‘Rob, could you put the gun down? I’m coming to help you.’

‘What if there’s another one?’ fretted Hansen, sounding loosely wrapped. ‘What if there’s a mate?’

Keeping his tone mild and even, Hirsch said, ‘Look around. Do you see another one?’

A pause. ‘No.’

‘Okay, I’m coming. Don’t shoot.’

Hirsch chanced a quick look first. Hansen was still on his back, the pistol loose in one hand, looking down along his body to his sandalled feet, where the snake was draped sinuously over the bloodied creek stones. A potent-looking force even in death.

Hansen turned to Hirsch. Startled by the grimness etched in the man’s face, Hirsch ducked.

‘I’m not going to shoot you,’ Hansen said, looking down at the snake again.

Hirsch reholstered his gun. ‘Okay.’

He crossed the ground, crouched, removed a little Glock from Hansen’s slack fingers, all the time with one eye on the snake. The head looked hacked about—pistol bullets at close range—but he recognised it as a brown, one of the most poisonous on the continent, a metre and a half long and almost as thick as his forearm. More deaths from a brown than any other snake. And to be bitten several times…

Hansen had shot himself in the foot, too.

Hirsch stood up, stepped over to the snake. Steeled himself, and flipped it away with his shoe.

‘I must’ve trod on it,’ Hansen said, trembling, dusty tear tracks on his cheeks. ‘It just kept biting me, so I shot it. I don’t feel very good.’

Hirsch crouched again, put a hand to Hansen’s forehead. Clammy. He examined the pale legs: a mix of scratches and puncture wounds.

Hansen said dazedly, ‘Help me stand. I’ll drive myself to hospital.’

Hirsch pressed gently down on his shoulder. ‘You need to keep still. Movement increases the blood flow.’

Hansen screwed up his face. He seemed to be breaking down. ‘Have you got a knife? Cut open the bites?’

‘They don’t do that anymore.’

‘Ambulance.’

Hirsch felt his jitters vanish, a cool pragmatism settling in him. Hansen would probably die: too much venom, too late, too far from medical help. ‘Rob, I need to know: you shot Lavau, and you’re here to shoot the kids for some reason?’

‘What? No!’ In all of his wretchedness, Hansen was shocked. ‘Not me. Roesch. I need to get to them before she does.’

32

32

HIRSCH CROUCHED, WONDERING if he and Hansen were about to become the fulcrum of each other’s worlds. He shaded Hansen’s face with his hat, and asked the question.

‘Why?’

Hansen’s voice weakened. ‘The older girl can ID her as the one who shot her father.’

And I showed her a photo of Roesch sitting on my sofa, Hirsch thought. No wonder she was on edge.