‘I’m going to need coffee if you’re going to be vague,’ I said. A shimmer of hope went through me that he was talking about Sam’s case, but he was holding a laptop, and when he sat down beside me I saw it was full of Qantas ticketing information.
‘Jace Robit’s crew are making a run for it.’ Kash pointed to the screen. ‘An ASIO buddy sent me these after I put in for security checks on Robit and his three mates. In the last six months, all four of them have applied for passports. They’ve each booked a one-way ticket to Ngurah Rai Airport in Denpasar. All leaving on the same day.’
‘When?’
‘Next week.’
‘ They could be going on a bucks’ weekend.’ I rubbed my eyes.
‘John Stieg,’ Kash brought up a mugshot of Jace’s short, thick-bodied friend, ‘he’s closed all his online gaming accounts and cashed in the remaining credit. Frank Scullen’s divided his bank accounts with his wife in half and taken his share out in cash. Damien Ponch sold his truck.’
‘A big bucks’ weekend.’
‘One-way tickets, Blue.’ Kash nudged me. ‘Focus. I think this whole thing has been a misdirect. An exit strategy. They’re not on the offensive. They’re trying to hold us off, ensure we only react to the wrong circumstances.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Get your things.’ He got up and kicked my bag towards me. ‘I’ll explain on the way. Last Chance might be in more danger than we thought.’
Chapter 86
KASH HAD THE binoculars trained on Jace Robit’s house and was slowly adjusting the focus, the dial making a soft clicking as he rolled it with his fingers. The agent had plenty of high-tech equipment in his truck. Beyond the windshield, affixed to the hood of the car, a parabolic microphone was pointed towards the house on the plain. Now and then it picked up voices from inside, the clunking and shuffling of objects.
Robit’s three friends were inside with him: Frank Scullen, John Stieg and Damien Ponch. When the heat is on, criminals tend to band together, which isn’t clever behaviour. Drug dealers call more frequent meetings. Bank robbers organise a late-night rendezvous. Young partygoers who got out of control one weekend and assaulted a girl all come together for a crisis talk to get their stories straight. Kash was muttering reconnaissance to himself like he couldn’t help it, marking out distances and wind direction.
‘Four confirmed in the interior,’ he murmured. ‘None visible on the exterior.’
‘ Yo, General Patton.’ I slapped his chest. ‘Tell me what’s going on.’
‘Here’s my theory. The gold we found at Chief Campbell’s place belonged to these guys,’ Kash said.
‘What makes you suspect that?’
‘Think about it. Chief Campbell’s got eighty K worth of gold stashed in his house, and his wife doesn’t know about it. It’s not recorded as evidence at the police station. The very first people Olivia Campbell pointed to as suspects were these guys. She sensed they were a threat to her husband. She asked him what he was up to, and he said it was a drug sting. Well, we know that’s not true. There’s nothing in the police log about a sting operation. Snale knew nothing about it.’
‘OK, I’m with you.’
‘I think these guys acquired that gold from somewhere illegally,’ Kash said. ‘I think Theo Campbell found them with it, and he took it off their hands. We know from what Bella Destro said that Chief Campbell didn’t always play by the rules. He might have stopped them on the road. Or maybe they were acting weird and he was snooping around them for drugs. I don’t know. But somehow he discovered them with it, and decided he’d just take it.’
‘Hmm.’ I nodded along.
‘Now the guys have got a problem. They need to get rid of Theo Campbell. But there are seventy-five people in the town and they’re no angels. They’re likely to be the first suspects. How do they get rid of Campbell and control the circumstances around the investigation?’
‘Control the circumstances?’
‘ I’m talking war tactics.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. In hostile situations, you strategise to control how your enemy thinks and reacts, bait them, feed them false information.’
‘They constructed the diary,’ I said. ‘Used it as bait to make sure we’d connect it with the bombing on the hill. They provided us with the answers before we asked any questions. We went looking for an angry teen.’
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘We’ve been totally distracted, looking for vengeful young spree killers in training. Lone-wolf terrorists. They put Zac Taby right under our noses.’
‘So why kill him? He was a great suspect.’
‘Maybe they weren’t after Taby.’ He shrugged. ‘Any of us could have got in that car. Maybe they weren’t planning on any of us actually getting in. Zac got into the car at night. It was dark. In the daytime, someone would have looked in and seen those gas bottles in the back seat. It’s possible they were just trying to scare us. Make us evacuate the town.’
‘Eighty thousand dollars is a lot of money,’ I said. ‘But it’s not much shared between four men. And if the whole goal was the get their rocks back, why didn’t they take them?’
‘Maybe what we found at Campbell’s house is just the tip of the iceberg,’ Kash said. ‘Maybe there’s so much gold they could all start new lives on it. And Theo Campbell was threatening to bring all their grand plans crashing down.’
I stared at the house before us. A little fibro shack in the middle of a hole in the middle of nowhere. I could imagine the temptation presented to people like these, scraping out a living from the hard earth. Zac Taby had wanted to run away. Did these men hear the same call of the horizon?
‘ Remember how the gold was packed?’ Kash said. ‘Wrapped in black plastic. Bound with duct tape. Why wrap it like that? Because you want to store it, disguise it, and ship it.’
I sat up and grabbed the criminal record sheets we’d printed out that morning for the crew inside the house.
Jace Robit. Domestic assault. Robbery. Possession of a prohibited substance.
Frank Scullen, assault, grievous bodily harm, theft.
John Stieg and Damien Ponch both had records for fraud. There were also domestic assaults, the complainants their wives.
Kash was right. These men were not the town’s most upstanding citizens. They had every reason to want to get away from this life, and the willingness to do it in an underhanded way.
‘So what are they going to do?’ I said. ‘They’ve already killed two people. They think we’re well down the wrong track in the investigation. Are they just going to leave quietly?’
‘I don’t know,’ Kash said. ‘It worries me that they removed the massacre plan page. Maybe they just thought it was too much. But maybe they …’
He sighed, his voice uneven.
‘Maybe they’ll try to go out with a blast,’ he continued. ‘A smoke screen. Slip away in the chaos.’
The microphone crackled.
‘I sure as fuck hope so!’ someone shouted. ‘I hope he suffered big-time, the little … I tell you what, this place would be better off with a quarter … its inhabitants. Seventy-five was far too … many. Seventy-three now. We’re getting closer to perfect.’
The microphone crackled and went silent. I thumped the speaker sitting on the console between us.
‘ This thing is rubbish,’ I said. ‘We need to get closer.’
‘I’ve already conducted a risk assessment,’ Kash said. ‘This is our most effective reconnaissance base. We can do another assessment in forty-seven minutes, if the wind changes, maybe.’
I listened quietly to Kash’s reasoning, then opened the car door and got out. Kash was behind me by the time I got to the edge of the property, crouching in the bracken.
A handful of locusts, disturbed by my presence, fluttered up and around me. The sun was immediately blazing on my already burned face. I shielded myself against it and crept to the wire fence, to a collection of rusty steel drums.
‘Don’t get us killed, Harry,’ Kash murmured as he crept up behind me. ‘This is Jace’s property. If he shoots us he’ll have three witnesses to tell the cops it was self-defence.’