Murder in the Fabric

by Andrew Jennings

minutes before she arrived at Halls Gap. It didn’t tell her what to do when she got there.

  Truth was she was totally conflicted about George. Mostly she worried that his feelings for her were just sentimentality. The wish to be transported back to being a twenty-something, with a whole life to look forward to wasting.

  // Oscar

  “OK here we go.” Oscar said.

  He started gathering twigs, and small branches. Michael had a realisation.

  “You’re going to light a fire.” he said.

  “Told you it was radical.” Oscar said.

  Yes, it would render the drones and the satellites useless. The infrared sensors would just see one large heat source. The visual surveillance would see a large smoke cloud. But, it had one clear problem.

  “We send them a smoke signal. Pinpointing us.” Michael said.

  “Within the space of the fire.” Oscar said.

  “Sets a timer.” Michael said. “They will surround it.”

  “Once we don’t appear on cue at the western point, they will move the search to here anyway.”

  “OK. I see. But how do we do it?”

  “We light it upwind and walk through the smoke.”

  // Quang

  It was simple enough to make the link between Michael and Alex, and to begin tracking Alex’s car. His equivalent of the wall gave the park as the most likely location. It was a very big park. Even with all the technology.

  “Searching Eastwards from the last contact.” Quang said.

  “Based on?” Liuping asked.

  “High visibility points here, he pointed, and here.”

  “So when they get to these points we can spot them easily with the satellite?”

  “Yes.”

  But based too much on logic. On what a normal person could carry in food and water.

  “All good.” she said. “Logical. Thorough.”

  The wall showed a probability based overlay. Not just based on surface analysis. But also past history and even some elements of personality, gleaned from social media.

  “But if we reverse this. The human element. They know that we will make assumptions. So they take the most unlikely path.” Quang said.

  On the topographic map it was very clear. The ridge was totally exposed. Not a lot of tree cover, only a few tracks. It was like a trap.

  // Mia

  Mia rode slowly down Hardware Lane. Looking at the street cameras and imaging the processing working overtime to keep her image in sight. As she moved from one camera to another, handing over. Out into Lonsdale Street and a larger stream of traffic. Hopefully being lost amongst the multitude of targets, then onward to Docklands.

  A public bike parking terminal. Place the bike and watch it disappear skywards. Although it wasn’t cold she flipped the hood over her head, put on the sunglasses. Going from Mia, prime target, to hopefully something anonymous. Diving deep into the swirling crowds. Blending, and jumping. Doing circles, doubling back. Then finally diving into the apartment. Up the stairs. Into the room filled with projectors and displays.

  // Oscar

  For a moment they huddled under a large outcrop of rock. It was like a natural verandah. Hid them from view.

  “Infrared. What do we do?” Michael asked, as if Oscar would be a drone expert. But he had no real experience. This was something that Michael had brought with him.

  “We need a river.” he said.

  “Swimming?”

  “Enough just to get in the water, I think.”

  They looked up the terrain. Realising that to get to the nearest creek involved straight up and over. Really hard work with the packs. As they got higher there was less vegetation.

  “Try and move it going downwards. Fast and random.” Oscar said.

  Running down the steep slope became a process of falling and running at the same time. They sat at the bottom, and waited for the drones to give up. They headed fast into the water. Stopping to look back, to see if they had lost them.

  Eventually the undergrowth got so deep that they could relax. Michael and Oscar struggled further into the valley. Struggling with the undergrowth. A miserable meal of muesli bars. They couldn’t avoid looking upward. But eventually a fitful sleep came. Morning bringing more munching on dried food.

  “We have to cross the road.” Oscar said.

  “Why?”

  “If we keep going this way we are heading for Ararat.”

  “Which is the way we would be expected to go.”

  “Correct.”

  “But it’s at least three days walk the other way. Over Mt William, down to Jimmy Creek and over the ridge.”

  “Only way.”

  // George

  George watched the wall. All of the local police had the photo. Old fashioned stuff - showing people the photo. Asking.

  His phone had a tiny version of the wall. He could watch the wall anywhere. So George being George he decided to watch the wall on a tram heading for St Kilda. It rattled past the shrine, past Melbourne Grammar.

  // Quang

  “They know how we work. What we model. Everything points to them heading to Ararat.” Liuping said.

  “So let’s assume they head West.” Quang said.

  “But it’s three days extra walking.” she said.

  “Where in the profile does it say they are lazy?” he said.

  // Michael, Oscar

  The road might as well have been 10 kilometres wide. Michael and Oscar huddled at the side. Under the last of the large trees, scanning the skies for drones.

  “What I wouldn’t give for a drone scan.” Oscar said.

  Normally they would have a live feed. You took those things for granted when you had them. Felt naked. In the last half hour only two cars had gone past, and one drone. They waited another ten minutes and it didn’t return.

  “Ready?” Michael said.

  “Ready as I ever will be.” Oscar said.

  They jumped out of the bushes. Slightly unsure on their feet at first, then gaining speed. Aiming for the track on the other side of the road. The tree cover. Only relaxing when they had something between themselves and the drones.

  Ahead it looked like an illusion. As if the ridge were overhanging them.

  So tinder dry. That if you threw a spark, it would just explode. Just madness. No other way to look at it. Which gave it an edge against a machine programmed to look for the most likely of all of the possible outcomes.

  If they were overtaken by it, they would be burned alive. Oscar surveyed the landscape, the conditions.

  “If we light it here it will drive smoke north. We can cross through the smoke and head for that road.” He said, pointing to the road on the map, in the valley beyond the ridge. Which of course begged the question of what they did when they got to the road.

  Michael thought about those holidays with the family in the Grampians. Back before the famous one was famous. It seemed like three centuries ago on another planet. He thought of how to construct a message to his mother that she would understand, but nobody else could decipher.

  “Need some light stuff to get it started.” Oscar said.

  They gathered twigs and leaves. Light sticks. For the explosion, he thought. Oscar got out a box of matches.

  “Twenty kilometres due north of the pizza meltdown.” Michael sent. Breaking all the rules, complete desperation.

  Now they were up and running, in anticipation of the smoke that would cover them. Scrambling, and falling through the undergrowth. Here it was scrubby, and low. Scratching and pulling at their clothes. But they dared not look back.

  // George

  George was silent all the way to the fun palace. Alice looked across at him. He’d never been picked up from Beaumaris in the morning. They all knew about Beaumaris, who lived there, and what the attraction was. This was the opposite of all that. She had never seen him look so uncertain, so fragile.

  “You ok?” she said.

  He looked across, smil
ed. A sheepish smile. Knowing that he didn’t have to fill in the background.

  “Alex did a runner. She’s chasing the boy.” he said.

  “How much does she know?” she said.

  “Only the location.”

  “You told her?” she said.

  “No. Of course not.”

  He looked desperate. It was all out of character. George jumped. It didn’t make any sense. He paused, then continued.

  “She saw it on the phone. Just went for it.”

  // Quang

  He saw it first. “What’s that? On the ridge.” he said.

  They all swiveled to look at the large screen. It wasn’t much. Just a slight wafting of grey smoke.

  “It’s a fire. Look at the infrared.” Quang said.

  “Zoom the drones. We need a clearer picture.”

  The three drones broke off and moved toward the smoke.

  “Lower.” Robert said.

  Now they were swarming, just above the tree tops.

  “There.” Quang said.

  Sure enough. It was almost like ‘smile for the camera’. There they were just north of the smoke, clambering down the slope. The smoke grew stronger, and it became harder to see them. First contact for a week, and they had a clear indication of direction.

  “Heading west.” he said.

  “Nearest road?” he asked of the system. It zoomed and rotated until the road map was aligned.

  They knew they had been sighted. So it couldn’t just be a sprint to the nearest town. There had to be more going on.

  “Nearest food.” Robert asked. The display updated.

  “Anything in emails?” Robert asked of Quang.

  There wasn’t much to show. There was the pizza email.

  Robert stared at the screen.

  “Shit. This is a private code.”

  // Alex

  Alex didn’t slow on the highway, even though she had no idea of her final destination. Charging towards an unknown target. The email flashed on the windscreen as part of the