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In the aftermath of Slaughter Park and the Doggylands affair, the Nordlund business empire collapses. Shunned by their Chinese backers and property developer partners, by investors, politicians and shareholders, its companies fall into bankruptcy one by one, many of them subject to ongoing police and ICAC investigations. Slater Park is saved as public parkland, while mining in the Cackleberry Valley is stopped and its landscape restored.
After a formal search, Harry Belltree is confirmed as the senior surviving member with a claim on the Nordlund family trust, and after apportionments to other surviving members he ends up with the only significant remaining asset, the thirteen per cent shareholding in the Times newspaper. Thus Harry becomes, in effect, Kelly Pool’s boss, a quirk of fate that appeals to them both. Kelly has no need of his patronage, however, as the recipient of a Walkley Award for excellence in journalism and a legend in Sydney crime reporting. The income from Harry’s Times shareholding goes to a foundation run by Jenny Belltree, to develop and distribute new technologies to help the blind.
Harry, Jenny and Abigail often travel up to Mungindi to the farm that Monti has bought with Pearl’s share of the Nordlund inheritance, and have become a close part of their family. On one of these trips they detour through Newcastle, Gloucester and on to Thunderbolt’s Way. It is the twenty-sixth of June 2015, the fifth anniversary of that day when, early on a misty morning, the car in which Jenny sat, gazing idly out of the window at the trees rushing past, was hit by an overtaking truck and sent over the edge in a howl of screaming metal. They pass the spot, an awkward bend above a steep hillside, and Harry pulls into the next layby. He straps Abigail onto his back and together they walk to the fatal place and climb down to the great blue gum against which his father’s BMW finally came to rest. Jenny remembers it all clearly now, the deafening, nightmarish plunge, the glimpses of Danny and Mary in the front seats tossed like puppets. There are deep gashes in the blue gum’s massive trunk, and she reaches out her hand to touch them. She thinks of the invisible scars that day left, and all the other people, innocent and guilty, whose lives were changed by that shattering moment, and she weeps.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing the Belltree trilogy was a new experience for me. I had never written a story spanning three books before, nor one set in the world of the New South Wales police. I am indebted to many people for their generous help with this project, and have acknowledged many of them in the first two books. In addition I would give my special thanks to people whose insights and advice have helped shape Slaughter Park, including Alex Mitchell, Dr Tim Lyons, my agent Lyn Tranter, my editor at Text Elizabeth Cowell, and especially my wife Margaret.
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