‘I see.’
‘You know any ex-cons?’
‘Just current ones.’ Whitt dragged himself to his feet. ‘I didn’t catch your name.’
‘Tox Barnes.’
‘Tox?’ Whitt squinted.
‘Yup.’
‘I’m –’
‘Edward Whittacker. You’re the reason I’m here. I expected to find you upstairs in your apartment, sippin’ a chardonnay or browsing an IKEA catalogue or some shit. Nope. Looked in the windows there and saw you face-planted on the garage floor. Who’d have thought.’
Whitt struggled to comprehend. One minute, he’d been walking from his car to the elevator, dreaming of home, worn out from the day in court, visiting Sam in prison. Now a strange, dishevelled man was schooling him on prison fight tactics. Whitt dragged himself up. He reached for his phone. Remembered it was gone.
‘I’m with Harry,’ Tox said.
‘Oh.’ Whitt watched the man finish the crust of his pizza, then chuck the empty box on the floor of the garage with a soft whump.
‘Yup. I’m here to help out with the thing with her brother.’
‘Oh,’ Whitt said again.
‘So, you’re on your feet.’ Tox looked his new partner up and down. ‘Let’s roll.’
Chapter 31
IT WAS A long, awkward ride back into town, Kash in the front seat, me in the back. Snale tried to make light, cheerful conversation to cover the silence. The dog sat staring at me as though my pockets might be full of treats, a long string of drool hanging from her tongue. She started barking as we came into sight of the town.
‘Oh, shit,’ Snale said as we pulled in to the main street.
At the end of the row of ten stores, comprising the entirety of the town centre, was the tiny police station. It was crowded with people. The gun-slinging group from the front of the pub had Zac Taby bailed up against the front doors. Digger and I jumped from the car before Snale had time to shut the engine off.
The dog ran towards the group, its tail wagging so hard her hindquarters were swaying back and forth. It certainly was a friendly thing. I could see why the town was so attached to it.
‘We’ve had enough!’ A man had Zac by the front of his T-shirt, pushing him into the glass. ‘You’re going home to pack your shit, and then you’re outta here.’
‘ Murderer!’ someone cried. ‘Terrorist!’
‘Break it up!’ I pushed the men aside. ‘I will arrest the lot of you if I have to. Back the fuck up.’
One of the farmers pointed a gnarled finger at Zac. ‘He’s murdered our police chief. If you let him keep going, him and his kind will kill us all.’
‘He’s dangerous,’ a woman said. Suddenly the number of people around me had doubled. ‘We want him out of our town. We know he’s behind this.’
‘You don’t know shit, bitch,’ Zac spat in the dirt. ‘Suck my fat di–’
‘That’s enough from you.’ I shoved Zac into the police station. He stumbled deliberately against the front counter, clutching his elbow. ‘Argh! My arm! Police brutality!’
‘You are going to see some brutality in a minute.’ I frog-marched the boy through the empty station and into the interview room. Zac flopped into the chair, sunk low, so that his head looked straight across the tabletop, his legs spread beneath its surface. Snale and Kash shut the doors on the crowd and followed me into the darkened room, flipping on lights.
Kash leaned on the table, taking up most of its space with his huge arms, forcing Zac to back off into his chair.
‘You probably deleted all those photos,’ Kash said. ‘But they’ll be easy enough to get back.’
‘No shit,’ Zac said.
‘You’re in a real mess, boy-o. Tell me about those pictures.’
‘These ones?’ Zac took out his phone and swiped through the photos Kash had talked about at the gully. Naked girls. Kids at a party, huffing dope. ‘I didn’t delete them. I’m not an idiot, dude. I know you can get them back. That’s my ex-girlfriend. Those are her tits. You want a closer look?’
He shoved the phone at Kash’s face. I took the phone from between them, looked through the pictures.
‘She’s eighteen. I like older women, and they like me.’ Zac winked in my direction. ‘And for all you know, those bongs are full of green tea. Try to prove otherwise. I fucking dare you.’
‘I bet those joints we pulled out of your pockets aren’t full of green tea.’
‘You came all the way to this shithole to charge me with possession of weed?’ Zac sneered. ‘What a bunch of pretenders.’
‘The picture that concerns us is this one,’ I said, finding the picture among the collection.
The photograph was of a cluttered table in the middle of a dark shed. Tools, wires, buckets of screws and nails. In the background, a rusty gas bottle sitting on a shelf.
‘That’s my mate’s dad’s shed,’ Zac said lazily. ‘We build shit in there when we’re bored. That lump of metal in the middle of the table is a half-built go-cart.’
‘You ever built anything that goes bang?’ I asked.
Zac didn’t answer, stared at his fingernails.
‘There was a spate of low-level mischief involving explosives about two years ago,’ Snale sighed from where she stood in the doorway. ‘A student teacher doing his internship came out to Last Chance Valley in the second school term. He was being supervised by one of our teachers, Greg Harvey, but one morning Greg let the intern take the class by himself. The young teacher thought he’d endear himself to the kids. It was a science class. He taught them about different types of explosives.’
‘ Oh, great,’ I said. Kash and I looked at each other.
‘It was nothing as complex as what we saw up on the hillside,’ Snale said. ‘So it sort of slipped my mind until now. He taught them about gunpowder, basically. How to make their own fire-works. So some of the kids got together and made their own mini-firecrackers.’
‘Bungers,’ Zac said. ‘You can make them as small as a cigarette. About two seconds’ fuse. Chuck them at old ladies. Fuckin’ hilarious.’
‘Not you, though. You wouldn’t do anything like that.’ I rolled my eyes.
‘No, no. Not me.’
‘How many kids were in that class?’ I asked. ‘The one about explosives.’
‘’Bout five of us.’ Zac smiled, sat giggling to himself, the only sound in the room as Snale, Kash and I quietly despaired about the four other kids we now had to interview. Kash slapped the table soon enough, shutting Zac up instantly.
‘This is all very hilarious, I’m sure, but the number one suspect as far as the rest of the town is concerned is you, mate,’ he said. ‘I’ve worked in villages outside Johannesburg where suspicion of a serious crime is all it takes to get you dragged into the bush and hung from a tree.’
‘I’ve worked in villages outside Johannesburg …’ Zac waved his hands, his voice a buffoonish imitation. ‘Dude, you’re such a try-hard. You’re not impressing anyone.’
Kash looked like he wanted to leap across the table and strangle the kid. But he met my eye and I shook my head. I was in charge now. If we were going to do any roughhousing of the suspects, it was my call. And if we spent too much time knocking innocent people around, the people of this town would clam up on us. Small towns were full of secrets, and if we became their enemy, they’d hide the killer in their midst just to spite us.
Chapter 32
KASH WALKED OUT of the interview room, veins beginning to creep up from beneath the skin near his sweaty temples. Snale followed. I went to sit in the chair Kash had vacated and put my feet up on the table.
‘Is that tosser your partner?’ Zac asked.
‘At the moment.’ I took an intake form from beside the recorder and tossed a pen at the kid. ‘Fill in this form.’ I would take the paper and compare Zac’s handwriting against the diarist’s. The kid sighed and began writing.
‘So that guy’s your boyfriend, then,’ he said eventually.
‘Certainly not.’