Even though she was only doing this research as an exercise in due diligence, to better inform herself about the administration she had been tasked to infiltrate, Caitlin found herself drawn into the story of homesteaders being forced off their land and into flight. She couldn’t help but sympathise with Pieraro’s anguish; his need to choose between avenging himself on the agents and getting his sole surviving child to safety. She thought him a man crushed between the weight of two worlds.

Before she became too deeply enmeshed with the narrative, the Echelon agent called room service and ordered up a pot of coffee and an omelette.

‘Miles to go before I sleep,’ she said to the empty room. But it wasn’t all bad. She had forgotten about Bret and Monique again.

28

NORTH DARWIN, NORTHERN TERRITORY

‘I understand you went for a swim this morning, Mr Shah.’

‘The weather, Detective, it is very hot this time of year.’

Julianne, keen to stay in character as the dutiful junior lawyer, held her pen poised over an old-fashioned legal pad, even though Downing was recording the whole interview on a microcassette. Shah had answered the policeman’s loaded question happily enough, but did not offer to elaborate. It seemed unlike him to play silly buggers with the law. Not for the first time, Jules wondered what the hell was going on here.

Detective Palmer, a powerfully built, thirty-something man wearing what looked like a bespoke suit, leaned back in his gas lift chair and regarded the old Gurkha as if he were an interesting crossword puzzle.

Alerted by Downing, Jules had spied the chairs, six of them in total, as soon as they’d entered the interview room. She recognised the model as a Herman Miller ‘Aeron’, a couple of thousand dollars’ worth of sit-down technology. They were positioned around a long hardwood table. A large mirror threw back their reflections from one wall at the end of the room. Undoubtedly, an observation area stood behind it. But otherwise, the interview room in no way resembled the grim, concrete boxes in which suspects usually found themselves. She had no doubt that somewhere in this building such a space would exist, probably three or four of them. Shah and his legal team were enjoying gentle, kid-gloves treatment, it seemed. Nevertheless, Palmer still wanted to know what he’d been doing down at the Gonzales Road Marina when the Rhino’s boat had blown up.

Jules just hoped nobody would recognise her from the scene. That would have taken some explaining, given she was supposed to be Piers Downing’s assistant.

‘Did you know any of the victims, Mr Shah?’ asked Palmer. ‘Did you have some reason for being down there?’

‘The man who was injured, the one I helped pull back to shore, his name is Rhino Ross. He is a friend of mine.’