Prohibited Zone (7 page)

‘You silly old bugger,' I said. ‘Just keep your mind on the road.'

I walked with him to the cabin of the truck. ‘No need to worry about me, mate,' he said as he clambered into it. ‘I'm not the wandering kind. As long as I can get the leg over the missus about once a week I'm happy.'

‘And I'm sure she loves your sense of romance.'

He cackled and gave me a mock salute. ‘Well, good luck. Better hit the frog 'n' toad. Don't want the consignment to die of cold.'

‘Hey, don't turn her into a bloody commodity, mate.'

He laughed again. ‘See you in Adelaide, Westie.'

I ran back to the ute. Five minutes later we'd overtaken Col and were cruising towards Port Augusta.

6

I
T
'
S NOT A BAD RUN INTO
P
ORT
A
UGUSTA
, also known as the Gutter, from the north. To the west, a series of abrupt, flat-topped hills cut into the horizon, iron-hard and about a billion years old. This morning they were deep blue against the horizon. Between the hills and the road and from the road eastward lay a broad scrubby plain of saltbush and mallee, the trunks of the mallee dark, the saltbush grey. Salt pans lay in the low points of the plain, gleaming and flat and white as bones. The dirt changed colour occasionally as we drove across the plain, from red, to red-brown, to brown, to salmon pink. It was about the only thing that changed for eighty kilometres. I didn't even change gear. Kara sat silently in the passenger seat, staring out the side window. I played Dave Graney's
Heroic Blues
.

‘Don't you have anything more cheerful?' she asked.

‘What like? I don't have any Wiggles.'

‘The Wiggles would be better than this. It's like we're driving to a funeral.'

As we approached Port Augusta the Flinders Ranges manifested to the east through the gathering heat haze, flanks shapely and elegant despite their age. The sky was completely clear. The car's temperature gauge showed it was twenty-eight degrees outside, and it was only just past seven a.m. Mallee trees were being rocked by a north wind. It was going to be a very hot day.

‘We'd better get our stories straight,' said Kara, then spent ten minutes telling me what the story was.

The roadblock was set up in a truck-parking bay five kilometres out of Port Augusta. Four police cars and a couple of bikes were parked in the bay and witch's hats were laid out to funnel south-bound traffic. North-bound vehicles were able to pass straight through.

‘This'll be interesting,' said Kara as we drew to a stop adjacent to a helmeted motorcycle cop. I wound down my window and was blasted by hot air.

‘Morning,' said the cop. He stood slightly in front of me and back from the window. He looked tired and as if he didn't want to be there. According to his tag he was Number 5767. He was wearing regulation sunglasses and black moustache.

‘Where have you come from this morning, sir?'

‘Just up the road.'

‘Exactly where, sir?'

‘About eighty kilometres north. We camped on the side of the road.'

‘And where did you come from before that?'

‘Roxby Downs.'

‘Were you at the Woomera Detention Centre at any time yesterday?'

‘No.'

The cop stooped and looked across at Kara.

‘How about you, ma'am?'

‘Yes, I was there.'

‘May I see some identification, please?'

She fished around in her satchel and pulled out a purse, from which she extracted a driver's licence. She handed it to the cop, who studied it for a few seconds.

‘You are Kara Peake-Jones?'

‘No, I just gave you a fake ID. What do you think?'

He stared at her for a moment, stony faced. ‘Are you still living at Milson's Point, Sydney?'

‘Yes.'

He took out a sheet of paper from his jacket and scanned it. Then he looked at me. ‘May I also see your driver's licence, sir?'

I obliged.

‘Just wait here a moment, please, Mr West.' He walked away from the car and spoke on his two-way. He seemed to get a response because he spoke again and then returned to my window. He leant down so he could see us both, handing back our licences.

‘I'm going to have to ask you to follow me to the Port Augusta police station,' he said.

‘Why?'

‘We just want to ask a few questions about events that occurred last night.'

‘Can't you ask them here?'

‘It's not me who wants to ask them. Actually, I've just come up from Adelaide this morning. We're a bit short-staffed at the moment. Six officers were injured in the riot yesterday up in Woomera.' He gave Kara a glare, as if it was her fault, which it might have been.

‘And how many detainees?' she demanded. ‘How many detainees were hurt when the police over-reacted?'

‘We didn't start the riot, ma'am.' The ‘ma'am' was a struggle. He looked at me sourly. ‘I'll just take a look in your tray and we can go.' He walked to the back of the ute and unstrapped the tray cover until it was almost completely open. He fossicked among my camping gear for a couple of minutes and then did the flap back up. ‘Doesn't that toolkit usually go inside the cabin?' he asked.

‘Yeah. I had it out the other day and didn't bother putting it back.'

‘What did you sleep on last night? You don't have any sleeping gear.'

‘We slept in the car. It was bloody cold.' I gestured towards Kara. ‘And she wasn't very friendly.'

He didn't smile. I wondered if he ever did. The lenses of his sunglasses gave me nothing. ‘Follow me.' He hopped onto his BMW bike and moved out of the parking bay onto the highway. We followed him into town, crossing the bridge that spanned the tip of Spencer Gulf, turning right into Alamein and then left onto Commercial. A newsagent on the corner showed the headline of Adelaide's daily rag, the
Advertiser
, in a wire display rack. ‘TERROR RISK “EXTREME”.' A second headline in smaller type read ‘17 Woomera escapees still at large'. Early risers were out doing their shopping before the heat really started to hit. A few others looked like they hadn't been home yet and were just waiting for the pub to re-open.

Port Augusta's police station was a large, modern, redbrick building down a dead-end street. It sat across the road from the old railway station, now an art gallery, and the local unemployment office. Beyond the old railway station was a railway graveyard, littered with rusting carriages slowly returning to the earth from where they had come.

Our guide parked his bike out the back of the station and I pulled into the public car park. We followed him through a large glass sliding door into a reception area with a counter, a soft-drink vending machine and a row of seats. Five of the seats were occupied, four by Aboriginal women, who looked at us without curiosity. A large white woman sat as far as she could from the Aborigines, which was three seats away. A young black child was on the floor playing with a few pieces of Lego.

‘Wait here,' said the cop. He walked through a door marked ‘Staff Only'. We sat down between the black and the white. The seats were plastic and uncomfortable. We had just settled when he re-emerged. He looked at Kara and nodded to her.

‘Come with me.'

She gave me a look that could have meant anything except ‘sorry for all this hassle' and followed him through the door. I grabbed a magazine from the coffee table and was reading about celebrity bust-ups in Hollywood when a young uniformed cop came through the staff-only door and beckoned me. I followed him down a sterile corridor past a door marked ‘Interview 1' to another marked ‘Interview 2', which was open.

‘In here,' said the cop. ‘Take a seat.'

I entered a small, square room containing a table and three chairs. There was a single, tinted, double-glazed window, through which I could see the silhouette of a tree and nothing else. There was no decoration on the wall. I stopped studying the room and took a seat. It was plastic and uncomfortable. I stood up again.

Two men walked in through the open door. The first was about forty and had a medium build, short blond hair and a brown suit that looked as if it had walked up from Adelaide. Apart from his suit, everything about him was pale. His eyebrows were sandy, difficult to see on a background of bloodless skin. He had thin lips and sallow cheeks, each with a permanent vertical line in the middle. He was chewing gum and gave me a bland smile as he reached out to shake my hand.

‘Thanks for coming in, Mr West,' he said. ‘We won't keep you long. I'm Detective Inspector Tarrant from the Adelaide Crime Investigation Bureau.'

The second man closed the door behind him. He took a seat to one side of the desk and didn't introduce himself. I had seen him before – at Spuds; Kara had thought he was with ASIO. His thin moustache lay bedraggled on his wide upper lip like a strand of seaweed on a beach. I gave him a little wave.

‘I'm Steve West.'

‘I know who you are.'

‘So who the hell are you?'

‘Just sit down. Let's not get this off to a bad start.'

‘We already have.'

‘Please sit down, Mr West,' said Tarrant. ‘His name is Hindmarsh.'

Hindmarsh looked at him quickly. ‘There was no need to tell him that.'

Tarrant held out his hands in a part-apology. ‘I hope it wasn't covered by the Official Secrets Act. It's not your real name anyway, is it?' His cheeks tightened, as if he was trying to suppress a smile. Hindmarsh glared at him and then at me. I sat down. Tarrant opened a notebook and flicked through it.

‘Mr West, there was a riot at the Woomera Detention Centre yesterday.' He looked up. ‘A number of detainees – twenty-two – escaped. Since then, seven have been found and are now in police custody, which leaves fifteen still at large.'

‘The
Advertiser
said seventeen.'

‘The
Advertiser
is out of date. We're keen to find the rest of them. We think you have information that might help us do that.'

‘I doubt it.'

‘How well do you know Kara Peake-Jones, Mr West?'

‘I only met her last night. She needed a lift to Adelaide.'

‘How did you meet her?'

‘She introduced herself.'

‘Was she alone?'

‘Yes.' I gestured towards Hindmarsh. ‘He'll confirm that.

He was there.'

‘Did she talk about the events at the Woomera Detention Centre?'

‘Not in detail.'

‘So you don't know that she was the main organiser of the protest?'

‘No, but it doesn't surprise me. She seemed quite uptight about it all.'

‘In what way?'

‘She almost got into a fistfight at Spuds.'

Tarrant paused to make a note. He was left-handed and he wore a wedding ring.

‘Did you agree to take Ms Peake-Jones to Adelaide?'

‘Not at first.'

‘Why did you change your mind?'

‘She insisted. She was very insistent. And I can never say no to a woman.'

Hindmarsh snorted, but not with mirth. Tarrant consulted his notes.

‘Mr West, at approximately nine-twenty p.m. you told Constable Garrett that Ms Peake-Jones was walking to Woomera.'

‘I thought she was. That's what she told me.'

‘But she didn't.'

‘She might have started. But she came back about half an hour later and tried to convince me to change my mind. In the end I did.'

He handed me a small photo. ‘Do you know this woman? Her name is Saira Abdiani, and she escaped from the Woomera Detention Centre yesterday.' I looked at the photo; it was the Saira I knew. I shook my head and looked at Tarrant.

‘No.'

Tarrant stared back at me for a couple of seconds and then looked at Hindmarsh, who sat forward, his hands below the desk.

‘Bullshit,' said Hindmarsh.

I shrugged and looked at him. ‘You know better?'

‘You picked her up last night,' he said.

‘I did not.'

‘We know you did.'

‘I don't know how.'

‘It's amazing what you can see from a satellite these days.'

‘It's amazing what you can pull out of your arse.'

‘We want to know what you did with that woman.'

‘I didn't do anything with her.'

‘Where is she?'

‘I have no idea.'

He contemplated me for a full minute. I contemplated back.

‘Do you know that Corrections Australia is offering rewards of up to ten thousand dollars for information leading to the capture of the escapees?'

‘Yes, I had heard that. Seems like a good way to encourage vigilantes.'

‘You're a bleeding heart.' He said it with a curl of the lip.

‘Last I heard it wasn't a crime in this country. Almost, but not quite.'

Hindmarsh pulled out a packet of cigarettes and lit one without taking his eyes off me. He blew smoke in my direction. There was no ashtray so he dropped his ash on the floor. He stuck the cigarette between his teeth and took out another photo, which he handed to me. It showed a man wearing a turban. He had a long, unruly black beard, thick black eyebrows and cracked and blistered lips. The photo had a formal look to it, as if taken for a passport, and a mauve background that was comically incongruous. The man's eyes were narrowed, perhaps permanently, and his lined and scarred face was devoid of any hint of humour or compassion.

‘Do you know him?' asked Hindmarsh past the cigarette.

‘Was he on
American Idol
?'

Tarrant chuckled. Hindmarsh didn't.

‘Who is he?'

‘You're telling me you don't know him,' said Hindmarsh, taking the cigarette from his mouth.

‘Should I?'

No reply. He was studying the photo now.