Her sunny mood evaporated after the first bite when the guilt kicked in. She hadn't called her mum in a couple of days and had no idea how Ca.s.sie was getting on. That was the other thing about undercover work. The irregular hours meant that the times she would ordinarily have kept in touch with her family and friends were spent working cultivating the networks that would lead to the next bust.

She picked her mobile up from next to her plate and scrolled for her parents' number.

The call was answered almost immediately. 'h.e.l.lo, Frances Jackson.'

Jill was surprised. Her mum usually let her calls go through to the machine to deter telemarketers, picking up only when the caller spoke.

'Mum, hi.'

'Ca.s.sie?'

'No, Mum, it's Jill. I guess Ca.s.sie didn't stay with you guys then?'

'Hi, darling. No. She left the same day we brought her home. She let me drive her to her unit. I got her settled in, and she seemed okay. Very tired, of course.'

'Did she say whether she'd get some counselling?' asked Jill.

Frances sighed down the phone. 'Well, we talked about it for a little while, but she said she didn't need it. She said that she'd been stupid and learned a big lesson and would never do anything like that again.'

'Anything like what?' said Jill. 'Overdose?'

'Oh, you don't think it was deliberate, do you?' Frances sounded terrified.

'No, Mum. I really don't,' said Jill. 'I think Ca.s.sie just has too much money and too much time on her hands. She hangs out with too many people just like her, and they all think that the whole world is a big carnival and they should get on as many rides as they can.'

'I hope she's going to be all right,' said Frances. 'Anyway, how are you, darling? Is everything okay? It's not like you to call at this time of day.'

'I'm fine, Ma. Believe it or not, I just got up.'

'What's going on? Are you sick?'

'I'm fine. I'm eating scrambled eggs. I have to give you this recipe.'

'Hmm sleeping in and eating properly. Whoever you are, could you put my daughter on the phone, please?'

'You're a riot,' Jill said. 'What're you doing today?'

'Groceries, bills, gardening, cooking. You know the drill. What about you? How's the case going?'

Jill's mother knew nothing about what she was doing, other than that she was working on something she couldn't discuss, and it involved living away from home for a while.

'Really well, actually.' Not a lot more she could or wanted to say.

'Any idea when you'll be working back at Maroubra?'

'Not in the short term.' If ever.

'It was nice to see Scotty the other day,' said Frances. 'Have you caught up again since?'

'I called him. We're going to meet up on the weekend for a bike ride.' Jill now wanted out of this conversation. Her mum's next questions would be about her feelings for Scotty, about Gabriel and she'd rather have a conversation with a speed dealer than go there. 'Mum. I have to go. I'm sorry. I'll give you another call soon.'

Jill cleaned away her breakfast and took a shower. That was the other thing she'd fixed as soon as she got in here a new showerhead to ensure the water coursed hot and strong. She donned her uniform for the day Playboy hipster tracksuit pants in baby blue, matching midriff hoodie, a white singlet, push-up bra and sneakers. Her hair went into a high ponytail, and she slicked on lots of black eyeliner. Sitting down on her bed, she picked up a cheap jewellery box from the nightstand and began pulling on the ten silver rings Krystal Peters always wore. She was not prepared to have any more piercings for this a.s.signment one in each ear was enough for her but lashings of inexpensive rings and bangles seemed to help her blend in with her neighbours. Some spangly silver earrings completed her outfit. Ta-dah, she checked out Krystal in the mirror, as always bemused and a little shocked to see her standing there. She picked up her handbag and set off to wake Ingrid.

It had turned out that Ingrid Dobell Jill/Krystal's new bestie, and her neighbour from across the hall was hooked in with plenty of the speed and smack dealers in the Fairfield area. She didn't use herself told Jill she'd seen the damage it had done to her father and brothers but she'd grown up in the area and had a lot of friends. When Jill had moved in, supposedly on the run from a bad break-up with her man in Brisbane, Ingrid had come around to drop off a welcome pack: a shiny red laundry bucket packed with a bottle of no-name washing-up liquid, some Chux, a small jar of instant coffee, a roll of toilet paper, a package of shortbread biscuits and a carton of milk.

In her kitchen, Jill had unpacked the bucket, touched by the thoughtfulness. At ten-thirty the next morning, she'd gone around to thank Ingrid.

'Come in, come in,' said her neighbour, standing back from her screen door, waving Jill inside with the smoke from her cigarette. 'Don't mind the mess. Haven't got around to getting my place done yet.'

Actually, the unit wasn't terribly untidy. Some unfolded washing on the couch, a few dishes in the sink, shoes on the floor. Jill would have had to have typhoid fever to leave her place like that overnight, but she'd been expecting a lot worse of her new neighbours.

'I'm a carer for Mrs Dang, next door to you,' said Ingrid. 'Poor love has schizophrenia. I make sure she's taken her meds, had something to eat, and I tidy up a bit.' Ingrid took a seat at her kitchen table; with a bare foot, she pushed out the other chair for Jill. 'She's not too bad this morning. Only asked about her cat once.'

'Her cat?' said Jill.

Ingrid laughed and blew smoke towards the ceiling. 'Yeah, poor thing. She thinks the government took her cat to do experiments on it.'

'Where is her cat?'

'Never had one as long as I've lived here, and that's coming up for nine years now.' Ingrid laughed again. 'Doesn't worry me. She's good fun, and I'm gettin' the carer's pension to look after her.'

'No s.h.i.t,' said Jill.

'Yep. Not bad, eh? Mind you, she wouldn't cope on her own. I've been doing this s.h.i.t for her for years anyway. She's f.u.c.ked.' Ingrid finished her cigarette and looked around for another. 'Anyway, Krystal, what's your story?'

It was over the first gla.s.s of wine a week after they met that Jill had sounded Ingrid out for some contacts. She'd seen no drug paraphernalia around her flat, so she was a little worried about Ingrid's reaction, but she figured that she might as well try to get something if she was going to have to drink this c.r.a.p.

'So, Ingrid,' she tried. 'You wouldn't know where I could get any shabu around here, would you?'

That had been three months ago, and Ingrid's initial introductions had led to others that had resulted in the takedowns Lawrence Last was so happy about.

Jill wanted more. Despite the busts of numerous clandestine laboratories, there was still a huge amount of crystal methamphetamine on the streets. Although her brief was to try to find ice and ecstasy dealers, it was the proliferation of dodgy ice cooks in particular that most worried the authorities. The manufacture of ecstasy was quite an art. Getting it right could be tricky, and production was most often a large-scale affair by professionals. Ice was another thing altogether.

Locking the door to her unit, Jill thought about the ma.s.sive proliferation of this drug over the past five years. The problem with ice, she thought, is that half the country knows how to cook it. Theoretically. She knew that she could go to the internet today, and within five minutes collect twenty recipes. But most people manufacturing it were taught face to face by a friend. She knew that there were plenty of small operations making enough to service a local group of ice addicts, but large-scale production generally originated in Asia. The source ingredients required were tightly controlled in Australia, meaning that major meth production was rare. But there was certainly plenty on these streets, and Jill and everyone else around here knew that someone had a bloodline to a major supply. So far though, no one had been able to give her any useful links to the really big players.

Today, she would be meeting someone she hoped could hook her up to a bigger supplier. Jelly. Jelly owed her. Or at least he thought he did.

Jelly was a regular on the Fairfield street scene. An easy target, he was rolled regularly for his cigarettes, phone, and any money he had. Jill's best guess was that Jelly was aged around twenty-five, with the IQ of an eight-year-old. She was guessing some sort of hormonal abnormality accounted for his problems: Jelly seemed to be pumping too much oestrogen. Jill knew she could never hope to have b.r.e.a.s.t.s as impressive as Jelly's; the skin of his face was smooth and hairless, and when he spoke he sounded a lot more like a girl than most of the chicks he shared the streets with. As far as she could tell, Jelly didn't seem to have s.e.xual proclivities that leaned either way. When left to his own devices, he was more than happy to swap dumb jokes, shoplift lollies or any other food he could get his hands on and attempt to skateboard. At six foot, and a hundred and twenty kilos, he looked pretty stupid on a skateboard, but Jelly didn't seem to realise that, no matter how often the kids at the skate park told him.

Even without the contacts he had, Jill would have kept an eye out for Jelly; he might as well have had a big red target painted on his rounded back. So, when she'd found him curled up in the railway carpark being battered by four youths obviously not from around the area, she'd jumped in. Actually, it had been kind of fun. She hadn't had a chance to practise her kickboxing for real for a long time, and discovering that she had lost none of the power from her roundhouse kick was gratifying. The melee had ended disappointingly quickly. The youths were evidently weekend warriors, fearless only when their prey couldn't fight back.

But Jill knew that Jelly had another guardian angel. Kasem Nader. The only reason Jelly hadn't long ago been kicked to death for sport was that most people around here knew that Kasem Nader would come find them if they hurt Jelly too badly. Nader had had a long a.s.sociation with Merrylands police, dating back to his primary school years. Since then, he and his brothers had collected an impressive criminal portfolio, from stick-ups and standovers to weapons charges and abduction. Jill had heard that the boys now had an impressive meth lab up and running and were looking to expand their operations.

She had met Jelly for the first time one morning in Ingrid's kitchen, where he was trying to bake cupcakes. Ingrid told her that although he lived in a neighbouring unit block, he was in her flat more often than his own. Jill had peered into his mixing bowl before he poured the ingredients into some patty cases Ingrid had found for him at the back of a cupboard.

'Ah, what's in this?' Jill had asked, sniffing carefully.

Ingrid pushed her way between Jill and Jelly and leaned over the bowl with them. 'f.u.c.k knows,' she said. 'You wouldn't eat any of that s.h.i.t, anyway, Krystal. I just let him go for it. What'd'ya put in there, Jelly?'

Jelly showed them. Some of his special ingredients had come from the cupboard under the sink.

Twenty minutes later, with Jelly's batter grey-green and hissing in the drain, 'Krystal', Jelly and Ingrid had taken a hot batch of b.u.t.tery cupcakes around to Mrs Dang's, and Jelly had been a loyal fan of Jill's ever since.

It was Ingrid who told Jill about the Kasem Nader connection. According to her, Jelly and his younger brother, Corey, had been sent to separate foster homes when their mother wouldn't quit whoring from her bedroom while the boys watched cartoons in the next room. Corey had grown up in Merrylands near the Nader brothers while Jelly had moved from home to home and ended up in the Fairfield area. Corey had been fatally stabbed in a brawl with some skinheads from Cronulla. Ingrid told Jill that Corey took a knife through the spleen when he jumped in to prevent Kasem being stomped to death.

Kasem had made a monthly trip out to Fairfield ever since.

And today, Jelly was due a visit.

17.

Friday 5 April, 11 am.

By eleven am Seren knew one thing for sure: she could not do this job for a second day. Not even to stay out of that h.e.l.lhole in Silverwater. But with these thoughts, images of Marco swam through her tears and the pink-tinged water raining down continuously from the pipes overhead. Marco. Her son. Completely alone without her. What she'd sworn to him when holding his brand new body on her naked chest, she'd already betrayed: I'll never leave you. I will always protect you.

Seren swallowed the bile in her throat and reached out to grab a screaming chicken from the yellow crate at her side. Its warm body pressed into her palms and she felt its heart hammering wildly. Scrabbling with her gloved hand for one of its feet, she hung it upside down as she'd been shown at six o'clock this morning by her supervisor, and clasped each foot into the metal restraints; belly forwards, facing her. The terrified creature flapped its malformed wings, stunted by being raised in a box so small it had never been able to stretch; it swung its head wildly and its shining eyes met her own.

They begged.

I'm sorry, she told the bird, and snapped its neck with the piece of equipment designed by someone, somewhere, just for this job.

The dying bird's s.h.i.t joined her vomit in the sink below the carca.s.s. Seren pushed the b.u.t.ton, and the conveyor belt took the body away.

Ten workers today. Fifty thousand chickens to be killed between them. I can't do this, she thought.

And then she remembered Marco being dragged from her by the DoCS worker, when the officer took her from the courtroom to the cells below.

She reached for another chicken.

Seren sat staring at the lunchroom table. Men and women around her laughed, b.i.t.c.hed and ate sandwiches provided by their employers.

Seren didn't think she'd ever eat again.

'You'll get used to it, love.' The middle-aged man from the conveyor belt next to her offered her a c.o.ke. 'Take it. It'll help settle your stomach.'

'How can I get out of that section?' she asked him.

He laughed. 'Not easy. You gotta be here a year at least to get into the packing section.'

'There has to be something else.' She turned her head to meet his eyes.

'There is. And it's worse. Believe me. I lasted a couple of weeks and begged 'em to put me back here,' he said. 'You're just lucky they put you on the line in the first place. You could have got sent straight to gutting.'

Yeah, that's me, Seren thought. Just lucky. Feeling faint, she lowered her head into her hands and tuned out the clamour around her.

For the first three months she was locked up, Seren had done little but cry. She cried for herself, alone in the world since fifteen, when her mother had died of breast cancer in Liverpool Hospital. She cried for her mother, who'd lost all of her light when Seren's father had been killed, falling though a ceiling on a building site. She cried for her brother, Bradley, removed from their home by authorities; her stepfather charged for the 'greenstick injury' to his leg. Seren had always remembered that term and looked it up when she was twelve: she learned that children's bones are so new, so supple, that they do not snap like an adult's. Instead they bend when twisted, as a young tree branch might do. A greenstick injury. Seren had not seen Bradley since fostered out for life, to give him the best chance.

Seren cried mostly for the little boy she'd had at fifteen. Marco, born two weeks after the state buried her mother. Alone. Out there, without her.

After three months crying, Seren had had enough. Enough of authority. They'd been involved in her life for as long as she could remember and where had it got her? Here. They owned her. She spent a month or so in and out of segregation, isolated from the other women for swearing at officers, being late for muster, refusing to complete the a.s.signed tasks. All it took was cancellation of her visitor's rights for a month, though, and she had abandoned her rebellion instantly.

The fight left her, but not the rage. It boiled behind her eyes and seared a red-tinged image onto her retina.

The image of the love of her life.

The man she would make pay.

In the slaughterhouse lunchroom, holding her head in her hands, Seren Templeton worked through her strategy; honed her plans. She sent her thoughts out into the street, hunting him. The man she would make pay.

Christian Worthington.

At least the job finished in time to allow her to be there when Marco arrived home from school. At ten past three that afternoon she ducked her head out of the bus shelter and searched the road for sign of his bus approaching. The rain hung over the street ahead and she could see nothing but the cars immediately in front of her.

G.o.d, I wish we had a car, she thought. Safe inside a vehicle, there were fewer opportunities to be hara.s.sed. One day we'll have a car, Marco, she promised him silently.

Second day in his new school. She hoped it was better than the first.

The bus steamed to a stop in front of her.

'Hi baby. How'd it go?' she asked as he alighted, his secondhand school shorts bagging around his waist.

'Don't call me baby.'

'Oops, sorry,' she said. 'You're still my baby, though,' she whispered, bending to help him with his backpack. Two or three drops of rain spattered onto the lenses of his gla.s.ses.

Seren tried to hold the umbrella over Marco as they made their way back to the unit block, but he was always a step out of reach. The rain had decreased to a cheerless drizzle, so she folded up the umbrella and hurried a little to catch him up.

'Bad day?' she asked.

'Not really,' he said.

She kept her eyes on him, hardly heeding where she walked. She was hungry for the sight of him; she had missed him so much today. She watched his k.n.o.bbly knees as he strode through muddy puddles. They cut through an ill-tended carpark, its concrete being reclaimed by the earth, fascinated by his dark hair slicked to his face like a helmet, his upturned nose.

'I think I made a friend,' he said to the ground.

Warmth filled her chest. Love and pain. Did they always go together?

'Yeah?' she said. 'What's his name?'

'Jake.'

'What's he like?'