Fifty Fifty (Detective Harriet Blue #2)(34)

I’ll deposit some more now, I told Whitt. You and Tox OK?

There was a lengthy pause. I’m not sure we’re the most suited of partners. He’s an unsettling person with an unsettling reputation, and I worry about his actual plans for the killer if we find him.

I smiled at that. Tox was, indeed, unsettling. Whitt had likely heard by now the rumour on the police force that Tox had murdered a mother and her son when he was a kid. I was one of few people who knew the real truth – but I wouldn’t divulge Tox’s secret behind his back.

I texted Whitt, tried to stem his curiosity.

Five days and I’ll be home. Tox is good people. Trust me. You’re safe with him.

He smells like a wet dog, Whitt replied.





Chapter 44


I BORROWED SNALE’S car and took a drive out into the desert to clear my head while she and Kash worked on the package of gold from Olivia Campbell’s house. When I had left Snale’s place the two were dissecting it, weighing the gold and using lifting tape to secure any prints from the wrapping. Kash was rambling about how the difficulty of tracing precious metals made them perfect funding for terrorism.

I understood Kash’s way of looking at the world. I knew officers who had worked in Sex Crimes so long they let it divide their minds clean in half, so that all men became potential predators and all women their potential prey. To stay away from men was to be, by definition, safe.

I’d called Tenacity on the hands-free without asking myself why. I guess I was curious to see if it was indeed the Tenacity whose case I’d solved years earlier.

When she picked up, she sounded like she was clattering around the house, moving pots and pans.

‘Oh my God, Harry,’ she laughed. ‘What a surprise.’

‘ Just checking in on my tenacious friend,’ I said. ‘How’s things?’

A little guilt rippled through me as she sighed and started complaining about how her mother couldn’t find a job, her brother was getting sued, she couldn’t keep her house clean. She told me she’d been doing great in counselling, though. I didn’t know how to get around to the topic of Kash, or even if I should. I’d decided that it was totally inappropriate of me to even think of talking to her about him.

‘I’m in the middle of a divorce, though,’ she said.

‘Oh dear.’

‘I’ve been with Elliot sixteen years,’ she said. ‘We were high school sweethearts.’

I made an awkward noise. Tenacity paused.

‘What?’

‘I think I might be on a case with him.’

‘Who? Elliot?’ The clattering in the background of the call stopped. ‘Elliot Kash? Jesus!’ She gave a humourless laugh. ‘Small world.’

‘I feel very ashamed,’ I said. ‘I heard him say your name, and I thought –’

‘You thought, “How many fucking Tenacitys could there possibly be in the world?” I get it all the time. Let me guess, you want me to drag him home and out of your hair.’

My face was burning. I tried to focus on the road.

‘Well, you listen to me, Harriet Blue,’ she said. ‘I don’t care if you have to chain him to the front fence of the town hall. You keep him out there as long as you can. I need a break, you understand?’

‘A break from what?’

‘ From feeling like I’m going to get held hostage every time I walk into a bloody airport!’ She was ranting now. ‘From looking at every person on the bus like their bag might be packed with explosives! From waking up every morning to Voice of the Caliphate on the radio, copies of jihadi recruitment magazines spread all over the kitchen table! My friends think he’s a fucking nutcase. Elliot’s obsession with Islamic terrorism is driving me nuts. I thought I had problems.’

‘Well, it’s his job,’ I reasoned. ‘I mean –’

‘It’s not his job,’ she snapped. ‘It’s his life. When I met Ell he was a laid-back surfer type. He was a bricklayer. Hard hands. Brown as a nut. Then everything changed. He went to Bali on a surfing trip with four of his mates and they all went to the Sari Club on the first night.’

My heart sank. I knew where this was going. In 2002, two hundred and two people, including eighty-eight Australians, had been killed by a suicide bombing in Kuta conducted by an Islamic terrorist group called Jemaah Islamiyah. One of the bombs had gone off outside the Sari Club, which was full of tourists having a good time.

‘Three of his friends died that night,’ she said. ‘The fourth died in hospital the next day. Elliot applied for a fast-track uni degree two weeks later. International relations, security major. Before I knew it he was interviewing for position with ASIO. And ever since then it’s been this.’ I imagined her standing in her kitchen gesturing angrily around the countertops laden with stacks of books and papers, aerial shots of tiny Afghan villages. ‘I can’t keep doing this. Elliot is not going to stop terrorism all by himself. He’s going to end up as their next victim, by destroying everything and everyone he loves with his fixation.’





Chapter 45


I’D TURNED OFF the highway onto the faint tyre tracks in the hard earth that led towards the scary old man’s house. The land was sparsely populated here with spiky desert plants. Inhospitable brush led to distant clumps of trees dotting the horizon like approaching armies, shimmering in the heat. Last Chance Valley seemed like an oasis compared with this endless dead zone of shadowed valleys and hazardous cliffs. There were no landmarks to guide the wanderer. Mobs of grey kangaroos lounged in the minimal shade, eyeing the car as I passed.