‘We didn’t call her here,’ Rick said. He had the hollow cheeks and pink eyes of almost all the junkies I’d ever dealt with, but for some reason I got the sense that the thinness and raggedness of him was due to hard work and self-neglect rather than getting intohis own product. He was too calm. ‘She’s explained it to us all. The property that called her about the wallaby is actually our neighbours next door. Your daughter has mixed up the directions and come onto our land by mistake.’
Rick cast an arm out westwards. I didn’t follow the gesture, aware that I might have a fifth guy creeping up on me from behind. I kept my ears pricked for footsteps on gravel and said, ‘We can get out of your way and forget this ever happened, right now.’
‘That would be so nice,’ Rick said. ‘But the problem is, she’s seen the inside of the house.’ Again, he gave an almost apologetic sigh. He indicated to my hostage. ‘That idiot took a piss break and let her get all the way up the driveway. Andthatidiot’—he gestured to the man at the bottom of the stairs—‘found her at the house and brought her in. She’s seen all the product, all the gear, everything. I can’t just let you walk away.’
‘Yes, you can.’
‘Mate, there are people to answer to, okay? People above me. If it comes to your two arses, or mine, I know who I’m going to choose.’
‘You’re not going to kill her,’ I said. ‘Or me.’
‘I’m not?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Because, while there’s been a whole lot of idiocy around here today, you’re not going to let it continue.’
Rick gave a rueful nod, like we were on the same team. Two guys surrounded by morons.
‘Right now,’ I said, ‘your worst-case scenario is having to bail out on your set-up. And that’ll be annoying. Because you have found a nice little spot, and it looks like you’ve been here a while. But if you kill us, you’ll have every cop in the state on your tail in five minutes time, and they will chase you to the ends of the earth, I promise you. Try explaining that to your higher-ups.’
‘You’re a jacko yourself, aren’t you?’
‘Sure am.’
Rick filled his cheeks with air, let them slowly deflate, as though something like this was just typical of his kind of luck.
‘Your bosses will forgive you for bailing on your set-up. They won’t forgive you for killing a cop and a teenager and making the national news.’
‘This is not what I needed today.’ Rick adjusted the grip on his gun.
‘Sit us both on the ground,’ I said. ‘Have your smartest lug-head watch over us. You can have the lab packed up and be on the road in an hour. You have your lone lug-head watch us for another hour while you all burn rubber. You can be in Sydney by then. They’ll never find you.’
Rick thought about it. ‘It won’t take a genius to figure out where she’s gone,’ he sighed. ‘If we do kill her, I mean. She showed us the app with the bloody animal rescue job on it.’
‘Right.’
Rick looked at Bridie, fingered the trigger, thinking. I counted my breaths. In, out, in, out. The little drug lord turned to me, let his eyes wander from my gun to my hostage, back to my face. ‘You’re in town for the murder, are you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Girl at the pub.’
I nodded.
‘We had nothing to do with that, you know,’ Rick said. He looked at Bridie, gestured in her direction with the gun in a way that made my shoulders tighten. Didn’t go so far as to raise it to her completely. ‘We’re not here to hurt people. Especially girls.’
‘I believe you,’ I said, though I’d been listening to him weighing up whether to kill both my daughter and me for the past five minutes. Drug people have a strange relationship with the truth. ‘Listen, this is just a mobile cook-out, yeah?’
‘Right.’
I had been on drug squad for six months straight out of the academy. I knew the behaviour. The property we were on wouldn’t belong to the crew. It would have been scouted by a member of the overall organisation, identified for the secluded setting, the sense that it was abandoned and unoccupied. The crew would have set uphere mere days earlier, with the goal to cook as much meth as they could in a short span of time without raising the kind of suspicions their sounds and smells and foot traffic would raise in a city or suburban or industrial setting.
‘You have nothing to lose,’ I said. ‘Pack up and go.’
Rick tapped the gun against his thigh.
‘Okay. Here’s what’s gonna happen,’ he said. He pointed with his gun as he spoke, like it was an extension of his arm. ‘Matt, you stay on the copper. Dan, you’re gonna go with the girl, and make sure she does her job and doesn’t run off. Uri, mate?’ He turned to the house, to the window. ‘Start packing.’
‘Wait,whereis Bridie going?’ I squinted, confused.
