Fifty Fifty (Detective Harriet Blue #2)(65)

If only it had all gone the way he’d planned. It would have been so perfect. He’d come across Sam for the first time after leaving prison, and it was there that he’d got his idea. Sam had been standing at the edge of the hall outside a computer lab on the Sydney Uni campus, talking to one of his pretty little students, her long chocolate hair awash in sunlight. Regan had followed and watched and realised that Sam was surrounded by these gorgeous creatures. They waved at him from cafe tables and touched his arm as he went by, smiling, asking about some assignment or another. Sam was so happy. Regan could see it in his stride as he walked home, as he climbed the stairs to his neat, bright apartment. Wasn’t Sam just the perfect ‘fuck you’ to all those care workers and all those families shuffling him here and there, the raggedy, hollow-eyed urchin Regan knew so well playing tricks in the dark by the riverside. Bad boy. Difficult boy. Unwanted boy. Sam’s beautiful world was choreographed as joyously as the opening of a Broadway show. People swinging on lampposts, arms out, soaring voices.

Regan had entered Sam’s world like a dark cloud creeping, billowing up over the horizon. He’d wanted to stay longer. It had all been going too well.

He moved out of the study, back into the hall.

And heard a sound in the kitchen.





Chapter 98


I PICKED UP Kash. He’d stayed by our surveillance spot, lying on his belly at the edge of the ridge, watching the sun go down, sweeping the valley with his binoculars. He didn’t speak as he got in to the car. There was an icy feeling in the pit of my stomach, that he’d call me out for walking off instead of standing my ground and defending my brother. But my ability to stand my ground was waning. Two more days and the AVO would be lifted, and I could be by Sam’s side again.

‘We’ve got a problem,’ Kash said, breaking me out of my reverie.

‘What?’

‘Dez spread the word around town that people aren’t to congregate, that we want the pub closed and the main street clear. This seems to have had the opposite effect. People are angry. Defiant. There’s talk they’re going to gather tonight in the main street as a show of strength.’

‘ Oh, brilliant!’ I snapped. ‘What a fantastic idea! We’ve told them it’s dangerous to gather in groups, and what do they do? They decide to throw a party.’

‘They’re Australians,’ Kash sighed. ‘We told them to stay away from their local pub. We might as well have waved a red flag in front of a bull.’

There were already people in the main street as we drove through, standing outside shops, talking. Only twelve or thirteen in total, but more would come. There was a strange excitement in the air, the feel of Christmas or New Year’s Eve, of community. It didn’t seem to matter that someone wanted to kill them all. The mob was stronger than a single killer.

They were wrong. I knew they were wrong.

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.