Chapter 45
Meg sat on a swing waiting for Georgie at the park on Barton Drive, kicking the dirt beneath her feet as a light breeze rustled the gum leaves overhead. It was one of those depressing suburban parks, wedged between brick houses on a vacant block. A swing set. A slide. A cold metal seat for a weary mum to sit on. Someone had dumped an old couch by the fence. Yellow stuffing spewed out of a rip in its brown checked fabric and half-a-dozen empty beer bottles lay in the long grass beside a VB box. Even around the play equipment the grass was knee high, dotted with dandelions and wild daisies.
She held the tracker in her hand, turning it over and over in her fingers.
There was a crunch of feet on gravel and she looked up to see Georgie exhaling a plume of white smoke.
‘Hey.’ Georgie sucked on her vape again, then sat on the swing beside her. ‘What’s going on?’
Meg looked towards the road, checking they weren’t being watched, then passed Georgie the tracker.
She looked at it closely, then up at Meg, frowning. ‘Is it a tracker? Like an AirTag?’
Meg nodded. ‘Found it in my bag.’
‘What the hell?’ Georgie whispered. ‘Why?’
‘Because I dared to ask some questions about the jail redevelopment. And I’m getting close to working out what’s going on around here.’ Meg gestured towards the strip of houses to her right.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Who do you think’s buying all these places?’ Meg waited for Georgie to connect the dots.
Georgie’s eyes widened. ‘The Ashworths?’ Her voice was low.
Meg nodded.
‘Why, though?’
Meg shared her theory that Ashworth Property owned the factory and was planning to bulldoze it, along with the houses, to make way for a development of some sort.
‘Dodgy pricks,’ Georgie said when Meg finished, hatred infused in the words.
Meg pulled up the photo she’d taken of the CCTV footage. ‘Do you know this guy?’
Georgie squinted at the blurry image. ‘Yeah, that’s Dean Morgan.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘Just a local dickhead. Why?’
‘He visited my mum in the nursing home, pretended to be my brother. And last night, someone threw a brick through the window of the place where I was staying in Sydney.’
‘What the hell?’
‘I think he’s working for them.’
‘The Ashworths?’
‘Yep. And there’s more. You know Dan James, the protester?’ Georgie nodded.
‘I spoke with him just now. He believes there was a systematic campaign against him, retribution for his public opposition to the Hartwell Gaol development. The other protester, a guy called Joel Hardy, was driven off the road while he was riding his motorbike and had very serious injuries. Dan reckons it was someone working for Ashworth Property who did it, and that was when he decided to leave town.’
Georgie shook her head, stunned.
‘Ashworth Property are clearly using these intimidation tactics to scare and silence anyone who publicly opposes their developments,’ Meg said. ‘And it’s got me thinking about your dad’s accident.’
Georgie’s head snapped up, a deep crease between her eyes.
