hair shone, her four-year-old skin was translucent. She had on a
yellow dress – favourite colour – and red shoes. A couple of
weeks before, she'd begun to insist she could dress herself.

Charlie launched herself into his arms.

'We're late again, Daddy!' She sounded thrilled. She pretty

much always sounded that way.

'Well, you're just going to have to drive fast then,' he said to her
beaming face. He turned her around in his arms and deposited her
in a chair at the table.

'Go and get dressed, babe,' said Isobel, trailing her fingertips
carefully over his bruised face as she passed. 'I'll take over here.'
She smoothed a dark lock of hair into place. Damn he loved her
wearing that suit.

Joss groaned and headed towards the stairs.

It'd been ten years, and he still couldn't get used to wearing a
suit. When he'd become a civilian again in ninety-seven, he'd
thought he would never find a job. Do your twenty years,
everyone told him. Get an army pension and take a while to make
your next move. It wasn't a bad suggestion. But then again, no
one but Isobel and his former commanding officers knew about
his medical discharge on psychiatric grounds. People thought his
tour of Rwanda had changed him; they had no idea how much.

Turned out, though, that his skills were in high demand in

civvy street. The ability to lead, proven discipline and analytical
expertise – he'd had a choice of jobs. He'd taken a role as fraud
investigator for an insurance company, because he thought it
sounded boring and he wouldn't have to work in a team. He'd kept
these motivations out of his comments in the job interview.

He walked quickly past the mirror, avoiding catching a glimpse

of his black eye. The intern at the hospital had told him that they
could operate on the cheekbone, insert a screw. Nerve damage
was a risk, though. Joss figured his cheek had healed okay the last
time he'd fractured it, in Rwanda. He shook his head a little to
disperse the memory. Forget surgery, he'd told the doctor. Well,
you probably should avoid breaking it again, the specialist had
returned dryly.

Downstairs, he got Isobel to do his tie. Six years of private-

school uniform had made him an expert at tying knots, but each
morning saw him feigning helplessness to his wife. Isobel,
amused and frustrated, especially when they were late, like today,
would expertly tie the knot, kiss him on the mouth. For two
minutes, every morning during this ritual, he breathed her in. A
couple of times he'd undone the tie, turned back to her with a look
of shocked innocence, like, how did that happen?

Not today, though. They really were late.

As soon as the car turned the corner, carrying Charlie to preschool
and Isobel to her office in North Sydney, Joss was again lost in
images of the robbery. Isobel had wanted him to take some time
off, get some counselling, let his face heal. But the last thing he
needed was to sit around with nothing to do but think. She knew
him well enough to let it go.

Preparing for work last night, he'd presented Isobel with some
scenarios to explain his black eye to the other insurance assessors:
a water-skiing accident, a fistfight with his mother-in-law; caught
up in the latest home invasion? He thought he'd go with Isobel's
suggestion in the end: I fell off a ladder, painting the house.

He joined the queue for the bus into the city. Usually, he liked
catching the bus, people-watching, the relaxed pace of it. It made
more sense than getting a lift with Isobel on her way to work, and
there was plenty to distract him from his memories of the past:
Balmain looked nothing like Rwanda.

Since the thing at Andy Wu's, however, his mind had hardly
visited Africa at all.

Those eyes. He'd never have believed you could recognise

someone you hadn't seen in twenty-three years just from two eyes
staring out of a balaclava. But he had.

Henry Nguyen. Cutter.

Until his first tour of duty, until the Kibeho massacre in

Rwanda, Joss's nightmares had all been about the last day he'd
seen Cutter.

At age thirteen, two days after the last time he had seen Cutter,
Joss and his mum were out the front of Fairfield shopping centre,
waiting to cross the road. His mum had told him that they had a
meeting scheduled with Jesus. His whole life she'd been telling
him stuff like that. He was eight before he realised that people
didn't really come into their house each night to poison their food;
he'd stayed up one night to check. So, when she wanted to take
him to talk to Jesus, the only thing he was worried about was that
she didn't start the meeting right there on the pavement in front of
Franklins. But she'd grabbed his hand and run into the street. He'd
pulled away.

How could he have pulled away?

He used to get so embarrassed when she showed up at the

school, wasted, falling asleep in the principal's office. Or when
she'd accuse him of being Satan's messenger in front of his
friends, screaming into his face, froth on her lips.

Is that why he'd let go of her hand?

Thing is, he knew deep down that he couldn't have known she
would run into the path of a car. But a little voice inside asked,
couldn't you have guessed? Maybe you knew she was going to do
it? Why did you let go of her hand?

His mother had survived, but she'd been scheduled to a psych

hospital, and Joss's grandparents had stepped in. He'd moved
from Cabramatta to Mosman, changed schools, and had never
seen Cutter or any of the others since.

Until Andy's house, the previous Saturday night.

Joss knew Cutter would not have been overjoyed to renew their
acquaintance. The feeling was mutual. But that was not the
problem.

If Cutter figured out that Joss had recognised him, Cutter

would come and find him.

He had to.

Andy Wu would never walk again, and Joss could put Cutter
away.
 3
THE FEELINGS STARTED the day before, and built until he cut. And
if something went wrong, if things didn't go like he planned, it
hurt. Bad.

When he was a kid, Henry Nguyen would manage the feelings

by slicing his forearms; carving crosses and snakes into his skin.
Only when he'd cut to screaming point would the sexual tension
ease. The kids who could watch him called him Cutter. The kids
who couldn't, never spoke to him at all, kept their heads down
when he walked past.

Nowadays, there was nothing he could inflict on himself to

stop the feelings. He'd long moved on from that. Blood was still
an aphrodisiac, but now he only started feeling normal again
when others screamed.

Just lately, though, he hadn't been feeling right until the

screaming stopped.

Guns had never done it for him. The pissweak and petrified had
brought him plenty over the years, but he'd passed them on again.
What do guns get you? Moments of respect, and then you've got
to do something. Shoot, or move on. Shoot, and it's all over.
Move on and well, what the fuck good was that?

Tonight was different, though. The hit planned for Capitol Hill
was on a gun collector. A suburban Rambo getting through his
midlife crisis with a new Harley and a shooting-range
membership. Word was, he was cashed up, and had a nine-piece
collection. Licensed and locked down, of course, but Cutter was
looking forward to cracking the safe.
 Persuading the owner to open it for him.

His men felt they needed the guns. Tried to tell him only guns
could get them through doors now, only guns could convince
people to open up and shut up. He saw them look away while he
was working. He knew they didn't have his love for the knife.

He didn't understand this about his crew. In fact, he'd given up

trying to figure people out when he was in kindergarten. He knew
there was a deficit in his makeup. Empathy. He had figured out
what it was supposed to be, understood the concept, he just
couldn't find the switch to turn it on. He figured it was the same
as colourblindness. Some people have it. Some people don't.

Some counsellor clown had tried to teach him empathy once –

try to put yourself in the other person's shoes, think how they
might be feeling. Best counselling he'd ever had. Helped him
imagine just what might hurt the most. He'd used the tip several
times to hone his technique over the years.

Tonight, the feeling became maddening while he was putting

on his fatigues, packing his bag. Lacing his boots, his groin
burned so much he wanted to screech. Last couple of times, when
the screaming had stopped, he'd been surprised to catch himself
howling. He laughed aloud when he thought of the other guys'
faces.

Cutter's laugh came out a shriek.

 4
IT TOOK TEN full seconds for Joss to realise that the face was
Isobel's, not Fuzzy's; that she was alive, not drowning in her own
blood; and that he was screaming, clutching at his throat.

'Babe, it's okay.' She reached to still his hands.

It's fucking not. 'I know. I'm sorry. Another nightmare.' The
sheets stuck to his legs. He shuddered involuntarily as his heart
decelerated.

'I made an appointment with Dr Sherif yesterday,' said Isobel.

'I'm not going to a counsellor.'

'It's tentative. I thought we could see how we felt in the

morning.'

He said nothing, climbed out of bed.

'What time is it?' he asked from the window, checking the

perimeter.

'One. And we've got a visitor.'

He spun; Charlie stood in the doorway, the nose of her yellow

dinosaur bumping against her bare feet, its tail in her fist. Her
lower lip pouted.

'You shouted,' she said.

'Sorry, baby, Daddy had a bad dream.'

 He gathered her up, hot and moist with sleep, and tucked her
into their bed, curled in the nest her mother had made of her arms
and legs in the bed.

He left the room, knowing he'd not sleep again that night.

He patrolled the house. Over the past two nights, he'd spent
more time doing that at night than sleeping. He kept to the
deepest shadows in Charlie's room, away from the pool of soft
blue light that glowed from the nightlight near her bed. The
window was secure. His pulse started with a car engine, but he
quickly recognised the vehicle. The Wilkinson kid next door. Got
work last Christmas as a baker. His mum got up this time every
morning to take him to work.

His mind returned to the night at Andy's. The sights, sounds

and smells walked with him through his quiet house. Thwack.
Aaarrgh.

He chewed at the skin around his thumbnail as he descended

the stairs to continue his reconnaissance. Guilt gnawed at his gut.
He should've told the police everything straight away, but he had
frozen at that point when giving his statement. He knew that if he
gave them Cutter, the cops would stick a microscope up his arse.
Would want to know everything: how he knew him. He couldn't
give them that. Telling the police would mean telling Isobel, and
she knew nothing of Cutter. Joss had to make sure it stayed that
way.

He looked around the newly renovated kitchen. Charlie's

finger-paintings covered the gleaming stainless steel that had
added a grand to the cost of the refrigerator. He couldn't lose
Charlie, Isobel. He'd made it out of that life; he couldn't go back
to that world.

Maybe it wasn't Cutter, he tried to tell himself. It might not

have been him at Andy's at all. Shock can do that to you. Cause
you to make mistakes. Shit, it had been twenty years since he'd
seen him.

He rubbed at his face and winced; a stab of pain from his cheek
started a headache that he knew would last all day.

He felt Cutter's eyes follow him as he continued his patrol.

 5
FINDING THE RIGHT house was not easy. It's true there were a
million McMansions around these days, usually with a BMW or
Range Rover in the garage, but most of them were mortgaged to
the hilt. Cutter and his crew had learned that most of these owners
didn't have a spare dollar to save their lives.

Some of the fibro houses in Cabramatta were another thing

altogether. One family had thirty grand under the bed for
fucksakes. Cutter couldn't believe that Mouse, one of his crew,
had given up his own aunty on that one. But when he'd cut off the
aunty's thumbs to help her calm herself down a little, Esterhase
had had to take Mouse out the back. See, you could never figure
people out. Why did he put his aunty in it in the first place?

Cutter liked the garage entry best. Kept everyone real quiet
until they were all inside. You had to know the house a little: look
for one with an internal entry from the garage through to the
house. Good thing Esterhase did furniture deliveries for his day
job – he got to see these things. Then, wait near the garage, slip in
with the car when they come home, and stay quiet till the door
goes down. Let them get out of the car. Then they're all yours
until morning. Do anything you want, go anywhere you need to
go.

Nosy neighbours could be a problem. He tried to stay away

from townhouses – connecting walls. It was true they had done
one townhouse, and no one had come running. But they'd had to
use duct tape to keep her quiet. Cutter preferred it when there was
a little screaming room. Houses that backed onto a reserve, a
school, an industrial estate; those that had a high brick fence, a
busy road, a pool in the yard, just a bit of space around were best.

When Esterhase showed him the house with the guns at Capitol
Hill, he'd been in heaven. The Capitol Hill estate was all two- to
five-acre blocks. Double brick castles. Pool houses, guest wings.
Still a new development, there were vacant blocks everywhere,
next to half-finished houses, skeletal in the night. He'd be back
for this place. Shit. Maybe he'd do another two here.

Almost time. Cutter couldn't wait.

Esterhase waited in the dark near the garage. The target rarely
got home before one a.m. Owned some factory where they
worked through the night.

Cutter sat in the van. The rest of the crew sat with him in their
balaclavas, wishing Cutter would put his mask on too. They
looked everywhere but at him.

Cutter stared out the window of the van into the night,
grinning, rocking backwards and forwards in his seat. He kept his
hands pressed down tightly into his lap.
 6
IN HER UNDERWEAR, face sour, Jill surveyed the wreckage of her
bedroom. The only clothes she owned that she hadn't tried on
were her swimming costumes.

'So much for a couple of days off,' she muttered.

She settled on narrow grey pants, a fitted white shirt. She

smoothed her hair into a high ponytail and scowled at the mirror.
New people. Blah. She smudged a tiny bit of colour across her
cheeks and eyes. She had no tan yet to hide the freckles across her
nose.

At her breakfast bar, she sat with an orange juice and toast,
bare feet on the bench, a street directory in her lap. She had
planned on plotting her route carefully, maybe taking a drive out
to her new workplace before starting. Yeah, right.

The call had come at five-thirty a.m. Another home invasion:

Capitol Hill, a wealthy estate around fifteen minutes from the
copshop in Liverpool. This time the victim didn't make it to
hospital. The ambos had brought his body out in two bags.

'We're going to meet at eight, Jill, but I'll understand if you're

not able to get here by then.' Superintendent Last spoke in an
unhurried tone. 'We'll catch you up when you do arrive. Again,
I'm sorry to call you in today.'

'No problem. I'll be there as soon as I can.'

The most direct route seemed to be Beauchamp Road to

Foreshore Drive and then along the M5 all the way to Liverpool.
There looked to be only a couple of streets to negotiate once she
got off the motorway.

By six-forty, she was in the car heading southwest.

She wound the window down and angled her face into a stream
of cool air. The morning sky glowed, and there was a promise on
the joggers' faces as they bounded by.

She found a parking spot right out the front of the police station.
Metered, but they'd settle that stuff later. The clock in the dash
showed 7.38. Early. Good. The last thing she wanted was to start
this thing behind everyone else.

Her gut twisted. She hated meeting new people. After nearly a
year away from school following the kidnapping, she'd returned
to find she couldn't speak English anymore. At least it felt that
way. She couldn't relate to the things the other kids said, couldn't
fill the silences they left for her. Couldn't make the little noises
they did – the giggles, uh-huhs, nuhs, whatevers. What was the
point? Once you said what you wanted, or needed, or what was
immediately obvious, what was left to say? Some lunchtimes
she'd sat, incredulous, listening to the roar of language around
her. The words smothered her, choked her airways, and
sometimes she would run to a silent classroom, wheezing for
oxygen, struggling to clear her throat, trying to prevent an anxiety
attack.

The ability to banter, which she'd taken for granted as a

younger child, had never returned. The comfortable chitchat that
knitted relationships was beyond her. Others saw her as aloof,
rude, odd. Some instantly disliked her; resented her for the
discomfort they felt when she broke the social rules. In the past, if
she could've done anything about it, she probably wouldn't have,
given that the distance kept her feeling safe. But today, starting a
new job, she wished she had the ability to make the right noises,
to help dispel some of the stories she knew would've reached here
before her arrival.

She slicked tinted gloss over her dry lips, checked her face
once in the rear-view mirror, and stepped out of the car into
Liverpool.

The first thing she noticed was that there were definitely no
joggers. Not a one. In Maroubra, they were everywhere at this
time of day. Here, a few early risers hurried to get to work. Down
a block and across the road, a man, his face lost in his hair,
screamed ceaselessly at the traffic – motherfucking cunts! You're
all cunts! A skinny young mum waited with a pram at the lights.
A man next to her kept his eyes fastened on the brown paper bag
clutched in his hand. Already. What time did the bottlos open
around here? She figured that there must be a methadone clinic
somewhere close by. A man and a woman in tracksuit pants it
looked like they'd worn to bed did the junkie shuffle towards the
chemist on the corner. She remembered reading a few years ago
that the shopkeepers in the area were furious about the crackdown
on the heroin trade in nearby Cabramatta. The politicians had
claimed hero status in the war on drugs, but the buyers and sellers
had moved just five kilometres down the highway to Liverpool.

Mouth dry, Jill decided she needed a juice or something before

she entered the building. On the other side of the road she could
see an Asian food store open for business. She crossed the street.
Tables of fresh fruit and vegetables, still wet from the markets,
spilled onto the footpaths. Moon cakes and dim sum sat in the
fridge next to cans of Pepsi and bottled water. She took a bottle of
green tea to the counter, where a woman was packing a vegetable
Jill had never seen before into small bags.

'Okra. More fibre than any other vegetable! You want some this
morning?' The shopkeeper continued to pack as she spoke.
 'How do you cook it?' Jill wanted to know.

'I don't know. Never had it! You try it and tell me next time.'

'Okay. Why not. How much?' Jill rummaged through the

bottom of her bag for her purse.

'Two dollars,' the woman replied, beaming as she filled Jill a

fresh bag containing twice as much as the others she had packed.

Jill crossed the road, cramming the bag of vegetables into her
handbag. They poked out the top and she wondered what the hell
she had been thinking. It was ten to eight and time to get in there.

Jill found Superintendent Lawrence Last striding down a hallway

in her direction. A youth in uniform half-jogged to keep up with
him. Last's baggy suit shushed with each oversized step; grey suit,
hair and skin seemed all the same tone. He hunched forward, as
though the ceiling hovered just beyond his hair. Plate-sized hands
swung by his sides. He saw her ahead of him, and his hand and
the crags around his mouth lifted in greeting, then dropped again
with his shoulders. He turned his grey eyes to his watch, and was
with her in one final lurch.

'I'm so glad you're here, Jill. I really appreciate it.' The quiet
voice seemed out of place from such a huge man, as though he'd
tried to shrink that too. 'It's all a terrible mess, I'm afraid.'

He seemed so bent with worry that Jill's self-consciousness had

already been replaced with a desire to try to lessen his burden.
She fell in behind him as he opened the door to a meeting room.
The man in uniform handed Last a folder and left them.

They entered a room already occupied by two men.

 'David. Derek. Thank you for coming.' Although his voice was
low in volume, Superintendent Last carried power into the room.

'Not like we had a choice, is it, boss?'

The words were for Last, but the speaker's eyes were on Jill.
Leaning against a wall, arms folded over a bulging chest, he stood
straight at the last minute, in offhanded respect to his superior
officer.

'Quite,' said Last. 'It's a minute to eight. I expect Delahunt will

be here shortly. We'll wait. Maybe if we all take a seat?'

Jill walked around the table to take the seat diagonally facing
the door. The dragon seat. According to the rules of feng shui, it
afforded its occupant power through placement. Jill didn't know if
she believed that stuff, but she did prefer that position, with her
back to the wall – and she needed all the help she could get today.
She reached the chair at the same time as the fourth occupant of
the room. A flicker of a smile, and then he dropped his eyes, held
out a hand, his other holding onto the back of the chair. Assuming
possession of it.

'Hello. I am David Tran.'

She took his hand, feeling slightly put out until she noticed a
walking stick leaning against the table; he was using the chair for
balance while he greeted her.

'Hi. Jill Jackson.' She smiled.

They stood there.

'You take the seat,' she offered, at the same moment as he

waved her towards it. They laughed, awkward.

'No, please take this seat. I will sit next to you,' said David.

'Thanks.' Jill dropped into the chair, looking up to see Muscles

watching the exchange with an open smirk.

She looked around the table. The men all wore suits. What had
she been thinking with her outfit? First day – taskforce – suit! It
seemed obvious now. She adjusted her shirt a little. Muscles still
wore the smirk.

Just in time to save her from doing something ridiculous, like

initiating a stare-down match with this idiot, another man entered
the room. He must be another taskforce member. What had
Superintendent Last said his name was? Delahunt?

Cargo pants. Phew. It was the first thing she noticed. Blue tee-
shirt. Yee hah. She straightened a little in her seat.

Dark-haired and unshaven, he walked into the room on an

angle, kind of like he was trying to sneak up on something. An
A4 notepad, rolled like a trumpet, stuck out of the side pocket of
his navy cargos. She figured him for around six foot. Making eye
contact with no one, he sat down.

With his entry, Superintendent Last looked up from a bulky

folder and rummaged through a box on the table. He pulled out
four more folders of the same size, and handed them around the
room. Jill left hers closed in front of her, focused her attention on
the team leader, eager now to begin.

'Gabriel. Glad you're here,' he said to Delahunt. 'This thing's

gone from bad to worse.' A pause. 'I'd like to begin with
introductions. I've met all of you previously, so I'll begin with . . .
'

A forceful sneeze made Jill jump in her seat. Embarrassed by

her exaggerated startle-response, she shifted a little to hide her
movement. The new guy sneezed again. An explosion. And
again. And again. Each sneeze a shout. The others waited, staring
at him. Jill forgot her own discomfort in her mortification for the
man. The sound must have been echoing through the hallways.
 'Haven't you got a tissue?' the sneezer demanded, looking
around at the others. She'd expected 'sorry', 'excuse me', even 'oh
dear', but he seemed completely unperturbed.

She grabbed her bag, more to give her something to do other

than stare, and reached into it to find her tissue pack. Too late, she
overturned the bulging bag of vegetables, and they sprayed across
the table, two landing in the superintendent's open folder.

'Bumya,' said the new guy, Gabriel.

'Sorry?' She meant it as a question; as an apology for covering

the table in okra; and as an apology to herself, for having to come
to this bloody place this morning when she'd so badly wanted a
few days off.

'Bumya,' he repeated.

She wondered what was wrong with him.

'It's um . . . ah . . .' he tried.

Muscles leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head,

enjoying the show.

This was like a car crash.

'Okra!' Delahunt shouted, delighted with himself. 'Bumya.

Okra. It's the same thing.' He pointed at the scattered vegetables.

Over the next hour, Jill learned that last night not only had the
home invasion gang committed murder for the first time, but that
they were now in possession of at least nine firearms. Most
worryingly, however, it was clear that the motivation for these
crimes was not just robbery. At least one member of this gang
was a violent sadist. A sociopath. And his need for violence was
escalating.

Six acts to date. Eighteen victims. One dead. One still

unconscious, with multiple serious injuries. Reports from past
victims had all identified one person who seemed to be in charge.
There were four offenders they knew about, each armed with a
machete; but only one man in each of the robberies had used his
knife. The victims' descriptions suggested that it had been the
same person each time: the descriptions of his height, his
mannerisms, his voice seemed to tally.

Superintendent Last wanted them all to travel over to the

Capitol Hill residence later this morning. He'd been there at five
this morning, shortly after the daughter of the deceased had
managed to free herself from her restraints and telephone for
help. Physically uninjured, she remained in hospital, heavily
sedated. Her father's legs, head and arms had been severed from
his torso. His safe, containing ammunition and nine registered
firearms, had been cleared out.

Almost incoherent, the survivor had managed to let the arriving

officers know that she'd heard the whole thing.

Jill imagined that the sound of her father's screaming would

have been less horrific than the chopping and sawing sounds that
had continued when he stopped.

The taskforce members had been silent during the briefing,

transfixed by Last's measured, careful account. Jill and David
Tran scribbled notes. During the introductions, she had learned
that David Tran and Derek Reid were detectives from Sydney's
southwest. Gabriel Delahunt was the surprise – an Australian
Federal Police officer, he had most recently been stationed at the
police headquarters in Surry Hills, but like Jill, had moved around
a lot for his previous big cases. She knew that the AFP often
worked major crime investigations with community police, but
she'd never worked a case involving them.
 'Before we get moving on this thing,' said Last, 'there are two
other important matters. First, we'll be looking into a couple of
additional home invasions committed prior to the six we have
been actively assigned. They occurred late last year, and there are
some similarities which suggest that one or more of the same
perpetrators may be involved.'

He cleared his throat, sat a little straighter in his seat.

'The second matter we need to discuss involves the media.'

Silence for a few beats.

'I am sure you heard the news this morning.'

Jill did a mental head slap. She'd been too busy figuring out
how to get there to listen to the radio.

'I don't know whether any of you listen to talkback, but it

seems that eighty per cent of callers want to know why we haven't
caught these guys yet. They're talking about being too scared to
turn the lights off; complaining that they've spent thousands on
new security. Last week, one woman said she'd moved all of her
family's beds into the loungeroom, where they plan to sleep every
night until the offenders are caught. The idea seems to have
caught on, and other listeners report doing the same thing.' He
stopped to take a sip of water.

'The news this morning was all over the murder in Capitol Hill.
Neighbours must have tipped them off. In fact, channels Nine and
Seven and a couple of radio stations held special broadcasts this
morning, dedicated to the home invasions. It is now the major
national issue. Even the premier's been wheeled out to talk about
it.' He paused again and scratched at an island of grey stubble on
his face, as though surprised to find it there. Hasty shaving had
clawed other patches of skin.

'The pissing contest has begun,' he said. It was the first time Jill
had heard him swear.

'I don't know whether any of you have worked a headline case
before,' he continued. 'I am sorry to tell you that you are caught
up in one now.' He seemed genuinely apologetic. 'The pressure is
horrendous. You will work ridiculous hours and be criticised
constantly for doing nothing. You can expect no support from
above me should things go wrong. Expect hysteria, propaganda
and even lies in the media. I can't say it more clearly than this: do
not speak to them. Come to me with everything. I will do my best
to watch your backs.' He paused again. 'Please. Don't speak to the
media. They will be everywhere.'

The superintendent unfolded like a giant pair of compasses.

'David, Derek. If you could ride with me please. Jill, would you
come behind us with Gabriel? Please follow my vehicle. If we
become separated, Capitol Hill is off Elizabeth Drive. You've a
map in your folder there . . . ah, Appendix C.' He flicked through
the folder to show them. 'We'll enter the house together. Expect
crime scene, the coroner, and of course the media. Thank you for
your attention this morning. I'll set new directives following our
meeting in situ.'

Back in a tick, he'd said.

Jill sat in the Commodore out the front of the police station,
motor idling. She stared at the backs of the four heads in the car
in front of her, its engine also running. A uniformed officer was in
the driver's seat, Last in front, Reid and Tran in the back.

She thrummed her fingers against the wheel, felt like she was
doing something wrong. Where the hell was Delahunt?

At last he bounded through the front doors of the station,

swung into the passenger seat.

About bloody time, she thought, irritated. She ignored him

completely and pulled out, indicating to enter the traffic. Delahunt
sat silently, hands in his lap.

She stayed with the car in front, watching for the street sign.
Elizabeth Drive. There it was. Straight now to Capitol Hill. She
relaxed a tiny bit, rubbed at her neck.

She became more aware of her passenger. Was she supposed to

say something? She widened her senses, listened to him moving,
tried to learn more about her companion in the quiet car. Her
perceptive skills had been sharpened through years of fight
training blindfolded, and she could tell a lot from others' barely
perceptible movements, the way they breathed. His breathing was
even, composed. She felt no tension, but he was not especially
still. His active attention was directed to the road, outside the car.
There seemed to be no awkwardness or tightness in his silence.
She chanced a glance sideways. He'd donned a trucker's cap, the
brim pulled low. No sunnies. His eyelashes were ridiculously
long. Mediterranean skin, strong nose, generous lips.

'Best way to cook it is with lamb,' he said.

Jill over-corrected the steering a little. 'Sorry?'

'You gotta use heaps of garlic, like a whole thing. A big onion.
Then brown the lamb with it. You can use lamb mince if you
want, but it smells like shit. Better to use chops, or you could cut
up a leg of lamb.'

Was this guy for real? After what they'd just heard? What they
were going to see? Regardless, he was on a roll. She sat back and
listened, finally realising that he was explaining to her how to
cook the okra.

'You gotta have boiling water ready, or you can use stock if you
want. Salt and pepper and plenty of tomato paste in with the meat.
Add some sugar. A big spoonful. Then you throw the bumya in –
you know, the okra – and cover it all with the water. And you
have to cook it for an hour. You eat it with rice. But don't do that
crappy boiled rice. You've gotta cook it absorption method. You
can put lemon and chilli in at the end if you want.'

Was he done? Jill waited.

'Some people eat it with yoghurt,' he said.

He sat silently. Seemed satisfied.

'Right.' she said. 'Um, thanks.'

There were trees on both sides of the road now, large houses
thrown around the hills surrounding them. The scrub grew more
dense as the car ahead indicated right. Within a kilometre they
were on a wide road, sealed, but without curbs and gutters. Jill
was amazed at the rural outlook – they were so close to built-up
suburbs, but around her were bushland, orchards, grazing cattle
and sheep. On the horizon, the Blue Mountains shimmered,
opalescent; the sky beyond stretched away forever.

Delahunt was taking everything in, head moving from side to

side; at one point, hands on the dash and face pressed against the
windscreen, he seemed to stare at something directly above the
car. He wound the window down, sniffing the air outside. Jill
watched him from the corner of her eye.

She braked with the sudden red lights of the car ahead. They
were turning right into a gated roadway. A sign ahead indicated
their arrival in Capitol Hill, also announcing that there were acre
lots still available for sale.

Jill stared when the first house came into view. It looked like it
had been dropped there from Vaucluse, or Hollywood or
something. Despite one of the worst droughts in the state's
history, manicured emerald lawns and verdant foliage surrounded
the gated property. There must be two hundred rose bushes lining
the drive, she thought. As they rolled though the suburb, she
swivelled her head from side to side. Each home competed with
the next for opulence, size, lushness of the gardens.

'Can you believe this?' she asked as they passed a walled two-
storey mansion with single-storey wings either side, each annexe
as big as a large home in its own right.

Gabriel murmured something, totally absorbed.

'What do you reckon these people do for a living?' she

wondered aloud.

'Tradies, a lot of them,' said Gabriel. 'We've passed electrician

vans, building trucks . . .'

'Mercedes, Ferraris. We're in the wrong job.'

'So, that neighbour who noticed the white van at the victim's
house last night wouldn't have thought it out of place at all,' he
said. 'Most of these people would contract out their cleaning and
gardening.'

'Looks like most of them would have live-in help.'

They heard the circus before they saw it. As they rounded a
wide bend, the Superintendent's vehicle came to a sudden stop,
and Jill hit the brakes hard. Cars and media vans lined the road.
Clutches of people stood talking and smoking. A television crew
filmed a suited woman gesturing gravely behind her as she spoke.
A news chopper droned in the sky up ahead.

The lead car began rolling again, gestured forward by a

uniformed officer. Jill buzzed down her window to speak to show
him her ID, but he waved her through. The film crew turned
cameras in their direction and Jill gave them the back of her head
as she motored past the uniformed cop.

A hundred metres in front, unmarked and regular police

vehicles indicated the victim's home. Jill pulled up in front of the
next-door neighbour's house; behind a wide circular driveway, a
curtain moved back into place when she glanced in its direction.
She stared at the window a moment longer, then followed her
colleagues towards the crime scene.

Nobody bothered to speak; a descending chopper thumping

overhead drowned all other sound. The morning was heating up
already. Record temperatures were predicted for Sydney this
spring and summer. Global warming. It made Jill feel guilty; she
loved the heat.

An elaborate intercom system stood beside the open motorised

gate and around fifty full-sized palms lined the sandstone drive. A
circular fountain the size of Jill's bathroom fluted jets of water
into the air. When they reached the open doors, twice as wide and
tall as doors on any house Jill had ever entered, she noticed that
Delahunt was no longer by her side. She looked back and saw
him at the gates, squatting by the fence line, rifling through the
dirt with his hands. She followed the others into a marble foyer
two levels high.

The cacophony from outside was instantly muted. Jill felt her
edginess dissipate slightly. What would it be like to actually live
here, she wondered idly, looking around at the opulent
furnishings. Given the horror that had unfolded here, she
wondered how it could feel so serene.

The superintendent herded them into a room off the foyer, a

library. They gathered around him, waiting. David Tran leaned on
his walking stick, his face pale. He seemed to be in some pain.
Derek Reid, in contrast, almost vibrated with fitness. He brushed
unnecessarily close to Jill and she thought she caught the sweet
steroid smell body builders often emitted. He gave her a smug
smile when he caught her looking.

'The murder took place in the media room.' Last spoke in his
usual hushed tone. 'Of course, the body is no longer here. Video
footage and photos will be available by the time we get back to
the House,' he said, referring to the police station back in
Liverpool. He glanced at his watch. 'The autopsy is in progress
right now. I wanted you to be here, rather than there.'

Last looked around the group, and finally seemed to notice

Gabriel's absence. He did not comment.

'I have no set objective for any of you this morning. Forensics
are still collecting prints and trace. Just do what you do. Get a feel
for what happened. Take notes.'

From a manila folder, the superintendent handed each of them

a three-page photocopied floor plan of the home. He pointed out
the murder room.

'We'll meet back here at 1200 hours. If anyone questions your

presence, please refer them to me. Good luck.'

Last moved away from their group and Jill was left staring at
Reid and Tran. David Tran seemed about to say something. Reid
grinned at them and left the library before he could speak.

'Jill,' said Tran, 'you may be best off without me this morning.'
He seemed to be still out of breath. 'I'm afraid that walk has
already taken a lot out of me. I'll be moving at a slower pace.'

'Sure,' said Jill. She wanted to ask if he was okay, but wasn't
sure of the words to use, didn't want to offend.

He seemed to sense her unease. 'I'm supposed to still be at

home,' he said. 'Sick report. HOD.'

Hmm. Hurt on duty. She wondered what had happened. Well,

this would be the time to ask, Jill, she told herself. But the
moment passed while she was thinking of something to say. She
nodded at Tran and left the room.

Jill figured Reid would go straight to the crime scene, so she

made her way to the garage. She didn't want to see the murder
room with Derek Reid.

The MO in three of the home invasions had been access

through the garage. Donna Moser, the victim's daughter, had been
asleep when her father arrived home. She'd awoken to a black
balaclava. So far, she hadn't been able to give the police anything
about how the offenders had gained entry. Jill figured if the
offenders were onto a good thing, they'd probably stick to it.

Orienting herself using the map in her hand, she walked across
marble, granite and thick carpet until she reached the internal
entry to the garage, in a room next to the kitchen. The room held
a plush couch and large television, and Jill glimpsed a bright,
gleaming expanse where a door opened out to a backyard
entertainment area and pool.

The door ahead of her stood open; beyond was the darkness of
the garage. Jill realised that her tongue was stuck to the roof of
her mouth. Maybe she should get some water before going in
there.

She was halfway back to the brightness of the kitchen when

she forced herself to turn around. It's not the basement, stupid, she
told herself. This place is crawling with cops. You're okay. Dark
rooms always reminded her of the place she'd been held captive
as a twelve-year-old, and it was only six months or so ago that
she'd been locked in the same basement, this time fighting for her
life.

She stepped down from the living area into a black, cavernous
room. Despite its size, it was warm and airless. Her shirt stuck to
her back – the air-con obviously didn't reach this room. She
smelled fuel. A dark four-wheel drive squatted ahead of her,
ghostly smudges glowing from its panels in the gloom. She
couldn't see beyond the car. Anyone could be there. Memories of
waiting in the dark for the pain to begin crawled from her
stomach into her mouth, and she closed her lips tight to keep
them there. Heart thudding, she walked backwards until she felt
the wall behind her; she slid her hand upwards, seeking the light
switch, eyes always focused ahead.

Scrabbling at the wall now, her hand brushed the light panel,
and she stabbed the switch on. The lustrous smudges on the
Porsche Cayenne were just the chalky residue left behind by the
fingerprint team. She stood against the wall a moment, blinked
away the memories, already scornful of her weakness. Her
contempt gave her the impetus to push away from the wall, and
she moved towards the car.

If it had gone down like the others, she thought, Eugene Moser
had stepped out of this vehicle into his garage and the point of a
machete. The masked man would have led him back into the
house, threatening to kill him if he did not comply quietly, and
from there would have let in the rest of the crew. Jill imagined the
man's terror, the impossible choices: Should I scream, stay here
and fight? My daughter's inside – I can't let this man in! But if he
stabs me now, he will get in anyway. I have to be in there with
her. Maybe he'll just take what he wants and leave us alone. The
options would have raced through his mind; his captor aggressive,
masked, would have left him no time to think. Ultimately, he
would do what he had to do to keep the knife from his throat, to
try to placate his assailant.

On tiptoes, Jill peered through the tinted windows into the car's
interior. Would they get any prints this time? To date, no
fingerprints had been found at any of the crime scenes, and the
DNA testing of hair and fibres was still jammed up in a queue
with other cases. They'd prioritise everything from this case, she
thought.

She walked through the rest of the triple-car garage. Along one
wall, a floor-to-ceiling shelving system held every type of tool
she could imagine. Drawers and cupboards were labelled and
colour-coded; hooks held spades and small shovels, brushes and
trimming shears. Each had been stencilled in paint onto the
backboard. Jill appreciated the order, opened some of the drawers.
Suddenly, she stopped walking. A tool was missing. A circular
stencilled shape the size of a basketball signalled the outline of
the tool that should be docked there. Close by, the hand saw's
hook was also empty. She took out her camera, her lips a thin
line. Along with the horrendous machete wounds found on a few
of the previous victims, Eugene Moser had been dismembered
with some kind of saw. Or maybe more than one kind, she
thought, figuring a power saw would fit the first stencil perfectly.

The mechanised whirring of her camera droned through the

stuffy silence as she snapped the rest of the tool shelves. There
was no fingerprint dust on the shelving. She wondered whether
the others had noticed that the saws were missing. No weapons
had been left at the scene. She turned and stepped straight into
Gabriel Delahunt's chest.

Her sharp intake of breath muffled a yelp. You scared me, she
wanted to bark, but instead she just glared at him, not wanting to
give away more than she already had.

'The others were waiting up the road,' he said.

If he had noticed her alarm, he gave no indication.

'Who?' Jill tried not to convey her irritation. Did this man ever
speak in full sentences?

Gabriel held up a sealed evidence bag. 'Forensics missed these.'

The bag held cigarette butts.

'Why do you assume they belong to the perps?' Jill stared into
the bag.

'These hadn't been there more than a day,' he said, also looking
into the bag. 'It rained a little out here the day before yesterday.
But these haven't been wet. And a vehicle had been parked off the
road next to where I found them. There're ten butts in here.
Someone waited there a long time, smoking, yesterday at the
latest.' He shrugged. 'Might not have been them. But it probably
was.'

Jill stared at his profile as he scanned the tool shelves. Maybe

Delahunt had just found their best bet for DNA from at least one
of the perps.

'Two saws missing.' He pointed his chin at the stencilled

patterns.

'Yeah,' she said.

'You wanna check out the murder site?' he asked. Like he'd
asked if she wanted to get a pizza.

'Okay,' she said.

Jill could physically feel Eugene Moser's suffering in the room in

which he died. His blood shrieked from the walls, ceiling, floor,
demanding the witness understand the horror he'd endured. She
stood in a vortex with the screaming, turning slowly in the middle
of the room, buffeted by each arc of blood, drenched in the pain.

'The safe's through there.'

Gabriel stood at her shoulder, and she started at his voice,

pulled from the nightmare. She glanced around again. The room
was every bit as grotesque, but at least it had stopped howling.

The floor plans referred to this room as 'the media centre'. Ten
reclining leather armchairs sat in two rows in front of a wall. On
the ceiling above the wall, Jill could see a recessed opening where
the screen must drop down. In the middle of the house, the room
had no windows, and the doors sealed completely to shut out all
light. The artificial lights rendered the scene somehow more
garish. She could see no surface unmarked by blood.

She followed Gabriel through the room towards an opening in

the wall – some kind of door – which stood slightly ajar. It was
the same colour as the wall and she could see no handle. Were it
closed, she doubted she could have found it again.

'It's not on the floor plan,' said Gabriel. He walked inside.

The size of a large walk-in robe, this room had obviously

housed the guns. Display racks were empty, their black bolts
open. A small safe stood ajar, some papers scattered on the floor
in front of it. A monitor at the back of the room depicted four
views of the house and grounds, each scene changing after thirty
seconds or so to exhibit another part of the property. On the
screen, Jill watched Derek Reid walk into one of the quadrants; in
another, two uniformed officers stood guard at the front door.

'So this is a panic room,' said Jill, speaking her thoughts aloud.
'First time I've seen one. Except for that movie, of course.' She
looked down at a computer under the monitor. Everything had
already been chalked. She noticed the time display on the
electronic equipment.

'Shit,' she said. 'It's already gone twelve o'clock. We'd better get
back to the library.'

Gabriel was on his hands and knees. Was he sniffing the floor?
Hearing her words, he stood and followed her out.

Outside the media centre, Jill made straight for a set of French
doors at the back of the house. She needed air that did not reek of
blood.

In contrast with the starkly modern media centre, this room

held a chaise longue and several ornate cabinets full of trinkets.
Jill opened the glass doors onto a pretty courtyard, sheltered from
the rest of the yard by flowering shrubs. A semi-circular stone
love-seat watched over a fishpond; two fat golden carp swam
lazily. Jill followed their movements and saw that the pond
flowed under a small bridge and out of the courtyard, apparently
to a larger pool elsewhere.

'This is pretty good,' said Delahunt.

'Yeah,' she answered flatly.

'At least one of them can't handle what's going on.'

'What are you talking about?' She realised he was not looking
at the fish.

'Vomit.'

'Huh?'

'Here,' he said, pointing to a shrub behind the folded-out doors.

'Someone was sick.'

On the ground, in the bushes, someone had thrown up.

'Could have been one of us,' she said.

'Could have been one of them,' he countered. 'Saw what his

buddy did and couldn't take it.'

He watched while Jill photographed the area, and moved the

bushes aside for her.

'And that would make it all very interesting.'

He sounded delighted.
 7
'I'D PREFER THE movies to the counsellor,' said Joss, falling back
on the bed against the pillows. He watched the top of the tree
moving outside their window.

'You're bloody hopeless!' said Isobel, dropping down next to

him. 'What if I want to go?'

'Do you?'

'I don't know,' she answered. 'But you made me take a day off
work for nothing.'

'Well, not for nothing,' he said, wiping drops of water from her
bare shoulder, missed when she'd towelled off after their shower.

'But Joss,' she said, pulling away a little and looking him in the
eye, 'your nightmares have been worse than ever since the
robbery.'

'Haven't you been dreaming about it?'

'Yeah. A few times. I dreamed last night that they broke in here,
and we were running, and we couldn't find Charlie.' She paused,
pain in her eyes. 'And then there was Andy being cut again,
except then it was me getting cut, and you were holding the
knife.' She shook her head.

'Shit. Sounds like mine,' he lied. 'Maybe we should go to the

counsellor.'

'Would you say anything this time?'

 'I think you need it more than me. Talking about shit with a
stranger has never helped me. I'll wait outside.'

'It was just so horrible, Joss.'

'I know.' Thwack. Aaarrgh! The sound was on loop tape. 'Do
you think we should use today to go out to the hospital to see
Andy?' Please say no, he thought, hating himself for feeling that
way. He wasn't sure that he could handle seeing Isobel's boss
again just yet.

'I thought I told you. Sorry,' said Isobel. 'I called Lucy last
night. The doctors are allowing immediate family only. He's still
unconscious.'

'Poor bastard.'

Isobel sighed, ran her fingertips lightly over his blackened

cheek; the bruise was still spreading. 'Anything good on at the
movies?'

'I don't know. Let's go find out.'

She stayed where she was; watched the ceiling fan cycling
slowly.

'Work organised a collection for Andy and Lucy,' she said.

'We're gonna try to get ramps built so he can wheel in and out of
his house.'

'Sounds good.' Thwack, Aaarrgh. 'Let's get out of here.'

The movie had been a bad idea. He hadn't been able to get a seat
in the last row, and that left his back exposed. Joss rubbed at his
neck: his shoulders ached from the tension of straining to hear
everything behind him. It had been a while since he'd had to sit
with his back to the wall.

And now there's this freaking crowd, he thought, trying to surf

to the front of the wave that had spilled out of the theatre when
the movie ended. Isobel half-jogged along beside him, aware of
his need to get out.

'Joss, we've got to pay for parking before we go to the car.' She
squeezed his hand.

'Where?' All he could see were the exit doors.

'Just back in the shopping centre a bit. Near the lifts,' she said.
'You want me to go?'

Yes. 'Nah, I'm coming.'

He followed her through the cinema foyer to an alcove between

the shops and another parking station. The area was quiet and
bare, brightly lit and airless, discouraging people from loitering.
An elevator whisked customers to the glamour of the shops
below, minimising the time they were away from spending.

Isobel had her purse out, facing the machine, figuring out how
to insert the ticket, when Joss, reading the instructions over her
shoulder, felt movement behind him and spun on the spot.

The fact that time had slowed to half-speed left him convinced
for a moment that this was just another nightmare. But even his
worst nightmares did not inject this much adrenalin into his gut.
He nearly evacuated his bowels. He backed hard into Isobel,
jamming her against the ticket machine. Safe. Between him and
the wall.

In front of him stood Henry Nguyen. Cutter.

'Hey!' said Isobel, at the same time that Cutter said, 'Hey. Don't
I know you?'
 Joss scanned the ground, searching for a bottle to smash.
Nothing. No litter, nothing he could use as a weapon. A Coke
machine in the corner. The bottles would be plastic anyway. Fuck.
He opened his arms, protecting Isobel, ready to fly forward and
tear this guy's face off.

'Joss. Aren't you Joss? We used to go to school together.'

'Joss, what's wrong?' Isobel sounded unsure.

'Henry. Henry Nguyen. Remember me?' He was holding out his

hand.

Isobel was trying to get out from behind him.

'I saw you back in the cinema,' Cutter continued. 'I can't believe
I recognised you. How long since we've seen each other, man?'

The question hung in the air.

'I think we were thirteen or fourteen. Shit. It's been forever,'

Cutter continued.

He'd dropped his hand, but hadn't moved forward. Joss saw
Cutter's mouth moving, but the words were faint, muffled by the
pulse in his ears.

Ready. I'm ready, motherfucker, he told Cutter with his eyes.

Cutter was laughing. Isobel was really struggling now.

'Joss, let me out!'

'You're squashing your wife, man,' said Cutter. 'I mean, is this
your wife?'

'I. Don't. Know. You.' Joss's voice was quiet. His eyes never
left the other man's.
 Isobel stopped struggling. Went small behind his back. Knew,
when she heard his voice: danger.

'Yeah, whatever man,' Cutter laughed again, only with his

mouth, his eyes stayed dead. He flicked long black hair off his
shoulders, exposing the gaol tats on his neck.

'Good to see you anyway, Joss. Maybe you'll remember me

later. And we can catch up. I'm sure you'll be able to find me if
you come around the old neighbourhood. Or I can find you.
Think about it. It would be good to see you again.'

With a sideways step, Cutter was gone.

A polished circular table had been moved into the library. When
Jill and Gabriel arrived, Superintendent Last was seated with his
back to the door. Next to him, his uniformed driver stabbed with
two fingers at keys on a laptop. David Tran had the dragon seat,
facing the door. Derek Reid slouched in a deep armchair that had
been pushed against the wall to make room for the table.

'Did ya get lost?' Reid asked, arms folded across his huge chest,
a suggestive smile on his face. 'Big house. Lots of rooms.'

Three empty chairs waited at the table. Jill took the seat that
showed Reid her back.

'Jill. Gabriel.' Superintendent Last acknowledged them. 'Colin

here is noting our impressions before we leave the site.' He
pointed his chin at the officer with the laptop. 'David's just begun
making his comments,' he continued. 'Help yourself to some
coffee.'

Jill took a bottle of water from the centre of the table instead.
She sipped as she listened to Tran talking about his impressions
of the site.

'I couldn't help but notice,' David Tran spoke respectfully, with
a faint Vietnamese accent, 'how many items of value the group
left behind. I think that is what struck me the most while here.' He
sat straight in his seat, and looked at each of them as he spoke. 'If
we assume that the whole gang was here last night, then they had
four men to carry away stolen property. I was expecting to find
the house more . . . disturbed. I did not expect to find a laptop
computer. It was in plain sight in the daughter's bedroom. Also in
her room was a box containing some gold jewellery. In the master
bedroom, I found an expensive watch, and a mobile phone. These
are items that could easily have been taken by the group.'

'Very true,' said Superintendent Last. 'When we first got here,

we even found a couple of hundred in cash in the breadbox in the
kitchen. Previous victims have reported that all such items were
cleared out. What do you make of that?'

'Well, obviously in this case they came for the guns,' Reid
answered.

'Has the surviving victim made any comment about the number
of offenders?' asked Tran. 'Maybe there were fewer on this
occasion?'

'She hasn't been able to cover specifics yet, no,' Last said. 'It is
possible there were fewer offenders. That might have left them
less time to cover the house thoroughly.'

'Maybe they couldn't focus,' Gabriel spoke for the first time.
The group turned to him. 'Could be they weren't feeling well.'

Reid snorted. 'What? You think they all got a headache or

something, Delahunt?'

Gabriel paused. 'Yes. I think that's a good way to describe it.'

He was silent again; his trucker cap pulled low, eyes on the table,
eyelashes brushing his cheeks.

They waited, until Last finally suggested, 'Maybe if you think it

through aloud, Gabriel? We'd like to hear what you're thinking.
It's all just hypotheses at this stage.'

'I think that the killer, their leader, is a headache for the rest of
the gang.' He smiled, happy with his analogy. 'One of them was
literally sick last night.' He told them about the vomit in the
bushes near the murder room, his language indicating that both he
and Jill had made the discovery, although she hadn't had anything
to do with the find.

In response, Last opened the mobile phone on the table, and

instructed somebody to take a specimen sample from the
courtyard immediately. He put the phone down and stared at
Gabriel, nodding at him to go on.

Gabriel just smiled back at him.

'Ah, could you talk a little more about what you think happened
here last night, Gabriel?' said the superintendent.

'Oh. Okay.' He continued. 'Well, three of them waited in a

white van in front of the vacant block a couple of houses up. At
least one of them was smoking.' He withdrew the evidence bag
from his jacket and placed it on the table in front of him, then
skidded it across to Tran, who was staring at the package. 'Then
same old, same old. One of them crept in behind the Porsche, got
the vic out and let the others in. Then the leader took over. The
others kept the girl quiet. They were too panicked or revolted by
what they saw in the media room and they weren't able to
concentrate on clearing the house of valuables. At least one of
them besides the leader had to go right past Eugene Moser's body
to help carry the guns. And one of them couldn't keep his food
down.'

For the first time, he seemed to notice the insulated cups of

coffee in the centre of the table, and he reached across to take
one. Jill noticed his bicep bulge as his arm moved. His skin was a
dark honey colour.

Gabriel opened the lid on the styrofoam cup and looked at the
coffee. They all watched him.

'Why are you sure it was one of them that vomited?' asked
Tran. 'We should ask the first officers on the scene if any of them
became ill.'

'Betcha forensics'll find the spew belongs to a dog,' said Reid.

'They weren't ready for the saws,' said Gabriel. 'I think it's
thrown this group over the edge. All of them. The leader's out of
control and the others are pissing their pants. The group's on the
brink and they're already making mistakes. It's gonna be easier to
find them, but more people are going to die first. The killer's on a
spree. He can't stop.' After this rush of words, he looked down at
his coffee again, pushed his nose past the rim of the cup and took
several deep sniffs.

Last said, 'Saws? You said saws.'

'Jill found them.' Gabriel opened a different coffee and sniffed

it, then compared the scent to his other cup.

Superintendent Last focused his attention on Jill.

'The tool rack in the garage,' she said. 'Um. They weren't
dusted, and there's a power saw and hand saw missing. We
figured maybe they could have been used on Moser.'

'Great work,' said Last, looking over the shoulder of the man
typing, ensuring he'd captured the comments. He reached for his
phone again and instructed someone to pick up the evidence bag
and dust the shelves in the garage. He then called the medical
examiner's office and left a message about the missing saws.
 While Last was on the phone, Jill tried desperately to find
something to distract her from Gabriel. He'd turned to David
Tran, asking him, 'So what's wrong with your legs?'

She stood and walked to the back of the room. Floor-to-ceiling

bookshelves covered the back wall. A wooden A-frame ladder on
wheels waited in the corner of the room, offering access to the
books near the ceiling. Leatherbound copies of Dickens,
Shakespeare, Austen. Books on architecture, modern art, classical
music. She wondered if any of them had been read. It seemed like
a designer's idea of a library. She turned when she heard someone
moving towards her.

Reid. He leaned in close.

'Well spotted out there, Jackson.' A sheen of sweat, or maybe

moisturiser, highlighted open pores across his nose and cheeks.
She stepped back a little from the sweet smell of his breath.

After a few beats, he said, 'Look, since you're new around

here,' – Oh God, here it comes, she thought – 'I was thinking
maybe I could introduce you to the rest of the Ds out here. We
drink at the Crossroads on Wednesday nights.'

'Yeah. I don't think so,' she said.

She knew she was supposed to make an excuse here, say

something conciliatory, even come up with a new topic once she'd
declined, but when she could not find even one word, she just
waited.

'You can bring your boyfriend, Delahunt.'

Things never changed much from the schoolyard. She almost

laughed, but instead moved back to the table. Superintendent Last
looked as though he was ready to speak again.

'Good work today,' he told them when they were again seated.
'Now I'd just like to discuss how we're going to use our time over
the next few days. First up, I'd like to meet each morning at eight
as we did today. That okay with everyone?' He looked around the
group. 'Appreciate it,' he said, his eyes meeting Jill's.

'Next, we'll need to re-interview the direct victims of the past

robberies.' He removed two stapled groups of paper from his
folder. 'Names and current contacts. David and Derek, I've got
you interviewing the vics from robberies one, three and five. Jill
and Gabriel, you've got two, four and Donna Moser, who's over at
Liverpool Hospital at the moment.' He gathered together his
belongings. 'I'm heading back to the House. If anyone wants a lift
back now, you're welcome. If you want to stay out here a while,
there'll be plenty of people heading back later this afternoon. See
you in the morning.' He left the room.

Jill checked her watch. Almost one o'clock. She moved over to
Gabriel, and indicated the paper containing the names of the
victims they were to interview.

'Do you want to see whether we can get one of these interviews
in this arvo?' she asked him.

'Yep,' he answered, pulling out his phone. 'Where do you want

to start?'

'Somewhere close?'

'Abbotsbury. Down the road.'

She studied the list. The victims from incident number two
lived at Abbotsbury. Ryan Temple and Justine Rice. While
Gabriel dialled the number, she glanced over their police
statements, although she knew the story already from the meeting
this morning. Justine was seventeen, Ryan a year older.

On the night of the robbery, Ryan had been staying over at

Justine's house while her parents were overseas. The gang had
just knocked on the door this time. Ryan opened it, and in they
came. Easy as that. They'd taken Justine upstairs and worked
Ryan over in the loungeroom. He'd been bound and beaten, the
two offenders upstairs telling Justine they'd kill Ryan if she didn't
hurry up and get them cash, jewellery, drugs, everything valuable
in the house. No one was cut on this occasion, but the offenders
were wearing their trademark black and balaclavas, and carrying
machetes.

The apparent leader had been upstairs with Justine. Both she
and Ryan had indicated that he'd given orders to the other
offenders. Their descriptions of his height and role within the
group matched those given by other victims.

Jill read Justine's description of him. She'd guessed he was

around 5'8", a little shorter than Ryan, her boyfriend. A thin,
black ponytail extended beyond his balaclava; his eyes were dark,
Asian. Australian accent. No labels she could detect on his
clothing, although the others had been wearing black sports
clothes bearing well-known brand names. She'd seen tattoos
though – a scorpion on his hip, glimpsed, she said, when he had
reached for her brother's Game Boy when raiding one of the
rooms, and what looked like crudely inked spiders on the side of
his neck between his collar and the balaclava.

Jill caught the end of Gabriel's conversation, and looked up

from the file.

'Yes. Thank you, Mrs Rice. We'll see you soon.'

Gabriel closed the phone and together they left the house.

On the way to the car, Jill breathed deeply, ridding herself of

the scent of death that had permeated every room of the house.
Gabriel stood by the driver's door. Apparently he was driving this
time. She threw him the keys and took the passenger seat without
comment, putting her sunglasses on and winding up the window.

When they'd left Capitol Hill behind, Jill leaned back in her
seat. Gabriel drove confidently, seemingly comfortable with their
silence, allowing Jill to think about the kids they were on their
way to interview. She thought again about Justine's statement.
Something was different with this case. For a start, the violence
was much less severe than in any of the others. She thought about
the statements she'd read from the other victims. She couldn't be
certain, as she'd not had a chance to study them properly, but she
was pretty sure this was the only time tattoos had been
mentioned.
 8
CHLOE FARRELL SHIFTED uncomfortably in the early afternoon sun.
The crutch of her tights had been heading south since she got out
here this morning. She'd thought about finding a toilet somewhere
and taking them off altogether, but the blisters from her new
shoes would only get worse. She scowled at her boss, Deborah
Davies, as she postured for the camera. Davies had shown up at
lunchtime after Chloe had called her, letting her know she'd
finally persuaded one of the Capitol Hill residents to be
interviewed. Deborah had finished the interview, using Chloe's
typed list of questions, and the neighbour had gone back inside
her palatial home, thrilled to have met the current affairs presenter
she watched in her loungeroom every night. Davies was now
recording the fill-ins: asking the questions over and over again in
an ever more concerned tone. Giving empathic nods and outraged
shakes of her head to her favourite thing in the world: the camera.
The gestures and comments would be edited into the piece later,
by Chloe, ready for the six p.m. broadcast.

Chloe knew she could've done the interview better. Shit, the
stuff she'd got before Deborah arrived was gold. At first, the
frightened housewife had refused to speak to her at all, but Chloe
had managed to persuade her through the intercom that her
comments could help people understand how terrible these home
invasions had been. Maybe then the police would do something
about catching these bastards, she'd said, knowing the woman
was standing just there, behind the door, listening.

She'd opened up, just as Chloe had known she would.

Although she lived in a mansion, they were still in the western
suburbs. And people around here could tell that Chloe was one of
them. She made sure of it with every word she spoke. It got her in
a lot of doors.

Born and raised in Seven Hills, Chloe had been one of just a
handful from her high school to make it to university. She'd
excelled in her journalism studies, taking the university prize two
years running. At just twenty-three, and a brand new graduate,
she knew a hundred others who would claw her eyes out for this
cadetship with the premier news service in the country.

But Chloe was impatient.

Her parents had run their local mixed grocery store for thirty
years and they were so tired. Chloe saw her mum every morning,
grey-faced and miserable, leaving home to open the shop. Now
she was working, Chloe saw her dad only on Sundays. He would
be at the markets when they opened at five a.m., and asleep
before she returned from work each evening.

Growing up, the shop had been her second home. After school,
she'd make her way there and could choose anything she liked for
afternoon tea. When she got older, she helped serve customers.
Soon she knew most of the neighbourhood. By the time she was
thirteen, she knew that Mrs Shanoa's husband was a no-good
drunk; that Jeremy Peterson was having an affair with his boss
behind his boyfriend's back; that Tania Taylor was on the pension,
even though she worked fulltime for cash in hand at the bowling
club; and that Mr Mason dressed in drag once a month and stayed
out all night in Darlinghurst. She knew plenty more besides, and
she couldn't get enough. People opened up and told her things,
quietly, while she cut their ham, weighed their frankfurts, rang up
their smokes on the outdated till.

Her father stopped her working at the store after the second
armed robbery. The man, armed with a syringe, had made off
with the day's takings half an hour before Chloe got there for the
afternoon. Her dad hated his wife being there too, and had tried to
sell the shop, but there were no genuine buyers. Everyone knew
that Coles and Woollies made all the money in the industry.
Everyone except the junkies, that is: they saw the corner store as
a cash register. Her parents had been robbed five times since then.

Chloe had to get them out, and she would. She was going to
find a way to get an on-screen position and a six-figure salary.
She'd pay off their mortgage and get them out of the shop. And
there was something about this story that felt like destiny. She
peered overhead at the news chopper, one of theirs, returning after
a midday break. Sydney wanted to know what was going on out
here.

Chloe surreptitiously pulled at her tights again and made some

more notes. Hell, the whole country wanted answers. And she
was going to get them.
 9
GABRIEL SAT OPEN-mouthed, staring at the enormous television in
the corner of the room. Narelle Rice had muted the sound when
she'd shown Jill and Gabriel into the living room, explaining that
Justine and Ryan were expected home from work at two-thirty.
Jill tried to catch Delahunt's eye, but he sat absorbed in the silent
TV. On the screen, American soap actors made exaggerated facial
expressions.

Mrs Rice returned from the kitchen carrying soft drinks in

glasses and a plate of biscuits. She put the biscuits on a low
coffee table in front of Gabriel and sat next to Jill on the couch.
Gabriel reached unseeingly for the plate and munched while he
watched the soap.

'You want me to put the sound on?' asked Mrs Rice.

'No. That's fine,' answered Jill, scowling at Gabriel, who'd

turned to nod a yes.

'So, Mrs Rice,' began Jill, 'do Ryan and Justine work together?'

'They do everything together now. Could you just call me

Narelle?'

Jill smiled.

'We've only just been able to get Justine to go back to work,'

Mrs Rice continued. 'They work over at Orange Grove – you
know the Krispy Kreme over there? Ryan's a manager,' she said
with pride, 'and Justine was well on her way to management too.
Before this happened.' She looked at her lap.
 'It must have been terrible for you all,' said Jill.

'Oh you've no idea.' Narelle pulled a tissue from her cardigan

pocket. 'We'll just never get over it. Justine . . .' She broke off,
smothering a sob with her tissue. 'We've had to let Ryan move in.
She wouldn't sleep alone. She said she'd move in with him if we
didn't let him stay over.'

Jill nodded.

'He's a good boy, really,' Narelle continued, 'but he's been

drinking far too much since this happened.' She shook her head.
'And the arguments! You've no idea. They used to be so close, so
kind to one another.'

Jill noted that Gabriel's attention now seemed to be split

between Narelle and the soap.

'I'll just get some more biscuits.' Narelle stood. 'Everyone loves
them.'

Jill looked down at the empty plate in front of her partner. Are
you serious, she asked him with her eyes.

He smiled at her with delight, his thick eyebrows raised high.

Crumbs covered his dark tee-shirt. She stared at him
disparagingly.

'What?' he said.

She pointed at his clothes.

'Oh.'

Still smiling, he brushed at his flat stomach, then stood and

dumped the crumbs on the floor. He stared at the little pile around
his chair, and then scraped at them with his feet, spreading them
into the carpet. She watched, transfixed, as he stopped, then
began again, his head down, scraping at the ground with his toe,
like a cartoon bull about to charge. Laughter caught in her throat;
she wiped the smile from her face when Mrs Rice walked back in,
the plate refilled. Gabriel settled back into his chair and took
another biscuit.

A scrabbling sound at the front door drew their attention.

'Mum, let us in.'

'Excuse me please. They must have lost their keys again. We

haven't left a door unlocked anywhere in this house since the
robbery.'

Jill heard a whispered conversation at the front entrance, a

disgruntled young female voice louder than the others. Footsteps
stamped upstairs and then Mrs Rice re-entered the living room,
accompanied by an ungainly youth in a work uniform, baseball
cap pulled low, a few pimples scattered across his cheeks.

'Detectives, this is Ryan.' Her hand rested protectively across

his shoulders. 'I'll just get you a glass, Ryan,' she told him.

'That's okay,' he muttered. 'I'll get a beer.'

'I'll bring you one,' she said tightly. 'You speak to the
detectives.' Turning to Jill, she said, 'Justine's just getting
changed.'

'You're not the ones we talked to last time.' Ryan dropped into a
chair.

'I'm Sergeant Jill Jackson, Ryan. This is Federal Agent Gabriel

Delahunt. We wanted to ask you a few more questions.'

'Yeah, I know. Justine said you called. Is it true those arseholes

killed someone this time? We heard it on the news.' His eyes were
just visible under the rim of the cap, his voice flat.

'We're not sure if it's the same people at this point, Ryan, but
we need to reinterview everyone who's been through a home
invasion lately so we can try to find out.'

Ryan took his beer from Mrs Rice with a mumbled thank you,
and drained half of it in one go. Justine's mother gave Jill a
resigned look and left the room, worry creasing her forehead.

'They'd better not come here again,' Ryan spoke into his bottle.
'I'll be ready for them next time.'

'Ryan,' Jill had his statement in her hand, 'this is the police
report you made. Could you have a look at the section I've
highlighted, and tell me if there's anything else you can remember
about the offenders? Anything at all could be a great help. The
way they moved, talked, anything they said. Sometimes after a
couple of weeks bits and pieces come back.'

Ryan swallowed the rest of the beer in two long draughts and
stood up.

'I'll look at it, but I'm not the one you should be talking to.' He
stood rigid, the statement clenched in his fist. 'Half the time I had
my face shoved into that chair you're sitting on.' He indicated to
Gabriel. 'The rest of the time I was getting the shit kicked out of
me. Justine was upstairs with two of them, and it was pretty quiet
up there.' He turned at the sound of feet on the stairs. 'Here she is
now. I reckon she got a good look at everything.' His voice was
acid. 'I'm going to get another beer.'

Justine Rice froze in the doorway, staring after her boyfriend as

he left the room, her eyes panicked. Jill was surprised to see she'd
changed into flannelette pyjamas. It wasn't yet three p.m. Her hair
had been scraped into a messy ponytail and her clear skin was
free of makeup. If Ryan had not just indicated otherwise, Jill
would have been certain that this was Justine's little sister, a much
younger teen.

Justine seemed to register Jill's eyes on her clothing, and

hugged her arms around her slender body.

'I've got a stomach ache,' she said, 'so can we do this quickly?
I'm sick all the time now, since it happened.' She crawled into the
chair furthest from Gabriel and tucked her legs under her. She
spoke to Jill only, angling her body so that she could not even see
Gabriel.

He stood. 'Jill, I'm just going to see if I can help Ryan with his
statement.'

She nodded, grateful Gabriel had picked up the girl's obvious

discomfort with him.

'Justine, I'm Jill. Thank you so much for talking with us. I
know this is the very last thing you wanted to do today.' Jill
leaned forward in her seat and smiled; Justine seemed to uncurl
herself a little.

'Are you going to catch these guys soon?' she asked, her voice
small.

'Yes.' Jill hoped it was true. 'We've got a lot of people looking
for them, and we need your help, Justine.'

'Hah. I can't even help myself.'

'Maybe, Justine, but you saw these guys. You got a better look
at them than some of the other witnesses, and that could help us a
lot.'

Justine said nothing.

'Justine,' Jill began carefully, 'you were taken upstairs by two of

these guys, is that right?'

A small nod.

'And you could hear the others hurting Ryan down here?'
 'I could hear everything. He was screaming.' Her mouth was
now on her knees, her voice muffled in her pyjamas. 'They said
they'd kill him.'

'It must have been horrible, honey. I can't even imagine it.' Jill
wished that were true. 'You were very brave to get them what they
needed so they wouldn't hurt Ryan anymore.'

'I wasn't brave.'

Jill could barely hear her now.

'Justine, you did exactly what you had to do to get them to stop
hurting Ryan and get them out of the house.'

Justine was a portrait of misery, her face buried in her knees,

her arms wrapped around them. Her small body shook silently.

'Justine, sometimes it's easier if you keep your eyes open,' Jill
told her. 'It makes the images not so clear.'

Justine rocked slightly, her sobbing just audible, and Jill

wondered whether she'd told them all there was to know about
her time upstairs.

'What happened up there, Justine? Tell me what happened

when it all went quiet.'

'They said they'd kill him,' she said. 'The spider one said he'd
cut my throat –'

Suddenly she gagged and ran from the room. Mrs Rice hurried
after her from the kitchen. Jill sighed resignedly and stood. She
followed the sounds of Justine dry-retching and found her sitting
on the edge of the bath, her face wet with tears. Her mother bent
to comfort her.

'It'll be easier if you just tell me, honey,' Jill said.

 'Tell you what?' Mrs Rice straightened. 'Really! She's sick. I
think it's best we leave this for another time. I can bring her in to
see you tomorrow.'

'Narelle, you've been great letting us come over here, and I

know this is horrible for everyone. And I am going to have to get
Justine and Ryan to come in and make another statement
tomorrow. But right now, Justine has something that she needs to
tell me.'

Mrs Rice clasped a hand over her mouth.

Jill continued. 'Narelle, I'm going to have to ask you to just

leave us both in here for around ten minutes. Maybe you could
duck down to the shop and buy Justine a lemonade? It'll help
settle her stomach.'

She spoke firmly. If Justine didn't get this off her chest now, it
would consume her from the inside out. Narelle Rice seemed
suddenly to know this too, and with an imploring glance at Jill,
left the room.

Jill took her place on the side of the bath.

'Let's get this done, Justine. You've held this in too long
already. These feelings are poisonous when you keep them
inside.' Justine looked up at her. 'You've already told me you've
been feeling sick since it happened. You can't get well again until
you let it out, until you tell the truth.' It'll take more than that, she
thought, but it's a start.

'You said the spider one told you he'd cut your throat,' Jill
continued. 'That wasn't in your statement. What happened next?'

Justine pulled away a little from her and turned her head to face
the wall. I've lost her, Jill thought, but Justine began to speak in a
flat, lifeless voice.

'He'd said he'd cut my throat and fuck the hole in my neck.' Her
voice echoed in the small bathroom. 'He said he'd kill Ryan first
and then come back and fuck me while I was bleeding. He said I
could stop him doing it if I gave the other guy head.' Justine
began to cough, then spoke again in a tiny voice. 'So I did.'

'I'm so sorry, Justine,' Jill wanted to reach out to the girl, but
she'd moved as far as she could from her.

'Did the other one have any tattoos?' Jill didn't want to press
her any more, but this was a race for time now. They had to get
these animals.

'No. He didn't.' Justine turned, and faced Jill. 'He made me do it

while the spider one watched. But halfway through he pulled
away from me and walked out.'

'Okay. I'm so sorry that happened to you, Justine. I'm going to

leave you alone soon, honey, but we're going to need you to come
in tomorrow.' Jill put her hand on the girl's shoulder. 'You did the
right thing telling me.'

'Ryan won't think so. He'll leave me.'

'Deep inside, Justine, I think Ryan already knows what they did
to you, and he hasn't left you yet,' Jill said. 'And you know what,
Justine? If he did leave you because you got sexually assaulted,
then he's not worth it anyway.'

Jill held her while she cried a little, and then said, 'Unless you
want to, honey, don't feel you have to tell anyone about this until
you come in tomorrow. I'll help you tell your parents and Ryan.'

'Thanks.'

'Before we go, Justine, is there anything else you can think of

that they said or did that you haven't told us yet?'

Justine looked up at her. Jill saw her eyes widen with horror;
she was remembering, reliving the scene. The girl swallowed, and
the dead voice came back.

'Yeah,' she said. 'While he was making me do it to the other

one, the spider one started cutting himself on his stomach with a
knife, and then he . . . came.'

Jill couldn't speak for a moment. 'He . . . what? He did what?'

She listened to the girl crying almost inaudibly.

Finally, she asked quietly, 'Justine, was there any blood or

semen left in your room afterwards?'

'Yeah,' the girl nodded, and then hung her head, 'on the floor,
but I wiped it up.'

'That's okay Justine. That's okay.'

As she left the house, Jill had her mobile out and was already
dialling.


10
'JOSS, YOU'VE GOT to talk to me.' Isobel had tucked Charlie into
bed, and now sat down next to him on the lounge. 'Who was that?'

'I told you in the car,' Joss's voice was glass. 'I knew him when
I was growing up. He's violent. He's been in gaol. You know I
don't want anything to do with my past.'

'Yeah, but I've never heard you talk like that. What would be
wrong with just acknowledging him and moving on?'

'For fuck's sake, Isobel! Why do you have to question

everything I do? I told you, he's fucking dangerous.'

'Do you think you could try any harder to wake Charlie?' Isobel
stood. 'Anyway,' she said, turning away, 'the police called. They
have to re-interview us about the robbery. They're going to call
tomorrow to set up a time.'

She left the room before he could respond.

Great. Just great. What did they want? Joss stared at the blank
television screen. He felt hunted, trapped. How had Cutter found
him? He knew it was no coincidence. Twenty years and he'd
never seen anyone from his past life, and now he'd seen Cutter
twice in just over a week. How long had he been watching them?
Did he know where they lived? He looked around his
loungeroom. How had he let this danger into his life? Why was
this happening to him?

An image of Fuzzy, scrabbling at his throat, blood everywhere,

flashed into his mind. It seemed to answer his question.

Cursing under his breath, he reached for the remote control,

desperate to find something to replace the scenes and sounds in
his head. On each station, Fuzzy's fourteen-year-old eyes pleaded
with Joss to help him, jets of blood pumping from the gash in his
neck. Joss's hands, wet with blood, trying to hold his friend's
throat together.

He threw the remote onto the cushion next to him and made his
way to the kitchen, unconsciously wiping his hands on his jeans.
Reaching into the cupboard, he took out the bottle, a glass. He
filled it completely, a wave of the amber liquid sloshing over the
side onto his hand. Eyes unfocused, he downed half the glass,
relishing the burning. He coughed, swallowed the rest, and
poured again, then took the glass and the remainder of the bottle
of bourbon back into the loungeroom, noting with relief that he'd
seen a new bottle at the back of the cupboard. This was going to
be a long night.

Fuzzy's face had left the TV screen, but Joss could still smell
his blood. He downed another half glass before the blood of the
kids in Rwanda took over. The screaming and hacking of the
massacre in Kibeho crowded into his brain and he had to stop
midway to the couch; he put his glass down on the dining table so
he could hold his head in his hands. Leaning forward, praying the
memories would leave him alone, that his brain wouldn't burst, he
finally felt his medicine taking effect, the heat of the alcohol in
his belly. He fell into the cushions of the lounge, pulled the bottle
closer, and turned the volume of the television up a little.

ABC news. He moved to flip the channel, not ready for any
more reality, when the top story caught his eye. Another home
invasion. Last night. He sat forward in the seat, suddenly very
sober. This time someone was dead.

It was as if he'd left the door from hell wide open, and a demon
had walked on through. He thought of his girls, upstairs. He had
to get them out of here.

Then, he had to find Cutter.

Jill sat at the computer in her loungeroom in her singlet and

briefs. She googled 'M5 motorway' to find the site to register for
an electronic toll payment tag. The department would reimburse
her for the monthly fees. She didn't know how long she'd be out
at Liverpool, but she wasn't going to wait in the M5 toll queue
with the motorists paying cash every day. She was surprised her
department vehicle hadn't been fitted with a tag already. The car
was brand new; maybe that explained it.

She sighed and stretched. The trip there and back was a bitch.
It took two hours of her day: time she could be training. She
looked down at her belly and grimaced. For years, her stomach
had been unyielding, creaseless. She poked at a small fold above
her knickers and walked into her gym.

Truth is, I kind of like looking like this, Jill thought, looking at
her mirrored reflection. She'd had to change out of her push-up
bra this morning because her décolletage had rendered her fitted
shirt obscene. She smiled at the curve of her usually hard
buttocks. The extra five kilos had even changed her face a little –
fewer hard angles.

But soft is dead, she told herself.

She scowled at the mirror and increased the angle on her

incline bench to forty-five degrees. As she started on six sets of
fifty sit-ups, she realised she missed the pain. Her mind drifted
back to work.

Following her phone call from the Rice residence,

Superintendent Last had arranged for a tech truck to travel to the
house. He'd called her at home at eight with the results. Not only
had luminol fluoresced all over the floorboards and the rug in
Justine's bedroom, revealing the presence of organic matter, but
Justine had also presented the techies with a plastic shopping bag.

'What was in it?' Jill had asked her new boss. What else did this
girl have to tell them?

'A bath towel,' he'd said evenly. 'She kept it after wiping up the
blood and semen. Can you believe it?'

'She wanted to tell us what happened. She just couldn't put it

into words the first time, and then the lie got too big,' said Jill.

'Great work, Jill.' His voice was exhausted. He sounded old.

'We should get results from the sample tomorrow afternoon. What
they get from the other trace you found out at Capitol Hill with
Gabriel should follow.'

Jill lost count at one hundred crunches, caught up in her

thoughts. Before leaving Justine, she'd helped the girl to tell Ryan
and her mother what had happened upstairs. Ryan had taken off,
hate and tears in his eyes. She wondered whether he'd returned
yet, and what would happen between the young couple.

She'd seen it all before. Sometimes the male ego couldn't take
the blow when his partner had been sexually assaulted. All of her
tears following a rape were, in some men's eyes, accusations of
weakness, reproaches because he hadn't been able to protect her.
When the victim also held a corresponding unspoken belief that
her partner should have been there, stopped it, the couple rarely
made it. When they did, sometimes Jill felt they shouldn't have:
the anger would eat them alive.

Jill had ensured that Narelle Rice had all the phone numbers
for the community services that could help. She'd follow up and
urge Justine and Ryan to have counselling. It had taken a few
years and a couple of different therapists for Jill to gain some
relief following her own ordeal. Still, killing her rapist years later
was what had given her the most release. Now that was
something you never got told in therapy. The memory of his death
was still a strong, clear image. She tried to tell herself that the
healing came from the knowledge that he could never hurt her
again. She forced herself not to relive the satisfaction of kicking
him to death.

She unhooked her ankles and rolled off the incline bench onto
the floor. Nine-thirty. She longed for the shower and her bed.
Instead, she walked the well-trodden path to her hand weights and
took them back to the bench. Three sets of dumbbell flies first.
 11
'I'M NOT GOING.'

'Isobel. I told you. He'll come here. I can identify him.'

Joss stood in the kitchen facing his wife, her arms folded in
determination; his, to keep from throwing up. Fortunately, Isobel
became very quiet when angry. His hangover was a living entity
this morning.

He'd decided last night that he had to tell his wife the truth –
that he had recognised one of the men from the home invasion,
the most violent of all of them, the man who had almost cut her
boss's legs off. He had told Isobel the man's name, Henry
Nguyen, Cutter, and that he had known him from his childhood in
Cabramatta.

'I understand that we've got to do something about it,' Isobel

said. 'But I'm not leaving you. Charlie and I are staying right here.
We've got to tell the police. We'll tell them now.'

The most reasonable statement in the world, thought Joss,

except that telling the police would change their lives forever,
maybe even send him to gaol. He'd left all that behind him. The
old Joss was dead. He had to do everything he could to hang on to
the new world he'd built for himself.

'I've only told you half the story,' he said.

'You're kidding.'

His eyes showed he was not.

 For the first time in his life, Joss told someone what had
happened to Fuzzy.

In her kitchen, Jill prepared herself some lunch to take to work,

emptied her dishwasher. After stacking her breakfast dishes inside
it, she looked around for her handbag. She spotted it near the
front door. When she bent to pick it up, she groaned with the pain
from her stomach muscles. After a couple of attempts she
managed to grab the bag using just one handle. Its contents tipped
out onto the floor. For the second time, the vegetables from the
Asian food store spilled everywhere, and she remembered the
scene from yesterday.

Laughing aloud, Jill squatted to retrieve them, and was still

smiling when she left her apartment.

Joss heard the empathy in his boss's voice when he told him he'd
be taking a second day away from work. His dangerous 'accident'
would be the topic of the lunchroom again today. His colleagues
had clucked with alarm when he'd told them he'd fallen from a
ladder, leaving him relieved he'd not told them the real reason for
his bruised face. It reminded the assessors of the other freak-
accidents-around-the-home they'd processed over the years.
Apparently, more people died in their bathrooms than in motor
vehicle collisions, he'd heard at lunch on Monday.

Isobel had insisted that she would go to work.

'I might be able to find Cutter,' she'd reasoned. When he'd told
her about Fuzzy, and explained to her why he couldn't tell the
police about his connection to Cutter, she hadn't flinched. Instead,
she was in problem-solving mode, and he wished he'd trusted her
earlier.

Isobel worked for one of the three largest law firms in

Australia. Her role included investigating the paper trail of
anyone who wasn't on their side, and sometimes those who were.
She had access to almost every piece of electronic information the
police did. Privacy meant little if you had the technology and
resources to get around the flimsy obstacles set up to protect it.

For his part, Joss was going to see his mother. Back to where it
all began.

Tiptoeing up from the loungeroom last night, with most of the

second bottle of bourbon rendering the staircase a roiling
escalator, Joss had wheeled a chair from the study out to the
hallway in front of the linen closet. He'd positioned the swivel
chair under the manhole cover and held onto it until the floor
stopped moving. Managing to climb onto the seat of the chair, he
stood with his feet slightly apart and his hand on the wall to stop
the spinning.

As quietly as possible he'd popped the manhole cover, sliding it

back into the roof. Ordinarily, he would easily have been able to
pull himself from the chair up into the dark cavity overhead. Last
night, however, when he'd gripped the edge of the manhole and
tried to launch himself up, his feet had propelled the wheeled
chair into the closed doors of the master bedroom. With Isobel
standing over him holding a tearful Charlie, he'd summoned as
much dignity as he could muster and made his way to his side of
the bed, where he found himself this morning.

Problem was, now he couldn't keep his mind off the toolbox in
the ceiling.

The knife had gone into the box when he'd returned from
Rwanda. He'd moved the box from the ceiling in their former
home to this house when they moved in five years ago, and as far
as he knew, no one else knew what was inside.

Isobel had some idea of the horrors of the genocide in Africa.

He knew that when he'd come home, she'd read everything she
could find about the Australian peacekeepers' role there. She
knew that Joss was one of the thirty or so Australian soldiers
who'd been on-site during the Kibeho massacre, when four
thousand Hutus had been slaughtered over the course of four days
in a displaced person's camp of one hundred thousand people.
Thousands more had been horribly wounded. She knew that the
rules of engagement for the Australians had prohibited them
firing their weapons unless they were directly fired upon. They
were expressly forbidden from using their firearms in defence of
the civilians.

Two battalions of Tutsi warriors had surrounded the camp,

convinced it was harbouring Hutu fighters. In fact, the majority of
the camp consisted of women and children, but that had not
stopped the bloodlust. The Tutsis had mostly used machetes in
order to save bullets. The carnage would have sent any witness
mad, but for a soldier, trained to defend and attack, the horror of
the utter helplessness had been unspeakable. Literally. Although
Isobel knew the facts released to the media, no one knew what
Joss had seen and done in those three days. His brothers and
sisters in arms had their own unspoken memories; he read them in
their eyes on the rare occasions they caught up, but only Joss and
the dead Tutsi soldier knew why he kept the knife locked in the
toolbox.

He turned his eyes away as he washed his sodden, uneaten

Weetbix down the sink, rinsed the breakfast dishes and left the
kitchen.

Then he went back upstairs to get his knife.

Despite the humidity, Joss kept the hood up on his jacket when he
changed buses at Wynyard. The bruising on his face was at its
most livid this morning, and he noticed that people averted their
eyes when he glanced in their direction; today that suited him
fine.

As always, he felt guilty on the way to his mother's place.

His maternal grandparents had moved Joss and his mother out
of Cabramatta after the car accident. The fight had left her after
that. The much-loved only child of Richard and Joan Preston-
Jones, lost to schizophrenia, and later heroin, was finally home.

The house in Mosman evoked a confusing mix of nostalgia and

pleasure for Joss. After six months of half-arsed rebellion, he'd
settled with relief into the quiet habits of his grandparents, happy
to swap the chaos of his childhood for their structure and
normalcy. The house was the first real home he'd ever had – he
and his mother had bounced between rental units, her friends'
loungerooms, squats and refuges for his first thirteen years. The
sedate mansion that had smothered his mother when she was
growing up was, for him, the first place he could breathe.

It hadn't been that way in the very beginning, though.

Now, staring through the rain into his childhood, his breath
fogging the window on the bus, Joss thought about the only time
he had tried to unite his Cabramatta past with his Mosman
present. He'd been living with his grandparents for three months
or so, and although he'd made a few friends at his new school,
Sandhurst College, the other boys had had a great time at his
expense, filling every moment outside of class with stories of his
ignorance of the social etiquette they took for granted. After
fighting three of the loudest on the oval after school, they began
to make comments only when they were in groups so that he
couldn't distinguish the speaker, and they developed codes that
sent them into fits when he walked by, like raucous packs of
birds.

He had missed his brothers from Cabra. Their escapades

became heroic adventures in his mind, adventures that he knew
the pissants at his new school would never have survived. He
remembered his face pushed into the gravel one night, squashed
with Fuzzy against a railway wall while a train passed above
them, deafened, aware that he would be decapitated if he raised
his head just a fraction. Just when he'd thought that the screaming
monster above them would suck him up, the last carriage had
passed, and he and Fuzzy had risen, their legs trembling in the
dark, to finish their graffiti piece on the side of the wall. They'd
been legends for a year for that piece, sprayed onto a virgin wall
that everyone else had assumed was untouchable.

He remembered running from the transit cops with Cutter,

Hendo and Tatts, jumping fences, dropping level to level in
carparks, turning back to laugh at the fat fucks running behind
them. He remembered, after trashing a school, the searchlights of
a police chopper turning night into day. His friends had scattered
in all directions, but he'd chosen the worst route – across the
school quadrangle. Two cops behind him, guns drawn, shouted at
him to stop or they'd shoot. He'd imagined the bullets entering his
back, but he didn't stop. He still wondered at his indifference to
death that night.

And so he'd invited them over. And, unbelievably, Tatts,

Esterhase and Cutter had come to Mosman. Hardly anyone knew
Tatts's real name: Guo Qi Xu. Even the teachers couldn't say it
properly, so they also called him Tatts. Tatts's uncle, this mad
motherfucker who sold smack from his tattoo parlour, had been
practising on his nephew since Tatts was six. Tatts loved the body
art, and hated his real name, so everyone was happy. Mouse and
Cutter wanted Tatts's uncle to do all of their crew with spiders
crawling around their necks. Joss and Esterhase had copped some
shit from the others when they'd refused.

Joss remembered his grandmother's face when she'd first seen

Tatts, but to her credit, she'd welcomed his friends, preparing
them sandwiches and juice to eat in the garden by the pool. She'd
provided them with tennis racquets and left them alone to spend
the day together. Joss had known that inviting them was a mistake
from the moment they arrived. Tatts had pulled out a joint as soon
as she left. But it was when he'd caught Esterhase with his
grandfather's camera in his jacket that Joss told them to leave.
He'd never felt so alone. He was no longer one of them, but he
didn't want to be a Sandhurst boy.

He got off the bus on Military Road and walked the last couple
of blocks to the house. Aged, overhanging trees kept most of the
rain off his shoulders, and he breathed in the smell of the wet
road, remembering cold, damp afternoons and the welcoming
warmth of home. Smiling, he put his hands into his pockets.

His fingers brushed against the knife.

The light left his eyes as he walked up the path of his

grandparents' house.

The nurse stepped back and let him in without a smile. He'd
seen her here before, but couldn't remember her name. She didn't
offer it. She was one of a rotating shift of healthcare workers from
an agency paid for through his grandparents' estate.

His mum looked just as she had for the past twenty years. She
was sitting by the wide bay window in the main loungeroom,
rocking slightly. She looked up when he came in. Her mouth
stopped working for just a moment before her tongue continued
its rhythmic exploration of her teeth and lips, endlessly pushing in
and out of her mouth. Tardive dyskinesia, caused by three
decades of antipsychotic medication – no wonder she hadn't
wanted to take the shit, he thought for the thousandth time,
bending to catch her head with a kiss as she rocked.

He pulled a heavy armchair over next to hers, and sat down.

One of the kinder nurses, Kathy Lin, had told him that his mother
liked to be touched, to have her arm stroked, her hair brushed. He
watched the rocking slow as he communicated with his mother in
the only way they had left. He talked to her, the usual one-way
conversation, and wondered what she heard, what she took in,
just as he always had.

When it was time for her medication, Joss left her with the
nurse and the production line of pills and went upstairs to his old
bedroom. When he'd left home, his grandmother had not changed
his room. There had been no need: there were far more rooms
than she could use in the house, and she knew how important
stability, the absence of change, were to Joss.

He knew the house now technically belonged to him, but he

thought of it as his mother's. He knew he'd never live here again.

He dropped onto his old bed with a pain in his throat; it felt like
he'd swallowed an apple, whole. The skin on his mother's arms
was almost see-through now, soft like tissue. Her eyes were
lifeless; he almost missed the madness that used to shine behind
them. At least there'd been energy there.

The rain plashed quietly on the windowsill outside.

At last he rose from the bed and walked over to the cupboard in
his room. He'd lived here for more than a year before he'd found
the door on the inside wall of the cupboard that opened to a
smaller, hidden cavity. Over the years, the space had held liquor,
poor report cards, and once or twice a bag of pot. Now his old
school backpack filled the space completely. He took the bag
back to the bed and opened it. From inside his old pencil case, he
unfolded a faded newspaper page. Smiling up at him from the top
half of the page was Fuzzy, dressed in school uniform, curly hair
completely out of control.

Teenager's Throat Cut! screamed the text below the picture.

 12
ISOBEL THOUGHT ABOUT Joss as she scribbled shorthand. Her direct
boss was updating the senior partners on their world domination
progress since the last monthly meeting. His account was
longwinded, as always. When he finally sat, she stretched her
cramping fingers and peered through the rain at the bridge.

From the boardroom on the twenty-third floor, Sydney Harbour

was typically a gaudy showgirl, but this morning she seemed to
have gathered her shawls around her to hide. The mist rendered
the wide window a mirror, and Isobel caught her boss, Bob
Shields, staring at her in the glass as she watched the rain. She
dropped her eyes back to her notepad and held her pen as a
pointer, pretending to read over the notes she had taken.

Instead, she worried about her husband. This morning she'd felt
the return of the impenetrable emotional barrier he'd brought
home with him from Rwanda. For eighteen months after his
return from deployment, Isobel had felt she was living with a
different man, a soulless robot who ate and drank – a lot – but had
no ability to relate as a human. She'd missed her best friend. But
then when the barrier had eventually started to come down, she'd
almost wanted it back. Joss had spent months alternating between
angry tyrant and melancholy drunk. Isobel had used humour and
reason, patience and sex to forge brief moments of connection
with the man she'd married. But with Charlie's birth she finally
felt him come fully home to her. She'd woken from her first sleep
after the eleven-hour labour to find him leaning over her. One
look in his eyes had told her.

'I missed you,' she'd said. 'Where've you been?'

 'You've only been asleep an hour,' he'd smiled, smoothing her
hair from her face, his mouth almost touching hers. 'I've been here
the whole time.'

'Yeah? Anyway, welcome back.'

But this morning he was a soldier again: his body in the

kitchen, his mind guarding the wire. She wondered whether he
was correct about the man at Andy's. She prayed he was just
being paranoid. That monster couldn't be the guy he'd grown up
with. Could he? She flipped a page in her notebook and stared at
the name. Henry Nguyen.

Finally, the meeting was drawing to a close. Isobel forced

herself to remain seated until the first of the group left the
boardroom before joining the others making their way through
the doors. She swallowed her impatience as the two men ahead of
her stalled in the doorway to make a final inane joke, the more
junior of the two throwing his head back and braying falsely.
She'd almost reached the end of the corridor when she felt a hand
touch the small of her back.

'You seem a little distracted today, Isobel,' Bob Shields said,

close to her ear. 'I'm not giving you too much work to do, am I?'

Isobel kept walking, aiming for the bright hallway flanked by

offices outside the boardroom. She worked hard to keep plenty of
people around when she talked to her boss.

'Well, yes, as a matter of fact,' she smiled, facing him, her back
to the wall. 'I think I'll go to lunch.' It was 10.30 a.m. She strode
purposefully in the direction of her office.

Shields's loud laughter followed her. 'I expect the Donatio

report on my desk this afternoon,' he called to her back.

She waved her arm in reply. She wasn't sure how much longer
she could bear working for that sleaze. She'd known about
Shields's reputation for wandering hands before she started
working for him – everyone knew – but that didn't make it any
easier dealing with the man. She knew she could take it to
antidiscrimination, but she wasn't ready to give up working in the
legal industry just yet. Though he wasn't her direct line manager,
Andy Wu looked out for her, and would assign her duties that
kept her away from Shields whenever he could. She shuddered,
remembering the last time she'd seen Andy, and wondered how
the hell Lucy was bearing up. She and Joss should go out to visit
her soon, she thought guiltily, but they had to get on top of this
new threat first.

At last she reached her office, shut the door, and began the
searches that made her services so highly prized round here. It
wasn't the Donatio file she was working on, though. The name
she typed into her search engines was Nguyen.

As always, she started wide and worked her way inwards. The
Vietnamese name was one of the most common, and the
programs hauled in thousands of hits. She narrowed the fields
continually, honing in on his approximate age, geographic
location, the nickname 'Cutter', and other small details she'd
gathered from Joss. She roughly sifted court reports, quickly
discarding mismatches and corralling possibilities to explore
more carefully later. She downloaded Freedom of Information
applications for credit reports, lease agreements, criminal record
history, insurance claims, motor registrations, phone contracts,
Medicare and Centrelink records. For the average person, these
applications could take months to process, but there were back-
entrances for certain groups: finance and insurance institutions,
various welfare departments, lawyers acting on behalf of their
clients. For her job, Isobel had carefully cultivated contacts with
some of the most powerful people in the country – the clerks who
held the records to personal information.

She started to dial.

 13
JILL FELT LOST in the sterile corridors of the Liverpool police
complex. Constructed perhaps twenty years ago, it sat next to the
busy courthouse and the mostly deserted public library. An
attempt had been made at a contemporary construction, but the
bright modern art, glass and stainless steel were at once too slick
for the Liverpool streets and too tacky for good taste. A twenty-
year coating of grime didn't help. Her boots squeaked over shiny
floors as she made her way to the foyer, where she'd agreed to
meet her new partner.

Gabriel leaned on the customer service counter. His face

appeared serious, but the dark-haired girl behind the barrier
inclined towards him, laughing, her fingers twisting a lock of her
glossy hair. The girl turned a flushed face and narrowed eyes
towards Jill as she approached. Jill felt those eyes on her until
they left the building.

A small crowd waited for their turn in front of the court

building to their left. Cigarette smoke hung in a pall above them.
A couple of ill-looking trees, hopelessly under-equipped to
transform the toxins back into oxygen, drooped over the footpath.
Two or three man-boys pulled irritably at bright-coloured ties,
standing next to resigned parents. Several men in cheap, shiny
suits bared tennis socks and skinny ankles. Some of them
clustered together, comparing gaol cred, making deals. Others
stood too close to their woman, who would today reverse the
Apprehended Violence Order protecting her from him; would
insist that she would not press charges over the assault that had
left her hospitalised and her kids in the care of the state.
 Jill and Gabriel passed the courthouse, closely observed by
most of those waiting outside, studiously ignoring the news crew
on the footpath opposite. She imagined they would do anything to
be able to sit in while she and Gabriel interviewed the daughter of
the man murdered yesterday. Jill took a deep breath when a
breeze momentarily freshened the air. The sun was out on their
side of the street; it was another hot day.

Gabriel half-turned to her. 'So, nice place out here,' he said.

She smiled wryly.

'I don't think we'll have much luck with Donna Moser today,'
he said next. 'It sounds like the hospital kept her sedated all day
yesterday.'

'Worth a shot,' said Jill.

They walked in silence for a while, nearing the sprawling

Westfield shopping centre, which had recently undergone major
renovations. Its shiny commercial happiness contrasted with the
customers and staff who waited at the lights to enter it.

Jill's thoughts turned back to the interview yesterday with

Justine Rice. 'I wonder whether Donna was sexually assaulted as
well. She's not a great deal older than Justine.'

'It's possible,' Gabriel said. 'But I doubt it. The scenarios are too
different. At the Moser house the perp got all his sexual
gratification from the torture and the kill.'

'Freak,' she said. They turned off the main street and the huge
hospital complex came into sight. 'The violence has escalated so
dramatically. It's a wonder we haven't come across this guy
before. It's possible he's done a lot of time inside. We should
probably look into violent sexual assaults in prison.'

'Good idea. There is some kind of sexual sadism going on,

even if we've only seen it expressed in an overt sexual act with
the Rice girl.' He stood aside to let a woman with a stroller pass
them on the narrow footpath.

When he caught up, he continued.

'Traditional sexual assault doesn't have to take place for these

people to get off. Think about it. In a sick way, stabbing flesh
simulates the sex act.'

'Yeah, I've heard of that. What do they call it?' Jill felt sweat at
her hairline.

'Piquerism. It's a paraphilia common to sexual sadists. Jack the

Ripper was a piquerist. And you know what's typical with these
guys?' He didn't wait for an answer. 'They also often stab
themselves in some way. When they caught the serial killer Albert
Fish, an X-ray showed he had more than two dozen needles
inserted into his groin. They're sick mothers, I tell you. When I
was training, I got called to transport a stiff from this small
hospital in the sticks. Bloke had been brought in about ten times
previously with self-inflicted stab wounds to the stomach. Would
never tell the surgeons what he did it for. When he realised he
wasn't going to make it this last time, he told them why he did it.'

Jill looked up at him as she walked.

'He told them,' he continued, 'that he believed he had vaginal

tissue in his stomach. When he whacked off, he'd stab his gut to
reach the tissue, effectively fucking himself.'

Oh, for God's sake. Jill stared into the gutter, waiting to cross at
the lights. Of course she knew they were dealing with a monster
in this case, but it was hard to fathom the depravity of a human
who could not only deliberately inflict pain upon himself and
another, but also become sexually aroused by the suffering.
Inevitably, with such thoughts, her own traumatic memories
shuddered into view, haltingly illuminated, as though by a
fluorescent light stuttering to life. Screaming in the basement for
the sexual pleasure of two men. Why did any aberrance surprise
her?

Jill lifted her eyes from the ground. Gabriel stood slightly
ahead of her. Unshaven again, with his hands in the pockets of his
dark cargos, today he wore a light blue tee-shirt. The trucker cap
sat low on his forehead. A marked police car passed them, and
Gabriel lifted his chin towards the driver in acknowledgement.
She saw the gesture returned.

He spoke again, eyes on the hospital across the road. 'The

violence is highly addictive,' he said. 'And it has to escalate to
satiate their desires. The other thing. . .' He paused, blinking in
the sun. 'They never stop until they're caught or dead.'

The nursing unit manager walked Jill and Gabriel towards

Donna Moser's room, but warned them that they probably
wouldn't be able to get her to speak clearly. The only time the girl
had awoken during the night, the nurse told them, she'd become
hysterical, waking the whole floor with her screams. They'd
sedated her again, and when the psych registrar had visited this
morning, he'd authorised another intravenous dose of Valium. A
general medical unit was the wrong place for her, in the nurse's
opinion.

'Some family friends have arranged to have her moved out of

here as soon as possible,' she said softly as she ushered them into
the victim's room.

Jill looked down at the young woman sleeping in the bed. She
would have guessed her age at maybe sixteen or seventeen, rather
than the twenty years Jill knew to be correct. Other than her very
white face and some pale shadows under her eyes, Donna
appeared unharmed. They waited while the nurse tried gently to
rouse her, calling her name, smoothing her hair back from her
face. The young woman's eyelids fluttered, but the drugs pulled
her back under.
 Jill gestured to the nurse to let it go. I wouldn't want to face the
world either, Jill thought. She moved one of the heavy bouquets
of flowers on the nightstand to leave a card by the girl's bed, and
she and Gabriel made their way out of the hospital.

Back on the street, Jill moved towards the pedestrian crossing,

but Gabriel pointed in the other direction. She shrugged and
followed.

'We'll have to find out where she's moved to when they

discharge her,' said Jill, falling into step next to him. 'I'll follow it
up.'

He nodded.

Their new direction led them past a large park. Specialists'

buildings occupied the other side of the road.

'I didn't expect her to look so young,' she said.

When Gabriel again didn't answer, she stared up at him,

slightly annoyed, but then noticed that he seemed focused on
something ahead. She followed his line of vision. Action
exploded immediately ahead of them. A youth wrenched at the
handbag of a middle-aged woman as she stood at the side of a
vehicle a few metres away. The woman screamed, and Jill tensed
to move, but Gabriel held her arm and signalled her to follow
him. He stepped off the footpath and into the park. Within
seconds, the offender had ripped the bag from the woman's grasp
and run straight into the park. Jill stood back slightly, aware she
could give chase if she needed to, but that was Delahunt's call.
Let's see what he's got, she thought.

Gabriel didn't identify himself as the youth ran towards them;

in fact, he seemed to make barely any preparatory move at all. At
the last moment, as the offender bolted towards them, he turned
side-on and swung his arm out into the runner's path at throat-
height.
 The kid hit the ground hard.

'Get your hands flat on the ground,' Jill yelled, moving quickly
towards the youth, now sprawled on his back. 'Face down,' she
instructed him.

She followed procedure, but there was really little need. The
kid was sucking air, eyes closed in pain. Kicking the bag away,
she rolled him over and cuffed his hands behind his back. He was
still breathing hard, but managed a couple of hoarse
'motherfuckers'. She kept her hands on the cuffs and looked
around at the crowd that was gathering. Gabriel's eyes danced as
he watched.

'Up,' Jill ordered, hauling on the handcuffs, and the kid got
quickly to his feet, pulled upwards by the pressure. Gabriel had
his radio out, but she could already see a uniformed foot patrol
running towards them, and a marked car, sirens on, arriving at the
scene. Jill had heard that there were several snatch and grabs a
day in Liverpool, and units typically responded quickly.

On their way over to the car, Gabriel spoke.

'Door job,' he said, looking at the perp. His smile was huge.

She couldn't help smiling back. Door job: cyclists collected

when a motorist opens the car door without looking. Same
principle, I suppose, she thought, and shook her head.

Standing out the front of the Liverpool police complex with the
two other lackey journalists, Chloe Farrell had held her breath
when she'd seen the man and woman come out of the building.
She'd seen these two yesterday out at Capitol Hill, arriving in an
unmarked car behind the taskforce commander, Lawrence Last.
Slinging a camera around her neck, she'd taken coffee orders
from the others and headed off to follow the cops. She did not
want passengers.

She kept a reasonable distance behind them. They were easy to

tail. Headed to the hospital, she guessed, as they made their way
down George Street. She knew the victim's daughter was in there.

Chloe had waited outside the main doors of Liverpool Hospital,

wondering whether she should go in and try to find them. They
could be in there for ages. Well, one thing's for sure, she promised
herself, I am not standing out here any longer than five minutes.
Although she was outdoors, she thought she might as well have
been in a pub – so many patients and their visitors had come out
here to smoke that her eyes were watering.

When the tracksuited drug dealer who'd been staring at her

finally walked over to chat, Chloe decided to leave. As she turned
to go, she spotted the detectives coming back out of the front
doors.

'Hey, princess,' the man in the tracksuit stood in her path, his
voice a nasal drawl. 'Do you want to go for a drink or something?'

'Actually,' she said, 'I've just got to catch up with my colleagues

over there.' She saw the man clock the detectives. His eyes
widened and he began to slink away. 'Maybe later,' she called
after him. 'Could I get your name?'

Her would-be suitor broke into a jog, heading back down

towards Speed Street.

Chloe smiled to herself and hurried to catch the cops ahead of

her. She made a sudden decision that she'd approach them,
identify herself and try to get some intel on the case. The worst
they can do is brush me off, she thought. I've got to take risks if
I'm going to get anywhere in this job.

She'd almost closed the distance between them when she

noticed the male stop. The hairs rose on the back of her neck and
she took the lens cap off her camera.

It all happened so quickly. Chloe had taken a dozen shots

before she even knew what was happening. She got everything.
The lot. This would run with the lead story tonight – she knew it.
When she tied the two detectives to the taskforce and the murder
in Capitol Hill, they'd link it all into one sensational story, with
pictures.

I'm gonna get a lead reporter's job out of this home invasion
story, thought Chloe, trying to run back to the news truck in her
stupid new shoes. Hang in there, Mum and Dad.
 14
ISOBEL FIGURED THAT if she could give Cutter to the police on a
plate, Joss might be able to avoid having to tell his story to them.
He'd always shied away from telling her much about his
childhood, but she had known that he'd run with a gang until his
grandparents had intervened. His account this morning of a
robbery in which a boy called Fuzzy had been killed had been
vaguely familiar to Isobel. However, the story she remembered
hearing as a kid did not match what Joss had told her.

She remembered her parents talking about it after the evening

news bulletin. It'd been a big story, back then. Late one night in
1984, fourteen-year-old Carl Waterman – affectionately known to
all his classmates as 'Fuzzy' because of his blond afro – had
investigated a noise in his father's bike shop. The shop sat
underneath the two-bedroom apartment in North Parramatta that
Carl shared with his father. Mr Waterman, waking to a crash, had
found his son speared through the throat by a shard of glass from
his shattered front window. He'd been unable to save his son. The
man's desolate face on the news, pleading for the offenders to
come forward, had brought Isobel's mother to tears. Her father
had sworn that they should hang the bloody mongrels.

Actually, Joss had told her, what had really happened was that
Fuzzy had let him, Cutter and Esterhase into the shop to steal the
bikes. They figured insurance would pay for the robbery, and Mr
Waterman would be no worse off. The plan was that they'd wheel
a bike out each, and hide one for Fuzzy in the flats around the
corner. It had gone perfectly until they shattered the window of
the shop to make it look like a smash and grab. They knew
Fuzzy's dad would sleep till the cops got there – he went to bed
with Jack Daniels and nothing could wake him.

They were right. Mr Waterman didn't wake when the huge

front window broke inwards and impaled his son. He didn't even
wake when Cutter and Esterhase bolted from the shop, knocking
over a rack of bike wheels.

Only Joss's screams had woken Fuzzy's dad from his drunken
sleep. Joss had done his best to hold Fuzzy's throat together, but
his best friend had drowned in his own blood right there in Joss's
lap.

By the time he got downstairs carrying a baseball bat, Mr

Waterman's son was dead, and Joss was gone.
 15
THE CONDENSATION CAUSED by the spring rain combined with the
steam of rice and soup cooking in the kitchen. Sweating, Cutter
could imagine himself in the Vietnam of his grandfather's era. He
rolled onto his side and reached for another tissue, coughed. The
routines and rituals of the room comforted him back to his pillow.
His aunt fed his cousin's baby on the floor next to him. His
grandma sat in her favourite chair rolling sticky rice balls, just as
she had every day of his life. He coughed again and groaned
quietly, and his grandma glanced up, giving a cluck of alarm. His
ma poked her head out from the doorway of the small kitchen and
instructed him to drink more of the fish soup that was sitting in a
bowl next to his mattress on the floor.

Cutter always came home when he was sick. He'd grown up in

this humble house in Cabramatta, as had nine of his cousins and
most of their children since. At times, there were up to twenty
people sleeping in the house, and it had always been full of
delicious smells, laughter and babies.

Because his father and grandfather had purchased the house

together, young Henry was the only child to have a bedroom of
his own. He would have preferred to sleep in this room with
everyone else, on the mattresses that were rolled out each
evening; but his grandfather had insisted that Henry occupy his
own bed, telling him that he would one day inherit the home and
should be aware of his place in the family.

Cutter had had great respect for his grandfather, who'd died
when he was only eight, less than twelve months after Cutter's
father had been hit by a car and killed instantly.
 Cutter's grandfather had been a hero of the war in Vietnam, a
general in the South Vietnamese army, fighting for the allies. At
night, he had sat with Henry by the hour and verbally recreated
epic battles, his role in fighting for the South. He'd prevented the
deaths of hundreds of Australian and American troops, teaching
them how to recognise and survive the perils of the steaming
jungle. There were the panji pits: sticks and branches concealing
a ditch studded with protruding spikes that had been poisoned
with rotting meat. There were mines suspended from trees,
created from discarded Western supplies, set at heights designed
to pulverise half the face. He taught them to recognise signs in the
bush that the enemy had passed or were waiting – bent leaves, a
broken branch. He told Henry of the elaborate Cu Chi Tunnels,
designed to house whole families as well as munitions, with
deadly snakes kept ready to be released upon enemies brave
enough to venture inside. The landmines in the hills of Long Hai;
the perils of R&R in the streets of Saigon. Young Cutter, wide-
eyed, sat on his bed with his chin on his knees, rapt, as his
grandfather conjured up the tastes, smells and sounds of a country
he had never visited.

Of course, the history lessons were not without pain. Henry

understood that. One terrible night, betrayed by some of his own
villagers, his grandfather had been captured by the Vietcong.
Before he was rescued a week later when the Australians overran
the camp, he had been tortured almost to death. Grandfather had
watched each of his loyal troops beheaded one by one, their heads
used as footballs by the enemy. When he'd closed his eyes, unable
to watch, his eyelids were cut from his face. Grandpa told Henry
that he knew his time would soon come when he had watched his
lieutenant's manhood being cut from his loins and forced into his
mouth, his lips then sewn crudely shut. He had watched his best
friend's eyes pleading with him, the blood from his balls running
from his mouth, before he too had been decapitated.

Grandpa told Henry that the experience had made him more
than a man; he felt immortal. Death had no power over him. Pain
held no fear. But the most powerful lesson, he told the boy almost
every night, he had learned from the needles. It was his
responsibility, he explained to his grandson, to teach him, to
impart to him the same power.

Grandfather told him that the needles were inserted by his

captors under the foreskin of his penis. Any sound made caused
another needle to be inserted. This continued until the man made
no murmur, no sound. The lesson would then be over until the
next day.

Cutter learned the lesson in one night when he was four years
of age. He'd had the flu and his grandfather had stayed home with
him while his family was out celebrating Tet. Most nights
thereafter, until his grandfather's death, Henry was instructed in
his heritage by the war hero.

As a boy, Henry had loved Saturdays. Once a week on this day,

he had the honour of accompanying his grandfather to the local
market. There, neighbours and stallholders would pay their
respects to Grandpa. Small children would stare at Henry in awe
or curiosity as he led the war hero through the bakeries and
vegetable stands. Grandpa's eyesight was very poor and he wore
his usual huge dark glasses to protect his scarred eyes. He walked
slowly; Henry knew his grandfather had terrible arthritis in
multiple old injury sites on his arms and legs. Yet his bearing was
regal – stallholders would crow to their neighbours with pride
when he had purchased from their store.

And then the accident had happened.

It was a wet day, much like this one, Cutter thought now, as he
patted at his nose, already sore from blowing it too much. It was a
well-worn memory, and he leaned back against his pillow to think
it through. His grandma had required medication for one of the
babies, he recalled, Chinese medicine from Thanh Kha's store
above Dutton Lane. Henry had led his grandfather through the
marketplace and into the narrow side street. Slowly, they climbed
the stairs to the apothecary's small shop – the living room of an
apartment above the market.

At times, at night, the musty smells of the medicinal powders

and roots still came to Cutter before he dropped into dreamless
sleep.

That morning, Dr Kha's family was eating a late breakfast in

the room behind the shop. Cutter remembered that on that day he
had been walking as carefully as his grandfather, his groin aching
deeply from an extended lesson the night before. As they were
leaving, Mrs Pham came out of the gloom of the narrow stairway
and greeted them with a bow.

'Please be careful,' she had warned, looking down at young

Henry. 'The stairs are wet with the rain this morning.'

Cutter's grandfather had been wrong about being immortal.

You had to give it to him though – he had made no sound as

Henry had shoved him hard in the back as he was shuffling down
the steep stairway. In fact, the only sound Cutter heard before the
stallholders came running was the dull splat when Grandpa's head
had split open like a melon on the concrete below.

Cutter thought he could hear the sound now; it caused his penis
to harden under the thin bedsheet and set him to coughing again.
His grandma stood slowly and came to his side, bending down to
feel his forehead with her soft, papery hands.

Cutter always came home when he was sick. He loved the

memories.
 16
JOSS CARRIED HIS old schoolbag with him when he left his
mother's house. He sat directly behind the driver on the bus,
shifting from time to time to adjust the position of the knife in his
pocket. It seemed to prod for his attention; he couldn't stop
thinking about it. He'd have to fashion some kind of holster; it
wasn't as though he could just wear it in his belt as he had
overseas.

He looked down at his schoolbag – just like any sports

backpack, really. It seemed hot in his lap, and he wondered
whether any of the other passengers could tell that it had travelled
from the past, from another world.

Inside the bag, the boy from the streets waited to get out.

Joss changed buses again at Wynyard, but this time he crossed

the road to catch a train to Cabramatta. He swung his backpack
over his shoulder and jogged to the platform. The knife thumped
against his thigh as he ran.

How does one go about making an anonymous call to the police,

Isobel wondered. Can't send a fax or email, of course. Traceable.
Her mobile? She always used a prepaid mobile phone because she
knew how easy it was to find out someone's identity when they
subscribed to a plan. Still, she'd heard that even though a prepaid
number wasn't registered, the phone still acted as a satellite
tracking system when it was switched on. If police had a number
that was of interest, they could find the phone, even if they didn't
know whose it was.

How ridiculous, she thought, and snorted as she sipped her

coffee. She felt like she was in a spy movie or something. The
woman from the next table looked up from her novel and stared.

Isobel got the file out of her shoulder bag and read it through
again briefly. She'd found Henry Nguyen and had done a work-up
on the Donatio file for Shields as well, and all before two o'clock.
I am pretty good at this stuff, she reminded herself.

Nguyen had no Centrelink file that she could find, but she'd
been able to find his Medicare record. There was also no hiding
his criminal past. From age eighteen – it would take a bit longer
to get any juvenile files – it seemed he had spent more time in
than out of gaol. Violent crime and robbery. She chewed at her
lip, worried Joss could be right – that this man could have been
the one who'd attacked them at Andy Wu's. Still, she figured,
maybe Joss would have a record, too, if he'd not been rescued
from that life.

But that was crazy. It can't be him, she told herself. Joss was
just shaken up by the robbery. God knows, she still was. And Joss
also had his memories of Africa, of the massacre, to contend with.
She could easily see how Andy Wu's blood could've triggered
memories of his friend Fuzzy's death. Fuzzy made him think
about Cutter, and he had just projected Nguyen underneath the
mask of the devil at the home invasion.

There was no way Joss could recognise someone underneath

that balaclava – there just wasn't any face to see.

The memory of Joss's panic at the movies yesterday surfaced

briefly. It did seem a coincidence that they had run into this guy
just after the home invasion, but it must just have been spooky
chance. She pushed her doubts aside with the remainder of her
coffee, not allowing them to fully register. She could not let
herself believe that Joss was right about this guy. She'd collected
this information just to placate her husband – to give Nguyen's
details to the police and let them rule him in or out of this thing.

Isobel left the last bite of her toasted sandwich and stood up.
She waited at the lights outside the café with a couple of dozen
other people and crossed the street when they got the 'walk'
signal. Then she stepped into one of the payphones opposite her
work for the first time ever.

'Honey, I really don't think all this is necessary,' Isobel said to her
husband in their bedroom that evening. She used her reasoning
voice, trying to speak calmly, holding at her side the baseball bat
Joss had given her. 'The police have his details now, and if he's
implicated in any way, they'll pick him up.' She sighed, looking at
his face. Nothing she said made any difference, she thought. He
was just waiting for her to finish.

She was right.

'Show me again,' he said.

She gripped the very end of the bat with one hand as he had
demonstrated, her other hand in the middle, as though she were
holding a javelin. She lunged forward at an imaginary attacker,
holding the bat at face-height.

'Remember,' he said, 'You can go for the face, throat, or the

balls. Don't go for the chest. Winding him is no good. An eye
socket will do.'

He looked her straight in the face, but she felt he wasn't really
seeing her.

'Don't forget,' he continued, 'you don't want to hesitate. You

don't want to listen to anything anyone's got to say. You'll have
one chance only and you've gotta put every bit of strength you
have behind it. And don't miss.' He paused, then held his fingers
up to emphasise each point. 'One, use all your force; two, don't
hesitate; and three, don't miss. Now, show me again.'

Five minutes later, Isobel finally threw the bat on the bed.
'Where are you going to be while I'm hitting this home run?' she
asked.

'Don't worry about me. Hopefully, it won't come to this. If they

come, with any luck, you, me and Charlie will be on the roof.'

As soon as she'd arrived home from work, Joss had again tried
to persuade her to take Charlie to her mother's home in Cairns.
She'd turned him down without waiting to listen to his argument.
As though he'd known that would be her response, he'd insisted
she come up to their bedroom and practise climbing out of the
window and onto their roof.

'Can we at least wait till it's dark?' she'd wanted to know. 'And
I'm not teaching Charlie to climb out a window onto the roof!'

'Fine,' he'd capitulated. 'We take her only if necessary.'

So, when evening had fallen, Isobel had climbed out of the low
bedroom window onto their tiled roof. Joss had followed her out.

'Move around to the side a bit.'

He'd spoken softly, thank God. Isobel couldn't imagine trying

to explain this to Mrs Wilkinson next door.

Isobel had inched her way around on the tiles; the slope here
was gentle, and it was not difficult to move along. Fortunately,
the rain had cleared up just after lunch, and the tiles had been dry
and still quite warm.

'What the hell's this?' she whispered when she'd come across a
dark shape wedged into a corner on the roof.

'The ladder, of course. How did you think we were going to get
Charlie down?'

On her haunches on the roof, Isobel had found herself worried

far less about a potential home invasion than about her husband's
grip on reality. Was she right to humour him in this way? Should
she just insist he see the counsellor, refuse to go along with his
paranoid plans? Was all this making him worse? What was she
doing squatting out here? She'd studied Joss from behind as he
negotiated the roof, moving assuredly across the tiles, considering
every angle. She determined to try to talk to him again tomorrow.

Back in the bedroom, Isobel put her hand on Joss's shoulder.

'Come on, babe, I'm tired. Let's have a shower and go to bed
early.'

Joss picked the bat up from the bed and handed it to her.

'Remember, we're in a confined space,' he said. 'You don't want

to have to try and swing it. And you don't want him to get closer
to you than a metre. Show me again.'
 17
'DO YOU WANT to get out of here today?' Jill asked Gabriel as they
sat at their desks in the communal detectives' office in Liverpool.
The taskforce meeting had just concluded and Jill was not looking
forward to chatting with her colleagues this morning. As Gabriel's
smiling eyes met hers over the rim of his coffee mug, she
continued, 'It's that bloody current affairs show from last night. I
don't want to hear what Derek Reid and his mates have to say
about it.'

'You looked pretty tough handcuffing the dangerous assailant in

the suburbs,' said Gabriel.

'Don't start, Mr Door Job.'

'Yeah, well,' he said, 'maybe we should go out and do some

more interviews.'

'Who's up next?' Jill flicked through the folder in front of her.

'Um, that couple in Balmain,' Gabriel answered. He spoke

without looking up, absorbed in the statements in front of him.

'Yeah, that's right,' she said. 'Isobel Rymill and Joss Preston-
Jones. That was the Wu case, right?' She didn't really expect an
answer and got none. 'Poor bastard, they couldn't save one of his
legs, you know. Surgery didn't take.'

'Are you gonna eat that?'

Jill looked down at the banana on her desk. Morning tea. What
the hell. She slid it over. He grinned, more at the fruit than at her.
He peeled it with his thick fingers and ate it in three huge bites.

'So are you ready to head over there?' He arced the banana skin
through the air, and it dropped into a garbage bin on the other side
of the room. Reid's bin.

'Yeah, I guess.' Jill thought about the long drive to Balmain, the
trip back here to Liverpool afterwards, and then at five or six
tonight, the trip back to her unit on the beach. She took a deep
breath and stood. God I miss working at Maroubra, she thought.

When they got down to the carpark, Gabriel walked straight to

the passenger side and got in, still reading from one of the files he
held in his hand.

'So, I guess I'm driving again,' she said to the roof of the car
before she climbed behind the wheel.

'You know, these first interviews on the home invasions aren't

that great.' Gabriel hadn't heard her. He spoke with his head
down, still reading from the case files.

She didn't respond, trying to picture the best route from

Liverpool to Balmain. 'Do you know a better way to get to
Balmain than the M5?' she asked, tired already.

'Huh? Nuh.'

'So, we'll just take the M5 back into the city, and double back
to Balmain?' I could use a little help here, she thought. New girl,
remember?

'Okay,' he said.

'Off we go then,' Jill said dryly, making her way back into the
traffic she'd sat through not an hour before to get there.

It wasn't until they were at tollbooths that he spoke again. Jill

had already worked her way through half a litre of water from a
bottle by her side.

'Reid and Tran did most of these victims' interviews,' he said.

Jill waited for his point. Finally, she said, 'Yeah, so?'

'There just seems to be a lot of information lacking. Like Rice

and Temple. It didn't take us long to get more information, extra
evidence from them. Some of the most important evidence in the
case so far.'

Jill thought about the two kids, Justine and Ryan, and
wondered how they were doing today. She wondered how Narelle
Rice was coping with having her home trashed again by crime
scene. In the group meeting this morning, Superintendent Last
had told them that the analysis of the towel Justine had kept
would be back tomorrow at the latest. She frowned; it was pretty
sloppy that Reid and Tran had not discovered the sexual assault.
Still . . .

'Maybe Justine just couldn't tell two men about the sexual
violence,' she said. 'Maybe they interviewed her while Ryan or
her mum was there with her. It's not easy to talk about that stuff
you know.' God, she knew.

'Exactly.'

'What, exactly?'

'Well, that's Interview 101, isn't it? There just seem to be a lot
of holes in all of the statements. Maybe we should tell Last that
we'll reinterview all of them?'

Jill choked on a sip of water. 'Are you serious?' She could just
imagine what the rest of the detectives would say: Yeah, she's
been here less than a week, and already she thinks she can do it
all better than us. 'It would take forever for just you and me to
interview all the witnesses. There's other stuff to be done on this
case, Gabriel.'
 'Yeah, but the single most important determinant in
successfully resolving a case is the quality of information
gathered from the interviews with victims and witnesses.'

She looked over at him. His trucker cap hid most of his eyes.

'Anyway,' she said, changing the subject, hoping that he

wouldn't try to insist on this, 'what do you think of that
anonymous call that came though yesterday afternoon?'

Lawrence Last had mentioned the call in the morning meeting.

It was from a woman, identifying a male who might be involved.
It had been just one of many calls from the public since their
work on the case had started. None of them to date had thrown up
anything useful.

'What do I think?' he said. 'I think someone's feeling guilty.'

'Why do you say that? It's not like she was confessing to
anything.'

Gabriel kept reading. Jill was getting used to these one-sided

conversations. At the moment, she just felt bored and sleepy. The
sun beamed in through the windscreen and her cheeks felt hot.
She cracked the window a little. The exhaust fumes from the
motorway blew in with the breeze. She had found it difficult to
sleep last night, waking from a blood-soaked dream in which
huge, biting spiders chased her. She'd lain in her bed for an hour
afterwards thinking about Eugene Moser's final moments and
Justine Rice's horrific confession. Who was this lunatic? It was
horrible to imagine him out there somewhere, planning another
attack. What could he be capable of next time?

'What was the guy's name?' Jill asked. 'The guy from the phone
call? Henry someone? Asian name.'

'Nguyen, Henry. AKA Cutter.'

 'That's it. Cutter.' Jill made a scoffing noise. 'Must've been real
hard for her to come up with a name like that, given the stories all
over the media,' she said sarcastically. 'The call's probably
bullshit. Just someone who wants attention, knows nothing about
the case at all.' She didn't know whether she believed that,
exactly, but she was curious to know more of Gabriel's thoughts
about it.

He grunted and kept reading.

Jill high-beamed a car doing eighty in the right-hand lane. It

was a hundred zone, and she didn't feel like sitting on this
motorway any longer than she had to. The Ford Laser stayed right
where it was.

'What's in the file that's so fascinating, anyway?' she said,

starting to seriously tailgate the guy in front of her. 'You've read
the interview before.'

'It's not what's in here,' said Gabriel. 'It's what's not. You
wouldn't believe the questions they forgot to ask this couple from
Balmain.'

The truck in the lane next to her was too close to consider
overtaking from the left, but the Laser could easily have moved
over by now. Jill was considering putting the siren up on the dash
and ruining this guy's day.

'So what did they miss out on?' She tried to curb her
impatience. Scotty had hated driving with her when she was in
this mood. Gabriel seemed not to notice at all.

'Well, a detailed narration of events, for one.'

'Yeah,' she said. 'I read through the interviews yesterday. They
did seem a bit sketchy.'

'A bit? Reid did the Preston-Jones interview. He didn't get a

description of any of the voices. He didn't ask about incidental
sounds from the other room. For God's sake, there wasn't even a
word-for-word account of the exact words the witness heard from
each offender.'

'Mmm. Pretty sloppy, especially given they had few physical

features to go on because of the balaclavas.'

'Don't start me,' he said. 'There's plenty bloody more they could
have asked about physical characteristics.'

The Laser finally moved over. A young bloke in dark sunnies.

He flipped her the finger before he took the River-wood exit.
Dickhead. He probably thought she and Gabriel were a married
couple out for a drive. She'd known how to spot an unmarked cop
car from age thirteen. This fool had no idea how close he'd come
to a five-hundred-dollar headache. He was lucky that Gabriel had
finally started to talk and distract her.

'What questions would you have asked to get more from the
witnesses about the physical details?' Jill was genuinely
interested. All detectives had a different interview technique, and
most tended to stick to the questions they had learned from their
first supervisor. She'd always been open to learning more
sophisticated methods of getting at facts.

'I always teach the witness to use their memory like a video-
recording,' he said, suddenly animated. 'I tell them they can fast-
forward scenes, or slow the action down. They can take it frame
by frame, or just view still-shots. On any given shot they can
zoom the camera in, or widen the lens to take in details at the
corners of their vision.'

He closed the file but kept his finger inside, marking his place.
'Some witnesses aren't so good at processing visual information,
but around a third are brilliant. You can get some people to
change the camera angle to get almost any perspective, like a
bird's-eye view, looking down from the ceiling, or shoe-view, the
camera looking up at the action from the floor.'
 'Wow. And that works?'

'Yeah. Like I said, not with everyone, but the least you'd do
would be to say, "Stop the picture now. In your mind's eye, stop
him right there in front of you. Okay, now tell me what he looks
like from the top of his head all the way down."'

'That's good,' said Jill. 'I mean, I do try to get the most vivid
descriptions possible, but I'll have to try some of those questions.'

'This,' Gabriel waved the file, 'is shit. He hasn't even asked the
witness if he has any thoughts about the perps' motivations. You
can get a lot of incidentals when you ask them to just let go and
guess why the offenders might have behaved the way they did.'

'You want to know why the witness thinks the offender

committed the crime?'

'Sure. You know that witnesses are always worried about

saying something wrong, or making a mistake. They censor
themselves. In a case like this, we can worry about errors in
accuracy later; what we want from the witness in an interview is
every little thing they can remember, even when they're not
completely certain. They're our only eyes in there. They're the
detective on the scene.'

'Interesting way of putting it. Do you ever say that to them?'

'All the time. You tell them you want them to guess the
thoughts and emotions of the offenders. It widens their viewpoint.
Opens them up. You can ask, "Why do you think he did that?", or
"Do you think they planned it to go that way?" or even something
like "Do you think any of them were angry with, or closer to, any
of the others?"'

'Mmm.'

Jill drove silently for a while, her thoughts turning back to the
anonymous phone call.
 'Why'd you say the anonymous caller was feeling guilty?' she
asked again.

'Well, she obviously wants us to investigate someone. You're

right, it could be a bullshit call, but I thought her sentence
structure was interesting when I listened to the tape this morning.
She was really eager to put this guy in. And I don't think she just
made up a name. If she did, it wouldn't take us long to find out he
doesn't exist. Pretty pointless if it's a joke.' He pulled his finger
from the file and placed the folder into the door pocket, turning
towards her. 'Besides,' he said, 'I think this Henry Nguyen is real,
and the feeling I got is that this caller can't live with herself
without saying something to someone. She wants us to find him.
But she definitely knows more about him than she's told us.'

'It could just be someone she's pissed off with,' returned Jill.
'Revenge – she might just want us to give some guy a hard time.'

Jill had listened to the call too, and she had to admit that she'd
also thought there was something about it that demanded close
attention. The caller's voice had been muffled; she really didn't
want them to know who she was. At the moment though, Jill was
more interested in the way her new partner thought than in
discussing her own impressions.

'Could be,' he said. 'We'll have to wait and see. The details she
gave don't sound right for that though – not just his address, but
his Medicare number, where he's done time? And what she didn't
say is just as important. Like, this is how I know what I know;
this is why you need to get this guy; and more importantly, my
name is . . .'

'Come on, we get heaps of anonymous tips. People don't want

to get involved.'

'Yeah, but descriptive information like that is coming from

someone who's just a little bit more than a helpful citizen. I think
that call's for real and we're looking for a guilty woman. Guilt by
association with something. And if she's got anything to do with
this case, I'll know her when I talk to her.'

For some reason Jill believed him. That speech should've

sounded arrogant, but instead Gabriel just sounded open, matter-
of-fact.

She finished the last of her water as the traffic on the motorway
slowed to a stop. There was obviously some holdup ahead. At
that precise moment, she realised she was desperate for the toilet.
Great. She sighed and tried to distract herself. She just wasn't
used to these mammoth drives – maybe it was a conditioned
response. It seemed like every time she got on this bloody road
she had to go. Could be because there were no service stations:
when she knew she couldn't go, she suddenly had to. Thank God,
they were nearly at Moore Park.

At the end of the freeway, Jill swung the Commodore into the
first service station and bolted to the bathroom. When she got
back, Gabriel was standing at the bonnet, food and drink spread
out on the hot car like it was a picnic rug.

'So how're we going to handle the interview?' he said,

indicating that a plastic-looking salad sandwich was for her.

'What do you have in mind?'

'I want to use audiovisuals to record everything. What do you

think?'

'I think,' she answered, 'that you'll completely freak out the
victims. They're not going to understand why they would be
taped. We haven't even caught a suspect, so it's not like a tape
could be used in court.'

'These people are the only experts we have on this gang,' he

said, struggling to open his sandwich wrapper. 'They know much
more than they think they know. We need as many verbal and
non-verbal cues as possible for a full behavioural analysis.'

'It seems like a lot of trouble for a witness interview, but I

guess we've got to do everything we can think of at this point,'
she said. 'You got the equipment, or are we gonna get them to
come in again later?'

'Got everything we need.' He nodded at the duffle bag on the

back seat, his still-wrapped sandwich in his mouth, fingers and
teeth tearing at the plastic. Jill thought about offering to help, but
finally, the plastic gave way. 'We can get it all done today.'

As Gabriel pulled his bag from the back of the car, Jill silently
repeated the victims' names – Isobel Rymill, Joss Preston-Jones.
'What were they like when you set up the interview this morning?'

'Ah, they said no.' He walked across the street. She stared after
him.

'What?' She hurried to catch up. 'Said no to what?'

'The interview.'

They were already at the front door of the freestanding two-

storey terrace. Jill glared at Gabriel as he knocked. She heard
sounds behind the door, and a deadbolt sliding back. She couldn't
see through the crack, as Gabriel's back filled the space.

'Mr Preston-Jones? We spoke this morning,' Gabriel sounded

assertive, turned slightly to make space for Jill next to him. 'I'm
Gabriel Delahunt and this is my partner, Sergeant Jillian Jackson.'

The man who opened the door looked as though he'd ordinarily
be of a more cheerful disposition. An open face, light grey eyes,
sandy hair that was buzz-cut close to his scalp. He stood in his
doorway in a faded red tee-shirt, tight across his upper chest,
loose navy pants, no shoes. He stood a smidge taller than Gabe.
He didn't smile. A black-green bruise marred the lightly freckled
skin under his left eye.

'I thought we agreed we'd have to do this another time?' He

folded tanned arms across his chest.

Gabriel held out his hand. Big smile. Seeing it, Jill couldn't
help but smile as well.

Joss Preston-Jones sighed, shook Gabriel's hand, and reached

for Jill's. Then he stepped aside and motioned for them to come
in.

The hallway was narrow. 'Sorry about this,' she felt she had to
say over her shoulder. The man smiled tightly.

Jill followed Gabriel to a bright kitchen washed in the midday

sun streaming in from the small backyard. Gabriel took a seat on
a stool at the breakfast bar. She waited for him to explain what
they were doing there, but he seemed content to look around the
room, still smiling.

'Ah, Mr Preston-Jones,' she started. Someone had to say

something.

'Call me Joss.'

'Great, thanks. Please, call me Jill.' Let Delahunt fend for

himself.

'I understand that you would have preferred to do this some

other time.'

'My wife's at work.'

Jill stared hard at Gabriel, then turned back to Joss. 'You're

probably aware of how urgent it is for us to investigate this case.
You might have heard about the latest home invasion?'

'I don't watch the news,' said Joss.

'Well, we believe that the gang that attacked you at Andy Wu's
house have now killed a man.' Jill noticed Joss rub his hand
across his mouth. 'We need to get as much information as we can
about these people so that we can get them off the streets.'

She watched his shoulders relax a little, and his arms, folded
across his chest, dropped to his sides.

'I haven't really been back to work since it happened,' said Joss.
'But Isobel had to go. She's bringing our daughter, Charlie, home
at about four.'

'Is that Charlie?' Jill pointed to a photo on the fridge. It showed

a blonde toddler nursing a fluffy cat almost bigger than herself.

Joss laughed a little. 'Yep.' The love in his eyes looked like
pain.

Jill became aware that Gabriel was unpacking his bag.

'The light's probably best in here,' he said, unfolding a

telescoped tripod.

'For what?' Joss's arms folded again.

'From now on we'll be videotaping all of our interviews

regarding the case.' Gabriel spoke to the small camera he was
screwing to the top of the tripod.

Jill glowered at him. This guy could turn the charm on and then
drop it in an instant. She guessed that they were about to be
kicked out, but instead Joss offered them something to drink. She
and Gabriel accepted an orange juice. Joss poured himself a tall
glass of water from a filter jug next to the sink.
 'Might as well get on with it then,' he said, walking back
towards them.

Gabriel set up the recording equipment with more speed than

she could have imagined. By the time Joss had taken a seat at the
breakfast bar, the contents of Gabriel's modest-sized duffle bag
had transformed the small dining area off the kitchen into a
studio. He had angled two dining chairs to face one another, and a
collapsible reflective screen was positioned behind one of the
chairs. He ushered their host towards this chair, motioning Jill
towards the other, and took up his place behind the camera.

Jill took her seat feeling nervous and annoyed. For heaven's
sake, she thought, we're interviewing a witness, not interrogating
a suspect. She opened her notebook and smiled reassuringly at
Joss.

'Hang on a sec,' said Gabriel. Incredulous, she watched him

drop to his knees and, using a retractable tape measure, calculate
the distance between the two chairs. Walking back on his knees,
he signalled with his hand for her to rise. She stood and he pushed
her chair backwards a hand's breadth.

'Sorry,' he looked up at her.

'Um, yes, maybe we should just get on with it.'

'They were only ninety-two centimetres apart.'

Jill stared. It seemed he was apologising for not getting the

measurements right the first time, rather than for the ridiculous
fact that he was bothering with such details in the first place.

'Should've been ninety-seven,' Gabriel said to Joss, hands out,

as if that explained everything.

I gotta talk to this guy, Jill thought.

'Joss,' she took over. His legs and arms were crossed now, and
he leaned towards the back door as though he wanted to be
anywhere but in there with them. 'We're here to get your full
description of what you remember happening at Andy Wu's last
Saturday night. Can you tell us everything that happened after
you arrived? Please don't leave anything out, everything you've
got to say is very important to us. You are our eyes and ears in
there.'

Gabriel caught her eye, raised his eyebrows at her.

They listened quietly to Joss's account, occasionally

interrupting to clarify a point.

While speaking, Joss stared at a point just beyond Jill's

shoulder. She watched him reliving the horror of the night, saw
his eyeballs tracking actively as the scene replayed before him.
His face was grey and his voice hoarse when he finished. An
electronic chime indicated that Gabriel had turned the camera off.
Jill looked down at her watch. Three-thirty. The wife would be
home soon, but this guy had had enough. His hand shook slightly
as he rubbed the bristle on top of his head. When he stood, he
steadied himself using the back of the chair, his eyes glazed and
unfocused. She and Gabriel gave him their thanks and left,
arranging to return to take his wife's statement the following day.

'I hope he's going to be okay,' said Jill, opening the back door
of the car so Gabriel could dump his equipment. 'He looked pretty
shaken up.'

The steering wheel felt warm when she started the ignition.

'He certainly did,' said Gabriel, absentmindedly struggling to

fasten his seatbelt. The plug had caught in his khaki shirt, and she
had to stifle an unexpected impulse to untangle the mess for him.
She turned on the air-conditioner instead.

'So it's back to Liverpool, then,' she said, mentally calculating

the time it would take to get there and back again.
 'No. Let's just go to your house.'

'My house.'

'Yeah. I want to watch this tape back. We've got some problems
here.'

'I live in Maroubra.'

'Have you got a good TV?'

'Well, yes. But . . . Oh, whatever. We can watch the tape there I
suppose.'

She pulled the car out from the curb and headed into the city,
finding herself smiling at the thought of the early mark. They
travelled against the traffic for most of the trip, Gabriel staring
out the window, from time to time jotting in his notebook. As
they passed the shops in Randwick, she suddenly wondered what
the hell she was doing. Scotty was the only partner she'd ever had
in her house, and she trusted him. She'd known her new partner
for under a week.

Last night on the phone, her mum had asked her what he was
like, and she'd been unable to find the words. After a few
moments, she'd laughed, and told her mum that she'd have to get
back to her. She hadn't figured him out yet.

Jill drove towards the ocean ahead.

After seeing the detectives out, Joss found himself back in front
of the cupboard in the kitchen. Describing the night at Andy's in
such detail had unshackled the demons in his brain. Memories
howled in his head now, each clamouring for processing, hurling
up image after horrifying image. He gave in to the kaleidoscope,
knowing from experience that he was incapable of stemming the
flood once it had progressed unchecked to this point. He reached
unseeingly for the bottle of bourbon. The interview had prevented
him utilising his routine avoidance strategies – hard exercise;
forcing himself to remember he was home, safe, in the present.
He had only this recourse left. He swigged directly from the
bottle and then reached for a glass.

Back on the sofa, he steeled himself for the show; he drank

quickly to put as much distance between himself and the images
as possible.

Kibeho, 1995. The definition of human depravity. From every

angle someone died in agony, or, much worse, survived, a
machete wound through the middle of their face; a limb or
genitals missing; intestines exposed for the birds that dived
sorties in screaming, black-eyed packs. He moved through the
blood and body pieces, pulling a dead woman away from her
wailing infant before the child suffocated under her weight,
dragging a breathing body from a pile of corpses and handing him
to the medics. A small team from Médecins Sans Frontières and
the medical section of the Australian peacekeeping force patched
up those they could, medivaced a fortunate few, and provided
morphine to many others, who would at least die oblivious to
their own screams. For many years, he envied them that.

Another glass. The bourbon burned.

The boy and his family. The memory kicked in at the worst
part, of course. The father lay dead, feeble spits of blood still
exiting the mess of his throat. A girl, maybe ten, waited, mute, for
the next act of horror life would bring her. Her mother, a baby on
her hip, keened quietly, a steady, emotionless moan that conveyed
more pain than a scream. And the new man of the house – the
boy, younger than his sister – shaped up with a stick to the Tutsi
warrior with the machete.

The devil with the knife turned to smile at Joss; to tell him with
his eyes that he could cut this family to pieces, and that Joss could
do nothing but salvage anyone left when he'd had his fill.

Not this time.

Joss watched himself moving forward to meet the enemy.

On the couch, feeling as though his head had played host to a

wasp's nest, Joss's hand reached between the cushions, and pulled
out that for which it had been searching. He wiped the knife
against his thigh, and put it back in its resting place. Close.

He let his head fall back against the lounge.

 18
'YOU SEE, HE'S doing it again,' said Gabriel, cross-legged on her
floor. The glow of the TV screen lit up his face. They otherwise
sat in shadow, the gathering gloom of dusk waited on the balcony.

'So that would be another cluster?'

'Yup.' He kept his eyes on the screen, but she saw him make a
mark in the notepad perched on his knee.

There hadn't been time to be awkward. Gabriel had walked

straight to the TV upon entering Jill's apartment and had wheeled
it around to expose the leads at the back. Before she'd even
offered coffee, the Balmain room and Joss Preston-Jones had
filled the screen. Gabriel had been animated from the start.

'I don't get it,' he'd said to her. 'I've got to see it again. This guy
was throwing up deception cues all over the place. Come in here
and watch this.'

She'd taken a seat on her chocolate leather sofa and leaned

backwards, her arms across her chest, an eyebrow raised.

'You're sceptical,' he said.

'You think he's lying?'

'He's not telling us the whole truth. He's being deceptive again
and again and again.'

'How do you know?'

 'Same way I can tell that you think I'm full of shit right now.
Incriminating and discriminating stress cues; verbal and non-
verbal signs.' He turned back to the TV. 'You gotta watch this.'

Jill had always been interested in the principles of

interrogation, and had thought she had a good sense of when a
subject was lying. She knew well that most of the time what a
suspect actually said during an interrogation was only half the
story. The way they said it, their body posture and movements
told the rest. What she learned in her loungeroom over the next
two hours, though, surpassed all of the behaviour analysis
training she'd had to date, and gave words to a lot of her
instinctual knowledge and hunches.

'Okay, so we know that no single behaviour can tell us whether

someone is being truthful or deceptive, right?' He continued
without expecting a response. 'But when we repeatedly observe
some kind of stress reaction, or even better, a cluster of stress
reactions when a particular issue is being discussed, then we can
assume it's not a random behaviour.'

From Jill's point of view, anyone speaking about a brutal home

invasion would radiate stress signals. Preston-Jones was wrecked
after the interview, as was almost every victim she'd ever talked
to. Gabriel's eyes and voice were compelling, however. She
leaned forward in her seat.

'Of course, even innocent subjects will be nervous, and we'll

detect that every time. But Joss exhibits markers suggestive of
poor credibility at several key points through the interview,
signals that I wouldn't expect in subjects who are telling the
whole truth. What we've got to figure out now is what he's
omitting from his statement. What he's not telling us. But more
importantly,' Gabriel turned his eyes from Jill back to the screen,
'why he's omitting it.'

Jill finally found herself on the rug next to Gabriel, propped

cross-legged with her back against the lounge to better see the
screen. He paused the tape at key moments and time and again
showed her movements made by Joss that stood out from his
typical signs of tension.

'I'm picking up more evasion than deception,' he said.

She estimated that they were around halfway through the tape.

'It could also be embarrassment,' he continued, 'but it's more

likely to be guilty knowledge: withholding information.'

The discriminating stress cues, once Gabriel had pointed them

out, began to appear obvious.

'Negation!' Jill pointed at Joss on screen, once again rubbing

his palm up and down his nose, briefly covering his mouth.
Negation behaviour, Gabriel had reminded her, was a
subconscious effort to hide leaks of emotion from the face. In the
video, Joss repeatedly put his hands up to the facial touch zone –
the area from mid-nose to mid-chin – hiding his mouth when he
spoke about the ringleader of the gang.

'Right. And what's that?' he asked her, tape paused on Joss

making a sweeping gesture in response to a question asked by
Gabriel.

'Aversion behaviour? He's blocking you, isn't he?'

'Figuratively, he's sweeping the question away. Remember I

asked him to expand on what happened when the leader was
questioning him on the ground. He used a bridging phrase: what
did he say?' Gabriel looked down at the pad on his knee. '"The
next thing I knew they were gone." The next thing I knew . . . It's
a typical phrase used to cover gaps and omissions. He doesn't
want to talk about what happened just before the offenders left.'

Gabriel paused the tape again and performed a yoga stretch on

the loungeroom floor. His khaki shirt stretched tight over the
muscles in his chest and back. Her shoulders felt stiff and she
considered copying his pose, but instead she contented herself
with stretching her neck from side to side.

'What else do we know about this guy?' he asked.

'Just the basic demographics, I think,' she answered. 'Age,

address, family, his job. Probably we should look deeper.'

'Definitely. Look at the screen now.' Gabriel again sat up,

cross-legged. 'See. That's another control behaviour. He's sitting
on his hands. I think that he knows about stress cues and he's
trying to suppress his nervous behaviours. Problem for him is that
this tells us just as much – he's trying to be deceptive about his
true emotions. When he freezes, or grips the chair, or sits on his
hands within three to five seconds of a hot topic, he might as well
have just let his hands do what they wanted to.

'But what I really want to know,' he said, standing and clicking

off the TV, 'is where he learned that he should be monitoring his
signals. I don't think he's always been a civilian, Jill.'

Jill also stood. She walked into the kitchen, and for no reason
felt suddenly self-conscious. She wiped her hand across the four
switches in the panel on the wall and flooded the apartment with
light. What was it, six o'clock? She glanced at the clock on her
wall.

'It's almost seven,' he said. 'What do you want to eat?'

'Ah . . .'

'We could just go grab some laksa?' He seemed to notice the

startled expression on her face. 'Or maybe you're too tired. That's
okay. I'll head off.'

'Where do you live?'

Was she supposed to offer to drive him home? This sucked.

She didn't even know this guy, and now she felt responsible for
getting him home. What do you do in these situations? The
awkwardness of such personal exchanges was almost physically
painful for her.

'Bus to Central. Central to Ryde,' he answered. 'I live in Ryde.

It's an hour from here. I come out here all the time. I love the Thai
restaurant up the strip.'

'Hang on a sec,' Jill surprised herself by saying. She suddenly

realised she was starving. 'I'd love some laksa.'

She walked into her bathroom, splashed her face and fixed her
hair in the mirror. Just before leaving, she turned back and slicked
on some lip-gloss. What are you doing? she asked herself in the
mirror. She left the room quickly and grabbed her handbag, not
looking at Gabriel.

'Let's go,' she said, walking out of her flat.

 19
'YOU LOOK LIKE you know your way around a gym,' he said.

It was only 7.45 a.m., and Jill had made the mistake of entering
the taskforce meeting room without considering that she might be
alone in there with Derek Reid. He'd moved on from his first-day
suit to more casual clothes, and the three buttons undone at the
top of his thin beige shirt showed too much tan and too little hair.
She couldn't help but look twice. Yep, he waxed his chest. His
sleeves barely contained his biceps. His eyes took her in, whole.

'You look like you could stay away from it for a couple of
weeks,' she said. Stupid! Where did that come from? Oh my God,
he thinks I'm flirting, she thought, horrified.

Reid's mouth turned up. The sheen on his copper skin caught
the light as he actually flexed one bicep, pushing the fabric of his
shirt almost beyond its limits.

'Maybe we could work out together this afternoon, what do you

say?'

Maybe I could throw up now, she thought, but answered, 'I

don't think so. I'm booked in for a spray tan.'

The corners of his smile dropped a little as he thought that

through, and Jill turned to see David Tran entering the meeting
room, leaning on his cane. She smiled, more than pleased to see
him.

'Superintendent Last asked that I apologise for his being late

this morning,' Tran spoke to them both. 'Apparently there's been a
step forward in the case.'

'Do you know what it is, David?' asked Jill.

He shook his head, and they fell silent for several moments.

'So I wonder what Delahunt's excuse is for being late,' Reid

said. 'I guess the Feds can show up whenever they're ready, huh?'

Jill ignored him. The service was full of people like Reid –
always looking to put someone or something down. She found the
constant negativity boring. She wondered what Tran was like. He
certainly didn't seem to fit the usual mould. She decided to try to
find out more about his experiences when he interviewed some of
the past victims.

'So what did you think of Justine Rice?' she began. She
directed the question to David Tran, but Reid answered.

'She gave us nothing,' he said. 'Not surprising, really, now it

turns out that she was sexually assaulted by these freaks. She's not
going to speak to a couple of blokes, is she?' He sounded
defensive.

'There was more to it, I think, Jill,' said Tran. 'She and Ryan
Temple took an instant dislike to me in particular. While it's often
an advantage being an Asian cop around these suburbs, I'm afraid
that it's alienated some of the vics in this case.'

Jill nodded. She could see his point. Even people who'd
denounced racism all their lives could find themselves fearful or
hostile towards people of a particular nationality when they'd
been attacked by a member of that community. She knew from
experience that when violent crime was paired with a certain
ethnicity, many victims forever after avoided all members of that
race.

'I have already made the observation to Superintendent Last. It

is probably a good thing that some of these interviews are
repeated,' said Tran. 'Because of my presence, there could be
other things people are holding back.'

Reid turned away, but not before Jill caught him giving his
partner a foul look.

Lawrence Last walked in, looking as haggard as ever, but this

morning there was a light behind his eyes. Gabriel Delahunt
followed him into the room.

'We've had the biggest breakthrough so far,' he told them as

soon as everyone had taken a seat. 'Forensics came through late
last night on the evidence collected at two of the crime scenes.
Both names are in the system. The organic matter collected at
Capitol Hill belonged to the stomach contents of a Dang Huynh,
AKA Mouse. He last did time at Junee for an aggravated rob.
Time before that at Parramatta for vehicle theft. He's got a bit of a
juvie record. He's thirty-four now.'

'We don't know for sure that this bloke's got anything to do
with the murder, do we?' Reid wanted to know.

'No, Derek, we know nothing about why Huynh was at the

property. Jill and Gabriel haven't yet been able to speak to Donna
Moser, the victim's daughter. He could have been there for some
other reason, but we know that there was an eight- to twenty-four-
hour window during which this man vomited at the residence.
Beyond that, we don't know any more about the suspect than what
I've just told you.

'The second piece of remarkable news, folks,' he continued,

fixing each of them with an intent look, 'comes from the Rice
crime scene. The lab has analysed the semen and blood sample
collected on the towel by Justine Rice. It belongs to Mr Henry
Nguyen.'

Jill gasped and turned to Gabriel. He raised his eyebrows at

her, his face otherwise impassive.
 'Yes, the name should be familiar to each of you,'
Superintendent Last continued. 'On Wednesday afternoon we
received an anonymous call from a woman claiming that Henry
Nguyen, AKA Cutter, was the leader of this gang. I believe some
of you have listened to the tape. I have arranged for a copy of the
sound file to be emailed to each of you this morning. It appears
that this caller does know what she is talking about, and we need
very much to speak to her again. We issued a media release first
thing today, indicating that we want the caller to contact us again.'

'What do we know about this man so far, sir?' Tran asked, as

Last took a sip from his coffee.

'Nguyen's last known address was John Street, Cabramatta,'

said Last, 'excluding, of course, his time spent in prison: Parklea,
Parramatta and Long Bay. Ah, hold on a moment.' He looked
down at his notes, and then read, 'Maliciously destroying
property; break, enter and steal; take and drive conveyance;
assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

'As a child,' he continued, 'Nguyen also appears to have been

locked up for more time than he was at school, including in
Minda, Mount Penang and Dharruk. Let's see . . .' – again he
bowed his large head to his notes – 'charges whilst an inmate
include fighting; threatening language; assault; and damaging
property.

'And people,' Lawrence Last paused to ensure they were all

listening. 'Apparently Mr Nguyen likes a knife – hence the
nickname, Cutter. He's had multiple self-harm attempts in every
lock-up, and most of the time he did not report them. In fact,' he
cleared his throat, and then continued in the same measured tone,
'he was transferred to the hospital at Long Bay when his cell-mate
went to the guards for help. Apparently Mr Nguyen had opened a
wound in his stomach, and under his covers had been
manipulating the area for over a week. The cell-mate informed
the guards when he could no longer bear the smell.'
Jill unconsciously smoothed her hair when Joss Preston-Jones's
wife, Isobel Rymill, opened her front door. A dark, glossy
ponytail snaked around one side of the tall woman's neck,
contrasting with her simple white shift dress. She welcomed them
into her home with a smile, but hugged her arms around her slim
body as they walked together towards the kitchen. Her face was
shiny and clear, but her eyes were red-rimmed, her lips slightly
swollen.

Superintendent Last had insisted that the taskforce continue

with the witness interviews today, despite the developments. He
had four officers collecting further intelligence on their two
suspects, and would not hear of any definitive action being taken
until they had done more surveillance to better determine their
whereabouts. He was adamant that no one went anywhere near
the suspects' families, or their last known addresses, until they
knew exactly where the two men were. It was important not to tip
them off in any way.

So Jill and Gabriel sat sipping orange juice at the breakfast bar
of the terrace house in Balmain for the second time in as many
days.

'How was Joss after yesterday's interview?' Jill asked Isobel

Rymill. Despite the evidence on the tape that he was holding
something back, Jill had instinctively warmed to this woman's
husband, and she couldn't help but wish that this family had not
come into their investigation in such a brutal way. She felt guilty
that she and Gabriel would this afternoon be finding out
everything they could about Joss Preston-Jones. This was not the
way she was used to working with victims.

As Isobel told them that her husband was bearing up relatively

well, Jill couldn't help but notice the aversion behaviours she
displayed – the 'liar's lean', Gabriel had called it – her body
angled sharply away from Jill, almost toppling her off the back of
her stool. Her eyes darted around the room like a small bird, and
she twisted her fingers together in her lap.

Isobel's account of the home invasion was just as harrowing as

her husband's. Jill liked to think she had a sense for detecting
offenders, and Joss and Isobel did not fit the pattern. She noted
the carefully maintained furniture, the mementoes, the
photographs on the walls. It was a family home, an ordinary
home. She had to agree with Gabriel, though. Joss and Isobel
definitely seemed to be keeping some-thing back from them. This
did not necessarily mean that they were hiding something related
to this case; Jill had seen this kind of behaviour before.
Sometimes police involvement in the life of a victim of a
particular crime unearthed their involvement in a completely
unrelated matter.

Are you up to something? Jill mentally questioned Isobel, as

she was tearily finishing her account for the camera.

By the time the interview was over at two o'clock, Jill was
already regretting that she'd agreed to analyse the tape at Gabriel's
apartment in Ryde. His suggestion that they use her flat yesterday
had caught her by surprise, but in bed last night she had mentally
kicked herself for not suggesting they use the police station in
Balmain, or even in the city, rather than her unit. And when
Gabriel had suggested his house today, she'd agreed immediately.
What was going on with her? Breaking her own rules,
backtracking on decisions. She was lowering her guard too fast.
The thought bunched her shoulders. Still, she told herself, they
were achieving a lot together in this case. Just let it go at that.
 20
CHLOE HAD BEEN extra careful with her makeup this morning.
With her first pay cheque as a journalist, she'd been able to buy
some serious-looking suits. The dress she chose this morning,
however, she had purchased for eveningwear. Perhaps for a date
with some fascinating scientist or a doctor she'd have interviewed,
she'd thought at the time. Although it wasn't at all low-cut, and
dropped to her calves, the caramel jersey clung to her breasts and
hips, and she felt more sexy in it than in her skimpiest sundress. It
had not even been on sale. This morning, she'd twirled, delighted,
around and around in front of the mirror, just as she had in the
change rooms of the boutique in which she'd bought it. The
snooty salesgirl had actually smiled at her. A woman from the
next stall had come out of her cubicle just after her, wearing the
same dress. Chloe, four inches taller than her in her bare feet, had
given her a big smile, but the other woman had stared briefly at
both of them in the communal mirror and ducked back behind her
door. Chloe had bought the dress and a pair of knee-high,
chocolate brown boots. The boots were the same shade as her
eyes and hair.

She stood now in George Street, Liverpool, regretting her

decision this morning. A group of four workmen in the Spotlight
carpark behind her had been making comments since nine a.m.
and it was now after twelve. She'd seen the same man in a suit
walk past her and the cameramen three times. She knew he was
working up the courage to come over to her. His smile lingered
longer with each trip. Keep walking, she tried to tell him with her
eyes.

Thing is, the guy behind the counter in the copshop had been
the reason for this dress this morning. Constable Andrew
Montgomery. He'd asked her if she'd be back today, and yep, here
she was, but she hadn't yet been in to say hi.

Yesterday, she'd entered the station full of confidence, given

her name and implied that she was an important investigative
journalist working on the home invasion cases. The female police
liaison officer had tried to blow her off with the standard spiel for
the media, but Chloe, undeterred, had said that she'd wait to speak
to someone for as long as it took. The dark-eyed girl behind the
counter had just smiled sardonically as Chloe settled in for the
wait, somewhat dispirited.

She had spotted him first, sat a little straighter on the rigid
plastic bench seat. He was looking for something behind the
counter, flustered, in a hurry. Two high spots of colour stood out
on the smooth skin of his face. Along with Chloe, the dark-eyed
girl tracked every move he made. He seemed to spot what he was
searching for and moved to pick it up from under a counter. Chloe
caught her breath when his shoulders flexed in the short-sleeved
police uniform. She'd never realised until that point how much
she liked uniforms. At that moment, when Chloe was midway
through a slow, secret smile, he seemed to realise that there was
someone else in the room and his eyes cut to hers.

She dropped her notepad.

'Here, let me get that for you.'

He was out from behind the counter and by her side in a

heartbeat. He passed her the writing pad and she felt compelled to
stand: he was so tall from her vantage point on the bench. Chloe
was as good as six foot without the kitten heels she was wearing.
He stood a head taller. His dark hair was closely cropped.

'Thanks,' she said. Then cleared her throat.

'Is someone looking after you?' he asked.

 'It's okay, Andrew,' the liaison officer called from behind the
counter. 'She's with the press. I already told her there are no
updates this morning.'

'Ah, a journalist,' he said to Chloe. 'Here to keep us on our

toes?'

Chloe figured that she should use this opportunity to try to get
some kind of quote from one of the officers working here. Any
comment could be useful when her bosses were demanding fresh
input for three news programs and eight updates a day.

'Actually,' she said with a smile, 'have you got a minute?'

'Is that all you need?'

Chloe laughed. She couldn't help it.

'What I need is some information about the progress being

made on the home invasion gang. Have you guys interviewed any
suspects?'

He looked uncomfortable.

'What's your name?' he asked finally.

Chloe withdrew a card from the top pocket of her shirt and
handed it to him. He read it, and then held out his hand. She
shook it, briefly. He smiled into her eyes.

'Well, Chloe Farrell, my name's Constable Andrew

Montgomery, and all I can tell you is that we are unable to
provide the media with any new information at the present time.
We will release further statements as facts become available.' He
used a mock-formal tone to deliver the standard line.

'Thanks a lot. Very helpful,' she said with a pout, gathering up

her bag.
 'Hey,' he said. 'Things change every day. You never know
what's gonna come up. Are you coming back tomorrow?'

'You never know, Constable Montgomery,' she said, turning to

leave. 'Things change every day.'

Now, on the pavement opposite the station, Chloe had half

made up her mind to cross the road and enter the building again
when she spotted an unmarked vehicle leaving the parking area
under the police complex. She nudged her colleague with the
camera.

'Another one,' she said. 'Could be one of the taskforce.'

She was correct. It was Sergeant Jillian Jackson, the woman

she'd photographed on Wednesday, driving with the dark-haired
man in the trucker's cap that she'd been unable to identify. Even
Deborah Davies hadn't been able to get the guy's name. I wonder
who he is, Chloe thought.

When the car was out of shot, Chloe guessed that these
detectives leaving the building would be the most exciting thing
that would happen in the next couple of hours. She thought it
might be time to try to get something from someone behind the
desk. She combed her fingers through her hair and strode across
George Street.

Chloe smiled deliberately at the one-way mirror directly behind

the liaison officer before stating her request. Constable Andrew
Montgomery skidded out from behind the panel before she'd even
finished her sentence.

'Chloe Farrell,' he said. 'It's lunchtime. Hungry?'

'Starving,' she said.



21
'EVA!' KAREN MICEH dropped the platter she was drying, and it
smashed into pieces on the tiled kitchen floor. Her two-year-old
daughter, Eva, began to cry at the noise and the shock of Mummy
yelling at her.

Within three lurching strides, Karen had reached the child

sitting cross-legged under the dining room table and removed the
pointed filleting knife from her lap. Eva howled more loudly.

'Oh my God, Eva! How many times have I told you, you
mustn't play . . . owww!'

Karen banged her head on the table as she bundled wet-faced

Eva up from the floor. She held her close, stroking her back,
automatically jiggling her little body up and down. Manoeuvring
one hand out from under her daughter's chubby legs, she glanced
at her watch. Oh for heaven's sake, she thought. How am I going
to get everything done on time?

For the third time already this morning, she cursed her ratbag
husband, Eddie. Ex-husband, she reminded herself, and good
riddance. She didn't miss his lazy, bludging friends calling at all
hours of the night; she didn't miss his subtle putdowns and the
way he leered at other women. She certainly didn't miss the bong
under his side of the bed. When she'd found her daughters,
Maryana and Eva, giggling and grimacing over its stink one
morning, she knew her fool husband would never grow up, and
that her marriage was over.

Actually, in some ways life had never been so peaceful for

Karen as it was now – just her and the girls, homework and
shopping, and her part-time work as a sandwich hand at Castle
Towers. The one thing she couldn't do without, though, was
Eddie's pay cheque.

She walked the sniffling Eva back to the sink and settled her
into the highchair she'd set up so her little girl could 'help' with
the dishes. This time, though, she pushed the chair further from
the sink. How had she missed Eva grabbing the knife?

She sighed tiredly and looked into the loungeroom of her

Baulkham Hills home. This place is perfect, she told herself
again. I can't move the girls now, they're just settling down after
the separation. She bent to pick up the shards of the ceramic
platter. One of her favourites; her brother, Ken, had bought it for
her in Spain. She turned to frown at Eva, but her daughter's self-
occupied chortling over her tea-set left her smiling instead.

It was her brother who'd given her the rental idea.

'This is really a great room,' Ken had said to her the previous
month, when he'd come to install the above-ground pool he'd
bought for his nieces – getting it ready for Christmas, he'd said.
He always spoiled them.

'Yeah, the girls love to play in there,' she'd said around a peg, as
she hung out the washing on the hoist next to the lemon tree.

'You could rent that out to another family,' he'd laughed.

Karen didn't know anyone who'd ever taken in a boarder, but

actually it was the perfect solution for her. With the extra income,
there'd be no need for her and the girls to find a cheaper place to
rent. Of course, the self-contained space under the large balcony
couldn't actually house a family, but a single person would have
plenty of room.

The problem, the real-estate people had warned her, was that
her house was some distance from public transport, and the sort
of people wishing to rent a single room typically didn't have their
own car. This would reduce the number of applicants, they told
her. Karen was not daunted. She knew she might be idealising it,
but she had an image of herself selecting from a few young
people first moving away from home, preferably a girl – Karen
would be her mentor, a friend; she'd really enjoy the company.
Maybe her tenant would be from the country – here for her first
year at university. She could imagine how the girl's family would
appreciate the family home away from home that Karen would
provide. Macquarie Uni was not too far from here, she reasoned.

Six months had passed with just a single application submitted.

The couple had been young, but that's where her fantasy tenants
ended. They'd pulled up to Karen's house in a car she was certain
was their home at the time. Even had there not been boxes and
clothes piled high, the driver would have been hard pressed to see
through the grime that covered the windows. The occupants didn't
alight for a good five minutes, and from behind the curtain in her
loungeroom Karen watched them screaming at one another. At
least their windscreen was relatively clear. From this vantage, she
could also see the drapes moving surreptitiously at number
nineteen. Mrs Robotham. What would she have made of Jackie
and Troy as new neighbours? Jackie picked at sores on her arms
while Troy did the talking. Neither of them really made eye
contact with Karen. As soon as they crossed the threshold, she
was planning their exit. Troy smelled like Eddie's bong water and
Jackie couldn't negotiate around the furniture. Karen couldn't be
certain, but it seemed Troy's interest lay more in her electrical
goods than the room for rent. His eyes lingered on the
microwave, the DVD, the clunky laptop she used to play
Solitaire.

Karen had resignedly begun searching for less expensive

properties for herself when someone else had answered her ad.

Now, she threw the last of the scatter cushions onto the couch
and kicked one of Maryana's rollerskates back under a chair.
Maryana, her six-year-old, was at school. Karen bustled back to
the kitchen to grab Eva – couldn't leave her near the knives again
– and hurried over to respond to the doorbell.

I hope he likes the room, she thought, opening the door with a
smile.

If it hadn't been for the old woman, Karen's first reaction would
have been to shut the door again immediately. As it was, however,
the tiny, bent lady looked as though she could not stand up for
much longer, despite the fact that the man was holding her arm so
solicitously.

She showed them in and asked the old woman if she'd like a
drink.

'Just some water, please,' he answered for her.

'My grandmother has lived through war and famine,' he said

when Karen returned with the water. 'She has arthritis and she
turned ninety last year, but she still insisted that she come and
inspect the room before I take it.' He smiled fondly at his
grandmother as he helped her accept the glass.

Karen smiled uncertainly. She did not like his long hair, but he
seemed a much nicer person than her first glimpse of him had
indicated. Anyone who was this close to his grandmother must be
a good person. She had a sense about these things. Just goes to
show, she reminded herself, you can't judge a book by its cover –
her own grandmother had taught her that.

'I'm afraid there are a few stairs,' she said, shifting a shy Eva to
the other hip. 'But when you're both ready, I'll take you down to
see the room, Henry.'

'That'd be great. Thanks.'

Karen smiled more brightly and led Cutter and his grandmother
from the room.

In one of the Department of Community Service's many attempts

to 'help' him, at thirteen Cutter had been sent to a small group
home for troubled children. The house was in leafy Baulkham
Hills, and he was pretty sure that most of the neighbours didn't
know the purpose of the home. A couple, Debbie and Ian, chosen
and paid by the Department for their extraordinary progress with
even the most difficult kids, ran the home.

Cutter had loved Baulkham Hills. Sure, everyone was racist

there, but that was the case pretty much everywhere when he was
a kid. The Australian families fascinated him, and after twilight,
he would sit in the bushes for hours watching the mums preparing
dinner, the kids doing their homework, their dads arriving home
from work. He'd laugh quietly at the funny way they ate, the way
the kids were disciplined and ran crying to their rooms. Better
than any TV show he'd ever seen, however, were the backhanders
he saw some of the perfect dads give the perfect mums. He'd
found at least four of these households, and he would sit in their
azalea bushes, the camellia shrubs, and stuff his hand in his
mouth to stop his laughter being heard. The suburb was so quiet
in the evenings that he'd even taken to bringing a towel to muffle
the chortles while he watched his special TV screens – their well-
lit loungeroom windows.

Debbie, his group home 'mum', had told him he should be

coming home earlier. She would sit with him at night and quietly
ask him where he went, why he never ate with them. He couldn't
tell Debbie that he skipped school and went home most days to
eat rice balls and fish soup. Debbie would be furious that the
school had not told her he was seldom there. Things were going
just fine for him at that school – he didn't want to be there, and
they couldn't have been more delighted with his decision.

Debbie just wouldn't give up on him. She'd bring Ian into his
room at night and they'd play good cop/bad cop; she'd read the
Bible with him; she learned about Vietnam, and even tried
learning some of the words to encourage him to speak to her. One
night, when he'd broken into a face-splitting smile, she'd thought
it was working. She was winning him over. Cutter couldn't bear
that her efforts would now redouble and he'd have to sit here for
hours more, listening to her shit. Instead, he spoke his first full
sentence ever to Debbie.

'You know why I smiled, Debbie?' He looked up at her through

straight, black eyelashes, shadowing bottomless black eyes.

He really is a striking boy, she thought, reaching out with her

foot to touch just the tip of his shoe, the first time she had ever
touched him. Finally, she was getting through. All they need is a
little love, she told herself.

'Why Henry? Why were you smiling?' She leaned in close.

'Because I can smell your cunt, you slut. You fucked Ian just
before you came in here, didn't you?' He spoke quietly,
concentrating on every feature as the horror flared her nostrils and
dilated her pupils. Before she could physically recoil, he grabbed
at her crotch under her pretty, yellow skirt, and managed to push
his finger through her panties and hard into her hole.
 'Or maybe,' he continued, holding her arm now as she
screamed, 'you were waiting for me, with your finger going round
and round in there. I've seen the way you look at me.'

He could no longer hold her and she fell off the bed, screaming
and screaming, scuttling backwards on the floor. He jumped out
the window before Ian could grab him, but not before slowly
sucking his finger on the window ledge.

Debbie could tell Ian all about what that gesture meant later,
when she was feeling better.

Cutter checked out the basement underneath Karen's huge back

patio. He showed his grandmother carefully to a chair by a desk.
She'd been wonderful. He knew he would never have got this
place in Baulkham Hills if he'd come alone. And he knew his
grandmother would always do whatever her number-one
grandson asked.

He smiled at the two women, walked to the small window

looking out onto the backyard and breathed in the lemony air.

'Perfect,' he said.
 22
'YOU WANT SOMETHING to drink?'

Jill looked at Gabriel standing in his kitchen. Yeah, white wine,

she thought. Where did that urge come from, she wondered. She
hadn't had a drink in ten years. 'Um, some water would be great,'
she said.

'Help yourself.' He pointed his chin at the fridge, his hands

expertly paring the skin from two fat, brilliant-orange salmon
steaks.

She opened the refrigerator and looked around, almost

disappointed to find there was no wine in there anyway. A tall
bottle of water stood in the door. She pulled it out and put it on
the bench, then stuck her head back in the fridge.

'You want me to make a salad or something?' she asked, spying

bags of lettuce and carrots.

'If you want,' he said. 'And pass me those beans.'

She grabbed the vegetables and set them next to the water on
the bench, then stood for a moment, figuring he'd tell her where
things were. When he didn't, she went looking for the glasses, a
knife, a salad bowl and chopping board. She also found some
warm, ripe tomatoes, a lemon and a Spanish onion in the fruit
bowl, and set to tearing lettuce leaves. She stole glances at him as
he worked. Without his cap, dark curls fell into his eyes. He kept
wiping them away with his wrist, careful not to touch his hair
with his fishy hands. She realised she had never seen him clean-
shaven. He always had a dark stubble; she noticed for the first
time that it was flecked with just one or two greys. His full lips
moved unconsciously as he concentrated completely on the food.

She looked away and checked out his apartment instead,

stamping firmly down upon the stupid thought that this felt more
like a lunch date than a day at work. We gotta eat, she told
herself. Might as well be here as anywhere else.

Actually, this is quite nice, if kind of weird, she thought,

looking around the apartment. It felt more like a treehouse than a
two-bedroom, third-floor unit in Sydney's northwest. A giant
eucalyptus tree that danced literally at the edge of the balcony
established the effect. Midway up the tree trunk, the view from
the unit was of spinning lime-green leaves and gnarled branches,
with just a few glimpses of the sky beyond. This apartment
building felt as if it had been surgically inserted into one of the
rare pockets of original Sydney bushland.

She drizzled olive oil onto the salad, and walked over towards
the balcony to take a better look. Sliding open the glass door, she
stepped into a greenhouse, took sips of the green, oxygen-soaked
air. Had she dared, she could easily have climbed onto the
balustrade and down the knobbly trunk of the huge tree. She
could see no sign of other humans living anywhere nearby. She
imagined strolling as far as she could see along the bush-gully
floor, through fallen leaves and stands of stringybark and gum
trees. Half-tempted to do just that, she suddenly noticed a smoke-
like shape break away from the base of the tree and hurtle up
towards her. She almost stepped back in fear until she recognised
the lithe movements. She waited to see where the small cat would
go. Within half a second, it sat staring at her from the branch
closest to the balcony. Entranced, she froze, and they stared at one
another until she had to blink.

The cat sprang silently from the branch to the balcony floor
and rubbed its chubby grey cheeks around her ankles. She blinked
down at it for a few moments more, hoping it would not run
away, and then bent carefully to pat it. There was a rumble of
purring, and then the little cat lifted high its tail and sauntered
into Gabriel's apartment.

Jill followed it in, leaving the doors open. Inside, from this
angle, the room was less remarkable. A couple of squashy lounge
chairs and a coffee table, a TV, no dining table. The light in the
apartment was a cool, flickering green – the effect of the tree
outside, breathing through the room.

'Ten,' said Gabriel, matter-of-factly, from the kitchen.

'Pardon?' she said.

'That's Ten,' he pointed at the floor.

She looked down, lost.

'Oh, the cat!' She finally got it. 'Why do you call it Ten?'

'Her. She's a her,' he said, and then, 'Lunch is ready.'

They ate on the lounge chairs with their plates on their laps.
Gabriel had coated thick fingers of the salmon in the most
translucent tempura Jill had ever eaten. The fish had barely been
cooked through, and when her fork caused the soft pieces to flake
apart, she copied Gabriel and ate it with her hands. It was deep-
fried, and the delicious sin of this made her lick her salty fingers
with each bite.

'You ready to look at the tape?' he asked eventually, the first

words either of them had spoken since they'd sat down.

'Huh? Oh, yeah.' She stood. 'That was just . . . great. Thanks.'
She took the dishes to the sink, and tried to rise out of the strange
mood that had enveloped her since she'd walked in here. She
dropped her fork when she identified the feeling.

She was relaxed.

The knowledge made her hands shake.
 23
'AW FUCK, MOUSE, now look what you've done!' Simon Esterhase
threw his snooker cue into the rack in disgust. 'I sank the black,
man. Why don't you stop bitching for a while? It's getting old.'

'Are you fucking serious?' Dang Huynh, known to most people

as Mouse, chewed at his thumbnail. The skin around all of his
fingernails was red-raw. 'I'm telling you I can't take anymore of
this shit. He's a fucking psycho! What's to stop him from
chopping one of us into pieces?'

Esterhase rubbed at his neck. He'd had diarrhoea every day

since the Capitol Hill thing, and he just couldn't sleep right. But
what was he going to do? Mouse and Tatts were losing it, and it
was true that this could get them all killed. They'd all known
Cutter was mental since they were kids, but he'd never done
anything like this before. Now, though, Esterhase agreed with
Mouse that it wouldn't take much for Cutter to turn his radar on
them. He winced as images, sounds, flashed into his mind.

Esterhase sat down at his coffee table, chopped up some more

pot. The ritual soothed him. He'd smoked twenty cones a day for
the past fifteen years. Truth was, now when he had to be straight
for some reason, he felt stoned.

Fuck, Mouse had paced the same circle fifty times.

'Man, can you sit down, Mouse? You're making my dick itch.'

'Why did he have to start with the killing? He's not going to
stop,' said Mouse. 'How are we going to get out of this? He's
going to get caught and we're all going up for fucking murder,
man.'

Esterhase knew it. He packed a cone tightly and lit it, his lungs
burning as he pulled the hit of marijuana, clean. They had always
been scared of Cutter, but you just kind of ignored his sick shit
back in the day. They'd all done so much time since then that
none of them really knew how bad he'd become. Maybe Cutter
didn't even know. The fucker was mad, that was for sure.
Esterhase packed another cone.

'Here, Mouse, have this. You'll feel better,' he said, holding the
bong out to his friend.

'I don't want it. I'm paranoid enough already!' Mouse wrung his
hands. He had dark circles under his eyes and Esterhase noticed
grey shot through his greasy dark hair. 'I keep thinking he's gonna
break in my house and cut me up.' His voice cracked.

'Well, what do you want to do, Mouse? We go to the cops, we'll

go down with him. They won't stop until they get the rest of us.'
He lit the bong and had half the cone himself. He stared at Mouse
through the smoke, red-eyed. 'We can kill him.'

Esterhase expected Mouse to freak at the suggestion. He, Tatts

and Mouse had never done more than give a bloke a good
flogging. The machetes were all for show. At least they had been.

Mouse said nothing.

'You wouldn't want to fuck a thing like that up though, now

would ya, Mouse?'

'How would we do it?' Mouse's voice was tiny.

'You're fucking kidding me!' Esterhase gave a dead laugh.

'You've thought about it then?'

'What else are we gonna do?' Mouse pleaded. 'We've got to get
out of this shit somehow.'
 Esterhase looked around his rumpus room. He saw a luxurious,
relaxing room to chill out in. In reality, the room was like the rest
of the house, crammed with mismatched stolen property, half of it
broken, all of it coated in a thin layer of grime. The walls were
yellow with cigarette and marijuana smoke.

Esterhase was the pride of his family. The only child to have a
job for more than six months straight, and to make it out of the
housos. Shit, even his dad had only had a job once for about a
year, back when Esterhase was a kid. Removalist too, just like
him. But while his father had fucked his back up early, Esterhase
had been smart. He'd always got others on the job to do the heavy
lifting. The Maoris would work all day for smoko or some speed
at knock-off time. And the job was perfect for finding places to
do over.

Everything was pretty good in his life, he thought, finishing the

rest of the cone.

Except for Cutter.

Lunch had been perfect, really, in every way. Well, except for
the food.

Fortunately, Chloe Farrell and Andrew Montgomery had not

been interested in the food. A newly retired couple sharing a
muffin at the next table in the small café had wriggled closer on
their bench seat while watching them. The man even moved his
foot to touch his wife's shoe under the table. They'd been that
way, once.

Andrew knew he was going to be late back, but he ordered a

coffee anyway. Chloe had sparkling mineral water.

'Off the record,' Andrew said, watching her sip her drink
through a straw.

'What is?' asked Chloe, ready for another joke, or flirtatious

comment.

'A call came in late yesterday about the case.'

Chloe tucked her hair behind her ears. Sat forward.

'It could be nothing. Jane took it at the front desk. I was getting
ready to knock off.'

'What was it?'

'Some woman. Anonymous. Gave the name of someone we

should be looking at for these home invasions.'

'What was the name?' she asked, palms flat on the table, eyes
serious, face angled up to his.

Andrew gave a laugh. 'You're a real little newshound, aren't

you?'

'Come on, Andrew. It's my job.'

'Yeah, well, it'd be my job if anyone knew I even told you that
much.'

'But you said it could be nothing. If I knew the name, I could

dig around. Maybe I could help.'

'You digging around would not help, Chloe. If the tip was
straight up, you would not want to go poking a stick into this
guy's nest.'

'Is there anything I could say that would get you to give me the
name?'

'Baby, I could think of a million things you could say to me that

would make me give you anything. But that's not playing fair.'

'Okay,' she said, standing. 'Well, we'd better get back then.'

Andrew's expression was surprised, then hurt.

'I'll pay for lunch if you'll get dinner.' She smiled over her
shoulder, as she walked to the cashier.
 24
JILL STOOD IN the doorway after lunch, silently taking in the bank
of audiovisual and computing equipment in Gabriel's second
bedroom. It wrapped around three walls: PC monitors and TV
screens, cameras and tripods, speakers and hard drives. Electrical
cords and cables snaked across the floor, climbed walls, and
trailed sinuously across most surfaces. A curtain was drawn
across the single window, and the room was shadowy. Green and
red LED lights blinked rhythmically in the gloom.

Gabriel cleared his throat behind her; she stepped aside.

Smiling broadly, he wheeled a second chair into the room,
bumping it four-wheel-drive-style over double-adaptors and a
couple of magazines. Jill, flattening herself against the bookshelf
next to the door, turned and read some of the titles. Crime Scene
Investigation; Criminal Profiling; Forensic Interviewing and
Interrogation; Serial Killer Typology.

'So what sort of cases were you on before this one?' she asked,
pulling down a thick tome. She flicked through it before closing it
on a page of corpses, a black and white photograph of a child's
dead eyes the last image in her mind. She blinked it away.

'Oh, this and that. Same as you I suppose,' he answered,

smashing the second chair into a space at one of the terminals. He
couldn't quite get it to fit, so she walked over, and with her foot,
nudged aside a book caught between the wheel and the desk. The
chair bumped hard against the table with Gabriel's final shove,
and some of the equipment atop it lurched. 'There!' he grinned
delightedly and threw himself onto the seat.
 Jill took the other chair as Gabriel pressed buttons and moved a
mouse to wake some of the slumbering machines. She looked at
the screen in front of Gabriel too late to identify the official-
looking logo that preceded the program he had opened.

'Could you just access my email, Jill?' he said, pointing to the

monitor in front of her. 'I sent myself the voice recording of the
anonymous phone call. It should be in there somewhere.'

She opened his email program, surprised at his lack of concern

for his privacy. Probably this isn't his only email account, she
thought. She found the MPEG file near the top of his unopened
mail and double-clicked. Under it were a couple of the
pharmaceutical and penis-enlargement spam emails that also
choked her mailbox every morning. It seemed not even all this
technology could stop them getting through.

'So.' He pushed his chair back a little from his screen and
looked at her. 'What did you think of Isobel Rymill?'

'She seemed even more nervous than her husband,' she said.

Gabriel pulled a USB flash device from his pocket and plugged
it into his terminal, where it began downloading a large
document. 'Anything else?' he asked, eyes back on his screen.

'Well, I noticed clusters of deception signals.' The words she'd

learned from him yesterday seemed cumbersome.

'And they could mean . . .'

'She's hiding something. It could be guilty knowledge,

something shameful, or the truth. She might be lying to us, or just
holding something of importance back.' Jill felt half-curious and
half-annoyed by this oral examination.

'Exactly.' He nodded and smiled slightly.

She waited for him to add something. He seemed delighted by

their exchange, but as she had come to learn, he didn't always
conclude his train of thoughts aloud.

She waited while he clicked on some icons on his screen, and a

computerised drone started up from the terminal as it obeyed his
commands. Suddenly he reached straight across her and used the
mouse for her computer. His back touched her chest and her
mouth was almost on his neck. She pushed her chair backwards,
startled by his abrupt invasion of her space, but he continued what
he was doing without heeding her movement.

'Just saved the audio MPEG to my machine,' he said,

straightening up and turning to face her. 'Remember I told you
that if I heard the anonymous caller again I was sure I would
know her?'

Jill stared at him, the realisation raising the hairs on her arms.
'Isobel Rymill – she was the one who called and told us to
investigate Henry Nguyen?'

He didn't answer, and she watched as he used the program he'd

opened to compartmentalise parts of the recording they'd made of
Rymill earlier that morning. He created a series of digitised sound
bites and lined seven or eight of them up next to the file that held
the recording of the anonymous tip-off. He then opened another
program and opened two of the files with it. When he pressed
'Enter' the drone of the computer kicked up a notch. Almost
immediately a coloured graph and readout appeared on the
screen.

'Ninety per cent match,' he said, white teeth flashing. 'Not bad,
considering the distortion from the phone call caused by her
covering the receiver.'

'Wow,' said Jill, leaning close over Gabriel's shoulder. 'Where'd

you get this voice recognition software? I don't think we've got
anything that good at work.'
 'I know. It's amateur hour in there. What are you gonna do?'

'So, we've got a clear new line of inquiry,' he continued,

opening another program. 'We need to know everything about
Joss Preston-Jones and Isobel Rymill, and we need to know why
they so desperately want us to investigate Henry Nguyen.'

Joss had thought his day at work would never end, but he was
surprised at how quickly he'd slipped into robot-mode and
completed his chores for the day. He'd brushed aside the
concerned comments about the fading bruises on his face, and left
the office at 4.30 p.m. exactly. He called the house phone,
knowing Isobel would not yet be there with Charlie – tonight
Charlie had dancing lessons – and left a message indicating that
he would not be home for dinner. Then he turned his mobile
phone off and caught the lift down to the employees-only gym.
He changed out of his work clothes and shoved them into his
backpack. Imagining Isobel's face when she saw the clothes, he
took the trousers out again and folded them neatly.

He went to the weight rack wearing a singlet and shorts and

loaded fifteen kilos onto the hand weights. He moved rapidly
through six sets of fifty bicep curls, dissociating through the pain,
then hit the showers. He held his face under the water, eyes open,
breathing in the steam.

He could see only Cutter.

He changed into jeans, a dark tee-shirt and runners. And for the
second time in two days, Joss went back to his old world. He
caught the train from Central to Cabramatta.

Isobel had grudgingly told Joss the things she'd learned about
Henry Nguyen.
 'I don't see why you need to know this stuff,' she'd protested.
'The police have it now.'

In Cabramatta two days before, he'd visited a medical centre.

Isobel had found Cutter's medical records and they showed
monthly visits to the centre, mostly on Thursday afternoons. The
timing was about right, but Joss, waiting at a bus stop directly
across from the front door, had seen no sign of Nguyen. He'd had
no firm plan as to what he would do if he did. All he knew was
that his life had changed completely since the home invasion, and
he was not going to let it fall apart without doing everything he
could to stop it.

He considered staking out Cutter's grandmother's house. When

they were kids, he, Fuzzy and Esterhase had dropped Cutter there
at around five one morning using a car they'd stolen the night
before. Half asleep, they'd driven the car over a couple of streets
and dumped it at a soccer field before walking home. Joss
remembered that he'd helped his drunken mum from the lounge
up to her bed before he'd gone to bed for the rest of the day. He
shook his head. What a way to grow up.

He decided against the trip to Cutter's old home. He could think

of no obvious information he could get from the family at this
point. It was unlikely Cutter still lived there anyway. Joss needed
to know more about his associates – who he hung out with now.
Maybe he could find out the name of the arsehole that'd stood on
his head at Andy Wu's house.

He got off the train at Cabramatta station and the smells of his
past slapped him in the face. The area had been predominantly
Italian when he was a kid, but since then Asian, and particularly
Vietnamese, communities had been steadily migrating to the
suburb. Now, most shop signs were in both English and
Vietnamese. The rest were in Vietnamese only.

He made his way to the pub closest to the station. Back then,
he and his friends had sold stolen watches and cameras,
typewriters and aftershave to the patrons of this pub. It could be
that some of the old crew still came here.

The ground felt gummy out the front of the hotel. Because of
too many broken heads from the bashings and paralytic falls, the
council had replaced the pavement with the rubber material used
in children's playgrounds.

Joss left the last of the warm twilight behind him and stepped
inside the pub. Like most hotels, it was always the same time
once you entered those doors. Ten a.m. or midnight, it all felt the
same, with the aim of aiding the punters to forget the troubles of
the outside world, kick back for a while, lose some more money.

Cigarette smoke already impregnating his tee-shirt and

whispering its way down his lungs, he took a seat at the end of
the main bar, facing the door. Determined to ask for a light beer
and sit back to sip it slowly, he found himself instead ordering a
schooner of full-strength VB. Ten minutes later he asked for the
same again and for two packets of chips. He hoped the grease
would counteract some of the alcohol.

Tragedy performed a series of vignettes around the hotel. A

woman sat with two men, her features sliding off her face with
her lipstick, gazing with naked desperation from one man to the
other as they spoke the inscrutable language of the drunk. Her
expression altered to one of begging appeasement when she had
their attention. He twice watched her flinch when one of the men
moved his arm suddenly to sneeze, to make a point.

A bloke in the fluorescent shirt that was the uniform of

unskilled labourers kicked his workboot in disgust against the
base of the poker machine he was feeding. When he stood up
from his stool, Joss was surprised to see he looked no older than
twenty or so. He made his way to the front of the room, but
instead of leaving, he withdrew two fifties from the ATM near the
door. He returned to his stool, slid in a note, his jaw slack, his
eyes on fire, as though he was watching pornography.
 A wizened man laughed into his glass on a stool next to Joss. A
section of greasy hair that had long abandoned its comb-over
position slipped in and out of his beer as he drank. The bald spot
on his head was beaded with sweat, despite the refrigerated air. A
dark area at his groin signalled that he'd found the trip to the toilet
a waste of good drinking time. He's probably a digger, thought
Joss, draining the last of his beer. The thought made him want to
order another, but he figured he'd use the toilet instead. He
swayed a little when he got off the stool.

He splashed his face with cold water before leaving the

bathroom.

Eyes always on the door, he saw a face from his past walk into
the pub.

Fuck, what was his name?

The man walked towards the bar, not looking in Joss's

direction. Joss ordered another beer and took it back to a small
table; he angled his chair towards the bar. The man looked around
the room after he'd ordered his drink. His eyes moved past Joss,
then whipped back again, his obvious movement almost comical
to someone trained in surveillance.

Joss sipped.

'Hey, man,' the bloke had his drink and was making his way
over. What was his frigging name? 'Aren't you Joss?'

'Yeah. Rodney Harris?' said Joss, remembering at the very last

moment.

'Yeah, man! How the fuck have you been? What are you doing
back in Cabra, dog?'

Rodney Harris was a wannabe back in the day. He would try to

hang around whenever he saw Joss and his friends, and
sometimes they'd let him. Other times they'd tell him to piss off,
or make him steal them some food before he could stay. Today,
his features were blurred, his once-blond hair thin, translucent. He
spoke in the nasal gaol-whine of the streets. The heels of his
shoes were rounded with wear.

'Oh, you know, nothin,' Joss tried to dumb down. 'Thought I'd
come see if there's any action around here, you know.'

Harris looked at him sidelong, and took a sip of his dark-

coloured drink.

Joss pushed out the chair opposite with his foot. 'You're not still
drinking Jackies are ya?' he said.

Harris laughed. 'Yeah, man, always.' He took the seat.

'So what have you been doing?' Joss asked before the other
man could. 'I haven't seen you for years.'

'Since we were kids, dog. Not since Fuzzy died. How fucked
up was that, man?'

'Yeah.'

'I've been doing shit. You know, this and that. I got a coupla
kids.' He put his hand-rolled cigarette on the edge of an ashtray
on the table, pulled out a flat, shredding wallet and showed Joss a
green-tinged laminated photo of a young girl and boy. 'Course
they'd be older than this now,' he said, looking at the photo. 'Their
slut mum took off with them to Queensland when I was inside.'

'Yeah?' said Joss. 'Bitch. They're all the fuckin' same.'

'Too right, dog.' They drank together. 'So what about you?
Where'd you piss off to? We heard your mum killed herself.
Sorry, man.'

'Nah. Crazy bitch. She just threw herself in front of a car, but
she survived. Probably dead now though, for all I know. Who
cares? I got locked up for being uncontrollable.'

'No waaay.' Harris laughed. 'Unlucky. So what brings you back

to the 'hood?'

Joss inwardly cringed at the American gangster-speak. Didn't

these idiots ever grow up? Harris drained his drink, crunched the
ice.

'Let me get you another one, man.' Joss stood and made his
way over to the bar. He shouldn't have another, but this was a
critical point. He had to ask about Cutter. He ordered another
beer, and, overly careful, carried the drinks back to the table. The
rigid walk of the almost drunk.

'It's a spinout to see you, Rod,' he said when he got back to the
table. 'Do any of the old boys still hang around here?'

'Yeah, man.' Harris listed off a few names, all of them familiar,
none of them the right one.

'So where do you go to score now?' Joss lowered his voice.

Big smile. 'What are you into?'

'I just want some pot, maybe some pills.'

'You know who's selling some great shit right now? Simon
Esterhase. Remember him?'

Yeah, you could say that. 'Bullshit. Esterhase? I haven't seen

him for ages. Does he still hang around with, ah, what was his
name . . . Cutter?'

Harris's mouth turned down at the name. 'Yeah, man.' He

looked around the room. 'Crazy motherfucker.'

'Does he come around here much?'

 'Who? Cutter? Nah. I see him around the station sometimes. I
think he still goes over to his olds' house a lot. That's when he's
not inside.'

Joss laughed hollowly.

'Yeah?' he gathered himself together, spoke calmly, a pulse

ticking in his temple. 'You know I wouldn't mind catching up with
them again, now I'm doing the whole memory lane thing. You
wouldn't know how I could reach them, would ya?'

'I got Esterhase's number right here. I go see him whenever I

can afford it. You wanna go out there tonight?'

'Maybe. What about Cutter's number, have you got that?'

'What do you want his number for, man? Don't you remember
him? Well, he's a lot worse than that now.' He pulled from his
wallet a worn, folded sheet of paper, torn from an exercise book.
'Got a pen? Don't tell Cutter I gave you this, man.'

Joss copied the numbers, both mobiles, onto a coaster and

dropped it into his backpack. He'd had half of his latest beer and
needed the toilet again. The woman sitting with the two men
began crying loudly, but there were no tears in her eyes. She
stopped when one of the men raised a fist.

Joss stood, suddenly exhausted. His head buzzed and his hands
felt filthy. He looked down at them and they seemed hazy,
indistinct. He went to the toilet. When he returned Harris was
crunching ice again, looking up at him expectantly, eager to
continue the party.

'I'm gonna go, Rod,' he said, leaving his beer.

'Nah, dog, where are you going?'

Joss was already halfway to the door.

He salivated with the scent of coriander, rice and fried garlic as he
hit the night air. Isobel would've left him some dinner, of course,
but he had to eat now. He remembered there used to be a good
noodle house around here somewhere. He wondered if it would
still be there.

The streets were quiet. A few late travellers made their way
home from work, but it seemed that most people were indoors
now, cooking up the smells that were driving him crazy. He
turned a corner that seemed familiar and pulled his wallet from
his pocket, hoping he had some cash left. He had to walk over to
a street light to see the inside of his wallet.

Friends since kindergarten, Frankie Danang and Tua Lataafa had

always played together well. Whispered, when it was certain they
were nowhere listening, their classmates called them Quick and
Thick. On the footy field, Frankie ran faster than anyone, and
when it came to defence, no one could get past Tua, who was
bigger than all of the teachers by Year Six. Today, at eighteen, and
already done with school for five years, most people in
Cabramatta ducked into a shop, crossed a street or hailed a cab
when they spotted Tua and Frankie in the distance. If you got off
at the station and saw them sitting there, most people knew it was
best to hop back on the train, catch the bus back from the next
stop. Better half an hour late for dinner, than the next three days
in Fairfield Hospital.

Frankie and Tua had rolling down pat. They averaged five
hundred bucks a day, but three grand was their record. Frankie
used a knife and Tua his fists. Sometimes a boot was required, but
most people were quite obliging within a minute or two. They'd
never gone much for excessive violence; had never seen the need,
really.
 The strategy was simple: approach and ask for a smoke;
Frankie – twenty centimetre switchblade punched into the thigh;
Tua – king-hit to the face: nose, jaw, depended on the angle as
they dropped, really. They used to relive the action highlights
over a beer afterwards, but the novelty had mostly worn off by
now, and they tended to talk more about football and girls.

Tua spotted this one. He touched Frankie on the arm, nodded

his head in the man's direction. The day had been slow. They'd
met up pretty late this arvo, and there'd been no one in the quiet
spots around Cabra this evening. Frankie had recommended a trip
to the Quay, and they had been heading to the station.

Frankie scanned their environment. Perfect. He'd lost count of

their hits in this alley. And the guy had a slight lean on. He
wouldn't even know his leg had a hole in it until the ambos told
him in half an hour or so. No one around, should be sweet.

Still, he didn't give Tua the signal straight away. There was
something. Could this guy be a cop? Something about the way he
held himself? He didn't seem to have any idea they were there,
but . . .

Tua was staring at Frankie. What? His eyebrows asked.

Frankie shrugged. The blade snicked out by his thigh, a scissor

snip in the night.

The signal.

Joss checked his wallet under the streetlight, but its contents
didn't register. Nothing in his face or posture had altered, but he
was now completely sober. He put a seemingly steadying hand
upon the pole and bent awkwardly, pulling at his shoe as though
to dislodge a stone. The angle widened his peripheral vision, and
he was now certain that one of them was carrying. Gun or knife?
The answer was essential in determining his first move. He
couldn't tell – the knuckles on the hand holding the weapon were
pointed down, but still, it could be either.

Eight metres, seven. Make a decision.

Most places in Sydney, chances were this would be a knife.

Guns were relatively scarce, but this was Cabramatta after all, and
if there was going to be a gun, it would be here.

Six metres.

He was going to guess knife. Something about the hang of the

kid's shoulders, the grip on the object, the fist closed hard,
pumping it up. No need to do that with a gun.

Five metres.

Okay, come.

'Hey, you got a smoke there, mate?'

The big one spoke (to distract), the little one moved closer (to
strike).

Joss drew in a deep, delicious draught of night air. The effect

was soporific, but his senses could not have been more acute. A
sensation of peace came with a feeling of alignment. Sometimes
in life it was much more difficult to play nice than to just be real.
Just you and me, boys. The violence was hot behind his eyes.

'I don't smoke,' he said.

The little one knew, now.

Three metres, two.

Wait.
Frankie realised he had missed the feeling of adrenalin pissing
into his gut, the flurry of fear constricting his anus.

This guy was going to need care, he thought. In times to come,

he and Tua would talk about tonight. He tried to signal to Tua, to
let him know to beware, but his best friend was in the zone,
pumping up.

Frankie knew he'd have to go in fast.

He felt his heartbeat in his hands.

Tua knew that somehow he should've been calculating a new

strategy, but the first thing he felt was admiration for the guy's
block and duck from Frankie's knife. Still wondering whether he
could use that move playing footy on the weekend, he found
himself on his arse. The cunt had kicked him! He stood and
lurched forward, enraged, and he was on the ground again. Huh?
No one had touched him, 'cause the fucker was busy kicking
Frankie. He stood. He fell. What the . . .

Tua looked down at his legs and blinked. He screamed.

His left shinbone had burst through the skin above his ankle
and stood like a forty-five degree erection out from his flesh,
some of which was clinging pinkly to the bone.

He fainted.
Joss could see that the little one was just conscious; he was
nursing his broken arm as he lay in the gutter.

'Don't go to sleep now,' he said calmly to the Asian youth at his

feet. 'Your friend needs an ambulance.'

A couple of people stared as he jumped on the train just before

it pulled out from Cabramatta station. Joss looked down at his
hands, clothes. No blood. What?

He didn't realise that his eyes glittered and his grin had stuck
his lips to his teeth.

The unit felt empty tonight. In the past, that had been the only
way Jill could bear it. She liked it locked down and silent – the
only noises those she generated herself, or the familiar hums and
purrs of her cleaning appliances. On odd occasions, she'd feel an
urge to invite her mum and dad over for dinner. Sometimes her
brother and sister-in-law would drop by with Lily and Avery, her
four-year-old niece and six-year-old nephew. More often, she'd
visit them in their homes. She could probably count the number
of times Cassie, her sister, had been by. When she did have
visitors, while she wanted to be with them, Jill also found herself
watching and waiting for the cues that indicated they would soon
leave.

Control. It meant everything to her. And when people were in

her house, when she couldn't see where everyone was, or identify
each noise in her space, she couldn't relax. She'd do her best, but
couldn't resist the urge to maintain her order – surreptitiously re-
straightening magazines, re-aligning cushions when she thought
people didn't notice. She often caught her mum at such moments,
smiling in her direction, cueing her to try to let things go until
everyone left.

Tonight felt different. She frowned at her apartment. For the

first time ever the gleaming surfaces, blonde beech, stainless steel
and cool granite seemed sterile somehow. She wondered whether
more colour could help – some jewel-coloured cushions on the
chocolate sofas, maybe a big painting on the loungeroom wall. A
rug?

Maybe I should move altogether, she thought suddenly. This

unit had quadrupled in value since she had taken out the mortgage
ten years ago. The outrageous Sydney property boom, coupled
with her gorgeous ocean view, had made her rich. Well, on paper.
Of course, as soon as she purchased another Sydney property
she'd be back in debt.

She'd never thought this way before. She hated change.

Anyway, where would she go? It would be pretty hard to give up
living at the beach. The noise of the inner city would drive her
crazy. And she couldn't see herself in a house in the suburbs,
mowing the lawns.

Why was that? Where was that urge for kids and a husband?
Holidays to the Gold Coast, school fetes, a four-wheel drive? She
paced her kitchen, opened cupboards, closed them again, looking
for something.

She walked to the phone. Punched in seven digits and hung up

before dialling the eighth. Scotty. What would he be doing now?
Probably Emma Gibson. She smiled viciously, thinking of the
grey-eyed glamour girl they'd worked with at Maroubra. She's
one person glad to see me out of there, she thought.

The next number she dialled unconsciously, listening to the

machine's familiar message while she pictured Emma's shiny
black hair in Scotty's big hands. Her mum picked up at the end of
the recorded spiel. She always let it play whether she was home
or not – stopped the telemarketers, she said.

'So, how's the case going, darling?' her mum wanted to know.

'Mmm, okay. Not fast enough though of course. It never is, is

it? Especially this case.'

'It's just terrible. I hate to think of you working on these things.

The stories on the news today were just awful.'

'Don't watch the news.' Jill modified her tone when she realised
how abrupt she sounded. 'Yeah, it's a pretty bad case. We hope to
get a breakthrough soon.'

'How's everything else out there, Jill? What are the people like?
You didn't manage to tell me anything about Gabriel last time we
spoke,' her mum reminded her.

'They're okay. I don't really know anyone yet. Gabriel seems

okay, though.'

'How old is he?'

'Mum. I don't know how old he is. Maybe the same age as me.'

'And he's nice?'

Jill paused. Nice? It was probably not the first word she'd use
to describe her new partner. What could she say about him him?

'He's a good cook,' she tried.

'He's cooked for you? You had dinner at his house? Was his
wife there?'

Oh boy. 'He doesn't have a wife.' As far as I know. 'We had to

watch some videos from the case. His house was close and he
cooked. Lunch.'
 'So what did you eat?'

'Fish. Look, Mum, tell me what's happening out your way.

How's Dad?'

'Your father – I don't know what's got into him lately. He hasn't
been himself.'

'What do you mean? Is he okay?' Jill sat up straight at her

breakfast bar.

'Oh, he seems healthy enough. But he's . . . well he's doing a lot
of shopping.'

'Shopping. Dad?'

'I know. Stuff for the house. Clothes for him. Yesterday he
bought me a swimming costume.'

'He did not.'

'With parrots on it.'

Jill felt her eyebrows rising. Her father could not be dragged
into a shopping mall, and had always made her or Cassie buy his
presents for their mum. He had no difficulties at the hardware
shop – but visiting a store that sold women's clothing? She
couldn't imagine it.

'I know what you're thinking,' her mother continued. 'Midlife

crisis. I bought a book today.'

Jill smiled. Pop psychology. Her mother had a library.

'Oprah recommended it. He's a little old for it all, according to

the book, but I'll finish reading it and let you know.'

'How's everyone else?'

 Frances Jackson sighed through the phone.

'Cassie.' Jill guessed.

'I don't know, love. I think she's not eating again.'

Jill's younger sister made a living as a swimsuit model. Like

the rest of her colleagues, she perennially flirted with anorexia
nervosa. Jill shifted on the barstool. Not a lot she could do about
it: she found it harder to talk to Cassie than almost anyone, and
when she tried to discuss weight with her sister, Cassie would
scoff – Jill's own struggles with food from time to time made her
concern seem hypocritical.

'Bob and I called around there on Tuesday,' Frances continued.

'It was after lunch, Jill, and she was still in bed.'

'She'd probably been on a shoot, Ma.'

'That's what she said, but it looked more like she'd had a party
over there. It was a mess.'

'Good for her,' said Jill, suddenly almost envying her sister's
glamorous lifestyle.

'Mmm.' Jill's mother did not approve. 'Some of her friends had
stayed the night.'

'Uh huh.'

'They're all very beautiful, Jill, but none of them seem very . . .
diligent.'

'Diligent?'

'Oh, I don't know. I just wish she'd settle down a bit. She's
thirty now. And you should have seen the empty bottles
everywhere.'
 Jill rubbed at a non-existent smudge on her breakfast bar. 'Well,
you said it was a party.' None of them spoke overtly about the fact
that they rarely saw Cassie without a drink in her hand.

'Yes. Anyway, darling, I don't want to worry you. I'm sure

things will be fine. How's Scotty? Have you seen him since you
started at Liverpool?'

'No. Oh, Mum, I just got call waiting.' Jill lied. 'I'll give you a
ring again tomorrow.'

Jill hung up feeling slightly guilty about lying to her mother.

But speaking about Scotty was the last thing she felt like tonight.
Right now, she just wished he was here scoffing food in her
loungeroom, his huge feet overhanging her lounge.

She walked dispiritedly around her empty unit and finally

found herself in her gym. She got to work.
 25
SATURDAY MORNING SAW Jill at a computer terminal in the
detectives' quarters of the Liverpool police complex. She and
Gabriel had decided to split tasks; the pressure from the media
upon the investigations team was huge. Jill would've preferred
Superintendent Last to get angry, scream at them – anything other
than having to watch his stoop deepen. He had chewed through
half a packet of antacid tablets in the meeting yesterday morning.

Jill and Gabriel knew they needed to find the connection

between Henry Nguyen, Isobel and Joss. At the same time,
because they had learned so much from re-interviewing the
victims of the home invasions, they'd decided they couldn't afford
to abandon that process. The logical choice was for Gabriel to
continue the interviews, while Jill investigated Isobel and Joss's
backgrounds, looking for links with Nguyen.

She'd expected another warm day, and now Jill sat freezing and
miserable in shirtsleeves in the squadroom. The temperature on
the air-conditioner, she was convinced, had been set by some
demented maintenance guy who hated cops. She knew without
checking that her top lip would be blue; she had the kind of
headache she usually got when she ate icecream too quickly. No
good trying to get someone to make the thing warmer. In these
buildings the thermostat was always 'centrally controlled' and
adjusting it 'a major drama'.

She stuck her hands under her armpits for a moment and then
turned her attention to Henry Nguyen, creating a file of what they
knew about him already. The anonymous caller – Isobel Rymill,
they were almost certain – had rattled off a series of his
convictions and sentences. Jill opened another window on the
computer and called up his sheet. There was a long list, as
Superintendent Last had indicated yesterday, and the caller had
missed a few. Juvenile record, Jill noted. Career criminal. She
copied the information and tidied it up a little; pasted it into her
own file.

One of the juvie cases caught her eye. Nguyen had done nine
months at Dharruk for a smash and grab that had left an
adolescent dead, his throat cut. She calculated dates and figured
young Henry had been thirteen. The charge was break and enter –
with the actions leading to accidental death – but she wondered
whether there had been more to it. What did they call Nguyen?
Cutter. Maybe he'd started early? His record did not include
murder or manslaughter, or anything involving serious knife
attacks, but she knew that a charge sheet generally only reflected
a fraction of what an offender had been up to.

She searched the COPS database for the juvenile case and
scanned it quickly. She copied it, deleted irrelevant notations, and
pasted it into her file. The smash and grab had been at a bike
shop; the deceased, the owner's son. Henry Nguyen's fingerprints,
already on file even at that early age, had been found at the scene,
and when they'd gone around to his grandmother's home in
Cabramatta to pick him up, they'd found one of the stolen bikes in
his bedroom. Jill could remember nothing of the story at the time.
She'd have been about eleven when this went down. Eleven. A
year before her own world went to hell when she was abducted.

The victim, Carl Waterman, had been around the same age as
Nguyen at the time; the cops investigating figured that the boy,
who lived with his father above the bike shop, had heard the noise
when Cutter broke into the store and come down to investigate.
There were ten COPS entries on the same event.

According to the files, Nguyen had told the investigating

officers that he'd broken into the store alone by smashing one of
the two glass panels at the front of the shop. He'd told the officers
he hadn't seen the Waterman boy in the shop and couldn't explain
how the kid had come to be impaled by a large section of the
glass. He also could not explain how he'd managed to steal five
bikes on his own.

Jill skimmed the wrap-up on the case. The officers assumed

that Nguyen had committed the robbery in company with at least
a couple of older youths, possibly adults – people smart enough
not to leave fingerprints. They believed the second panel of glass,
destabilised when the first had come down, was what had killed
Carl Waterman. The prosecutors had had to ask for a committal,
given the child's death, but Jill figured that the relatively light
sentence reflected a belief that Nguyen had been led astray by
more seasoned criminals.

She wondered whether the smash and grab had really gone
down that way. The case could actually establish a very early
propensity for this Cutter to make people bleed. They knew he
liked blood a hell of a lot nowadays. She thought with horror of
young Justine Rice watching this sicko bring himself to orgasm
by cutting himself. They had to find him fast.

Jill needed to stand up. Pins and needles throbbed in her

fingertips. This cold is ridiculous, she thought. She stared at the
ceiling above her terminal. A half-metre air-conditioning vent was
positioned directly above her chair. She imagined she could see
the frigid air streaming from the vent, drenching her desk. She
cupped the tip of her nose in her palm to try to get some feeling
back. The back of her throat felt scratchy, and she wished she
could be doing this work from home. Or at Gabriel's. She bet his
computers would have access to these databases.

She walked to one of the windows of the squadroom, hugging

her arms around her body, and stared down into the street below.
A camera flashed. She stepped sideways, back against the wall,
and angled her head to peek out without showing her face. Two
media trucks occupied the parking spots in front of the courthouse
below. She saw a third in the Spotlight carpark across the road. A
news camera was now angled up at her, two men and a woman
sidestepping, heads weaving, trying to see behind the window.
Anything at all to do with this case was big news. Not since the
'Bodies in the Barrels' homicides in Adelaide had Australia been
as deliciously terrified. People in the immediate area, however,
got no thrill at all from it. Counsellors had been brought into local
schools because children had been producing artwork depicting
their fathers and pets dismembered.

Jill wondered what Gabriel would be able to get out of the dead
man's daughter, Donna Moser. He planned to interview her
sometime today. She was well enough to have been moved to a
private psychiatric hospital in Burwood, so she should be up to
talking, they'd figured.

On her way to the coffee machine, Jill passed another woman,

head down over a computer. Muriel? Marilyn? Lawrence Last had
introduced them a couple of days ago. Marion? Yep, that's it, she
thought. The woman raised her head briefly and nodded at Jill.
She looks comfortable enough, thought Jill, starting to shiver. The
extra twenty kilos Marion had on her would be helping. She slid a
mug under the expensive espresso maker and added two heaped
teaspoons of sugar. Wrapping her hands around the cup, she held
its warmth to her body as she walked back to her desk.

Next step: known associates of Henry Nguyen. There had been

no mention in the meeting yesterday of any known past
connection between Nguyen and Dang Huynh – the suspect
forensics had identified as having vomited at the Capitol Hill
crime scene. Jill thought about Gabriel's rapid conclusion that the
vomit indicated that at least one member of the gang didn't have
the same bloodlust as the killer. Huynh hadn't been able to keep
his dinner down, so there was little chance he was the one doing
the butchery.

Jill wondered how long Huynh had known Cutter as she typed
and underlined his name in her notes. She entered his nickname,
'Mouse', and called up his sheet. Car theft, aggravated robbery.
She kept digging. Well, well. At age seventeen, Dang Huynh had
gone up on an assault charge in company with Henry Nguyen.
They'd bashed a boy and a teacher at Bonnyrigg High during
school hours. Neither attacker had been a student at the school.
Jill remembered the case from Nguyen's criminal records. The
school's vice-principal had lost an eye when Nguyen had smashed
a bottle into his face; the teacher had been trying to break up the
attack. Nguyen had been sent to Mt Penang that time. She read
on. Yep, there it was, Mouse had also been remanded at Mt
Penang after the assault.

So at least these two members of the home invasion gang went

back a long way. The thought gave Jill an idea. She pushed her
already cooling coffee aside and bent back over the computer.

Cutter tucked his lucky socks into a drawer inside his wardrobe.
Head on an angle, he peered into his black eyes in the mirror
stuck inside the wardrobe door. He closed it and lowered himself
onto his carefully made single bed. It and the wardrobe were the
only furniture he'd moved over from Cabramatta. Same bed he'd
had since he was a boy. In fact, his grandfather used to sit just
about there, as he taught him the needle lessons. Cutter's orange
towelling bedspread was so worn it was transparent in patches. So
soft. He smoothed it over and over under his palm.

He felt very pleased with this basement room. The door was
heavy, made of metal for some reason, and when he closed it, the
small window, and the curtain covering it, he could hear nothing
at all from outside. He felt certain that no one outside could hear
him in here, either. The walls were double brick, coated in thick
white paint, and he sniffed in the dirt-tang of mildew that bubbled
underneath. He loved that smell. His grandmother had not. No,
she had told him, you cannot live here! The water is stagnant.
Your luck cannot flow. Your cold will be worse! Come home with
us where you belong, she'd entreated in Vietnamese as he signed
the simple, single-page contract that his new landlord, Mrs
Miceh, had produced.

Karen Miceh. So sweet. He'd had to almost pull the piece of

paper from her grip, as though she'd changed her mind at the last
minute. Face to face when he'd handed it back again, he'd
quickened his breathing to match her own, his chest rising and
falling in rhythm with hers, listening for the sound of her pulse,
hypnotised.

The sound of a dog barking blew in with the breeze from his
open window. He frowned, rose from the bed and stepped into
some slippers. He walked around the clothesline and the wading
pool, passing the squat lemon tree, thick with bees sipping at its
blossoms.

Just past three p.m. in Baulkham Hills. He loved this hour. On

weekdays at this time, mums, dads and nanas would wait at bus
stops and pedestrian crossings outside the schools, lined up in
Taragos and four-wheel drives. When the weather warmed up, it
would be straight to the local pool and then to pick up a
barbecued chook on the way home. Today, it would be softball
tryouts and piano lessons, maths tutoring or karate class. When
living here as a child, he'd seen these routines as a pantomime just
for him – a whole cast of humans playing sugar and spice,
frantically ignoring the rot and disease that was born within all of
them, that was feasting away as they grew older.

He had reached the back of the large suburban garden. Behind

the huge, netted fig tree, a low wire fence hid behind feral
camellia bushes, marking the boundary between Karen Miceh's
home and her neighbour's. The barking stopped with Cutter's last
footstep and was replaced by a pleading whine, a snuffling
whimper. The dog wanted a pat. Cutter manoeuvred through the
scented bushes and a wet, yellow nose pushed through the mesh
of the wire barrier.
 'Good doggie,' Cutter crooned, hand outstretched. The golden
Labrador thumped the lawn behind the fence in delight, strained
to get closer for a good scratch.

'That's a good boy,' said Cutter softly, reaching over the fence.

Jill absently wiped the back of her hand across her nose. Ugh. She
reached for a tissue, and then picked up the phone on the desk.

'Gabe, where are you?' she said into the handset.

'At the hospital,' he said.

'Have you interviewed her yet?'

'Nope. Three o'clock.'

'I'll meet you out there.'

She printed out a single page and shut down the computer.
She'd finished earlier than she'd thought, and was glad to have the
opportunity to watch Gabriel interviewing another victim. She
gathered up her bag and the case-file, and stood to leave the
squadroom. At the last moment, she grabbed the phone again and
left a message for Lawrence Last to let him know her movements.

She jogged down four flights of stairs to the basement carpark

and threw her bag in the backseat of her issued Commodore. It
wasn't until the M5 on-ramp that she pushed the dashboard vents
away from her face and turned the heater down, realising she was
now stifling hot. Nudging the bumper of her vehicle into the near-
stationary traffic, she waved to pretend that she was grateful to
the driver behind for letting her in. She knew she'd be still sitting
waiting to merge if that motorist had had anything to do with it. It
was dog-eat-dog on this motorway.
 Too late, she realised that it would've been far quicker to take
the Hume Highway to Burwood. She thumped the steering wheel
with the heel of her hand and settled in to wait in the traffic.

Her hot nose throbbed.

'So, guess who used to hang with Henry Nguyen back in the day?'
she said to Gabriel in greeting when they met in the foyer of the
hospital. There were still twenty minutes before they were due to
meet with Donna Moser.

'Joss Preston-Jones,' he said.

'Well, yeah,' she said. 'Good guess. Also, Mr Chew and Spew –
Dang Huynh.'

'Hmm.'

Gabriel led her to a tiny cafeteria just off the entrance. 'You
want something to drink?' he asked her, gesturing to a half-
finished milkshake and hamburger at a table. He'd obviously
started before she got there.

She walked to a fridge at the back of the café, selected a glass

bottle of orange juice and pressed it, cold, against her cheeks. At
the counter, she paid for it and a six-capsule box of Panadol, and
walked back to join Gabriel, popping two of the tablets and
draining half the juice before she reached the table.

He watched her, eyebrows lifted, as he ate his hamburger. It

smelled pretty good.

'Joss was arrested, age twelve, in company with Nguyen, a

couple of other juveniles and a nineteen-year-old,' she told him.
'The North Sydney cops caught them stealing petrol from a
caryard. The yard had a single fuel pump for its own use and the
kids decided to stock up. They filled their car and a couple of
containers in the boot. The North Sydney boys released Joss and
Henry and the other kids, but the adult copped a charge.'

Gabriel slurped his shake.

'So all these years later, Henry and Joss meet again,' she said.
'Or had they been hanging out all along? Joss has no adult sheet,
but maybe he's been in touch with this gang since he was a kid.
What if he knew all about the thing at Andy Wu's? What if that's
what he and his wife are hiding?'

Gabriel raised one dark eyebrow.

'I know,' she said. 'Just brainstorming. They're not the type.
And if it was the case that Nguyen and Joss are still mates, why
would Joss and Isobel tip us off about Nguyen?'

He nodded.

'So, what: they're just at this dinner party and it all goes down
just as they said? But then somehow Joss recognises Cutter and
tells his wife, and she tells us?'

Gabriel shrugged.

'What, are we playing charades here or something?' Jill rubbed

at her eyes in irritation. They felt hot and itchy. She took another
sip of juice. She thought she didn't have a lot of words to say to
others. Gabriel was so odd sometimes. She sighed and continued.
'Why didn't they just tell all this to Tran and Reid when they
interviewed them the first time? Why did they keep Nguyen's
name from us when we interviewed them?'

'Scared.'

'Yeah, I get that. But they're gonna be better off with him
locked up, aren't they? Wouldn't it be better for them to help us
catch him?'

Gabriel shrugged again. Jill finished her juice.

'Are you ready?' She looked down at her watch. Already three
p.m., and they hadn't even begun the interview with Donna
Moser. She wanted to be at home in a bath.

Maryana Miceh held her finger to her lips, motioning Eva to be

quiet. Two-year-olds are so dumb, thought Maryana, as Eva
giggled and twirled around and around on the balcony above her.
At six, Maryana felt she should be the boss of her little sister, but
Eva never listened to her. She knelt down in the grass near the
wall under the veranda and crawled carefully forward. When she
drew close to the spot with the crack, she held her breath.
Mummy had told her five times already not to go near the new
tenant, but that just made her want to see him more. At recess,
Jasmine Hardcastle had said that maybe he was a murderer and he
would kill her family in their sleep. Maryana had squealed and
laughed with everyone else, but since then, the idea made her feel
kind of like she had worms in her tummy. Standing up slowly in
the grass near the wall, her tummy felt fluttery, like the worms
had hatched into moths. She heard Eva singing 'Jingle Bells'
above her.

Ooh! He's got tattoos, was the first thing that Maryana thought.
She pressed her eye closer to the crack in the wall. She wasn't
sure what he was doing, but it looked like it had to hurt. Maybe
he was sick? He was lying on his bed with his hands on his
stomach and it was all bloody!

'Maryana!'

At her mother's voice, the squeal slipped out before she could
stop it, and Maryana ran as fast as she could. She felt as though a
dragon were chasing her, and when she arrived, flushed and
panting in the kitchen, her mother asked her what was wrong.

'Nothing,' she said, mouth turned down, shifting from foot to

foot.

Karen Miceh looked twice at her little girl, then bent to pick up
Eva, still singing. She put her arm on Maryana's shoulder and led
them to the front door.

'Girls,' she said, 'Kylie and James are here from next door.
They want to know if we've seen Buffy. He's gone missing.'

'I've never done this before,' said Chloe, propped up in the bed,
Andrew's white quilt clutched to her chest.

'Well, you seemed to know what you were doing.'

Andrew ducked when she threw a pillow at his head. He had a

towel slung low around his flat stomach.

'Not that, stupid!' she said. 'I mean I've never gone to bed with
someone when I've known them less than a week.'

'Actually,' Andrew looked at his watch, 'we met almost exactly

seventy-two hours ago.'

Chloe groaned. 'Don't rub it in,' she said, but she felt kind of
pleased that he'd memorised the time of their first meeting.

'What are you gonna do while I'm at work today?' he asked,

opening a cupboard and pulling out an ironed shirt.

The uniform. Chloe smiled widely and leaned back against the
bed head to watch.

'You'd better stop looking at me like that,' he said. 'I can't be

late to work today.'

'Anything happen with that name that came through on

Thursday?' she asked, wondering if he'd tell her anything else
about the anonymous call.

'Yep,' he said, buttoning his shirt. 'They think it's one of them.'

'The home invasion gang? You're shitting me! How do you

know?'

He grinned at her. She'd leaned forward, all attention,

forgetting about the quilt. She clutched it to her chest again, red-
faced.

'A few of us got a memo,' he said. 'There's a rotating shift to

watch this guy's last known address. We got instructions not to
approach; it's just surveillance right now. At least this nutjob's
good for something – me and Hendo pulled tonight's watch.
Should be some good overtime.'

'What's his name?'

He looked at her sideways.

'Henry,' he said.

'Go on! Henry what?'

'Yeah, good try, beautiful. That, I'm not gonna tell you. Now
come over here and give me a hand. I've got a bit of a problem
with this towel.'
At four o'clock, Donna Moser's godparents arrived at the hospital
and, seeing her distress, asked Jill and Gabriel to leave. They had
arranged for Donna to be moved from Liverpool Hospital to this
private psychiatric clinic. They were now the only family that she
had – an only child, her mother had died of breast cancer when
Donna was in her first year of high school.

Donna had told Jill and Gabriel that her godparents, Eugene
Moser's business partner and his wife, had asked her to live with
them and their sons in Strathfield. She wasn't yet sure what she
was going to do. She and her father had only just moved into the
house in Capitol Hill, working together with an architect and
designer to incorporate the features they wanted in their home,
but right now, she didn't want anything to do with the property.

It's good that she has some choices at least, thought Jill –
Donna Moser had just inherited fifty per cent of a multimillion-
dollar metal fabrication business.

As they left the room, Jill could see a male nurse gently try to
encourage the pale, hollow-eyed girl to take some medication.
Donna stared into space, tears coursing unchecked. Jill knew she
and Gabe had pressed play on the animation reel of her father's
murder. She imagined that the soundtrack was the worst part.

'Do you want to come over to my house?' Gabriel asked Jill as

they stood in the carpark.

'What? No. Why?'

'Got some more stuff on Joss Preston-Jones,' he answered,

looking at his shoes. 'I thought maybe we could put it all
together.' He paused. 'And I'm making penne alla vodka.'

'You're making what?'

'It's pasta in a vodka-cream sauce. Really, you have to try it.'

Jill thought about the contents of her refrigerator. She hadn't

been shopping since she'd started working at Liverpool. She had a
bag of carrots, some olives and anchovies. Her mum's frozen
meals had run out days ago. It would have to be takeaway, or . . .

'I've got garlic bread. And pistachio gelato,' said Gabriel.

'I'll follow you,' she said.

As much as Chloe had wanted Andrew to tell her the name of the
suspect in the gang, she was kind of pleased that he hadn't. She
respected that he took his job so seriously.

She smiled slowly, thinking about the dinner they'd shared last
night. When they couldn't stretch dessert out any longer, they'd
had to make a choice. Another venue, or his house. Parting hadn't
even been an option. She stretched her neck against the headrest
of the driver's seat. Her Mazda 3 was really a little squishy for her
long legs, but it had been a good price. Tucked in behind a ute in
the Spotlight carpark, Chloe had a good view of the vehicles
leaving the Liverpool police complex.

The black Magna was not the Commodore she'd been

expecting, but she could never have mistaken Andrew behind the
wheel, even though he'd changed out of his uniform into civilian
clothing. A red-haired guy in a white tee-shirt laughed in the seat
next to him.

She pulled her car into the traffic a few vehicles behind them.
 26
HOW IT HAD happened, Jill couldn't figure. She had been curled in
a lounge chair listening to the sounds of Gabriel cooking in the
kitchen, the little grey cat named Ten warm on her lap, smiling at
her, eyes closed.

She woke to Gabriel speaking her name quietly. Her heart shot
to her throat and free-fell back again. She stared around wildly,
still saturated with sleep, and when she realised where she was,
she wanted to cry. Horrified, she felt hot tears well. She couldn't
believe she had let her guard down so quickly with him. She
straightened in the chair; a bolt of tension fused one side of her
neck; her face felt scorched.

'You look like shit,' said Gabriel.

She stared at him, desolately.

'Probably we should eat something,' he said.

Dull pain pressed at the back of her throat and pulsed behind
her eyes. She still felt utterly exhausted, and she allowed Gabriel
to grab her hand and drag her from the chair. What am I doing
here? she thought. She recognised the aches she felt in her elbows
and knees as signs of a cold. The travelling, the new people, the
case, the fucking air-conditioner. It had worn her down.

'Come and tell me how much you want.'

She followed him to the kitchen. And this guy. Never before
had her nervous system habituated so rapidly to the presence of a
man. She couldn't believe she'd fallen asleep in his house. She
glared at the back of his head, angry with him somehow for that.

The smell of garlic finally made it past her muffled senses and
Jill began to salivate. She hadn't eaten since breakfast. Unself-
consciously, Gabriel helped himself first, filling a deep bowl with
pasta from the pot on the stove. He handed her the spoon and
stood back to watch. While she filled her mismatched plate, he
began eating as he stood there, waiting for her. When her plate
was full, he opened the oven door and pulled garlic bread off a
tray with his fingers, dropped two fragrant wedges onto her plate.
She hurried to sit, starving. The creamy sauce had a grainy heat
behind it. It was almost gone before she reclined back in the
lounge chair. She licked garlicky butter from her fingers.

Ten sat propped against a wall like a polar bear, her legs spread
out in front of her, cleaning her stomach. A cool rivulet of breeze
from the balcony washed over Jill's flushed cheeks. Gabriel
spoke.

'I spent the morning here on the computer,' he said. 'Checking

out our boy, Joss.'

Jill tucked her legs up under her and leaned back into the
cushion, listening.

'He moved from Canley Vale High School when he was

thirteen and finished his schooling at Sandhurst College,' he
continued. 'He must've hung out with Cutter while he was living
with his mother. She has schizophrenia. Been in and out of
Rozelle and Cumberland for the last thirty years. Joss did his
Higher School Certificate. Joined the army, Infantry corps. Went
with the second contingent of Australian peacekeepers to Rwanda
in 1995. The Australians on his tour got caught up in the Kibeho
massacre. Do you remember watching the news about the war in
Africa in ninety-four, ninety-five?'

'Yep.'
 Jill had grown up horrified, along with the rest of Australia, by
the famines in Africa. When Australians troops had joined the
UN peacekeepers over there in 1994, she'd avoided the news
programs for weeks because it seemed every story was about the
'rivers of blood' in Rwanda; images of mounds of corpses and
scores of bodies floating down a river had left her feeling
helpless, ill. Just as she'd changed the channel and ignored it, the
world had also looked the other way.

She thought about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Supposedly the allies were there to liberate the people from the
tyranny of their governments. No soldiers had been sent to fight
for the tens of thousands of people who were slaughtered in
Rwanda. Australia's peacekeepers had been impotent. Their rules
of engagement had not allowed them to fire a shot in defence of
the victims. They were there simply to observe and to assist the
wounded when they could.

There was no oil in Africa.

'Preston-Jones was medically discharged from the army on

psych grounds,' Gabriel continued. 'He married Isobel Rymill in
ninety-three. As we know, they have one daughter, Charlie
Rymill, aged four. His maternal grandparents are deceased. His
father's name was not listed on his birth certificate. He works for
a large insurance company in Martin Place.' Gabriel stood and
stretched.

'You want a drink?' he asked, on his way to the kitchen.

Jill unfolded her legs on the couch. Ten now slept with a paw
over her eyes, blocking out the soft light in the room. Her little
body twitched as she dreamed. Jill took a look at her watch.
Seven o'clock. I should go home, she thought, and sat up.

Gabriel returned with two cups. She took hers and sniffed it.
Held the cup back out to him.
 'It's butterscotch schnapps. It'll be good for your cold,' he said.

She lifted an eyebrow, stared flatly. He took a sip from his

glass, a china teacup bearing red roses, and licked his lips,
grinning at her.

She looked down into her brown earthenware mug; in an inch

of amber, viscous liquid, two fat ice cubes circled lazily. It
smelled great. She took her first sip of alcohol in ten years. The
toffee liquid coated the back of her throat, burning and freezing at
the same time. She had another taste, her lips sticky.

The ice cubes clinked softly and Jill leaned back into the
couch. Ten breathed heavily as she slept. The peal of a phone
suddenly split the silence, and Jill snapped forward, grabbing for
her bag.

'Jackson,' she said.

'Yo, J.'

'Scotty! What do you want?'

'What do I want? Nice. I have to want something now to say

hi?'

'Sorry, Scotty. I didn't mean to say that. It came out wrong.

How're you doing?' Jill stood and walked with the phone, acutely
aware of Gabriel staring at her openly, as though she were a live
stage show, or a scene from a riveting movie.

'Okay, but I miss you. Well, I miss beating you at things. It's
not the same thrashing Robbo on the bike. He doesn't try as hard
as you, and he never gets as pissed when I teach him a lesson.'

She smiled wryly.

'Jackson. You still there?

 'Yes, Scotty. I'm still here. You don't always win, you know.'
She found herself almost whispering.

'What are you doing now? I could whip your arse with a game
of squash and then we could have a swim?' He cleared his throat.
'Or, maybe we could get something to eat?'

Jill's stomach lurched a little at the sudden vulnerability in his

voice.

'I, ah, I already ate. I just finished working.' Why did she feel
guilty?

Right then, Gabriel called from the kitchen.

'Jill, you want some ice-cream?'

'Ice-cream,' said Scotty. 'Working hard?'

'I said I just finished.'

'Uh huh. So who was that?'

'Gabriel Delahunt. New partner.'

'Gabriel,' said Scotty. 'Girl's name.'

Jill sighed. Oh for goodness' sake. 'Look, I was just about to

head home. I think I caught a cold today. I just want to get to bed.'

'Yeah, well, don't let me keep you, Jill. I'll catch you later.'

'I'll call you next week.' She closed her phone.

'I think we should go to Balmain first thing Monday morning,'

Gabriel said when she joined him in the kitchen. 'Speak to Joss
and Isobel before they go to work. What do you reckon?'

'Yep. Good idea,' she answered sleepily. She drained her cup.
 'So, you want some dessert?'

'No thanks, Gabriel.' Her voice sounded formal to her ears, and
she felt suddenly shy, then annoyed that she should feel this way.
'I'm going to head home.'

'No worries. So, we'll make it six on Monday then?'

She nodded and moved to leave, determined to get out of there,

her thoughts churning. Why did she feel like she was cheating on
Scotty when she didn't think of him that way? And why should
she feel like she was cheating at all when she barely knew
Gabriel? They'd only eaten together, for heaven's sake.

She climbed into her car and threw her bag onto the seat next
to her. That's why it's easier not to get too close to people, she
told herself. These confusing feelings.

She buzzed her window all the way down as she drove, the
evening breeze helping to dispel some of the dullness that
smudged her senses. She still could not believe she'd fallen asleep
in someone else's house.

Not counting her parents' home, that was a first.

Chloe returned to the house in Cabramatta at eight-thirty that

night. The black Magna had left and she could see a green late-
model Falcon sitting in its place. She chewed her lip.

What was the good of knowing about this place if she didn't get
some more on this guy? Investigative journalists are like
detectives, she reminded herself. They've got to have a cover and
they've got to take some risks.

She knew by the end of this year there'd be a hundred new

journalism graduates hungry to take her spot. That was not going
to happen. Chloe got out of her car and opened the gate out the
front of the small fibro house.

Cutter's house.

Mrs Tu Ly Nguyen wasn't sure what she should do. Although her
English was limited, she knew enough to know that this lovely
young girl wanted to speak to Henry. Henry had always told her
never to speak to anyone about him. And her daughter-in-law and
children were out visiting this evening.

It would be best to say nothing, to close the door, and she

determined to do so. She sighed. The girl was so pretty.

Mrs Nguyen worried so much about her first-born grandson.

He should have had a wife, a family by now to take care of him.
She had hated leaving him in that room under the stairs. He
should have more friends like this one.

She looked up at the girl on the porch. So tall. So beautiful!

Something told her she could trust this girl. But she worried that
Henry would be angry. She sighed.

Certain now that she was doing the right thing, Cutter's
grandmother turned away from the door and walked back into the
house.

She returned thirty seconds later with a piece of paper and an

orange.

Mrs Tu Ly Nguyen pressed the fruit and the scrap of cardboard

into Chloe's hand. Upon the paper was scribbled an address. A
street number in Baulkham Hills.
 No one should live under the stairs, Mrs Nguyen thought,
shuffling back inside to pray to her ancestors at her shrine.
 27
KAREN MICEH WAS torn. Her parents had taught her to share, to
treat others with respect, and she wanted to pass the same morals
on to her daughters. It was Henry's first weekend living
downstairs, and before she'd met him she'd always intended to
invite the new tenant to Sunday lunch with her, her brother Ken
and the girls. She and Ken had kept the Sunday ritual going after
their parents died, although her dropkick husband had often
stuffed things up by getting stoned and trying to start an argument
with her brother or hitting on whichever girl Ken might have been
seeing at the time. The lunches since Eddie had been gone had
been lovely. She had thought that inviting the new tenant along
would be a pleasant addition to their party. She loved to cook.

But then she'd met Henry. Something about him made her
uneasy, although she felt guilty about that. Her grandmother had
always told her not to judge people by their appearance alone, and
she tried to live by that saying, finding that she'd met many
beautiful people who maybe hadn't seemed respectable at first
glance. When she'd seen Henry with his hair tied back for the first
time, his tattoos visible, she had freaked. But it wasn't just the
tattoos – even Ken had tattoos – although the beautiful tiger on
Ken's deltoid was hardly the same thing as spiders on one's neck,
she thought. She hoped that she wasn't a closet racist. She'd heard
you could be such a thing without even knowing. Her good
friend, Jamie, who was a lesbian, had told her that, saying that
even members of the gay community could be closet
homophobes. Ashamed of their own sexuality, even when they
were out and supposedly proud! Imagine that.

That decided her at last. Karen had always prided herself on

denouncing racism, and if it did turn out to be bigotry that was
holding her back from giving this man a chance, then she'd face it
and fix it.

Besides, she thought, twisting at the hem of her apron, it would

give Ken a chance to meet Henry, to see what he thought.

Karen stood at the door a few moments before knocking. She was
pretty sure he was in there – her front gate made an awful squeak
when it was opened, and she hadn't heard it this morning, so she
reasoned that he couldn't have gone out. She raised her hand to
knock, and then lowered it again, her stomach flip-flopping.

She looked around her yard, stalling. It was a beautiful day.

The sun was warm and she could hear the bees in the lemon tree.
She had to get the first load out on the line soon and get on with
the day, or no one was going to be eating lunch. She stepped
closer to the door and knocked firmly.

'Henry,' she spoke to the door, smiling. 'I wonder, have you got
a minute?'

She suddenly worried that he could be asleep, and she could

have slapped herself. It hadn't occurred to her that someone could
still be asleep at ten o'clock in the morning. She hadn't slept that
late since she was a teenager. But it was Sunday morning, she
chastised herself – not everyone is up at six o'clock like her.

'I can wait,' she sang through the door. 'I'll wait for a moment. I
just wanted to invite you to lunch.'

She heard nothing from behind the thick door and thought
about retreating. Maybe he was coming, though; she must've
already woken him up. She remembered when she'd been painting
the room that sounds from outside were deadened. Maybe he
hadn't heard her. She could just walk away.

She stood a moment, studying her nails, and, hearing nothing

from inside, turned to go. Maybe he doesn't want much to do with
us anyway, she thought. That would be a relief, she decided, if
he'd come to that conclusion himself.

Karen's thoughts had turned to her washing, and she had taken
a step away when the door scraped open behind her, and she
raised a hand to her mouth.

'Oh, Henry,' she said. 'I hope I didn't wake you.'

The man stared at her from those curiously black eyes, and she
could read nothing in his expression. He didn't say a thing. He
seemed to be wide awake, though, as far as she could tell, and
thank goodness, he was fully dressed. She noticed a nasty smell
from the room behind him and blushed in embarrassment.

'Henry, it smells like the mould's coming back in there,' she

prattled, unnerved by his silence and slow-blinking eyes. 'Ken
and I – he's my brother, I think I told you – we did our best to get
rid of it all in there, but I think it must be coming through the
paint. I'm sorry about that. We'll get onto it again.'

He said nothing, continued to study her.

'Anyway,' she continued, overly bright, 'I thought you might

like to come to lunch with me and the girls. Oh, and Ken, that's
my brother. Although of course if you don't want to . . . it's only a
roast. I don't want to be intrusive; I thought I'd just ask, but . . .'

'Lunch would be lovely. Thank you, Karen.'

He smiled. She wished he hadn't.

'Okay, great then, that's great,' she said, backing away. 'Well,
we eat at twelve, usually, although some people might think that's
a bit early. It's the girls . . .'
 'Twelve's great, Karen. I'm really looking forward to it.'

Karen Miceh managed a weak smile and half ran up her back
steps to her laundry.

In the end, the roast was dry, because she wasn't sure whether
he'd like it medium, as she and Ken did. The girls always
preferred the crunchy edges anyway, but Karen felt miserable
carving the juiceless meat. She smiled at her guest, who'd
changed into a collared shirt and tied his long hair back into a
ponytail. Somehow, his attempt to appear civilised rendered him
even more alien.

'So, Henry, were you born in Australia?' she asked. Good one,
Karen: go the race card already.

'Yes,' he said, 'and you?'

'Yes, yes. Ken and I were both born here. Our parents were
proud Macedonians, but they wanted us to be Australian. They
thought the names Karen and Ken were as Aussie as you could
get.' She gave him a wry smile as she passed him a plate.

'Thank you,' he said, accepting the sliced roast lamb from her.
'Looks delicious. I'm glad it's well cooked. I can't stand blood.'

Her smile was forced as she fixed Ken with a stare. Great, so
she and her brother should eat overcooked meat every Sunday
now? Why does it have to be so hard to be neighbourly?

'You have beautiful daughters, Karen. You must be very proud.'

'Yes. Thank you,' she said. 'Maryana, sit up straight in your

chair. You know better than that. I've told you twice already.'
 Karen frowned. Her oldest daughter usually swamped strangers
with questions and chatter, and it was all Karen could do,
typically, to stop her little girl climbing all over them. Today,
Maryana seemed almost to be trying to hide under the table. Eva
prattled away in her highchair, playing with her potatoes.

'So, Henry, what do you do for a quid?' Ken spoke up. 'Are you
in a job at the moment?'

'In and out, Ken. I'm in sales. I do a lot of door-to-door work.'

Karen almost snorted. No wonder he didn't get a lot of work.

Most people wouldn't want him in their house. Damn Eddie for
putting me in this situation, she thought. Still, Henry seemed to be
nice enough now that she was getting used to the way he looked.

Karen finished serving and began to eat. She listened to Ken

and Henry speaking for a while and tried to encourage Maryana
to settle down, but her daughter had eaten none of her lunch.

'What's the matter, little Maryana, don't you feel well?' Henry
asked during a break in the conversation with Ken.

Maryana squirmed in her chair, her hair covering her face.

'Did something make you feel sick?' he said.

Maryana started to cry.

'Oh baby, what's wrong?' Karen stood and went to her daughter.
'Henry, I think you're right.' She reached down and scooped
Maryana into her arms. 'She's all hot. Are you feeling sick,
darling?'

Karen took Maryana from the room, her daughter clinging to

her like a baby. She settled her into bed and smoothed her hair a
little until she stopped crying.

She returned to the table when Maryana had relaxed under her
quilt, tired out by her sobs.

'Is she okay, Karen?' asked Ken.

'I don't know what's wrong with her,' she said. 'I gave her a
Panadol. I'll let her sleep now and take her up to the medical
centre this afternoon.'

Maryana Miceh felt a lot better.

As soon as she got away from that Henry, she didn't feel so
woozy. He was probably a very nice man, she told herself. It was
just that the sore on his tummy made her feel really sweaty and
hot. She kept thinking about what she had seen him doing through
the crack in the wall. Maybe she should tell her mum?

She decided it would probably be best to ask Jasmine

Hardcastle tomorrow before class started. Even though Jasmine
thought she was better than everyone else, she did seem to know
a lot of stuff. Maryana didn't want to get in trouble for spying on
Henry, but maybe her mum should know about his stomach.
Maybe she could get him some bandaids or something. And he
didn't have a car. Maybe he needed to get a lift to see Dr Kim at
the medical centre.

Alerted by a sound out the window, she scrambled up and knelt

on her bed.

Wow, she thought. There's a pretty lady on the lawn. She's

coming to our house!

Maryana slipped off her bed and padded through the hallway to
the front door. She pulled the door open and walked out onto the
front steps. She held her hand up to her face to stop the sun
hurting her eyes. The lady waved. Maryana could see that the
lady couldn't open their gate.

'That gate's stupid,' said Maryana, hopping on one leg down the
path that ran from the steps to the fence. 'My dad was supposed to
fix it, but Mummy said he's stupid too.'

'I've come to visit Henry,' said Chloe Farrell, smiling. 'Does he

live here?'

'No, silly!' Maryana laughed.

'Oh . . . okay.'

'He's renting!'

'Uh huh.'

'You know you can just climb over that gate. Uncle Ken does
that. He says my dad is stupid too. Do you think that's rude?'

Chloe stepped over the low fence easily.

'My name's Chloe,' she said.

'I wish that was my name,' said Maryana. 'I'm Maryana.

Everyone's in there having lunch.' She pointed back inside. 'Come
on. I'll show you where Henry is renting.'

Maryana ran around the side of the house.

Chloe followed.

Chloe now felt certain that the police had this all wrong. She'd
been told that the first suspect police investigated was most often
the wrong one, and it was with this in mind that she'd decided to
risk asking after this Henry person at the house in Cabramatta.
The fact that he hadn't been brought in for questioning also
strengthened her doubts that the police seriously thought this guy
was one of the killers. And then she'd met Henry's grandmother,
and she was so sweet! But it was little Maryana and this
gingerbread house that finally convinced her. Would a
bloodthirsty psychopath be eating Sunday lunch with a family in
Baulkham Hills? She didn't think so.

So it was all good for her. She could get an interview with a
police suspect and show that they were still a long way off the
mark as far as solving the case. She wondered if this bloke even
knew he was under surveillance. She suspected that the cops
didn't even know that he'd moved on from the family house in
Cabramatta. She smiled to herself as she followed little Maryana's
chubby legs into the backyard of the home. Maybe she'd get to
present a piece live to camera. The anchor, Deborah, would burn.

'Maryana!'

Chloe heard a call come from inside the house.

'That's my mum,' the little girl said. 'I gotta go. His room's in
there.' Maryana pointed to a door tucked beside the stairs leading
to the house above them. 'You wanna come up?'

'No, that's okay, Maryana. I should go back around the front

and knock on the door. I should introduce myself to your mum
properly.'

'Okay, then,' said the little girl, giving her a quizzical look. She
ran off.

Chloe decided to have a quick look around before going back

to the front of the house. She was surprised at how easy it had
been to find this guy and wanted to think of a few questions to put
to him before they met, but she wasn't sure whether the little girl
would tell her mum she was down here. Chloe didn't want to meet
these people that way. She quickly ducked around the side of the
rented room and realised that it was partially dug into the ground.
She spotted a window on the back wall and tried to peer through.
She could see nothing.

She made her way back around to the front of the room.

'Lunch was great, Karen, Ken.' Henry stood. 'Thank you. I might
just use the bathroom before I go.'

Ken stood as well. 'You might have to go downstairs, mate. I'm

just on my way to use the toilet up here myself.'

Karen smiled at her brother, grateful. For some ridiculous

reason she didn't want this man becoming too familiar with her
house.

'I don't know why everyone needs the toilet all of a sudden.'
Karen tried to laugh. 'And Maryana feeling sick too. I hope it
wasn't my cooking. Where has that child got to?' she said, calling
to her daughter again before seeing Henry to the back door.

Karen shocked herself by turning the deadlock when she closed

it. Must be that closet racism, she thought, forcing herself to open
the door again. Her six-year-old scooted past her into the kitchen.

Cutter could smell her.

He moved from the final step of the house onto the concrete
that led to the washing line. Not Karen's sweet, ripe tang. No, no.
We've had a visitor, he thought. Musky smell. He turned his nose
into the light breeze and sniffed again. Why would anyone be
down here?

Cutter didn't believe in coincidence. He didn't believe in

chance. If something didn't feel right, it was wrong. There was
something wrong in Baulkham Hills.

His head whipped around with the sound. There. There she is.
Anyone with her? He could see no one. Still, he kept his options
open as he moved forward a little to greet the guest.

'Henry?' she said, doubt in her eyes.

Now that was a surprise. No one knew he was here. She didn't
look like a cop. Maybe a friend of his landlord – had Karen told
people about him already?

'My name is Chloe Farrell,' she said, extending her hand. 'I'm
an investigative journalist working on the southwest Sydney
home invasion case. I wondered if we could speak for a few
moments?'

He took her hand, breathed with her for a few beats. He had to
blink to break the spell.

'To me? What about?' He walked closer to his door.

'I don't know whether you're aware, Henry, but the police think
you might know something that could help them with the case.'

'Did you get my address from the police?' he asked, putting his
key into the lock on his door.

'No,' she smiled. 'I'm pretty sure they don't know you live here.
Don't be angry, now,' she said with a big smile. Her teeth are so
white, he thought. 'I got your address from the sweet lady at your
old house in Cabramatta. Is she your grandmother?'

Cutter grinned and the girl stepped back a little. He lowered the
wattage.
 'Yes, that's my grandma. Look, I don't think I can help you with
any of this, but I wouldn't mind knowing what's going on. You
want to come in for a moment and we can talk for a bit?'
 28
JILL SAT UP quickly in bed and wished she hadn't. A ribbon of pain
that began in her neck and extended down one shoulder pulled
her back down to her pillow. After falling quickly into a deep and
dreamless sleep within twenty minutes of arriving home from
Gabriel's last night, she'd awoken at three a.m. feeling she was
drowning. She'd spent the next fifteen minutes blowing her nose,
and the hour after that punching her pillow into some kind of
shape conducive to sleeping again. She'd ended with the pillow
bunched high under her neck, a position that always left her sore
the next morning.

Sunday. She could not believe that just a week had passed since
she and Scotty had packed her belongings at Maroubra police
station. So much had happened. They'd uncovered a lot of
important information about the home invasion gang, but they
still had no one in custody, and had yet to interview a suspect.

She wondered what Scotty was doing today, and smiled,

certain that he would wonder the same thing about her at some
stage today. Usually they went for a run or a long bike ride
together on Sundays. She thought about the butterfly pendant in
her underwear drawer, the jewellery so unlike her. She smiled
again, but the back of her throat suddenly ached with sadness.
She hoped that the butterfly did not symbolise her relationship
with Scotty: a fragile, beautiful, brief life. She considered all of
the relationships she'd had. Her habit had been to flit from one to
the next, alighting briefly, fluttering away with any minor
disturbance or change in the wind. And she'd been so careful with
Scotty, never allowing more than a friendship, to try to preserve
what they had together as partners at work.
 So. She should do something with her day off. She could go
out to Camden and see her family – she'd love to see her niece
and nephew right now. Even with a red nose and headache, it
would be great to have little Lily sitting with her on the bed,
prattling on about the most important things in the world to her –
frogs, her best friend Tracey Timmons, her Bratz dolls. But Jill
could not imagine getting in the car and driving that far.

She could call Scotty. He'd love to see her, and she realised that
she missed him a lot. Most weeks for the past couple of years
they'd seen each other six or even seven days a week. She
convinced herself that she wouldn't call because he'd want to do a
bike ride, or a swim, and she didn't feel well enough today. She
quickly pushed aside the real reason she wouldn't call: she
couldn't bear it if the awkwardness that had ended every past
relationship suddenly materialised between them.

She pulled her knees up to her chin, unwilling yet to get out of
bed and face the day. She should be able to call a girlfriend, catch
up for lunch, she thought. That's what other people did with their
weekends. The fact that she didn't have close friends had never
bothered her until the last six months or so. In the past, there'd
only been time for training and work, but even with her obsessive
dedication, they had been mere hobbies compared to her fulltime
occupation: keeping herself safe. Safety entailed distance from
others. The fewer people you let into your heart, the less likely
that one of them would rip and shred and tear it to pieces.

She sighed. Although she'd killed Alejandro Sebastian – the

man who'd kidnapped and raped her as a child – his legacy lived
on. She'd hoped that his death would burst the bubble that had
simultaneously protected and alienated her from the world. Over
the past few months she'd thought the bubble was becoming a
little more permeable, but she could still feel its barricades at the
periphery of her psyche.

The thought of the schnapps at Gabriel's last night suddenly

rose like a spectre in front of her. Changing routines meant losing
control. She thought about a story the therapist, Mercy Merris,
had told her when she had been forced to have counselling
several years ago. Mercy had spoken of a Vietnam veteran who'd
been an inpatient at the hospital where she worked. The man had
seemed to be fitting in well, participating in group sessions and
joining in the 'veranda therapy' with the other vets, who swapped
jokes and cigarettes, life lessons and sometimes their meds.

One day Mercy had seen the man sitting alone by the rose
garden with his head in his hands. She'd approached and asked
him what was wrong. The look in his eyes had been wretched.

'What are you people fucking doing to me?' the man had
demanded. 'Don't you know I've killed people?'

Mercy had told Jill that the question had surprised her. She'd
been working with this man so he knew very well that she was
aware he had killed people.

He'd continued, 'I've been fucking laughing over there!',

pointing to the veranda behind them. 'If I let my guard down like
that, who knows what the fuck I'll do next? I've killed people – if
you try to get me to start feeling again, what if I can't control that
part of me?'

Although Jill had understood the man's dilemma when Mercy

had first related the story, its meaning was deeper for her now.
Her life had so long been lived in absolutes that she was not sure
she could tolerate the shades of grey that other people seemed to
accept. The one glass of liquor last night would be just that to
anyone else, but for Jill it could mean that she'd just taken her
first step into the alcoholic spiral she had lived through for a year
in her adolescence. It had always been all or nothing for her.

She got out of bed, the cramp in her neck finally demanding a
stretch. She picked her tissue box up from the nightstand and
walked with it to her loungeroom, slipping between the blinds
and sliding the balcony door open a crack. She couldn't smell the
surf through her blocked nose, but the sea breeze slapped her in
the face. She took a few deep gulps of the cool morning air.

It wasn't just the alcohol. Other rituals were blurring, too. The
exercise, for one. It was now every second day. Was that enough?
Could she still fight for her life? Did she still need to? And then
there was Gabriel. A week, she'd known him, and last night she
had been drinking at his house. If someone had told her a week
ago the way she would spend last night, she'd have laughed in
their face.

She made up her mind. Despite this head cold, she couldn't
spend the whole day inside feeling miserable. She needed some
groceries and she wasn't going to let the day go by without some
form of exercise. She quickly showered and dressed in leggings
and a long-sleeved tee-shirt.

The Maroubra shopping centre was an easy three-kilometre

walk. Jill wasn't going to do easy. No way she'd allow herself to
get weak, she decided. She'd go to Eastgardens at Pagewood, and
she'd take the long route, via Matraville.

When her feet hit the pavement outside her unit block, she
started to run. Habit. At first, her lungs burned with the effort, and
her feet felt heavy, but by the time she got to Beauchamp Road,
she had found her rhythm and zoned out the pain.

Her thoughts turned again to the case. She considered the

answers she wanted to get out of Joss Preston-Jones and Isobel
Rymill tomorrow. The time had come for them to stop screwing
around. In full flight at the Anzac Parade intersection at South
Maroubra, she didn't bother to stop at the lights. Dodging through
the traffic, it suddenly occurred to her that Joss and his wife could
be in danger. She hit the pavement on the other side of the
intersection. If Joss had recognised Cutter wearing a balaclava,
surely it was possible, even probable, that Cutter had recognised
him.
 She thought about what she told most victims who were
worried about offenders coming back to find them after they'd
been robbed or attacked. The adrenalin rush the criminal
experienced during the act of crime typically diminished their
memory for incidental details of the crime scene. These incidental
details included the features of their victims. She'd seen survivors
sell their homes within weeks, quit their jobs, leave the state, even
their families, afraid that the offenders would return and attack
again, certain they were still on a hit list. When she spoke to the
perps, however, Jill noticed that most of them wouldn't have a
clue that their targets were still petrified that they'd be back. Most
of the time, Jill's words didn't comfort the victims. Hell, her
behaviour over the last twenty years indicated that she didn't
believe them herself.

And the stakes were higher in this case. Cutter and his crew
had committed murder. There were witnesses. If they believed
that those witnesses could send them to gaol, they might try to
return and take them out.

Heading downhill now, Jill ramped up the pace and felt her
drug of choice – endorphins – kick in. She considered whether
telling the couple about this risk might convince them to open up
to her. She had no real evidence of a threat to their safety – in
fact, she decided, the events so far would indicate otherwise. The
offenders had done nothing to harm Joss at the time of the home
invasion. Surely if he'd recognised Joss, Henry Nguyen would
have taken him out that night? Jill knew that during robberies,
mass murder would sometimes take place when the armed robber
had gone too far and accidentally killed someone at the scene.
Realising that the consequences of being caught were now far
worse, sometimes the perps went postal and took out all of the
witnesses.

After the five-kilometre run, she automatically took her pulse

out the front of the sprawling Eastgardens shopping complex. A
little higher than usual. She waited outside the huge glass doors
for a moment, letting her heartbeat slow. She detested crowds,
and she knew that she didn't need any extra stimulation when she
entered the centre.

It seemed as though the spring weather had created a nesting

frenzy. It looked like people had come from all over Sydney
today to purchase their summer fashions, new cushions or a
barbecue. She knew from her mother that around this time of year
people started to think about a new lounge suite or plasma TV to
impress their Christmas visitors. Hell, Jill thought, as she looked
around her, some of these people would probably have their
Christmas present lists on them. In October! Jill usually bought
her presents on the twenty-third of December. She had promised
herself she would use the internet to do her Christmas shopping
this year, but she guessed she probably wouldn't get around to it.

Breathing normally again, she followed a twenty-something

couple in through the doors. They held hands, but the woman was
a step ahead of her man, her face shining, entering her Sunday
house of worship.

Jill just needed some fresh vegies. She'd get fish, milk and
coffee locally, but the vegetables were better in the larger centres.
Music poured out of a huge boutique to her left and she paused.
She really liked this song. The mannequins in the window angled
bony hips and arrogant eyes down at her. Summer dresses. Full,
floaty fabrics held onto bare shoulders by impossibly thin
shoestring straps. Jill couldn't imagine herself wearing something
that offered so little protection from the outside world. The
jewelled colours conjured images of cocktails by the pool,
tropical birds, sunsets and balmy evening Christmas parties. A
world Jill wasn't part of. She knew there were others in the
community also barred entry to this world, who malevolently
resented its inhabitants. Isolated, violent males, who took this
rejection personally, plotted revenge against girls who wore
dresses like these. 'Paint it Black', the Rolling Stones song, came
to her mind – for some people the bright summer clothes brought
forward their darkest fantasies.
 The opening notes of another track that Jill liked came from the
boutique's sound system. She stepped inside and immediately
regretted it. She usually purchased her clothing from Myer or
David Jones a couple of times a year, shopping in the middle of
the week to avoid the crowds. She felt safe in the spacious, quiet
department stores. A salesgirl buzzed straight over to her, shining
and glossy, almost fizzing with energy. Jill felt snotty and dull in
comparison.

'Good morning! Are you having a good day so far?'

The girl was a riot of belts and bangles, piercings and hair
fudge. She probably wouldn't sit her Higher School Certificate
until next year or the year afterwards. Jill was awed by such
confidence in someone so new.

Just looking, thanks, was her automatic response to

salespeople, but for some reason she decided to try something on.
Maybe it was the music. Or the braces on the girl's teeth, worn
like jewellery. Jill admired her self-confidence. And maybe she
needed some new clothes.

Forty minutes later, Jill finally made her way to the

greengrocers.

She took a different route home, down Maroubra Road and past
the police station. She wondered who was in there today and what
she would have been working on over the past week had she
stayed there. The thought made her think about the movie Sliding
Doors. If she'd worked at Maroubra as usual over the past six
days, she would never have met Gabriel. She had already learned
so much from him, and the thought gratified her. Despite her
discomfort around him – the ridiculous discomfort of being
comfortable – she looked forward to working the rest of the case
with him. She resolved again to ask him more about assignments
he'd worked in the past and how he'd come to be seconded to the
taskforce.
 The case had become all about Cutter, she realised, as she ran
downhill towards the sea. The brutality of the crimes had led
them naturally to focus upon the one man depicted by all the
witnesses as the gang leader and the most violent. Trying to find
him was their main priority. She wondered whether that was
limiting their scope. She knew that the detectives who'd worked
the cases before the establishment of the taskforce had looked
pretty hard at trying to identify other members of the crew. They
had one other name at least, Mouse. In the interview with Joss
and Isobel tomorrow, she would focus at least some questions on
trying to learn more about these other people.

She rifled mentally through other cases, trying to glean

something from them that could help with this one. In her
experience, home invasions were usually one-off events
committed by somebody who knew the occupants of the house
and that something of value was kept at that residence.
Sometimes, it was a member of the victim's community who'd
learned that the homeowner had a safe in which they kept cash
from their business, or jewellery they'd inherited. At other times,
a punter who'd come good and shouted the wrong person at the
local would find their winnings gone by daybreak, often while
they slept the night off. And plenty of Harley-Davidson riders had
woken to a gun to their head and a demand for their keys in the
middle of the night. Jill remembered one incident where the
owner had refused, and had been gutshot by a bikie in his living
room in front of his wife and kids.

These robberies were different. They appeared to be organised

along some other lines. The stolen items of value were typical of
any burglary, but there didn't seem to be any other obvious link
between the hits. She knew that the previous detectives had
investigated any tradies that the victims might have had in
common – a plumber or an electrician who might have visited all
of the residences and used the chance to scope the house for
security and valuables. They hadn't come up with a link. She
wondered whether other professions had been considered – even
an accountant, a kid's tutor or a gardener could have had a son or
a boyfriend, a cousin or a brother who was a criminal and had
used their connections to get to the next victim. She added
another task to her list: ensuring that all service providers had
been meticulously looked at for connections between the victims.

The final stretch home was uphill. Good. Jill imagined the
sweat cleaning out the germs in her system. When she reached
Maroubra Junction, she decided to stop for the last few items on
her shopping list. She bought a chicken from a butcher's shop on
Maroubra Road, and a sourdough loaf from the bakery. Walking
the rest of the way home, carrying her latest purchases, she
thought about the chicken soup she'd decided to make for lunch.
Her mum would be proud.

Back in her unit, Jill piled the food onto the benchtop and then
went into her bedroom to put her new clothes away. Her brow
creased while hanging up the filmy tops and the sundress she had
purchased. They looked nothing like the rest of her outfits. She
scowled at them, and shut the wardrobe door. Maybe she would
be wearing Scotty's pretty pendant soon! She stripped off her
running gear and took a quick shower. Her nose had cleared a
little, but she still felt stuffy; the scented steaminess of the warm
water helped a lot.

In a soft tee-shirt, boxer shorts, and squashy socks, Jill returned

to her kitchen to cook. She diced carrots, onion and celery, and
sweated them in a little olive oil and salt in her biggest stockpot.
She added boiling water, a couple of bay leaves and the chicken,
looking forward to having the soup with a squeeze of lemon juice
in a couple of hours. In the meantime, she cut a hunk of the bread
and toasted it, then slathered it with strawberry jam. She took the
toast and a pot of green tea out to the balcony.

She stared out to sea, her body humming from the exercise, and
zoned out. Within a few moments, however, the case again came
to mind. Whatever method the gang had used to target their
victims, she thought, it was almost certain that most of them had
not seen things going the way they had. In the first robberies, the
violence, although terrifying, had mostly been used as a threat to
compel compliance. Robbery had clearly been the motive. The
motive for the leader now, though, was the violence itself, and if
Gabriel was right, cracks in the group would be starting to form.
She wondered whether there might be any way they could turn
the screws a little more. Maybe put the hovering media to good
use, to heighten the fear and paranoia among the group members
– get them to turn on themselves. She'd put it to the taskforce
tomorrow.

Jill felt the Vitamin D doing her good. She leaned her face into
the sunshine and closed her eyes.
 29
CHLOE FELT SWEAT at her hairline, but her heartbeat was slowing.
God, the guy had scared the shit out of her when she came back
around to the front of the basement room. And she had nothing
against tattoos, but he was kind of scary-looking.

She debated entering the room. Maybe she should suggest they
go up to the house? But she hadn't even met the owner. Would it
be rude to just go barging into someone else's house? She couldn't
suggest another place to interview him. It's not like she could
invite him home for a cup of tea at her house in Seven Hills. And
no one back at the network would even dream of giving a cadet
an office.

She made up her mind. What could happen, she thought. It's a
sunny afternoon in the suburbs and Maryana and her mother are
just up the stairs.

Chloe followed Cutter into his bedroom.

When he entered the room behind her, she began to feel even
more awkward. Wanting him to feel comfortable enough to open
up and speak to her, she was acutely aware in the small room that
she stood a head taller than him. She looked for somewhere to sit
– there was only the bed. She perched on the very edge and got
her notebook out of her bag. The door shut, and her head whipped
up. The thud had been a heavy metallic sound – like a vault. Her
heartbeat gathered pace again.

'We don't want people listening to us,' he said.

Chloe's eyes darted around the room. A thick curtain covered a

small window in the whitewashed wall. It smelled funny in here.

'I'm already disturbed that my name would be mentioned in a

criminal investigation,' he continued. 'I don't want Mrs Miceh
imagining that I'm an unsavoury tenant. Do you know, if it wasn't
for my grandma, I don't think she would even have leased this
room to me in the first place.'

Chloe relaxed a little. She pictured the bent old woman in the
doorway in Cabramatta, smilingly pushing a piece of fruit and
this address into her hand.

'She is a sweetie,' said Chloe. 'How long have you been living
here?'

'Just a week or so,' said Henry. 'It's all I can afford at the
moment. I have a new job in sales, in the Hills district, so this
suits me fine.'

'So, nobody from the police department has contacted you

regarding this investigation?' Chloe asked, eager to begin the
interview.

'No. But I can't say I'm surprised that they're looking at me.'

She gave him a questioning look.

'I got into trouble as a kid,' he explained. 'Break and enters,

stealing. A criminal record is the worst thing, Ms Farrell. The
police are very lazy. Crimes happen in a certain area – they go
through their database and suddenly there's a cop at your door. It's
hard to convince people that you've changed.'

Chloe made a few notes.

'And the tattoos don't help matters,' he said.

No kidding, thought Chloe. Ugh.

 'When I was young, I lost my father and my grandfather in a
very short period of time,' he said. 'I was particularly close to my
grandfather. I think that's why I rebelled.'

Chloe jotted his comments, but wished that he would sit down.
He seemed to be standing over her.

'But I've grown up now. I don't do silly little things like that
anymore,' he said.

'The police are watching your family home in Cabramatta,' she

said. 'Now you know that, what do you think you will do about
it?' She readied herself to scribble down his response. 'Will you
go to them and ask why they're intruding into your life this way?'

He looked down at her and smiled. Chloe decided that when

he'd answered this question, she would stand after all. This whole
situation creeped her out.

'No, I don't think so,' he answered. 'You might have gathered

that I don't like the police, Ms Farrell. And I don't think they're
going to find me out here. My grandmother won't be giving this
address to anyone else.'

Chloe rubbed at her left eye. The tic always started when she
felt anxious. She moved to stand.

The explosion of movement stunned her more than the blow to

her face. Her vision darkened for just a moment, and then
returned, orange. Her face was pressed into his bedspread.

'Slut! Stupid slut!'

Chloe bucked with her legs to throw him off, trying to bawl out
a scream, but her mouth pressed into the orange fabric, and the
scream wouldn't form. All of his weight was on top of her, but
Chloe was strong, and she felt his body shifting sideways, sliding
off her. Then she felt cold steel pressed into the left side of her
neck. She recoiled, jerking her head to the right, and the knife
followed, this time biting, deep. She felt warm blood well. She
was going to die here. Terror paralysed her.

'That's right, slut. Don't move around, and maybe I won't hurt
you.'

He kept the knife to her neck and raised himself off her body.
She tried to move a little and he pressed the knife deeper. She
stopped moving.

'Stand up now, slut,' he said.

The pressure of the knife forcing her to comply, Chloe stood at

the side of the bed, whimpering quietly. She knew that her only
hope for seeing her parents again lay in keeping this blade from
slicing her throat. She knew now with whom she shared this
room. How could she have been so stupid? Details of the murder
in Capitol Hill came to her, threatening to unhinge her
completely. Stop it, she told herself. She needed to stay sane. Do
what he told her. She wasn't ready to die yet.

They stood now between the bed and a wardrobe. He pushed

her towards the cupboard and for a moment, she imagined that he
was going to try to stuff her inside it. She'd never fit. Instead, he
reached in with his left hand, his eyes on her the whole time.

Chloe met his eyes once and her knees buckled. His hand
whipped out of the wardrobe and caught her arm. He used his
right hand to lift her chin with the knife.

'Open your eyes, now,' he said. 'You're not being any fun.'

She forced herself to open her eyes and stare at the floor. If she
looked into his demented face again, she wouldn't be able to help
screaming, and he would start stabbing her with that huge knife.
She knew it.

His left hand held cable. Plastic ties. She'd seen them before in
crime scene photos. The restraint of choice for today's killer:
cable ties, unable to be broken by the victim without pulling their
own hands off. Her thoughts cantered madly. She couldn't let this
man bind her. She had to fight now! On the other hand, if he was
going to restrain her, he wasn't going to kill her immediately. She
might have time to reason with him.

Chloe found her voice, although to her ears it sounded

fractured, hysterical. She forced herself not to focus on it, or she'd
lose herself to those impulses.

'My b-boyfriend knows I'm here,' she managed. 'He's a cop.'

'Wrong. No. I don't think so.' Grinning, her captor capered a

little on the spot, the machete still pointed at her throat. She froze,
terrified of the swishing blade. The wound on her neck throbbed,
but she sensed the blood had coagulated and she was not bleeding
heavily. 'You said the police don't know I'm here. You said that,
slut. Don't lie to me. Now turn around and give me your hands.'

She hesitated, and he jabbed the knife at her neck again. She
whimpered and turned. This man had dismembered a person in
Capitol Hill.

Pulling her arms behind her back, he wrapped one hand then
the other with the unyielding ties, wrenching her shoulders
backwards finally to tighten them.

'Now sit. Here. On the floor.'

Chloe squatted and then dropped to her bottom between the

bed and the wardrobe. He'd have to put the knife down to bind her
ankles. When he bent over her she'd headbutt – no, kick him –
then run for the door.

He seemed to have seen her calculating.

'You can't get out,' he said. 'You have to use the key. And I have
that. By the time you get to the door, I'll have filleted you. Did
you know you can do that to a person? No, I didn't either, but I've
found, recently, that the muscles come away quite cleanly.'

Chloe screamed and screamed.

He ripped his bedspread from his bed and shoved a fistful of

the fabric into her mouth. Chloe gagged on the material and tried
to dislodge the wad from her airway. She couldn't breathe. He
jabbed the tip of the knife under her chin.

'I'm not going to hurt you unless you make me,' he said.

She tried desperately to rein in her blind panic. There were

only two choices here. Live or die. This man would kill her now,
or she could delay her death and possibly survive this.

'Good,' he said. 'No one can hear you anyway. There's a foot of
concrete above us, and these double-brick walls are half buried
into the earth. I love it here, don't you?'

He motioned her to lie on her side and he squatted to tie each

ankle, and then cable-tied them together.

'Now,' he said. 'I promise not to hurt you, but you need to
cooperate. This bit's tricky.'

He stood and reached back into the wardrobe. Chloe panted

into the fabric, terrified with each move he made that he would
bring forth some object of horror. His hands emerged and he now
held a thick wire with a lock, a device resembling something used
to secure a bike. He squatted again. He looped the cord through
the restraints around her ankles and used it to pull her legs
backwards. He then yanked her hands downwards, pulling at the
restraints, handling her as though she were an inanimate object.
Her shoulders burned and she moaned around the fabric. She
heard him click the lock into place. She was shackled into a U-
shape, the top half of her body facing the bed.

Immediately, Chloe was engulfed by waves of claustrophobic

terror. She was completely immobilised. She tried to roll, but the
movement wrenched at her shoulders and thighs. Her neck
strained and she struggled to breathe.

'Hogtied,' he said, standing with his hands on his hips, beaming

down at her. 'You look good. I've fastened the cable to a bolt in
the wall. You'll be staying here for a while.'

He picked up his knife from the bed. 'Shut up,' he said, when
Chloe made choking sounds through the fabric in her mouth. 'I'm
going to fix a proper gag so you can breathe properly.' He took a
scarf from the wardrobe and squatted next to her again. 'Don't
scream, slut, or I'll cut you.'

He pulled the bedspread from her jaws, and Chloe spat out the
taste, then screamed through sobs. He wrapped the scarf around
her mouth. She could at least breathe around the fabric, but the
pressure he applied compressed her tongue and chafed at the soft
corners of her lips; the knot at the back of her neck cut her
circulation.

He sat down on the side of the bed; took a deep breath.

'Now I'm going to show you how I relax,' he said.

Cutter reclined on the bed and lifted his shirt, tended to his
wound. The smell filled the room.

Chloe gave into the hysteria that bulged behind her eyes.
 30
JILL WAS AWAKE before the alarm sounded at five, but her
eyelashes were glued shut. She prised them open carefully,
groaned and rolled over. A sea of used tissues littered the ground;
one was still crushed in her fist.

She pointed her face into the hot stream of water in the shower
and thought again about what she'd ask Joss and Isobel. She
figured these were good people caught up in some sort of bad
situation, but this was no time for them to be stuffing around. It
had been six days since the murder at Capitol Hill, and the
taskforce had yet to bring in a person of interest. The media were
slamming them on every news update. She knew that Last would
want Henry Nguyen brought in today or tomorrow at the latest.
They'd had constant covert surveillance on his last known
address, and the superintendent had given orders to bring the
other suspect, Dang Huynh, in on sight. Joss and his wife might
have information that could close the net on these guys.

She pulled on knee-high socks and zipped skinny black jeans

into calf-length boots. She tucked a long-sleeved black tee-shirt
into her jeans and added a belt and a black jacket. The detectives
dressed more casually out in Liverpool than they did at Maroubra
and, sunshine or not, there was no way she was going to freeze
her arse off out there today. She blow-dried her hair carefully and
left it long, warm around her neck, dropped Visine into her red
eyes and smeared Vaseline over her lips. She thought she was
beginning to feel better.

She stuffed an apple, some industrial-strength cough lollies and

a few more tissues into her bag and left.
Gabriel's car was there already, and he crossed the road when Jill
parked, smiling at her. He's always so bloody cheerful, she
thought, wiping her nose and checking her face in the rearview
mirror before getting out of the car.

Joss opened the door before they knocked, his face a mask.

'Morning, Joss,' said Jill. 'Isobel here? We've got to have a talk.'

He stepped aside wordlessly and led them into the terrace

house. Isobel stood by the glass doors next to the kitchen. She
wore a terry dressing gown and her hair was still wet. She had an
arm across her stomach and worry creased her brow. She glanced
at Charlie, seated at the kitchen table, her little hand holding a
spoon above a bowl of cornflakes.

'Hello,' said the little girl, scraping her chair away from the
table. She walked over to Jill and held out her hand. 'I'm Charlie
Rymill. What's your name?'

Oh how gorgeous! Jill's eyes said to Isobel, who smiled back

tremulously.

'Hi, Charlie, I'm Jillian. This is Gabriel. We're friends of your

mum and dad.'

'Do you want some cornflakes?'

'Finish your breakfast, honey,' said Isobel, walking over and

guiding Charlie back to the table, at the same time that Gabriel
said: 'Do you have any Coco Pops?'

'No, we're not allowed,' said the little girl sadly, shaking her
head. 'Too much sugar.' Her big blue eyes were multifaceted
marbles.
 'Can I put some toast in for you?' asked Isobel tightly, walking
into the kitchen. 'I'm making some for us anyway.'

'That would be great, Isobel, thanks,' said Jill, and Gabriel

nodded. Jill followed her into the kitchen, and spoke quietly,
away from the little ears at the table. 'We know you're on your
way to work, but we really need you and Joss to call in late this
morning. We have to have your help with this case, and it can't
wait.'

Isobel nodded and slotted four thick slices of bread into the
toaster.

'Could you put some more in for me when they're done?' she
said to Jill. 'I'll just go and make some calls.'

Jill toasted more than half the seeded loaf and took it with a
few jars of spreads over to the table. Joss stood staring out into
his backyard, immobile, apparently uninterested in the near
stranger poking around in his kitchen. He seemed preoccupied but
somewhat less tense than the last time she'd been here.

Gabriel had already finished one piece of toast and was

speaking to Charlie with his mouth full when Isobel reentered the
room.

'Done,' Isobel said. 'Joss, I left a message for Eric that you
might not be in at all today. I did the same with my boss,' she said
to Jill.

'Thanks, Isobel.' Jill felt awkward sitting at their table with her
piece of toast, interrupting these people's lives. She knew from
experience, though, that refusing hospitality on a home visit
added to the tension.

Isobel had dried her hair and with that seemed to have
collected herself. She brought milk, sugar and mugs to the table.
A few minutes later, a big pot of brewed coffee followed and she
played gracious host for the next fifteen minutes, but took only a
few bites of toast herself. Joss sat with them, but didn't eat a
thing.

When Charlie had finished her breakfast, Isobel took her into
the loungeroom and switched on the television.

'The Wiggles,' she said when she came back to the kitchen.
'Her favourite DVD. We'll be right for a while.'

'Great,' said Jill, eager now to get to the point. Gabriel sat back
in his chair, relaxed, but she knew he was observing everything.
'There's no polite way to say this, Isobel. So I'm just going to say
it straight because we really need your help right now. We know
you two are holding something back about the night at Andy
Wu's.'

Isobel's mouth opened; she looked hunted and guilty. Joss

stared straight ahead, his palms flat on the table.

'Thing is,' Jill continued, 'we know the identities of at least two
of the people committing these home invasions and we don't have
to tell you how terribly dangerous they are. We want one of these
men, especially, locked up right now, before he kills someone
else. He's not in custody yet, though, and we urgently need to
speak with anyone who knows anything about him.'

Jill paused. Music tinkled from the loungeroom, and she could
hear what sounded like Charlie dancing. The kitchen was
otherwise silent.

'Isobel, you and Joss know a lot about him,' she continued, 'and
it's time you told us everything you know about Cutter – Henry
Nguyen.'

Isobel jerked a hand to her mouth, her eyes darting to her

husband. For a second his posture stiffened, as though he was
preparing for sudden movement. Jill did the same. Suddenly,
Joss's shoulders dropped and his eyes met her own.

'What do you know?' he asked.

'Well, we know that Isobel called the hotline and told us to

investigate Nguyen,' she said. 'It's okay,' Jill glanced at Isobel,
who looked as though she was about to cry. 'That tells us you do
want to help. We have hard evidence – DNA – connecting
Nguyen to one of the crime scenes, and we believe that he has
participated in at least six home invasions. We also know, Joss,'
she said, turning to him, 'that you knew him well when you were
a kid, and we're pretty sure that you recognised him at Andy Wu's
home.'

He was watching her closely.

'What we don't know,' said Jill, 'is why you haven't told us that.
We don't want to believe that you're trying to protect this guy. Did
you know that your wife called the hotline?'

'Of course I knew,' Joss said.

'Then why didn't you tell us everything the other day, Joss? We
get it that you're worried for your safety. But why wouldn't you
tell us everything you know to help us lock him up faster?'

Joss sighed deeply and raised his eyes to the ceiling. He then
lowered his forehead to his hands. Isobel stood and walked to her
husband; she touched his neck, tears running now. Jill wondered
whether to speak, but Gabriel shook his head silently at her.

When he raised his face, Joss's eyes stared directly into Jill's.

'Look around you, Jill,' he said. 'Everything in this house is my

world. I don't want this world to change.' He rubbed at his chin. 'I
know that not coming forward was not very honourable, but I
fooled myself into thinking that if I just tried to ignore the past, it
would stay there. Stupid, really. I've always known that was never
going to happen.'
 Isobel, still standing at his side, rubbed his shoulder. He placed
his own hand over hers and stood. He talked as he paced.

'It seems you know a bit about my life as a kid,' said Joss.
'What you probably don't know is that for the past twenty years
I've considered that kid dead. It's like he was never a part of me. I
can't relate to anything I did or believed back then. When I got the
chance to change my life, I took it and fucking ran.'

Isobel flinched a little and watched her husband closely.

'You're right,' he continued. 'I did know Cutter. I suppose I

would have called the group I hung out with at that time my best
friends. My mother was out of it and my dad wasn't around. My
friends were my family. There was nothing else worth caring
about. I just didn't know any different. I know what a real friend
is now, and the only one I have in this world is my wife.' He
looked at her, his face serious. She smiled encouragingly at him.

'Back then, until I was twelve or thirteen, I didn't really care

about my life or whether I was alive or dead. There's not much I
can admit to being proud of. Everything was opportunistic. We'd
steal anything we could get our hands on. Sometimes so we could
eat, sometimes just for the fuck of it. Back then – when you've
got nothing else to live for – it was fun. Stealing cars, smash and
grabs, police chases . . .'

Joss stood now by the sliding doors, staring into the yard. Jill
noticed Gabriel also rising from the table quietly, moving closer
to him, wanting to catch every word, but unwilling to break the
flow.

'Then something really bad happened,' said Joss, 'just before I

went to live with my grandparents.' He looked up and seemed
surprised to see Gabriel standing closer to him. 'Me, Cutter,
Simon Esterhase and Carl Waterman decided we'd do over Carl's
dad's bike shop. We used to call Carl "Fuzzy". He said his dad
would get everything back on insurance, and we were dying to
get our hands on these new trick bikes in the shop. Mr Waterman
wouldn't even let us touch them. I don't know how it happened . .
.' Joss paused and started to cough. The cough caught and his face
turned red as he struggled to catch his breath. He stared wildly
around the kitchen. Isobel was by his side in a moment with a
glass of water. He downed it in two swallows, and handed the
glass back. Jill felt slightly envious of the silent synchronicity
between the pair.

Joss took a couple of deep breaths. 'Sorry,' he said, his voice

devoid of emotion. 'Anyway, Fuzzy let us into the shop while his
dad was asleep and we took the bikes. We came back after hiding
them and knew we had to smash the window so it would look like
someone broke in.' He cleared his throat again. 'One of the panels
must've speared inwards. Somehow it stabbed Fuzzy in the neck.'
Joss was unconsciously holding his own throat, his voice
threadlike.

'You didn't actually see the wound being inflicted, then?'

Gabriel asked.

Joss shook his head. 'I tried to hold his throat together.' Isobel
was at his side, almost touching. 'But, he just, kind of like,
drowned.' Tears stood in his eyes. 'He was looking at me, his eyes
just . . .' He trailed off.

After a pause, he continued. Emotionless. 'Anyway, he died

there while I watched, and then I pissed off. I got taken to my
grandmother's after that because my mum got hit by a car. I heard
a few months later that Cutter got arrested, but he didn't report me
and Esterhase. I thought it was a miracle that I got away with it, a
sign that I had to change my life.' He looked up at them,
defensive, as though challenging them to doubt him, or to laugh.

He took a seat and began to tear a piece of toast into a pile of

crumbs.
 Finally, Joss continued. 'You see, where I am today, I don't
want people like that anywhere near me. I don't even want to
know they exist. When the shit happened at Andy's, I just wanted
all of us to get out of there alive. I would've done something to
stop them if I could, but there was just no way.'

Isobel nodded.

'And then, just before they left, he looked at me, and I knew it
was Cutter. I don't know how, but I knew it was him. I know now
that he recognised me too. He followed us a couple of days ago to
the movies,' he glanced at his wife. Isobel's hand was at her
throat. 'He said some smartarse things. I knew then that we
weren't safe and that it was definitely him that night. I told Is I
wanted her to move away with Charlie for a while, but she
wouldn't go. I knew we had to tell the cops, so she rang you guys.'

'Joss thought that if we did it anonymously,' said Isobel in a

quiet, pleading voice, 'that the stuff about Fuzzy would never
have to come up. I mainly agreed to do it though because I
thought that Joss was mistaken and you guys would look into
Nguyen and figure out he wasn't involved.' She looked at her
husband apologetically. He laid a hand on her arm and sighed.

'Anyway, I might as well tell you everything now,' he said. His

wife looked at him, surprised. 'I've been back to where we used to
hang out,' he continued, as Isobel drew in a sharp breath, 'and
tried to find out more about him, like where he lives now, so I
could pass that on to you.'

'Joss!' Isobel looked angry.

'Anyway, I can tell you he's still hanging out with Simon
Esterhase.'

'We're going to want to know everything you discovered out

there, Joss,' Gabriel spoke to him for the first time. 'But I'd like
you to come out to Liverpool today so that we can record your
statement. I don't want to miss a thing you've got to say next. It
might be exactly what we need to get the lot of them.'

Jill and Gabriel left Joss and Isobel, arranging for the couple to
meet them out at Liverpool at two p.m.

Joss lingered at the doorway as they were leaving.

'Just so we're clear,' he said to them, eyeballing each in turn,

voice low, 'you guys had better get this fucker fast. I told you I'd
do whatever I had to do to protect them,' he angled his head back
towards the interior of his house. 'And you need to understand
that I will.'

Lawrence Last was not in his office when they got back to
Liverpool; an urgent meeting with the police commissioner, his
assistant told them. Jill shared a sympathetic expression with the
uniformed man behind the desk. The taskforce meeting was
delayed until Last's return.

Jill and Gabriel spent the next half-hour working on a report to

summarise their movements since the last meeting.

They were just wrapping it up when Jill sensed someone

behind her, heading their way. She kept her eyes on the computer
screen and tried to detect the identity of the visitor from his
movements. Derek Reid, she guessed, just before he spoke.

'Don't you two make a cute couple?'

Jill kept typing. Gabriel grunted.

'Come on! Just shit-stirring,' Reid said. 'Got anything new?'

'Not really,' said Gabriel.

 'Not that you'd share leads anyway, hey, Delahunt?' said Reid.

'We're just finishing up a report, but we won't have anything

hard until later this arvo,' said Gabriel. 'We'll fill you in on
everything in the next meeting. We've got a couple of vics coming
in later today.'

Reid seemed annoyed by Gabriel's neutral tone. He took a step

closer to Jill, and because she was still seated, his crotch was now
in her face. She stood and glared at him. He laughed at her.

'You wanna get some lunch, Jill?' said Gabriel.

She grabbed her bag from under the desk.

'Aw, how sweet,' grinned Reid. 'Can I come too? Since you've
broken your rules about dating cops, Jackson, maybe you should
give me a go. I'll make you forget all about Super Spy here.'

'I don't really know what you're talking about, Derek,' said Jill,
smiling sweetly, 'but you're going to have to get over anything
happening between you and me.' She swung her handbag over her
shoulder. 'I don't date body builders. It's a little problem I have,'
she stared pointedly at his groin, 'with the steroids.'

'Whoa!' Gabriel laughed, and turned to follow Jill as she

walked towards the door.

'What's funny, Delahunt?' said Reid, smiling menacingly. 'Why

don't you stay here and we can talk about it?'

Gabriel kept walking. 'Forget it, Derek. I don't do cock fights,'

he said.

Jill and Gabriel left the room with Reid's parting words:
'Fucking freaks.'
Facing one another across the moulded plastic table, Jill felt an
awkward silence between her and Gabriel for the first time since
the initial taskforce meeting. The other patrons of the food hall
also seemed low on conversation. Overweight kids in school
uniform scoffed burgers or pizza for lunch. A young mum seated
close to Jill fed her toddler hot chips, the child cawing for them
like a hungry seagull. Pairs of people – a mother and daughter,
perhaps, on the left, sisters or friends straight ahead – munched
listlessly, exchanging grunts now and then.

Jill felt the muteness stealing over her. When that mode kicked
in, she sometimes wondered whether she'd ever speak again. Why
did she feel this way now? It couldn't have been Reid's comments
– God knows she was used to crap like that. She looked down at
the table and noticed that she'd used her milkshake as a barrier
between them. This was ridiculous. She forced herself to speak.

'So how did you get posted to this case?' she asked. They'd
discussed his past briefly before, but never in any detail.

'Lawrence Last asked for my help,' he said. 'I worked with him
a year or so ago on an organised crime thing. I've been attached to
police units on a few major cases now.'

'So, why this one?'

'My specialty's interrogation. Because they were coming up

with so little trace evidence at the crime scenes, they figured they
had to get more out of the witnesses and suspects. Anything to get
these fuckers.'

'Makes sense,' she said. 'We're an odd group, this taskforce,

don't you think? I mean David Tran – what's going on between
him and Reid? And I wonder how he got injured – has he said
anything to you?'
 'Yeah. I'm surprised you haven't been told by someone yet.
Everyone out here seems to have an opinion.'

Jill leaned back in her chair while Gabriel continued.

'He's the community liaison officer in the area,' he said. 'First

contact for the Vietnamese community. Some of them trust him.
Most of them don't. Culturally, it's taboo to speak outside the
family about problems. He's seen as a traitor by many of his
people because he's operating outside of their rules of silence.'

'Wow. That would be hard.'

'Yep, but it's a double dilemma for David, because he's never
been fully accepted by some of the cops either. What did I hear
Reid say the other day?' Gabriel took a sip of his drink while he
thought. 'Oh yeah, that's it – Tran was called to the desk to speak
to someone about some information that could've helped with the
case. Reid went with him, so I took a walk over there too. David
spoke Vietnamese to this bloke. Reid was like – You wouldn't
think we were in Australia, would you mate? – some shit like that.
Then he had a laugh with the girl behind the desk, um, what was
it – Why don't they save their bloody Chinese for China or
wherever they're from?'

'MENSA candidate, Reid. He's wasted in the cops,' said Jill. 'So
what happened to David's leg?'

'Oh yeah, that. Heroin dealers from Cabra. Smashed his

thighbone with a hammer.'

'Oh my God!' Jill raised a hand to her mouth.

'Yep. He was off duty. They got him in the toilets in Westfield.
He'd sent up a few of their best re-sellers.'

'Wow. But David said he was off work HOD.'

'Yeah, Last made sure it was written up as Hurt on Duty. And

Last got the fuckers too. Tran I.D.'d the cousin of one of the perps
he locked up. So, now they want to kill him.'

'Shit.'

'Yup. For real. That's another reason Last wanted me over here.
The organised gang shit is his next big target, once they get on
top of the home invasions.'

'So what about you then, Gabe? Are there any deep dark secrets
I should know?' Where the hell did that come from? Jill felt her
cheeks grow hot. She never asked questions like that.

Gabriel sat there, head on an angle, watching her from under

the brim of his cap.

'Sorry,' she said. 'I was just stuffing around. You don't have to
answer that.'

'No, it's okay,' he said. 'It's just that I'm not usually great at
speaking about my past. Specially at this time of year.'

'This is a rough time?'

Gabriel looked at her again, closed his eyes briefly. Finally, he

sighed and pushed his food away.

'I joined the Feds with my wife,' he said.

Jill hoped the shock didn't show on her face.

'We met in a psych lecture at uni. We got married and joined

the AFP together four years later. Started work on the Monday
after the wedding, actually.' He smiled. 'I started the job in
organised crime and Abi was assigned to major fraud. Between
jobs, we worked our way together through the MOSC program.'

Phew. Jill had heard of the Management of Serious Crime

program: it was the most intense major-crime training program in
Australian law enforcement.

'Then after September 11, we both got routed to

counterterrorism,' Gabriel continued. 'Three-quarters of us did, to
tell you the truth.'

Jill listened. He'd cleared up some of the questions she'd had

about him. But where was Gabriel's wife? He seemed to have
read her mind as he continued.

'Abi and I were together for ten years. She was my world.' A
small smile did not reach his eyes; they watched a scene from
another time. 'We were still based in Canberra, running
surveillance. Just a routine tip-off – a member of the public
worried about their neighbour's allegiances. The target was a
mufti from Queanbeyan; he'd just visited the subject of another
intelligence report. Abi was the eye, following him a few cars
back. I was with the rest of the team shadowing her.'

'The eye?' said Jill, and then regretted her utterance. She didn't
want Gabriel to stop speaking, and she was afraid of breaking his
train of thought.

'Yeah. The eye follows the rabbit – the target. The rest of the
team follows the eye and ignores the rabbit. You don't want a fleet
of cars trailing some poor prick. We just tail the one vehicle – the
eye – and the eye can be rotated; that way we can maintain
contact and chop and change positions when we need to.' He
paused.

'Go on, Gabe. Sorry I interrupted.' She held her breath.

'Nothing great left to tell you, Jill. Some drunk motherfucker

ran a light and killed my wife. Head on. He made it out alive.
Serial offender. Lived to drink and drive another day, I'm afraid.'
He reached unconsciously for his napkin and began to shred it,
working around the edges in an organised pattern. 'I was first on
the scene, thank God.'
 Jill leaned forward, as Gabriel's voice had dropped with his
eyes to the table.

'We had a few moments,' he said. 'We had a bit of time . . . And
then the ambos got there.' He cleared his throat. 'Nothing they
could do, though. I'd already tried. Abi and I, we tried, but, the
injuries . . .' He looked up. Tears stood in his eyes, and he smiled
sadly. 'Five years ago,' he said, 'last Saturday.'

Jill reached a hand towards his, but stopped just before their
fingers touched. She could feel the warmth of his skin.

'Saturday,' she said. They'd eaten pasta in his unit. She'd fallen
asleep with his cat.

'Yep. First anniversary I didn't spend alone. Thanks.'

Jill knew all about anniversaries. She swallowed at the lump in

her throat. They were silent a moment, each thinking about that
time of the year when the ghosts crowded closer, clamouring for
more attention. This time she let her fingers find his. She covered
his hand with her own. What would it feel like, she thought, to
find and then lose your soul mate – to feel her dying, leaving you,
wanting desperately to stay, but knowing there was nothing you
could do? The helplessness, the loss of control; is love worth
risking such desolation?

Gabriel gazed at the table. Jill stared at a wet smear on the soft
skin next to his eye. She longed to wipe it away. She had her
finger poised, ready, but left her hand where it was.

'I bet she was amazing.' Jill wasn't sure whether she spoke
aloud. Suddenly, a thought occurred to her. 'Hey,' she said. 'Your
cat. You named her "Ten".'

He looked up and smiled. 'Best years of my life.'

An itchy impatience prevented Jill enjoying twilight on her
balcony. She sat rocking on a chair, bare feet up on the small
table.

It was just over a week since she'd become involved in the

case. They'd come a long way – identified the main offender – but
he was still out there, and they couldn't go in hard until they
sighted him. Interviewing his friends and associates would drive
him to ground.

But this guy was unhinged. He could attack again at any time,
with or without his crew. She felt guilty being home so early, but
there'd been nothing immediate for the taskforce to do, and Last
had sent them home. She'd considered driving around trying to
locate him herself, but they had crews from Penrith to Redfern
out looking; there was nothing she could do tonight.

The sound of gulls calling blew back on the salty seaweed

breeze; the sound left her feeling inexplicably sad. She pictured
them, endlessly wheeling over the ocean, crying. She'd never
understood people's aversion to seagulls. Beady-eyed greedy
devils, scavengers, some called them, pelting them with rocks,
tossing cigarette butts at them, pretending to offer chips or bread.
Jill could feed them by the hour, ignoring the baleful stares of
others who didn't want to share the beach with the birds. She'd
grown skilled at aiming the bread so that the crippled gulls got
there first – those hopping on one leg, the fishing line that had
strangled their other limb still trailing; those with one eye, or a
hook gleaming through their cheek or their beak. The fatter birds
stared at her, indignant: these rejects were the walking dead.
Feeding them is pointless; life is for living. But she saw gratitude
in the shiny black eyes of the wounded birds, or she imagined she
did.

She scratched compulsively at her ankles with her toes, then

stood, walked back into her apartment. Her thoughts turned to the
story Gabriel had told her at lunchtime, but she deflected them.
They'd spent every day together for the past week. She could
spend a night without thinking about him. As usually happened
when she thought about Gabriel, Scotty popped into her mind;
she imagined him now, laughing eyes smiling down at her. She
picked up the phone.

Maybe he feels like a run or something, she thought, dialling.

Idiot. Idiot. The word was now a mantra. Jill mentally repeated it
over and over as she smiled self-consciously from her corner of
the backyard.

You've gotta come, Scotty had told her. You're not doing
anything else. You know my parents. It's just them and my sister.
It's nothing, just a barbecue in the backyard.

She clutched a wine glass to her chest, trying to use it as a

shield to cover herself in her flimsy new dress. Idiot. What the
hell had she put this on for? At least she'd removed the butterfly
pendant at the last minute before getting out of the car.

'This is new.' Scotty now stood at her side, barefoot in

boardshorts and a white windcheater that highlighted his almost
permanent suntan. Her bare arms left her feeling naked.

'Don't start,' she warned.

'Oh. I didn't mean the dress,' he said, 'although now you

mention it . . .' He grinned and lightly fingered one of the flimsy
straps. She shrugged away, half-smiling, tempted to spin and
snap-kick as she usually did when he teased in this manner. That
probably would not go down so well at this backyard barbie, nor
in this dress.
 'I mean the wine,' he said.

'Yeah, well,' she said. 'So?' She took another sip.

'Nothing. I'm glad you're here. So you've almost caught this

crazy fucker, huh?'

'Well, we know who a couple of them are. The one we want is

Henry Nguyen.'

'Yeah, I heard. Maroubra got updated this morning. The whole

city's looking for him.'

Scotty's stepfather, Rob, stood at the barbecue turning the

steaks over and over, beer in hand. Scotty's sister's fiancé stood
with him, talking and laughing. She could see Scotty's mother and
sister, Rhiannon, illuminated behind a flyscreen, spotlit by the
kitchen lights. Earlier, standing with them there, trying to help
with the salads, she'd felt compelled to pull the blinds, knowing
she could be seen but could not see out. Rhiannon, perhaps
sensing her discomfort, had pressed a white wine into her hands
and shooed her out the door. The wine was ice-cold, and she'd not
noticed the first glass going down. She tried to sip more slowly at
this second one.

'So, do you like it out there?' Scotty wanted to know.

'I don't know.' Suddenly tired of standing so stiffly, she dropped

into the suspended swing seat next to her. Scotty sat down beside
her. 'It's not so bad,' she continued. 'Better than I thought it would
be.'

'I heard your new partner's a Fed.'

'Been checking up on me, Hutchinson?'

'What was his name again – Gloria? Gabrielle? I heard he's a

bit, ah, eccentric.'
 'Funny. That's the New South Wales Police Force for you, isn't
it? Someone doesn't act exactly the same as everyone else and
they've got to be a weirdo.' She pushed her feet against the
pavers, stopping the movement of the chair. The slight swing of
the seat was making her dizzy.

'You're pretty protective of him already,' he said.

'Yeah, well you're being pretty predictable.'

'What does that mean?'

'The whole testosterone thing – mine's bigger than his.' She

drained her glass and put it down on the cushion next to her.
Scotty picked it up again.

She stood, needing firm ground beneath her. 'I don't want to
argue tonight, Scotty. Do you want to go down to the beach
before dinner?'

'I'll just get my thongs.'

Scotty unlocked the gate at the rear of the garden and led Jill
down the steep, sandy stairway behind the property. Jutting roots
from wind-blasted shrubs twisted up through the sand, and she
hooked a hand into the waistband of his boardies for balance as
they negotiated the shadowy steps.

When they reached the bottom, the bushes gave way onto a
sheltered cove. Jill hadn't been down here at night before. The
glow from a pale, fat moon washed with every wavelet onto the
quiet beach. A couple of anglers, highlighted by moonlight, sat on
the rocks to their right. A fragment of their discussion reached Jill
as she stepped into the cool sand, carrying her sandals; the
distance between them scattered their words in the wind.

The sea air was deliciously cool on her hot cheeks and Jill
breathed deeply, padding down to the shoreline. Whipped around
by the breeze, she had to keep pushing tendrils of hair from her
eyes and mouth. She walked, head down, watching her footprints
melt back into the liquid sand at the edge of the ocean. She didn't
realise she was smiling.

A shout from the fishermen caused Jill to look up, and she saw
Scotty standing there, staring at her. He held her shoes. Huh. She
must've dropped them.

'What're you looking at?' She smiled up at him.

With one long stride, he stood immediately before her.

'You're beautiful.'

So quietly. Did he really say that?

He dropped her sandals by his feet. Jill stood immobile in the

sand, acutely aware of every sound and movement. Scotty
reached out and caught a wayward strand of hair from her face,
wrapped it around a finger.

Jill stopped breathing. Suddenly she knew exactly what she

wanted. Scott Hutchinson. Now.

'Scotty.' She reached up and wrapped her hands around his

neck, pulled his face down to hers. She closed her eyes, her lips
parted.

Nothing happened.

Her eyes snapped open. Scotty's mouth was a whisper from

hers, his lips curved in a small smile.

'What are you doing?' he said.

'I would've thought that was obvious,' she answered, trying to

pull him still closer.

'You know, Jackson,' his mouth almost touched her own, 'we
could've been doing this every night for the past year.'

'So, we're doing it now. Shh. Too much talking.'

'Except tonight you've been drinking.'

She dropped her hands, stepped backwards. Suddenly freezing,

she wrapped her arms around her body.

'You think I'm drunk?' she said.

'Look, Jill, not drunk, but . . . wait!'

She snatched up her sandals and strode through the sand.

'I don't want it to be an excuse,' he called after her, 'a mistake. I

don't want you to regret this tomorrow and freeze me out. Would
you frigging wait a second – you're going the wrong way!'

What was the right way? Humiliated tears rolled down her
cheeks. She felt ridiculous and so exposed in this dress. She
would never get stuff like this right.
 31
EXTRA POLITE. SHE hated it when they were especially civil to one
another.

For her part, Isobel had to be courteous in order to censor the

screaming shrew who wanted to tear strips from her husband.
How could he go to Cabramatta to look for that psychopath?
What else, she wondered, have you been doing that I don't know
about? Why did you ever hang around that freak in the first
place? Why didn't you kill him when we were at Andy's? Instead,
she asked, 'Can I get you a drink of something, hon?' She'd just
tucked Charlie in for the night.

'No, that's okay, babe,' he said, mid-lift on a shoulder press

using his hand weights. She knew he hated to talk when he was in
the middle of a set. Hence her question right now.

'I'll get something later,' he added, his deltoids distended, a vein

bulging in his neck.

I'm sure you will, she thought. It usually took three reminders
to get Joss to take out the recycling. He'd taken the bottles out
four nights in a row now. The hundred-litre recycling bin was full
of his empties.

At the mirror in their bathroom, she carefully cleansed her face,

pretending not to notice the new creases of worry around her
eyes. She toned and moisturised, then brushed her teeth. Please
God let them catch him, please God let them catch him. A mental
hymn in tune with the rhythm of the electric toothbrush. She
gargled the same song.
 Tidying the bathroom a little, Isobel thought about the night
ahead. She knew she'd find it difficult to sleep – replaying their
interview at the police station, Joss's answers, the warnings of the
detectives. She wondered whether she should take Charlie up to
north Queensland. Probably. But what about Joss? Despite the
fact that he'd managed to open up to the police, could she trust
him to behave rationally down here alone? And she knew he
wouldn't come with her. The inner tussle already tightening her
stomach, she reached for the yellow pills at the back of the
medicine drawer. Left over from minor surgery, the opiates would
get her at least a few hours of dead sleep. She swallowed two
with a handful of water from the tap, grimacing when one stuck
on the way down.

She pulled on shortie pyjamas and climbed into bed. Twenty

minutes later, she was snoring through a magazine on her face.

A hand over her mouth. The blood blasted from her toes to her
crown in the split-second before she recognised Joss's face above
her own. His eyes hard, unrelenting. Telling her: they are here.
No fucking around. It's fight or die.

All without words.

Our baby, his eyes said next. I'm going to get her.

He took his hand from her mouth. Gave her the bat. Remember
the lessons.

With the thought of her baby in that man's hands, the strength
that ran through Isobel's body left her wanting to bite, tear flesh
with her teeth. She positioned herself behind the door. The bat felt
spongy in her hands; she felt she could snap it in two. Already
furious with the fuckers for taking so long to get to her, she
practised seeing the blood spray from a head, wiping it quickly
from her eyes to swing again.

When the massacre had first started, Joss had been careful to step
around the bodies. Even when the mounds at Kibeho had grown
so wide that there was nowhere else to walk than over the dead
and dying, he would try to avoid treading on a hand or a leg on
his way to pull another breathing person out of the pile. By the
end of the third day, however, he marched over dead faces, strode
through brains, stepped straight onto balls. There was no other
way to get around.

Now, Joss moved silently through the darkness of his home,

ignoring the hands grappling at his ankles, moving through the
body parts. His own hand was finally whole again, holding his
knife. He heard it laughing and he smiled back at it, his teeth
flashing in the dark.

I'm coming, Cutter.

Leaning against a counter in Joss's kitchen, Cutter stared at his

diluted reflection in the glass of a cabinet. While he listened to
the quiet movements above him, he allowed himself some time to
think about what he was going to do to Mouse. He couldn't
believe the fucker wouldn't come tonight, that he didn't know his
fate for turning Cutter down.

He selected a toothpick from a tiny bowl on the counter next to

him, and worked at some food caught in his teeth. As usual, when
using a toothpick, he couldn't resist the urge to press the sharp
thing deep into the softest crevice of the gum, the agony
mushrooming a feeling he equated to what love must feel like. He
sucked happily at the metallic tang of his blood.
 Studying the now slimy wooden splinter in his hand, it
occurred to him that he should use the needles on Mouse. Perfect.
He sucked the toothpick dry before placing it on the bench.
Lately, he couldn't get enough of that taste.

He needed to hurry now. He walked into the loungeroom

carrying the twelve-litre container in one hand and the machete in
the other. He slashed a few times at the couch in the centre of the
room and began sloshing the accelerant over the furniture.

Esterhase could see no way out of it. He felt sick, his limbs
rubbery. He'd been pissing his shit out for over a week.
Everything he ate turned to water. And his gut ached. He rubbed
it unconsciously as he stood silently in the upstairs hallway of the
house in Balmain.

Cutter had explained about Joss. Esterhase still felt disbelief.

He hadn't even recognised him when they'd done over that house
in Green Valley. But Joss was only part of the problem. Man, the
whole thing was so fucked up. If he killed Cutter, this prick Joss
still knew too much. And if he didn't do this job with Cutter, the
cunt would completely schiz and he'd be next. Mouse had better
be packing for Vietnam right now, he thought. Cutter had just
smiled when he told him Huynh wouldn't be coming. Esterhase
had nearly shit his pants just looking at him.

He breathed in the dark, his heart hammering. Too many things

could go wrong. Who knew when Mouse would break, or when
Cutter would get them all caught. He had to do this job tonight,
and then he was getting the fuck out of the state. Shit, maybe he'd
even go to New Zealand.

Esterhase stood in the dark thinking about what he had to do

tonight. He bent forward slightly as the fist in his gut squeezed at
his innards.

Isobel had thought it impossible for her heart rate to increase

further until she heard the furtive footsteps stop outside the room.
She'd spent a few moments agonising over the possibility that
Joss could return quietly to the bedroom and she might hit him by
mistake, but she knew now as certainly as if there were no door
between them that the person standing out there was not her
husband.

The corridor outside the double doors was black; the light in
the bedroom with her, slightly brighter. She stared so hard at the
rind of darkness that she thought she was imagining it when the
door finally began to move. Terror wrestled with rage; her senses
focused, and she squeezed the bat harder. Ready.

The scream of a siren split the air and Isobel recognised their
fire alarm a heartbeat before the door flew open and her
nightmare barged in. While the siren shrieked, the dance between
her and the masked man seemed silent, slow.

I'm sorry Joss, she said internally. I let him get closer than a
metre.

Somehow, the man had got hold of the end of the bat. He raised
the knife above his head. Isobel could almost feel the pain in her
shoulder where she imagined it would slice into her. Her
daughter's blue eyes danced in her vision and she sobbed
goodbye. Then, with the strength of a grief beyond anything she
had ever experienced, she drove the bat forward into the chest of
the man in front of her, propelling him three feet across the room.
She felt the movement of his weapon as it fell past her ear. She
considered picking it up, but, bent double, he was already
preparing to move forward again.
 Instead, she went to meet him.

Isobel lifted the bat above her shoulder and kept her eye on the
ball, just as her brothers had taught her. She swung, the bat
slamming into his temple, the thud shuddering up her arms and
into her neck, causing her to bite her tongue.

With the fire alarm sobbing in her ears and blood from her
tongue on her lips, Isobel spoke quietly to the man unconscious in
her bedroom. She ignored the smoke swirling around her feet and
his body.

'You leave my family alone,' she told him. 'You leave us alone.'

He didn't move, but she kept the bat close, and bent down to
him. The fire alarms bawled for attention: it seemed as though
there had never been silence. She was aware of a heat somewhere
behind the doors, but she had to know. Carefully at first, and then
scratching, clawing, she ripped at the balaclava covering the face
in front of her.

The skin at his temple was already beginning to bulge.

Somehow, she knew that his brains were leaking out of a fracture
in his skull. The long dark hair curled into the hollows of his
neck, like snakes nesting comfortably with the spider tattoos.

He had carried the other children through the carnage, crying, just
like this, crooked in his right arm. Joss couldn't hear his
daughter's sobs over the sirens, but he felt them, wet, against his
shoulder. The alarms deafened him, just as the mortars had, but he
was well practised at relying on his other senses. He stayed close
to the wall, moving slowly, ignoring the bodies at his feet – back
from Charlie's room to the bedroom, to Isobel.

The balaclava walked out of the smoke.

 And they faced each other.

He manoeuvred Charlie a little higher. Her legs clung to him,

terrified. Inconsolable at being woken from her sleep by this
noise, she buried her face deeper into his neck. She didn't see the
shock in the masked man's eyes when he saw that his opponent
carried a little girl.

Joss smiled at him. The sight seemed to confound the man

further. The enemy shifted his machete in his hand.

Joss knew somehow, with certainty, that this was not Cutter.
This fact heightened his impatience. He willed the man to act.

The enemy signalled to Joss to raise his hands. Joss walked

forward, quickly, still grinning, watching the other's eyes widen
with anger, disbelief, watching him raise the machete, wave it, a
warning.

Joss kept his left hand pressed tight against his leg until they
stood eye to eye. He watched the other's internal dialogue – this
guy's crazy! Should I do something? He's holding a kid! The
fucking house is on fire!

Joss studied the eyes even more closely when he plunged his
knife into the masked man's diaphragm. As awareness dilated the
enemy's pupils, Joss angled his body sideways a little, turning
Charlie's body towards the wall. The blade of his knife buried in
the other man's gut, Joss felt his opponent's heart beat in his hand.
He stared intimately into the other man's eyes and pulled the knife
upwards.

When he felt the flames climbing the stairs, Joss reclaimed his
knife and wiped it on his leg. Charlie's body now shook with
coughing. Joss's eyes streamed in the smoke.

He walked into his bedroom, heard the mortars falling, and

listened to the howls of the orgiastic Tutsis drunk on the blood of
the Hutus in the camp. He stepped over another body, and looked
around for his wife. His saw the open window and crossed the
room quickly. In the light from the half-moon, he saw that Isobel
waited.

Joss handed their daughter through the window, and climbed

out to join her on the roof.


32
JILL SHUT THE bedroom door, but she imagined she could still hear
the woman rocking out there, back and forth, by the bay window.
It reminded her of a circus tiger pacing its cage – the obsessive
movements of a beast driven mad by captivity. She'd spoken to
many sufferers of schizophrenia, and some told her that the
medications made them feel just like that, imprisoned in a
chemical cage in their mind. She focused on the room in front of
her to distract herself from Joss's mother. Perhaps Mrs Preston-
Jones was fortunate to be oblivious to the trouble her son faced.

Gabriel sat on a tapestry-covered chair at one side of the

queen-sized bed. Joss and Isobel sat on the bed on either side of
their little girl, Charlie, who was asleep, lightly sedated, under the
covers. They all still reeked of burned wood. Images of the
charcoaled bodies from the morgue this morning wafted through
Jill's mind with the scent. Superintendent Last had called Jill just
before dawn from the crime scene, the family's terrace in
Balmain.

'This thing's gone to hell,' he told her over the speakerphone

while she walked through her bedroom, still in darkness,
gathering clothing. 'Your victims, Preston-Jones and Rymill . . .'

'Are they okay?' Jill could hear the fire brigade sirens in the
background.

'. . . are on their way to the Prince Alfred Hospital.' He

obviously hadn't heard her. 'Smoke inhalation, nothing too bad.
Their house burned down.'

'Okay,' said Jill. So what was Last doing there?

'There's a couple of bodies in there, Jill. Preston-Jones admitted

to killing two men who broke into their home tonight. He says it's
our boys – the same men that committed the home invasion at the
Wu property.'

Jill sat on the edge of her bed, raised a hand to her mouth. 'And
is it?' she said.

'Looks like it, Jill. The description fits. The local boys called
me when they got Preston-Jones's story.'

'So what happened?' she asked.

'I haven't yet personally spoken to Preston-Jones. I've been told

that he and his wife escaped with their child by climbing onto the
roof. Neighbours called the fire brigade, but their house burned
out. The Inspector here tells me there was almost certainly some
sort of accelerant used. The fireys couldn't get anywhere near it
until it was all over.'

'Have you seen the bodies?' Jill wanted to know.

'They're on their way out now. The Inspector tells me that

formal identification won't be possible tonight. It smells like a
barbecue out here, Jill.'

She winced. That smell. She knew that many in the emergency
services could not eat pork because of the scent memory. A
burned human body smells just like roast pig. She'd once worked
with a cop in Wollongong who vowed never again to attend a
barbecue after a triple-fatal house fire in Corrimal.
 'I've already spoken with Gabriel,' said Last. 'Sorry to do this to
you, Jill, but I'll need both of you out at Glebe as soon as
possible. I'd like you to meet the truck when it arrives with the
bodies.'

That had been hours ago, Jill thought, and it was still only just
past mid-morning. She and Gabriel had travelled straight from the
morgue to the hospital, but had been told that Joss was back at
Balmain police station and that Isobel and Charlie had come to
this house in Mosman.

Springing Joss from Balmain station had not been easy. The
Inspector had come in early for the show. The Balmain crew
wanted in on the glory. They all knew the story would go global:
Victim kills machete slayer, saves family from burning home!

She and Gabriel had waited until Joss had given his first
recorded interview of the events and then booked him out, the
political powers of the taskforce outweighing the pissed-off
Balmain command. Last wanted Gabriel to do the full
interrogation. They'd yet to decide whether charges would be laid.

Jill looked at Joss, now lying curled around Charlie, and

figured further questioning would have to wait. His eyes were
heavy-lidded and blinked more slowly by the moment. Isobel,
pale-faced, stared at a wall. Shock, thought Jill. It's best to let
these people sleep a while. She caught Gabriel's eye, gestured
with her head to the door. He stood.

'We're going to let you guys rest for a bit,' said Gabriel. Joss
looked up blankly. Isobel didn't move. 'We're going to stay out
here if that's okay with you, Joss?'

Not that you have any choice, Jill thought.

'Of course,' croaked the man from the bed, and coughed. 'And
thank you.'
 Gabriel followed her from the room and closed the door. Jill
bypassed the sitting room, and found a homecare nurse drinking
coffee in the breakfast area off the kitchen. The woman stood
when they entered.

'Please,' said Jill. 'Don't let us bother you.'

The woman picked up her cup and left the room anyway,
glancing back nervously from the doorway.

'Probably all over the news by now,' said Gabriel, walking into
the kitchen.

'Ah, you think?' said Jill.

'Yeah, it would be,' he said, missing her sarcasm. 'She's

probably been watching it all morning.' He nodded at the
doorway the nurse had just exited.

Jill smiled tiredly. 'You making coffee?'

'Yup. Want one?'

'Definitely.' She opened the fridge. 'You think they'd mind if we

fixed ourselves something to eat? I'm starving.'

'Well, we'd be feeding him if we were back at Balmain doing

the interview. What's in there?'

Jill found a Tupperware container filled with shaved ham and

another with finely sliced Swiss cheese. She grabbed a loaf of
bread and a jar of hot English mustard and closed the refrigerator
door. There was a tomato and an avocado in a bowl on a
benchtop.

'Toasted or plain?' she asked him, spotting a sandwich press

near the kettle.

'Might as well go the whole hog.' Gabriel clicked the switch to

turn on the appliance.

They took their food out to a sun-saturated, wrought-iron

outdoor setting in the backyard. Jill moved an overflowing
ashtray from the table, her nose screwed up in distaste.

'So, you reckon we'll have to charge him?' she said, after
several bites of the sandwich.

'Yep,' said Gabriel, chewing.

Jill leaned back in her chair. The sprawling gardens, although

now overgrown, had obviously been professionally maintained at
some stage in the past. The drone of a leaf blower on a
neighbouring property couldn't drown out the manic activity of
bees in the blossoms around her. She licked at a burgeoning cold
sore on her lip. It thrummed under the skin – all that was left of
her cold.

At one o'clock, they decided they could not let Joss and Isobel
sleep any longer. Last had already called twice, wanting to know
if they'd recorded the interview yet. Gabriel set his equipment up
in one of the formal lounges on the lower floor. It was unorthodox
to do the interview outside a police station, but Jill had not
wanted Charlie to be moved around unnecessarily.

By six p.m., Jill was making her way home, exhausted. Joss
and Isobel had given them the same story. They'd woken to a
sound outside their bedroom, and then the fire alarm had sounded.
Joss had gone out with a baseball bat to investigate, and had
encountered a man with a knife. The alarm must have allowed
Joss to approach the offender undetected, and he'd managed to
wrestle the man to the ground, turning his knife against him. He'd
rushed back to the bedroom and found the second offender, caved
his head in with the bat. Isobel had rescued Charlie. Before they
went out to the roof, the couple had removed the mask of the man
in the bedroom, and had identified an Asian male, mid-thirties,
with spider tattoos on his neck.
 As they'd stood out the front of the quiet home in Mosman
before leaving, Jill had noted the stress signals she'd detected
while the couple were speaking. Gabriel had been non-committal.
They were both in shock, and the cues could be confusing at such
times, he pointed out.

Jill wound her windows down while driving towards the ocean.
She let the early evening breeze play through the car, tangling her
hair.

Thank God, she thought, driving past the surf club at Maroubra
Beach. Cutter's dead.

Now he understood what it felt like.

Constable Andrew Montgomery sat dripping from his shower

in the small gym beneath Liverpool police station. He towelled
off the top half of his body and reached for his mobile, tried
Chloe's number again. If he got this many missed call messages
from a girl this early in a relationship, it set off a wacko alarm,
and he began putting as much space between him and her as
possible. Problem was, he'd never felt this way about a girl before
Chloe, and now he kind of understood the compulsion to ring
again and again.

Nothing. No answer.

He stood from the bench and finished drying himself, made his
way to his locker and reached for his uniform. He'd finished half
of his double shift, and had another hour's break before signing
back on for the nightshift. Most of his mates were pissed off with
the extended hours. Ordinarily, Andrew would have been more
than happy – the overtime pay got him closer to his US–Canada
skiing holiday. Two years' planning and saving, the trip had been
the first thing on his mind every morning until he'd met Chloe
Farrell. He smiled at himself in the mirror, straightening his
collar, thinking of her.

The smile faltered. He wondered again why she hadn't called.

He knew he wanted to see her every day, and he thought she'd felt
the same. He'd let Sunday pass, certain each call he received
would be from her. He'd never waited for a call from a girl before
and he somehow liked the anxious anticipation of having to wait
for something he really wanted. By Monday morning, though, he
was over the game and ready to concede defeat. He called her.
He'd been trying every couple of hours since, and now here he
was, Tuesday night. No word.

All of the possible explanations sucked. He couldn't figure out

whether it would hurt more that she just didn't care enough to
have returned the call, or whether she'd got what she wanted from
him for now and didn't need him at the moment. Actually, that
would be worse, he thought – that Chloe had deliberately targeted
him only to glean some information on the home invasion case.

He took his shoes over to the bench again and sat, leaned his
face into his hands and rubbed at his temples. He felt stupid for
giving her the little information he had; he'd never done anything
like that before. He mentally chewed through their conversations
again. All he'd really told her was that there'd been an apparently
important anonymous phone call and that the caller had identified
someone called Henry. It had just been a tease. Nothing she could
actually use – just some-thing to attract her interest, make those
eyes light up. She couldn't actually do anything with those details,
could she? He'd scanned the news the last couple of days and
there was no sign that she'd reported the scraps of information.

Another possibility for Chloe's silence nagged at him and again

he pushed it away as ridiculous. Chloe couldn't actually have used
that information to try to find Henry herself, could she? I mean,
we couldn't even find Nguyen, he reasoned with himself. How
would she have had a hope when she didn't know his address or
even his surname?

Andrew Montgomery decided he'd sign on early. He grabbed

his holster and notebook from his locker and made his way
towards the stairs. At the doorway, he suddenly paused and
reached into his top pocket.

He chewed at the skin around his thumb and pressed the phone
against his ear.
 33
JILL TOOK THE call while dressing for work. 'Tonight?' she said
into the phone. 'Why tonight?'

'Your sister's going away on another shoot,' her mother replied.

'As usual, she waited until the last minute to tell us. She's going to
Italy this time and thinks it may be one of the last big overseas
shoots she does. She thinks they're about to send her out to
pasture.' Jill knew Cassie was paranoid about her age: thought she
was lucky to still be modelling at thirty.

'Okay, I guess I can come,' said Jill, holding the handset under
her chin and trying to towel off at the same time. 'Where are we
going?'

'East Ocean in Chinatown.'

'Yum. That's a bit a hike for you guys, isn't it?'

'Actually, it's quite exciting. You'll never believe what your

father's done now.'

'What?' asked Jill. Her father wasn't big on spontaneity or

surprises.

'He's booked us a suite at the casino. We're going there after

dinner.'

'Wow. What's the occasion?' Jill nervously ran through a

checklist of anniversary dates and birthdays – nothing she could
think of.
 'No reason. Can you believe it? Last night I told him about the
dinner plans and he said he'd arrange for us to stay in the city.'
Frances sounded thrilled.

Jill smiled widely. It was great to see her parents relaxing a

little. Even though she'd been only twelve, and traumatised, when
she had returned home after the abduction, she had recognised the
changes in her parents. There had been times early on when it
seemed they went weeks without even speaking to one another.
Sitting on her bed now, holding the phone, Jill felt another subtle
adjustment in her tension levels, as if another piece of ice had
sloughed away from the glacier that had been her heart for so
many years. Her family seemed to be healing, finally.

'That's great, Ma. So, who's coming?'

'Tim and Robyn, Avery and Lily.' Jill hadn't seen her brother
and his family for a month or so, and she was pleased to hear
their names. 'Cassie, of course,' her mum continued, 'and she's
bringing her new friend. They've been seeing each other for quite
a while, apparently, so that should be interesting.'

After the call, Jill hurriedly finished getting dressed for work.
She figured that the pressure on the case would lessen with the
news that two of the offenders were dead. Police and community
relief would be massive when they announced that one of the
deceased was the ringleader – Cutter. Still, she didn't want to be
late to the taskforce meeting today. There could be word back
from the coroner, more details from the crime scene, or word on
whether Joss would have to face formal charges. And there were
still two offenders in the wind.

Despite the remaining heavy workload, she wondered whether

the taskforce would be dismantled now that Henry Nguyen had
been killed. As soon as the 'sexiness' of a murderer was taken out
of the equation, media interest and political pressure, in that
order, would diminish, and competing workloads from other
cases would begin to pull the taskforce apart. She wondered how
she felt about that. She had expected to be delighted and relieved;
she'd been thinking she would put in for a transfer closer to home,
even try to get back to Maroubra, not that that would be easy. On
the other hand, she had been enjoying working with Lawrence
Last. She wondered whether he would request her help on another
case.

And then there was Gabriel. So different to Scotty. Jill wasn't

sure exactly how she felt about their partnership coming to an
end, but suddenly the morning didn't seem quite so bright.

She gathered up her handbag and briefcase, and left for work.

At just after seven p.m. Jill left the departmental car undercover
in a parking station on George Street and walked down to
Chinatown. She pulled a ruffled black cardigan over her white
shirt as she walked. The evenings were still a little cool,
especially in the city. She waited at the lights on Hay Street while
other pedestrians walked straight in front of cars, ignoring the
horns and expletives of motorists still trying to get home. She
shook her head as two giggling girls, both on mobiles, caused a
dark Mercedes to slam on the brakes. She hated driving through
this intersection.

As she climbed the stairs to the restaurant, the noise from the
street gave way to Japanese harp music. She spotted her family
sitting at a circular table near the window overlooking the
streetlights below. Spicy scents followed her as she walked past a
trickling fountain and candlelit tables to reach them.

'Hi everyone,' she said, smiling.

Jill's mum rose to give her a hug and four-year-old Lily leapt
from her seat before her mum, Robyn, could stop her.
 'You're sitting here, Aunty Jill! Mum, you said she would sit
here.'

'Yes, Lily, it's okay, settle down now.'

Jill made her way around the table; her sister, Cassie, stood
when she reached her.

'Hey, big sis,' she said, kissing Jill on both cheeks. Cassie's lips
were berry-red with wine, her cheeks flushed.

'Hey, Cass,' Jill replied, wishing she'd had time to change out of
her work clothes. Cassie wore black, a sheath of slinky fabric
falling to the floor, leaving her arms and shoulders bare. A heavy
silver band circled her throat. She looked beautiful, but very thin.

'Jill, this is Aidan,' said Cassie, and the man next to her stood
and offered his hand. He wore a casually crumpled suit, his shirt
open at the throat. He brushed a long dark fringe from his eyes
and smiled at her.

'Pop ordered lobster,' called Avery, her nephew, from across the
table, waving a menu. Avery sat next to her father, who was
wearing his good suit. 'It says on here "market prices", but the
waiter told us they're a hundred bucks each and Pop ordered two!'

Jill's father told Avery to keep his voice down, but everyone
smiled.

A waiter came past with wine, water and juice for the table and
asked Jill whether she'd like to order a drink.

'I'll be fine with what's here for the moment, thanks,' she told
him, watching Cassie helping herself to the wine before the
waiter could pour it for her.

The plates seemed to multiply on the table, bowl after bowl of

sticky, steaming food. Jill tried dishes she'd never tasted before –
abalone, sea-urchin roe – and others, some of which she wasn't
certain she wanted to know the main ingredients.

'Dad, what's got into you?' laughed Jill, selecting a piece of

marinated tofu with her chopsticks. 'You've never ordered like
this before.'

'No. Aidan helped with the ordering tonight,' her father stated,
staring dubiously at a jellied dish in front of him. Aidan and
Cassie laughed loudly together, the area around Cassie's plate
clear of the mess that surrounded everyone else's. The waiter
arrived with another bottle of wine and took it straight to their
side of the table. Jill's mother caught her eye.

'How was it out there today, darling?' Frances asked.

'Not bad. Pretty good, actually. Liverpool's kind of growing on

me.'

'Maybe that's because the case is nearly over,' her mum said.
'Does it still look as though it'll be wrapped up soon?'

'Yeah, it looks that way,' said Jill.

Her mother smiled. 'Do you think they'll send you back to
Maroubra?'

'I doubt it,' Jill answered. 'But they could send me anywhere.'
Her mobile was ringing. Jill reached for her handbag. 'Sorry, ma,
just hang on a second.'

'Jackson,' she said into the phone.

It was Gabriel.

'Sorry to interrupt your evening, Jill,' he said. 'I just got off the
phone with Last. The coroner's got a report on the bodies. He
wants us to go over to Glebe and get a wrap-up.'

'Tonight?' Jill sighed, looking around the table at her family.

Her mother watched her.

'Yep. The pressure's on to let the public know that Nguyen's

dead. They want it released to the media before the morning.'

'Okay. I'm out to dinner with my family. I'll be over there in

half an hour.'

'Don't hurry too much, Jill. The coroner's still tying everything
up. Forensics are faxing over some findings to add to his report.'

'I'll see you when I get there, then.'

She hung up.

Frances Jackson was already standing. Jill didn't think it would

be long before this party broke up altogether anyway. Her father
had been frowning for the past fifteen minutes. Cassie and
Aidan's conversation was garnering them stares and raised
eyebrows from nearby tables; they laughed and argued, oblivious.

She made her apologies and left the restaurant.

Jill made it to Glebe in fifteen minutes, parking out the front of

the building on Parramatta Road. She reattached her gunbelt and
showed her badge to gain entry to the Coroner's Court. At the
office of the state coroner, David Mobbs, she gave her name,
asking the PA if he was available. There was no sign yet of
Gabriel.

'I'm sorry, Sergeant Jackson. He's not ready for you yet,' the
woman said from behind a glass partition. Her face was haggard,
her hair a mess. Jill guessed they would've been working around
the clock since the bodies came in early on Tuesday morning. 'If
you just hang on a moment, I'll try to get some idea of the wait.'
 The woman made a brief phone call and turned back towards
Jill.

'Going to be up to an hour, I'm afraid,' she said.

Jill thanked her and made her way back to the front of the
building. A departmental vehicle pulled in behind hers, and she
walked out to meet Gabriel.

'Maybe another hour,' she said to him by way of greeting. 'Want

to go get a coffee? It stinks in there.'

They walked around the corner and into a side street with a
brightly lit café. They were the sole customers, and the pimply
waiter alternated between watching them and the plasma screen
behind the counter showing a Bollywood movie. After ordering,
Jill moved to a Formica table at the back of the room, and they
took a seat under glaring fluorescent lights. The coffee was barely
passable.

'So, do you still reckon Joss will be charged?' said Jill.

'Probably,' said Gabriel. 'But the charges will likely be dropped

before it gets to court.'

'That's what I think,' said Jill. 'When all the evidence comes
through linking the men in the house to the home invasion gang,
it'll be ruled self-defence, and he'll get off.' She sipped the coffee
slowly; it may as well have been warm water. She grimaced. 'I
don't think anything will come of the incident with the death of
his childhood friend, either, do you?'

'Nah,' said Gabriel. 'Too long ago, extenuating circumstances –

the kid killed was involved in the robbery of his father's shop.'

'Joss has been worried about that for a long time.'

'Mmm. I've actually been wondering whether this boy Fuzzy –

Carl Waterman – was Cutter's first kill.'
 'I know. The thought's crossed my mind as well. I guess we'll
never know now.' She pushed the cup away from her and leaned
back in the uncomfortable seat. 'Bizarre, the way Joss's life
caught up with him, isn't it?' she said. 'It's like you try to push
away parts of yourself that you don't want to know anymore, but
they always come back to be dealt with.'

'There's one part of his childhood that won't be coming back for
more.'

'Cutter,' she said.

'Uh huh.'

She was quiet for a moment, and then found herself saying,
'Gabriel, I really appreciated you opening up the other day about
your wife and your past.' She suddenly wanted him to know this.
It could be that they would be separated by work very soon. 'In
fact,' she said, 'I've really enjoyed working with you over the last
two weeks. I've learned a lot.'

'Thanks. We've had fun.'

Her brow wrinkled a little. She didn't know whether she'd

really describe the experience that way, but she kept going.

'I was terrified about coming out to Liverpool, to be honest,'

she said. 'I have a hard time getting to know new people. You
made it easy.'

'It was easy because we're both in the same boat,' he said.
'People usually find me weird.'

'So I'm weird? Thanks! '

'Yep, a bit.'

'Anyway,' Jill shook her head and laughed. 'We were talking
about the past never really staying buried, and I guess I've also
been through some things that make it hard for me to open up.'
She coughed; her cheeks felt hot under the lights. Such
conversations left her feeling as though she was walking through
shadowy waters over rolling logs. She feared that at any moment
she'd dislocate a knee or step into a sinkhole and never emerge
again. 'Um, yeah,' she said, 'I just thought I'd say that I
appreciated you being so open and easy to get along with.' There,
she thought. That would do.

'You said that,' he said. 'So. What'd you go through that makes
it hard for you to open up?'

Just like that. He just came out and asked things. God! She
swallowed. Thought about what to say. Stared at him, then at the
table. Unrolled the wax strip around the top edge of her cardboard
coffee cup. This was when her words were going to fail her. She
couldn't think of a thing to say. He waited, patiently.

'I got kidnapped when I was twelve,' she said. Fuck.

He sat quietly, attentive, his face neutral. Maybe it was that, she
thought later. No horror or great concern, no reaching over the
table to touch or comfort her. No expressions of anger and
indignation about how someone could do that to a child. She
found herself speaking again, in a rush.

'I was at a sports carnival,' she said. 'I was hanging out at the
back fence with my two best friends. They were smoking. I was
gonna try it. First time. There was a gap in the fence. It was
surrounded by trees. We just slipped through.' She took a sip from
her ruined cup. It was empty, but this barely registered.

'There was a guy,' she continued. 'I didn't see anything. I was
coming through the gap in the fence backwards and I just got
grabbed and lifted up. They put something over my head. I started
screaming. I heard my friends screaming too, but he ran with me
back to the car. He threw me in and the car drove off. There was
another one driving.'
 Jill stared unseeingly at the countertop. She was back in the
car.

'He tied the thing tighter around my head and then he put his
feet on me. He must've put me on the floor of the car. They had
me three days, although when I got back, I thought I'd been gone,
like, two weeks or something. They kept me in a basement. I was
blindfolded. Alone, when they weren't with me.'

Well not really alone. Jill thought briefly about the white-eyed
girl – a dissociated part of herself that had separated from her
consciousness when the pain and fear had become unbearable.
'They burned me,' she said in a small voice. 'Raped me. I didn't
even know what sex was.' Her voice trailed off.

'They dropped me off at a school oval,' she continued, finally,

in a tiny voice. 'I was naked. Still blindfolded. I often wonder
who found me, and if they're okay now. I can't remember any of
that last bit. There are lots of blanks.' She looked up at him. 'I
suppose I should be grateful for that.' She laughed, harshly. 'Stuff
still comes back in nightmares, though,' she said. 'I guess that's
what I meant when I said the past keeps coming back.'

'That's fucked,' he said. 'Sorry.' Then, 'Did they catch them?'

'Nup. Not then,' she said. 'The younger one killed the older one
when he got senile and started telling anyone who would listen
about the sick shit they used to do to kids. They were part of an
organised ring.'

And I killed the other one six months ago. She thought it, but
didn't speak the words. The knowledge registered feelings of
relief, satisfaction, horror. She stared at her hands.

Jill's mobile sounded, and she fumbled reaching for it.

'Jackson,' she said; then, 'Okay. Be right over.' She put the
phone back in her jacket pocket. Gabriel was already standing.
 'They're ready?' he asked.

'Yep.' She found her legs wobbly when she stood. 'Forensics
have faxed over a copy of their findings to Mobbs. His report's
being printed now.'

Fifteen minutes later, Jill's passenger door wasn't yet shut when
Gabriel hooked a U-turn in front of the traffic on Parramatta
Road. Tyres shrieked. She held on. He hit the siren.

'It wasn't him.' Jill said it again, third time.

'He's going to go and get them, Jill. Try to get them on the
phone.'

The coroner's report had revealed that the burned bodies in the
home of Joss Preston-Jones and Isobel Rymill belonged to two
men named Simon Esterhase and Guo Qi Xu, AKA Tatts. Each
had a substantial criminal record. They were both known
associates of Henry Nguyen. Cutter.

A comparison of the organic material found at the Rice and

Capitol Hill crime scenes had specifically ruled out that Nguyen
was one of the dead men.

The phone rang unanswered at the Mosman residence.

 34
PERFECT TIMING AS usual, Mother, thought Joss, driving through
the night back to Mosman from Rozelle Hospital. He'd made the
trip countless times throughout his adolescence – his grandfather
doing the driving in the early days, then his grandmother. Finally,
before leaving for the army, he would use the trip as practice for
his driver's licence. His mother had made the trip many more
times without them, in an ambulance, after hours of screaming
obscenities, often naked, sometimes in front of their affronted
North Shore neighbours.

Tonight, Joss's wife and child made the trip with him. He
figured that his family's arrival and the disruption to his mother's
routine had caused her fragile chemical stability to crumble yet
again.

He stole a glance at Isobel's pale profile, and gripped the

steering wheel tighter. It wasn't as though their presence in the
Mosman house could have disturbed his mother too terribly.
Isobel had said barely anything since they had climbed from the
roof of their burning home on Monday night, two days ago. Even
Charlie was quiet, listless.

Thinking back to that night, Joss could almost smell the smoke
in his daughter's hair. When he'd handed Charlie to Isobel on the
roof, the night air and the urgency of the situation had roused his
sensibilities. Leaving Isobel clutching a wide-eyed and
shuddering Charlie, he had worked quickly, the sound of the
flames now audible over the noise of their smoke alarm. He had
lowered the ladder to the ground and gone back for Charlie. He
had prised his daughter from his wife's grip at the edge of the
roof, and again clinging to her with one arm, had instructed Isobel
to follow him. On the ground safely, they walked in single file
towards the front of the house. A huddle of neighbours now stood
in the street, mobile phones to their ears, panic painted on their
faces in the streetlights.

Joss had pulled his blank-faced wife into the shadows near the
Wilkinson's terrace next door, motioning her to squat with him
behind the large council wheelie bins. Urgently, he'd asked Isobel
what had happened when he'd left the room, and she had
recounted, as dry and factual as a police officer testifying in court,
what had happened in the bedroom. His relief when she had
described the dead man's features had brought him to sobs. But
the emotion behind the tears quickly gave way to grief for his
wife. She had that night become a member of a terrible club, and
it was his fault. He knew too well that killing another human
being left a terrible legacy.

When he'd heard emergency services approaching their street,

Joss had made Isobel narrate, three times, an alternative story:
that he had killed both men in the house. When the details of her
account were consistent, he had taken her hand and Charlie's, and
walked with them through the smoke and out into the street.

Now, in the driver's seat, Joss steered with one hand; the other
rubbed at his forehead. Either Isobel would come to believe the
tale he'd constructed that night or she wouldn't. Regardless, the
weight of the repression, or the horror of the truth, would burden
her. His poisoned past had infected his innocent girls. He could
never forgive himself. They'd probably have a better life without
him.

A gentle rain smeared the world outside the car. Joss wished
they could stay in here forever, that he could just drive with his
family to another place, another time, where none of this had
happened, and his girls were shiny and smiling again. He glanced
into the rear-view mirror. The shoosh of the tyres on the night-wet
road had lulled Charlie into a fitful sleep. Isobel's forehead rested
on the passenger window, her breath a frosty ghost on the glass.
What did she see out there with that thousand-mile stare, he
wondered.

Joss accelerated carefully. He hunched forward over the wheel,

staring intently through the drizzle. Nearly there. He had to get
back to the house in Mosman. The ghouls in his mind were
impatient, and the bourbon was waiting.

It's taking forever to get there, thought Jill.

Night roadworks had snarled the traffic, and Gabe kept the
siren on until they hit Mosman.

When they finally arrived, Jill climbed carefully out of the car.
The dirt-tang of the rain on the road filled her nostrils, all senses
acute. Joss's phone had rung out five times on the trip over, and
her neck was taut with tension. If Cutter was coming after this
family, she thought, it could well be tonight. She and Gabriel had
been out here until late last night finalising the statements. The
police presence would've kept him away yesterday. In the car,
speeding over here, Jill had tried to reason that it was more likely
that Nguyen had done a runner – figured his luck had run out and
gone to ground. But the intensity of Gabriel next to her as he
negotiated the vehicle through the city traffic had chased the
thought from her mind.

Gabriel believed Cutter was coming here.

She took several deep breaths to flood her bloodstream with

oxygen and moved around the car to his side.

The mansion squatted in the darkness. If there was any moon,

tonight it was obscured by the mist that hung above them. The
drizzle had stopped for now, but it draped, poised, waiting to fall.
 Jill led Gabriel in through the heavy iron gates, her radio in
hand. The overgrown vegetation around them shifted and
breathed in the dark; the garden of a madwoman. There were
hiding spots everywhere, and Jill kept her other hand near her
gun. The house ahead lay completely silent, but she'd expected
that. There were obviously no nursing staff on tonight. The nurse,
or Joss or Isobel, would've answered the phone if they were in
there. If they'd been able to. She swallowed the thought, and
moved closer to the house.

On the threshold of the ornate entryway, Gabriel touched her

elbow, pointed with two fingers to his eyes, and then to the right
of the house. Jill nodded and walked left; Gabriel moved to the
right. She debated whether to call for backup. She'd wait, she
decided, until they'd determined whether the perimeter was
secure. She hooked her radio back onto her gunbelt, took her gun
from its holster and unclipped her torch.

Most of the gravel path that must've once surrounded the house
had been reclaimed by the garden; the sound of her footfalls was
absorbed by wet vegetation. Jill smelled rot with each step.

She'd not reached the back of the sprawling house when her
tread crunched. Broken glass glinted at her feet in the torchlight.
She directed the beam upwards. The small white-framed window
probably opened onto a laundry or small study; the glass had been
shattered, and the window hung ajar.

Jill signalled Gabriel's radio with her own, and stepped away
from the window, into the grass. She made a quiet call for police
assistance and waited for her partner. She watched him jog
silently from around the back of the building.

'I've called for backup,' she whispered, playing the torch beam
over the window and back down to the glass below to show him
what she'd found.
 He nodded.

It was not difficult to gain a toehold in the red brick wall for
the one step-up needed to reach the window. The frame was clear
of glass. Jill pulled herself in after Gabriel. As she'd guessed, the
room was a laundry. A tiny one. These houses were all designed
by men, Jill couldn't help but think, in the days when a male
would never wash a shirt or cook a meal. She and Gabriel stood
face to face in the darkness. Their breathing was the only sound
she could hear.

'We should do this together,' he whispered.

'No time,' she said. The blood-spattered walls from the house in
Capitol Hill filled her vision, and she felt compelled to move
quickly. What if he's in here? What if they're still alive?

She couldn't decide whether the look Gabriel gave her was of
relief or doubt, but he nodded, and they moved out of the room.

'I'll take downstairs,' he whispered.

Jill kept her back to the wall as she made her way to the grand
staircase in the centre of the loungeroom. Cutter had no firearm
offences on his sheet, but that meant nothing – he had access to
the nine guns from the Capitol Hill robbery. She ran lightly up the
stairs with her heart in her mouth, bolted to the cover of a wall
and squatted in a crouch.

That window could've been broken ages ago, she told herself,
as she slid along the cold plaster wall. No one really looked after
this place. She used the reasoning to temper the panic that always
built when she couldn't see anything.

The hallway that led away from the stairs was windowless, and
the darkness was built of shadows and blacker voids behind them
that could conceal anything.

They'd kept her blindfolded in the basement when she was

twelve, and she knew that terror grew so quickly in the absence of
light that it could push all vestiges of sanity from the mind. She
waited for the numbness to kick in. The sensor that tripped when
she experienced any emotion too strongly should have engaged
by now. But her anxiety continued to climb.

Jill decided to take control of her feelings by tuning in

carefully to all of her other senses. The house creaked and
moaned in the quiet way that old houses complained as they aged.

She steeled herself to enter the doorway on her left. The master
bedroom, she remembered, pushing the door backwards with her
left hand and then following her gun into the room. She swept
through quickly, back flat against the walls when possible,
listening for breathing or movement in the dark. Nothing.

Back in the hallway, Jill froze. There. A sound, behind her.

Footsteps. She squatted, and then crawled back towards the noise.
Peering over the balustrade of the balcony, she spotted Gabriel
patrolling. She let go of her breath. He'd heard her too, and
signalled. She moved back into the hallway, and made her way
into the second room. A bathroom. Tiny. She checked the possible
hiding places and made her way to the third room along the
hallway. Joss's room, she remembered, as she pushed the door
back.

Jill heard the woof of the knife as it sliced through the

darkness, but didn't feel it when it bit into her gun hand. Pain or
not, her gun clattered to the ground, and she screamed into the
mask in front of her. Panic detonated behind her eyes as she
struggled to get her left hand up to strike, but he had the
momentum and he used it to pull her to him, towards the knife.
When she stopped screaming to breathe, she thought she heard
him giggle. She pulled backwards with everything she had, but he
had hold of her jacket.

Every millisecond of the next few moments seemed to register.

She saw his eyes widen and at the same instant, she detected
movement behind her. He heaved her towards him with the force
that still reverberated from his original strike, and smacked his
forearm across her throat.

Gabriel stood in the doorway. His gun pointed at them.

Cutter chortled in her ear and she felt his arms and chest tense
to pull the machete sideways, to slice her throat. She absorbed his
madness, and the physical power that accompanied it, through the
skin of his arm on her neck.

Gabriel's eyes met hers.

Yes, she told him, without a word.

Then there was just white. No sound.

The blast blew them backwards and Jill flew through the air
with Cutter, landing merged with him on the floor at the base of
the bed. Her cheek rested against his neck. Above his nose was
purple-red, wet. His right eye and the top of his skull were
pulverised.

Her mouth filled with the smell of singed wool, cordite, and
vaporised blood.

Jill's hearing returned in stutters. She listened to Cutter living

and dying with each breath. The death rattle.

She couldn't move. She lay there breathing in this man's soul as
it left his body. She felt close to him, part of him, dying there with
him. Her mouth on his neck, she whispered into the blood. Not
long now, she told him.

But Cutter first had something to say.

Because they made no sense, and she'd never been certain that
she had actually heard them, Jill had never repeated the words to
anyone.
 'Coming, Grandfather.'

'Thanks,' Jill managed in the back of the ambulance.

'Sorry,' said Gabriel.

She couldn't hear him, couldn't hear anything at the moment

actually, as the deafness had returned, but she'd seen him mouth
the word. She nodded and tried to touch her face. The medical
attendant pushed her hand away. The bullet had been so close that
her cheek was seared. The ambo sprayed something cold on her
skin that felt wonderful.

'Tell me you're a great shot,' she said to Gabriel. She couldn't

hear herself. She was probably shouting.

He smiled at her, reached forward and gently smoothed her

fringe from her forehead.

'I'm a great shot,' she saw him say.

Gabriel's hand continued down the length of her hair and onto
her shoulder, then stopped. Emotions scudded across his dark
eyes like a storm across a night sky. She saw grief, guilt, hope. A
question.

She reached up and found his hand, held it tight and closed her
eyes. She rested her injured hand on her chest.

Underneath, the butterfly pendant seemed to tremble against

her heart.
 35
OCCASIONALLY CHLOE HEARD someone sobbing. Felt a little sorry
for the girl. At least, it sounded like a girl. You never can tell, she
thought sleepily, it sounds kinda muffled. Hands bound behind
her back, ankles shackled to the bolt in the brick wall, Chloe
Farrell no longer recognised the moans as her own. The gag in
her mouth had long ago dried her saliva; her throat rasped raw
from screaming through the cloth, but this discomfort and the
spasms from her contorted muscles now failed to register. The
thirst and pain had pushed her to an altered state of
consciousness, a nowhere land, which she accepted, matter-of-
factly, as the waiting room for death. After four nights bound and
gagged on the floor in Cutter's subterranean room, squashed
between his bed and a wardrobe, Chloe was comfortable in the
silent softness of her mind.

She was careful, however, to stay away from the edges of this
dreamlike state. If she let her mind wander too freely it found the
memories – the consciousness of what had happened to her. The
images stabbed into the protective bubble surrounding her psyche
and filled it with blood.

When the memory played, the recording didn't stop until it had
gone right through. Forced to watch it all, what the man had done
to his stomach on the bed above her, Chloe had at first tried
screaming to herself to run instead of entering the room with
Henry Nguyen. Now, she just waited until the memory played out
and the muffled nothingness returned.

He'd be back, he had told her, four nights ago.

 On the floor, bound to the double-brick wall, the girl
whimpered and sobbed. In her mind, far away, Chloe Farrell
tuned out the sound and waited to die.

Maryana Miceh couldn't figure out why Mummy had been crying
all morning. Probably Daddy said something mean again, she
thought. She and Uncle Ken had been watching the boring news
all morning. Maryana hadn't even been allowed to watch Hi-5.
She had thought that her mum would have liked watching Hi-5
better, because the news just made her cry harder. When she
asked Uncle Ken what was wrong, he told her everything was
going to be fine, and picked her up and squashed her in a hug.
She told him to put her down because his whiskers were scratchy.

When she'd tried to see what they were so interested in on

television, Uncle Ken had led her away. Then he had scrooched
down to her height and put his hands on her shoulders. He went
all serious and she had wanted to smack him because he looked
like he was going to cry too. Uncle Ken never cried and he
shouldn't start now, while Mummy was so upset. But all he told
her was that Henry wouldn't be renting with them any more.
Maryana had felt mean and happy at the same time, because she
really didn't like Henry. She knew that was un-Christian, because
he had always been nice to her and because he had a sore
stomach, but she couldn't help it, and she had smiled. Then it had
occurred to her that this was probably a Bad Thing. Probably
that's why Mummy keeps crying, she thought. We need the
money from the rent.

Maryana wondered what would happen to Henry's room now.

Maybe she and Eva could use it for playing again. She had been
nowhere near the room since she'd seen that man's sore tummy.
Now, knowing he wasn't coming back, she ran down into the
backyard and squinted through the crack in the wall. Henry had
left all his stuff in there. Maybe he didn't want it anymore. That
wardrobe looked pretty old. Kneeling on the grass peering in,
Maryana thought about the money. Maybe we could have a fete
like they did at school last month, she thought. She had heard Mrs
Marshall telling Mr Jacoby that they'd made shitloads. That
sounded like a lot.

Maryana stood back up. It was hot today. Probably soon they'd
be allowed to go swimming.

What was that? She jumped at the sound, dropping back to her
knees in the grass.

Again!

Someone's crying in there!

Maryana Miceh ran as fast as she could up to the kitchen, and

she could run pretty fast. She'd beaten Jasmine Hardcastle in
cross-country last week.
 Epilogue
SWEAT STUNG HIS eyes and he used the hand holding his knife to
wipe his brow. The scrub here was the thickest he'd encountered,
and he hacked at some tangled vines draped like a monstrous
spider's web between two trees, blocking his path. Joss had come
at this clearing from a different approach yesterday. But he knew
it was around here, somewhere.

Shirtless, he tucked his knife back into the equipment belt

slung low around his hips. For the tenth time in as many minutes,
he pushed dirty blond hair out of his eyes. Maybe he should cut it
all off again, he thought.

Just when he was beginning to worry that he'd gone completely

off course, Joss found the area he'd been searching for and pulled
an axe from his belt. He set to work chopping branches from the
fallen tree, the timber dry and covered in papery bark, perfect for
firewood.

He didn't stop until there was way too much to carry back. He
doubled over, hands on hips, and caught his breath, staring at the
sandy soil around his feet; he studied a rivulet of sweat slipping
over an ankle and into his sneaker. Fitter than he'd been in a long
while, he recovered quickly and straightened, then set to
gathering all the wood he could carry into a sling he'd brought for
the purpose.

Striding from the scrub that bordered the isolated beach, Joss
was forced to squeeze his eyes tight when the brilliance
threatened to overload his senses. He opened them again,
blinking, and made his way towards the camp. The colours were
amazing. The perfect white of the sand and impossible turquoise
of the ocean ahead; the honey-tan of Charlie, now five, shovelling
sand into her little yellow bucket; and the molten-red of his wife's
bikini. She lifted her huge sunglasses and winked at him, a small
smile on her lips.

Once he'd stacked the firewood near the tent and the embers of
last night's campfire, he kicked off his shoes and walked back
through powdered sand. He dropped onto his towel next to his
family, and grabbed the bottle of water next to Isobel. As he
drank, an image of cold beer flicked up, a mental advertisement,
but he quickly changed the channel. He leaned back in the sun,
his mind again shifting through scenes of life before today.

There was no way he'd ever have consented to go to rehab until

he'd reached the point where he simply had no resistance left.
That night, pulling up behind the detective's vehicle at the house
in Mosman two minutes before the troops arrived, he'd left Isobel
and Charlie in the car. Finding Cutter missing part of his head on
the floor of his old bedroom was just too much.

That had been seven months ago. He'd spent three of them in
an inpatient unit with around thirty other thirsty vets. He'd left
some new friends and old habits at the hospital, along with a
couple of the worst memories. He'd also left the person he'd
become closer to than anyone else in his life, other than the two
people with whom he now shared the beach. Carrie, his therapist.
In her office at the hospital, she'd done combat duty with him,
walked through his memories, exploring, in exhaustive detail, the
experiences he feared had almost pushed him into the madlands
his poor mother had inhabited.

Carrie had been at his mum's funeral last month, Isobel holding
onto her tearfully before they left. Isobel and Carrie had also done
a tour of duty together, during individual and family therapy
sessions.

He'd left the bill for the treatment to Veterans' Affairs.

 Not that money was an issue now really. He could be retired
today if he felt like it. He'd never have believed the house in
Mosman would have sold for so much.

But taking the winter off to holiday in the Top End would do
fine. He smiled lazily, watching Charlie scratch an itch on her
pink zinc-covered nose, the action sticking sand to her face. She
scratched again, and more sand smudged into the pink cream.

She'd start school next year, they'd decided. And he'd go back
to the insurance company. As much time as you need, the partners
had insisted, sending a monthly bouquet of flowers out to him at
the hospital. He'd given them to the nurses before the other guys
had seen them.

Isobel told him that his work colleagues had telephoned her
and offered their support, expressing their shock when they'd
learned he'd served the country in Rwanda. Great, he'd thought
more than once since then; they were the type of guys who'd want
war stories every lunchtime, but wouldn't eat with him again if he
told them the real deal.

Charlie stood from her sandcastles and moved around to the

left side of his chair; she carried her bucket with her everywhere.
Her nose was now completely covered in pink sand, and she
swiped a tentative finger at it every couple of moments, gluing on
some more.

'Um, do you want to go for a swim, Daddy?' she said. 'I'm hot.'

'Yep. Me too,' he smiled at her. 'But maybe you should go and

show your mum your face before we go swimming. You've gotta
do something about your nose.'

She gave him a look of quiet indignation, then half-dragged

and half-rolled herself across his stomach, the most direct route to
her mother.
 'Mummy,' she said, standing proudly, pot-bellied in her yellow
bikini, her bucket by her side, 'Could you please fix my nose? I'm
not decent.'
Dr Leah Giarratano has had a long career as a clinical
psychologist. An expert in psychological trauma, sex offences
and psychopathology, she has had many years' experience
working with victims and psychopaths. She has worked in
psychiatric hospitals, with the Australian Defence Force, and in
corrective services with offenders who suffer severe personality
disorders. She has assessed and treated survivors of just about
every imaginable psychological trauma, including hostages; war
veterans; rape, assault, and accident victims; and has worked with
police, fire and ambulance officers.