‘You didn’t. You couldn’t…’ She was almost incoherent.

The phone was ringing still, but they ignored it. Some things were too important even for the imperatives of medicine to interrupt.

‘I love you,’ he whispered, but he knew at once that it was a mistake. He felt the sudden rigidity of her body. He felt the shock wave running through her slight frame and he knew there was no joy here this night. ‘No.’

‘Yes.’

‘Grant,’ she said, then faltered, and the tension in her body was suddenly matched by his. ‘I can’t… Because of Grant… Don’t say you love me, Alistair. I was your twin’s fiancée and this night I’ve shocked you to the core. You don’t know what you’re saying. You feel sorry for me, Alistair, and I can’t get past that. Not yet. Not now. Do you think I’d let you make love with me now-when there’s this between us?’

‘No, but-’

‘I knew how it’d be,’ she said bleakly. ‘I desperately didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want to give you this guilt.’

‘I’m not wearing guilt.’

‘You’re saying if this hadn’t happened you’d be kissing me? This isn’t love, Alistair. This is shock. Passion of anger and pain and distress.’ Then, as he hesitated, she pulled away from him completely. ‘Answer the phone, Alistair,’ she whispered. ‘You need to.’

‘I don’t want-’

‘You don’t know what you want and neither do I. Answer the phone.’

He stared at her, balked. Frustrated. Her face had shuttered. Her eyes were blank and weary.

‘It’s too late,’ she said, turning away from him. ‘Or too early. It’s almost dawn. And I can’t face you. Not yet. Not now. I can’t take this forward. Just go and answer the phone, Alistair, and leave me be.’

How could he leave her? He couldn’t. But of course, as always, there were medical imperatives. Howard was awake and writhing with pain. One of the stones must be pushing through. He needed to increase the morphine dose and give the man some reassurance that he wasn’t dying.

He had to go. Like it or not.

‘We’ll leave it for now, but we can’t leave this for ever,’ he told her.

He’d answered the phone set up in the hall so he was standing in her doorway again, with Sarah a shadow silhouetted against the moonlight in the window.

‘We’ll leave it till morning,’ she whispered, almost grateful ‘Meanwhile…go and see to Howard. Let me think.’


It wasn’t only pain and fear of his illness keeping Howard awake. Alistair increased his morphine dose, but before he could leave the man gripped his arm and started pleading.

‘I’m not responsible. I dunno who all these people are.’

Alistair nodded. He wanted to go back to Sarah. He desperately wanted to get back to Sarah. There was so much left unsaid.

But there were other imperatives. Deadly imperatives. He knew that. If staying here could get them information…

‘You’ve had lots of people through the property?’

‘Heaps,’ Howard told him. He’d obviously been lying in the dark, in pain, and had decided the only way through this was to be helpful. ‘But I never knew who any of them were. Most from those places with funny names like Iran and Iraq or Kurb… Kurb… Anyway, places like that. They never said anything. The pilots would drop them off, I’d feed them and give them the passports and stuff, show ’em a few videos about living here, and in a few days a truck’d come and fetch them.’

‘A truck?’

‘They’d go on one of the transporters that take the cattle down south. It was all paid for. The truck drivers didn’t know nothing, either. No one did.’

‘You know that the pilot died?’

‘Yeah, but I didn’t know him. He was a newbie. We’d had the same pilot for two years but he got cold feet. The boss said he was sending someone out from Thailand to take over the run.’

‘The boss?’

Howard chewed his lip. ‘Yeah. The boss. I’m not supposed to know who he is.’

‘But you do?’

‘I might.’

‘Can you contact him?’

‘Maybe.’ Howard shifted in his bed and winced. ‘I’m not supposed to know anything at all. But he came here once to check the place out and…well, I checked his wallet when he was in the shower. I’m no happier to work in the dark than the next man.’

‘He’s Australian?’

‘Yeah. Do you reckon if I fingered him they’d be easier on me?’

‘I’m sure they would,’ Alistair told him. He was focused now, knowing this could be vital information. His own personal needs-what lay between him and Sarah-had to be put aside for this. It must. ‘Do you want me to ask the senior detective to talk to you?’

‘What’d’you reckon?’

‘I reckon it might help. And that has to count for something.’

It might well help. More than anything right now he wanted to go back to Sarah, but he knew enough of human nature to know that Howard was likely to change his mind at any minute. If he clammed up, this opportunity could well be lost.

‘I’ll phone the detective now,’ he told Howard, and Howard nodded.

‘You stay, though,’ he told Alistair. ‘They put words in a man’s mouth, these coppers. You stay with us while he’s here or I’m saying nothing.’

Alistair nodded. It meant he couldn’t go back to Sarah. It meant he might be stuck here for an hour.

Maybe it was just as well.


How could she think?

Sarah couldn’t. She lay and stared at the ceiling until the first glimmers of dawn lit the room. Four a.m. Four-thirty. Enough. Alistair wasn’t returning and she was going crazy.

She needed a walk. She needed to do anything but lie here and go crazy. Silently she rose and dressed, hauling on jeans and sweatshirt and trainers. Then she walked out into the dawn, closing the door firmly on Flotsam as he tried to follow.

‘No, boy. Not this morning. I need my own company.’

And how lonely was that?

She couldn’t answer her question. There was so much happening. So much…

She walked. She walked for miles along the sea-washed beach. But it didn’t help. Nothing helped, and finally she turned. She knew she had to return to the house. To Alistair.

To sort out for ever what lay between them.

To somehow forge a way forward.

Who was she kidding? There was no way forward.

She was alone for ever.


Dolphin Creek’s tiny police station was on the main street. Barry usually slept out on the veranda-it was cooler that way-and right now he appreciated it. Right now he needed as much cooling as he could get.

He was suspended. Suspended pending investigation.

He knew what that meant. The end of his police career.

But why? For the life of him he couldn’t appreciate why everyone was so worried about the low-life criminal element he dealt with. And he was a good cop. He knew he was. Much better than the mealy-mouthed, psychology-trained cadets coming into the force these days.

He didn’t like the direction the force was taking. Maybe it was time he moved on.

But he had no wish to move on. Despite the hassles he’d had over the last couple of years, despite the implied demotion in being sent to Dolphin Creek, he liked being a policeman. He liked wearing a gun on his hip and having people treat him with the respect he deserved. He liked neatness and order, and he liked people paying the penalty if they flouted that sense of order.

So what was happening to him right now made no sense at all to the aggrieved police officer. He’d shot an illegal refugee-a criminal. A person of no worth at all. And now he was going to lose his career because of it.

His anger was building all through the night. He lay awake and stared out at the deserted street and thought about it. And fumed. And somewhere in the time between darkness and dawn the fine line between reason and irrational fury was crossed.

That was how he was when he saw the woman. She was a ragged figure, carting what looked like the doc’s big medical bag down the street, darting from shadow to shadow.

He did nothing. Who gave a toss? he thought sourly. He could bring her in. That’d please them. But then, why should he lift a finger to help? Damn them all. They could go chase their tails.

He was suspended.

Only then he saw her go past again, a stooped figure pushing Florence Trotman’s wheelbarrow. She was still darting from shadow to shadow, pushing the barrow before her.

He watched for a while and saw her for a third time. This time her barrow was loaded, not just with the doctor’s bag, but also with a pile of things that looked from this distance like basic supplies. Mounds of bottled water. Bread.

Petty pilfering. Why should he care?

She didn’t look anything, he thought. Certainly not the hardened criminal he’d thought was probably behind this whole thing. She looked…pathetic. Maybe she was a stooge, expendable, being sent into town to fetch.

Taking her out would achieve nothing. There must be someone behind her.

She was headed north.

Were they hiding north, then? Despite his determination not to get involved, he couldn’t prevent a rousing interest. He lay back on his bunk and tried to figure it out. Who would have thought that they’d hide out north of the town? They must have skirted the town’s boundaries, maybe coming close so they could steal.

Where would they hide within wheelbarrow-pushing distance north of the town? The land out there was barren. Empty. There were only the cliffs.

The caves. If they’d come down from the hills looking for supplies then the closest place to hide would be the caves.

Stuff it, he wasn’t going to help. He was suspended.

He lay still. But his mind wouldn’t cease thinking.


Sarah was quickening her steps as she walked back towards town. She’d come too far. Soon the team would be heading out to the wreck and she needed to go with them.

But still nothing was resolved. The ache in her heart was as dreadful as ever.