Fifty Fifty (Detective Harriet Blue #2)(68)

‘Fucking Aussies,’ I said. ‘Any excuse to have a piss-up.’

Someone was seriously threatening to kill these people, and they were coming out in force to pretend they weren’t afraid. Horns beeping, shopfronts open. I leaned over and looked at the back car park of the mechanic’s. There was no semitrailer there. That, at least, was something.

We spied Snale telling off a couple of youths and stopped beside her. Her uniform was patched with sweat.

‘It’s a madhouse,’ she panted as Kash rolled down his window. She looked at us, seemed to measure the trauma on our faces. ‘What happened? Are you two alright?’

‘We’re OK,’ I said. ‘We’ll stash the car and come help with crowd control.’

Kash drove on. By the edge of town, there was a streak of white in front of the vehicle. Kash slammed on the brakes. It was Bella Destro, in ridiculous high heels beneath her blue jeans, steadying herself against the asphalt with one hand, a beer bottle in the other. I got out of the car and helped her to her feet.

‘You’re the last person I expected to see out here,’ I said.

‘Woo! Detective Harriet Blue!’ She staggered, grinned at me, sweeping back her hair. ‘Look at all these people! It’s a party!’

Kash honked the car horn, scaring us both. I dragged Bella towards the passenger side door.

‘I’ll drive her home. She’s off her head,’ I told Kash. ‘You meet up with the other guys, give them a hand. I’ll be back in a minute.’

I wasn’t focused. I was sad and hurt about Zac’s letter, about the stupid young lives all around me, kids trying to run off with stolen gold, flopping on the road like wounded animals, cheering and reeking of beer. This was a maddening place. I momentarily felt so beyond rage I could hardly speak.

I was distracted. Not thinking at all as I started driving Bella back the way we’d come, into the dark.





Chapter 107


IN THE CAR, she put her head against the window, the cheerful, clumsy girl I’d witnessed on the road gone. I figured she was tired. My mind was not in the car. It was back in the centre of town, where a killer was possibly planning on breaking out into a shooting spree.

I ran through the checklist of precautions in my mind. I knew Snale and another officer had separately locked down the armoury and the ammunition caches so that even if someone managed to get through their defences, they’d waste precious time trying to get to any useful weaponry. Snale and the team in town would be doing regular check-ins. I should have taken a radio, got onto their channel. No matter. I’d be back there in minutes. We’d need to charge Stieg and Scullen when this was done. Stealing. Unlicensed mining operations on trespassed property. We needed to arrest Mick, alert the families of the dead. That wasn’t important now. I shook my head. What was important was keeping everyone safe for tonight. Even if the killer never showed their face.

I pulled in to the Destro property and began driving up the long, lamplit driveway.

‘You must feel very alone,’ Bella said suddenly. I glanced at her. She was sitting with her hands in her lap, facing the house, her expression calm.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The whole thing with your brother,’ she said as I came to a stop beside the house. ‘He’s in jail. He’s got his own problems to worry about. You’re free, out here in the world, wandering around trying to get on with things. No one believes you when you say that he’s innocent.’

My brother was the last thing I wanted to talk about. I got out of the car. Left my gun right beside her in the centre console.

Stupid. Stupid.

‘No one believes you,’ she said again, looking at me as I opened the door for her. ‘It must be so isolating.’

‘I don’t have time for a deep and meaningful,’ I said. ‘Get out. I’ve got to go. I’m busy.’

That was when she pointed the gun at me.

‘You’re not going anywhere,’ she said.





Chapter 108


I WAS BEWILDERED. At first, my brain told me this was just another inconvenience on what was shaping up to be a horror of a night. I was still cursing myself for not having a radio.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said. ‘Put it down.’

‘Harriet,’ she said. Trying to wake me up. Bring me back down to Earth. ‘Focus.’

Focus. Breathe. I was standing like an idiot in the driveway with my hands by my sides, staring at the gun, the strange, unfamiliar sight of my own weapon pointed towards me and not away. She actioned the weapon expertly, and with that sickening sound I came to.

I looked into her eyes.

‘Oh no,’ I said.





Chapter 109


WITH THE GUN at my back I walked numbly up the driveway towards the house, too shocked to offer much resistance. I’d gone into full denial mode, a symptom of my general stress over the case and my emotional detachment after the murders earlier in the night. Cognitive dissonance, the same thing that affects soldiers, sends them wandering into no-man’s-land under shellfire like they’re going for a Sunday stroll. This was a game. A prank by a strange drunken girl. She was going to be in a whole lot of trouble when she gave me back the gun. I was going to be in a whole lot of trouble if anyone ever found out she’d played with it. Yes, ‘played’. Because she was a girl. A young university student home to study for exams. Her major concerns would be trying to get some proper study time in without wasting the entire vacation watching bad TV and chatting on Facebook.