Colder Than Blood

ED ROWE
COLDER THAN BLOOD

In memory of
Bob Bilston
“My second best mate”
COLDER THAN BLOOD
Copyright © 2007 by Shannon Edward Rowe
First published in 2008 by Lulu.com
All rights reserved. Apart from legitimate use permitted under Australian
copyright law, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, image scanning, photography, or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
All characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons,
living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover images by Shannon Edward Rowe

Chapter One
I wasn’t expecting trouble that afternoon as I drove home from yet

another failed job interview. My shirt collar was unbuttoned, my
tie a scrunched ball in the glove box. I was in one of those black moods
that only whisky can wash clean.
I had just braked for a traffic light, my mind still tormenting itself
with replays and should-have-said retorts, when a girl yanked open the
back door and dived into my car, screaming, “Go, go, go!” My body
reacted before my brain could object. I stomped on the pedal and ran the
red, leaving a pack of horns barking at my tail. I’d burned up half a
block before I remembered how to think.
The girl gripped my shoulder. “Please don’t stop,” she said. She
had long, frizzy blonde hair, and if she was in her twenties it was only
by an inch. Her eyes sought out mine in the rear-view mirror. Her chin
was trembling.
I gave her a hard stare through my little piece of mirror and went for
the brakes.
“No!” She shook my shoulder. “You have to help me!”
“Is that right?” I stopped the car completely and scowled at her.
“Please! We have to go now. Now!” She cast an anxious glance
through the rear window. I followed her gaze, but saw nothing
dangerous out there.
The girl wore a tight cream-coloured top and a skirt that showed
more leg than it was paid to. A gold crucifix necklace dangled between
her breasts. Her hand felt small and delicate on my arm.
“What’s the big emergency?” I demanded. “This isn’t an
ambulance.”
She leaned in close, her breath hot on my cheek. “He’s trying to kill
me!” Emotions rippled across her face like the contortions of a
drowning child.
“Who’s trying to kill you? What does he want?”
Her deep blue eyes locked onto mine. “Vengeance,” she said.
Tyres screeched on the road behind us. Fifty metres back, a brown
Mitsubishi work-van swerved in front of another car, muscling through
the traffic like a bully. The van looked broad and sturdy, with a
leathery, sunbaked skin of dirt. It straightened out and accelerated
COLDER THAN BLOOD 1 ED ROWE

towards us.
“It’s him!” the girl shouted. Her fist pounded my seat. “Go, go,
go!”
I floored it. The girl was flung back into her seat as the Commodore
leapt forward. I glued my foot to the pedal and blurred past a line of
cars.
The van increased its speed, snorting furious blasts of exhaust as its
driver gunned the engine. A ladder tied to the van’s roof rack jutted out
over the windshield like a jousting lance. The van began to close the
distance between us, its heavy bull-bar grinning with wicked metal teeth
as it drew closer.
Chew on this, I thought, and whipped my car through a narrow gap.
I shot ahead into a clear stretch of road and took off, leaving the van
stuck behind traffic. The van swung from lane to lane, tailgating the
cars in its way and trying to force an opening. Its horn brayed howls of
frustration as I sped away.
“No worries,” I told the girl.
“He won’t give up,” she said. “You’ll see.”
In the mirror, I saw the van veer out from behind a stubborn Volvo.
Its left wheels ramped up onto the pavement and it surged ahead,
straddling the gutter as it raced alongside the Volvo.
“Put your seatbelt on,” I said. My hands tightened on the steering
wheel.
The van swung onto the road in front of the Volvo. Its tyres bounced
off the kerb and the back of the van clipped the smaller vehicle’s fender.
Headlight glass sprayed into the air as the Volvo limped out of the way.
The van shrugged off the blow and homed relentlessly in on us again.
“Oh God.” The girl had seen it too. “Oh God, we’re going to die!”
She clutched her knees to her chest, her breath coming in short, ragged
gulps.
“We’re not dead yet.”
The road ahead sloped up a steep hill. I shifted to third gear and hit
it doing over a hundred. The Commodore’s engine revved as we
rocketed up the hill, my foot jammed hard against the accelerator. But
still the van kept pace, as unstoppable as a tank, its driver a dark,
menacing silhouette behind the windshield.
We soared over the crest of the hill and my guts suddenly clenched:
a solid wall of cars blocked the road at the next set of traffic lights.

“Problem,” I said. There were no side streets to pull into.
The girl’s fingernails dug into my shoulder. “Oh Jesus, do
something!” She still hadn’t fastened her seatbelt. “He’ll catch us!”
As we plummeted towards the intersection, I spotted a corner service
station coming up fast on the left. It was a chance, but if I mistimed it…
In the mirror, I saw the van clear the top of the hill. Its cruel bull-bar
smile seemed to widen in triumph as it accelerated towards us.
“He’s coming!” the girl cried. “He’s going to ram us!”
“Shut up and hold on to something!”
I braked hard to avoid a hatchback, then spun the wheel to the left
and thumped into the service station’s entryway. The undercarriage
scraped harshly on concrete and the back tyres went into a skid. I fought
to control the fishtailing car, the steering wheel jarring my fingers as we
barely missed a petrol pump. A thud and a muffled squeal of pain came
from the back seat, but I had no time to look. The car continued to slide.
I grappled with the wheel as we skidded towards the store’s plate-glass
window. Inside at the counter, a clerk turned his head in alarm.
Grunting with effort, I hauled the wheel across and skimmed so close
to the glass that the automatic doors started to open. The car sledded
past the store on two wheels before skidding out of the adjacent
entryway and onto the other road.
Horns blared as I cut across the path of oncoming traffic. I pumped
the brakes to regain control and a strong, acrid smell of burnt rubber
filled the car. I straightened out into the middle lane and stood on the
pedal again. My heart was pounding hard enough to make a nervous
doctor reach for sedatives.
The girl scooted forward, her eyes wide and panicky. “Did you lose
him?”
In the mirror, I saw the brown van shoot out of the entryway a
hundred metres behind us. “I’m working on it,” I said.
I made an abrupt left turn into a tree-lined residential street. The
back of the car threatened to spin out again, but I kept it under control
through sheer willpower. The girl grabbed my headrest to steady
herself. With the rear view still empty, I pulled a quick right into the
next street.
Only it wasn’t a street, I realised too late. It was a dead-end court.
There was no time to back out. I braked hard and tucked the car into
the nearest driveway, my teeth clacking as the tyres bumped the kerb.

Just as we slid out of sight behind a hedge, I turned my head and saw the
van go roaring past down the other street.
The girl watched it go. A light mist of sweat gleamed on her
forehead. She was shivering. Her top had come untucked from her
skirt, revealing a milky strip of skin with a cute bellybutton sewn in the
middle of it.
I kept the engine idling while we watched the road in silence for a
long minute. Then I let out the breath I’d been rationing. “He’s gone.
Now, what’s the story?”
“I…” she started. Her eyes narrowed as if she sensed a trap.
“You…”
“You’re safe now,” I said, but she was already scrabbling at the door
handle. She swung the door open and bolted from the car.
I cursed and shut off the engine. The girl had dashed back to the
street and was running in the same direction the van had gone. Crazy. I
put my head down and sprinted after her. I caught her easily and
dragged her by the arm into somebody’s front lawn. A wattle tree
concealed us from the street.
“Not even a thankyou?”
She tried to pull away, making little animal sounds of fear. I didn’t
hurt her, but I didn’t relax my grip either. I wanted answers.
Suddenly she thrust herself into my arms with a racking sob. She
screwed her face into my shoulder and I responded hesitantly, stroking
her slender back as her hot tears soaked my business shirt. Her body felt
warm and tender against mine, her golden hair like silk in my hand. Her
skin radiated a subtle apricot perfume of youth.
“Everything’ll be okay now,” I muttered. I felt awkward standing
there holding this strange girl while she bled out her tears. I couldn’t
think of any words of comfort; all the things I wanted to say had
question marks on the end.
We were in a lovingly tended flower garden. I recognised a camellia
tree, some native ferns, and a row of agapanthus lilies. A terracotta
birdbath stood empty, waiting for feathered customers. Climbing roses
were twined through a wooden trellis attached to the side of the house,
the pink buds looking like the scrunched little faces of cherubs. It was a
nice place for hugging a girl.
Finally she looked up, her sapphire eyes shining and wet. “What’s
your name?” she asked. “Tell me the name of the man who saved my

life.” Her heart-shaped face glowed with a shy but sensual innocence.
“I’m Jack,” I told her. “Jack Marsh.” I watched my name write
itself in her eyes and sink deep into their ocean depths.
“My saviour Jack,” she murmured dreamily. She reached up and
traced a fingertip along my scar. The pale, prominent scar curved across
my cheek from the corner of my right eye to the jawbone below my ear,
more visible than usual since I’d shaved off my regular three-day growth
for the interview. I hoped she wouldn’t ask. I’d spent twelve years not
talking about it and I wasn’t going to start now.
But she didn’t say anything. She just pressed against me and sighed
happily, a pretty stranger safe in the arms of her saviour knight.
From across the street, a throaty argument between two dogs carried
into our secluded garden pocket. The smell of cloying roses enveloped
us. The street beyond our oasis was growing dark with afternoon
shadows from the crisscrossed trees on either side. I looked at the girl in
my arms, still smiling her childlike, dreamy smile, even though she had
to be at least nineteen. I decided I’d been patient long enough.
I shook her roughly. “Wake up, you! I want answers and I want
them now.”
She gave me a confused, hurt look, as if I’d trampled on a wish to
stop it from coming true. Maybe she was a nut. Maybe I should have
pulled over earlier and collected my answers from Mr. Brown Van. I
shook her again.
“Please don’t make me,” she said. “He’ll kill me if I tell you
anything.” Giving me the timid little-girl eyes that were supposed to
soften me up and make me cave in. Plenty of other guys might have
fallen for it, but I’d had enough of playing the stooge.
“Nobody’s going to kill you while I’m around. I’ll protect you, but
you need to tell me what’s happening.”
“You don’t understand. He knows everything. I’ve betrayed him
and he won’t stop until he’s had vengeance.”
That word again. My jaw hardened as I imagined some Neanderthal
brute terrorising this poor girl. “Who is he?”
She shook her head. “He’ll find out that I told you and then he’ll kill
you too.”
“I’m not easy to kill. I’ll take my chances.”
Her eyes were distant islands in a sea of despair. “He makes me do
such terrible things,” she whispered. “Filthy things.” Her body

shuddered against me. “He’ll never let me go.”
“Tell me,” I said softly. “Let me help you.”
“I… I can’t. You’ll think I’m disgusting!”
“No I won’t. But I need to know everything.” I smiled reassuringly
at her. “Go ahead, hit me with it. On the chin, and don’t leave out any
knuckles.”
She took a deep breath and let it out in a shuddering sigh. “It’s like
I’ve been asleep all this time, trapped in a nightmare without even
realising it. And… and now he won’t let me wake up. He wants to pull
me back under the surface.”
“You’re not making–”
“I’ve betrayed him and now he’s going to kill me!” she cried out, her
voice rising, liquid with terror. “He’ll use the knife…”
The knife. Memory sent a stab of fear pulsing through my stomach.
At the age of sixteen, I’d had personal experience with the wrong end of
a knife.
Here’s something else to remember me by, Jacky boy…
I closed my eyes. I resisted the urge to scratch my scar. I controlled
my breathing and reflected deeply on the cowardice of man.
All around us are hidden scenes of suffering. We never know which
of the one in four children we meet has been sexually abused. We shake
hands with wife-beaters, rapists, and murderers, and we don’t recognise
them because they look the same as us. We live out the petty routines of
our safe little lives, ignoring the broken human machinery of victims and
villains around us. We never ask. We don’t want to know. And
sometimes, in the black hours of the night, we realise that we don’t even
care.
But then sometimes, I thought with resolve, we realise that we care
very much.
“Well, you don’t have to be afraid of him anymore,” I said. I gave
her my most confident smile. “Whatever danger you’re in, I’ll help you
get out of it.”
She searched my face with hopeful eyes. “Do you mean that?”
“Yes.”
She snuggled against me. “My hero. I knew I could depend on
you.”
I smiled wryly at the notion. Jack Marsh, hero for hire. Hell, if it
earned me a regular paycheque, I’d gladly slay dragons and rescue

troubled maidens for a living.
A motorbike revved on the street and we both tensed until it passed.
It was time to leave. Once we were safe, I’d be able to calm her down
and question her properly.
“Let’s go.”
“Where?” She squinted at me suspiciously.
“Some place where we can talk. Feel like a beer? I know a good
pub.”
She studied my face for a long moment. “Okay, I’m going to trust
you.” The set of her shoulders softened. She raised her lips to my ear
and said, “I’m Tess, by the way.”
“Tess?”
“That’s me.” She rested her cheek against my chest and bumped
against me in a slow, sensual waltz, humming to herself. She was
starting to drift into fantasy land again.
“Come on,” I said, turning her towards the street. “We’d better
move.”
“No!” Her head snapped up and she became rigid in my arms, all
her fear returning in a rush. “It’s not safe, he’ll find us. I’m scared,
Jack!”
“Relax, Tess, you’re safe now. If that guy tries anything while I’m
around, he’d better have hospital cover.”
“You don’t understand!” she cried. “He knows everything. If I so
much as take a step out there, he’ll sense me!” Her chin began to
tremble again.
I felt exasperated, but I knew that I had to handle her gently.
“Okay,” I said, “we’ll do it like this. You wait here while I bring the car
up. You’ll be safe here. When I beep the horn, you run out quickly and
jump in.” As a plan, it was irrational as hell, but I was worried she
might spook even worse if I tried to argue.
Tess’s lips quivered. “You’re going to leave me here?”
“Only for a moment.” I enveloped both her tiny hands in my big
ones. “Okay?”
She nodded. She still looked frightened. “Jack?”
“What?”
Tess tilted her face up and kissed me. Her lips were soft, her breath
hot and sugary. I kissed her back hungrily and felt an electric spark
crackle to life between us. By the time we broke for air we were

breathing hard, our faces flushed and vibrant.
I looked at her with awakening interest. More than just an innocent
girl, I realised; she was a woman. The curve of her lips, the blonde
question marks of her eyebrows, even the light spray of freckles on her
nose – these little things seemed suddenly fresh and special, and needed
to be explored. She gazed back at me, her eyes alive with the buzz of
possibility too. I felt energised for the first time in months.
We were standing near the rose trellis. Tess smiled mischievously.
She reached out and shook the trellis and a shower of roses came loose
and fell over our heads. Giggling, she snatched one out of the air and
tucked it into the top buttonhole of my shirt.
“A medal for my hero,” she said.
I grinned. “And I wasn’t even wounded in battle.”
I kissed her once more and let go of her. I was grinning like a fool. I
stepped out past the wattle tree, looked cautiously both ways, and started
jogging back to the car.
What was I getting myself into here? I didn’t know the full story
yet, or exactly how I felt, but I did know one thing: that whatever the
guy in the van had done to Tess, I’d make sure he never did it again.
I had reached the head of the court, car keys in hand, when I heard
tyres screech behind me. My stomach turned to stone. It was the brown
van.
“Jack!” Tess shouted from too far away.
She must have panicked and emerged from the garden to wait for
me, and the driver had doubled back and found her. The van angled
across the street to cut off her escape. They were maybe three hundred
metres away. I sprinted towards them, already knowing I was too late.
A man leapt out of the van and grabbed Tess around the shoulders. I
couldn’t see him clearly; distance and shadows darkened everything.
Tess struggled and he punched her in the face. She went limp in his
arms and he yanked open the van’s sliding door, shoved her inside, and
slammed it shut.
“No!” I yelled, still running at top speed.
The man didn’t even glance at me. He hurried to the front and got in
behind the wheel. All I could make out was a flash of dark hair. He
took off instantly, squealing the tyres and leaving black swatches of
rubber on the street.
I had maybe eighty metres to go. Almost close enough to read the

licence plate… I gave it everything I had: arms tucked in, lungs on fire,
legs pumping like pistons.
And then the van accelerated around a corner, tyres screaming, and
was gone.
I ran for my car, but I already knew it was hopeless. A cold worm of
fear gnawed at me as I drove randomly through the streets trying to pick
up the trail. But there was no Tess and no brown van. I had lost her.
All my life I’d dreamed of being a detective and now I tried to think
like one. I found a public phone and looked up the number for
VicRoads. I told the lady who answered that I was buying a second-
hand van and wanted to confirm the owner’s identity. I gave her the
plate number I’d memorised. I’d managed to glimpse it just in time.
She told me that she wasn’t allowed to give out names and addresses,
but that the van had been reported stolen three weeks ago. She asked me
who the current owner was and I hung up. So much for detective Jack.
Back in the car, I found Tess’s rose on my seat. It had fallen out of
my buttonhole. I held it gently in my palm, a precious thing of creamy
petals threaded with a pale network of veins, and then I crushed it until
the thorns cut my fingers.
Afterwards, I went to a bar where nobody knew me and got very
drunk. Normally on a Friday night I would go to my regular pub, The
Hairy Elephant, to meet Benny and a few other friends, and we’d find
out how pissed we could get and still shoot pool. But tonight I needed to
be alone. Benny would have to make do without my match-winning
break.
Saturday morning, I woke with a hangover and the last screams from
a nightmare echoing in my brain. I bought the newspaper: nothing about
Tess. I didn’t know whether that was good or bad.
I scanned the employment section, circled a few ads, and wasted
most of the morning writing application letters that probably wouldn’t
add up to a job. Nine months ago, I’d lost a good position as an
insurance claims examiner when some stupid manager had fired me for
insubordination. Campaigning loudly on behalf of ripped-off claimants
apparently went against the company’s mission statement. Since then,
I’d been on the dole and looking for work, but there hadn’t been much
on sale.
Yesterday’s interview had been a disaster. A short, swarthy man
with a thick goatee and a penetrating stare had interviewed me. I’d

stared him down in return, but I’d overdone it and received a lecture
about “the right attitude”. In business, there are the people who do the
telling and the people who get told. Yesterday, I got told.
I felt restless. I watered my alfalfa farm – a multi-tiered plastic cube
the size of a small television, which contained four trays of alfalfa seeds
in various stages of growth. I raided the top layer and used half to make
a ham and alfalfa sandwich for lunch. I scattered new seeds into the
empty tray and shuffled the other trays up to make room for it at the
bottom. The next batch would be ready tomorrow, and the newest tray
would sprout in three or four days. I packed the rest of the day’s harvest
into the old, slim tobacco tin that I used for holding my walking-around
stash.
I tried watching television, but there was nothing interesting, so I
resumed reading the Lawrence Block mystery I’d started on earlier that
week. After a few pages though, my eyes started skipping and I gave it
up. I did some karate exercises instead, practising kata sequences to try
to burn off my tension, but after ten minutes of struggling to concentrate,
I decided that I wasn’t in the mood for anything at all.
So in the end, I liberated the “emergency” bottle of whisky from my
desk drawer, and tapped it every time I started worrying about Tess.
There were a lot of emergencies.
In time, I probably would have forgotten about Tess and the brown
van. But the next day, on the front page of the Sunday newspaper, there
she was staring out at me, my smiling blonde beauty. And above her
photo, the headline: TEENAGER MURDERED.

Chapter Two
I needed a hard shot of whisky just to make it past the headline.

The article gave me the morbid statistics: Theresa Hinley was
nineteen years old and two days dead.
Tess’s naked body had been found in a school playground Saturday
evening by a couple of eight-year-olds playing hide and seek. She’d
been stuffed into the hollow of a large concrete pipe put there for
children to play in. The kid who’d found her hadn’t stayed hidden for
long.
According to the newspaper report, there had been “mutilation”.
That meant a sharp knife and a lot of pain. I had a mental image of her
body and it wasn’t all in one piece. The school would have a hard time
scrubbing the blood out of the concrete.
My stomach boiled nastily. My scar itched. I wanted a drink.
Instead, I focused on the rest of the article. Marcus Hinley, a baker,
described his daughter as “a sweet, loving saint of a girl”, and wanted
“five minutes alone with the bastard who did this”. The usual clichés of
grief. His wife had been hospitalised for shock.
Tess had been studying marketing at Swinburne University’s
Hawthorn campus. She’d been active in amateur theatre and was a
devout Christian. Just your average girl-next-door without an enemy to
her name. The police were appealing for information, which meant that
Mr. Brown Van was still on the loose and the cops didn’t know squat.
I spent the afternoon asking myself what I could have done
differently and looking for answers in the whisky bottle. The answers I
dredged up all started with the phrase, “If only…”
The evening TV news report didn’t add anything, but they used a
different photo. Tess looked a year younger in the picture, and much
more carefree and innocent than the terrified girl I’d held so briefly in
my arms. It made me think about Melanie, and I wondered – not for the
first time – what kind of face she wore these days.
My sister Melanie had run away from home eighteen years ago,
leaving a cryptic note on her bed and a hole in my life. She’d be thirty-
four now. I could just picture her squashy nose and brown hair, but that
was it; my mental snapshot of her was blurry and fading more each year.
The hole inside me, though, had never healed.

I wondered if Melanie, wherever she was, remembered her little
brother Jack.
I wondered if she was even still alive.
Then I took a long slug of whisky and stopped wondering for a
while.
Later, I shrugged on some clean clothes and prepared to go out. My
eyes looked bloodshot. My lower lip was ragged from nervous chewing.
All that was left of the Scotch was the empty bottle. But it was eight
p.m. and I was getting hungry and sober. There was also something I
needed to do.
I locked up the apartment and drove aimlessly until I found a
restaurant that looked crowded enough to suggest that they served edible
food. I made it as far as the door, took one look at the damned place,
and didn’t go in. Instead I entered the public phone booth across the
street and picked up the receiver. I dialled triple-zero and told the
operator that I had information about the murder of Tess Hinley.
I don’t like the police. They don’t like me either, but since they’re in
more of a position to do something about it, I try to keep out of their
way. I spent my teenage years getting in their way. I’d been one of
those juvenile punks whom cops automatically assume are up to no good
– and in my case, they were usually right.
I was being transferred to the officer in charge. I watched the people
on the street. An old man in a tracksuit and moccasins carried his brown
paper bag from a nearby bottle shop to a rundown Ford that took him
three tries to start. Two middle-aged couples sitting at an outdoor
restaurant table were laughing too loudly and gesturing too
enthusiastically, trying to outdo each other with desperate youth.
The way I figure it, there’s three types of crime. There’s the pissy
stuff that doesn’t hurt anyone, such as letting your dog crap on the
sidewalk or driving too fast when the road’s empty. Then there are the
crimes we tolerate as the dirty price of living in this society. Vandals,
pickpockets and burglars don’t understand the pain their actions cause,
until they grow up and themselves become victims of the same outrages.
It was the third type of crime that made me sick with anger, which was
why I had a cop’s grunt in my ear right now, instead of a meal in my
stomach.
“Detective Constable Gars.” He had a rough, bourbon-for-breakfast
voice. “You got something for me on the Hinley case, buddy?”

“I sure do.”
“Good.” I heard computer keys clicking. “Name?”
“Let’s skip that part.”
He paused, then said, “Okay buddy, whatever you say. What you
got for me?”
“I have a lead that’ll help you find the killer.”
“Spill it.” This guy was Tact Central.
I took a breath. “I was driving home Friday afternoon–”
“Where from?” Gars butted in.
“The city.”
“What were you doing in the city?”
“What difference does that make?”
“Just answer the question.”
“I had a job interview,” I said. “Anyway, I’d just come off the
Eastern Freeway and was driving down–”
“Where was the interview?”
My hand tightened on the receiver. “In. The. City.”
Gars grunted. “Don’t get smart with me, buddy. How do I know
you’re not handing me a bag of bullshit if you won’t let me verify a few
basic details, you follow? What can it hurt to tell me where you started
out from?”
It could hurt plenty if he found my name in Mr. Right Attitude’s
appointment book. “Wouldn’t you rather hear about the murder?” I
asked.
“We’ll get to that,” he said. “Anyway, what did you say your name
was again?”
“I didn’t.”
He grunted. “Yeah that’s right. I forgot. So you were driving home
from this secret bloody interview in the city. What next?”
“I was on Springvale Road, going through Nunawading. I stopped
for a red light at the Maroondah Highway intersection. You taking
notes?”
“Yeah, it’s being recorded. Keep going.”
“It was about three o’clock. I was sitting at the lights when all of a
sudden Tess Hinley jumped into the back of my car.”
“You knew her?”
“No, she was a complete stranger.”
“Then how’d you know who she was, buddy?”

“I didn’t, not until I saw her face in today’s newspaper.”
“Hold on a second,” Gars said. I heard papers rustling. “Says here
her name’s Theresa. What’d you call her?”
“Tess.”
“Her old man told me only family and friends called her Tess. You
sure you didn’t know her?”
“She introduced herself as Tess. I guess she considered me a
friend.”
“Friends, huh?” he said scornfully. “Good friends?”
I knew he was just trying to taunt me into tripping over my tongue,
so I locked it away and waited.
“You still there, buddy?” he said after a few moments.
I didn’t say anything.
“What’s the matter? Got a cork in your mouth?”
Still nothing.
Gars let out an irritated sigh. “Okay, so there you are, sitting pretty
at the lights, when out of the blue this strange broad suddenly jumps into
your car and introduces herself as Tess Hinley. Am I getting this right?”
“Close enough. She asked me for help.”
“Why? Was she hitchhiking?”
“She was–”
“Say, you don’t drive a taxi do you, buddy?”
“Nice try, but no,” I said. “Anyway–”
“So what sort of car do you drive then?”
My jaw clenched. “A unicycle.”
It took him a moment to figure it out. “Hey look buddy, don’t get
me wrong,” he said, trying to pull the nails out of his voice and not quite
succeeding. “I’m just trying to get at the facts here.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“I’m asking you to cooperate, that’s all. I’m a trained detective. I
collect the clues and figure out the patterns. What you might think is
trivial could be the detail that breaks the case for me, you follow?”
“Uh huh.”
“See, right now I don’t know what happened. You do. So you and
me, we got to get one of them clear communication things happening,
you follow? I ask the questions and you answer them clearly and
completely and without the lip, see, and maybe it helps me solve the
case. That sound good to you, buddy?”

“Whatever you say, buddy.”
I heard his breath hissing through his teeth. Perhaps he was counting
to ten.
“Okay,” Gars said. “She’s in the back of your car. What next?”
I stared out at the world beyond the phone booth. Night was
descending quickly, like the shutter of a peepshow. Rain began
pattering on the street. A waiter helped the two couples outside the
restaurant move their meals indoors, the ladies squealing and shielding
their hair, the men acting unhurried and amused.
I remembered Tess shaking the rose trellis, the flowers showering
around us as she clung to me and laughed. There would be no more
roses for Tess now. No more fun. Nothing but cold, unyielding eternity.
“A man was chasing her,” I told Gars. “She wouldn’t say who he
was, but he was driving a brown van. I think he might have been
keeping her prisoner in the van. My guess is that she broke free at the
lights and ran to the first car in the queue. Mine.”
“Go on.”
“She was terrified and asked me for help. I took off and the van
chased us.”
“What did the van look like?”
“A brown Mitsubishi work-van. An Express, I think, maybe ten
years old.” I gave him the licence plate number and described the van. I
heard Gars typing the details into a computer. “I suspect it was stolen,” I
added.
“Yeah, says here it was nicked a few weeks ago. Tradesman lost it
outside a hardware store, left the motor running while he pissed around
inside.”
“Where it was stolen from?” I asked casually.
Gars saw through the question. “That’s none of your damned
business, buddy. You just leave the detective work to me and finish
telling your side of the story.”
“Fine,” I said. “You want it short and sweet, then here it is. I gave
the van the slip by driving down side streets. Afterwards, Tess panicked
and took off on foot. The guy in the van came back and caught her. He
looked tough and had dark hair. That’s it, everything that happened.
Now start detecting.”
Gars’s voice was all cop. “I’m not done with you, buddy. You’d
better haul your arse down here right now for a full interrogation.”

“I don’t think so. Chalk this up as an anonymous tip.”
“Look, buddy, you want me to catch this guy, right? You want to
help, you got to do the right thing, you follow? If you’re innocent, you
got nothing to worry about.” He let a sly note crawl into his voice.
“Plus there’s a five grand reward for information leading to an arrest.
You help me out, it could be all yours, you follow?”
“I don’t want it. Donate it to an orphanage.”
Whatever tissue-thin control he had over his temper crumpled.
“Buddy, you’re in so much shit you need a goddamned snorkel! Your
only chance is to drag your arse over here right now and come clean,
you follow? Or I’ll–”
“Gars, I’ve given you the best bloody lead you’re going to get. Now
get off your arse and run it down. You follow?”
“You little bastard! What’s your name?”
“Call me Mr. Shut-Up-And-Listen,” I said. “If you want to find the
guy who killed Tess Hinley, find that brown van. I’ve done my bit to
help. Now I’m going to go home, get drunk, and try to forget the sound
of your stupid voice!”
“You–”
I hung up and trudged through the rain to my car. I wasn’t hungry
anymore; I was angry. Detective Gars wasn’t going to find the killer in
the brown van. He’d be too busy practising threats in the mirror and
stuffing his belly with donuts.
No, I decided, I’ll just have to do it myself.
To Gars, Tess was just another tedious form to fill out, bury in a
filing cabinet, and forget about. He didn’t give a damn that a young life
had been snuffed out, that a bright human candle burning with hopes and
dreams and desires was now extinguished.
Well, I gave a damn. And I would not rest until I’d found Tess’s
killer.
I drove roughly, punishing the Commodore for its part in the whole
mess. The storm opened up, rain pouring out of the slashed grey bellies
of the clouds and pelting the car with hard, fat pellets of water. I thought
about Tess’s new home deep under the ground, and the meagre police
effort that was keeping justice there too.
Tess had known her killer. He had terrified and controlled her,
somehow making her do “filthy” things against her will. Had she tried
to leave an abusive relationship? Was the killer a psychotic

ex-boyfriend who’d felt “betrayed” simply because she’d had the nerve
to leave him? As a working theory it fit, at least for now.
But then why had he been chasing her in a stolen van?
I made it back to my apartment and squeezed the car into the slot
next to my neighbour’s oversized Cadillac. The courtyard was deserted
except for a kid’s tricycle that had blown over into the mud, its lone
front wheel spinning in the wind. The other tenants had sealed
themselves inside their apartments, cowering from the storm like
frightened rabbits. I got out of the car and planted my foot right into a
pothole full of rain. I ran to my door, wet sock squelching, and made it
inside.
Home was a one-bedroom shoebox: no frills, but the rent was cheap.
The paint was scuffed and greasy, the carpet still haunted by the ghosts
of the last occupant’s cigars, but it was mine. A man doesn’t need a
fancy place anyway; at least not until he has a woman’s voice lodged in
his ear and her fingers in his wallet. My ex-girlfriend Julie once told me
my apartment was a pigsty, but that wasn’t true. There’s a difference
between dirty and untidy, and anyone who thinks otherwise is only
letting himself in for more cleaning than is necessary.
I made a beeline to the fridge, popped a beer, and emptied it in a few
swallows. It wasn’t whisky, but it trimmed the rough edges off my
temper. I microwaved some leftover takeaway curry and wolfed that
down. Then I filled a steaming hot bath and let it unravel my knotted
muscles.
Years ago, shortly after my sister had disappeared, I’d been full of
the naïve enthusiasm of a ten-year-old boy who’d read too many pulp
crime stories. When I grew up, I was going to be Jack Marsh, hard-
boiled P.I., stalking the mean streets of Melbourne in a trench coat and
battered fedora, a smoke hovering at my lips Bogart-style. Back then,
I’d even started my own detective agency. I’d pinned hand-drawn
advertisements to trees around the neighbourhood and knocked on doors
to pester family and friends for “cases”.
My first case had been to find my neighbour Mrs. Charles’s missing
dog, which had wandered off in search of new territory to mark. I’d
solved the case later that day when the dog sauntered across our lawn
and took a dump. Mrs. Charles had given me twenty cents and an
indulgent smile. After that victory, my next challenge had been to locate
a missing spanner in Dad’s garage. After three hours of searching, I’d

concluded that being a detective wasn’t as much fun as I’d thought, and
there had ended the great childhood career of Jack Marsh, Private Eye.
Over time, my innocence drained away, but the dream never entirely
faded. I stopped bothering neighbours and shopkeepers with childishly
clever questions about my sister. I gave up hunting for clues in the
backyard. I came to accept that Melanie was gone and wasn’t coming
back. And then everything had gotten worse, so much worse, and any
innocence I’d had left had been shattered forever…
I exploded out of the bath now, hurried to the fridge, and slammed
down another beer. I stood there dripping water onto the kitchen floor
until the shakes subsided. Then I towelled off and put on dry clothes. In
the bedroom mirror, the scar on my cheek glowed like an ember from
the heat of the bath.
Rain spat and hissed on the walkway outside, the wind cheering it
on. I could hear my neighbours through the thin walls: an inane radio
talk show; the man in number fifteen yelling at his Filipino wife again;
cranky old Mrs. Vanguard cooing to her cats. I stared out the window.
All I could see was rain. All I had ever seen was rain.
I wanted to get drunk, but I’d run out of whisky. I grabbed another
beer from the fridge, sat at my desk, and scowled at the pile of detective
novels stacked against the living room wall. My collection numbered
almost two hundred books, most of them second-hand, each a gritty tale
of tough guys and deadly dames. More naïve fantasies. Right now, with
Tess’s murder eating at me, I felt like torching the lot.
Who the hell was I to think I could be a real-life detective?
I stared at the can of beer. Drink me, it whispered. Drink me and
forget this craziness. The storm outside grew louder, applauding my
weakness.
I slammed the can onto the desk. Foamy beer fizzed out over my
hand. I was not going to give up before I’d even started, not this time.
I’d wasted enough of my life watching the rain and feeling sorry for
myself. I leaned back in the swivel chair and picked up the phone. I put
my feet on the desk because I owned it. An idea had flickered to life in
my brain.
“Benny? You awake?”
“Jack, mate! How’s it hanging?” His voice was a well-rounded
thump in my ear.
“To the left.”

“Is that as far as you can get it up?” He snorted with amusement.
“So anyway, tell me, did you end up lighting that matchstick’s fire?”
He meant the intense redhead I’d taken home from the bar a week
ago. Mandy something, thin as a fuse and with eyes that smouldered.
She’d been so energetic in bed that I’d never forget her, but so dull
afterwards that I’d never called her.
“A smart magician,” I said, “never reveals his tricks.”
“Ha! I’ll bet she was waving your wand all night long...”
I came perilously close to laughing. “Is that the best you can come
up with?”
“Aha! So that’s what she said when you dropped your pants.”
I couldn’t keep from cracking up that time. He’d outdone me yet
again. Benny Thompson has been my best friend ever since the day in
high school when I’d called him a dirty name and he’d fired back and
impressed me with an even dirtier one.
“So, what’s up?” Benny asked when we’d finished laughing.
“I need your help to do a computer search. Can I come over?”
“When?”
“Right now.”
“At this time of night? You gotta be jerking my gherkin.” It was
nine-thirty. Benny thinks being difficult is hilarious. “Contrary to
popular stereotype, programmers do have personal lives, you know…”
I lowered my voice. “Might be worth a bottle of Wild Turkey to
you–”
“Sold!”
“–although you’ll have to wait until my next dole cheque comes in.”
Benny exaggerated a groan. “You are such a bludger, Jack. Ah
well, at least I’ll be indirectly getting some of my tax dollars back.”
“Thanks mate, you’re a champ.” I was grinning. He probably was
too. “See you in ten minutes,” I said, and hung up before he could add
anything crude.
All I needed was a toehold into the mystery. I needed to start
gathering information, to try to learn more about Tess’s life and the
people in it. At first I’d had no idea where to start looking, or even how,
and then I’d thought of Benny and his computer. Information
technology. It was a long shot, but there was one investigative resource
that I hoped would give me the lead I needed:
The Internet.

Chapter Three
B enny Thompson’s ugly three-bedroom house was just one of

the many jigsaw pieces that slotted together to make up the
ugly housing estate in which he lived. The area had once been a huge
splotch of wasteland on the outskirts of Croydon, until the property
developers came and spewed eighty mass-production brick clones onto
it. Neighbouring houses were crammed so close together here that
privacy had become just another word in the dictionary. Every time I
visited, I could sense the desperation seeping through the cheap walls.
The rain had slowed to a lazy crawl. Four teenage boys sat in silence
on a darkened front porch across the street, the occasional red glow of
their cigarettes revealing faces that looked like blood smears on the
black curtain of night. I nodded a greeting to them and got nothing but
blank stares in return. The stares prickled the back of my neck all the
way up Benny’s driveway.
The pink plaster flamingo Benny’s ex-girlfriend had given him still
lorded it over his flowerbed. It looked pretty miserable squatting there
amongst the dead and the dying. Maybe one night the teenagers would
end its suffering with a well-tossed brick. I thumbed the doorbell and an
awful rendition of Greensleeves chimed inside the house. I’d known
Benny for fifteen years, and not once in all that time had he shown any
sign of developing style.
Benny opened the door and scowled at me. “You know, Jack,
you’ve got some nerve bailing me up at ten o-goddamned-clock on a
Sunday night with your crazy demands. You’re just lucky I didn’t have
a hot date.”
He wore a grey tracksuit with sauce stains on it. A cigarette was
clamped between his chubby lips. “Well you’re certainly dressed for
one,” I said.
“Wise-arse. Come on then, get inside before someone sees you and
calls the freak-catchers.
I followed him into the house and the smell hit me. Stale, languid
air, flavoured with a mix of tobacco smoke, body odour, and alcohol
fumes. I snorted.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Benny said, rolling his eyes. “What it is with
you and fresh air anyway? Plenty of oxygen in the place.”

“Whatever you say, Stinkmeister, but it sure smells like an anus has
been hard at work churning out farts in here.”
He made a contemptuous sound as he shut the door. I noticed him
turn the lock and test it twice. With those dead-eyed teenagers out there,
I didn’t blame him.
“You want a coldie?” he asked.
“Thanks.”
In the kitchen he fished a can of Vic Bitter out of the fridge and
tossed it to me. He opened a light beer for himself.
“Light?” I winced at the can with distaste.
“Some of us have to work tomorrow.”
“Not this merry dole bludger. Cheers mate.” I took a long swallow
of icy beer. “I hope you realise,” I added cheekily, “that it’s your taxes
paying for this grand lifestyle of boozing, womanising, and daytime TV
that I enjoy.”
Benny shook his head with mock disgust. “You’re a leech, Jack,
sponging off us hard-working blokes. A wallet-sucking vampire.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
“One day the politicians are going to smarten up and ship all you
bludgers off to Tasmania. It’ll be the new convict colony for lazy
pricks.”
There was only one comeback for that: I gave him the finger.
He stuck out his tongue and we both broke out laughing. It was
amazing that our friendship had lasted so long. Benny was a successful
computer nerd earning two hundred grand a year. I was an unemployed
bum with a bank account like a bucket with a hole in it. But we both
shared the same cynical view that the world was heading for hell, and I
liked that about him, even if he did have the latest computer and mobile
phone and was one of those leading the rush.
He hitched his tracksuit pants up over his fat butt and we went into
the computer area. The room was full of boxes stuffed with electronic
parts, dog-eared technical manuals, and half a dozen computers with
their cases off and strange skeletal insides showing.
Benny dropped into the swivel chair in front of his primary
computer. He backhanded a pile of magazines from a second chair and
dragged it through the debris for me to sit beside him. To call the place
a mess would have been a compliment.
“Okay, so what are we looking for?” he asked, cigarette bobbing at

his lips.
I showed him the newspaper clippings that I’d brought with me.
“This girl was killed yesterday. I want to find out everything I can about
her.” I drank some beer while he read the article.
“She’s a honey,” he said finally. “How did you know her?”
I took a deep breath, and then fed him the whole enchilada. I didn’t
leave out anything; fifteen years of friendship is a solid résumé for trust.
“That’s one hell of a ride, Jack,” he said when I was finished.
“You’ve been busier than a one-eyed cat watching two rat holes.”
“Life’s full of excitement when you’re on the dole.”
“So why are you…” His eyes widened. “Oh no!” he said. “No, no,
no. Tell me you’re not working yourself up with those private eye
fantasies again.”
“Somebody’s got to–”
“Jack, a murder case is serious shit. If you start treading on the cops’
toes where you’re not wanted, they’ll tread back. Hard.”
“I owe it to her, Benny.”
“Are you listening to me? You are not a private detective. You’re
just an average Joe and this obsession of yours is only going to land you
in big trouble. Forget those ‘mean streets’ mystery books you’re always
reading, real life doesn’t–”
“I said, I owe it to Tess,” I told him quietly.
Benny stared at me for a long moment, and I stared back at him, and
in that odd way in which good friends can communicate without words,
he understood. His mouth twisted into a wry smile. He turned to the
computer and connected to the Internet.
I had a rough understanding of how the Internet worked. Benny had
explained it to me once. Millions of computers from all over the world
were linked up like a gigantic spider web. If you knew which strand of
the web to follow, you could find just about anything stored at the other
end. You could catch up on current news headlines, or drool over the
schematics of expensive cars, or study research papers on the mating
patterns of gnats. You could mail-order illegally exported Viagra. And
if you were really sick in the head, you could swap pictures of kiddies
with Russian paedophiles, or learn how to make home-brew napalm, or
even download videos of real people dying in horrible ways.
A real boon to society, the Internet.
“Alright, check this out,” Benny said. He pointed to the image on

the monitor. “This is Google. It’s a search engine that indexes nearly
every web page on the Internet. We search the index for whatever
combination of words we want and it’ll point us to the closest matching
results. It’s really cool.”
“Will it help us find out about Tess?”
“Maybe. If there’s anything to find.” He ground out his spent
cigarette in an ashtray and lit another one.
I wrinkled my nose at the tobacco cloud hovering in front of the
computer screen. I said, “You know, those things’ll–”
“Kill me?” He grinned, exposing nicotine-stained teeth. “So what?
Everyone bites the dust some day. I might as well get a head start on
going out in style.” He drained the last of his beer, tossed the can onto
the floor, and belched.
“Benny,” I said, “you have the manners of a shaved baboon.”
“And you, Jack,” he said with a crooked smile, “have the looks.”
His fingers were poised over the keyboard, cigarette idling between his
lips. “Anyway, what was that chick’s name again?”
“Tess Hinley.”
Benny’s fingers blurred and Tess’s name appeared in a little box on
the screen. He clicked an onscreen button labelled “Google Search” and
the mouse cursor turned into an hourglass. A few seconds later, the text
on the screen changed:
Your search – “Tess Hinley” – did not match

any documents.
No pages were found containing “Tess
Hinley”.
“No sale,” Benny told me.

“Try it with her full first name, Theresa.”
He made the alteration and ran the search again. Nothing.
My shoulders sank. “Well, it was a long shot.”
“Patience, fool! We’re not beaten yet.” He deleted the word
“Theresa” and submitted the search again.
Searched the web for “Hinley”

Results 1-100 of about 2,080.

A number of short summary paragraphs filled the screen, each
containing the word “Hinley”, which had been highlighted for emphasis.
Benny scrolled quickly through the list, explaining that these summaries
were a sort of shorthand blurb describing the contents of each link. At
the bottom of the list was a button that would bring up the next hundred
results.
“Don’t tell me we have to wade through two thousand of these,” I
said.
“No, just the ones that might be relevant.”
Benny clicked on one promising sounding link entitled “Hinley’s
Home”. It turned out to be a promotional page for an American
cartoonist named Brad Hinley, who seemed to be trying to scrounge up
publisher interest in his portfolio. There were illustrations of cartoon
animals in human clothes doing unfunny things while mouthing equally
unfunny captions. The artist’s photo looked more comical than his
drawings.
Benny made a contemptuous face at the screen. “Ninety-five percent
of the Net is crap,” he explained. “You have to sift through a mountain
of rubbish in order to find anything worthy. The Net’s mostly just a big
dumping ground for porn, spam advertising, and personal ‘look at me,
I’m alive!’ pages like this fool’s.” He zapped Brad Hinley back to
obscurity with one click of the mouse.
“Damn, this is going to take hours,” I said. I drained the last of my
beer and tossed the can onto the floor to join the other empties. Benny
scowled at me as if I had committed a blasphemy.
“Let me try something else,” he said, but I was only half listening. I
stared at the newspaper photo of Tess while he clicked and typed. She
smiled back, cheerful and vibrant, frozen in a moment of past innocence.
There was no hint of the pain and terror that was to come, no shadow of
the rictus beneath her carefree smile. But I saw them there anyway.
Benny said, “Check this out!” There was new text on the screen:
Searched the web for +Tess +Hinley site:au

Results 1-7 of 7.
Benny went through each of the links, calling up the corresponding

web pages and scanning them rapidly. Most were red herrings. On the
sixth try, I saw:

CRYSTAL’S WEB PAGE!!!
A grainy photo of Crystal’s face appeared under the heading. She

was an attractive brunette with an impish smile.
“That’s not Tess,” I said.
“Yeah, but she’s hot though,” Benny said. “I’d screw that for a
dollar!” It was a typical Benny vulgarity. He said it every time he saw a
pretty girl, which probably went some way towards explaining why he
was still single.
A year ago, Benny had dated a crazy Chinese girl named Li, whom
he’d met over the Internet. She had stretched him around her little finger
like a mood ring, driving him nuts with a personality that had
schizophrenically alternated between control freak and sex kitten. When
Benny had finally grown a backbone and called it quits, Li, of the pink
flamingo fame, had sent two angry Chinese brothers around to teach
Benny a detailed lesson about respect. Even now, he still double-
checked his locks.
“Some men,” I said, “win the girls over with charm.”
“Yeah, but in the eternal wager between charm and the almighty
dollar, I’ll be backing Bill Gates.” He fished another cigarette out of the
pack and lit it off the dying gasp of his previous one. “Anyhow, young
Crystal here can do a ‘Claire Swire’ on me any time she likes…”
I just stared at him.
“Never mind,” he said. “Nerd joke.”
On the screen, Crystal’s web page was loaded with plenty of trivia
about Crystal herself, but I couldn’t see Tess mentioned anywhere.
Crystal claimed to be a marketing student, a wild party girl, and a born-
again Christian, all rolled into one nineteen-year-old bundle of
sweetness. She lived in Mount Waverly with her parents, and couldn’t
wait to get her own place once she graduated. Her favourite band was
Destiny’s Child and she had a puppy named Vegemite. If anyone was
curious, she’d written, they should send her an email to find out how the
dog got its name. Her email address was listed as
cmainwaring@swin.edu.au.
“What’s that gibberish mean?” I asked Benny.
“It means her surname is Mainwaring,” he said. “Looks like the
Swinburne admins use a typical ‘first initial/surname’ format.”

“Swinburne?” I was starting to feel stupid.
“Swinburne University. See the domain name?”
I shook my head.
“Domains are like delivery addresses for emails,” Benny explained.
“Similar to how the post office uses street names and postcodes to
deliver regular snail mail to people’s homes.” He jabbed a chewed
fingernail at the screen. “This ‘au’ here means that the mail server is
located somewhere in Australia. Then the ‘edu’ shows that it belongs to
an educational institution. That narrows it down already, see?”
I nodded. The nodding made me feel a little smarter. “So the ‘swin’
narrows it down even further to Swinburne University, right?” I said.
“You got it, peanut brain.” He waved his cigarette at the screen.
“Of course, not all domains break down geographically. Sometimes you
have to do a ‘trace route’ to check the path the…”
I tuned out the nerd-speak and tried to think. Crystal Mainwaring
was studying marketing at Swinburne – the same course Tess had been
enrolled in, I remembered, and presumably at the same Hawthorn
campus. It looked like a lead.
“Hey, Jack,” Benny was saying. He was drooling over Crystal’s
photo again. “Do you think we should send her an email? I’ve got the
perfect pickup line.” He jiggled his eyebrows. “Oh Vegemite, spread
me, spread me!”
I groaned. “Men with charm don’t need pickup lines.”
“That’s because they can’t afford any.”
“Benny, you’re nothing but a shaved baboon.”
“Maybe, but I’m a shaved, wealthy baboon.”
“Well you certainly live in a filthy ape’s cage, that’s for sure.”
We grinned at each other like a couple of idiots competing for a
stupidity award. On his salary, Benny could have easily moved out of
this rat hole and into a luxury apartment in any of the toff parts of town.
But “show and tell” material flourishes weren’t Benny’s priority.
Instead, he’d deliberately bought the most basic place he could find so
that he could plunge the bulk of his income into the stock market. He
called it his “retiring at forty fund”. I’d never gotten him drunk enough
to peg a dollar figure on the boast, but I had a hunch it was several rungs
higher than a million already.
He gave me one last mocking sneer, then turned back to the
computer and clicked and scrolled until he found the connection:

CRYSTAL’S MATES!!!
Make sure you email all my friends too, but

don’t forget to tell them I sent you!
• My very manly and cute boyfriend Duong on

dnguyen@swin.edu.au (Love you Duong!)
• Katie, wildest of the party animals on
katiekins812@hotmail.com (You rock,
girl!)
• My very best friend Tess on
thinley@swin.edu.au (Thanks for
everything, Tess!)
“There she is!” The thrill of discovery tingled through my palms.

“Benny, you’re a legend. Now, can you bring up Tess’s home address
as well?”
Benny stared at me. “You mean all this time you just wanted her
address? Haven’t you heard of the phone book?” He shoved a pile of
computer junk off his desk and unearthed both volumes of the White
Pages.
I felt my face going red. “There’s probably a dozen Hinleys in
there.”
He waved the newspaper clippings at me. “Yeah, but how many of
them have an ‘M’ for the first initial? Think about it, doofus…”
I glared at him and blackened my finger through the ink of the phone
book until I found the entry for Tess’s father. Marcus Hinley and
whatever was left of his family lived in Templestowe, a leafy suburb
northeast of the city. I circled the address with a pen and ripped out the
page just to spite Benny. I also put a mark against the only Mainwaring
entry for Mount Waverly, and tore out that page as well.
My cheeks burned with embarrassment. Damn it, I thought, a real
detective would have figured that out by himself. I felt lousy and
worthless, a stupid man in a big body. It was the same feeling I always
got after a job interview went sour.
“Alright, genius,” I snapped. “So why don’t you get that computer
to tell us who killed Tess, then? And offer me another beer while you’re

at it, for Christ’s sake!”
He gave me a hurt look. “Have another beer, Jack,” he said in a
monotone, and turned his back on me to resume tapping away at the
keyboard.
I went to the fridge and opened a new can. It tasted bitter. I leaned
against the fridge and swallowed it anyway, waiting for the anger to
drain out of me.
An invisible line runs through every friendship, a narrow thread that
separates love from malice. The closer you get to the line, the tighter the
bond – and the greater the risk of stumbling into that territory where a
joking insult suddenly becomes an insulting joke. Playful mockery can
be good for scratching our sore spots and making life seem momentarily
less serious. There’s nothing toxic in it, not really. But it can take a
friendship awfully close to the line at times.
“Last beer if you’re driving,” he said when I came back. He gave me
a tentative smirk. “Don’t want you stinking up my couch all night.”
“That’s rich, coming from the Stinkmeister himself.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” He made a show of
sniffing his armpits. “Smells like fresh bread to…” he said and burst
into a coughing spasm. “Jeez!” he spluttered. “Now I understand why
the redhead picked you instead of me!”
I grinned and we were friends again. Benny was a good mate.
“Check this out,” he said as I sat down again. He pointed at the
computer screen, which now displayed the heading:
CRYSTAL’S PHOTOS!!!
Under the title, several photos the size of postage stamps were
arranged in a grid. There were people in the photos, but the images were
too small and blurry for me to make out their faces.
“These are called thumbnails,” Benny said. “They’re low-bandwidth
cutdown versions of the full pictures, so people can look before they
click.”
“Spare me the nerd talk and just show me.”
He clicked on the first miniature and the screen filled with an
expanded, better quality version of the thumbnail. I saw Crystal holding
hands with a grumpy looking Asian guy, no doubt her “manly and cute
boyfriend” Duong Nguyen. His long hair had been slicked back into a

ponytail; it looked like an oily black whip.
“Found the pics in a subdirectory off the main page,” Benny said.
“Benny, I’m impressed,” I said. “If I didn’t know you as well as I
do, I’d almost think you were smart.”
He managed to bury his reaction under a quickly contrived sneer. “If
my nose didn’t work as well as it does, I’d almost think you’d had your
annual bath.” He clicked an onscreen button labelled “Back” and the
thumbnail grid appeared again. “Let’s check out the rest of the pics.”
One of the tiny photos looked worth investigating. I pointed at the
thumbnail photo and said, “Try that one.”
The image of a young woman appeared on the screen. She was
laughing for the camera, her blonde hair frozen in a timeless halo around
her heart-shaped face. When the photo had been taken, she had been
carefree, vibrant, and very much alive.
“Mmm, I’d shag her for a…” Benny started, and then stopped
abruptly when he saw my frozen expression.
I just stared at the screen. I could hear every heartbeat pounding
through my veins. The golden image of Tess’s face beamed out at me,
an irreplaceable angel reduced to pixels on a computer monitor. She
was dead now, but I’d found her again anyway.

Chapter Four
T he next morning I drove out to Swinburne and crammed my car

into a space in the student car park. I wore my scuffed black
leather jacket, jeans, and a three-day growth. I was trying to pass as a
mature-age university student, but it wasn’t much of a disguise – I still
looked like an unemployed bum.
Students wandered around with schoolbags slung over their
shoulders and textbooks in their hands. It was almost lunchtime and
many of them were packing their gobs full of greasy chips and soft
drink. Others filled their mouths with cigarettes, anxiously chewed
fingernails, or someone else’s tongue. A good slice of the crowd was
made up of overseas students – another stumble in the great march of
education: precious university places reserved for rich, unsubsidised
foreigners while Aussie kids miss out and instead learn how to say, “Do
you want fries with that?” with a repetitive smile.
I tracked down the administration building and told the matronly
woman at the desk that I had to find Crystal Mainwaring immediately
due to a family emergency. The lie earned me a look at Crystal’s study
schedule. According to her timetable, she was currently attending an
economics lecture. The receptionist gave me directions and I thanked
her and left. It was a long shot that Crystal would actually be present
today, considering that her best friend had just been murdered, but she
was the only lead I had and I didn’t have anything better to do anyway.
The Business and Arts building was bland and boxy-looking, a
cardboard container for dispensing fast-food education. A constant
stream of students trickled through the glass revolving doors, their heads
empty when they went in, and brimming with politically correct
opinions when they came out. I climbed a couple of stopped escalators
and found the lecture theatre at the end of a long hall. With my hands
cupped to my eyes, I squinted through the window set into the door. I
counted about sixty bored faces illuminated in the backwash of light
from a slide projector. At the front, a balding lecturer buzzed on about
economics like a tired honeybee.
Benny had given me printouts of the web page photos of Crystal,
Duong, and Tess. I was looking for either of the living ones. I spotted
Crystal sitting near the back of the room. Her eyes were tinged red and

she didn’t seem to be paying much attention to the lecture. Her hair had
been permed since the web page photo; it floated around her head now
like a chestnut waterfall. She looked so fragile and sad that I felt an urge
to hold her in my arms and console her.
One barrier to that idea was the Vietnamese guy slouching beside
her. Duong Nguyen sat with his muscular arms folded across his chest
and a scowl pasted onto his face. His hair was pinched back into a long
black ponytail. He looked like one of those nightclub bouncers who get
their kicks from baiting drunks into a fight.
I couldn’t just stand there gawking through the window, so I went
outside and found a seat in the main courtyard from where I could watch
the glass doors. It was a hot afternoon and the warmth made me drowsy.
I took off my jacket and tried not to think about the pub just down the
stairs and across the street.
After a while, my stomach began growling at me. I took out my
Dad’s old tobacco holder and tucked into the fresh alfalfa stash I’d
packed that morning. My father had once kept tobacco in that tin,
constructing his cigarettes with the care and precision of an artist before
smoking them down to the last inch using the tin’s lid as an ashtray.
Dad was gone now, and the slender tin held nothing more than sprouts
for me to snack on, but in some strange way, through this souvenir that
was all I had left of him, I could still feel the essence of my father
performing his familiar, comforting rituals.
I waited another twenty minutes before they came out. Crystal
walked unsteadily, as if each step had to be planned. Her face looked
puffy with grief. Duong Nguyen had his arm draped around her
shoulders like a scarf. His apparently permanent scowl looked like it
had soaked up a lot of anger without spilling a drop. He fired up a
cigarette and took the smoke into his lungs in a series of snarling
grimaces. Crystal huddled under his arm, staring blankly at the ground.
Duong flicked away his half-finished cigarette. “I got to go class
now,” I heard him say. “You still need lift tomorrow?” She nodded,
and he said, “Okay, I pick you up in the morning.” He scraped a kiss
across her lips and hurried back into the building, already ripping a
textbook out of his backpack.
Crystal watched him go until he was out of sight. She stood there
uncertainly for a moment, as if waiting for someone to tell her what to
do next, before trudging off across the courtyard with her head down. I

got to my feet, stretched, and casually followed her down a set of stairs
and across to the student cafeteria.
As she entered the building, a sleazy-looking guy wearing tight gym
shorts timed his exit so that they had to squeeze past each other in the
doorway. He came out with a leer spreading across his slimy face. It
was an old perverts’ trick for copping a feel. I didn’t know him from
Adam, and most likely neither did Crystal, but his ribs accidentally
copped a feel of my elbow as I strode past him.
The cafeteria was crowded with students consuming their daily dose
of fried junk. Dozens of conversations merged into one shapeless mass
of background noise. The room stank of batter, dim sims, and bad
coffee. Several people were ignoring the “No Smoking” sign and
risking the wrath of the fire sprinklers.
Crystal sat at a table by herself at the far end of the eating area. She
appeared to be studying a textbook. I went to the counter and watched
her while I waited to be served. She had dark Mediterranean eyes – all
pupils and long eyelashes – and they were on the verge of boiling over
with tears. The book was a prop; she was deep inside her thoughts and
not doing any actual reading.
I parted company with a fiver from my wallet and bought two foam
cups of coffee. Crystal’s head popped up with surprise when I placed
one of them on her table and slid it across to her.
“You look like you could use one of these,” I said.
She stared at me for a moment. “Thanks, I think.” Only half of her
mouth could manage a smile. Light winked off a small, tasteful stud set
into the side of her nose.
I took that as my cue and sat opposite her. “Go ahead, it’ll warm
you up. I figured you for milk and two sugars, I hope that’s okay.”
Crystal sipped the coffee tentatively. “I’m sorry, but do I, like, know
you?”
“No, but that’s easily fixed. I’m Jack.”
“Well, thanks for the coffee, Jack, but I really need to study, and I’ve
already got a boyfriend, so if you don’t mind...” She gave me a feeble
smile and went back to staring at her book. This was where I was
supposed to make polite excuses and take off with my tail between my
legs.
Instead I got straight to the point. “Crystal, I’m investigating what
happened to Tess Hinley.” She looked up sharply when I said the name.

“I understand you and Tess were close friends,” I explained.
She was already shaking her head. “I can’t bear to talk about it right
now.” She sipped her coffee, holding the cup to her lips with trembling
hands. I noticed a crucifix hanging from a gold chain around her neck.
I showed her my most sympathetic smile. “I know this is a difficult
time, Crystal, but I only have a few questions.”
“Look,” she said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m really not in the
mood for questions.” Her mouth twisted wryly. “I mean, hello? I’m
still, like, grieving here.”
“But you might know something that can help me find the killer,” I
said. “Do it for Tess, if not for me.”
It was the wrong thing to say. She looked at me properly for the first
time. “You… you ghoul! Who are you? Some bloody reporter looking
for a scoop? Get out of here before I call the security guards.”
“Wait, Crystal, I just–”
“Get lost!” Her eyes flashed contempt.
I didn’t get lost, but my temper did. “Damn it, I didn’t come here to
pick a fight with you. I’m here because I need your help to catch the
bastard who killed your friend. Your friend, Crystal, not some stranger
on the slab.” My face was reddening, my hands clenching at air. “So
stop feeling so damned sorry for yourself, and start…”
Crystal had backed as far away from me as she could. Her wide eyes
shimmered with tears. I realised that I’d angled across the table towards
her, all the muscles in my ugly face bulging. Her breathing was quick
and shallow. I had frightened her.
“I’m sorry,” I said, more gently. I sat back and forced my grimace to
relax into a friendly smile. “This is a rotten time for everyone. Look, all
I need is some background information. Will you give me five
minutes?”
“I don’t know,” she said sulkily.
I scalded my throat with a gulp of bitter coffee and pushed on. “Do
you have any idea who killed her?” I asked.
She shook her head. A tear squeezed out from the corner of her eye.
“You and Tess were close?”
Her lips trembled. “Tess was so special. She was my best friend.”
Another tear slid down her cheek and she backhanded it away. “Well,
she used to be.”
“Used to be?”

Crystal sighed. “We’d drifted apart recently. Tess became, like,
really distant. Not answering my calls, avoiding me in class, it felt like
the brush-off, you know?”
“Yeah, I imagine it would.”
“So I hardly ever saw her anyway.” She dabbed at her eyes. “I’ve
been spending most of my time lately with my boyfriend, if you want to
know the truth.”
“Why did Tess go cold on you like that?”
She shrugged. “Jealousy maybe?”
“Jealous of what?”
She shrugged again. “I thought she was okay about me and Duong.
But maybe she felt kind of like resentful, you know? I’ve been so
wrapped up with Duong lately that I haven’t had time to pay attention to
anyone else’s feelings.”
“Love of your life, huh?”
She gave me an irritated frown. “Who the hell are you anyway?
Why am I even telling you anything?”
“I’m, uh, a private investigator.”
“Yeah, right,” Crystal said with disdain. “You don’t look like one.”
“Sure I am,” I lied. “We don’t all wear trench coats and gun
holsters.”
“Fine, whatever,” she said. She stared at my face. “Did you get that
on a case?”
I fingered the long scar. “Something like that.”
Across the room, a group of jocks shouted a chorus of greeting to
friends who’d just entered the cafeteria. The coffee machine in the
kitchen rattled and hissed and spat out another bad cappuccino. At the
table next to us, an overweight girl with a sour face took the lid off a
steaming, pungent curry.
“Why are you so interested in what happened to Tess?” Crystal
persisted. Her gaze turned suddenly penetrating. “Did her parents hire
you? Aren’t you supposed to, like, leave these things to the cops?”
I leaned forward to face Crystal squarely. “You want to know
why?” I growled. “Because I’m going to find the son of a bitch who
killed Tess, and I’m going to feed him his teeth on a knuckle platter,
that’s why.” My fingers clenched my foam cup so tightly that a spurt of
hot coffee spilled out onto the back of my hand. “The cops? When I’m
finished with him, they can have him. They can put whatever’s left of

him on trial.”
“My God,” Crystal said. Her eyes gleamed as she studied me with
new interest. “You are a detective!”
The belt of anger around my temples loosened a little. I gave her my
best Mike Hammer grin. “You said it, kitten.”
“You’d really do that?” she asked. “Beat the guy up and not give a
damn about the consequences?” Her lips parted slightly and I saw a
sliver of pink tongue. “Wow, that is, like, so vigilante justice!”
“My idea of justice is a broken nose, slammed over and over again
into a brick wall.” I was really hamming up the tough guy act now. “So
are you gonna help me or not?” I drawled.
She nodded eagerly. “I do want to help, Jack.”
“Glad to hear it.” I almost added “doll”, but enough was enough.
“I know it’s not very Christian of me to want an eye for an eye,” she
said, “but Tess was, like, my best friend, you know?”
“I know.”
“So I’m willing to help you in any way I can.” Her face brightened.
“Hey, do you have a business card? You know, in case I remember
something later?”
“Uh, I’m out of cards right now, but here’s my home number.” I
took a pen and notepad out of my jacket pocket and wrote out my details
for her. “I don’t have a mobile, but there’s an answering machine.”
“Jack Marsh.” The way she said my name made it sound brand new.
She tossed her chestnut hair over her shoulder with a practised flick.
“What if you need to call me? Don’t you, like, want my number as
well?” I couldn’t tell if she was flirting or not.
“If I need it, I’ll find it,” I said in a confident voice, as if such things
were trivial for hard-boiled detectives like me. I didn’t feel it necessary
to add that I’d already pulled her address and phone number from
Benny’s White Pages.
“Okay, so, like, where do we go from here?” she asked.
“Tell me anything you know about Tess that might be important.”
“Where do I start?”
“Did she have a boyfriend?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think Tess was seeing anyone, but I
can’t be a hundred percent sure. We hadn’t exactly kept each other up to
speed lately, you know?”
“How about violent ex-boyfriends? Or hopefuls she’d turned down

who might have had a problem with rejection?”
Crystal’s eyes slid to one side. “I’m sorry, I can’t think of anyone
like that,” she said. A faint blush coloured her cheeks.
I filed it and let it pass for now. “Any family trouble at home then?”
“Sorry again. I’m not much use, am I?” She made a wry face.
“It’s not your fault.” I threw in a heavy sinker: “The most you can
do is tell me the truth as you know it, and that’s what you’ve been doing,
right?”
Crystal sighed. She spent a long minute studying her coffee cup. “I
should have realised something was wrong when she stopped coming to
church,” she said slowly. “That was so not Tess. She was such a good
Christian, and for her to drop out like that was totally out of character.”
“When did this happen?”
“Five, maybe six weeks ago, something like that. This was, like,
before she started giving me the cold treatment.” She gave me a curious
sidelong look from under her eyelashes. “Did you know that Tess
helped me to find Jesus?”
I shook my head.
“I used to be, like, ultra clueless, would you believe? I had no idea
what I was doing with my life. I kept stumbling around like a lost
traveller looking for directions. Have you ever had that feeling, Jack?”
“Once or twice.”
“Well I had it bad,” she said. Her hand rose automatically to her
crucifix and she kneaded it between thumb and forefinger as she spoke.
“But then Tess introduced me to Jesus and I let Him into my heart. My
life has been, like, so full of purpose ever since.”
“Good for you.” The conversation was nose-diving towards a sales
pitch. “What made Tess stop going to church?” I asked to bring her
back to the point.
Crystal gave me a lopsided shrug. “I don’t know for sure. Whatever
it was, it must have been something, like, truly evil for her to reject God
and her friends. Reverend Hoffman tried to convince her to trust in
Jesus, to have faith that He would be able to soothe her fears, but she
just screamed at the Reverend and took off.”
“Her fears? What was she afraid of?”
“Well, I don’t know exactly, but sometimes Tess would say weird
things. Like, one time she told me she didn’t feel in control of her own
life. I asked her what she meant, and she said she felt dirty and used.”

I leaned forward. This was it. “What did she mean by that?”
Crystal shrugged. “She wouldn’t tell me. She said I wouldn’t, like,
understand.” Her lips compressed into a sultry pout. “Me, her best
friend.”
I was disappointed too, but I had one string left to play out. “Tess
told me she was afraid of a man,” I said. “She said he’d forced her to do
filthy things against her will, and that he was after her because she’d
betrayed him. Does that ring any bells?”
Crystal’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “What did you just say?”
she demanded, her voice suddenly icy.
I couldn’t believe my blunder. “Uh, I said she must have been afraid
of a man.” I tried to will my face not to go red, but the blush was
spreading like a plague.
“No, that’s not what you said, Mr. Jack Marsh, if that really is your
name.” Her eyes were dark rocks pinning me against a hard place.
“Who are you really, and when did you talk to Tess, and why would she
tell you anything when she wouldn’t even talk to me, her best friend?”
“Well, I’ve been investigating–”
“Hello? I’m not some dumb checkout chick you can dump a load of
bullshit on.” Her voice was getting louder. “I’ve got your phone
number, remember, and if you don’t come clean like five minutes ago, I
am so going to the police with it!”
“Alright,” I snarled. “I’ll tell you what happened.”
Her mouth twisted with triumph. “You’d better.”
I dealt her the full deck. The chase, the brown van, deciding to put
things right myself. I admitted that I was only an amateur detective. “I
let Tess down when she needed my help,” I finished. My jaw clenched
as I imagined the brutalities that had been done to Tess’s body. “I won’t
rest until I’ve found the bastard who butchered her.”
Crystal folded her arms and looked at me with undisguised
contempt. “I still don’t believe you,” she said. She pushed her coffee
cup away from her as if suspicious that I might have drugged it. “How
do I know you didn’t kill my friend?”
“To hell with you then!” I stood up to leave, the legs of my chair
screeching across the floor behind me. “I’ve told you the truth and I
don’t give a rat’s arse whether you believe me or not. If you want to dob
me in to the law, then go ahead. Just don’t waste any more of my time.
I’ve got a killer to catch.”

Her eyes widened. “Wait,” she said. “Wait just a minute please.”
I waited. I put attitude into every uncomfortable second of it.
Crystal looked up at me uncertainly. “I… I do want to believe you,
Jack, really I do. It’s just hard to have faith in anyone right now, you
know?”
“Tell it to your priest,” I said harshly. “I’ve got work to do, and I’m
going ahead with or without your help.”
Crystal’s voice was shaky, almost inaudible. “But I do want to help.
Please, Jack, be patient with me.” Fresh tears glistened at the corners of
her eyes. “I’m sorry I doubted you. I’m still, like, in shock over all this,
you know, so maybe I’m a little emotional right now.”
“If I’m rough with you,” I said, toning down my glare slightly, “it’s
because I don’t have time to be Mr. Sensitive. I need to move fast while
the trail’s still hot. I can’t afford to waste time babysitting people’s
feelings.”
“I loved Tess,” Crystal said. The tears leaked out right on cue and
zigzagged down her face. “She was my best… my best friend.”
“So you keep saying.”
I’d gone too far. Crystal began crying openly, her face wrenched
with anguish. People at other tables started to stare.
I felt callous and ashamed of myself. Tess’s murder had wounded
me too, in some essential part of my heart, but this girl who had been
Tess’s closest friend was clearly hurting much, much worse. And here I
was, bludgeoning her with aggression, as tactful as a punch in the nose.
“Um, well, thanks for your help, Crystal,” I mumbled, backing away
from the table. It was time to retreat. “I’ll, uh, let you know if I learn
anything.”
She just stared up at me, the sight of her naked grief numbing me to
the core. Her delicate frame shook with every wordless sob. She looked
both vulnerable and vibrant at the same time, and beautiful all the way.
I got out of there fast, before the urge to comfort her could take hold.
Comforting Crystal was Duong’s job. Besides, I’d made enough of a
fool of myself for one day.
I legged it through the campus and back to my car. A young couple
lay on the grass kissing passionately with electric delight in the gardens
behind the car park. My skin tingled with regret. Had I merely
imagined it, that last imploring look in Crystal’s eyes? Her desperate
need for a hug?

To hell with it, it didn’t matter. I’d bungled the meeting and there
was no way of salvaging anything now. Just have to forget the whole
debacle and keep moving. Forget about Crystal. Just keep moving and
don’t look back.
I slammed the car door and took off with my foot heavy on the
pedal. Behind me in the gardens, the fires of young love burned bright
and hot, with no sign yet of the inevitable ashes.

Chapter Five
A fter a detour through a sandwich shop for some see-through

ham on stale bread, I drove to Tess’s address in Templestowe.
The house had once been renovated in the cottage style, but its country
charm had since been whittled away by time and neglect. The
weatherboards needed a fresh coat of white paint and the grass needed a
coat of green. Chipped and broken roof tiles crowded together in ragged
rows like a boxer’s teeth. A sign attached to the gate told me to “Beware
Of The Dog”; I ignored it and went on through.
I stepped onto the veranda and put my knuckles to use on the front
door. Nobody answered. I knocked again and a threadbare grey dog
loped around from the backyard and whined at me. I gave the dog an ear
scratch and it nuzzled affectionately against my leg. I hoped the Hinleys
were remembering to feed the poor thing while they went through the
routines of grief.
Nobody was feeding my knocks though, that much was certain. I
sneaked a look through the front windows, but all I could see was heavy
drapes. Tess’s parents were probably out taking care of funeral
arrangements and other matters which I had no right poking my nose
into. Anyway, with my usual level of tact, I probably would have ended
up sticking my nose right into her father’s fist.
It was late afternoon and the sun had slipped modestly behind a bank
of clouds to change into its evening gown. The smell of newly cut grass
came riding on a light wind from the house next door. I gave the dog
one last scratch and went next door to give my knuckles a second
chance. A fat teenager wearing a school uniform opened the inner door
and pressed his pug nose against the flyscreen mesh.
“Whaddya want?” His face was a minefield of pimples.
“Your parents home, kid?”
“Nuh.”
“Any other adults I can talk to?”
The kid scratched his nose. He looked like he was aching to pick it.
“Nuh.”
Some authority was called for here. “I’m a private investigator,” I
told him. “I’m trying to find out who killed Tess Hinley, the girl who
lived next door.”

His eyes widened. “No shit?” He pushed out through the wire door
and stood squinting up at me. He didn’t look any better in the sunlight.
“She was a hot piece, she was. Real waste.”
“So I’ve heard. How much do you know about what happened?”
“She got done in a school playground, they said on TV.” A bloated
pink tongue appeared between his lips. “Guts and gizzards all over the
swings and stuff.”
“Do you know where Tess’s parents are?”
“Probably digging a hole at the bone farm.” He grinned as if he
thought he was the funniest kid on earth. His teeth were clogged with
chunks of food. Wet patches had formed around his armpits from the
exertion of opening the door.
“Did Tess get along with her parents?”
The kid shrugged his expansive shoulders. “Who cares?”
This wasn’t going well. “Do you know if Tess had any trouble with
her father?” I didn’t think it was likely that Tess’s father had been the
man in the brown van, but it had to be checked. “Anything you tell me
could be important to the investigation,” I added, lending it the weight of
a cop’s serious undertone.
“Do I look like her fucking diary?”
I took a deep breath and reminded myself to stay calm. “Did you
ever see or hear any signs of domestic violence?”
“Ha!” the kid said. “They’re fine. Fucking Brady Bunch in there.”
His eyes were piggy and defiant. “You want to meet the bash artist on
this street, try my old man. Nothing’s good enough for that bastard.”
His mouth hardened and he spat into the flowerbed. “Mum’s no better.
Just lets him wale into us, the dumb cow.”
“Did you notice any personality changes in Tess?” I asked to change
the subject. “Especially in the last six weeks?”
He shrugged. “How would I know? I hardly knew the bitch. Would
have slipped her the old beef injection though.” He leered and pumped
his hips to illustrate the point. “She was some hot piece alright.”
I was almost ready to give up. “Can you think of anything at all that
might help?”
“Nuh.” The kid’s finger was edging towards his nostril again.
Suddenly his face shifted gears into a crafty look. “Oh yeah, now I
remember...”
“What?”

He gave me a crooked grin. “How much you gonna pay me to tell
you?”
“Tell me first. If it’s good, we’ll work out how much it’s worth.”
“She was on drugs,” he said in a sly voice. He rubbed his fingers
together in the traditional where’s-my-bribe motion. “Now I reckon a
hot tip like that’s gotta be worth at least twenty bucks…”
“Keep going and we’ll see. What sort of drugs?”
“Who knows?” he said. “And who cares? Drugs are for losers.”
“What makes you think she was using?”
“My mate and I saw her acting up about three months ago. She was
stoned off her nut. Fell on her twat and sat there giggling like a dork.”
“She might have just been drunk,” I suggested.
“Nuh, she was stoned alright. Any fool can spot a junkie. She was
off her nut.”
If the kid was telling the truth, this tip was gold. “Where did she get
the drugs?”
He shrugged. “Who knows? Anywhere, everywhere. Just stand still
on a city street, dealers be all over you like flies.” He was just a kid
trying to sound streetwise and cynical, but he was doing a fine job of it.
I knew what he meant though. Certain parts of Melbourne are
notorious drug zones. At the corner of Bourke Street and Russell Street
in the city, for example, dealers lurk in storefronts and the back rooms of
arcade parlours, trolling brazenly for customers. Catch their eye for five
seconds and you can be walking away with foil-wrapped heroin five
seconds after that. Trying to find out where Tess had scored her dope
would be like looking for a syringe in a haystack.
Often while waiting in the dole queue, I’d seen drug addicts standing
in line for their government sponsored fix money. Pale, bleary-eyed
creatures, desperately hugging themselves against the shakes. The Tess
I’d met had looked nothing like those poor wraiths, but a lot can change
in three months. She might have kicked the habit but been unable to
escape the dark drug underworld itself.
“You’re on your way to earning that twenty dollars,” I told the kid.
“Where did this happen?” I gestured towards the Hinley property.
“Over there?”
“Are you crazy? Nobody’s stupid enough to shoot up in front of
their olds.” His fat face suddenly closed up into a sullen mass of flesh,
as if he’d just remembered one of his own family’s failings.

“So where then?”
“I forget.” He shifted his weight and gave me a challenging stare.
“Think hard.”
“Why should I?” The kid finally gave in to his urge and plunged a
finger deep into his nose. He’d obviously skipped etiquette class.
“I bet this’ll help you remember,” I said. I dug out my wallet and
held a twenty right where his beady eyes couldn’t miss it.
The finger popped out. “Gimme that.”
I handed him the money and he stuffed it into his pocket. I’d just
bribed my first witness. “Now,” I said, trying to be nice, “where did you
see Tess doing drugs?”
“Some pool hall in the city. I was having a game there with my
mate.”
“Which pool hall?”
“I told you before, I forgot.”
I grunted and held out another ten bucks. It disappeared into the
kid’s pocket. My wallet was starting to look pretty slender.
He leaned against the flyscreen door with his arms folded. “Nuh,
still doesn’t help. I really did forget.” He smirked. “Looks like you
wasted your dough.”
“Kid,” I said, through a forced smile, “how about you ring your
friend and ask him if he remembers.”
“Why should I?” His finger drilled into his nose again. He was back
to acting bored and insolent: he knew he wouldn’t get any more money
out of me.
In karate training, we’re taught to use our skills only for self-
defence. No matter how obnoxious your opponent, violence is never the
answer. Flattening a certain fat finger inside a certain fat nose, as
appealing as the idea was, wouldn’t get me anywhere.
“You’d be helping my investigation,” I said patiently. “You’d be
helping Tess too, in a way.”
He snorted. “Who cares about Tess now? She’s as dead as dog
shit.” He tugged open the wire door. “Piss off, copper. I’ve got more
important things to do.”
I’d had enough. “Like what, Fatso? Jerking yourself off?”
That stopped him. He slammed the door and squinted up at me with
hard teenage eyes. “The fuck you say to me?” He’d probably rehearsed
it on the little kids at school.

“You heard me, Fatso. Or are you deaf as well as obese?”
The kid blushed scarlet and only half of it was anger. I could tell he
wanted to hit me, but I was bigger, tougher, and meaner-looking than he
was.
“Get the fuck off my property!” he demanded in a thick voice. He
waved a chewed fingernail in the direction of Off The Property.
“Alright, I’m going,” I said darkly. “But your old man won’t be
happy when I come back later and tell him you’ve obstructed an official
investigation.”
The kid’s cocky sneer dropped half an inch.
“Maybe I’ll even invent a story about you being caught shoplifting,”
I added, “just to get him angrier. And then I’ll keep coming back and
making trouble for you until I get the answers I want.” I shot him a
menacing glare. “So long, Fatso.” I stomped off towards my car,
moving slowly enough to give him a chance.
I’d almost reached the road when he called out, “Okay!”
I paused, cocked an ear in his direction. “Was that a belch I heard?”
“Okay, you prick! I’ll ring my mate. I’ll ask him about the bloody
pool hall.” He sounded sulky. “You happy now?”
I turned and stared hard at him. “Make it quick.”
The kid raced inside. I wandered around the yard, thinking. At the
fence adjoining Tess’s place was a scraggly rosebush. I remembered the
rose she’d slipped into my buttonhole, the feel of her lips on mine. I
picked a rose and sniffed it, but there was no fragrance of girl-next-door.
I tossed it over the fence and it landed on the Hinleys’ veranda. Sweet
dreams, Tess.
The fat kid took five minutes to make his phone call. “Alright
copper, I got your bloody facts.”
“Go on.”
“My mate says it was The Green Triangle.”
I knew the place. It was in one of the seedy little alleys branching
out from Chinatown in Little Bourke Street. “It took you five minutes to
ask that?”
“Screw you. I was going over it with my mate. He reminded me of
something else that might be important.”
“What?”
The kid’s heavy face was sweaty. “I’ll tell you if you promise not to
set my old man off.”

“Tell me first and I’ll consider it.”
“That night, when Tess was stoned, she had a fight with her
boyfriend,” he said, rushing to get his words out. “She was all happy-
happy, kept demanding the guy’s attention and stuffing up his game. He
got fed up and slapped her face. That was when she plopped down on
the floor and started giggling. I remember it now.”
“What was her boyfriend’s name?”
“Dunno. I used to see him around here when he came to pick her up
though. Yellow bastard. Carried a flick-knife on him. I called him a
name once when he parked too close to our drive and the prick
threatened me with it.”
A knife. A violent boyfriend. And Tess, hurt and vulnerable. My
fingers wanted to clutch a throat.
“I bet he killed her,” the kid continued. “Silly bitch probably wasn’t
putting out enough, so he went crazy from blue balls, that’s my theory.”
I could have taught his own balls a theory or two about sexism, but I
doubted that it would do much to advance the feminist cause. Instead I
asked, “When did you last see this guy?”
“Haven’t seen him around here since that night. They must have
split up.”
“Did the guy drive a brown van?” I knew the van had only been
stolen recently, but it was a way to test the kid’s veracity.
The kid blinked. “Nuh. Some little beat-up red thing.”
“Have you seen any suspicious vehicles around the neighbourhood
lately?” I described the brown van for him. “Think carefully.”
“You think I go taking notes on every dickhead around here? I get
enough grief from my old man without…” He trailed off, his fat throat
bobbing as though he were choking on a bone. His expression wavered
somewhere between hatred and shame.
I decided to give him a break. “Okay. What did her boyfriend look
like?”
“Big ugly yellow prick. Too many muscles and a wanky ponytail.”
The circuits in my brain clicked. “He was Asian?”
“That’s what I said, didn’t I? A big yellow gook.” He noticed my
expression and sneered at me. “You aren’t one of them political
correctness dorks, are you?”
“Not me, Fatso, you greasy tub of lard.”
His nostrils flared. “You’ve got what you wanted, copper. Now piss

off and don’t come back.”
I wasn’t going to get any more out of him. “You’d better pray that I
don’t have to,” I said in a hard voice, and left.
As I drove away, the kid held out his parting gift: an upraised middle
finger. I couldn’t help feeling a little bit sorry for him. With all that
meanness and custom-built posturing, he was well on his way to
becoming a carbon copy of his “old man”.
I tried to absorb what I’d learned. The mysterious ex-boyfriend had
to be Duong. He’d been with Tess at least three months ago, and now he
was dating her so-called best friend. Crystal had dodged telling me the
whole truth and I wanted to know why.
On the way home, I drove through the same intersection that had
first hurtled me into this whole damned mess, and I knew that I was
doing the right thing. For once, I was doing something with my life
instead of just drinking up dole money and feeling useless. This was
important. Tess was important. I was going to crack this case. I grinned
at myself in the mirror and a hard-boiled sleuth grinned back.
The confident mood evaporated abruptly as I drove into my
apartment complex and saw two cops waiting on my doorstep.

Chapter Six
W henever the police come knocking, it usually means bad

news. They’re either there to arrest you or to ask you to
identify the body of a loved one. Since I didn’t have too many loved
ones, my hopes for making tonight’s happy hour at The Hairy Elephant
were looking pretty grim.
I parked in my slot and walked towards them, trying not to let my
apprehension show. The younger of the two cops, a presentable woman
in her early thirties, followed my progress with a cool, unreadable stare.
She looked lean and fit, with a narrow face, shrewd eyes, and sunset-red
hair. Her trouser creases were ironed sharp enough to give paper cuts
and she had an amused half-smile curve to her lips that made me wonder
how many of my secrets she already knew.
Her partner was the one to watch out for. A heavy beer gut drooped
over his belt and his wrinkled suit strained to contain the rest of him. He
had the pitted red nose of a serious drinker. He squinted at me from
beneath a shadowy overhang of scowl as I approached, his lower jaw
jutting out like a misaligned brick.
“I’m Jack Marsh. I presume you’re looking for me.” I stuck out my
hand, nice and friendly.
The fat cop glared at my hand as if it were diseased. He opened his
notebook and scrawled something. Probably “Jack Marsh” with an
underline.
His partner, however, reached out a slender hand and we shook.
“Mr. Marsh, I’m Detective Sergeant Pearl,” she said. “This is Detective
Constable Gars.” Gars grunted an acknowledgement without looking at
me.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“We’d like to ask you a few questions in relation to a case we’re
investigating,” Pearl said. “If you don’t mind.”
“What case?”
“You know damned well what case, buddy,” Gars said, his voice like
a gravel rockslide. His tact evidently hadn’t improved since yesterday’s
phone conversation.
I could have played dumb. But since they were here, they somehow
already knew I was involved. “Alright, what do you want to know?”

“It would be better if we talked inside,” Pearl said.
I unlocked the door and led them into my living room. Their eyes
scanned the apartment, no doubt casually noting the little details of my
life: small TV wedged between window and wall heater; scuffed desk
with empty bottle of Scotch pinning down the employment section of the
newspaper; smells of dusty carpet and neglected saucepans.
Conclusion: single, unemployed male with no prospects. My whole
existence summed up and dismissed at a glance.
“Hurry up and ask your questions then,” I said. “I’ve got things to
do.”
Pearl took out her notebook and flipped it open. “Where were you at
approximately three o’clock last Friday afternoon, Mr. Marsh?”
“Driving home from the city.”
“On Springvale Road?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you stop at the intersection of Maroondah Highway and
Springvale Road at approximately four minutes past three?”
“I couldn’t say. I forgot to set my stopwatch.”
Gars pointed a stubby finger at me. “Don’t be a smart-arse, buddy.”
“Sure,” I said. “As long as you promise not to be a dumb-arse.”
Gars’s fist tightened around his notepad. “Why you–”
“Specifically,” Pearl said, “while you were stopped at that
intersection, did a young woman named Tess Hinley climb into the back
of your vehicle?”
“You make it sound like hanky panky in the back seat,” I said,
grinning. “If I were a chivalrous gentleman, I’d deny everything to
protect milady’s honour...”
Pearl’s lips twitched. “Mr. Marsh, I know you want to help or you
wouldn’t have made that anonymous call yesterday. So no more jokes,
please. It’s important that you treat this seriously and tell us as much as
you can about what happened.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling humbled. I met her cool gaze. “It’s like I
told Gars yesterday. I was waiting for a red light when this strange girl
jumped into my car and begged for help. A guy in a brown van was
after her. You going to write this down?”
Pearl’s stare was impassive. “Later. Just tell it freely for now.”
I described the chase and Tess’s subsequent recapture. I tried to give
a verbatim account of the cryptic comments Tess had made. I didn’t

mention our kiss under the rose bush or my attempts to solve the case on
my own. “Next thing I knew,” I finished, “Tess was in the obit column,
and that’s when I rang triple-O and laid the skinny on Gars here.”
“Thought you were real clever with that phone call, didn’t you?”
Gars said.
“One of us had to be,” I replied, “and it clearly wasn’t going to be
you.”
“Yeah, well you weren’t so clever that I couldn’t find you, buddy.
You’re not so clever as you think.”
“How’d you find me?” I was genuinely curious.
“We checked the area around that intersection for witnesses. A
shopkeeper spotted the Hinley girl running from the van to your car,
thought it looked suspicious, and made a note of the licence plates.” His
face tightened with malice. “That was all I needed to nail you down.”
I was impressed. “Looks like you were paying attention after all.”
He speared a porky finger at me. “I always pay attention. Especially
when punks are mouthing off and telling me to shut up.” His glare
scorched the air between us.
I tried to stare him down, but it’s not easy being tough when the
other guy has a gun strapped to his belt. Pearl tapped her pen against her
notepad to get my attention.
“Mr. Marsh,” she said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d come back to the
station with us so that we can go over your story in more detail.” Her
voice was throaty and persuasive.
“What for? I’ve told you all I know.”
“Sometimes people remember things more accurately in a formal
environment.” She smiled reassuringly as if to show how simple it all
was. “Besides, you’ll need to sign a statement at some point anyway, so
why not get it over with now?”
“I have this strange disease,” I said. “My memory’s allergic to
police stations, and my penmanship starts to deteriorate the closer I get
to an interrogation room.”
“This is getting nowhere,” Gars grunted. His jaw muscles flexed.
“Let me slap the cuffs on him and–”
“Sorry, who were you again?” I deadpanned at him. I swivelled
back to Pearl and grinned, determined to rip through her cool exterior
somehow. “You see? The mere mention of a cop shop and my memory
goes all to hell…”

A wrinkle of annoyance flickered across her forehead. “Have you
forgotten that Tess Hinley was murdered?” she said in an iced-tea tone.
All the humour drained out of me in an instant. “No, I haven’t
forgotten.”
“Good.” She put her notebook away. “You’re ready to go then?”
“Am I under arrest?”
“No, you’re simply helping us with our inquiries.” Her tone was
professional and gave nothing away. “Okay?”
It was time to stop clowning anyway. I sighed, resigning myself to
an evening of law enforcement tedium.
Then Gars ruined it all by saying, “Not like you got a choice
anyhow, buddy.”
My stubbornness flared up. “You’re wrong,” I told him. “Pearl just
said I’m not under arrest. So maybe I’ll just stay right here and watch
Big Brother on TV instead.” I emphasised the point by sitting on the
edge of my desk and folding my arms.
Gars was livid. “You’ll do what you’re told, punk!”
“Not by you, errand-boy. Get a judge to tell it to me on a warrant
and then maybe I’ll listen.”
Gars looked like he wanted to slug me. He probably knew plenty of
unofficial ways to stop guys like me from spraying him with the smart
mouth. But with his senior officer in the room, he couldn’t use any of
them. He jammed his hands into his pockets so that they couldn’t punch
anyone. I grinned at him and the pockets bulged.
Pearl stepped between us. “Mr. Marsh, let’s not make this any more
difficult than we have to,” she said. “All we’re asking for is your
cooperation. Okay?”
I let her wait a long moment before answering. “Okay,” I said at
last. “Even though mutual cooperation seems to be in short supply
around here.” I looked at Gars. “That’s a hint, by the way.”
Gars gave me a hard stare. “You think you’re real funny, don’t
you?”
“Sure. Put a coin in my hat and I’ll tell you the one about the nun
and the bear.”
His face darkened. “One of these days,” he said, “things are gonna
be different. You won’t be laughing then, buddy.”
“Alright, let’s go,” Pearl said brusquely. “Why don’t you follow us
to the station in your car, Mr. Marsh, so that you can make your own

way home afterwards. We’ll try to make this as quick and painless as
possible.”
“Fine,” I said. “It’s not like I had a life to lead or anything.”
My neighbour, Mrs. Vanguard, scowled at me from her doorway as I
left with the cops. She had a cat perched in the crook of her arm and
was no doubt praying I’d be simultaneously arrested and evicted. The
old widow had disliked me since the day I moved into the apartment
block. Apparently I was “not the right material for this respectable
neighbourhood”. The fact that I also didn’t like cats only further
cemented Mrs. Vanguard’s disapproval. I stuck my tongue out at her as
I went past and she slammed her door with a “Harrumph!”
The cops drove ahead of me without using the siren. I busied myself
thinking up fresh wisecracks to use on Gars and witty double entendres
to use on Pearl. The sky was getting darker now, the departing sun
reddening the horizon. I could still smell a hint of Tess’s apricot
perfume inside the car.
The Ringwood police station was a grey building with garish yellow
window frames. Gars was nowhere in sight, but Pearl was waiting for
me at the security door. I parked in a space marked “Visitors” and we
went through into an air-conditioned reception area. Inside was a long,
polished wooden counter, with a uniformed constable propping it up.
Bright blue doors led off into the bowels of the station. Pearl escorted
me along several corridors to a windowless interrogation room. The
room contained a metal table, some hard-backed chairs, and a three-copy
interview recorder.
Pearl put fresh tapes into the recorder, announced the date and time,
and then launched in. She questioned me about the chase over and over,
refining the level of detail with each iteration. I was surprised at some
of the additional facts she helped me to remember. Descriptions of the
brown van became clearer and more precise. I remembered the Volvo
that the van had smashed off the road, which seemed to please Pearl, as
if I’d confirmed other corroborating evidence. She brought in a street
map and I pointed out the path I’d taken. I was careful not to mention
my amateur investigation or anything that I’d learned since Tess’s
murder. For the time being, I was keeping my theories about Tess’s
drug habit and Duong’s sordid little love triangle all to myself.
After a while, Gars knocked and entered. He whispered something
to Pearl that I couldn’t hear, then sat and glared at me while she

continued her questioning. Something dark in his face suggested that he
would have preferred a more direct method of forcing facts to the
surface, whether they existed or not.
At one point, Pearl asked, “Did Tess mention a man named Kurt
Drucker?”
“Huh? Who’s he?”
“Just a name we found in her personal papers. It might mean
nothing. Does the name mean anything to you?” I noticed that she was
watching me keenly.
“I’ve never heard of him.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” I said. But I made a mental note to check it out later.
The interview went on and on. Pearl did most of the talking, with
Gars throwing in the occasional snide remark. I felt like I’d raked
through the whole thesaurus telling the same story over and over. I
finally exploded. “For crying out loud! How many more times do you
expect me to repeat myself?”
“We’re almost done, Jack,” Pearl said. She was as cool and
unflappable as ever, but at least I had been promoted to “Jack” now.
“Just a few more things to clarify and then you can go.”
“You said this would be over quickly.” I waggled my watch in her
face. “That was three and a half hours ago!”
“And you’ve been very helpful. We won’t keep you much longer.
Now, back to what you saw when the driver jumped out of the van...”
“I’ve told you and told you, I didn’t see him clearly.”
“How convenient,” Gars said dryly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He shrugged. “If you didn’t see him, and nobody else saw him, then
maybe he wasn’t there at all, you follow?”
I turned to Pearl. “The killer was there alright. That van didn’t drive
itself.”
But Pearl said nothing. In the silence, Gars kept his relentless red-
eyed stare locked on my face. The walls loomed closer and the air in the
room seemed to turn sour. They had zeroed in on the shaky part of my
story and pounced.
“If you’re suggesting that I–”
Gars raised his palms in mock appeasement. “I’m not suggesting
anything, buddy. All I’m saying is we got us a period of time here

where anything could have happened. Maybe the van came back, like
you say, and maybe it didn’t. We got to take all the possibilities into
consideration, you follow?”
“Get to the point, if you’ve got one.”
“Point is we got to wonder if maybe there’s things you haven’t told
us yet.” He leaned towards me, his face ballooning with menace. “Like
how you killed the Hinley girl yourself, for example.”
I held his stare. “Well, there is one important fact I’ve been holding
back.”
He arched his thick eyebrows. “Spill it.”
“The fact that you’re an overweight, peanut-brained ape with all the
charisma of a rotten banana.”
Gars’s face turned dark red. He ground his teeth hard to keep from
saying the wrong thing on tape, but his eyes blazed with all the things he
wanted to say. A soft knock on the door broke the tension.
Pearl said, “Interview suspended at 8:05 p.m.,” and stopped the tape.
I thought I saw the hint of a smile touch her lips as she went to the door.
The man outside wore a lab coat and carried a folder under his arm.
Pearl excused herself and went out into the hall to talk to him, closing
the door behind her. Now it was just me and the ape.
Gars raised his head slowly. Fiery hate shone in his eyes. “I’m
gonna pound you into mincemeat, you cocky piece of shit.”
“Go ahead and try,” I told him. “But you’d better make your first
punch count.”
“Oh, I will, buddy,” he said. “When the time’s right. One day you’ll
be driving too fast, or driving too slow, or acting suspiciously, or maybe
just acting the fool. And I’ll be there to break you down, you follow?”
The door opened and Pearl returned. Gars and I both tried to look
nonchalant, like two schoolboy enemies pretending to behave in front of
the teacher.
“Okay, Jack, you’re free to go,” Pearl said. “Thanks for taking the
time to assist us with our inquiries.”
“The pleasure,” I said, standing, “has been all yours.”
She gave me my copy of the interview tape along with a statement
form to sign. I put my squiggle on it and to hell with the fine print. Gars
gave me one last dagger stare as I left the room; I caught it and threw it
right back at him.
Pearl led me through the warren of halls and blue doors until we

were back outside. It was full dark now and the night air was cold.
Pearl shivered. She was just a cop doing her job, but I still felt an
awkward tension between us, as if neither of us was quite ready yet to
say goodbye.
“Thanks again, Jack,” she said. “If you remember anything else, you
know what to do.” She was wearing her unreadable Mona Lisa smile
again.
“Yeah.”
“In the meantime, keep yourself available in case we need to speak
to you again.”
“In other words, ‘don’t leave town, buster’, is that what you’re
saying?”
“Just keep yourself available.”
Her unflappable calm irritated me. “Don’t worry, babe,” I said, with
an exaggerated wink. “I’m always available for a hot date with the lady
law.”
Pearl’s eyes flashed. “Was that a sexist remark?”
I showed her a grin. “It’s called a joke, Pearl.”
She gave me a withering glare. “Do you think you’re funny?
Degrading women with your so-called jokes?”
“I haven’t degraded–”
“Stupid jokes like that only perpetuate the male dominant culture of
abuse in this society.” Her voice turned shrill. “Don’t you think you
men, with your chauvinist pig attitudes, have oppressed women long
enough?”
I’d managed to pry up her shell at last, but I was starting to regret it.
“Look, I’m sorry if you thought–”
“And if you think you can get away with displaying offensive
behaviour towards a female officer, then you’d better think again!” Her
shoulders were stiff and angular with feminist fury. “You men have
preyed on women since the beginning of time, but now we’re fighting
back, and believe me, we will fight for our equality.”
“Don’t shoot me.” I held out my hands in a peace gesture and tested
a smile. “I may have a stupid sense of humour, but I do actually respect
women.”
Pearl squinted at me for a long, suspicious moment. “Good,” she
said. She looked slightly embarrassed. “Just so we’re clear.”
“Clear as mud.”

“Good.” She had regained her composure. “You can go now.”
“Thanks.” I offered Pearl my hand. She looked surprised, but after a
moment’s hesitation, she took it. Her handshake was brisk and cool.
“Let me know if you catch the bastard,” I said.
“Oh, we will catch him.” Her eyes scalded me like hot steam.
“Whoever he is, that animal will never hurt another woman again...”
As I walked to where I’d parked my car, I wondered whether that
last threat had been meant specifically for me, or just aimed in general at
anyone with an appendage between his legs. I glanced behind me,
feeling an apprehensive twinge between my shoulder blades, but Pearl
had already disappeared back inside the building.
It was a quarter past eight and I was starving. Time for a fast food
run. I got into the car and shut the door.
What the hell?
I could smell an unpleasant odour that hadn’t been there before.
Body odour. Somebody had been in my car. Gars, I thought, and the
veins in my temples throbbed.
I turned on the map light and checked the backseat area. Everything
looked the same, but the food wrappers and crumpled papers on the floor
were distributed in slightly neater patterns than usual. Gars must have
illegally searched the car for evidence, and there wasn’t a damned thing
I could do to prove it. I wouldn’t have put it past him to plant a frame
either. Then I remembered the lab coat guy who’d spoken to Pearl in the
hallway, and the way she’d stretched out the interrogation interminably
until he’d shown up, and my paranoia increased. I sped off with an
angry screech of tyres.
The police obviously considered me a suspect. Right at this
moment, they could be coming up with the theory that I’d kidnapped
Tess, and that the guy chasing us in the van had been her friend trying to
rescue her. They could wrap me up in a nice, neat parcel of
circumstantial evidence, stow me in remand for months, and then shove
me in front of a sceptical jury to tell a story that wouldn’t have grown
any less flimsy with age. I had to find the killer now, before it was too
late. Innocent men get railroaded into prison all the time.
I already knew my next step. It was time to unravel that messy
romantic knot that tied Duong Nguyen into all this. According to the fat
neighbour kid in Templestowe, Duong had exercised his slapping hand
on Tess’s face at the pool hall a few months ago. Thinking about that

made my knuckles tighten on the steering wheel as I aimed the car
towards the city.
You can’t find justice at an overworked police station. You can’t
find it in the courts. And you sure as hell can’t find it in a pine box
buried six feet under the daisies. I was one of the few guys still selling
the stuff, and right now it was on special for less than cost price. I
vowed not to rest until I’d found justice for Tess. Whoever said that the
dead forsake all debts, lied.

Chapter Seven
T he Green Triangle was in one of the dark cul-de-sac alleys

branching out from Chinatown, tucked in between a Korean
restaurant and a souvenir imports shop. I was wearing my leather jacket
to ward off the night chill, my breath appearing in the cold air like a
mist-shrouded ghost. The ozone scent of an approaching thunderstorm
competed with the stale exhaust fumes left over from the rush hour
bedlam. Shadows grew and twisted ahead of me like a thief’s fingers as
I entered the alley, while a nearby car alarm cried wolf. I found the
entry door beneath a flickering neon depiction of a pool rack, one side of
its illuminated triangle winking off and on with a nervous tic.
The foyer was just a concrete box with an elevator set into one of its
stained walls. Muffled music came thumping down through the air vents
from the room above. I thumbed the up button and waited as the
elevator came clanking down. The doors slid open and I was almost
knocked over by a short youth who rushed out without looking and
slammed into my shoulder. My foot resisted an urge to stick itself out
and trip him. The youth made a grunt that might have been an apology,
but which sounded more like an obscenity, before darting out into the
alley. My foot resented the missed opportunity.
The pool hall was busier than I’d expected for a Monday night. I
counted about twenty tables and nearly all of them were occupied.
Cigarette smoke hovered around the fluorescent lights above the tables
and the air was hot and stuffy. A jukebox belched outdated rap music at
ear-splitting volume. I took off my jacket and tried to take shallow
breaths. I wandered around the big room, casually checking out the
games in progress and studying the people. Most of the players were
young men, many of them Asian. One tough-looking shark challenged
me to a game, but I pretended not to hear.
Duong wasn’t here. That was okay though; I hadn’t expected to find
him. I crossed to the bar where a sour-faced woman with grey hair tied
back in a bun was serving drinks. She wore a badge with “Margaret”
stencilled on it, and I was betting a thousand to one that was her name.
A sign with a long list of Do-Nots was prominently displayed on the
wall behind her.
“G’day Margaret,” I said. “I’ll have a whisky, please.”

“We don’t serve spirits in here,” she said. She sounded grouchy.
“Then make it a VB.”
She took a glass and filled it from the tap. There was almost as
much head as there was beer. “Four fifty,” she said, setting the glass on
a cheap paper coaster.
It was a blatant rip-off, but I paid it without complaint. It’s only dole
money, I reasoned, and besides, she might have information. “Busy
night?” I asked.
“It’s always busy. You want a table?” She was polishing a glass
with a filthy, grease-spotted rag. I eased my drink back onto the coaster
untouched.
“Actually, I’m looking for one of your customers.” I was watching
her face carefully. “Duong Nguyen. You know him?”
“Never heard of him.” But she was lying: her lips tightened and her
eyes seemed to sag and grow wary.
I pulled out the photo printout from Crystal’s web page and showed
it to her. “This guy. Recognise him now?”
Her eyes flicked involuntarily towards four Asian guys playing
doubles at one of the nearby tables. “Never seen him before.”
“You sure about that?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know anything,” she said. “I don’t
know anybody. I just work here.” She started scrubbing another glass
with the rag. Her hands fumbled it and she almost dropped the glass.
Something was wrong here and it wasn’t just the no-spirits rule.
“Thanks for nothing,” I said. I took my beer and gestured with it
towards the group of Asian men. “Maybe his mates will be more
helpful,” I muttered as I walked away.
“Wait!” Margaret shouted over the music. Her long face, pinched
with tension and nostrils flaring, made her resemble a panicked horse.
I moved back to the bar. “Remembered something, have you?”
“You’d better not start any fights.” She twisted her hands in the
cleaning rag and squinted at me. “I won’t have you bothering the
customers.”
“I’ll make sure I say please.”
Her lips pursed as if tugged by a drawstring. “Don’t you even think
about stirring up trouble, or I’m calling the cops right now!”
“I’m not looking for trouble. I’m looking for Duong Nguyen.”
“Why?” Her long face drooped even lower with worry.

“Because I can.”
She sighed heavily and looked me over with distaste, her palms flat
on the counter. She beckoned with her head and I leaned in close
enough for whispering. “You don’t tell anyone I told you this, okay?”
she said. “You don’t tell anyone. That Nguyen boy, he’s a real bad egg,
understand? I don’t want him coming after me.”
“He’s no friend of mine,” I assured her.
Margaret laughed without mirth. “You don’t want him for an enemy
either, let me tell you.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“About two months ago, he got into a fight with a guy who bumped
his cue. Nguyen pulled a flick-knife. The other boy got a slashed ear,
and it could have been much worse if Nguyen’s friends hadn’t held him
back.”
“What did you do?”
“Well of course I called the cops. But by then, the kid with the
bleeding ear had taken off in a panic, and since he wasn’t a member, I
had no details to give to the police. Nguyen denied everything,
naturally, and his mates backed him up.” She glared at the Asian players
across the room. “It was my word against theirs, and without a victim or
any evidence, the cops wouldn’t do a thing.”
“What about the knife?”
“He must have palmed it to one of his mates before the police
searched him. They didn’t find it.” She grimaced. “So he still keeps
coming in, all puffed up and cocksure as if he knows he’s untouchable.”
“You mentioned membership details,” I said. “Is Duong a
member?”
“Yes, he’s a regular. We have discounts.”
“So you’d have contact details for him, yes?”
She studied me warily. “Who are you, anyway? Why are you so
interested in that no-good troublemaker?”
“Maybe I just want to bend his ear a little,” I said, putting a hint of
unspecified danger into my voice. “Have a nice friendly chat about
politics and religion.”
She squinted at me. “If I give you his address, will you leave me
alone?”
“Alright.”
“And you won’t tell him where you got the information?” Her jaw

was set. “I don’t want a knife in my face, understand?”
“You have my word,” I said.
Margaret gave me one last suspicious squint before hauling a large
folder out from under the bar. She leafed through it until she found
Duong’s membership form. I borrowed a pen and wrote his
Collingwood address on the back of my beer coaster.
“Don’t forget your promise,” she said. She looked dried out and
haggard. “I don’t want any trouble.”
“I can handle trouble just fine.”
“It’s not you I’m worried about,” she said. She jammed her fists into
her hips and thrust her horsy chin forward. “Do you have any idea what
I have to put up with here? Working alone in this dump every night for
a pittance, always afraid that some young punk is going to carve up my
face over a bill dispute, and for what? For what, I ask you?”
I didn’t have the answer either, so I thanked her and headed for the
elevator, leaving my beer untouched on the counter. Margaret needed it
more than I did. I considered tackling Duong’s mates anyway, but
they’d probably just clam up with the “No Speak English” routine and
laugh behind my back. Besides, I was tired, grumpy, and hadn’t eaten
since lunchtime.
The elevator arrived and the same short youth who’d bumped me on
the way up rushed out impatiently and crashed into me again. This time,
however, I put some shoulder into the matter and he went sprawling onto
the floor.
“Watch yourself, runt,” I told him. He had a shaved head and wore a
heavy metal T-shirt, but with his height, he was never going to
successfully pull off the tough look. He sprang to his feet, cooking me
with red-faced anger, and then ran off into the smoky depths of the pool
hall.
It felt good to breathe the chilled night air after the stagnation inside.
I rode my heels out to Little Bourke Street, Melbourne’s own small strip
of China, a narrow street lined with gaudy, pseudo-Oriental arches and
globe-shaped streetlights. A group of elderly women huddled together
outside the Korean restaurant, warding off their fear of the night by
chattering more loudly than they needed to. Strange smells of spice and
exotic vegetables hissed out on a breath of steam from the restaurant’s
air vents.
I heard excited voices behind me. Three guys came out of the alley

and began following me. One of them was the vertically-challenged
twerp I’d tangled with outside the elevator. They stayed at a steady
distance a few paces behind me.
I ignored them and walked to a nearby Hungry Jacks and bought a
hamburger and a soft drink to chase it with. I ate my dinner at a table
near the window. The three youths lurked in a shopfront outside,
playing the intimidation game. The runt shook his fist at me whenever I
looked at him.
I finished eating and headed for the parking lot where I’d left the
Commodore. The streets were full of half-life people, the forgotten and
the dangerous who roam the fringes of society. Teenage gangs clustered
in front of fast food outlets, passing cigarettes and doing their best to
imitate American hip hop culture. An old woman with wild hair blocked
people’s paths and begged aggressively for small change. Two
mean-faced men dressed in black walked side by side along the Bourke
Street strip, scrutinising the body of every young woman they passed in
some mysterious, unfathomable search. I glanced behind me after a
block, but I couldn’t see my friends from The Green Triangle. I felt an
odd sense of letdown, as if part of me had been secretly looking forward
to the fight.
I walked past a nightclub and stole a look at the girls in the queue;
many of them wore skirts that were little more than belts, and bras that
weren’t there at all. An Aboriginal couple sitting in a café bickered
loudly about money. I passed a late-working businessman who clutched
his briefcase like a shield and gestured anxiously to attract a taxi. The
city hummed like a hornet’s nest of damaged souls, while from high
above, the massive skyscrapers looked down on us all with silent
contempt.
I entered the multi-storey car park where my car was stashed. The
place was deserted, apart from empty cars and litter, and the dark areas
between the fluorescents seemed to seethe with menace. The back of
my neck prickled and I spun around. The three guys from the pool hall
had followed me inside.
The runt glowered at me with undisguised hatred. A cruel sneer
played about his mouth. The other two were anything but runts. For
some reason, I didn’t think they were after a fourth to play bridge. I
steeled myself for what was coming.
The runt said, “Now you’re gonna get it.” His voice was high-

pitched and choked with anger. “I’ll shove you on the floor, you son of
a bitch.”
“You been picking on Tony here?” one of the other toughs asked me.
He looked as if he’d grown up in a gym. Despite the cold, he was
wearing a tank top to show off his muscles. “Why don’t you take on
someone your own size, huh?” He made a fist and the muscles
expanded.
The third punk was tall, wiry, and scarred with acne. “Yah,” he said.
“Someone like us!” He smacked his fists together theatrically. Probably
wasn’t allowed out much.
“Fellas, I don’t want any trouble,” I said.
“Look around you,” Tony said. “You’ve got trouble!”
“Not from you, runt.”
Tony’s cheeks reddened. He pulled a small folding knife from his
jeans pocket and mimed cutting off one of my body parts and shoving it
somewhere else. He wasn’t referring to a haircut.
“Guys,” I said, “I have a brown belt in karate. That’s one belt
before black, by the way. And I’m not in the mood for this nonsense.” I
kept my limbs loose and ready.
“He’s full of shit!” shouted Tony. He held the knife in an amateur’s
grip: too tight, and angled for stabbing rather than slashing. “You
believe that shit, Rex?”
Rex was the guy with the muscles. He simply shrugged.
“You’d better believe it, Shorty,” I said. “Unless you’re fond of
hospital food.”
“You hear that mouth, guys?” Tony said. “Listen good, ‘cause it
won’t sound so snappy without a tongue.” He made a comprehensive
gesture with the knife that resembled a runt cutting out a tongue. “How
do you like that idea, you son of a bitch?”
“I’ll be sure to remember it once I’ve got that knife.”
“Oh, you’ll get the knife alright,” he said. “I’ll freshen up that scar
on your cheek for you and give you a matching one on the other side.”
“Don’t blink,” I said. “You might miss me shaking with terror.”
Rex had been watching patiently. He looked amused. “Okay,
mate,” he said. “How about you give Tony here your wallet and an
apology, and maybe he can be persuaded not to cut you into–”
“An apology!” Tony shrieked, and lunged at me with the knife. It
came flashing towards my chest.

I hadn’t been lying about the brown belt. I pivoted to avoid the knife
thrust and slammed a knuckled fist into Tony’s solar plexus as he
blundered past. He crashed to the concrete, clutching his ribs and
wheezing. The knife lay within reach, but he was in no condition to
reach for it.
The tall, ugly thug watched in shock for a moment, and then snapped
out of it and crouched in a clumsy boxer’s stance. He launched a punch
at my head. I blocked it easily. He cranked back his fist for another try
and I flattened him with a stiff jab to the nose. He fell on his butt and sat
there blinking stupidly.
The bodybuilder still hadn’t moved. “Impressive,” he said. His
expression hadn’t changed, but the rest of him was taut and ready.
“Yes. And completely unnecessary.”
“What the fuck are you waiting for, Rex?” the runt screamed. “Bash
him!”
Rex’s eyes never left my face. “You say you’ve got a brown belt in
karate?”
I gestured at his fallen friends. “There’s the proof.”
“Well I’ve got bad news for you, mate,” he said. “I’ve got a black
belt in tae kwon do.” He shifted into fighting stance. “I’m going to tear
you apart, karate-boy.”
“Bash him good!” Tony added.
Rex came at me with a double-punch combination that I hadn’t seen
before. I blocked it with a crossed-arms block and countered with a
front kick to the stomach. Rex knocked it aside with a knee and my foot
only grazed his hip. He tried for a grapple as my momentum spun me
around, but I brought out a hard gyakuzuki punch from way back behind
my shoulder. My fist exploded into his chest and staggered him back
three steps.
“Bastard,” he said, gasping for breath, and came at me again.
This time I didn’t wait. I feinted with an open left hand, then
whipped out a powerful mawashigeri roundhouse kick. Rex dodged to
avoid it, lashing out with a desperate punch that had no control behind it.
I caught his flailing wrist and twisted it up behind his back. He cried out
as I yanked on his arm to immobilise him.
“I’ve heard that it only takes two years to get a black belt in tae
kwon do,” I said in his ear. “They hand them out like fast food dinners.”
“Fuck… you!” he forced out through clenched teeth. His face

looked mottled.
I jerked his wrist higher and he screamed. “It takes a lot longer to
get a karate black belt,” I continued, “but once you’ve got it, you’ve
damn well earned it. My brown belt is worth two of your cheap blacks.”
I let go of his arm and shoved him forward, with a boot in the pants
to help him on his way to the concrete. He rolled over and glared at me,
but Rex wasn’t getting up for another round and we both knew it.
“So long, runt,” I said to Tony, who looked at me with murder in his
eyes. “Watch you don’t accidentally cut yourself with that knife.
You’re short enough as it is.”
I left them cursing and rubbing their sore parts, and took the stairs up
to fetch the car. I felt pumped with adrenaline. Let Marlowe and Spade
take their beatings and saps to the back of the head; the streets were
meaner in real life, and if you went down here, you’d stay down. To
survive in a rough world, you’ve got to be rougher.
Six years of karate training had kept me fit, confident, and safe from
harm. I usually visited the karate hall at least two times a week. Since
becoming unemployed, I’d made a deal with the owner, Sensei Randall,
to teach some of the junior classes in exchange for free tuition. I was
also looking forward to finally trying out for my black belt at the next
grading exam.
I drove home, filled a hot bath, and opened a beer. I left the beer
outside the tub within easy reach and let the heat unwind my muscles.
By the time the water had cooled, my adrenaline rush had ebbed away
and been replaced by self-loathing. I’d provoked an easy fight for no
good reason and it made me feel lousy. At least this time I hadn’t had
one of my panic attacks afterwards.
I tried to stave off the black mood by keeping active. I towelled off
quickly and grabbed the phone. “Benny? You awake?”
“Jesus F. Christ!” he sputtered. “Do you have any bloody idea what
time it is?”
“What’s the matter? Did I interrupt you in the middle of spanking
the monkey?”
He snorted. “You’re just lucky I wasn’t asleep, you filthy baboon.”
“Hey, I’m not filthy,” I protested. “I’ve just had a bath.”
“Is it that time of the year already?” Muted gunfire sounded in the
background. “So what do you want, baboon? More free favours, I’ll
bet.”

“Well, now that you mention it…”
Benny groaned. “Well spit it out then. I’ve just downloaded the
latest version of Counter-Strike and I’m in the middle of a clan match.”
More gunfire, the clack of a keyboard. “Counter-Strike rocks, man!
You gotta get into it.”
“Some of us are too busy living real lives to waste time on computer
games.”
“Jack, life is a game,” he said. “If you take it too seriously, you’ll
never make the high score table, know what I mean?” I heard a digitised
explosion. “Jesus, I’m getting owned here! Quick, what do you want?”
“Remember that Duong Nguyen guy?” I said. “There’s a chance he
might have a criminal record. Is there some way you can find out?”
“I doubt it. I can do Google searches easily enough, and I know a
few other tricks, but that’s about it. I don’t have access to any of the
police databases.”
“Can’t you hack your way in?”
“You’ve been watching too much Hollywood crap again, Jack.” He
sniggered. “Besides, I left my Apple Mac on the alien mothership.”
“Huh?”
“Nerd joke.” I heard the boom of a shotgun. “Ah, take that, you
bloody camper!” He cackled at somebody or something in his video
game. There was more gunfire. His voice in my ear said, “Alright, I’ll
see what I can do. Is that all you wanted, baboon?”
I sifted through my tired thoughts and recalled the name Pearl had
tossed at me. “While you’re at it, see what you can find out about a guy
named Kurt Drucker.”
“Who the hell’s he?”
“That’s what you’re going to tell me.”
“Why the hell should I?” A virtual machine gun rattled in the
background.
“For that warm glow you’ll get from doing a good deed for a mate.”
My voice was exaggeratedly droll.
“Stuff that. How about you bring over that bottle of Wild Turkey
you owe me, I’ll get my warm glow from that.”
“Later. I haven’t pissed in it yet.”
That won me the first laugh, so I hung up while I was ahead. I knew
he’d try his best to find the information. Benny and I shared a skewed,
competitive sense of humour, but behind the gags we jousted with lay a

deep, unspoken friendship that would only have suffered from
awkwardness if expressed out loud. Our best friends are often the ones
with whom we share the silliest private jokes.
I set my alarm clock for an early start; tomorrow was going to be a
busy day. Duong had told Crystal he’d pick her up in the morning, and
wherever they went, I wanted to be there to scoop up any clues they
might drop. In bed, however, my glum mood returned. The pillow was
too warm and the sheets kept tangling no matter how much I kicked.
Memories of things I wasn’t proud of kept crowding into the bed and
whispering ugly reminders in my ear. I couldn’t sleep. In the end, after
wrestling with it for an hour, I got up and poured myself a drink.

Chapter Eight
T he crack of dawn wasn’t pleased to see me. It gnashed its teeth

at the back of my neck and howled in my ears until I tamed it
with a strong coffee and some peanut butter on toast. Even then it still
rattled its claws against the bars. I felt a little more human after putting
on a shower, a shave, and some fresh clothes. My old leather jacket
needed a polish, but I figured it wouldn’t result in three wishes.
By the time I’d driven out to Collingwood, my body had grudgingly
accepted the fact that I intended to stay awake. The sun was peeking
over the horizon, trying to decide if it was safe to emerge. All the early
birds were still tucked blissfully into their nests of sin, dreaming of
worms. According to my dashboard clock, it was 6:13 a.m.
Duong’s apartment block was a horseshoe-shaped eyesore: four
storeys of ugliness huddled around a choked parking bay. Fifty cramped
concrete boxes that would boil the tenants in summer and freeze them in
winter, voluntary prisons for people without the luxury of choice.
Duong lived in flat thirty-two, according to The Green Triangle’s
records. I tracked down his numbered parking spot and found a red
Datsun with sagging tyres, rust pockmarks, and a “P” plate tacked to the
windscreen. I tried the doors, but the car was locked.
I went up the slippery stairs to Duong’s apartment on the third floor.
On the door buzzer his name was printed, illuminated, and confirmed.
From the outward size of the apartment, I guessed it was a one-bedroom
bachelor pad, not all that different from mine. The drapes behind the
front window were drawn and a gangly pot plant on the window ledge
was the only sign of life. I pressed my ear to the door and listened to the
silence within. A faint stale odour of cabbage wafted through the cracks.
I noticed a few homemade cigarette butts scattered near the welcome
mat. I sniffed one, not really expecting to find any clues, which was just
as well because it was only tobacco. Feeling more like a peeping Tom
than a detective, I hotfooted it back to my car, reparked to get a better
view of the apartment, and then settled in for a long wait.
At around seven-thirty, the neighbourhood began to come to life.
Businessmen waved goodbye to their wives and sped off towards
workaholic tedium. A newspaper boy zigzagged up and down the street.
Impatient car horns began blaring from the nearby highway. Eight

o’clock and the schoolkids emerged, trussed up in identical uniforms,
ready for another day of learning to become just like everyone else.
Housewives juggled grocery bags and infants with indifferent dexterity
and tried not to let their weariness show. I wound down my window and
yawned, letting the cool morning air into my lungs. Somewhere nearby,
a small dog practised its soprano.
I’d brought along the Lawrence Block novel. I propped the book
against the steering wheel and resumed where I’d left off: detective Matt
Scudder continued to trudge doggedly all over New York in an effort to
detect the location of his next AA meeting. I glanced up at Duong’s
apartment every time I turned a page. Chewing alfalfa sprouts kept my
jaws from getting bored, but didn’t do much for my butt or the pins and
needles in my calves.
A couple of hours later, a scrawny kid who should have been at
school came out into the courtyard. He kept trying to stuff a limp
basketball into a crude wire hoop that had been fastened to the second
floor railing, but anyone could see that he wasn’t going to make it
without a stepladder. Two faded housewives, each wearing an apron
and carrying a basket of dirty clothes, met at the door to the communal
laundry and began gossiping in a foreign language. An old man with a
crooked spine shuffled down the street with the aid of a walking cane,
squinting at me with suspicious eyes as he passed my car. I was starting
to wonder what the hell I was doing here myself. My bladder was
protesting, the sun kept getting in my eyes, and the stench of rotting
meat from a nearby rubbish bin was becoming more difficult to ignore.
Surveillance isn’t the entertaining sixty seconds of donuts and buddy
banter that TV makes it out to be.
At a quarter past ten, the drapes in Duong’s window opened. About
bloody time. Duong’s face appeared, frowned at the world, and then
went away. I put my book down and waited. Twenty minutes later, the
apartment door opened and Duong emerged wearing baggy cargo pants
and a green shirt, his ponytail swinging as he moved. He came
downstairs and the kid with the basketball passed him the ball. Duong
winked at him, bounced the ball once, and fired it at the hoop without
looking. It went in. For a guy like Duong Nguyen, it would always go
in. He bumped fists with the kid and gave him a crooked grin; the kid’s
face beamed with hero worship.
The red Datsun swerved out onto the street, coughing bluish exhaust

and shuddering with the effort of staying in one piece. Heavy metal
music blared from its sound system. I threw out an invisible towline and
tried to follow at a discreet distance. It wasn’t easy: Duong drove badly
and at a reckless pace. At one intersection, he gunned a set of orange
lights and I had to risk death, injury, and a traffic fine to keep on his tail.
Even from three car lengths back, I could hear the pounding bass roaring
from his speakers. He was beating a cigarette drumstick against his
window frame, tapping out ash in time with the music.
I soon realised where we were headed. Shortly after we hit Mount
Waverly, Duong swerved off the main road and into a residential street.
By sheer coincidence, so did I. After another two coincidental turns, I
watched him pull into Crystal’s driveway and honk his horn. I drove
past, made a casual turn into the next street, and then quickly U-turned
and edged my car forward until I could see the house.
The Mainwaring residence was a handsome two-storey house built in
the English Tudor style. The gabled roof was pitched at a steep angle,
with small, crosshatched windows peering myopically out at the world.
Ivy had been encouraged to climb the walls and the twining leaves had
been kept meticulously trimmed. It was a pleasant enough upper-
middle-class status symbol, but somehow it lacked the honest humanity
of Tess’s rundown cottage. I felt the ache of her loss more than ever.
After a couple of minutes, Crystal came out of the house and slid
into Duong’s car. She wore a snug white dress that made her look
virginal and her slim waist was custom-built for a man’s arm. They
kissed. His hand found her breast and squeezed. Lucky bastard, I
thought.
Duong reversed out of the driveway, spun the wheels, and headed
back towards the main road. I waited until they were out of sight around
the first corner before taking off after them. I let them get settled on the
main road before closing the gap. I didn’t think they’d spot me unless I
made an obvious blunder, but Crystal knew my face so I put on a pair of
sunglasses as a rudimentary disguise.
Duong drove even more poorly than before, as if he were showing
off for his girl. His car continued to belch exhaust and the tyres looked
bald enough to light a match on. He revved the engine whenever he
could, swerved in and out of lanes to overtake, and kept drifting to the
left as if his attention was focused more on the passenger seat than on
the road. I followed them onto the Monash freeway and dropped the tail

back a notch.
When Duong took a last-second exit, I followed suit like the Jack of
Spades. We drifted through Malvern, one of those posh suburbs where
they have by-laws about picking up what your dog drops. Duong’s car
suddenly veered off into a tree-lined street and disappeared over the
crest of a hill. I’d been hanging back to give them room to breathe, but
when I topped the crest a few moments later, they were nowhere in
sight.
Damn! Had I left it too late? Had Duong spotted me and peeled off
a few sharp corners to shake the tail? I squinted at the road ahead, trying
to see which turn they might have taken, but there were too many
possibilities. I glided past the first couple of streets anyway, craning my
neck and seeing nothing. Damn it! With every passing second, Duong
and Crystal were speeding further and further down Lost Tail Boulevard.
Sometimes luck comes to those who seek it. That’s when we call it
skill or intuition. Successful stockbrokers don’t really predict the future.
All they do is stir thousands of figures and statistics in the cauldron of
their minds until they’ve boiled everything down to a hunch. The lucky
ones play their hunches wisely and turn a profit; the rest embezzle funds,
trade insider secrets, and come out even better. I don’t consider myself a
lucky man. The only gut feelings I get are the ones that require antacid.
But I’ll admit that it was luck that made me turn my head just in time to
glimpse a flicker of brake lights at the end of a long driveway. I
reversed back to the spot, squinted down the driveway, and did a
double-take. Maybe even a triple-take. It was the Datsun.
A high stone wall enclosed the property, the driveway stretching
back from a formidable iron gate. Pine trees were stationed in twin
sentry columns along the length of the drive. Broken glass had been
concreted on top of the wall to deter intruders. The main house was set
nearly thirty metres back from the road, an enormous three-storey
mansion swollen with uncounted rooms and wealth. I had made it to
Richville. If I wanted to stay here though, it was going to take more
than just the dole and recycled beer can refunds.
I nudged my car forward for a better look. I saw an active fountain
at the end of the driveway, the centrepiece of a wide turning circle, with
five cars parked along the curve. None of the cars had millionaire
written on them. I made out a muddy Falcon ute and an old Mazda with
a prang dent along one side. No brown van. Crystal got out of the

Datsun and smoothed down her dress. She leaned in through Duong’s
open window for one last kiss, gave him a girlish goodbye wave, and
hurried into the house without knocking. A few seconds later, Duong
glided his car around the turning circle and started heading back towards
me.
I had a tough choice to make. Follow Duong and try to learn more
about what made him tick? Or investigate Crystal’s connection with this
place? I figured that since Duong had chauffeured her here, he’d
probably be coming back later to retrieve her. I flipped a mental coin
and made my decision: I switched off my engine, averted my face as he
drove past, and let him go. The Datsun grumbled off out of sight,
leaving behind a noxious fart of exhaust. After he’d gone, the
neighbourhood seemed unnaturally quiet. I could almost hear the
crackle of cheques being signed. No noisy kids at play, no rasp of
lawnmowers, no uncouth lower-class riffraff talking about the football.
Even the dogs had been paid not to bark.
I wandered over to the gate. The sturdy iron wings were on an
automated swing mechanism that could be controlled from the house,
but for now they stayed open. A label next to the intercom button read
“Alistair Hoffman”. Nobody seemed to be watching, so I ducked
through the gate and hid behind a tree. Dried leaves crumbled under my
feet as I slipped from tree to tree, sneaking closer to the house. I hoped
there were no guard dogs patrolling the grounds. I worked my way over
to the tree closest to the building. The mansion loomed majestically
above me: high sandstone pillars, rendered cream walls, and plenty of
ornate cornicing that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a historic
European cathedral.
I crept along until I had a good view through an enormous bay
window on the ground floor. Inside the room, I counted ten people
sitting around an expensive, highly polished conference table. They
were mostly young girls in their teens and early twenties, with a few
guys making up the balance. I moved as close as I dared without leaving
the sanctuary of the trees. Crystal sat with her back to the window. She
was staring raptly at an older man standing at the head of the table. The
others in the room were also gazing at him with similar adoring
expressions. Alistair Hoffman, king of the castle, no doubt. He had
thinning, well-groomed brown hair and a neatly clipped salt-and-pepper
beard. I figured him to be in his late forties. He gestured with his hands

as he spoke, and his body language conveyed authority and charisma.
I’d seen his type before. The honest-Joe salesman with a hot deal
just for you; the enthusiastic investment broker ready to put your money
to work; the caring politician who wants to represent your interests
amidst all those sharks in government. All you have to do is give up a
little of that magic word: trust. I wondered what sort of scam this guy
was operating. With a pad like this, it had to be a profitable one. Show
me a rich, persuasive salesman, and I’ll show you a crook with a
thousand ripped-off former customers baying for his blood.
It all stopped being suspicious, however, when one of the girls
picked up a book from the table. I couldn’t read the title, but the cross
on the cover was visible enough. I started to get the awful feeling that
I’d just followed Duong and Crystal halfway across town to spy on a
bible-reading class. Don’t ask me how I knew. Maybe it was one of
those lucky hunches.
I cursed under my breath all the way back to the car. I wasn’t going
to sneak around and watch a bunch of Christians spend all day phoning
God and getting the “line busy” tone. I regretted not following Duong
instead. If Crystal wanted to get all juiced up with the glory of Jesus and
fawn over Reverend Alistair “Pass-The-Collection-Plate” Hoffman, who
was no doubt so wonderful that he had Jesus over for coffee and scones
every Sunday, then to hell with her. To hell with all of them.
I felt foolish and cranky. It was midday. Not the proper time for a
drink, but then, it never is. I wanted to forget about Duong and Crystal
and Tess and the whole damned case, forget about the appalling
surveillance effort I’d turned in today, forget that I was nothing but an
unemployed bum with no prospects and a pile of rejection letters.
Forget about everything except how to lift the glass to my lips and
deepen the amnesia. I drove towards the city and the promise of amber
oblivion.
I started at Young and Jackson’s, the most well known seedy pub in
Melbourne. Ordered a double whisky. It went down like a healing
potion. I bought a toasted ham and cheese sandwich and wolfed it down
in three bites. My seat was near the door, and I watched people swarm
in and out of Flinders Street station. Office girls strutting their wares,
mums with prams, couples huddled close and laughing at private love
jokes. I wondered what a girl like Crystal could possibly see in a creep
like Duong, and then ordered another double whisky to make myself

stop wondering. I could feel the old hunger clawing its way out of the
grave at the bottom of my heart where I’d thought I’d buried it. I missed
the tender strokes, the shine of bedroom eyes, those sleepy promises of
forever. Outside on Swanston Street, a pretty girl bounced against her
boyfriend like a magnet. I grimaced and turned back to my drink. Their
love wouldn’t last. It never does. The only girl I’d ever cared about had
taught me that.
Julie Evans had been my soul mate, my first love, and my downfall.
I’d met her at the office. She was a typist, I was a claims examiner, and
together we’d had our bright future all mapped out. I’d had girlfriends
before, plaything relationships that never lasted long, but with Julie, for
the first time I’d felt intrigued. I’d wanted to know everything about
her, to cherish all her quirks, learn all the tricks for making her smile.
And for a year and a half, it had been good. But then I’d gotten the boot
from my job and landed in the dole queue, and suddenly I was no longer
enough of a rising star for Julie Evans. She’d taken up with some
bespectacled manager, puncturing my heart in the process. Months later,
I still missed her, and a hardness had congealed around my feelings.
I conjured up another whisky and made it disappear. The past haunts
us far more dreadfully than a ghost clad in bed sheets ever could. My
thoughts turned inwards, like barbed fishhooks, to the more recent pain
of failing to save Tess. Failure seemed to be my middle name, and as a
would-be detective, I was failing yet again. The case was dead and
starting to decompose. What had seemed like a clever plan at the time
had turned out to be a foolish waste of time. My expectations had been
based on too many trashy TV cop shows in which the detective nails the
bad guy within an hour, minus ad breaks. All I’d managed to sniff out
was the rancid scent of red herrings. I stopped looking at the happy
couples on the street. I tried not to think about the case. I bought
another double whisky and kept it company while it brooded about the
unfairness of life in a shot glass.
It was after midnight when I made it home. I staggered inside and
bashed my hip on the corner of the desk. Great, I thought. That’ll
bruise like a bastard in the morning, you clumsy oaf. I brushed the moss
off my teeth and swallowed a handful of Vitamin B tablets to belatedly
try to stave off the inevitable hangover. My eyes in the bathroom mirror
looked like veined red grapes.
There were several messages on my answering machine. The first

was from Sensei Randall at the karate hall, wanting to know why I
hadn’t shown up to teach the novice class that evening. He didn’t sound
happy. My grandmother had also called, wanting to know when I was
coming out to Geelong next. I felt a surge of guilt for not having visited
her in over a month. After my parents were killed, Nanna had moved
down to Melbourne and looked after me until I grew old enough to fend
for myself. I’d been a difficult handful for the old lady, bucking like an
unbroken horse with rage and grief and teenage insolence. But Nanna’s
patience, her warm heart, and large quantities of banana cake with
passionfruit icing had tamed me. She’d returned to her own home in
Geelong years ago, but she still worried about me. Nanna was all the
family I had left, and I loved her more than anything. The third message
was from Benny:
“Baboon. Change that stupid message, will you? You sound like the
winner of an idiot contest.”
“Har-de-har,” I said to the machine.
“Anyway, fool, I trawled the net looking for those two names.
Couldn’t find zip on that Duong Nguyen bloke. The name ‘Nguyen’ is
the Vietnamese version of ‘Smith’, by the way, so there was never much
chance of pinpointing anything there.”
Even a negative result was more than I’d achieved today, and it had
only cost Benny a few mouse clicks. My shoulders drooped and I felt
more useless than ever.
“But as for Kurt Drucker,” Benny continued, “now that guy is one
bad son of a bitch. I searched in the online newspaper archives and
found half a dozen big juicy steaks for you to chew on. Hope you’ve got
your nappy on, baboon, because you are going to shit yourself when you
hear this…”
My mouth went dry and my heart kicked into second gear. This
could be the lead I’d hoped for. The booze haze evaporated as I listened
to Benny’s voice.
“Drucker’s a high level drug dealer, a real-life Mr. Big. The law had
him up on charges a couple of years ago, back when all those Melbourne
underworld gangland killings were making headlines. Some smart-dick
lawyer got him released on bail, and our man Drucker promptly got
onboard the Fugitive Express. He hasn’t been seen in public since,
although the cops seem to think he’s still in town. Jack, if you’re pissing
in this guy’s pond, be real careful.” He hesitated, presumably double-

checking his next insult for any embarrassing trace of sentiment. “I
don’t want you croaking until you’ve paid off that bottle of Wild Turkey
you owe me…”
“I’ll put it in my will,” I told the disembodied voice.
“Anyway, I’ve printed out all the articles I found. There’s some
gruesome stuff. One of the witnesses who’d been scheduled to testify at
the trial, an addict who’d turned stoolie to deal down a possession rap,
was murdered shortly after Drucker made bail.” I heard Benny take in a
deep breath of nicotine. “The guy had been skinned alive.”
My legs felt wobbly and I had to clutch the desk to steady myself.
Too much alcohol will do that, I told myself, not too convincingly.
“Anyway, peanut brain, I’ll drop the printouts around tomorrow after
I finish work, and we’ll have a chat. Make sure you have my fee ready
for me to drink, baboon, and don’t forget to change that stupid
message!” Beep.
I stopped the machine and tried to sift through these new facts.
Could Drucker have been Tess’s drug connection? Maybe she’d stiffed
him on a payment, or threatened to expose his whereabouts, and he’d
killed her. It was a promising theory, but I didn’t want to leap onto the
hasty-conclusion bandwagon. Assumptions are the holes through which
the truth can be lost. I needed to find out more before I could act, but at
least now I had another lead to investigate. I pressed the button to go to
the next message.
“Hi Jack, it’s Crystal.”
Great, I thought, my favourite Jesus freak.
“I just wanted to say I’m sorry if I acted weird yesterday. I was, like,
still pretty shaken up about Tess, so I wasn’t really myself, you know?
Anyway, I called to tell you that I still want to help. Can you meet me at
the pub opposite the Swinburne library – say around two thirty after my
lecture? Maybe we can, you know, help each other out?” Her voice
lilted with ambiguous meaning on the last sentence. “See you
tomorrow, I hope!”
I still felt sulky for having wasted time following Crystal to her
bible-thumping party. I had half a mind to say to hell with her and stand
her up, but that might have just been the drunken half of my mind
talking. I decided to wait and see how I felt in the morning. Maybe it
would be worth going just to spring what I’d learned about Duong on
her, and watch the shock scuff up her pretty face. There was one more

message. I pressed the button to play it.
A raspy voice said: “Just remember that I’m watching you, buddy.
Like the song says: every move you make, every breath you take, I’ll be
bloody well watching you, you mouthy punk. And when you slip, I’ll be
there to nail your arse to the wall, you follow? You’ll be the sorriest dog
in the pound, buddy.”
Beep.

Chapter Nine
A t half past two the following afternoon, I found a table near the
window and sat there drinking an overpriced beer and watching
the rain outside. The place had been renovated since I’d last blown
through here on a pub-crawl several years ago. But the beer still tasted
watered down, the students still drank it, and the cynical bartenders still
carded anyone who didn’t have a full beard. The pub was quiet at this
time of day, the calm before the five p.m. storm. Two uni students were
engaged in serious battle at one of the pool tables. Three girls and a guy
with a runny nose sat huddled around a table strewn with notepads,
arguing about a group assignment. Across the room, a trio of inflated
male egos stood at the bar boasting about easy lays. I was the only
person drinking alone. I tried to convince my pot of beer that it was
beautiful by lavishing it with small, regular kisses.
Two more rain-soaked students entered, flooding the doorway with
cold air. Crystal had come prepared with a woollen jumper and a
raincoat. Her companion, however, looked wet, angry, and ready to
punch out Mother Nature. I groaned inwardly. Either that scowl was
Duong’s regular expression, or his mother hadn’t warned him not to pull
faces in case the wind changed.
Crystal smiled. “Hi Jack.”
“What’s with the bodyguard?”
“This is my boyfriend, Duong,” she said, patting his wet shoulder.
“Duong, this is Jack Marsh, the detective I told you about.”
Duong bared his teeth in what probably passed as a smile for him
and extended a hand without much enthusiasm. “You not look like
detective.”
I shook his hand and straight away he tried to pulp mine. He was
strong, but I knew that game too, and I let him have a bonecrusher. His
scowl deepened and he rubbed his sore hand through his hair and put it
away in his pocket as a fist.
“Sit down,” I said. They sat in front of me. I noticed that they didn’t
touch each other or lean close the way affectionate couples do. The
novelty had probably worn off. Crystal was watching me expectantly.
I took a sip of beer and smacked my lips a few times. “Alright, I’m
here. What have you got?”

Crystal looked puzzled. “I don’t understand.”
“You called me,” I said. “I take it you have some new information
to share.”
She flushed. “Oh. No, I don’t have anything new. I just wanted to,
like, see how you were going. With the investigation, I mean. That’s
all.”
I glared at her. “Then you’ve wasted my time. Time that I could
have spent investigating other leads while they were still hot.” I shot
Duong a glare as well, so he wouldn’t feel left out.
“I just thought that if you, like, shared what you’ve found out so far,
we might–”
“Look, Crystal,” I said, “I don’t have the time or the patience for
this. I used up all of my patience on a certain wild goose chase
yesterday, and as a result, I don’t have any left to waste on you.”
Duong gripped the edge of the table. “Watch yourself, Marsh. I not
like your attitude.” His eyes were smouldering black embers.
“So what? I’m not running for office.” I gave them both a hard
look. “If you haven’t told me something useful by the time I finish this
beer, I’m leaving.” I drank all but an inch from the glass and sat back in
my chair.
“We just want to help,” Crystal said. “Please tell us how we can
help.” Her lips pushed out at me in a sultry pout. A lot of men would
have buckled at the knees under that pout. She was a princess girlfriend,
the sort of girl who loves to test the limits of a man’s backbone, but soon
grows bored of him if he lets her.
I went ahead and drained the beer anyway. “That’s it, the tide is out.
I don’t need your help.” I stood, made a show of reaching for my jacket,
and played my trump card: “Besides, the last time I spoke to you, all you
gave me was lies.”
“Wait,” Crystal said. “What do you mean, lies? I told you the
truth!”
I snorted. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out that Tess used to date
Duong? And that he dumped her to play happy families with you, her
so-called best friend?”
“How did you find that out?” she blurted.
“I read your horoscopes and deduced it.”
Crystal tried to recover. “I’m sorry, Jack, I didn’t mean to lie, I just
didn’t think it was important enough to mention, that’s all. I mean,

hello? This happened, like, months ago. We were all so over it long
before Tess got killed, you know?”
“I hear you saying it.”
Duong was leaning back with his arms folded and a smug expression
on his pan that seemed to say, See, I get all the hot chicks. It annoyed
me, so I switched to him and said, “I also know you hit Tess at The
Green Triangle, you woman-beating scum.”
The smug look fell away and the scowl returned. “I never hit Tess,”
he said through his teeth. A vein pulsed in his temple.
“She was stoned that night, and you slapped her silly. Remember?
If you don’t, there are witnesses who do.”
“They liars.”
Crystal touched Duong’s arm, but he wouldn’t look at her, he was
too intent on spearing holes in me with his eyes. “Honey,” she said,
shaking his arm, “you have to tell him everything, no matter how painful
it is. We both know you didn’t hurt Tess, but Jack doesn’t know you the
way I do. You need to, like, stay calm and explain–”
“What business is it of this fool to know my personal affair?” he
snapped.
“Please, Duong!” She pulled his face around and kissed him. “For
Tess, honey. Do it for Tess.”
His jaw tightened and he winced. For a moment, his eyes softened
as he allowed Crystal to soothe him. Then he turned to me, the hardness
back, and nodded curtly. “Okay, I tell you,” he said, putting enough
grudge into his tone to let me know he was still tough. “Tess promised
no more drugs. I stand by her and help her get clean. Then she go and
shoot up again and I get mad.” He raised his chin defiantly. “Just
because I lose temper one time, does not make me woman-beater.”
“Uh huh,” I said.
“Tess was never happy girl,” he said. “She have no mind of her
own, no… no…” He looked to Crystal for help.
“Independence, honey.”
“Independence, yes. She have no independence of herself. She want
attention all the time, drugs to get rid of unhappy mood.” He scowled at
some unpleasant memory. “She too clingy, too much problems. That’s
why I dump her and take Crystal.”
“I’m a low maintenance kind of girl,” Crystal put in, smiling.
“Alright, I’m listening,” I said. I returned to my chair and faced

them. “So you’re telling me Tess was a junkie. What’s the punch line?”
“What you mean?” Duong asked.
“Who killed her?”
“I wish I know.” He stared at me sullenly. “I would kill him
myself,” he said, enunciating every word. He slung a proprietary arm
around Crystal’s shoulders, the macho, protective boyfriend, and curled
his lip at me.
“Would you now?” I mirrored his sneer right back at him. “Stab
him with that cowardly little flick-knife of yours, would you?”
Duong jumped to his feet. “You watch what you say to me, man!”
“Or what? You’ll slash my ear like you did to that bloke at the pool
hall?” Surprise flickered across his face. I said, “Yeah, that’s right, I
know all about you, you gutless wonder. Maybe you should hand over
that knife before you cut yourself with it.” I paused for effect. “Maybe
it’s the same knife that killed Tess.”
He wavered there, caught between rage and confusion. I watched his
hands, my legs crouched and ready under the table. I mentally planned
exactly which moves I would make if he went for his blade.
“Well?” I prompted.
Crystal tugged at his arm. “Please, honey. Sit down.” Her face had
paled.
Duong pulled free from her and jabbed a finger at me. “I did not kill
Tess.”
“Convince me,” I said.
“You think I guilty just because I Vietnamese, don’t you? You think
you better than me, don’t you?”
“I–”
“You hate me, don’t you? You think I just a gook, don’t you?” His
forehead was furrowed with anger. He was working himself up into a
rage without any need for me to poke him. Crystal looked worried, but
not shocked; he probably did this often.
“You’re right,” I said in a low voice, “I don’t like you. But it’s not
because of where you came from or the colour of your skin. It’s because
you’re a violent son of a bitch who’d rather fight than talk.” I gestured
at his chair. “Now why don’t you sit the hell down, cool the hell off,
and help me find a killer.”
We stared at each other. His cheekbones bulged, his eyes narrow
slivers of charcoal. Finally, he said, “So what you don’t like me? I not

running for office.”
I had to laugh at that. Duong smiled for the first time; it brightened
his face like the end of an eclipse. He barked out a short laugh and
returned to his seat. Crystal didn’t seem to get the joke, but she smiled
and relaxed as well.
“So now?” Duong asked.
It took me a moment to remember the topic. “Do you know where
Tess got the drugs? Or who gave them to her?”
He shook his head. “I never ask her. More important was to get her
clean and stand on her own two foots.” He watched me carefully, his
temper under control now but still simmering on the hotplate. “I try.
But I not able to help her.”
“Okay,” I said. “Did you ever see her talking to anyone suspicious-
looking? Doing any dodgy deals?”
He massaged his temples for a few seconds, thinking. “I see her talk
a few time to skinny Aussie guy,” he said. “I think he student here. He
look like sneaky bastard. I see Tess give him money one time but I not
see any drugs.”
“You reckon he might have been her drug dealer?”
“Could be. He have crazy look in his eye. Wear all black clothes.”
Crystal said, “Oh, that guy. You mean Needles?”
“What?” I said.
She sounded excited. “I’ve seen the guy Duong’s talking about,
everyone calls him Needles. I don’t know his real name, he might not
have one for all I know, but I’ve, like, seen him hanging around campus
enough times. He dresses sort of Goth, looks like a total freak.”
“Why do they call him Needles?”
“Well, duh,” she said, and mimed injecting a syringe into a vein.
“At least, that’s what I heard, that he’s the one to go to.” She smiled
sweetly at Duong. “Honey, you never told me anything about this.”
Duong’s face darkened. “Drugs are bad thing. You good girl,
Crystal, I want you keep away from drugs and sneaky bastard. I don’t
want you get hurt like Tess.”
“Don’t worry, honey. I’ll be a good girl.” Her tone was
simultaneously innocent and naughty, but Duong didn’t pick up on it. I
wondered what she was playing at, what subtle message she was trying
to pass me beneath the radar of Duong’s broken English.
“Have either of you,” I asked, “heard of a man named Kurt

Drucker?”
Crystal shook her head. Duong, his habitual scowl beginning to
settle back onto his face like dust, said, “Who Kurt Drucker?”
“So far, just a name. The cops claim they found his name in some of
Tess’s private papers. He’s a heavy-duty drug dealer. Could be
associated with this Needles.”
“You’ve spoken to the cops?” Crystal asked.
“Detectives Pearl and Gars,” I said. “Between them, they’ve got as
much charm as a fart in an elevator.”
Duong said, “At least police officer in this country does not beat and
kill person for no purpose.” His fists were clenched, real pain in his
voice. For once, I held back the wisecrack that sprang to mind.
“How about you tell us everything you’ve found out, Jack?” Crystal
said. “We might make another connection.” The corner of her mouth
twitched as she said it. Was she flirting with me?
“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s play Join The Dots.”
“We have been patient, Marsh,” Duong said.
They had at that. “Okay, then. Like I told Crystal, I think the man in
the brown van killed Tess. She knew who he was and she was afraid of
him.” I looked pointedly at Duong. “She told me the man had a knife.”
It was the wrong thing to say. “You still think I kill her!” He sprang
out of his chair, his face boiling. “Bastard! I never hurt Tess. I loved
her!”
“I never said you killed her. Only that you had the means. There’s a
diff–”
“Not true!” he screamed, and swung a punch. I rolled out of my
chair, but he’d surprised me, and his knuckles rapped my ear.
I made it to my feet as he charged around the table. He grabbed my
shirt collar and tried to knee me in the groin. I twisted my hips and
caught it on the thigh. I knocked his hand away with a cross-body block
and then smashed my fist into his solar plexus. Hot breath exploded out
of him and he doubled over. Far off, somewhere in the world beyond
instinct, I heard Crystal cry out for us to stop.
Duong’s face was contorted with hate, his breath rasping in and out.
He straightened with effort and a switchblade appeared in his hand.
Deadly steel flashed out and locked into place.
“I slit your belly,” he said.
I crouched in fighting stance, bouncing lightly on the balls of my

feet. If he swung in an arc, I would sidestep, try to grab his arm and
break it with a hammer chop. If he lunged at me, I’d kick him off his
feet and pray that I was fast enough to keep my leg from getting slashed.
He held the knife correctly, thumb against the handle for precision,
elbow tucked in close to his body. No easily avoided hook swings here.
His would be the short, tidy thrusts of the experienced knife-fighter.
I watched his eyes for the telltale signs of a strike. Around us, I
heard shouts, screams, the bartender threatening to call the police. We
stood frozen together for nearly a minute, two statues poised at the edge
of a cliff, each waiting for the other to jump first. Then Duong smiled, a
cold, ghastly grin with no humour in it. He pressed a button and the
knife blade slid back into the handle with a snick.
“I not a killer,” he said, his eyes like molten tar. He flicked his
ponytail over his shoulder and stormed out of the pub, slamming the
door as he went.
I let out my breath. The tension ebbed out of my muscles, but the
adrenaline crackle would take hours to fade. Crystal still sat there with
her mouth open. I felt like reaching out and closing it for her.
“Get out!” someone shouted. It was the bartender, waving his arms.
“Get out of here now before I call the cops!”
“Somebody should,” I said. “Your watered-down beer is the real
crime.”
Out on the street, there was no sign of Duong. Crystal appeared at
my shoulder, hugging her raincoat around her shoulders. The rain
trickling down her face made her look as if she were crying.
“You’re getting rained on,” I said.
“I’m a big girl.”
“If you say so.” I turned to leave, but she clutched my arm.
“Jack?”
“What?”
“Can I… can we talk?”
“About what? Shouldn’t you be rushing off to soothe your psycho
boyfriend’s ego?” It came out sounding more abrupt than I’d intended.
“Will you at least come and have coffee with me? There’s a place
across the road.” She squeezed my arm softly. “I don’t want you to hate
me, Jack.”
The way she said my name settled it. We hurried across Glenferrie
Road, dodging both cars and puddles, and took a table at the back of the

coffee shop. I ordered two cappuccinos and sat facing Crystal. Her dark
hair was plastered to her face with rain, but even wet she looked
wonderful. Her pink cheeks glowed with female warmth and her eyes
were bright and clear. A beautiful Siren of the rain, luring men to their
demise.
“I’m sorry about Duong,” she said, once we were settled and she’d
peeled off her raincoat. “He’s not usually that aggro, you know?”
“Could have fooled me.”
“He’s just upset about Tess, that’s all. He did care about her, in his
own way.” She shrugged. “Anyway it’s over now, and nobody got hurt,
right?”
I grinned. “Well, I think I bruised a knuckle...”
She slapped the back of my hand playfully. “Oh, you!”
We smiled at each other, something building between us that I
wasn’t sure how to deal with. Our drinks arrived and I had trouble with
the sugar spoon.
Crystal closed her fingers around my wrist. “My God, Jack! You’re
shaking.”
It had crept up on me without my realising it, the dreaded panic
attack I knew so well. I scalded my throat with hot coffee to flush away
the memories surging up out of the past. The knife twisting in my
stomach. My cheek slashed open and flapping. The helplessness and
the horror. Here’s something else to remember me by, Jacky boy…
“Are you alright, Jack?” Concern in her eyes.
I shook my head. Gasped. Crystal stroked my forearm. Focus on
her touch. Focus on the present. You can do it. You’re okay now.
Focus.
“Jack?”
I had myself under control again; I’d managed to dam the panic
wave before it could flood me. This time. “I’m fine now.”
“What happened?”
“Delayed reaction.” I gave her a lopsided smile. “I don’t like
knives.”
Her eyes were apologetic. She rubbed her fingers up and down my
wrist, soothing me without words until the demons of the past had been
nailed back into their coffins where they belonged.
I nodded towards the sugar spoon I’d fumbled. “Spoons on the other
hand, well, I can usually deal with those.”

Crystal closed one eye in a half-wink. “I like spoons too…”
It broke the tension. We laughed together, the electric affinity
between us swelling and blossoming. I turned my palm up and we
joined hands. Her fingers felt warm and delicately feminine.
“You know, I really like your laugh, Jack. Duong hardly ever
laughs.”
“What are you doing with a short-fuse jerk like him anyway?”
“He’s not always like that. He can be really sweet when it’s just the
two of us. He’s just, like, overprotective at times, that’s all.”
“Do you love him?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. What is love anyway? You can’t just
lock it away in a box and expect it to flower. Love should be free to take
root wherever it can, a gift without boundaries.”
“That’s one way of putting it.” Our hands were still knotted
together.
“It’s what Jesus wanted for us. For people, I mean. Unconditional
love.”
“Unconditional doesn’t mean uncontrollable,” I said.
She chewed her lip as she thought about that. “Love’s not some
possession that stays still once you’ve found it,” she said. “It’s a living,
growing force of change that can’t be contained. So even though I love
Duong today, who can predict what new feelings tomorrow will bring,
you know?”
“And there I was thinking you two were as inseparable as a nut and a
bolt.”
She gave me an amused grimace. “Do you have to be so horribly
crude?”
“No,” I said, kneading her fingers. “But I am anyway.”
“I think you’re jealous,” she said, teasing me with her eyes.
“I’ll get over it in a couple of years.”
Crystal gently took her hand away and sipped her cappuccino. “So
do you have a girl, Jack? Anyone special in your life?”
“Who needs special? It never lasts, and then you’re left holding a
broken heart.”
“So cynical! Maybe you just haven’t met the right girl yet.”
“Maybe.” I missed the warmth of her touch already. “So Duong
isn’t the right guy for you then?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m young, I’m free, I’m so not ready for any

sort of ‘together forever’ thing right now. I know Duong wants to get
more serious, but, like, hello? I’m still in my party years, you know?”
“Sure.”
“That’s all God wants for us, Jack. He wants us to have fun and
enjoy the life He gave us. Being a Christian isn’t as boring as you might
think.”
“I take it Duong doesn’t go in for the hallelujah crowd then?”
She shook her head. “I’ve asked him to come to church with me
enough times, but he’s so not interested. I think he’s afraid to open up
his heart because there might not be, like, enough room for both me and
Jesus in there.” She giggled at the thought.
“Sounds like you two don’t have a whole lot in common.”
“Well, for now I love Duong and we have fun together, that’s all that
matters.” She brushed some wet hair aside and gave me a smile full of
dimples. “He tries so hard to please me, it’s really sweet. He makes me
feel like a queen. I have to love him for that, right?”
“Until the day you dump him like a bag of garbage.”
Crystal smiled saucily. “Come on Jack, love isn’t about chaining up
our emotions with manacles of commitment. I mean, hello? That’s the
sort of repressed thinking our grandparents got so hung up on. Jesus
taught us to love others as we love ourselves, and to share that love
freely. We should be expressing our feelings openly, not locking them
away where they can’t do anybody any good.”
I wondered how Duong felt about Crystal’s free-spirited ideas. She
was a Siren alright, playing chicken with people’s feelings in the name
of free love. I almost felt sorry for Duong. There was an amoral,
teasing dangerousness about her that both appalled and excited me.
Being close to Crystal Mainwaring would be very much like skating
along the edge of a cliff.
I took a slug of coffee that stripped the lining from the back of my
throat. But it felt good, carrying warmth all the way down to my frozen
toes. Crystal watched me with a curious expression, as if trying to
divine my thoughts.
“You’re a bulldog, Jack,” she said. Her lips were full and slightly
parted. “I can sense that about you. Once you get hold of something
you want, you won’t let go until you’ve got it all.”
“Is that right?”
Her pupils were wide, welcoming. “It’s true though, isn’t it? Once

you’ve decided you want something, nobody can stop you from taking
it.”
“Plenty of people try.”
“Not me,” she said, and moistened her lips.
I leaned across the table and kissed her. I stroked her damp,
beautiful hair. Her mouth was passionate and hungry; she knew how to
kiss. Then suddenly she broke it off and sat back, blushing and out of
breath.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have let you do that. Duong…”
“Forget about him.” I was tingling all over. I wanted more.
She touched a finger to her lips. “Duong would never do anything
spontaneous like that. He says that too much affection in public is, like,
a disgrace.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’m the bulldog, remember. I get
what I want.”
We locked eyes over that for a long moment, our gazes meeting in
the middle somewhere and negotiating a silent understanding. I didn’t
reach out again and neither did she. We were back on that awkward,
indecisive knife-edge of potential.
“So what happens now?” she asked. Her cheeks were flushed with
pink.
I loaded the tough back into my tone. “Now I keep investigating. I
need to find out more about this Needles punk.”
“That freak? Do you think he was involved in Tess’s murder?”
“Could be. I’ll need your help to identify him.”
“When?”
“Some time soon. Call me when you’re ready to wander around the
zoo and stare at the animals.”
“What if I don’t have time?” She raised an eyebrow and smiled.
“Call me anyway,” I said. I gulped down the last of my coffee. “What
are you going to do about Duong?”
She chewed on that for a minute. I thought she was about to come
out with an answer, but then she bit it back and chewed on it for a while
longer. Finally, she said, “I don’t know, Jack. I’ve got a lot of things to
think about, you know?”
“Okay, you do that,” I said. “Think happy thoughts.”
We said our farewells – polite, no goodbye kiss – and I went out into
the rain and jogged back to my car. I had to drive with my nose close to

the windscreen to see through the downpour. I had learned a few new
things about Tess today, but I wanted a second opinion. Duong and
Crystal weren’t exactly the king and queen of trustworthiness.
Emotions whirled around in my head, colliding with any rational
thoughts they encountered, leaving me feeling giddy and out of control.
I knew that Crystal was trouble. Anything we built would inevitably
crumble. But I wanted her more than any woman I’d met in a long time.
None of the girls I’d dated since breaking up with Julie had excited me
the way Crystal did now. She was a peculiar mix of vixen and virgin,
both confident and uncertain at the same time, and I wanted her. I
wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was just the forbidden fruit factor. Or maybe
I really was that bulldog who wouldn’t say die.

Chapter Ten
I drove out to Templestowe and parked across from the Hinley

house. The thick curtains in the front windows were still closed,
but this time a battered old Ford cowered in the driveway, its rear fender
held in place with electrical tape, a “Please Wash Me” slogan scrawled
in the dirt on the back window. The rain was gradually eroding the
words; I wondered if Tess had written them there.
The Hinleys’ old dog lay on the veranda, licking its sparse wet fur
without much enthusiasm. It raised its head as I hurried up out of the
rain, a growl idling at the back of its throat. I held out my hand for it to
sniff and it broke into a panting, tongue-lolling grin. I scratched the dog
behind the ear and its back leg beat a tattoo against the boards. “Hey,
old battler,” I said. “Good to see you again.”
I knocked. Waited. Ran a hand through my hair. I’d never been
good at dealing with other people’s grief. Footsteps clumped on the
other side of the door. I tried to think of what to say. The door opened.
“Yeah?”
“Marcus Hinley?”
“That’s right. What do you want?”
Tess’s father stood there sizing me up. A great bull of a man, his
shoulders almost touched the sides of the doorway. He wore faded
khaki workpants and a white shirt buttoned crookedly. The recent
tragedy showed in his reddened eyes and in the liquor on his breath. His
hair was powdering to grey and his callused baker’s hands had rolled a
lot of dough. He scowled at me, waiting for an answer.
“My name’s Jack Marsh,” I said. “I’d like to talk to you about your
daughter.”
“Would you now?” His nostrils flared, making him look even more
like an enraged bull. “Wouldn’t have anything to do with that
goddamned reward, would it?”
“Mr. Hinley–”
“You’re the third greedy bastard to come sniffing around here trying
to get your grubby paws on that money. I’ve a good mind to grab you
by the balls and–”
“Mr. Hinley,” I said. “I’m not here about any reward. I need your
help.”

“My help? What the hell for?”
“I’m trying to nail the killer, and I need–”
“So you can get your bloody reward, right? I knew it!”
“No, you don’t understand,” I said. This wasn’t going well. “I don’t
care about the reward. I’m doing this for Tess.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “You knew Tess?”
“Only briefly. But I’m going to find the bastard who killed her, and
the only reward I care about is the one my fist is going to smash into his
face.”
“Who the hell are you?” Hinley asked. “Tess never mentioned you.”
“I was the last person to see her alive,” I said. “Aside from the
killer, that is. I–”
His face darkened. “You what?”
“Didn’t the cops tell you? About the car chase when Tess got
grabbed?”
“The what?” His fists curled into rocks. Some bug had bitten him
where it hurt and he was dead set on a squashing. It didn’t have to be
the same bug.
I took a breath. “Mr. Hinley, how much have the police told you
about what happened to your daughter?”
“Obviously not bloody enough!”
“Why don’t we go inside? I’ll tell you everything I’ve learned.” I
shifted my body weight to help the suggestion along.
Hinley blocked the doorway with a massive shoulder. “The hell you
will! I’ll not have you upsetting my wife with false hopes and lies.” His
neck muscles bulged. “You’ll do your talking right here on the porch,
you rat bastard!”
He was firing up for a fight; he couldn’t get his hands on the
unknown killer, but he could sure as hell lash out at me. Say the right
thing, I told myself. Don’t get into a brawl with a grieving father.
“Calm down, Mr. Hinley,” I said. “You’re obviously in no shape for
rational–”
He swung one of those meaty fists. My arm automatically flew up to
block it, but not quickly enough, and the punch caught me flush on the
chin. I crashed down hard on the veranda, jarring every bone in my
body. The dog yelped with alarm, its claws clattering on the wooden
boards as it fled out into the rain. I rolled onto my back and saw Hinley
standing over me, his fists pulsing. But the look on his face was one of

concern.
“I didn’t mean to do that,” he said.
I ran my tongue over my lower teeth, all of which were thankfully
still accounted for. “I know,” I said. “But I’ll bet it made you feel
better.” Down here at knockout level, the aroma of wet dog was strong.
Hinley stared at me for a moment, then held out his hand. I grasped
it and he hauled me up without apparent effort.
“You take a good punch,” he said.
“You throw a good punch.”
“I haven’t been myself since Tess died. It’s been… it’s been bloody
hard.” He set his jaw resolutely. “You might as well come in. We’ll
have a beer and start over.”
The lounge was home to a few tattered sofa chairs and a low coffee
table littered with tabloid magazines. The room smelled of potpourri
and dust. Hinley went off to fetch the beer while I worked my jaw from
side to side to reduce the ache. I overheard him talking to his wife in the
kitchen, telling her not to worry. He came back with two cans of
Fosters. I took a swig and let the cold beer numb my pain.
“Okay,” he said. “Tell me what you know about my daughter’s
murder.”
I told him about the brown van, the chase, my decision to hunt for
the killer myself. I studied his reactions as I talked, but soon dismissed
any idea of him being involved: his grief and rage were too clearly
genuine. He leaned forward on the edge of his chair, listening intently,
his deep brows knitting with concentration.
When I’d finished, he said, “So you’re saying you tried to help my
Tess?”
“Tried to.” I met his eyes, although it wasn’t easy. “And failed.”
Hinley took a hefty swallow of beer. He nodded slowly. “I’m
probably being a fool. Lord knows I shouldn’t trust you, but I do.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ve been sitting here tearing my hair out for days, trying to make
some bloody sense of all this, and you know what? You know what’s
the worst thing?”
“What’s that?”
“Not being able to do anything.” His large pancake hands looked
capable of crushing coconuts. “If I knew how to find the killer, then I’d
take care of it myself, and God help the bastard then. But no, I’ve got to

sit here and wait for the bloody cops to stop twiddling their dicks, and all
the while that mongrel’s out there laughing his bloody head off.” He
gave me an appraising look. “You think you can find him?”
“I’m not giving up until I do.”
“Good.” He cracked his knuckles, sat up straighter. “Then let’s get
to work. Jack, wasn’t it? Call me Marcus. What do you need me to
do?”
“I’ve got a few questions, to start with.”
“Go ahead.”
“When was the last time you saw Tess? I’m trying to get an idea of
her movements that day.”
He shook his head. “I start at the bakery at five a.m. every morning.
I’d not seen Tess since the night before.”
“Does your wife know what time Tess left the house?”
“Hannah reckons she left a tad after two p.m., for her Friday class.
Tess usually catches the bus to Box Hill and then takes the train to
school.” He heard his own inadvertent use of the present tense and
kicked his heel against the base of his chair. “Damn it, I can’t think
straight anymore!”
“Just bear with me, Mr. Hinley.”
“Marcus. Look, Jack, I don’t see how this is going to help us. I’ve
gone into all this with the police already, and we know how bloody
useless they’ve been.”
“It’s all helpful, Marcus.”
“Helpful how?”
I wasn’t too sure myself. “Well, we’ve narrowed down the time of
the snatch to between two o’clock when she left here and three o’clock
when she dived into my car. So we know he must have grabbed her
somewhere between here and the bus stop.”
“You can’t know that for sure. You’re guessing.”
“It’s a fair guess though. She never made it onto that bus. Public
transport, lots of people around, he wouldn’t have been able to get at her
after that. No, I’d bet he watched the house, waited for her to leave, and
then made his move.”
“The bastard,” Hinley grunted. His beer can flexed and crackled in
his fist.
“Do you know if Tess was afraid of anyone in particular?”
“Never said anything to us, if she was.”

I took a hit of beer. My sore chin was starting to behave. “How
about a guy named Duong Nguyen?”
“That Vietnamese bloke she went out with last year?” He didn’t
sound pleased to hear the name. “What about him? Are you saying he
was involved?”
“You tell me.”
Hinley drank some beer and made a face. “Tess was on with him for
a while. She brought him home a couple of times to meet Hannah and
me. I didn’t like him one bit. Could tell he was a bastard as soon as I
set eyes on him.”
“In what way?”
“Bad influence. Keeping her out all night, getting her drunk, Lord
knows what other shenanigans they got up to.” His face darkened at the
thought. “She came home stumbling drunk one night and vomited on
the carpet.” He shrugged. “But what could I say? Tess wasn’t a little
girl anymore, you can’t coddle them forever.”
I wondered whether drugs had been the real cause of Tess’s
symptoms that night, rather than booze, but I decided not to mention it.
Marcus Hinley’s temper was already in pretty bad shape.
He thumped his fist against his knee. “I should have bloody well
stepped in anyway! She was totally devoted to that mongrel and what
did he do? Broke her heart and dumped her like a sack of grain.”
“How did she take that?”
“It racked her up for a while. She sulked in her room for days,
crying and carrying on, her face as pale as cornflour. Wouldn’t take
phone calls, wouldn’t see her friends, even gave up going to her church.”
He gave me a wry smile. “I let Hannah deal with it. You know how
women are. Let them have their ‘girl talk’ and soak a few tissues and
they usually settle down.”
“Was there any trouble with Duong afterwards?”
“Not that I’m aware of. As I said, Tess carried on like a banshee for
a few days after they’d split up, but once she’d gotten all that teenage
melodrama out of her system she seemed to perk up.” He scratched his
cheek. “If he gave her any more grief after that, she didn’t say, and I
wasn’t game to ask. I was just happy to see the tail end of the bastard.”
“Did she still have feelings for him?”
“I wouldn’t know. She’d still go into a sulk every now and then, so
I’d guess she wasn’t completely over it.” He took in some beer and

sighed. “I remember her brooding at dinner a couple of weeks ago,
grouching about how miserable life was, and I thought ‘bloody hell, not
this again’. She was carrying on about how nobody would ever love her
again after all the things he’d made her do. I told her that’s not–”
I lurched upright as if I’d been plugged into the power grid and
switched on.
“What? What?” Hinley asked, his eyes expanding. “Is it
something?”
“It could be,” I said carefully. “Was she referring to Duong?”
“Well, no, she didn’t say his name, but who the hell else could it
be?” He mashed his big hands together. “I’ll murder the bastard!”
I was reluctant to go along with rash assumptions. Tess had told me
that the man chasing her had made her do terrible things, and that she’d
betrayed him, or he’d believed she had. I remembered the way Duong
had braced me with his flick-knife just a couple of hours ago. His anger
had seemed pretty genuine then, but now I wasn’t so sure.
“Maybe Tess knew things about the man who killed her,” I
suggested. “Criminal acts he’d committed, for instance, or some nasty
personal secret. If she was upset about being jilted, she might have
threatened to air his dirty undies in public.”
Hinley grunted, breathing hard. The veins in his temples throbbed.
“If it was Duong,” I continued, “that could explain why–”
“I’ll break the bastard in half!” Hinley rose from his chair
brandishing fists like cannonballs. “Where can I find him?”
“Marcus…”
“Well? Are you with me or not?”
“Sit down, Marcus,” I said. “We don’t know anything for sure.”
“I know that he chopped my daughter up like dog meat!”
“Goddamn it, Marcus, calm down!” My voice cut through his rage
and silenced him. “We’ve got to use our heads,” I said. “When the time
comes for action, then action we’ll have. I’m with you on that. But
right now, we need more evidence.”
He said, “I’ve got all the evidence I need,” but his fists had
unravelled and become hands again. He didn’t look convinced of
anything.
“Look, Marcus, I want to thump whoever did this just as much as
you do. But we can’t let our impatience get the better of us. We have to
do this thing right.”

Hinley slumped back in his chair. “You’re right,” he said. “Listen
to me carrying on like a madman bellowing for revenge.” He rubbed at
his eyes with both hands. “I’m a baker, not a bloody vigilante...”
“You’re her father,” I said.
His shook his head bitterly. “What sort of father would let such a
thing happen to his little girl? I should have protected her somehow,
that’s what fathers are supposed to do.” He squinted, trying to hide the
sudden rush of tears. “I’ll kill the bloody bastard with my bare hands!”
I looked at him, at that poor man, and said softly, “You can’t do
everything yourself, Marcus. Let me handle it. I’ll make sure he gets
what’s coming to him.”
“I have to,” he said. “It’s all I have now. Anger is all I have left.”
“Not all,” I said. “You have your wife. She needs you now, more
than ever.”
His lips quivered. He stood, drained his beer, and pulped the can
with his strong fingers. “I’m going for another beer,” he said, voice
wobbling. “You want one?”
“Thanks.”
He trudged off towards the kitchen. I was impatient to leave, but it
would have been insensitive, and I still had a few questions to ask
anyway. I leafed through one of the tabloids from the coffee table while
I waited: celebrity scandals of the week, hot new fashion trends to max
out the credit card on, a five step guide to better orgasms. Glamour and
gossip, a banal artificial world far removed from the tragic realities of
life.
Hinley returned and handed me a can. His face was ruddy. He said,
gruffly, “Sorry it took a while. Beer fridge is outside in the shed.” He
returned to his chair without meeting my eyes.
“No worries,” I said, pretending I hadn’t noticed anything. I popped
the tab on my beer and gulped down half the can. The rain outside was
starting to ease up. “Have you ever heard of a guy named Kurt
Drucker?” I asked.
Hinley shook his head. “Who’s he?”
“Just a name the cops threw at me. He’s a drug dealer apparently.”
“Drugs? What’s that got to do with my Tess?” He tried to scowl,
but the anger that had sustained him was spent now, and he merely
looked worn out. “Are you suggesting,” he said grimly, “that my
daughter was taking drugs?”

“Uh, of course not.” I doubted if Hinley could take any more shocks
just now. “The cops told me they found Drucker’s name in her papers.”
“That would be Tess’s diary,” he explained. “I let the police take it.
I’d not have felt right going through it myself.”
“I can understand that.”
“Anyway, my Tess would never have touched drugs,” he said.
“Sure, she’d have a wee too many drinks now and then, but we all do
when we’re that age.” He smiled and nodded to himself, a faraway
gleam in his eyes.
It was time to go; he was turning maudlin. “Thanks for the beer,
Marcus,” I said, and stood. “I’d better get going. You’ve been a great
help.”
He was on his feet in a flash. His hand was firm and strong and
knew what a man’s shake was. “Sure, Jack, sure. Anything else you
need, you just holler. You’ll let me know as soon as you find out
anything, won’t you?”
“I will.”
His hand tightened on mine. “And when it’s time to take action,
you’ll call me?”
“If I can.”
The dog had parked itself back on the veranda. It lifted its head to
sniff my shoes as we came out. I scratched it behind the ear and it
whined soulfully. Hinley walked me right out to the car. The dog
followed at our heels, its bony shoulders hunched against the rain,
peering up at me hopefully for one last rub.
Hinley and I shook hands again. “You’re a good man, Jack,” he
said. “I’m counting on you.”
I resented him a little for that. I didn’t need any more responsibility
heaped on me to solve the case. If I couldn’t put things right this time,
even the strongest whisky wouldn’t wash away the constant reminder of
failure.
I sat at the wheel and watched Tess’s father shuffle away through the
rain. Halfway to the door, the hope I’d loaned him drained away. His
shoulders slumped and his broad back began to shake. His wife met him
at the front door and held him, her pale, tight face staring accusingly at
me over his shoulder.
I drove away from that depressing place. I drove pretty fast.

Chapter Eleven
A fter talking with Marcus Hinley, it was almost time for my

evening karate classes. I winged past a takeaway shop for a
paper satchel full of grease and ate the few dollops of potato and fish
embedded in it. A drive-through liquor store supplied me with two
bottles of whisky for my medicinal stockpile and the Wild Turkey for
Benny. I made it to the karate hall on time, with ten minutes to spare.
I retrieved the sports bag containing my karate outfit and practice
weapons from the boot of my car. My nunchakas – two hard wooden
batons joined by a short chain – clinked as I hefted the bag. I’d practised
with them for years and could twirl them as impressively as any B-grade
chop sockey star: always a popular party trick. The sports bag also
stored a plastic sleeve containing six razor-sharp shurikens, popularly
known as throwing stars. They’d never been thrown at anything more
formidable than the training corkboard though, and once, when I’d been
drunk, at the ceiling of my apartment. The weapons were illegal to carry
on the street and would never be used outside of training, but they still
gave me a boyish sense of self-assurance in knowing that I could defend
myself with deadly force if I ever had to. Some people can juggle; I can
fight. I know which party trick I’d rather have in a sticky situation.
The dojo was on the second floor above a video store and was
crowded with the usual mix of novices and adepts. Rank in karate is
indicated by the colour of the belt worn, although the colour scheme can
vary between different organisations. Here there were seven other
colours to progress through on the way from white belt to black belt, and
this evening I was teaching the mid-level green/blue/purple class.
Sensei Randall Clark, the owner of the dojo, would be holding the
advanced class afterwards. I changed into my gi, which I’d recently had
dry-cleaned, and tied my brown belt around my waist.
I took the students through the customary fifteen-minute warm-up
session and then led them through several katas: graceful dance-like
sequences designed to improve precision and control. I coaxed and
cajoled and berated and commended. I froze them in place with sharp
commands, corrected errant feet and sloppy punches, and then set them
back in motion. I made them start over when their efforts faltered
through fatigue, and nodded proudly when they found new reserves of

enthusiasm. It was a productive class. The students looked happy and
sweaty as they filed out to the changing room.
Sensei Randall arrived and we discussed how each of the students
had performed. He was a short, solid man in his late fifties, with a Friar
Tuck halo of baldness and eyes that had seen everything and been
amused by it all. He was Australian, but had received his training
directly from the masters in Japan. I was glad to see him; his patient Zen
nature always seemed to calm and inspire me. We went into the
reception area to chat while we waited for the rest of the advanced class
to show up.
“So, Jack,” he said. “It would seem that you were unable to drag
yourself away from the bar long enough to attend to your students last
night.”
“I’m sorry, Sensei,” I said. Sensei is the karate term of respect for
one’s teacher.
“Shame on you, Jack. You left a room full of kids warming up for
almost an hour before another tutor could get here.”
“Well at least they’ll be limber.”
He tried to look stern, but couldn’t suppress a smile. “One hundred
push-ups,” he ordered, “and don’t let it happen again.”
“Osu, Sensei!” I said, and dropped to the floor to begin my
punishment.
“I guess it could have been worse,” he mused as I grunted and
strained. “You might have shown up drunk and taught them how to
headbutt the mirror.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” I said between gasps. “Those are advanced class
secrets!”
“The cheek of the boy,” he said, chuckling. He planted his foot
between my shoulder blades and added his weight to the scales. “Make
that two hundred push-ups.”
A couple of black belts arrived, bowing to Sensei Randall as they
entered. They laughed when they saw me, and one of them joked that I
must have been caught groping teenage girls in the junior class. I was
too busy straining my muscles to retort. By the time I’d served my
sentence my arms were aching and my uniform was soaked with sweat.
Sensei Randall removed his foot and helped me up. He looked
impressed that I’d managed the whole handicapped double century.
The class began. Sensei Randall took us through several endurance

and impact-handling exercises. We trained for a solid two hours, at the
end of which I’d had a thorough workout. My body was stiff and sore,
but in a good way. It felt great to forget about the case for a while and
just lose myself in the mindless bliss of exercise.
Afterwards, once I’d changed into my street clothes and helped
Sensei Randall lock up the dojo, I stood outside in the car park, alone,
staring up at the night sky. The concrete smelled of recent rain and the
moon was very bright. I wondered if Tess was up there in heaven
somewhere, looking down on me with disappointment.
Why were you killed, Tess? If I could just figure out the motive then
I’d be closer to finding the killer. But then again, in this crazy violent
society of ours where grandmothers are knocked into comas for their
purses, where wives are routinely beaten for burning the toast, and
where high school teachers get stabbed with ballpoint pens for not
giving A’s, the reasons why one person hurts another are as many as the
stars. The guy called me a name, your Honour, so I waited until he left
the party and then I bashed his skull in. Simple, stupid, insignificant
reasons. I might never find a meaningful answer, might never make
sense of the senselessness. A billion trillion stars out there and not one
of them could tell me why Tess had to die.
I heard the pad of soft footsteps. “Are you okay, Jack?”
“I’m fine, Sensei,” I said. “Just breathing in and breathing out.”
His scalp gleamed in the moonlight. “You weren’t very focused
tonight, Jack. Is everything alright?”
“I’ll be okay. Just got a few things on my mind.”
He chuckled. “More likely it’s that cheap liquor you seem to favour.
When are you going to take an old man’s advice and start looking after
your health?”
I gave him a smirk. “Sensei, not all of us can stomach sunflower
seeds and goat cheese for dinner.” Sensei Randall was an avid health
nut and knew dozens of nutritionally tasteless recipes.
“Understandable,” he said. “With the quantity of alcohol usually
found in your stomach, I’d be surprised if you could hold down a bar
pretzel.”
“Well, you can consider it an achievement that you got me into
alfalfa sprouts. At least I’m getting some vegetarian intake in between
whiskies.”
He laughed then and I joined in. Our bantering about the perils of

the demon drink was an old joke between us, grown grey and stooped
with repetition, but he still found it funny and I didn’t mind indulging
him.
“A healthy body houses a healthy mind, Jack. And a focused mind
is essential to solving one’s problems.”
“I know that, Sensei. But it’s going to take more than goat cheese
and Buddhist philosophy to solve my problems this time.”
Sensei Randall’s eyes were concerned and fatherly. I could tell he
wanted to ask me what was wrong, but we were men and that was
against the rules. Instead he said, “You’ve got a strong focus, Jack. You
know how to use it when you apply yourself.”
“Thanks, Sensei.”
He patted my arm. “Go home. Have a good night’s sleep and look
after your health for once.”
“Osu, Sensei.”
I drove with the window down, drawing the crisp night air into my
lungs. Sensei Randall was right: I’d lost my focus. Although I could no
longer smell Tess’s perfume inside the car, I still remembered the way
she’d felt in my arms, the taste of her on my lips. I still wanted to
believe that she was my warm, vulnerable maiden, and I the brave knight
sworn to avenge her. But she’d told me herself that she had betrayed the
dragon.
That was what I’d been having trouble focusing on. I hadn’t wanted
to muddy my memory of Tess by admitting that she might be anything
less than pure. I’d been assuming her innocence in whatever events had
led to her death. But the truth, as illusion-shattering as it might be, was
that Tess had been just as capable of hurtfulness as any of us. I needed
to be more objective. If Tess had genuinely betrayed or tried to
blackmail the killer, then that meant there was a serious motive out there
for me to uncover. All I had to do was keep poking people in the ribs
until I found the sore spot.
I examined my reflection in the mirror. I was no Sherlock Holmes,
but I would get my man eventually. Holmes might be able to turn a
dropped peanut shell into a suave confrontation in the killer’s drawing
room, but I didn’t have an egghead like Sherlock’s. What I needed was
more information. I needed to focus and be patient. And most of all, I
needed a cold beer, to wash away the cobwebs. Even a lukewarm beer
would do.

At home, there was a thick envelope in my mailbox with a message
scrawled on the front. The message read:
Dear Baboon,
Went to all the effort of lugging this over

only to find you’d buggered off for the
night, no doubt merrily screwing your
latest canine girlfriend at the local dog
kennels.
Let me know if you need anything else, and

don’t forget my bourbon!
Cheers,
Benny.
I took the envelope and my liquor store purchases inside and dumped
everything on my desk. Went straight to the fridge and skolled a can of
beer in one long swallow. My head was pounding when I finally paused
for breath. After steaming myself wrinkly in the shower and slapping
together a cheese and alfalfa sandwich for a late night snack, I was ready
to tackle Benny’s envelope. It contained a manila folder with about
twenty pages of printed information. My newly restored focus would
get a solid workout reading through that lot. I was tired, but it needed to
be done. I skimmed through the file, looking for anything obvious.
Benny had included a picture of Kurt Drucker from an online
newspaper article, a grainy black-and-white headshot that showed a
swarthy man with a bushy moustache. There was something unsettling
about Drucker’s eyes, as if he’d stolen them from somebody else and
they didn’t quite belong on his face. He looked vaguely foreign – a hint
of Arab, a dash of Italian, maybe a pinch of French – and was most
likely none of the above. Was this the face of the man in the brown van?
His head shape seemed to be an approximate physical match, but I
couldn’t be sure. I stared at the cruel eyes, trying to divine their secrets,
but the photo wasn’t talking. Nobody can ever truly see inside another
person’s mind. We knock on each other’s doors, hoping to be invited in,
but the best we can manage is partial glimpses through the keyhole.

The beer had worn off and I was starting to feel edgy again. I tried
to read through Benny’s dossier in more detail, but I couldn’t
concentrate. Pessimistic thoughts kept jumping the queue. The harder I
tried, the more stubborn my mental resistance became, until finally I
thought: To hell with it. To hell with finding my focus and to hell with
Sensei Randall. I uncapped a new bottle of whisky, poured myself a
generous shot, and downed it.
To hell with me too. I was nothing but an unemployed lout, trying to
act like Philip Marlowe and instead turning in an Inspector Clouseau
performance. I drank whisky until the ugly fire in my brain had been put
out. Later, with most of the bottle in my belly, I decided to get some
eye. My legs felt like stilts, but I made it to the bed okay.
I dreamed of Tess. We were in the back of my car, making love, and
her face was all slashed and gory. Her mouth opened to tell me
something, but only blood and betrayal and vengeance came out. I
woke, panting and sweaty, with Tess’s screams ringing in my ears.
Justice is almost as hard to find in the pillow world as it is in the waking
one.
The phone had woken me. It was still ringing. My back felt stiff,
my head hurt, and nothing that the phone had to offer could possibly be
more important than a day off. I got up anyway and answered the
bloody thing. I cracked a kink out of my neck and grunted a hello into
the receiver.
“Jack, are you there?” she asked, and in the moment before the
dream fuzziness cleared, I almost thought it was Tess speaking. “You
have to get over here, like, right away...”

Chapter Twelve
I ’ve never understood women.
Crystal hadn’t wanted to say over the phone what the big rush was,
but her sense of urgency had galvanised me. Forty minutes later,
wearing matted hair and yesterday’s crumpled clothes, I jogged up to the
university courtyard where she was supposed to be waiting for me. She
wasn’t there. I cursed and sat down to wait. The rumblings of a mild
hangover kept echoing around inside my skull. I’d have preferred
another few hours in the kip, but I had to admit that I did want to see
Crystal again.
After twenty minutes of diminishing patience, an Indian girl with
cute legs and a clipboard came over and asked me to participate in a
political survey. I passed some time flirting with her while I filled it out.
She giggled at my lame jokes and kept leaning in close to explain
questions I didn’t understand. When I’d finished, she skipped off
happily with the survey clutched to her chest like a medal. I chided
myself for not asking for her phone number.
Fifteen minutes after that, Crystal emerged from the library. She
wore tight blue jeans and a smiley-face T-shirt with the smiley’s tongue
poking out. She also wore Duong Nguyen’s arm around her waist like a
chastity belt. So much for Jack the bulldog.
“Alright, I’m here,” I said. “What’s so damned important that I had
to get out of bed and race over here?”
“Well look who ate a grouch for breakfast,” Crystal said. “Can’t we
all, like, be friendly with each other?”
“I’ve got enough friends.”
She waved it away. “First off, I want you two to shake hands and
make peace. Will you do that for me?”
Duong seemed to have cooled down since our last encounter, but he
still gave me a wary scowl. I could feel my jaw hardening in response.
“I’m allergic to peace,” I said. “Now what–”
Crystal stamped her foot. “I mean it, Jack!” She looked like a sulky
princess waiting for someone to remove the pea from under her mattress.
“I’m so not telling you anything until you guys promise you won’t get
into any more fights.”

“Yeah, Jack,” Duong said. “You make apologize to me or we not
help you.” He squeezed Crystal’s shoulder possessively.
“Your English needs work, Duong. Read a dictionary some time.”
He coloured. That predictable scowl creased his face.
“Ah, what the hell,” I said, and stuck out my hand. “A truce?”
After three grudging seconds, he shook my hand. His grip was firm
and brief, as if this time he only had a small point to prove.
Crystal’s eyes twinkled. “Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Her
voice was tinged with mischief and her lips looked more kissable than
ever.
“I should be a politician. Now, what have you got for me?”
“I’ve seen him,” she said.
“Him who?”
“Well, hello? Our friendly neighbourhood dope fiend, remember?”
“Drucker?” I still felt a little groggy after my night on the booze.
“No, the other guy. Needles. Remember?” She studied my face and
grinned. “Jeez, you look so hung over today, Jack.”
“Occupational hazard,” I said. “So where is he?”
“Somewhere in there.” She gestured towards the Business and Arts
building. “He went inside a short while ago, but I don’t know which
room. If he had a class, he should still be in there.”
“Well that narrows it down,” I said dryly. The building was
enormous.
“Oh, don’t worry,” she said. “Everyone goes in and out through the
front doors. We’ll, like, confront him when he comes out.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t want Needles to know you’re involved. When
he comes out, point him out to me discreetly and I’ll tackle him by
myself.”
“Do you think he might be, like, dangerous?” She shivered. “Oh my
God, what if he saw me watching him before? He might come after
me!” She clung to her boyfriend for support.
“I gouge his eyes out if he dare look at you,” Duong said. He was
staring at me as he said it; I figured he was trying to tell me something.
Crystal kissed his cheek. “You’re my hero, honey.”
“Yeah, Duong’s your personal King Arthur,” I said. “I’m just the
lowly knight Lancelot, glad to be of service.”
Crystal blushed; she knew what I meant. Duong stood there
smirking, probably thinking I’d complimented him.

“Anyway,” I went on, “if Needles is connected to Drucker, then
things could get hairy. Kurt Drucker is one nasty individual.”
“How nasty?” she asked.
I remembered what Benny had said about the skinned stoolie.
“Nasty,” I told her. “I want you two out of harm’s way, just in case. Let
me handle the rough stuff.”
“Okay.” She wet her lips and added, “You’re so brave, Jack.”
Duong didn’t like that. Evidently he felt it was his job, and his job
alone, to be brave in front of Crystal. His frown dug itself even deeper
into its trench.
“Yeah, you big shot detective,” he said. “We just stiff scared
students.” He worked his jaw into a frigid smile. “We point finger at
drug dealer so you can go do tough guy thing while we hide like
coward.”
I could have retorted with any of a dozen comebacks, but I let him
score his point. I didn’t need him any more offside than he already was.
We settled in to wait. Crystal and Duong watched the doors of the
Business and Arts building, their eyes scanning the steady flow of
students for our target. Duong made sure that I knew Crystal was his
girl: he clamped his arm around her shoulders and kept sneering at me as
if he thought it would make me jealous. I kept acting nonchalant, as if
he wasn’t succeeding.
After ten minutes of this, Crystal said, “Oh, Jack, before I forget.”
“Yeah?”
“The Reverend wants to talk with you. Reverend Hoffman, from my
church. I’ve told him all about you.”
“Only the bad stuff, I hope. What does he want from me?”
“He’s pretty upset about what happened to Tess, and he’s keen to
help out in any way he can. Remember I told you that Tess introduced
me to Jesus?”
“Uh huh,” I said. “Popular fellow that Jesus.”
She nodded absently, her eyes gazing back into the past. “I was so in
need of saving, and then Tess took me to meet the Reverend, and–”
“I’m not interested in being saved, Crystal, if that’s what you’re
thinking.” After the great stakeout fiasco, I’d had enough of the Word to
last me into the next life.
“No, no,” she said. “Reverend Hoffman just wants to help, you
know? He used to practise law before he became a priest, so he might

have some, you know, legal opinions that could be useful. He also knew
Tess pretty well.”
“Hmm,” I said.
“So you’ll talk to him?”
I sighed wearily. “I guess I’d better.”
Crystal clapped her hands together. “Great! I’ll let him know to
expect you, okay?” I nodded and she gave me Hoffman’s address. I
didn’t tell her that I’d already been there. “You’ll love him, I’m sure
you will. He’s, like, such a special man.”
I remembered the high walls, the wooded driveway, the affluent
mansion. Alistair Hoffman was special alright. “My Nanna always told
me I was special,” I joked. “And look how I turned out.”
She ignored it. “When I’m with Reverend Hoffman and the others, I
feel so unconditionally loved. The Reverend says that only those who
give their love freely in service of the Lord will be able to enter
Heaven.”
“Mmm.”
We went back to watching the student wildlife. I wasn’t eager to
talk to Hoffman, but what the hell, the guy might actually know
something. Maybe Tess had spilled her personal problems in the
confession box. I’d gladly sit through an hour of sermons in exchange
for some useful information.
My brain started to hurt from boredom. I put it in neutral and went
on waiting. Crystal still vigilantly watched the crowd, but Duong
appeared to have lost interest. He lit a cigarette and made a point of
blowing the smoke in my direction. After another half hour of nothing, I
left them there and ducked over to the student cafeteria. I drowned a bag
of hot chips in salt and vinegar and took my prize back to the courtyard.
“Those chips smell nice,” Crystal said after a while.
“That’s because they are,” I said, and kept eating. She didn’t say it
again.
We moved to another bench to avoid the sun and waited some more.
The cream of university life passed before my tired eyes: skinheads,
booze hounds, mixed couples holding hands, the occasional nerd
wearing a vest. I listened to a man on the bench next to us holding forth
on the intricacies of Welsh dialect pronunciation. I watched students
sneak through the library theft detector with books held overhead to beat
the scanners. At one point, a tall guy in a suede suit who looked like a

lecturer walked past and I smelled the distinct, pungent odour of
marijuana trailing behind him.
I was just about to nod off when Crystal sat up straight. “There he
is! There’s Needles!” I followed her gaze and saw a young man
slinking from the building. Needles’s face was pale, his stringy, unclean
black hair reaching almost to his waist. He looked underfed, as if he
took all his meals intravenously. Every stitch on him was black, even
his socks. His black shirt was buttoned over a bulging Adam’s apple.
He turned right and headed for the stairs to the street. I stood up to
follow and Duong gestured goodbye with a loaded finger, smiling as he
pulled the trigger. For the first time, I almost liked him. I aimed my
own finger gun at him and fired a parting shot.
I trailed Needles down the thin walkway that led to the Glenferrie
train station, keeping my distance at about twenty paces behind. He
didn’t seem to be in any hurry. He hawked up a big gob of spit and
washed the pavement with it. I moved closer as he entered the tunnel
under the station, and followed him up the ramp to the platform. He
coughed loudly, found another supply of saliva from some untapped
reservoir, and tapped it. Charming fellow.
The platform stank of diesel fuel, a foul rotten-orange odour.
Needles stood in front of one of the yellow waiting benches and rocked
back and forth on his heels. He discovered a cigarette in his pants, stuck
it into his mouth with the practiced motions of an expert, and ignited it
with a shiny gold lighter. He wasn’t the guy from the brown van – too
thin, different hair – but that didn’t mean he wasn’t involved.
I rearranged my face and walked up to him. “Hey, man,” I said in a
shaky voice that I hoped sounded like a fellow junkie’s. “You got a
smoke?”
He stared at me as if I were a blowfly he’d found crawling on his
food. He reluctantly produced a pack of Dunhill cigarettes. “Here.”
I showed disappointment. “Man, haven’t you got anything stronger?
You know, something to get me high?” I showed him my wallet. “I’m
good for it.”
The cigarettes disappeared. “Do I know you?” he asked, squinting.
“Um, no.”
“Well, there’s your answer,” he said, and turned away. “Get lost.”
“C’mon man, I’m burning up!” I figured that was the sort of thing a
starving druggie might say. “I heard you had quality stuff.”

“You heard wrong. Now get out of my face!”
“C’mon man!” I whined. Good thing I wasn’t trying to make a
living as an actor; this audience looked far from clapping.
“Fuck off!” he yelled, and stalked away up the platform. He went
into the small public toilet at the end of the platform, his bony shoulders
flexing angrily. I followed.
He had a knife out when I came in after him. He stood with his back
to the urinal, pointing the knife at me. The walls were painted puke
green and the whole room smelled of stale piss.
“Do you have a mental problem?” Needles said. He spat at my feet
and missed.
“I don’t have a problem,” I told him, dropping the act. “It’s your
problem, and it’s come looking for you.”
“Get lost.” He showed me the knife. “I don’t want to have to clean
this again.”
“Enough foreplay, Needles,” I said. “Who killed Tess Hinley?” He
almost covered his reaction in time, but I was watching for it. Jackpot.
“Never heard of her,” he said. “Now get out of my face while you
still can.” He waved the knife again, as if it were a magic wand that
would make me disappear.
I moved towards him. “You know, and you’ll tell.” He would have
to take his wand back to the magic shop for repairs.
“Take another step,” he said, his voice wavering, “and it’ll be your
last.”
I took another step.
“I’m warning you, fool! I’ll dice you so fine you’ll be confetti!”
I stepped forward again. The knife was within striking distance now.
Needles’s forehead was shiny with sweat. He smelled rancid.
“Tell me who–”
“I ain’t telling you shit!” He lunged with the knife. I dodged it
easily, straight-armed him into the urinal. One of his black boots
splashed in the murky water.
“Who killed her, Needles?”
“Die, motherfucker!” He lurched forward again, spearing the deadly
blade towards my stomach. I grabbed his wrist, twisted, and plucked the
knife from his strained fingers. Too easy. I shoved him into the urinal
again. He crashed off the metal wall and went down with one hand in
the trough.

I tossed the knife so that it landed in the yellowy water. “Let’s try
again,” I said. “Who killed Tess?”
Needles picked up the knife with slippery fingers. He was panting
and red-faced. His shirtsleeve had slid up; I saw the purple web of used-
up veins on his forearm.
“The next time you rush me,” I said, “I’ll flush your head in the toilet
bowl. After that I start breaking bones. Answer my questions and you
might even make your train.”
He gave me a sly look. “If I scream,” he said, “the station attendants
will come running.” He wiped the wet knife on his pants.
“If they hear you.” I showed him a one-knuckle fist with the middle
knuckle extended. “Ever seen a crushed larynx? You won’t be able to
scream. Your body will try to vomit, but it won’t have anywhere to go
except straight into your lungs. You’ll die choking on your screams.”
He swallowed hard. I held my breath. If he called my bluff now, I’d
have no choice but to let him go. The tension stretched out between us
like the taut line in a contest between fisherman and shark.
“Alright,” he said, lowering the knife. “Alright, you motherfucker,
I’ll talk!”
“Then talk.”
Needles spat on the floor. “Shit, I didn’t even know she was dead.
What the fuck are you hassling me for?”
“You’re lying.” I towered over him. “Maybe you killed her,
Needles.”
He cringed. “No, wait! I never touched her!”
“But you sold her your filthy drugs, didn’t you?”
“No, I never–”
“Didn’t you?”
Needles’s face went as pale as the white powder he peddled. I could
feel the arteries throbbing in my neck. Right then, I must have looked
pretty damn scary.
“Smack,” he said. “Mostly she bought smack. Discount rates too.”
“Smack?”
“Heroin,” he explained. “Couple of tabs of ‘E’ occasionally, but
mostly the smack.” He looked startled. “Hey, you ain’t vice, are you?
Is that your angle?”
I raised my fist and he flinched. “I’m looking to break some heads,”
I said. “That’s my fucking angle.”

“No, wait, please!” he said, raising his hands. “I don’t know who
killed your friend. Honest! I hadn’t even seen her for a couple of
months. Figured she must have fallen out with…” He chewed off the
end of the sentence.
“With who?”
“Nobody.” His face turned a shade paler.
I took a gamble. “With Kurt Drucker?”
He gaped. “What are you hassling me for then, if you already
know?”
“For fun. Tell me about Drucker and Tess.”
“Drucker brought her to me. Friend of his, he says. Take care of her
if she needs a fix before class, he says. Discount rates too.”
“Why the discount?”
A nasty leer flickered about Needles’s mouth. “Why do you think?
Drucker was probably screwing the bitch and wanted her kept all juiced
up and bouncy. Waste of good smack, you ask me. But hey, when the
big man farts, the workers lift their noses and smell the perfume.”
I’d heard stories about junkies who traded sex for drugs. I hoped
Needles was wrong, that Tess hadn’t been one of those. The idea of her
in bed with drug dealers sickened me. My fingernails dug into my
palms.
“Did Drucker kill Tess?” I asked.
“I don’t know shit about that.”
“Did he have any reason to kill her?”
“Here’s a reason, arsehole,” Needles said, and held up his middle
finger. He spat into the urinal for emphasis.
I resisted an urge to reach out and snap the finger. “Where can I find
Drucker?”
Needles blinked. “What are you, crazy? You do not want to take on
Kurt Drucker. He’ll skin you alive and make you eat it.”
“Already heard that one. Now where is he?”
“Fuck you.”
He was starting to get his courage back. It was time to take it away
from him again. I showed him my killer knuckle. “Remember the
larynx?”
His face tried on several different emotions: loyalty, fear,
calculation, shame. He spat again, but there was no longer any bravado
in it. “Drucker’s got dozens of dealers working for him. Why don’t you

go hassle one of them? He’ll butcher me if he finds out I squealed.”
“Maybe. If you’ve still got a throat left to squeal with.”
Needles’s shoulders drooped. “I don’t know where he lives. I’m
supposed to meet him tomorrow night at the usual drop, to pick up a new
batch of product. I…”
“Keep squealing. When and where?”
His face looked haggard; I’d wrung all the resistance out of him.
“Arcade parlour in St. Kilda. The Fun Palace. Eight o’clock.”
“If you’re lying,” I said in my darkest voice, “I’ll come back for
you.”
“It’s the truth, I swear!”
“It had better be. Also, if you warn him off and he’s not there
tomorrow, then I’m going to be really pissed off. Understand?” I held
up my pointed fist again to help him with his understanding.
Needles’s head bobbed. He ran a wet hand over his bulging Adam’s
apple as if to reassure it that the knuckle was only kidding. “If you go
after Drucker, we’re both dead,” he said. He looked like he was
struggling not to cry.
“Is that right?”
“You can’t take Drucker. He’s too tough, and he’s got bodyguards
who are even tougher. He’ll tie you to a chair and make you scream for
hours. He’ll butcher you, and then he’ll come after me!”
“I don’t think–”
But Needles wasn’t listening anymore. He turned his face away
from me and stared sullenly at his hands. They were shaking. “You’ve
killed me, man! You’ve killed me, you stupid motherfucker!”
I left him there and drove home, feeling like the world’s worst bully.
Karate is only supposed to be used for self-defence, not for intimidating
people. I had dishonoured everything that Sensei Randall had taught
me. I took a long shower when I got home, but I still felt dirtier than a
fifth ace.
There was a message blinking on my machine. “Hi Jack, it’s
Crystal. I’m just calling to, like, find out how you went with that
Needles wacko. Did you learn any more about Kurt Drucker? I guess
you’re not home yet, huh? I’m so dying to know how it went. Anyway,
when you get home, give me a call. I’m at Duong’s place.” She recited
her mobile number. “See ya soon, my brave bulldog!”
I turned off the answering machine, leaving her message on the tape

in case I felt like torturing myself with her sweet voice again tomorrow.
I didn’t need her brand of trouble. Crystal was an accomplished tease,
and to her, I was just a “Plan B” flirtation to keep on the string in case
her boyfriend didn’t work out. I knew that game and I didn’t like it. But
the sound of her voice still made my heart thump faster anyway.
Hell, I never could understand women.

Chapter Thirteen
F or dinner I had eggs on toast with Vegemite, washed down with

whisky. I read through Benny’s file in detail as I ate. My
concentration engine was working just fine this time, and whenever it
began to stall, the whisky came in handy as a kick-starter.
Kurt Drucker had been due to stand trial for a drugs rap back at the
time when the so-called gangland killings in Melbourne’s underworld
had reached a peak, with new turf-war shootings making the news every
few days. Drucker had gone into hiding the day after his lawyer posted
bail, and now, almost two years later, he was still a fugitive. Being on
the Most Wanted list didn’t appear to have limited his activities
however: he was suspected of involvement in several of the gangland
hits. A tabloid had run the story of the skinned stoolie who’d been set to
give evidence at Drucker’s trial. The journalist had squeezed out every
gruesome insinuation possible, his editorial making Drucker sound like a
slobbering monster with fangs and barbed fingernails.
After I’d finished reading, I had a vague, unsettling feeling that I’d
missed some vital snippet of information that would tie the whole case
together. I read through the file a second time, hoping that the tingle
would coalesce into something more solid. Nothing. I settled for staring
at the black-and-white photo until I’d memorised every whisker on Kurt
Drucker’s face.
I transferred some more whisky from the bottle to my glass, and
from the glass to my stomach. The more I drank, the more melancholy I
became. I kept remembering how I’d shoved Needles into the urinal, the
way his hand had splashed down amongst the yellow soap balls. Christ,
Jack, I thought, now you’re beating people up…
I played a hand of imaginary poker with the whisky bottle. The
whisky lost and had to pay up. Needles had sung, but he’d been no
innocent choirboy, just a punk drug dealer with important information
that I’d been forced to extract. I nodded at the brownish liquid in my
glass, knew that I’d done what had needed to be done. I also knew
exactly how many drinks it would require to wipe away the shame of
having done it.
Some time later, the phone rang. “Urr?”
“Jack?” A woman’s voice.

“Urr.”
“You’re drunk.” Disdain in the voice.
“Wha’ makes you think that?”
“I can virtually smell it over the phone.”
“So hang up if you don’ like it,” I said, and then did precisely that.
I went back to beating my drink bankrupt at imaginary cards. The
phone rang again. I let it ring. I wasn’t done gambling with the whisky
yet; the bastard might be holding a flush. Good thing I had four Kings
up my sleeve. After I’d won another gulp, I reached for the phone and
fumbled it out of the cradle. The receiver clattered down the side of the
desk, pulling the base with it, and the whole damned thing fell onto the
floor. I gathered up the mess and said hello, but the rude person had
disconnected. I had to win three more tricks from the whisky bottle just
to feel better about that.
The phone startled me awake. It took me a few moments to figure
out what was different: the sunlight coming through the window. I’d
passed out drunk at my desk. My neck muscles twanged like guitar
strings as I reached for the phone. “Yeah?”
“Jack?”
“Who wants to know?”
“This is Detective Sergeant Pearl speaking. I hope you’re a little less
inebriated this morning.”
“A little.” A headache was playing drums on the inside of my skull.
The morning light forcing its way into my eyes only made it worse.
“What were you doing last night?” she asked.
“Drinking.”
“No wisecracks today, Jack? I’m disappointed.”
“What a coincidence. I feel the same way about your shoddy police-
work.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded. “You don’t
think I’m man enough to do the job, is that it? Do you think that just
because I’m a woman, I can’t–”
I cut her off. “For God’s sake, Pearl, I’m not interested in fighting
gender wars with you. All I want is to see Tess’s killer behind bars. I
don’t care whether it’s Superman or Wonder Woman who puts him
there, as long as it happens.”
There was a frosty silence. I was about to hang up when she said,
“Is that what you’ve been doing, Jack? Playing Superman?”

“No, I’ve been drinking,” I said. “I already told you that. But you
can still win a stuffed toy if you guess what was in the bottle.”
Pearl said, “I know you’ve been asking people about Tess.”
I went quiet.
“Jack?”
I didn’t say anything.
“No more nonsense, Jack,” she said. “What do you think you’re
doing?”
“Nothing you’d give me an A-plus for.”
“You’ve been investigating Tess’s murder on your own, haven’t
you?”
“So what?” My tongue felt thick and furry and in need of a
toothbrush. “I’ve just been talking to a few people, asking a few
questions. No law against that, is there?”
“I can think of several,” she said. “Such as obstruction of justice, for
starters.”
“Where’s your gratitude, Pearl? I’m only trying to help.” I laughed.
“Maybe you should stop obstructing my investigation and go back to
ticketing speeders and looking for lost cats, or whatever it is you cops do
between donuts.”
“Curiosity killed the cat, Jack.”
I almost liked her for that, but no cop was going to out-wisecrack
me. “Sure, but after one night with me, satisfaction brought her back.”
She took a sharp breath, and for a moment I was afraid she’d take it
the wrong way and start roasting me on the fires of feminist activism
again, but all she said was, “Cute.”
“How’d you find out I was investigating, anyway?”
“Marcus Hinley called,” she said. “Told me he’d met this crack
amateur detective who was going to chew off my lazy arse and spit out
the killer.”
“Maybe tomorrow,” I said. “I can’t handle that much chewing with
a hangover.”
Pearl laughed. “Shame. I could afford to lose a few kilos.” She
snorted and then laughed again. “I can’t believe I just let you get away
with a sexist line like that!”
I liked the sound of her laugh. Pearl was an attractive enough
woman. If she hadn’t been such a fervent man-hater, I might have even
asked her out for a drink.

“So then, what have you learned during this investigation of yours?”
she asked, serious again.
Well, let’s see now, I thought. I know where bad boy Kurt Drucker
is going to show up tonight. Two years on the Most Wanted list and who
tracks him down in a matter of days? Me. The crack amateur detective.
“Nothing,” I said firmly. “Nothing at all.”
“You sure about that?”
Maybe I could use this opportunity to pry information out of Pearl.
“Somebody told me that Tess used to be a heroin addict. Does that fit
with what you know?”
“The medical examiner found needle scars on her arms and thighs,
but they weren’t recent. She may have had a drug problem in the past,
but she’d been clean for a while before she died.”
“Do you know where Tess got the drugs?”
“We’re still investigating,” Pearl said.
“Do you think that someone connected with drugs killed her?”
Softly, softly.
“We’re still investigating.”
Damn it, I was wasting my breath here. “One more thing,” I said. “I
discovered that the killer is really an alien from the planet Zork. He
whizzed on down in his spaceship and dissected her in the name of
intergalactic science.”
“Is that supposed to be funny?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’ll be funnier if I tell it a second time.”
“Enough jokes, Jack. Did you find out anything else?”
I’d found out plenty, but did that mean I could trust the force’s finest
not to bungle the job? “No,” I said, “that’s as far as I’ve gotten.”
“And that’s as far as you will get.” The sound of cop was back in
her voice. “Because as of right now, this amateur investigation of yours
is over.”
I didn’t say anything. My fingers tightened around the phone.
“Do you understand?” she said.
“Yeah.”
There was a silence. Uncomfortable for her, I hoped. “I’m doing
you a favour by locking you out of this, Jack,” she said at last. “You
can’t afford to expose yourself to any further suspicion. Detective
Constable Gars is already trying to convince the prosecutor that you
killed Tess Hinley.”

I snorted. “Gars couldn’t convince his own arse not to crap in his
jocks.”
“Like it or not, you are a suspect, Jack. You–”
“All the more reason for me to find the killer and clear my name!”
My heart was racing. “Gars has got it in for me. He’d rather stitch me
up than try to find the real killer.” There, I’d said it for the record.
Pearl’s voice lowered. “Gars is only doing his job, Jack. Think
about it rationally. You claim you were the last person to see Tess alive,
but there are no witnesses to support that. And you have to admit, your
story about the van coming back a second time doesn’t sound
particularly credible.”
Now I knew why she’d gone over that point so many times during
the interview. A small, cold lump of fear started to pulse in the pit of my
stomach.
“You’re unemployed and unmarried,” she went on. “In front of a
courtroom, with twelve hard-eyed jurors waiting to pounce on any
mistake you make, you’re going to look like the logical suspect.”
“What about you, Pearl?” I asked, and my voice didn’t sound
anywhere near as confident as I wanted it to. “You believe me, don’t
you?”
“I’ve already told you more than I should have.”
“But do you believe me?”
“I want to believe you, Jack,” she said reluctantly. “My instincts tell
me you did everything you could to help that girl. Which is more than
most men would do.”
“It wasn’t enough,” I said. “I failed her. That’s why I need to find
the killer.”
“No, Jack! You have to back off, for your own sake. You’re
interfering in a murder investigation, in which, right now, you are the
prime suspect. Try to imagine explaining your actions to a jury. What
are they going to think?”
That icy feeling of dread in my stomach intensified.
“Let me tell you what they’ll think,” she continued in a near-
whisper. “They’ll think whatever the highly-paid prosecution barrister
wants them to think. He’ll tell them your so-called investigation was
really a desperate attempt to cover up your crime. That you went around
threatening those people you’ve talked to, trying to shut them up.”
“That’s not true.”

“It doesn’t have to be true. Just imagine yourself in front of a jury.
Who are they going to believe? You, in your shabby suit, with some
laughable excuse about trying to right wrongs? Or the thousand-dollar-
an-hour Queen’s Counsel with his persuasive, logical argument?”
“They’ll believe me,” I said hoarsely. “I’ll be the one telling them
the truth.”
Pearl sighed. “Don’t be naïve, Jack. I’ve been in this game a long
time. I’ve seen well-meaning people go to prison and guilty men go
free. The legal system doesn’t care about the truth. It’s all about who’s
best at making their spiel sound like the truth.”
“Wow,” I said dryly. “A jaded cop with wisdom.”
“Jack, I’m warning you, just back off. You have to leave this one to
us.”
My mind rebelled against the idea of giving up, but what she was
saying made a lot of sense. “I guess you’re right.”
Pearl’s voice became gentler. “I understand your reasons, Jack. You
want justice for Tess, but mostly you want to find the killer yourself
because he made you feel weak and guilty for not being able to save
her.”
I was quiet. I didn’t trust my voice. She had me pegged pretty
accurately.
“I also know why it’s so hard for you to let this go,” she said, her
voice softening further. “I read in your file about what happened to your
parents when you were a boy.”
Rage swelled up in me. “You don’t know shit about me, Pearl!” My
fist pounded the desk. “Goddamn you! What did you have to bring that
up for?”
“I’m only trying to help you understand–”
“Your help is not required, Detective. If I want someone to explain
my tragic past to me, then I’ll go to a bloody psychiatrist. I don’t want
to hear your half-baked theories about my feelings. You don’t know a
goddamned thing about how I feel!”
“Jack–”
I slammed the phone down. The shakes were coming in waves.
Dark memories, summoned from my own private hell, threatened to
burst out into a full-scale panic attack. My heart thumped wildly,
rattling the bars of its cage of ribs. My hands twisted uncontrollably into
claws. I could only breathe by gasping through my mouth.

My parents, dead and butchered. The knife spearing my guts and
slicing open my face. The killer gloating, “Here’s something else to
remember me by, Jacky boy…”
I fought it hard. I focused on being mad at Pearl, desperately trying
to rechannel my emotions. Blood pulsed in my temples with the strain.
I punched the desk again and again until my knuckles blistered and the
past began to fade. Something else to remember me by, the voice from
the past hissed once more before slithering away.
I needed a drink. Got one poured. Drank it. Poured another. I
hesitated with the glass at my lips, and then eased it down again
untouched. The shakes were gone; it was over. It had been almost a
year now since my last major attack, but at least this one had been
relatively mild. There was no need to get drunk.
I busied myself with familiar rituals. I watered my alfalfa farm and
packed the latest crop into my tobacco tin. I shaved and put on fresh
clothes, swung by the supermarket for groceries, and then cooked a
proper lunch of pepper steak with sour-cream potatoes and beans,
washing it down with orange juice while I read the newspaper. There
was no mention of Tess; she’d already become yesterday’s news,
superseded by the more potent tragedy of a footballer’s injured
hamstring. Afterwards, with my belly full and my mind settled, I felt
nearly human again. I knew what I had to do now.
The only salvation for me was to see this thing through to the gritty
end. If I backed down now because of a few fears and obstacles, I
would lose any self-respect I had left. Despite what Detective Sergeant
Pearl – whose first name I didn’t even know – had said, I had to keep
going, even if it left my life in ruins.
Even if it left me dead.

Chapter Fourteen
R everend Alistair Hoffman’s holy mansion loomed before me. It

was three o’clock in the afternoon and I still had plenty of time
to kill before heading out to St. Kilda. Might as well ask the good
Reverend if he’d heard any interesting confessions lately. If I was lucky,
I might even wangle a blessing out of him.
For now, mine was the only car in the driveway; the other sinners
probably only showed up on Sundays to gargle the holy wine and tithe
their paycheques away. I leaned on the doorbell and heard it chime
inside. I wondered if Hoffman would have anything to tell me. If Tess
had confided in anyone, surely she would have blabbed to her priest. All
I had to do was worm the information out from under his confidential
dog collar. I practised my most disarming smile, but it felt too much like
a wooden grimace. I jiggled the doorbell again and waited.
The afternoon air was warm, the sun and clouds playing peekaboo
with each other. Birds twittered in the pine trees behind me and the
smell of freshly mown grass tickled my nostrils. Maybe Hoffman was
busy trying to wake God with a few heartfelt prayers for bigger
donations. He’d be wasting his time though: God’s a heavy sleeper. I
reached for the bell again and the door clacked and swung open. A
fresh-faced teenage girl looked up and blinked at me.
“Oh, hello?” She wore a tight T-shirt with a pink handprint emblem
splayed across the chest. Her legs were long and tanned and ended in a
pair of bare feet. She had a cute face, with wavy blonde hair that fell in
front of her eyes, and a demure smile straight out of a centrefold. She
couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old. When she grew up,
she’d be a man-killer.
“Hi. My name’s Jack Marsh. Is the master of the mansion home?”
“Reverend Hoffman?”
“Yeah, Reverend Hoffman. Can I talk to him?”
“You want to talk to Reverend Hoffman?” There was a puzzled look
on her face.
“Yes, I’d like to talk to Reverend Hoffman.”
“Oh!” she said. “You want to see Reverend Hoffman!”
“Uh huh.” I was starting to feel like a Hemingway character.
“Crystal told me he wanted a word with me.”

“Um, I’ll see if he’s available. What did you say your name was
again?”
“Bozo the Clown.”
“I’m sorry, who?” She still had that crease of puzzlement on her
pretty forehead. I was starting to suspect that she wore it often.
“Jack Marsh.”
“Oh, okay, that’s what I thought you said.” The frown subsided.
“I’m Vanessa.”
“Hi, Vanessa.” I noticed that she wore a gold crucifix necklace
similar to the ones I’d seen on Tess and Crystal.
“Hi, Jack.” She looked me over appraisingly. “Say, you’re
handsome!” she said.
I was flattered, but she was way too young. “I’m having a good hair
day,” I said. “Do you live here?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “It’s such a wonderful place.”
“Yeah,” I said dryly. “God must pay Hoffman a damn good salary.”
Vanessa pouted. “Don’t say that. Reverend Hoffman worked really,
really hard for this place. He really did!”
“Really?”
“Yes, really!” She nodded vigorously, her long hair jumping around
her face. She was a nice enough kid, if you didn’t mind the echo coming
from between her ears.
“Hey, what happened to your cheek?” she asked.
I rubbed my scar self-consciously. “One of the lions in the arena
swatted me with its paw,” I said. “But fortunately the Romans gave me
the thumbs up.”
“Oh, okay,” she said, and went back to staring unabashedly at my
face. Maybe I should have drawn a picture to help her get the joke.
“Uh, about the Reverend?” I prompted.
“Oh, that’s right,” she said. “Hang loose. I’ll see if I can find him.”
The door closed and I heard her padding off into the house to look for
Hoffman. It was a big house. Hopefully she’d tied a ball of string to the
doorknob so that she could find her way back again.
I hung loose. I tried to peer through the bay window, but the sun
was shining directly on the glass and it was difficult to see inside. I
could just make out the silhouette of the conference table I’d seen during
my previous snooping expedition. From what I could see, it was
probably worth more than my entire annual dole handout.

The door opened and Reverend Alistair Hoffman himself strode
towards me. He was a big, broad-shouldered man, but he moved with a
kind of leonine grace. He wore regular clothes, with a white clerical
collar showing at his throat. He stepped in close and seized my right
hand.
“Jack, isn’t it?” He had the salesman’s handshake, and his beard
curled up into a professional smile that didn’t quite touch his eyes.
“Crystal’s told me all about you. From what I hear, you’re trying to find
out who killed our Tess.”
“You heard right.”
“Surely the police are better qualified to handle these matters?”
“That,” I said, “is a matter of opinion.”
“I see.” He released my hand. “Well, come on inside, Jack. I’m
happy to do whatever I can to help.” He gave a magnanimous shrug.
“We can talk in my office.”
I followed him across the threshold. I didn’t much like his
patronising attitude, but on the off chance that he might know something
useful, I was willing to put up with a few minutes of biting my tongue.
The mansion was surreally decorated: the walls had been papered
with embossed golden crosses set into a swirling orange cloud pattern,
while the carpet looked like a shimmering electric blue fungus. I could
smell the heady fumes of a joss stick, and heard New Age instrumental
music being piped from a hidden sound system somewhere. I blinked a
few times to make sure I hadn’t stepped into a bizarre parallel
dimension.
Vanessa was waiting in the hallway, watching me curiously. “Be a
good girl and bring us a pot of coffee, will you.” Hoffman told her.
“Yes, Reverend.” She trotted off deeper into the house, weaving her
teenage behind from side to side as she went. She moved as if she were
high on something that wasn’t just the joy of living. It made me wonder
about that joss stick.
Hoffman led me down the hallway to a heavy door and unlocked it
with a key from his pocket. His office was a cosy room crowded with
bookshelves and an expensive looking TV cabinet. The bookshelves
were mostly tenanted by legal textbooks, with the exception of one shelf
which was entirely devoted to a wonderful collection of miniature
crystal and pewter elephants. Hoffman took the plush leather chair
behind his mahogany desk and waved me to one of the guest chairs on

the other side.
“I used to be a barrister before I began doing the Lord’s work,” he
explained, indicating the law books. “Thanks to my success in that field,
I now have the luxury of being able to pursue my true calling in this
magnificent home.”
“What sort of cases were you involved in?”
“Criminal defence, mostly,” he said. “White collar fraud, possession
charges, that sort of thing. Rarely anything terribly exciting, I’m afraid,
but all lucrative nonetheless.”
I felt that slight tingle at the back of my mind again, the sense that an
important connection triggered by Hoffman’s words had flitted almost
close enough to grasp. I strained for it, but it stayed maddeningly out of
reach and remained just a tingle.
It made me feel churlish. “What about donations from the faithful?”
I asked. “Do you count those on your tax return?”
Hoffman looked at me. “I run a free church, Jack. None of my
followers have ever been asked for money.” His perfectly capped teeth
glinted. “My personal investments and other business enterprises bring
in more than enough to meet my needs.”
I grinned. “Do diamond-studded toothbrushes count as needs?”
His mouth tightened into a slash in his beard. “The Lord’s message
is far more important than petty monetary matters,” he said with a
condescending edge to his voice.
“If you say so.” I was beginning to suspect that The Lord hadn’t
blessed Reverend Hoffman with a sense of humour.
There was a discreet knock at the door. Hoffman said, “Enter,” and
Vanessa came in bearing a tray laden with steaming hot coffee, sugar,
and cream in a little jug. Actual cream, not milk. The coffee had been
percolated and smelled divine, a far cry from the instant paint-stripper I
drank at home. Vanessa carefully poured out two cups, and handed one
to Hoffman.
“Cream or sugar, Jack?” she asked. The tip of her tongue winked at
me from the corner of her mouth.
“One sugar and lots of cream, thanks.”
She stirred it in and brought the cup to me. Our fingers touched as
she handed me the cup and she gazed directly into my eyes until I felt an
uncomfortable blush crawl across my face. Just what I didn’t need: a
teenage Lolita with a crush on me. Then she was gone, the door closing

softly behind her.
The coffee was excellent. Hoffman dabbed at his bearded lips with a
handkerchief. He stared at me. “Do you believe in God, Jack?”
I made a noncommittal grunt and busied myself with my coffee.
“Do you believe in Jesus Christ our Saviour?”
Might as well get it over with. “No. I’m not a Christian.”
He lifted a well-practiced eyebrow. “Surely you must believe in
something. That there is some higher purpose in life.”
“My only purpose in life,” I said, “is to watch cricket on TV, sleep in
late, and get drunk with my mates every weekend.”
Hoffman leaned forward, his voice low. “Those are slothful, selfish
pursuits,” he said. “Jesus Christ our Lord taught that we must devote
ourselves to His service, that we must share His love and happiness with
others that they may also come to know Him.” He gave me a stern,
priestly look. “Love is the opposite of misery, Jack. When we come
together to share in Jesus’ love, there can be no unhappiness.”
Evidently Hoffman wouldn’t recognise a joke if it bit him on the
balls. I decided to play it straight. “Love is a lost cause,” I said.
“There’s too much hate and anger and suffering out there, and more
every day.”
“Love is a force, Jack. We who give ourselves to God’s service
understand that, alone, we can’t change the world. But together, we can
build a growing force of love that will stand tall against the cold wind of
evil. Alone, we have no hope. But united in the name of Christ, we
stand a chance!”
I had to admire the strength of his belief. Even though I wasn’t
religious, I sometimes envied those who were able to believe. Faith
seemed to give them a serene, unshakeable purpose, the strength to make
a stand against the indifference of life. But I was too cynically logical to
ever let myself be swept off my feet by religious mania. In a world
where science has taken away our ignorance, we no longer point our
fingers to the heavens as an explanation for the things we don’t
understand. We’ve unscrewed the mystery to see what was inside, and
now that the magic has stopped working, we don’t know how to put it
back together again.
But theological debates weren’t what I’d come here for. I said,
“Reverend, do you have any idea who might have killed Tess Hinley?”
His eyes flashed disappointment at the change of subject; I’d

knocked him off his hobbyhorse just as he was racing into the home
stretch. He leaned back in his chair. “None at all, I’m afraid.”
“Did she ever say anything about being scared of somebody?”
“Sorry, no.” He shrugged expansively.
“Did she ever confess anything that might be relevant?” I let the
question dangle and waited to see if he would pick it up and tug at the
thread.
“We don’t have confessionals here.”
I was wasting my time. Hoffman didn’t know anything. Not one
person in this whole damned case knew anything. I stared into my cup
to see if I could spot any better questions floating there. Nothing. I
drained the cup and got dregs in my mouth.
Hoffman said, “Tess was a sweet, happy Christian girl without an
enemy in the world. I can’t think of anyone who would do such horrible
things to her.”
“I can think of one person.” I played my hole card and hoped
Hoffman hadn’t been peeking: “A drug dealer named Kurt Drucker.”
Hoffman lifted an eyebrow. “Is that so?”
“Yeah, Drucker’s a real nasty slice of bacon. Word on the street is
that he was supplying Tess with drugs.”
Hoffman’s brow wrinkled. “I never saw any indication that Tess
was involved with narcotics. And as counsellor to a number of troubled
young people, believe me, I do know the signs. Are you sure you’re not
mistaken?” He shook his head as if unable to accept that one of his
faithful could possibly have hidden a secret from him.
“Several witnesses have confirmed it.”
“I know Tess had her problems, but… drugs?”
I pounced on that. “What problems?”
He waved his hands. “Only God knows what darkness the human
heart holds,” he said, as if that answered everything.
It was time to bring out the thumbscrews. “What troubles,
Reverend?”
Hoffman’s face darkened slightly. “I couldn’t say. Tess, God bless
her soul, unfortunately chose to leave the church before I could help her
with her difficulties.” He grimaced. “I understand she had a falling out
with Crystal over some boy.”
“Duong Nguyen,” I said. “Crystal swiped him away from her.”
Hoffman didn’t seem to hear me. “I implored her to stay, of course.

I begged Tess to practise Christian forgiveness. But she was young and
impulsive, and she wouldn’t listen to me.” He fixed me with hot,
penetrating eyes that boiled with regret. “If she hadn’t turned her back
on God and those who loved her, she might still be alive today. Without
the supporting love of Christ to guide her, she simply lost her way.”
I waited to see if any new information might be tied to the end of the
sermon. But the heat of righteousness had subsided, and all he said was,
“I pray for her soul.” For a moment he looked ten years older, drained
by loss and regret, and then his face smoothed out into a blank sheet of
faux holiness again.
There was nothing for me here. It was becoming more and more
obvious that Kurt Drucker was probably the killer. All I’d gained in
talking to Hoffman was a little more background confirmation that Tess
had been a troubled girl. But I still had an uneasy rumbling in my gut
that told me there was more to this case than met the eye. I tried again to
summon that tickling sense of revelation that had flickered in my mind
earlier, but it remained frustratingly out of reach.
I thanked Hoffman and got up to leave, nodding politely as he made
inviting noises about coming back to join the group for a bible-reading
class some time. I barely listened; already my mind was working on
strategies for tackling Drucker tonight.
At the front door, Hoffman shook my hand. “Good luck, Jack,” he
said. “You’ll keep me informed if you learn anything, won’t you?”
“I’ll try.”
“May God smile favourably on your endeavours.”
I laughed. “It’ll make a change from Him pissing on me.” Seeing a
frown start to form on Hoffman’s face, I said a quick goodbye, and left.
I made it to my car without being struck by lightning. Hoffman’s
frown followed me all the way to the gate.

Chapter Fifteen
B y the time I reached St. Kilda, night had crept into the sky and
disposed of the sun like a black-hearted assassin. The Fun
Palace was on Fitzroy Street, a gaudy eyesore in the middle of
cosmopolitan nirvana. I drove with the window down, searching in vain
for a parking spot. Seagulls cawed with hungry dissatisfaction, echoing
the materialistic cries of their human counterparts. The breeze lifted the
smell of Port Phillip Bay to my nose: not the pleasant ocean scent of
poetry, but a damp, murky odour of marine death, rising up from the
depths like the spirits of drowned sailors. Down on the esplanade, the
happy people strolled and rollerbladed and courted, while out on the
pier, a solitary figure stood looking out to sea, perhaps mourning a
long-lost dream or contemplating a watery suicide. The iconic kiosk at
the end of the pier had been rebuilt after a fire, I remembered; its new
face looked the same as its old one. When I looked back, the person on
the pier was gone.
I finally found a niche to squeeze the car into, reversing in just as a
bottle blonde in a Mercedes tried to claim the space. She gave me a
spoiled pout, and then when I still didn’t budge, the finger. I took out
my alfalfa holder and popped the last handful of sprouts into my mouth.
The gaping clown’s maw of Luna Park wasn’t visible from here, but I
could hear distant screams as the Scenic Railway rollercoaster plunged
into its abyss of manufactured terror. Outside the car, a used syringe lay
in the gutter, the by-product of a brief, manufactured glimpse of heaven.
And in the notorious back alleys just a few blocks from here, the street
prostitutes would be busily manufacturing love on demand. I checked
my watch; it was almost eight.
The Fun Palace’s walls were grimy from cigarette smoke and the
arcade games looked at least a decade out of date. Only a couple of
bored kids were playing the machines. A pot-bellied man with white
hair snored on a stool behind the change counter. I pretended to browse
the bleeping and flashing machines as I watched the front entrance. One
of the kids lost his game and stared sullenly at me as though it had been
my fault. I fished around in my pockets as if hunting for coins until he
stopped looking.
A few minutes later, two goons entered. Neither of them looked like

Kurt Drucker. They looked more like sides of beef that had escaped
from the butcher’s hook. The bigger one wore an ill-fitting grey
business suit buttoned tightly around an excess of muscles. He had
cabbage ears and a nose that had been broken into the shape of an
S-bend. He looked like one of those guys who open beer bottles with
their eye sockets for party tricks. His right hand was hidden inside his
coat pocket.
The other man was leaner, but still no slouch in the bodybuilding
stakes. He wore a crisp new blue suit, but the cruel, sharp-edged
expression on his face spoiled his looks. He stared at me with hard
lizard eyes. “That’ll be him,” he said to his partner.
They flanked me on either side. The thug in the grey suit raised the
bulge in his pocket towards me. “I have a gun in here,” he said in a
surprisingly mellow voice. He jiggled the pocket. “And I’m an
excellent shot.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls,” I said.
“So you’re a funny guy, huh?” he said with a half-smile. “What do
you think, mate?” he asked the mean-looking thug. “Is he a funny guy?”
Blue was studying his fingernails in a bored way. “I’m sure he
thinks he is,” he said, picking a fleck of dirt from under one nail.
“Then I’ll try not to laugh too hard,” Grey said, “in case I split my
sides.” His eyes sparkled with good humour, but his shoulders were set
for action.
“We wouldn’t want that,” I said. “Your suit’s under enough strain as
it is.”
“See what I mean? Too funny for his own good.” He rustled his
coat again.
I waited. Maybe there was a gun in that pocket, and maybe it was
just a banana, but I wasn’t going to take the chance. There was no
karate move for blocking bullets.
“We hear,” Blue said, “that you’ve been asking about Mr. Drucker.”
“Which is why we’re here,” his partner added.
“Because Mr. Drucker doesn’t like people asking about him,” Blue
finished.
I exaggerated a wince. “You guys need to work on your tag-team
routine. You’re about as witty as a tax office press release.”
They only smiled at that, which unnerved me. It meant they couldn’t
be rattled into making mistakes.

“Alright,” I said. “So that little worm Needles blabbed to Drucker,
and Drucker sent you oafs out to put the arm on me. What now?”
“Now we’ll casually walk outside to our car,” Grey said. “Mr.
Drucker wants to see you.” He motioned with the concealed gun.
We moved out onto the sidewalk in tight formation. The snoozing
owner and the kids hammering away at the arcade machines didn’t even
notice that I was being kidnapped, or if they did, they didn’t much care.
A pinpoint itch in the small of my back felt like a premonition of where
the first bullet would strike.
A silver BMW was double-parked out front. It looked very new and
shiny. Blue opened the back door and motioned me inside. “The ride of
your life,” he said.
“Please keep your hands inside the vehicle at all times,” said the
other one.
“You two are such comedians,” I said. “If you were any funnier,
someone might accidentally chuckle.”
“Try this on for laughs then,” Blue said, and punched me in the
stomach with a sledgehammer fist. “How’d you like that skit, tough
guy?”
I was doubled over with pain, outnumbered, and a gun was aimed at
me. Baiting them probably wasn’t the smart thing to do. “You hit like a
schoolgirl,” I gasped.
“You’ll be screaming like one soon enough. Now get in.”
I slid onto the backseat. Grey crowded into the back with me, still
smiling. He kept the pocket pointed at me while Blue got the car
moving. Once we were underway, he withdrew his hand to reveal the
cold, unblinking eye of a heavy-looking gun. The eye lifted until it was
staring directly at my face.
“If you make a move,” Grey said, “I’ll shoot you.” There was none
of the friendliness now. “If you try to attract attention, I’ll shoot you. If
you so much as fart, I’ll shoot you.”
I glared at him. “What if I call you a fat, stupid idiot?”
“Then I’ll shoot you,” he said. “Give me your wallet.”
“So you’re petty thieves as well.” I pulled out my wallet and handed
it to him. He took it with his left hand, his right never wavering, and
passed it over the seat to Blue, who began flicking through it as he
drove.
Grey grinned. “Relax. Lucas is just checking your ID to make sure

you’re not John Smith or Joe Bloggs.”
“It’s Fred Nerk, actually.”
“I’ll make sure they spell it right on your tombstone,” he said,
smirking.
“His name’s Jack Marsh,” announced the thug named Lucas. “Lives
in Ringwood.” He handed the wallet back to me and I put it away.
“Pleased to meet you, Jack,” Grey said. “I’m Warren. You’ll
forgive me if I don’t shake.”
“Sure.” The back of my head was growing damp with sweat.
“Needles told us you’re some kind of martial arts pro. Said he
almost had you wiped out in that dunny before you pulled a trick Bruce
Lee move on him.” He snorted. “I’d say Needles is prone to
exaggeration, wouldn’t you, Jack?”
“Let’s just say I hope he washed his hands.”
“Clever.” Warren tilted his brows forward in a serious expression.
“Now, tell me why you’ve been poking around in Mr. Drucker’s pants.”
“I’ll tell that to Drucker.”
Warren’s eyes hardened. He lifted the gun to within an inch of my
nose. “Don’t make me have to scrub the upholstery.”
“That’s easily avoided,” I said. “Don’t shoot.”
He glared at me for a long moment before lowering the gun.
Shrugged as if it didn’t matter either way. But he kept the gun trained
steadily on my chest.
We drove along St. Kilda Road, then took Kings Way out to the
Westgate Freeway, passing through downtown Melbourne in all its bleak
industrial glory. Soon we were crossing the Westgate Bridge, that great
metal monster of death. Thirty-five construction workers died during its
birthing throes, and in its maturity the bridge has despatched countless
unhappy souls ever since. The stark lights of the city grew distant as we
made our way further into the black rural night.
We travelled for almost half an hour in silence. I watched Warren’s
hands, waiting for either an opportunity or a bullet to come my way.
Neither did. At the outskirts of Werribee, Lucas slowed the BMW and
turned onto a dark road lined with wire fences on either side. We passed
a sign, and in the flash of headlights, I saw that we had entered a
municipal garbage tip. I had no doubt that they were planning to kill me.
The lights from the freeway winked out as the car glided around a
curve. I glimpsed scrub and trees off to the sides. No houses, no people;

the tip was closed for the night. Warren faded to a murky silhouette
with gleaming eyes. Moonlight glinted off the barrel of his gun.
“Let me go now,” I said, just to be saying something tough, “and I’ll
let you both off with a stern reprimand.”
Neither of them bothered with that, not even to hit me. Obviously
this was the serious part. A trickle of sweat dripped down the back of
my neck.
Ahead was an area of desolate ground filled with huge mountains of
rubbish. There was one section for plant cuttings and grass, another for
recyclables, and a pit for tossing in hard waste. Old car tyres stacked in
rickety towers swayed in the wind like unsteady drunks. The bulldozer
had been locked away for the night. A sparse forest of bushland
surrounded the tip. I wondered if daylight would show the trees leaning
away from their smelly neighbours.
The BMW stopped near a small building that was probably the toll
office. Lucas shut down the engine but left the headlights on. My right
eye began twitching; I couldn’t stop staring into the barrel of the gun.
The smell of garbage began to seep into the car, rank and offensive in
the back of my nose.
“Get out,” Warren said.
“Why? So you can kill me?”
“Not me,” he said, grinning. “That’s not my job…”
Outside, as if on cue, a pair of brilliant headlights flashed on. A
sleek, nearly invisible car rolled out from behind the toll building. A
black Porsche 911 Turbo, my dream car. Somehow I doubted that its
owner would be selling me any dreams tonight.
“Out,” Warren ordered. He wasn’t smiling. I opened my door and
climbed out. Warren scooted across the seat and shoved me forward
before I could even think about slamming the door in his face. I
staggered a few steps and spun around, my fists clenched, and saw the
gun aimed at my chest. Warren grinned. Lucas moved up beside him,
arms folded, his cruel eyes like watchful snakeheads waiting to strike.
The Porsche’s door slammed. A shiver rippled ominously down my
spine. I turned and saw the silhouette of a man walking towards us,
carrying a bag that swung against his leg as he walked.
Lucas nodded to the figure. “Evening, Mr. Drucker.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Drucker said, stepping into the light. His eyes were
small and greedy and a little too moist. He jerked his head at me. “So

what’s your name, faggot?” His moustache lifted into a sneer.
I glared at him and said nothing.
“I asked you a question!” His eyes jiggled dangerously.
“Yeah,” I said. “And it didn’t deserve an answer.”
“His name’s Jack Marsh,” Lucas told him. “He’s the one who
roughed up Needles. We found him waiting at the drop.”
“Trapped like a rat in a slippery dunny,” Warren added, smiling.
Drucker ignored the joke. “So, Jack Marsh, I hear you’ve been
talking about me without saying please.” He rubbed his moustache as he
considered me. “Think you’re a tough guy, do you?”
“Yep.” Well, he’d asked.
He laughed. It was a wet, gurgling sound. “Well, well, well. A
tough guy.” He gestured to his men. “Oh, I just love tough guys, don’t
I, boys? Breaking them is so much more rewarding…”
I didn’t say anything. The nearest cover was the toll building, but
that would be locked for the night and I wouldn’t find any refuge there.
The rubbish and tyre mounds were exposed and useless. The bushland
bordering the tip was my best bet, but Warren’s gun would cut me down
before I reached the nearest trees twenty metres away.
“It’s a nice night for a chat, isn’t it?” Drucker said. He lowered his
bag to the ground. It looked like one of those leather bags that old-time
doctors used to carry when making house calls. He smirked. “A nice
night for some friendly fun.”
“If you say so.”
He motioned to Lucas, who stepped up and pinned my arms behind
my back. I didn’t resist. I could feel Lucas’s breath on the back of my
neck.
Drucker looked me over and gave a little squeal. “Isn’t he
marvellous? Such a brave little tough guy, this Jack Marsh fellow.” He
prodded my chest with his finger. “Now, why have you been trying to
find me?”
“Because of Tess Hinley,” I said.
His nose wrinkled. “Oh, her.”
“So you admit you killed her?” I all but shouted.
“I haven’t admitted anything.” He stepped back, a nasty sneer on his
face. “And anyway, even if I did have something to admit, why would I
admit it to you?”
“Why not? You’re holding all the cards right now.”

“This isn’t a James Bond movie,” he said, and laughed scornfully.
“You’re here to die, not listen to speeches.” He leaned forward to
whisper in my ear. “I will tell you one thing though: I don’t kill girls.” I
heard that slight note of disgust again. “You’ve gone chasing the wrong
man and landed yourself in a pickle for nothing.”
“Maybe you didn’t kill her yourself,” I said, “but you’re involved
somehow.”
He snorted with amusement. “Either you’ve got balls, Jack Marsh,”
he said, “or you’re real stupid.”
“A bit of both,” I said. “But it hasn’t stopped me yet.”
He nodded agreement. “Yet.”
“Who killed her, Drucker? She was your customer.”
“What does it matter?” he said dismissively. “She took her medicine
like a good little bitch. Now she’s dead, so who cares? There are
always more junkies.”
I felt like curing his oily expression with a double dose of knuckles.
“There wouldn’t be any junkies if it weren’t for scumbag dope peddlers
like you,” I said, and tried to stare him down. For once, I lost. He was
too intense, and the fact that one click of his fingers would lodge a bullet
in my brain didn’t help.
He snickered. “See, you’re not so tough, Jack Marsh.” He leaned
forward conspiratorially and said, “Do you really want to know who
killed the bitch?”
“Who?”
He grinned. “You can ask her yourself. She’s waiting for you at the
Boneyard Hotel.” His moustache twitched like a thick black slug
crawling across his lip. “You’ll be checking in there real soon now.”
“Yeah,” echoed Lucas. “Real soon.”
They all got a laugh out of that. It didn’t much tickle my funny bone
though, so I interrupted them with: “Who killed her, damn it?”
Drucker stared at me. “Jeez! Why are you so worked up about one
silly little junkie cow, anyway? Screwing her, were you?”
“She didn’t deserve to die like that. The man who killed her does
though.”
Drucker sneered. “Such tough talk for such a little poofter.” He
poked my chest again. “But now I’ve heard enough of your posturing
and I’ve answered enough of your questions. Now it’s my turn to get
some answers.” He kneaded his moustache between his fingers. “Who

told you about me?”
“Nobody. I looked in the Yellow Pages under ‘Filthy Scumbags’
and yours was the biggest ad.”
He slapped my face. “Do you like pain, Jack? Because if you don’t,
it would be very foolish of you to insult me.” My cheek stung, but I
couldn’t rub it with Lucas gripping my arms. “I’ll ask you one more
time,” Drucker said. “Why were you looking for me? Try to answer
politely this time.”
Anger began building inside me like a volcano preparing to erupt. “I
wanted to find you,” I said, “to tell you what a sick piece of filth you
are.”
Drucker planted a hairy hand on my chest. He leaned his moustache
into my face. “I hope you enjoy screaming, Jack Marsh,” he said, his
breath sour and stinking of onions. “You’ll be doing rather a lot of it
tonight.” He punched me hard in the stomach, but I was expecting it and
had tightened my stomach muscles. I gave him a groan anyway, so he
wouldn’t feel like a failure. He threw back his head and laughed.
“You like that?” he shouted. “You want some more?” He hit me
again in the same spot. It hurt, but I felt Lucas’s grip on my sweaty arms
loosen momentarily when the punch connected. It gave me an idea.
Drucker opened his leather bag and rummaged inside it. He brought
out a pair of pliers and lifted them up for me to see. “See these, Jack?
Know what I’m going to do with them if you don’t behave?” A mad fire
crackled in his piggy eyes.
“I can guess.”
“So many options, aren’t there, Jack? Teeth, eyelids, nipples,
testicles.” His lip curled. “You’re going to answer my questions now,
aren’t you, pretty boy? While you’ve still got a tongue?”
I nodded slowly. Behind me, Lucas chuckled.
“Now,” Drucker said. “For the last time, why were you trying to
find me?”
“I knew Tess was taking drugs. I figured she had to be getting them
through someone at the university, so I went after Needles and found out
about you through him.”
“You’re lying. Needles told the boys you already knew my name.”
He shook his head with mock sadness and clicked the pliers open and
shut. “Liars must be punished, Jack. Didn’t your mother ever teach you
not to lie to people?”

My shirt was soaked with sweat. My throat was dry. But to hell
with it. I met his gaze and said, “Yeah, but she told me there was one
exception.”
“What’s that?”
“When the person is a sick piece of filth like you.”
Kurt Drucker’s face compressed into a mask of hate. He jabbed out
with the pliers and pinched them into the meat of my bicep. My arm
screamed with white fire. “What did you say to me?” he demanded.
I repeated myself through a stoic grimace. He repositioned the pliers
onto my left pectoral muscle and squeezed, hard. I gasped as the metal
teeth ground relentlessly into muscle and flesh. Drucker released a small
wet giggle of glee.
“Say it again,” he dared me. He released the pliers and clicked them
menacingly.
I said it again.
Drucker sneered. He reached for my face with the pliers and I kneed
him in the groin. His legs buckled, and as he fell, I brought my foot
down fast and stomped on Lucas’s shin. Lucas yelped; his grip on my
arms loosened. I windmilled my arms free, reached back over my
shoulder, and grabbed a hunk of hair. I rolled my torso to the side and
yanked. Classic flip position. Lucas sailed over my back, his body
following his scalp. Warren had only just begun to react, the gun
starting to rise. I bucked Lucas towards him and they both went down in
a jumble of limbs. I didn’t stop to watch; I hurdled Drucker and ran for
the trees.
“Kill him!” Drucker shrieked. I heard the thugs scrambling to their
feet. The trees were still fifteen metres away. I was a moving target in
open space. I put my head down and sprinted. Ten more metres…
“Out of the way, Luke!” shouted Warren. I strafed sharply to the left
and a bullet cracked through the space where I’d just been. I made a
final dash for the trees, the skin on the back of my neck humming like a
live wire. Five metres…
A second bullet snapped past so close to my face that a wave of
scorched air puffed my cheek. I lunged into the cover of the trees,
crashing through leaves and twigs with one forearm held up to protect
my face. My feet barely touched the ground. Shrubs and ferns clutched
at my legs as I bolted through them. An unseen branch grazed the side
of my head and I bit down on my lip to keep from crying out. I regained

my balance and rushed deeper into the moonlit forest.
The gun roared again from somewhere behind me and I heard the
bullet smack into a tree a good distance to my left. They must have lost
sight of me. I could hear the crunching footsteps of the men behind me
as they worked their way cautiously into the bush. I slowed my pace
and toe-walked to the right, keeping close to cover. The moon stared at
me through a part in the clouds, making me feel naked and exposed. I
crept further into the forest until I reached a cluster of tall eucalyptus
trees. Overhead branches blotted out the moonlight, creating a pocket of
darkness. I crouched beside one of the trees, blending the outline of my
body against its trunk, and waited. I could smell the tree’s pungent
aroma, contaminated by the underlying stink from the rubbish tip. I
pawed the ground under the tree until I found a rock the size of a cricket
ball, and slid it into my pocket. It was no match for a gun, but it was
better than nothing.
“Jack Marsh!” Drucker yelled. “Get back here now!”
I compressed myself further into my hiding place. My heart knocked
erratically against my ribs like a tribal drum. I couldn’t get enough air;
every breath had to be won against the urge to stifle it. My night vision
had improved and I could see a fair distance into the milky dimness now,
but I also knew that the others would have adapted as well. The earthy
aroma of the woods smelled like an open grave.
“Over here!” Drucker called to his men. He sounded closer. I heard
them come crashing through the forest.
“What is it, boss?” Lucas asked.
“See this broken fern,” I heard Drucker say. “The stalk is still moist.
He went that way. Take the flank over there and fan out. We’ll soon
have him flushed.”
“Roger that.”
“You hear me, Jack Marsh?” Drucker shouted. “We’re coming for
you!”
They began crunching through the woods again, drawing inexorably
closer. If I stayed here, they would find me. I knew that, but my body
resisted, fear keeping me frozen in place. The first vibrations of a panic
attack started to hum in my chest. I forced myself to remember every
blow Drucker had landed on me, the humiliation of having been at his
mercy. I visualised his piggy, perverted eyes and that ridiculous
moustache. Hatred drove away the terror and my muscles unlocked. I

felt like kicking Drucker’s teeth down his throat. My fists clenched,
adrenaline pumped, and I was back in control of my body.
I slipped away from the safety of the trees, my knees popping after
crouching for so long, and hurried ahead of my pursuers. Despite my
efforts to be stealthy, twigs and bark still crackled under my feet. I
prayed that the men chasing me couldn’t hear the noises above the
sounds of their own progress. I turned my head to look behind me and a
protruding branch gouged my shoulder. Anger bristled inside me and I
almost punched the tree. Save it for Drucker, I told myself, and kept
moving.
Suddenly I reached the far edge of the forest. Ahead lay an open
hilly field with no cover. I squinted into the dark night, desperately
seeking alternatives, but there were none. Drucker and his men were
closing in. The crest of the hill was maybe two hundred metres away
and a vague glow came from that direction. I squinted harder; beyond
the hill, moonlight gleamed off a wire fence. And behind that fence, the
land dipped down to a road on which I could just make out the rooftops
of a string of residential houses. I smiled grimly. Freedom, if I could
reach it.
I took three deep breaths and was about to start running for my life
when movement snagged the corner of my eye. A dark figure emerged
from the forest just five metres away, pausing at the edge of the trees.
Drucker. He tilted his head as if sniffing for my scent. The other two
were still crashing through the woods some distance away. Drucker
must have hunting experience, I realised; he had crept up on me like a
sleek, silent jaguar stalking its prey. The silhouette of his jaw turned
back and forth as he scanned the hillside. I stood there, paralysed. If I
broke away from the trees now, he would spot me immediately, but if I
didn’t act soon, Warren and Lucas would arrive in a matter of seconds.
The rock I’d picked up was still in my pocket. Moving only my arm,
I lobbed it as hard as I could, high over the tops of the trees, aiming for a
point towards the cars to make them think I’d doubled back. Moments
later, the rock clattered against something in the distance. “This way!”
Lucas yelled. “We’ve got him!” I heard him charging off through the
bush, with Warren close behind. Drucker started at the noise, but didn’t
rush off towards it as I’d hoped. The ruse hadn’t fooled him; perhaps
something had registered in his peripheral vision. He cocked his head in
my direction, as if trying to decide whether I was a man or a tree. His

teeth flashed in the moonlight.
“I know you’re there, Jack Marsh,” he whispered. “I can smell your
fear.”
I stood motionless in the darkness. He was just metres away, almost
close enough to touch. Maybe he really could smell me.
“You’re afraid of me, aren’t you, queer-boy?” he said. “You know
you’re not man enough to take me on, just you and me.” He held up his
fists and displayed them in the moonlight. “What do you say, Jack? Are
you man enough to take me?”
I said nothing. In the background, the thrashings of the two thugs
receded further into the distance.
“What’s the matter, Jack? Pliers got your tongue?” Drucker
sniggered. It was a sickly, greasy sound, and it made me hate him all the
more. Anger flooded my brain like a red cape to a bull.
“You sick piece of filth,” I growled. “I’ll wrap your tongue around
your neck and strangle you with it!” I pushed away from the tree and
launched myself at him.
Drucker’s eyes became white beacons of fear in the dimness.
“Warren, Lucas!” he screeched in a girlish voice. “Help me!”
He raised an arm to protect his head. I bashed it out of the way. I
drove my other fist into his throat with crunching impact. He made a
horrible craaak sound and staggered backwards. His blocky moustache
jiggled as though he wanted to say something, but all he could force out
was a raw, gargling rattle. He dropped to his hands and knees and began
to crawl. I stood over him, balling my fists.
The others were coming; I could hear them stomping towards us. I
reluctantly left Drucker there and began running up the hill. Shouts
chased me, almost inaudible over the pounding of blood in my head. I
didn’t dare look back, concentrating only on crossing the open area. I
poured on the speed, my calf muscles aching. Now I could see the wire
fence, just a hundred metres away. Behind me a gunshot roared, but I
was too far away now for the shooter to get a good aim, and it missed
me by a wide margin.
I risked a glance back. Lucas was jogging up the hill, only twenty
metres behind me, puffing hard but keeping pace. Warren stood in a
shooter’s stance back near the trees, trying to line me up in his sights. I
glimpsed Drucker pacing beside him, issuing orders with one hand
clutched to his throat.

My lungs burned as I approached the crest of the hill. A gunshot
crackled through the night air, the sound droning away in a piercing
whistle. Then another shot, sent to mate with the first wherever near
misses go to couple.
“Cut it out, you idiot! You’ll hit me!” Lucas yelled. He had halved
the gap between us; he was fit and strong, and his body hadn’t been
slowed by a beating the way mine had. I’d be in trouble if he caught me.
I saw Drucker and Warren begin jogging up the hill after us. Distracted,
I skidded on a patch of mud and Lucas gained another few metres on
me. The fence was twenty metres away. I faced forward, racing
desperately through the black night. Fifteen metres. Ten. Behind the
fence, the ground dropped away to reveal houses and amber streetlights.
Five metres, with Lucas’s harsh breathing right behind me…
I leapt at the fence, dug my fingers into the wire mesh. I clutched
the steel support pole and hauled myself up just as Lucas grabbed my
foot and yanked. Using his force against him, with the pole as a pivot
point, I spun around and smashed my free heel into his face. He let go
and fell hard on his butt. I swung back to the fence, climbed over the
top. Unexpected barbed wire sank into my thigh. I tore myself loose,
crying out with the pain, and flung myself over the fence. My feet hit
the slope at the wrong angle and I was thrown into a roll. I tumbled over
sharp stones, scraping down the incline until my body thumped into the
ditch at the bottom. My head took a wallop hard enough to bring me to
the brink of unconsciousness; only the adrenaline pumping through my
system kept me from slipping over the edge.
Dizzy and injured in several places, I still managed to get to my feet.
I jogged unsteadily down the road, looking for cover. There was nobody
around, but even if there had been, I knew better than to hope anyone
would stop to help me. There were plenty of houses along the street,
some with lit windows, but I didn’t want to put any families at risk. I
kept moving until I hoped I was out of gunshot range before finally
daring to look back. Drucker and his thugs were still behind the fence I
had vaulted. They watched me in silence, making no effort to climb
over and follow. I moved into the brightness of a corner streetlight so
that they could see me properly.
“Take that, you sick piece of filth!” I shouted, and gave them the
middle-finger salute with both hands. I felt giddy with relief and
triumph. I left them standing there and jogged off around the corner, my

adrenaline surge reaching its crescendo.
I made half a dozen random turns before I found a house with a “For
Lease” sign on the nature strip and no cars in the driveway. I unlatched
the side gate and sneaked through into the backyard. High brush hedges,
neglected pot plants, a sheltered decking overlooking the pool: I’d be
safe here for the night. I drank water from an outside tap and washed
my face and hands before collapsing into a canvas deckchair to assess
my injuries. My thighs and belly stung from barbed wire cuts. Some
nasty bruises were rising where Drucker had worked on me with the
pliers. And I could feel my pulse throbbing through a golf ball sized
lump on the back of my head, like a mad musician pounding out
drumbeats of pain. Whisky would fix it, if I had any, I thought ruefully.
At least my alfalfa tin had survived the adventure, although it was empty
and had no congratulations to offer.
I curled into a ball on the deckchair and tried to sleep. The
adrenaline rush had smoothed out and I was exhausted. I hugged myself
against the cold, my eyelids growing heavier and heavier as if they’d
waded into a pair of concrete boots, until finally I sank down, down,
down into the blackness, and the dark night became blissfully darker…

Chapter Sixteen
I woke to the cold light of morning and found a brown cocker

spaniel sniffing my face. It had mournful eyes and a moist
tongue. I shooed the dog away and it scurried off to a safe distance, its
claws ticking on the frost-covered decking boards. I squinted blearily at
it, and it sniffed warily at me in return. Neither of us decided the other
was worth barking at.
A wan dawn light lapped at the edges of the horizon, the moon still
lingering like the last guest to leave a party. Bloated clouds hung in the
sky like great heavy sponges, a dull promise of rain later in the day. The
pool smelled faintly of chlorine. I saw a bald lemon tree in the middle of
the yard and a small greenhouse with broken panes set back near the
fence. Early birds chirped sweet melodies to each other as they hunted
their wormy prey.
I lay there for several minutes, test-firing various muscles and
dreading the moment when I would have to stand. Nothing seemed to be
broken, and nothing hurt so badly that a shot of medicinal whisky
wouldn’t cure it. My clothes were soiled and crumpled from the night
on the deck chair, and once my nose started working again I would
probably find that I stank as well.
I sat up too fast and everything blurred. The dog began barking in
colourful, pulsing rainbows. When the dizziness subsided, I explored
the back of my head with my fingers and found a tender, grazed lump. It
wasn’t quite as big as a cricket ball, but it sure as hell felt like it had been
batted through an entire Ashes series. My eyes felt bloodshot and
swollen, as if my headache had overflowed into them.
The dog watched as I put on a free slapstick show learning how to
walk all over again. It cocked its head and yo-yoed its tongue while I
kept snatching for invisible support ropes. But I showed it in the end.
The dog couldn’t top my walking trick, so it trotted off with all four on
the floor. I patted my pockets and made out the familiar bulges of my
wallet and keys. A small relief after all I’d been through.
I wandered through the streets until I found a pay phone and called
for a taxi. I sat on the kerb, blinked once or twice, and then the taxi’s
horn was waking me up. I told the cabbie to nudge me when we reached
St. Kilda. In my dream I was in a torture chamber, tied to a hard chair.

Warren and Lucas kept shaking the chair. Kurt Drucker’s moustache
floated before my eyes as he shouted homophobic obscenities in my
face. My teeth began to rattle. Drucker reached for my chattering teeth
with his pliers, and then he disappeared and it was just the cabbie
shaking my shoulder.
There was a parking ticket on my car windscreen, which I crumpled
up and tossed into the backseat. From the mirror, a human wreck peered
back at me. The steel band of my headache intensified when I started
the car. I survived the long trip home – it only took an eternity or two to
get there – making a pit stop at a drive-through bottle shop to buy a slab
of beer and a bottle of cheap whisky. The attendant gave my injuries a
suspicious look; I gave him his money and a “don’t ask” scowl.
Back at my apartment complex, I parked too close to my neighbour’s
Cadillac. Old Mr. Scott would just have to catch the bus until I woke up
some time next year. I hefted my drinking supplies and locked the car. I
was going to get drunk, and God help anybody who tried to stop me.
An elderly voice stopped me. “I want a word with you, Marsh.” It
was Mrs. Vanguard from apartment seven. She stood at the door to the
common washroom, peering up at me out of a face as wrinkled and sour
as a gherkin. “I’ve reached my final straw with you,” she declared.
Mrs. Vanguard was our designated grouch. Every block of
apartments has one. They’re the lonely, bitter husks of humanity that the
world has forgotten. They have nobody left to pay attention to them, so
their only remaining option is to be a pain in the arse to everybody else.
The whole block lived in fear of Mrs. Vanguard. Every slight deviation
from her impossible standards soon became a cause to be championed, a
complaint to be lodged, a flag to be waved indignantly in her
neighbours’ faces to prove that her opinions still mattered.
I didn’t need this now. “Reach it some other time. I’m busy.”
“I am telling you for the last time, Marsh, I will not tolerate such
terrible noise. I have told you and told you that I expect a quiet
environment after eight in the evening.”
“So what?” I kept walking, but she moved out of the doorway to
block me.
Her face pinched up in that bird-like squint she had. “My poor cats
could not sleep with that racket going on last night. They are most
distressed today. I have told you and told you that there are to be no
loud parties in this–”

“Get your cats some earplugs then. Anyway, I wasn’t home last
night.”
“Don’t you dare lie to me, Marsh! I know you think I’m old and
senile, but I saw those friends of yours go into your apartment, and I
heard the dreadful carrying on you all made. Banging walls and
thumping Lord knows what until all hours of the night.” She wagged a
finger at me. “You can be sure I’ll be informing the landlord about this
latest outrage. Such unruly behaviour will not be allowed to–”
Suddenly I registered what she was saying. I dropped the slab of
beer and it crashed to the ground. Mrs. Vanguard yelped with alarm,
momentarily silenced. I sprinted to my apartment as she stood there
gaping. The door had been jimmied. Splinters around the frame showed
where the lock had been forced. I hit the door at a run and thundered
into the apartment, gripping the whisky bottle by the neck to use as a
club. The place had been ransacked. Nobody in the living room or
kitchen. I raced into the bedroom and saw more destruction. The
bathroom had also been vandalised. I lowered my makeshift weapon.
Drucker and his boys were gone, but they had left their mark. My
headache resumed with a sudden rush that slammed into my brain like a
nail. My mouth tasted sour and I felt like throwing up. I needed beer. I
put the whisky on my desk and went out to retrieve the slab. Mrs.
Vanguard ambushed me the moment I stepped outside.
“I’ll have you booted out this time, Marsh!” she screeched. “I’ve put
up with your inconsiderate behaviour for way too long, and I’ll be telling
the landlord–”
I snapped. “Damn it, can’t you just shut up and leave me alone for
once?”
Mrs. Vanguard looked aghast. “I will not! How dare you–”
“Save it,” I said, suddenly weary. I picked up my slab of beer;
fortunately none of the cans had burst. “Look, Mrs. Vanguard, I’m sorry
if I’ve upset you, but I’ve had a rough night. I just need to be left in
peace right now. Okay?”
She thrust her beak at me, squawking, “You don’t fool me with your
crocodile apologies, Marsh. When I’m through telling the landlord
about this latest indignity, you’ll be evicted for certain, do you hear
me?”
“Listen, those men you saw last night were crooks,” I told her.
“They broke into my apartment looking for me. I wasn’t there, so they

trashed the place.”
Mrs. Vanguard’s eyes narrowed. “Crooks! What? I don’t
understand.”
“I promise I’ll explain it to you later after I’ve sorted things out.”
But there was no chance of that. “You’re a disgrace to this
community, Marsh,” she said, her voice rising in that shrill, signature
nagging tone she had. “I always knew you were nothing but a drunken,
unemployed scoundrel, and if that weren’t bad enough, now you’re
telling me that you’ve brought criminals into our neighbourhood? I
won’t tolerate it, do you hear me? I will not tolerate it!”
I’d tolerated enough myself. “Maybe you didn’t hear me before,
Mrs. Vanguard. Those men broke into my apartment.” I gave her a hard
stare; a malicious little idea had just occurred to me. “And I’ll bet you
just stood at your window and watched. Don’t you know that it’s
against the law to stand by and do nothing while a crime is being
committed?” I was making it up to scare her, but I made it sound
convincing.
She blanched. “That’s ridiculous! I–”
“Did you even bother to call the police?”
“Of course not. I thought they were your–”
“Then that makes you an accessory after the fact, Mrs. Vanguard.
You allowed those men to commit a crime unchallenged. In the eyes of
the law, that makes you guilty of negligently abetting a felony.” I was
bullshitting freely now, inventing spontaneous cop-show jargon to
befuddle her, and enjoying every moment of it. I squared my jaw at her.
“Do you know what the maximum penalty for negligently abetting a
felony is?”
She gulped and shook her head. It was all I could do to keep a
straight face.
“Five years in prison,” I said. “Five long years cooped up with
murderers and bank robbers and thieves. No cats allowed.”
“This is ridiculous!” she said in a panicky voice. “I had no idea
those men were breaking in. I… I thought you let them in. I can’t be
held accountable for that.”
I lowered my voice to its most ominous tone. “That’ll be for the
courts to decide, Mrs. Vanguard. Maybe you’ll go to jail and maybe you
won’t, but I’ll tell you this: if you don’t stop bothering me right now,
then your name is going to feature prominently in my complaint to the

police.”
Her face turned so pale that her wrinkles stood out in bas-relief.
“You… you wouldn’t dare!”
“The hell I wouldn’t! They’ll lock you up and sell your cats to a
cannery! Now if you know what’s good for you, just shut up and leave
me alone!”
Mrs. Vanguard squawked one last cheep of alarm and then retreated
to the safety of her apartment. I grinned to myself as I lugged the beer
back inside. We all need to unleash a little spite at times, balanced out
later by remorse. I locked the broken door as best I could and wedged a
chair up under the doorknob. The sight of the destruction gave me a
renewed headache. I tore at the plastic wrapping on the slab with my
fingernails, teased a can out, drank half of it in one go, paused for breath,
drained the can, and opened another. The headache gave one last hellish
screech of persistence and then started to dull. I stored the slab in the
fridge and set about inspecting the damage.
It was bad. Drawers had been yanked and upturned. My pile of
mystery books had been kicked over and trampled on, and the bottle of
Wild Turkey I’d bought for Benny had been dashed against the wall,
leaving broken glass and alcohol everywhere. The TV screen had a big
crack in it. The phone was intact though, and the answering machine’s
message light still blinked, so at least they hadn’t smashed everything;
they probably wanted to be able to call up and gloat.
In the bedroom, most of the clothes from my wardrobe had been
dumped on the carpet and urinated on. I went for a third beer and
assessed the kitchen. Plates, cups, glasses – all swept onto the floor and
broken. My alfalfa farm had been destroyed, the plastic box twisted out
of shape and the sprouts scattered and stomped on. I ground my teeth;
somehow that was the worst insult of all.
I took the clothes Drucker had soiled out to the communal washroom
and loaded them into a machine. Mrs. Vanguard spied on me from her
window, cradling a cat in each arm. I felt too weary to even scowl at
her. The thought of cleaning up the devastation in my apartment
depressed me, but I knew it had to be done right away or I’d never feel
at home there again. It took me two hours to return the apartment to
some semblance of normality, but even then the sense of intrusion still
lingered like the after-effects of a rape: an emotional dirtiness that could
never be fully scoured clean.

The only damage to the bathroom seemed to be the shower curtain
ripped free from the rods. I took a hot, steamy bath and scrubbed away
the dirt and sweat from last night. My scratches and bruises stung, but I
kept at them with the soap and the scrubber until they shined. I counted
twenty-six minor wounds, not including a pair of skinned elbows thrown
in for free. I put disinfectant and bandaids on the worst of the cuts, and
only winced twice. An exhumed zombie stared back at me from the
bathroom mirror. My eyes were flecked with bloodshot webbing and I
had a doorknob on the back of my head. Various lumps, nicks, and
scrapes kept inviting me to their party and daring me to play the itch
game. I scratched one just to see if it’d get worse. It did.
After putting on fresh clothes, I dumped an inch of instant coffee
into one of my few surviving mugs, splashed in some hot water, and
drank the sludge with a handful of painkillers. It was still morning; it
had been a long day already, and I had no idea how I was going to cope
with the rest of it. I sat at my desk and wondered whether to call the
cops. The answering machine’s message light was blinking. I thumbed
the button to check the message.
“Hi Jack, it’s Crystal. I’m just calling to, like, find out how you
went with that Needles wacko. Did you learn any more about Kurt
Drucker? I guess you’re not home yet, huh? I’m so dying to know–”
Oh shit!
It was the message Crystal had left yesterday. I hadn’t deleted it. If
Drucker had checked the machine…
“–how it went. Anyway, when you get home, give me a call. I’m at
Duong’s place. You can call me on–”
I cut it off and reached for my phone message pad. The previous
page had been ripped off unevenly. A chill worked its way down my
spine like a parasite burrowing deeper into its host. I fanned the tip of a
lead pencil lightly over the top sheet of the message pad, bringing out
the faint impressions that had indented through from the previous sheet.
Crystal’s phone number appeared on the page, followed by Duong’s full
name and address. With horror, I realised that I’d left the beer coaster
with his details from The Green Triangle on my desk as well. Worse
still, in the comments section, somebody had written:
Damage control?

An icy noose tightened around my throat. I dialled Crystal’s mobile.
She picked up on the second ring.
“Jack?” She sounded apprehensive.
“Good guess.”
“What’s happened?”
“Drucker ambushed me,” I said. “Things got pretty rough. You and
Duong might be in trouble. Where are you now?”
“At home. I just got back from visiting Reverend Hoffman. Why,
what’s the matter?” Her voice trembled. “Has something happened to
Duong?”
“I hope not. Drucker and his men raided my place last night. They
wrote down your phone number from that message you left, and they
also copied Duong’s address from my notes.”
“What does that mean?”
“Your mobile number won’t do them much good, but Duong could
be in danger.”
“My God!”
“Here’s what I want you to do. Call Duong now, tell him to get out
of his apartment. Then call me back.”
“Sure thing.” The phone beeped in my ear.
I spent an anxious five minutes pacing the room. A thick curtain of
fear drew itself around me, deadening the voice of hope like a
soundproofed wall. Everything had gone to hell, the guilty were stalking
the innocent, and I was so deeply involved that it was hard to tell on
which side of the scales I belonged. The phone jangled like a poked
rattlesnake.
“Oh my God, Duong’s not answering. They… they must have killed
him!”
“Don’t panic,” I said, although a cold undercurrent of horror was
already seeping into my bones. “He’s probably just gone out to play
pool or steal a car or something.”
“No, no, no, something bad has happened!” she said. “I can feel it in
my heart. Oh God, Jack, how will I ever forgive myself if anything’s
happened to Duong?”
“Here’s the plan,” I said. “I’ll come over and get you. We’ll drive
out to Duong’s place together and warn him about Drucker. Everything
will be fine.”
“Do you mean that?” she asked in a small voice. “Do you promise?”

“Absolutely. I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.”
“Okay, Jack. I trust you.” I hoped that her faith wasn’t misguided;
Tess had trusted me too.
The clock had just ticked off midday by the time I pulled into
Crystal’s driveway. The smell of pending rain hung in the air, the sun
already swallowed up by a grey swarm of storm clouds. Long shadows
touched the house like dark fingers feeling for a throat to strangle.
Crystal swung open the door and cast herself into my arms.
“Jack, thank God you’re here,” she cried.
I stroked her slender shoulders as she shuddered against my chest.
She looked tired, but her hair smelled of peaches and sunshine, and she
wore a lacy pink dress that made her seem both shy and seductive. I
wanted to kiss her, but now wasn’t the time.
“We can thank God later. Let’s head over to–”
“Oh, you’re hurt!” she cried, seeing my injuries. Concern showed in
her face. Her fingers explored the bump on my head.
I eased her hand away. “Don’t worry about that now,” I said.
“Right now, we have to get over to Duong’s place. Okay?”
She stiffened. “What if he’s not okay, Jack? What if–”
“He’ll be fine, Crystal.” I detached myself and hurried to the car.
“Let’s go.”
Neither of us felt like talking as I sped towards Collingwood. A
sense that time was running out began to throb in my guts. The clouds
that had been threatening rain all day finally broke open, dispatching fat,
heavy drops that drummed against the car’s roof with metronomic fury.
Crystal tried calling Duong again on her mobile: still no answer. I drove
fast despite the downpour. Crystal’s lips were pressed together in a
grim, trembling line. I was tense too. I’d already seen how rough
Drucker and his boys could play, and this wasn’t rugby with rules.
I jammed the car up against the narrow kerb of Duong’s street and
we ran through the rain, Crystal gripping my hand. Duong’s red Datsun
sat rusting in its parking bay. Two bored-looking boys squatted in the
stairwell, bouncing a tennis ball back and forth as they waited for the
rain to stop. I stared up at Duong’s apartment. No lights on, drapes
closed. Feeling a cold sense of dread, I led Crystal past the kids and up
the stairs until we stood before the door to apartment thirty-two.
I knocked hard and waited. Crystal clutched my arm, her fingernails
biting. No answer. I tried the door, but it was locked.

“Do you have a key?” I asked Crystal.
Her face fell. “Yes, but I forgot to bring it. I’m sorry, Jack, I’ve
been so, like, in a mess since you called, that I just didn’t think.” She
pulled me closer. “Jack, I’m scared! What if Duong’s…”
“He’ll be fine,” I told her, not quite believing it myself. The locked
apartment had an unearthly stillness about it that sent a chill squirming
down my neck.
“But what if something terrible has happened?” Her eyes filled with
pain. “He was going to finish his studies and get a good job so he could
send money back to Vietnam to support his family. He was… he was
going to take me there to meet…” She sniffed back her tears to keep
them from all splashing out in a rush. “Who’s… who’s going to tell his
parents?”
I didn’t have a whole lot of experience with comforting hysterical
females, but I knew all about taking action. I pounded on the door
again. “Duong! Open up, it’s Jack and Crystal!” The only reply was
from one of the kids downstairs yelling, “The slope’s not home,
dickhead!” I restrained myself from shouting back a politically correct
response and looked at Crystal.
“Stand back. I’m going to break the door down, okay?”
“Okay.”
I unleashed a powerful front kick, slamming my heel into the flimsy
wood above the lock. The frame splintered and the door shuddered open
and crashed against the wall. Downstairs, the foul-mouthed kids paused
in their ball throwing.
“Wait here,” I told Crystal, and stepped inside the darkened
apartment. The living room was small and compact, with only a card
table and some directors’ chairs for furniture. I turned on the light and
saw grimy walls, a frayed carpet, budget curtains. A connecting door
led off to the bedroom. Not a whisker of Duong. There was a smoky,
acrid odour that smelled like roast pork gone bad.
“Duong?” I called. No answer.
“I’m scared, Jack,” Crystal said right in my ear, making me jump.
“Damn it, Crystal! I told you to stay put.”
“I know, but…” She tilted her head. “Oh, no!”
“What?”
“That’s Duong’s wallet.” She pointed to a slim black square on the
kitchen counter. “He never goes anywhere without it. Oh my God,

something terrible has happened, I just know it has.” Her hand flew to
her lips to stifle a sob.
Things were looking grimmer by the minute. We went through the
connecting door and into the bedroom. The pork-like smell was stronger
in here. A double bed had been wedged into the tight space between the
walls, and a dark lump lay motionless on it. I found the light switch and
flicked it on with a knuckle. Crystal screamed. Her body thumped the
carpet as she fainted. I barely noticed. I was too busy staring at the
thing on the bed.
Duong Nguyen’s arms and legs had been tied to the bedposts. He
was naked, gagged with a pair of socks stuffed into his mouth. On the
nightstand beside him, an electric clothes iron had been plugged into a
power socket. It was still connected, hot and hissing steam. The soles
of Duong’s feet were blistered and raw. His calves and thighs were
bright red. I shuddered when I saw where the worst burns were. His
throat had been slashed, and the sheets around his head were crimson
with dried blood. His open eyes scowled their last eternal challenge at
the dusty ceiling.
I helped Crystal off the floor, carried her back to the living room,
and sat her on one of the directors’ chairs. The fresh air coming through
the broken door was a godsend after the stink of death and burnt flesh.
Crystal sat there gasping like a beached goldfish, her lower lip hanging
loose and forgotten. I held her in my arms and she shook violently
against me.
Later, I tracked down Duong’s old rotary phone, dialled triple-O, and
asked for the police.

Chapter Seventeen
T he police station was an old building with faded red bricks and
tiny windows. The rain had begun to let up, but I was reluctant
to go inside. My hands wouldn’t stop twitching. Constable Baden, the
uniform who’d driven me here, looked just as shaky as I felt. He offered
me a pack of cigarettes from the patrol car’s glove box and I bummed a
smoke for the first time in years, coughing my way right down to the
filter. It went some way towards getting the scorched smell from
Duong’s apartment out of my mind, but not far enough. A hipflask full
of whisky would have done a more thorough job.
Craig Baden was a young, friendly cop, barely out of the academy,
with peach fuzz growing on his upper lip. He’d been first on the scene,
and he still looked as though he was struggling to hold onto his lunch. I
figured his mother would be ironing his shirts for a while. Crystal had
left earlier with Baden’s partner to see a doctor for shock, while I’d
stayed behind with Baden until the forensics team had arrived.
“Was he a mate of yours?” he asked now as we sat in the car
smoking and staring out at the drizzle. His voice leaked a few last
unconquered drops of English accent.
I thought about it. “No,” I said. “But I was starting to like him.”
“Nasty way to get done in,” he said, shuddering. He sucked at his
cigarette hungrily, as if the price might go up next month.
“Yeah.”
Duong’s dead, I thought, my guts churning. Yesterday he was alive,
and today he’s nothing but a bag of meat. Emotions of guilt and horror
surged inside me, crashing against my nerves like storm waves pounding
a ship. I knew that I couldn’t afford to get swept away by them, or the
panic would start and my self-control would collapse entirely.
We finished our cigarettes and Baden led me inside, up a flight of
stairs and along a short, busy corridor to an interview room. There was a
bare wooden table with several hard-backed chairs. The room’s single
window gave a commanding view of an airshaft. I fidgeted for a few
minutes while Baden went for coffee. He returned with a steaming mug,
took a small bottle of rum from his pocket, and when I nodded, added a
generous dose. “Two sugars, wasn’t it?” he said with a wink.
“You’re a champ, Craig.”

“Well, I’d better get my nose back to the grindstone, Jack.” He gave
me a dour look. “Grind away until I get that smell out of my nostrils.”
“Good luck.”
We shook hands. “Wait here,” he said. “A detective should be
along any minute now.” And out he went: the first decent cop I’d ever
met.
I stirred my doctored coffee with my thumb and drank a healthy
gulp. I could hear the rain outside, pouring down on the mortal world
like so much wet misery. I finished my drink and toasted the window
with the empty cup. “Here’s to you, Duong,” I said. “For what it’s
worth, I’m sorry.” The rain trickled its sullen reply.
An hour and a half later, I was so impatient that I was considering
hanging myself with my shoelaces just for something to do. Finally, the
door swung open. Detective Constable Gars looked like a mean drunk
who’d bludgeoned his way through a hangover and come out the worse
for it. Veins snaked across his nose like subcutaneous worms. He
crunched his thick eyebrows into a scowl.
“Well, well,” he said. “The smart-arse.” He was chewing gum.
“Well, well,” I said. “The arse.”
Gars turned a key in the door, locking it. Not a good sign. “Time
I’m done with you, buddy,” he said, “you’re gonna be mincemeat.” He
slammed a plastic folder and a portable tape recorder onto the table and
stood over me, his hairy forearms showing. “Mincemeat,” he repeated.
I sat there glaring steadily back at him. He held it a good thirty
seconds before scratching the stubble under his chin and looking away.
“Got nothing to say for yourself, punk?”
“Bring in the real cops. I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
“Sure you do.” Gars’s gut resembled a corpse floating above the
water line of his belt. “This Nguyen stiff, for instance,” he said,
pronouncing it Na-goo-yen. “You kill him?” He chewed his gum with
aggressive chomps.
“The stiff,” I said icily, “happened to be a good bloke.”
“Corpse, then. Deceased. Dearly bloody departed.” He waved his
hand dismissively and smacked his gum. “Why’d you kill him then, if
he was such a saint?”
That didn’t deserve an answer.
Gars poked my chest with a hard finger. “I asked you a question,
buddy!”

“Is that what it was? I thought you’d farted.”
He reddened, his scalp radiating heat through its sparse shield of
hair. “You’ll answer my questions, buddy, whether you want to or not.
Little Miss Pearl’s not here to save your scrawny butt this time. Today,
you answer to me.”
“I’ll try not to use any big words.”
“You’re one smart-arse crack away from a black eye, punk.” He
turned so that I could see the nightstick attached to his belt.
“Yeah, well you’d know all about arse cracks, Gars,” I said,
gesturing at his ample backside. “You got a wide load permit for that
thing?”
His eyes shone hatred. His hand edged towards the nightstick’s
handle, but he managed to rein it in. “Stop cracking wise and start
telling me what I want to hear. Or I’ll stuff you in a cell for a month on
suspicion and dedicate all my waking hours to breaking you down.”
“Free bed and food, and I get to insult you all day as well? What’s
the catch?”
Gars shot me a shrewd look. “Don’t think that I can’t see through
your bluster, buddy. You think you’re putting on a brave front, but I can
see the guilt tearing away at your guts. Why not make it nice and easy
for everyone? Go ahead, get it off your chest. Tell me why you killed
the gook, you’ll feel better.”
“I ought to report that racist remark to your superiors,” I said. “I’m
sure they wouldn’t approve of–”
“Shut up!” He smacked his palm on the table. It must have stung,
but he didn’t let it show. “The only thing you’ll be reporting is your
confession!”
I sighed. “Give it a rest, Gars. I’m too tired for the tough TV cop
routine.”
“Poor little Jack is too tired,” he mocked. He snorted derisively.
“Just you, me, and God in this room, buddy. And God’s turning a blind
eye today, you follow?” He walked around behind me and put his heavy
hands on my shoulders. “I’ll get my answers one way or another,
buddy,” he whispered harshly in my ear. “One way or another.”
“Get your hands off me,” I said between clenched teeth, “or I’ll
break them off.”
“Threatening an officer now, are you?” He removed his weight from
my shoulders. “Go on then, take your best shot. See what it gets you.”

“My best shot would kill you,” I said, not bothering to look at him.
“You’re not even worth my second best.”
Gars gave a nasty laugh. He patted my shoulders twice and then
snapped a finger against the side of my neck. It stung, but he’d already
moved back around the table before I could do anything about it. I
resisted the urge to rub the sore spot.
At the other end of the table, Gars flicked through his notepad.
“Guess what I’ve been doing while you were waiting,” he said.
“Ballet dancing in a pink tutu?”
“Been having a nice little chat with your tart friend Crystal.” He
leered as if he’d just thought of something amusing. “Had a lot to say
about you, she did.”
“Is that a fact?”
Gars displayed a set of tiny sharp teeth that had probably once been
white. His chewing gum was tucked into the side of one fat cheek. “She
told me why you did it, buddy,” he announced. “You killed Nguyen to
get him out of the way so you could make a grab for Crystal.” He
sneered triumphantly. “The broad already dobbed you in, you follow?
Your only chance is to confess now and try to cop a plea.”
I laughed. “You’ll have to try harder than that, Detective. I know a
fishing expedition when I see one.”
His expression turned crafty. “Think so, do you?” He patted the
tape recorder he’d brought in. “This might convince you otherwise…”
“You’re bluffing. That’s just a prop.”
His finger hovered over the Play button. “Last chance to tell your
side of the story, punk.” His expression darkened. “Once I push this
button, all deals are off.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “Shoot your blanks.”
Gars gave me one last sneer and then stubbed Play with his fat
finger. Crystal’s voice – tinny and distorted, but definitely her voice –
filled the room. Gars had been holding a full house after all. I could
hardly believe what I was hearing:
Crystal: I kissed Duong goodnight and went

home, and... and he was fine. And then
this morning the phone, like, rang and woke
me up, and it was him.

Gars: By “him”, you mean Jack Marsh?
Crystal: Yes sir, that’s right. He wanted

to meet me, but he wouldn’t say why. He
drove me to this, you know, deserted
parking lot and... and...
Gars: C’mon honey, you can tell your old

buddy Gars.
The sound of Gars trying to be gentle would have made me laugh if

the situation hadn’t been so dismal. I wasn’t game to look at him across
the table, but I could feel the heat of his steady stare. I was speechless
with confusion. Why was Crystal lying?
Crystal: And then he... he put his hands

all over me! He kept trying to kiss me and
grab my boobs, even though I said no, and
he wouldn’t let up. He kept saying I was
“his” now.
Gars: Did the bastard rape you?
Crystal: No, but he would have. I swear he

would have!
There was a moment of silence on the tape. In front of me, Gars

cracked his knuckles meaningfully. His voice on the tape was thick:
Gars: What happened next?
Crystal: I... I pushed him away and told

him it was Duong I loved, not him. And
Jack went cold. I mean, like, really cold.
He started driving again. I was terrified!
Gars: He drove you to the Nguyen apartment?

Marsh drove you to the Nguyen apartment?
Crystal: Yes, that’s right.

Gars: He knew where to go already without
asking?
Crystal: Yes sir.
Gars: Then what did he do?
Crystal: He dragged me up the stairs to

Duong’s apartment. He kicked the door open
and yanked me inside and Duong was... he
was...
Gars: Dead, yeah I know. I saw the stiff.
So what did Marsh do then?
Crystal: He... he told me he loved me and

that I... that no “yellow skunk” was going
to get in the way of true love. He said
he’d killed Duong as a... as a gift to
prove his love! And if I didn’t... if I
didn’t do what he wanted, he’d... he’d...
Gars: There, there, honey. Good old Gars

will take care of-
Gars switched off the recording and gave me a penetrating look of

contempt. I had that prickly, nauseating sensation of pseudo-guilt that
comes when you know you’re innocent of the crime that you’re being
accused of, but your body chemistry decides you’re in deep shit
nonetheless. I forced myself to look at Gars. His face was flushed, his
nostrils flaring.
“Well, buddy,” he said between gritted teeth. “What you got to say
about that?”
“She’s lying. I have no idea why, but she’s lying.”
“Then how about this,” Gars said. “Dispatcher got an anonymous
phone call this morning. Bloke said he’d overheard you at the pub
boasting about your plan to ‘iron out the Asian invasion’. I got that on
tape too, buddy. That’s two witnesses against you now, you follow?”
He rapped his knuckles on the table sharply. “What you got to say for

yourself now, punk?”
“That anonymous call must have been Kurt Drucker telling fibs.”
“Oh really? Well here’s what I think, smart-arse.” He counted off
points on his fingers. “You’re the one who was all over the scene of the
crime. Not just today, but in the Hinley case as well. You’re the one
who killed the Nguyen punk, and you’re the one who killed the girl.
You’re the one who’s lying.” Another point and his thumb would have
made a clean sweep. Instead, he rolled up his points into a solid fist.
“You’re guilty as hell. That’s what I think.”
I let him think it. I scratched my cheek and faked a yawn.
“Do you think this is amusing?” he shouted.
“I thought you were doing all the thinking,” I said. But inwardly, my
brain was burning with questions. Why had Crystal set me up? I could
understand Drucker trying to frame me, but Crystal? It didn’t make
sense. Unless… A chilling thought wriggled around in my brain: what
if Crystal and Drucker were in on this together, both conspiring to pin
the murder on me like the tail on the proverbial donkey?
Gars slammed his hand onto the table. “Start talking, punk! You’ve
heard the evidence against you; you’re done for and you know it. The
sooner you confess, the sooner we can get this over with, you follow?”
He watched me expectantly, a nervous hunger flickering at the corners
of his eyes.
And that was when I realised: Gars already knew Crystal’s story was
a lie. But he’d put on an act anyway, just because he hated my guts,
hoping I’d crack like an eggshell under the pressure of his “evidence”
and admit to something I hadn’t done.
“Piss off, Gars,” I said. “You’ve got nothing and you know it.”
“I’ve got all the evidence I need to hang you with, buddy. Right here
in black and white.” He patted the tape recorder. Gars, master of the
metaphor.
It was time to call his bluff. “I’ve had enough of this foolishness.
Either charge me with something or I’m walking out of here.”
“You’re not going anywhere, punk, not until you’ve told me what I
want to hear.”
“Go ring a phone sex service then. For five dollars a minute, they’ll
tell you what you want to hear, big boy.”
Gars reddened. “Think you’re real clever, don’t you? You’ll have
plenty of time to practise your wisecracks on the butch boys in prison.

Now start confessing!”
I sighed; enough was enough. He wasn’t worth wasting the wit on.
Maybe if I waited him out, he’d deflate like a fat balloon. I studied my
fingernails and didn’t respond.
He reddened further. “I’m talking to you, punk!”
There was a small grain of dirt under one of my nails. I picked it out
and flicked it onto the floor. I would probably need a manicure in about
a week.
Gars growled and shoved the table forward. It screeched across the
floor and the edge rammed into my stomach. He shouted, “I’m warning
you! If I don’t hear a confession by the time I count to five, I’m going to
work you over like a dog’s chew toy.” He touched the truncheon
clipped to his belt. “You follow?”
I exaggerated a yawn of boredom.
His lips twitched dangerously. “Alright, punk, you asked for this.”
He unfastened the strap holding his nightstick. “One… Two…” He
had to use his fingers to count; it was a good thing he wasn’t going past
ten. “Three… Four… Well, what’s it going to be, smart guy?”
“Five,” I said dryly. “If I remember correctly.”
Gars drew out his nightstick and hefted the heavy black tool in his
hand. He punished his chewing gum with powerful, angry grinds of his
teeth. “Suspect was overcome with remorse,” he said in a mock writing-
the-report voice, “and bashed his own face repeatedly against the wall.”
He chuckled. “I like it.” He slammed the stick into the table. It made a
dull thud. “Now start talking!”
“Start asking proper questions then,” I said. “If you know how.”
He sneered and walked casually around the table again. The
nightstick slid smoothly across my cheek from behind. It was black and
looked well polished. He curled the stick under my chin and I felt its
cold slickness against my skin.
“You’ll tell me what I want to hear,” he hissed, “or I’ll–” Without
warning, he jammed the nightstick into my throat. I gagged, tried to
struggle. And then, just as quickly, he released the chokehold and
shoved me away. He strolled back around to the other side of the table
and leered at me. “Feeling more cooperative now, punk?”
I couldn’t believe he’d actually done it. I coughed a few times to
clear my throat. It felt like a walnut had lodged in there. “Sure. I’ll be
cooperating with internal affairs to have you booted off the force.” My

voice sounded a bit croaky, but I got it out okay.
“You think you got a real smart mouth, don’t you?” he said. He
slammed the stick against the table again. “I’ve put away plenty of
scumbags over the years thought they had smart mouths. Now they got
toothless mouths, you follow?”
“Go to hell, Gars. You don’t scare–”
He lashed out across the table with the nightstick. It struck me on
the elbow, right on the funny bone, and I yelped. “Now talk!” he roared.
My arm tingled like crazy and it took all my self-control to stay in
my seat. “Sure, I’ll talk,” I said. I hoisted my middle finger at him. “In
sign language.”
His complexion reddened again. “Don’t you crack wise with me,
punk!” He did his truncheon-slamming trick again and started edging
around the table towards me. “Sit down!” he shouted as I made a move
to get to my feet. “You’re not going anywhere.” He planted one sweaty
hand on my shoulder from behind. “Mongrels like you,” he began, “just
make me want to–”
I sensed the sudden downswing of his arm. I twisted in my chair,
tearing free from his grip. The nightstick swished past my face as I
stood up fast and seized his wrist. I pushed him off balance and jerked
his arm up sharply behind his back. Gars cried out in pain as I strained
his tendons to the limit. He still held the nightstick in his captive hand;
its tip prodded the back of his head. I yanked it loose and tossed the
weapon onto the floor.
“This… assaulting an officer!” he managed to sputter as he fought
against the submission hold. I didn’t want to break his arm, so I dug two
fingers into the folds of his fat neck and pinched a special nerve near the
jugular. He winced and stopped struggling instantly.
“Shut up,” I hissed in his ear. “You’re a bully, Gars. How you got
on the force I have no idea, but if you ever try anything like this again,
I’ll see to it that you’re finished as a cop.”
“Let go of me! I’ll–”
I tweaked the nerve again and his face scrunched up into agonised
ridges. “I told you to shut up. I’m tired and I’m pissed off, and a good
man has just been murdered. Now if you want to play Dirty Harry, then
I’m–”
There was a hurried knock on the door. “Detective?” someone
called. The doorknob rattled.

“Listen up, Gars,” I said in a low voice. “Here’s the deal. Back off
now and we’ll call it square. I’ll even let you keep the free licks you got
in today. But if you want to make a road show of it, then I’ll make sure
you get dragged down for police brutality. We can share a cell together
and play checkers all day.”
I heard keys clattering in the lock. I loosened the arm hold and
shoved him away. He stumbled across the room off balance, then turned
to face me, his eyes venomous.
Just then the door flew open and Detective Sergeant Pearl came in at
a run, with two male officers behind her. “What the hell is going on in
here?” she demanded.
“He… assaulted me!” Gars yelled, panting hard like a fish trying to
evolve.
“I’m not surprised,” Pearl said, quivering with anger. “Damn it,
Gars, you promised you wouldn’t lose control.”
“That punk kept… baiting me!” Gars’s face looked so red I felt like
calling for a heart surgeon. A strand of snot stuck to his lip where he’d
snorted it out like a bull in a scarlet fury. “I’ll kill the dirty–”
“Get him out of here until he cools off,” Pearl ordered. The two men
flanked Gars and led him to the door.
I couldn’t resist. “So long, buddy,” I said.
Gars roared and struggled to pull free of his colleagues, but they held
onto him and dragged him outside. He clamped one hand on the
doorframe and jerked his head at me. “You’d better pray,” he warned in
a tone full of menace. “Pray that I don’t get the evidence I need.”
“Every day and twice on Sunday.”
The officers hauled him out of the interview room. Pearl closed the
door on his receding curses. “Are you okay, Jack? Did he injure you?”
“There’ll be a few bruises tomorrow. Nothing serious.”
“Good.” She slumped into a chair and sighed. “I apologise for
Detective Constable Gars’s behaviour. He’s a good cop, but sometimes
when a case isn’t going well, his frustration gets the better of him.”
“Gars doesn’t belong on the force,” I said, sitting opposite her.
“He’s a caveman. He should be sacked before he really hurts someone.”
She looked at me. “It won’t happen again, Jack, trust me. We have
our own internal methods for disciplining and counseling our officers.”
“A slap on the wrist, huh?”
“Don’t be like that, Jack.” She kneaded her eyebrows as if she had a

headache.
The flush of vengefulness had faded. “Okay, I’ll let it go,” I said.
“Just keep him out of my face though, or I will flatten him, badge or no
badge.”
Pearl looked up. “And I’m sure you’d do a decent job of it too,” she
said, with that Mona Lisa smile of hers.
I took my first proper look at her. She wore a sleek black dress and
sprinkles of eye glitter. Her fingernails were painted magenta with little
silver sequins stuck to them. The makeup gave her a sort of rosy
softness that hadn’t been there on our last meeting. I guessed she’d been
at a party when the call came.
I said, “Hey Pearl, looking pretty today.”
Instant scowl. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
“It’s called a compliment.” I added a smile to prove it.
The frown turned frostier. “How typical. Just because I like to wear
nice clothes, it doesn’t mean I want men waving their hard-ons at me.”
I’d been through too much today to be intimidated by Pearl’s
oversensitivity. “In that case, I take back what I said. Your dress looks
like an Op Shop throwaway and I’ve seen prettier makeup on a drag
queen. Is that better?”
She took it like a slap to the cheek. Her mouth formed a circle of
disbelief. I didn’t care. Duong was dead, Gars had socked me, and I
was way too sober. Walking on eggshells for political correctness
wasn’t high on my list of Things To Do just then.
“Because if you’re going to assume that everything that comes out of
my mouth is a sexist insult,” I continued, “then I might as well forget
about friendly social conversation and just live up to the stereotype
instead.” I made a show of beating my chest and whooping like an ape.
Pearl blushed. Some of my pointed message must have punched
through her crust. “Okay, forget about it,” she said brusquely. She
turned the full force of her stare on me, all cop again. “Tell me what
happened to Duong Nguyen.”
“He was tortured to death. Crystal and I found his body.”
“I’m aware of that. What else?”
“I think I know who killed him.”
Pearl looked at me very hard. “Who?”
“Kurt Drucker.”
“The drug dealer?” Her eyebrows lifted. “You’re sure of this?”

“Not a hundred percent, but he’s definitely the favourite.”
“How do you know about Drucker anyway?” Her pupils shrank to
needle points. “You kept investigating, didn’t you? After I told you to
stop.”
“You mustn’t have told me loudly enough.”
“Damn it, Jack! Duong Nguyen is dead because you didn’t do what
you were supposed to.”
Muscles tightened along my jaw. “Do you think I don’t realise
that?”
Pearl glared at me for a long minute. It was the longest, soberest,
most uncomfortable minute of my life. “Okay,” she said eventually, and
sighed. “You’d better tell me everything.” Her voice was still tight, but
she seemed to be making an effort to loosen it.
I couldn’t resist baiting her. “Well for a start, you’re cute when
you’re angry.”
“Jesus Christ, Jack!” she yelled. “A man is dead! This is no time for
jokes.”
She was right, of course. Duong was dead and there was nothing
funny about that. But how I chose to cope with death was my business,
and if wisecracks could keep the shivers away, then bring on the
comedy. At least Pearl hadn’t pulled out a gun and pistol-whipped me
for unlawful chauvinism.
“Alright,” I said, “here it comes, try not to spill it.”
I gave her an edited version: learning that Tess had taken drugs; how
Duong and Crystal had put me onto Needles; Drucker’s ambush; the tip,
the break-in, the whole bloody mess. I didn’t mention the fight I’d had
with Duong at the pub.
“So you already knew Kurt Drucker’s whereabouts when I spoke to
you on the phone yesterday?” Pearl said, sounding hurt. “And you
didn’t tell me.”
“You didn’t ask.”
Her lips thinned. “If you’d been honest with me, Drucker would be
locked up by now and the Nguyen boy would still be alive.”
“I realise that now,” I said bitterly. “I did what I thought was right at
the time.”
She simply stared at me. There was no heat in it, just a sense of
plain, total disappointment, and somehow that was worse than any words
of abuse she could have hurled. My face drooped so low it felt like it

was sagging right off my skull.
As I went over my story again and again, I could feel the anxiety
collecting inside me – in my lungs, in my throat, at the back of my teeth
– all building to a great crescendo of pressure that ached to be released.
I swallowed it down. I will not give in to weakness, I told myself, not
now, not in front of Pearl.
It took two and a half hours. I did my blabbing and Pearl listened to
the blabs. I filled up three audiocassette tapes and drained countless
cups of coffee. Finally, Pearl told me to wait and left the room. I spent
several minutes counting through my mistakes until I ran out of fingers
and toes. She returned with a folder clasped under her arm, looking
thoughtful.
“Here’s something,” she said. “Preliminary forensics report.”
“That quick?”
“Just the first impressions.”
She opened the report and showed me a page choked with jargon.
One note read: Second and third degree burns to lower body and
genitalia. Victim bled out through deep laceration to left carotid artery,
consistent with–
“See here,” Pearl said, and pointed to another section of the report.
I looked, but only saw a load of technical waffle about compound
elements and serration signatures. “It’s all gibberish to me,” I said.
“What does it mean?”
“It means,” she said ominously, “that the knife which killed Duong
Nguyen is the same knife that was used on Tess Hinley.”
I was impressed. “How the hell can you know that?”
“The shape of the wound, various serration marks resulting from tiny
nicks and flaws in the blade, that sort of thing. Sometimes there are
minute traces of metal left behind from the knife.” She tapped the page.
“Every weapon leaves a unique fingerprint, and prints can be matched.
So far these findings appear to match the trace evidence from Tess’s
file.”
“So the same person killed both of them?”
“Too early to tell. The detailed forensics report will give a better
indication. But yes, the preliminary comparison suggests that the same
weapon was used in both attacks. For now, the lab guys are saying
ninety percent certainty.”
“Then if we find the knife, we’ll find the murderer, right?” I was

getting excited.
“Not we,” Pearl said. “You’re out of it, and this time, you’re going
to stay out.”
I opened my mouth to object.
“Period,” she added with finality.
I closed my mouth again. She held all the free walk cards, and
somehow I didn’t think rolling a double would be enough to get my little
hat out of jail.
“Now that you’re aware of the importance, I want you to think hard,”
she said. She held out her hands about forty centimetres apart. “Did you
see a knife about this long anywhere in Duong’s apartment? We haven’t
been able to find it.”
I shook my head. “No. I would have noticed.”
“You’re sure?” Her eyes narrowed. “Because if I find out later that
you concealed evidence, still thinking about pursuing your own–”
I was offended. “I said no, didn’t I?” I put sarcasm into my voice.
“I’d have thought you’d be the first to agree that ‘No means No’,
Detective…”
But she wouldn’t quit. “Miss Mainwaring told Detective Constable
Gars she saw a knife at the foot of the bed. She said it wasn’t there
when she came to after her faint.”
“Crystal said a lot of things.” I indicated the tape recorder Gars had
left behind. “What’s with that swag of lies Gars played for me anyway?
You do realise it was all bullshit, don’t you?”
Pearl looked uncomfortable. She gave a slight nod. “Gars only
played you the first half. Crystal breaks down later under cross-
examination and recants the whole thing. You’re in the clear.”
“I don’t get it. Why would Crystal want to get me in trouble in the
first place?”
“She was upset and confused.” Pearl’s shoulders drew in
defensively. “Her boyfriend had just died because you wouldn’t leave
things alone. I don’t blame her for wanting to lash out.” She eyed me
defiantly.
And Gars was probably more than happy to encourage Crystal to
blame me, I thought. “I want to talk to her,” I said.
“You can’t. She’s gone home with a friend.”
“Who?”
“That’s none of your business,” she said. “Someone trustworthy.

Anyway, if I were you, I’d stay away from Crystal. You’re not her
favourite person at the moment.”
My mouth tasted sour. I couldn’t bear the idea of Crystal hating me.
I wanted to hold her and let her pound my chest with her little fists until
she’d worn out all her anger and eroded away all my guilt.
I looked at my watch. It was after five. How time flies when you’re
being grilled. “Can I go now?” I asked. I was bone tired, and my thirst
for a drink hadn’t diminished. I’d already begun mentally listing nearby
pubs and bottle shops.
Pearl rubbed the back of her neck wearily. “Go on then, get out of
here.” She gave me a severe look. “But remember, this amateur
investigation of yours is over. Duong Nguyen died because you didn’t
do what you were told.” Her face grew stern. “If I find out you’re still
poking around, I will lock you up, and God help you then.” She gave me
a long, steady look. “Understand?”
“Yeah.” I was furious, but I clamped down hard on it.
“Good. Now piss off.” She waved me out dismissively.
A taxi took me back to my car. The forensics team had left, and
Duong’s apartment was sealed up with police tape. The street was quiet
and most of the lights in the neighbouring apartments were on. Life
returns to normal. I saw Duong’s red Datsun and remembered that he
had been a bad driver. Well, he would never menace another pedestrian
again. The only thing he’d be driving now was a felt-lined coffin.
I frowned away the ugly thoughts, started my car, and concentrated
on finding somebody, anybody, who would sell me a drink.

Chapter Eighteen
I left the pub after last call and staggered back to my car. It was
late and the wind jabbed at my face with sharp needles of cold. I
was probably too drunk to drive, but I did so anyway, slowly and badly,
and somehow made it home without dying. I grabbed the fresh whisky
bottle I’d purchased at the pub and stumbled into my apartment.
The swivel chair beckoned invitingly through the haze. I sat at my
desk and turned the bottle in my hands, staring at the murky liquid
sloshing within. I had opened hundreds of bottles just like this one.
Was alcohol the only constant comfort in life? Lovers leave, old friends
grow up and out of sight, strangers breathe through their mouths
whenever someone holds out a hand for help. But whisky never says no.
Whisky is always there to warm the broken soul.
To hell with it. I broke the seal on the bottle. Maybe I really was an
alcoholic, but so what if I was? Some people drink God, and some drink
their jobs, and some drink frantic, age-defying affairs with younger
partners. Other people drink too much junk food, drink too many
smokes, or drink the contents of their televisions. It’s all drinking, one
way or another.
I unscrewed the cap. Stared longingly at the easy answer. And then
walked decisively to the kitchen, upended the bottle over the sink, and
poured all of the whisky down the drain. I let out a ragged sigh.
Alcohol wouldn’t help me this time. I needed real support. So I did the
next best thing: I grabbed the phone.
“Who the hell is it?”
“It’s me.”
“Bloody hell, Jack! Can you even fathom what time it is? What if
I’d been in mid-thrust with a couple of French bimbos when you–”
“Not tonight, Benny. I need help.”
“You can say that again. Psychiatric help.”
“A lot of bad stuff has happened, Benny. Duong Nguyen was
tortured to death.”
“Jesus H. Christ, Jack! You’re not bullshitting me, are you?”
“I wish I was.”
I heard him gulp. “You’d better roll it from the beginning.”
I told him everything I’d learned and everything I’d done and

everything that had gone wrong. Benny listened patiently, making the
right grunts to nudge me along.
“I’m shocked,” he said when I’d finished. “Totally shocked.”
“So what should I do?” My voice sounded hoarse. “Drucker’s still
out to get me, and the cops would rather lock me up than let me help.
I’m in way over my head, Benny, and I don’t know what to do.”
“What you ought to do,” he said, “is forget the whole thing. Just
drop it. Go to a nightclub, pick up some juicy scrubber, and bang her
brains out. You’ll be so busy trying to get rid of her gracefully in the
morning that you won’t have time to think about all this crap.”
I wasn’t in the mood for levity. “That won’t solve the problem,
Benny,” I said with annoyance.
“Well, no, I suppose for a Doberman molester such as yourself, it
wouldn’t.” I could sense his sardonic grin even over the phone. “What
you should do instead is head over to the local dog pound and pick out a
sleek, black, muscular–”
“Enough with the Dobermans already!”
“True, true. You’re more of a poodle man now that I think about it.”
I was on the verge of losing my temper. “Benny, I’m trying to be
serious here. I’m in trouble and I need to pick your brain.”
He sniggered. “‘My mind is going… I can feel it…’” he quoted in a
robotic tone.
“Will you quit joking?”
“‘I’m sorry, Dave. I can’t do that.’”
“Benny!”
He sighed. “Look, Jack, what I really think you need to do is pull
the rug on this silly private eye fantasy of yours. Forget about Tess and
Duong and Crystal and Drucker. You can’t right every wrong in the
world. Just lay low and get on with your life.” He paused. “Let the
cops be the heroes, Jack. This is too big for you to handle.”
I listened to what he was saying, and it stung because he was right.
“And while you’re at it,” he added, “get a bloody job and stop dole
bludging off my taxes.” He snickered at his joke, then turned serious
again. “Mate, it’s not my place to tell you what to do. I can give you
opinions and I can give you an ear, but only you can decide what the
answers are. You have to figure it out for yourself.”
The phone felt like a snake pressed to my cheek. My mind whirred
with objections, but at the same time I knew that he was telling me

things I needed to hear, and that he was probably the only person I could
tolerate hearing them from.
I let it sink in for a moment, and then said, “Dude, that’s probably
the most boringly grownup speech I’ve ever heard you make.”
“Hmm.” He loosed a long, sonorous belch over the phone. “That
ought to rectify the situation.”
I grinned. “I can smell it from here.”
“What you smell is the stench of your own anus floating up at you.”
We both laughed at that one. I said, “Do I really have a private eye
fantasy?”
“Jack, ever since school, you’ve been patterning yourself after one
tough guy detective or another from that ratty old stack of books you
keep collecting.”
“They’re good books!”
Benny grunted. “Maybe they are, but that doesn’t mean you can act
like you’re walking the same mean streets. You’re not some Bogart
hard case with a gun and an attitude, walking the straight line of film
noir morality.” He put a spoonful of clown into his voice. “You’re just
a filthy Doberman molester with an attitude, staggering drunkenly out of
the pub in a sulk after I’ve fleeced you at pool.”
“As I recall,” I said, smiling, “it was yourself running around the
table with your trousers down just last month.” It was an old tradition at
The Hairy Elephant: anyone who lost a billiard game without sinking a
single shot had to run the underpants gauntlet.
Benny scoffed. “Ha! I threw that game purely in order to show off
my package to that blonde chick with the glasses.”
“A likely story. Besides, she didn’t seem all that impressed, did she?
Maybe you should have padded it with more socks.”
He laughed. “Ah, Jack,” he said. “Don’t get yourself killed, mate,
whatever you do. I’d miss this.”
I felt a sudden warm glow of friendship and a lump formed in my
throat. I choked it down and replied, “Yeah. God knows what
unspeakable depravities you’d unleash on the Doberman population if I
wasn’t around to keep you in check.”
“I don’t know either. I’d have to read your diary for ideas.”
More shared laughter. “Thanks, Benny. I feel better.”
“Are you going to stop chasing coffins now?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’d be the smart thing to do. I’ll have to

think about it.”
“You? Think? With your peanut-sized brain? Surely you jest?”
I snorted. “Brains are overrated; it’s charm that pulls the chicks.
And you’ve got about as much charm as a festering boil on the red butt
cheeks of a mangy baboon.”
“Silence, fool!” Benny cried. “You cannot defeat me with insults
when you yourself are so hideously repulsive that you must wear a paper
bag over your head in public, lest innocent bystanders’ eyeballs
spontaneously explode in disgust.”
“But what about you, sir?” I retorted. “You whose personal stench is
so revolting that when you were born, your mother had to feed you
insect repellent instead of breast milk, in an effort to keep the blowflies
away.”
He burst out laughing. “Ah, Jack,” he said when he’d caught his
breath. “You win that round, mate. But I’ll be ready for you with new
material next time.”
“Good night, toilet licker,” I said.
“Good night, dung beetle.”
“Vomit cookie.”
“Ball-sweat drinker.”
“Earwax muncher,” I said, and hung up before he could get the last
word. I grinned; Benny hates not getting the last word.
I was beginning to sober up, and on the heels of sobriety came that
jittery clarity of the senses that signalled the onset of a hangover. Pretty
soon, the headache would follow, and the nausea, and the flu-like muscle
ache. Every morning-after, I groan and curse and vow to never again
repeat my sins. But the road to hell is paved with broken vows, many of
them mine, and only saints and small children get to travel on the
bypass.
It was time to admit that I’d failed. Benny and Pearl were right: I
had to give up the case. I was not a detective and I never would be. In
the cold light of reality, I was just a dull, desperate, unemployed man,
with no money, few friends, and a big hole where my future should have
been. I’d let myself get caught up in a fantasy of gangster stories and
action heroes, and I’d made a fool of myself trying to act the part.
Fantasy is nothing more than a brief escape from the mundane, a
glimpse of an impossibly more interesting world. For the bored
housewife, real-life sex seems cumbersome and unfulfilling compared to

the sweat-soaked peaks of adulterous bliss in her Mills and Boon. The
scrawny accountant coming out of a thriller movie imagines himself
bristling with heroics in a tight situation, and then merely stands frozen
in shock and confusion while the mugger plucks his wallet. We scratch
and pick at the threads of our ordinary lives, chafing against the uneasy
sensation that there should be more, that we’re somehow missing out on
something vital, and so we open our books and we aim our remotes and
we slip back into the fantasy realm once again. And if we’re not careful,
if we don’t keep reminding ourselves which side of the mirror we’re on,
then we can sometimes forget the way home.
A dark melancholy welled up from deep inside me. It was a feeling I
knew well, the black sorrow that would only get worse. In the past,
Nanna used to stroke my face and sing gentle songs whenever the rough
seas came. These days I usually held the tidal wave back with booze.
But none of those remedies would work this time.
I had to get out of the house. It was almost five a.m. There was an
all-hours convenience store a few blocks away; a walk and a coffee
might save me. I slid into a woollen parka, locked up, and moved my
feet one after the other down the empty street. The night air smelled
crisp and untainted. A faint hint of approaching dawn tested the horizon,
like a burglar using a hooded flashlight to hunt for valuables. Mist had
settled in, and everything looked grainy and moist. The streets were
silent, barren; I suddenly felt more alone than I’d ever felt in my life.
Just keep walking, I thought, and don’t stop. Nobody will miss you.
Just keep walking until you drop dead.
Sure, I had people who cared about me. There was Benny, of
course, and Sensei Randall, and Nanna out there in Geelong, all willing
to make their sympathetic noises. But that was as far as they could
stretch. They couldn’t get inside my head and feel the emptiness, or
understand the crushing sense of uselessness I often felt. No, there was
nobody who could help me, nobody but my own damn self, and I’d done
a hell of a shitty job of it so far.
Is this the way suicides think? I wondered. Should I just leave all my
problems behind and embrace the simplicity of death? My hands were
shaking. My vision began to grow red around the edges.
I reached the top of a hill and stared out into the pre-dawn greyness.
I could just make out the lights of the city in the distance, shining like
halos through the mist. The city seemed ugly to me now, vulgar, as if it

were a huge decomposing corpse being picked over by vultures jostling
each other for scraps. Duong was one of those scraps now, discarded
and left for the scavengers.
People die, I told myself. Get over it. I was breathing unevenly and
the shivering had spread to my shoulders. I could hear my pulse in my
temples. Dizziness. All the usual symptoms. My eyes darted around
wildly, looking for avenues of escape that weren’t there. You can’t
escape from yourself.
I moved quickly to the kerb and sat. The images began to invade my
mind. I heard myself whimpering, a formless hand of terror squeezing
the air from my lungs, as if the memory had coalesced into a tangible
physical presence. The pounding in my head grew louder; the gates
inside me began to open. I put my head between my knees and braced
myself. It was coming…
I’m sixteen again, walking through the old house, calling for my
parents. They’re not answering. Maybe they’re still angry about this
morning. I’d left for school in a huff, slamming the door behind me to
blot out the nagging, left them sitting at the kitchen table with their
bacon and eggs, Dad’s homemade cigarette burning down in the lid of
his tobacco tin, Mum in her nightie blinking sleep out of her eyes, both
of them on my back about some chore, and I’d left without saying
goodbye.
I find my Mum in the master bedroom. My birth mother died of
breast cancer when I was two, but my stepmother has always been my
real Mum to me. I find her stretched out on the big bed, mostly, a few
bits of her on the floor. She’s been torn apart with a knife, shredded, her
guts pulled out like a cat’s cradle. The amount of blood is unbelievable.
The carpet squishes under my feet as I back out of the room.
I run through the house, searching frantically for my father. He isn’t
answering either. My eyes are bugging out and my head feels frozen
with confusion. He has to be okay! Oh, God, please let my Dad be
okay!
He’s in the living room. Propped up in his easy chair, one slash
across his throat, deep, his head lolling and almost severed, oh God no,
not my Dad, no, left there like a worn toy drooping its stuffing, oh
please, God, no!
And waiting for me on the sofa, the naked, hairy stranger, covered in
blood, grinning, holding the knife he’d butchered my parents with,

gesturing at my father as if showing off a piece of art. He rises from the
sofa, the bastard, and he says: “Welcome home, Jacky boy!”
I roar and launch myself at him, punching, flailing my arms, crying,
screaming at the top of my lungs, and he cackles and shoves me aside
easily, a big man in his twenties with brooding, heavy eyebrows and a
pug face. I throw a vase at him, but he bats it aside and it smashes a
window.
He charges and bears me down to the carpet. He drops on top of me,
smelling of sweat and blood and chemicals, pounding my face with his
bloodstained fist, kneeling on my upper arms so that I can’t move.
“You like the symphony I played on your folks, Jacky boy?” he says,
his voice warbling with excitement. I try to ward off his blows, but he’s
got me pinned. He howls with insane laughter as he hits me. “You
like?” he shouts. “You fucking like?” He holds the knife to my throat
and I know it’s the end. “You want I should do the same to you, Jacky
boy? You want to be played like a harp, Jacky boy?”
I’m gasping with terror. I don’t know why this is happening. All I
know is that I’m going to die and that it’s going to hurt.
The man slits my left nostril and I cry out from the pain. My right
nostril is next. The cuts sting like salty fire. I clench my teeth to keep
from blacking out. I struggle again to get free, but he’s too strong and
I’m only sixteen. He waves the knife in front of my face like a
conductor before an orchestra. He’s left-handed.
“Ah, Jacky boy, you’re no fun. I want to hear screams, kid.
Screams, not whimpers!” He grins, then pumps his arm forward and
spears the knife into my belly.
My mouth flies open; it is the most incredible pain I’ve ever
experienced, every nerve fibre vibrating with pain, and as he twists the
blade in my guts, I do scream, scream, scream like I’ve never screamed
before.
“Now that’s more like it!” He yanks the knife out and laughs.
“You’re a natural born singer, Jacky boy. You got talent! Let’s hear
some more of that sweet music…”
I squeeze my eyes shut, waiting for the dreadful blade to strike. I
can feel my life draining out of me through the rupture in my stomach.
The madman’s breath smells sour and rank. My own breath has seized
up tight in my lungs.
Suddenly he freezes. I hear a faint wail of sirens. The police are

coming. A neighbour must have heard my screams through the broken
window. I open my eyes.
“Sons of bitches!” the killer yells. He climbs off me and hurries to
where he’s left his clothes – jeans, sneakers, a cheap flannel work shirt –
and begins struggling into them. I curl into a foetal ball, holding my
stomach in with both hands. I can feel blood escaping past my fingers.
He’s dressed. He strides over and kicks me in the kidneys and I
scream.
“That’s what I like to hear, Jacky boy!” He leers at me. “That belly
wound won’t kill you, but you’ll be singing that lovely high note for a
week.”
The sirens are getting closer now. He hauls me up by the shirtfront.
“I got to run,” he says, his face inches from mine. “So it’s up to you to
let people know what a great performance I done on your folks.” His
eyes jiggle crazily. “It’s important that they know. It’s important that
people get the message.”
I make a supreme effort, the words just barely a whisper. “Eat shit,”
I say.
He gives me the sickly leer again. “You’ve got balls, kid. I like that.
Maybe we’ll even meet again some time, finish our little duet.” The
smile evaporates. “But until that day, here’s something else to
remember me by, Jacky boy…”
He slashes with the knife and rips my face open to the bone. I
scream so loud that my throat is stripped raw. The maniac cackles with
glee and releases me. I crumple to the carpet, bleeding, savaged, my
body jerking in agonised spasms.
“So long, Jacky boy,” he says. “Don’t forget me.”
My fingers no longer work and my stomach is starting to slide out
through them. My vision fogs over with a hazy mist of pain. Through
the mist I see the killer’s sneakers clump off towards the back door. I
blink and he’s gone.
The sirens are louder, but they’re too late. Too late for my parents
and too late for me. My eyes won’t stay open. I can feel my cheek
hanging loose and flapping. The pain bears me under, so much pain, as
if a demon were forking me down into hell with a trident. So much pain,
so much pain…
I snapped out of it then, came hurtling back from the horror realm of
memory. The panic attack was over. My legs were shaking and

rubbery, my breathing fast and uneven. Sweat had popped out all over
my body. It had been a bad one. I sat there on the kerb and hugged my
knees until the shakes subsided, then clambered to my feet and began
walking again.
Dawn had almost arrived, the horizon shimmering like an ethereal
butterfly trapped between the windowpanes of light and dark. Strength
began to ebb back into my muscles as I walked. I picked up my pace
and segued into a jog, letting the mindless flow of exercise calm me. A
cold knot in my stomach reminded me where the knife had gone in all
those years ago. I’d been in and out of surgery for a month. My slashed
cheek had needed thirty stitches to sew it back together. Back then, I’d
thought the pain would never stop. Now, as I jogged into the awakening
dawn, the cool morning wind brushed lightly against my scar and I felt
happy to be alive.
I’m not some weak-minded flake who can’t handle his problems.
Sure, I might get a little wobbly at times – I still suffer the occasional
panic attack now and then, maybe sink a few more whiskies than I
should – but all in all, I think I’m doing pretty damn well for a guy with
a head full of bad memories. I’ve got my problems, like everyone does,
but the one thing I know is that I’ll never be broken like that again.
They never caught the killer. After the double funeral, my
grandmother took me in and raised me. I’d struggled like a teenage
demon, full of wrath that couldn’t be focused and pain that couldn’t be
soothed. But with love and patience, she’d done her best to heal me, and
had somehow managed to keep me on the right path. Now I was a man,
strong and independent, and I loved my Nanna dearly for everything
she’d done for me. But some wounds always remain open, no matter
how we try to bandage them.
Never again. I’d made that vow twelve years ago, and I renewed it
now. Never give in to weakness. Never let anyone hurt the people you
love. Never back down from a fight. I had toughened myself both
mentally and physically during those twelve hard years. I’d installed
strenuous karate training into my muscles. Now I was lean and hard and
ready. Never again would I be a victim.
Never again.
I reached the convenience store, hesitated only a moment, and then
kept running, my chin held high. Whatever crutch they were selling, I
no longer needed it. I admired the beauty of the dawn as I ran, my lungs

filling with clean, frosty air. I had rediscovered my sense of purpose
again, and I felt energised and alive. To hell with Pearl and Benny and
anybody else who thought I should just sit around with my mouth open
and wait for roast justice to fly in.
The best cure for hopelessness is a hero. If all those detective stories
I’d read over the years had taught me anything, it was that moral self
respect is everything. I set my jaw with determination, but I was smiling
too. I would not quit. Not now. Not until I’d finished this. There were
tears on my cheeks, but they were good tears. I’d found my mission at
last, my reason for being. They were tears of homecoming.
The dawn light finally spilled over the horizon, shining brilliantly
upon my face like a holy blessing. Maybe it was a sign, a radiant omen
of approval from above. Or maybe I was just a fool, plodding blindly
towards damnation.
Maybe both.

Chapter Nineteen
“N ow then, Jack, what can I do for you?” Reverend Hoffman

asked. We were in his office, facing each other across his
wide mahogany desk. “I can only give you a few minutes and then I’ll
need to prepare for the morning service.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“You are of course welcome to join us for the service.” He eyed me.
“Have you ever been to church, Jack?”
“My parents were Christmas and Easter pilgrims. They dragged me
along on a leash once or twice, but it never took.”
Hoffman produced a lukewarm smile. “Well, I trust you won’t let
those stuffy old experiences from childhood stop you from making new
friends today. We’re quite relaxed here in the group, not at all what you
might expect.” The smile lifted an extra inch into sales mode. “Perhaps
now that you’re an adult, you’ll be better able to see the truth of
Christianity for yourself, with fresh eyes.”
“I’ll consider it.”
He seemed satisfied with the answer. He cleared his throat and made
a businesslike show of gathering up a few loose papers, squaring them
into a sheaf, and filing them away in a desk drawer. “Now then,” he said
in a lawyerly tone, “I assume you’re here because of what happened to
Crystal’s boyfriend.”
I didn’t answer right away. I leaned back in my chair and stared up
at the ceiling. I wasn’t quite sure why I’d come here. On the way over,
I’d been hoping Hoffman might be able to help make sense of Crystal’s
half-hearted attempt to frame me, assuming he’d been the trusted friend
who’d taken her home from the police station. But now that I was here,
I realised that I already knew the answers. I’d lashed out in much the
same irrational way when my parents had been taken from me.
“Don’t worry about Crystal,” Hoffman said now, as if reading my
thoughts. “She’s resting at home for the time being. She will of course
be provided with all the spiritual guidance and support she needs to help
her through this difficult occasion.” He glanced at me with a speculative
look. “I offer you that same support too, Jack, should you be willing to
accept it. You’ve also been through a great deal.”
I was touched by his concern. I’d been alone with my thoughts too

long, and they weren’t nice thoughts. “Thanks, Reverend. I appreciate
the offer.”
Hoffman took a breath and put on what he probably considered his
deal-closing smile. “I’d really like you to stay for our service, Jack. I’m
sure you’ll feel much better once you’re surrounded by loving people
who care about you.”
“I’m not–”
He held up a hand to stop me. “I think you’ll find that you’re
pleasantly surprised. I’m not the stuffy, bible-thumping stereotype you
might think I am.” It was a light remark designed to elicit a smile, and it
earned one from me now. “All I ask, Jack, is that you come along and
see for yourself how God’s love has empowered us. If you keep your
heart and mind open, He will do the same for you, believe me.”
“Well…”
“Trust me, Jack.” He held out his hands in an all-encompassing
gesture. “It will change your life forever.”
It was easier to just agree. This church thing might not be my cup of
hooch, but it wouldn’t kill me to sit through an hour or two of
yammering. Besides, there was a small chance that one of the Christians
might know something about Tess. I said, “Okay.”
He beamed. “That’s wonderful, Jack! You’ll love the others when
you meet them. You’ll fit right in, I’m certain.”
“We’ll see.”
There was a moment’s awkward silence. Hoffman studied me, his
thoughtful eyes picking away at the scabs on my soul with incisive
precision. “I sense,” he said carefully, “that what’s been missing in your
life, Jack, is a feeling of belonging. You have a strong desire to find a
cause that you can serve passionately. Would that be an accurate
assessment?”
“Who knows?” I said gruffly. He’d prodded a nerve. The
illumination I’d felt at dawn was already starting to fray at the edges,
like a desperately clutched dream draining away inexorably upon
waking. “Life doesn’t come with an instruction manual.”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Jack. We all need guidance.” He
spread his hands wide. “Right now you’re floundering, lost in the barren
mountains of uncertainty. What you need is a new direction, a sure and
sturdy path to lead you out of despair.” He leaned forward, a knot of
authoritarian concern twisting his forehead like an exclamation mark.

“God’s path,” he pronounced.
“Damn it, I just want to solve the case!” I blurted out. Instantly
embarrassed, I pressed on in a subdued tone. “I want to see justice done,
that’s all. Justice for Tess. And for Duong,” I finished lamely.
Hoffman softened his expression. “God has a special plan for each
of us, Jack. You may not understand this yet, but I have every faith that
it will all soon become clear to you.” He nodded reassuringly. “Allow
God’s light to fill you, and the way ahead will become clear. The power
of faith will guide your actions.”
I was tempted to make a crack about the power of whisky. I
clamped down on my tongue to keep it firmly in my cheek.
“God has the answers you seek,” Hoffman continued. “If you open
your heart to Him, He will reveal the truth to you.” He stood, glancing
at the gold watch on his wrist. “I have to prepare for the service now,
Jack. Would you like some coffee before we commence?”
I recalled the excellent brew from my last visit. “Yes, please.”
“Splendid.” A big toothy gleam escaped from the forest of his beard.
“Wait here and I’ll have Vanessa bring it in for you.” He came out from
behind his desk to give me a fatherly pat on the shoulder. “An open
mind, Jack, that’s all I ask. An open mind to allow the light of God into
your life.”
I rewarded his spiel with a polite, noncommittal smile, and he left the
room. It felt good to just sit there and be at peace for a moment, away
from Hoffman’s intensity. His insight into a person’s inner secrets was
uncanny. I could see why he was a successful preacher; with his
charisma, he could charm the bribes off a politician.
I loosed a yawn that registered three on the Richter scale and
wandered over to the shelves to examine one of Hoffman’s crystal
elephants. It was the size of a woman’s fist, with two tiny ruby eyes that
had been skilfully embedded into the crystal, and miniature tusks that
appeared to be genuine ivory. I could sell both of my kidneys on the
black organ market and still not be able to afford such a fine piece of art.
On the opposite wall, inside a polished, sleek entertainment cabinet, a
state of the art plasma television had been installed with precision. Just
to be nosey, I opened the cabinet and found a fancy video recorder and a
rack with several dozen tapes. I flipped through the tapes, but the labels
were marked only with dates. Perhaps Hoffman recorded his sermons
for posterity, to numb the minds of future converts.

I had just closed the cabinet door when an arm slipped around my
waist.
“Jesus!” I said, and Vanessa giggled.
“Hi, Jack.” She gave me a squeeze. “Did I scare you?”
“Either that or I just spontaneously converted to Christ.”
She stroked the back of my neck. “Oh, now you’re all tense.” She
kneaded my shoulders with nimble fingers.
“Vanessa...”
“Hush, Jack. I brought you your coffee.”
I pulled away from her touch and moved over to where she’d placed
the tray on the desk. The elephants watched with their judgmental red
eyes as I stirred in my cream. The coffee tasted a bit metallic, so I
heaped in an extra spoonful of sugar.
Vanessa moved up next to me and I could feel the heat of her
proximity. I angled myself slightly to create some distance.
“What’s the matter, Jack?” she said, sounding hurt. “Don’t you like
me?”
“I like you fine, Vanessa.”
“Then why don’t you want to make love to me?” She said it as
casually as if she’d asked me to pass the pepper.
I nearly choked on my coffee. “You’re too young,” I spluttered.
“I’ll be nineteen next month,” she said.
“Bullshit,” I said. “You’re fourteen, fifteen at most.”
She shrugged. Her hair drifted in front of her eyes. “What
difference does age make, really? I can be as old as you want me to be,
Jack, or as young.” She looked at me steadily through her hair, the
barest hint of her tongue swimming slow laps on the surface of her lips
to emphasise her point. It was well emphasised.
“It makes a difference to me,” I said blandly.
She pouted. “You don’t have to make excuses just because you
don’t find me attractive. I know I’m not the prettiest–”
I shook my head. “That’s not it at all. I think you’re very attractive,
but–”
“Really?” She edged closer to me. “You do?”
“But,” I said, and then I couldn’t think of a single but that wouldn’t
sound prudish to this sexually mature girl-creature in front of me. “But
that’s just the way it is,” I finished lamely. “End of story.”
Vanessa posed with hands on hips. “Not even a teensy-weensy little

kiss?”
Her lips were full and ripe, her skin unspoiled and tempting. Other
guys might have gone for it. But I shook my head. I’ve got my morals.
They might not be worth much more than pocket lint, but I’ve got them.
She reached out and pressed her fingertips to my lips. “Not even a
finger kiss?”
I relented and brushed the tip of her finger with a peck. “There you
go,” I said. “Now beat it before you get me in trouble with the
principal.”
She giggled and sucked her finger into her mouth, bouncing out
through the door like a schoolgirl on heat. Which, come to think of it,
she was. Teenagers, I thought, and rolled my eyes. Thank God I don’t
own one.
I sat and drank more of the coffee. It tasted awful. I wondered who
had brewed it today. I’d read somewhere that fifty percent of a good
coffee is in the skill of the preparer. I gulped the bitter mixture down
anyway, with a series of jerks and grimaces. It was stirring sluggishly in
my stomach by the time Hoffman returned.
He was decked out in priestly robes. “Are you ready to join us,
Jack?” He studied me keenly.
“Yeah, I guess.” I swayed a little giddily as I got to my feet.
“This way.”
He led me along the hallway and into the big conference room I’d
glimpsed before. Ten people were already seated at the massive
polished table. They smiled at me with shiny eyes as I walked in, as if
I’d just escaped from purgatory and was here to be inducted back into
the fold.
Hoffman turned me around to face them, his hand gripping me by
the upper arm. “Let me introduce you to the rest of the group, Jack.”
“Hello,” I said, nodding to everyone in general. I was feeling
sociable. “I’m Jack.” In front of each person rested a bible and a glass
of what looked like white wine.
Nearly everyone beamed identical smiles of welcome back at me.
Most of the Christians were female. Vanessa was sitting with her back
to the window. She gave me a huge smile with plenty of lip and tongue
in it. A surly-looking youth with a crew cut broke the mould by
favouring me with a scowl instead. Probably thought I was muscling in
on his action.

“Jack, this is Tristan,” Hoffman said, pointing to the frowning young
man. “Tristan’s a motor mechanic by trade.”
“G’day,” I said.
Tristan responded with a curt nod. He had the scarred knuckles of a
fighter. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place him. I’d been
in plenty of drunken pub brawls over the years though; it wouldn’t be
the first time I’d run up against an old grudge held by somebody that I’d
entirely forgotten about.
A young married couple were the Bannisters. Her job was carrying
the kid that was due in four months and his sales job was going to buy
the silver spoon. Next on the checklist were Annabelle and Kylie, both
doing first year law at university. They looked like a pair of skinny
vampires badly in need of a tan and a decent meal.
Hoffman kept going around the table, matching names to faces as
fast as I could forget them. Rob, a big, stupid-looking guy, was “looking
for work” and seemed somewhat reluctant about the prospect of finding
it. Over here were twin sisters Samantha and Faye, both still at school,
sharing not only identical genes but an unfortunate, near-symmetrical
bout of acne. Vanessa licked her lips, fluttered her eyelashes at me, and
still looked fifteen and not a virgin. Lucky last was Anita, a shy, plain
Greek girl in her twenties, who worked as a receptionist and wouldn’t
meet my eyes. They all wore those familiar gold crucifixes around their
necks, as if the necklaces were membership medallions that would get
you into God’s private club.
After the hellos, I was ushered into a chair between Vanessa and
Anita. I felt like a fossil. Aside from Hoffman, I was the oldest person
in the room. These people were the bright young future of religion, I
realised. So much for the stereotype of the Church as a dumping ground
for grannies in cobwebbed shawls.
Vanessa put her hand on my knee the moment I’d wedged myself
into the hard uncushioned chair. “Hi, Jack,” she said in a flirty whisper.
“Changed your mind yet?”
“Nope,” I told her.
She winked and patted my thigh. “Let me know when you do.”
I wriggled around in my chair trying to get comfortable. Several fat
red candles had been lit, one for each corner of the room. They
resembled bloated pungent sausages, filling the air with a sweet-smelling
aroma. Hoffman was at the head of the table, talking to the Bannisters.

The others chatted among themselves. I felt a sudden sense of dizzy
unreality, as if I were trapped in some bizarre dream that I needed to
pinch my way out of. My mouth felt dry and I could still taste the bad
coffee on my tongue.
“Where do you go to school?” I asked Vanessa, to make
conversation.
She brightened at my interest. “Dropped out last year,” she said.
“Wasn’t learning nothing anyway. Gave my folks the flick at the same
time.” She tossed her hair with a practiced movement. “Reverend
Hoffman took me in, and now I’m learning all about Jesus instead.”
“I see.”
“You believe in God, don’t you, Jack?” she asked. “Heaven and
hell?”
I thought about it. “Well, let’s just say that I’ve seen enough
wickedness to know that evil exists.”
“Evil, hmm?” The pink tip of her tongue salted the question with
mischief. “So you’re a bit of a bad boy, are you?” Her fingers kept
moving up my thigh and I wasn’t sure what to do about it.
“Not me,” I said. “I meant other people’s evil.”
She frowned. “Oh yeah, I know about that alright.” Her young face
hardened and took on much older lines. “Do you want to know why I
ran away from home?”
I felt sick. “Was someone touching you?”
She laughed bitterly. “Touching me? My father did way more than
touch me, the dirty old shit. And my mum, she didn’t even…” Her
varnish had all peeled off now, the bare boards exposed. She took a
shaky breath and exhaled slowly before dismissing the subject with a
shrug. “Anyway, they can both rot in hell for all I care.” A spiteful
sneer passed across her face. “I heard they’ve been going nuts trying to
find me.”
I had no idea how to respond. I was starting to feel groggy, trapped
in this stuffy room. As my brain struggled to find the words, I decided I
could no longer tolerate her fondling my leg. At the same time, I didn’t
want to appear callous. So I scooped up her hand and gave it a
sympathetic squeeze. “You’re safe now,” I said, clutching at the first
clichéd words of comfort that came to mind.
Vanessa beamed like a girl who’d just found her one true love. She
squeezed back, her eyes forming half-moons of happiness. I was feeling

increasingly uncomfortable – my mouth was parched, my head felt
woozy and clogged with a dull heat – but at least I had her roving hand
under control. I took a gulp from the glass of yellow liquid in front of
me. It was a thick, sweet lemon cordial, barely diluted with water. I
choked down a mouthful and did my best not to gag.
The door opened and a couple in their mid-twenties came into the
room. The man was thin and anaemic, with a bald patch creeping across
his scalp like a rash. His partner looked almost as wide as she was tall,
and probably hadn’t seen her own feet in years. Hoffman introduced
them as Paul and Kirsty. The mismatched pair gave me a friendly hello,
which I caught, rubbed clean, and tossed back at them. I felt a twinge of
disappointment, and realised that I’d been unconsciously hoping Crystal
would appear. Perhaps that had been what had brought me to Hoffman’s
after all, the urge to see her and try to redeem myself in her eyes.
“Very good,” Hoffman said once everyone was seated. “Alright,
now that we’re all here, let us begin, shall we?”
Vanessa released my hand and picked up her bible. I followed the
script and reached for the book in front of me. It was neatly bound in
fine leather, with gold lettering inscribed on the cover:
HOLY BIBLE
Specially printed for the Rev. Alistair

Hoffman
“God Reads Your Soul As You Read His Wisdom”
“Cute,” I said, pointing at the cover. Vanessa smiled and peered up

at me through half-closed eyelids. She probably thought it was her
seductive look, but it only made her look goofy. I opened my mouth to
smile back, and the smile stretched out into a big sudden yawn. The
sweet fumes from those candles were making me sleepy.
Hoffman stood. “Let’s start with Matthew 7:21,” he announced.
I vaguely remembered that the Gospels were somewhere around the
three-quarter mark, so I didn’t look too foolish trying to find the passage.
I scavenged through the pages until I found the right verse.
Hoffman cleared his throat and began reciting, apparently from
memory. “Beware of false prophets. For not everyone who calls me

Lord is welcome in the kingdom of heaven,” he quoted. “Only those
who obey my true will, without question, will be spared from damnation.
When the Judgment falls, many will cry, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not heed
your word, have we not fought evil in your name and performed many
good deeds?’ And I will reply, ‘Away with you, sinners! For you have
done the bidding of Satan’s liars and I know you not.” He got it word
perfect.
Hoffman brought his eyes to rest on me. “Jack, you’re our guest
today. What is your interpretation of that verse?” He looked at me
expectantly.
It was a test and I’d been put on the spot. I felt a momentary wave of
dizziness. My face burned from the heat of everybody’s stares as I tried
to think. In here, I thought, the Christians are the lions, and they’ve got
me in their jaws. I took a punt and said, “It’s a warning not to use God’s
name as an excuse for your actions.”
Hoffman flashed his toothy shark’s grin. “A good try, Jack, but
wrong.” He paced the floor, gesturing as he spoke. “In this passage,
Jesus is warning us to beware of those who claim to have our best
interests at heart, but are in fact the minions of Satan!”
A few people gasped at the mention of the red-skinned guy with the
horns. I noticed that Vanessa was concentrating hard on Hoffman’s
every word.
“God has a plan for each and every one of us,” Hoffman continued.
“Yet this plan is perverted every single day by the devil’s henchmen.
Disguised as officials and politicians and even your own family and
friends, they utter blasphemies and lies to trick and confuse you. These
are the false prophets Jesus tells us to defy!”
He expelled a hot, angry breath and gestured towards the big bay
window, behind which, presumably, all those false prophets were
lurking in the woods outside. “Listen to what I tell you, what Jesus tells
you. Pay no attention to the liars who seek to discourage you from
finding your rightful place in God’s bosom.” He angled his hands
inwards to smooth his robes. “Instead, trust only in God Himself, and in
the love of those who truly understand His plan.”
Hoffman suddenly pounded the table with his fist, startling several
people, including me. “Doubt is the name of the poison that the servants
of evil seek to infect us with!” he shouted. “That is why we must all
take heed of Jesus’ warning and resolve anew to keep our faith strong.”

He cast a solemn gaze around the room. “We must not let the godless
evildoers out there undermine and destroy our church.”
I glanced at the others. Everybody looked rapt, their awe-struck eyes
focused on Hoffman. Heads were nodding and I heard a few murmured
buzzes of agreement. Even I was half nodding. He was some preacher
alright.
“You ask me who will ascend at the Judgment?” Hoffman cried,
pointing out each person in the room with a stern finger. “I tell you that
only those who follow God’s mission to the letter will be saved!” The
finger of wrath finished up aimed at me.
“And what might that mission be?” I asked, trying for a joke to
lighten the mood. I was feeling a little tipsy. “To boldly go where no
man has gone before?”
Hoffman glared at me with indignation, as if I were a theatregoer
who’d just yelled an answer to Hamlet’s musings on the stage. He
reined it in though, and gave me his tepid used-car-salesman’s smile.
“That, Jack, is the eternal answer that each of us must discover. With
the right teaching, you too will come to understand God’s plan.”
“And I suppose you’re the right teacher, Reverend, is that it?” I
demanded, my mouth slurring over some of the words. “How do I know
you aren’t one of those false prophets you warned us about?” I felt
giddy with cleverness; my brain had tapped into undiscovered reserves
of intelligence. Einstein himself couldn’t have expressed it better. I
drank another gulp of the yellow cordial to celebrate; it tasted almost
drinkable now.
Hoffman seemed unfazed. “Trust me, Jack,” he said. “God has
touched my soul and shown me His vision of a better world.” He
slashed a hand towards the big window. “Other so-called priests are
nothing but conmen, interested only in money and head counts and
increasing the profits on the collection plate. What passes for
Christianity out there has become just another tool for the devil to
promote greed and corruption.”
The cynic in me couldn’t help nodding. It’s hard to focus on feeding
the needy when your magnificent church needs a new million-dollar
wing with marble toilets.
“Whereas I,” Hoffman continued, “have never taken money from my
followers.” He fixed me with powerful, blazing eyes. “Faith, yes.
Trust, yes. Love, definitely! But never money. Any priest who

demands money in exchange for God’s blessing is nothing more than a
thieving charlatan!” His face flushed with righteousness. “My church is
devoted to love!” he shrieked. “Love!”
A few of the Christians at the table muttered “Amen” like well-
trained dogs.
“Love…” Vanessa whispered. She was rocking back and forth in
her chair, entranced by Hoffman’s performance. The other Christians
seemed to be in a similar state of rapture. I found myself swaying a little
as well, although that might just have been peer pressure.
“Love.” Hoffman breathed deeply, as if drawing in love from the air
itself. “To share the love of God, the love of others, the love of life in all
its glory – that is my message, Jack. The capacity for love is our Lord
and Saviour’s greatest gift to us. Love is the only gift that is
unconditionally free.” His eyes focused on me like lasers. I realized
that he was waiting for me to say something.
“I… understand,” I said, and somehow I did. Logically, I could
think of several other things that were just as important as love, but right
at that moment, in the face of Hoffman’s impassioned speech, they all
seemed so shallow. My vision had become blurry and I couldn’t think
clearly. It was simpler to just agree. I let my mind go blank. My pulse
felt like a soft, soothing drumbeat inside my skull. So much easier to
accept what he was saying than to try to argue. I gulped down the
remainder of the cordial. My hand wobbled as I returned the empty
glass to the table.
“Let me help you, Jack,” Hoffman said softly. “You’ve been
brought up in a depraved society that only values people for what they
have and what they’ve accomplished. Out there, love is rationed out
only to the successful, to those who conform to the evils of materialism.
Anyone who fails is considered worthless, shunned. Is that how you
feel, Jack? Worthless?”
I nodded. I thought of my drunken unemployment, my crappy little
rented apartment, the list of friends I could count on one hand. I had
failed to save Tess, failed to protect Duong. I’d failed to find even one
part of myself worth feeling good about. Slumped in that uncomfortable
chair, I could actually feel my worthlessness, as if the word itself had
taken physical form and was bearing down on my shoulders with
relentless pressure. My eyelids felt hot and heavy.
“But you’re not worthless, Jack,” Hoffman continued, his voice

penetrating through the haze in my brain to offer a flash of hope. “Here
in my church, with love and unity, such petty individual concerns as
success and failure become pointless. Let go of your pain, Jack.
Embrace love and become a member of God’s team.”
“Join us, Jack,” Vanessa whispered in my ear. She began stroking
my thigh again and I didn’t have the strength to do anything about it.
“Let us love you.”
There was perspiration on my forehead now. I was barely able to
keep myself upright. I wondered if I was having a spiritual experience.
Hoffman was right: the world had devolved into a frantic scrabble for
money and power. Nobody cared about anybody but themselves
anymore. Love had been lost somewhere along the ride, trampled in the
mad rush. I was nodding vigorously now, my head spinning with new
insights. I felt poised on the brink of a breakthrough.
“Let me guide you, Jack,” Hoffman said, his words sliding straight
into my brain. “Trust me, join me, and your heart will soon be filled
with the majesty of God’s love. Your soul will be renewed with faith
and purpose.”
Hoffman’s promises shone like beacons of hope in the black night.
What allegiance did I owe to society anyway? That human cesspool out
there where politicians cheat and lie and steal, doing and saying anything
to get voted back into office where they can cheat and lie and steal some
more. Where smartly dressed executives buy and sell people’s lives at
the whims of shareholders, slashing jobs and destroying families for the
sake of a few cents a share. Where doctors pocket hefty fees for yanking
us screaming out of the womb, rush us through our appointments over
the years with one eye on the clock and the other on their bulk billing
quotas, and then stretch out our final fights until the last of the money
dries up. It was a cold, loveless world out there, I saw now. Hoffman
was right: the chill of despair, cynicism, and ever-gnawing loneliness
had seeped into my soul with insidious stealth, and I needed to be
rescued.
I tried to say something, to voice some of these thoughts, but my
mouth wouldn’t work. My tongue felt too thick to navigate around my
teeth. Bright spots pinpricked my vision. I wondered, vaguely, if I’d
been drugged. It didn’t matter. All I wanted was to lie down and clear
my head. I closed my eyes for a moment and was almost washed away
by a wave of dizziness.

“That’s it, Jack,” Hoffman was saying, his deep bass voice echoing
inside my skull. “Don’t fight the sensation. What you feel is the Holy
Spirit sweeping through you, cleansing your soul. Let go of your
resistance. Put your faith in me and I will guide you to a place where
love can flourish.” Through the fog, I saw his eyes glitter like those of a
hawk swooping in for the kill.
Heaviness dragged at my eyelids. The fog in my head ebbed and
billowed like the steam in a sauna. I was balanced on the lip of a
precipice, needing only a nudge to push me off into a whole new way of
life. I understood the power of faith now, the sense of destiny and
completion it provided. I felt as though God had reached out a divine
finger and zapped me with a revelation.
My senses seemed heightened: the sickly sweetness of the cordial on
my tongue, Vanessa’s hand industrious on my thigh, the acrid toffee
stink of the candles. My brain felt like a jigsaw puzzle, whole and
broken all at the same time, and ready to be put back together in new
configurations.
Hoffman was still preaching, but I couldn’t hear him anymore. His
words blurred into one smooth, soothing conduit of sound, leading me
deeper towards epiphany, urging me to let go, to open my mind, open
my heart, surrender my trust, lose myself to faith, to love, to feel God’s
love surging through my veins.
I closed my eyes, took a shuddery breath, and risked all. I opened
my mind. I opened my heart, mind, and soul to the nothingness, and to
whatever salvation it might bring…

Chapter Twenty
F aces. Crowding around me. Staring. People lifting me,

carrying me. Lowering me onto softness. A moist towel
touched to my forehead. The deep, calming voice.
“Are you alright, Jack?” the voice said.
My eyes felt blurry with fever. I looked up and saw Christ on the
cross, glowing with radiant divinity. I blinked to refocus my eyes and
the holy vision was revealed as just a Crucifixion mural painted on the
ceiling. I was in a dimly lit lounge room. More religious artwork
adorned the walls. Reverend Hoffman sat on the arm of the couch I had
been laid out on, staring down at me. He dabbed my face with the towel.
Several of the other Christians stood behind him, shimmering in and out
of my vision like wraiths.
“Jack, can you hear me?”
I managed a grunt. Someone brought a glass to my lips. More of the
cloying cordial stuff. The glass clanked against my teeth as I took a
mouthful.
“That’s it, Jack,” the Hoffman voice said. “Drink it all down.”
I turned my head aside. “No more,” I mumbled. The glass was
taken away. “Feel woozy. Just need some fresh air.”
“You need rest, Jack.” Hoffman patted my arm, setting off wavy
ripples in my vision. “What you need is time to absorb the Lord’s
message.”
My attention kept trying to slink off on its own unauthorised
missions. “Need air,” I said through sluggish lips. The urge to faint
again was overpowering and I had to struggle to stay ahead of the
greyness. “Just a little… fresh air… I’ll be okay.”
I could barely raise my head from the couch. Two of those red
incense candles had been lit, spreading their sickly smoke throughout the
room. Heavy curtains covered the windows, blocking out all natural
light. The air in the room seemed humid and uncooperative, as if it were
some malicious, sentient organism bent on defying my efforts to breathe.
Hoffman’s teeth gleamed within his beard like the twinkle of a
manufactured diamond. “Let go of your resistance, Jack. Let go and
allow the Holy Spirit to fill you with love and obedience.”
He fished something out of a pocket in his robes and handed it to me.

It was some sort of pink and yellow medicine capsule. “Take this,” he
said. “You’ll feel better.” When I hesitated, the teeth flashed again.
“Trust me, Jack. You’re among friends here.” Behind him, the other
Christians smiled and nodded encouragingly.
Muddled as I felt, I didn’t like the idea of taking strange medicine. I
stuck the pill under my tongue and pretended to swallow it with a sip of
the cordial.
“Very good,” Hoffman said. “You’ll stay here for a few days until
you’ve made the transition.” He patted my shoulder tenderly. “Don’t
worry, Jack. Just relax, listen to the tape, and learn. Alright?”
I nodded. The pill felt sour and uncomfortable in my mouth.
“When you feel the Spirit start to move in you, do not fight it. Just
open your mind and allow yourself to be overwhelmed by the glory of
Jesus Christ.” He gave me a fatherly look. “Put your trust in me, Jack,
and I will change your life forever. You want that, don’t you?”
“Sure,” I said with my thick tongue tucked over the pill.
Hoffman stood. “You’re one of us now, Jack,” he said. “You’ll
never feel lonely or useless again.” His eyes sparkled. “God has much
work for you to do.” The hovering crowd of Christians followed him to
the door like moths swirling around a flame.
“Have faith, Jack,” he said with one final wolfish smile. “Trust me
and I’ll show you Heaven.” He swept his robes around him with a
flourish and left the room, the Christians trailing out behind him. The
door snicked shut. I was alone at last.
But not entirely alone. Near the stand that held the candles, a stereo
system had been tucked into an alcove. One of the Christians must have
activated it on the way out. Hoffman’s voice came rolling smoothly
from the speakers. “Open your mind, child,” the recording said. “Do
not resist the call of the Lord.” Soft background music accompanied the
voice, a gentle piano and flute duet that reminded me of the sea.
I spat out the pill and hid it in my pocket. I needed air, not recorded
sermons and happy pills. Although, my lethargic mind whispered,
wouldn’t it be easy, oh so easy, to just lie here on the couch and listen,
listen to the voice, just let yourself slip, slip under the surface, and...
“Let the love of Jesus Christ consume you,” the tape said, as if it
could read my thoughts. “Open your mind to the will of God and accept
His love into your heart.” Behind the voice, the music pulsed out a
sleepy heartbeat.

Sure, why not? I tried to open my mind, the way the voice told me
to, but some silly yammering mental whisper kept insisting that
something wasn’t right.
“Let go, and allow the light of God to fill you. You are God’s
servant and you must learn how to obey His will. Breathe deeply of His
love and the Lord will reward you with salvation.”
I breathed deeply, but my only reward was a lungful of harsh, toffee-
scented smoke from the candles across the room. It made me cough
until my head spun, and that broke the spell. I couldn’t take this
anymore; I had to have fresh air.
I rolled from the couch and crashed onto the carpet. I didn’t have the
strength to stand. All I wanted to do was curl up into a ball and listen to
the soothing voice. But I made myself move. On hands and knees, head
hanging low, I crawled towards the windows. From the stereo speakers,
Hoffman’s recorded voice preached on about the beauty of God’s love
and the honour of being His servant. I finally made it across the room
and stretched out a shaky hand to tug open the curtains.
The light of God! My whole being reeled with a sudden surge of
hope and awe, and I came close to passing out. But as my eyes adjusted,
I realised it was only sunlight, and not a miracle after all.
Disappointment tore through me. But I wouldn’t stop now. I clenched
my teeth and, using the window frame for support, hauled myself to my
feet.
The window was one that could be wound open. I opened it as far as
it would go and shoved my face out into the cool, clean air. It tasted like
pure bliss. I breathed in another big lungful and the dizziness began to
lift from my mind. I felt the faint stirrings of a headache starting to
form. I looked out at the garden view and calculated the distance to the
ground; this room was on the second floor. I kept sucking in fresh air,
again and again, until my brain had clambered up out of the pit of haze.
“You must renounce your old sinful ties to the past.” Hoffman’s
recording was still going strong. “Do not trust anyone who does not
belong to the church, even friends and family you have known for years.
For the devil prises his way into the souls of the unsaved, and they will
try to poison you against our church with their evil lies.”
His voice no longer sounded smooth and persuasive; now it grated
on my ears. I felt as though I might be ready to walk. I held my breath
and waded through the thick air over to the stereo alcove. Hoffman was

babbling on about God’s love residing within each of us, waiting to be
shared. I stopped the tape, ejected it, and snapped it in half with my bare
hands. There was no love residing in my heart right now. Only sickness
and disgust and the growing heat of anger.
Still holding my breath, I went to the door and readied my hand on
the knob. Unlocked. I curled my other hand into a fist, yanked open the
door, and burst out into the hallway. Nobody in sight. The hallway was
decorated with the same orange wallpaper and frizzy blue carpeting I’d
seen before. Hoffman must have bought them in bulk. I holstered the
fist and started moving.
The air was normal out here. I could see a staircase at the end of the
hallway, extending in both directions. I had no way of knowing where
the Christians were, so I’d have to chance it. Reaching the stairs
undetected would be my first challenge.
I knew now that I had been drugged. Drugs in the candle smoke,
drugs in the cordial, and probably drugs in Hoffman’s coffee as well.
They hadn’t fully worn off yet. My tongue felt bloated and
unresponsive against the inside of my cheek. A wave of giddiness
washed over me and I leaned against the wall until it had passed. I
swore softly. The weakness I felt was only making me angrier.
Hoffman was brainwashing people for his own twisted purposes,
whatever those might be. Plying them with drugs and “love bomb”
messages until their brains were blasted clean, and then filling the empty
shells with pseudo-religious rubbish. Like a vampire, he drained every
last drop of individuality and free will, leaving only awed obedience.
He’d done it to the others, and he’d almost succeeded in doing it to me.
Right here in the heart of Melbourne, I’d stumbled into a religious
cult. You hear about extreme cults in the news every now and then,
when a sermon goes wrong and turns into a slaughter. But for every cult
that implodes in the public eye, there are ten other would-be messiahs
out there, quietly biding their time, collecting followers, pursuing their
own private heavens and hells. It made me sick to my stomach, but now
wasn’t the time for getting mad. Right now, I needed to make like Steve
McQueen on a Nazi motorbike and escape this madhouse.
I tiptoed towards the staircase, my shoulders pinching up against my
neck as I passed each open doorway. My heart was pounding like a
jackhammer and I had to consciously will each foot to move. I had
almost made it to the stairs when I heard a gasp.

My head spun towards the sound. A snapshot of the room seared
itself into my brain: several naked people sprawled together; Hoffman
working the controls of a video camera; Vanessa, her eyes dull with
drugs, on all fours and gaping at me with surprise.
I blundered past the doorway and stumbled down the stairs. Yet
another maze of gold crosses and blue carpet. I couldn’t afford to get
lost, not now. Someone shouted behind me and my stomach leapt into
my mouth. I saw more open doors, more unknown rooms, and I ran
frantically past them all without looking, desperate to find a way out. I
could hear footsteps pounding down the stairs. My mind was spinning,
still unable to process the shocking images I’d glimpsed. I felt like
vomiting. And then, incredibly, I rounded the corner into the next
hallway and there was the door, the blessed front door, like a holy sign
sent to lead me out of this sordid nightmare.
I wrenched the door open. Sunlight. More shouts from behind me.
I ran towards the fountain where my car was parked. I clawed my keys
out of my pocket and climbed in behind the wheel. My vision kept
blurring from drugs and adrenaline. I jabbed the key at the ignition too
quickly and fumbled the whole key ring onto the floor.
Shit!
I looked up. Tristan sprinted from the house wearing only his pants.
I slapped down the door lock just as he reached the car. His face twisted
into a snarl of amphetamine rage and he punched the window. The glass
rang like a shot, but didn’t break.
I groped the key from where it had fallen between my shoes and slid
it into the ignition. The engine started without a hiccup. Tristan
pounded on the roof in frustration as I shifted into reverse. I stamped on
the accelerator and he leapt away from the car as it took off. The tyres
left streaks of rubber on Hoffman’s driveway.
I reversed at high speed, using the mirror to see where I was going.
More cultists spilled out of the mansion in various states of undress and
confusion. The back of the car suddenly wavered off the driveway and
ploughed a brown line through the grass until I dragged it back under
control. And then I shot backwards through the open gate, jammed on
the brakes, and swung the car out onto the road to freedom. I shifted
into first and spun the wheels all the way to the next block. In the
mirror, several half-naked cultists stood just inside Hoffman’s gate,
staring after me like dark centaurs.

I steered the Commodore back to the main road and headed for
home. I wanted to hit somebody. I’d just barely avoided being
brainwashed and I was mad about it. I drove fast and recklessly,
reasoning that if a cop pulled me over for speeding, then at least I’d have
somebody to hit. By the time I reached my neighbourhood, the effects
of Hoffman’s drugs, whatever the hell they’d been, had mostly worn off.
A paranoid chill ran down my spine. The cultists couldn’t have
caught up to me yet, but Drucker was still out there somewhere. I
parked a few houses back from my apartment and scanned the street. No
sign of trouble. No brown van or black Porsche. The only vehicle that
looked out of place was my neighbour Herbert’s hippy kombi van with
the velvet curtains, but that always looked out of place.
I entered the courtyard, keeping close to the fence. Mrs. Vanguard
stood at the communal washing line pegging new holes into her old
stockings. She scowled at me suspiciously as I scuttled past her. I made
it to my door, stabbed my key into the lock, and went in fast.
I shouldered the door open and it juddered against the frame as I
rushed inside with a yell. Nobody swung a machete at my head.
Nobody waited at my desk with a gun levelled at my chest. I darted into
the cut-away kitchen in fighting stance, back foot supporting my weight,
front foot tensed and ready to fire. No thugs crouched in the gap
between the fridge and the stove. Nobody lurked in the pantry cupboard.
I grabbed a rolling pin while I was in there. It felt thick and heavy and
hungry for a head to knock.
The bathroom was clear. Nobody squatted in the shower stall
waiting to pounce. The bedroom cupboard concealed no slavering
madmen, just some criminally out-of-fashion clothes. The only hiding
place left was under the bed. I didn’t really expect anyone to be hiding
there, but I checked anyway. I was down on my knees squinting at the
dust bunnies when a voice spoke suddenly in the next room. I yelped
and cracked my head on the slats of the bed, and then sprang up and
hurtled into the living room, roaring at the top of my lungs and slashing
the rolling pin wildly from side to side.
There was nobody in the apartment but a fool. A fool named Jack.
“…leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I’m sober.” It was
my own recorded voice answering a phone call. The beep made me feel
even more foolish.
“Pick up the phone, Jack,” the caller said in a grave voice. “This is

Reverend Hoffman speaking.”
A shiver snaked its way down my back.
“Jack, I don’t know what spooked you earlier,” Hoffman said, “but
rest assured, we mean you no harm.”
“Yeah right,” I told the answering machine.
“I only want what’s best for you, Jack. Your brothers and sisters in
the church only want what’s best for you.” His voice was smooth and
arrogant, a knowing father disciplining a child.
I’d heard enough. I stormed across the room and snatched up the
phone. “Go to hell, you sick bastard!”
“Jack! Don’t hang up! Thank God you’re okay.”
“You don’t have the right to call God by his first name,” I said.
“Your so-called church is nothing more than a brainwash brothel!”
“My church–”
“What do you do? Dope them to the eyeballs and then make them
‘fuck for Jesus’? Huh? Is filming amateur porn the only way you can
get it up?”
“How dare you–”
“I’m turning you over to the cops,” I said with every bit of contempt
I could muster. “For Christ’s sake, Hoffman, some of those kids are still
in school.”
“Nobody is being made to do anything they don’t want–”
“Do you know what they do to kiddie diddlers in prison?”
Hoffman’s voice darkened. “If you attempt to blacken my good
name with your lies, I will sue you to your last dollar.” There was none
of the slick-talking conman in his voice now. Now he was all steel. “I’ll
see you ruined, do you hear me? Ruined!”
I snorted. “Go ahead and sue. If you win, you might even get the
whole twenty-six bucks.”
“You are nothing but a fiend sent to do the devil’s work!” Hoffman
shouted. He was losing it badly. “My church is protected by our Lord
and saviour, Jesus Christ! Know that if you try to harm me, His
vengeance will be swift and horrible!”
That subconscious tickle that had been nudging at my mind suddenly
exploded with full force. “You had Tess killed,” I said in a harsh
whisper. It cut him off in mid-rant. I sneered into the receiver with
savage pleasure. “And now I know how to prove it...”
I slammed down the phone before he could respond. Seconds later,

it began ringing again. I pulled the cord out of the wall and silenced it
before the answering machine could engage.
“Vengeance is mine; I will repay,” I said to the empty room. It was
one of the few bible quotes that I actually remembered. Tess had been
afraid of her pursuer’s vengeance, I remembered now; she’d specifically
used that unusual, religiously weighted word. And here was the word
again, straight from Hoffman’s pious lips.
The proof! I rummaged through the mess on my desk until I found
the manila folder Benny had given me. I skimmed through the file,
looking for that one sheet of paper which held all the answers, the tingle
in my mind growing into a great pounding thump of certainty. I flipped
through article after article until at last I found it.
The crack lawyer. The one whose sleazy tactics had won Drucker
his bail. The name had flitted past my consciousness when I’d first read
the file, but there it was now in black and white. I held up the page
triumphantly and rattled it in my fist.
“A. Hoffman,” I said aloud to the silent apartment. “Counsel for the
defence.”
Somebody knocked on the door and I flinched. I stuffed the article
into a desk drawer and crossed the room with my fist cocked at shoulder
level. The knock came again, and with it, Mrs. Vanguard’s irritating
voice. “I know you’re in there, Marsh!”
I yanked open the door and scowled at her. “What?”
“I beg your pardon!”
“What do you want, Mrs. Vanguard?” It took all of my self-control
to avoid making extensive use of four-letter words.
Mrs. Vanguard’s lips tightened. She looked at me with all the
self-righteous contempt of a kicked poodle. “I want a word with you,
Marsh. I will not tolerate such banging of doors and uncivilised
yelling–”
“Blah, blah, blah,” I said rudely. “Go put your word in a letter, and
put the letter in my mailbox, and I’ll read it when I’m good and ready.”
Her face compressed into a shocked grimace, her mouth meshing as
she tried to find the words to express her indignation. “Have you
entirely forgotten your manners?” she squawked.
“I never had any. Now piss off and leave me alone!”
I shut the door in her face and locked it. The doorbell rang again and
again, and I could hear her sputtering with rage and landlord-related

threats on the other side of the door, but I ignored her and after a few
minutes she stalked back to her apartment, slamming her own door
behind her. I grinned to myself; with any luck, her cats would have a
word with her about that.
I sat at my desk and tried to think. I’d found evidence that Hoffman
and Drucker had been entangled together in the past, and it didn’t take a
quantum physicist to figure out who Hoffman was buying his drugs from
now. But beyond that brief flash of insight, I couldn’t concentrate. It
was the smiling horror of it all that kept eating at me. Those kids had
been brainwashed so cynically that they couldn’t think for themselves
anymore. Now they just smiled and performed like mindless sheep on a
stage, while their great bearded messiah instructed them on how to
arrange their naked bodies for God and the camera. Just thinking about
it made my fists ache.
I still didn’t have enough solid proof to convince the cops. Maybe I
was just a big stupid goose chasing my own feathered tail, but I was
determined to take Hoffman down myself. Nobody should have the
right to rifle through somebody else’s mind and take away their free
will. I just hoped that the damage was reversible. I plugged the phone
back in and dialled, apprehensive about the sort of reception I might get.
“Hello?”
“It’s me, Crystal.”
“Jack?” Her tone changed from wariness to relief in an instant. “Oh
my God, I’m so sorry about before. Are you alright?”
“Not really. I’m in more trouble than an amputee with an itch.”
“Is it because of what I said about you to that fat policeman? Please
forgive me, Jack. I was, like, totally out of my head.”
“It’s okay.”
“I just needed to blame somebody, you know, and–”
“Forget about that now,” I butted in. “I need to see you. Right
away.”
“Why, what’s wrong?”
“I can’t tell you,” I said. “Not over the phone.” If I tried to speak ill
of her beloved Reverend too prematurely, she might hang up on me in
disbelief and call him for reassurance. And I wasn’t going to risk letting
her end up as another scarlet Picasso in a concrete pipe.
“Where do you want to meet?” she asked.
“Can you drive?”

“I can borrow Mum’s car.”
There was a secluded park I knew of, about halfway between my
place and hers. I told her how to get there.
“Oh Jack, there’s so many things I–”
“Save it.” I was anxious to get out of the apartment before Hoffman
could organise a posse. “I’ll see you in about twenty minutes.”
“My God, you sound so, like, serious. It must be really bad.”
“Oh it’s bad alright,” I said. “I know who killed Tess, and he’s
badder than Michael Jackson.”
“You know who did it? My God, who?”
“Good guess,” I said, and hung up. Nice touch, I thought, and ran
for the car.

Chapter Twenty-One
I inspected myself in the car’s mirror. Give me a shave, some

clean clothes, and a stiff drink and I’d probably pass a drill
sergeant’s inspection. For about half a second. A few of the barbed
wire cuts I’d received the other night had become itchy with infection, as
if they’d called over all their germ friends to come on in and have one on
the house. I couldn’t remember my last tetanus shot. It’d be ironic if I
made it this far and then died because of a rusty fence.
I left the car and wandered into the park. Crystal hadn’t arrived yet.
The afternoon sun felt warm enough to bake a cake. The air smelled as
delicious as fresh bread and the grass looked soft and green. It was a
relaxing, romantic place, with well-tended flowers, butterflies, and a
gentle wind whispering lullabies to the trees. I, on the other hand, was
all wire nerves and tension.
Hurry up, Crystal!
I paced. I explored the park, climbed halfway up a tree like a little
kid. I picked some flowers for Crystal on a whim, and then tossed them
away. I paced some more. She was half an hour late. Maybe Hoffman
had reached her first. Or Drucker had come for her. Maybe the knife
was entering her flesh right now…
A Volkswagen pulled up fast, its handbrake rasping. Crystal got out
and waved when she saw me. She wore a long white dress and heels
that made her look like a princess waiting to be saved; by comparison I
looked like a crime scene photo. She ran across the grass towards me,
and then she was in my arms.
“Crystal…” I started, but she pressed her lips against mine. Our kiss
was full of hunger, as if we’d been starving for each other all our lives. I
hugged her tightly and she hugged me back. It was all that mattered for
now.
She broke the kiss and beamed at me. “How was that?” she asked.
“Like a glass of water in the desert.” She was beautiful, and just
holding her, I felt beautiful inside too, no matter how ripped up and
scarred I was on the outside. Her dreamy smile reminded me of Tess. I
said, “Crystal, we need to talk.”
She stroked my chest. “We were meant to be together, Jack.” She
gazed at me with eyes that yearned for something nameless and eternal.

“Don’t you feel it?”
I swallowed. “Crystal, we have to talk about what’s happened.”
Her tongue brushed mischievously across the surface of her lips.
She reached down between my legs and squeezed.
“Not yet,” she said.
I pulled her to me and kissed her hard. She mashed her breasts
against my chest and panted into my mouth. We kissed more and more
passionately, trying to find an ever-deeper unity. I covered her face and
throat with whiskery kisses. Even her sweat smelled divine. She
clutched at me with growing excitement and wove her fingers through
my hair.
We lay on the grass, Crystal straddling my hips. There was nobody
else in the park. I removed my shirt and she kneaded my hard muscles,
making little noises of approval. She kissed my chest, worked her way
down, and planted a wet tongue in my bellybutton that made me laugh.
Her hands found my belt and loosened it, and then there was only her
hot, lovely mouth. I gasped and felt the world withdrawing from my
senses, leaving me immersed in pure, blissful sensation. I roamed under
her dress with my fingers and found slick, inviting heat. Crystal arched
her back and sighed with pleasure, then shifted into position and lowered
herself onto me with a gasp, and for a while we forgot about everything
but the seamless, timeless junction of our bodies…
Afterwards, we kissed and murmured soft, breathless sounds to each
other. I felt a lazy buzz of peacefulness in my lower stomach. The sun
had crept away behind a cloud and it was growing cooler. A nearby
rosemary bush enveloped us with its fragrance.
“You know, Jack, I was thinking,” Crystal said as she lay with her
head on my chest. “Maybe things were, like, supposed to turn out this
way.”
“What do you mean?”
She toyed absently with my chest hair. “I mean Tess and Duong.”
Her touch felt like tiny pleasant wisps of electricity. “Maybe it was,
like, God’s will that those bad things had to happen, so that you and I
would meet and get together.”
“That’s a pretty raw deal for the other two.”
She gave me a meaningful look. “God works in mysterious ways,
Jack.”
I was feeling fine and didn’t want to argue. “All I know is I’m glad

you’re here.”
“I love you, Jack. My heart knows we were meant to be together.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. Men are wired differently to
women; it takes longer for our feelings to percolate into words. I gave
her my hundred-watt smile and said, “I think you’re great too, Crystal.”
It seemed to be enough. She snuggled against me and made little sounds
of contentment.
What is love, anyway? I’d been in love before. Back when I’d been
with Julie, I’d been open, free with my feelings, maybe more than a little
crazy. Now though, almost nine months since the heartbreak, I still
remained wary about letting go of the reins again.
But to love somebody else gives us a reason for living. Without
other people to care about, we’re just solitary pieces on a chessboard,
occupying our own little spaces and being pushed around by forces we
don’t understand. Every king needs a queen. However, I wasn’t ready
to analyse how I felt about Crystal just yet. I was on an emotional high
right now and that was dangerous enough. I didn’t want to rush in
blindly like a pawn again.
“Are you ready to talk about the bad stuff?” I asked.
She nodded. “Okay.”
“I think I know who killed Tess,” I said.
“Who?”
“You’re not going to like it.”
Her eyes went big and round. “Jack, you’re scaring me! Who?”
I took a deep breath. “Alistair Hoffman.” Crystal’s head was
already shaking in rejection of the idea. “I’m guessing he paid Drucker
to do the wet work,” I continued, “but it was definitely Hoffman who
wanted her dead.”
“How can you even think that?” she said. She leaned away from me.
“Reverend Hoffman loved Tess. He wouldn’t hurt a mosquito.”
“Hoffman and Drucker go way back,” I told her. “Drucker supplies
the dope that keeps you and the others brainwashed and believing
Hoffman’s bullshit. They–”
“Stop it! I won’t listen to your lies!”
“It’s the truth, Crystal.”
“No!” She pulled away from me and settled on the grass at a chilly
distance. “You don’t know what you’re saying. Reverend Hoffman is a
good man. A holy man. We love him of our own free will.” She spoke

with the heat of conviction, but I thought I saw a glimmer of doubt in her
eyes.
“He tried to do it to me, Crystal,” I said forcefully. “He slipped
enough drugs into my drink to brainwash an elephant, and then left me
in a room with mind control mumbo jumbo playing on the stereo.”
“Maybe you just got drunk on the holy wine and became confused.”
“Not a chance, Crystal.” I snorted. “I suck myself into a bottle
every night like a genie looking for misplaced wishes. I know what
drunk is, and that was something else. If I hadn’t made a run for it, I’d
be halfway to Hallucination Heaven by now.”
“I don’t believe you. Anyway, that tape is just the induction
program the Reverend uses to help us, you know, get a crash course on
Jesus’ message.” She sniffed. “You don’t have to listen to it, so how
can it be mind control, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, so Hoffman fed you the same bullshit, huh?”
“It is not bullshit.” She folded her arms indignantly.
“It’s bullshit,” I said. “The problem is you’ve already swallowed it,
so now you think it tastes like chocolate.”
Her lips tightened. “How can you say such awful things, Jack?
After we’ve just… after I…” She pouted. “I thought you loved me.”
“I do care about you. That’s why I’m trying to save you.”
Her face brightened. “No, let me save you, Jack. You’re misguided,
that’s all. Let me save your soul.”
“Crystal–”
“I know what must have happened,” she said. “When God’s love
began flowing through you, it was, like, so intense that you freaked out,
that’s all. You just need to open your heart a bit wider and–”
“Crystal–”
“Come back to the mansion with me, Jack. Come back and try
again.” She was flushed with hope now, animated and talking rapidly.
“If you apologise, I’m sure Reverend Hoffman will forgive you for
whatever you’ve said. Then you and I can be together, forever, in God’s
loving arms.”
“For crying out loud, Crystal, wake up to yourself!” I was annoyed
and impatient now. “I’ve seen Hoffman’s idea of love. It’s nothing but
pornographic filth!”
She opened her mouth as if to argue, but then shut it again.
“Yeah, that’s right,” I said harshly. “I saw him playing film director

to a room full of naked zealots. One hand on the video camera and the
other on his cock. It was disgusting. He had them all thumping on the
carpet like rabbits.”
Crystal’s cheeks turned bright red. “You… you’re twisting things
around and making them sound bad when it’s… it’s not like that at all,
really it isn’t.”
“Does he make you fuck for the camera like an animal, Crystal?” I
could feel my neck muscles bulging, my fingernails digging into my
palms. “Tell me, is that the sort of thing a good Christian girl is
supposed to do?”
“It’s not… oh, why are you trying to confuse me, Jack?” Her
shoulders shook. “You’re messing with my head!”
“Somebody’s been messing with it alright.”
She ignored my sarcasm. “Now you… you’re twisting everything
around and making it sound dirty, and I don’t… I don’t want to talk
about it anymore.” She was barely holding back the tears now, like an
overfilled glass of water being carried over rocky ground. I’d have to
tread carefully if I was going to bring her back whole.
“Look,” I said in a softer voice, “you can’t blame yourself for the
things he made you do. Hoffman’s a manipulative conman. You can’t–
”
“You’re a liar!” she screamed. Tears spilled onto her cheeks. “How
can you say these horrible things?”
I made calming gestures. “I’m just trying to help you, Crystal.”
“You’re an evil, devil-loving liar, and you’ll burn in hell for your
lies!”
“Hoffman had Duong killed as well,” I said.
“Lies!”
“It’s the truth. Tess and Duong were both cut with the same knife.”
“All lies!”
“Damn it, Crystal! He killed your boyfriend and your best friend.
And if you don’t wake up and smell the facts, then he might even kill
you too. Can’t you see that?”
Crystal stiffened. Something small and far away glittered in her
eyes. She got unsteadily to her feet. I stood too and she walked up to
me. She drew back her hand and slapped my face hard. I took it without
a word.
“I hate you!” she screeched, and stormed off.

I watched her go, my emotions churning with guilt and anger and
indecision and desire. Then I ran after her and caught her before she
reached her car. She folded into my arms without resistance. Fresh sobs
tore loose from her throat and she hugged me hard, crying into the
hollow of my shoulder.
“Duong…” she whispered.
I just held her as she shivered in my arms. I remembered holding
Tess in my arms in another garden long ago. I stroked Crystal’s chestnut
hair and made soothing murmurs until her tears stopped.
“Jack?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I said. “It was a hell of a shock to hit you with.”
“I’m still not saying I believe any of it. But I shouldn’t have reacted
that way without, like, hearing you out first.”
“It’s okay.”
“You’d better just tell me everything.” Her mouth curled. “I’ll, like,
try to reserve my judgment until then.”
“Do you promise not to claw my eyes out if I speak blasphemy
against the great Reverend Hoffman?”
She managed a weak smile. “I’ll restrain myself. Only one eye.”
I grinned. “One’s enough to wink at you with anyway.”
I kept it brief, leaving out the feelings and concentrating on the facts.
I was wading into deep water here: I had no way of knowing how deeply
Hoffman had penetrated into her psyche. I told her about the drugs and
the room full of naked film stars. Crystal’s face turned scarlet when I
described the orgy I’d glimpsed. I showed her the suspicious pink and
yellow pill. I recounted Hoffman’s phone threats and told her about the
evidence trail I had found in Benny’s file.
Crystal listened in silence as I spoke. Her lips twisted back and forth
as if she were chewing on something bitter and inedible. She wouldn’t
meet my eyes.
“Hoffman is one persuasive son of a bitch,” I finished. “He’s
already rich, so I doubt he’s doing any of this for money. I suspect he’s
just a control freak pervert who enjoys abusing people’s minds and
bodies as part of some sort of sick power game.”
“He’s not like that…” Crystal started, and then clammed up again.
I stroked her back in a slow, soothing circle. “Go on. What is it?”

“It’s just love,” she said simply. “That’s all. We all love each other
in the church.” She still spoke with passion, but it was tinged with
defensiveness now. “It may not be, you know, the ‘social norm’, but it
feels right and it makes God happy. Reverend Hoffman teaches us how
to love each other the way God intended us to.”
“I’ll bet he does.”
Crystal pouted. “I knew you wouldn’t understand.” She uncoupled
herself from my arms and regarded me coolly.
I sighed impatiently. “Here, I’ll lay it out for you,” I said. “Hoffman
and Drucker have been buddies for years. I think they met back when
Hoffman was a lawyer and Drucker needed a way to stay out of jail, and
they’ve been as thick as thieves ever since.”
She refused to acknowledge me. Not even a flicker of interest.
“Now Hoffman’s built himself a cult,” I continued, “full of nice
young Christian girls who are ripe and willing and packed to the gills
with dope. Whenever he needs more drugs to keep the sheep from using
their brains, he goes to his good mate Kurt Drucker. It’s a fine old
arrangement.” I hardened my tone. “And when one of you wakes up
and wants out, the way Tess did, he gets Drucker to do the messy work
of keeping the lid on the pan.”
I could see her struggling to take it in and I understood her
resistance. After all, to her brainwashed mind, she was happy. Most
people only become aware of mind control as an issue whenever some
bunch of lunatics winds up on the news after a siege or a mass suicide.
But there’s also plenty of legitimised brainwashing going on all around
us, some of it so subtle that we don’t even realise we’ve been caught up
in it ourselves. For an alcoholic, the bar camaraderie is its own form of
cult. For a gambler, it’s the lights and bells of the casino. For a
desperately lonely spinster, the lies and promises of a dating agency.
And then, of course, there’s the insidious grasp of advertising and the
opinion steering of the media, the lure of new technologies to goad our
wallets into remaining constantly open, the peer pressure trends that
spread through cunning viral marketing strategies into every corner of
our lives.
For Crystal, however, it was Hoffman’s warped version of Christian
love that had fastened its teeth on her mind. How could I convince her
that she was in danger when she couldn’t even see that she was a victim?
She looked at me with her eyes narrowed. “You said you have

proof?”
I nodded. “Most of it’s circumstantial, but it should be enough to get
the cops interested. Once we set the hounds loose, they’ll be able to
sniff out the rest.”
“But you don’t have any solid proof that the Reverend killed Tess,
do you?”
“Not rock solid,” I admitted.
“So you’re going to slander a good and decent man,” she shot back
pointedly, “and let the police harass him like a common criminal.” Her
nose turned up in disgust. “Well, hello? What about ‘innocent until
proven guilty’?”
“Hoffman’s guilty alright. He’s guiltier than Judas.”
Crystal sniffed. “What would you know?”
This was getting nowhere. The afternoon sky had darkened towards
evening, and already I missed the warmth of her body against mine.
I changed tack. “I think maybe it all got too much for her. For Tess,
I mean.”
She folded her arms across her chest and pretended to ignore me.
“All the religious craziness, the sex, the drugs. Especially the drugs.
I think Tess had become addicted to the point where she needed more
than just spiked cordial. So Hoffman hooked her up directly with
Drucker, who then arranged for her to buy discounted junk from his boy
Needles. Between them, they had her locked in real good.
“But then at some point, Tess woke up. She made a brave effort to
get clean and quit the cult, trying to leave the nightmare behind and
stitch her life back together.” I paused for effect. “But the nightmare
found her again…”
“You can’t know that for sure,” Crystal said. So she was listening
again.
I shrugged. “Okay, it’s just a theory, but it fits. Hoffman couldn’t
stand to let her go, so he had her killed. In his eyes, she’d betrayed
him.”
“But even so, why would the Reverend want to kill Tess? He loved
her!”
“Who knows?” I said. “My guess is that Hoffman’s a dangerous
control freak who couldn’t accept that one of his hand-groomed
followers might have the nerve to leave him. Maybe Tess threatened to
go to the cops or the newspapers and expose him.”

“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe any of this.” She gave me a
contemptuous look. “I have complete trust in Reverend Hoffman. If
you only knew him the way I do, you wouldn’t doubt him for a second.”
I scowled right back at her. “I wouldn’t trust Reverend bloody
Hoffman with the lint from my jocks.”
Her face stiffened. “You bastard,” she said. I thought she might slap
me again, but she didn’t. “Get out of my sight. I never want to see you
again.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’m gone. You can follow your precious shaman all
the way to prison for all I care.” Right then, I was mad enough to mean
it too.
“You’re really going to the police?”
“Damn right, I am. Hoffman’s going down harder than a passed-out
drunk.”
“You wouldn’t dare! You’ve got no evidence, Jack, and you know
it.” Her voice was breaking. “The Reverend will, like, sue you for
every cent you’ve got.”
I laughed. “You mean my dole cheque? He’s welcome to it.”
Crystal’s eyes burned with frustration and anger. “If you do
anything to hurt the Reverend,” she said in a barely audible voice, “I’ll
kill you.”
“Take a number,” I said. “There are tougher people than you waiting
their turn.” I figured that was a pretty good exit line, so I spun on my
heel and began walking back to my car. To hell with her, anyway. You
try to be a good guy and keep the pretty girl out of trouble, and look
what it gets you. Yet another death threat to pencil into your
appointment book.
But damn it to hell, I did love her. I loved the way her eyebrows
looped in squiggly inverted commas. I loved the way her mischievous
pout hinted at things better done than said. I loved her even now when
her mind was made up against me and she hated me with blind passion.
She was innocence and perfection and seduction all rolled up in one fine
slim package. I couldn’t just let her face the coming storm alone.
Hoffman and Drucker were going to jail. That was my debt to Tess and
it would be paid. But until that happened, Crystal wouldn’t be able to
see the truth through the blanket of persuasion that had been draped
around her. If I left her like this, she would go directly to the Hoffman
she trusted and find a different, crueller Hoffman in his place. I had to

be tough with her now, and hope that there was still some love left when
all this was over. I walked back and grabbed her by the arm.
“You’re coming with me,” I said. “We’re going to finish this
together.”
“No!” She tried to pull away. “Let go of me, you lying bastard!”
“It’s for your own safety, Crystal.” I felt a little crazy myself right
now. I yanked and she came stumbling along beside me, cursing and
wriggling and trying to pull free. I dragged her relentlessly, feeling like
a deranged kidnapper.
We made it to my car, and somehow I got the back door open and
forced her inside. Once she was seated, she became sullen and quiet.
She glared at me as I got in behind the wheel. Her face was red and tear-
blotched.
“It’s for your own good,” I said, repeating myself like an idiot. “I’m
sorry.” I started the engine and glanced at her in the mirror. She looked
vulnerable and afraid. Just like Tess, I thought, only this one is going to
live.
“Jack?” Her voice sounded strange. I turned to look back at her and
she bashed something hard against my face. I stared at the object
through spinning concentric circles of vision. It was the steering wheel
lock for my own car. It came rushing through the rippling pond and hit
me a second time.
I didn’t go all the way out. I was a passive observer of my own
body. Little sequences ticked away discretely like the second hands on a
clock.
Crystal getting out of the car. Dragging me out onto the road.
Pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. The car’s engine idling next to
my head. The rubber smell of the tyres. Crystal stabbing buttons on her
mobile phone. Talking urgently, the words buzzing like insects in my
ears. An itch on my leg. My eyes closing for a while. A kiss on my
cheek. Crystal stroking my face.
“It’ll be alright, Jack.” Her voice coming from somewhere distant.
“The Reverend will know what to do.” Cradling my head in her lap.
Waiting. A screech of brakes.
“They’re here now, Jack. Everything’s going to be okay.” A vehicle
pulling up beside my car. My eyes swivelling in their sockets. A brown
van.
The brown van…

Chapter Twenty-Two
T he van was still grimy with dirt, its bull-bar sneering with cold
metal teeth. I could make out the dim profile of the driver
behind the windshield. It was Tristan. I recognised him now as the
shadowy pursuer who’d grabbed Tess. But Tristan was only a tool, I
realised; Hoffman was the true controlling force behind his actions. I
lay there helpless as Tristan and a heavy guy whose name I couldn’t
remember got out of the van and swaggered over.
“Good work, Crystal,” Tristan said, and then skipped up and kicked
me in the ribs. “You awake, demon?” he asked, punctuating the
question with another kick.
I tried to make a witty comeback, but only a pain noise came out.
Tristan rapped me hard on the jaw with the tip of his shoe. My
vision took another brief nosedive into the clouds, but I wasn’t going to
give him the satisfaction of passing out. I wondered, dully, if I had a
concussion, but I couldn’t remember how to tell. I could scarcely lift my
head, let alone a fist.
“Hell-fiend!” he yelled, and that seemed to finish him. He squatted
beside me and looked at me with something like pity.
This was the bastard who’d stolen Tess from me. I’d found him at
last. But of all the tough lines I could have come up with, all that
croaked out was: “You’re the hell-fiend.” By my standards, it was as
mediocre as an empty bottle of Scotch.
“You’d better start praying for your soul,” he sneered, “because hell
is exactly where you’re going.” He took something from his pocket that
clinked.
“I’ll send you a postcard.” My wisecrack machine was going into
meltdown.
Tristan frowned. “You’ll burn for your blasphemy, demon.” His lip
curled up into a malicious leer. “Even the purification won’t save
you...”
The other youth stepped over anxiously. “Quick, let’s get him in the
van.”
“No, I don’t want him loose in the van,” Tristan said. “Remember
what happened with Tess. Besides, we need to get his car off the street.”
He waved the youth forward. “Come here, help me roll him over.”

They turned me onto my stomach and Tristan forced my arms behind
my back. Something cool and metallic clicked shut around my wrists.
Handcuffs. I was helpless.
Tristan stood. He scowled down at me as if I were a troublesome
mound of garbage that had burst out of a hole in the bag. “Here’s what
we’ll do,” he said. “We’ll dump him in the boot of his car and I’ll drive
it back to the house. Rob, you take the van and meet us there.”
“Okay.”
“Crystal?”
“I… I’ve got my Mum’s car.”
“Good. We’ll all meet back at the house then.” He touched her arm
softly. “The Reverend’s counting on you.”
“Yes, Tristan,” she said in a small voice. Fresh tear-streaks lined her
face. She was doing her best not to look at me.
The two men picked me up by the ankles and armpits. I was too
weak to lash out.
“Heavy bastard, isn’t he?” Rob said, grunting under my weight.
“Shut up and open the boot.”
They popped the latch and tossed me in. My face thumped against
the spare tyre and my pinned shoulders almost dislocated. Then the
trunk lid slammed down and everything went dark. After a moment, the
car door clunked and we began to move.
I was wedged in at a stiff angle. The rumbling of the engine rattled
my teeth and the potholes rattled my skull. The carpeted lining felt
scratchy against my cheek. I tried to breathe deeply, but the air tasted
stuffy and limited. I was closed in, trapped.
In a coffin, buried alive…
The confining darkness got to me then and I thrashed around in a
desperate panic, jarring my elbow against the panelling and twisting my
limbs even further out of shape. I forced myself to calm down, breathe
in metered rhythmic patterns, and be still. Tristan’s muffled voice was
audible through the seat wall of the car. He was humming a tune. I
imagined driving my fist into his mouth to shut him up, and the panic
gradually faded away, replaced by the cold steel of anger.
I could feel several bruises blossoming in the flesh around my
ribcage. One of my back teeth also felt conspicuously loose, like a
dissident in the crowd. The trunk smelled of oil and dirt and the strong,
gassy stink of petrol. I clamped down on it all with stoic self control and

focused on coming up with a plan.
If I could just slide my cuffed hands past my butt and thread my legs
through the gap, I’d have my hands in front where I could use them. I
arched my back and managed the first part okay, but the confined space
made the rest too awkward. I couldn’t contort my body far enough to
allow my feet to slip between the cuffs. I tried it from a few different
angles, straining my muscles until I thought they would tear, but it was
useless. I gave it up and lay on my side, breathing hard.
I felt something poking against my leg. I rolled over and groped
blindly in the darkness until I found it. It felt like a gym bag. My
fingers explored the fabric until they found a zipper, and then I
remembered. A slow grin spread over my face.
My karate bag.
I hadn’t taken the bag out of the car since my last workout. There
was hope yet. I flexed my elbows and reached into the bag with clumsy,
backwardly oriented hands. I pushed aside my sweat-damp karate outfit
and found what I wanted.
The set of nunchakas were at the bottom of the bag. The hard, foot-
long rods clicked together in tune with the car’s motion. I rolled onto
my side and drew my legs up so that I could reach my ankle. Working
by feel, I slid the linked sticks underneath the leg of my pants, tucking
one end into my sock to hold the weapon in place. It felt bulky and
uncomfortable, and would probably be obvious to anyone who looked,
but I didn’t have a whole lot of choice. Next I withdrew the plastic sheet
containing my six shurikens. The deadly throwing stars were tucked
into individual plastic pockets to protect their sharp blades. Being
careful not to cut myself, I slid the palm-sized weapons from their
sleeves and distributed three in each of my back pockets.
I was armed. The moment they took the cuffs off, I’d be ready to
strike. If they took the cuffs off…
My head ached. I was thirstier than a camel with a defective hump.
If only I’d kept a flask of whisky in the gym bag. Never know when
you’ll be locked in the boot with only petrol fumes to keep you
company, right? There was a plastic bottle of water inside the jack
compartment, inches away, which I kept handy in case of an angry
radiator, but even if I could have reached it, I wouldn’t have been able to
get it to my lips.
I focused inwards, seeking my special place of concentration through

a series of karate relaxation techniques. I had gotten soft lately. Every
man and his dog kept grabbing me off the street and making me dance
the tango with death. I was sick of it. It was time to teach the bullies a
lesson about playground rules.
Calm replaced fear. Readiness replaced paralysis. Cunning replaced
confusion. I rehearsed no plans, instead trusting my fate to instinct and
years of martial arts training. When you get down to the wire, plans are
futile anyway; life rarely follows the script. You can only hope to be
quick enough to grab the prize and dodge the blows. By the time we
arrived, my heartbeat was under control.
The car stopped and the engine died. I heard the car door slam and
then some sort of grating sound followed by a loud clang. I tensed for
action, even though it wasn’t the right moment yet.
I heard Tristan call out, “Over here, guys.”
The sound of shuffling feet. “Where’s that dirty little poofter?” said
a voice I recognised. My insides knotted with a sudden wrench of fear.
“In the boot. Been bouncing him around like a sack of spuds.”
“Can he hear us?”
“Dunno.” Tristan raised his voice. “Hey, hell-fiend! You still
alive?”
I said nothing.
“I’ve cuffed him, so he shouldn’t be a problem,” Tristan said. “Do
you need any help bringing him up?”
“Oh, don’t you worry about us,” Drucker said, menace oozing from
every syllable. “We’ll manage just fine.”
“No worries. Rob and I are going upstairs to help the Reverend
prepare.”
“You do that, boys.”
I heard footsteps tromping off. Moments later, the boot lid opened.
Bright fluorescent light speared straight through my eyes and hammered
on the soggy mess that was my brain. I squinted and saw Drucker
sneering down at me, his moustache curled with distaste. Warren and
Lucas stood silhouetted behind him with their arms folded.
“Well, well, well,” Drucker said. “Jack Marsh in the flesh.” He spat
out my name as if each word were an obscenity.
“Well, well, well,” I said. “The sicko.”
He laughed. “Are you ready to meet your maker, Jack?” The gleam
in his eye hinted at horrors beyond imagining.

“And what if I’m not?”
“Oh, you will be soon enough.” His leer widened. “Before long,
you’ll be pleading for death to come…”
He gestured to his men. Warren had his gun out, but he put it away
when he saw that I was shackled. He and Lucas still wore their grey and
blue business suits. They hauled me out of the boot, setting me on my
feet between them. I swayed unsteadily, as if I were dazed and
harmless. It didn’t require much acting.
We were in a large enclosed garage that could have easily housed
four cars, but mine was the only one parked here. The roller-door had
been lowered, which explained the noise I’d heard earlier. A plastic
cross hung on the wall, and steps led up to a plain wooden door that
presumably connected to Hoffman’s mansion. One of the fluorescent
bulbs overhead winked on and off with a nervous tic, giving the garage a
distinctly noir atmosphere.
“So, are you scared, little boy?” Drucker taunted. He reached out
and ruffled my hair. “Pissed your pants in terror yet?”
I recoiled away from his touch and his face hardened. He grabbed a
handful of hair and yanked. With my hands cuffed behind my back, I
couldn’t keep my balance. I fell awkwardly onto the concrete floor and
jarred my shoulder.
“Ooh look, the poor little queer-boy fell over!”
“You gutless coward!” I thrashed around like a fox caught in a
snare. “Uncuff me and fight like a man!”
“Say please first, little boy,” he said. He pranced around me in a
kind of childish jig. “Say pretty please with sugar on it, and maybe I
will.”
I doused my anger before it could burn a hole in my brain. Now was
not the time. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me lose
control. If my hands had been free, I could have turned his teeth into
mush, but as it was, all I could do was ignore him and struggle to my
feet. It wasn’t easy, but I made it.
Drucker looked disappointed. “Oh well,” he said, and sighed
theatrically. “Let’s not keep the big cheese waiting.” He went up the
steps and opened the door to the house.
“Can you walk?” Warren asked me. The gun was in his hand again.
“I don’t know. I feel pretty dizzy. Maybe if you took the cuffs
off...”

He gestured with the gun. “Maybe if I shoved this up your arse…”
His hooked nose wrinkled with amusement. “Now move!”
It’s not easy looking tough with your hands pinned behind your back
and your face half bashed in, but I think I managed it. Drucker went
ahead while his men guided me up the steps and into the mansion. All
three kept well out of kick range. I glanced down at my feet as I walked;
the bulge of the nunchakas didn’t look too noticeable.
The door led into that familiar hallway with the orange crucifix
wallpaper. Instead of New Age music, the sound system now piped an
eerie piece full of thunder and crashing waves. I’d only just escaped this
nightmarish place a few short hours ago, and now fate had dragged me
back again. We headed up the main staircase.
Drucker fell into step beside me. I could smell onions on his breath.
“Do you know what’s ironic?” he asked.
“What?”
“In theory, Christians don’t condone murder. Thou shalt not kill and
all that Ten Commandments crap.”
“How comforting,” I said dryly.
“So instead of calling it murder,” Drucker went on, “they come up
with all these loopholes and call it purification of sins instead.” He
snorted. “You ever read the bible? Full of people stoning each other
and calling down the wrath of God on their unfaithful wives. It’s a hoot,
I tell you.”
“I can scarcely contain my amusement.”
“Anyway, all it means is that you’ll still die an agonising death,” he
said. “It’ll just be in the name of holy goodness.” He sniggered. “Kind
of ironic, don’t you think?”
“The irony is lost on me.”
We reached the second storey landing. Drucker gripped my shoulder
and ushered me up the next flight of stairs. It seemed we were going all
the way to the top. He steered me down yet another orange hallway
until we reached a heavy wooden door. A plaque above the door read
“CHAPEL”. I could hear people chanting inside.
“Well, I guess this is goodbye, faggot,” Drucker said. “Only
religious nuts allowed, unfortunately.” He gave a little disappointed
shrug. “Not that I wouldn’t love to be part of the action-packed climax
of your short life,” he drawled nastily, “but what can I do? It’s those
religious loopholes again.”

I was confused. “Then why are you here?”
The corner of his moustache lifted into a knowing sneer. “Mop-up
crew.”
Never one to give up a case, I said, “Like you mopped up Tess?”
He shrugged easily. “Sure. It takes talent to dispose of a stiff
properly. Alistair pays well for such professional talent.” He actually
sounded proud of himself.
My blood was boiling. “And what about Duong? Did you kill him
for free?”
“Kill him?” He looked mildly amused. “Hey, I might have roasted
his chestnuts a little to get him yapping, but once he was good and
crispy, I just left him there to marinate.” His moustache fanned out into
an ugly leer. “Maybe the bible brigade came over afterwards for some
late night barbecue…”
I heard Warren chuckling at his boss’s joke and it made me angry.
“You vicious bastards! Duong didn’t know anything.”
“He knew how to burn,” Drucker said bluntly.
His words froze the very marrow in my bones. My mind suddenly
filled with horror and I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. All I
could think was: And I’m next…
Drucker broke the silence with three sharp knocks on the door. The
chanting inside stopped. One of the thugs nudged me forward.
“So you’re nothing more than an errand boy,” I spat at Drucker
weakly, desperate to get under his skin somehow. “Cleaning up other
people’s messes.”
“And being paid well for it,” he agreed cheerfully. “You should
thank me actually, Jack. I’m going to make you a celebrity. Tomorrow,
the cops will get an anonymous tip off. They’ll find the murder knife
that killed Tess and Duong in your apartment, with your prints on it.
Your toothbrush, clothes, and car will all disappear, and so will you.
You’ll be on the most wanted list for years.”
My mouth felt dry. “It’ll never work.”
“Sure it will,” Drucker said. “You’ll be dead, the fuzz will be
diverted, and my favourite former lawyer will continue to buy premium
dope to keep his God Squad happy.” He gestured towards the chapel
door. “Right now, some of those freaks are flying so high they can see
God’s bald spot.” He laughed at his own joke, and his two sycophant
muscle boys chimed in right on cue. He leaned over and whispered in

my ear with awful deliberation. “Man, you should have seen what they
did to Tess. When they’re that far gone, they’re capable of anything...”
I worked my mouth to say something snappy, but nothing came out.
I knew then that I was really going to die.
The chapel door groaned open. Tristan and Rob had changed into
white robes that flowed down to their shoes. They stood on either side
of me, firmly gripping my shoulders. Even with the cuffs, they were
taking no chances.
“Well, this is it, Jack,” Drucker said. “We’ll be downstairs watching
your swansong on TV. Alistair has a simply marvellous live feed
system in his office,” he explained. “You’re going to be a snuff star,
Jack Marsh.
It was my final opportunity. “You’re a sick piece of filth, Kurt
Drucker.”
Drucker sneered. He pushed his moustache closer and puffed a gust
of onion-breath at my face. With two fingers, he pinched my left nipple
hard through my shirt. It took all of my willpower to stare him down
without wincing.
“Oh, and one more thing,” he said casually, giving a ghastly parody
of a smile. “Do try to die like a man, won’t you, instead of just
screaming and pissing your pants like a pansy.” He flashed me one last
smarmy look, and then he and his men headed off down the stairs
laughing. My nipple burned as if it had been twisted in half.
When they had gone, Tristan pushed me roughly towards the open
door. “This way, hell-fiend,” he said, and we went into the killing room.

Chapter Twenty-Three
T he chapel was enormous, almost the size of an actual small

church, its high ceiling tapering up to an apex of dark shadows.
More cultists wearing long white robes turned their heads to watch me
enter. The curtains had been closed and murky red candles tucked into
slots along the walls, already lit and reeking of incense. The flickering
light inked the faces of those present with demonic colours and patterns.
Hoffman stood at the end of a long line of red carpet that stretched
across the floor like a lascivious tongue. He wore a flowing robe with
gold tassels. Behind him, a full-scale wooden cross had been bolted
upright to the floor. It looked like the one Jesus had worn to his big
party. I noticed leather arm and leg restraints attached to the cross. Not
a good omen. A video camera had been positioned on a tripod at the
back of the room, its lens peering up the length of the red carpet towards
the cross like a solitary baleful eye. A cable snaked from the camera to
the wall, and presumably from there to the TV in Hoffman’s office,
where Drucker would be watching the show with his yes-men and
passing around the popcorn.
“Behold, the impure one has come to us this day for cleansing!”
boomed Hoffman, and all heads turned towards him. “We who are clean
of soul and pure of heart will pray for his salvation at the hands of our
Lord Jesus Christ.”
“Amen,” chanted the crowd. In addition to Hoffman and the two
men holding me, I counted six other cultists standing in rows beside the
red carpet. Each wore a white robe and held a lit candle at chest level.
Not everyone from the bible study meeting was present; these were
evidently the handful that could be trusted with murder. Vanessa smiled
at me, her eyes bright with teenage excitement, or drugs, or maybe both.
The twin sisters Faye and Samantha watched me warily, as if I might
suddenly sprout horns and a forked tail. The odd couple, Paul and
Kirsty, looked giddy with dope and bloodlust. And, dressed like a virgin
in her own white robe, Crystal stood at the front of her row, hands folded
demurely. She saw me looking and quickly lowered her eyes.
“Our church,” Hoffman went on, “seeks only to worship the love
that our Lord has given to us. We are God’s chosen, and together we
have found a love too powerful to be denied.” His face was flushed and

sweaty, a hot mania brewing in his eyes. He withdrew a long
ornamental knife from the folds of his robe. It had an ornate Arabian
pommel with coloured jewels studded into the handle. It looked sharp.
“But in his infinite treachery, Satan tries to destroy our love by
swaying us with evil doubts. He sends demons to attack and tear down
our faith with lies and false accusations.” Hoffman’s voice boomed with
passion, as if he actually believed his own nonsense. Maybe he really
did. Maybe he’d been staring at the insane face in the mirror for so long
that it had started talking back to him.
“The devil has possessed this poor man you see before you,” he said.
“Together we must drive out the demon and restore love to the impure
one’s heart. Only then will God have mercy on his soul.” He raised his
arms to his followers. “Who among us will serve the Lord in this duty?”
“We will,” the cultists chanted.
“Who among us will act out of love to save this man’s soul from
damnation?”
“We will.”
“Who among us will stand up and fight evil in the name of Jesus
Christ our Lord?” he shouted.
“We will!” they roared.
Hoffman lowered his arms. A satisfied smile flitted around the
edges of his beard. “Then let the impure one be brought to the cross,” he
said softly.
Tristan steered me down the length of carpet towards Hoffman. My
heart was pounding hard and pumping adrenaline into my system. I still
felt dizzy, but the rest of me was ready for action. Tristan kept his grip
on my shoulder as I faced the mad priest.
“Have you any sins you wish to confess, demon?” Hoffman asked.
“Nothing you could print in a church newsletter,” I said more
bravely than I felt.
“Oh, but you will confess,” he said. He tucked the knife back inside
his robes and sighed theatrically. “We will scour the evil from you, no
matter how long it takes.” He nodded to my guards. “Strap him in.”
Tristan tried to drag me back towards the cross, while Rob moved to
unfasten its leather restraints.
“Hoffman, wait!” I said, stalling for time. “You’re a reasonable
man. Surely we can straighten out this… this misunderstanding.” I
stared into Hoffman’s eyes. He didn’t look reasonable at all; he looked

insane. He met my gaze and raised his lips in a knowing smirk. He
knows he’s mad, I thought, and he doesn’t even care.
He held up a hand and Tristan stopped shoving at me. Hoffman
reached out and patted my cheek, his expression fatherly. “Jack, despite
what you might think, we are here to save you. I gave you a chance to
join us. You could have devoted yourself to Jesus and done great things
for our church.” He shook his head sadly as though weighed down by a
great, sorry responsibility. He’d probably perfected the act during his
lawyer days, miming dismay and dignified gravity before countless
juries. He added a leaden sigh that clearly conveyed his terrible burden
to the crowd. “But instead you chose to let the devil into your heart and
to turn away from our love.”
I was sick of listening to his rubbish. “I’ve seen your idea of love,
Reverend,” I said. I nodded towards the cultists. “You fill their heads
with drugs and religious hogwash until they’re just puppets waiting for
you to twitch the strings. You’re just a pervert with a power fetish.”
He reddened slightly, but covered it well with a patient smile. “I
teach my followers the love of God, Jack. Sex is a natural extension of
that love. It is nothing to be ashamed of. This is the twenty-first
century. We’re not superstitious peasants living in the Dark Ages of
sexual repression anymore.” His voice lifted into a patterned sermon
tone, speaking as much to his followers as to me. “Love and sex are
God’s gifts to humanity. In the moment of orgasm, we come as close to
the bliss of Heaven as any mortal can. God meant for us to enjoy our
bodies and to share them with those we love.”
“Does that include using drugs to brainwash pretty girls into giving
their consent?”
Hoffman suppressed a sneer. “Try to understand that drugs in
themselves are not evil, Jack. Just like with sex, only people’s motives
can be considered good or bad. In combination with the power of prayer
and the support of fellow Christians, drugs are a useful tool that can
guide us closer to God.” He turned to face the crowd and smiled at them
warmly. “My children, has it not increased your faith in God to have
tasted but a hint of the ecstasy that Heaven has to offer?” There were
several nods and murmurs of agreement. He turned back to me and his
smile grew cold. “When one has flown close to God, Jack, as we have,
then the knowledge of His love becomes impossible to deny.
“Here in my church,” he went on, before I could get a contrary word

in, “love is the only thing that matters. It must be created between
people and not selfishly hoarded in one heart alone. I teach my
followers to embrace love and become one with the group. As
individuals, they were like sheep: alone, frightened, and in constant
danger of being devoured by wolves. But now, with God’s gifts of love
and guidance, they are strong and they are happy.” His mouth
assembled itself into a humble smile, but beneath the whiskers of his
beard I could still see his cruel arrogance. “I am simply the shepherd
helping my people to find their way.”
I said, “You’re insane, Hoffman. Stark, raving mad. Somebody
should put you down like a rabid sheepdog.”
Hoffman’s skin darkened under his beard, but he kept his plastic
expression of sympathy locked in place for the benefit of the crowd. “I
can see that the devil has a firm hold on you, Jack. You may be
interested to know that it took nearly five hours to purify Tess of the evil
that had infested her.” He licked his lips with nasty deliberation. “She
had to make many painful sacrifices before the demon inside her finally
released her soul.”
“You mad bastard! Somebody should–”
He leaned towards me and sneered maliciously. “But of course, hers
was only a minor demon, a trickster which whispered doubts in her ear
to try to fool her into spreading lies about our church to the authorities.”
His mask was totally down now; the madness writhed in his face like
grey worms under the skin. “Your demon, on the other hand, appears to
be far more stubborn. I suspect it may take a lot longer to purge all of
the evil from you.” He stepped back and nodded to Rob and Tristan.
“Strap him down!”
Tristan had the handcuff keys. He bent behind me and tried to find
the keyhole. This was it; it was now or never. I tensed my muscles,
waiting for the click.
But it must have shown in my face too early. Rob suddenly tackled
me and bent me over in a headlock. He rammed my back against the
cross. Tristan darted in and I felt the cuffs snap loose and his hands
clamp around my wrists instead. I struggled wildly, howling with rage,
but together they were too strong.
Slowly, inexorably, they forced each of my hands into the restraints
and strapped them tight. I fought like a madman, but there was no
contest. I was stretched out from arm to arm. My chest felt taut and my

shoulder joints tugged painfully in their sockets. I turned my head and
saw old bloodstains on the wood of the cross.
I kicked out when they went for my legs, but they caught my feet
easily and bore me down. Rob found the nunchakas right away.
“Tristan, there’s something…” He tugged at my trouser leg and his
eyes widened. “Hey look! He’s got some of those kung fu sticks hidden
in his sock!”
“They’re called nunchakas, you moron,” I said.
Rob slid the rods out of my pants leg and rapped me on the chest
with them. “Yeah, well you won’t be doing any ‘chucking’ with these,
will you, moron?” He sniggered and tossed the weapon onto the floor
behind the cross. I felt like wiping the smirk off his chunky face with
one of the shurikens that were now well out of reach in my back pockets.
Tristan forced my feet down and fastened the long leather strap at the
base of the cross around my ankles. He double-checked all the bindings
and then stepped back to inspect his work. I was neatly pinned like a
bug in a display case. I cursed myself for not having made my move
sooner. I’d waited too long, hoping for a perfect opportunity that never
came. And now it was too late.
Once I was secured, Tristan and Rob moved back to stand with the
other cultists. I strained against my bonds, but they were tighter than a
skinflint’s grip on a wallet.
“And now, let us begin the purification,” Hoffman said. The cultists
gazed at him with rapturous expressions. “As our Lord Jesus Christ died
on the cross for our sins, so too will the impure one be saved this day.”
“Amen,” chanted the group.
“For only through the agony of purification,” Hoffman boomed, his
eyes glittering, “only through the white-hot, excruciating agony that
Jesus himself endured will the demon inside this man be cast out and his
soul released.”
“Amen.”
A few of the cultists looked a little green. I guessed most of them
had been here when Tess had been butchered; they knew what was
coming. But Hoffman’s words acted like an electric voltage on their
minds: whenever he spoke, those flickers of doubt disappeared and their
faces soon became blank and shiny and obedient again.
Hoffman reached into a fold in his robes and withdrew a familiar
gold necklace. “This crucifix belonged to Tess,” he told me, fingering it

lovingly. “A small connection to God which helped her to transcend her
purification.” He stepped closer. “I give it to you now, in the hope that
God will take mercy on you also in your time of suffering.”
I didn’t resist as Hoffman put the cross around my neck. The metal
felt cold against my skin, but in a strange way it also felt sadly
comforting, as if the spirit of Tess had been imbued in the metal and she
were whispering regrets in my ear.
“Crystal,” Hoffman said in a commanding tone, without taking his
eyes off me.
“Yes, Reverend?” Her voice was barely a croak.
Hoffman spoke without turning to face her, his mouth twisted into a
cruel leer that only I could see. “You have been tainted by the impure
one’s evil, Crystal. You will make the first sacrifice, so as to redeem
yourself in the eyes of the Lord.”
“Yes, Reverend.”
She came forward, her head bowed subserviently. Hoffman
retrieved the ornamental knife from his robes and placed it so that it lay
across his outstretched palms. Crystal took it reverentially, as if it were
a holy relic. The knife’s sharp edge glinted wickedly in the candlelight.
The room was silent, expectant. Crystal looked up at me, the knife
trembling in her hand. Her face was turbulent with conflicting emotions.
“I’m so sorry, Jack,” she whispered. Her hand tightened on the hilt
of the blade. “Crystal, no!” I shouted. “This is murder! You have to cut
me loose!”
“I can’t, Jack. I must… I have to save you.”
“Save me?” I had to get through to her. “Listen to yourself, Crystal.
Can’t you see how crazy this is? No true Christian would ever do
anything like this.” I saw doubt shimmering in her eyes and pressed my
advantage. “Hoffman is the devil here, not me!”
But Hoffman placed a powerful hand on her shoulder. “My child,
you must not believe the demon’s lies,” he said in a reassuring tone.
“This is no longer your friend Jack speaking. It is the demon within him
that you hear begging for its infernal life. We must snuff it out before it
can infect us all with doubts and sinful thoughts.” There were murmurs
of assent from the crowd.
Tears ran suddenly down Crystal’s cheeks. “I can’t do it, Reverend.
I… I love him!” Her eyes pleaded with Hoffman for mercy.
His face darkened and he puffed himself up to his full commanding

height. “There is no longer a man in that body. It is but a demon!” he
boomed. “Have you fallen in love with a demon, Crystal Mainwaring?”
She shrank away from him in terror. “No… no, Reverend. I…”
“Do you need to be purified as well?” he roared. He shot her a
withering look of disgust. “Hurry, child! Strike now that the Lord may
forgive your hesitation!”
Confusion and uncertainty swam across Crystal’s face. She faced
me again and raised the knife. Her mouth mimed “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,
I’m sorry…” without sound. She pointed the knife at my chest, all the
while begging my forgiveness with her eyes.
“Please, Crystal!” I cried out, my voice hoarse and desperate.
“Please don’t let me die like Duong!”
Her face collapsed in on itself for a moment as comprehension, or
something like it, slammed into her. A great gasping sob burst from her
lips, and for a split second, I thought I’d gotten through to her. And
then, just as quickly, the uncertainty cleared. Resolve hardened her face.
She raised her eyes to mine for a last, silent goodbye, and then brought
the knife flashing towards me…

Chapter Twenty-Four
T he bite of steel didn’t come. Instead, Crystal stepped to the side

and sliced through the leather restraint that held my right arm. I
jolted with surprise as my wrist snapped free.
Everything happened at once. Hoffman screamed “No!” and
punched Crystal in the back of the head. She cried out and fell, the knife
clattering to the floor beside her. Hoffman darted in and stooped to pick
it up.
But I was moving fast as well. I slid my fingers between my butt
and the cross, and yanked a shuriken from my back pocket. The points
cut my fingers as I stretched over and slashed the sharp edge across the
other restraint. The leather ripped easily and now both my hands were
loose.
The other cultists had only just started to react. Hoffman came for
me with the knife raised high. No time to deal with the ankle restraint. I
dropped the shuriken and dived forward, launching myself underneath
the knife, and double-punched Hoffman in the stomach with both fists.
The impact folded him like a sledgehammer through cardboard. We
crashed to the floor, gravity and momentum causing my heels to pop out
from under the strap. The knife grazed a furrow along my back as I
landed hard on top of Hoffman, my weight slamming the breath out of
him.
I rolled fast as he lashed out with a roar of rage. The blade stabbed
down and skidded along the red carpet. I rolled again, out of range, and
sprang to my feet. Hoffman stayed down, doubled over and wheezing.
Near the base of the cross, Crystal lay in a limp bundle, unconscious.
The rest of the room was motion and chaos.
A cultist jumped at me in an attempted tackle. I pivoted instinctively
and plugged him on the chin with an uppercut. His eyes rolled up to
whites and he crumpled. It was the weedy guy, name forgotten, and he
was out of it. But more were coming.
Tristan had held back long enough to take off his robe so that he
could fight more freely. Smart move. He edged towards me warily, his
fists up in a boxing stance. His fat buddy Rob moved in the opposite
direction to flank me. Tristan’s face pulsated with snarling violence.
I backed up, moving into the area behind the cross as they advanced.

Keeping the wall at my back, I took out two more shurikens and held
one in each hand where the pair could see them. I didn’t want to use
them unless I had to. But still they kept advancing.
Rob roared and charged at me, his head down like a bull’s. I flicked
my wrist and spun a shuriken at him. It missed, shaving past his
shoulder, and he rushed ahead blindly, windmilling his arms while
Tristan made a dive for my legs. I spun around and brought my knee up
hard into Tristan’s face. His nose exploded in a spray of blood and he
went down. But he had my shins pinned in a bear grip, and as I went
down with him, Rob’s heavy body slammed on top of me as if we were
all in a rugby scrum.
I was flat on my back and couldn’t manoeuvre. Rob threw a punch
that connected with the side of my neck. I realised I was still holding the
second shuriken. I lashed out with it and embedded it into the meat of
his fist. He recoiled with a yelp, and I took the opportunity to twist my
torso and buck him off me. He backed away on his knees, clutching his
ruined hand.
Tristan’s arms were still locked around my legs. Blood streamed
from his nose and a grim glow of determination shone in his eyes. I
pounded my fists against the top of his head and thrashed my legs until
his grip loosened, then scuttled away from him in a crab-crawl. My
hand skidded on something hard and tubular. My nunchakas. The
instant I had them in my hand, I felt a fresh surge of adrenaline. I stood,
oriented the weapon in my hand, and spun it around my elbow three
times. I grinned wickedly, like the demon I was supposed to be.
Tristan staggered to his feet to face me. Blood had splashed all
down the front of his shirt. He shifted into his relentless boxer’s crouch,
a stoic gladiator collecting his strength for a final fight to the death. If
he got too close, I realised, I’d have no room to swing the nunchakas.
It was just me and Tristan now. Rob huddled on the floor
whimpering over his hand, while the female cultists had helped Hoffman
over to the back wall, from where they warily watched the action from a
distance. Tristan and I studied each other like frozen warriors, each
waiting for the other to make his move.
“You’ll burn, hell-fiend,” he said with a blood-spitting gurgle.
“You’ll burn in the fires of hell for eternity.” He sprang at me then, as
quick as a snake, but his hook punch telegraphed itself too early. I shot
a fast front kick at full power into his belly. As he buckled, I swung the

nunchakas up and put him out with a cracking blow under the chin. He
dropped like an anchor.
“That,” I told his unconscious form, “was my fire extinguisher.”
The door to the room crashed open. Drucker yelled, “Freeze!” and
entered with the gun outstretched in both hands. His men crowded the
doorway behind him. Drucker’s moustache cocked up in a sneer as he
spotted me.
I dived behind the cross just as the gun went off. A bullet thudded
into the wooden frame, centimetres from my face. The cross wouldn’t
protect me for long. I crouched as low as I could, clawing frantically at
my back pockets. I still had three shurikens. As Drucker narrowed his
aim for another shot, I launched all three at once.
It was a panic throw, poorly timed. Only one of the deadly throwing
stars found its mark, spearing into Drucker’s shoulder. He shrieked a
high-pitched girly squeal and fired reflexively, but he’d been knocked
off balance and it went wide. The gun dropped from his spasming
fingers. Warren and Lucas rushed past him and into the room, ready to
defend their boss.
I was up and racing towards them before anybody could react. As
Lucas reached for the fallen gun, Warren stepped forward to block me
and I weaved to the side and tripped him with a low sweep kick. At the
same time, I was swinging the nunchakas in a lethal circle around my
shoulder to build up speed. As Warren stumbled away, I completed the
arc and brought twelve inches of solid agony smashing straight down
onto Lucas’s outstretched wrist.
Lucas howled as the sound of shattering bone rang in the air. Not
stopping for a moment, I slammed my foot hard into his chest. He
cannonballed backwards and his head crashed against the wall, putting
him out like a snuffed candle.
Drucker wasn’t in sight. I made the mistake of looking down for the
gun, and Warren came rushing out of the shadows and bulled into me
with his massive shoulder, almost lifting me off the ground. We
stumbled across the room before overbalancing, crashing heavily onto
the floor like two wrestlers playing for the crowd.
The gun had been kicked away and was nowhere to be seen. But I
still had the nunchakas, even if I didn’t have room to swing them. As
Warren’s fist sailed towards my head, I bashed it out of the way with the
hard weapon. He barely flinched, even though it must have broken

every knuckle in his hand. He threw another punch which caught me on
the jaw and set my head reeling. As I gasped, he grunted in triumph, and
then suddenly propelled his head forward in an attempted headbutt.
I didn’t plan what happened next. I instinctively brought up the
nunchakas to try to block the blow. Warren’s left eye slammed hard into
the blunt end of one of the rods. The other end was driven into the floor,
and the rod sank deep with an awful squelching sound. I let go of the
weapon immediately, but it was too late.
Warren’s whole body stiffened and jerked. A ghastly gagging sound
bubbled from his lips. I rolled away from him, horrified, his huge body
offering no resistance now. The jerking intensified and I saw his lone
eye swivelling crazily, as if wondering why its mate had stopped talking
to it. He clawed at the nunchakas, trying to pull them out, but blood and
eye fluid had made the weapon slippery. I felt like throwing up. He
huddled into a foetal ball and began making loud, keening whimpers of
pain and shock.
Somebody was screaming. These people weren’t soldiers, they were
scared children thrust into a situation they didn’t understand. You can
lead a sheep into the slaughterhouse, but not onto a noisy battlefield.
Two of the cultists – the twin sisters, it looked like – made a break for
the door. They distracted me for only a moment, but it was enough.
Drucker appeared suddenly out of the dimness, kicking at me before I
could get up, his face stretched with hatred.
I rolled and took the stomp high on my back, rolled again as Drucker
aimed another kick at my head and missed. I grabbed his ankle before
he could withdraw, and twisted. He lost his balance and tumbled, and in
an instant I was upon him. I straddled him and seized a handful of shirt
to keep him on his back. The shuriken was still embedded in his
shoulder, blood oozing like treacle all down his arm. I raised my fist and
his face paled. Around me, I sensed terrified cultists fleeing the chapel,
but I had eyes only for my enemy.
“I’ve been saving this for you, Drucker,” I said in a voice of pure
granite, and smashed my fist into his filthy moustache as hard as I could.
Lips split and teeth crunched like chalk. His eyes blanked out and he
went as limp as a wet sock.
I stood up slowly, adrenaline pounding through my arteries. It was
all that kept me on my feet. My vision kept threatening to blur. If I lost
my momentum, I knew, dizziness and exhaustion would soon follow. It

was time to hurry up and finish this.
Hoffman hadn’t taken his chance to evacuate. He stood propped
against the back wall, supported by Vanessa. They watched me warily
as I approached. Everybody else had either fled or was lying
unconscious on the floor. Hoffman’s face looked sweaty and sagging.
He’d lost, and he knew it, but he was still dangerous. He held the
sacrificial knife loosely at his side.
“It’s over, Hoffman,” I said. “You’re going to jail.”
He still had enough strength for a lecture. “The Lord will protect
me, demon. But know that He will have no mercy on your soul.”
Vanessa shrieked and rushed at me with her fingernails scrunched
into hooks meant for my eyes. I sidestepped and avoided her easily, but
she bounced back and clawed at my face again, screeching like a
wildcat, her mouth a big O until I put a reluctant fist in it to shut her up.
She slumped against me and I eased her to the floor. I stepped around
her to face Hoffman.
“Drop the knife, Hoffman. You’re finished.”
“The Lord will protect–” He stabbed out with the blade in mid-
sentence, trying to catch me off guard.
But I was way past having any of that. I slapped the knife out of his
hand. His eyes widened and he opened his mouth to say something. I
jammed an uppercut into his chin and the mouth closed. His head
wobbled as if it were on a spring.
“I’m not a Christian,” I said. “I don’t heed prayers.”
I advanced on him menacingly. Hoffman’s eyes had no authority
left in them now, only fear. I raised my hands where he could see them
and knuckled them into rocks of revenge. “You’re the one going to hell,
Hoffman. And I’m going to chauffeur you right to the gate...”
A clattering sound made me look around. Drucker had woken up
unexpectedly, or he’d been faking, and now he’d found the gun. My
stomach dropped down into my balls like a sack of ice as the
overpowering realisation of error swept through me. I’d fucked up; I
hadn’t secured the situation the way I should have if I’d been following
my karate training correctly. I was exposed, with nowhere to run.
Drucker’s face was a bloody mess of chipped teeth and mangled lips,
but his eyes still gleamed with triumph as he brought the gun around to
bear on me…

Chapter Twenty-Five
W hen there’s no cover, you have to improvise some. I grabbed

Hoffman and spun him in front of me as a shield, tightening
my forearm around his throat hard enough to make him sputter. “Drop
the gun or I’ll crush this bastard’s windpipe!” I yelled.
Drucker paused, the gun extended in his wavering left hand. His
right arm hung limply, the shuriken still protruding from his shoulder.
Behind him, Tristan was starting to wake up. My odds were slipping
again.
“Let go of Alistair, faggot,” Drucker said. His voice sounded like
bubbling acid coming through his damaged mouth.
“Not a chance,” I said, and increased the headlock by a notch.
Hoffman’s complexion darkened and a choked gurgle came out of him.
Drucker took an angry step towards us. “Let go of him now, you
filthy poofter!”
In that instant, I realised the sad truth about Kurt Drucker. It pained
me to have to resort to sledging, but there was a chance that I could use
his secret to my advantage.
“Hey, Drucker,” I said carelessly. “You want to know something?”
He sneered. “I know everything.”
“Then you’d know that you’ve got some serious closet homosexual
issues.”
The skin around his eyes tightened and I knew I had my finger on the
nerve.
“All that homophobic ranting and raving,” I pressed on. I rolled my
eyes theatrically. “Man! Why don’t you just come out already?”
He went scarlet – whether with rage or shame, I couldn’t tell. Veins
stood out in his neck and his moustache wriggled like a moth trapped at
a window. “You… shut… up!” he forced out. His finger tightened on
the trigger.
I tried to keep as much of myself behind Hoffman as possible.
“Haven’t you heard?” I taunted him. “It’s okay to be gay these days,
Drucker. This isn’t the shameful seventies anymore.”
“Shut up, you stinking liar!” Tears brimmed in his eyes. The gun
shook wildly in his hand. “It’s not true. None of it… is true!”
“Stop denying yourself and admit what you’ve always known.” I

coated every word with scorn. “You like men, don’t you, Drucker?
Maybe you wouldn’t be such a messed-up psychopath if you’d just–”
“Shut up, damn you!” Drucker screamed, his cheeks burning.
Hoffman must have realised what I was trying to do. Somehow he
managed to get words out from under my chokehold. “No, Kurt! He’s
just trying to make you–”
“It’s a lie!” Drucker screamed. “I never–”
The gun went off. Just once. The bullet caught Hoffman in the
stomach. Blood exploded from his gut like a burst water balloon. The
impact rocked him back against me and, horrified, I let go of his throat.
He collapsed onto the floor with a wet sound.
Drucker’s mouth hung slack in shock at what he’d done. Perfect
silence stretched out for one long, almost holy moment. But then the
hatred cranked back into his eyes. He raised the gun, and now there was
nothing left between me and a bullet but empty space.
“Hell-fiend!” Tristan’s voice reverberated throughout the room like
a war cry. He sprang at Drucker, his face mutated with rage. “You
killed the Reverend!”
The gun roared again as Drucker was bulldozed off his feet, and I
heard the bullet smack into flesh. Tristan merely grunted, never losing
momentum as he propelled Drucker towards the curtained windows.
“No!” I shouted, seeing his intention, but it was too late.
Glass shattered as they smashed through the window, tearing the
curtain from its rails. Drucker shrieked as he fell, all the way to the
ground three storeys below. I winced at the sound of the thud and the
silence that followed. Cold air began to blow through the remains of the
window. As I watched, the breeze extinguished one of those awful red
candles.
A cough got my attention. My fists bulged as I turned to face
Hoffman for the last time. He spat out a wad of blood and focused
wobbly eyes on me.
“Look what you’ve done to me!” he said, his voice shaky with
disbelief. He looked like a gutted fish trying to hold back the gore
gushing from its belly with uncooperative fins. “How could the Lord let
this happen to me? To me, His faithful servant?”
His arrogance enraged me. Even now, as he sat there dying on the
floor, he still thought he was in the right. He still believed that what
he’d done to Tess was proper. Well, I wouldn’t let him have his

comforting madness. “Don’t die yet, you filth,” I snarled, looming over
him. “You haven’t been purified yet.”
He grabbed the knife from the floor and thrust it out in front of him.
“Stay back! Lord, protect me from this demon!”
“The Lord won’t get here in time to save you,” I said, advancing
towards him. “We’ve got hours of purification ahead of us yet.” I took
another step, not giving a damn about the knife. At that moment, I
wasn’t thinking rationally at all. I just wanted to hurt him, hurt him bad,
like he’d hurt so many people. And so I said it, said that awful thing, it
came slashing out of my mouth without warning. I said: “I’ll give you
something else to remember me by…”
It terrified him. Maybe he saw the horrors he’d inflicted on Tess
reflected in my expression. Maybe he saw that there was nothing pure
about dying with a thousand screams after all. His eyes squeezed shut
and he suddenly reversed his grip on the knife, both hands clutching the
hilt, and drove the blade inwards.
“Wait!” I shouted, reaching for him, but it was too late. With an
audible crunch, Reverend Alistair Hoffman stabbed himself through his
robes, the blade penetrating his chest. He made a moist, sighing sound
and blood seeped from the corners of his mouth. I backed away, unable
to do anything but watch. Hoffman’s hands spasmed on the hilt of the
knife, his fingers jittering around it as though it were a flute, until he
finally managed to grasp it and push the blade in deeper.
His eyes sought out mine and he gave me one last smirk of defiance.
I beat you to it, his expression seemed to say. I’ll be a martyr now. And
then his mouth relaxed into the first genuine smile I’d seen him make. It
was the smile of someone who’d found what he had always been
searching for. His hands fell away from the knife and he slumped over,
dead, his sightless eyes staring ahead into the next world at whatever
creatures shambled there.
It was over. I was exhausted. I got my feet moving anyway. Every
muscle in my body twanged and pinged like a hot engine after a race.
Dizziness lurked at the edges of my vision and threatened to overwhelm
me. It was probably a good time to leave.
I walked past the bodies of the dead, the unconscious, and the
groaning. Lucas was still out cold against the wall, his broken arm
twisted horribly as if it had grown an extra joint. Warren had managed
to work the nunchakas out of his eye. The weapon lay there glistening

beside him. I didn’t want it anymore; he could keep it for a souvenir.
I hobbled over to the smashed window and squinted out into the
approaching night. Tristan lay sprawled in a mess of broken glass and
curtain fabric with his neck at an unlikely angle. I couldn’t see Drucker.
He must have survived the fall and escaped. I cursed his infernal luck.
I went to Crystal and lifted an eyelid, but she was further out than
low tide. Straining my spent muscles, I hoisted her over my shoulders in
a fireman’s carry. She was heavy and I staggered a lot, but we made it
to the chapel door. I took one last look at Hoffman, the great fallen
preacher lying in a pool of his own blood. I felt neither guilt nor
satisfaction; I felt nothing. I was too tired even to sneer.
I don’t know how I got down the stairs. Crystal was a dead weight
on my shoulders, but some dim spark of determination kept me going.
The sweet, familiar smell of her skin was offset by the chemical tang of
the drugs Hoffman had primed her with. Her breathing sounded erratic.
I could only hope she was okay.
At the bottom of the stairs, I realised that one of the others still had
my car keys. To hell with it; I was too wrecked to go back up for them.
I gritted my teeth and kept moving. Every so often, I heard muffled
screams coming from elsewhere in the house. I ignored them and
concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. Crystal kept
gaining weight with every step. Finally I made it to the front door. The
door had been flung open, probably by a fleeing cultist, and the evening
air was cool and crisp. The evil outside world didn’t smell bad at all.
I stumbled out into the driveway. Tristan’s brown van was parked
beside the fountain. It seemed emasculated somehow, a harmless tool
now that its owner lay broken nearby in a jumble of smashed body parts.
I didn’t pause to think; I yanked the passenger door open, manoeuvred
Crystal inside, and strapped her in place with the seatbelt. My shoulders
hummed with relief. I got in behind the wheel. The stolen key was right
there in the stolen ignition. My lucky day at last.
“Poetic justice,” I told the unconscious girl next to me. I had no idea
what I meant. The adrenaline rush had started to fade, and I could feel
myself slipping into a state of shock. I turned the key and the engine
rumbled its deep bass.
I floored the accelerator and the van bulleted forward towards
freedom. Tess’s gold crucifix still hung around my neck; it bounced
against my chest like a second heartbeat. My mind felt numb; I had

gone beyond instinct now, beyond exhaustion. The gate ahead was
closed. It didn’t matter; I just planted my foot down harder. I was about
three hundred horrors past caring by now.
The van smashed into the gate and the heavy iron wings exploded
from the wall as the bull-bar powered through them like a medieval
battering ram. Crystal and I were both jolted hard against our seatbelts.
The van cleared the wreckage, wobbled out onto the road, and stopped.
Its engine sputtered and died, dark steam pouring up from the bonnet.
The dragon that had carried Tess away in its belly had been slain, but it
had redeemed itself first.
Three houses down the street, an old lady scurried out onto her porch
to see what all the commotion was. She nearly fainted at the sight of me
blundering towards her like walking hamburger meat and carrying an
unconscious girl in my arms, but then she kindly let me use her phone to
call the police.

Chapter Twenty-Six
“W hat is it now?” I snarled into the phone.
“Well, Jack, if you can spare a few minutes of your valuable time,”
Detective Sergeant Pearl said smoothly, “there are a few more things I’d
like to clear up.”
I kneaded the ridge of brow between my tired eyes. Even now, a
week since the nightmare at the chapel, I could still feel the aftershocks
of the concussion I’d sustained.
“Are you there, Mr. Celebrity? Or are you too busy counting your
reward money?” She said it with an edge that I didn’t appreciate.
It had been a long week. A government official had reluctantly
handed me a reward cheque for five grand. The face he’d pulled, you’d
have thought it came out of his own pension. Some handshaking mayor
kept threatening to pin a medal on me. The cops had put me through
paperwork hell before releasing my car from the evidence impound.
And then the journalists had attacked in swarms until they’d stung
everything newsworthy out of me. I’d made the fame journey from front
page to letters page, and in another week I’d be anonymous again.
I was tired of it all. I didn’t need Pearl harping at me, not now. And
besides, I had big plans for that money, none of which was any of her
damn business. I said, “Yeah, I’m here. Leave me alone.”
“You’re not going to hang up on me again, are you?”
“Now there’s an idea.” I hefted the glass of whisky the doctors had
told me I couldn’t have, and put it to good use. I rubbed the phone
against my unshaven chin to give her an earful of bristle music. “What
do you want, Pearl?”
She cleared her throat and I heard her shuffling papers. “Well, as
you know, in addition to the recording of the fight, we also found the
video that Hoffman made of Tess Hinley’s murder.”
“You’ve watched it then?”
“Yes.” Her tone contained all the horror and sadness in the world. I
had no interest in the details. I wanted to keep my last memory of Tess
sweet and unspoiled, like the kiss we’d shared under the wattle tree. But
I had to know one thing. “Was Crystal in the video?”
“No, she’s in the clear. She didn’t know anything about it. Hoffman

probably didn’t want to risk involving her because he knew how close
she was to Tess.”
I sighed with relief. I had a date with Crystal scheduled for
tomorrow.
“The audio’s bad, but we’ll get half a dozen convictions if the judge
allows the tape,” Pearl said. “Hoffman made sure every one of those
poor kids had a turn with the knife. He screwed with their heads in the
worst possible way.”
“He screwed something alright,” I said dryly, thinking of the other
videos Hoffman had made.
If Pearl caught my reference, she chose not to acknowledge it. “We
also found a cache of drugs in the mansion that can be traced back to
Drucker,” she added.
“Heroin?”
“Some. Mostly hallucinogenic stuff. Hoffman also had a range of
brainwashing textbooks and hypnotic audio tapes. We even found a set
of specially reworded bibles that he’d tailored to help push his agenda.”
“Yeah, I remember those.” Out of curiosity, I’d looked up Matthew
7:21 in a proper bible a few days ago. The genuine passage had been
significantly less loaded with manipulative language than Hoffman’s
twisted travesty.
We were quiet for a moment. I wondered why Pearl was being so
free with information. I could hear her controlled breathing. I took the
opportunity to liberate my glass of some of the liquid weighing it down.
Pearl cleared her throat and said hoarsely, “Look, Jack, the reason I
called was to… to tell you that you did the right thing.” She exhaled
loudly. “What Hoffman did to those poor girls… well, I just want you to
know – off the record of course – that you did the world a favour putting
that pervert down.”
She sounded sincere enough, but it might still have been a trap.
“We’ve been over this already, Pearl,” I said neutrally. “Watch the
video again. Drucker fired the shot and then Hoffman finished the job
himself. I simply defended myself.” I could hear the whine in my own
voice. “I didn’t kill anyone.”
The long silence felt like an accusation, even though I’d already been
officially cleared on the self-defence aspect. Maybe you didn’t kill
anyone directly, the silence sneered, but you sure stirred up a lot of
death. My forehead felt tight, as if it had been gripped by mental

forceps.
Pearl broke the spell by asking, softly, “How do you feel, Jack?”
I’d done a lot of hard thinking about that in the past week. Hard,
ugly thoughts that even alcohol couldn’t fully submerge. “It feels like
drinking a fine wine, enjoying the hell out of it, and then someone tells
you he pissed in your glass.”
“What do you mean?”
I took a big swallow of my decidedly cheap whisky. “Part of me
feels fantastic for just making it out of that hellhole alive,” I said, trying
to put the thoughts into words. “For being better than all of those
crazies.”
“But?” Pearl prompted.
The imaginary forceps squeezed tighter. “But mostly I just feel
rotten. Even though I survived, I feel like I’ve killed a part of myself in
the process.”
This was the issue I’d been grappling with for a week now. At
times, I’d felt like toasting my reflection in the mirror as Tess’s
avenging angel of justice. But then the glory would fade, the horror
would return, and I’d stand there sober and shivering and unable to look
at myself. I kept remembering my last words to Hoffman, the evil that
I’d unthinkingly exhumed with that one dreadful phrase. I kept
wondering if that black part of me which had absorbed the wickedness
of the past would surface again. The scar on my cheek burned as heat
rushed to my face.
Oh yes, you do remember me after all, Jacky boy…
“I’m sorry, Jack,” Pearl said quietly. She was starting to sound less
like a cop. “I’m sorry you had to go through that all by yourself.”
I lubricated my tonsils with whisky and let the stillness speak for me.
Eloquent thing, silence. It could mean anything you wanted it to.
“I wish there was some way I could…” She trailed off. I had the
dim impression that there were things lurking unsaid within her own
pauses. When she spoke again, her voice was professional once more.
“About the protection…”
“Damn it!” My pride sprang up immediately. “I already told you
no.”
“Just listen to me for one minute, Jack.” She sounded frustrated.
“Drucker’s still out there with a serious grudge against you.”
“Either that or a crush.” I still felt dirty about having provoked

Drucker with his issues; the more jokes I made about it, I hoped, the
sooner the guilt would pass.
“I mean it, Jack,” Pearl said. “You need our protection.”
I laughed. “Are you kidding me? A cop following me into the
dunny every time I take a piss? It’s been a week already. I’ll take my
chances.”
Pearl let the silence linger for almost a minute that time, presumably
to let her disapproval wear me down. I used the time to wear down the
waterline of my glass by another inch or two. Finally she spoke,
sounding smaller somehow, almost nervous. “At least let me check in
on you occasionally, to… to make sure you’re okay.”
The mental tongs pinched again and my irritation rose up like bile.
The whole thing was bad enough without having Pearl soaping me with
pity as well. “What for?” I said nastily. “Going to hold it for me while I
take that piss?”
“You…” The indignation stuck in her throat. I’d ruined her script,
whatever it had been. She made a sound that might have been a hiccup.
“I hate you!” she shouted, and hung up. She wasn’t gentle about it.
I tried to shrug off the bad encounter with a fresh glass of whisky,
but it didn’t work. Instead of relaxing me, the booze only made me
grouchier. I called Benny to take it out on him, but his phone rang out
empty.
The only thing to lighten my gloom was the prospect of seeing
Crystal again tomorrow. The shrinks had analysed every traumatised
synapse in her pretty head and pronounced that she’d suffered no serious
psychological damage. At least, nothing that a few years worth of
hundred-dollar counselling sessions couldn’t fix. Crystal’s parents
apparently hadn’t been too happy about the idea of her seeing me again
after everything that had happened, but she’d brushed their concerns
aside with indomitable female wilfulness. I wondered if I was man
enough to take on the Crystal challenge myself.
I busied myself tending to my alfalfa farm. After the vandalism, I’d
put it back together with Scotch tape and restocked it with fresh seeds.
The joins seemed to be holding okay without any leaks. In another day
or two, the first new batch would be ready. I was looking forward to
filling my tobacco tin again and getting back to a normal routine.
The doorbell rang. I scowled at the door. Probably yet another TV
crew sniffing for an exclusive interview with the big hero. They’d been

showing up all week. Maybe just to spite them, I should pocket their
money and then sit there in front of the live camera mouthing “No
comment” while their ratings plummeted. I poured another glass of
whisky and waited for whoever it was to leave.
The bell rang again, and then the fool pounded loudly on the door
several times. Coming on top of the aggravation with Pearl, it set me
off. I slammed down my glass, stormed over to the door, and yanked it
open.
Kurt Drucker grinned at me from behind the black muzzle of his
gun.

Chapter Twenty-Seven
“W ell, well, well, if it isn’t Jack Marsh in the flesh again.

Aren’t you glad to see me?” Drucker had shaved off his
moustache and dyed his hair a watery blond. No disguise could hide
those crazy eyes though. “Now where are your manners,” he jeered.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
He pushed me back into the room and shut the door behind him.
“Keep backing up,” he said, gesturing with the gun. He carried his
ominous black leather bag in his other hand and walked with a slight
limp. “That’s it. Good. Now sit.”
I balanced on the edge of my chair with my legs gathered under me.
But I knew there wouldn’t be any easy opportunities this time. Drucker
dropped his bag near the door and leaned against the wall across from
my desk. The gun in his hand never wavered. He knew my moves now,
and was taking no risks.
“Alistair made a mistake,” Drucker said.
“He sure did,” I said through a suddenly parched throat. “He should
have bought a ten-storey penthouse. How’d you survive that fall?”
He ignored me. “Alistair shouldn’t have trusted that girl to do a
man’s job.” He rubbed at the pale skin where his moustache had been.
“Stupid amateurs! If he’d only let me take care of things professionally,
he’d still be alive. You’d be dead, business would be good, and my men
would still be by my side instead of in the prison hospital.”
“By your side, huh?”
He coloured pink and shook his head. “No, no, no. You won’t bait
me this time, Jack Marsh. I don’t care how many times you call me a
gay homo. You’ll never tempt me to give in to…” He stopped abruptly.
His grimace suggested that he was mentally reinforcing whatever
strategies and denials he’d filled himself with before coming here. His
face smoothed out again. “You won’t provoke me into making any
mistakes this time,” he said calmly. “I won’t let you.”
“Whatever you say, sicko.”
I struggled to focus my attention on the problem of defending
myself. I was unarmed and drunk. Sensei Randall had often warned me
that my karate brown belt would be worth less than a shoestring if I kept
getting too drunk to use it. The blunt muzzle of the gun seemed to

widen and suck me towards it.
I felt suddenly weary. Weary of tough guys, weary of fighting,
weary of everything. What was the use? If I had to die, it would be on
my terms, and it wouldn’t be sober. I reached for my glass.
“Stop!” Drucker yelled. “Hands down!”
“It’s a drink,” I said sarcastically. “Not a secret weapon.”
His eyes bulged and his gun followed my movements, but I got the
whisky to my lips without making friends with any bullets.
“If you’re trying to make me angry,” he said, “it’s not going to work
this time.” He pouted. “This is as close as I’ll get. I’ll shoot you from
here if I have to.”
“You do that.” I picked up the half-finished Scudder mystery I’d
been reading off and on. “Just let me finish this. I’d hate to go without
finding out whodunit.”
“You pay attention to me, goddamn it!” he hissed, shaking his gun
like a fish trying to loosen a hook. His blotchy red face didn’t go well
with the new blond hair.
I put the book down and sighed. “What do you want, Drucker?”
His scowl broadened into a sneer. “I’m going to cut you into pieces
like a jigsaw, faggot,” he said darkly. “Would you like to know why?”
I shrugged. I hoped my indifference was getting to him.
“Because I can. Because I have the power.” Drucker laughed his
wet, unpleasant laugh. “You’re nothing but an ant on the sidewalk to
me.” He moved his foot and squashed an imaginary ant on the floor.
His teeth looked sharp and predatory. “Ooh, we’re going to have some
fun tonight, you and me.”
“I’m all funned out. Why don’t you come back tomorrow?”
“Oh, but I’ve come prepared.” He gestured towards the leather bag
he’d left near the door. “See that? I brought some toys with me.” The
bag looked swollen with nastiness. He gave me a ghastly grin. “Let’s
go into the bedroom and play.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. I folded my arms across my chest. “You
can keep your fantasies to yourself.”
Drucker’s face reddened. “You do what I tell you or I’ll blow your
head off!”
“Was that a euphemism?”
He forgot his caution and stamped right up to me. He pressed the gun
into my left cheek. The metal felt cold and deadly against my skin. “I

mean it,” he snarled.
“Go ahead and shoot,” I said with more bravado than I felt. “I’m
not going to be your ironing board. Whatever you’ve got in that bag can
stay there.”
He was close enough now for me to smell his onion-breath. “Oh, it’s
much better than that,” he said. “Something new, something I haven’t
used before.”
“Your brain?” Underneath my chair, I was stealthily positioning my
feet.
Drucker actually laughed. “You’ll see.” He took a thick, solid
looking blackjack from his pocket. “Last chance. Do it my way, and
maybe I’ll go easy on you. But if I have to drag you in there, then I’ll
get mad and take my time.”
“Go to hell, Drucker.” I readied myself for the do-or-die.
“You first,” he said. He pushed the gun against my cheek again and
raised the blackjack with his other hand. “Try to dodge and the gun goes
off.”
He swung the blackjack towards my temple. I jerked my head to the
right and swept my arm up in a grapple block, hooking the pistol away
from my face. The sound of the gunshot boomed in my ear as the bullet
sizzled past. The blackjack swished down, missed my moving head, and
slammed into the hollow between my neck and shoulder instead. I
roared with the pain of it and pushed up out of the chair, forcing Drucker
back across the room.
Drucker struggled to free his gun hand from my grip as I desperately
tried to push it away. He shrieked with rage and loosed another shot that
screamed off towards the ceiling. My ears were ringing loudly. He
lashed out again with the blackjack and missed, and I grabbed his arm
before he could pull it back.
I had him pinned, but he still had the advantage of the weapons. If
he got loose, I’d be finished. We staggered around the room like a pair
of deadlocked wrestlers. It took all of my strength to hold onto his
wrists and keep my balance.
“Let go of me, you dirty poofter!” he shouted.
“Like hell!”
I had to get rid of the gun. Without releasing my grip, I dug my
fingernails into the soft underside of his wrist. The exposed wrist with
its delicate webbing of nerves is a psychological vulnerability for most

people. I pinched harder, feeling veins move aside. Drucker squealed
and his hand spasmed open. The gun bounced on the carpet at our feet
and I quickly kicked it away across the room.
“Yaaaaah! Let go of me!” Drucker screamed. He yanked backwards
violently, breaking free from my pincers grip and pulling me off balance
at the same time. I stumbled onto my hands and knees on the carpet in
front of him. He darted forward, and I looked up just in time to catch the
blackjack on the bridge of my nose.
Light exploded behind my eyes and blood burst from my nose like
juice from a grapefruit, but I didn’t black out. As I reeled, Drucker
reached out and grabbed me by the hair. He forced my head up so that I
could see his triumphant face.
“Now!” he cried. His eyes jiggled crazily in his head and his mouth
was frothy with spittle. “Now you’re gonna pay! When they find you,
you’ll be a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle!” He raised the blackjack.
When all else fails, fight dirty. Summoning every ounce of anger
and outrage I had left, I clenched my fist and punched him in the balls as
hard as I could.
Drucker’s eyes bulged in their sockets. His breath hissed out of him
in a strangled hiccup. I drew back my fist and immediately smashed it
into his groin again with all the force of a cannonball. His testicles
imploded with a pop. He screamed and let go of my hair and I scuttled
away. The muscles in Drucker’s neck stood out like tension ropes. The
blackjack dropped from his fingers as he sank to his knees screeching a
high wail of agony that went far beyond what words could convey.
I clambered slowly to my feet. My blood nose had already drenched
the front of my shirt and a wide area of carpet. I glared down at
Drucker, hovering on his knees with his hands cupping his ruined groin.
Tears streamed down his cheeks, but his eyes still blazed with pain and
fury. I hated him. I hated him for all that he had done, to me and to
others. My fists bunched with unspent anger.
“When they find you,” I hissed, “they’ll have to take you to jail in a
bucket.”
The gun had wound up near my pile of books. I scooped it up and
held it the way I’d seen in the movies. It felt heavier than I’d expected,
cold and brutal in my hand. The chilling power of it seeped into my
bones, converting hot rage into an ice-cold deadliness. I stood over
Drucker, my mouth stretched in a mirthless smile.

Drucker’s eyes widened. He tried to stand. I shoved him back and
he stayed down, his eyes rolling with terror. I pointed the gun at him.
The odour of hot urine suddenly filled the room and I saw the stain start
to spread on his pants.
“You can’t put me in prison,” he wailed. “They’ll rape me in there!”
He sounded simultaneously horrified and excited by the prospect.
“Please! I’ll give you anything!”
“What have you got that I could possibly want?” I said flatly, and
shot him in the left knee. Drucker’s scream was even louder than the
gunshot.
Something colder than blood ran in my veins now. I had become an
instrument of revenge, a bringer of frozen death. The cold steel in my
hand matched the ice in my soul.
Drucker’s face became a sheet of stark terror. He writhed on the
ground in a frenzy of pain and desperation, sputtering out his final plea.
“Please, no! I beg of you, Jack, please!” He was hyperventilating.
I raised the gun and aimed it at his head. My voice was emotionless,
my face felt as hard as the cold granite of the crypt. “You’ll never hurt
anyone again.” My finger hesitated on the trigger.
It was too much for him. His eyes jackpotted up to whites. He
crumpled and lay still, bleeding and stinking on the floor, his pain taken
away by unconsciousness. It was too much for me too. The gun
trembled in my hand and I knew the moment had passed. The frozen
numbness in my brain began to recede.
Drained, I sat heavily at my desk. I put the gun down and stared at
it; I could still feel where its recoil had bucked against my hand. I never
wanted to touch a gun again.
I had come close to losing myself. Had I given in to that urge to kill,
the coldness would have consumed me forever. I had shot an unarmed
man in an appallingly unjustifiable moment of cruelty. I had almost
pulled the executioner’s trigger as well, and the ease with which I’d
lingered on that awful threshold terrified me. It made me feel like an
unwanted stranger in my own skin. It made my scar itch and boil.
But for now, the soul searching would have to wait. The cold fury in
my veins had thawed and it was time to act responsibly. I picked up the
phone. Dialled a number.
“Pearl?” I said once they’d put me through.
“Jack?” She sounded hoarse. “What the hell do you want?”

“You’ll never guess what the cat just dragged in.” I turned an eye on
the unconscious Drucker. His shattered knee was bleeding, but there
didn’t seem to be any arteries involved. “Kurt Drucker just showed up
on my doorstep and turned himself in.”
“Huh? What?” There was a clatter as Pearl knocked something over
in surprise. “Is this some sort of stupid joke?”
“No joke. He’s right here, and he’s looking forward to spending the
next twenty years in a nice clean jail cell. Of course, if you’re not
interested, I can always give him a pat on the head and send him away.”
“You’re at your apartment? I’ll be there five minutes ago!”
“Oh, and, uh, bring a doctor,” I said. “He got a nasty paper cut and it
might need medical attention.”
“I’m on my way.”
Drucker was still down for the count. I tore off a strip from one of
my old shirts and tightened it around his wound to slow the bleeding.
He grunted and twitched in his sleep like a dreaming puppy. A trail of
spittle had run down his chin. I wiped it away. I felt no anger towards
him now; if anything, I felt pity and remorse.
Maybe I was still human after all. Maybe the warmth hadn’t been
entirely leached out of me and I wasn’t damaged beyond repair.
Somehow, I would find the way back to myself. No matter how ugly
things get, we always have the choice to pull back from the brink.
There’s never any excuse for becoming part of the ugliness too.
I leaned back in my chair to await Pearl’s cavalry. A wave of nausea
flooded through me as the shock finally caught up with me. I reached
for the whisky bottle to settle my nerves and found that a stray bullet had
shattered it during the fight. Bits of broken glass floated in the remains
of the bottle like miniature lifeboats marooned in a sea of alcohol. I
shook my head wryly.
Maybe it was God’s way of telling me to stop depending on cheap
booze. To instead drink mineral water, munch goat’s cheese and cashew
nuts, and put in ten hours a week sculpting my body at the gym. It made
me want to laugh, but I was afraid that if I did, I mightn’t be able to stop.
Nah, I thought, the laugh breaking through anyway. Or God
wouldn’t have created bottle shops.

Chapter Twenty-Eight
“S o, what are you, like, going to do with the reward?” Crystal

asked.
I showed her my patented wolfish grin. “Spend it on lollies.”
We were eating at a trendy Chapel Street restaurant in South Yarra
that served entrée-sized portions of food at main course prices. Our
outdoor table was so far out on the sidewalk that it almost classified as a
parked car. I was drinking imported beer and pushing a bloody steak
scarcely bigger than a baby’s fist around my plate.
“Five thousand bucks could buy a whole lot of fun, Jack...” She
shifted sinuously in her seat, giving me a good view of the potential fun
on offer.
“I’m sure it could.”
“I know! You should take a holiday.” She gave me an innocent
wink that contained more seduction than innocence. “There’s London,
Rome, Amsterdam,” she listed airily. “Oh, and of course, how could I
forget Paris?” She tossed her hair and gazed sultrily at me from behind
it. “It’s the city of romance, you know?”
“I dunno. I hear the French are ruder than I am.”
She laughed, then leaned over and kissed me hard, pushing her plate
of oysters aside. Who knows, maybe the things really are aphrodisiacs.
Either that or it was the five thousand dollar bulge in my wallet.
She broke the kiss and said with her lips against my mouth, “Well?”
“Well what?” I answered cheekily. I was enjoying the flirting game,
but I felt reluctant to approach the subject of the money seriously. I’d
been pulling together the strands of a lot of hard thinking over the last
couple of days, and yet I felt strangely superstitious about making the
final decision. Because once you’ve said it out loud, I thought, you’ll be
committed.
She smiled coyly. “You know, silly. The reward.”
“Well…”
Is this it then? Am I really going to do this thing?
I thought about what Hoffman had said about the importance of
purpose. I remembered how much more alive I’d felt while pursuing my
goal of justice for Tess. And I thought about how essential it really is
for us to have a reason for what we do, and then, suddenly, I saw that the

answer had been obvious all along.
Damn right I’m going to do it!
I plunged ahead and said all in one quick breath: “I’m going to use
the money to get my private investigator’s licence!”
She recoiled with surprise. “You’re what?”
Now that the cat was out of the bag, all the enthusiasm I’d been
cautiously restraining came out in a rush. “Well, I’ll have to do a proper
training course first, obviously. My friend Benny has already checked
out the requirements on the Internet for me. I’ll need to get a Certificate
Four in Investigative Services, and then–”
Crystal gave a sharp laugh. “Hello? Isn’t all that, like, kind of
dull?”
“Huh?” My mind was still racing ahead with ideas.
She gave me a smile full of dimples. “A reward is supposed to be
about rewarding yourself, Jack. Not boring old blah-blah career plans.”
“But it’s what I’ve always wanted to do. And now I’ve finally got
the cash to do it.” And the confidence, I thought, and, at last, a sense of
direction in my life.
Crystal still looked mischievous. “Aren’t you at least going to, you
know, celebrate a little first?”
“I thought we were doing that right now.”
She sighed and pouted theatrically. “Oh sure then,” she said in a
spoiled princess voice full of resignation. “Whatever.”
“Hey, I’ll buy you a diamond earring with the next reward,” I said.
Her face lit up faster than a lightning bolt. “You promise?”
“Promise. And the next bad guy after that can pay for Paris.”
Her smile faded abruptly and she turned away from me. Her brave
face was slipping, and I loved her all the more for the fact that she’d
worn it for me, for as long as she could. I didn’t push. I knew she was
thinking about Hoffman, her mind still coming to terms with the truth. I
only hoped that in time I’d be able to help her overcome it. Inner
demons can’t be extinguished as easily as human lives.
A loud giggle from a nearby café drew my attention. Three young
Toorak girls, their upturned noses saying No Chance and their sleekly
packaged bodies saying Come Get Some, had been approached by a pair
of guys wearing tightly stretched muscle shirts. The guys were working
their tag team charm routine and consciously striking poses they’d seen
in hip hop videos. I knew the outcome didn’t much matter to any of

them; it was all part of the social game of hanging out in the right places,
of being talked about, being seen. It was a lifestyle as shallow as a
crepe, and probably about as nourishing, but at that moment, I envied
them. Those lucky kids had never had to deal with murderous priests
and psychotic drug dealers. Their carefree innocence was devastating.
Crystal remained silent for a long time, staring at the streaks of sauce
on her plate. I didn’t make any move to touch her. It was all still very
fresh and painful, and she needed space to work through it. There were
things best left unsaid, if possible.
“Drucker killed Duong,” she said finally, her voice wobbling.
“That’s what the cops believe.”
“He’ll go away to prison for the rest of his life, won’t he? Drucker, I
mean.”
“Who knows? With all the lenient judges these days, and the
government pushing early parole schemes to hurry crims back into the
tax-paying community, it’s anyone’s guess. But we can always hope
that justice prevails. Perhaps some public-spirited prisoner will slip him
a shank when he bends over for the soap.”
“But he confessed, didn’t he? Didn’t he?”
They say that ninety percent of human communication is non-verbal,
like the bulk of an iceberg hidden below the surface. Crystal’s face read
like a big question mark; she needed to hear the answer to the
unanswerable question of grief and guilt and relentless self-torment that
could never be satisfied.
“Don’t worry about it,” I told her, feeling it all start to crumble.
“Pearl has enough evidence to convict him for killing Hoffman, among
other things.”
“But what about Duong? What about what he did to Duong?”
“Drucker was responsible for the torture,” I said. “He admitted as
much to me himself.” I took a deep breath, and added, “But Drucker
didn’t kill Duong.”
Her eyes drilled into mine. “How can you say such a thing? Of
course Drucker killed him!” Her voice began to tremble. “Who else
could it have been?”
A weary depression began to seep into my mind, like a chronic ache
settling back into place after the painkillers wear off. “Duong was killed
with the same sacrificial knife that was used on Tess, remember?
Hoffman would never have let a non-believer like Drucker touch that

knife. No, it wasn’t Drucker.”
“Are you… are you suggesting that the Reverend did the killing
himself?”
“I think that after Drucker tortured all the information he could get
out of Duong, he must have phoned Hoffman for instructions. Hoffman
told Drucker to get out of there, and then he sent one of his faithful to
finish the job.”
Crystal’s mouth gaped with shock. “But… but who?” The muscles
in her face and neck were all tightened up with fear. “Tristan?”
I didn’t want to say it. The weight on my shoulders had pushed its
way down into my stomach and my appetite had been squeezed out.
Around us, Chapel Street still hummed with its usual heady atmosphere
of pretentiousness. The glamorous people walked the proud fashion
beat, watched enviously by the has-beens. But I felt very much alone, as
if a dark cloud of responsibility had swept all the vibrancy away.
“Forget about it,” I said. “It doesn’t matter now. Eat your oysters
and have fun.”
But she wouldn’t let it go. She kept worrying at it like a dog
checking that its bone is still buried. With quivering lips and tormented
eyes, she leaned across the table and said, “Who killed my boyfriend,
Jack? Tell me! I need to know.”
So she was going to force it after all. I took one last breath of her
sweet perfume, let it out slowly between my teeth, and said softly: “You
did, Crystal.”
Her look of surprise was a little too slow. “Me?” she said in a shaky
voice.
“Yes.” I tried to soften my voice, but it still came out sounding hard.
“It was you that Hoffman sent with the knife.”
“That’s ridiculous! Why would I kill my own boyfriend?”
“For the same reason you almost killed me. Because you were under
Hoffman’s control.” I remembered her vacant, brainwashed stare as
she’d held the knife ready to plunge into my body. I’d gotten through to
her then, in the nick of time, and I’d hoped that that would be
redemption enough. But it looked like salvation wasn’t going to be that
easy to achieve.
Crystal shook her head in denial, but her face bore the truth of her
guilty suffering. I regretted that it had come to this.
“I think that after Drucker told him about the torture, Hoffman

suddenly saw a perfect opportunity to seal all the leaks,” I said. “Later
that night, he gave you the knife and commanded that you finish off
Duong.”
“No…” Her eyes looked feverish. “Please don’t…”
“Maybe Hoffman came along as well, stood there and talked you
through it, I don’t know. But once it was over, he’d managed to silence
Duong as well as tighten his mental hold on you. All that was left after
that was to frame me for the murder and Hoffman would have been
sitting pretty. He dobbed me in anonymously, having fed you all the
right lies to tell the police beforehand, but without him there in the
interrogation room to guide you, you crumbled and couldn’t pull it off.”
“How can you even think–”
“And then when that didn’t work, he had a last innings crack at
brainwashing me onto the team. If you can’t frame ‘em, recruit ‘em.”
“You’re wrong. You’re just so wrong.”
Suddenly, I didn’t want to hear her protests any more. She was lost
to me now, no matter what I said. I could feel her shutting me out with
every word. It was all too much for her to take, and I felt too resentful to
baby her through it.
I said gruffly, “Look, Crystal, I’ll always be grateful that you came
through in the end and saved me, but it doesn’t alter the fact that you
killed Duong.”
“Jack, please…”
“The big difference was that Duong didn’t get the chance to talk you
out of it, what with that damn sock in his mouth.”
Crystal’s skin turned as pale as talcum powder. Her mouth worked
silently as she struggled in vain to find a suitable response. Finally, she
looked up at me, broken to the truth. “You… you don’t know what it
was like,” she whispered. “You can’t know...”
“I know it must have been awful,” I said, “coming back to that
apartment with me and pretending it was all new and horrible. You must
be one hell of an actress.”
She raised her eyes to meet mine. They were sodden with tears.
“Why are you forcing this out of me? Why are you being so cruel?”
Because I love you, I wanted to say, but it was too late for things like
love. “Because you need to come to terms with the guilt,” I said.
“You’ll never heal until you do.” I was speaking to myself as much as
to her, I realised. I was pushing her away as much as she was resisting

me. The weariness in my bones seemed to double.
“Does that mean you’re going to turn me in to the police?”
“No,” I said. “That bastard Hoffman had you under his control. I’m
no lawyer, but in my court, that means you weren’t fully responsible for
what you did.”
“So you won’t tell anyone?”
“You saved my life in that chapel. You’ve earned your secret.”
The tension in her body lessened then, but she still stared at me for a
long time, her face churning with the most calculating expression I had
ever seen. It was the cold face of a stranger. She was a hell of an actress
alright.
If I’d handled her differently, might we still have salvaged
something? I didn’t think so. We’d both come to this table primed to
explode, I realised, and we’d both hoped foolishly to avoid the
inevitable. Deep down, beneath the surface of consciousness, we’d both
known it had to end this way.
“Jack, I don’t think we should see each other again.”
“I agree.”
“I… I had to do it,” she said. “He was in such pain, such…” She
wiped away a tear with one feminine fingertip.
“You’d do it for a pet, right?” I said coldly.
She burst into tears. Maybe the tears were the genuine article and
maybe they weren’t. Maybe I just didn’t care anymore. A concerned-
looking waiter started over, but I glared him all the way back behind the
counter.
Crystal stood up clutching her purse. “What we’ve talked about,”
she said, “you won’t… you won’t, like, repeat it to anyone, will you?”
I stared at her, at this beautiful, dangerous creature. I wanted to fix
this last image of her in my mind, the visage of a terrible black widow
spider willing to consume its mate. Life is full of untidy loose ends, I
thought. The scales of justice rarely balance.
“Cross my heart,” I said wryly, and she nodded and rushed out and
was gone.
I sat there for a moment, trying to preserve that vision of the hard,
calculating femme fatale, and I wondered if letting her go was the right
thing to do. But I couldn’t hold the picture in my mind for long.
Memories of her scent, her lips, her electric vitality, all kept slipping
around the edges and turning her back into a beloved princess.

Jack Marsh, Private Schmuck. Well, my next case couldn’t possibly
be any worse. Got to fall down first in order to get up, right?
The waiter was hovering around, peeking at me nervously. I waved
him over.
“Are you alright, sir?” he asked. “Can I get you anything else?”
I had brought Tess’s gold crucifix along in my pocket. I could feel it
now, its points pressing into my leg. It gave me a sad feeling of comfort
to know it was there, as if in some small way, Tess was still depending
on me to keep her alive.
“Whisky,” I said. “A double. And if you’re quick, I might even say
thanks.”

Colder Than Blood

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Descrizione originale:

Titolo originale

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Colder Than Blood

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD

“My second best mate”

COLDER THAN BLOOD

Copyright © 2007 by Shannon Edward Rowe

First published in 2008 by Lulu.com

Cover images by Shannon Edward Rowe

I wasn’t expecting trouble that afternoon as I drove home from yet

COLDER THAN BLOOD 1 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 2 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 3 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 4 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 5 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 6 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 7 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 8 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 9 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 10 ED ROWE

I needed a hard shot of whisky just to make it past the headline.

COLDER THAN BLOOD 11 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 12 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 13 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 14 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 15 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 16 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 17 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 18 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 19 ED ROWE

B enny Thompson’s ugly three-bedroom house was just one of

COLDER THAN BLOOD 20 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 21 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 22 ED ROWE

Your search – “Tess Hinley” – did not match

“No sale,” Benny told me.

Searched the web for “Hinley”

COLDER THAN BLOOD 23 ED ROWE

Searched the web for +Tess +Hinley site:au

Benny went through each of the links, calling up the corresponding

COLDER THAN BLOOD 24 ED ROWE

A grainy photo of Crystal’s face appeared under the heading. She

COLDER THAN BLOOD 25 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 26 ED ROWE

Make sure you email all my friends too, but

• My very manly and cute boyfriend Duong on

“There she is!” The thrill of discovery tingled through my palms.

COLDER THAN BLOOD 27 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 28 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 29 ED ROWE

T he next morning I drove out to Swinburne and crammed my car

COLDER THAN BLOOD 30 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 31 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 32 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 33 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 34 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 35 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 36 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 37 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 38 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 39 ED ROWE

A fter a detour through a sandwich shop for some see-through

COLDER THAN BLOOD 40 ED ROWE

COLDER THAN BLOOD 41 ED ROWE