DETECTIVE BRUNO KARRAS FLOATS in the dark ocean, out past the breakers where the quiet water drifts. It’s just him and another bloke further down, the two of them exchanging a distant nod as they wait for the next set. It’s a couple of minutes past dawn, too early for everyone else.
Another week in this year.
The year where nothing matters.
Bruno turns towards the shoreline: Surfers Paradise lurks in the distance, grey and calm. The city is a jagged line of high-rises, cranes and scaffolding, all in silhouette.
A place on pause.
Australia in recession.
Everything going backwards.
The sea water swells beneath him. He paddles for a wave and finds himself on the right of the other surfer. Bruno pulls back, lets the other guy have it, then tracks the man’s head and shoulders as he travels the wave and dips away. Bruno tries for another two waves from the set, but none of it breaks the right way.
He returns to his spot in the quiet.
He waits.
He thinks about work—the go-nowhere case load assigned to him—and he’s still thinking about it when he senses movement in the water, some strange current.
He searches around.
A long shadow passes beneath his feet.
Shark.
Bruno swims, thrashing as the swell comes in behind. He stays prone on his board as the wave crests, desperate to keep his legs out of the sea.
‘Shark,’ he screams, searching for the other guy. ‘Shark.’
The wave carries him like a glacier.
Bruno paddles, arms burning. He’s still shouting when a dolphin jumps out a few feet away, its glistening black hide slick with water.
False alarm.
Bruno keeps swimming, cursing the dolphin all the way to shore. He waits in the shallows and tries, with all his might, to let his pounding heart subside into a crying jag, but the tears won’t come.
The carpark by the beach is a quarter full, despite the hour. Bruno towels off by his ute, gives the carpark a quick scan, drops his togs and pulls on a pair of white cotton jocks. He puts the rest of his work clothes on, except his shoes, then slips behind the steering wheel to wax his hair in the rear-view. That’s when he notices it: paper tucked under the windscreen wiper. He reaches around and yanks it free.
It’s a white business envelope.
His name, written in blue biro on the front.
He holds it up to the light.
No wires. Nothing sus.
He opens it and finds a deck of photographs.
He flicks through them.
A street.
A house on that street.
The same again, but with a car in the foreground.
It’s a big house, but nothing outrageous. Some new-money mansion with tapered kerbs and a dry lawn out front. Could be one of a dozen new estates cropping up around the coast.
Bruno keeps moving through the images.
The same house, from different angles.
The same street.
Over and over.
The final image is facedown in the deck. Bruno turns it over and immediately checks his surroundings. He looks at the photograph again and feels absolute dread for the second time this morning.