the site of the atrocity, which had since been allocated to another family. They’d also conducted interviews with Miguel Pieraro, his daughter Sofia, and interestingly with four other subjects who’d arrived in Kansas City with the Pieraros. A woman, Maive Aronson, and a teenage boy named Adam Coupland, both survivors of a Mormon party that had been driving a herd of cattle to market when set upon by a gang of road agents; Trudi Jessup, a civil servant in the federal government’s food security program; and a Marsha Gross, described in the case note as a ‘camp follower’ of the gang that had attacked Aronson’s party.
‘And thereby hangs a tale, I’ll bet,’ Caitlin said to herself.
Even though she was only doing this research as an exercise in due diligence, to better inform herself about the administration she had been tasked to infiltrate, Caitlin found herself drawn into the story of homesteaders being forced off their land and into flight. She couldn’t help but sympathise with Pieraro’s anguish; his need to choose between avenging himself on the agents and getting his sole surviving child to safety. She thought him a man crushed between the weight of two worlds.
Before she became too deeply enmeshed with the narrative, the Echelon agent called room service and ordered up a pot of coffee and an omelette.
‘Miles to go before I sleep,’ she said to the empty room. But it wasn’t all bad. She had forgotten about Bret and Monique again.
28
NORTH DARWIN, NORTHERN TERRITORY
‘I understand you went for a swim this morning, Mr Shah.’
‘The weather, Detective, it is very hot this time of year.’
Julianne, keen to stay in character as the dutiful junior lawyer, held her pen poised over an old-fashioned legal pad, even though Downing was recording the whole interview on a microcassette. Shah had answered the policeman’s loaded question happily enough, but did not offer to elaborate. It seemed unlike him to play silly buggers with the law. Not for the first time, Jules wondered what the hell was going on here.
Detective Palmer, a powerfully built, thirty-something man wearing what looked like a bespoke suit, leaned back in his gas lift chair and regarded the old Gurkha as if he were an interesting crossword puzzle.
Alerted by Downing, Jules had spied the chairs, six of them in total, as soon as they’d entered the interview room. She recognised the model as a Herman Miller ‘Aeron’, a couple of thousand dollars’ worth of sit-down technology. They were positioned around a long hardwood table. A large mirror threw back their reflections from one wall at the end of the room. Undoubtedly, an observation area stood behind it. But otherwise, the interview room in no way resembled the grim, concrete boxes in which suspects usually found themselves. She had no doubt that somewhere in this building such a space would exist, probably three or four of them. Shah and his legal team were enjoying gentle, kid-gloves treatment, it seemed. Nevertheless, Palmer still wanted to know what he’d been doing down at the Gonzales Road Marina when the Rhino’s boat had blown up.
Jules just hoped nobody would recognise her from the scene. That would have taken some explaining, given she was supposed to be Piers Downing’s assistant.
‘Did you know any of the victims, Mr Shah?’ asked Palmer. ‘Did you have some reason for being down there?’
‘The man who was injured, the one I helped pull back to shore, his name is Rhino Ross. He is a friend of mine.’
Jules felt a pulse beating slowly and powerfully in her temple. If he explained too much about his connection to the Rhino, her own role in bringing them together might be exposed. Still, the detective seemed satisfied that Shah had admitted to being at the marina and knowing the victim. She had to admire her Nepalese friend for having the sense to play a straight bat. Her natural inclination when dealing with the authorities was to bury them in bullshit. But Palmer would undoubtedly have been making enquiries over the last couple of hours.
‘Do you believe there might be some connection between the attempted bombing at my house and the attack on Mr Ross today?’ Shah asked.
Palmer pressed his lips together as though forcing himself to remain quiet. ‘Investigations continue. But if you know of anything that might explain why two refugees should be targeted like this, I’m all ears.’
‘I object to the term “refugee”,’ Downing interjected. ‘Mr Shah is a respected and highly valued member of this community.’
‘We respect all the members of our community, Mr Downing,’ said Palmer. ‘Whether they’re black fellas who’ve been here for ten thousand years or reffos who blew in last week, we treat them all the same.’
Jules wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by that. Was it sarcasm or sincerity? He had an excellent poker face.
‘My point exactly,’ countered the lawyer, choosing to bet on sarcasm. ‘Is there some reason you dragged my client and myself down here? I’m not sure why we couldn’t have had this conversation by telephone.’
‘Bringing people together, Mr Downing, that’s what I’m all about.’ Palmer leaned back again and crossed his legs. He looked like he might be settling in for the duration. ‘And what brought you and Mr Ross together, Mr Shah? Did you have some reason for visiting him at lunchtime, just before he was blown up? Or was it more of a pop-in visit - a friendly call? You know, just before the fucking bomb exploded.’
Julianne was doing her best to paraphrase the questions in note form, but she’d never learned shorthand and most of her note-taking at college consisted of jotting down phone numbers and the addresses of parties. Part of her, the last remnants of childhood’s trusting naivete she supposed, wanted to be done with the facade and tell Palmer all about New York, the attack in Texas, the Romanian who tried to knife her in Sydney, about Cesky, and Acapulco, and how the two bomb blasts that had gone off in this city over the last week were probably tied in with them. But Shah, who knew all this, revealed nothing to the police officer. And Jules trusted him far more than she did Detective Palmer, in his beautiful hand-stitched suit. So she scratched out her notes, and kept her mouth shut.
‘I would have liked Mr Ross to work for me,’ said Shah. ‘He is a good man and in my business they can be hard to find. But the Rhino, he is very much an individual. An old-fashioned American. He prefers to set his own course. There is no telling this kind of man.’
It was obvious that Palmer was dissatisfied with the answer. He regarded his interviewee with a stony face for at least two seconds.
‘You must surely have some idea of why somebody wants you dead,’ he said eventually. ’
Jules expected Shah to stiffen at the taunt, and she did see Downing move as if to placate his client. But the old warrior didn’t react at all. Rather than having to calm him down or restrain him, Downing instead picked up a pen and scratched a meaningless doodle onto the yellow legal pad in front of him. Covering his own precipitate reaction.
‘Can we safely assume then, Detective Palmer,’ he said without looking up from the pad, ‘that you haven’t the foggiest idea of why somebody attacked my client? At his home. Would it be the case, Detective, that you don’t even have a lead to be getting on with, since the surviving bomber died without talking? So, is it the case you thought you might have Mr Shah in here this afternoon to see if he could do your job for you?’
Unlike Shah, Palmer did not hide his irritation. Two distinct spots of colour rose to his cheeks, fairly burning with resentment, as he glared at the lawyer.
‘If your client could answer a perfectly simple and reasonable question, it might give me a lead, Mr Downing. But for some reason he seems to have not a single thought on the matter of what connection there might be between the attempted bombing four days ago, and the actual bombing of a known associate of his today. A
