‘They’ll have been drinking,’ I said. ‘They’re no good to us. The nearest backup we have is in Gosford. That’ll be a half hour at least. And you’re not sending me off to do busywork, Detective Inspector Powder. I’m the second-most senior officer here.’
‘So I’ve got you lot to work with for a half an hour.’ Russell huffed a sigh, the disappointed army captain lumped with the last platoon to go over the trench wall. He turned his fiery eyes on Dodge. ‘You know, I just don’t get this. You’ve got a senseless stabbing murder in town, and this guy out here, Branchy—he doesn’t spring immediately to mind? Everybody’s falling over each other to say what a great guy he is, yet he’s been living out here in this Fortress of Solitude’—he jerked his thumb towards the property behind him—‘and nobody’s blinked at that? Have you seen the hedges? They’re twenty foot high!’
‘That’s notsouncommon.’ Dodge shook his head. ‘Living like that. These guys, they come out here because they like their own space. Branchy has obviously been … he’s been a certain type of person down at the pub. Friendly and what-not. But out here, he’s …’
‘He’s his real self.’ Fry’s mouth was a thin line. ‘And he’s just never showed anybody that, I guess. And nobody’s gone looking.’
‘We’ve got all types out here,’ Dodge went on. ‘Religious types. Doomsday preppers. Sometimes guys just don’t let people in because they’re embarrassed about how hoarded the place is.’
‘Lots of hoarders,’ Lee confirmed. ‘To know a guy for twenty years and never go onto his land is pretty standard.’
‘The hedge,’ Russell said. ‘Does it go all the way around like that?’
‘I don’t know,’ Dodge said.
Russell pointed at me.
‘You,’ he said. ‘Take Lee. Check the boundary that way. I want to know if there are routes in. We’re notgoing in, though, Evan. Understand?We’re not going in.We’re scoping out the situation and we’re meeting back here to form a plan. Dodge, come with me. We’ll take the other side. Fry, stay with the cars and call Gosford for backup.’
RUSSELL
We walked towards the front of the property, past the cracked-open gates. I was almost certain we were walking under the gaze of cameras, but there wasn’t much I could do about that. If Stephen Branch was the kind of weirdo who would grow twenty-foot walls of impenetrable hedge laced with razor-sharp blackberry, he was the kind of weirdo who would put cameras not only at his gates but throughout the surrounding bush. Dodge was quiet. I didn’t realise I already had my gun out, pulled from the holster at the back of my belt, until Dodge cleared his throat beside me.
‘I think I’m gonna pull my gun, too,’ he said. I glanced over. He was actually watching me for approval. I guessed I was witnessing a cop pull his weapon for the first time in his career.
We rounded the corner of the property and I saw that same hedge running up the mountain for maybe three acres. The big moon lit the adjacent field. It was still, and wet, and silver. I smelt cow shit and saw black shapes as big as cars lying in the shadow of a tree.
‘Let’s just walk along here to the corner,’ I said. ‘See if we can see anything at all before backup gets here. We should have got radios.’
‘Should we go back and radio up?’
We were a quarter of the way along the hedge towards the hilltop. ‘Yes. We should.’
‘Do you reckon we’ll end up going in?’
‘It’s one guy sneaking around his own property wearing army fatigues,’ I said. ‘That’s not a crime. But I trust Fry’s intuition about the vibe.’
‘Youdo?’ Dodge couldn’t hide the disbelief in his voice.
‘Fry’s saying something’s not right. He’s one of our guys. So until we check him out, we’re not leaving,’ I said. ‘I’m hoping this ends up as a big hoo-ha over nothing.’
‘But what is hedoing?’ Dodge’s voice was too high, thin. ‘Is he alone in there? Is he playing like … war games? Why creep up on a cop when you’re fucking armed? Are you trying to get shot? Branch, mate, what the fuck?’
‘Dodge.’ I clapped him on the shoulder. ‘It might be time to accept the fact that you don’t really know this guy at all.’
Dodge walked on, eyes and pistol pointed at the ground, darkly contemplative. I felt bad for him. He had the rural cop’s good heart, the one that liked to believe that the person you knew from playing darts and laughing and sinking schooners down the pub was the same person in their private life. Dodge’s was a world in which there were no secrets or lies. A nice world to fantasise about. But city cops came to understand soon enough that the charming businessman could well be a violent paedophile. The doe-eyed mother of four could be a life-destroying fraudster. The guy playing darts and entertaining his mates with impressions was also the guy who would spend his spare time doing … whatever the hell we had interrupted Stephen Branch doing tonight. I knew humans were liars by nature. Expected it. I’d hidden the fact of who I really was from my wife for almost two decades.
A hiss stopped us in our tracks. I saw a shape moving through the hedge and raised my weapon, my pulse thumping in my neck. The black shape was crouched low, around three metres from where I was standing, an indistinguishable blob.
‘Hey!’ The voice was soft and trembling. ‘Hey, is someone there?’
‘Hello?’ Dodge hissed back.
‘Oh, Jesus!’ The voice rose above a whisper, only barely. ‘Hi. I’m here. I’m here! My name is Ashley Wilson. I-I-I’m trapped in here. I’m trying to get out!’
Dodge and I looked at each other.
‘Ashley?’ Dodge ducked his head, trying to see. ‘Is that your name?’
