I spied Mary Skinner, the mother with the young children, walking along the road back towards her house, her two kids running ahead. At least someone was being sensible.
Kash and I parked by the bracken just beyond Jace Robit’s property again. At precisely seven-thirty, the man emerged, taking long strides to his ute. Through the growing dark, I could see lights on in Frank Scullen’s garage. Headlights swept us as the two men pulled out.
‘Come on, fuckers,’ I said, starting the engine. ‘Show us your big plan.’
Chapter 99
WE PLOUGHED INTO the night. Kash became pointed beside me, squinting into the dark ahead. I left the longest possible distance between Frank’s truck and our own, trying not to spook him with my headlights. The trucks disappeared over ridges and hills in the desert.
We were well out of town when the headlights ahead stopped moving. I turned ours off and rolled slowly towards a huge eucalypt surrounded by bush. As Kash and I got out of the car, a group of dingoes somewhere in the vast empty wilderness nearby sent up a howling song.
Here is where I could meet my end, I thought, as I always do when I find myself in situations like this. Rushing into a home where a child is suspected to be in danger, storming the doors of porn studios, dungeons, makeshift brothels. I have plenty of police training to try to combat the dangers of the sniper in the upstairs window, the man with the shotgun behind the door, the tripwire in the hall attached to a grenade. I know to look out for these things. But there’s always the chance of a wildcard. A new strategy by the bad guys. Cops die every single day. This could be the day that it’s me.
I jogged behind Kash across the dirt, head low, drawing out my gun.
The trucks were parked at the base of a high cliff, a split in the Earth’s crust cleaved vertically through the enormous rock shelf, only a metre wide. I knew there was probably a lookout just inside the entrance to the cave. Kash took the other side of the entrance. I crept forwards and looked in, saw a pair of stubby legs splayed on the warm earth. John Stieg was just settling in to his position, still tapping through his phone, checking the things that needed to be checked and sending the things that needed to be sent before a long stretch of guard duty. I leapt forwards before he could look up from the phone, knowing his night vision would be ruined by the bright screen.
He put a hand to the gun sitting on the ground by his hip. ‘Don’t,’ I said. I put a hand out. He paused, finger sideways, loose, on the trigger guard.
The man gave in and took his hand off the weapon. He rose reluctantly, rubbing his short beard. Kash’s breath was on the back of my neck. It was tight here. Tight enough that in a struggle, I might lose this man. Stieg twisted and I poked him forwards with my pistol, away from the gun on the ground, which Kash swept up into the back of his jeans.
‘Make a noise, and I’ll fire,’ I said.
We walked through the darkness. Ahead of us there came the clattering and crashing of things being set up, men talking, their voices echoing off the walls of the narrow cave. I spied wires on the ground. My breath was coming in short, hot blasts. Tanks. Cables. The sickly glow of headlamps trying to cut through airborne dust. It was hard not to cough.
The crevice widened and we were suddenly upon the other three, Jace Robit nearest to me, tugging a cotton mask up over his nose and mouth, a small jackhammer hanging from his fist. I shoved Stieg and he gathered with the rest of them.
‘Police!’ I shouted, my eardrums pulsing as the sound ricocheted off the close walls. ‘Tools down! Hands up!’
No one complied. It takes a leader, not a stranger, to get them moving. They all looked at Jace.
‘I said hands up, fuckbags!’ I kicked the jackhammer out of Jace’s hand. It clanked to the ground. The man gave a short, hard laugh, raised his hands and interlocked them at the back of his head. I checked Kash’s gun was on them all and lowered mine. I walked around them and looked into the black depths of the crevice beyond where we stood. It seemed to narrow then turn away into pitch blackness.
‘Is there anyone else?’
‘No,’ someone said. I kicked the nearest man’s knee out. He took the hint and knelt. The others followed. There was a lot of equipment here. Plastic and duct tape, buckets of water. I couldn’t get my heartbeat down. My thoughts were racing. Whatever this was, it wasn’t bomb-building paraphernalia. That was good. My hands were shaking on my gun. ‘What the fuck is all this?’
The men didn’t answer. Kash kicked over a bucket of rocks near his foot.
‘Gold,’ he said. ‘They’ve found a gold deposit.’
‘Jesus Christ.’ I glanced at the rock wall beside us, only just now realising that it was covered in indentations only visible in the light of the headlamps. ‘This is where it came from. The package we found at Chief Campbell’s place. Did he confiscate that gold from you? Did you kill him because he found out what you were doing here?’
Jace Robit was watching me. His eyes were fierce above the hem of the cotton mask covering his nose and mouth. I felt like smashing his face with the butt of my pistol. If there’s one thing I can’t stand from suspects, it’s the silent treatment. But I was working through things in my mind. Trying to fit the pieces together.
‘It wasn’t drugs you were all into. It was this. Gold. Theo Campbell shook you down. It’s just like we said.’ I looked at Kash. ‘But he knew there had to be more. So you killed him. You blew him up.’
‘We didn’t kill anybody.’ Frank Scullen shook his head, glared at me. ‘This is bullshit. I’m not wearing a fucking murder charge.’
‘Which one of you wrote the diary?’ My voice was quivering. ‘You wrote the diary to distract us, didn’t you?’
‘We didn’t kill nobody, and we didn’t write no fuckin’ diary!’ John Stieg snapped.
‘Then why the secrecy?’ I looked at the gold on the ground by Kash’s foot.
The men glanced at each other, all but Jace, whose eyes were locked on me.
‘Whose land is this?’ Kash asked. ‘Whose land are we on?’
No one answered. Kash pointed at the ground.
‘If this land isn’t yours, and it isn’t public, then this gold is being stolen,’ he said. ‘Are we on someone’s land right now?’
I heard a click right beside my ear. The unmistakable sound of a hammer drawing back on a revolver.
Chapter 100
REGAN GAVE THE corner of the kitchen a wide berth, walked around through the living room and looked in. There was a man standing there, leaning against the counter, his arms folded and his eyes following Regan as he stepped into view. This man looked disordered, crooked, roughed-up somehow. Like the survivor of some kind of natural disaster, emerging from the forest with windswept hair and hard features, dirty clothes, a starved look. He was big. Muscular. Enormous boots. This had indeed been a very big mistake on Regan’s part. Who was this man? Was he Harriet’s boyfriend? What else didn’t he know about Sam’s sister? Once again, his plans were being foiled. The game was changing. Regan felt exhilaration rush through him.
‘I really hoped you’d come,’ Tox said.
Regan tried to make sense of the words. He glanced towards the door. Was this a trap? No, of course not. He’d have been knocked to the ground by now, windows bursting in, SWAT teams thumping up the stairs. This man was alone. His black pistol lay on the counter, turned away.
The man in the kitchen looked Regan over, sniffed.
‘So you’re him,’ Tox said, eyes roving. ‘I’ve seen pictures of you. Seen the imprint of your hand on the bodies of your victims. Your punches. I guess I thought I knew what you’d look like. But you’re different.’
‘Different how?’ Regan asked.
The man in the leather jacket shrugged his folded arms.
‘I guess I hoped you’d be bigger,’ he said.