The Parthian Shot

By Ian Bradley

Without her knowledge, she has been used as a drug mule by her husband and is in prison, doing time for what is, in reality, his crime. But Liz is no shrinking violet. She works out that he must have a fortune stashed away somewhere in hard cash. She also works out where that stash is. She plans the perfect revenge: to escape, rob him of his ill-gotten gains and then return to prison before anybody knows she has gone.
Of course, she will need a bit of help but who can she trust? Her unscrupulous lawyer? The highly pregnant identity thief who shares her cell and is as greedy as she is cunning? Her best friend, who is now her husband’s mistress? Or his venomous ex-mistress, intent on retribution?
Every one of them, Liz discovers, is planning their own ‘Parthian Shot.'

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ian Bradley
• Release date: May 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9780994355522

Ian Bradley

Ian Bradley has written over 40 books and is well-known as a  broadcaster, journalist and lecturer. He is also a Church of Scotland minister and a respected academic whose enthusiasm shines through in all that he does.

Book preview

You wound like Parthians, while you fly

and kill with a retreating eye.

<-----<<< Samuel Butler

Natalie Palmer didn’t know who first introduced the Private Prison System to Australia but she assumed he must be either corrupt or stupid or both. One thing she did know was that, whoever he was, she was eternally grateful to him. So, after lights-out and before she commenced the business of the evening, she took out the Wi-Fi modem that she kept in a special compartment stitched inside her teddy bear, plugged it into her laptop and lay on her prison bed and googled Private Prisons in Australia.

She read that the first private prison in Australia was opened at Borallon in Queensland in 1990, several years before she was born. Putting aside the moral question as to whether anybody other than the State should incarcerate and punish people, the reasons for handing the prison system over to primarily foreign-owned private companies were both simple and illogical. The Queensland State Government had campaigned on a platform of law and order and being tough on crime, resulting in a massive explosion in the number of people in prison. At the same time they had campaigned on a platform of fiscal responsibility, so less money was available to pay for extra prisons, resulting in overcrowding of existing prisons..

Their solution was to transfer the business of running the prison system over to private enterprise, who then took a large proportion of the money available as profits, leaving even less money to pay for the housing and rehabilitation of the prisoner explosion.

The sheer illogicality of this decision was so appealing that all the other States quickly followed suit and within ten years more than half the prisons in Australia, together with most of the Refugee Detention Camps, were all run by private, primarily foreign-owned companies.

The early private prisons, like Borallon, were a showpiece for the system: custom-built, high-tech, with the latest in security systems and rehabilitation programs. But these things cost money and as people became accustomed to the concept of private prisons, or more commonly didn’t notice that the prison system had gone private, the new owners started cutting corners and reducing costs.

By the time Bridgewater Prison, the establishment currently holding Natalie, went private, all pretence of being cutting edge had gone. Bridgewater wasn’t even custom built. It was merely tacked on to an existing early twentieth century prison. And although cost-cutting technology such as surveillance cameras and key cards were used, it was essentially a group of concrete huts with tin roofs, surrounded by a high cyclone fence.

The Government thought they could get away with this because Bridgewater was a women’s prison and everybody knows that women prisoners are usually of low IQ and lack the resourcefulness required to plan an escape. Natalie Palmer must have been the exception that proves the rule. When she first arrived, she took one look at the flimsy cyclone fence surrounding the prison and thought she would acquire a set of wire cutters and be gone in a few days. Events weren’t going to work out quite as Natalie planned.

In fact Natalie Palmer didn’t actually exist. Well, she did exist once but she was killed alongside her parents in a car crash, not long after Borallon was opened.

The prisoner, Natalie Palmer, was somebody else entirely, and it wasn’t either of the other two aliases she was using when she was arrested for identity fraud.

This Natalie was born in Perth, Western Australia, to a couple who would never have married if her mother hadn’t fallen pregnant during their student days. The marriage lasted just over a year and Natalie stayed with her mother when the couple split up. Some years later, her mother decided to continue her studies in England and left Natalie with her father, who had remarried to a very strange woman with an even stranger brood of children from a previous marriage.

Natalie felt isolated and alone, and withdrew into a fantasy world where her mother would return one day and whisk her away to live a life of luxury overseas. As the years passed and it became clear that Natalie’s mother was never going to return to make her dream come true, Natalie decided she would make it come true, herself.

She got a part-time job while still at school and started to save for her future but her stepmother’s odd parenting style made it impossible for her to prosper.

If Natalie was earning money she had to pay her way at home.

If Natalie’s relatives ever gave her anything, it had to be shared with her step-mother’s brood.

Natalie was never to get any special treatment; everybody had to be treated the same.

Natalie embraced this doctrine in a way that her step-mother never envisaged.

If everything she had belonged to her siblings, she reasoned, then everything they had belonged to her.

So the first thing she took was her oldest sister’s identity.

When Natalie was sixteen, she borrowed her sister’s driving licence and birth certificate and opened, not one, but two bank accounts. By swapping money between the two, she created the impression that she was earning a substantial wage. Then she applied for, and got, credit cards from both banks. When the time was right she maxed out both the credit cards, flew to Adelaide and became Natalie Palmer.

From the beginning, Natalie had her career path firmly mapped out. Her father was English so she had a British Passport but she never used her real identity again. It was safely locked away until the day she was ready to leave Australia and assume a new life in England.

In an obscure South Australian graveyard, she found Natalie Palmer who not only had the advantage of being dead, she was also an orphan, so it was an identity Natalie could keep indefinitely. She never committed any type of fraud using this identity; she kept it as her real identity, to be used only if she were caught. Then she travelled to Melbourne and on to Sydney, stealing new identities and gradually building her nest-egg for the future.

Despite successfully stealing several identities, Natalie quickly came to realize that even in crime there is sexual inequality. Banks are much keener to make loans to men. Mortgages are easy to obtain for a thirty-year-old man and almost impossible for a twenty-year-old girl. Intent on a big sting, Natalie took a male partner. She took him because he thought he was smart but he was, in fact, stupid. She controlled him with sex; right up to the point where they were eligible to get a very substantial loan from the bank. Then he blew it by spending part of the money illegitimately before Natalie could quietly squirrel the lot away and move on.

They were arrested. Natalie presented herself as a first-time offender, led astray by an older man. She got twelve months. He got five years.

Natalie saw this as a temporary set-back. They never found her true identity. She still had several other undiscovered identities she could re-assume when necessary. She could be out of the prison and gone before they knew it, and she could become anybody she wanted to be.

The crunch came at her induction examination. She was eight weeks pregnant.

On the Outside this wouldn’t have been a problem. She would simply have had an abortion and moved on.

On the Inside, things were more complicated. For a start there was no medical reason why she should have an abortion. Secondly, as a pregnant child - because even in her early twenties Natalie still looked like a child - she found the system afforded her a whole set of privileges and a whole set of rules that she could exploit. She soon realised that there was no reason why being in prison should affect her criminal career adversely and there was the added advantage that, if she were caught, all they could do was leave her where she was.

Also adding to the advantages was the fact that Bridgewater was privately run, under-staffed and inherently corrupt, and that the most corrupt officer of all was a married ex-soldier named Jack Fitzgerald; a man with a weakness for vulnerable women. Most of the female prisoners saw Jack as a threat. Natalie saw him as an opportunity; especially when she discovered that the current object of his sexual desires was not one of the other inmates but one of his fellow prison officers, Nikki Rooney.

Nikki was in her early thirties. The body clock was ticking and it seemed life was passing her by. Even in the city, with a plethora of men, she probably would have missed out. In Bridgewater it seemed she would never find love. Then Jack started paying her attention. They never met outside the prison, but inside they spent eight hours a day together. And when those eight hours were the night shift, the opportunities for sexual adventure were limitless.

In keeping with their policy of cutting costs to the bone, the Prison Management locked Bridgewater down from seven at night until six in the morning. Prisoners were locked in their cottages where, again to save money, they cooked for themselves using the ingredients they bought from the prison store with the five dollars a day food allowance the prison provided. To further save costs on electricity, at nine o’clock lights were turned off and everybody retired to bed. At least that was the theory.

The entire prison perimeter, prison yards and gardens were covered by security cameras. One officer could sit at the screens and watch the whole area. In the event that the officer might be taken ill or fall asleep, a second officer was assigned to watch the first officer.

With everything locked down there was nothing else to do; no reason to pay more staff. So with one hundred and thirty inmates at Bridgewater, during the night shift there were just two prison officers on duty. And when the two officers were Jack and Nikki, they weren’t watching the security screens. They waited until the prison was locked down then set the scene in the empty Sick Bay on the second floor of the main prison building. Some baby oil, some cheap domestic wine and a red glass cover over a scented candle was all it took to have Nikki in raptures.

It was also all it took to tell Natalie exactly what was going on and how to exploit it.

Kirstie Walker, the indigenous prisoner who occupied the cell next to Natalie’s in Cottage Five, was the first to discover the tell-tale melted candle wax on the bedside table in the Sick Bay. Kirstie had come to Sydney with a regional team to play basketball and been busted at a nightclub with a small amount of ecstasy. A white girl would have got off with a warning; Kirstie got twelve months. Like Natalie, she was smart enough to see that there were certain opportunities to be salvaged from her misfortune. Unlike Natalie, Kirstie was intent on improving herself, not merely her circumstances. She was training to be a Nurse’s Aide. She got day release to attend college in the town, she assisted the nurse on her visits to the prison, and she accompanied Natalie to her pre-natal classes in town.

It was during one of these trips that Kirstie mentioned the wax to Natalie.

Natalie added this information to the discarded wine bottles she found in the dustbin when she was cleaning up one morning, after Jack and Nikki were on night duty, and she knew exactly what was going on and how to exploit it.

Natalie’s condition was too delicate for her to work in the Prison Workshop alongside Rae Davis, another inmate of Cottage Five. Instead, she had become the cleaner in the Administration block of the prison. It was a light assignment and Natalie made the most of her spare time. Most of the locks in Administration were key cards and key cards were Natalie’s stock-in-trade. She soon had access to every room in the building, including the Key Room where she took an impression of the metal key to the outer door of Cottage Five, which Rae duly copied in the workshop. Now Natalie could get out of the cottage any time she wanted. There was nothing between her and freedom but the flimsy cyclone fence; but she wasn’t going anywhere. She had a much better plan.

Being a low security prison, surrounded by a cyclone fence, a lot of contraband was smuggled into Bridgewater. Mostly it was just thrown over the fence during the night, and the inmates hoped they would get to pick it up before the prison officers did their morning rounds and found it.

Alternatively, a lot of women left the prison each day on work release and tried to smuggle contraband back into the prison. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes they suffered internal searches and loss of privileges. Sometimes they became victim to Jack Fitzgerald’s desires. Whatever their fate, it was all very unreliable. So Natalie offered a service. Anything they wanted, no questions asked, provided the price was right.

So it was that at ten o’clock, when everybody except the night staff had gone home, and there was a rattle of the lock on the outer door of the cottage, followed by silence, Natalie switched off her computer, slipped on her powder blue, fluffy slippers and unlocked the door to her cell.

Being able to unlock her cell door was not a feat in itself. All the women were given key cards to their cells so they could visit the bathroom whenever they wanted to, or lock themselves into their cells whenever they needed to. The key cards also opened the inner door of the cottage, leading out into the yard. So when Natalie stepped out of her cell into the darkened main living, dining and kitchen area of the cottage, Kirstie, Rae and Louise Grey, otherwise known as Lou, were already waiting by the outer door, all still fully dressed in prison uniforms and listening for any sound of footsteps in the yard.

Natalie unlocked the outer door of the cottage with her metal key.

The door opened soundlessly due to the constant greasing of the hinges with margarine. She looked out into the yard across to the Administration block. It was in darkness, with light spilling from just one window as if the Security Surveillance room was occupied. Natalie knew it wasn’t.

Above the door to the Administration block, a security camera was mounted, staring straight at Natalie and Cottage Five. Natalie ignored it and moved to the corner of the cottage and looked around.

She could now see the main prison building, part of the old, original prison block. There was a faint, red light coming through the curtains on the second floor, where the Sick Bay was located. Jack and Nikki were at it, and would be for an hour or two. The sound of the lock being rattled earlier on, had been one or other of them checking that all the cottages were secured before they headed for the Sick Bay.

Natalie ushered Lou out into the yard, then went back into the cottage and pulled the door closed behind her.

Lou stood alone in the darkness, transfixed by the security camera, staring straight at her.

She knew it was switched on. She knew it was recording her every move. Natalie had told her to ignore it, and it was true that in the half dozen times she had stepped outside the cottage after dark, nobody had ever questioned her later or mentioned the security tape.

Lou didn’t know how Natalie managed this. She didn’t really care. She was desperate to feed her habit, and with her record the authorities were never going to give her day release, so she had no alternative. Natalie was her only hope.

She backed up against the wall of the cottage, making herself as small as possible and edged her way around the building, only to be confronted by another camera staring down at her from a support pole on the cyclone fence.

Between the cottage and the fence was a sort of garden. Somebody, sometime, had planted a rose bower and erected a garden bench to create a screen so that people coming in the main gate couldn’t see people in the garden, and people in the garden couldn’t see the main gate. The rose bower covered the cyclone fence that separated the road from the garden. It was massively overgrown but still managed, defiantly, to bloom each year, despite a lack of pruning.

The garden itself was also untended: a few overgrown garden beds and a patch of overgrown lawn. Still, at least the thick grass provided a soft cushion for the package that was thrown over the fence and landed softly on the ground.

Ignoring the cameras now, Lou ran for the package and picked it up. She stared through the cyclone fence to see who had thrown it. In the darkness she could see nothing. She turned and ran back to the shadow of the cottage, made her way around to the main door and tapped on it twice. It was immediately opened. Lou rushed in and Natalie closed and locked the door behind her.

Natalie had placed a small battery operated LED lamp on the kitchen table with its beam facing towards the living area, so that the area around the front door was still in virtual darkness as Lou came back into the cottage. Natalie lead the way to the pool of light surrounding the table, but instead of following her, Lou made a dash for her cell; only to find her way blocked by the hulking figure of Rae and the equally imposing figure of Kirstie. Being a basketballer, Kirstie’s blocking game was excellent, and she and Rae easily prevented Lou from slipping away with the package.

Natalie took the package from Lou and checked the contents in the pool of light on the kitchen table: boxes and boxes of tablets. She opened one box, pulled out a tab and held it out to Lou.

I want more, said Lou.

We agreed, Natalie replied. One tab.

I want more, I take all the risks.

There are no risks.

What about the cameras?

Natalie sighed.

I deal with those.

Yeah, well, I still want more. You need me. Kirstie won’t do it. She’s not gonna risk getting caught and losin’ her day release. And Rae’s afraid of the dark.

I’m not afraid, growled Rae, towering over Lou.

Lou stood her ground.

Yeah? Well, you go out there then. Go on.

Rae didn’t move.

She wasn’t afraid of the dark but she was afraid of open spaces. She’d been locked up for so long, spent so much time in solitary that she was agoraphobic. She also had an aversion to being touched or of touching anybody else, but this didn’t seem to extend to her knuckles. She punched Lou hard, causing her to double up and collapse.

Natalie threw the tab down to Lou.

Get back in your cell, she said.

She handed a tab to Rae, and offered one to Kirstie, who refused it.

I’ll stick with the cash, thanks.

Like Natalie, Kirstie was thinking of her future. She wouldn’t have completed her course by the time she was released. She wanted to carry on, get her certificate and take her skills back to her Country in Central Australia. She needed all the money she could get her hands on.

Rae gave Lou a kick, which encouraged her to pick up the tab and scurry back into her cell.

Once inside, she was immediately scrabbling for the tin she kept taped to the underside of her bed. It contained a lighter, a spoon, a rubber tube and a syringe. Lou was so far gone that she was injecting herself between her toes these days.

Natalie didn’t give Lou another thought. She waited until Kirstie and Rae had returned to their cells, then she collected the vacuum cleaner from the kitchen cupboard. She removed the bag and filled it with tablets. The following morning when everybody was busy signing people out for day release and searching visitors, Natalie would resume her duties as trustee and cleaner and take her vacuum cleaner to the Administration block. There she would take the tablets from the vacuum cleaner and hide them right under the prison officers’ noses. Then she would let herself into the Security Room where the security tapes were kept.

The security system had been installed more than a decade earlier, when security cameras still used video tapes. Nobody was going to spend money updating the system. There was one tape for each camera. Each tape lasted twenty-four hours, and was changed at 2 pm each day when the afternoon shift came on. Long before then, Natalie would take the two tapes for the relevant Administration and Fence Cameras out of the machine, and swap them for the two tapes lined up to be used the next day. When the officer in charge changed the tapes again, the originals would be put back into the machine and taped over. Even if the tapes were checked, which they rarely were, they’d find nothing.

Natalie had a very smooth operation going but she was far from satisfied. She could only bring goods in when Jack and Nikki were on night duty, and she would be lucky to clear a few hundred dollars on each consignment. At this rate she would never make enough money to go to England. As she climbed into her bunk and wrapped her arms around her teddy bear, she thought that what she really needed was for somebody very rich to come to Bridgewater Prison; somebody who, in turn, could make Natalie rich.

But she knew she was only dreaming. Rich people don’t go to prison.

II

Elizabeth Wright certainly felt rich, even though she was only sitting in the Premium Economy section of the Virgin Australia flight from Bali to Sydney. Finally, after twenty years of marriage, she had been on her honeymoon. In fact, it was her twentieth wedding anniversary but since she had been too pregnant to fly when she first married, it doubled as her honeymoon. The trip was all the more enjoyable because it was so unexpected. Billy, her husband, never remembered wedding anniversaries, or birthdays. He had to be reminded when Christmas came around.

On this occasion it was their nineteen-year-old son Damien who had reminded his father.

An ex-footballer, Billy was President of the Breakers Leagues Club. He also had a transport business and a couple of businesses in Indonesia. He had started the latter when he was asked to transport some Balinese furniture back to Sydney. On learning how cheap the furniture was in Bali and how much he could sell it for in Sydney, he decided to begin importing it himself. Quite a few years later, as his contacts in Indonesia grew, he also started exporting frozen grapes to Bali to make wine. Excise on imported wine was prohibitive but frozen grapes could be imported duty free, so Billy saw an opening. The business was still getting started but it meant frequent trips to Indonesia, one of which he’d unwittingly planned to clash with his twentieth wedding anniversary. That was when Damien suggested that Billy take Liz along for the first few days of the trip as a surprise anniversary present.

At first, Liz worried that Billy might have felt pushed into it; but if he did, he certainly didn’t act that way. In Bali he was attention itself; even threatened a local character who was ogling Liz in her bikini. It was flattering that he was jealous after all these years, and he’d topped it all off on the last night of their holiday by giving her a beautiful, emerald necklace. Mind you, he had insisted that Liz wear it back into Australia to avoid customs duty, but that was typical of Billy; always looking for an angle. Not that he was dishonest; he just liked to win, to come out on top. And Liz had to admit he was good at it. They hadn’t done too badly for a pregnant cheer leader, and a footballer whose career was cut short by injury.

As the plane came in to land at Sydney's Kingsford Smith Airport, Liz realized how tired she was. It seemed a shame to spend days in idyllic somnolence, then spoil it by flying home overnight. Still, it was the only direct flight, and if Liz had flown on to Jakarta with Billy for the rest of his business trip, she wouldn’t have been home in time to prepare for the next term at the primary school where she taught. She’d be fine. She could sleep all day, have dinner with Damian and her daughter, Shelley, at the Club, and by tomorrow morning she’d be right as rain.

Liz didn’t turn on her mobile until she was through passport control, and waiting for her suitcase to appear on the carousel. She phoned Damian, who was waiting in the Arrivals area of the airport with Shelley and Amanda Freeman, Liz’s best friend and next door neighbour.

Nobody really understood why Liz and Amanda were such good friends. Liz was serious, dedicated to her work as a primary teacher and a mother. Amanda was a trophy wife whose husband had moved on to a newer model. She seemed to have no interest in anything except clothes, fashion, and men. If truth were known, Liz and Amanda had become friends because Liz felt sorry for her, suddenly being cast adrift after twenty years with no survival skills other than the ability to attract men; and even that was getting a bit beyond her, despite frantic efforts involving the gym and a plastic surgeon.

Mutton dressed as lamb, Billy called her.

Damian answered his mother’s call without any preamble, as people do who know each other well.

Mum, where are you?

I’m at the carousel waiting for my luggage. Is Shelley with you?

Yeah and Amanda; she gave us a lift. How was the trip?

Very romantic.

Too much information, Mum.

Damian put his hand over the phone, grinned and said to Shelley.

She says it was very romantic. Can you imagine Dad being romantic?

No thanks, Shelley screwed up her nose.

Amanda smiled along with the kids, trying to give the impression that she was in on the joke but she wasn’t. She thought Billy was a bit of a hunk.

Liz had been watching the carousel as she talked on the phone. She saw her case trundle up the ramp and spill onto the conveyor.

I think I can see my case. I’ll see you soon.

She hung up and pushed through the crowd to retrieve her suitcase. It was ridiculously large for just a few days holiday. She had over-packed going over there, and then added to it with gifts bought for the kids. She heaved the case off of the carousel, placed in on the floor, pulled out the retractable handle and wheeled it towards customs.

As she stood in the "Nothing to declare" queue, she nervously fingered the emerald necklace around her neck. Surely they wouldn’t want to see proof that she had taken it out of the country with her? Surely the fact that it was in plain sight would be sufficient to indicate it was an old piece of jewellery? She forced herself to leave the necklace alone, and moved forward with her passport and declaration card at the ready. To her surprise, the customs officer directed her to the counter where other officers were questioning passengers, and rummaging through their luggage.

Liz dutifully hauled her suitcase over to the counter and handed over her passport and declaration to the first available customs officer. He gave the papers no more than a cursory glance.

Could you put your case up on the counter, please Mrs. Wright, he said.

As Liz heaved her case up onto the counter, she noticed a man in a suit move to stand behind the customs officer.

Did you pack this bag yourself? the customs officer asked.

Yes.

Open it, please.

Liz opened the combination lock and threw back the lid. She still had no premonition of trouble. As long as they were looking at the case, and not her throat, she had nothing to worry about.

As the customs officer foraged through her clothes and the batik shirts and sarongs she’d bought as presents, Liz looked up at the man in the suit and made eye contact. He smiled. He looked vaguely familiar. She smiled back, not sure if it would be rude not to acknowledge him.

What’s this?

Liz looked at the package the customs officer had pulled from the bottom of the bag.

It was a brightly wrapped parcel, tied with ribbon.

Liz guessed it was a surprise present. She smiled.

I don’t know. It must be a present from my husband. It’s our anniversary.

The customs officer handed the package to Liz.

Open it please.

Bemused, but not alarmed, Liz opened the package.

I hope he hasn’t bought me anything embarrassing, she joked; then stopped.

The package contained a pure white powder, wrapped securely in plastic. Liz turned the package over in her hands, baffled. The man in the suit stepped forward.

Come with us, please. Mrs. Wright.

In a complete daze, Liz was led away by the customs officer and the plainclothes policeman.

She had often wondered where the other doors leading out of the Arrivals lounge went: the ones that didn’t lead to the waiting crowd and freedom. Even after she had been through them, Liz was so freaked out by what was happening that she still didn’t know where they went, or how she eventually got to a small interview room; complete with surveillance cameras, recording devices, and a large mirrored wall, which, having seen a lot of television, she assumed was a two-way mirror.

The policeman introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Steve Metcalf of the Drugs Squad.

Have we met? Liz asked, trying to humanize the situation.

Yes we have, he said, but he didn’t elaborate. Instead, he said:

"You say your husband gave you the heroin, Mrs. Wright?

No, of course not.

It was in your suitcase... You said you packed the case yourself?

Somebody must have opened it.

It had a combination lock.

I’m sure they can open locks.

They?

Whoever put it there, I don’t know; Baggage Handlers? Isn’t that what they did to Schappelle Corby?

I think it’s been pretty much proven that she was lying, said Metcalf. She got life in Bali. You’re lucky you were caught here.

Liz certainly didn’t feel lucky. All she could feel was disbelief

I haven’t done anything, she insisted. The drugs - whatever they are - weren’t there when I packed my suitcase.

Was your husband there? asked Metcalf. When you packed your suitcase?

Liz hesitated. If she admitted Billy was there, would it look bad for him? On the other hand if she lied wouldn’t she just be getting herself into a deeper mess? She had nothing to hide.

Confused, she just said:

This is all a big mistake.

Metcalf repeated the question.

Was your husband there?

Liz decided her best option was simply to tell the truth.

Yes he was. He was asleep on the bed.

Before Metcalf could continue, the door opened, and in walked a face that Liz definitely did recognize.

Detective Inspector Victor Holman was about Billy’s age; in fact, he and Billy had played in the same football team, twenty years earlier. He was carrying two take-away coffees. He put one down on the table in front of Liz and smiled.

Here we go, Liz; Flat White, no sugar. Okay?

He sat in the vacant chair opposite and pulled his chair forward as he removed the lid from his coffee.

Conceding that Holman was the senior officer, Metcalf pushed his chair back slightly so that he was now the observer; Holman, the interrogator.

As soon as Liz saw Holman, her heart sank.

She had known him as long as she had known Billy. Liz was a cheerleader when the two men played in the same football team. He had even tried to date her but he was always second best to Billy, on and off the field. Liz had always thought Holman resented Billy, and her suspicions were confirmed when Billy got into trouble. It was a couple of years after Billy and Liz married. Liz was expecting Shelley, when Billy was injured. Suddenly his playing career was over.

There were no great insurance policies in those days but the Club did look after its own, in its own unique way. Billy started running an illegal SP Bookie business out of the Club, and everybody looked the other way, including the local cops and Holman. But Billy’s one big failing was that he always wanted to be the best and biggest in whatever he did.

He’d wanted to be the best footballer in the club. Now he wanted to be the biggest and only SP Bookie in the Club. The trouble was, there was already an SP Bookie there, who’d been there for years and had a loyal clientele. A turf war erupted. It wasn’t much of a turf war. Billy was a fit young ex-player; his rival was a middle-aged man. Billy always claimed that he’d hardly hit the guy. Nevertheless, the older man ended up permanently damaged, and Billy ended up doing three years for GBH.

Billy always thought he did it tough when he was in prison. In fact Liz did it a lot tougher. Pregnant and with a young son, Billy had left her with no support and even in prison he couldn’t keep out of trouble. He had to prove he was the hardest, the toughest. Parole was refused, time and again. He served the full three years plus extra time for violent behaviour. It took a long time for Liz to forgive Billy for leaving her exposed like that, but she never forgave Holman. With Billy in jail, he thought he saw his chance. He started calling around at all hours. Eventually she’d had to go to his superior officer and report him for stalking.

All this was ancient history now, but it had left a scar.

Since then, Liz had gone to college, built a career. No matter how successful Billy had become, Liz had always worked, had always ensured she could support herself. She never wanted to feel helpless again, and she never wanted to see Holman again.

Now here he was; sitting across the table, smiling.

Why was he here? Why was he bringing her coffee? Did he know she was flying in? Was he waiting for her? If so, why?

She left her coffee untouched as he babbled on, ostensibly for Metcalf’s benefit; explaining how he’d known Liz for years, talking as if they were old friends.

How long is it now we’ve known each other, Liz? Over twenty years? It must be. You’ve been celebrating your twentieth wedding anniversary, haven’t you? So how old does that make Damian? He must be nineteen, nearly twenty; yes, very nearly twenty.

He was telling Metcalf that Liz was pregnant when she and Billy got married, and he was smiling. It wasn’t a pleasant smile. It was almost a sneer; Liz knew he wasn’t there by coincidence and he wasn’t there to help.

So why are you here? she asked, at last giving voice to the question she had been asking herself since she first laid eyes on him.

Holman shrugged.

I’m head of the Drug Squad these days, Liz. Haven’t made a fortune like Billy, but I’ve done all right.

He was still smiling. He was beginning to irritate her.

So, same question, Liz said in her best schoolmarm voice. Why are you here? I’m not a drug smuggler.

No, said Holman.

His smile disappeared.

But Billy is.

So that was it. Even after more than twenty years, Holman was still jealous of Billy. Jealous because Billy was Team Captain; jealous because Billy had become Club President; jealous because Billy had married Liz.

Bullshit, she said. Then realized that she wasn’t talking to the slimy, second-best footballer at the club, Vic Holman, she was talking to the Head of the Drug Squad, Vic Holman.

Still, Holman didn’t seem offended.

We know he’s been dealing for years, he said. How else do you think you got so rich? Billy was never that bright.

So that’s what this is, said Liz, shaking her head. Jealousy.

This time, Holman took the bait.

Jealous? Why would I be jealous of an ex-con?

That was nearly twenty years ago. He just lost his temper.

And nearly killed a man, Holman almost yelled.

Liz looked at him the way she had looked at him when he’d come sniffing around her, years ago, when Billy was in Prison.

You always were second-best, weren’t you, Vic?

Liz knew this would cut to the bone, because it was true.

"What is it? Still sulking because I chose him, not you?

You didn’t have much option, did you Liz? Holman sneered back, Not with a bun in the oven.

Metcalf knew that this wasn’t going to sound good on the tape. He cut in to give Holman a chance to calm down.

We did find a couple of kilos of heroin in your suitcase, Mrs. Wright.

Well I didn’t put them there, said Liz.

We know, Metcalf answered, to her surprise. They were put there by a man called Swain. Les Swain, that name mean anything to you?

No.

He owns a jewellery shop in Bali; at the hotel where you were staying.

Liz shrugged, it still meant nothing. She shook her head.

No.

Involuntarily, she fingered her emerald necklace. She had been so angry, she’d almost forgotten how much trouble she was in.

If he put it there, she said, I didn’t know about it.

Holman had recovered his temper by now. He sounded almost sincere.

We believe you, Liz. You didn’t know about it, but Billy did. We’ve been watching him for years. At first we thought he was smuggling the drugs in the Balinese furniture. Then we thought it was in the wine or the chemicals they use to make the wine. Then it dawned on us. Every time he went to Bali he met a girl there. They travelled there separately. They came home separately. That’s why it took us so long to twig what was happening. While he went on to Jakarta on business, she came back with two kilos of heroin in her suitcase. Just like you. Then a baggage handler intercepted the heroin before the bag got to customs. That was the last link. The one we connected today

I don’t believe you, said Liz flatly

Holman picked up a manila folder from the table that Liz hadn’t noticed before.

He pulled out a large photo. Even though he kept his hand over part of the photo, Liz could see it was taken near the pool in the hotel where she had just been staying with Billy.

Here he is with his girlfriend, Holman said and pushed the photo across