

VENOM

By Evan Clarry

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Evan Clarry

Cover Design Concept by Evan Clarry

Original Artwork by Danielle O'Brien

http://www.danielleobrienart.com

CONTENTS

Title Page

License Notes

Disclaimer

Dedication

VENOM

About the Author

LICENSE NOTES

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy. It's cheaper than a cup of coffee and the pleasure is bottomless. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then head on over to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. If you enjoyed it, spread the word. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living dead, or undead, is purely coincidental.

For Joe R. and F. Scott.

## Chapter 1

In the middle of a scorched plain sparsely peppered with mulga trees stood an old windmill; its corroded iron vane pushed by the breeze creaked and banged like a child's violin. It had long ceased working, the components of its pump rusted by the rising salt killing off the land. The air was dry and brittle, unseasonably hot for late winter; it picked up a little, gently combing the wispy, yellow strands of paspalum. A late model tray-back Land Cruiser was parked in the shade of the crumbling tower. It was just after 4:30 pm.

Frank Hutchins coaxed a Marlboro Light from its pack and placed it in his mouth, letting it rest there a while. He stood with one leg straight and the other cocked lightly forward in the country fashion, with a thumb hooked in his carved leather belt and his paunch slung proud. He wore Cuban-heeled western boots beneath tan moleskins, and a pale blue short sleeved business shirt. His face was plump and red and beaded with sweat and his scalp sunburned beneath his silver mane. Frank squinted into the distance and reached into his pocket for a Zippo.

A few feet away, Sam Fletcher wedged his bony hands in the pockets of his flour-dusted slacks and shuffled his feet and waited for Frank to speak. An oversized bowling shirt with "Sam's Pizza and Pasta" printed on the back hung loosely on his rounded shoulders; pinned to the front was a plastic nametag underscored with the words Owner/Manager. Sam's hair was a fifteen-dollar barbershop special, dull, but practical, like his dough-spattered tennis shoes. At that moment, Sam's attention was on a sloughed snakeskin caught on a tuft of spinifex at his feet. It was from a large snake, possibly six feet long, and it did little to ease his troubled mind.

"The sea is the other side of that," Frank began, nodding towards the hills and lighting his cigarette. He took a long drag, then took the cigarette from his mouth and blew a plume of smoke. "In two months time, an announcement will be made that the Thomastown nickel mine is finally going ahead, bringing with it fifteen hundred new jobs." He swept his hand in a wide arc over the horizon. "This whole area is about to be rezoned residential."

"Uh huh," Sam muttered.

Frank waited for Sam to grasp the significance, but no such grasp seemed forthcoming. He went on. "Meaning this hundred acre cow pat is gonna be worth something. Something big. And nobody knows it yet. Well, practically nobody. I have a connection in State Government who's got the dope on the mining application. They're holding back the good news 'til a by-election in three weeks gives them the numbers to push it through. The wheels are greased, Sam. She's a definite goer."

"That's good news," offered Sam, after a pause.

"It gets better," Frank said. "The owner of this dust bowl, one Leland Cutler, is an old timer riddled with debt, not to mention cancer. Bad too. He won't see Christmas. Missed his last four mortgage payments due to medical bills and whatnot. Drought hasn't helped," he added thoughtfully.

Sam shook his head, suddenly aware that he too had missed his last two payments. "That's terrible," he said, and cleared his throat.

"Yeah, sucks to be him. Anyway, I'll be foreclosing in a month. Property's worth around two-fifty at auction, tops. I reckon he'd take two hundred if you offered it to him now. Not like he's got time to waste."

Sam wondered where this was leading. When he got the call from Frank saying they needed to talk, he suspected it had something to do with the ten grand he owed him. Sam was a problem gambler, the problem being he couldn't draw a winning hand. Frank, on the other hand, had no such problem. Sam's poker debt had accumulated with frightening speed over the last few months and Sam had no means of paying it off. Frank knew this more than anybody. He was, after all, Sam's bank manager. But Frank wasn't about to kill anybody, Sam decided. Not for ten grand.

Frank finally arrived at the point. "I need a proxy to buy the farm."

Sam, after a pause: "You want to buy the farm?"

"I'd like to, but I can't. I need a proxy. Are you even fucking listening?"

"I don't understand," said Sam.

Frank spoke slowly, as if to a child. "There's a little thing called insider trading. I can't buy the place, cause I'm Cutler's bank manager, and why would I want a crummy piece of dirt like this unless I knew it was gonna be worth something come next month. Would look kind of suspicious, Sam, don't you think? I need a front. Someone who won't draw suspicion."

"Me?"

"No. Colonel fucking Sanders."

"I don't have any money, Frank, you know that."

"I do know that. I also know you owe me ten large. I'm willing to let that go, pay out the mortgage on your home and business, plus throw in a generous commission, say twenty..." he hesitated before upping the deal, "twenty-five thousand. This is how it will run–"

Sam threw up his hands. "Whoah Frank, now ease up. I don't know about this."

"You'll remortgage your house for two hundred–"

"I already have a mortgage for that amount. How am I supposed to–"

"You'll be approved, Sam. Jesus, relax. You won't even have to make one repayment." Frank gave Sam a calming salesman's smile. "You take the two hundred and buy the property off old man Cutler. A week later, you sell the property to an offshore investment fund," Frank smugly pointed to himself and winked, "immediately trebling your investment and netting you a tidy profit. You'll be debt free and ahead for the first time in your life."

Sam had learned in life that nothing came easy. Or free. Not to him, anyway. But Frank was a bully, and Sam already felt compromised having been brought this far into Frank's dangerous plot. He let the offer sit for a moment, his face creasing in readiness for the inevitable let down.

Gee, Frank," he said, "It sounds like a great idea. I mean, I get that it's not strictly legal..."

"There is nothing illegal if you break it down to its constituent parts." Frank smiled at his politician's logic.

"I'm just not sure Olivia will go for this."

A thin, knowing smile crept over Frank's face. Frank always had a knack for holding back the trump card until its reveal would inflict the most damage.

"Listen, Sam," he said, "I didn't want to go there, but you leave me no choice. Olivia, as you know, has always been very close to me. We once shared a special time before you and her got together, you know that. I missed my opportunity. But every now and then life offers you up a second chance." He spat in the dust and looked slowly up from under his eyes. "That's what I'm offering you, Sam. Your marriage... well, let's face it. The ship's on the rocks, mate. Whole town knows that. Has been for some time. If it wasn't for Freddy, who knows if you'd still be together. I care for Olivia. I want to make sure that she and Freddy have a secure future."

Sam felt his neck grow hot. "Freddy doesn't need your help, Frank. And neither do we."

"I don't think you understand what I'm saying. I'm giving you an opportunity to start again, Sam. Debt free, a clean slate, with money in the bank. On your own of course. Olivia and Freddy will be moving in with me."

Sam felt ill. Frank and Olivia's friendship had lately veered towards the inappropriate, and the attention Frank lavished on Freddy, along with the boy's lack of family resemblance to Sam, often led him to speculate that perhaps he'd been a proxy for Frank before. But he didn't see this coming. He had blindly stepped in front of a truck and in that instant lost everything that meant anything in his life. He had even lost his ability to retaliate. There was no ammunition; he was beat. Sam saw now with absolute clarity that his run of bad luck at the table was somehow preordained. He also knew that Frank did after all have it in him to kill somebody.

Frank slapped a sympathetic paw on Sam's shoulder and steered him back towards the vehicle.

"You need a drink and some time to take it in. Come down to my office Monday morning and I'll draft up the contract."

All sound and feeling melted into dull nothingness, and Sam felt himself floating, separating from his body and rising upwards. The pain stayed behind and was replaced by a detached, wave-like euphoria. Looking down, Sam saw a defeated man with slumped shoulders walking a couple of paces behind Frank. But it wasn't him, not in that peaceful moment. Sam was safe up there. For a few seconds at least, it was all just a dream.

He saw something else while he was up there. A sudden movement, a shard of reflected light in the grass. Then Frank went "Ho! Jesus!" and leapt to his right. Sam jolted as he dropped back down into his body.

In the grass in front of them was a large brown snake. More specifically a King Brown, known locally as a Pilbara Cobra because of its massive size and the way it flattens its head when threatened. Right now, its head was flatter than day old lemonade.

Now Frank was a self-made man with the attitude that nothing stands in the way of self-belief and determination; he hadn't gotten where he had as regional manager of the State Bank by standing back and waiting for things to happen. Frank grew up in the bush and knew how to handle himself. Without a second thought he reached down and grabbed the serpent by the tail and went to hurl it into the distance. Unfortunately, he misjudged its size. It was a robust specimen, a mature female close to ten feet long. Its thickest section was as wide as a jam jar and it weighed at least forty pound. Frank barely managed to lift its tail off the ground before realising his mistake. The massive creature turned on him with surprising speed, striking a distance of six feet and smacking into Frank's chest twice before he knew what hit him.

The mulga snake is known for its aggressiveness, and has even gone after vehicles that passed too close. This one was madder than a wasp. It quickly rose up several feet off the ground, spreading its hooded neck and hissing like a punctured tyre, before striking a third, forth and fifth time. The last strike got Frank in the arm as he tried to defend himself, and the needle-like fangs embedded themselves in his soft flesh, pumping poison into his system the more he struggled. Frank scrambled backwards in the dust with graceless urgency, the snake twisting and writhing off his arm like it was a part of him. The monster was so heavy he didn't even have the strength to shake it off. It dragged him to the ground by its sheer weight.

Sam stood transfixed. It all happened so fast. Frank grunted and heaved, too paralysed with shock to even scream. The snake released itself and coiled defensively. Sam snapped out of his trance. He ran for the back of the Land Cruiser, grabbed a post hole shovel from the tray and carefully approached the snake from behind before swinging the blade down on its back.

The snake recoiled sharply and whipped around, facing Sam. Its mouth was open, hissing, its broad head the size of a man's fist. It tensed to strike but fell to the side, its back broken by the shovel. It was really pissed now, writhing and slapping the earth with fury. It was never more dangerous.

Sam edged close enough to swing the shovel down a second time. A few blows in and the beast was cactus. Sam placed the blade on its neck and shoved his foot down, severing its head with a satisfying crunch. Its body spat blood and it continued to slowly twist and curl. Then, as the tail of the creature swept against its detached head, its jaws opened and bit in reflex, blindly seizing upon its own flesh. The reptile slowly flipped over in the dust and the blood, its head fixed grotesquely to its side as Sam watched in mute horror.

"Sam?"

Sam shuddered and let out a breath. He turned to Frank, who was deathly pale and unbuttoning his shirt with shaking hands. There were several red twin puncture marks across his chest and arms. Small rivulets of blood flowed from the bites. He looked up at Sam like a child come off his bike poised to cry.

"Oh shit, Frank," said Sam. He tore off his shirt and ripped it in two, wrapping one piece around Frank's arm in a tourniquet, then pressing the other against a chest bite. He grabbed Frank's hand and placed it on the makeshift compress.

"Get me outa here, Sam," Frank wheezed. Sam pulled Frank to his feet and stumbled with him to the cabin of the Land Cruiser, bundling him into the passenger seat. He then returned to the snake which had by now ceased moving. He carefully prised the severed head from its body and threw it in the back for identification purposes. He remembered that administering the wrong antivenin could be fatal. Sam jumped behind the wheel and within seconds they were tearing down the dusty track.

Frank fumbled with his mobile phone, but they were out of range.

"You Telstra?" Frank wheezed.

Sam looked across at him. "What?" he replied. "No, Virgin."

"Well fuck," Frank mumbled with disgust. The phone dropped onto his lap.

"Hang in there, Frank," Sam said, his voice trembling with adrenalin.

Frank was white as a sheet, beads of sweat forming over his brow. The main road was still a couple of miles away. Sam could see a distant line of dark green, the tree line bordering the highway. He could also make out the reflected light from the tin roof of Leland Cutler's house a few hundred yards shy of the highway junction. From the turnoff it was at least forty minutes to town. The vehicle jolted and careened through potholes. It took a particularly savage dip, sending Frank hard against the ceiling of the cabin. He didn't need that.

"Seatbelt, Frank!"

Frank didn't respond for a second, but then leaned forward and vomited all over himself.

"Ah Jesus!" Sam powered down the window to let some air in. He pushed his foot down harder, but it was already against the floor. "Come on!" he roared at the screaming engine. He looked at Frank, suddenly filled with loathing and fear. What the fuck was he trying to do back there? Why didn't he leave it alone? What was he fucking thinking?

"What were you fucking thinking?"

Frank's head flopped onto his chest. A trail of sick and blood-streaked sputum oozed down his chin.

"Frank, don't go to sleep. Stay awake. Frank!" Sam smacked him hard with the back of his hand. "Frank!" He hit him again, this time with his fist. Stay awake, you motherfucker. You selfish, twisted, backstabbing motherfucker. Sam grabbed Frank's shoulder and slammed him against the door. Frank moaned. Sam found himself enjoying it.

The line of trees bordering the highway drew nearer. They began to blur with the last rays of last sun setting behind them. Suddenly, everything slid into slow motion. An idea had taken hold in Sam's mind, fully formed and alive with possibility. It was simple and profound, belonging solely to that particular moment; one of those thoughts that seizes the imagination so tightly, that all sound and distraction falls away; you are totally immersed, and you find yourself conscious of events around you only moments afterwards when you emerge from the dream. The perfect dream.

The car bounced through a pothole and jolted Sam back to reality. The idea remained: Frank was already dead; Sam wasn't driving a dying man to casualty, he was transporting a corpse to the morgue.

Sam looked across at Frank. Frank's glazed eyes stared into the middle distance and he was making a slow rhythmic convulsing motion. He was not long for this world, that was for certain. All that was needed to guarantee it was time.

Sam's foot had eased off the accelerator. King Browns dump an inordinately large amount of venom when they strike, he remembered reading once. Around 150 mg, at least ten times as much as other snakes. That's a lot of poison. You had little chance of survival if you were miles from help, Sam justified to himself. He looked at the line of trees ahead and noticed they were still. The Toyota had pulled to a stop as if of its own volition. Sam's mouth was dry. He glanced over at Frank; he was breathing, but looked unconscious.

A strange feeling crept over Sam. An awareness that he was not doing the right thing, but that he felt right doing it. Frank was not dead, but he soon would be. That was certain. Wasn't it? Okay, perhaps there was remotest of possibilities that if Sam kept moving, ran every red light that maybe, just maybe, Frank would make it. But he would be brain dead by then, surely. And what kind of a life would that be?

Sam had already begun to walk a different path the moment Frank had outlined his plans for his future. He just hadn't known it until then. And sensing the path opening out before him, Sam was filled with a growing feeling of exaltation he could only imagine opening oneself up to Jesus might feel like.

Seconds passed. Sam felt the heaviness of his breathing and the idle of the diesel motor. He took one last look up and down the track to make sure no one else was around. They were alone. There would be no witnesses.

Sam engaged the clutch and slid the gear stick into first, then slowly veered off the track. The Toyota ambled through the tall dry grass, coming to rest behind a stand of mulga trees. He switched off the engine.

They were less than a hundred yards from Cutler's house. Sam heard a dog barking somewhere, and a road train rumble by. The Toyota was well hidden. Frank became aware that the vehicle had stopped and lifted his head drowsily. Avoiding Frank's eyes, Sam loosened the tourniquet around his arm with shaking hands and got out.

"I'm sorry, Frank," he mumbled, before turning away. A sudden surge of nausea hit Sam and he threw up. Then, just as quickly he felt better, experiencing an almost euphoric sense of disconnect. He walked towards a solitary ghost gum about twenty yards off, detached from the moment, clear-headed and strangely empty of feeling.

Despite his pounding head and a hopelessly disorienting sensation of drowning, Frank was clear about one thing. That Sam had abandoned him to his fate. Frank knew what betrayal smelt like; he'd been on the serving end enough times. An indignant rage rose in him. He tried to move, but his muscles failed him. He stared at Sam with desperation and hate. He saw the calmly reposed man seated in the grass, waiting for him to die, and knew in that instant that he had no friend in the world, and that the world he knew was rapidly falling away from him. There was no God. Not for Frank Hutchins. His dry lips parted, a thin film of blood on his teeth, for his blood cells had begun to disintegrate into fragments so tiny that even the finest capillaries could not contain them, and he attempted to cry out. All he could muster was a rasping sound.

Sam sat cross-legged under the shade of the gum tree, smoking Frank's cigarettes with shaking fingers. He had decided in the last fifteen minutes to take up smoking again and had already finished off half the pack. He debated with himself the ethics of action versus inaction. Was this murder? How could it be? Frank decided of his own free will to grab hold of a venomous snake. Sam even tried to stop him. Frank did this to himself. Sam didn't deliberately poison him, or put a gun to his head. Shit, he even tried to save him! He did what he could. Frank died in the car on the way. Sam tried to get to help as fast as he could...

And there

right there

was Sam's one lie.

Because he stopped... to make sure.

To make sure Frank went all the fucking way and didn't come back.

It was not murder. But it was negligent homicide. Sam shuddered and continued to do the math. Eventually he decided that it wouldn't be a lie if he just failed to mention that he stopped. It would simply be an omission.

Another half hour had passed before Sam arrived at his final argument: 'Frank was attacked by a king brown snake. I administered first aid and got him into the car, then drove him to the hospital as fast as I could. On the way I stopped briefly to check his vital signs (this part Sam liked, for it allowed him to admit that he did in fact stop) and found that Frank had died from his wounds. I attempted CPR for several minutes, but Frank failed to respond. I then proceeded to the hospital, staying within the legal speed limit so as not to endanger the lives of myself and others.'

Satisfied, Sam got up and walked towards the four-wheel drive. It had been quiet for quite some time and the sun had set. Darkness was descending upon the plain. He looked at Frank. He sat motionless, head tilted forward, a mucousy strand of blood connecting his chin to his vomit-crusted chest, which was no longer rising and falling with breath. Sam stared at Frank for a long time to make sure. A fly landed on Frank's lips. Sam watched it crawl in his mouth and then out again. Satisfied, he got in beside him.

He reached over and placed his fingers around Frank's wrist; he couldn't find a pulse.

"I'm sorry Frank," he said, retying the tourniquet around his arm, "But you would have died anyway." He pulled the tourniquet tight, fastened his seatbelt, then started up the vehicle.

The Toyota crawled back onto the track and idled slowly past the Cutler farmhouse. There was a faint TV glow in the window. Frank's phone suddenly came into range and started buzzing with messages and missed calls. He was a busy man, Frank, a needed man. Unlike Sam, whose phone, predictably, remained silent. The Pizza shop was taking care of itself. Life went on. When he reached the highway, he switched the headlights back on and turned and headed towards town.

##

## 

## Chapter 2

The sky had turned deep purple. It was a new moon, and already darkness was consuming the landscape. They were still several miles deep in the badlands, well beyond street lighting. Sam drove in heavy silence, only a faint green glow from the dash illuminating the cabin. He switched on the radio and Bruce Springsteen's lonely harmonica cried its way out of the speakers turning the already dark atmosphere an even deeper shade of blue. The song was Nebraska, a love song about a murderer, but Sam wasn't listening to the lyrics.

He smiled to himself. Even the revelation of Frank and Olivia seemed inconsequential at that moment. He anticipated there might be a few rocky periods ahead, but he felt good. Surprisingly good, now that he thought about it. He turned up the radio.

A car approached with its lights on high beam. Sam looked away to shield his eyes. As the bright light filled the cabin, Frank's face rose menacingly out of the shadow. His eyes were open and bloodshot, and staring straight at Sam.

"JESUS!" Sam leapt out of his skin, jerking the wheel and sending the vehicle fishtailing onto the shoulder as the car passed, plunging the cabin into darkness again. Sam brought the car to a halt and madly grappled with the door handle. He tumbled out of his seat onto the road and backed away from the cabin's dark interior.

A cold shiver ran through him. The engine was still on and red dust swirled in the beam of the headlights. Sam heard a sound above the idling motor that made his skin crawl. It was Frank moaning. Sam moved slowly toward the cabin and looked in. Frank was moving only slightly; his head still bowed, but he was alive. Just. But how could that be? Frank slowly lifted his hand and slapped it weakly it against the glass of the passenger window. His finger slid down the glass, leaving a greasy streak.

"Frank?" Sam whispered.

Frank gurgled and his shoulders shuddered. Then after a moment, he slowly turned to face Sam. It was too dark to see Frank's eyes, but Sam knew they were open and looking straight at him. His voice was a croaky whisper.

"You fucking left me to die... tried to kill me..." Frank spoke is short wheezes.

"No Frank..."

"...tried to kill me, you fuck... You're sunk, hear me... you little cocksucker... going down for this..." The effort of his speech was great and Frank grew faint, slumping forward again, his breathing strained.

Frank was going to pull through, and when he did, Sam would be finished. Just like that he was back to losing everything again, and more. Now he would be going to prison.

Sam's mind raced. Frank knew exactly what Sam had tried to do; there was no sugar coating it now. Sam's action, or inaction, was tantamount to attempted murder, or attempted manslaughter at best. And Frank would make Sam pay– with extreme prejudice. He had even managed to provide Sam with a motive for wanting him dead.

Sam was cornered. He was facing possible jail time, financial ruin, the loss of his family, his business, his reputation. How could he recover from that? Frank had tried to take his wife and child from him. Never gave it a second thought. And it was Frank who picked up the goddamn snake that killed him. Would have killed him. Should have... It should be Frank who loses everything. Sam didn't start this, but now he was left with no choice. He had to finish it.

Sam got out from behind the wheel and walked around to the tray back. He stopped and stared at the snake's head. The cold night air settled on his shoulders. How the fuck had it come to this? An hour ago he'd swerve to avoid a cane toad. Now he was committing murder.

Sam picked up the bloodied, severed head of the snake. It was cold and heavy. His hand brushed past its wet mouth, snagging against something sharp, and he shuddered. He returned to the driver's seat. The driver door half clicked shut behind him as he leaned across and opened the glove compartment, allowing a small light to provide some illumination for his gruesome task. He could see Frank's neck in the soft glow; a raised artery pulsing feverishly as he desperately clung to life.

Sam opened the snake's jaw, extending its fangs. In the dim glow, a tiny droplet of viscous fluid glistened as it clung to the fang's tip. Sam positioned himself, then quickly pressed the animal's upper jaw hard onto Frank's neck, the needle-like fangs penetrating the skin and jolting Frank back to life. He lurched upwards and desperately threshed about, grabbing hold of Sam by the hair. The snake's head flew from Sam's hand and thudded somewhere in the darkness. The more Sam struggled, the tighter Frank grasped. Sam yelled and punched against Frank's vice-like grip.

Frank managed to get Sam's face close enough to bury his teeth in into his cheek. Sam screamed and tried to pull away, but Frank's jaw had locked on, just like the snake's had on Frank's arm. In desperation, Sam tore his face free, leaving behind a large chunk of skin and flesh between Frank's teeth.

A flash of searing pain and rage surged through Sam. He viciously punched at Frank again and again, the first blows missing altogether or colliding with Frank's arm. Finally he connected. Once he felt the blunt force of Frank's head against his fist, he focused his attack, following a few fast blows with grabbing Frank's head and thumping it against the passenger glass until Frank stopped struggling. Then, just to make sure (and this time the decision came easy) he rolled up his torn shirt and pressed it against Frank's nose and mouth, suffocating him.

The only sound was a faint creak of the upholstery as Sam's muscles strained to keep the pressure on. Sam's heart was beating hard, and he felt a warm wet sensation running down his face and soaking his T-shirt. Frank struggled against the cloth fighting for air, but he was barely conscious now and getting weaker by the second.

A splinter of light pierced the gloom of the cabin. Sam looked up and saw a car approaching in the distance, its lights on high beam. Within seconds the cabin was flooded with light. Sensing his last chance, Frank redoubled his efforts. He shoved Sam hard against the driver door, and it popped open nearly sending Sam toppling back onto the road. He held onto Frank's shirt, punching and grappling and trying to pull himself back into the cabin. The approaching car got closer, headlights blazing like Grand final night, with Sam and Frank the half time entertainment. Fuckwit. Sam wanted to kill that prick too.

Sam threw himself forward, spearing his head between Frank's eyes, effectively shutting him down. He came away from Frank's skull seeing white, and he wasn't sure if it was the approaching headlights or stars or angels. Probably not angels. He looked out the window and saw that the car with the Hollywood headlights had slowed down. The driver, a clean cut looking throwback to fifties Bible-belt America, with his crew cut and checked shirt and wife and two kids in the back, was throwing a concerned Samaritan's look at Sam. The whole family was, even the golden retriever in the back.

He was about to wind down his window and chirp, "You guys okay there? Need some help?" when something stopped him. Perhaps it was his wife's tightening grip on his arm, or the dark, glistening shadow on the left side of Sam's face, or the sudden absence of the passenger, but something made the driver drop the good Christian act and put pedal to the metal. Sam made an automatic ID of the car. A late model silver commodore station wagon. He hoped he would never have cause to remember it.

Frank was unconscious, but still breathing. Sam grabbed the cloth and stuffed it against Frank's face and pushed his head down onto his lap. There was some struggle, but it was weak. Sam put his whole weight onto it. After several minutes, his arms burning from the strain, Sam released the pressure on the gag. Frank was still. There was no breath. No pulse. Sam lifted up his head. Tears of dried blood stained Frank's cheeks and a chunk of Sam's flesh dangled from his teeth. His eyes were open, but he wasn't seeing. He was dead.

## Chapter 3

Police Senior Sergeant Bill Hepburn zipped up his fly and exited the bathroom, pausing to wash his hands at the basin. He looked at himself in the grimy mirror and surveyed his thinning scalp, grunting at the lack of response to his latest hair treatment. He had recently begun taking a prostate pill that he heard was a cure for baldness. He was sceptical, but decided anything was worth a shot. Thirty-eight was too young to be going bald.

It was just after 7 pm and he should have knocked off already, but Riley was late for the change over. Not that it mattered. Bill had no wife or kids to go home to, but he was looking forward to a couple of beers at the Bullhorn Tavern followed by a desultory round of speed dating. Good times.

Bill grew up in Thomastown, the only son of a cop and a theatre nurse. He had an older sister, but she moved to Europe when he was twelve and he rarely saw her since. Bill had just turned fifteen when both parents died within weeks of each other. One from ovarian cancer, the other from heartbreak, helped on by high blood pressure and cholesterol.

Heartache was a common disease in the country, and Thomastown was not immune; a rural sprawl nestled on a dry river delta pockmarked with disused wheat silos from a bygone era of agricultural fecundity. A couple of decades back saw a dam built to the north, rendering barren the once fertile delta. The riverbed which sliced through the centre of town was now dry for most of the year, except during the big wet, when flash flooding tore through the place, undermining the foundations of the century old buildings and the resilience of a rural, God-fearing community.

The population of Thomastown was around nine thousand, and plummeting. Its main industries were cattle, tobacco and a meat processing plant. A two-time finalist in the state's Tidy Town awards, Thomastown once fielded a state rugby representative; it was a good town of mostly good people. Crime was limited to Friday night punch-ups in the Chaser's nightclub car park, a few domestics and the occasional car theft or dope bust. The last couple of years saw many businesses hit the wall. The drought had bitten hard and crops were failing. Young people were marching south in devastating numbers to seek opportunity and better drugs. And who could blame them? There was little to do in Thomastown except drink, fuck and fight. The place was slowly dying, ingesting itself to stay alive.

There was once talk of a new mine, Bill recalled. That would swing things around. He opened his desktop drawer, saw a pack of Kent filters with a picture of a sliced-open cancerous lung on the front. Next to it was a pack of nicorette gum. Life was about choices. He grabbed the nicorettes, popped one in his mouth and picked up the phone receiver.

There was a message from Casualty. Snakebite death. Attendance required. There was also a message from Riley. Won't be in 'til seven-thirty. Bill took a can of Red Bull from the fridge, popped the lid and called the hospital. He spoke to the Duty Nurse and scribbled details down on a pad and took a pull from the can. He stopped scribbling when he heard who the victim was. Two minutes later he was in his car heading for the hospital.

\- - -

Sam sat in a beige plastic hospital chair, his T-shirt soaked with blood. His own. His forehead was bruised, and a sterile bandage covered the fourteen freshly sewn stitches on his cheek. Sam told the doctor that he had collided with a star picket when he tried to get away from the snake. (He had carefully removed any evidence from Frank's teeth and cleaned the dead man's mouth out with a rag) The doctor bought the story, or so it seemed.

Less than ten feet away, separated by a wall, Frank's grey corpse lay naked on a slab, head raised slightly on a block. His body was festooned with purple, raised twin-puncture marks. His right eye socket was swollen and blue from where Sam clocked him. Beneath half-closed lids, his opaque lifeless eyes stared at the ceiling. His passive expression belied the violent manner of his death; his left arm raised in rigor mortis as if he was waving farewell.

Next to the slab on a stainless steel tray lay the snake's head and a variety of swabs, tweezers and vials. Over by the rear wall, a microwave oven dinged. Pathologist, Ward Stein, snapped open the door with a surgical-gloved hand and removed a steaming cup of black coffee. He blew on the cup and ventured a sip, scalding his tongue. He placed the cup down next to the snake's head and resumed his examination of the body.

Something caught his eye. He turned Frank's head to the side and looked at a small, U-shaped scratch on Frank's neck. There was something there, embedded in the skin. He picked up a pair of tweezers, adjusted his glasses and gently pulled a small splinter of bone from the scratch and held it up to the light. It was translucent, fractionally thicker than a needle and about half an inch long. He carefully placed it in a small Petri dish.

Outside in the hallway, Sam stared at the linoleum floor, his face throbbing. He had refused codeine because he was paranoid he might get sloppy and say something that would arouse suspicion. He said a couple of panadol would do him, and a cup of tea if it were no trouble. It was certainly no trouble, given he arrived with the corpse of a friend.

A fatal snakebite was a rare bird, and the staff of the hospital was buzzing with the news. Besides, this was no ordinary stiff. Frank Hutchins was well known around town. Bank manager, community leader, business advocate and ratbag conservative commentator; rarely a week went by without Frank's mug on the local news. There was rife speculation he was in the pocket of developers, not to mention poker buddies with brothel owner Danny Burke, and had an eye on the Conservative Rural Party seat at the next council elections. Everyone knew Frank, or knew the face at least. It wasn't a big pond. And Frank was one of the bigger fish in it.

"Oh Sam!" It was Frank's wife, Alice. She ran to him, a handkerchief held to her mouth. Sam took her in his arms and she began weeping onto his chest. He could feel her hot tears through the cotton. When she finally lifted her face to his, some of his dried blood had been moistened by her tears and left a red smear on her face.

"Alice. I'm so sorry..."

A lurching guilty sob threatened to erupt from Sam's chest as he looked into her brown eyes, but he reined it in. Alice was still in her thirties, petite and striking. An odd match for Frank, who had let himself go a little. Alice worked as a property manager and knew how to fill out a little black dress. She maintained an air of musky sexuality even in the midst of grief.

She wanted to know exactly what happened. It was good practice to relay the story. Sam would be doing it for some time and he needed to have it down pat. Luckily, most of it was true. The only concocted part was the time taken from the initial snakebite to his arrival at the hospital. He had to lose an hour and a half and so adjusted the time of the attack from around 4 pm to 5:30. The adrenaline had evened out on the drive back, and he had felt a strange and pleasurable rush as he checked and re-checked his story, as if he had just gotten away with a jewel Heist.

He delivered the details with just the right measure of grief. It wasn't difficult, for he felt nothing. The horror had evaporated and been replaced by a kind of detached fascination in his role in the unfolding scenario. There was nothing in his heart for Frank. The man, after all, had just finished ripping out Sam's heart and lungs when he got himself bit. Serves him right.

Bill Hepburn arrived, surprised to see Sam. They exchanged greetings, before he turned to Alice.

"Alice, I'm very sorry. Frank was a big part of our community, and he'll be greatly missed."

"Thank you," she replied, and blew her nose.

Bill looked at Sam's bandaged face.

"What happened to you?" he asked.

The two men had known each other since primary school. They were the same age and had been close friends well into their early twenties. But as happens when one starts a family and the other marries his job, friends drift apart. They were still mates, but they rarely connected socially anymore. Right now, Sam felt the heat of Bill's friendship burning like a fire he was standing too close too. He felt uncomfortable and wanted to move away from it.

"I ran into a star picket getting away from the damn snake," Sam replied.

Bill raised an eyebrow. "It was you brought him in?" He hadn't realised Sam was involved.

Sam shifted uneasily. "I was with Frank when it happened. We were a long way out of town. I did what I could, but he died on the way back."

Bill looked at his friend with concern. "How long after..."

"I don't know. It was very quick. He was bit pretty bad."

"You did well, mate," Bill said softly. He turned again to Alice.

"Alice, I'm sorry to have to ask, but have you witnessed the body yet? There needs to be a formal identification."

She gathered herself, and then said, "Yes. Of course." She took Sam's hand and asked if he would go in with her. Sam wasn't keen on the idea, but couldn't well refuse. Bill nodded his consent like it was required. He went in first and spoke with Dr Stein. After a couple of minutes he reappeared and ushered Sam and Alice in.

Frank had been discreetly covered with a sheet. Sam was suddenly gripped with fear and he had to work hard to bring himself under control. He half expected Frank to rise up and point an accusing finger at him. Alice walked up to Frank's side, her hand tightly wrapped around Sam's. Bill nodded to Dr Stein who gently pulled back the sheet revealing Frank's face.

The room suddenly went cold and the hair on Sam's neck stood on end. For Frank was looking right at him, his awful mouth twisted into a sneer. It was as if he were laughing at him, at his own private joke. In the space of those horrible seconds, Sam swore he saw Frank wink at him. Alice gasped and took a moment before gravely nodding her head. Bill nodded to Stein, who pulled the sheet back again.

Alice shuddered when she saw the head of the snake on the stainless steel tray. "Horrid thing," she muttered. It was as if she was referring to a dog that had messed on her carpet rather than the creature that took her husband's life. Sam knew she didn't love Frank. Perhaps she felt something in that moment, some forgotten affection, but the truth was that long before Sam knew anything of his wife's feelings for Frank, he and Olivia had often discussed Alice and Frank's train wreck of a marriage. It was common enough knowledge in the town. Only now did Sam realize Olivia had been justifying her own feelings for Frank.

Olivia.

He hadn't called her yet. She would assume he was at the pizza shop. She wouldn't have called. She never called him at work. Had she tried to call Frank? Was that her trying to call him in the car? She must have known Frank's meeting with Sam was taking place and what it was about. She might have been calling to hear how it all went down. Not the way she expected it to, that's for certain. Sam felt a rush of panic. Alice would check Frank's phone. Frank's love affair with Olivia could be motive enough for murder. Now that Frank was dead, so too was the affair. And maybe that would be the end of it. Nobody had anything to gain by exposing the sordid details. If Sam's story held– and why shouldn't it? It was close enough to the truth– then in a few days, Frank would be in the ground and Sam would be in the clear.

The three walked out of the examination room and into the hall. Alice refused Bill's offer of a ride home. She still held onto Sam's hand. She turned and thanked him, then moved in close, squeezed his hand and kissed him on his good cheek. The intimacy brought with it a musky perfume, and Sam found himself distracted by a sudden spike of arousal.

"Thank you, Sam," she said, "for bringing him home." Her grief was authentic, but the pitch of her comment seemed more suited to a mother standing over the flag-draped coffin of her war hero son.

"Frank was a friend," Sam said stupidly. He didn't know what else to say but it seemed to do the trick. Alice nodded and turned away. When she was gone, Bill turned back to Sam.

"How you holding up, Sam?"

"I'm alright."

"You need a ride home?"

"Frank picked me up. I'll take his truck back to my place and pick up my car in the morning."

"Where's your car?"

"At the pizza shop."

"Listen, I'm done for the night, you want to go for a drink?"

"I could use one, but I want to go home."

"Sure." Bill looked searchingly at Sam's face, his eyes resting a bit too long on the bloodied gauze bandage.

"You did good, mate. He was bit pretty bad. Long way from help. You did your best." Sam said nothing. "You didn't try calling for an ambo?"

"Didn't have coverage. By the time we did he was gone."

"You can still dial emergency without coverage. You knew that, didn't you?"

"I... Frank tried to call. He said he couldn't get through. Hell, I was driving, Bill. By the time I got into range he was dead. I just kept driving." Sam shook his head like it was all getting too much.

Bill nodded sympathetically, but Sam thought he caught a trace of something else in Bill's look. An almost imperceptible flicker. A kernel of doubt perhaps? Bill placed a hand on the small of Sam's back and steered him towards the hall. "Go home, Sam. Have a large scotch. I'll talk to you tomorrow. I need to get all the details down for the coroner. Should do it now, by rights, but we'll let it go 'til the morning. Can you come round the station?"

Sam swallowed. "Sure."

"Early is better. Then we'll take a drive out to where it happened."

"Tomorrow? I have to work."

Bill looked at him for a moment, then smiled. "We'll be back by lunchtime. Go home, Sam."

After Bill saw Sam to his car, he went back to have another look at the corpse. Stein had wheeled him into the anteroom by the fridges and was drinking scotch from a beaker and scanning the online news.

"Want a drink?" Ward offered, lifting a corked medical bottle from a drawer. "Made it myself."

Bill frowned and drew back the sheet. "No thanks." Stein appeared at his shoulder.

"He's a bit banged up," Bill said.

"He was bitten six times. The snake really went at him. I've seen 'em do it. Angry bastards, King Browns."

Bill's eyes roamed around the raised puncture marks and came to rest on the face. He took in the dried blood and the heavy bruising around Frank's eye.

"That bruise..."

"The neurotoxin breaks down the blood," Stein said. "Thins it out. Hence you got bleeding from the nose and gums. He was slumped forward when they lifted him from the truck. Maybe he hit the dash. Was dead an hour or more. Possibly localized livor mortis."

"What?"

"Blood pooling when the circulation stops." Stein popped the cork and took a hit from the tiny bottle.

Bill threw the sheet back over the corpse and grabbed a wipe from a dispenser, rubbed his fingers with it and tossed it into a bin. "You should get yourself a glass," he said. "You don't know what's been in that."

Bill walked out of the hospital into the cool night air, got into his car and headed for the pub. On the way he thought about Frank. He was a prominent figure in the community, reviled and liked in equal measure. It was an unusual way for a guy like him to go out. The story carried with it the delicious whiff of sensation, and even Bill felt drawn repeatedly back to its stark imagery. The town gossips would pick over this one like vultures on carrion.

He popped a breath mint in his mouth and checked his hair in the mirror. An hour later he was sitting opposite a brown skinned beauty, watching her smile turn politely cool when he told her he was a cop. Then the bell rang and she moved to the next guy. Bill moved to the bar and bought another beer.

\---

Sam parked Frank's Land Cruiser behind Olivia's black Audi. He got out and stood in the driveway of his modest Californian bungalow-style home. The light was on in the bedroom and he could see the glow of blue and red from the television dancing on the curtains. He stood for several minutes, watching to the bugs flitter around the streetlight. Then he walked up the path to his door, unlocked it and went inside.

He stood under a hot shower until the water ran cold. He got out, dried himself, went to the kitchen and poured himself a large J&B. He downed it fast, then poured another, topping it up with ginger ale and throwing a couple of rocks in it. He went down the hall, pausing at his son Freddy's bedroom door and listening to the soft clacking sound of thumbs working a gaming console. He'd have his headphones on, blasting the shit out of some gamer from another suburb in another country.

Sam continued down the hall to the master bedroom. The door was open. He saw the bed ruffled and empty, the still-warm television set now switched off. A half drunk bottle of Chateau Lamothe stood on the dresser amongst scattered creams and jewellery, and on the bedside table resting on a small pile of paperback thrillers, lay an opened tray of Baci chocolates and a box of tissues.

Olivia was in the en suite. She was leaning into the mirror, blithely attending to some errant blemishes on her face, a half drunk glass of wine perched within reach. She wore a Bali tee-shirt and loose-fitting cotton pants. Her hair was a short bob, shiny and black and she had it pinned back against her scalp. She was an attractive enough woman in her late thirties with smooth skin and a husky voice. Her once trim breast-stroke champion's body had broadened in some places, thinned out in others, courtesy of childbirth, age and the ennui of a stale marriage. remedied by too much wine and a guiltless procession of late night Tim Tam slammers. She pursed her lips and glanced at the reflection of Sam's silhouetted figure standing in the doorway. Sam could tell she was expecting news, though clearly not the news he was about to deliver.

"You're home early," she said, brushing away some invisible nothing beneath her eye. "Slow night?"

She knew Sam had spent the afternoon with Frank. Sam took in her carefully stage-managed posture, facing away, nonchalantly preening, revealing her complicity through the deliberate and forced indifference to his arrival. Sam could see her fingers trembling.

He drained his scotch. The ice clacked against his teeth and he burped softly. After a moment's silence, Olivia turned and faced him, taking in his bandaged face and bloody T-shirt. She gasped.

"Jesus Sam, what happened?"

Sam looked at his wife and said, "Frank's dead."

The clock beside the bed ticked over to nine-thirty exactly.

Outside, the Land Cruiser's motor slowly ticked as the metal cooled. The gentle ocean roar of the highway could be heard along with faint canned laughter from a television set somewhere. A car turned into the unremarkable suburban street, its headlights illuminating the passenger window of Frank's truck for a few fleeting seconds as it approached. Unseen by anyone, letters magically appeared, smeared onto the glass in an unsteady, infantile hand, before fading again as the car passed. And the letters formed the word, "murder".

## Chapter 4

Sam told Olivia what had happened, leaving out the bit where Frank had confessed his feelings for her. Olivia sobbed and didn't resist when Sam put his arms around her. She was in shock. A half hour later and she was drifting off into a Valium sleep. No dreams for her that night. She'd be waking up to a nightmare.

The next morning, after a fitful sleep peppered with lurid visions of blood, teeth and bone, Sam sat in the kitchen, shaken. He was on his third coffee. Freddy, dressed in his school uniform, ate coco pops and texted. Olivia hadn't emerged from her room.

Sam glanced up at the clock. It was ten to nine.

"Come on, Freddy. You'll be late for school."

Freddy slurped a last mouthful of milk off his spoon, then scraped his chair and got up.

On the drive to school, neither spoke for a while. Then Freddy said, "Why is Uncle Frank's car in the driveway?"

Sam turned to him. "When did you start calling him Uncle Frank? He's not your uncle."

Freddy shrugged. "He wanted me to. Mum said it was okay."

Sam gritted his teeth. They had been well and truly prepping the bed for change.

"You don't call him uncle Frank, okay. It's just Frank. Or Mr Hutchins."

"Why is his car there?"

"Well, Freddy, son, I got some sad news. You see, Mr Hutchins passed away yesterday." He looked at Freddy to gauge his response. Freddy just stared straight ahead. "He's dead, son."

Freddy looked at his father. "Uncl- Mr Hutchins is dead?"

"He was bitten by a poisonous snake."

"What kind?"

"A brown snake."

"A king brown or a common brown?"

"Jesus, Freddy. A king brown. Mr Hutchins is dead. Do you understand?"

Freddy nodded his head and stared out the front windscreen again. After a moment, he said, "King Browns aren't actually brown snakes. They're related to black snakes."

"Right," Sam said, shaking his head a little. "So anyway, Frank's dead, so, he won't be coming around when I'm at work anymore. Okay?" He let out a hostile breath and hung a left. The school was up ahead. Kids were dotted over the sports field and hanging in groups near the drop off zone.

"Let me out here," Freddy said, grabbing his backpack off the floor.

"I'll drop you at the gate."

"No, here!"

Sam pulled over and Freddy opened his door. Sam gently grabbed his wrist.

"Hey buddy?"

"What?"

"Turn around. Look at me."

Freddy turned to face Sam but kept his eyes on his bag.

"Eyes, Freddy."

Freddy raised his eyes and looked at his father.

"You got a hug and kiss for your old man?"

Freddy sighed and moved across and wrapped his arms around his father and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. Sam held him tight.

"I love you Freddy. You're my boy and I'll always love you."

"Okay." Freddy began squirming his way free. He shuffled out of the car and started walking.

"Be good," Sam called. Freddy walked quickly, shoulders hunched against some dark weight that had settled upon him in recent weeks. Sam watched him as he passed groups of kids laughing and interacting in the sunshine, his heart heavy with fear and aching love for his son.

When Sam got home he found Olivia sitting at the kitchen bench, staring out the window at the back yard. She was still sluggish from the Valium. A cold, untouched coffee sat next to her limp hand. Sam busied himself with some dirty dishes. The air was thick.

"I told Freddy what happened," Sam said.

Olivia said nothing. In the back yard, the washing from the two days before still hung on the line. A black negligee had blown free and lay bunched on the mown grass.

"He's been a bit withdrawn lately, don't you think? More so than usual, anyway." Sam waited for a response. "You okay?"

"No, Sam." Her voice was gravelly.

Sam put the dishes in the sink and poured some hot water over them, then wiped his hands with a tea towel. "I know about you and Frank," he said. "He told me that you planned to move in with him and take Freddy with you."

"Did you kill him?" she said.

"What kind of a question is that?"

"Did you?"

Sam stared at her, waiting for her eyes to meet his. She continued staring out the window.

"Frank killed himself," he said.

Olivia glanced down at her trembling fingers.

"Well," she said, "now you know." She finally looked up at Sam, her eyes dry and hollow.

"You want me to stay home with you today?"

"Why, Sam?" she said. "Why would I want you to do that?" She loudly scraped her chair as she got up and left the kitchen.

Sam waited until he heard the bedroom door close, then picked up the keys to Frank's Land Cruiser and went out the front door.

It was ten o'clock and hot and the air inside the cabin of Frank's car was cooked. A funk rolled out that was not pleasant. It brought with it images of the night before, of Frank's black eyes staring at him in the darkness. Funny how a smell can open the door to memory. This one was still warm, unlike Frank, who was currently resting at somewhere below zero.

Sam stood back to let the fresh air do its thing, but the smell had seared into his olfactories; decaying blood; rotting flesh; death. Looking down, he saw evidence: blood on the floor, some of it Frank's, most of it his own, and the bloodied, torn shirt used to snuff out Frank for good. He felt the visceral sensations of the killing inhabit his flesh again, like the memories of a dream so real one refuses to believe it wasn't true. Only this time it was.

Sam had seen enough forensic crime shows to suspect the police would probably want to inspect the vehicle Frank died in. Sam chewed his thumb and ran through his adjusted version of events. He rationalized that some blood would be normal. Still, he arrived at the decision to clean it up.

He headed across town, turning into Kirkwood Avenue, a cracked ribbon of concrete lined with neglected palms, used car yards and panel shops and turned into the car park of a quasi-Mediterranean-style restaurant. It had chipped white stucco walls and Roman arch windows shaded with frayed striped canvas awnings. Beneath the windows, concrete flowerbeds like neglected graves, overrun with heading grass and weeds. A painted sign out front announced 'Sam's Family Pizza and Pasta Restaurant'. On the sign was a two-foot tall cartoon Italian with an oversized moustache carrying a pizza.

Sam drove down the side of the building and parked out the back under the shade of a spreading fig tree, then headed inside for some bleach and a bucket. Ten minutes later, he set to with the pine-o-cleen and a scourer. The bucket of warm sudsy water turned dirty pink. Most of the blood was congealed in pools on the driver's seat. He scrubbed hard, and the water and the blood mixed with the dirt on the floor, and his cheek began to throb. He sprayed the inside with Glen-20 and shut the doors and locked it.

Back inside, he tipped the filthy red water down the sink in the men's toilet. He avoided looking at himself in the mirror for as long as he could, but a tingling sensation in his face forced him to glance up. Fresh blood had seeped through the bandage on his cheek. He had been clenching his jaw pretty tight the last half hour. He rinsed the sink and washed his hands, then went into the kitchen and pulled out the first aid kit.

Sam delicately pulled the bandage away revealing the wound on his face. It was swollen and infected, and glowed scarlet around the edges of the stitching. A line of raised purple teeth marks around the wound gave the game away in a flash. He needed it seen to, but it looked less and less like what he had described, and more and more like what it really was. He couldn't risk seeing another doctor. Sam cleaned it with undiluted dettol. It burned like acid and he grew momentarily faint. He steadied himself and slapped on a fresh gauze. Rummaging around the bottom of the box, he found an out-of-date blister pack of amoxycillin and dry swallowed two, slipping the rest in his pocket. Then he got to work.

He ran up the takings of the previous night, conducted an inventory of toppings, placed an online order for pizza cartons and post mix and checked the duty roster for the night. A post-it-note from Tex Dean was stuck on the roster, saying he was unable to come in tonight. Sam sucked his teeth and shook his head, then picked up the phone and ran his finger down the list of staff numbers on the whiteboard, stopping at Sally Beaumont. He dialled and it went to her message service.

"Hey Sally, it's Sam," he said, as if calling an old friend long distance, "Listen, I was hoping you could come in to work tonight if you're available, say around five thirty? Let me know. Bye."

Sam hung up and noticed the light was flashing on the phone receiver. He pressed the message button. "Sam, it's Frank Hutchins..." Sam jolted at the voice. "I got a proposition I want to discuss with you. Can you call me? I'll try you on your mobile." Sam hit the erase button.

Then his mobile rang. It was Bill Hepburn.

\---

Bill stood in the tiny station kitchen and rubbed his tired eyes and waited for the coffee machine to heat up. He didn't leave the pub the night before until eleven, having taken a punt on one of the speed-dating girls who had stuck around. Several shots and two hours spent listening to her unpack her previous relationship had yielded nothing but a headache.

He spooned coffee into the paper filter and slid in the tray, then poured in the water. The machine began to bubble and sing. Bill watched the tiny dark brown drips fall and his thoughts drifted back to Frank. Bill had already fielded several calls from the local and press and a couple from interstate. He found himself asked more than once what Frank was doing all the way out in the middle of nowhere, and he began to wonder himself. For a slow news town, death by snakebite would sell a few papers. Especially when the victim was a high-profile manager of the busiest bank in town, a known gambler and associate of the town's most notorious crook.

Bill had been closely monitoring the business affairs of Danny Burke the last year, ever since the suspicious burning down of an industrial property netted Danny a generous insurance payout– not to mention clearing the way for the development of the Honey Pot, the town's first licensed brothel. But Frank's relationship with Danny was not unusual. Whatever Danny might be, he is still a businessman. And most of the business in Thomastown flowed across Frank's desk.

Bill picked up the desk phone and called Sam.

"Hey Bill," Sam answered.

"'Morning Sam. You free to take that drive?"

Sam hesitated for a few seconds.

"Sam?"

"Of course," Sam replied.

"Meet me at the station in thirty minutes, or I can swing by and pick you up."

"No. I'll come to you," Sam said.

"See you in half an hour."

Bill hung up. He stretched and rubbed his neck, then went to the sink and rinsed his favourite coffee cup.

\---

On the rooftop terrace of the Honey Pot, Danny Burke lit a cigarette, popped a Fisherman's Friend into his mouth and downed a steaming mouthful of creamy over-sweet coffee. Danny was in his late thirties, with tanned skin and blue eyes behind gold aviators. His hair was thick and blonde, wet with product and slicked back. Mutton chop sideburns framed his wide mouth and a thin gold chain hung loosely around his broad neck. The morning sun lit up his jug of orange juice like a lamp and his toast glistened with melted pats of butter. Danny settled back in his cane chair and fluffed the pages of the Daily Mercury.

Breakfast on the terrace deserved a better view than the one he had, which was the rear yard of a neighbouring Earthmoving business, but the State's brothel laws demanded such premises be located in industrial precincts. But Danny was never one for views, political or geographical. He tolerated anyone and anything, as long as it turned a profit. He was a simple man with simple tastes. All of which could be sampled within the walls of The Honey Pot.

Having started at the sports section it took twenty minutes for Danny to arrive at the front page. He stopped chewing when he saw the smiling photo of Frank. It sat beneath the headline, 'Dead'. The dramatic font size was more suited to the death of a President, but this was the Daily Mercury. The only reason Danny read the paper at all was because he advertised in it. He read the story slowly. He wasn't a fast reader. He took in every detail, then read it again.

Danny's girlfriend sauntered out onto the terrace wearing an opened satin gown, and cotton panties. A tiny tattoo of an angel danced above her left hip as she moved. And she knew how to move. Angel was nineteen. She had lap danced and turned tricks since her sixteenth birthday and had earned her place at Danny's side through hard work and application. She sat down and reached for the toast.

"What's happening in the big old world today, Danny?" she said, taking a bite.

"Shut up and go get Vince, will you," said Danny, still frowning at the article. "And tell him I want to see the books."

"Good morning to you too," she said as she lifted the jug. Danny looked up and met her eyes. She put the jug down and got up.

"Grump," she pouted, taking another piece of toast and walking off.

Vince Young-Wan was Danny's Chief of Operations; in effect, head bouncer and Danny's hatchet man. Loyal, dependable and effective. A softly-spoken Samoan, who bore no malice when he punched the teeth out of punters who pawed the lap-dancers once too often. When Danny was a kid, his dad brought home a disgraced guard dog that had gone soft from being petted too much. That was Vince.

Vince emerged a minute later. He had to duck under the lintel. Vince was nearly seven feet tall and weighed 400 pounds, give or take. Half his face was inked with Pacific Island tribal tattoos. He was hard to miss. He handed Danny two ledger books. Danny dismissed the first, the legitimate one, in favour of the second, the one the tax department never saw. It was thicker than the former by a country mile. He licked his middle finger and leafed through the pages, scanning columns. He soon found what he was looking for. He looked up at Vince with faint irritation, threw a fresh cigarette in his mouth, rolled another Fisherman's Friend between his fingers and grumbled.

"Frank Hutchins went and died, the cunt."

Vince leant forward and lit Danny's cigarette. Danny took a drag and looked across the lot at a giant digger. He imagined Frank at the bottom of a large hole, a ton of earth dumped on him from a height. The image brought him some small consolation. He blew a plume of smoke.

"Bastard owes me fifteen grand," he said. Danny was principled when it came to business. A debt was a debt, and he had an unblemished record when it came to collecting. Death would prove no barrier. But there was no hurry.

He told Vince to put on a fresh pot of coffee and he read the story again. Further down the page he noticed a small photo of Sam wearing a paper chef's hat and holding up a pizza for some charity event. The hero of the story. There was no hurry.

## Chapter 5

Bill exited the Caltex Petrol Station cafe with two take away coffees and got behind the wheel. He handed one of the coffees to Sam, then peeled out onto the highway, heading west past the boarded-up shopfront wastelands to the drought hit plains of the western district.

They listened to the local news on the radio. Its lead story was the death of 'colourful' local identity Frank Hutchins. Sam thought that 'colourful' in that context usually meant criminal, though he suspected they meant something different. Like that he sponsored the local footy team and wore a clown nose on charity days. Sam got a mention on the report. He was hailed as a hero. Bill glanced over to Sam and smiled, then switched off the radio.

"How you doing? Okay?"

"Yeah, fine. Still a bit shaken. Guess it'll take a little time."

"Would have been pretty frightening. I seem to recall you were never fond of snakes when we were kids."

"Hate 'em."

"I remember your brother had one in a pillow case once, carpet python. Got loose and wound up in the bathroom or something."

"Wrapped itself around the S-bend. Wouldn't let go. No one could use the toilet for two days. Found it hard to take a shit for months after that."

Bill laughed. "There was that one time over at Tony Reddan's place. Must have been sixteen or so. He had that detached bathroom out back, remember? His folks were away for the weekend, so he invites Maria Milani over for the night."

Sam whistled softly. "Maria Milani. Shit."

"Yeah, she was pure aphrodisiac."

"Wasn't she religious?"

"Her dad was a Minister or something. Didn't stop Reddo. He chipped away at her for months. Reckons when she caved in she was dirty as."

"He'd say that, of course."

"Anyway, he suggests they take a shower together. They get in, he pulls the curtain across and a bloody snake drops from the curtain rail, right into the bathtub with them. Can you imagine?"

The two men roared.

"It was amazing neither of 'em got bitten," Bill sputtered, "I think the snake was more freaked out than they were."

"What happened?"

"She went straight home. Put her off sex for months, Tony reckoned. Thought it was a sign from God."

This only made them laugh harder. Sam wiped tears from his eyes. It felt good to laugh. Like finding something that was lost.

They drank the coffee in silence for a while. Then Bill said, "So what were you and Frank Hutchins doing out in mulga territory anyway? Rooting for truffles?"

Sam pondered thoughtfully out the window. He had rehearsed this conversation in anticipation of the trip.

"Frank wanted some advice," he began. "He'd been having difficulties with Alice. I don't think he really knew who else to talk to."

"What sort of difficulties?"

"Oh, the usual," Sam said dismissively, hoping to end it there, then added, "Problems in the bedroom." A poor choice.

"Frank talked to you about his problems in the bedroom?" Bill asked in disbelief.

"I know!" Sam said, matching his incredulity. Thankfully Bill moved on.

"Why all the way out here? I mean, if it were me, I'd just ask you out for a beer."

"Frank's probably wishing he had too."

Sam hadn't intended to be funny, but Bill roared with laughter. Sam joined in and relaxed once more.

The rest of the trip out to Cutler's road passed easily with shared memories filling up the miles. They basked in a different time, sunny and free, before all of the damage done by life. It was nice, and for a while Sam forgot about the last twenty-four hours.

They eventually reached the turnoff and drove down the bumpy track. A stooped old man in a worn cowboy hat exited an old chicken shed as they passed Cutler's farmhouse. A dog rooted around at his feet. Neither looked up as they passed.

Sam tensed as they passed the dry grassy pasture and the spreading ghost gum under which he sat waiting for Frank to die. After twenty minutes they arrived at the creaking windmill. They got out and stretched. Bill checked his watch. It was twelve-thirty.

"Well, here we are," he said. "Want to run me through it?"

Sam led Bill through the long grass, motioning with his arm.

"We were walking back from over there..."

"What's over there?"

"Nothing. We were just walking. And I saw a movement in the grass, and I stopped. Here..."

They came upon the headless carcass of the snake, swarming with black ants. It was a monster, certainly the biggest Bill had ever seen. The grass all around it was crushed flat. Probably from Frank threshing about with the bloody great thing clamped to his arm, Bill thought. Must have been a sight. He switched on his camera and took a couple of photos.

Bill inspected the shovel marks in the dirt near the snake, where Sam had chopped its head off. Sam shivered as he outlined the series of events. What came across as guilt for having failed to save Frank's life was in fact simply fear of being caught. He pointed out the star picket poking out of the grass and mimed reacting to the snake in slow motion, spinning himself around and impaling his face on the spike. Bill took a close look at the picket.

"This the one? Doesn't seem to be any blood on it."

"It was a glancing blow. I came off it pretty quick. Maybe the blood came a second or two afterwards, I don't know."

"Right." Bill seemed convinced. He nodded appropriately and scanned the scene once more with his hands on his hips. Sam felt a tiny spike of adrenaline at having narrowly dodged a bullet.

They went through the final moments: Sam struggling to get Frank into the car, driving down the track at speed and Frank's final gasp just before they hit the highway.

"He went downhill fast," Sam said, "I guess 'cause he was bitten so many times. The thing moved so quick. He had no chance. You saw how big it was. It was... incredible, really. And awful."

"How did you know Frank was dead while you were driving?"

"He made this choking sound," Sam explained, "So I pulled over, thinking he was swallowing his tongue. He wasn't breathing and his pulse had stopped. I shook him and slapped him a bit, and tried some mouth to mouth but it was too late. He was gone."

"And what time was this again?"

Sam chewed his lip and concentrated. "Well, I arrived at the hospital at just after seven. And we hadn't even hit the highway at this point, so were still at least an hour away. I guess, somewhere around six thirty?"

"Six-thirty."

"Somewhere around that."

Bill nodded and jotted down notes in his pad, then snapped it shut and slipped it in his pocket. They were done.

On the way back they stopped at the local pub for a beer and a counter lunch. They ate roast pork with gravy and mushy veg and talked about Frank. He never had any kids. Sam instantly thought of Freddy, then killed that notion right away. Frank liked to gamble, Bill threw in. Again, times and places ran through Sam's mind he cared not to revisit at that time, though the sudden warm thought that he no longer owed Frank ten grand made the watered down beer taste a little better. Bill danced around Frank's familiarity with Danny Burke and The Honey Pot for a bit, but thankfully kept Sam out if it. Perhaps he didn't make a connection.

The drive home was relatively quiet. Just the radio and the view. They had talked through enough of their shared past to not have to bring it up again for another few years. Sam was due back at the pizza shop and Bill had to get back to the traffic fines and dog licences.

They pulled into a high chain-wire fenced car park at the rear of the Thomastown police station. Sam unbuckled his seat belt.

"Thanks, Sam," Bill said. "Hey, have you returned Frank's truck?"

"Not yet. It's still at work."

"Okay. I just need to have a quick look over it. For the coroner's report."

"Sure," Sam said, smiling. He'd guessed right.

"Can you drop here on your way to returning it?"

"Tomorrow morning okay?"

"Sure. Thanks again, Sam. Let's go for a beer soon. I'll give Reddo a call."

Sam laughed. "That'd be good. Haven't seen him in ages."

Sam got out and went on his way. Bill went inside, took a long, luxurious piss courtesy of the beer and the hour-long drive, then wrote out the report on Frank's death for the coroner, leaving space at the bottom for the vehicle inspection. He tossed the report on an out tray and thought about something else. Already the story had begun to lose its lustre. Soon it would be a footnote to the memory of an inconsequential man.

\---

It was a quarter after three. Olivia was out, most likely picking up Freddy from school. Sam showered, then went in to work.

He pulled up out the back of the restaurant and saw Sally Beaumont sharing a cigarette with Tex. Sam felt a twinge of jealousy. Though Sally was nearly half Sam's age, he had a crush on her and resented the attention she gave other men. Tex wore low slung hipster jeans and a white T-shirt that was slightly too small. He had the self-possession of Jimmie Dean coupled with the intellect of Donald Duck.

Tex glanced at Sam and looked to the ground, stubbing his cigarette under his boot. Sam got out of the car and approached them.

"Hey Sam," Tex said.

"Hiya," said Sally.

"Tex. Sally," Sam replied. "I thought you weren't coming in?" This to Tex.

"Yeah right, uh... I'm looking after my sister's kid. I was just picking up a shirt I left at Sally's place," Tex added, knowing that would irritate Sam. "Hey, I saw you in the paper, bro. You're a hero."

Bro?

Sally looked at Sam and beamed. Sam blushed.

He said, "I'm no hero, Tex."

"Well, you're famous at least," Tex said, with a grin. "You like, made the local paper." His tone was facetious and Sam saw the back of his hand gently nudge Sally's hip, as if to bring her into his private joke.

Sam flushed, and a picture sprang into his mind with brute violence; Tex on his knees, crying and pleading for his life in some dark quarry at night, his face bloodied, the dull weight of gun metal in Sam's grip. The bastard wasn't grinning then. The thought came to Sam freely and unfettered by conscience. He stared at Tex for a long moment, savouring the image.

Tex's cocky smile wilted under Sam's gaze, like he sensed some dark malevolence, and he shuffled uncomfortably before making his excuse to leave. He went to kiss Sally on the mouth, his parting shot, but she only gave him her cheek, and that with indifference.

Sam followed Sally into the kitchen as Tex mounted his Honda XR 650 and took off in a cloud of dust and humiliation.

It was a busier night than usual for eat-in customers, which was a welcome change. Sam's Pizza and Pasta had been taking a battering of late, what with the drought and the rural economy on the slide. Sam had also advanced himself cash from time to time to feed his poker habit, which had taken a sizable bite out of the profit column. He had tried to secrete the missing cash throughout his ledger, listing spoiled food, theft and lost receipts as culprits, but it had become increasingly difficult. He had delayed paying some invoices for so long that letters threatening legal action had begun trickling in. Sam had been avoiding his accountant since tax time two months back. He'd had enough bad news and, like any addict, simply fed his gambling habit to avoid facing the awful truth. But Sam was avoiding thinking about more than just bad debts this Friday night. He was still coming down from murder. He placed his concentration on olives and diced ham.

Several people during the night smiled strangely at him. One old woman collecting her take away order even placed a comforting hand on his arm. At first Sam was perplexed, before he spotted the several copies of the Daily Mercury that had been drawn out of the magazine rack and scattered around the restaurant on tables and seats. Right there on the front page was Sam's face.

The story of Frank's death and Sam's heroic dash to save his life was bringing some small measure of fame to Sam's Pizza and Pasta. It was no Graceland, but for a day at least, it seemed there was some profit to be had in the morbid joy of ordering a carbonara from the guy whose mate 'died in his arms', so the story would have people believe. If only they knew, Sam thought.

At around eight, a car pulled up directly in front of the main window. Sam didn't notice it. He was too busy helping Sally top a party order of six meat-lovers and a Hawaiian. A man and a woman and their two kids piled out of the late model silver commodore and entered the shop, taking a booth by the front window.

The family loudly debated what they would have before the man of the house, Barry Farkas, got up and approached the counter, looking up at the chalk-drawn menu board. Sally glanced up and saw that no one was available to take his order.

She called out, "Be with you in a tick," as she expertly frisbeed disks of salami across the top of a pizza.

Farkas looked down and smiled at her. His smile dipped at the sides as he caught sight of Sam. Something clicked. A key turned in Barry's mind unlocking a door to something raw and evil. For he saw the face of the man from the night before, the man in the Land Cruiser with the other guy.

Farkas was a man who liked to help people. Good people. In fact he was returning the night before from a church charity cake drive when he saw what looked like trouble ahead. It appeared that a man was stumbling backwards from the driver side door and the passenger was trying to help him in. Was the driver drunk? Having a seizure? The driver managed to get back in and the two men then appeared to hug each other, but as Farkas slowed down to offer help he noticed that the passenger, clearly seen on the approach, had now ducked down out of view. He was face down on the driver's lap, the driver's face straining in some fashion.

Now Barry had once sat on a censorship advisory panel for the Country Conservative Alliance and had viewed more than his fair share of filth. He knew what it looked like. And the look on Sam's face in that brief shadowy moment as the two vehicles passed seemed to point to the conclusion that a crime against nature was taking place.

Fearful that his wife and children had witnessed more than any decent Christian man would care to, Farkas hit the gas, quickly cranking up 33 Miles' "What Grace Looks Like" (certainly not that) and silently praying. And now here they were, about to break bread, or a form of bread, kneaded by the dirty, sinful hands of this man.

Farkas looked at his family seated at the table. They were hungry and none-the-wiser and they wanted pizza. Barry was hungry too. So he parked his righteousness for the time being in favour of a piping hot pan supreme, herb bread and coke. He quickly placed his order with Sally and resumed his seat. The kids were occupied with each other, and he took a moment to whisper into his wife's ear, "Him. He's the one," motioning discreetly in Sam's direction. "The pervert from last night, you know?"

Pamela Farkas took in Sam and raised a waxed eyebrow. The thought was delicious to her, and she savoured it with a genteel sip of diet cola.

With a huff Farkas snapped out the paper he found on his seat, scanning the front page for anything to take his mind off the filth. And then to see him again, halfway down the page, hailed as some local hero! What was this? He read the article and a cold air settled across his shoulders.

At first, he was confused. To his credit, Farkas was quick to accept that he may have made a mistake. But the paper inferred that Sam was transporting a deceased man. And Barry had clearly seen a man in the passenger seat that night on the approach, very much alive.

Barry's pulse quickened. He re-read the article carefully, taking sly glances at Sam and replaying the images from the night before. He saw the driver stumbling backwards from his seat. Previously he hadn't given this much thought; one doesn't automatically jump to suspicion. He had assumed Sam had stumbled getting back in the seat, or was drunk or something. It's what he saw immediately afterwards which now, under the light of new information, seemed to take on a sinister twist.

After the driver got back behind the wheel, Barry clearly remembered the two men appearing to embrace, which possibly informed Barry's assumption of fellatio moments later, when there was a look of what seemed to be ecstasy on the driver's face. But on review, could it have been something else altogether? Carnal pleasure often reflected a countenance easily mistaken for pain. And he now seemed to recall something on the left side of Sam's face, hidden in the shadow. Was it blood? He caught sight of the bandage on Sam's face. Had Barry in fact witnessed something more heinous than sexual pleasure between two men? Was he in fact a witness to murder? The thought tightened pleasurably around his throat as he stared at the smiling photo of Sam.

"Extra Large Pan Supreme?" Sam placed the steaming tray down upon the table. He looked up and jerked involuntarily at the moment of recognition, as if slapped in the face. It triggered an automatic replay of the last night's event in his mind: Barry looking up from the car with his neighbourly smile, then a beat later his smile vanishing, replaced with some unpleasant realisation. And then the rapid getaway, like he'd seen something he shouldn't have.

The blood drained from Sam's face. Barry averted his eyes, choosing the pizza as the logical place to put them.

"Looks good," he said in a thin voice.

"I'll send Sally over with your herb bread," Sam said. "Enjoy." He turned and went out the back, passing Sally on the way.

"Feeling a bit green," he muttered with a dying voice. "I might go out and get some air."

Sam careened out the back screen door and stumbled onto the grass beside the industrial bins. He steadied himself against the cold metal container, breathing deeply, trying to suppress a rising panic attack. Sally followed him out the door.

"You okay, Sam?"

Sam was doubled over. He waved his arm in a gesture suggesting he was fine, though his posture and pale colour indicated otherwise. Sally hesitated, then went back inside.

Sam took deep breaths and pulled himself back from the precipice. He looked across the lot and saw Frank's Land Cruiser, its front grill grinning at him out of the shadows. He walked towards it hesitantly, imagining a snake lurking somewhere in the dark grass; a child's nightmare. He shivered and opened the driver side door. The smell was still there: dried blood and fear. He snatched the crushed package of Marlboro Lights off the dash and got out quickly and ran back into the light. He pulled the bic lighter from inside the pack and lit a cigarette with shaking hands.

He stayed out there for half an hour. Sally came out to check and bring him a glass of water. He told her he had a migraine and that he would be right as rain in a few minutes. He asked her if any of the tables had cleared. She told him that booth five had asked to have their pizza put into take-away cartons and left.

"How did they pay?" he asked.

"Card, I think. Why?"

"It's okay, you better go inside. Who's looking after the floor?"

"Glenys."

"Better not leave her alone. I'll be fine."

"Can I get you anything else?"

Sam smiled, warmed by Sally's rare attention.

"No. Thank you, Sally," he said.

She smiled and looked strangely at him for a moment, then went back inside. Sam wasn't sure what the look was about. He half hoped it was some dopey schoolgirl crush, like that was what he needed in his life right now, then surmised it probably had something to do with his sudden notoriety. She wanted to protect her boss, the hero of the moment, who had survived a traumatic ordeal and was unexpectedly now a bit famous. Like any other fad of the young, it would die off in a day or so and she would default to her usual state of affected indifference.

Sam knocked Sally off at eleven. She was the last to go. He placed the final tray of glasses in the washer and pressed the button, wiped down the tables and booths and stacked the chairs. He'd leave the mopping for tomorrow morning.

Then he went into his small office out back and sat behind the desk and pulled a bottle of J&B from the drawer. He often finished the night with his feet on the desk, downing a large one to warm his blood before returning home to the cold connubial bed. He liked the image it painted, that of the lonely, world weary detective. There was even a gun to complete the picture, tucked deep in the drawer behind the pens and staplers. A Smith and Wesson .22 calibre target revolver from his sport shooting days. Unloaded, of course. He kept it on the premises for protection, but he often toyed with it after dark, taking mock pot shots at the car park stragglers on the security monitor above the filing cabinet.

When Sam was seventeen, he and Bill Hepburn had decided to enter Police College together. But Sam was two inches too short. In more recent years that rule had been relaxed, but at the time there was no room for short cops. And so Sam entered business school. He wound up purchasing the pizza store he schlepped plates at to pay for his education, and he'd been there ever since. Had he been a couple of inches taller, or born ten years later, he might not have found himself wondering what to do about the man whose name appeared on the visa docket in front of him. The man who possibly witnessed Sam committing murder. Barrabas James Farkas. What kind of a fucking name was that?

Sam poured himself another J&B. What if Farkas saw Frank? Well so what? He died in the car. That's what he told Bill; that's what happened. They're the facts of the matter. And anything else, any embellishment on the story would only be what Farkas thought he saw, if indeed he saw anything. There was definitely a change in Farkas' expression when he slowed down to help. Like he had seen something wrong. And the way he took off, as if he'd caught sight of a tornado ripping a barn apart in his rear view mirror. Farkas definitely formed some sort of negative opinion based on what he saw. But everything was there in the paper. He only had to read it to figure out that it was not what he thought it was.

By the third glass, Sam had convinced himself Farkas was no longer a threat. He rinsed his glass and placed the bottle back in the drawer. Rounding the desk, he swiped at his keys, brushing them onto the floor. He toppled as he bent to pick them up. Stumbling against the wall, Sam suddenly realised how drunk he was.

He went out the back, locked the door and got in behind the wheel of his car. He started the engine and the radio came on, but it was just static. Sam adjusted the signal, searching for a station, then gave up. He switched the radio off and slipped the car into first. As he crawled past Frank's ute, nestled in the darkness, he glimpsed someone sitting in the passenger seat and hit the brakes. He stared at the dark shape and he felt the skin in his back prickle with fear. Sam eased the gearstick into reverse and backed up, sweeping the beam of the headlights across the parked vehicle. The dark shape vanished under the harsh light. There was no one there.

Sam shook off his fear, then drove out of the car park. He turned onto Kirkwood Avenue and headed home, keeping her slow and steady. Ten minutes later he drove straight through a red light and into the path of a car. Sam caught sight of the vehicle just as it swerved in front, its horn blaring. It seemed to come from nowhere. He hauled the wheel hard right and slammed into a power pole. The hood crumpled and a fountain of steam erupted from the twisted radiator; it sounded like a burst of applause. Dazed, Sam thought he had just woken from a lucid dream, before realising his pillow was in fact a deployed airbag.

He smelled fuel and heard himself saying "Shit! Shit!" as he pushed against his door, which had jammed on impact. Finally with a big shove he got it open. Sam fumbled with his seatbelt, then spilled out of the car onto his knees. The scene erupted in a disco of blue and red light as a police cruiser pulled up, its headlights on Sam, like the solo spot on a circus clown after he dropped all his balls. For an encore, Sam pitched forward and emptied his stomach onto the road.

\---

Two suburbs away, Barry Farkas brushed his teeth and studied his face in the mirror. Behind him his wife lay asleep, facing the wall. Barry's mind was in turmoil. He wasn't exactly sure what he had seen the previous night, but he knew that whatever it was, it pointed to a crime. He also knew that he couldn't sleep knowing he had chosen to stay silent. He saw himself as a good man, and believed that evil triumphed when good men did nothing. He rinsed his mouth and placed the toothbrush in the glass next to his wife's. He made up his mind that he would go to the authorities and tell them what he saw.

## Chapter 6

As Sam's car was being hooked up to a tow truck, he dutifully blew in the bag for Senior Constable Tom Riley. Predictably, the result was not good and he found himself in the back seat of Riley's cruiser on his way to the station. Riley knew Sam from all the press surrounding the death of Frank. He also knew Sam and Bill were old friends, so he went easy on him. Sam was processed and informed a date would be set for his appearance before the magistrate, then asked if he had a way of getting home. It was after midnight. Sam phoned Olivia.

On the way home, Olivia said nothing. She had been asleep when Sam had called. She pulled into the driveway and switched off the engine, filling the interior with a heavy silence. Sam went to speak, but she got out and headed back inside. Sam watched as the front door closed behind her. He went to sleep in the attic room. When he got up the next morning at around ten, Olivia and Freddy were gone.

Sam stood in the shower until the water ran cold, then stayed there a further twenty minutes. The cold water went some way to abating the nausea and the hammering in his skull. He dried himself and sat naked and shivering in the kitchen while the coffee percolator fired up. The house was cavernous and empty. Like his soul. There was no sound but the gentle bubble of the coffee maker and the pounding rush of blood through his veins.

Images from two nights ago forced their way into his consciousness. A dark dream made real, inerasable from his memory and burnt into his retina forever, from which he was unable to turn away. Frank dancing with an eight foot serpent attached to his wrist; his mute scream from the front of the truck while Sam waited for him to die; Sam pressing the snake's fangs into Frank's neck; the searing pain and the rush of blood when Frank ripped open Sam's cheek; suffocating the man and watching as his terrified eyes saw death rushing towards him. And with each image, Sam felt the rawness, the wound in him opening up anew, the wound inflicted by murder. He saw Frank as a child, as someone's baby, as a man who had laughed and cried and desired for the last time, because Sam made it so. It was the great undeniable truth: he had wilfully taken a life. And with that truth, that raw exposure of the soul there came the guilt finally, the rush of tears, the great wracking sobs that tore from him. He tore his hair and beat his chest and head with his fists.

"What have I done?" he spat between great wet belches. "I'm sorry, Frank, I'm so sorry!"

The outpouring proved epiphanous. Suddenly he felt good, as if a boulder had rolled from his shoulders. Was this Christ tapping him on the shoulder, offering him an olive branch, he wondered. He felt an overwhelming urge to go to Bill, his old friend, and confess. Like a storm passing, the grief and anguish receded and was replaced by a sense of peace. The percolator began to bubble and hiss. Life and possibility flowed through him once again. Sam breathed heavily, suddenly aware that his hangover had lifted, along with his feelings of guilt. He felt strong. He quickly shook off the foolish notion that God, or his only son, had reached out to him. He didn't want to go down that path, not now that he smelt the fresh coffee.

He got up and wiped his face with a tea towel. He switched off the percolator and opened the cupboard and reached for a cup. The pain lifted, he now saw with greater clarity the bigger picture. Frank was gone; what real purpose would it serve for Sam to confess his part and go to prison? The entire world believed that Frank had died of natural causes. And for the most part, he did. More or less. So where's the harm in the end? Why should others' lives be destroyed by uncovering the truth? A confession now would be irresponsible and heartless.

His phone rang. He picked it up and looked at the screen; it was Frank's home number. As he stared at it a dull thud started up again, deep in his head; his hangover was just taking a breather.

He answered. "Hello?"

"Sam?" It was Alice, of course.

"Alice, Hi." There was a pause, then he added, "How are you doing? You okay?"

She didn't answer for a long time; he could hear her breathing. Then she spoke. "Um, you doing anything? I could use someone to talk to."

"Sure, Alice. I'm here."

"I was hoping you could come over."

There was a short pause. "Of course," Sam said. "Give me an hour." He needed time to drink some coffee and possibly throw up some more.

"Fine. I'll see you then. Thank you, Sam." She rang off.

Sam took a deep breath and tried to counter the sudden spin of the walls. Then he stumbled sideways to the sink and dry retched. There was nothing left in his stomach. He retched again, his gut muscles locked in a spasm until he struggled for breath. Then it was over. He slid down the cupboard to the floor and stared at the fridge. He felt better.

\---

Riley had left a copy of the accident report and Sam's charge sheet on Bill's desk. Bill met the news with a sigh. He picked up the phone and tried calling Sam, but the phone rang out.

"Poor bastard" he muttered. "He's not having a good week."

Sarah Ellis, a junior constable in her second year entered the room, her slender arms raised as she fastened her auburn hair with a clip.

"Who's that?" she asked.

"Sam Fletcher. The fella who brought in Frank Hutchins." Then, after a pause, "the snakebite fatality."

"Uh huh," she said, not really listening. She grabbed her purse and went out, pausing at the front door.

"I'm grabbing a coffee, Sarge. You want one?"

Bill looked up and caught Sarah standing in the doorway. She was backlit by the mid-morning sun, and he caught a heart-quickening glimpse of her silhouetted figure beneath the blue blouse. It was a burst of caffeine in itself. She had a good body, firm, athletic, and she was twenty-eight and single. Single, but not available, not to him, anyway. Bill was approaching forty, at speed, with thinning hair and even thinner prospects. He smiled at her dusty good looks.

"No thanks," he answered, the dream fading. Bill's eyes lingered in the empty doorway after she left. She was attractive for a cop, but a cop was the last thing he needed. What he needed was someone to come home to at night who didn't talk about cop things, someone who he could share a laugh with, or a good meal or a deep bathtub by candlelight. He pictured himself sharing a bathtub with Sarah. What the hell, perhaps it could work. He grabbed his keys and hat and left.

Bill arrived at the hospital at 10:30 and parked in the Police space outside casualty. His boots clacked on the linoleum floor as he walked down the cold, fluoro-lit corridors of the trauma ward, inhaling the antiseptic air with its fruity overtones of sickness and rot. He liked the smell, like some men like petrol or the musky funk of a cattle yard. Bill suspected that it was because his mother was a nurse and would crawl into his bed and snuggle up with him after night shifts when he was a kid. When he had a mother. The smell of the wards reminded him of that warm, secure feeling.

He found Stein in his office, eyes glued to his laptop burrowing his way through a bacon and cheese sandwich. He offered Bill coffee. Bill glanced at the tin of caterer's blend by the kettle and politely declined.

"Just the toxicology report on Frank Hutchins."

Stein pulled open the drawer of a filing cabinet and drew out a manila folder and handed it to Bill.

"Want to know what I think?"

Bill opened the folder and scanned the document, making sure all the boxes were ticked. "What's that?"

"Snake did it."

Bill gave a token smile and read aloud from the report: "Cause of death: acute kidney and respiratory failure..."

"Symptoms consistent with envenomation from a king brown."

"You were right. Snake did it."

Stein slid the drawer closed.

"They're not actually brown snakes. Did you know that?"

"Fascinating," Bill said, eyes on the report. He went to close the document when something caught his eye. He took a closer look.

"Says here Frank was bitten six times," he said.

"That's right."

"I counted five."

Stein took a bite of his sandwich and shook his head. He grabbed the file so he could take a look. He pointed to the entry. "Six."

Bill studied the entry. There was a bite wound listed on the neck. He couldn't recall seeing it. That he would have remembered.

"Show me," he said.

Stein made a show of being vaguely irritated, placed his sandwich on the bench and brushed the crumbs from his lap. He got up wiping his mouth with his sleeve and headed through the thick plastic curtains to the cool room. Bill followed.

The fridge door opened with a sigh and out slid Frank's corpse in a halo of frosty air. His big toe was tagged and his bluish skin was streaked and spotted with purple rashes. His lids were still half-closed, filmy slivers of eyes the colour of grey opal, his right socket swollen and black. Bill had forgotten about the bruised eye and for a brief moment assumed it was as a result of a violent trauma.

"Here," said Stein, directing him to the bite mark on the neck. "Right above the carotid artery. See?"

Bill looked, but saw only what seemed to be a U-shaped scratch made up of tiny red dots. It looked nothing like the other bites on his body.

"What am I looking at exactly," Bill enquired.

"See these tiny pinpricks? These are the snake's back teeth. And here's where the fangs penetrated."

Bill examined the mark. "Looks like a scratch to me."

Stein went over to a table and picked up a Petri dish. Using tweezers, he picked up a tiny, translucent fragment of bone in the dish. Bill had to put on his reading glasses just to see the damn thing.

"It's a fang fragment," Stein continued. "Pulled it from his neck."

Bill studied the wound up close. "This bite. It's inconsistent with the others. No redness. No raised welts."

Stein sucked a crumb through his teeth and shrugged. "Maybe it couldn't get a clean strike."

"It struck deep enough to lose a piece of its fang."

"They latch on sometimes, hook right in to release more poison. Maybe Frank grabbed the snake and tore it from his neck before it got much venom away."

Bill took another close look, then studied one of the torso strikes. Stein watched him.

"If you look at the other bites," Bill went on, "there's no indentation from the back teeth. Only fang marks."

Stein said nothing.

Bill thought for a moment, then asked, "Do you still have the snake's head?"

Stein shook his head. "Incinerated."

"These bites," Bill indicated the bites on Frank's abdomen and arm, "they're swollen and discoloured. Why's that?"

"Body's natural response to trauma. Increased blood flow, white cells trying to fight the toxin."

"Then why not here?" Bill pointed to the Frank's neck.

"Could be any number of reasons," said Stein.

"Such as?"

"A dry bite."

"What's that?"

"No venom left. Or maybe Frank's system had already started to shut down. His blood wasn't moving as fast."

"That would result in this?"

"You wouldn't have the same degree of swelling."

"But the time it took from Frank getting attacked to when Sam killed the snake was only minutes. His system wouldn't have started shutting down 'til they were driving."

Stein shrugged. "He was struck six times, remember," he said. "The toxin reading in his blood was pretty significant. Minutes were probably all he had."

Bill took another look at the neck bite. He could see the twin puncture marks in line with the artery, which appeared as a faint, dark red line. He looked up at Stein and placed two fingers in a vertical position against his neck.

"What?"

"The snake would have had to have struck him sideways," Bill said.

"Or struck him when he was on the ground," Stein countered. "Frank fell during the attack."

Bill stared down at the frozen corpse and drifted into thought.

Stein studied him. "You missing something?"

"Hm? No. I'm done." Bill caught Frank's blackened eye staring at him as Stein slid him back into his hole and slammed the door.

A half hour later Bill was back behind his desk at the station, filling out the paperwork for the coroner. His work was slow, distracted. For some reason, the bite on Frank's neck had infected his thoughts. It could be nothing. More than likely was. Yet he now had the feeling he himself had been bitten. He could feel the venom of doubt and suspicion coursing through his system.

## Chapter 7

Sam took a cab to the shop. He sat behind his desk and jerked open the drawer. The Smith and Wesson slid into view, and he picked it up, drew back the hammer and pointed it at the door in one quick practiced movement, as if awaiting the entrance of a hired killer. It was an automatic response, a throwaway moment of boyish fantasy. He pulled the trigger; the hammer fell with a loud snap. Then he tossed the gun back into the drawer and grabbed Frank's keys.

He walked back out into the crisp Autumnal air and approached Frank's Land Cruiser. It was parked beneath the sprawling fig tree, tucked away, concealed by brooding branches and shadows. Sam looked through the window at the interior; the discarded gum wrappers and crushed cigarette packs, the dust, the bloodied rag that snuffed out Frank's life. He got in and closed the door, shutting out the sounds of morning and replacing it with a claustrophobic, muggy stillness, like death.

"Morning, Sam," came the voice. It was Frank. Sam looked across and saw the empty seat next to him. The sun-dappled upholstery yielded no clues as to what happened there a few nights ago. But the echo of murder remained in the stillness. He shuddered and turned over the engine.

Sam pulled into the driveway of 17 Buena Vista Avenue. The avenue, as the name suggested, once held the best view in town. The front of the house looked over the nearby man-made lake, though the surrounding hills, once verdant, were becoming increasingly scarred by housing developments.

The sprawling house was the original homestead of a property that engulfed in the entire region: A high set Colonial with wrap around verandas and a detached kitchen and bathhouse. A crushed white coral path led through manicured beds of rose bushes, some as old as the house itself. It was perched on an acre of neatly clipped lawn, ideal for driving practice, and backed onto a neighbouring thoroughbred stud.

Sam walked up the wide front staircase to the polished jarrah veranda and reached for the door. Before he could ring the bell, Alice opened it. Her hair was attractively mussed. She wore a loose skirt and an oversized paint-spattered shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a few buttons short where it mattered. She wore nothing under the shirt. Sam put her uncharacteristic disheveledness down to grief, though she still remembered to put on some make-up. She smelled alright too. Like slept-in cotton sheets. They went inside.

Alice poured tea. Sam glanced up at the wall. An oversized photo of Frank with his hands resting heavily on his seated wife's shoulders, as if he was holding her down.

"How are you, Alice?"

"How do you think?"

Sam said nothing. Alice put her hand to her forehead and shook her head.

"I'm sorry, Sam. After what you went through. That was–"

"It's alright."

She heaped sugar into her tea. Sam noticed her hand was shaking. He also noticed the gap in her unbuttoned shirt and the glimpse of her breast. He became aroused, and at the same time aware that he felt no shame or guilt that it was Frank's wife. Or for having murdered her husband, for that matter. Guilt was furthest thing from Sam's mind as he felt the rising heat in his blood. Alice, on the other hand...

"I feel guilty," she announced.

Sam tried to listen and avoid watching her breast through the gap in her clothing, without much luck.

"I don't miss him. I don't even grieve him, Sam. I'm not glad he's dead, but I am that he's gone. I don't have to pretend anymore. You must think I'm terrible."

"Don't be silly."

"He wasn't a good husband." She let that hang for a second or two before continuing. "He was violent. He punched me in the face once, fractured my eye socket. I couldn't leave the house for two weeks. Of course he regretted it, tried to make it up to me. But it was more about how he would be perceived, how it would affect his public standing. He didn't really care about me at all."

"I didn't know any of that Alice. I'm sorry."

She fingered the tablecloth. "Don't be. He doesn't have to worry what people think any more." Then after a pause, she looked up and threw a measured look right in his eyes. "He's dead."

Sam looked away and took a long draught of hot tea. It burned his tongue.

"How's Olivia?" she said.

"Fine."

"You don't have to lie to me, Sam. I know about Olivia and Frank. I've known for the last year."

"–year?"

"You didn't know? How could you not know?" Alice tossed her hair back and threw Sam an incredulous smile. She seemed to like the fact that Sam was ignorant. It made her feel less a fool for having suffered through it for so long. She went on: "Christ, Frank was hardly discreet. I think he liked the idea that people knew he screwed around. Made him feel virile. Men in his circle respected that. He was a jerk, Sam." She tugged agitatedly at the fabric on her shoulders, inadvertently widening the gap in her blouse. She waited for Sam's eyes to settle on hers. "He hadn't fucked me in over a year. His own wife. Not that he was any good at it anyway."

Sam was suddenly feeling hot. His face flushed and his scar throbbed under the bandage. He took a deep breath.

"I better go."

"I'm sorry, Sam. I didn't mean to dump on you."

"You don't have to apologize, Alice. Look, I have to take Frank's car to the police station."

"Why?"

"Bill asked me to. They want to look it over. I guess because Frank died in it."

Alice shuddered. "I don't want it here," she said. "I never liked it. Maybe you could help me sell it?"

"Sure."

They got up and stood facing each other.

"Thanks for coming over. I'm sorry about everything, Sam. I'm sorry you had to be the one who was with Frank when he died. It must have been horrible. Not even Frank deserved to die that way."

Sam gave a comforting smile. Alice moved forward, her arms out, eyes suddenly teary, seeking solace. Perhaps now she had offloaded, her grief would come.

They held each other tight and Sam felt the wetness of her tears soaking through his shirt, the hot breath on his neck, her naked breast, heaving with life, pressed firmly against his chest. They stayed like that for some time. The revelation of the length of Olivia's affair with Frank had killed off any last remnant of propriety Sam may have harboured and he found himself giving way to the warm sensation of intimacy that radiated from Alice's firm body. He became aware of a hardening of his cock and made no attempt to move away. They stood motionless, breathing each other's hot breath.

She felt the hardness in his trousers and rubbed her crotch against it. Sam could feel the heat through her skirt and the moist roughness of her pubic hair and realized she was wearing nothing underneath. Frank had definitely left the building. She brought her parted lips, salty with tears, around to meet his and slipped her tongue into his mouth. They hungrily devoured each other, stumbling blindly to the king-sized white leather sofa in the lounge room.

Alice's skirt slipped away revealing her rounded hips and a glistening nest of pubic hair. She smelled of the sea, and Sam buried his face into it, his lips sucking and drinking from the well of her pleasure. She writhed and clutched his hair in clumps. Sam slipped his hands up under her blouse and cupped her breasts as she unbuttoned it. The blouse fell open revealing her perfect flesh, arching, sun-browned and youthful. He moved up her downy stomach with his tongue, and gently kissed and licked her nipples. They were pink and rigid and danced under his touch. The smell of her warm goose-bumpy flesh was tangy and sweet, the smell of sunshine. She opened her legs and Sam entered her easily. They fucked away their pain until Alice came with a heaving sob. Her body shuddered and her nails dug into Sam's back, drawing blood. Sam lifted her hips and drove himself into her hard and finished a few moments later.

Neither of them moved after that for several minutes save for breathing. Sam stayed in her until he began to soften.

"I'm not sorry we did it," Alice said. "It was nice. Thank you."

Sam smiled, though he had begun to get the creeping sensation that Frank was about to walk in on them. The smiling photos of the once seemingly happy couple on the wall didn't help.

"I should get going," he said.

Before Alice could reply there was a sharp rapping on the front door. They both froze.

"Shit!" hissed Alice, arching her neck over the sofa get a look through the window. She saw Frank's cherry red Land Cruiser parked in the drive. Behind it was Bill Hepburn's patrol car.

\---

Bill was returning from a late breakfast when he pulled up at a traffic light. On the corner across the street was the Bank where Frank worked. The light changed and Bill went on through, then on impulse veered into a loading zone and parked out front. He sat for a few minutes, wondering what had made him stop. He realized he was curious about Frank's trip out west with Sam. Sam and Frank had a connection that went back to before Sam was married, when Frank and Olivia were seeing each other. He thought it strange that Frank would seek advice from Sam over his failing marriage. Sam was hardly someone you would go to for bedroom advice, and Frank was not the man to admit he had a problem. Bill unclipped his seatbelt and got out of the car.

The branch was still in a state of morbid excitement. The usual scripted reaction: Shock and disbelief that "something so terrible could happen to such a great guy". The atmosphere was certainly light on genuine grief. Bill was directed to Frank's private secretary, Mrs Myers, where he asked about Frank's movements the previous Thursday. She was defensive, unsure of where the line of loyalty lay with the recently deceased.

"It's not an investigation, Mrs Myers," Bill assured her. "For the record I just need to establish his final movements. Did he come to work that morning?"

"Yes. He was working."

"Busy?"

"Mr Hutchins was always busy. He was the manager."

"Give me a run down on the day, would you? Time of arrival, meetings and so forth."

Mrs Myers arched a thinly pencilled eyebrow and lingered for a beat, then moved behind her desk and retrieved a day diary and opened it. She was a fastidious and mirthless woman in her fifties, old fashioned and raised on CWA scones and lashings of the good book. She perched her half-rimmed spectacles on the end of her nose and read from the diary.

"Meetings in the morning, then a trip to City Hall for some business or other with the Chamber of Commerce..."

"You don't know what business?" Bill enquired.

"Not specifically. Mr Hutchins was a strong advocate for civic advancement. He sits–" she paused to correct herself, "–sat on several boards. He often took lunch with the Mayor."

"Right. And in the afternoon?"

She ran her bony finger down the page.

"Nothing tabled for the afternoon. He told me to keep it clear though, and that he would be away for a few hours."

"How did he seem that day, do you recall?"

"He seemed in good spirits."

"Was he preoccupied at all?"

"How do you mean?"

"Was there stuff going on in his personal life that you knew about?"

"I wouldn't know," she said.

"You said he planned to be away for a few hours. Did he say what for?"

She fixed him with a look like he was simple. "Well, to meet with Mr Fletcher, obviously."

"Did he tell you he was meeting Mr Fletcher?"

She took the glasses from her nose and folded them. "He did not."

"Was that unusual? For him to just disappear for a few hours?"

Mrs Myers blushed and raised her eyebrows in the manner of a disapproving headmistress. "Well," she sniffed, "it certainly wasn't the first time he took a few hours off in the afternoon."

Bill followed her pointed glance to a partly opened door, revealing an ensuite with a shower and an assortment of aftershaves. Message received.

Bill left the bank and slowly headed back to the station. One of the most powerful men in town takes the afternoon off to drive out to the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere, to open up to a struggling, small-time pizza shop owner about his sex life and winds up dead, killed by a snake. The whole thing sat in his gut like a greasy 3AM kebab.

He decided to look in on Alice, see how she was coping. Not as well as Frank's colleagues, he guessed. He headed up Buena Vista and spotted Frank's Land Cruiser on the approach. He parked behind it and got out. Heading past the ute, he saw smears of snake blood on the tray back.

Bill knocked on the front door. After a minute, he knocked again. This time the door opened. Alice looked like she had just gotten out of bed.

"Yes, Bill?"

"Hi Alice. I was in the neighbourhood, thought I'd check in. How you holding up?"

She reacted like it was a dumb question. "I'm okay. Thanks for asking." Her body filled the narrow gap in the doorway as if preventing a cat from escaping.

"I see Sam dropped Frank's Land Cruiser back."

"Yes," then after a pause, "Would you like to speak with him?"

"He's still here? Why yes, I would." Bill went to enter when he saw Sam appear behind Alice.

"Hi Bill," he said, exiting the front door.

Sam turned back to Alice and smiled warmly at her.

"Thanks for the tea, Alice. I'll get going."

Alice nodded and gave a tight smile.

"I'll see you both at Frank's service, I suppose," she said quietly.

"When is it?" Bill enquired.

"Tomorrow, eleven o'clock. Details are in the paper."

The men nodded solemnly.

"Alice, if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to inspect Frank's truck."

"Now?"

"It'll only take a few minutes. Save you having to bring it down to the station."

"Sure," she said, waving her hand irritably as if dismissing a Jehovah's Witness.

"Thanks," Bill said. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

"No. Just be quick," she said, and closed the door.

Bill looked at the front door for a beat, then turned to Sam.

"How's she holding up?" he asked.

Sam's dick was still wet in his pants. "Coping," he replied.

"What about you?"

Sam looked away. Bill found his gaze instinctively drop to Sam's knuckles. They were red and grazed. Frank's bruised face popped into Bill's mind unbidden, like the answer to an unasked question.

"Fine," said Sam, looking back and catching Bill's glance.

Bill nodded, then walked to his car, opened the door and retrieved a clipboard from a briefcase. Sam stood by the driver door of the Land Cruiser and fished the keys from his pocket. As he looked up he saw something that made his flesh creep. The late morning sun had peaked over a neighbour's roof backlighting the passenger window and revealing the grisly note left behind by Frank's greasy finger: murder.

Sam's blood curdled. He imagined for a moment that Frank must have risen from the slab and put it there some time before dawn. Then in a flash he recalled Frank dying of poison in the front seat, his finger squeaking across the window. So that's what he was doing, planning to trump Sam from beyond the grave. How like Frank.

Sam heard Bill's car door shut and looked up. He was on his way back. Sam fumbled with the lock and managed to open the door. He slipped the key into the ignition and began powering down the passenger window just as Bill arrived.

"Get a bit of air in here," Sam said.

Bill's eyes peered through the passenger window just as the incriminating evidence slid from view, taking Frank's damnation with it. A rush of adrenaline poured through Sam, not for the first time in the last forty-eight hours, and he enjoyed the feeling of danger. It felt similar to when he was sixteen and found himself naked in his girlfriend's bedroom, hiding behind the door while her parents congratulated her on her grades. It was becoming addictive.

Bill moved to the rear of the truck. Next to the smeared blood lay the post hole shovel that Sam used to kill the snake. He picked it up by the handle and carefully examined the blade. There was a dried chunk of bloodied soil and grass stuck to the edge. Satisfied, he rested the shovel back down and opened the passenger door. The first thing that hit him was the fresh tang of bleach mixed with the stale odour of tobacco smoke. Sam had left a few select specks of blood on the seat to mask the clean up. He also left behind the bloodied piece of cloth he'd smothered Frank with. Bill noticed it.

"It's part of my shirt," Sam explained. "I used it as a tourniquet."

Bill nodded and continued his inspection, jotting down notes on his clipboard.

The front door slammed and Sam and Bill looked up. Alice, showered and changed, made her way to her car without acknowledging the men further. She got in, reversed down the driveway and sped off. Sam watched her disappear around the corner as Bill resumed his inspection. He was looking under the seat.

"What's this?" He reached under and retrieved Frank's mobile phone. Sam silently admonished himself for not having found it while cleaning the car. He'd completely forgotten about it.

Bill held it up and looked at Sam. "Not yours?"

"Frank's. I can give it to Alice," he said quickly, reaching for it.

Bill slipped the phone into his back pocket. "It's okay. I'll hold on to it," he said.

Bill's decision to keep Frank's phone irritated Sam. What would he possibly want with it? Wasn't that illegal without some sort of warrant? An infringement of privacy? This wasn't a criminal investigation. The fact was that Frank's phone would probably contain text messages and call records to and from Olivia, which, irrespective of how the cards fell, could be read as motive for Sam wanting Frank dead. Sam bristled at the injustice.

Finally Bill was finished. He clicked his pen shut and slid it into his breast pocket.

"Done. You want a ride somewhere?"

"Alice asked me to get rid of the truck. She doesn't want it anymore. I said I'd clean it up for sale. That okay with you?" Sam added in a short tone.

Bill didn't react. "If that's what she wants. You going to drive it now?"

"I don't have a choice. My car's fucked."

"I heard."

"Spare the lecture, Bill. I know it was stupid."

"Like jumping in the sack with Frank's wife?"

Sam went white.

Bill continued. "Come on, mate. I wasn't born yesterday. You looked like a pair of busted teenagers."

"It just happened, Bill. She was crying on my shoulder, and the next thing–"

"I don't want to hear the details, mate. Just think about what you're doing. You've got a family. You've been through a trauma. So's she. It's a small town, and people love to talk. It's not a good look."

"What do you mean?"

"What? I have to spell it out?"

"I had nothing to do with Frank's death."

Ripples of silence spread out from Sam's declaration. He quickly recovered. "I'm not having an affair, Bill, if that's what you think. There was nothing in this before this morning, I swear."

Bill looked searchingly at his friend, giving the moment some air. "Everything alright, Sam?"

"I'm sorry, mate, I'm just a bit... With everything that's been going on. Business is down, the crash, Frank..."

Bill nodded. "How are things at home? With Olivia?"

The response caught in Sam's throat like a bone, but he delivered it with a smile. "Fine."

"Maybe you should take a couple of days off."

"I don't have time for that, Bill. I'm in debt up the wazoo." Sam opened the driver side door of Frank's truck and moved to get in. "I got to go to work."

"Hey Sam, one more thing," Bill said. "I took another look at Frank down at the morgue this morning."

Sam paused and clicked the door shut. He turned to face Bill. "Why?"

"Do you recall the bite on his neck?"

Sam felt the bile rising in his throat. "His neck?"

Bill placed his fingers to his throat. "Here." Then after a beat, "Above the carotid artery."

"Possibly. I can't recall." Sam's mind was racing, trying to catch up. "Wait," he said, taking a punt, "Yes, I remember now."

"At what point did it happen?"

"How do you mean?"

"In the attack. Was it the first... second strike?" Bill looked up from under his eyelids, searching for something he hoped he wouldn't see.

Sam sweated for a second, trying to figure the reasoning of the question. Then in a flash, he saw the logic. "No," he said, "it was at the end. Just before I killed it. I remember Frank was stepping backwards, trying to get away when he stumbled and fell." Sam was shaking. What was this about?

"He was on the ground then?" continued Bill.

"I'd gone to get the shovel from the truck. I turned and Frank was on his back. He was clutching his neck. That's when I killed the snake."

"Uh huh." Bill seemed satisfied by the answer, but it was clear he had more on his mind. "Listen Sam, do you mind if I ask you what you two were doing out on Cutler's Road on a Thursday afternoon?"

"I told you yesterday."

"You told me Frank wanted advice about his relationship." Bill looked at him squarely. "You want to try again? What aren't you telling me, Sam?"

Sam took a moment to answer. "It's private."

"Shit, Sam. I've been your mate since we were kids. Frank Hutchins is dead. You were the last one to see him alive. You have a wound to your face–"

"I told you what happened."

"– and you have fresh abrasions to your right hand which tells me you and Frank had some kind of a misunderstanding."

Sam looked at Bill like he had been betrayed. Bill met his stare with compassion.

"You're not under suspicion, Sam. Frank bought it legit. It's in the report. I just want to know what the fuck you were doing out there."

Sam looked to the ground at his left, summoning a great reimagining of the truth. He took a deep breath and then launched, peppering his speech with pauses and carefully placed stutters.

"Frank had been having an affair with Olivia. It'd been going on for a year and I only recently found out. Frank wanted to meet with me to tell me that they were in love and that he was going to move in with her. And Freddy too."

Sam paused to let Bill soak it up. Bill noticeably softened. That would be a blow to any man.

Sam went on. "He picked me up and we drove. To nowhere in particular, just to talk. He just kept on driving. We found ourselves out on Cutler's Road. I was numb. We stopped to stretch our legs, get some air, and that's when we came upon the snake. The stupid fool tried to grab it but it rounded on him. I grazed my knuckles getting the shovel from the back of the truck."

Bill cocked an eyebrow.

Sam ignored it and continued on. "When I hit at the snake it went for me and I stumbled and turned and ran smack into a star picket fence. I thought it was still coming for me. When I finally managed to kill the thing Frank was halfway fucked already, passing out and being sick everywhere. I had to help him get in the car. He wasn't much help. He's a heavy sonofabitch."

Sam paused to light a cigarette. He took a couple of thirsty drags and then coughed. Bill said nothing and waited.

"Before the snake came along, I won't lie to you, Bill, I wished Frank was dead. I really did. I even began fantasizing how to do it. How to kill him. Crazy, huh?" Sam laughed, though his eyes were a study of abject fear. "I wished it, and then it just happened. Like an act of God. It scared the fuck out of me. I felt like I was responsible, somehow." He looked imploringly at Bill, pleading for understanding, for forgiveness. It was a dazzling performance. "I know it was just some fucked up accident. But how do you think that makes me feel?"

Bill watched Sam's shaking fingers as they crushed the life out of his cigarette. Sam drew on it bitterly and threw the butt under his shoe, his final words rolling out through a cloud of grey smoke. "The bastard was planning to take everything from me. My wife and child. My very life. And in return I tried to save his. But I failed. And now I got to live with that. And that's why I didn't want to tell you, Bill. Because it's none of yours or anyone else's business."

Bill was silent for a long while. Sam breathed through his nose in short indignant snorts, hoping he hadn't overplayed it. After a lengthy pause, Bill nodded. His expression was deadpan, but Sam judged him to be satisfied with the explanation.

"I'm sorry to hear about Olivia, mate," Bill said. "And don't think you're alone at wishing Frank ill. The man played his part in the misery of more than a few people I know of. He was a champion arsehole." Bill tapped his clipboard gently against his Sam's arm and strolled back to his car, got in and drove off. Sam became aware of the sweat-soaked polyester clinging to his back. His heart rate had levelled out and he felt unusually calm.

He headed back to the pizza shop. The first thing he did was grab a rag and some window cleaner and get to work on Frank's little finger painting. This time Frank would not get the last word.

Bill drove slowly back to the station. Sam's words replayed themselves in his mind, over and over. He wasn't sure when exactly the notion of murder was hatched in his mind, but he found himself toying with it on the drive back. Perhaps it was Sam's guilty confession to wanting Frank dead followed by the almost biblical account of the snake attack. It certainly was an odd and tantalizing coincidence. But murder was an unlikely proposition, given the nature of the death. There was violence and betrayal and secrets, motive enough, even Sam himself admitted that. But it just didn't add up. Sam's wanting Frank dead was justified and completely natural, given the circumstances, but Sam Fletcher was no killer. And he certainly was no snake handler. The guy was petrified of the things. But he was banging Frank's wife, and Frank had been banging his. And that was interesting, and maybe just a bit suspicious. Violent death tends to attract that kind of thinking, like a turd attracts flies. Bill pulled into the rear of the station, parked his thoughts and got on with the rest of the day.

## Chapter 8

The service was held around a six-foot hole in the earth in the middle of the local cemetery, followed by a wake at the Bullhorn tavern. The town's senior dignitaries and business leaders turned out to honour and celebrate the great man, including the Mayor and Danny Burke. Bill was there too, sporting a black tie last seen around his neck at his divorce hearing four years back. It was a hot and dry day and a strong wind blew in from the scorched west. Dust devils spat up and dissolved around the vast, dusty graveyard. Black skirts whipped around thighs, and ties and opened coats fluttered as downcast eyes lifted periodically to measure the grief of others.

Sam was there in his best suit, accompanied by Olivia and Freddy. He was in good spirits, having slept soundly for the first time since the night Frank died. He'd cooked a hearty breakfast of eggs, bacon and sausage for his family, though Olivia could barely manage a finger of toast. Freddy said he wasn't hungry, then ate two bowls of coco pops. Sam didn't care. He wolfed the lot and washed it down with lashings of hot, sweet tea, then killed a couple of hours playing video games. The highlight of the day was watching Frank's casket sink gently into the ground. Sam felt a warm sense of relief and closure as he tossed a dry biscuit of earth into the grave and heard it thunk on the lid. Frank was history, and so too any chance of Sam being found out. He was in the clear and free to enjoy the warm air among the flowers and the headstones. He could already taste the beer on his lips.

Olivia was suitably downcast and kept to the back of the congregation. At the wake, she unwisely joined everyone else in offering her condolences to the widow. Alice looked her in the eye and coldly told her to fuck off. Olivia took the advice and left, taking Freddy with her and not bothering to tell Sam who was engaged in conversation with Frank's successor, Bud Logan, at the opposite end of the room.

Before Bud's sudden and unexpected elevation to Branch Manager, he was head of Business and Loans at the Thomastown State Bank. Young, brash and ambitious, he saw Frank's untimely death as a fantastic opportunity for career advancement and could scarcely contain his delight.

"Frank will be missed," he beamed. "Hutch loved the banking business and treated his staff with respect."

Sam suspected this one was already sharpening his knives.

"He really was an inspiration." Bud trailed off, already losing interest in his subject. He kept his eyes peeled for the drinks tray. "What about you," he asked absently, "How did you know Frank?"

"I was with him when he died," Sam said.

Bud stopped looking over Sam's shoulder and fixed his full attention on him.

"You were with him? You were the one who drove him to the hospital? Good Lord, why you're a hero! Tell me, what was it like? He died on the way, yeah?" Bud snapped his finger to get the drink waiter's attention.

"He was pretty badly struck," Sam explained, "Six times, mostly in the chest and stomach... oh, and once on the neck," he threw in with confidence.

"The neck!" Bud was lapping it up. This was better than COPS. "But that's awful! Poor Frank!" He lifted a beer and a white wine from a passing waiter and handed the beer to Sam. "How long did it take him to, you know... expire? Was he in pain?" He took a sip, then added, "I don't know much about it."

Sam was more than happy to relate the story. In fact it was the sixth time that day he had told it. At one stage he had ten eager mourners gathered around him as he recounted the grisly details. He now had the story honed to perfection, and was confident, seeing Frank was safely beneath the loam, that he could move on. As to what came next, he didn't know, but he felt strangely happy and free. He no longer owed Frank ten grand for starters.

Earlier Sam had approached Alice to offer his condolences. She looked at him with no more recognition than she gave the next man. No secret squeeze of the hand, no tiny nod or lowering of the eyelids. His initial stab of rejection was soon replaced by a feeling of power. He looked around at the solemn faces in the crowd, the phonies and the sycophants, and pictured himself bringing Alice to climax while Frank was making ice on the slab. He felt like a conquering King. Sam saw himself in that moment with absolute clarity. He realised that not only had he no sense of remorse for Frank's passing, he had begun to own it. He had been waiting for guilt to wrack his body like some jungle fever. But days had passed and it hadn't arrived. In fact, he never felt better. He was a man who had lost control of so much: his marriage, his finances, his gambling, his life. For the first time in as long as he could remember, Sam felt like he was in control.

Sam and Bill clocked each other across the many heads and nodded a distant greeting. Sam felt that there was possibly some residue with Bill from yesterday and it made him slightly uneasy. He tried to throw it off and enjoy himself.

Sporting a black embroidered western shirt and snakeskin boots, Danny Burke forked a cocktail sausage with a toothpick and dunked it in barbeque sauce. Angel stood next to him with a bored expression, stirring a coke with a straw. She wore a black mini-dress and thigh-high patent leather boots for the occasion. Danny nodded at the Mayor across the room, but the Mayor, noticing Angel, who had frequented his lap many times, pretended not to see him. Danny wasn't offended. He spotted Sam yapping to that sanctimonious hypocrite, Bud Logan, and took a bite from his sausage. He told Angel to wait there and not talk to anyone. She sucked noisily through her straw and pouted.

Sam had just finished telling Bud and his wife that Frank had soiled himself in the car when Danny strolled up to join the party.

"Hello Sam," he said with a grin. "Sad day."

Sam was startled. "Yes, it is," he said. "How are you, Danny?"

"Danny Burke," he said, turning to Bud and his wife. Bud hoisted his chin and his wife sniffed and looked away. Danny was not good publicity and Bud, a lay pastor of the Hillsong Church, had actively campaigned against Danny's amoral business activities in the past. But he wasn't about to make a show of it at Frank's wake. Plus, he was a coward.

"Bud Logan. My wife, Mrs Logan."

"Sure," Danny said, dismissing them and turning to face Sam. Bud cleared his throat and said loudly:

"Pleasure meeting you, Sam Fletcher. A genuine hero. If there's anything I can do for you, financial or otherwise, give me a call. Direct." He handed Sam his card. The ink was still wet.

"Thanks, Bud, I appreciate it."

"I appreciate what you did for Frank." He sure did.

Bud led his wife away, casting an irritated backwards glance at Danny Burke.

"Frank's death was unexpected," Danny began mysteriously.

"Uh huh... yep," Sam answered, nervously shifting his feet. Bill watched them from across the room.

"The last time I saw Frank, he was taking you for about a grand at my private table."

Sam said nothing, though his blood suddenly ran cold.

"I thought he was bluffing. So did you, unfortunately. He had one hell of a poker face, old Frank, I'll give him that." Danny gave a dry laugh.

"What do you want, Danny?"

"You learn lessons hard, Sam. How much did Frank take you for over the last month? Year? You seem to like throwing good money after bad."

Sam blinked rapidly. "That's my business."

"Not any more."

With impeccable timing Vince Young-Wan appeared over Sam's shoulder, blocking out the sun. A match slowly danced from one side of his mouth to the other.

Danny went on, "Frank died owing me a lot of money."

"What's that got to do with me?"

Danny ignored the question and went on: "Fifteen Grand, give or take..."

A female friend of Sam's approached and attempted to join the conversation.

"Hey, Sam! How–"

"Piss off," Danny said, his eyes barrelling Sam's.

Barely breaking stride, the woman immediately waved to nobody and made a beeline for safety.

"Now, Danny–"

"You owed Frank ten grand. Frank owed me fifteen. Now Frank's gone and died taking my fifteen with him. Since you owe Frank and Frank owes me, I'm gonna make it real simple. You pay me what you owe Frank. Ten Grand. Plus interest of five. That makes fifteen Grand total you now owe me."

"You can't do that!"

"A debt's a debt, mate."

"You have no claim on my money, Danny."

"You left or right handed?" Danny asked.

"What?"

"I said, are you left handed, or are you right handed?"

"What's that got to do–"

"Left or right."

"Right."

"Right. I'm giving you 'til Wednesday. That's three days from now. If by Wednesday the fifteen large is not on my desk, you'll be wanking exclusively with your left from then on."

Sam was speechless.

Vince misinterpreted the silence. "Meaning he'll break your right arm."

"He gets it, Vince. Jesus. Do you have to kill it every time?"

"Sorry, Danny," Vince said.

Angel sauntered over, chewing her straw.

"I'm bored, Danny. Can we get outa here?"

"What did I tell you, Angel? You shut up when I'm doing business."

"Well how am I supposed to know when you're doing business?" She winked and smiled provocatively at Sam.

"Go wait in the car."

"Grouch." She spun around huffing and left.

"Three days!" Sam pleaded, "That's impossible."

"Nothing's impossible if you set your mind to it, Sam." He slapped him on the shoulder. "I'll see you Wednesday. Enjoy the rest of the funeral." He dropped his toothpick into Sam's beer.

Danny turned and walked off. Tonto followed. The sounds of laughter and stories flooded back into the room. Sam's earlier feeling of empowerment had drained out of him like piss down his leg, and all that repressed fear and guilt came rushing in with devastating inevitability. He became aware of a throbbing pain in his cheek, and pictured Frank, six feet below him, grinning in his rosewood box.

"Sam?"

Sam looked up and saw Bill standing in front of him.

"You okay?" Bill said. "You look ill."

"No, I..." Sam took a moment to steady himself. "I'm okay. I haven't been sleeping well."

"What did Danny Burke want? I didn't know you knew him."

"I don't. I met him a few times through Frank. We were just talking about him."

"You and Frank played poker at the Honey Pot, didn't you."

"Once or twice. That a crime?"

"Steady, mate. You're not under investigation."

"Aren't I? You seem to be asking a lot of questions lately, Bill."

"Force of habit. Look Sam, we go back a long way, so don't think I can't offer you advice. Danny's a rat with a gold tooth. You hang around him long enough you're gonna pick up lice."

"Frank knew a lot of people from all walks, Bill. You going to ask the Mayor if he knows Danny too?" Bill already knew the answer to that one. Sam angrily tossed back the rest of his drink, forgetting Danny's discarded toothpick which lodged itself in the back of his throat. He gagged and dropped his glass flapping his hands before him. A few heads turned, before Sam managed to cough the toothpick free. Wiping the tears from his eyes, he stormed red-faced past Bill and out of the tavern.

Twenty minutes later he pulled up in a cab outside his house. Olivia's black Audi was in the drive, its rear doors open and the interior stuffed to the brim with luggage and bedding. Sam paid the driver and met Olivia as she exited the front door, Freddy in tow.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"I'm off to mum's. I'm taking Freddy with me."

Freddy stood there, his eyes fixed on his tablet.

Sam, confused: "What? Why?"

Olivia crammed a large suitcase into the overstuffed boot and shut the lid. "Freddy, get in the car, love. Go on."

Freddy looked up at Sam and said, "Are you coming, dad?"

"Daddy's not coming, Freddy. It's just you and me. Come on, get in the car."

"I don't want to go."

"Get in the car."

Freddy huffed and stomped his way to the passenger seat.

"What's this about?" Sam said. "When did you decide this?"

Olivia drew Sam aside and spoke low to him so that Freddy wouldn't hear.

"I'm going to mum's for two weeks, and when I return we're getting a divorce."

"What?"

"I'm sorry, Sam. I won't share a bed with a man I don't love."

Sam seemed confused. "But Frank's dead."

Olivia paled and her face grew hard. "Yes, Sam. Thanks to you, now Frank's dead."

"He got bitten by a snake, Olivia. How is that my fault?"

"If Frank hadn't gotten it in his head to help you out, he'd still be here."

"Help me out? Help m–" Sam grabbed Olivia by the wrist and led her away from the car. "Are you out of your fucking mind? Frank wasn't trying to help me, Olivia. He was trying to do to me what he'd been doing to you the past twelve months."

"Frank cared for me, Sam. He was interested in me as a person. And he loved Freddy."

"Freddy! Gimme a break."

"When was the last time you kicked a ball around with your son? Or helped him with his homework. Or took him to the movies?"

"I do those things."

"The last time?"

Sam clawed at his memory and came up short. "I've been busy," was all he could muster.

Olivia turned and strode back to the house. "Freddy doesn't need excuses, Sam. He needs action."

"Well you made sure you got plenty of that," Sam said. He'd taken some hits and was sinking. Olivia grabbed her handbag and phone from the hall stand and turned to face Sam in the doorway.

"You know, Sam, if you paid more attention to your son, you'd realise he was struggling at school."

"He's always found school hard," Sam said. He turned and looked at Freddy seated in the back of the car. "That's normal."

"He's been skipping school altogether. Running off, doing God knows what. That sound normal to you?"

"Why didn't you tell me this before?" Sam said. "Why am I just finding this out now?"

"When are you home? You're always out."

"I work nights."

"I'm not talking about work. You're always finding excuses to be absent."

Sam felt the shame of his addiction burning through him. He ground his teeth and took a deep breath.

"What's this got to do with Frank?" he said bitterly.

"Frank offered to help."

"How?"

"He came around a few times. We'd have dinner and then Frank would go and help Freddy with his homework."

"And afterwards, you'd help Frank out."

A pause. "It didn't start out that way." Olivia marched past Sam back to the car.

"You're wrong about Frank," she said. "He cared about me and Freddy."

"Frank wanted one thing, and he was prepared to use our son to get it."

Olivia paused at the open driver-side door then turned to Sam. Her eyes were moist.

"Frank told me he never stopped loving me," she said, in a quiet, controlled voice. "And I guess the truth was, I'd stopped loving you a long time ago, Sam." She got in behind the wheel.

"Stay. We need to talk about this."

"We just did. Goodbye, Sam."

She shut the door and started up the engine.

"You leave, don't think about coming back!" Sam said. It came out like a spit that landed on his own chin.

Olivia powered down the window. "That's the general idea, Sam."

"Why are you two fighting?" said Freddy.

"We're not fighting, Freddy," Olivia said. "We're just... having words."

"Mummy and Daddy still love each other," Sam said, reaching in and giving Freddy a kiss. He clocked Olivia's eyes in the rear view mirror. "I'll see you soon, okay?" Sam said to Freddy. "I love you."

He stepped back from the car.

"Come on, Freddy, cheer up," Olivia said brightly. "We're off to Nana's."

"Nana's sucks."

"Amen," Sam said under his breath.

Olivia slammed the car into reverse and backed out onto the road, then tore off with a scream, setting off the neighbour's dogs. The last thing Sam saw was Freddy staring at him through the rear window.

\---

After the funeral Bill drove back to the station. He sat himself behind his desk, weary from the afternoon beer. A growing pile of mundane police work was awaiting his attention. Frank Hutchins was in the ground and life went on. Case closed, if there even was a case to begin with.

He stared with glazed eyes at an excel spreadsheet and tried to get on with it, but found himself drifting again and again back to the image of Frank writhing on the ground, liquored up on snake venom. A week from now, or perhaps only a day or two if he was lucky, Frank would fade from his memory altogether. And along with him, the nagging suspicion that there was something more to the story.

It was a Tuesday. Over-40s Singles night at the pub. Bill went home, showered, then took himself off for a Chicken Fried Rice at Fungs. He arrived at the bar hoping the generous slathering of Brut 33 was enough to mask the desperation. In fact, it only added to it. Still, it was the right crowd. Bill got lucky, wound up in a Rubinesque, redheaded beauty's bed and had his brains sensationally fucked out until two in the morning. Not a moment too soon.

## Chapter 9

Shortly after they were married, it was decreed that Sam would sleep in the attic due to his chronic Sleep Apnoea. He snored most nights. Consequently, come bedtime Sam was banished to the attic room at the far end of the house, unless called upon to perform certain duties relating to pleasure and reproduction, when the embargo would be temporarily lifted. And it was in the attic room he spent his first night alone, despite the sudden availability of the master suite.

He woke up in the middle of the night shivering, thinking he'd heard a voice. He didn't feel ill at all and the night was warm, but his blood felt ice cold. He touched his face and it was wet. Moonlight shone through a small lead-lighted window on the gable wall, and he could see his hand had something dark and sticky staining it. He switched on the bedside lamp and saw blood all over his hand and on the pillow.

"Shit."

He leapt up and ran to the bathroom, switching on the light and stopping in front of the mirror. His skin was pale, as if drained of blood and the bandage was missing from his face. The broken ends of stitches were poking out from the torn gash where Frank had bitten him. It looked nasty and wept with pus. Sam looked down at his fingernails; they were jammed up with blood and scab fragments.

"Oh fuck," Sam muttered, shuddering. He looked up and inspected the wound more closely. It was itchy. He moved to scratch it and then froze. The wound itself began to move, as if larvae were hatching beneath the skin. The hair rose on his neck as he raised his fingers and pressed the burning flesh around it. The gash grew taut and then suddenly split open, revealing diseased yellow teeth– not his own. The hideous maw yawned, and out from it came a voice: Frank's voice.

"They're gonna find out what you did, cocksucker!"

The hair stood to attention on Sam's head. This is a dream, he pleaded with himself. Why wasn't he waking up? 'Wake up!' he screamed. The mouth in Sam's cheek twisted into a grin and spat at the mirror. A gob of bloody sputum hung from the glass forming a deranged tear in Sam's reflection. He could see Frank's eyes, translucent beneath his skin now, like the whole man was forming inside him, soon to tear apart his paper-thin skin and arrive fully formed in his place. Frank's mouth began to laugh. Sam punched and tore at the wound with his fist and fingernails and screamed. Then his reflection in the mirror vanished altogether and in its place on the floor lay a coiled brown snake. Sam stepped backwards and feeling it writhe underfoot leapt away in terror, slipping on the tiles and smashing his skull against the wall. His head burned with bright white light, and he found himself falling finally into blackness.

Sam awoke to a cold hard feeling against his face and a pounding in his head. As his vision drew into focus he noticed the familiar pattern of the parquetry on the attic room floor.

He thought for a moment he'd been mugged. There was a throbbing, warm, wet sensation on his scalp. Slowly feeling crept back in his body and he got up. He was woozy and the floor moved beneath him. He steadied himself, and looked at his hand. No blood. He rubbed his sore scalp and found white chalky powder matting his hair. Looking up at the low gabled ceiling, Sam discovered a small impact crater in the plaster a few inches in diameter. It was right above his bed.

He touched his face and felt the bandage still in place. His cheek gently throbbed and the flesh around it was tender and hot. The infection was doing nicely, which possibly explained the rather colourful nightmare, although recent events might have had something to do with it.

Sam regarded the new work done on the ceiling. He figured he had suffered a bout of sleep apnoea, which often resulted in a violent awakening as the body choked for air. It wasn't the first time he had ended up on the floor in such circumstances, but it was the first time he'd pushed his head through the ceiling. Like so much else in his life at that moment, things were spiralling out of control.

He decided that sleep wasn't a safe place for him right then. He got up, showered and made coffee, then switched on the laptop and read the online news. Down the bottom of the front page was a small mention about an upcoming by-election. Sam normally skated over such dreary articles, but this time he stopped. He remembered what Frank told him just before he cashed in, about the farm he was planning to buy, the one belonging to the old man with cancer, Leland Cutler. And about the nickel mine, and the re-zoning and the millions to be made. Sam realized that he had information nobody else shared. Nobody, that is, but Frank, and Frank wasn't using it. Information that could bury all Sam's problems under a sweet pile of green.

He hadn't seriously entertained the notion when Frank was outlining his plan. For starters, Sam wanted nothing to do with Frank. Secondly, big ideas generally frightened Sam. He ran a small pizza restaurant. Sure, it was sending him broke–along with problem gambling– but it was what he knew, and most probably all he was going to know. He was an unambitious small business operator with humble dreams of quiet failure. That was, until now.

Now that he was wide-awake and the morning sun had burnt off the last vestiges of the night terrors, Sam began to feel like a new man. A man with vision and ambition. Finally Sam had been dealt a winning hand. And Frank had kindly bowed out of the game.

He spent a couple of hours on the net, researching Frank's story. He came upon a website for a mining company, Consolidated Earth Minerals and Mining. A quick search revealed the existence of a proposed nickel mine which had gained approval but had been shelved due to the Global Financial Crisis. That was eight years earlier. The country was currently experiencing a mining boom. A news thread on the site predicted a go-ahead of the mine sometime in the near future. The article was dated only two weeks earlier. Frank said he had a contact, someone in Government who had the inside track on the numbers. Frank knew people: Politicians, mining executives, masters of business, crooks. Frank was a Freemason. Frank had the goods. Sam had become Frank's proxy after all.

Sam had a few hours before he needed to begin preparing pizza dough. He shaved, bryl-creamed back his hair, slapped on some Old Spice and his best shirt and headed west, back out where it had all ended for Frank, and where it was just beginning for Sam.

## Chapter 10

Before leaving town, Sam stopped off at Bob's Magic Shop, a small retail concern down a narrow arcade built sometime after the Second World War. The shop had a curtained-off area out the back which sold porn. The front section was frozen in time. Desultory party items and discontinued magic kits lay unloved on shelves while sundry amusement items, such as plastic dog turds, whoopie cushions and exploding cigarettes, gathered dust under a glass counter, which was covered at this time with a spread out Daily Mercury, a tin ashtray and a stained coffee mug. The proprietor sat behind the counter on a stool, maintaining a lit cigarette and an air of disinterest. He wore a sweat-stained bowling shirt and a frown. His eyes never left the paper. It was clear the real business took place in the rear section of the shop.

Sam found what he was looking for and handed over five dollars. The man looked up from his paper with surprise. He took the money then seemed to forget what to do next.

"You want a bag?" he ventured. But Sam was already on his way out the door.

Sam pulled up at an Ampol roadhouse a half hour out of town. He drove around the back and parked under a rusted metal awning. He adjusted the mirror, then opened the K-Tel Junior Spy Kit and removed a fake moustache and a small tube of spirit gum. The kit was a relic of the eighties but surprisingly effective. The hair was fake but realistic enough. He trimmed it with a small pair of scissors and applied it carefully to his upper lip. He regarded himself in the mirror with a slight tilt to the head. With his hair slicked back and the drooping Sanchez he looked less like Sam Fletcher and more like cheap sex. But Sam wasn't out to impress the ladies. He didn't want old man Cutler to pick his face, a face that only the day before was front-page news.

Sam entered the roadhouse cafe and bought himself a coffee and a sausage roll. He watched the girl behind the counter as she took his order.

"There you go," she said, handing him the cup. She looked him in the eye and smiled. Never batted an eyelid. Sam walked out enjoying himself. It felt good to be someone else, someone on his way to success.

\---

Despite not getting to sleep until two am, Bill woke up at five-thirty as usual. He rubbed his face and looked across the bed at the gently snoring redhead whose name he had forgotten. The harsh morning light revealed what was hidden the night before. She had aged a few years, and her carefully applied make-up had broken out across her face. The beauty was still there, in her bones and in the shape of her gently closed eyes, lids soft as kisses. She slept easily.

He liked her. She was generous and enthusiastic and enjoyed a laugh. Thankfully not during sex. Bill wished he could remember her name. Carly, or something. He got up quietly and dressed.

In the kitchen he switched on his phone. There was a power bill on the table and he checked the name on the front: Karen Lehman. Check. A vintage Atomic coffee maker sat on the stove and Bill nodded with approval. This girl had class. He brewed two espressos and brought them into the bedroom and placed one next to her. She stirred and opened her eyes, jumping with momentary shock when she saw Bill. Then she remembered and smiled. The coffee was a winner.

"The last guy was out the window before the condom hit the floor," she said, taking a sip.

"He must have thought you only had instant."

Karen smiled and stroked his leg. Her touch was warm and nurturing. It felt simple and right. They finished their coffee then made love again. He was due at work in half an hour. He decided to be late.

They made a date for dinner that night and Bill headed home, shaved and showered, then went in to work. The hangover had started to bite, and Bill had just downed a couple of paracetamol when Sarah Ellis stepped into his office. She didn't pass comment on his appearance, for which he was grateful.

"Hey Sarah. What's up?" Bill rubbed his tired eyes.

"There's a man out front wants to speak with the duty Sergeant."

"What's he want?"

"He won't say."

"Can't you deal with it?"

"He refuses to talk with anyone but you. He's been waiting a half hour."

"For fuck's sake," Bill muttered under his breath. His head began to throb.

"Shall I tell him you won't be back today?"

Bill was already on his feet. He walked out front and saw a man in a starched, short-sleeved white shirt and pressed trousers seated in the waiting area. The man got up.

"I'm Senior Sergeant Bill Hepburn. What seems to be the problem?"

"Sergeant. My name is Barry Farkas."

Unfortunate, Bill considered.

Farkas went on, "And I have something I wish to share with you regarding the death of Mr Frank Hutchins." Bill was well and truly listening. "Is there somewhere private we can talk, Sergeant?"

Bill led Farkas into the interrogation room. Farkas accepted a glass of water. And for the next twenty minutes he described with vigour what he saw on the night in question, which boiled down to the prime fact that Frank was alive and very much kicking at Seven PM that evening, whereas Sam's story had him dead a half hour or more earlier, before they even reached the highway.

"You mentioned they were struggling?" Bill said.

"They were parked by the side of the road. I saw two people struggling in the cabin of the truck. It looked like someone was in trouble. When I pulled alongside to see what was going on, Mr Hutchins– I didn't realise it was him at the time, it was dark, you see, a new moon–"

"Go on."

"Mr Hutchins had disappeared from view. The driver, the pizza shop man, was bleeding from the face. He looked positively dangerous, and I took off." Not wanting to appear cowardly, Farkas added, "I had my family with me."

"They witnessed this as well?"

Farkas straightened. "I'm telling you what I saw, Sergeant. I don't want my family brought into this."

"How can you be sure Mr Hutchins was alive at this point."

"He was alive. I wouldn't have come forward had I not read the report in the paper stating otherwise."

Bill felt the revelation spread through his circuitry like bad cocaine. Sam lied to him. Frank hadn't died on Cutlers road, like he said. And if Frank was alive (and kicking) a good hour after he had been bitten, then why was he dead when they arrived at the hospital?

"I'm telling you this out of a sense of civic duty," Farkas went on. "It is for you to follow up on your own, Sergeant. I do not wish to be brought in on this. Not unless you have airtight proof of foul play. I will not subject my family to the threat of recrimination."

Bill was irritated by this, but he just nodded non-commitedly. He did not wish to discuss the matter further with Farkas. If and when the need arose, Farkas would be called in, whether he liked it or not. Civic duty, my arse. Smug bastard. Bill thanked him for the information and showed him the door, insisting he'd look into it further. Bill told Sarah he was not to be disturbed, went back to his office and shut the door.

The truth was Bill hoped that the whole Frank Hutchins affair, like Frank himself, was dead and buried. He was well on the way to convincing himself Sam's story checked out. The coroner's report was signed and delivered and the death certificate issued. Frank was six feet underground, getting acquainted with the worms. Everything wrapped up neatly with a pink ribbon. And now, Barrabas James Farkas, prying do-gooder from the Bible brigade turns up and shits on Bill's breakfast by claiming he saw a man living when the coroner's report clearly states he was dead.

There was something else about Farkas's claims too. The time. If Farkas saw Frank alive at seven pm, then the snake attack must have occurred somewhere after six, at least a half an hour later than when Sam claimed it happened. The sun sets at five-thirty. Bill opened his desk drawer and shuffled through the old papers. He found a booklet of tide times, a relic from his fishing days, and opened it to the date in question. It had been a new moon that night. It would have been dark as pitch at six pm. What were they doing wandering through the long grass in the dark?

Bill went and made himself an inferior coffee, sat back down at his desk, and thought of Karen Lehmann, all toasty under her doona, and of her vintage atomic. He could wake up to that picture every morning and be happy. The taste of Caterer's Blend brought him back to reality. He picked up the phone and dialled, not yet knowing what he would say. It went to message bank.

"Sam, Bill. Mate, give us a call when you get this. We need to talk."

\---

Sam felt his shoulders tense as he turned into Cutler's Road. The wind gently brushed the quiet, vast paddocks of dead grass, dotted with twisted mulgas and ghost gums. It had the atmosphere of an abandoned lawn cemetery.

Sam drove the fifty or so yards to Cutler's front gate. He switched off the engine and immediately heard the barking of a dog. An ageing kelpie-cross with a stump for a tail came around the house at a slow lope, shaking its hairless hindquarter with such enthusiasm that it threatened to topple him sideways. He was clearly as old, in dog years, as Cutler himself, who followed behind him.

Sam got out and stayed behind the gate. He lifted a hand in polite greeting. Cutler approached with a limp. He wore a greasy old akubra with a hole in the pinch, and a faded and torn red flannelette shirt, rolled up to the elbows and tucked into a pair of urine stained-trousers. They had a busted zipper and were held up with baling twine. Cutler's sinewy forearms were tanned and wrinkled, and his weathered face was dusted with prickly white whiskers.

Cutler lifted the brim of his hat and spat in the dust, rubbing his spit into the dirt with a cracked, elastic-sided boot. He was a hundred mile of country road, with red-rimmed eyes that spoke of a long acquaintance with the bottle.

"Quiet down, now," he barked. The dog sat down in the dust and began to gnaw its back.

"G'day," Sam said.

"Can I help you?" Cutler slurred. Sam caught the whiff of beer on his breath.

"This the road to the beach?" asked Sam.

"There's a beach at the end of this road, but you got to drive another 15 mile. It's a private road, but people can use it."

"Ellis Brown," Sam said, extending his hand.

"Lee Cutler," the old man replied. His hand was bony and cold. There wasn't much strength in it. Sam cast his eyes around the place. The house was a dump with peeling paint and a buckling iron roof scabbed over with slatherings of tar. The yard was dense with long grass, out from which jutted remnants of a working life. Rusted slashers and post hole diggers, piles of twisted lumber, collapsing stockyards and weeds which had developed into small trees. A pair of water tanks had collapsed under the rust. The place was a portrait of decay.

"Nice and quiet out here," Sam said.

Cutler seemed to think this was funny. He haw-hawed for a bit, but it soon turned into a fit of coughing. The old man pulled out a grubby handkerchief and violently hacked into it. He wiped his mouth and blood came away on the cloth. He didn't pay it any mind, simply tucked it back into his trousers and let another spit go. This one seemed to contain a piece of his lung.

"Yeah, she's quiet all right," he concluded.

"You okay, there?" Sam asked.

"Not really," the old man said, as if to himself.

"Listen, I'm retiring," Sam went on, "and I'm thinking about a tree-change."

Cutler regarded the hills and raised an eyebrow. "A what?"

"A tree-change. You know, a move to the country, clean air, trees..."

"You don't want to do that, mate. Country life's nothing but dust, misery and death. Was a fella killed from a snake right here on this road but a few days ago. Don't you read the paper?"

"I heard something about it," Sam said.

Cutler pulled out a pouch of White Ox from his trouser pocket.

"Tree change, huh?"

He peeled off a paper and stuck it to his lower lip, then massaged a pinch of tobacco between his palms. Sam removed a pack of Marlboro Lights from his pocket and offered one to Cutler. The old man shook his head. Sam lighted his cigarette and then offered the flame to Cutler.

"I want to buy a place out here. Close to the sea."

"You won't find nothing round here closer than where you're standing."

"There's nothing further down this road?"

"This road cuts through my place. People use it, but its mine."

"Your kids must like coming here."

Cutler snorted and spat again.

"What about Grandkids? You got any?" Sam asked.

"They don't come out here. Nothing for them. What would they want with this? Was worth something once. Ain't worth a pinch of salt now. Land's dead. I'll be here 'til they cart me off in a box." The old man's eyes seem to indicate that wasn't too far off.

Sam let the moment hang for a beat.

"Maybe you'd consider an offer?"

"For what?"

"Your place," said Sam.

Cutler looked at Sam like he was simple.

Sam leapt in, upping Frank's offer by fifty thousand for reasons he didn't understand. "Two hundred and fifty thousand."

Cutler looked at Sam, gauging his sincerity. He wiped his lips with his hand, suddenly feeling thirsty.

"You want to buy my place?"

"Yes."

"For two hundred and fifty thousand?"

Sam paused and swallowed. "Yes." He regretted not saying two hundred.

"I don't know, Mr Brown."

"It's Sa– Ellis." Sam was beginning to sweat. He hoped the moustache would hold, though he suspected the old guy wouldn't have remembered his face anyway. Cutler was deep in thought. He seemed to be considering the offer.

Cutler seemed to arrive at a decision, but it wasn't the one Sam was expecting.

"I feel like a drink," he said, "Would you like to join me?"

Sam sat with Cutler in his dank kitchen by the light of the midday sun filtering through the nicotine stained window. They drank Toohey's Old out of enamel mugs and smoked some more while Chopper, that was the dog's name, dragged his arse along the frayed carpet and grinned at Sam. The smoke from Cutler's White Ox smelled like burning corpses.

A half hour later, Sam left with Cutler's promise that he would seriously consider his offer. Sam could tell he was interested. The old man's hands trembled with anticipation of a better, more comfortable future, however brief. Sam scrawled Cutler's phone number on a piece of paper and said he would visit him again on Friday.

As the Land Cruiser pulled onto the highway, Sam peeled off the moustache and rubbed his upper lip. He caught a glimpse of his face in the rear view mirror. He touched his bandage and felt no pain. Maybe the stitches were ready to come out. Sam felt good. Tomorrow he would pay a visit to Bud Logan. He was on his way.

## Chapter 11

The next morning, Sam sat in the foyer of the State Bank and waited for Bud Logan. He held Bud's business card and flicked it with his thumb. His phone buzzed and he checked the caller ID. It was Bill calling again. Sam diverted the call. He looked up at the white office door with the translucent glass panel. There was a light patch and four tiny holes where only recently was screwed a wooden plaque which bore the engraved words, Frank Hutchins, Manager. The new one bearing Bud's name wasn't ready yet, but that didn't mean that Frank's wasn't ready to come down.

The door opened. Bud came out led by his outstretched hand. His expression managed to convey joy and sympathy at the same time. They shook hands and Bud motioned for Sam to enter his office.

"Life goes on," Bud said philosophically, as Sam took a seat. "Can I get you a tea? Coffee?"

"No thank you."

"Are you sure? A glass of water? An overdraft?" Bud laughed a little too hard at his own joke, then settled down. Sam noticed a picture of Jesus next to one of his family. Bud followed his eyes.

"I owe that fella everything. You have faith, Sam?"

Sam didn't know what to say.

"Don't worry, it's not a pre-requisite," Bud laughed. "I shouldn't ask. It's none of my business. But you went through an ordeal, Sam, in the service of a fellow traveller. And sometimes that can stay with a man. From time to time people need a little help, a little guidance."

"I appreciate it, Bud. But I'm okay," said Sam. "Really."

Bud held up his hands and said no more on the subject.

"What can I do for you, Sam?" he said.

"Well," Sam began, "Before Frank died, we'd been talking about my applying for a loan against the house. He'd okayed it, told me to come in and he'd draft up the papers."

"You didn't make a formal application?"

"I was about to. Frank approved it verbally. He said it was just a matter of coming in and filling out the paperwork."

Bud scowled at Frank's laissez-faire approach to business.

"I'm sure we can sort something out," he said with a smile, reaching into a drawer and removing a form. "What kind of loan?"

"Business."

"And the amount?"

"Two hundred and fif–" He paused, remembering his debt to Danny. "Two hundred and sixty-five thousand."

Bud paused and looked up at Sam. "Two-sixty-five?"

Sam nodded. Bud placed the form down in front of Sam and handed him a silver pen from his own pocket.

"Fill this out, if you would, please Sam."

Sam began to fill out the form. Bud leaned back in his chair and folded his hands on his stomach.

"What's the loan for?" he said.

"I'm looking at expanding the business. Opening a new shop on the northside."

"Good for you, Sam. You know your pizzas are the best in Thomastown. My wife loves them."

"Really? What's her favourite?"

"She likes the one with the several kinds of meat on it."

"Meatlovers."

"That's the one! Me, I go the supreme. A little bit of everything suits me. Except anchovies. Hate those little guys. Hey listen, I'm going to ask Mrs Myers for a cup of tea. Are you sure you wouldn't like one?"

"Sure, Bud, thank you."

"Milk and sugar?"

"Just black, thanks."

Bud got up and opened the door and spoke to Mrs Myers, who went off to make tea. Sam continued to fill out the form. When he was done and the tea was drunk, he got up and shook hands with Bud.

"I'll let you know within twenty four hours. Once again, all of us here really appreciate what you tried to do for Frank."

"I only wish I could've done more," Sam said.

"I'm sure you did all you could. Hope the new venture goes well," Bud added, placing a hand on Sam's back and showing him the door. "And remember, if you ever feel the need to just talk, man to man, okay?" He winked and made the 'call me' sign with his hand.

Sam nodded and winked back, immediately regretting it. He felt like a little part of him had just been stolen.

\---

Bill was due to finish for the day at four. He still hadn't been able to reach Sam despite leaving several messages and driving by the usual spots. He'd even cruised past Alice Hutchins's in case Sam was engaging in a little afternoon delight. The driveway was clean. Maybe it was just a one-off pity fuck.

At knock off, Bill decided to take a drive out to Cutler's road. The sun would be setting when he got there. He wanted to stand there in the dark, at the time and place Sam said Frank was attacked, and have another go at divining the truth. He had no idea what he expected to find, if anything.

He clocked off, grabbed a Red Bull from the fridge and his keys from the desk and headed out. An hour and twenty minutes later, he was passing Cutler's farmhouse. A light was burning inside, and the thought hit him that Sam could easily have stopped and sought assistance. Called ahead for an ambulance or medivac to meet them. Bill continued on. Twenty minutes later he was standing under the old windmill.

Bill started at the remains of the snake. It didn't take long to locate it again after five days in the sun. The pungent stench of rotting flesh awoke a sense memory, immediately transporting him to a shallow bush grave two years earlier where the weeks-old remains of a missing twelve year-old boy had been uncovered. The smell of a death scene was unlike any other. Blood, shit, putrefaction, petrol, smoke, gas... The longer he worked, the more the everyday aromas of life became co-opted by death. A heavy weight threatened to settle on Bill's shoulders, but he shook it off.

The sky had turned purple, and in a few more minutes it would be dark. Bill strolled back to the car and got behind the wheel. He checked his mobile. No signal. SOS only. Sam still could have called for help. A chopper could have been dispatched and gotten there in twenty minutes. But people panic. Bill had seen enough evidence of that over the years.

Within minutes, the winter sun had left and darkness fell upon the paddock. Bill got out again and checked his watch. It had just gone five-thirty and it was already too dark to see the ground in front of him. A half moon would be making an appearance in a couple of hours, but five days ago would have been black as pitch and it was still fifteen minutes to go until the time Sam claimed Frank was bitten.

King browns are active at night, so that checked out well enough. But what were they doing out here in the dark this far away from the vehicle? Arguing about who fucked who's wife first? And how the hell did they see the snake at all let alone enough for Frank to pick it up and Sam to land a shovel across its back?

A sound familiar to any rural cop rang out across the plain. A rifle crack. Then a second. Bill gauged the shots were about a mile away. Close enough to cause some damage. He saw a distant bright light sweeping across the horizon. Liquored up yahoos out spotlighting roos. It was suddenly not safe to be standing where he was. Not to mention the obvious presence of angry mutant brown snakes. It was time to vamoose. He got in, hit the floodlights and drove steadily down the pot-holed track towards the distant highway.

A few minutes down the track, Bill glanced down at the radio to try and pick up the signal. When he looked up something caught his eye. He braked sharply, then backed up until his headlights illuminated what appeared to be a pair of tyre marks leaving the track. The grass was flattened in two distinct narrow lines heading off into the darkness. There was nothing out there but a small stand of mulgas and some yards from that, a tall eucalypt, ghostly white against the dark blue sky. The tyre marks were barely noticeable, and would otherwise have not even registered but that Bill's senses were on the alert for anything out of the ordinary.

He got out of the car, leaving the engine running and followed the flattened grass into the darkness, clapping his hands to ward off any snakes. He hoped it didn't attract them. A little way in and the tyre marks stopped. He looked around him. Why stop here? He pulled his Maglite from his belt and switched it on, swinging it in slow arcs across the long grass. A shadow passed through the light, and he focussed his beam. A fold of grass a few feet away. The longer he looked, a second, almost unseeable path emerged before him. Narrow, singular. Somebody walked away from the car. The driver. He focused the torch beam on the path and followed it into the darkness, careful not to lose it. All around the narrow travelling beam of light was pitch black. Tufts of lonely grass illuminated briefly, then swallowed up again into blackness. A frisson of anticipation ran up Bill's spine, as he half expected to find another corpse lying in the waist high grass. His imagination was starting to get the better of him. Too many nights curled up with James Ellroy, he thought, trying to elbow in a little levity. He was preparing himself for the fact that he was most likely about to stumble upon a flyblown turd sitting under a mound of toilet paper. Award-winning police work.

The path came to a stop at the broad base of the ghost gum. No corpse, no turf, and no path leading away. Bill looked around him at the darkness. The stars were well and truly out now. The Milky Way unravelled across the sky like the lip of a gigantic oyster. There was nothing all around, but the sound of the wind through the grass.

His torch beam flitted around the base of the tree. There was a clear patch of dirt where the roots lay half buried. He tried to imagine what someone would do having arrived at this point, and decided to sit. He looked towards where he had come from. The car, had it been parked where the driver would have gotten out, was partly obscured by the tree.

He noticed something at his feet. Throwing the beam of light onto it, he lifted his boot and saw that it was a cigarette butt. He leaned forward to pick it up and noticed another. He pushed a tuft of grass aside and found a regular bowerbird's nest of butts. He counted fourteen. Someone liked a smoke. And their privacy. A further search would most likely yield a used condom, if he were basing his discovery of a pile of cigarette butts in long grass on experience and wisdom. But something told him he wouldn't find one. A cursory search confirmed his suspicion. Bill picked up one of the butts and examined it closely. The paper was bright and unfaded, the smell of the tobacco still fresh. Smoked within the last day or so. He read the name on the side. Marlboro light.

The sound of a stick snapping underfoot brought Bill's senses to alert. He snapped off his torch and instinctively felt for his gun, before realising he left it on the front seat of his car. He ducked low and leant against the tree, knowing he was in darkness. Peering around, he could just make out a tall figure about twenty yards away silhouetted against the dark sky, nearly black on black. The figure had on a hat and carried a rifle or a shotgun. It was impossible to make out which, but now wasn't the time to ask.

The figure stopped, facing the tree, his gun hitched to his hip. It appeared he could see in the dark.

A voice said, "What do you doing out here? This is private property. Come on out where I can see you."

"Lower your gun. I'm Sergeant Bill Hepburn of the Thomastown police."

A heavy-duty torch suddenly snapped on and the light hit squarely in Bill's face, blinding him.

"Step on out, Sergeant," went the voice. Bill stepped out from behind the tree and approached Lee Cutler, his hand shielding his eyes from the light.

"You mind lowering that torch?" Bill said.

Cutler obliged. "What are you doing out here, Sergeant. Lose your keys?"

"You'd be?"

"Lee Cutler. You're on my land."

"That your house?" Bill motioned towards the small wooden place with the warm glowing windows and the smoking chimney. Cutler grinned. Most of his teeth were M.I.A.

"You're good," he said.

Bill smiled. The old guy was quick and dry. He hoped he was friendly too and had a drink at his place. He said he wouldn't mind a chat and asked if they could do it somewhere warm. Cutler obliged for the second time that night.

Cutler poured Bill a glass of Toohey's Old into a chipped schooner glass that had developed a cloudy sheen after many years of abuse, then passed it to Bill.

"Cheers," he said.

The cold beer tasted good. They sat in a kitchen by a slow-burning wood stove. Next to the stove, newspapers spilled out of a cardboard box competing for space with finely chopped kindling and a loose pile of roughly sawn chunks of ironbark. The floor was littered with sawdust and ash, beer bottle tops and dog bones.

A yellow Kelvinator from the fifties rumbled away noisily in the corner. Atop an old sideboard, beneath a gun rack carrying a pair of old twin-barrel shotguns and a battered Thompson .308, lay a row of old jars, several deep, containing brown snakes steeped in methylated spirit. The ambience was somewhere between Ed Gein's living room and the Snowtown bank vault.

Cutler opened the fridge door to grab another bottle, and Bill caught a snapshot of its spartan interior. A knob of last year's butter wrapped in foil, a dried up piece of raw meat sharing a plate with a cooked sausage, an empty bottle of tomato sauce and a ripped open carton of Toohey's Old. You didn't have to phone a friend to figure Lee Cutler lived alone. Alone, that is, except for the dog. Bill took a draught of the cold beer and watched as Chopper noisily chewed his bald back. The smell of the place was a funky mix of body odour, mange, nicotine and rancid fat.

"Don't get many visitors," Lee said with no sense of irony. He popped the lid off the bottle and topped up both glasses, then pulled a leather pouch containing White Ox from his top pocket and started rolling.

Bill asked him, "Heard about Frank Hutchins?"

"How could I not? Got himself killed right here on my place. I knew the bastard too."

"What he was doing here?"

"Beats me."

"He didn't stop by? You said you knew him."

"Didn't say I liked him. It was mutual too." Cutler sucked on his cigarette and blew a thick cloud of smoke. "No, he didn't stop by." He waited a beat, then added, glancing pointedly at the gun rack, "knew better than to try."

"Why didn't you like him?"

"He made threats."

"What kind of threats?"

"Said if I didn't make repayments he was gonna take my place from me."

"He threatened to foreclose?"

Cutler nodded. He coughed, opened the grate on the stove and spat into the fire.

"Did you know the fella who was with him?" Bill asked.

Cutler tossed in another chunk of Mallee root and closed the grate. He shook his head.

"You didn't see or hear them pass by? You couldn't tell me what time it was?"

"I watch the telly from four onwards. My hearing's not great. Guess they went past some time after that. I found out on the news about it like everybody else."

"I wonder why they didn't stop and ask for help." Bill mused aloud.

"He was dead already most likely. That's what the paper said."

Bill said nothing and drank his beer, recalling Farkas's description of Frank struggling with Sam on the highway. His eyes drifted to a large envelope containing x-rays and a thick pile of oncology reports held down by a half brick on a wooden seat by the door. He surmised that Lee was a sick man. On cue, Cutler let forth a series of wet, hacking coughs, coarse enough to strip paint. Bill upgraded his assessment to Dead Man Walking.

"You brewing up some snake wine there, Lee?" Bill said, motioning to the collection of pickled snakes. Cutler got up and stood straight, his back clicking in several places. He glanced across at the snakes and snorted.

"Caught each and every one of them buggers within ten feet of my back door," he said. "One of them I found in the bath."

"Serious?"

"Had to teach Chopper here not to get too close. He makes a racket, lets me know when one's around. The land round here is thick with the bastards. Been bit twelve times. Hospitalized twice. My liver's shot from all the poison."

"Twelve times?"

"I've got an immunity now."

"I didn't think that was possible."

"Neither did the doctors. You get bit often enough, the body soon learns. You got to be bit pretty bad to die from one. Or sickly. Frank Hutchins, he wasn't a fit bloke. Chain-smoked those bloody light cigarettes. They're worse for you than this." He held up his pouch of White Ox and coughed for effect. "Too many bloody chemicals."

Bill ticked off the fresh pile of Marlboro Light cigarette butts by the tree.

"You get lonely out here, Lee?" he asked.

"Been in the country all my life. Been alone the last fifteen years, since the wife died." His old, watery eyes looked down the hall into the darkness. "I'm getting tired."

"You ever think of moving on?"

Cutler grew suddenly wary. "Why do you ask? Who you been talking to."

Bill clocked the abrupt shift in tone, but kept it to himself. "Nobody."

"What makes you think I want to move?" Cutler tilted his head back and looked down his hawkish nose at Bill, challenging him.

"I don't, Lee."

"Don't you? Then why'd you ask if I was thinking of selling up?"

Bill sat there silently, looking into Cutler's suddenly frightened eyes. He was hiding something.

"I didn't ask if you were selling, Lee," Bill said, then added after a pause, "Why? Someone made you an offer?"

Cutler got up scraping his chair and moved to the stove. He swung open the blackened cast iron door and threw a chunk of ironbark into the fire, sending a shower of sparks up to the blackened ceiling. "Drink up, Mister," he said, his back to Bill. "Time you left."

Bill placed the half finished glass on the table and got up. "Thanks for the beer."

Cutler kept his back to him and nodded. Bill placed his hat on his head and stepped out into the cool dark. He got behind the wheel of the car and mulled over Cutler's sudden shift in personality. Had Bill stumbled upon something, or was Cutler just a paranoid old goat whose switch got flicked? He turned the key and fired up the engine. The tail end of My Girl by Smokey Robinson came on the radio and he immediately thought of Karen. He had dinner for two booked for eight-thirty at Fungs and needed to get a move on. His phone came into range as he hit the bitumen, and he checked for messages. No call back from Sam. There was one from Karen and one from the station. The work call was some dry query about rosters. The call from Karen was of a different nature altogether. He decided to give Sam the rest of the night off.

\---

It was around three in the morning when Bill sat bolt upright in bed. He was wide awake, jolted from sleep by some deep thought process taking place in his unconscious mind that had reached a conclusion. And he was reeling from its impact. He looked down at Karen, lying on her stomach, her shoulders gently rising and falling, and placed a hand on the small of her back. There was reassurance in her innocence.

Bill looked up and stared out the window at the stillness of the moonlit street and brought forth the fully formed story in his head. The story of Sam and Frank and of what really happened on the night Frank died. It unravelled from his tangled dream state and reconstructed itself cleanly before him in a series of logical steps. Everything fell into place; motive, time and place, the sixth bite mark, the pile of butts beneath a lonely tree, Farkas's testimony and Sam's constantly shifting story, all clues for which explanations had been given, and yet the truth had somehow remained elusive. Until now.

Bill got up and went to the kitchen and prepared himself a coffee. He was fully awake and knew that sleep would not return. He only wished it was all a bad dream.

## Chapter 12

Sam awoke the next morning from another nightmare. He had been spared the ravages of guilt-driven fever dreams for the last couple of nights and wrongly thought he'd been granted a reprieve.

He'd finally chosen to sleep in the master bedroom. He figured Olivia wasn't coming back in a hurry, and if he couldn't fuck his wife he may as well fuck her expensive goose down pillow. He'd drowned in a post-ejaculation slumber, corpse-like, facing the ceiling. He opened his eyes what seemed like only seconds later to discover he was in complete darkness. His lower body felt numb. He went to lift himself up and bashed his forehead something hard, just inches from his face. A sprinkle of dirt fell into his eyes. He went to lift himself up and his arms barely travelled before they too hit wood. He became aware of the sensation all around him of hard edges, confinement, dead weight. Panic rose in him as he realized he was encased in a wooden box. The flat, heavy sound of nothing completed the picture. He was buried alive. He screamed, but his voice hit the heavy soil surrounding him and went nowhere. Fear tightened around his throat and the air became thin and poisonous with carbon dioxide. This was no dream, he thought. He had been knocked out, kidnapped, buried alive.

Then came the soft sound of dirt giving way and falling beside his ears, as if the timber walls of the makeshift coffin were rotting and giving way. In the blackness he felt a cool gust of air, barely a whisper, but it told him that a vent of some kind had opened up beside his face. The side of the face that bore his wound. He turned to it in the blackness, sucking up the cool air for dear life.

The gusts came in rhythmic waves, like breaths; they were cold and stank of putrefaction, and they carried a voice from the dead, Frank's. Sam realised the cool air was emanating from Frank's rotting lungs.

The voice wheezed, "You're with me now, cocksucker."

Sam jolted with electric fear; he struggled but couldn't move more than an inch or two in any direction. He felt a sudden injection of poison coursing through his blood, breaking it down, savaging his organs. Claustrophobia tightened around his skin. In the darkness Sam felt Frank's icy cold tongue scrape against his cheek, lifting his skin as if he too had begun to rot. He opened his mouth to scream and it filled with dirt, causing him to choke and cough.

More dirt began to fill up the box as Frank chewed and ripped into Sam's cheek. Sam tried to claw at the timber with bleeding nails; it was useless. He felt small live things dropping on him and crawling up his side; worms pushing through gaps in his clothes, boring into his skin, his ears, and his scalp, up his nostrils; he was in Hell. "Wake up!" he screamed. Frank was on top of him now, his face barely an inch above Sam's. Sam couldn't see him in the blackness, but that only made it more terrifying. His dead weight pushed the last of the air from Sam's lungs, and as Frank spoke, rotten blood seeped from his mouth and into Sam's eyes and face.

"You are awake, cocksucker!" Frank said.

Dirt spilled over into Sam's eyes, and he began to fall backwards through space, drowning, falling, drowning.

Sam awoke on all fours with nothing in his lungs and he screamed backwards with a great, lurching intake of air. Though disoriented, the sudden snap feeling of cold air and the night sounds told him he was awake. The nightmare had passed, but he could still taste dirt in his mouth, feel it in his eyes, and he was cold and wet. He lifted up his head and spat. The cold air made him cough so hard he dry retched. He became aware now of cool damp grass beneath him. Was he in the cemetery? He looked around him with rising new panic, realising, as his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, that it wasn't the cemetery, but his own back yard.

Low in the sky to the west was a near full moon. It must have been somewhere around one in the morning. Sam looked down at the clawed dirt at the base of the rose garden. What the fuck had happened? He suddenly imagined Frank's arm bursting through the earth and dragging him back underground. He got up quickly and stumbled over to the relative safety of the patio. He wanted to feel hardwood beneath him, not earth. The echo of Frank's laughter rung in his ears and his cheek throbbed.

Sam went back inside, had a shower and rinsed off the dirt. He saw himself in the mirror, his face and arms covered in scratches from the rose bushes. A frisson of fear ran through him. What did it take to wake him up from this shit, he wondered. He walked back towards the bedroom, pausing at Freddy's room. He looked in at his son's unmade bed with the Star Wars print linen, his junk lying all around the floor. On the wall, almost lost among the apocalyptic gaming posters was a picture Freddy had painted when he was five: Three stick figures, two tall, one short, standing next to a house. Instead of a smiling sun, the sky was full of big dark clouds. Sam he moved over to Freddy's bed and sat down. He picked up a crumpled shirt from the folds of the doona and buried his face in it. He smelt his son and cried.

He went back to his bedroom. The sheets were twisted into rope. White noise and static sprayed from the portable television on the dresser. An ejected porn DVD poked out of the player. He switched off the television. He had slept less than an hour before Frank had struck. Sam drowned two valium in a large whisky, then lay down his head and stared at the ceiling. Minutes later he was out cold. He remained in that position for ten hours.

Sam lifted his head from the pillow and glanced at the clock radio beside the bed. It was nearly eleven. He was making a habit of these late mornings. He went down to the kitchen and snapped on the dripolator, then checked his mobile; it was off. There were four lights flashing on the answering machine. He hit play and threw a couple of aspirin into a glass of water.

"Sam, it's Bill. I tried calling you several times. I can't seem to reach you. We need to talk. Call me please."

The second call was from Bill too. Sam could tell because he could hear Tom Riley yapping in the background, but Bill just hung up this time.

The third message was from Olivia. She asked him if he had collected the mail. He saw a couple of bills and a large brown document envelope on the counter. 'Yeah, so what?' he thought, shaking his head. He fast-forwarded to the last message.

"Good morning, Sam. Bud Logan." Sam tensed. "Hope I haven't disturbed you. About your loan. Listen, the bank can't approve it at this time, mate. Sorry. Couple of issues. Best you come in and see us. In fact, you really need to come in. We have to discuss your overdraft, among other things. It's pretty urgent. I wouldn't wait. Talk soon."

Sam steadied himself from the initial blow and his despair quickly revolted to anger. Why couldn't he catch a fucking break? This was his big chance. A man had fucking died for this. No one was going to take it away from him now.

He snatched his keys and stormed out the door, leaving the coffee to boil dry.

Fifteen minutes later he marched through the foyer of the State Bank and up to Mrs Myers' desk.

"I need to see Bud– Mr Logan," he stammered through gritted teeth.

"Do you have an appointment?" she coolly answered.

"No, I don't have an appointment. Tell him it's Sam Fletcher."

"Mr Logan is in a meeting with another client, Mr Fletcher. If you'd like to wait."

"I need to see him now!"

"Can I help you, Mr Fletcher?"

Sam swivelled and met a well-tailored haircut with a corporate smile and a face that had yet to be acquainted with a razor.

"I'm here to see Bud Logan. And how do you know my name?"

"We all know who you are, Mr Fletcher. You're a hero. You tried to save Frank Hutchins's life."

"Is that what you think?" Sam laughed. "You don't know shit."

Mrs Myers lifted the receiver gently and pressed a button. Bud opened the door of his office and stepped out, gently closing it behind him.

"Good morning, Sam. Is there a problem?"

Sam turned and took a backwards step. Bud seemed taller than before. Or perhaps Sam had shrunk.

"Frank told me that the loan was pre-approved," he stammered. "He guaranteed it!"

Bud took a deep breath and led Sam to a partitioned customer booth and sat him down. Bud sat opposite. The junior bank exec hung close by in case it got interesting.

Bud continued in a gentle but firm voice. "Your good friend Frank Hutchins made a lot of promises that cost the bank dearly. To be honest I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did– business-wise, I mean. We can't possibly approve a loan for you of that amount– any amount. And frankly, Sam, you have far more important issues to deal with. For starters your overdraft is several thousand in the red. You should have been brought in on that months ago. You seem to have had some kind of green light arrangement with Frank. And then there's the mortgage on your home." He paused and looked up at the young suit. "Jim, do you have Sam Fletcher's file handy?" Jim went off to collect the bad news.

Sam suddenly felt cornered and alone.

"This isn't right," he said. "Why didn't I know any of this?"

Bud gave a patronizing smile. "Well gee, Sam, only you can answer that. I mean, who does your accounting? Your wife?"

"My wife? Why my wife?"

"Well, she's a director of your company. I'm assuming that since you appear to be unaware of the state of your finances, then maybe your wife–"

"My wife didn't do the fucking accounting because she was too busy fucking Frank!"

The bank fell silent. Nobody breathed.

"Sam, please," Bud said, his voice hardening, "there's no need for that sort of filth." Bud was talking to Sam but his eyes were on Mrs Myers. She was speaking quietly into the phone; she was way ahead of him.

"I'm sorry. I really need that loan, Bud," Sam pleaded.

Jim appeared behind Sam carrying a file. He paused for a moment, catching Bud's look, then discreetly slid the file under Sam's nose.

"There's no way we can help you, Sam," Bud said with a smile. "Take a look at your file. You're weeks away from having your home auctioned out from under you. You need to make some serious fiscal decisions. You won't be opening a new store in the near future, I can tell you that much. Not until you do something drastic to rein in your debt. And fast."

Sam lurched from his chair, knocking it over. "That's what I'm trying to do if you just let me!"

Bud calmly adjusted his tie and smiled. "We're a bank, Sam, not a charity." Regular fucking school principal.

"I just need the money. You'll have it all back within three months, with interest. I guarantee you!"

Jim tried to calm Sam down by putting a hand on his shoulder. Sam flung it off aggressively. Jim, a seasoned squad player for the local rugby team, easily flipped Sam's arm around and placed him in a headlock. Sam struggled and yelled. Everyone in the bank had tuned into the spectacle.

A pair of security guards appeared. One of them got down in Sam's face and told him to calm down. Finally Jim let go and stepped away from him. The guard kept in Sam's face and made him breathe. Sam swallowed his anger and picked up his file as if to take it, then flung it at Bud. The paperwork flew out and fluttered to the floor.

"All right, mate." The two guards flanked Sam with iron grips and frog-marched him out the door.

Once outside, the security guards got a little more playful. They shoved Sam hard onto the footpath and he stumbled and fell.

"Fuck off, cunt, and don't come back," one of them said.

"Dickhead," chimed in the other. The guards turned and walked back inside. Sam got up and rubbed his knee. The cloth had torn and there was some blood.

"Cocksuckers," he mumbled under his breath. He caught sight of Frank's face, smirking at him from behind the glass, his framed portrait hanging in the window of the bank in a shrine of remembrance. Sam pictured him screwing Olivia, taking his money, lining Sam up to be the stooge in his corrupt real-estate venture. A puppet to sing. Well the puppet master was underground now, his body leaking fluid and on its way to becoming fertilizer. And that made Sam feel strong again. Because he put him there. It was something he owned, a secret he controlled. He had power over Frank's life. Over the Creator. The rest of Sam's life might be heading for the silt quicker than the Titanic, but he was a killer. And he could do it again.

The thought was electric, a mainline of amphetamine to his system. It quickened Sam's blood and made him strong again. There was no urge to kill the notion, temper it with morality or reason. He was his own island. He took himself to the Bullhorn Tavern and ordered a large vodka. An hour later, he was still there.

Bill had been searching for Sam all morning. He found him by chance, spotting Frank's truck in the car park. He placed a vodka down on the table and slid it towards Sam, then sat down opposite. Sam looked up.

"You're a hard man to track down," Bill said. "We need to talk."

"I'm tired, Bill," Sam said, reaching for the vodka.

Bill took a pull from a rum and coke.

"I had a fella come into the station a couple of days ago," he said. "Claims he saw you parked by the side of the road about a half hour out of town, struggling with Frank Hutchins the night he died." Sam's brow furrowed. "He put the time at around six-thirty." Bill took another hit of his drink, letting that sit with Sam a moment.

Sam looked away, nursing his vodka. After a beat or two, he drained it quickly, then placed the empty glass down on the table.

"Who?" he demanded.

"No one you know. But you saw his face. He slowed down to help, got a good look then drove off. He said he saw you and Frank grappling with each other. Fighting."

"Frank was dead. How could he have seen us fighting?"

"You tell me."

"You think I'm lying? You believe some stranger over me?"

"Why should this guy come forward? He doesn't know you. He's a do-gooder from the church who feels it's his civic duty to come forward because he saw something." There was a pause. "Yeah. I think you're lying. What did he see, Sam?"

"I don't know what he thinks he saw, but Frank was dead before we got off Cutler's road."

"At first he thought you and Frank were doing something else."

Sam looked confused for a moment, before realising what Bill meant. He shook his head and smiled bitterly.

"Tell me what you were doing parked by the side of the road, Sam."

Sam picked up the empty glass, glanced at the bar, put the glass down again. He waited a beat before answering. "Frank fell forward. I had to pull over and lift him back up and put the seatbelt around him."

"How's the cheek?"

Sam blushed. He steadied himself. Said nothing.

"Nasty place to get cut." Sam let that one hang. Bill went on, "Did Frank mention anything about buying the old Cutler place?"

"What?" Sam swallowed. "No. I told you, we were talking about Olivia. He wanted to move away with her. I don't know anything about buying any place."

Sam pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Bill eyed the pack: Marlboro Lights. Sam tapped out a cigarette with shaking hands and asked, "What's the Cutler place got to do with anything?"

"I went out there yesterday. Took another look."

"Find anything new?" Sam added tartly. He lit a cigarette.

"I did, actually. A fresh pile of Marlboro Light butts in the middle of a paddock half way down the track. I'm guessing at the rate of one every three minutes, that was one helluva smoke break. Forty-five minutes at least."

Neither man said anything for a full minute. The smoke from Sam's cigarette hung in the air like cordite from a gun barrel.

"They were Frank's cigarettes," Sam began softly. "We'd fought about Olivia. Had a scrap. I landed a couple on him, but he's stronger. He got me in a headlock. Showed himself to be superior, yet again."

Sam took a drag with trembling fingers and continued. "It was still light when it happened. I'm not sure of the time exactly. You're right, probably forty-five minutes, an hour earlier than what I said. The snake, Frank went for it, got himself bit. I killed the snake, got Frank in the truck..." Sam went quiet, swallowed, collected himself. Bill said nothing. "I was bleeding from hitting the fence post. Feeling woozy. I started to drive. Frank was being sick all over the place. The smell... I began to feel faint. I was going to be sick myself. I couldn't keep driving; I couldn't see, let alone drive. I pulled over and threw up outside the door. When I looked back, I saw that Frank was dead. I tried to revive him, but I knew he was gone. So I grabbed his cigarettes and walked away. I was in shock. All I could taste was bile and sick. I tried to smoke away the taste and the fear and the guilt. I didn't tell you or anyone else because I was ashamed. And scared. And anyway, what the fuck did it matter? Frank died on Cutler's road, like I said. From a snakebite, like I said. And that self-righteous prick who saw me on the highway? He only saw what he wanted to see to justify his moral outrage: A couple of perverts having it off, and when that didn't pan out he imagined murder."

"Nobody mentioned murder," Bill said softly, after a pause.

A violent look flashed across Sam's face. Bill rattled the cubes at the bottom of his glass and drained the last of the rum.

"Here's what I think happened. Frank was fucking Olivia, wanted to take her and Freddy from you. He was bitten by a snake. You thought he died, so you pulled over, like you said. Smoked half a pack of cigarettes, trying to make sense of what just happened. The horror gave way to relief. The guy who wanted to destroy your life, the guy you wanted dead went and got himself killed. It was perfect. Like a gift. It was dark, so you started to head back. An hour or so from town and Frank started coming around. Turns out he wasn't dead after all. And all the thinking you'd done, all the cigarettes worth of planning how you were going to make your life better was all shot, because the arsehole that tried to ruin you decided to keep on living. And this was where you made your mistake, Sam. You decided you preferred him dead, so you took the snake from the back of the truck and you tried to finish the job. That bite mark on Frank's neck. I think you tried to put more poison into Frank and he fought back. That's what Farkas saw. That wound on your face? I think you're lying about that too. There was no blood on any star picket and there was no blood on the ground other than the snake's. You got it in the struggle with Frank. He's a strong man, and any man fighting for his life has twice the strength. But in the end it wasn't enough." Bill waited for Sam's eyes to meet his. "You killed him, Sam."

There was a pause in which neither man heard nor saw anything other than the palpable intent of the other. Outwardly, Sam gave away nothing. Inwardly, he fought for breath. Bill had it figured out, but Sam was pretty sure he had nothing concrete, nothing that could sustain a charge. It was a great story, but only Sam knew the truth. Bill knew nothing. Sam gathered his wits, and with a hammering heart laid down his bluff.

"Even if that were true," he said slowly, "you couldn't prove it. You don't have anything."

Bill's eyes met Sam's. He saw nothing of his childhood friend in them. They were the eyes of a stranger.

"You're right," admitted Bill after a pause. "Farkas would be discredited by any half decent barrister and the rest is circumstantial. Frank's in the ground. It'd take some doing, and a lot of bad press to dig him up again. My superiors wouldn't buy it. I'd be laughed out of the building. But I know I'm right. And so do you. I know you did it, Sam. I'm not saying you set out deliberately to do Frank harm. But in the end, you crossed the line. I urge you to confess. You'd be doing yourself a favour. But I know you won't. I'm going to keep on searching, Sam. Eventually something will come up. And you'll wish you came forward when I gave you the opportunity."

"I have nothing to hide," Sam said in a rising tone. But Bill was already heading out the door.

Sam stared at the empty doorway through which Bill exited. A great hole had opened up inside him, and Bill had passed through that as well. Sam rushed to the bar and ordered another large vodka. He drank it at the bar in one pull, then put his finger up for a second. It was harder to drink away the fear this time. Bill was a cop. Bill was his friend. Was. And Bill knew. Sam's bluff had paid off. Bill had nothing. And Frank was six feet underground. By the sixth drink, Sam had convinced himself he had nothing to fear.

He spent the remains of the day feeding the slot machines and drinking steadily. By the time he stumbled out into the car park it was a quarter to midnight. He fumbled for his keys as he approached Frank's truck, then stopped. Over the roofs of parked cars he spied a late-model Ford sedan at the far end of the car park. There was a figure behind the wheel, silhouetted in the darkness. Sam stepped back into the shadows and watched the vehicle for a few minutes. There was no movement. Bill, Sam thought to himself. He swore under his breath, then turned and went back inside, then left through the front door and headed home on foot.

\---

One in the morning; Sam fumbling with the keys to the front door. He cursed loudly, too drunk to care, thinking that Olivia had changed the lock. Then he remembered that it was she who left him.

If he needed further proof of the end of his relationship, it came when he tore open a second brown legal envelope that he discovered slipped under the door. It was from a law firm he had never heard of. The gist of the letter was that their client, Olivia Fletcher, was demanding a divorce and would be requiring Sam to vacate, as she would be getting the house. She would also be getting Freddy. That was the gist. Sam dropped the letter on the carpet, pulled out his dick and urinated on it. Olivia chose the carpet. He never liked it.

He decided to avoid the master bedroom. Bad juju in there. He stumbled upstairs to the snorer's quarters. As a precautionary measure against a midnight visit from Frank, he dropped a couple of Valium. He was asleep before he hit the mattress.

## Chapter 13

The morning was nearly over when Sam stirred from his sleep. The sunlight burned his face, blinding him behind his eyelids. It compounded his aching head. He tried rolling onto his stomach, but he had a full bladder erection that was going nowhere in a hurry. The light was killing him.

He rose unsteadily, traipsed to the venetians and twisted them shut. He turned to go back to bed, and that's when he saw him. Sam's eyes were still blinded by the fierce sunlight, and all he could make out was the dark shape of a thick-set man seated in the corner. Sam's spine filled with icy fluid and his hair stood on end. It was Frank, and this time it was no dream.

"You could put someone's eye out with that thing," Frank said, only the voice wasn't Frank's. Sam's eyes adjusted to the darkness, bringing into sharp relief the seated figure. It was worse than Frank's ghost. Vince Young-Wan, Danny Burke's collection agency, sat picking his teeth with a match and leafing through a porn mag. Sam recognized the mag. He'd had it stashed in his underwear drawer. Vince must have gotten bored waiting for him to wake up and had a right looky-loo around the place.

"What are you doing here?" Sam said, pulling the sheet off the bed and covering up his shame. "How did you get in?"

"I'm here to pick up the fifteen thousand." A beat. "And the front door was open."

"The front door was open?"

Vince spat out a tiny sliver of matchstick. "Maybe you want to hear the first answer again."

"I don't have it, Vince. I don't have the fifteen thousand."

Vince gave the match a final suck, then carefully placed it on the arm of the chair.

"Okey-doke," Vince sighed, hauling himself up from the chair, the top of his head scraping the ceiling. Sam took an involuntary step backwards, bumping into the wall. The blood drained from his dick quicker than air from a party balloon.

"Don't hit me!" he said.

"Put some clothes on. We're going for a drive."

"No way! I'm not getting into a car with you!"

Vince opened a drawer and tossed some clothes on the bed.

"Quit bawling and get dressed. The sooner we get this over with the better."

"What's going to happen to me?"

"Danny just wants to talk. He's a businessman, like you. You'll work something out. Now hurry up. I want to grab something to eat on the way."

Vince sat back down and picked up the magazine again. Sam slowly got dressed.

\---

"Where's mine?" Danny complained when he saw Vince chewing on a felafel roll.

"How'd I know you wanted one," Vince said, catching crumbs with a napkin.

Danny sat behind his large oak desk and shook his head. On the desk was scattered various objects of desire: expensive mobiles in chargers, a gold-plated laptop, a stolen police scanner and Angel's bottom.

She was dressed in a miniscule red number and had her legs crossed and her tiny sliver of a skirt hitched up. There was more than a hint of knickers showing. Vince's eyes kept straying to the red apple cotton print which peeked provocatively from between Angel's thighs. She smiled and kept up the act. Sam stood next to Vince, the taste of bile in his mouth.

"Didn't think to ring me and ask?" Danny said to Vince, still with the food. "Where'd you get it from?"

"King Ahiram's."

That only made matters worse. "The King! I'm fucking starving, now."

"You want a bite?" Vince offered, holding out the half eaten roll. A slice of tomato dropped to the floor.

Danny shook his head then got up and walked over to a sideboard. He opened it and removed a foot-long, heavy wooden bracket and placed it on the table. It had two small leather straps. It looked like a medieval wine rack designed to hold only one bottle.

"Sam," Danny began, "remind me of our little arrangement."

Sam's eyes were on the wine rack.

"Danny," he said, "I can get you the money eventually. But right now, I'm skint. You need to be reasonable. I can't come up with fifteen grand in three days. That's impossible."

Danny opened a drawer and pulled out a chrome-plated tyre iron. It was then that Sam understood the significance of the wine rack; it had nothing to do with wine.

"I know you'll come through with the money, Sam. But we had a deal. And I can't expect others to keep up their end of the bargain if I don't. Vince."

Vince carefully placed the half-eaten roll on the desk, wiped his hands on his trousers and took a hold of Sam's arms. Sam struggled vainly against the machine-like grip and felt his bowels turn to water.

"Danny, please..." Vince lifted Sam like a child and carried him over to the wooden rack and forced his right arm into the cradle as Danny tightened the leather straps around it. Sam was weeping with fear.

"It was the right arm, wasn't it?" Danny asked the room.

"Please! I'll get the money tonight!"

"It was the right," Angel piped in, happy at last to contribute. "He said it, I remember."

Sam glared at her, tears in his eyes. "I don't want her watching!" he screamed.

Angel poked her tongue out at Sam. Danny lifted the shiny metal bar and let it gently rest on Sam's forearm. Sam could feel its dull weight and groaned.

"Angel," Danny said, "pour Sam a brandy. A large one. Brandy alright Sam?"

Fucking scotch!" Sam bawled.

"Make it scotch."

Angel hopped off the table and danced over to the liquor cabinet.

"The scotch will dull the edge of the pain. I don't want you to suffer unduly, Sam. After it's done we'll take you to the hospital and get you fixed up. It a few weeks you'll be good as new."

"You're fucking crazy!" Sam cried.

Angel brought over the drink. Sam took it in his other hand and slammed it. He coughed. "Another!"

Danny looked at Angel and shook his head. "It's not good to have too much booze in you when you go into shock. Take a deep breath," Danny said.

"Wait! Danny, stop!" Sam spluttered. "I know something. Something that will make you rich. A secret!"

"What is it?" Danny asked hopefully. "Magic beans?"

Vince chuckled.

Angel looked bored. "You gonna do it?"

"Frank," Sam blurted desperately, "before he died, he told me about a land deal."

The smile cooled on Danny's face. Sam felt the weight on the tyre iron ease slightly.

"What land deal?"

Angel sighed loudly for everyone's benefit. Sam sensed a brief reprieve. He spoke quickly.

"There's a mine going to go ahead. It's about to be approved in parliament. A nickel mine, out past the ranges. There's a packet of private farmland sitting right next door that's going to be zoned residential. It's worthless now, but in a few weeks it'll become prime real estate, worth a fortune. And nobody knows about it."

Vince piped up from the cheap seats. "Sounds like a whole lot of horseshit to me."

"And you know diddly-squat about property, dickhead," Danny said. "So shut your hole."

Vince scowled and went back to his falafel.

"Look it up," Sam went on. "It's on the net, Danny, it's all there. Earth Minerals dot com. Go to their past projects. You'll see a nickel mine was shelved eight years ago. It was pre-approved, ready to go ahead, then dropped because of the GFC. There's nothing on the web site to say it, but two weeks from now it'll be a goer. Frank had a contact in the know. He told me about this farm, the owner's in debt, bankrupt, he needs to sell. He's sitting on a fucking gold mine and he has no idea."

"Why would Frank tell you?"

"He needed someone not connected to the bank to buy it for him, to make it legit. A proxy. He was going to lend me the money, put it through as a business loan." To add further weight, Sam added, "He wanted to buy me off because he was fucking my wife."

Angel giggled.

After a beat, Danny spoke. "And where is this 'packet of worthless farmland'?"

"West of here," Sam said vaguely. He was careful not to spill too much.

"Who's Frank's contact?"

"I don't know." Then after a beat, "You'd have to ask Frank."

Danny stared hard at Sam for a long moment. Sam grew more confident as the scotch warmed his blood.

"I'm not lying. Frank was no fool, you know that. Especially with money. He was betting big on this, Danny. I've never seen him so worked up."

Sam watched as Danny's eyes glazed over, working the numbers, calculating the odds, imagining the payoff. His mouth tightened in a thin, greedy smile, and Sam knew he'd bought the story, and Sam, his reprieve. Danny lifted the tyre iron from his arm and rested it on the table. Sam closed his eyes and felt his sphincter relax. Then an electric jolt of pain as the metal bar snapped his radius bone in two.

\---

Sam lolled about in the rear of Danny's 1977, vintage sunburst Mustang, his head swimming in morphine. Angel sat next to him, doodling tiny skulls and butterflies in felt pen on his newly minted plaster cast. Danny drove. Vince rode shotgun.

"Here's how it'll run," went Danny. "We visit the guy tomorrow, you make the introduction, I'll take it from there."

"You'll frighten him off," Sam said. "I made the connection. He trusts me."

"What's he asking?"

"I offered him two-sixty-five."

"That's too much. I'll offer two hundred, leave him room to go up to two-twenty."

"He won't go for that. Not after what I offered him."

"Sadly," Danny said, "you're no longer in the market. I am. I'm his saviour. You said he was bankrupt. Well, he'll take what he can fucking get. And besides, this is no longer your deal, Sam."

"You got to cut me in on this, Danny. Christ, I handed it to you on a plate!"

"I don't have to do anything. But because I'm a fair and decent human being, I'll waive the fifteen grand you owe me. Plus, you'll get a nice little bonus when it all goes through. Shit, I'll even toss in Angel to help you out until the plaster comes off." He made a wanking motion with his hand.

"Fuck off, Danny" Angel said.

While Vince and Danny yukked it up, Sam buried his face in his hands. He could feel the distant throb in his arm as the morphine began to thin out.

Sam got dropped off outside his home. He heard the echo of the Mustang's souped up V8 disappearing around the block. He went inside, found himself standing in front of the bedroom mirror. His face was drawn, his expression, empty. The purple line of stitches pulled his mouth into a vacant snarl. His broken arm was encased in white plaster, Angel's dopey, child-like doodling all over it.

The dwindling opiate buzz held emotion at bay. For now. In an hour or so he would either be asleep or curled up in a ball of tears on the ground. Or with Frank, perhaps. Anything was up for grabs at that point.

It was still light outside. The remaining day held nothing for him but painful thoughts. He took a bottle and some Mogadon to bed with him. Scotch was his only friend now. Before, there was Bill at least. Not anymore. He'd betrayed Bill and lost his friendship forever. His wife hated him and took his son, the only thing of value in his life. And he shared his sleep with the ghost of the man he murdered. Right now, Sam felt lonelier than a turd in a swimming pool. He left the light on and went to sleep. The throbbing pain in his arm woke him up two hours later.

## Chapter 14

Bill lifted himself from the water after struggling to the end of his sixth lap. His head was dizzy. He sat on the concrete bench, towelled his face and let the early morning sunshine do the rest. Since he met Karen, he'd been getting a workout in the bedroom at least twice a day. Far from making him tired, he felt energized. He had begun exercising and even watching what he ate. It felt good to care again.

A group of excited schoolkids in bathers shuffled towards the lanes, hugging their bodies and shivering against the morning cold. Bill picked up his bag and headed for the change rooms. Above him, a swag of Kookaburras perched in the branches of a ghost gum erupted in a volley of machine gun laughter. He looked up. One of them had killed a snake and it dangled from its beak. The sight of it had stirred up the mob. The snake reminded Bill of something he saw one time on the news; a captured US pilot in the Iraq War, strung up on a bridge, the angry crowd going wild. It made him think of Sam. And of how easily men can become accustomed to murder and atrocity. Bill felt like he had lost a brother to the war.

He stepped into the shower and rinsed off the chlorine. His thoughts returned to brighter things. Of Friday night, and Karen, whose laughter was as raucous as the kookaburras and whose body was as warm and inviting as home cooking. He'd be with her tonight. And with any luck, the night after that. Bill never planned too far ahead, but something made him feel that that was about to change.

\---

The Mustang's low profile fats caned the bitumen. Sam sat glumly in the passenger seat while Danny drove. Grinderman's 'No Pussy Blues' ripped through the twin fifteen-inch speakers mounted in the rear rendering conversation obsolete. In the back seat, Angel chewed gum and sucked coca cola and let the wind blow in her face. Through the side windows, the dust bowl flew endlessly by. Sam watched the passing spinifex and the decayed old farmhouses and abandoned service stations through a haze of codeine. He'd been wolfing Mogadons like lollies.

Danny had brought a pile of money with him for a deposit to lay on the old man. Not a cheque, like any normal person would. This was Danny Burke. He knew the deep underlying nature of greed. He used it, prised it from others. A fad wad of bills said something. It was tangible. Like land. Cutler's land. He brought Angel along for added inducement. She wore a low-cut top and her soft, pink bosom rose from it invitingly like warm baked bread. Danny's methods may have been crude, but they were proven. He had built his fortune with them.

They turned left off the highway, crawled up the dirt track a hundred yards or so, then stopped at Cutler's gate. The old man wasn't anywhere to be seen.

"Get the gate," Danny ordered.

Sam sat motionless and stared ahead. He wasn't going to be the ship's cat on this crew. Angel stared out the window, then glanced forward when nothing happened. She caught Danny's look in the rear view.

"Yes you, braindead. Get the fucking gate!"

Sam smiled. Angel huffed and got out, tramped to the gate and fiddled with the tie of fencing wire looped around the gatepost. The gate swung inwards with a high-pitched squeak. The sound brought a salvo of half-hearted barking from round back of the house. Danny crept through the gate, his tyres rippling over a half-buried cattle grid. The engine poppled menacingly. Angel followed on foot, swishing flies from her face.

The Mustang pulled to a stop facing the front door. Danny got out. Sam followed. Chopper came waddling around the side of the house, carrying a stick in his mouth and muttering. He dropped the stick at Danny's feet, then quickly picked it up again and chewed it some more, then dropped it again, unable to make up his mind. Danny didn't appreciate indecisiveness. He kicked the stick away with disgust.

The screen door swung open with a thunk. Out limped Cutler, a wary look on his face.

"Who are you?" he said. "What are you doing here?"

Sam took his cue. "Hey, Lee," he said, stepping forward.

Cutler swung his face Sam's way, his eyes narrowing. Sam suddenly remembered he'd had a bad moustache and a grease-back when Cutler last saw him. That was only a couple of days ago; now he was clean-shaven and sporting a cast.

"Lee," he went on, "it's Ellis Brown. I met you two days ago. I made you an offer on your place. You remember?"

Cutler took a moment for it to sink in. He seemed to make the connection, though his frown refused to lift. He looked back at Danny with suspicion, and then caught sight of Angel for the first time. His eyes fixed on her for a few beats, awakening a feeling in him that had been dormant for some time. Danny smiled.

"Danny Burke," he said, stepping forward and extending his hand. Cutler remained fixed on the stoop. He seemed to miss the invitation, momentarily stuck on Angel. He snapped out of it.

"What do you want?" he stated gruffly. He'd summed up Danny in one glance. Cutler had a nose for trouble and right now it was itching.

"My friend Sam here tells me you might be interested in selling up?"

Sam dropped his eyes to the ground. He couldn't meet the old guy's look.

"What business is it of yours?"

Danny clicked his fingers, summoning Angel. She was focussing on her nails and missed her cue.

"Angel Honey?" Danny said through a forced smile, his eyes fixed on Cutler. Angel snapped to it. She sashayed up to Danny and put her arm around him. Cutler's bottom lip drooped a little lower as his gaze fell to her ample bosom. She was ripe and milky and fecund, bursting from her tiny dress like cotton from a bud. Cutler summoned a polite smile and swallowed.

"Miss," he said.

"This is my wife, Angel, Mr Cutler," Danny said. "She and I are looking to buy a little piece of heaven out this way. Sam, here, told us about your place."

Cutler turned to Sam, suddenly wary again.

"I thought you were interested?" he said.

"Thing of it is, Lee, my circumstances changed. And I knew Danny here was looking for something similar, so I told him about it. I hope you don't mind."

Cutler began to sense a ruse. He could smell a rat in the barn from a hundred paces. He scratched his stubbled chin and scowled. The smile on Danny's face was beginning to ache.

Angel, who had the attention span of a gnat, was fast growing bored. She saw an opportunity to kill a few minutes and took it.

"Excuse me, Mister," she began. Danny threw her an irritated glance. She was going off script. Improvising.

"Do you have a bathroom I might use?" she said sweetly, subtly crossing her legs for effect.

"Sure thing, Miss," said Cutler. "There's an outhouse around the back."

"A what?" said Angel.

"Just follow your nose," Danny put in, annoyed. It was an attempt to admonish Angel, but came out insulting Cutler. Luckily Cutler missed it.

Angel walked past Danny and threw him a look of defiance. Danny would have smacked her upside the head, but suspected it might be counter-productive. Old man Cutler watched and admired Angel as she disappeared behind the house.

"So, old man," Danny continued, "about the property? Can we talk?"

Cutler turned back to Danny, his smile evaporating faster than spit on a griddle.

"I don't know you from a bar of soap, mister. What makes you think I want to sell?"

Danny glanced at Sam with growing irritation.

"Well," Danny began with forced confidence, "for starters, I'm offering you the princely sum of two-hundred thousand dollars."

"Bah. Your friend here offered me two hundred and sixty-five." There was nothing wrong with the old guy's memory.

Danny frowned. "My friend here hasn't got ten cents to rub together," he said, his voice frosting over, "so how about we leave him the fuck out of it."

Sam looked at Danny. What the hell was he doing?

Danny pulled a bound wad of cash from his inside pocket and drew his thumb across it so it flapped musically. "There's five thousand cash deposit right here." He tossed it lazily onto the dust between them.

Cutler's eyes fell on the money and he licked his lips. He spoke with surprising calm. "Alright mister," he began, after a pause. "I'll sell you my property..."

A smile crept across Danny's face. Lay down mazaire.

"...for five hundred thousand."

The smile on Danny's face cracked like cheap porcelain and his cheeks burned red. He was led to believe this was a done deal. The old cunt was supposed to be on his deathbed. Wasn't his liver shot or something? He looked like he was ready to do a line dance all over Danny's face, the smug bastard. Danny glared at Sam who opened his mouth but said nothing. Sam wanted to say, "You fucked it up, Danny, you, you stupid berk!" but his useless right arm throbbed and he valued his left.

Chopper grunted with pleasure as he rubbed his back against the underside of a step. Cutler just smiled. He was beginning to enjoy himself.

Angel squatted behind the woodpile and pissed, her eyes peeled for snakes and spiders. She had poked her nose in the outhouse and decided it was not for her. Ditto the great outdoors, period. She stood and pulled up her knickers, then adjusted her i-pod, turning it up. She hummed to herself as she listened to the music and walked along a fallen fence post.

The wind blew through the dry grass, sending a shiver across the land. Angel spotted a lone horse nearby, standing in an adjacent paddock, all rag and bone and yellow teeth. It rested its upper jaw on an ironbark fence post, then bit down hard, arching its neck and opening up its windpipe, sucking in great gutfuls of air. The beast was bloated and wasted, eyes dead, its withered hide stretched taut across its ribs and hips. The horse made a hollow, belching sound as it drew the toxic wind into its belly. The fence post was splintered at the top and days' worth of dried dung was scattered all around it. The wretched animal stared at Angel with no sense of recognition, its throat opening and sucking with repetitive regularity. Angel stared into its dead eyes and shuddered.

Then suddenly, the horse jerked wildly, as if pulled back by an invisible rope. It bucked once and trotted off in the other direction. At the same time, a flock of white cockatoos exploded from the grass and scattered into the sky. A roar echoed across the plain. But Angel, her ears plugged into Lady Gaga, heard nothing.

## Chapter 15

Sam had recent first-hand experience of how quickly things get out of hand once a wrong turn is taken. Frank Hutchins, case in point. If Sam, on that fateful day a week ago, had ignored the decision to pull over and let Frank die, he wouldn't have wound up committing murder. And he certainly wouldn't be standing here right now, looking down at two slain men, whose guts and brains and blood were seeping into the thirsty ground.

Cutler lay on his back, his head resting on a step, a cricket ball-sized crater above his left eye. On the stoop behind him, Chopper sniffed at a piece of his skull and fretted. Over by the rear of the Mustang, Danny Burke lay spread-eagled, his chest hanging open.

Here's how it played out...

Danny had recovered quickly after Cutler's counter-offer.

"Five hundred is a joke, old man, and you know it. Now, I'm willing to go up to two-twenty–"

"Five hundred."

"What do you think you're–"

"It's five hundred, or you can fuck off right now."

"Now Lee," Sam began, sensing a bad end.

Danny turned to Sam, his teeth bared. "You brought me all the way out here to be insulted by this geriatric cunt?"

Cutler interjected. "Two offers in as many days. Something tells me you two know something I don't. That bank manager was sniffing around too, asking questions. I wasn't born yesterday, arsehole. It's five hundred or you can go suck my dick!"

Danny lunged at Cutler. Sam got in front of him, pushing him back. Cutler took a step back and raised his fists in the Queensberry Rules fashion, ready for a stoush. Chopper ran round in circles and barked with excitement.

"Danny, don't," Sam pleaded, "We can still work something out." He turned to Cutler. "Lee, be reasonable."

"You can fuck off too," spat the old man, his voice shaking. "I'm a veteran, you know. Now get off my land!"

"You talk tough for an old bastard," said Danny. "How would you like me to knock the last of your teeth out?"

Cutler straightened and walked quickly back inside. The screen door swung shut behind him. "Yeah, well fuck you too!" Danny swung on Sam.

"You'll fucking regret this, cunt," he snarled, stabbing his finger into Sam's breastbone.

"It wasn't my fault," Sam said. "You went in too hard. I told you he wouldn't go for it. You should have let me–"

The screen door swung open again with a bang and out stepped Cutler, brandishing a vintage twin barrelled shotgun. Sam and Danny turned to face him.

"What is this?" Danny laughed. "The Beverly Hillbillies?"

"Get the hell off my property!"

"'Geet the hail orfa mah prarpity'," hee-hawed Danny, his blood well and truly up.

"Steady, Lee. Take it easy. We're going."

"You want a dick swinging contest, huh?" Danny said, as he marched over to the rear of the Mustang and popped the trunk. He reached in and lifted out a gold plated Desert Eagle .50 calibre. Danny snapped the chamber loudly, aiming at the sky. "Ho-o, that's what I'm talking about."

Sam was yelling, "Danny! What the fuck!"

With his rod in his hands, Danny suddenly went all bad-asss nigga, yo-yo-in' and hip-hoppin' and holding his gun sideways, gangsta-fashion.

"What are you gonna do with that, Grandpa? Pepper some rats?"

If Cutler was alarmed, he didn't show it. "I'm giving you ten seconds to get off my place," he said in a low voice. He primed one of the hammers with a click.

Danny waved the gun in Cutler's direction. He said to Sam, "I didn't come all this way in this stinking heat to this stinking latrine to be insulted by this old crow with his piss-stained trousers and his bad fucking manners, and–"

Cutler let off one of the barrels. A warning shot. The boom shook the walls and tore out a corner of an eave. Pop! Pop! Danny's fingers clenched in reaction to the sound, squeezing off two rounds before he even realised what had happened. The first slug smacked into an upright holding up the eave. The second hit Cutler just above his right eye, snapping his head back like a cracked whip.

Sam, his ears ringing, looked over at Cutler. The old man was lying on his back; his head– what was left of it– arched back, mouth agape, resting on the step like he was sleeping. Which he was; the big sleep. His shotgun lay on the ground a couple of feet from his hand. Chopper sniffed and circled him, his tail between his legs, cowed and confused. A lump of Cutler's brain detached from the screen door behind him and fell to the veranda with a sickening plop.

Danny went white. "Oh God," he whispered. "What have I done?"

"Danny," Sam said quietly, "You got to put down the gun, now."

"What have I done?" he repeated, glaring in dismay at the weapon in his hand.

"Danny?"

Danny began pacing, getting his head back together, muttering to himself, figuring it out. The answer hit him squarely and with certainty, and when he turned and looked at Sam, Sam knew it too.

"Danny, please," Sam begged him.

Danny straightened up and levelled his gun at Sam. Then he looked around with fierce eyes, suddenly remembering Angel. Would he have to do her too, he wondered? No witnesses. He looked back down at Sam, who had involuntarily fallen to his knees, in supplication or fear, or perhaps both.

"I won't tell anyone," Sam said, "I promise."

"You got that right." Danny aimed the gun at Sam and shielding his face from blowback with his other hand, began to squeeze the trigger.

"I murdered Frank!" Sam yelled.

The gun went off. Sam caught a flash bright white light and a thump of pressure slamming against the side of his head. Blackness. He vaguely felt the crunch of earth slamming against his head and the warm sensation of fluid running down his face into his unseeing eyes and mouth. He felt nothing. He was floating, dead. He waited for the remnants of his consciousness to dissipate like smoke.

Seconds passed. Sam became aware of the sensation of blood trickling down his throat and the blackness began to give way to the soft blood hue of daylight from behind closed eyelids. Pain and feeling crept back into his body and his hearing returned with a deafening ring. Then came a sharp jab to the ribs which he felt clear enough. It was the metal tip of Danny's snakeskin boot giving him a nudge.

"Get up," he heard through the ringing.

Sam opened his eyes, blinking through the blood and saw Danny standing over him, his gold-plated pistol resting by his side, shoulders at ease, face relaxed. He had arrived at an agreement with his conscience. Didn't take him long.

Sam sat up, his ears still ringing. He put a hand to his right ear and could feel something between his fingers that was wet and gristly. He realized it was part of his ear. He didn't feel any pain. Just an overwhelming relief that he was alive.

"What do you mean, you murdered Frank," Danny said.

Sam spoke quickly. No time for embellishment.

"He was bitten by a snake. Dying. I stopped the car so that he would die, so there was no chance of him getting to a hospital. Then he started to pull through. He knew what I'd tried to do. He was going to ruin me. So I had to kill him. I smothered him. He did this to me," pointing to his cheek, "trying to save himself. But I killed him. With my own hands. And nobody knows that. Except you."

Danny stared at Sam for some time. He scratched his face with the barrel of the gun and smiled.

"I'm like you, Danny," Sam continued. "Don't you see? You don't want to kill me, leave another body for the cops to find. Eventually they'll figure it out. You need me to help you. Why would I tell anyone, after what I just told you."

"You killed Frank. So what?"

"I'll do anything you want. I'll sign over my shop, leave town, anything." A sudden gust of wind blew up the dust. It swirled and eddied around Cutler's body.

"Danny?" Sam said, not yet off the hook. Danny looked to the horizon, chewed his lip and considered.

"Stand up." Danny he said finally, motioning with his gun. Sam got up. Danny nudged Cutler's leg with his boot. "Drag him inside."

"What are you going to do?"

"Clean house."

Danny slipped the gun down the back of his pants. He reached down and picked up the wad of cash and stuffed it back in his shirt, then moved around to the rear of the mustang. He reached in the trunk and grabbed a tin of petrol.

"We're gonna burn this dump to the ground, with the old guy in it," Danny said.

He slammed the lid shut and stepped out and saw Sam holding Cutler's shotgun aimed directly at his chest.

"What do you think you're–"

The double-aught buckshot ripped through Danny's chest, taking his lungs, heart and soul with it. He flew backwards and hit the dust, blood shooting up from his mouth. Five grand in lead-shredded bills flew around him and up into the wind.

A hundred yards away, Angel heard a crack of thunder. The song on her i-pod had just finished. She looked up to a clear blue sky and wondered where it had come from.

"Danny?" She called out. There was no answer. She pulled out her earphones and walked back towards the house. As she rounded the corner she collided with Sam. She yelped. Sam was white with shock, the side of his face covered with blood. Part of his ear dangled in the breeze.

"Angel," Sam said in a panicked voice, laying it on thick. "Danny's dead. We got to get out of here."

Angel stepped back, frightened.

"What are you talking about? What's happened?"

"The old man shot Danny. They shot each other. They're both dead." The news spread in lines across her face. She tried to get around Sam, but he stopped her.

"Let me go!" She punched his arms and struggled free, then ran around to the front of the house.

Angel pulled up short, surveying the carnage before her. She saw Cutler first. He had the shotgun lying across his chest, his right hand resting on the trigger mechanism. She panned right: Bang! There was Danny, a rag doll, its stuffing ripped out by a dog. Zombie apocalypse. Angel began to convulse, her body shaking in deep seismic waves emanating from her primal core. She heaved a couple of times, then out came a guttural sob. The sob soon developed into an hysterical scream. There was no sense of loss; it was fear, pure and visceral, undistilled.

Sam came up to her and tried to hold her. She punched and kicked at him.

"Angel, we've got to get out of here. We've got to run."

"Get your hands off of me!" she railed.

"He's dead, Angel," Sam said, "No one knows we were here, except Vince. We need to leave the car here and get out while we can. Angel. Angel!" Still she struggled. Sam slapped her face. He slapped her again. She looked at him through her mascara-black tears, still hysterical and screamed, "Quit slapping me, you jerk!"

"Calm down!" Sam yelled. "Calm the fuck down."

Finally she stopped struggling, and fell to the ground on her arse and sobbed quietly for a minute. Sam watched the horizon keenly. She'd ease off in a minute, then they could get going.

Angel looked up at him. "What happened?"

"The old man went loopy. Started threatening us with a shotgun. Danny got his gun out and they had a standoff. Both went off at the same time. It was crazy."

Angel said nothing for a few moments. She seemed to buy it. Then she looked up at Sam.

"What happened to your ear?" she asked.

"I got winged by the old man's buckshot."

"It looks painful. Are you okay?" she asked, between sniffs. She seemed to have gotten over the worst.

"Not really. I'm going to have to explain how come I'm missing half an ear."

Angel laughed a little. She was buzzing with a brain chemical overload. She was still on the edge. She looked across at Danny and moaned.

"Oh god," she said, her voice deepening. She was being consumed by another wave.

"Don't look at him," Sam told her. "Angel, don't look at him. Look at me. Look at me!" She looked at Sam. "We're going to have to leave here, on foot." She looked confused. "We have to leave Danny's car here, make it look like he came here on his own. It'll look like they shot each other."

"Isn't that what happened?" she asked.

"Yes, yes, of course, but if we were here, then we'd be called in as witnesses. Don't you see? They'll ask what we were doing here. You don't want to be brought into this. You and I, we were never here, okay?" She was nodding her head slowly. "We have to leave on foot. We can cut through the bush over there. It's about a fifteen-mile walk to the highway. From there we can hitch a ride."

"What about your ear? Won't people ask questions?"

"I'll tie a tee-shirt or something around my head. Say it's for keeping off the sun."

"That's smart," she said, feeling a little better.

"Okay, then. Let's get going. Grab anything that's yours from the car."

Sam filled up a plastic water bottle from the bore tap. The water was discoloured and a bit briny, but it would see them through the trek if they were sparing.

Angel grabbed her handbag. She pulled a mars bar from it and showed it to Sam. "Least we won't starve," she said. Sam gave her an encouraging smile.

They left the dead behind them and walked out the gate towards the vast plain. They crossed over the track, crawled under the barbed wire fence and into the paddock, marching through the crackling dry grass and spinifex.

It was hot, and Sam was mindful of snakes. Ahead of them, about a mile away, lay a line of trees. The wild bushland. There, the grass would thin out and they would be shaded from the sun by trees. They would be less likely to chance upon a snake. And they would be hidden from the rest of the world, which was more to the point, as Sam knew that only one of them would be emerging from the trees on the other side.

## Chapter 16

"Sarge?"

Sarah Ellis came into focus standing in front of his desk. Bill rubbed his eyes.

"What is it?"

She pointed down at a takeaway macchiato which magically appeared before him. It felt like he'd only given her his order a few seconds earlier.

"Right. Thanks," he said.

Sarah looked at him and gave a little frown. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm good. Thanks for the coffee."

She left. Bill lifted the lid off the cup and watched the steam drift upwards. His encounter with Sam had rocked him, calling into question his values and his sense of duty. Frank's death was no great loss. The man was corrupt in soul and flesh and the town would not suffer his absence. His death was preceded by an accident from which there was no certainty he would even have survived. Perhaps Sam did what any man would do when his family is in the sights of an opportunistic predator. But that didn't excuse murder. Bill had no piece left to move. He could maintain pressure on Sam, drive him to confess, but that was unlikely. Nor did he have anyone to turn to for help. He was stuck with no evidence for a fanciful story that he knew in his gut to be right. To anyone who'd listen, it would have to be a joke, right?

He drank some coffee and tried again to put it out of his mind. He shifted a pile of papers and discovered Frank Hutchins's phone. He had meant to give it to Alice at the funeral. He studied it for a moment. It would most likely contain texts, and call records relating to his affair with Olivia. That was hardly groundbreaking news. The likelihood was that the affair was already common knowledge around town. More so, now that Frank was dead.

He tried switching it on but the battery was flat. He grabbed a charger from his drawer and plugged it in and waited for it to start. It asked for a four-digit access code. He typed 0000. No soap. He then tried Frank's year of birth followed by his postcode, before the phone disabled itself. Bill spun it in his fingers. It could be hacked by forensics in the city, but he had no warrant, and asking for one would put him in an awkward position. Even if he knew someone that could do it for him illegally, it could mean his job. And for what? What did he expect to find? He put the phone in his pocket, swiped his hat and keys from on top of the filing cabinet and left.

"Be back in half an hour," he said to Ellis on the way out.

Fifteen minutes later, Bill rang the bell at 17 Buena Vista. After a minute, Alice answered. She was doing up the top clip on a sheer black dress; it was not of the mourning variety. Her hair was pinned back, pearls delicately slung around her slender, perfumed neck.

"Hi Bill," she said.

"Alice. You look nice."

"I'm off to the races with some friends. They're taking me to lunch. It's not too soon, is it?"

"A lady's got to eat," Bill said.

Alice smiled. "What can I do for you, Bill?"

"You haven't seen Sam lately, have you?"

"No. Not since the funeral. Why?"

"I'm just trying to track him down."

"What makes you think he'd be here," she asked pointedly.

"Just thought I'd ask." He pulled out Frank's mobile phone. "This belongs to Frank. Sorry I didn't get it back sooner."

Alice stared at it as if it contained the seeds of some dark destruction.

"You okay?"

"Yes, I'm okay." She took the phone and placed it on the side table in the hall. "Thanks."

"If you see Sam, get him to call me?"

"Sure."

Bill saw her eyes drop to the phone as the door closed on her. He knew she would torture herself playing back the messages and reading the texts that told the story of his love for another. He adjusted his hat and headed back to the car.

He'd gotten about forty yards down the road when he looked in the rear view mirror and saw Alice come running into the street waving her arms madly. Bill skidded to a halt. Alice came running up to his window. Her face was drained of colour and she was trembling.

They stood by the kitchen table. Alice swiped open Frank's phone. A microphone icon appeared. A voice recording application.

"This was open when I unlocked his phone," she explained in a shaky voice. Bill examined it closely. There was a list of recorded voice messages, the last one made at 5:24 pm, on the evening Frank died. Bill looked up at Alice. She was pale and shaken; her face resembled that of a violated child. Bill pressed play.

At first there was only laboured breathing. Then after a few seconds, a voice could be heard, little more than a hoarse whisper, broken sentences, delivered in short bursts.

"Alice... I'm sorry, Alice... forgive me... I don't deserve to die... like this..." Frank's voice. Bill looked at Alice. She was biting her hand. After some silence, Frank's voice continued. "He's trying to kill me... Sam Fletcher... he's stopped the car... walked off... left me to die... God help me, please..." A clunking sound followed. Frank's breathing and straining could be heard, more distant this time. The phone must have dropped to the floor.

Tears streaked Alice's cheeks. Bill looked back down at the phone. There was still fifteen minutes of the recording to go. Bill placed the phone on the kitchen table and sat down. Alice remained standing. After about ten more minutes of compelling silence, Frank's breathing had faded to nothing. There was now just silence. A couple of minutes after that came a faint rustling sound. The ambience on the recording grew thick; the presence of another could be felt. The hair on Bill's neck stood on end.

Bill was barely breathing, his senses focused on the tiny phone speaker. A metallic click, followed by the sound of a car door opening. Breathing again, sparse, shallow... somebody else's. There was silence again for about thirty seconds, even the breathing had stopped. Then a loud creak of vinyl and seat springs. Someone settling slowly back into their seat. Bill could picture it all. Then came a voice.

"I'm sorry, Frank." Sam's delivery was cold, flat, devoid of emotion. "But you would have died anyway." The tone of Sam's voice was as shocking as the revelation itself. It felt calculated.

A few beats later and the recording timed out. Bill was stunned. He stared at the phone on the table with awful reverence; it contained the soul of a dead man. And it was the one thing Sam had missed. And the thing that would condemn him. Bill looked up at Alice. She was in shock.

"Alice, I'm sorry," was all Bill could say.

"I let him inside me," she said softly. "The day after he murdered Frank, I let him touch me."

Tell it to a Priest, Bill thought. He took out his phone and dialled.

"Tom. I need you to expedite a warrant for the arrest of Sam Fletcher of 11 Colston Avenue, The Glen. The charge is murder. Alert Homicide, tell 'em I'm on my way back, be there in twenty minutes." He rang off.

He left Alice seated at the kitchen table. Her make-up was ruined, not to mention her lunch. He called Karen and told her she'd be eating alone that night.

The Homicide division were appraised of the events and played the voice message on Frank's phone. The Frank Hutchins file was re-opened and a warrant issued for the arrest of Sam Fletcher. Accidental death was promoted to negligent homicide.

Bill called Sam's place. No answer. Likewise, his mobile went straight to message bank. Tex Dean picked up at Sam's Pizza and Pasta, said he hadn't seen Sam and would get him to call. Olivia took Bill's call, told him she hadn't seen Sam, nor spoken to him since the funeral. She wanted to know what it was about. Her manner suggested she had no idea what had gone down. She'd find out soon enough. Bill hung up. He began to get edgy.

Bill and Tom took a drive over to Sam's house. On the way Bill spotted Frank's Land Cruiser in the Bullhorn Tavern car park, where it was left the night before. It was locked. He went inside, asked around, but Sam had not been seen since the previous night. They continued on to Colston Avenue.

Bill rapped on the door.

"Sam? Open up, it's Bill." Nothing. He went round the back. Tom covered the front door in case Sam was inside, planning a runner. His hand rested on his gun.

Bill found an opened window. He looked in to an empty kitchen.

"Sam, you in there?" he yelled. No sound, no vibration. Bill hoisted himself up, squirmed his way through and spilled onto the floor.

He took a quick look around, then opened the front door and let Riley in. They searched the place, room by room.

They entered the master bedroom. Next to the bed was a pack of high-strength prescription codeine. Bill checked the label. They came from the hospital dispensary the day before. He got out his phone and dialled Ward Stein.

"Ward, it's Bill Hepburn. Listen, do me a favour, will you. Check with the registrar. Sam Fletcher was admitted yesterday. I need to know what for."

A few minutes later Ward called him back and told him that Sam had suffered a compound fracture of the radius.

"Caused by what?"

"Apparently he fell tree-lopping."

"Right," Bill said. "You saw the doctor's report yourself?"

"No."

"Do it."

"What's going on?"

"Sam Fletcher didn't fall out of a tree. I want to know what happened to him. He might be in trouble."

"What kind of trouble?"

"He's wanted for the murder of Frank Hutchins."

A beat. "I'll get back to you," Stein said. Bill hung up.

Tom picked up the skin magazine from the wicker chair, flicked through it.

"What's that?" Bill said.

Tom checked the title.

"Not that. Put the magazine down."

Bill stepped over and lifted something from the arm of the chair and examined it. It was a chewed matchstick. He removed a baggie from his pocket and slipped the match inside.

"What is it?" enquired Tom.

Bill slipped the bag in his pocket. "I have a feeling Sam's in deep over something more than just Frank's death."

"Like what?"

"I don't know. But I think he had a visitor."

They scoured the rest of the house. The answering machine was next to the phone. Bill pressed play. The first two messages were from Sam's work. Stuff about orders and rosters. Then a couple from Bill himself. He hit the fast-forward button. Next came Bud Logan, giving Sam the old heave-ho on his loan application. Bill's brow furrowed in thought. Sam was trying to borrow money and got turned down. Money for what?

Bill's phone buzzed. It was Stein.

"What have you got?" Bill said.

"The cleanness of the break suggests trauma from a blunt, heavy object. Isolated. A single hit. Bruising around the break runs in a straight line perpendicular to the bone itself. Falling from a tree would suggest further damage. Bruising to the body, scratches... If he used his arm to break a fall, the bone would have snapped differently. This was a clean break from a direct impact."

"From what?"

"Judging by the party that he came in with, I'd say a lead pipe."

"Let me guess. A seven foot Samoan with tattoos on his face."

"Friend of yours?"

"We've rubbed noses. Anyone else?"

"Yeah. A cheap-looking tart wearing little else but make-up, according to the nurse. Your man was in shock. Lurch did all the talking."

Vince Young-Wan, Danny Burke's aide-de-camp. That explained the chewed match. Bill had no idea who the girl was, but the description matched Danny's taste in women. He remembered seeing Danny and Vince talking to Sam at Frank's funeral.

"Pull out your file on Frank Hutchins," Bill told Stein. "Have another look at it. Check the photos. That bite to the neck. I think it took place after the snake was dead."

"You serious?"

"That's what I'm asking you to confirm. Write me up a new report, detailed. Then do the same on the arm break."

Bill rang off. Tom Riley emerged from the lounge room. He was holding a small piece of paper.

"Found this tucked under a glass next to a half-empty bottle of J&B and an ashtray filled with cigarette butts and broken dreams," he said.

Bill studied the piece of paper. It consisted of one word, 'Friday'– today– and a scrawled telephone number. It was a western districts number. Bill dialled. It rang out. Then he phoned the station and got Sarah on the second ring.

"Run this through the reverse phone book," he said, and read out the number. She asked him to hold. Riley inspected the contents of the refrigerator. He opened a plastic container of sliced ham, sniffed it, put it back. Sarah was back on the line in a just under a minute. The number belonged to one Leland John Cutler.

## Chapter 17

Angel limped along in her imitation designer shoes, her shoulders slumped. Sam was a few paces ahead. He adjusted the rag tied around his head and walked slowly, though his heart was racing. He was putting off the inevitable. He didn't want to kill Angel. She didn't deserve to die, but he couldn't trust her to not finger him. She was no Rhodes scholar. Any half-decent lawyer could twist her like a gumby. As far as Sam was concerned, he was never at Cutler's place to begin with. And Angel was the only one who could say otherwise. Vince was kosher. He wouldn't say a thing. Partly because he wasn't there and partly because he was old school and would sooner stick pins in his eyes than rat to the cops.

"Poor Danny," Angel said. "He's just laying back there in the sun."

"He's not feeling any pain."

"How do you know? Who knows what it feels like after you're dead."

You'll know soon enough, Sam thought. He was growing irritated by the sound of her voice.

Angel went on: "I mean, nobody knows for sure. Except those guys in that movie."

"What movie?"

"You know, the movie where they make themselves die and then come back, so they can see what's on the other side."

Chatting was keeping her sane. Unfortunately for Sam, it was also keeping her alive. The more she jawed, the harder it was for him to think of a way to kill her. He tried to stop thinking of her as someone's daughter who got hooked up with a lowlife and gave it all away for free.

Sam remembered the movie. "Flatliners," he said. Shit. What was the matter with him?

"Do you think there's an afterlife?" she asked hopefully.

"For Danny? Not likely."

"That's not a nice thing to say. You shouldn't speak ill of the dead."

Jesus.

They walked on in silence for a while.

"I'm thirsty," she said, pulling up. Sam stopped and turned around. Angel looked about fifteen. Sam handed her the water bottle and she guzzled from it, not stopping for breath.

"Not too much," he said, "You'll get a stitch."

"What's that?" she gasped, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and handing back the bottle.

"A pain in your stomach."

"I'm hungry too. You want some chocolate?" She removed a Mars bar from her bag. It had gone all soft.

"No, thanks," said Sam.

She tore open the end and sucked out the melted chocolate, massaging the bag and groaning with pleasure. It was innocent and sweet the way she did it, but the reality was she was Danny's girl and worked as a hundred-dollar-a-pop lap dancer. She could just as well be giving someone head, the way she went at it. That was the way Sam had to think; draw her away from the image in his head of an innocent young girl out of her depth. Angel was wily enough. She knew what she was getting herself into hanging with Danny. She certainly had no qualms when it came to Sam getting his arm broken. Angel was no angel; she was a threat. And she had to go. She stopped when the bar was half eaten, then folded the wrapper carefully over the rest and put it back in her purse. Her lips were brown and shiny with melted chocolate.

"Tastes like a deep fried Mars Bar I had in Bondi one time," she said with a smile. "The best thing ever. You never had one?"

"No," said Sam, wishing she'd shut up, though he couldn't help thinking it wasn't such a bad idea. He might even try it in his restaurant... Snap out of it, dickhead! he thought to himself. Stay on task. He shook the thought away.

"Come on," he said, "let's keep moving. The sun's heading in that direction," he pointed to the horizon, "which means we'll hit the highway soon."

Angel followed him through the dappled light, licking the chocolate from her lips. They walked for about thirty minutes in silence. Then Angel had to pee.

"Wait for me," she said. Sam sat down on a log while Angel walked off into the scrub. Sam watched her slowly vanish amongst the trees. He didn't like seeing her disappear. So he followed. At one point he lost sight of her completely. He began to panic. She's run off, he thought. She's worked out that he killed Danny. She's going to spill to the cops and he'll go down. He should have done her from the get go, killed her and left her with Danny. Side by side, clean and simple. Let a dead man take the rap.

Then he saw the top of her head. She was squatting by a tree, relieving herself. Relief washed over Sam. But with the relief came a certainty. The time had come to act. The opportunity was perfect. All he had to do was sneak up behind her and it would be over in a flash. She wouldn't feel anything. It would be a quick and peaceful way to go.

He reached down and picked up a rock, then slowly made his way towards her, being careful not to step on dry leaves or sticks. Angel was humming a tune to herself. She adjusted her feet to avoid the spreading puddle beneath her; she'd been holding it in for some time. Sam lifted the rock high above his head. Then something made Angel turn around. A sense, perhaps.

She jumped backwards and screamed, scuttling away through the piss and the dust with her knickers caught round her ankles. Sam stopped short.

"No, p-please," she cried, "Don't kill me. Don't! I'll do anything. Please!"

Sam stopped. He saw the face of a frightened girl and his head swam. It was as if he were pulling out of someone else's dream. A killer's fantasy. This was not him, this was possession.

Angel clutched at her knickers and drew them up, pleading, "I'll do anything you want, I promise. You want to fuck me? I'll let you fuck me any way you like."

"No..."

"You can come in my mouth."

"Stop," Sam said. He felt sick. "Please, I don't want you to say that. I'm sorry!"

"Just let me live, please!"

Sam suddenly saw an out. A light at the end of the tunnel. He could trust her. She didn't know anything. Why would she talk? They were bound together in this. Killing Danny; that was self-defence. So was Frank. Sam was no murderer. Tears sprang to his eyes. It was a revelation of convenience.

"Forgive me," he said, dropping the rock.

Angel stared at him, eyes wide as dinner plates, then burst into tears.

"I'm so sorry," said Sam. "I was scared. I wasn't thinking." He wanted to reach out to her, but knew that it wouldn't be right. He had moments earlier stood poised to crack open her skull with a rock.

"You're not going to kill me?" she said.

"I won't hurt you. I promise."

Angel let go a great heaving sigh. She collected herself. Her nose was running. She reached into her handbag for a tissue.

"You really scared me," she said through the sniffles.

"I lost my head," Sam said. "I was freaked out at what happened to Danny. When that old man shot him, I..."

Sam expected to see a tissue come out of Angel's handbag. It took him a half-second to realise it wasn't a tissue but a cylinder of some sort. It was a half-second too late. Sam caught an eyeful of pepper spray and screamed. His eyeballs were on fire. Angel leapt to her feet, continuing to blast him. What didn't make it into his eyes went up his nose and in his mouth. It was like a swarm of meat ants had descended on his face. When the can was spent she hurled it at him. It made a metallic thunk as it bounced off the top of his head. Sam didn't feel it. He was too busy screaming his lungs out and raining acid from his eyeballs. His brain was futzing.

Angel transformed. "You murdering sonofabitch!" she screamed. "You killed Danny, you goddamn motherfucker!" She took a run at Sam and drove her pointed boot so deep into his nuts that he spontaneously projected vomit. Sam dropped to his knees and Angel picked up the same rock he was only moments earlier going to crown her with and swung it at him hard. He caught it on the jaw. His head exploded in a spray of fireworks and he toppled sideways. Two of his teeth bounced out of his mouth as his head hit the ground.

"You piece of filth! You dirty cocksucker! I'm gonna get Vince and he's gonna come after you and slow roast you, bitch! And I'm gonna light the fucking match, you hear me? You're dead, arsehole! You're fucking dead!" She swung the boot in one last time, collecting him in the guts. The girl knew her craft. Sam was dry heaving and crying blood and screaming all at the same time. He sounded like a buffalo being slaughtered. Sam was burning up in Hell, and Angel was Satan's bitch girlfriend. When he managed to open his eyes a fraction, she was gone.

Angel ran for her life. Sam fought unconsciousness to get up. He knew that he had to catch up to Angel. If she got away he was a dead man. He stumbled in the direction she took, wiping his eyes and crashing into trees and falling down again. It was slow going.

Angel got lost several times. She looked back one time and saw Sam in the distance, wounded, angry, and knew that she would be no match for him a second time around. She was out of pepper spray for starters. But Danny had a gun. She needed to get to it.

She raced on, her lungs burning, feet bleeding– She had lost her shoes when she was kicking the shit out of Sam. And then she saw ahead of her, through a gap in the trees, the distant white roof of Cutler's house. She didn't look back. Behind her a hundred yards or so, she could hear Sam gaining on her.

\---

Bill drove and Tom sipped roadhouse coffee. The phone had rung out several times at Cutler's house, which made Bill feel uneasy. The old guy was sick, and all indications were that he wouldn't generally stray far from the house. Ordinarily he wouldn't have thought anything of it. But there was nothing ordinary about what had gone down in the last few hours. Sam Fletcher was off the radar. He was somehow tied up in something to do with Cutler's property, something Frank had set up. And Vince Young-Wan's presence could only mean that Danny Burke was also involved, and nothing good would come of that. Where did Sam go so wrong? Bill had begun to suspect that even the snake was no accident. Truth had left fiction confused and bleeding back on the highway as far as this case went.

"Sam Fletcher's an old friend of yours, isn't he?" Riley said, frowning at the brown sludge in his paper cup.

"We've known each other since we were kids. Grew up in the same street. He wanted to become a cop."

"What happened?"

"Couldn't get in. Too short."

"What was he like?"

Bill shrugged. "He was an ordinary kid. Decent parents. No siblings. We used to catch yabbies in the dam on his place, shoot tins with an air rifle. I remember hitting a sparrow once. He got all upset. We would've been about eleven."

"Now he's a killer."

Bill mulled over that for a few moments.

"I remember at school," he said, "final year, we were in the army cadets. I was a Captain, he stayed a grunt. Some people are destined to be grunts all their lives."

"You were a Captain? You're just a Sergeant now."

"I screwed a General's daughter. Anyway, this day, we were on bivouac out by Dead Man's Creek. Middle of summer. Spew Belcher, our chem teacher, was the C.O. We were on parade and I had to march up to Belcher and salute him, from like, six inches away. So Sam starts laughing, cause it was me and Belcher and we looked like a pair of Swiss Nutcrackers. Sam had no respect for military pomp. Belcher orders me to discipline him. So I'm up in Sam's face like a drill Sergeant busting a fat kid for doughnuts and I make him salute a fence post for half an hour while the rest of us break for morning tea."

"Harsh."

"We were at war."

"I hope he found the strength to laugh at authority again."

Bill smiled, but there was no laughter in his voice. "I think it changed things," he said. "Afterwards, we drifted apart. We'd see each other from time to time, always friendly, but it was never the same. And we were pretty close. First time I fooled around with a girl, Sam was in the same room with her best friend. We were only fifteen."

"You smell each other's fingers afterwards."

"Hells yeah. Rites of passage. That's what I'm saying. We shared some major moments. I still find it hard to believe Sam Fletcher could do anything like this."

They drove in silence for a while. Bill eased off the pedal as the Cutler's road turn-off loomed ahead.

"Here we go."

As Bill made the turn onto the dirt road, a torn piece of a hundred dollar bill pasted itself to the windshield for a few seconds, then blew away again. Bill and Riley turned to face each other.

"Did you just see–"

Bill was interrupted by the unmistakeable crack of pistol fire.

They skidded to a dusty halt. Riley pulled out his gun, checked the magazine. Bill removed his and laid it on the seat beside him. Each man experienced a sudden, pleasing spike in adrenaline. Bill slipped the car into first and slowly eased up the track.

## Chapter 18

A few minutes earlier, Angel stumbled through the gate of Cutler's place. A maddening chorus of Cicadas filled the stale hot air and scorching waves of heat rose from the corrugated iron roof of the house. The landscape was confettied with shredded hundred dollar bills. The two men, their bodies already stiff, lay in caked pools of red mud. Flies buzzed around the cavity above Cutler's eye. A trail of ants had moved up the side of Danny's carcass and had begun taking away pieces of meat and lung. It was a bonanza for the local insect population.

Angel collapsed to her knees, exhausted. The sudden smell and sight of death, coupled with her stomach cramped from running, made her puke. She saw the gold Desert Eagle still clutched tightly in Danny's fingers. She went for it, bawling and squirming as she tried to uncurl his stiffened fingers from the grip; it was heavy with the dead weight of his arm. Being a semi-automatic, the gun was live and dangerous, but Angel didn't know of such things.

About a hundred yards behind her, Sam lurched closer. One eye was swollen and closed over and he squinted through the other. The side of his face that caught the rock had swelled up and he spat great gobs of blood from where his teeth were knocked out. He could see the orange roof of Danny's Mustang in the distance.

Angel looked behind her. She clocked Sam's head in the distance, bobbing above the long grass. She grabbed onto the barrel of the gun and ripped it from Danny's cold dead fingers, one of which remained curled around the trigger. The gun went off and blew out one of the Mustang's headlights. Angel squealed and dropped the gun, falling on her butt and putting her hands over her ears.

Sam hit the ground. He hadn't seen Angel, but he heard Danny's gun. She must be firing at him. He moved sideways through the grass, then slowly lifted his head into view. What he saw next was Bill's patrol car crawling towards Cutler's gate. And Riley, crouched low and trotting alongside, his pistol drawn.

"Ohh shit!" Sam hissed. "Shit! Fuck! Shit!"

Angel was unaware of the approaching police car. She picked the gun up carefully, then crawled over behind the Mustang and sat with her back pressed against the grill.

"Come on, you filthy motherfucker," she whispered, trying to get her blood up. She needed to execute that bastard Sam, cold and quick. She couldn't afford to miss. She looked at Danny for reassurance that she could aim straight and pull the trigger. A blowfly crawled out of his mouth. She'd seen some hard shit in her nineteen years. This was the hardest and the shittest.

Bill pulled to a stop on the track, just shy of the gate. He slid across the seat and got out the same side as Tom Riley, weapon drawn and pointed to the ground. The two men peered around the car, searching for movement.

"What do you see?" asked Bill.

Tom craned his neck. He saw two legs sticking out from the front of the Mustang: Cuban heeled, croc-skin boots pointing at the sky.

"Looks like someone's taking a long nap in the sun just the other side of that hot rod," he said.

"That's Danny Burke's Mustang," Bill said. "Ten to one it's him."

"Doesn't look like he's getting up in a hurry."

"I'm gonna take a closer look."

"Be careful, Bill."

Bill moved low, quiet and quick through the gate, settling behind a thick nest of artichoke thistle growing out from an old stack of timber. He peeked around and scoped a better view. He spotted Cutler, recognizing him instantly by the old flannelette shirt. Chopper was lying next to him, licking his hand and nudging him with his snout. He could also see that the boots did indeed belong to Danny Burke. He could clearly see the damage done to both. Neither of them would be going to the ball. Bill also noticed that Danny was sans weapon. That meant only one thing. The shooter was still there, somewhere. In the house, perhaps? He moved quickly back to Riley. He whispered low.

"Two dead, Cutler and Danny Burke."

"You sure they're dead?"

"Danny's peeled open like a butterfly prawn. He must have copped a heavy gauge at close range. The old man's missing half his head. They're dead."

"What happened?"

"Looks like they did each other John Woo-style, but Danny's piece has gone AWOL. They've been dead a few hours too, by the look of it. That shot we heard means there's a shooter still at large."

"Sam?"

"Maybe," Bill said, "Vince Young-Wan?"

"What do we do? Call out? If he's in the house, he's probably seen us by now."

"Call for back up. Then head back to the main road, stop anyone from coming up the track. It's the only way in or out. Your phone in range?"

"Just."

"I'll stay here."

Tom hesitated. "I think we should stay together. The shooter makes an appearance, better there's two of us."

Bill checked his magazine. A full clip. His last range practice was over year ago. He took a deep breath.

"Call it in," he said.

Riley crept into the front seat, keeping low, and picked up the radio handset. Seconds later, and the cavalry was on its way.

Sam was on his belly. He had crawled as close as he could to the track before the grass began to thin out, making him visible. He tried to listen in on what Bill and Tom were saying but couldn't hear anything above his pounding heartbeat. He was sweating.

With her back resting against the grill of the Mustang, Angel was unaware of the presence of the law. She had her ears peeled and her trigger finger primed for the footfalls of Sam's approach. She shivered with fear. She wanted nothing more than to get the fuck out of there. Then she had a brainwave. Get behind the wheel, duck low, pedal to the metal and don't look back. Angel grew up on a farm, paddock bashing tooled-up stolen cars with her brothers since she was eight. She always liked speed. She even convinced Danny to give her a turn at the wheel at the speedway track a few weeks back. The smell of the racing fuel got her all hot under the hood. She fucked Danny so raw that night, he took her back the next day. Now she was gonna ride that bitch to freedom. And if that murderous, lowdown motherfucker gets in her way she won't stop to wipe his brains from the grill.

Angel peeked around the side of the car. All quiet. She crawled on her belly, her chin scraping the dirt, Danny's gun inches in front of her, just itching to go off. Bill's patrol car was on the far side, hidden from view. Angel reached up and fumbled for the door handle, her eyes wide, strafing the horizon for that fucker living on borrowed time. She found the handle, clicked open the door and slithered up onto the seat. Once inside she slammed the door and turned the key.

Bill was about to tell Tom to get himself down to the main road when they heard the car door slam. They turned to look, guns rising in unison. They couldn't see anyone inside the car, but they heard the motor fire up. The roar of the V-8 shook the walls of Cutler's shack.

"What the fuck," said Bill.

Sam popped his head up for a look. Angel slammed the gears into reverse. She peeked over the rear seat and dropped the clutch. The car took off. She slammed on the brake as she saw Bill and Tom step out from behind a patrol car, guns pointed right at her.

"Fuck!" she yelped, skidding to a halt.

Bill was yelling, "Police! Step out of the car! Now!"

Angel ground the gearstick into first and tore off in a blaze of dust and screaming noise.

"Stop!" Bill shot at the sky. Sam jerked at the big bore reverb echoing across the plain.

Angel bounced in her seat as she ran over Danny's head, making his body dance for a second. Her hands wrenched the wheel hard right, sending the car into a sideways drift and taking out a bore tap. Bill and Tom ran forward, guns ready to pop, before stopping as the Mustang disappeared around the side of the house. There was nowhere for it to go. They glanced quickly at each other– adrenaline overload. They still had no idea who was behind the wheel.

Angel fishtailed around the back of the house and dragged to a stop. Junk and fences and potholes, every which way. She was panicked, trapped. Angel dropped the clutch. The wheels spun angrily, carving a doughnut into the dust. Angel kept her head down, tear-arsing back the way she came.

The Mustang exploded from behind the wall of the house and bee-lined straight for Bill and Tom. They leapt sideways and rolled onto the dirt. Bill was back up in a second, letting off a volley of shots from his revolver. Tom was on his feet a beat later. He joined the party, emptying his revolver at rapido speed. In the long grass opposite, Sam was kissing the earth and praying, bullets whizzing low over his head.

Angel pushed her foot through the floor and screamed at the top of her lungs. She saw only a bright light in the distance. Then the rear windscreen shattered. A bullet ripped through the upholstery and slammed into her back. She gasped. Then two more instantly followed, and the lights went out. Angel's head snapped forward, blood and brain carpeting the windscreen and dashboard. Her head bounced off the steering wheel, the horn bipping, as bullets ping-pinged into the steel body of the car. Her foot slid off the accelerator pedal. The momentum of the vehicle carried it through the fence, taking a tangle of barbed wire with it, bouncing through the culvert and into the opposite field.

Sam looked up and saw the car heading straight for him. He stumbled to his feet and ran low, then tripped and fell. The idling Mustang eventually bunny-hopped to a stop, Angel's chin bouncing and then coming to rest on the horn. Sam slowly peered up through the grass and saw Angel's dead eyes looking straight at him.

He heard yelling from behind, and saw Bill and Tom Riley advancing slowly, guns raised. Sam slithered backwards on his belly, deeper into the long grass, eyes fixed on the two men.

"Hands on the wheel!" Bill yelled above the blaring of the horn. Then he got close enough to see the blood on the windscreen. He could tell by the stillness and lack of screaming, not to mention a gaping hole in the head, that the driver had gone to God. But was there anybody else in the car?

Bill's grip on his gun was rock solid; his index finger resting on the trigger with perfectly sustained tension. His breath was measured and steady. Tom was less assured. His eyes darted nervously and his mouth was dry. He walked a half pace behind Bill.

Bill got close enough to see that the car was empty of passengers. He moved around to the front of the car and saw a dead girl staring into the middle distance. Tom moved up beside him. The blood drained from his face. Both men had attended enough highway fatalities to deal with young bodies ripped apart before their time, but this sad, blue-eyed beauty had died in a hail of their bullets. They never even got to see the driver's face; Angel had kept low as she drove at them. Though their response was instinctive and justified, it was still a blow. They had expected maybe Vince. Bill broke with protocol and gently lifted Angel's face off the wheel, killing the horn, and let her fall back against the seat.

"Holy fuck," said Tom.

"She's one of Danny's girls," Bill said. "Romy Leigh... Angel."

"You know her?" Riley asked.

"I busted her for dope and soliciting a couple of times."

Riley took a deep breath. He tasted vomit in his throat. "Are we in trouble, Bill?" he asked.

"In so far as there's no one left to tell us what the fuck happened out here, yes. That a woman is dead, killed by police... She drove at us with intent, refusing to stop, fleeing a double homicide." He went silent. He stepped a few paces away and rubbed his eyes.

Sam hadn't moved a muscle; he was lying on his stomach less than twenty yards away, barely breathing. He could hear Bill and Tom clearly.

"You okay?" Tom asked Bill.

Bill shook his head clear and looked back towards Cutler's place. His voice was suddenly hoarse. "We should go back to the house, call in what happened. She's not going anywhere." They waded back through the long grass.

Sam waited until they had reached the gate before he dared move. He could hear Bill speaking into the radio. He crawled over to the car and opened the rear passenger side door just wide enough for him to crawl in. He stayed low on the seat and snatched up a bottle of water from the floor. He twisted off the lid, up-ending it down his throat. Glancing up through the shattered rear window, he saw Bill in the distance, standing at his car, holding a radio handset to his mouth. Riley was taking snaps of Danny's corpse. Sam guzzled the rest of water. The smell of blood and excrement was strong and he fought the urge to be sick. He avoided looking up. The bloody, matted hair from the top of Angel's head poked out above the seat, and rivulets of blood ran down the back of the upholstery.

Sam quickly scanned the rear of the car for anything that might incriminate him. He found his keys on the floor lying in a pool of Angel's blood and his heart rate jumped. Sam picked them up, shaking off as much blood as he could, then scoped under the seat for anything else. There was something shiny lying on the front floor beside Angel's bare feet. It took him a moment to realize Sam was staring down the barrel of Danny's gold Desert Eagle. The .50 calibre muzzle was deep, black and strangely inviting. A warm rush of adrenaline flooded through him, for he had repeatedly stared down death in the last few days, and each time beaten it. It sharpened his senses. All around him, enemies had fallen; he was the one left standing; he had survived. He was tempted to take the gun, but remembered that it needed to be found to incriminate Danny in Cutler's death. Angel, for her part, could be counted on to say nothing.

Sam hauled himself up on the seat and glanced out the rear window, then quickly ducked back down. Slowly he raised his eyes above the rear seat and saw Bill approaching. He dropped back down out of sight, his pulse racing. Bill was about forty yards away and closing. Sam's mind raced. He thought about Danny's gun. If he grabbed it he'd be forced to use it. And Bill was more likely to use his before Sam had even figured out what to do.

\---

After having radioed base to inform them of Angel's death, Bill and Tom carefully searched the property inside and out. Given Danny Burke was lying out there in the dust, there was every possibility Vince Young-Wan was in the vicinity. A dog never strays far from his master.

And Sam. Bill was pretty sure Sam was around; a part of him expected to find his corpse. There was also the possibility that he was alive, hiding somewhere, in a cupboard or under a bed. Bill and Tom led with their guns the whole way until they knew the place was clear.

In the kitchen, Riley found a bag of dog biscuits and poured some on the floor for Chopper. Bill was looking at a letter from the bank, detailing Cutler's repeated failure to meet his mortgage repayments. A phrase at the top of the page caught his attention. It stated that the letter constituted the final warning before the bank would be forced to take action. Frank's signature was on the bottom. A soft wind gently whistled through the torn curtains, bringing with it the smell of oil and blood.

The silence was cut by the chirp of a mobile phone coming from outside. Bill drew his gun and exited the door to the front yard.

Bill looked around for the source of the phone. It came from Danny's jeans. Bill holstered his weapon and drew a latex glove from his pocket. He pulled it onto his right hand and drew the phone from Danny's pocket. The caller ID said it was Vince. Bill hit the answer button, but said nothing.

"Danny?" said Vince, after a beat. Bill could hear the low thud of drum and bass in the background.

Bill answered. "Danny isn't able to come to the phone."

It was Vince's turn to be silent.

"Vincent Young-Wan?"

"Who's that?" said Vince.

"Senior Sergeant Bill Hepburn."

Vince's move. He was no chess player, Vince; Ker Plunk was more his speed. "Where's Danny?"

Bill glanced down at the corpse at his feet. Danny's eyes stared questioningly at God. God was looking the other way.

"He's taking a nap. A long one."

"What do you mean? Let me talk to him."

"He's not talking, Vince. He's not breathing either. Someone emptied a twelve gauge on his chest." He let that hang for a moment. When Vince didn't respond, Bill added, "I'm afraid Angel won't be coming home either."

Bill heard Vince's breathing down the line. It had gotten heavier. He was saying nothing.

Bill said, "You want to tell me where it is I found them and what they were doing here?"

He was still saying nothing.

"Vince?"

"Were they alone?" Vince finally asked. His voice was croaky.

"An old man riddled with cancer. The cancer didn't get him, though. A large calibre bullet to the head did."

Vince didn't seem phased by that. "Anyone else?"

"You tell me," Bill said. "Should I be looking for someone else? Sam Fletcher, perhaps?"

Vince went silent. Then the line went dead.

At least it ruled out Vince as the missing shooter. Bill would pay him a visit later. He slipped Danny's phone in his pocket, looked around the dirt and suddenly realized that he hadn't sighted the gun that killed Cutler. He was losing his touch. He glanced at the Mustang in the paddock opposite and sighed.

"Tom," he called. Tom stepped out onto the porch. Chopper pulled up behind him, wagging his stump. "Stay here," Bill said. "I'm going to go check Danny's car for his gun. I have a feeling Angel had it."

"You think she clipped the old guy," queried Tom, "after he shot Danny?"

"No idea," Bill replied. "But something makes me doubt it." He began to feel a little lightheaded.

Bill walked carefully through the long grass, eyes down, scoping for snakes. He had seen Cutler's jar collection and it made his skin crawl. Frank's pin cushioned body on the slab had also left its impression.

He looked up as he neared the car and then stopped dead in his tracks, his hand falling on his gun. The rear passenger-side door was ajar where before it had been shut. He pulled his weapon from the holster for the third time that day, and took a few quick deep breaths, steadying his nerves. He cautiously moved around the car, his gun leading, and saw that nobody was inside. The grass around the door was freshly trampled. A trail of bent grass led off into the paddock in the direction of the distant bushland.

Bill moistened his lips. His mouth had gone dry. He'd only been gone a few minutes.

"Sam?" he called out. He checked the front of the car, scoped Danny's gun at Angel's feet. It didn't mean that Sam was unarmed. "Sam? I know you're here. Give yourself up, mate. Please. It'll only turn out worse for you if you run."

A breeze picked up and brushed over the tall grass of the paddock. The sound it made was lonely and empty.

"Sam, listen to me. Frank recorded you on his phone, when he was dying. I know what happened out here, Sam. You can't run from it, mate, you have to turn yourself in."

Bill wandered a little further out into the tall grass, but the trail ran dry; the wind had massaged the grass back into place. God or the Devil was on Sam's side.

"Sam, we have three dead people back here," Bill called out, "For Christ's sake, you need to come in and sort yourself out." Then he added, "Think of Freddy."

Silence. The wind picked up and a shiver ran down Bill's spine. He had the feeling of someone standing in an abandoned town square of a war torn city. Somewhere, unseen, someone with a rifle was watching him, their finger resting on the trigger. He didn't want to die alone in that abandoned place. He wanted to go home to Karen, to chilled white wine and a warm fuck. Bill stepped back towards the car, placed himself behind it for protection, then walked quickly back to join Tom. He didn't turn back. It disturbed him that he had felt fear for the first time.

## Chapter 19

Vince hung up on the cop. He walked from the club room into Danny's office and shut the door. He opened a gun safe and selected an unmarked Beretta 92FS, 9mm. It was Danny's favourite gun. Belonged to his father, Ned, who was doing an 18 year stretch for armed rob with violence. It was a real sweet piece. Dead accurate. Danny taught Angel to shoot tins with it. It seemed the right choice.

Vince made sure the girls were ready for work and that the bouncers had shown up. He told them nothing. Then he locked up the office, went home and prayed to Allah.

\---

Sam crawled on his belly towards the relative safety of the bush. The dry grass pricked Sam's swollen face and the sun burned the back of his skull. He was beyond emotion at this point; pure survival instinct had kicked in. He figured that he had at least an hour before more cops showed up. By that time he would have disappeared deep into the scrubland and figured out what to do next.

Sam's thoughts ran wildly to reappearing in another town in another state with a new identity and a new life; his face had been largely remodelled, thanks to Angel. But details threatened to dislodge him from the fantasy. One needed money and dodgy connections. He had no money. And his only dodgy connection was lying dead in the dust by a policeman's boot.

Sam made it to the scrub and followed the path he made earlier with Angel. He walked past the empty mace tin and shivered with the memory. Somewhere in the vicinity lay two of his teeth, but he didn't stop to look for them. He pushed on. After a couple of hours, Sam arrived at a dry creek bed. There was a small, still puddle of muddy water. It smelled like an old bush toilet. Sam got on his belly and sucked greedily at the grimy water until his mouth began to fill up with mud. He coughed and dry retched, but managed to keep the fluid in him. He hadn't pissed all day; he was dehydrating.

The trees had thinned out to his left and he could see flashes of passing trucks through the foliage. He knew if he stayed close enough to the highway he wouldn't get lost. Sam got up and kept moving. Pain was all through his body, but standing still only allowed for thoughts to begin crowding his head. There was a meditative emptiness to the rhythm of his walking. Eventually he couldn't feel his legs. He seemed to be gliding slowly above the ground.

The sun dipped below the horizon and the light drained away. Sam trudged on through darkness, pausing to wait for trucks or cars to make sure he was still travelling in the right direction. Stars were popping on in the night sky, but he had no idea how to navigate by them. At one point he slammed his shin against a log and face-planted the dirt. He fell asleep in that position for what felt like a few seconds. He wasn't even sure he had slept until he got up and noticed the full moon high in the sky. Sam's body was stiff and cold. He didn't feel rested at all. He continued walking.

Sam's joints and skin ached like he was coming down with something. His head pounded from the dehydration. The pounding grew louder and louder, until Sam realized that it was not in is head at all, but coming from somewhere out there in the darkness. A rhythm. He became aware of a smell, like glycerine. It reminded him of Chaser's nightclub. He kept walking. The sound grew louder and around him trees began to move and dance with shadows. There was a fog drifting through the air. He thought he was hallucinating, until he heard the sound of cheering and laughter washing through the pulsing beat.

God-like rays of coloured laser light pierced through the foliage, and Sam glimpsed silhouettes of human forms dancing and cavorting through the scrub. The air was cloudy with stage fog and marijuana smoke. The sound had grown in volume and echoed around the bush. Rave music, pumping full bore from a stack of 30-inch speakers.

Sam stood frozen as a spotlight came to rest on him, spraying him with shafts of golden light. He stood transfixed, silhouetted, dreaming for a moment it was the light at the end of the tunnel. The light moved off him, carving a path of illumination through the bush. He sensed movement and turned to see a couple fucking against a tree. They looked like Angel and Danny in the darkness. Maybe he had died and gone to Hell.

A great thirst came rushing upon him and he moved into the light. As he entered the swarm of humanity, nobody seemed to give him a second look. He swum through the crowd, tossed and battered by waves of wet flesh. A water bottle was thrust under his nose, as if someone sensed his need. He took the bottle and poured its contents down his throat. The cool water slalomed though his system triggering a major discharge of endorphin. He was alive again, and for a few minutes was completely at one with the crowd of E-fuelled revellers.

The music allowed Sam to disconnect entirely from himself. Body pressed against body, Sam pogoed in rhythm to the dance, tears flowing down his face. Then the world tipped back and he felt the cool dust against his sweating back. The crowd around him parted and he felt his body ascending, as if on its way to Heaven. The heads of his fellow travellers fell below his line of sight and all he saw then was the night sky, swept with slow motion arcs of light. Treetops moved past him and he felt lighter than air. Then he blacked out.

\---

Sam came to in a large Bedouin-style tent, lit softly with glass tea light lanterns. He was lying on a foam mattress, buttressed with large, soft cushions, a cold-pack resting against his face. The thump-thump of the dance music was muted, set back some distance away. Through a slit in the canvas he glimpsed a rubber-gloved paramedic rigging an IV drip. Around him, recovering revellers were resting, reassuring, massaging, kissing and sucking chupa-chups. No one seemed to notice him. It took a few minutes for Sam to get his bearings and figure out where he was. First came the realization that he had stumbled onto a rave. Next came the jolting memory of the afternoon before. For one tantalizing nanobeat, it had all been a horrible dream.

Sam went to get up and was met with stabs of pain and nausea. He took a large, slow breath in and carefully settled himself back. A girl got up and approached him.

"How are you feeling?"

Sam looked at her. She looked in her early twenties, had tattoos sleeving her arms, close cropped jet-black hair, a nose ring and a friendly smile.

"A little dizzy," Sam said. "Where is this?"

"You're in the chill out room," she said. "You blacked out. Would you like some chai?"

"Some what?"

"Chai. It's full of goodness. You definitely look like you could use some goodness." She fetched Sam a cracked china mug brimming with steaming, sweet milky tea. A cardamom pod floated on the surface.

"Thanks." Sam took a sip. The hot tea felt good. The sugar went straight to his bloodstream. He drank it down, then asked for another.

"What's your name?" he asked the girl.

"Chance." She waited a well-rehearsed beat, then added, "My parents are chronic atheists."

Sam smiled. It was his first in quite a while. "I'm Sam," he said, sipping his second chai more slowly.

Chance stared at him. She got that he was in the wrong crowd.

"You look terrible," she said. "Were you in a car crash or something?"

"Yeah," Sam replied. Her question made him uneasy.

"My God. Were you on your own?"

"Yeah, but I'm okay."

"You should get looked at. We have paramedics here."

"No. I'm fine."

"You have blood on the side of your head."

Sam touched the bloodied rag over his ear and felt a jab of hot pain.

"Where am I? How far from town?"

"'bout twenty clicks. Is there someone we can call to come get you?"

"I just need a few minutes."

Chance nodded and smiled. She looked off for a moment.

Sam studied her tattoos. Amongst the pin-ups and Sailor iconography on her right sleeve he caught a portrait of Jesus, his face lifted in supplication. The left arm carried one of Mary.

Sam said, "So do you believe in Christ just to piss off your parents?"

"I don't believe in God or religion; I'm a socialist. So was Jesus. I love my parents."

Sam suddenly saw Freddy in the backyard, laughing, backlit by the afternoon sun. He took a sharp intake of breath and rubbed his eyes to stem the onset of tears.

"What did they teach you?" he said.

Chance thought about the question. She seemed to like it. "To treat everyone with respect. To do the right thing."

"How do you know what is the right thing?"

"If nobody gets hurt, that's usually a good place to start." If Sam was hoping for absolution it went out the window right there. Chance added, "I don't judge. Everyone has their own moral compass."

Mine must be broken, Sam thought. He remembered the moral debate he had wrestled with when Frank was heaving bile on his way to eternity. Sam had managed to convince himself that living with the consequences of an immoral choice was possible, when taking the moral option would have likely resulted in the same outcome. He was wrong, of course. He drifted into visions of Cutler, and of Danny, felt the metal of the trigger on his finger and the kickback from the round that sent Danny to Hell. He saw Angel, blood from her scalp running into her unblinking eyes, staring at him, accusing. He had arrived at that dark destination to find there was no redemption waiting for him.

He snapped back to the present and caught Chance watching him. Her demeanour had shifted; there was confusion in her eyes where before was understanding. It was like she'd witnessed his thoughts, seen something in him that had leaked out, some truth that told her this man was involved in bad things. Deadly bad.

"I'm sorry," Sam said. It was as close as he'd come to a confession.

"You know, Sam, religion doesn't hold a monopoly on forgiveness. All it takes is for someone to decide to stop running and face up to their mistakes and they can start again." She smiled thinly and took Sam's empty cup and returned it to the camp kitchen next door. Sam watched her leave. A roar went up from the crowd outside. When she returned, he had gone.

## Chapter 20

Bill and Tom Riley had surrendered their weapons on site and were separately interviewed by Bill's close friend, Chief Inspector Lou Fredricks. Bill was told to go home, get some rest and provide a full report the next day. He did good. The last bit rang hollow. Like the hole in Angel's head.

By the time Bill made it to Karen's house, the story was national news. Danny Burke's mug was splashed all over the screen and Lou fronted the camera giving away little and defending the police action. Angel wasn't identified by name. Bill had called when he was fifteen minutes away. Karen had a hot bath and a large highball waiting for him. She took him into her arms and let him cry on her shoulder. She didn't say anything. He ate a couple of lamb chops with roasted parsnips, drank two glasses of pinot and kissed Karen like a new wife. Then he fell into bed and didn't wake up until seven o'clock the next morning.

\---

It was dawn when Sam reached the outskirts of town. The dusty pink light skipped off the cracked concrete back alleys of the industrial district. Sam's socks were soaked with blood and sweat. His face was swollen and red, and his lips were stuck together with dried blood and mucous.

He arrived at the fence at the rear of his shop just as the sun was peeking over the horizon. He climbed up onto a commercial bin and pulled himself up and over the wire, spilling painfully into the car park. He got up and went straight for the tap. He drank solidly until he had to stop for breath, then drank some more.

His thirst slaked, Sam snuck around the side of the building and checked the street out front. There was a parked Fairmont sedan with two guys in the front. The guy behind the wheel had his head tilted back and his mouth open. The passenger, his eyes fixed on Sam's restaurant, blew steam from a polystyrene coffee cup. Sam didn't recognize them, but he knew what they were.

He drew back to the car park and went inside via the staff entrance, locking the door behind him. He made his way in to his office, locked the door and twisted shut the venetian blinds. He was thirsty again. He reached into his drawer and pulled out the bottle of J&B, slopped five fingers into a glass, then necked the bottle. The throat burn felt good. Sam fell back into his chair like he'd been slugged.

He reached into the drawer and pulled out the .22 target revolver and slapped it on the desk. Then he searched frantically for a box of shells that had been rattling around back there for years. Or so he thought. He came up empty and immediately blamed Tex, who he knew to be a thief and a gun-toting redneck. But as he went to shove the drawer shut, a loose .22 hollow point rolled into view. Sam stared at the tiny bullet. A pill to end the pain. An opportunity to bow out on his terms. Frank's real estate gamble didn't pan out. The only real estate Sam was looking at now was a twelve by six cell with a view of an exercise yard.

He cracked open the cylinder, slipped in the round and snapped it shut. He stared at the gun until his eyes stung with salt. He rubbed them with the heel of his palm. There was no getting back what he had lost by his own hand. That included Freddy. A tear fell on the polished metal as Sam pictured his son. With fingers trembling from exhaustion, he lifted the gun. It was getting heavier by the second. Sam placed the barrel in his mouth, resting it on his teeth. The metal tasted oily and his amalgam fillings zinged. As this was happening, sleep had started in Sam's feet and crawled silently up his legs, quietly enveloping his body in a shroud of gossamer. He didn't feel it coming. He went to pull the trigger. A beat later he was in a deep sleep. The gun toppled to the floor.

Across town, Bill drank coffee and told Karen what had happened. He kept the descriptions to a minimum. He felt lousy about killing Angel. He didn't feel guilty; the circumstances dictated the response. She had tried to run them down. Still, that didn't make things any easier.

It wasn't the first time Bill had killed someone. He'd attended a bank robbery as a probationary constable twenty years earlier and had put two rounds into an eighteen year-old's chest after the punk aimed a gun at him. The kid was dead before he hit the cement. The gun turned out to be a replica and Bill was awarded a medal for bravery. He felt pretty bad then too. Memories of the family eyeballing him outside the courthouse during the inquest. He remembered the hate in their eyes, but also the pain. Especially the mother's.

Karen cooked him sausages and eggs and refilled his coffee. She offered to take the day off work, but he refused. He told her he was fine and kissed her. The kiss led them to the bedroom. A half hour later and Bill felt like the world wasn't such a bad place after all.

When Karen left for work Bill grabbed his phone and called the station. There was no word on the whereabouts of Sam. The day before, Bill had told the attending officers that he suspected Sam having disappeared into the surrounding bushland. But there was no evidence to suggest that he was even there to begin with, much less the manpower to conduct a search into the bush. A warrant for Sam's arrest had been issued, and plain-clothed detectives were stationed outside his home and business. It was a small town. He'd turn up soon enough.

Bill took himself to the shower. The scalding water felt good. He thought about Sam, tried to imagine what was going through his head. Was he was still out in the scrub somewhere? Sam was no bushman, but he wasn't a fool, either. It would take him all night, but he'd make it back. He had nowhere else to go. Bill thought he'd check Sam's house on the way to the station.

\---

Vince Young-Wan turned into Kirkwood Avenue. He drove past Sam's restaurant, failing to spot the unmarked squad car, then turned into a narrow alleyway and parked. The baked alleyway was lined with overflowing bins and smelled of rancid prawn heads and urine. Empty crisp packets and ice cream wrappers lay scattered across the dusty concrete. Vince took out the Beretta and screwed on a suppressor.

Vince was unsure that he would find Sam at his restaurant, but guessed that sooner or later he would have to show up. And when he did, he would ask him what happened. If Sam didn't feel like speaking, he'd shoot him in the left knee, then the right. Then when Sam told Vince what he wanted to hear, Vince would put a bullet in his brain.

Vince was an orphan crim, a stray dog adopted from the street by Danny's father, Ned Burke, fifteen years earlier. Ned had needed a solid front row soldier who was handy with his fists and could take a beating. That was Vince. He'd taken hits from his old man since he was four (they stopped when Vince turned fourteen and reached six feet). Vince and Danny were like brothers, until Ned moved to the big house and Danny stepped up. After that, the relationship took on more of a boss/employee tenor. That suited Vince fine. He liked order, liked to know his place. And he was fiercely loyal to his family. That included Angel, whom he regarded as a sister. A sister who'd blown him once or twice. Now his brother and sister were dead. And so too, soon enough, would be Sam Fletcher.

Vince got out of the car and left it unlocked. He slipped the beretta into his black Tapout hoodie. He zipped up and walked down the alleyway and turned left into the lane that backed onto the restaurant car park.

## Chapter 21

An hour after Sam slid into unconsciousness, Tex Dean rocked up on his XR 650 with Sally Beaumont riding pillion. Neither wore helmets, and both were dressed in rave gear. Sally clutched a tote bag in one hand and a bottle of water in the other.

Detective Constable Lance Stevens nudged his sleeping buddy in the ribs. Detective Senior Constable Rodney Barnes woke with a snort and focussed with difficulty on the restaurant across the road. He copped Tex and Sally as they eased into the driveway, disappearing around the rear of the building.

From Stevens, "That him?"

"Naa," Barnes said, yawning. "I recognize the girl. She works here."

"Nice tits."

Barnes thought about it. "Seen better," he said.

Stevens looked at his watch. Another hour to go before they clocked off. He stretched in his seat and yawned. Barnes had already fallen back to sleep.

Sally got off the back of the motorcycle and tugged at her pants. Tex switched off the motor and stood the bike on its stand. He went to the back door and tried it. It was locked. He lifted his elbow and punched it through the small window on the door.

"Tex, you idiot," Sally said, "I got a fucking key."

"Gotta make it look authentic," Tex said. He reached round through the hole in the glass and unlocked the door. He held the door open for Sally. She went in slowly and their tongues mingled midway. Tex's hand went to Sally's crotch, and she slithered out of his grip with a giggle.

Once inside, Sally went straight for the beer fridge. She pulled out a bottle of Tiger and opened it. Tex went over to the door to Sam's office. He went to open it, but found it locked.

Inside his office, Sam hadn't moved from his chair. His breathing was low, deep and steady. An inch beneath his fingers lay his pistol.

Tex took a long, thin knife from his sock and jimmied open the till. Last night's takings had been banked in the night safe by Gladys, but the float was still there. Two hundred and fifty dollars in small bills and gold coins. Sally swigged her beer and watched Tex.

Tex said, "This'll get us breakfast and a nice clean motel room for when we crash, in, I reckon," he checked his watch, "about three hours time."

"I feel a little guilty," Sally said.

"It's not like Sam isn't insured," Tex said. He counted out the bills, then snapped off a twenty and offered it to her. She looked at it.

"What's that for?" she asked. Tex's other hand moved to unzip his fly and he smiled.

"Fuck off," she said, snatching the money and pocketing it. Tex laughed and stuffed the rest of the money in his pants. He stopped, felt something.

"No way!" he said, pulling out a tiny plastic bag. Sally was glancing at the previous night's receipts out of habit. She looked over to Tex who was holding up the bag. She saw the tiny white pill inside. A smile crept across her face. They were both in post MDMA come down and on their way to a rough landing. They'd done four pills each since two o'clock the previous afternoon. The jaw ache and maddening ennui had set in with a vengeance. They had a couple of valium on stand-by to put them to sleep at the optimal hour, but this little discovery delayed that plan by a couple of fun-filled hours at least.

Tex snapped the pill in two with his thumbnail and placed half on his tongue. Sally French-kissed him and ground her crotch against his hardening cock while her tongue retrieved the little morsel of goodness and sent it tumbling down her throat. Tex took the other half and washed it down with a swig of Sally's beer.

In the rear car park, a panel of corrugated iron covering a gap in the chain wire fence began to move. With a scrape, it was lifted clear and dropped forward. Vince pushed through the gap in the fence and surveyed the lot. In the corner was Sam's trashed car, and parked beside it, Frank's Land Cruiser. Closer to the rear door, Vince spotted the XR 650.

Vince drew the beretta from his jacket and quietly walked over and looked through the side window of the Land Cruiser. Empty. He felt the bonnet. It was stone cold. Vince headed to the rear of the building. He paused at the Honda, put his hand close to the cylinder head, felt the heat. Looking up at the building, he noticed the smashed window beside the rear door, which was slightly ajar. Vince moved to the rear wall and edged towards a window. The view inside was obscured by a venetian blind, but he managed to peek through a crack. There he saw a figure asleep in an office chair, head tilted back, mouth open. It was Sam Fletcher.

In the restaurant, Sally lay on a booth seat, her head resting in Tex's lap. Tex was fascinated by her hair and ran his fingers through it. He giggled and looked in her eyes.

"You're so fucking beautiful," he said, in a rare moment of poetry. Serotonin was emptying itself furiously from what was left in his depleted neurons.

"I need some water," Sally said. She lifted herself and took a swig from her water bottle.

"Let's do it in the cool room," Tex announced.

"What?" Sally answered.

"Baby, I want to come in you in the fucking cool room."

"You want to fuck in the cool room? With all the ingredients and shit? I hate the smell in there."

Tex got up. He led her to the kitchen. Sally was laughing and resisting. Tex pushed her against the door of the cool room and lifted her skirt. He went down on his knees and started kissing her belly. Sally moaned with pleasure and pushed his head lower.

"Oh God," she purred. Tex was no poet, but he was the bard of cunnilingus. Within minutes, the Serotonin rush from the MDMA jetted into Sally's bloodstream just as she came. A scream erupted from her throat and her body convulsed. Her hand shot out and grabbed the counter, sending a tip jar smashing to the floor. She clawed at the door handle behind her and opened the cool room. A rush of cold, frosty mist spilled out onto the floor. It felt like silk against her bare legs, wet and sticky with her come. She spilled backwards into the cool room, Tex following. The door snapped shut behind them.

Vince silently emerged from the shadows and gently slipped the locking pin into place. He walked to a window near the front of the restaurant and peered through a slit in the curtain. He clocked the unmarked cop car up the road and the two figures inside it. Then he turned and walked towards Sam's office.

Vince lifted the beretta and tried the door handle. It was locked. He stood back and took aim at the lock and fired twice. The smack of lead and disintegrating wood panel echoed through the restaurant. Vince kicked the door open and stepped in, his gun raised. What happened next surprised him. He saw an empty chair. Then his brain exploded in a furious ball of white light and heat. The vision in his left eye went out, and his right blurred. He fell against a wall, then managed to steady himself. A king hit. He turned to his right.

Sam had been in a deep sleep when the sound of the smashing tip jar woke him with a start. He took a moment to register where he was and what he was doing. He glanced up at the multi-screen black and white security monitor in the corner just in time to catch the unmistakeable figure of Vince Young-Wan, gun in hand, stepping away from the cool room and heading right for his office. Sam scooped up his gun from the floor, stood up and stared at the wooden door with mounting terror. The doorknob turned slightly, then came to a stop as it pushed against the lock. Sam moved swiftly and silently. A beat later and the lock exploded into fragments of timber and metal. Sam managed to get into position behind the door by the time the second bullet hit. He raised the gun and cocked it, the click of the hammer hidden by the kicking open of the door. Vince paused, dead centre of Sam's gun sight. Sam turned away and squeezed the trigger.

The bullet entered Vince's head just above his right ear. His left eye popped forward from the sudden outward pressure and he toppled to his left, hitting the wall. The optic nerve to Vince's left eye was shattered, blinding him. His right eye was blurry, but still good. To Sam's surprise, Vince steadied himself, turned and faced him. Vince lifted his hand to his head and felt where the bullet entered. Blood spurted from the hole in tiny metronomic jets. He pulled his hand away and saw the blood. There was no exit wound. Sam looked at the hole in Vince's head. Why the fuck wasn't he on the ground? Sam pulled the trigger repeatedly, the hammer falling on empty chambers.

Vince lifted his gun and fired it at Sam. The security monitor to the left of Sam's head exploded into sparks. Sam yelped and ran and Vince fired again. His aim was wide, not helped by impaired vision and the bullet lodged in his brain. He fired off three more shots. The third one ripped through Sam's shoulder, sending him spinning onto the floor behind the desk.

Outside, Detectives Stevens and Barnes had heard the distinctive signature of .22 calibre rim shot. They snapped to it. Stevens was on the radio calling for backup and Barnes was all holster clips and ammo checks. They were guns drawn, out of the car and hoofing it to the restaurant within seconds.

Bill was en route to Sam's place when he caught the radio call: gunfire at Pizza restaurant, 14A Kirkwood Avenue. He swung a u-turn in front of an oncoming garbage truck and burned rubber. He got there at around the time Sam caught the 9-mill slug to the shoulder. Bill got out and ran low to meet with Stevens and Barnes as they sat tight against the front wall of the restaurant.

"Update?" Bill said.

"We only heard one shot, Sarge" Barnes said, "but something's going on in there."

Stevens added, "We could hear furniture being turned over."

Barnes to Bill, "You armed?"

"No," Bill said, "I'll stick close. There's two ways in. Here at the front and the rear staff door. Lance, you get behind the bin over there and cover the front exit." Bill turned to Barnes. "Rod, you and I will go check the rear."

"It's been quiet in there some time," Barnes said. "Maybe it's over."

"Maybe," Bill said. He hoped to Hell it wasn't.

Vince walked slowly around the table. His shoulder was soaked with blood from the rhythmic squirt of blood pulsing from the small hole in the side of his head. He found Sam under the desk, his shoulder smashed and bleeding. Sam still clutched his gun, though short of hitting Vince with it, it was dead weight.

Vince sat down in Sam's office chair. He put a finger up to his head and plugged the hole.

"Why aren't you dead?" Sam found himself saying.

Vince's left eye was half-popped from its socket and skewed to the left. Vince lifted his gun hand and waved it in front of the dead eye and saw nothing. He looked down at Sam with his good eye. A small tear rolled from it and down his cheek. Sam pushed himself further back under the desk, emerging the other side. He cautiously lifted his head above the desk and saw that Vince was still staring at the same spot. Sam slowly got to his feet, a task made difficult on account of his banged up shoulder.

On the car park monitor, Bill and Rod Barnes moved silently along the side of the building. Sam shuffled backwards to the door keeping his eyes on Vince. Just as he reached the door, Vince stood up. Sam made a run for it. The doorjamb exploded in shards of pine.

Outside, Bill and Rod tensed, reacting to the commotion. The rear screen door banged open and Sam came hurtling out, stumbling onto the concrete, gun in hand. Barnes came around behind him, gun raised, yelling, "Police. Drop the gun. Drop the gun. Do it!"

Sam turned and saw Barnes's gun pointed at his head. He felt light-headed. Then he saw Bill by the wall. The two men locked eyes for a moment. Bill broke the gaze. He realized that Barnes had his back to the door.

"Rod! Get ba–"

A bullet shredded the flyscreen mesh and ploughed into Barnes's back, sending him to his knees. A gasp of bloody mist shot from his mouth. The bullet had torn through his lung. His gun fell to the ground and Barnes toppled onto it.

Vince stepped out onto the rear step. Bill shoulder charged him, sending the big man toppling to his side. Then he ran for Barnes, who was struggling for air through the blood that was bubbling into his lung cavity.

"Lance!" Bill screamed. He jumped behind Barnes, and reached under his body searching for his gun. Barnes jerked and coughed blood. He didn't sound good.

Vince picked himself up and raised his gun, walking steadily towards Bill.

"Sam, shoot him!" Bill screamed, his fingers scrabbling for metal. Sam had nothing in the chamber. He had no words either.

"Lance!"

Vince started pulling the trigger. The first shot exploded concrete chips inches from Bill's head. He shielded himself behind Barnes's body. A second shot thudded into Barnes's gut. Bill felt the impact vibration through the body. Suddenly his fingers found the barrel of Rod's gun. Vince fired again. Bill felt a burning, wasp-like sting on his upper arm. He yanked the gun out from under Rod and lifted it up just as Vince appeared, towering over him. Bill unloaded four rounds into Vince's chest and neck. Vince hit the concrete, his head cracking open with the force. Lance appeared around the corner, gun raised, white as a sheet.

"Get an ambulance!" Bill said. Lance stood there frozen. "Lance!"

Lance snapped out of it. He fumbled for his phone and dialled. Bill turned the gun on Sam. Sam lay on the ground his fingers wrapped around his .22.

"Throw the gun down, Sam! Throw it!"

Barnes began vomiting blood. Lance went to him, barking details at the Ambulance dispatch as he pressurized Barnes's wounds.

"Throw the fucking gun down, Sam!" yelled Bill.

Sam looked down the barrel of Bill's gun. There was hardly a bone in his body that wasn't snapped or shattered. He had lost complete sight of who he was. He was anonymous, reviled, devoid of a moral place anymore in this world. He had spun a vile web and caught himself in it. There was nothing left of him to redeem.

"Drop the fucking gun!" The words came slow and thick and distant through the fog that had begun to envelop him.

Sam saw Bill's hand gripped tightly around the gun. Its aim was true. The eye of the barrel stared back at him, dark and cool and endless, a place of solitude and eternal peace. The sound of the world fell to silence. Sam lifted the empty target pistol and aimed it at Bill. He felt the ground tip upwards, bringing the sky into view. It rushed away from him as he slid backwards into a dark void.

\---

Fog poured softly from Sally's parted lips as she bent over a metal tray of grated mozzarella, her hands gripping Tex's hips behind her. He hands cupped her small breasts as he rode her steadily from behind. The only thing they wore were shoes to protect their toes from getting frostbite. Their skin was goose-pimpled from head to foot. Sally cried out as Tex ejaculated in her.

She slid off his cock and turned, and they kissed open-mouthed until Tex's cock went soft. His junk froze as it slithered down the inside of Sally's thigh.

They shivered and laughed, gathering up their clothes to leave. It was then they discovered that the door had somehow locked itself behind them. The come down from the MDMA was instantaneous. Ecstasy was replaced by panic. They put on their frozen clothes and tried the phone.

Sally got her mother, telling her she had trapped herself in the cool room prepping for work. Sally's mum called Gladys who arrived to a sea of ambulances and squad cars. Gladys wasn't allowed inside, but passed on the information to Constable Sarah Ellis. Ellis went in and opened the cool room door and out spilled Sally and Tex, stiff as corpses. They were blue and shivering, but alive. Tom ordered a third ambulance, and they were carted off to hospital suffering hypothermia and acute humiliation. It was a surreal and uplifting end to a strange and sad day.

Rod Barnes was rushed to life support and clung to the sweet vine on drips and leads and attentive nurses. He'd come out of a coma after a week and receive a bravery award, then hit desk duty for a year until he got his mojo back.

Vince was body-bagged and dispatched to the morgue to join Danny and Angel. Nobody would claim the body, and he would be duly sent to the furnace and have his ashes sprinkled over the crematorium gardens by a couple of weepy, pinned-to-the-eyeballs pole dancers.

Bill was treated at the scene for a minor bullet graze to the upper right arm. He watched as Sam was hoisted unconscious into the back of an ambulance and carted off to hospital under police guard. He went home to Karen and proposed. She laughed with tears in her eyes and told him it was the Mogadon talking. Then she said yes.

## Chapter 22

Bill nodded to the police officer guarding the door to the private room where Sam was recuperating, then entered. The cot was raised up so a patient could watch TV or take in the view out the window. Sam opted for the latter. The hospital was on the edge of town and backed onto dry Savannah. A hundred square miles of desolate outback shimmering under a white-hot sky. The heat blasted through the window. A muted television stuck on some cable religious broadcast hung from the corner ceiling, a preacher slickly and silently delivering salvation. A heart rate monitor with a direct line to Sam's left index finger beeped next to the bed.

Sam was awake, his eyes glued to the window. He wore hospital pyjama pants, no shirt, a bandage wrapped tight around his chest and shoulder from where Vince's slug had been surgically removed. He had a morphine drip attached to his arm with his thumb riding the self-administering button. His jaw was wired shut, his face a patchwork of betadine stains and stitches.

"You look good," Bill said. Sam turned to face him and smiled, as much as he was able to manage.

"Can you talk?"

Sam spoke in a clenched mumble through the missing teeth at the side of his jaw. The words were slow and wet and hard to pick up, but Bill caught them okay.

"As long as the morph holds out, I'm good," he slurred, giving the button another squeeze. "What about you?" Sam motioned at the bandage on Bill's arm.

"No biggie. A graze, is all."

Silence filled the space between the two men for a beat. Then from Sam, "What about your friend?"

"Not so good. Shot through the lung. He's in an induced coma." Bill let that sink in before adding, "He's got a wife and four kids, all under ten."

Sam looked away to avoid Bill's eyes. "Will he pull through?" he said.

Bill said nothing. He was trying to keep his anger in check. So he looked out the window and cleared his throat. For a time, neither man said anything. The sun was low on the horizon.

"Why, Sam?" Bill eventually said.

A tear rolled down Sam's cheek. "I never meant for anybody to get hurt, Bill," he said.

"What about Frank?"

"Even Frank. Not in the beginning."

Bill wondered who the tear was for, if in fact it was for anyone. He turned and watched the dying light, wondering if he ever knew Sam at all. He had walked in there wanting to know everything that had happened; to understand why Sam did what he did; to make some kind of sense of the destructive events of the past few days. He was already beginning to regret it. Looking at the beat up man with the tubes and the wired jaw and the bruises, this stranger who bore no resemblance to the man he knew, he realised it didn't matter anymore. Five people were dead. Possibly a sixth on the way. Sam would be going down for at least one murder, possibly two. And in the end, murder is murder, whether it was callous and premeditated, or an act of serendipitous opportunity. It would all come out in the days and weeks to come. Someone else would be asking Sam the questions, and for that, Bill was grateful.

"You want a lawyer?"

"I'm so sorry, Bill." He didn't even hear the question.

Bill read him his rights, then charged him.

\---

Sam entered the visitors' area slowly. His shoulder was stiff and a fresh cast was on his arm. It'd had to be rebroken and set. He looked for his family. All around him were tables and chairs, hard-fixed to the floor, men in orange shirts and pants and slippers talking to mothers, wives and children. Guards stood nearby.

He saw Freddy and Olivia seated at a table. On the table was a manila folder. He knew what was in it. Olivia caught Sam's eyes as he approached. She looked frightened. What the hell was she doing there? Who was this guy coming towards her?

Freddy looked up at his father, his eyes wide. Sam stopped short, as if unsure of his rights. Freddy got up but Olivia stayed seated. Sam held out his arms and Freddy slowly moved into the sheltering arms of his father. They stayed like that for some time. A tear fell from Sam's eye, landing on his son's hair. Sam stroked Freddy's head and felt normal for the first in a long, long time. More tears came.

Freddy separated and looked at the cast on his father's arm and the missing teeth in his father's smile.

"What's it feel like to get shot?" he asked.

"Freddy, don't," Olivia said shortly.

"I wouldn't recommend it," Sam said. "It hurts quite a bit. Like someone whacking you with a red hot poker."

Freddy grinned. "Like this?" he said, swinging his fist into Sam's arm. Sam's shoulder throbbed, but it never felt better.

"Ow. Yeah, kiddo, something like that."

"Mummy said you killed Uncle Frank," Freddy said.

Sam looked up at Olivia. She met his look with nervous defiance.

"And now I'm paying the price for it. It was a very wrong thing to do, Freddy, and I hope you understand that. I'm very ashamed of my actions." He waited a beat before continuing. "But you also need to know that Uncle Frank was trying to hurt you and your daddy. Uncle Frank was an arsehole."

"Sam, that's enough," Olivia said tiredly. "He's already had to deal with his father going to jail for murder. Don't make it worse."

"How am I making things worse, Olivia? It's the truth."

"It's okay, Mum. I didn't like Uncle Frank." Freddy got out his Gameboy and fired it up.

"Well, Freddy, now that's just unfair and not true. Uncle Frank was very kind to you."

"Olivia–"

"No Sam, I'm not going to gloss over the truth just to make you look better."

"He tried to make me touch his willy one time." Freddy's thumbs flicked rapidly over the Gameboy controls.

Olivia took a moment to react. The words caught in her throat. "Freddy, don't lie! Who told you to say that?"

"I'm not lying," Freddy whined as his thumbs flicked nervously over the controls. His eyes were glued to the screen and the tip of his tongue poked out from between his lips.

Sam and Olivia looked at each other.

"Freddy," said Sam calmly. "Freddy, look at me." Freddy kept looking at the screen. Sam placed his finger under Freddy's chin and gently lifted his face to meet his. Freddy's eyes remained glued to the screen and his brow furrowed.

"Freddy?"

Freddy looked up finally, afraid that he had gotten into trouble.

"Freddy, did Uncle Frank ever touch you?"

"No."

Sam exhaled a shivery breath. "Then why did you say what you did just then?"

"I didn't say he touched me," Freddy whined. "He just came into my room one time when mum was in the bath."

"And?"

"He was holding his willy and said I could touch it."

Olivia drew in a sharp breath. Her voice came out shattered and fierce.

"He... He what?"

"I didn't want to so I called out to you and he gave me twenty dollars and told me to not say anything."

Olivia blanched and a light went out in her eyes. The tiny details of the many times Frank came around when Sam was at work began to take a new shape in her mind like the threads of a dark web being drawn taut. Olivia had been caught out, seduced not only by Frank's appetite for her flesh and soul, but also his seeming devotion to her son's well-being. How often Frank had wanted to be alone with Freddy to help him with his studies. How often his red-rimmed eyes strayed affectionately to her boy, which she had read as an extension of his love of her. Her need for his attention had turned her eyes away from her most cherished place. She held back the rising vomit in her throat with a sip from a water bottle. She met Sam's eyes. There was no judgement, only a parent's shared guilt. There was also forgiveness. Olivia pictured Frank dying brutally at the hands of her husband and wished he were alive again to that she could join the party. She would have opened up his neck in a heartbeat. With quivering hands, Olivia slipped the manila folder from the table and put it back in her handbag.

They stayed until they were asked to leave. Freddy hugged and kissed his father. Olivia managed a small smile and told him they'd visit next week. She told him to be careful and left fifty dollars at the prison reception for Sam to purchase Milo and cigarettes. She dropped the manila folder in a bin on the way out.

Sam looked at Freddy and could see that the kid would be strong enough to ride that one out. He also saw for the first time, as if with new eyes, himself in his son. Any fears Sam held regarding paternity were now dead and buried along with Frank. Sam saw the man Freddy would become and felt better about a future that only minutes before seemed bleak. He went back to his cell and felt the rush of cold air on the back of his neck as the steel door closed behind him. There was a bible left beside his cot, a donation from one B. Farkas. Sam sat on his cot and opened the bible and tore a page from Leviticus. He took a packet of tobacco and made a cigarette with the thin paper, lit it and inhaled.

And his blood was washed clean again.

###

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Evan Clarry's film and television directing credits include the Australian feature films, Blurred and Under the Radar and Emmy nominated television series Mortified. His other Television credits include Alien Surf Girls and Mako Mermaids.

Evan commenced his career writing and directing the celebrated short film Mate which won Best Australian Film at Flickerfest and Best Screenplay at the 1998 Australian Film Institute Awards. His other short film credits include The House I Grew Up In and Crack. He has also won an Australian Writer's Guild Award and the Federation of Australian Writers' Di Cranston Award for the screenplay Jericho (Co-written with Robert Rabiah).

He has worked as a cook, a waiter, laborer, copywriter, horse breaker, musician, zoo keeper and Advance Man for Ashton's Circus.

Venom is his first novel.

He lives in Brisbane, Australia with his wife Annie, daughter Harper and several chickens.

Contact Evan online:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/evanclarry

Smashwords: <https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/evanclarry>

Or if you've been driving all night with a body in the boot, consider a short stay at http://www.badmotel.com

