Dead Heat Read online

  When Alf had gone about ten metres, Davey stepped onto the first rock and followed him. Then, step by step, they headed towards The Steeple’s shortest and most fragile pillar. It stood at a perilous angle, about twenty metres away, near the middle of the massive base rock that supported the formation.

  On this side of The Steeple, the base rock was far more visible, emerging from the ground as a pitted wall, three metres high in places, and partly obscured by the native vines that hung down from the upper edge of it.

  Davey proved to be such a speedy rock-hopper that he reached the wall seconds after Alf. The two men then squatted together, and Alf pointed at Trainor and me and nodded. I gestured to Trainor, who stepped up onto the first rock, and then onto the second, and I followed her.

  When we reached the two Aboriginal men, they stood up, and Alf led Trainor and me along the wall, while Davey followed, erasing all trace of us with his sprig. Alf soon stopped and knelt in front of a section of vine that almost reached the ground.

  He eased his fingers between the fronds and into layers of growth behind them till he was able to part the hanging plant like a curtain. When the opening was big enough, he eased forward into it, so that only his waist and legs were visible. He grunted and groaned for a while, busy at some physical task in the area beyond the vine. Then he crawled further forward, the giant plant closed around him, and he disappeared completely.

  After a couple of minutes, Alf’s disembodied hands emerged from the vine and parted the plant again to make an opening. He said Trainor’s name, and she knelt down, crawled between the fronds, and disappeared as well, as they fell back into place. A few minutes later, Alf parted the fronds again and said my name.

  I knelt down, put the end of my pen torch between my teeth, and slipped my hands into the space below Alf’s hands. He withdrew, and I parted the fronds a little wider and eased myself between the layers of plant material. I crawled past the vine, low-crawled under an overhang of rock, and entered a space big enough to accommodate five or six people, if they were all sitting on their haunches.

  Alf squatted on the other side of the space, studying me. Crammed around him were an assortment of potted vines and basketball-sized boulders, which I assumed were used to block up the opening. Then it occurred to me. Where was Trainor?

  ‘Trainor?’ I said, crawling quickly forward. ‘Trainor!’

  ‘Down here,’ she said, grunting the words.

  I turned to her voice and my torch caught the top of her head as it disappeared down a hole at the back of the space. I crawled towards her as fast as I could and shone my torch into the hole.

  Trainor was a couple of metres below me, lowering herself on her back down a narrow tunnel that sloped steeply towards the east. I couldn’t see past her to assess the tunnel’s depth, but the moist and musty air that wafted up out of it was a sure sign that this wasn’t the only entry to what lay below. The vines parted, and natural light flooded over me as Davey crawled inside to join us.

  ‘Take it slowly,’ he said, gesturing at the hole. ‘Feet first.’

  I turned back to Trainor, and as I watched her disappear round a bulge in the tunnel wall, it occurred to me that it might be very unwise to enter this odd space with a couple of aggrieved men at my back. Then again, Trainor was already in the hole and descending. If she got into trouble, I couldn’t leave her there — losing two shadows in quick succession would be very bad form — so, one way or another, I was going to have to follow her down.

  Davey patted me on the back.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said, sympathetically. ‘We aren’t the bad buggers in this.’

  He pointed at the tunnel again, and I had no choice. I put my torch pen back between my teeth. Then I sat down in front of the tunnel, swung my legs around, and levered myself in, feet-first. The interior surface of the space was surprisingly smooth, and the tunnel itself was steeper than it’d looked from above. Through a combination of sliding and walking on all fours, backside downwards, I descended fifteen metres. Then I saw torchlight, not mine, playing on an opening just ahead of me, and I rolled out onto a hard floor inside a small cavern.

  Trainor swung her torch to the ceiling and around the walls of the subterranean space. All the surfaces, even the floor, appeared to have been rasped out and trimmed, possibly by a hammer and chisel. A set of steps descended to a narrow landing at the other end of the space. The air was damp, and I could hear water moving through the rocks somewhere nearby. Trainor gave me a weak smile, seeking reassurance that we were doing the right thing. I nodded, though I shared her misgivings about the level of trust we’d placed in the two men above us.

  Davey and Alf slid out of the tunnel in quick succession. Davey helped Alf to his feet, and the two of them took a drink from Davey’s canteen. Alf then gestured for us to follow him and he led us to the steps, which he descended one at a time with the aid of a rough handrail set into the rock wall. I was right behind him, Trainor was next, and then Davey. Alf shone his torch on the entrance to another tunnel at the end of the landing. I kept my torch on the tunnel as Alf entered it. Trainor followed, Davey went next, and I brought up the rear.

  Although you could walk upright in this second tunnel, it, too, was set at a steep angle, and I had to use handholds in the wall to regulate my descent and ensure my footing. I eventually emerged into what looked like a very big cavern. The other three stood waiting for me. Both the men held kerosene lamps that they’d already lit.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Alf, motioning us forward.

  Trainor followed the wobbly light of Alf’s lamp, I shuffled along behind them, and Davey followed. My torch played over walls full of graffiti. The white lettering was mostly indecipherable.

  I was wary of the surface underfoot, even though it seemed firm and smooth, like the paths above ground. The cavern sloped gently towards the ocean for a couple of hundred metres. Halfway through, it narrowed, and the ceiling descended till we were moving in another space that’d been gouged out with hand tools to make it wider.

  ‘Steps ahead!’ said Trainor. ‘Going down.’

  At the bottom of seven steps, we stood on another landing facing two tunnels. Alf entered the one on the right and we followed him, with me being the last to enter. This tunnel sloped eastwards as well and seemed to go on forever, particularly when it got so tight that I had to shuffle sideways to move forward. I was happy when I emerged into a small chamber, where the other three were waiting for me again.

  Alf led us down sloping ground for a hundred metres, and we descended a set of jagged steps. The men’s lamps raised a glow on the rocky surface around us, and we soon had our hands up to protect our heads from sharp rocks hanging from the ceiling.

  I wasn’t expecting the exit so soon, and was surprised when the light around Trainor brightened, transforming her into a dull silhouette about five metres ahead of me. I quickened my pace and was right behind her when she stepped from the tunnel into the open air. A nesting bird at our feet squawked and flew into the air.

  I filled my lungs with the freshness of it, and as my eyes adjusted, I saw that we’d emerged into a giant grotto at the bottom of the cliff. The lower portion of the cliff face was pocked with hundreds of deep holes like the one we’d just exited. Nesting seabirds occupied the entrances to most of the holes, including ours, and they seemed to fill every flat surface in sight. Screeching birds dived and darted above the nesters. I followed the other three as they picked their way, single file, through the rookery. Most of the nesting birds stayed put, though some became airborne and carried on till we’d passed.

  A wide area of rock sloped twenty metres down and then levelled out to form a natural platform that dropped away into the surging ocean. A section of the platform, and the rock that led to it, had collapsed eons ago to create a channel about fifteen metres long and seven metres wide connecting the ocean to the base of the cliff. Two other channels branc
hed-off near the end of it. One was almost as wide and as long as the main channel, the other was little more than a trough.

  A wave smashed into the cliff at the back of the main channel and was diverted into the secondary channel to produce small waves that bounced back and forth in a broil. The next wave expended itself in the same way. In such conditions, a boat trying to navigate these channels would quickly come to grief, but when the ocean was calm, it’d be a different story. A smallish vessel could motor up the main channel, turn into the secondary channel, and people could disembark.

  So, was the phone brought down through the tunnels, or did it come in by boat? It was a fifty-fifty bet, but if we wanted to establish the facts, we’d have to designate the tunnels and the rookery a crime scene and get an army of people to pick through them.

  A big wave smashed into the cliff face, sending a cloud of spray over the outer nests. Alf stopped where the nests met the rock platform and signalled for us to gather around.

  ‘Not many people know about the place you’ve just seen,’ he said, nodding at Davey. ‘Those who do have always treated it right. With respect. We’ve used it for years, and it’s kept our women and our kids safe. We owe it plenty. It’s not old to us, or sacred, but it’s a secret place, and that’s how we want it.’

  ‘I can’t tell you what’ll happen,’ said Trainor, dragging her gaze away from the ocean. ‘I only hope it stays as it is for you and your people.’

  Davey looked at Alf. They reflected the doubt in each other’s eyes.

  ‘We know you’re gonna go through the place,’ said Davey, tilting his head at the hole we’d just exited, ‘but how do we make sure it doesn’t become general knowledge? It’s been a secret for so long.’

  ‘The media is being kept on the road,’ said Trainor, giving the men a reassuring nod. ‘This whole area remains an exclusion zone, including the air and the waters around it. Over the next few hours, we’ll search the tunnels, and while I can’t guarantee anything, from what I’ve seen, our search won’t take long. It’s all solid surfaces, as you said. Once it’s all done, we’ll redact all mention of the place from our report, and when we hand it back to you, I really hope it slips back into being a secret.’

  ‘It’s an important thing for us to keep for the kids,’ said Alf. ‘You never know about a good place to hide. It might come in handy again one day.’

  BLOOD OATH NEWS BLOG

  SATURDAY 3 DECEMBER 10.30AM

  Numbers at a prayer vigil outside the Indonesian embassy in Canberra continue to swell, with the police now estimating the crowd at thirty thousand, and growing by the hour.

  While the vigil has been mostly peaceful, five people were arrested earlier today for attempting to scale the embassy wall. Vigil organisers are yet to confirm a mooted plan to march on Parliament House tomorrow to demand sterner action against Indonesia.

  Meanwhile, Indonesia continues to reject Australian demands for access to the surviving Australians being held in Jayapura. It’s unknown how many Australians were killed in the storming of the site. Indonesian Foreign Minister Amran Basri said the Australians had entered Indonesia illegally, they had ignored Indonesia’s request that they leave the country, and they were suffering the consequences of their actions.

  To quote a veteran Australian diplomat, the Indonesian response will go down like a turd in a punch bowl in Canberra, and the Indonesians can expect a stern rebuke when Federal Cabinet meets later today.

  12

  The two helicopter crewmen who’d been winched down to retrieve Kylie Stevens’s phone had found it in the middle of a group of nesting gulls close to the rock platform. The birds squawked as Trainor and I stepped through them to the shit-covered cone that marked the spot. Another crime scene left at nature’s mercy.

  Trainor said the crewmen hadn’t gone anywhere near the cliff face, and the team that’d subsequently been lowered into the site had quickly established that a thorough search of the rookery would result in its total destruction. They’d alerted their superiors to their concern, and after consultations further up the line, they’d been ordered to withdraw.

  Trainor’s phone pinged. She read the message and frowned.

  ‘I’ve got a dozen people arriving up top in half an hour,’ she said, pocketing the phone. ‘I know the tunnels are special to these people, but they’re going to get the full treatment.’

  ‘That’s all well and good,’ I said, ‘but I’m starting to think they don’t warrant anything like it. All hard surfaces, as Davey said, so what are you going to find? Nothing, is my guess. And as for this place, we’re in the middle of an active rookery, so not the most searchable place in the world, as your people have already discovered. In other words, it’s a nightmare search job that’ll take up plenty of time for little or no gain … which has me thinking maybe we’re being played — that the phone was planted here by the perps to keep us busy.’

  ‘What would that say about Jade Rawlins?’

  ‘I’m not saying she was party to it. Not yet.’

  Trainor studied me and got her phone out to send a message or make a call, but the thing buzzed in her hand, beating her to the punch. She read the incoming text.

  ‘I hear what you’re saying,’ she said, pocketing the phone, ‘but we have to search in any case. At least I won’t have to be here to supervise the job. My people have organised for us to see Dave Calder at seventeen hundred hours.’

  Alf led us back into the dank hole in the rock, and the thumping waves and the protests of the seabirds soon became an echo, and then died away altogether.

  On the way up, Trainor and I poked around in a stack of provisions stored in the biggest cavern. We opened boxes of dried beans and cans of whole tomatoes. We probed bins full of corn, rice, and wheat, and stripped the plastic from a dozen blankets and shook them out. But we found nothing.

  Most of the names inscribed on the wall of the big cavern were accompanied by dates. The earliest was from 14 November 1929. There were quotes from the Bible daubed in white paint, and one wall featured a coloured tableau depicting Aboriginal children being taken from the arms of their parents by men in broad-brimmed hats.

  We followed Alf and Davey up through the tunnel system. I’d seen no other paths on the way down, only the one we were on, so it would take Trainor’s people six to eight hours to go over this place a few times. I figured they were unlikely to uncover anything demanding a longer and more intrusive search.

  Once we’d emerged from the entry cave, we leant against the rock wall outside, next to the hanging vine, and caught our breath, and took a slow drink.

  ‘So, you’re off to see Calder,’ Davey said, nodding, confident in his assertion.

  Trainor tried to maintain a neutral face, but she came off looking a bit annoyed.

  ‘How do you know that?’ she said, her lips scrunched.

  ‘Grapevine,’ said Davey, as if that were obvious. ‘I’ll give you the tip. Calder’s not well. Not well at all. And he’s fragile with it, so go easy. Don’t stir him up, I mean.’

  ‘I’m sure everything will be fine with Mr Calder,’ I said, bristling at this unsolicited advice. ‘What’s the matter with him, anyway?’

  ‘Lung cancer,’ Davey said.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll keep Mr Calder’s condition in mind when we talk to him,’ Trainor said. ‘Now, we’d better go. We don’t want to keep him waiting.’

  Trainor shook hands with the two men and set off across the stepping stones. Davey and Alf wore hard expressions as they watched her go. I thanked them and stepped onto a stone, and then onto another stone, following Trainor as she headed for the path.

  We unfastened the flap in the fence and walked around to the front of The Steeple. A dozen military types were waiting for us there. They followed as we retraced our steps back along the fence line. We passed Alf and Dave
y on the way. They nodded but said nothing as they stepped off the path to let us through.

  I held back the flap in the fence for the search team. Trainor and I insisted they use the stepping stones to get to the wall below the pillars. One team member pinned back both sides of the hanging vine, and a few minutes later we watched the last of them disappear between the fronds.

  I rode my bike to Vincentia, with Trainor in tow in a sleek sedan. I stashed my gear in my rental, had a thirty-second shower, and changed into a shirt and light chinos. We had half an hour before our interview with Calder. I figured we’d make it there by the skin of our teeth.

  On the drive to his office in Nowra, I quizzed Trainor about her background. She said that after high school she’d studied Law at the ANU, and then got a job with the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions. Interesting work, but not interesting enough, so when an old friend had talked up a career in the army, she’d looked into it, and eventually enlisted. Within a couple of years, she was working for the Director of Military Prosecutions.

  ‘So that’s what you do now?’ I said. ‘You’re a prosecutor?’

  Trainor kept her eyes on the road.

  ‘I don’t talk about what I do,’ she said. ‘Just as I imagine you don’t talk about aspects of your role.’

  ‘You’ve moved on from prosecuting then,’ I said. ‘Let me guess — to military intelligence?’

  ‘That’s a coverall term for everything and nothing. But yes, I analyse and advise.’

  ‘And you must have some experience in criminal investigations, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Experienced, but not as experienced as you,’ she said, checking the rear-vision mirror. ‘I’ve read your book. And yes, I enjoyed it. Cracking Mondrian was impressive. And saving the Prime Minister. I shouldn’t say this, but I liked your approach. The decisions you made. Unconventional but effective.’