CHAPTER A (1) 'So what's with the Pommy new chum, over in Ward 2? Mates at the pub reckon he's bent. You heard anything?' Adrian’s question drifted on the chilly air of the Staff Room on this 1970s week-end. He leant back against a table in the centre of that room where Chris Carter, standing beside Adrian, puffed on a gasper. Chris blew smoke at the grimy cobwebs hanging from the room's crumbling ceiling cornices. ''Bent' as in ...?' he replied. Across from the men, their b

CHAPTER B I arrived at a tyre workshop, and saw food wrappers scattered along the cracked concrete path by the door. Greasy detritus, pockmarked with sprouting weeds, that rustled under the cold, poking stabs of a morning breeze. I counted to ten to steady my nerves as I faced the glass door of the premises. Behind me, traffic surged past the footpath. A smelly, clamorous stream of vehicles on the road that led away from the anxiety and stress I faced inside the workshop. Ano

CHAPTER C A warm afternoon breeze lashed greasy food wrappers, swirling them around my ankles, as I arrived at the glass entrance door to the tyre workshop. I held the backpack in one hand and pushed the door with the other. I stepped through the doorway and wended my way, past coils of electrical wiring and men on ladders, towards the back of the building. But it wasn't the pasty-faced slimeball at the back of the shop. Instead, a woman greeted me as I drew close to the cou

Chapter D (1) Lacking life, like the unmarked graves it covered, the brown grass whispered to a melancholy breeze. A summer breeze that gently bent the dry grass stems as it meandered between me and the derelict medical research building. 'That building,' Anne said, gazing at the building 'was abandoned, what, about fifteen years ago?' I nodded as I followed her gaze. 'Because...' 'The scandals were multiplying,' I replied. 'And the asylum administration was shit scared that

CHAPTER E 'So, the bitches have buggered off? And you reckon you gave nothing away, eh? Am I right?' The man's menacing eyes raked the face of the woman sitting across a table from him. He leaned forward across the table as the dark green vinyl bench seat on which he sat creaked. The woman drew back. She pressed herself into the padded backrest of the light grey vinyl bench seat on which she tensed her nervous self. She squirmed, like a worm on a baited fishing line, as she w

Chapter F 'Stuff happened at the farmhouse last night, crazy, nasty stuff,' Rebekah exclaimed as she walked out from behind a chrome edged Forest Green Formica counter. Her shoes clacked across shiny square black and white Lino floor tiles while high above her, four fans whirred along the length of a grimy pressed metal ceiling. The fans ruffled the hot, dusty morning summer air of a town on the North Coast of New South Wales as Rebekah strode towa

CHAPTER G Though dealing with Clare's incarceration in the asylum was straightforward, dealing with her brother Bill was something else. His febrile nature was challenging to address, no matter the setting or the occasion. A fact written about in Clare's journals and an issue observed by Rebekah when Bill met Clare in the milk bar. An encounter a couple of days back from where Rebekah was now, sitting in the front passenger seat of the Buggy. She sat alongside Clare on a sunn

CHAPTER H One over-time afternoon shift, about a week after my talk with Belinda, I walked into Banksia's Staff Room to make myself a cup of coffee. While making it, I gazed through the closed sliding glass door that opened onto a concrete courtyard. An open dusty wind-swept space that led out from the back of the Staff Room towards the black asphalt of a car park. After making the coffee, I thought about where to drink the brew, either inside or outside, where mucky newspape

CHAPTER I After Robin's call about the bashing of Tim and the incarceration of the other pseudo-patient, Clare, I gave Wayne a call. After he had picked up the phone and he and I had pleasantries, I said, 'I am phoning to ask if I may borrow your lovely Burnt Orange Kombi? I'll pay for the petrol.' 'No need,' he replied, 'what's the purpose?' 'A rescue mission,' I replied. 'Why am I not surprised?' Wayne chuckled. 'Who is it this time?' 'Two people,' I said, 'who I haven't m

CHAPTER J 'Here's my uncle!' Anne exclaimed one afternoon in our house on Wentworth Avenue, Vaucluse a couple of weeks after we left the farmhouse on the North Coast. The newspaper she had been reading in the lounge room rustled as she carried the paper out onto the veranda. As she walked along the veranda, gusts from an icy wind blew onto the green and white striped canvas blinds. Like sails on a yacht, the blinds billowed out into the veranda. The cords holding them to t

CHAPTER K A glowing cigarette marked the stealthy movements of two figures as they emerged from the shadows of a spreading Moreton Bay Fig Tree. The dark-clothed figures, with cloth caps pulled low over their faces, moved through a full moon's gentle light towards a derelict building. Their shadows slithered along the tire tracks which scarred the ground leading to the ash-smeared ruins. The glowing cigarette fell to the ground as the figures drew closer to the blackened shel