Chapter 2

THE PHONE CALL woke George Manolis at dawn, on a Sunday no less. He lay with his head buried in the pillow, hearing Detective Inspector Porter describe a small town with a big problem. Manolis yawned, scratched the sleep out of his eyes and numbly said ‘uh-huh’ a few times, before ending the conversation with a noncommittal grunt. Reluctantly, he got out of bed.

Manolis showered, long and hot. He’d been craving a day off. That Sunday was supposed to be his first in three weeks after working a junkie-on-junkie homicide. So much for the break that Paul Bloody Porter had promised him.

Manolis shaved four days’ worth of silver stubble, ran hands through his hair, now more salt than pepper. Examining his forty-year-old face in the bathroom mirror, he inspected his angular jaw, newest wrinkles and deep brown eyes, slightly bloodshot. His best years were behind him, but he remained ruggedly handsome. Selecting a charcoal-grey suit and crisp white shirt from his wardrobe, he stood before the wall mirror.

‘There,’ he said. ‘Ready.’

In the kitchen, he boiled a shot of strong Greek coffee, dark and viscous like mapping ink. He slurped it thoughtfully. Smoking a cigarette, he opened his phone, examined a map of his upcoming route, viewed photos of his destination, checked the region’s weather forecast. He was frustrated he couldn’t access more, but Porter had made it clear that some information was classified.

Manolis also checked his messages, hoping for something from his wife. But there was nothing. He was not at peace with their recent separation and suffering as a result. He still loved Emily deeply and missed her terribly.

‘You’ll be fine,’ he told himself in Greek. ‘Ola kala…’

Manolis spoke to himself often, a carryover from childhood, from having no siblings and keeping his own company. Speaking in Greek was another remnant; it calmed him to hear his first language. But it still embarrassed him when he was caught talking to himself, to have people think he was crazy.

He avoided the news, radio and TV and otherwise. It was all bad anyway, doom and gloom. Instead, sipping his coffee, smoking his smoke, he stood before the fridge door. He studied it, casting his eyes across the glossy images of his toddler son. These were the latest photos Emily had sent, and he gazed upon them as if taking in nourishment, gathering strength. He spoke to them, said all the things he could no longer say in person each day. There were no photos of his wife; it hurt too much to look at her image. Next to his son were photos of his elderly parents. He avoided conversation with them altogether; Con had recently died, which had left Manolis feeling bereft and his mum despairing.

Eventually, Manolis turned away. Packing a bag with precision and efficiency, he pocketed his badge, and closed his apartment door behind him with a muted click.

THE ROADS WERE quiet as he left the sleeping city. Manolis drove slowly, waiting until the engine oil warmed through. Buying the restored Chrysler Valiant had been a decision of the heart, not the head: it was the same make and model that Con once drove. The car was a connection to his past, to when Manolis was young and innocent, and petrol was leaded and affordable. The colour was almost identical too, gold-tan exterior, brown interior. It had real bumper bars, not crumple zones. It had locally sourced metal parts, not foreign-made plastic. No airbags. Emily hadn’t approved of the purchase, thought it was impractical and unsuitable for a new parent. But Manolis figured that was fair since he didn’t approve of her new partner, a tradesman with questionable ethics, who now put his son to bed every night.

The city limits fell behind, the road opened up ahead. Manolis felt the torque in his fingertips, humming, tiny sparks of electricity that trickled up his arms and neck to elicit the slightest smile. He planted his foot, was pressed back into his seat. This was his first chance to take the car for a good run beyond the central metropolis. The tight streets, traffic and constant stopping did his joy a complete disservice. Subjecting the Val to that was cruel, like running a thoroughbred racehorse through an equestrian event.

He stopped midmorning to refuel: eighty litres of premium unleaded for a hundred and twenty dollars, and a six-dollar cheese salad sandwich paid for with street-blackened coins. He choked on every tasteless morsel.

Back behind the wheel, he concentrated on the long empty road ahead. The Val’s eight cylinders pulled him along the outback road effortlessly, accelerating with ease. A hazard soon tested its brakes, the object appearing as a large round lump on the road, sitting square across the white lines. Manolis thought it was a rock or misshapen cardboard box, but as he drew closer he saw it moving, and far too leisurely for its own good. He swerved to avoid it with some urgency before pulling up with a short screech.

The hairy-nosed wombat was about a metre in length and smelt oily, a strong combination of musk and digested grass. It was also predictably heavy but stayed calm as Manolis carried it to the roadside and checked its fur for blood or injuries.

‘There you go, mate,’ he said. ‘Safely across.’

The stout creature let out a hearty grunt, which he took as appreciation. Manolis watched it claw the dirt with its dozer-like paws, then disappear into the scrub. He continued on his way.

As he drove further inland, he watched the signal bars on his phone disappear one by one. The trees, once lush, became empty hatstands, the earth drier and yellower before a sudden change to cattle-dog brown.

Finally, the outskirts of Cobb appeared. It was a town of several dozen streets spread over an area of six kilometres and accessible by only two roads at opposite ends of the compass. Manolis approached along the southern route with the noonday sun in his eyes. Crosses and floral wreaths littered the roadside, slowing his final approach. A big yellow sign said: No gambling, No grog, No humbug. Next to it, a fire danger sign had the needle in the red ‘extreme’ region; only black remained, for ‘catastrophic’.

Cobb’s main street was deserted. Discarded newspapers, plastic bags, hollowed-out cartons of booze. Manolis decelerated, scanning the street and shopfronts. He muttered to himself, voicing his disappointment. He drove past a church, then another. The majority of houses flew Australian flags in their front yards, all of which were at half-mast. In such a small community, Manolis imagined this was out of respect for the murder victim. He lingered outside a takeaway shop, the motor idling, eyeballing the grimy glass window with faded photos of enlarged hamburgers, pizzas and hot chips. He couldn’t work out if the business had ceased to trade or was simply closed. He was about to engage the handbrake and investigate when a red light lit up on his dashboard. The petrol tank was nearing empty. He passed two more churches and even more mournful flags before pulling into the first servo he found.

Heat billowed from the thirsty Val’s bonnet, the air shimmering before Manolis’s eyes. A group of kids mosquitoed around the petrol station toilets. They were instantly curious about the stranger and his shiny machine and gave both their undivided attention. They wore sleeveless footy jumpers and basketball singlets or no shirt at all. One had a bike. They smoked cigarettes and ignored signs that said not to.

‘Nice car, mister!’ Wolf-whistles added their approval.

Manolis smiled and stepped from his vehicle. The outside heat hit him like a blast of dragon’s breath. There was only one working bowser, and the cost per litre was outrageous, more expensive than he’d ever seen in the city. He filled up listening to the tick-tock of cooling metal beneath the stove-hot bonnet. Entering the shop, he eyed the empty shelves as he waited for the proprietor to appear. He called out, searched the aisles, but after five minutes just left cash on the counter and walked out.

In his absence, Manolis’s car had been modified. The Val’s antenna was bent at a painful angle, the circular hood ornament absent, souvenired. He looked up to see the kids laughing and slapping each other on the back.

‘Shit car, mister!’

‘We made it better for you!’

‘Get an Aussie car, a Commodore or Falcon, a real donk with some chrome spillin’ out the front!’

Manolis wanted to hurl a stream of abuse at the disrespectful youths, tell them those cars were tin cans beside his Val. He thought to collar the punks, drag their skinny arses in for vandalism. But taking charge of the case himself would mean filling in paperwork, preparing a brief, and so on. And he hadn’t been sent here to do that.

Filling his lungs, Manolis strode over to the kids. Identifying himself as a policeman did little to garner their attention. It was only when he mentioned he was a ‘detective from the city’ that he swiftly ended their fun.

‘Now, gentlemen, I want your names and addresses,’ he said calmly. He pulled a notepad from his pocket and began scratching away with a supermarket biro.

The boys answered one after the other, stony-faced, no tone.

‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ Manolis finally said. ‘Have a nice day.’

Reefing the steering wheel clockwise, he drove on.

The wooden cop shop came into view. As Manolis pulled up, a strange rattling sound came from beneath the bonnet. That wasn’t there before, he thought. Surely it wasn’t the kids at the servo as well. Was it? He reminded himself to get it looked at on his return to the city.

Manolis sat, watched, waited. The station was as lifeless as the town. Porter had never said anything about this. Manolis checked his phone – no reception. Approaching the station door, he bashed twice, called out. He peered through the window, obscured by metallic mesh security grilles. Seeing nothing, he crunched back to the street and gathered his thoughts under a brutal sky of boundless blue.

‘What in God’s name am I doing here…?’ he asked himself. Cobb had certainly laid out the welcome mat.

Behind him, the sound of a deadbolt lock being opened. He swung around to see a hard face scowling at him.

‘You Manolis?’

‘Yes. Hi.’

The face softened, a thin arm extended. ‘Constable Andrew Smith, but everyone calls me Sparrow. Come in.’

Sparrow was a callow stripling who spoke with an easy, laid-back drawl. He had skin the colour of dark ale, which made a striking contrast against his powder-blue shirt. He wore pressed navy shorts, long white socks and sensible black shoes.

Manolis was surprised to find more blowflies inside the cop shop than out on the street.

‘Welcome to Cobb,’ Sparrow said. ‘Boss told me to expect you.’

‘Is that Fyfe? Where’s he?’

‘Up at the brown house, trying to sort out the —’

‘Wait, he’s where?’

‘The brown house,’ said Sparrow. ‘You’ll hear people call it that around Cobb. It’s the new immigration detention centre at the northern end of town. You’re here about the homicide on Friday night, yair?’