AMY OWENS CHECKS THE girl in the passenger seat, taking a quick look out the side of her sunglasses. No change. The morning glare must be hell on the girl’s eyes, but she still stares out the windscreen, motionless and silent. Gone, Amy thinks. She’s been like this since Amy picked her up from the hospital. Whatever they did to her in there, it didn’t work.
It’s going to be a long couple of days.
Across the beachside carpark, a white ute reverses, coming out hard. The ute belongs to a local copper. A young Italian bloke. A minute ago, Amy watched him get dressed out in the open, caught a look at his pert arse. The cop tears out of the carpark without noticing them.
This prompts the girl to finally speak. ‘What was that all about?’
‘The guy?’
The girl doesn’t turn her face. ‘No, the envelope.’
Amy hits the ignition. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t look.’ It’s a lie. ‘Put your seatbelt on.’
‘How far is it?’
‘Pretty far.’ Amy pulls out onto the main drag, glances at the girl again. ‘Hey?’
‘What?’
‘I said put your belt on.’
The job is pure shit-work: get the girl to Adelaide. She won’t fly, so it’s a two-day drive instead. Amy ends up with it because the girl’s important to Colleen Vinton. Colleen the Queen. Colleen is upriver from everything unholy on the coast. Prostitution, porn, gambling, narcotics, police corruption. If it’s illegal, or bad for the soul, Colleen owns a piece of it. She owns a piece of Amy, as well. A big piece.
Amy steers them down the coast across the river into New South Wales. The girl doesn’t have luggage or dietary requirements, but she has a request. She wants to go to church. Apparently, it has to be her regular haunt. Saint Andrews, of all places.
Christ almighty.
When they get there, Amy sends her in alone, opting to stay by the car and smoke. She’s not worried about losing her. The girl’s moving like she’s underwater. She’s not running anywhere.
After a time, the girl comes back out with the priest in tow.
It’s not just any priest. It’s the man himself.
Father Frank Hanlon.
Like Colleen Vinton, Frank’s a man with a lot of enemies. Everyone on the coast knows him, especially the people in Colleen’s orbit. The two of them are mortal enemies—a real yin and yang deal—and it’s a mystery to everyone why Frank still draws breath. Colleen has killed men for much less.
He waves Amy over to the church.
‘What the fuck do you want?’ she whispers to herself, jettisoning her smoke. Amy tells the girl to go to the car and wait, then walks across to the church steps. ‘What?’
‘I’ve got people in Adelaide,’ says the priest.
Amy opens her hands. And?
‘I’ll know if she doesn’t get there.’
‘I think you’ve got me mixed up with someone else.’
‘No, I know who you are,’ he says. ‘I knew your father back in the day.’
Amy starts back across the lawn.
‘You really haven’t lived up to your potential, Miss Owens,’ the priest says.
Fuck this guy.
‘Wait,’ he says.
She stops. Something about his voice.
‘If you ever want to take off the leash, my door’s always open. We take all comers down here. I can help you. I’ve helped plenty of people just like you. You don’t have to spend your whole life doing Colleen’s bidding.’
‘Is that what I’m doing?’
The priest looks past her, over at the girl. ‘False idols speak only of false dreams.’
‘If you say so, buddy.’
Amy doesn’t stop a second time.
They drive all day, stopping only to pee and refuel. It’s hard going. The inside of the country is low and dry and monotonous. It’s that thing where you can see too much of it at once: trees and grass all the way to the horizon, with nothing further out. No hills or mountain ranges to provide perspective. No waterfalls or alpine greenery. Just dead grass and dirt, all the way to the centre.
By nightfall, they reach the town of Nyngan and hole up in a motel. Amy polishes off two bottles of the house red, but the girl won’t drink. Instead, she watches television in the darkened room, getting up every five minutes to change the channel.
‘Can you stop that?’ Amy snaps, tired.
‘Sorry,’ says the girl. She turns the TV off.
‘You didn’t have to do that.’
‘It’s fine,’ says the girl, and then, a full two minutes later, just as Amy is drifting off, she says, ‘They wouldn’t let us change the channel in the hospital.’