While the horse moved about sideways with a tiddly click-clack, the rider bellowed his order of a T-bone steak, cooked medium, with gravy and egg on the side. Without a word, Achilles went back into the kitchen, loaded his gun, and he crossed himself as he walked down the cafe floor, stopping in front of the horse. He aimed at a spot in front of the ear and shot the animal, sprinkling the floor with blood, toppling it. The head of Achilles, shaken by a gust of horror, gave a jerk, and his eyes darted from the twitching animal to the unsteady rider who got to his feet and ran out the door.

Achilles checked his apron for blood spatter: there was none, not a stain on his clothes. He put the rifle behind the counter and let his body go loose, go completely weak. It took some time before he could bring himself to look at the horse’s body and the blood running from its nose to the table at booth four. He needed another pair of hands. But who cared enough to help him? Achilles went outside and waved down a car.

‘I have a problem in my shop,’ he told the driver.

‘What sorta problem?’

‘A horse died in there.’

‘What’s a dead horse doing in a cafe, mate?’

‘It’s not my horse. Someone rode in there, caused trouble, and took off. I don’t know how to explain.’

With the driver’s assistance, he moved the animal’s body from the shop floor to the tray of the Cafe Truck, and then Achilles drove the corpse to the council tip, where he set the remains alight, offering a prayer cobbled together from his memories of the few funerals he’d attended. Over the horse, in English, he said:

Sleep forever

Pardon all our iniquities

Wash us and make us whiter than snow

Chapter 10: 2002

2002

1.

The murderer Henry Matfield died on the bank of a river that crossed into the Deua National Park where he’d been in hiding since the Third of April. Matfield had shot himself in the head with his rifle, using his thumb to pull the trigger: the bullet exited the rear of his skull and little damage was done to his face. The bushwalkers who found Henry recognised him from images they’d seen on television, and his mother identified the body at the state coroner’s complex back in Sydney.