A longer pause. ‘It’s Onions. He won’t release Omari.’

Manolis’s forehead clenched. ‘Jesus. Why not?’

‘He said Omari was in the managed accommodation area for being abusive and aggressive to his staff.’

‘Did you explain that he was innocent?’

‘I did, but he doesn’t believe me, doesn’t trust me, I’m too junior.’

Manolis heard his breath, heavy, ragged.

‘I told you,’ she added. ‘They do what they want here.’ Her voice had taken on a sudden tightness.

Manolis breathed thickly, anxiously, down the phone line. ‘Just stay where you are. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ He went to hang up.

‘Wait… George?’

‘Yes?’

‘There is some good news.’

‘Oh?’

‘Omari’s wife and daughter just arrived.’

Manolis nearly ran his car off the road. ‘What? You saw them?’

‘It was fortuitous timing – one of the guards let slip.’ She explained that Ahmed’s wife and daughter had been intercepted aboard a fishing boat two nights before and brought to shore on a navy warship. ‘It’s a bit hectic here now, everyone’s distracted, trying to work out what to do.’

‘So Ahmed wasn’t lying about his family,’ Manolis said.

‘No.’

He smiled, instantly lighter and energised. ‘Be there soon as I can.’

Arriving at the T-junction that was the town’s major artery of Queen Street, Manolis sat, engine idling. Hands clasped together in his lap, he closed his eyes and centred his breathing. He consulted his sixth sense. If he was on the run, which way would he go?

‘Ela,’ he told himself. ‘Slow down. Think.’

Ten seconds passed. Twenty, thirty, sixty, scanning his mind, replaying recent events, even dredging his childhood, all in the hope that an arm muscle would involuntarily twitch and decide for him.

Finally, one did. An arm shot out, clasped the wheel. He turned it left, north.

The outskirts of town, the yellow remembrance ribbons still tied around trees, and the turn-off to the detention centre were soon all in Manolis’s wake. An increasing number of roos littered the roadside, starving, looking for scarce nutrients, or deceased, their carcasses splayed out flat. Manolis drove recklessly, regularly crossing into the oncoming lane, eyes far into the distance, scanning the horizon for the rear of a speeding station wagon. The noonday heat blasted into the cabin like a hellfire furnace. His skin blistered, his eyes burned. There was barely any traffic on the road, only the occasional chicken truck spewing feathers or rusted horse float that he overtook with ease.