His partner at least had the advantage of long legs on the uneven ground. That and a chin which jutted out from his face like an antenna, guiding him over and around the protruding rocks. Though they were the same age Mitch looked older, gaunt, almost sickly in appearance, his arms and legs too long, as if stretched out and twisted back in an arbitrary fashion. When angry he had the tendency to flap them around like an inflatable sky-dancer outside a car dealership – minus the smile of course. Mitch rarely smiled.

Bundabaroo, the region that included the slopes of Gardner’s Hill, was a wilderness that was particularly inhospitable. Impassable mountains, trees and rocks that either crumbled underfoot and sent you sprawling, or were sharp enough to slice bone. An experiment by God to set the most extreme conditions life could prosper in. A place where the only attendant civilization was Wilbrook, though, as the joke went, if Wilbrook was your last source of civilization you really were in trouble.

Despite it being the 21st century, the region had yet to be fully explored on foot. There were only two ways in: a dirt road that skirted the foot of Gardner’s Hill; or a perilous descent in a helicopter through a thrashing mix of tall trees and wiry scrub on to the unstable surface below.

The reason they were all out here was a lost nineteen-year-old called Martin Taylor. It had been four days since Martin had disappeared and today a dog team had been bussed in from the coast to help, the canines afforded the luxury of a three-hour working day in the summer heat, while the humans toiled for twelve.

With the clack of the chopper overhead and eager barks of the hounds, Chandler concentrated on the noise closest to him: the crash of his boots through the undergrowth. Externally he was searching for Martin and internally for sympathy for the young man’s plight. Another city slicker pursuing the great outdoors despite being completely unprepared for what lay ahead. There was no defined trail out here, nothing for guidance other than eyes, compasses and maps. GPS was a pipedream. This was the earth as it was two and a half billion years ago, entirely undefined, rocks, trees and landscape blending into one, melting the land and sky together in a blur and offering no hint as to the way out.

All the information they had on Martin’s movements came from Eleanor Trebech, the owner of the Gardner’s Palace, the hotel he’d stayed in the night before. Eleanor had conveyed all she knew in her disinterested style, her hair curled in never-ending spirals.