‘Pity I can’t practise with it here.’

‘But you can. My offices are a padded cell. That makes everyone happy.’ Jones bustled to the back of his workshop, pushed open a wide door and slid a mobile bullseye target in view. ‘There are twenty bullets in the box.’

Cavalier loaded the weapon. He took up a crouched position and fired twice. The two men examined the shots. He was off centre with both.

‘Not right on target,’ Cavalier mumbled. ‘Have you a screwdriver?’

Jones found one. Cavalier made a slight adjustment. He fired at the target again.

‘Dead centre!’ Jones observed in admiration. ‘Still the best in the business.’

‘Not drinking as much,’ Cavalier said.

‘Pity. I was going to open some champagne.’

‘I said “as much”.’

Jones laughed and took a bottle from a fridge, then poured them both a glass.

‘Congratulations, Doctor Edwin Harris,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Wombat insisted I prepare you a new identity and passport. He sent me photographs. You’re an English doctor. There are CV notes on your life so far, where you lived and graduated, until age fifty-eight.’

‘Did he say why I needed a new passport?’

‘I think he wants you on an assignment.’

‘He mentioned something but without any details.’

‘You’re a doctor of Art and Literature from Cardiff University.’

‘A lifelong ambition.’

‘How’s your comprehension of Van Diemen’s Land? Have you been there?’

‘I confess, I haven’t.’

‘Shame on you. Do you know anything about it?’

‘Just that it’s home to David Boon and Ricky Ponting.’

‘Trust you to name bloody Test cricketers!’

‘Okay. Max Walker, too. He was a Test cricketer and played football for my team, Melbourne. And Nick Riewoldt for St Kilda.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘Errol Flynn and Simon Baker.’

‘Oh, yeah. Every male thinks of Errol!’

‘A lot of females too, by all accounts.’

‘Errol died sixty years ago. The state’s had a few more prominent people since then. Anyone else?’

‘Truganini.’

‘The last Tasmanian Aboriginal person. She died in 1876. Very good.’

‘One of the last.’

‘True. Al Haut agrees with that. He says there are around fifteen thousand with at least claims to being Indigenous. His paternal grandmother was an Aboriginal woman. Wombat knew her when he was a kid. He reckons it’s true.’

‘That might explain Haut’s spirituality, his claims to being a Shaman.’

‘Maybe.’

‘You haven’t mentioned the two-headed monsters.’

‘A rumour started by Tasmanians to keep tourists away.’

5 THE ISOLATED PROPHET

5

THE ISOLATED PROPHET