4.

Minutes, years, for his brain to unscramble. Lying on his back, the hard blow of the concrete still pounding through him, arms and legs half-numb. Panic spiked before he made sense of it. Not dying, not shot – tasered.

Light flared to the right as someone set a bright torch on the ground, the kind people kept in car boots and sheds. A waft of floral perfume as a woman came to stand in front of him. Oh fuck – Jasmine. At least, that’s what he called her. She’d never given him her real name, never shown ID to prove she was the federal cop she claimed to be.

He sat up, ignoring the spasm of pain in his back, and Jasmine knelt in front of him. Mid-thirties with drab brown hair and forgettable features, a tight mouth. The stun gun in her hand was designed to look like a phone. Probably the same illegal weapon she’d used while interrogating him four months ago. She’d half-drowned him in a bathtub and repeatedly stunned him, claiming it was to keep her cover. No idea what her excuse was this time, but she’d been after Frankie then, and she’d be after Frankie now.

She checked to make sure he was looking and launched into speech.

Silence.

Shit, his hearing aids were still in his pocket. They weren’t exactly news to Jasmine, but he wasn’t going to fumble around with numb fingers trying to put them on in front of her – like peeling back his skin to reveal his inner workings. Except she’d be impossible to lip-read without them; no faint tone, just her fast stream of words and the hard line of her mouth. A mouth that had grown even harder at his lack of response to the question she’d obviously just repeated.

Fuck it.

He reached for his aids and she thrust the taser towards him.

He froze.

‘I’m getting my hearing aids,’ he said quickly. ‘Can’t understand you.’

She glanced down the laneway and gestured for him to go ahead, impatience on her face as it took him a few attempts to hook them over his ears and insert the receivers. He brushed his hair over them and faced her.

‘… you … stand … now?’ A thin thread of a voice.

He filled in the gaps: ‘Can you understand me now?’ He’d probably only catch every second or so word, but it’d be enough to guess the rest.

‘Why the hell did you tase me?’ he said.

‘I told you not to run.’

‘Yeah, very helpful. If you’re after Frankie, I don’t know where she is. Ask her criminal mates – start with her sister, Maggie.’

Jasmine scanned the path behind them. ‘They’re not in contact, but … you … her.’

‘Slower.’

‘You. Know. Her. Better than anyone.’

He’d thought he’d known Frankie, thought they were friends as well as business partners. ‘Frankie fucked up my life and nearly got my wife killed. Even if I could find her, I wouldn’t.’

Jasmine leaned closer. Chapped lips, the remnants of dark lipstick clinging to the corners, skin stretched tight across her cheekbones. ‘I’m not asking you, I’m telling you – find her. She’s got documents I need. Get me them or Frankie, I don’t care which. You’ve got two days.’

He knew something about those files, but he wasn’t about to tell Jasmine.

She was scanning the tops of the high wooden fences, braced as though about to run. His muscles tensed in response. What would it take to scare a cop who’d chased a man down an unlit alley?

Sudden clarity in his fogged brain: she’d claimed she was a fed.

‘Is this connected to Martin Amon?’ he asked.

‘Yes. I need –’

‘Show me your ID.’

She darted another look down the laneway then withdrew a thin leather wallet from her back pocket and threw it to him. Inside was an official-looking seal bearing a crown and the words Australian Federal Police, her unsmiling photo beside it. Senior Constable Imogen Blain. Imogen – a name he’d seen written, but never said.

He noted her badge number and returned it. ‘What’s Frankie got to do with Amon?’

‘I told you, she’s got documents we need. That’s why Martin contacted you. I told him – ’ She faltered. ‘I told him you’d be able to find her.’

‘Wait. You mean Amon’s a cop? A federal cop?’

Her jaw worked. ‘Yes.’

An oil slick of fear in his stomach: a murdered fed. Whatever Imogen was involved in, he needed to be very far from it, very quickly. There was no way she was investigating this officially – not with her furtive approach and lack of partner, the fact no one else had mentioned Frankie. Imogen was either on the outer, or not a cop at all.

‘I can’t help.’ He went to stand.

‘If you don’t, I’ll make your life unbearable.’

He knew unbearable, knew its rank and sweating weight. Nothing she could do could come close. ‘Do your worst.’

‘Fine. I’ll arrest you for murder.’

Cold seeped through him. How could she know?

‘Did you really think we didn’t know, Caleb? You shot Michael Petronin and left him to rot on the beach. A falling-out among thieves. That’s what we’ll tell the jury. And they’ll believe it. Particularly when they find out the victim was Frankie’s thug brother-in-law.’

Petronin’s mangled neck and blank eyes, the warmth of his spraying blood, the salt taste of it.

Get it the fuck together and think. She couldn’t know, not for sure; there’d been no evidence, no witnesses.

He tried to keep his voice even. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Really? Because someone does.’ Imogen pulled a sheet of paper from her coat pocket and shoved it at him: a photocopy of a handwritten letter with yesterday’s date. No police letterhead, but set out like an official statement, with the author’s name and signature blacked out. Words of varying sizes sloped across the page.

I saw C A L E B Z E L I C kill that man on the beech last year they were aguing and C A L E B Z EL I C had a gun and shot the man dead. I know C A L E B Z E L I C becose I seen him round and he is deaf.

Imogen’s dry lips were moving. ‘… find Frankie or do twenty years for murder.’ She stood and flipped a business card onto his lap. ‘Your two days start now.’

She walked away, the darkness swallowing her.