The boy has been waiting a long time for this night.
Under a new moon, the river is steeped in darkness. The silhouette of a man’s body spills out of a camping chair. His large balding head catches the light of a distant trawler. Artfully, he balances a fishing rod in one hand and a beer in the other while a pyramid of tin cans grows in the sand beside him. A few metres away, the boy sits quietly on an esky, watching carefully, and waiting.
Get us another Toohey's, mate!’ the man turns and yells at the boy.
The sound of his voice ruptures the night’s silence.
‘Yeah, yeah sure, Bob’, he stammers. ‘N-n-no worries. Give us a sec and I’ll get you a cold one from the bottom.’
Jai takes a few deep breaths as he wills his body to calm itself. Turning his back on Bob, he reaches into the esky and pulls out a can of beer. Placing the can at his feet, he carefully removes a small piece of white folded paper from his torn jeans pocket. Inside the paper are six Xanax: Jai has been sneaking one tablet a week from Bob’s bedside drawer.
‘Hurry the fuck up, Jai! What the hell are you doin’ back there? You’re not making cocktails!’ Bob chuckles into the darkness at his own joke.
‘No, no, all good Bob. I’m coming r-right now.’
Jai's pounding heart threatens to explode. You're nearly there, he tells himself, you just need to hold on for a little bit longer. Out of sight, Jai opens the can and pours in the pills. He then swirls the beer as he walks towards Bob, sitting by the riverbank.
‘About fuckin’ time! A bloke could die of thirst waitin’ for you, mate!’
Bob snatches the beer and swigs almost half the can in a single gulp. Returning to the safety of the esky, Jai wonders how long it will be before the drug takes effect. After about a quarter of an hour, he starts to see Bob’s head lolling from side to side. The potent mix of Xanax and alcohol have begun to take their toll.
The familiar sound of Bob’s wheezing snore convinces Jai it is now safe for him to approach. But as he stands on the riverbank and stares at the man’s sprawling body, he is still unsure if his plan will work.
Jai is a slightly-built fifteen-year-old boy, not very tall for his age and weighing barely sixty kilos, whereas Bob is a whale of a man. Fearful he may come to at any moment, he tentatively pokes his fingers into Bob’s sprawling gut. But now there is no response from his heaving bulk.
Jai moves behind him, digging his heels into the sand for some much-needed traction. He leans in with his left shoulder and tries to push Bob’s comatose body out of the chair. Nothing moves; the man is a deadweight. Panicking, Jai takes a few steps backwards and hurls himself at Bob, falling on top of him as the foldout chair keels over into the river’s edge. Sickened by the memory of his smell and touch, Jai hastily clambers off the body now floating in the shallow waters of the mangrove swamp. He then grabs Bob's belt and begins to drag him out into the middle of the river. And when he begins to feel icy water lapping at his chest, Jai knows it is now time to let the river do its work.

*

Ryan Mackie has had a bad night chasing his money on the tables. Like every gambler before him, he was convinced he could play his way out of the giant hole he’d dug himself. And now that hole had just got a whole lot deeper. If he couldn’t come up with at least ten grand by the end of the week, the men he owed would be demanding payment of another kind from a police detective working out of Tweed Heads central command. Tip-offs, inside information, anything that could give these crims an inside edge.
Lost in his own miseries, Mackie’s head jerks up suddenly at the sound of tapping on his driver's side window. Oh great, he groans to himself, just what I don't need first thing on a Monday morning! It's his boss, Detective Inspector Mike Taylor, motioning Mackie to wind down his window.
‘Wake up, Mackie! Today’s your lucky day!'
Twenty-five years of service under his belt and Mackie knows he should have made it to DI by now. Instead he finds himself reporting to a guy seven years his junior. At thirty five, Taylor ticks all the boxes the higher ups want to promote as the face of modern policing. Graduate, ambitious, team player - pretty much everything Mackie is not.
'Morning boss, I was just about to go in.'
'No need, Mackie. You’re off to Brunswick Heads for a few days. Case of accidental death by drowning. I've assigned you to do the investigation and report back to the coroner. This one’s a bit sensitive though, one of our own, Bob Whittaker. He was a local sergeant down there for twenty odd years. Looks like the silly old bastard went night fishing and got on the piss. Some local boys found the body snagged in oyster beds yesterday morning. Sounds like a pretty straightforward case to me. Anyway, I’m sure the overtime and extra allowances will be a nice little perk for you, mate.’
Mate. The word stuck in Mackie’s throat. Could this bloke be any more of an arse licker if he tried? But, on the upside, a few days away might give him a chance to clear his head and figure out how to pay back that debt. The fuel gauge on his trusty old V8 Commodore shows plenty of gas to get him there and back. And now he steels himself for an icy reception as he hits speed dial on his mobile.
'Don't tell me you're working late tonight.' Here we go again, he thinks to himself. Not getting home until after two most nights of the week, his wife Pauline knows something is up. Of course, it's not what she thinks.
'Hi to you too, love,' Ryan can't resist a hint of sarcasm. 'The boss just told me I'll be working a coroner's case down the coast in Brunswick Heads for the next couple of days.'
'Oh no, Ryan! You promised the boys you'd take them to footy training.'
'I know I did, please tell them I'm really sorry and I will make it up to them.'
'Yeah, right. Like all the other times. I don't know why you even bother coming home at all.'
'Pauline, that's not fair. You know this is my job, and it’s what puts food on the table and pays for everything you and the boys need. Anyway, I'm heading off now and I'll call you again tonight.'
'Don't bother Ryan.' And with that, the line goes dead.
He wonders to himself if this week could get any worse but quickly decides to shut that thought down.
Out on the motorway, it's not long before the Tweed cityscape gives way to lush green sugar cane fields sheltered between the ocean and the mountains. Mackie looks over to his right and sees the majestic Mount Warning with its strange nobbled curl at the top, and reminds himself how insignificant humans are in the scheme of things. He half wishes he could just keep driving but in less than forty minutes. He’s pulling up outside the Brunswick Heads police station.
Opening the old wooden flyscreen door, he clocks a young constable going through some paperwork at his desk.
'G'day mate, DS Ryan Mackie from Tweed. I'm here about the accidental death.'
'Oh right, ok.' The young constable gets up quickly and comes over to the front counter. 'I'm PC Steve Mitchell,' he says. 'We're all pretty shaken up about Bob, he was such a good bloke.'
'Sorry for your loss mate, must be really hard in a small town.'
'Yeah, it is. Anyway, what do you need from us?'
'Well, to start with, somewhere to stay for the next couple of nights.'
'Sure. It's not real flash but I know there's a vacant cabin at Bob's caravan park. Then you can check out his place and talk to the brothers who found him.'
'Sounds like a plan, Steve.'
The Riverside caravan park is a few kilometres back from the centre of town. Turning off the main road, Mackie manoeuvres the Commodore down a narrow dirt track which leads to the park. There are two rows of four caravans all anchored to the ground with ropes and tent pegs. Most of the residents have makeshift awnings made from old tarps. Bob's van at the far end of the back row is cordoned off with blue and white checked police tape. On the riverfront, three cabins take prime position, and Mackie heads towards the one with an 'Office' sign on the door.
Thanks to PC Mitchell, the park manager Grahame has already booked him into cabin number two. Not wanting to waste any time, Mackie drops off his bag and walks over to site number four with the manager to meet the brothers who found Bob's body.
'Hey boys! This is the detective I told you about.' Turning to Mackie, Grahame gestures towards the tall gangly man in his mid-thirties with a scraggy brown ponytail, 'Detective Sergeant Mackie, this is Davey and this is his brother Mikey Petersen.' There was no doubting the two men were brothers, except for Mikey's plaited brown rat’s tail.
'If you like,' Davey says, 'we'll take you out in our tinny this arvo and you can see the place we found him. And then we can show you Bob's fishing spot.'
'That'd be great fellas,' Mackie tells them. 'Really appreciate your help.'
Out on the river, the water is like pale emerald glass, and Mackie can see schools of tailor and graceful stingrays hugging the riverbed. Mikey cuts the motor and steers the tinny into a small inlet.
'That's where we found him six o’clock yesterday,’ Davey says. ‘He was all cut up, and he was stuck in those oyster beds. We reckon he ended up here cos’ the tide started coming in around two.'
From early reports, Mackie knows the body had been in the water approximately six hours. A tidal change could definitely stop a body floating out to sea and bring it back into the river. And a light wind change could steer it northwards into this inlet. Nodding to the brothers that he's seen enough, Mikey starts up the outboard and they head back upstream to Bob's fishing spot.
As they pull into the shallow waters, Mackie sees a flattened blue foldout chair stuck in the wet sand. Just behind it are a pile of empty beer cans and a broken fishing rod. And then a bit further back, there's an esky. Funny, he thinks, why wasn't it next to the chair? Looks like the boss was right though, just another case of an old copper who drank too much.
Back at the caravan park, Mackie checks his phone and sees the autopsy report has come through. He opens the attachment and starts scrolling through. No surprises on poor liver and kidney function. But then he stops scrolling. The toxicology report indicates a high level of tranquilisers in the bloodstream. Mackie allows himself a few moments to process this finding but instinctively knows this accidental death has just become a murder enquiry.