I opened Google. Punched in something wild and desperate and certain—absolutelycertain—not to work.Computer destroying virus instant download.
The screen filled with an infinite list. The first readInstantly Downloadable Whole-hard Drive Atomic Wipeout. That sounded good. The website was so dodgy looking I actually smiled. Black background. Red Times New Roman text in dozens of different sizes. Animated icons. I clicked a link and watched a loading bar slowly filling with blue colour, and thought of venom being dripped into veins.
The screen in front of me blinked out with an audible ‘tink’ sound. I felt a surge of joy in my chest.
‘What the …’ I clicked the mouse a dozen times in rapid succession, mock confused. ‘What happened?’
Carras stepped over cautiously. Reached for the mouse. Performed the same useless clicking. ‘Did you turn it off, sir?’
‘No, I didn’t turn it off.’ Carras punched the power button on the PC’s tower. Nothing. Stifling my joy and relief took real effort. ‘Didyouturn it off?’
‘No.’
Carras ducked under the desk to look at where the computer was plugged into the wall. He flipped the switch on and off. Tried the power again. ‘What happened? Did it just go blank?’
‘Yeah. It just died.’
‘I mean … Maybe there’s been a blackout. But there can’t have been. The lights are still on.’
‘Do you have another computer here that I can access? I really need this thing printed.’
‘Ahhh …’ Carras ran a hand through his hair. ‘Not really. There’s the desktop computers of the other staff, but they’re all password-protected. This is the big daddy here.’
‘Looks like you’re running blind, then,’ I said.
‘I can’t be, though.’ Carras nudged me out of the way, dragging the PC tower forward so that he could inspect the back of the machine. ‘This thing controls all the cameras. I have to have an unbroken eye on all the boxes, all the time. Chain of custody, you know?’
‘Sucks to be you,’ I said, clapping the constable on the shoulder. ‘I’m gonna sign out. I’m in a hurry.’
RUSSELL
Ididn’t call Bridie. Didn’t text her back. Because there were a dozen or more scenarios running through my mind, each one of them more horrifying than the last, and none of them were resolved or improved by there being some indication on Bridie’s phone that her SOS message had successfully reached me and that I was on my way. I shoved my gun into my waistband and my phone into my pocket, ran out the door of the houseboat and remembered that my daughter had my car. Sprinting across the field, through the gate and along the road into town, my whole body aflame from last night’s injuries reawakened, I skidded hard and almost fell in the gravel as I spotted Rob Winter, the publican, driving slowly towards me in a dusty blue Land Cruiser. With bewilderment he pulled over sharply as I waved him down, and actually reeled back in the driver’s seat as I yanked open the door.
‘Get-out-get-out-get-out!’
He got out. I swung into the driver’s seat like a man pulling himself up on a horse and slammed the door closed as I drove away. Rob Winter stood in my dust cloud in the middle of the road, hands by his sides, watching me.
The first clue that Bridie had stumbled onto a drug lab came when I spotted the gate. It was entangled in a passionfruit vine, rusted and barely hanging on to the rotted wooden post it was attached to.It had all the appearances of a gate that was never opened, but the groove that the corner of the swinging arm had cut in the mud was nice and deep and spoke of regular use. I passed the gate, parked Rob’s car and walked back, ducked under a wire wrapped in the same camouflaging vine. I stepped into the moist, rainforest-like undergrowth. The road became barely visible only a few feet back from the gravel edge, the property’s interior disguised, as Stephen Branch’s had been, by an entanglement of weeds, vines and scrubby trees. I made my way towards the road leading off the gate, and walked by its side but not on it. It wasn’t long before I spotted a pipe running across the road, lazily cut into the dirt and painted a similar sandy colour. Intruders, cops, or lost teenagers here to rescue a wallaby would run over the pipe with their vehicles and set off a silent alarm somewhere up at the lab itself. I drew my gun and walked quickly and quietly, keeping the road in sight but sticking to the thickness of the bush.
The sentry knew something was up. Whether it was because I’d walked under a camera or set off some other hidden alarm, I didn’t know. But he was dumb enough to take action not by hiding and waiting for me to arrive, but by going out and standing in the middle of the road, a big unwieldly revolver of some type hanging in his fist. I skirted him by as much as I dared, cut in and came back up the road behind him, walking in the dampness of the sandy clay so my boots wouldn’t crunch on the gravel. Despite my efforts, a stone popped under my boot maybe six feet out. The sentry turned, and I raised my gun two-handed, cop-style, looking right down the barrel at him, so he’d know exactly who he was dealing with. Like me, he was pushing fifty and broad. He had salt-and-pepper hair and a badly flattened nose that was covered in deep, dirty pores.
‘Well.’ He blew out air in a disappointed huff. ‘Shit.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. I tipped the gun a little, and he dropped his weapon in the sand like a good boy. He stepped to the side and put his hands out, and I went over and felt his pockets and waistband. He even tugged up the thighs of his jeans to show me his boots: someone who had clearly been searched thousands upon thousands of times in their criminal career and knew the routine.
‘Where is she?’
‘At the house.’
‘Get going,’ I said. ‘Stay ahead of me. You stop to scratch your arse and I’ll put another hole in it for you.’
The big guy made an aggrieved sound and started walking. Sweat was making my T-shirt cling to my chest, and my jeans and boots were wet to the thighs from the forest. Intrusive, unhelpful thoughts kept zapping through my brain, carrying horrible visions that I had to fight the urge to succumb to. Bridie tied to a chair. Bridie on a bed. Bridie on the floor. Bridie in a grave. My career had presented me with plenty of dead and tortured and mangled women to draw inspiration from. Staying present, and keeping my breathing steady, was exhausting me.
We came upon a damp, mouldy single-storey house set into the rainforest, an asbestos-clad thing that was peeling and dropping paint and sheets of fibro like a half-dead insect shedding its exoskeleton. My Mustang was parked at the side. Another big, meat-faced guy stood at the bottom of the steps and watched me come up, escorting my hostage. He didn’t look surprised, or worried. Bridie came out of a screen door onto the verandah and a shorter guy emerged behind her, and though he was holding another stupidly big silver revolver I was pleased that he wasn’t pointing it at my child, otherwise I would have had to kill everyone right then and there, and I was still hoping for a nonviolent solution to all this. The curtain in the front window fluttered, and I knew I had a fourth man watching me, probably pointing a rifle at my head. Bridie looked bloodless and big-eyed, but she wasn’t crying.
‘I’m Rick,’ the shorter guy said, raising a hand at me in a tired and annoyed and embarrassed kind of way. The wave guys give each other when they step out of their vehicles after a rear-ender that was kind of both their fault. ‘This is your kid, is it?’
‘Yep,’ I said.
