The country up here had been scorched by fire. I wasn’t sure how long ago, but most of the tree trunks thrusting up over the canopy were white and bare, dead. Ravens peered down from the upper branches, their eyes like lasers. There were a few hardy farms scattered along the northern end of the valley: beef, alpaca, even goats. The further north I travelled, the hardier and more goat-like the farms became.
There was no mistaking the property when I rounded a bend and came to it on the northern side of the road. As Dad had said, the main building was like a fortress: long and low, almost crenellated, its dark windows looking down on a sizeable acreage below. The house was at the rear of the property, up where the farmland met the bush. The rock – Thunderhead, I presumed – loomed over the forested slopes behind the building. Dad was right about the outcrop: it looked positively creepy up there, like a human skull gazing down upon the valley. There was no sign of a woman’s face from this angle: it was all granite blocks and precipitous inclines. I could see why Dad had depicted it as powerfully ominous as he had. His creative instincts had always understood more than his rational mind.
I pulled up at the front gate. It was high and heavy, black iron, clearly designed to keep the world at bay. Beyond the gate there was a gloomy avenue of windswept cypress pines leading up to the house.
The sign at the front read: THUNDERHEAD ESTATE, with FINE WINES in smaller lettering below. A winery seemed out of place up here; it was like a livid scar on pale skin, an unnatural intrusion that could only keep the surrounding forest at bay with a bevy of chainsaws and poisons. Behind the house was a network of white brick and metal-clad sheds with solar panels and massive air-conditioning vents on their roofs. I presumed that would be the cellars and labs, the bottling plant.
I got out of the car, collar high, hat low, wondering what sort of security they had. Cameras? Motion sensors? Alarms? All of the above, I had to assume. I hunched lower into my jacket. The gate was closed, but I gave the lock a quick shake. Tight as. No jumping over this one.
It was getting on for dusk now. There were lights on in the main building and a squadron of SUVs and four-wheel drives in an attached carport.
I walked back to the HiLux and drove a kilometre down the road, past all the TRESPASSERS PROSECUTED signs my father had spoken of. I pulled into a side road and parked the car in a grove of tea-tree I hoped would hide me from prying eyes. I went up to the fence, studied the property from the side and considered my options.
I wanted to have a closer look at the buildings, but how was I going to do that? Knock on the door? Yeah, right. And besides, I had a suspicion that the country itself was an important element in this drama. Surely the property’s seclusion was the reason they’d chosen it? They grew a few grapes, sure, but what else did they get up to? The way they’d reacted to my father’s unauthorised entry suggested they were hiding something.
Maybe I could do two things in the one incursion. Use the last of the daylight to search the bushier parts of the property, and then, when it grew dark, set myself up at a vantage point behind the house and study its occupants with the binoculars. Look for any suspicious activities, anything out of place. Maybe engage in a little breaking and entering should the opportunity arise.
The sky suggested I had maybe half an hour of dim light left.
I kitted up: torch, binoculars, beanie, the folding shovel I kept for digging myself out of bogs. The storm was closing in. There was lightning in the west, ribbons and filaments of coruscation in the approaching clouds.
I climbed through the fence and walked until I came across a shallow gully. I decided to use it as a scaffold to ascend the property. It made the climb more difficult but it offered greater concealment from the house. I set out. There was a narrow creek at the gully’s base, sporadic trees and rocks fallen across it. It took about ten minutes to work my way up into the bush at the rear of the property.
As I climbed, the ground grew harder, sparser, trickier to read. There were flakes of mica embedded in the black boulders strewn across the trail, chunks of granite in the sand. When I got up to where the gully ran out, I came upon a track running off to the north-west. I followed it carefully, stooped low, searching for signs of . . . of what? Disturbance, I supposed. I could see the lights of the house, maybe five hundred metres away. Whenever I came across evidence of human activity – footprints, fence posts, old drums or car parts – I crouched down and made a detailed examination of the ground nearby. I came across animal scats, wombat holes, golden orb spiders in giant night webs. A bat swooped out of the darkness, carving a wave in the vortices of its wake. I stumbled upon – not into, thank Christ – an old mine shaft at the foot of the slope. I wouldn’t have minded a look down into its depths – could there be a better place to bury your secrets? – but the sides of the shaft were crumbly and dangerous and I wasn’t properly equipped. At least the snakes appeared to be hibernating.
A light dusting of snow drifted in, grew heavier, settled on the surface and made the search harder. I used the torch in short, sharp bursts as the darkness set in. I spent more time on my knees than I did upright, my attention caught by the tiniest of signs: a twisted root, a clump of hair, a handprint, a tear-shaped paw print. The storm clouds were gathering overhead, but they’d yet to deliver their full load.
I’d been at it for half an hour when I came across a track with a set of tyre treads on it that gave me pause. They were Dunlop Sport Maxx. The same tread I’d seen on the dirt road near my house. Not proof of anything, of course. There could be a hundred such sets of tyres in the district. But why was it running round up here, at the back of the property? Collecting firewood? Dumping rubbish? Maybe, but darker possibilities ran through my mind.
There was a rumble of thunder and the first fat raindrops punched the ground. I had to get cracking or the rain would wash away whatever I was looking for.
I set off after the Dunlops. I lost them once or twice in the dark, but found them again with a combination of touch and torch. Eventually I reached a clearing in which it appeared the vehicle had come to a halt. There were at least two sets of boot prints heading off to the west. I followed them.
Then, where the boots ran out, I found something: a low mound of earth, recent, with a layer of leaf matter and dirt dumped over it in an attempt at concealment. Too long for a dog, too short for a horse. Whatever it was, I didn’t like it. I removed my backpack, took out the folding shovel and started digging. I’d only gone a few centimetres when I encountered something metallic. I went at it for a few more minutes and uncovered an old steel and wire mesh security door. Somebody had placed it here to protect whatever was buried below. That made sense; you wouldn’t want foxes digging it up and distributing fragments around the neighbourhood.
I heard a dog bark in the distance, coming from the direction of the house. I kept digging, then heard another bark. Was it closer this time? I paused, studied the night, listening. I thought of the dog that had attacked Dad. Then I heard it again, definitely closer now.
I gripped the shovel and took a few steps towards the rear of the clearing – then stopped, stunned, as a battery of portable floodlights lit up the site and blinded me. I shielded my eyes and squinted through my fingers.
What the hell . . . I hadn’t heard anybody arrive. They must have been here all the time, waiting for me. A trio of figures stepped into the clearing, bright light streaming around their silhouettes. They were all holding weapons and the weapons were all aimed at me.
‘Evening, Jesse,’ said the man in the middle.
I took a moment to recognise him. It was his outfit that confused me: combat jacket, tactical boots, heavy equipment and gear. The last time I saw him he’d been wearing a crisp blue suit with trainers. The man who’d intercepted me at Hawley and Sons. What was his name? Kane Lochran. From Corporate Governance. He was holding a shotgun in his right arm and moving lightly on his feet, poised, ready to strike. Corporate fucking governance was right. He had a set of thermal binoculars around his neck and a portable radio in his chest pocket. Had they been watching me the whole time?
Next to him was Craig Hawley, levelling a bolt-action Winchester with a night scope at me. No surprise to see him here. It was the man on the other side who gave me a moment of despair. Ed Dougherty, the inspector from Greendale. He had a scowl on his face and a pistol in his right hand. His presence there instantly explained a lot of things: how they’d stayed a step ahead of me, how they’d known where I lived, how they’d sabotaged the investigations into the deaths of Leon Glazier and Raph Cambric. I remembered Dougherty disappearing on the first day of the investigation. Presumably he’d been planting the evidence that ensnared Nash, a move they’d been forced to make when I worked out that Raph’s death wasn’t an accident.
‘Please don’t make a sudden move,’ said Lochran. ‘You’re trespassing, but I’m sure we can resolve this.’
Yeah, right. Whoever was in the grave behind me had doubtless heard something similar.
He pulled the radio out of his pocket and put it to his mouth. ‘She was right,’ he said, not taking his eyes off me or his finger off the trigger. ‘We’ve got her.’
He listened for a moment, then replied: ‘I will.’
He put the radio away.
‘We wait,’ he said.
We waited.
The silence was protracted, razor-edged. A distant owl hooted.
I gave Dougherty an acid stare, remembering Starcy’s suggestion that the Revelators had blackmailed or corrupted cops on the payroll.
‘What was it?’ I asked Dougherty. ‘Young girls? Boys?’ He didn’t strike me as the acolyte type. He had the morals of a feral cat but he wasn’t stupid.
‘I warned you to keep your nose out of it,’ he said with a thick sneer.
Lochran answered for him. ‘Inspector Ed does have an unfortunate taste for young – is women the right word, Ed? Maybe not, but, if it’s any consolation, he won’t be interested in an old hag like you.’
Lochran continued to move restlessly on the balls of his feet, as if he were keen to finish this. The shottie was what concerned me most. It was a weapon that didn’t take prisoners, especially at this range, and he was cradling it with the air of somebody who knew how to use it. More than that: somebody who took pleasure in using it. He stepped forward, into the light, and I noticed a blue flash on the side of his boots.
‘You’re the bastard who dropped that tree on me,’ I grunted.
‘That was a warning,’ he replied. ‘We’d been told you were persistent.’
I could guess who told them that, I thought, glancing at Dougherty. I turned back to Lochran.
‘You crippled my dog.’
‘That wasn’t part of the plan,’ he said. A smile that said he couldn’t give a shit flitted across his face.
Speak of the devil, another dog – an athletic Doberman with prominent fangs and pointed ears – came bounding into the clearing. Lochran snapped his fingers and the animal moved to his side. It stood there, panting, watching.
Jesus. Guns, dogs, fancy-dress commandos. The odds were getting longer by the minute.
A set of headlights appeared, coming up from the house. I turned to watch as a sleek black four-wheel drive drew to a halt in front of us, its powerful high beams dazzling us all. Hawley and Dougherty instinctively moved to restrain me, each gripping an arm. Lochran remained in front of us, his eyes not leaving mine, the shotgun levelled at my chest.
The driver’s door opened and a man stepped out. George Hawley. No surprise there. He was wearing a long black coat, a thick scarf and an air of weary resolve, as if annoyed that I’d dragged him away from a warm fire, but supremely confident that he had the situation in hand. He was in charge here, as he liked to be.
Or was he?
He strode round to the passenger’s door and opened it. A shrouded figure stepped out into the elements: short, thin, moving slowly. A woman, I sensed from the way she stepped over the snowy ground. The atmosphere grew tense. I should have been planning my counterattack, but even I was intrigued.
She moved into the floodlights’ glow and pushed her fur-lined hood back to reveal a thin, brittle face, powdery pale where it wasn’t rouged. She had jet-black hair and painted lips.
‘Hello, Jesse,’ she said.
I was speechless.
It was Guin Patmos.