Chapter 37

THEY DRAGGED THE senior sergeant’s comatose body to the drunk tank, each pulling on a flabby arm until his underpants crept down. Manolis tugged them back up again, stretched him out flat across the floor. Ducking into the equipment room, Manolis helped himself to two pairs of handcuffs. Kerr locked the door with an old iron key, added a bicycle U-lock around the metal bars.

‘He’ll rejoin the land of the living soon,’ Manolis said. ‘I’ll pick him up some aspirin.’

Kerr secured the station. She was to drive north to the detention centre while Manolis went west. The detective felt torn. But he needed to get back to the tourist park and prayed he would find it just as he’d left it.

‘You don’t need me to come as backup?’ Kerr asked.

He considered it a moment, his eyebrows forming a tight chevron. ‘Best you get to the centre. We need someone reliable there, trustworthy, to release Omari. I’ll be fine.’ He turned to leave. ‘Just one more thing – and this may sound crazy – but has there ever been any report of a stoning in Cobb before Molly Abbott?’

Kerr looked at him blankly, her head tilting to one side.

‘No,’ she finally said. ‘Not to my knowledge, neither as a cop nor as a lifelong resident. What makes you ask?’

He swallowed hard. ‘Nothing. Just a theory.’

They drove in opposite directions, peeling away at dangerous speeds, skidding and fishtailing, competing engines revving into the distance.

OLDE COBBE TOWNE’S rickety wooden archway threatened to topple over with the velocity at which Manolis drove beneath it. Slowing his final approach, idling to a stop, he surreptitiously parked behind a thick gum tree not visible from the office, then advanced on foot.

The tourist park was deserted. Not a soul amid the rack and ruin. A stray newspaper blew about in the hot wind, scattering sheets like flyaway dandelion seeds. No sign of Sparrow.

With gun poised by his thigh, Manolis first checked the laundry. It was empty. Rex’s load was still spinning, humming like a centrifuge. Good, thought Manolis. Exiting the laundry, he heard a noise and drew his gun before he was suddenly greeted by a stray dog, a blue heeler, all yaps and yips. It jumped up to greet him, paws prodding his knees, dry nose sniffing his crotch. Startled, he nearly unloaded his weapon on the innocent beast, which hastily scurried away, whimpering, tail turned inwards.

‘Shit,’ he breathed. ‘Sorry, boy.’

The canine’s enthusiastic bark alerted Manolis to the likelihood that his cover was now blown. He needed to move speedily and decisively. He felt his ribs, still a dull ache.

This was the first time he’d seen the office building with door closed, curtains drawn. Knees cracking, he crouch-ran to the demountable, circumnavigated it once. Peering into tiny windows, past sheer curtains and multiple Australian flags, he saw only slivers of ordinary domesticity: floral-patterned furniture, used newspapers, uncapped sauce bottles. No sign of movement or life. The boxy white station wagon normally parked under the carport awning was absent, deep tyre tracks in the dry dirt.

Returning to the sliding door, Manolis steadied his breathing, raised his gun to his ear, and with his other hand knocked firmly, twice.

‘Police,’ he said. ‘Rex, Vera, c’mon now, open up.’

No response.

He tried again, firmer, a steeled knuckle.

‘Open up. Police.’

The sound of wind in the surrounding bushes and trees, a magpie warbling.

‘Sparrow…? Andrew, you there?’

The carport flapped.

Manolis briefly considered the time it would take to execute a search warrant, before drawing back his hand and shattering the glass door with the butt of his revolver. Careful to avoid the angular glass shards, he reached inside, flicked the lock, flung the door open and entered through the multicoloured plastic strip curtains.

Gun first, finger poised, twitchy, he searched the rooms one by one, moving swiftly, precisely. The outdated front office, the messy back room and overcrowded storage room. Then the cabin with its pokey kitchenette, airless bedrooms and musty bathroom. The whole space had an interrupted feel, with opened clothes drawers and half-drunk coffee cups and uncooked slices of white bread still resting in the toaster.

Stopping at the fridge, Manolis lowered his gun. He rubbed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose and felt the weight of the new world absorb into his bones.

‘Gamoto,’ he grumbled. Then, after a beat, ‘Right.’

They couldn’t have gotten far. He pictured a dour-faced Sparrow, palms raised in surrender, at the end of a muzzle or blade.

Not far, but where? Manolis ran outside, jogged down the centre of the tourist park’s main street, now that of a ghost town. Surely there was a nearby resident who had seen or heard something – a confrontation, an argument – or knew where they’d gone. The cattle dog reappeared, snapped playfully at his heels.

He passed half a dozen cabins, the general store, pub, barbershop, chemist, calling out whenever he caught his breath. He soon doubled back, returning to the first cabin, rapping on the sliding door. No answer. He tried the second, the pub, with more determined knocking, bashing, announcing himself as police. It was a risky move. In Manolis’s experience, revealing his identity when doorknocking kept hidden those with something to hide, or they were shortly thereafter seen leaping a back fence. In rare circumstances, cops were welcomed with flying bullets.

A half-face finally appeared from behind a curtain, its single eye big and bloodshot. Brilliant, thought Manolis, a junkie; probably high on meth, up all night, ready to fly through the door with a meat cleaver or disease-laden syringe.

‘Yeah?’ the eye asked.

Manolis pointed back towards the office demountable. ‘See anyone leave recently? A car drive away, you see where they went?’

The eye jagged sharply sideways, revealing a splatter of swollen vessels, then back to centre. The words came slow, laboured.

‘Yeah… three of ’em… two whiteys, one black… drove off real fast…’

‘Any idea which way they went?’

The eye blinked once, twice.

‘Umm… nup. They just left.’

Manolis checked his watch, precious minutes slipping by. Sensing his informant had run out of information, and potentially vocabulary, he bolted for Sparrow’s car.

Manipulating keys, ignition, gears, steering wheel, accelerator, Manolis drove, the wind blasting his eyes and face. Fumbling for his phone, he dialled Kerr’s number. She answered on the first ring.

‘They’ve gone,’ he said. ‘Took Sparrow with ’em.’

‘They took Sparrow…? What, you mean they kidnapped him?’

‘Seems that way. Big, stupid risk. I’m driving. But where do I go? Which way, what’s to the north, what’s south?’

Kerr sucked her teeth, scanning her local knowledge.

‘Not much, really,’ she said. ‘You’ve pretty much seen it all. Detention centre in the north, then nothing. Aboriginal community south, then more nothing.’

The car dodged a pothole, clumps of rubbish, roadkill. The rotting carrion was covered in scavenger birds busily trying to avoid becoming roadkill themselves. Manolis coughed exhaust fumes, spat flying insects and bugs. The town was fast approaching, taking up an increasing amount of the car’s non-windscreen. He would need to decide which way to spin the wheel: left to go north, right for south.

‘Can you get here?’ he asked, mind on a solution.

A pause. ‘Not really. Got my hands full.’

‘What’s the problem?’

A longer pause. ‘It’s Onions. He won’t release Omari.’

Manolis’s forehead clenched. ‘Jesus. Why not?’

‘He said Omari was in the managed accommodation area for being abusive and aggressive to his staff.’

‘Did you explain that he was innocent?’

‘I did, but he doesn’t believe me, doesn’t trust me, I’m too junior.’

Manolis heard his breath, heavy, ragged.

‘I told you,’ she added. ‘They do what they want here.’ Her voice had taken on a sudden tightness.

Manolis breathed thickly, anxiously, down the phone line. ‘Just stay where you are. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ He went to hang up.

‘Wait… George?’

‘Yes?’

‘There is some good news.’

‘Oh?’

‘Omari’s wife and daughter just arrived.’

Manolis nearly ran his car off the road. ‘What? You saw them?’

‘It was fortuitous timing – one of the guards let slip.’ She explained that Ahmed’s wife and daughter had been intercepted aboard a fishing boat two nights before and brought to shore on a navy warship. ‘It’s a bit hectic here now, everyone’s distracted, trying to work out what to do.’

‘So Ahmed wasn’t lying about his family,’ Manolis said.

‘No.’

He smiled, instantly lighter and energised. ‘Be there soon as I can.’

Arriving at the T-junction that was the town’s major artery of Queen Street, Manolis sat, engine idling. Hands clasped together in his lap, he closed his eyes and centred his breathing. He consulted his sixth sense. If he was on the run, which way would he go?

‘Ela,’ he told himself. ‘Slow down. Think.’

Ten seconds passed. Twenty, thirty, sixty, scanning his mind, replaying recent events, even dredging his childhood, all in the hope that an arm muscle would involuntarily twitch and decide for him.

Finally, one did. An arm shot out, clasped the wheel. He turned it left, north.

The outskirts of town, the yellow remembrance ribbons still tied around trees, and the turn-off to the detention centre were soon all in Manolis’s wake. An increasing number of roos littered the roadside, starving, looking for scarce nutrients, or deceased, their carcasses splayed out flat. Manolis drove recklessly, regularly crossing into the oncoming lane, eyes far into the distance, scanning the horizon for the rear of a speeding station wagon. The noonday heat blasted into the cabin like a hellfire furnace. His skin blistered, his eyes burned. There was barely any traffic on the road, only the occasional chicken truck spewing feathers or rusted horse float that he overtook with ease.

What began as an indistinct dot on the horizon turned out to be a roadhouse, a last bastion for fuel and supplies. A hand-drawn chalkboard sign out front declared: Last fuel, five hundred Ks. There were two cobwebbed petrol bowsers beneath a metal roof that extended out from a large tin shed. The signage was from yesteryear – extinct brands, promises of ‘full driveway service’, ‘friendly, courteous staff’ and ‘home-style cooked meals’ in florid cursive lettering. In its heyday, this would’ve been more than just a place to refuel; with so many services on offer, it was a destination in itself. The proliferation of multinational burger chains had put paid to that, just as they had to quaint little Greek cafés in outback country towns.

Manolis parked, entered through a door armed with a large jangly bell. It roused a snowy-haired proprietor from his morning nap with a start, hand clutched to his chest, mouth gasping. When his breathing had calmed, he focused his rheumy, cataract eyes on his customer, blinking through the milky-white clouds. ‘Help ya, son?’

Manolis asked the man if he’d had any other customers that morning, or seen a dirty white station wagon drive past with three occupants. The man looked out the window, then at the space above Manolis’s head. He mumbled that he had, although admitted he wasn’t entirely sure if it hadn’t been a dream.

‘Are you real,’ he droned, ‘or is this a dream as well?’

Manolis gauged the proprietor was likely under the influence of some substance, illicit or otherwise. He didn’t have time to find out. He thanked the old man for his time, bought bottled water and continued up the road.

He drove on, further into the great unknown, the badlands. The earth grew hotter and drier as if he were approaching its very core. The land was coarser now, the conditions harsher, the grasses shorter, tougher, trees stunted, clinging to life. Animals appeared more primal and desperate: larger, more muscular roos, broadshouldered, barrel-chested wombats like landmines, hardened by the conditions, emboldened to take on anything.

It took some fifteen empty minutes before Manolis began to question his instincts, along with the dependability of the heavily medicated proprietor. He hadn’t seen a single vehicle since leaving the roadhouse and had been flooring the sedan to its limit. He imagined he would’ve caught up with anything short of rocket-powered by now. Was he supposed to drive for hours, days? He might need to call for reinforcements here. Perhaps he should have earlier – not that his phone had any reception.

Another dead animal loomed ahead, this one stretched precariously across the centre of the road. Manolis narrowed his eyes, assessed the oncoming hazard and subconsciously eased his foot off the pedal. He would normally have swerved past the beast and continued on, but there was something about this carcass, its orientation, its shape. As he came closer, he realised what it was.

He applied the brakes late, the car screeching and sliding to a halt, rubber burning from bald tyres. He sat a moment, inhaling the cloud of toxic gas, eyeing the mass with trepidation and panic, coming to terms with what lay before him. On the road, a trail of deep crimson snaked from a pool that haloed the body’s head.

The arms, the legs were flared in unnatural positions, the face down, eyes closed.

But above all, it was the clothes. Powder-blue shirt, navy shorts, white socks and sensible black shoes.