The darkness closes around Kelly’s car as if she were a thousand miles from civilisation. The mangroves that the headlights move across are alien, twisted things growing out of black mud. There are no lights on the road ahead, no cars.
A bend in the road. Now for a brief instant she does see a tiny prick of light, way off down a side track. She stops, reverses and turns down towards it, a glimmer in the darkness. Her headlights pick out a building, a dilapidated house with a single lit window. There is an old truck standing outside, but no white van or black Mercedes. She turns around and heads slowly back to the road. She recognises landmarks now that she’s passed on her earlier visits to the crime scenes—a stand of casuarinas, and here on the left some crumbling brick walls and a ruined fence. She glances at them as she passes, and almost misses the glint of white in the moonlight. She pulls in to the side and gets out of the car.
Feeling suddenly exposed, Kelly picks her way carefully along the road back to the ruined compound, wondering if she was mistaken. She moves in across the yard between the collapsed structures, careful where she steps, and then comes to a stop. Yes, there it is, a white van. Standing next to it the slight glimmer of moonlight on the polished black Mercedes. They are parked outside a strange curved-roofed building, like a Nissen hut. She makes her way cautiously towards it, and makes out a faint line of light on its end wall. Closer still, she sees that the light is leaking from the edge of a corrugated steel panel.
She reaches out to it, and at that moment becomes aware of light reflecting off the trees by the road, and then the harsh beam of headlights turning into the compound. She scrambles away from the hut and drops down behind the van as a vehicle drives straight at her and pulls up. Peering through beneath the van, Kelly makes out feet dropping to the ground on both sides of the vehicle. The headlights are switched off and she’s blind in the sudden darkness. She holds her breath, staring, listening. Then the crunch of a boot right beside her makes her jump and strong hands grip her arms.