He hasn’t slept, hasn’t thought of sleeping. Mandy has gone. Vanished. There was no sign of blood at their home on the cliffs, no sign of a struggle. Just her phone left on the dining-room table and an unconscious policeman on the floor. The ambulance had come, so too the local police. The paramedics had acted decisively, stabilising the obstinately unresponsive Claus Vandenbruk before whisking him away, here, to this hospital. By comparison, the police had dithered, unsure of their protocols. They’d taken Martin’s statement and, as if to reassure themselves he wasn’t a fantasist, they’d plodded about upstairs in an ill-disciplined search, despite his pleas not to contaminate the crime scene.
‘What crime scene?’ the young constable had asked.
Martin waited at home until almost midnight, feeding and bathing Liam, putting the boy to bed, all the time listening, alert to any sign, imagining her voice, hoping that Mandy might return. A flimsy theory of hope constructed itself in his mind, built on the soft foundation of too few facts and too much yearning: she had knocked out Vandenbruk, flattening him with a candlestick or frying pan or laptop, before fleeing into the bush to hide. You’d want to hide, he reasoned, if you’d belted a cop. They only own one car now, the Subaru, so she hadn’t left, not by herself. And so he listened, even as he tried to present an air of confidence and normalcy to Liam. But the child, sensing Martin’s anxiety, became quarrelsome. He cried for his mother, something he rarely did.
When the boy finally fell asleep, hours past his normal bedtime, Martin left the house. Standing at the edge of the bush, he called Mandy’s name. But the more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed she could be hiding in the forest: why would she ring him twice, scream into her phone, then leave it lying on the dining-room table? And would she be screaming, ringing him in extremis, running into the forest, if the policeman was already unconscious on the floor? No. There must have been someone else in the house. Or someones.
He crouched on the damp ground by the house with a torch, seeking tyre tracks, but the ground had been thoroughly trampled, all evidence obliterated by the feet and vehicles of paramedics and police. He should have thought to look earlier, before the emergency services had arrived.
Eventually, he returned inside, but the house was not large enough to contain his anxieties, his mind not quiet enough to contain his speculations. At midnight, he packed a bag for Liam and another for himself, then carried the sleeping child to the car.
Now he lingers in the hospital because he doesn’t know where else to wait. Liam is safe and secure with Martin’s uncle Vern and his family. Martin has left Mandy’s phone at home: if she returns, she will call, explain what happened. But if she doesn’t, then the only person who might know where she has gone is Claus Vandenbruk, the comatose policeman.
Maybe he nods off, maybe he just closes his eyes, but the voice rouses him. ‘Martin?’
He’s instantly alert, but unprepared nevertheless: it’s Morris Montifore, homicide detective. ‘You?’ Homicide.
Montifore must see the panic in his eyes. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Mandy. Where is she? Is she okay?’
‘As far as I know.’ The policeman offers an approximation of a smile.
‘Have you found her?’
The smile vanishes. ‘Not yet.’
‘So who’s dead?’
Montifore sits down. There’s a weariness to the man that follows him, a weight that seldom lifts. ‘Not Mandy.’
‘Vandenbruk?’
‘No. He’s still unconscious. Stable, though. He’ll be choppered to Sydney as soon as possible, have all the scans. They reckon he should be okay, but they don’t want to take any chances.’
Martin stares at the detective. ‘What’s happening? What is Vandenbruk doing here? What are you doing here?’
Montifore matches the intensity of his gaze before looking away, choosing his words. ‘You ever watch the news up here? Read the papers?’
‘Not as much as I used to.’
‘You seen any of those stories about dodgy Sydney apartment blocks?’
‘Some.’ Even in Port Silver, they’ve been hard to miss. Entire residential blocks evacuated because of structural flaws, unsound foundations and fire-trap cladding.
Montifore is looking at Martin again. ‘There’s a big one out at Parramatta, called Sublimity—whatever the fuck that’s meant to mean. Only five years old. Huge crack, going from the subbasement up to the second or third floor. Creeps up a few more centimetres every day. All the residents have been kicked out.’
‘And?’
‘The structural engineers are on to it. They’ve been X-raying the foundations. They’ve got these huge machines, ground-penetrating radar or some such. The whole thing is as suss as all fuck. Not enough steel, too much sand, fuck-all cement.’
‘Let me guess: they found something.’
‘A cavity.’
‘A cavity?’
‘And a body. A very well-preserved body.’
‘Whose?’
‘A man known as Tarquin Molloy.’
‘What do you mean “known as”?’
‘An alias. You don’t need to know his real name.’ Montifore is examining Martin’s face, looking for a reaction. ‘Have you ever heard his name before?’
‘No. Never. Who was he?’
‘An undercover cop.’
‘What makes you think I would have heard of him?’
‘At the time of his death, he was engaged to be married. To Mandalay Blonde.’
chapter four
She wakes, disoriented once more. She lies still, trying to gather her consciousness around her, to assert her faculties, to take control. They’ve drugged her again, she realises. She struggles against the fog, straining to make sense of her predicament. She’s lying on her side, on a bed or
