Vanished by James Delargy (free novel 24 TXT) 📕

puffy with fat, smoothing any worry lines that might reveal his years, but she felt it was safe to say somewhere between thirty and forty.

‘I need to ask you about some gold.’

The eyebrow remained up. ‘I think you’re mistaking me with Fort Knox,’ he replied, a hint of Kiwi to the accent.

‘I don’t care if you bought it or what you did with it. You see something going at a good price why would I stop you? That’s for the local cops,’ said Emmaline, looking at Cooper who was a few steps behind her.

Jeremiah Tung didn’t answer. But he didn’t turn away either. She showed him Ian’s photo.

‘I just want to know how much he sold.’

Jeremiah Tung’s mouth twisted in thought, nostrils flaring. ‘I’ll speak with you. Alone.’

Emmaline nodded for Oily and Cooper to stay put and followed Tung to a back corner, home to the eye-watering reek of the nearby toilets. Maybe this was the corner he always used to conduct deals, the stench an incentive to hasten business along.

‘This gold. What’s it to you?’ he asked.

‘The guy flogging it might have kidnapped a mother and son. As I said, I don’t care about the deal, only how much he has.’

‘And the local blue?’

‘If they haven’t made a move yet then you must be too small-fry for them.’

Jeremiah looked momentarily offended by this. Then he shot her a beaming smile. ‘I bought the guts of an ounce. He wanted fifteen hundred. I gave him nine.’

Nine hundred. Enough for a week, maybe ten days at a stretch. There was a chance that Ian had then moved on to other dealers, but she guessed he wouldn’t want to hang around long. Especially with no guarantee that the next dealer wouldn’t just get a friendly call from Jeremiah and be ready to mug him of the rest of it.

She was about to leave when Jeremiah called her back.

‘He asked about buying a second-hand motor too. I directed him to my brother. On Trieste.’

Emmaline’s rapid-fire tour of Alice Springs’ lesser lights continued. Jeremiah Tung’s brother – also heavy-set and wearing an excess of denim – confirmed that a man fitting Ian Kinch’s description had bought a motor. An old Holden Commodore with two hundred thousand on the clock and no air con. For five hundred. Meaning he had four hundred left. Enough for a week, if he was sleeping in the car, which would be uncomfortable despite the Commodore’s size. It had been purchased under a fake name – Ted Grant – but though he could hide his name, Ian couldn’t hide his face. The licence plate number was immediately passed on to Cooper to run an ANPR check, though out here they would be lucky to get a positive.

Emmaline asked one final question. ‘You see anyone with him?’

Jeremiah Tung’s brother shook his head. ‘Not that I saw.’

122

Naiyana

It was a rocky ride. Pretty soon she regretted complaining about the broken road out of Kallayee and the compacted dirt of Keenan’s Run. They were like freshly laid tarmac compared to this, the ute being thrown up in the air before digging into the dirt and sand, almost burying the nose.

The rollercoaster nature of it also made it hard to see anything out of the window, the landscape rocking up and down like she was on a small boat on a choppy sea.

‘Slow down,’ she cried out as the seat belt bit into her shoulder.

‘You want to find them, don’t you?’

‘I have to be able to see to find them,’ she retorted, as the ute ploughed through a lonely mulga, shattering it into pieces.

‘I want to find them too. I don’t want to go back to prison. And lose you.’

She glanced over at him. His teeth were gritted, fighting the wheel. She wondered if he was fighting his emotions too. For the first time she wondered if the best decision was to let Lorcan and Dylan go. That way they would be safe. If Ian found them she couldn’t be sure what he’d do. She felt another surge of regret. That she ever became involved with him. The brief infatuation had passed, a puddle dried up in the sun. She had tried to convince herself that they had the same desires but they did not. He could kill in cold blood. She could not.

She glanced at the rifle. It lay wedged between his seat and the central panel. She decided that if they found Lorcan and her son she would grab it. She would retain ultimate control. And if either Ian or Lorcan threatened her child she would use it.

Indeed the more she thought about it the more she edged towards grabbing it now. Both of Ian’s hands were on the wheel, he was vulnerable. She resisted. For now.

She held onto the dashboard as the powerful ute fought through another dredge of sand, the engine revving briefly before being muted as the sand absorbed the noise.

An idea arose in her mind. A meeting in public. ‘We could wait for them in Hurton.’

Ian shook his head. ‘Too risky. We can’t cover all the angles. One cry for help and we’d be surrounded. We don’t need any outside interference. We don’t need witnesses.’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, hands inching towards the rifle.

‘We don’t need anyone outside the four of us knowing,’ he said, taking his eyes off the road for an instant. ‘I’ve got a record. I’d be the main suspect.’

‘You did kill Mike.’

‘But not Stevie. That was your husband.’

‘We don’t know that for sure.’

‘Why are you sticking up for him?’

It was a good question. One she couldn’t answer. Maybe she just wanted it to be clear in Ian’s head. That he had killed someone.

‘Keep your eyes on the road,’ she shouted, thinking how ironic it would be if they ‘drove off a cliff’ like Mike and Stevie.

‘Mike had it coming to him anyway,’ said Ian. ‘They both did. They knew what they were getting into. I told them that it wouldn’t