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In the fridge alcove was an eski. Dave opened the eski and took out a can of beer and a pizza box.

Kevin came on the answering machine. ‘Um hi, Dave. Um. Sally asked me to call. Um. It's about your maintenance payments. Um. Sorry mate.' Kevin lowered his voice and said, ‘You could try Excalibur tonight. I'm riding, and I reckon it's got the nod.' Beep.

Dave sat in the chair with his beer wondering about Kevin pimping his ride so his wife's ex-husband could make the back maintenance payments.

There was another call. Mungo. ‘Denmark Prince is still running. Which is extremely bad news, Dave. Come and see me. Now!' Beep. Click. Whirr.

Trish Fong ran a thriving Cash Converters franchise very close to Dave's house. Trish said it had picked up considerably during the two-speed economy era of rampant mining profits for some and soaring unmanageable prices for everyone else.

Dave took his eski into the shop.

‘Dave. What you doing here so late?'

‘Missing the home comforts.'

There was a couch and another armchair that matched the one in Dave's lounge room. There were other bits of furniture that would probably kit out Dave's flat rather nicely, including a newish refrigerator.

‘I had to shift your TV, Dave. Sorry.'

Dave shrugged, then reached into his pocket and pulled out the diamond bracelet.

Trish jumped back from it with a squeal, ‘Agggeee.'

Dave twirled the thing, making the diamonds flicker.

Trish came forward. ‘Dave. This is no good.'

‘Thought you'd be interested.'

‘A present? For my daughter?'

‘Trish, you never let me near her. No, I mean business. Big sentimental value mind. My dear grandmother's. But I need to sell it. For her operation.'

Trish didn't smile. She was looking at the bracelet like it was a blue-ringed octopus. ‘Are you crazy? With agreements and police checks and waiting periods, unless you've got an actual sales docket, and twenty years worth of provenance and chain of custody. And a stat dec – even with all that this'll take about four weeks to clear.'

Dave shrugged, returning the bracelet to his pocket. He picked up the eski from the floor and took out his passport and his telephone answering machine.

‘I'm not buying your passport.'

‘I could Chinese up the photo.'

Trish shook her head. She pointed at the answering machine. ‘Nobody uses those things anymore. It's all on your mobile.'

Dave looked glum.

Trish sucked her front tooth as she did and then said, ‘I'll give you ten for the eski and the thing.' She meant the answering machine.

Dave came out of Trish's Cash Converters and was punched in the nose.

He fell back to find himself sitting on the pavement looking up at Mungo's enforcers. Daryl was smiling. But Tiny, who wasn't, looked concerned.

Dave touched his nose experimentally. ‘I was coming to see you guys.'

‘What a coincidence,' said Daryl. ‘And here we are.'

Dave looked at his fingers and saw there was no blood. ‘Are you losing your touch, Tiny? It's not broken. I'm not even bleeding.'

Tiny said, ‘Yeah, I pulled it a bit, Dave.' Tiny demonstrated his gentler punch in the air above Dave's head.

‘Thanks, mate. I appreciate that.'

Tiny nodded.

‘When you two girls have finished catching up, Mungo says you're to give us $20,000.'

‘Quite right,' nodded Dave, remaining down on the pavement.

Daryl said, ‘It's broken legs time. On account.'

‘That's fair.'

Dave reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the diamond bracelet, holding it up towards them like garlic to vampires. Or was that raw meat to wolves?

Daryl took it and stepped close to the light of the shop window where he pretended to have jeweller skills. Finally, he said, ‘Twenty-four hours.'

‘Forty-eight.'

‘Thirty-six.'

‘Done.'

Daryl started walking towards a dark Lancer, but Tiny shuffled forward and bent down. ‘You didn't steal it, did you Dave?'

Dave didn't want to lie to Tiny. He liked him. He nodded.

Tiny said, ‘Don't take this the wrong way, but I've always respected you, Dave.'

‘Thanks, Tiny.'

‘But now I don't.'

Dave stood near the monitor in the sparsely populated TAB listening to Kevin's race. The buzz had been mild as he'd placed the bet. True, it was his last ten dollars, but it was only ten. A bald punter stood in a corner, red, sweating and grunting, as if he were in the middle of a solo sexual act. Dave waited for his own rush of anticipation or adrenaline or dread. He waited as the race neared the end. Another punter, a lady in very stretched trackie daks, looked like she might cry. Dave took his ticket to the window, feeling nothing.

Geraldine fed it in. She brightened. ‘Good call, Dave. Nice odds.'

‘Winners are grinners, Geraldine.'

She started counting out money. Hundred dollar bills.

‘Let's put it all on the next, eh?'

Dave sat in the visitor's seat across the desk from his supervisor. Ray raised his finger like a conductor about to start the orchestra up. Looking at Dave he moved the finger over to the mini-recorder on the desk between them and pressed the record button.

‘I am giving you a verbal warning concerning dissatisfaction with your performance. Do you acknowledge you understand this?'

Dave leaned forward and talked into the recorder as slowly as Ray had. ‘Yes, Raymond Beam, I, David Kelly, understand your verbal.'

‘This is the third verbal warning of poor performance.'

‘Yes, three.'

‘Have you received written material concerning your rights and the nature of your performance management?'

‘Yes. Received and read.'

‘Is there anything you do not understand about these verbal warnings concerning poor performance?'

‘I, David Orlando Kelly, understand, Raymond Beam. What's your middle name, Ray?'

Ray pressed stop. ‘When you get back from up north, I'll have something in writing.'

‘North?'

‘Yeah, Dave. As far away from other humans as we can find. Middle of nowhere. You can pick up a van in Port Hedland. Now fuck off.'

‘Ah, so he'd turned the recorder off by then?'

‘Ray is less polite when he's not “on”.'

‘You do have a way with authority figures.'

‘Yeah, well. It has been a shitty week.'

‘That's why I've called you. You're not still up north are you?'

‘I'm coming to that.'

‘It's not nowhere, Ken,' said Dave to the dead man. Dave had covered him up with a jacket. He'd found his wallet and was looking at Ken's driver's licence.

The driver's phone started ringing again. The ringtone was ‘Journey'. Dave tracked it to an Iridium 9555 lying in the dirt behind
the jeep. He'd always thought ‘Journey' should have been called ‘Marrakesh' or ‘Kasbah'. Something Middle Eastern. ‘Hash Salesman' would have worked.

He buttoned on the phone and a Scotsman started yelling, ‘Aboot bloody time. I don't like being messed aboot, Ken, and ye're messing me aboot. I've set things up fir Perth. Yir ticket and travelling money are at airport. Getting t'stones through is up tae ye.'

‘Um,' said Dave, when there was a gap. ‘Bit of bad news on that.'

‘Don't ye start haggling wi' me, laddie. Twenty thousand. Do it or I'll huv bad news for ye,' yelled the Scotsman. ‘Doon't fook me aboot.' Click.

The aluminium case flashed in the sun again like a wink. It was the kind used by geologists to carry samples. Dave opened the case. Inside were small brown and white rocks. They didn't look so much like stones as bits of muesli. One of the bits of muesli sparkled.

‘Gold?'

‘Diamonds, Terry.'

‘Diamonds!'

‘Diamonds.'

‘Cos you were working a mere two hundred kilometres from Argyle? Dave, you are so full of it.'

‘Am not.'

‘You can barely fix a fucking phone. How come you know you've got a case of diamonds?'

Dave left the scene of the accident and he flew back to Perth. When he opened the aluminium case at the Cash Converters, Trish Fong leapt back and screamed like a fifty year old Chinese-Australian woman jumping into the cold surf.

When she recovered she said, ‘Have you suddenly got a direct line into the diamond industry?'

‘Things are starting to fall my way.'

Trish took a metal pen and used it to turn a couple of the rocks. ‘Diamonds, but uncut. They look industrial.'

‘Industrial?'

‘Not for jewellery. For making cutting tools and drills and shit.' She shrugged.

‘So worth anything? Curio value?'

‘Are you crazy? Ever hear of Triads? Tongs? These have got to be hot. You heard of the Spider Boys? Africans. There's Africans here, you know. Everywhere you look. Are these blood diamonds?'

‘I don't think they're blood diamonds. I was working up north a few hundred K away from the Argyle Diamond Mine.'

‘And you thought you'd dig in the ground, huh? They aren't very pink.'

‘Pink?'

‘They have these pink diamonds. No. No good. You're trying to get me killed. No more diamonds please, Dave.' She nudged the case closed using her elbow. ‘Household goods and electronics.'

‘You already have most of my household goods, Trish.'

‘I'll give you twenty for the case.'

Dave stood near the check-in of the Perth International Airport counting the money in the envelope for the third time. One thousand English pounds.

Dave had shown Ken's driver's licence at a pick-up counter in the airport, deciding the photo on that looked a little more like him than the one in Ken's passport. They gave him a manila envelope. Inside was an airline ticket to Amsterdam and an address. A typed note said
Go by the name of Angus MacFergus, rest of payment COD.
There was a smaller envelope containing the money.

Dave was calculating how many Aussie dollars that would be and how quickly he could build that stake into a dream run at the track when a couple of businessmen hovered a little too close and he felt he should not flash his roll. That was when Terry phoned.

Terry said, ‘Where are you?'

‘Mate. Um, trying not to spin out of control.'

‘Well, I think you're seconds from impact.'

‘You're such a pessimist, Terry.'

‘That solar panel you were supposed to fix. You didn't. And there are
certain enquiries from the cops up north that you might be the person leaving the scene of an accident.'

‘Ah.'

‘And they'd like to ask you if you took any personal effects, like money and identification, from the deceased.'

‘Hmm.'

‘Daryl and Mungo have been calling the office.'

‘Yes, of course.'

‘And more police down here in Perth would also like to talk to you as a person of interest.'

‘Oh? What's that about?'

‘A missing diamond bracelet.'

‘Is that everything, Terry?'

‘I think that brings us both up to date with the events of this week. Maybe you should head for Darwin.'

Dave looked past hundreds of waiting or wandering passengers to a beautiful woman standing near the newsagent's. She smiled at him.

Terry said, ‘So, what are you gunna do?'

‘I think I'm going to keep spinning, Terry. But not to the ground. I'm going to spin faster and faster and go up – like a helicopter.'

Dave buttoned off and looked for the beautiful woman who'd smiled and made him feel like good things could happen in his future, but she was gone. Instead, the businessmen were there again. Their suits were cheap and ill-fitting and slightly out of fashion. The younger one winked at Dave.

‘You shouldn't have winked, Bruce.'

‘Then you punched me in the arm, Mal.'

‘Thank you, officers. Let's back up a little, Ken.'

‘My name's Dave, Inspector Compton.'

‘No, let's not do that again please. Ken, why are you going by the name of Angus MacFergus?'

‘It was at the airport. At a counter.'

‘From Dewar?'

Dave bought a carry-on bag for nineteen dollars and ninety-five cents and used his ticket and Ken's passport to get a boarding pass. As he was walking towards the security person who checked boarding passes and passports he recalled his few international travelling experiences. He'd been to Bali twice and to New Zealand once. Each time had involved questions and X-ray machines. He began to doubt the wisdom of trying to get on the plane with diamonds stuffed in every pocket. So, just before the door of no return, he patted his top pocket, as though searching for cigarettes and turned around and went out of the terminal.

‘Mal thought you'd bailed, Ken. Gutsed out on us.'

‘Yes, thank you, officer. Your version, Ken. For the record.'

‘Call me Dave.'

Dave got his Telstra van from the parking lot and drove to one of the service gates around the side. He beeped his horn until a security guy came. He didn't get out of the van. The guard waved and yelled. Dave waved his hand impatiently. The guard finally opened the gate. And Dave drove past him.

Dave parked his van near the baggage handlers shed and wandered in, yelling at the first guy he saw, ‘You got a problem with the phones?' It was a safe question. Everyone had problems with their phones. But the guy shook his head and raised his hands and indicated a hearing impairment or too little English and pointed back to an office.