‘Drugs. A car theft. Nothing recent.’
We rode in silence. Out of town, through the bush, across rolling, moonlit fields and into another dense slab of bushland. The front of the Branch property was a sheer wall of Murraya hedge—twenty feet tall, dense as brick—and as we stopped and I got out of the car I could see the reason for that. Blackberry vine was interwoven throughout the hedge, tumbling out of the structure like a waterfall, lethally thorny, spilling right up to the edge of the road. Fry was sitting on the ground in the light of their cruiser, his knees up, clutching at the throat of his police uniform shirt. It had been only four minutes since Dodge had grabbed me and Evan from the front of the pub in town.
‘What happened?’ Dodge ran to Lee, who was standing helplessly over her colleague.
‘I don’t know!’ Lee turned terrified eyes on me as I approached. ‘We went in through the gates, maybe, you know, fifty metres in? We were on foot—too narrow to get a car in. I turned back, because I’d left my phone in the car. I was only gonna be gone asecond! Before I can lock the car up, Fry running comes out like … likethis.’
Lee gestured to Fry. Fry was heaving, trying to suck breath into a closed throat. I knew the symptoms. The gates to the Branch property were just beyond the back of the patrol car and stood cracked open, tall wrought-iron woven with razor wire. I grabbed Fry by the biceps and yanked him to his feet, pointing at Dodge and Lee and Evan with my other hand. ‘Move the cars back. Get out of sight.’
The group ran to comply. I marched a gasping and trembling Fry across the road and into the bush. He was sweating so hard it was running down my fingers. I pulled us to a stop where the bush became impassable, but we were hopefully out of view of any cameras affixed to the front of the Branch property.
‘Fry,’ I said. ‘You’re having a panic attack, mate.’
He nodded, gripped my arms, mirroring my hold on him. We stood there in the dark, the bush ringing with life all around us.
‘You had one before?’
He shook his head. No.
‘I’m gonna ask you a question,’ I told the younger officer. ‘And I want you to focus hard on it. Think it over. Be careful with your answer. Keep your eyes on mine. Hey. Look here, okay? Good. Eyes on me. Only talk when you’ve got it locked in.’
Fry nodded hard again. I saw glimmers of his huge eyes in the hard moonlight. The whites were robin’s-egg blue and wet.
‘What’s seven times seven?’
Fry drew a huge breath. ‘Uh! What? Uh! F-f-f-f—’
‘Focus on the question.’
‘I can’t!’
‘Yes, you fucking can.’
‘F-f-f-forty-nine.’
‘What’s six times six?’
‘T-t-t-thirty-six.’
‘And four times four?’
‘Six’—Fry swallowed. Gasped. Swallowed again—‘teen.’
‘Divide that by two.’
‘Uh … uh … uh …’ Fry shook his head. His breath was coming back, but the shaking was still there. ‘Is it eight?’
‘It is.’ I let him get off ten breaths, each slower and deeper than the last. When he was okay enough I said, ‘What happened in there?’
‘Lee l-l-left.’ Fry let go of my arms, wiped the sweat from his face onto his palms, then onto the front of his police uniform shirt. Two long handprints that I could see even in the relative darkness. ‘I was just standing there. Waiting for her to come back. And I s-s-s-saw him. He was standing in the dark, watching me.’
‘Who?’
‘Branch,’ Fry said. ‘He was holding a gun. A rifle.’
‘Was he pointing it at you?’
‘No but he … He was smiling, with his teeth, and …’
