CHAPTER 1

Long waves of rain swept through the headlights’ arc. Big branches, heavy and wet, came whirling in upon the wind. A blizzard of twigs and leaves and other debris peppered the sides of the car. You could hear the tyres splash through the puddles on the bitumen, the V8 engine roar.

I glanced into the mirror. The Country Fire Authority ute was following close behind. Somewhere behind it was a Greendale patrol car. We’d been playing this wild game of tag since I started my shift this morning.

As we swung round a bend, a messmate gum on our right came crashing down onto the road in front of us.

‘Go left!’ screamed Lance, beside me.

I hit the anchors but stayed on course and slammed into the trunk.

‘Fucken hell,’ said Lance.

We stepped out into the rain and inspected the damage – the bull-bar was pushed back, the grille cracked. But the vehicle should still be driveable.

The CFA pulled up behind us. Danny Clarion, the Satellite brigade captain, got out and joined us, a chainsaw in his hands.

‘Good job,’ he muttered. He was a tall, spare man with bemused eyes and a rolly welded to the corner of his mouth.

‘Good job?’ replied Lance. ‘She ran straight into the tree. What a bloody mess.’

‘Well, it is a messmate,’ said Danny. ‘Rather hit the trunk than the branches,’ he explained, nodding at the thick foliage to our left. ‘You get that lot coming through the windscreen, they’ll be pluckin’ pieces out of you for weeks.’

I pointed at the fallen tree. ‘You got this, Danny?’

‘We got it.’

‘Thanks.’

He put the saw on the ground, started it up smoothly. His crew appeared with crowbars and axes, got down to business. Lance and I worked our way around the scene and resumed our journey.

‘How far now?’ I asked.

‘Couple of kays.’

We’d been despatched to an accident on Reynolds Road. There was a driver reportedly trapped in an overturned car, one of the dozens of incidents coming over the radio as the storm battered the Windmark Ranges. People said it was the worst in living memory, but they always say that. It was certainly the worst in my memory, but that wasn’t saying much; I’d only been here a few days. Whatever the truth, I could see there were trees and poles down everywhere, roads washed away, sinkholes opening up, flash floods and landslides descending.

I put my foot as far down as I dared. Frogs and fat raindrops bounced off the road. A shadow-cat flew by, scared out of its wits. The clock on the dash said it was almost midnight.

‘I do hate driving bells and whistles in a storm,’ I commented.

Lance remained silent, his features contorted as he leaned forward and stared at the road ahead, like he expected mace-waving orcs to rise up out of it. His confidence in my driving abilities had clearly taken a battering.

I caught a glimpse of something odd in a gully beside the road and slowed down for a closer look.

‘What is it?’ asked Lance.

‘Thought I saw a wheel.’ I stopped, reversed.

‘This isn’t Reynolds Road.’

‘Feller had just rolled his car . . .’

‘Yeah . . . in Reynolds Road.’

‘Might not have known exactly where he was – Reynolds might have been where he was heading.’ I stared down into the shadows.

Nothing.

Lance twisted around, his belly lolling over the seatbelt.

‘Jess, we have to go.’

‘Gimme a second.’ I lowered the window and scoped the gully with my Maglite. The wind and the rain came sweeping in. We both got wet laps.

There was a tangle of shapes and shades down there: bushes, tree trunks, a twisting creek, fantail ferns. And a half circle: a wheel in the air.

I moved the beam and a rectangle of metal pipes and plates appeared. The wheel was attached to an overturned car.

Was it a historic wreck or was it the object of our search? I moved the torch again.

Not historic. There was a body halfway out the window.

Lance called it in while I scrambled down the slope. I was relieved to see the body sketch a vague wave as I drew near.

‘You right there, mate?’ I asked.

He gave a drunken mumble in response.

I helped him out of the car. He was in his thirties, rubber-jawed, red-eyed, breath smelling like the back bar of the Satellite Hotel. He slumped to the ground, groped for his phone, tried to take a selfie, managed to take one of his own feet.

‘For the ’surance,’ he mumbled.

‘Yeah right.’

I gave him the once-over. He seemed okay. I tried a breathalyser but had trouble getting enough breath out of the bloke to take a reading. I was still trying when Lance arrived, panting.

‘How is he?’

‘Pissed as a public urinal.’

‘Ambulance’ll be here in twenty minutes,’ he said. ‘CFA, twenty seconds,’ he added, glancing back down the road, along which a set of flashing lights were approaching. Those guys never gave up.

Danny Clarion came surfing in on a black mud wave.

‘Just got a call,’ he said. ‘Tree down at Wycliff Rise.’

‘Trees are down everywhere.’

‘This one’s killed someone.’

Wycliff Rise? I’d never heard of it. Then again, there were a lot of things round here I hadn’t heard of. The ranges around us went all the way to Queensland. Half their luck. I was still trying to get my bearings in this part of the world. Main thing I’d learned so far was where to buy the best coffee and pies.

‘How far’s this Wycliff Rise?’

‘Night like this,’ said Danny. ‘Half an hour.’ A tree toppled in the distance. ‘One of those hits you, maybe forever.’

I nodded at the car below us, its driver flopped back against the wheel, arms akimbo. Rain fell into his mouth. One of his shoes had come off. ‘You know this joker?’

Danny peered at the car, frowned and shone the torch on its driver.

‘Jeez, Lenny,’ he said. ‘Third time in less than a year.’

‘Sorry, Danny,’ Lenny said, then vomited onto his phone.

The Greendale car arrived, its crew a pair of constables just starting their shift. I wanted to get to Wycliff in a hurry so I handed the drunken Lenny over to them, and Lance and I set off.

A string of washouts and diversions meant the trip took longer than expected. As we rounded a bend I caught an unexpected sight in the headlights: a white horse cantering through the bush alongside the road, a young woman – maybe a girl – in the saddle.

She vanished as swiftly as she’d appeared.

‘See that?’ I asked Lance.

‘What?’

‘Girl on a horse.’

He glanced around, but whoever it was, they were long gone.

‘You’re seeing a lot of things tonight,’ Lance grunted. He was a decent enough bloke, but not what you’d call dynamic. He’d been on the job for twenty years and had risen to the heady heights of senior constable. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he was pissed off that I’d been appointed officer-in-charge of the Satellite Station, but, if so, he was hiding it well. He told me he hadn’t applied, didn’t want the paperwork. He and his wife, Wendy, had asked me round to dinner, and he helped me find accommodation, something which, I’d been surprised to discover, was in short supply round here.

By the time we arrived at Wycliff there were other emergency workers on scene: ambos, fireys, State Emergency Service, police.

The latter was from Greendale – the vehicle was a BMW M3 Competition, the best and newest car in the fleet. That suggested somebody senior. They must have swung round from the north-west. Hardly surprising; there were cops all over the ranges tonight.

Somebody had set up floodlights, a portable genny rumbled. There was a tow truck, orange lights rotating, ready to swoop in and grab the wreck. The operator was out of the cab having a smoke. He hunched into his jacket and stamped his feet as we drove past.

The paramedics were working on what was left of some poor bastard in a Fergie tractor that had been crushed by a falling eucalypt. The fireys were sawing the tree into bite-sized chunks. They made the final cut and a team of volunteers lifted the main log off and twisted the tractor’s metal frame back with a Halligan bar.

The driver was as dead as anybody was ever going to be. I took a quick look at him and shuddered. The upper half of his body was crushed. His thick black hair was slick with blood, his head was pushed back into the roll bar. A smaller branch had speared right through his chest. Strangely, I had a sense of a handsome man, dark-haired, strongly built.

One of the people watching – a man in a high-vis snow jacket and gumboots – turned round. It was Ed Dougherty, the inspector from Greendale. My boss. He was tall, heavy, pale-faced and talking into his portable. Greendale, fifty kays away and on the edge of suburban Melbourne, was our regional headquarters. He finished the call then addressed me.

‘Redpath. We’re okay here. Get on up to the Leatherwood Crossing. There’s a bridge under water there, idiots trying to drive across. One death is enough for tonight. Who you with?’

‘Lance Cunningham.’

‘He’ll know it. Set up a roadblock. Nobody goes through.’

‘Got it.’

I paused for a last look at the scene. Tried to take it all in, something I’d learned to do in the Territory. A quick scan, a mental photograph filed away: the angles and glances, the whirling geometry, the anomalies and questions. The ambos, with the help of the fireys, were loading the body onto a stretcher. The SES guys were dragging the logs away to give everybody better access. Chainsaws screamed, sawdust flew. The wind was as sharp as a razor blade.

‘Redpath!’ The boss. ‘What are you waiting for? You’re not up in the Never-Never now.’

Was that all I was going to be known for down here? The woman from the Territory. Maybe, until I settled in, forged my own identity.

I climbed up the slope, mud sucking at my boots. Runnels of filthy water poured into every gap they could find. Mud crept into my pants as I slipped, skidded and scrambled up to the car.

I filled Lance in and off we went.