Queensland was not just soul reviving. It was a treat for the eyes and ears. It was a deep, rich green and silent, save for the occasional bird or cricket and the wind that carried the sound.

“Jesus!”

Coffey jumped when his phone beeped again. He fished it from his belt. It was Bob Herbert, telling him that the helicopter had landed at an air base to refuel. They would be arriving in Cairns by five-thirty. He also wanted to inform Coffey that the man they had on board was not Peter Kannaday.

“It’s a thug named John Hawke, who has confessed to sinking the yacht and helping Jervis Darling smuggle nuclear waste from ship to ship. The yacht even had a processing lab on board.”

“He told you all this on the helicopter?” Coffey asked.

“Right.”

“No attorney?”

“We fished a barracuda from the Coral Sea and used him,” Herbert said. “No, we didn’t have an attorney.”

“And you have no evidence,” Coffey asked.

“No.”

“Then you have no right to hold him,” Coffey replied.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Herbert asked. “We have a shitload of circumstantial evidence.”

“No,” Coffey said. “What you have is a ‘confession’ that he can deny ever having made. Word against word is a hollow legal exercise.”

“Oh, come on!” Herbert said. “Four people heard him!”

“Four people can plot,” Coffey said. “They’re no more valid than one, legally. The Rule of Evidence applies here just as it does in the United States. The Evidence Act was amended in 1995 to link it to the Drugs, Poisons, and Controlled Substances Act of 1981.”

“To do what?” Herbert asked. “Protect drug dealers?”

“To preserve justice,” Coffey replied. “Where is Hawke now?”

“He’s still in the helicopter.”

“Smart.”

“What?”

“He wouldn’t want to get out on a military base,” Coffey said. “If he did, you could theoretically hold him for trespassing.”

“Lowell, this is a joke, isn’t it?” Herbert demanded. “You’re pulling my bum leg.”

“Bob, I am completely serious,” Coffey said.

“That’s not what I want to hear,” Herbert snapped.

“Sorry. But unless you can get someone who will identify Hawke as an accomplice, you have no reason or right to hold him,” Coffey said. “Until you get to the yacht and locate evidence, until you can connect Hawke to smuggling activities or to the sinking, he’s an innocent man. When you land here, he can demand to be released. And you’ll have to let him go.”

“I don’t believe this,” Herbert said. “The prick played me. He fed me what I wanted to keep from going to Singapore.”

“Is that where you told him you’d take him?” Coffey asked.

Herbert said it was.

“That, at least, would have been legal,” Coffey said.

“Wait. What do you mean ‘would have been’?” Herbert asked. “Can’t we still do it?”

“Sure, but it probably won’t do you any good,” Coffey told him.