‘Jace made one point five million the first year and that was just the start. Kalla only had a small area under cultivation, he said there was no reason Papua couldn’t become the new Colombia. Even if they stopped it there eventually, Indonesia has seventeen thousand islands and you can grow coca on a few at least. But he reckoned Papua would do for a while. It’s huge and it’s one of the wildest places on earth. Access is tightly controlled by the army, but Kalla has logging companies in there, a copper mine. It’s no problem for him.’
‘So Harris asked you to stay under?’
‘We figured Kalla would hook up with me the next time he came. He’d put the hard word on me once, behind Jace’s back, and I had a letter from him after the murder. He was pretty keen.’
‘But he hasn’t turned up in nine months?’
‘There were some business issues, kept him at home. You don’t know how frustrating that was. Brian checked, they’re sorted now.’ She smiled eagerly. ‘Immigration will let us know when he arrives, I’ll make sure I meet him, find out what he’s up to, who he’s seeing, when the next load is coming in. Then we grab him, tickety-tock.’
‘The trial might scare him off.’
‘I don’t see why. He’s not all that bright.’
Like it was still a plan. And maybe it was, despite Rafiq Habib.
‘What about Teller’s family, after he died?’
‘Jace didn’t have anyone except a brother. Harris went over and talked to him, he’s a cop too. He’s on board.’
‘What about you? You agreed with this?’
She sounded more sceptical than she’d intended.
Sharon was looking at the surf, began to cry again. ‘It wasn’t too bad for a while. But when Kalla didn’t turn up after a few months I began to sort of drift. I don’t even know who I am anymore. There’s no one left inside me to make any decisions.’
‘Harris.’
‘Don’t blame Brian. I never told him, not properly. When I’m with him, it’s like we have to go through with this. Because of Jace.
It’s only when I’m by myself . . .’
‘So—’
‘Things just happened. I drifted. Then you turned up.’
‘And you agreed to meet me.’
Leaning against the wall on Campbell Parade.
‘Yeah. I remembered you, from last year.’
There was more Bec could say, but there was no point. Sharon put an arm around her waist and went to give her an awkward hug, but the gun got in the way. ‘You like carrying a weapon, Bec?’
‘Scares me, actually.’
‘Long as it scares the bad guys more.’ She let go and they walked. ‘You know when I realised how weird it had got? A few months ago, when the life I was leading started to seem normal. Jace always said if that ever happened to us, it would be time to get out. It happened to him but he couldn’t see it, he left it too late. I didn’t want to be like that. After Kalla hadn’t turned up for a long time, I told Brian something was wrong, he’d been tipped off and he wouldn’t be coming. Brian said no, but I said I wanted to get out. Oh, God—’
She put her arms around Bec so her sobbing face was against Bec’s chest. The move was so hard and awkward her hat came off and she almost fell over, and Bec found herself holding on to keep their balance.
Sharon drew back, put her hands up to her hair, said, ‘Brian would like to fuck me. He comes round to my flat sometimes. I wondered if it was why he kept me under so long. But it’s not that. It’s just . . . guys.’
‘You’ve got to come out now. It’s over.’
‘I told him we had to come clean before the trial, say who Jace was, let me give evidence. Then he just went away without telling me, just before the trial, to this DEA conference in the States.’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘He loves that sort of thing, thinks he’s a kind of honorary American. Sees this guy from the embassy a lot.’
‘What about the Crime Commission? Can’t you talk to them?’
‘When he got back I had it out with him. He asked me to stay under for one more month, said his information from the Yanks was Kalla was coming down soon with the coke. He wants to lock Kalla up more than anything. We all do. It would be like a vindication for Jace’s death. But Kalla must have been scared off, he never came. I said if he didn’t pull me out, I would go to the Commission and tell them it was over.’
‘What did Harris say?’
‘He was upset, of course. He cares so much. Said I’d let him down, but he’d talk to the Yanks. Give me a decision this week.’
Bec could see why everyone would want to stop cocaine being grown in Indonesia. It would be a huge achievement, the sort that made careers. Could push you to take risks. ‘You think Harris is a bit of a fanatic?’
‘You have to be. The way this thing is going, the drug stuff, it never ends, does it? You need something to keep going, something inside of you.’
‘You’ve still got that?’
‘On the good days.’
‘He uses people?’
‘That’s one way to put it. Your friend Knight, plus he knew some top guy at the DPP who pushed the Habib charge through. There are lots of people who respect him.’ She sighed. ‘Brian’s not always nice, but he gets results. You need people like that. He used to tell me, he wished he could be doing my job for me. He’s got a family somewhere and a normal life, but he wished he could do it all. I believe him.’
She went quiet. Bec could feel the sun warming her body, dulling her mind. As though reading her, Sharon said, ‘This is perfect, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you happy, Bec?’
She didn’t answer, reached down and picked up Sharon’s hat, brushed the sand off. Gave it to her and pulled out her phone. Three messages from Wallace, one of them a text: Ring me. Now. Nothing from anyone else. Turned the phone off so she wouldn’t have to talk to Vella if he called. Harris must still be in the mountains behind Coffs.
She thought about everything she’d heard from Sharon and tried to get it straight in her mind. ‘The safe. Was that really Sam Deeb?’
‘That bloody safe. God, I am enjoying this.’
Sharon was gazing at the beach as though seeing it for the first time, at a container ship out to sea and a few tilted yachts closer in, back at the crowd between the flags. Beaming. All afternoon she’d been either up or down. More than likely she was seriously unwell.
‘You can come in now,’ Bec said, ‘be a normal cop again.’
‘Regular shifts? Office gossip?’
‘All that.’
‘Jace said what we do is like being an addict. The buzz.’ She laughed a little self-consciously. ‘What I meant before about enjoying this, it’s having you to watch my back. Cop with a gun and all, it’s very reassuring, Bec. First time I’ve had that in a year. You a good cop? I bet you are.’
When her mood swung up she veered off topic. Bec said, ‘The safe?’
‘It’s a story. Can we sit down?’
They eased themselves down onto the sand, still looking out to sea. Sharon said Teller, real name Jason Ives, had done a degree in horticulture before joining the police, and this had led him into certain areas of UC work, including a year in Tasmania where some of the legal opium crop was being diverted. He’d solved that one, it had been a solid victory. Then he’d drifted into other UC drug stuff in New South Wales involving Sam Deeb, met Kalla, and one night mentioned his knowledge of plants. Kalla had talked about coca and Jason had concocted a story on the spot, said he’d been to Colombia and worked with one of the cartels. Kalla had been impressed—‘I wouldn’t say his insight into character is a hundred per cent,’ said Sharon. ‘But he was a sick fuck. Having a link with a cartel lit his fuse, it was almost sexual.’ He’d brought Teller up to Jakarta, shown him a good time, and flown him down to inspect his crop.
‘It’s only a jump from Jakarta and Kalla wanted to show it off. He was like a big kid. He took a few Indo friends too, he was so proud to be producing coke outside of S
outh America. Jace said it was weird, Papua’s in the tropics but there was snow on the mountains up high, then they landed lower down, middle of nowhere. Kalla had these Lexuses there, ready to meet them and drive to the coca crop. He’d built this proper road but it was only two kilometres long, there was nowhere else for the vehicles to drive, you couldn’t even go off the road, it was too steep and rough. Jace asked Kalla how he’d got the vehicles up there but he wouldn’t say. He showed him the local village, all these smiling natives in their huts and everything. When they got to the crop there were these big white tents and a banquet all ready for them. It was the strangest thing. Kalla was like a prince, the things he could do. Jace said up there you could look down on the clouds.’
‘Harris was happy for him to go to Indonesia?’
‘Hot for it. This crop might have been a game-changer internationally and here we were, we had someone who’d actually seen it. Brian was all like, “The Yanks can do a lot, they’ve got more money, blah dee dah, but they can’t do this. They need us Aussies to crack this one.”’ Oi oi oi. ‘He worked in the US for a while, knew all about the state/feds stuff, how to deal with that. He’s a very cluey guy. Plus he has this mate in the US embassy, always giving him advice. So Brian was running most of it himself, he arranged for the passport for Jace.’
‘You were okay with that?’
‘I’m a constable, for Christ’s sake. I didn’t know half of what was going on. Do you know what’s going on, Bec?’
Right now, half would be good. ‘Did you and Jason meet with Harris together?’
‘At the start. But I had nothing to do with Indonesia, it was just what Jace told me. He and Brian met alone about that.’
‘And Jason and you, you were . . .’
‘An item.’ She stared at Bec. ‘It’s not something I’d considered before, but you do get lonely. You get scared. It started a few months in, ended maybe two months before he died. He just got so focused on Kalla and angry too, because of the ’roids. When it ended, it was a relief. It’s not the sort of thing I’d do normally.’
Bec looked away and recalled the photos of Teller’s pumped-up body. ‘Harris must have known, about the steroids.’
‘It’s always the issue with UC stuff, how far you go. Most handlers just don’t want to know. I don’t think Brian ever talked to Jace about it.’
There had been another trip to Indonesia. ‘Kalla’s second crop got wiped out, the leaves just shrivelled and turned black. The people who were growing the stuff for him, villagers, some of them died. It was a disaster. He thought the crops had been sprayed with something, some of the villagers had seen a plane at night, no one really knew what was going on.’
‘That’s what they do in Colombia.’
‘Sure, they spray Roundup from planes, but it doesn’t kill people. This was different, and there was some story about fungus and stuff, some other crops were affected too. The people’s food. It was really terrible.’
Kalla had asked Teller to come up and take another look, his own horticultural expert having shot through. ‘Brian didn’t want him to go. They had a big argument, they were always fighting. Jace turned against everyone, he was paranoid by then. He told Brian he had to go, to keep Kalla on the string.’
This time the atmosphere in Papua had been very different. Only one of the SUVs was still working, and there were no white tents. Just a vast, blighted area of dead vegetation. Kalla hadn’t gone on the trip, it was Teller alone, sent to see if he could work out what had gone wrong. At the site, the guards were drunk and on edge. They didn’t let Teller near the village, he saw no locals at all. He collected some leaves for analysis and left after an hour, the guards happy to see him go. As the plane flew out it had to bank sharply over the mountain and he’d seen the village through the window, just a few hundred metres below. There was no one there but up a track was a cemetery, and he’d counted twenty fresh graves.
‘He told you all this?’ said Bec.
‘We met in a cafe the day after he got back. It was not long before he died. He was very angry, so angry, he was yelling so I had to take him outside.’
‘Yelling in a cafe?’
‘He was . . . he’d changed. He figured the government up there had sprayed the crop with some toxic chemical. Not Roundup but something much worse. Kalla said he didn’t know anything, it was probably a section of the military he didn’t have any control over. It’s complicated there, like there’s several different governments in competition. All trying to make money but act like it’s a normal country to the outside world. Different agendas, you know? Maybe someone wanted to shut down what Kalla was doing before the Yanks found out, because that would be very embarrassing. Kalla was refusing, he had protection from other powerful people, so someone just went in with the spray. That’s what Jace thought, anyway. But it was all wrong.’
‘How do you know?’
‘By that time he wasn’t thinking clearly. The graves got to him, he jumped to conclusions. But he was wrong. After he was killed I got the safe and gave it to Brian. He—’
‘You said you gave it to Sam Deeb.’
‘That was when I was pretending to be someone else.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘Brian had it opened, got the leaves analysed. It was a fungus after all, some sort of natural disease up there, the coca didn’t have any natural resistance.’ She smiled some more. ‘Poor Jace, hey? He was so angry, thinking those people had been killed by the Indonesian military.’
‘That’s what he believed?’
Sharon nodded. ‘He had it worked out. He thought about it a lot.’
Bec realised Jason hadn’t told her about the analysis he’d had done himself. Or maybe he hadn’t seen the results before he was killed. But if someone else had taken them from the flat, why would they have left the envelope?
She said, ‘Why didn’t Jason give Harris the leaves when he got back? Why were they still in the safe when he died?’
‘He handed them over. Brian just wanted the safe to make sure there were none left. I don’t know what was going on. Maybe he thought Jace had some other stuff there, might cause a problem.’
There were problems in what Sharon was saying, gaps and contradictions. Bec decided to get the big picture and then return to the details.
‘This Indonesian stuff had nothing to do with his death?’
‘It made Jace angry all the time, that and the ’roids. He was so confused by the end he even had this theory . . . he wondered if Brian might have been involved in the spraying.’
‘What?’
‘Brian had talked about this new spray once, something the Yanks had developed and he could get some of it, how he might hire a plane in Darwin and go and wipe out Kalla’s crop. But it was all fantasy, there was no spraying, it was fungus. Jace was just, you know, paranoid.’
Or not. They got up, walked up to the foot of the stairs and sat down, slowly wiping the sand from their feet. Bec was relishing the warmth of the sun coming off the concrete. When she had her socks and shoes back on, she checked her phone. Harris had left a message, said he was getting on a plane, would call again when they landed. Shit. There were two more messages from Wallace, one from Vella, but she didn’t read them. Vella would play it by the book if she called, provided he wasn’t the leak, he’d have help here in ten minutes, Sharon would be taken away to somewhere unknown. But from what she was saying, it might not be a place she ought to go.
It was more likely Vella wouldn’t take her fears seriously. Bec thought of Sharon being taken to a local police station, getting out of the car unprotected. The shot from the street. Or just driving somewhere in a police car, a bike coming up alongside her again. Maybe the same bike. Or everything going okay but word about her getting out, making it impossible for her to go back undercover, if that was what she really had to do. Or going back in and being exposed, killed.
Bec wanted desperately to hand the problem over to someone who knew more than her and could make the necessary decisions. A day
ago she would have trusted her bosses. Although she’d never thought they were perfect, she’d always put her faith in them, maybe because it was easier that way. But after what she’d learned, she could no longer do that. It was like the day she’d learned Santa Claus did not exist. Now she had to follow the implications of that knowledge, take matters into her own hands, make a decision, maybe earn some respect. Take care of Sharon until Harris reached Sydney.
She turned off her phone and looked up at the sky, sensing a change. A heavy bank of cloud was moving in from the south-west. It was still hot as they climbed the stairs to the park that ran north of the beach. They walked to a strange-looking sculpture, and found it was a memorial to the eighty-eight Australians killed in the Bali bombings of 2002.
‘Fucking Indos,’ Sharon said bitterly. ‘Fucking Muslims.’
There was more of a breeze up here. After reading the necrology they turned and went back the other way, Bec wondering what to do next, until Harris got in touch. He’d be back in an hour or two, it would be such a relief that just thinking about it made her feel better.
Ten minutes later they were at the other end of the beach, Sharon nervous again. ‘So what do we do now? I’m exhausted.’
‘Find a motel—’
‘No motels. These people have contacts like you wouldn’t believe.’
‘I’ve got friends whose house is empty, they’re on holidays. It’s not far. We’ll go there; I have to mow the lawn, you can have a rest. Wait for Harris to get in.’
‘You mow lawns?’
Magda had said bring a friend.
They were standing on a sort of headland, from which they could see some of the coast to the south. Off the path was a broad rock platform ending in a cliff. Sharon ran down and stood near the edge, the wind pushing the sundress against her body. Bec followed, feeling awkward in her suit although in fact her solid black shoes were better for walking on rocks than Sharon’s sandals. But she still felt clumsy. They stood together, looking at the waves working on the rocks way below.
‘It’s like the drugs, isn’t it?’ Sharon said. ‘They just keep coming.’
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