HUNTER DAY PARKED the police car on the side of the road under a 200-year-old ironbark. He left the engine humming with the aircon cranked to protect him from the blistering heat melting the bitumen outside. If his boss at the station, Reggie Ross, unexpectedly drove by Hunter could claim he was tracking the occasional passing vehicle with the station’s radar gun. Except that the gun was faulty. Last week it clocked a spluttering tractor at 140 clicks. Hunter held his mobile phone in one hand, scanning through images of Reggie’s wife, Delores. She sent him a new photograph each morning, after she’d showered, but before she dressed. Their affair was six months old. Hunter didn’t give a lot of thought to why it had started or what kept it going. He hated Reggie, which was reason enough.

He heard the crunch of gravel and dropped the phone in his lap. ‘Fuck me,’ he croaked, looking out through the grubby front windscreen at an old blackfella walking along the other side of the road. He wore a dark suit and an Akubra hat slanted to one side. He was carrying a small pack on his back. As he passed the car, the old Aboriginal man turned his head and glanced across the road in the policeman’s direction. Once he’d passed, Hunter looked into the rear-view mirror and watched the old man closely for some time until his dark frame melded into the shimmering haze lifting from the road.