Five Down Under

"The difference between 'unlikely' and 'impossible' is usually just a phone call to the right detective."

The office had settled into that peculiar mid-morning stillness that comes after the initial flurry of shift handover, when the urgent matters have been triaged and what remains is the slow, methodical work of proper policing. Outside my window, Argent Street baked under an August sun that had no right to be this harsh in the middle of winter—but that was Broken Hill for you, defying meteorological conventions the way it had defied geography and common sense for the past century and a half. Someone's ute rumbled past, its engine note familiar enough that I knew it was Barry Hutchins heading to his shift at the mine without needing to look.

Inside, the station's heater hummed its counterpoint to the morning warmth, a relic from when Broken Hill winters actually felt like winter. The sound had become white noise over the past three years, along with the occasional rustle of papers from Felicity's desk across the room and the rhythmic click of Brock's keyboard as he worked through his ever-growing stack of reports. I'd learned to find a strange sort of peace in these sounds, the quiet mechanics of a police station in a town where serious crime was supposed to be someone else's problem.

But peace, I'd discovered, had a way of being temporary.

I stared at the phone on my desk, its beige plastic surface reflecting the fluorescent lights overhead, and replayed Dave Santos's words from earlier that morning. We'd known each other for years—had worked a joint investigation back in 2013 involving stolen mining equipment that crossed state lines—and Dave wasn't given to dramatics. If anything, he erred on the side of understatement, a trait I appreciated in a colleague. But there had been something in his voice this morning, a careful quality to his words that had set my nerves humming like telegraph wires in a sandstorm.

"I'm just passing along what I heard, but my source down there seemed concerned about Luke Smith."

Concerned. Such a pedestrian word for whatever had made Dave's contact in Tasmania reach out across the Strait. Dave had mentioned it almost casually, the way you might mention seeing storm clouds on the horizon whilst discussing something entirely unrelated. But I'd learned long ago that it was precisely those casual mentions, those throwaway comments that people made when they weren't quite sure how seriously to take their own instincts, that often proved most significant.

The mention of other missing persons had lodged itself in my mind like a pebble in my boot—small enough to seem insignificant, impossible to ignore once you noticed it.

I tapped my pen against the desk, a habit Elizabeth had tried to break me of years ago when we'd shared the house on Greenhill Road and my studying had driven her to distraction. The rhythmic click-click-click did nothing to settle the restlessness building in my chest, that particular sensation that every detective learns to recognise—the feeling that you're standing on ground that's about to shift beneath your feet.

Paul Smith had been missing for over a week now. Eight days, to be precise. We'd confirmed he'd made it to Hobart—the flight manifests didn't lie, and airport security footage had shown him disembarking, carrying that battered backpack he'd apparently grabbed in his haste to leave Broken Hill. But what had happened after that? Where had he gone once he'd walked out of Hobart Airport into the Tasmanian morning?

And Luke—the brother who'd bought Paul's ticket, the helpful sibling stepping in during a marital crisis—was starting to feel like more than just family support. There was something about the neatness of it that bothered me, the way all the pieces fit together just a fraction too perfectly. Claire reports Paul missing. Luke produces a plane ticket he'd purchased for his brother. Paul boards the flight and disappears. Simple. Tidy. Except that in my experience, family dramas were rarely simple and never tidy.

The pieces didn't fit, not yet, and that was what made my gut twist in that way I'd learned not to ignore. Dad used to tell me that mathematics was about finding the elegant solution, the proof that worked not because you forced it but because it revealed the truth that had been there all along. Police work, I'd discovered, operated on a similar principle. When pieces had to be forced to fit, when the pattern required too much contortion to make sense, it usually meant you were looking at the wrong pattern entirely.

If I waited for the usual channels to churn out answers, it could be days before I got anything actionable. Formal requests submitted, processed through bureaucratic machinery, bounced between departments like a tennis ball in slow motion. That wasn't good enough. Not with the kind of insinuations Dave had made, not with that careful concern in his voice.

I needed someone on the ground, someone who could cut through the red tape and procedural niceties and get me answers fast. Someone who'd understand that sometimes you had to trust a colleague's instincts even when the evidence was still circumstantial. And that's how I found myself reaching for the phone, pulling up the contact information for Hobart CID that I'd requested from records that morning, and dialling Detective Karl Jenkins.

The phone rang twice—I counted them, the way I counted everything, a habit of measurement that had become second nature—before a deep, clipped voice answered.

"Detective Jenkins."

No preamble, no pleasantries. I appreciated that. It suggested a man who valued efficiency, who understood that phone calls between detectives in different states weren't social occasions.

"Detective," I said, trying to match his tone whilst keeping enough warmth to establish rapport. "This is Detective Jeremy Harding from the Broken Hill Police Station."

There was the briefest pause, and I could almost hear him placing the name, the location. Then: "Broken Hill?" he repeated, and there was a note of curiosity creeping into that clipped professionalism. "Isn't that the tiny mining town in the middle of nowhere?"

I smirked despite myself, despite the tension coiled in my shoulders. It was a reaction I'd grown accustomed to over the past three years, that mixture of curiosity and faint condescension from city-based colleagues who couldn't quite fathom why anyone would voluntarily police a jurisdiction measured in square kilometres rather than city blocks.

"We call it the outback," I corrected, adding just enough warmth to keep things friendly. Let him hear the smile in my voice, the self-deprecating acknowledgement that yes, we were a long way from anywhere that mattered to most people. "Though I suppose from Hobart, most of the mainland probably looks like the middle of nowhere."

He gave a short laugh, the sound carrying genuine amusement. "Fair point. You've got my curiosity piqued, Detective. What can I do for you?"

I hesitated, but only for a moment—just long enough to make it sound like I was weighing something heavy, choosing my words with care. In truth, I'd been rehearsing this conversation in my head for the past hour, ever since I'd made the decision to bypass official channels and make direct contact.

"I'm investigating the disappearance of a young man believed to have travelled from Broken Hill to Hobart just over a week ago," I said, letting my voice drop slightly, the way you might when discussing something that required discretion. "It's… complicated. His wife says he stormed out after a heated argument. Fairly routine, at first glance, but things aren't adding up."

I could hear the shift in his attention, the way his focus sharpened even through the phone line. That was the thing about good detectives—you could feel when they started really listening.

"Go on," Jenkins said, his tone all business now.

I leaned forward in my chair, the leather creaking softly beneath me, and lowered my voice as if the walls might be listening. As if Felicity and Brock, absorbed in their own work, might somehow overhear and misunderstand what I was about to say. In reality, I was performing for an audience of one—the detective on the other end of the line—creating an atmosphere of confidentiality and urgency.

"According to what we've pieced together, his brother bought him a plane ticket to Hobart. Security footage confirms he boarded the flight, but no one's heard from him since. The brother's gone quiet, too. I'm not saying we've got a crime yet, but…"

I let the words hang, hoping to plant the seed of urgency without overstating my case. This was the delicate part, the balance between conveying legitimate concern and sounding like a country detective seeing conspiracies in what might be nothing more than a family dispute that would resolve itself by next Tuesday.

Jenkins didn't respond immediately, and the pause stretched long enough to make my stomach tighten. I'd learned to read silences over the years, the way musicians learned to read the spaces between notes. This one felt heavy, weighted with implications I couldn't quite identify.

When he finally spoke, his voice was slower, more deliberate. "What's the brother's name again?"

"Luke Smith," I said, watching for any reaction even though he couldn't see me. Watching as if I might somehow divine his response through the phone line, through the thousand-odd kilometres of cable and wireless signals connecting Broken Hill to Hobart.

Another pause. This one shorter, but no less telling.

"Shit," Jenkins muttered under his breath.

That wasn't the response I'd expected. In all my mental rehearsals of this conversation, I'd anticipated scepticism, perhaps mild interest, possibly a polite promise to look into it when time permitted. I hadn't anticipated profanity, that sharp expletive that suggested I'd just confirmed something Jenkins had been dreading.

I gripped the phone tighter, my knuckles hardening against the beige plastic. "You know him, then?"

"Yeah," Jenkins said, and I heard a sigh audible through the line, the sound of a man who'd just had his day complicated in ways he'd been hoping to avoid. "We've been investigating him for the past week. We suspect he's responsible for the disappearance of at least five other people."

The room seemed to shrink around me. The familiar sounds of the station—the heater's hum, the distant murmur of voices from the front desk, the traffic outside—all faded to a distant buzz. Five other people. Not one disappearance, not two. Five. The number hung between us like a physical weight, transforming this conversation from a routine inter-state cooperation into something far darker.

"Five?" I said, and heard my own voice as if from a distance, flat and professional despite the way my pulse had accelerated.

"That's right," Jenkins confirmed, his tone grim in a way that told me he'd been living with this number for days, carrying the weight of five missing persons whose faces probably stared at him from a case board somewhere in Hobart CID. "And I wasn't aware his brother was in the state."

The implications cascaded through my mind like falling dominoes. Was Paul just another name in Luke's trail of destruction? Another victim in whatever pattern Jenkins had been tracking? Or was he something else entirely—a pawn, maybe even an accomplice? The brother who'd helpfully purchased the plane ticket, who'd sent Paul straight to Tasmania where Luke was apparently operating.

Christ. The thought made my stomach turn. I'd sat next to Paul in orchestra rehearsals, had listened to him play Mozart with surprising sensitivity for someone whose day job involved managing a hardware store. We'd talked about music, about Broken Hill's isolation, about nothing of consequence. And now I was investigating whether he'd walked knowingly or unknowingly into whatever dark enterprise his brother had constructed in Tasmania.

"We were hoping you might be able to check and confirm where Paul went after leaving the Hobart airport," I said, my voice tighter than I'd intended. Professional distance was one thing; pretending I wasn't rattled by this revelation was another. "Assuming he actually left the airport."

Jenkins didn't miss a beat. "Email me the flight details. I'll look into it straight away."

Straight away. Not when time permitted, not when resources allowed. Straight away. The urgency in his response told me everything I needed to know about how seriously he was taking Luke Smith's activities.

"Appreciate it," I said, scribbling a note to follow up on the page in front of me, my handwriting less neat than usual.

But my mind had already jumped ahead, was already racing through the implications like water finding cracks in a dam. If Luke was responsible for five disappearances, if he was operating in Tasmania whilst his brother conveniently arrived from interstate…

"Detective," I added after a moment, voicing the thought that had been building since Jenkins said the word 'five.' "The rest of Luke's family lives in Adelaide. Do you think they might be in danger?"

It was the question I'd been dreading to ask, because asking it made it real. Made it something more than speculation, more than a detective's paranoid imagination running wild. If Luke Smith was dangerous enough to make five people disappear, what was to stop him from targeting his own family? What kind of threat radius were we looking at?

Jenkins hesitated, and the silence felt colder than the air outside, colder than the Broken Hill winter that never quite materialised. I could picture him in some office in Hobart, weighing his words, calculating what to share with a mainland detective he'd never met about a case that was clearly ongoing.

Finally, he said, "We're monitoring all airports and ports out of Tasmania. I think it's unlikely he'd slip past and make it to the mainland. But I'll let you know the moment I find anything."

It was meant to be reassuring, I supposed. The kind of thing you said to a concerned colleague to prevent them from panicking. But I'd spent enough years in policing to recognise qualified optimism when I heard it. Unlikely wasn't impossible. Monitoring wasn't preventing. And I'll let you know the moment I find anything was just another way of saying I don't have answers yet.

We ended the call shortly after, the usual professional courtesies exchanged—my email address provided, his direct number received, promises of cooperation and information sharing offered on both sides. But his words lingered, settling over me like a lead blanket, heavy and cold and impossible to shake off.

I stayed seated for a while, staring at the phone as if it might ring again with better news, with some revelation that would make this all make sense. Outside the window, Broken Hill continued its ordinary Wednesday rhythm—utes and sedans making their way down Argent Street, someone's dog barking in the distance, the midday shift change at the Line of Lode Visitors Centre probably just wrapping up. The town seemed untouched by the unease roiling inside me, blissfully unaware that somewhere to the south, across the Murray and the border and Bass Strait, something dark had been unfolding whilst we'd all gone about our ordinary lives.

I replayed every word of the conversation, the way I'd replay witness statements, listening for nuance, for what wasn't said as much as what was. Jenkins had been professional but shaken. The way he'd cursed when I mentioned Luke's name spoke volumes about the investigation he'd been running, about the frustration of tracking someone who'd made five people disappear without leaving enough evidence for an arrest. And now that someone's brother had arrived in Tasmania, had vanished just as thoroughly as those other five.

When I finally moved, it was to the window. My legs felt stiff from sitting, and I realised I'd been gripping the phone hard enough to leave my palm indented with the pattern of the handset. Outside, the sun had shifted higher, marking the passage of time I'd barely noticed. Its pale light—that distinctive quality of winter sun in the outback, bright but somehow wan, as if it couldn't quite commit to warmth—did little to dispel the gnawing chill that had settled in my chest.

This case wasn't what I'd thought it was. Wasn't another iteration of Claire Smith's dramatics, wasn't just a missing husband who'd cool off and come home embarrassed about the fuss. It wasn't a family squabble blown out of proportion by small-town gossip and Claire's well-established tendency toward exaggeration.

It was something darker, more dangerous, and it had reached far beyond the red dust of Broken Hill.

The thought of Luke Smith made my stomach twist in a way I hadn't experienced since the Rebecca Andrewartha case in Adelaide, that visceral combination of professional concern and personal revulsion at what humans could do to one another. If Jenkins was right—and I had no reason to doubt him, no reason to think a Hobart detective would make up claims about five missing persons—then somewhere in Tasmania was a man who'd learned to make people disappear. A man who'd apparently convinced his own brother to fly down, walk into whatever web he'd constructed.

And we'd been treating this as a casual missing person case whilst Paul had potentially become victim number six.

I pressed my forehead against the window glass, feeling its cool against my skin, and looked out at Argent Street. The Barrier Ranges rose in the distance, their ancient peaks a constant backdrop to everything that happened in this town. They'd been there when the silver was discovered, when the mines opened, when the Afghan cameleers arrived, when the 1915 attack had turned this street into a war zone. They'd seen generations of people arrive and leave, seen fortunes made and lost, seen the town swell and contract with the boom and bust cycles of mining.

And they'd be there long after whatever was happening with Luke Smith was resolved, one way or another.

But that knowledge—that geological perspective—did nothing to settle the unease in my gut. Because if Jenkins was right, if Luke Smith was responsible for five disappearances and possibly now his own brother, then the tranquillity of this small town was an illusion. The safety of Adelaide, where the rest of the Smith family apparently lived, was hanging by a thread. And for the first time in years, since I'd left the complexity of Adelaide's Major Crime Investigation Section for the supposedly quieter rhythms of outback policing, I wasn't sure I could predict where that thread would snap.

I turned from the window, back to my desk where the phone sat innocently on its receiver, where my notes from the conversation with Jenkins were already looking inadequate. I needed to contact Adelaide CID, needed to alert them to a potential threat against the Smith family. Needed to email Jenkins those flight details. Needed to call Dave Santos back and thank him for the tip that had just blown this case wide open.

Needed to figure out what to tell Claire when she came in asking for updates, whether Paul was just another victim or something more complicated.

The office had returned to its familiar quiet, but the peace I'd felt earlier was gone. The heater still hummed, Felicity's papers still rustled occasionally, Brock's keyboard still clicked its steady rhythm. But now those sounds felt like a soundtrack to ignorance, the comfortable noises of people who didn't yet know that the case we'd been working had just transformed into something that stretched across state lines and possibly involved a serial offender who'd learned to make people vanish without trace.

I sat down at my desk and began typing the email to Jenkins, my fingers finding the keys whilst my mind raced ahead to next steps, to implications, to the dark possibilities that opened up when a routine missing person case revealed itself to be part of something much larger.

The investigation, I realised as I typed, had only just begun.