‘Turtle,’ said Chandler, interrupting. ‘It’s me, Chandler. Sergeant Jenkins.’

Turtle tilted his head, his good eye scanning the horizon, the other set straight but as blind as a bat’s. Now within thirty feet of him, Chandler could also see that his eyebrows appeared to have been drawn on in thick black marker, halfway up his forehead in a look of permanent surprise. He’d done it again, lit the gas cooker on full, shooting a cloud of flame towards his already charred face.

‘And what do you want, Chan’ler?’

Mitch inched closer. ‘We want you to keep calm.’

‘I was calm, boy. I ammm calm. What do you want?’

Chandler spoke up. ‘We need to have a look around, Turtle.’

Turtle’s head swung around so that his good eye faced Chandler. The unfortunate by-product of this was that the shotgun now pointed straight at them.

‘I ain’t done nothin’ wrong. You can’t prove I was poaching those fish.’

‘We—’ started Chandler. He flicked a glance at Mitch whose hand had curled around the butt of his gun, wary of the shotgun and the increasingly perturbed old man. ‘We’re not here for that. We just need a look ’round.’

Mitch grunted at Chandler, his voice forced low. ‘What are the chances he knows something about this?’

‘Slim to none,’ replied Chandler, equally forced, eyes trained on Turtle who kept the gun trained on them. ‘He’s not one for partners. Poaching’s the most serious thing he’s into.’

‘I still want to search it,’ said Mitch, his eyes on Turtle.

‘The place we’re looking for is further in.’

‘I want to rule this place out.’

‘I’m telling you—’

‘You said yourself that his memory’s gone. Our suspect could be here now, or maybe he had been here, pretending to be his son, the one who was fencing cars down in Sydney last I remember.’

Turtle might be losing his memory but there was nothing wrong with Mitch’s. The youngest Siefert boy was still in prison outside of Sydney for running a chop shop out of an abandoned warehouse.

Chandler swung back towards Turtle. ‘We’ll be quick, Turtle. We aren’t looking for anything you’ve done. We think someone might have been trespassing on your land.’

‘Who?’ asked Turtle, his face curling into a frown but his eyebrows remaining static.

‘A guy from out of town.’

Turtle swung around as if the Devil would appear on command. With his failing brain and eyesight, it was a worrying possibility. ‘Is he still on my land?’

‘No,’ assured Chandler. The last thing he wanted was Turtle storming off and getting in their way. ‘We want to see if we can find any clue about where he went after he was here.’

The old man fell silent, considering the request.

‘We won’t touch anything we don’t need to,’ said Chandler, closing in on victory.