Never Never

DANNY WATCHED THE Soldier disappear in the brief, pale light before the moon was shrouded by clouds. The darkness that sealed him was complete. He scrambled for the driver's side door of the van, yanked it, pushed against the back window where a long crack ran upward through the middle of the glass. He ran around and did the same on the other side. Panic thrummed through him. What was he doing? Even if he got into the van, the keys were gone. He spun around and bolted into the dark in the general direction of northeast. How the hell was he supposed to find anything out here?

The moon shone through the clouds again, giving him a glimpse of the expanse of dry sand and rock before it was taken away. He tripped forward and slid down a steep embankment, sweat plastering sand to his palms, his cheeks. His breath came in wild pants and gasps.

"Please, God," he cried. "Please, God, please!"

He ran blindly in the dark, arms pumping, stumbling now and then over razor-sharp desert plants. He came over a rocky rise and saw the camp glittering in the distance, no telling how far. Should he try to make it to the camp? He screamed out. Maybe someone on patrol would hear him.

Danny kept his eyes on the ground as he ran. Every shadow and ripple in the sand looked like a gun. He leapt at a dry log that looked like a rifle, knelt and fumbled in the dark. Sobs racked through his chest. The task was impossible.

The first sound was just a whoosh, sharper and louder than the wind. Danny straightened in alarm. The second whoosh was followed by a heavy thunk, and before he could put the two sounds together he was on his back in the sand.

The pain rushed up from his arm in a bright red wave. The young man gripped his shattered elbow, the sickening emptiness where his forearm and hand had been. High, loud cries came from deep in the pit of his stomach. Visions of his mother flashed in the redness behind his eyes. He rolled and dragged himself up.

He would not die this way. He would not die in the dark.

THE SOLDIER WATCHED through the rifle scope as the kid stumbled, his remaining hand gripping at the stump. The Soldier had seen the Barrett M82 rifle take heads clean off necks in the Gaza Strip, and in the Australian desert the weapon didn't disappoint. Lying flat on his belly on a ridge, the Soldier actioned the huge black rifle, set the upper rim of his eye against the scope. He breathed, shifted back, pulled the trigger and watched the kid collapse as the scare shot whizzed past his ear.

What next? A leg? An ear? The Soldier was surprised at his own callousness. He knew it wasn't military justice to play with the traitor while doling out his sentence, but the rage still burned in him.

You would have given us away, he seethed as he watched the boy running in the dark. You would have sacrificed us all.

There was no lesser creature on Earth than a liar, a cheat and a traitor. And bringing about a fellow soldier's end was never easy. In some ways, it felt like a second betrayal. Look what you've forced me to do, the Soldier thought, watching the kid screaming into the wind. The Soldier let the boy scream. The wind would carry his voice south, away from the camp.

The cry of a traitor. He would remember it for his own times of weakness.

The Soldier shifted in the sand, lined up a head shot and followed Danny in the crosshairs as he got up one last time.

"Target acquired," the Soldier murmured to himself, exhaling slowly. "Executing directive."

He pulled the trigger. What the Soldier saw through the scope made him smile sadly. He rose, flicked the bipod down on the end of the huge gun and slung the weapon over his shoulder.

"Target terminated. Mission complete."

He walked down the embankment into the dark.

I LAUGHED, HARD, in the Chief's face.

"Good work, Pops," I said, standing up so that my chair scraped loudly on the tiles. "Look, I like a good prank as much as anyone but I'm busier than a one-armed bricklayer out there. I can't believe they roped you into this one. Good work, mate. Now open this door."

"This isn't a joke, Harriet. Sit back down."

I laughed again. That's what I do when I'm nervous. I laugh, and I grin. "I've got cases."

"Your apartment and car are being forensically examined in connection with the Georges River Three case," the Chief said. He slapped a thick manila folder on the table between us. It was bursting with papers and photographs, yellow witness reports and pink Forensics sheets.

I knew the folder well. I'd watched it as it was carried around by the Homicide guys, back and forth, hand to hand, a bible of horror. Three beautiful university students, all brunettes, all found along the same stretch of the muddy Georges River. Their deaths, exactly thirty days apart, had been violent, drawn-out horrors. The stuff of mothers' nightmares. Of my nightmares. I'd wanted the Georges River Three case badly, at least to consult on it due to the sexual violence the women had endured. I'd hungered for that case. But it had been given to the parking-spot thief Detective Nigel Spader and his team of Homicide hounds. For weeks I'd sat at my desk seething at the closed door of their case room before the rage finally dissipated.

I sank back into my chair.

"What's that got to do with me?"

"It's routine, Blue," the Chief said gently. He reached out and put his hand on mine. "They're just making sure you didn't know."

"Know what?"

"We found the Georges River Killer," he said. He looked at my eyes. "It's your brother, Blue. It's Sam."

I SLAMMED THE door of the interrogation room in the Chief's face and marched across the office to the Homicide case room. Dozens of eyes followed me. I threw open the door and spotted that slimeball Nigel Spader standing before a huge corkboard stuffed with pinned images, pages, sketches. He flinched for a blow as I walked over but I restrained myself and smacked the folder he was holding out of his hands instead. Pages flew everywhere.

"You sniveling prick," I said, shoving a finger in his face. "You dirty, sniveling…dick hole!"

I was so mad I couldn't speak, and that's a real first for me. I couldn't breathe. My whole throat was aflame. The restraint faltered and I grabbed a wide-eyed Nigel by the shirtfront, gathering up two fistfuls of his orange chest hair as I dragged him to the floor. Someone caught my fist before I could land a punch. It took two more men to release my grip. We struggled backwards into a table full of coffees and plates of muffins. Crockery shattered on the floor.

"How could you be so completely wrong?" I shouted. "How could you be so completely, completely useless! You pathetic piece of—"

"That's enough!" The Chief stepped forward into the fray and took my arm. "Detective Blue, you get a fucking hold of yourself right now or I'll have the boys escort you out onto the street."

I was suddenly free of all arms and I stumbled, my head pounding.

And then I saw it.

The three girls, their autopsy portraits beside smiling, sunlit shots provided by the families. A handprint on a throat. A picture of my brother's hand. A map of Sydney, studded with pins where the victims lived, where their families lived, where my brother lived, where the bodies of the girls were found. Photographs of the inside of my brother's apartment, but not as I knew it. Unfamiliar things had been pulled out of drawers and brought down from cupboards. Porn. Tubs and tubs of magazines, DVDs, glossy pictures. A rope. A knife. A bloody T-shirt. Photographs of onlookers at the crime scenes. My brother's face among the crowd.

In the middle of it all, a photograph of Sam. I tugged the photo from the board and unfolded the half of the image that had been tucked away. My own face. The two of us were squeezed into the frame, the flash glinting in my brother's blue eyes.

We looked so alike. Detective Harry Blue and the Georges River Killer.

I'VE HAD TWO cigarettes in the past ten years. Both of them I smoked outside the funeral home where a fallen colleague's body was being laid to rest. I stood now in the alleyway behind headquarters, finishing off the third. I chain-lit the fourth, sucked hard, exhaled into the icy morning. Despite the chill, my shirt was sticking to me with sweat. I tried to call my brother's phone three times. No answer.

The Chief emerged from the fire exit beside me. I held up a hand. Not only did I not want to talk, I wasn't sure that I could if I tried. The old man stood watching as I smoked. My hands were shaking.

"That…that rat…that stain on humanity Nigel Spader is going to go down for this," I said. "If it's my last act, I'm going to make sure he—"

"I've overseen the entire operation," the Chief said. "I couldn't tell you it was going on, or you might have alerted Sam. We let you carry on, business as usual. Nigel and his team have done a very good job. They've been onto your brother for about three weeks now."

I looked at my chief. My trainer. My friend.

"I've thought you've been looking tired," I sneered. "Can't sleep at night, Boss?"

"No," he said. "As a matter of fact, I can't. I haven't slept since the morning the Homicide team told me of their suspicions. I hated lying to you, Blue."

He ground a piece of asphalt into the gutter with his heel. He looked ancient in the reflected light of the towering city blocks around us.

"Where is my brother?"

"They picked him up this morning," he said. "He's being interrogated by the Feds over at Parramatta headquarters."

"I need to get over there."

"You won't get anywhere near him at this stage." The Chief took me by the shoulders before I could barge past him through the fire door. "He's in processing. Depending on whether he's cooperative, he may not be approved for visitors for a week. Two, even."

"Sam didn't do this," I said. "You've got it wrong. Nigel's got it wrong. I need to be here to straighten all this out."

"No, you don't," he said. "You need to get some stuff together and get out of here."

"What, just abandon him?"

"Harry, Sam is about to go down as one of the nastiest sexual sadists since the Backpacker Murderer. Whether you think he did it or not, you're public enemy number two right now. If the press gets hold of you, they're going to eat you alive."

I shook another cigarette out of the packet I'd swiped from Nigel's desk. My thoughts were racing.

"You aren't going to do yourself any favors here, Harry. If you go around shouting in front of the cameras the way you did in that case room just now, you're going to look like a lunatic."

"I don't give a shit what I look like!"

"You should," the Chief said. "The entire country is going to tune in for this on the six o'clock news. People are angry. If they can't get at Sam, they're going to want to get at you. Think about it. It's fucking poetry. The killer's sister is a short-tempered, frequently violent cop with a mouth like a sailor. Better yet, she's in Sex Crimes, and has somehow managed to remain completely oblivious to the sexual predator at the family barbecue."

He took a piece of paper from the breast pocket of his jacket and handed it to me. It was a printout of a flight itinerary. He untucked a slim folder from under his arm and put it in my hands. I opened it and saw it was a case brief, but I couldn't get my eyes to settle on it for more than a few seconds. I felt sick with fear, uncertainty.

"What's this?" I asked.

"It's an Unexplained Death case out on a mining camp in the desert near Kalgoorlie," the Chief said.

"I'm Sex Crimes, Pops. Not cleanup crew."

"I don't care what you are. You're going. I pulled some strings with some old mates in Perth. The case itself is bullshit, but the area is so isolated, it'll make the perfect hideout."

"I don't want to go to fucking Kalgoorlie! Are you nuts?"

"You don't get a choice, Detective. Even if you don't know what's best for you right now, I do. I'm giving you a direct order as your superior officer. You don't go, I'll have you locked up for interrogative purposes. I'll tell a judge I want to know if you knew anything about the murders and I'll throw away the key until this shitstorm is over. You want that?"

I tried to walk away. The Chief grabbed my arm again.

"Look at me," he said.

I didn't look.

"There is nothing you can do to help your brother, Blue," the old man said. "It's over."