Jack waited for the police car to arrive. His idea of a pleasant drive with his darling wife had gone over a cliff. Erica had understood—it wasn’t every day he discovered a dead body while out on a leisurely drive. 

She left him to his responsibilities and went to check out the local shops, as part of her research on living in a bayside suburb. In the end, she eventually had to make her own way home. She was okay about it but Jack knew these things chipped away.

Catherine arrived, and they went into the bare house and watched while the forensic team took photos and did a general search of the house. They had an idea who killed Jill Winter, but he must be treated as innocent until proven guilty. Forensic officers would help put the nail in the coffin. Not a good phase. He thought of Ruby and hoped she was safe.

Jill Winter’s body hadn’t been moved from the chair. It was an eerie look. Sunlight poured in, silhouetting her, with dust motes dancing around her. Jack looked out the window, expecting to see the swarm of flies but they were gone. Hopefully, gone to find and attack the perpetrator. Maybe he needed to track down a drone and use it to follow the swarm—

“Jack.”

Catherine’s voice interrupted his thoughts. Good. He needed to be interrupted. He turned towards his partner.

“The checks had come back on the wizard. He had murdered before. He had served fifteen years of a twenty-year sentence.”

“No doubt his behaviour in jail was exemplary,” Jack said, with a sigh. “How long ago did he get out?”

“Five years.”

“He’s kept out of trouble since then. Wonder what the trigger was?”

“I would say that with what he and his partner were into, it was only a matter of time before the dark side returned.”

Catherine was paying more attention to the unseen world of late. Or perhaps it was because of the case they found themselves investigating. He looked around the room. What unseen things were looking down on them? The thought sent a slight shiver down his spine.

The room smelled of honey, the same scent he’d encountered at Jill Spencer’s. They more than likely burned the same candles.

Jill Winter and Toby Watts had lived a simple life with minimal furniture and decor. What decoration they had was concentrated on one lonely passageway table, which was covered with framed photographs and other paraphernalia. Jack walked over to look at them. One photograph showed Jill sitting in a boat, probably the one the fisherman told them about. Another photo showed them with bows and arrows. Jack shrugged. There seemed to be a connection between, witchcraft and bows and arrows—all medieval stuff.

Jack bent down to have a closer look at one of the many trophies that sat beside the photos. The man was good—he’d taken first place in a number of crossbow competitions. A lethal weapon, but one that would be licensed if he belonged to a sports club of some description. Jack hoped the weapon was stored somewhere in the house—safe and secure, out of harm’s way.

One of the forensic team came out of the bathroom area and looked at Jack and Catherine. “I would say he’s changed his appearance. Found lots of hair, from face and head.”

Jack looked at one of the photos of Toby Watts: medium length blonde hair and a thick whitish-blondish beard. He tried to picture him without the beard, but decided he’d be better to leave that to a forensic composite artist.

“The boat, Jack. Did you see it out the back?” Catherine asked.

“I did see a boat on the water when I was up at the lookout, looking over the bay. It looked like the wake pattern started from the small pier at the back of this house.”

“Time to visit our water police friends.”

After bidding farewell to the forensic officers, Catherine drove Jack ten minutes to the local bay police station where officers patrolled the streets by car and the bay islands by boat and car. He thought of Erica. He needed to make up for this. Once this case was solved, he was taking time off. 

They drove past blocks of empty land with large marketing signs asking if you wanted to experience paradise. Yes, he did. He wondered where the picture of the beaches with the waves was taken as he hadn’t seen any around here. Marketing. Preying on the gullible. 

They parked the car and walked into the police station. It was located in a quiet street. Jack imagined most of the police activity would take place on the islands.

The police had their own CCTV camera at the marina, watching over the police barge. One of the local constables brought up the marina’s CCTV footage on to a desktop computer. The recording showed the wizard on the boat ramp winding his boat on to a trailer, then walking around and securing the boat before driving off. An unknown man had helped him secure the boat, then had walked over towards the ferry terminal—an islander catching a ferry back home, perhaps. The car’s license plate had been entered into the police database and fed into the automated plate readers.

Jack didn’t need the forensic composite artist any more. He stared at Toby Watts, who looked a lot different without the beard. He no longer looked like a wizard.

Instead, he looked like a dangerous man, a murderer.

42 – A watched walker

TOBY KNEW THEY’D BE ON TO HIM. He left the car where he’d parked. Standing on the footpath, he placed his arms through the straps of the backpack and adjusted himself so it sat comfortably on his back. It contained everything he needed. He’d miss the boat, but another one would come into his life at some point. He left the keys in the car’s ignition and hoped that someone would steal the vehicle and boat. He would be harder to find on foot. There was to be no public transport, just a long walk along the river, through the city and then out to the suburbs again. He’d be hard to trace, hard to find.

He crossed the foot bridge and looked down on the city lights reflecting on the river. There was a slight swell out towards the middle of the river, perhaps caused by the bull sharks that lurked beneath the water. He used to feed the predators by trapping dogs and throwing them in the river. The owners would put up posters of their missing dogs on lamp posts and community billboards, but they were never found. He was never caught, but smiled when he saw posters of missing dogs. He and the sharks were one: predators. 

At some point, he’d need to cross the river again but knew the gods would provide him with a craft at the appropriate time. He and the gods were one. He and the sharks were one. He was one with all things. Energised, he wanted to release that knowledge. Be patient, he was told.

For now, he would head southwest. A vacant house waited for him.

<°)))><

There were over one thousand cameras installed across the city. Jack was confident one of them would pick up Toby Watts and his car, trailer and boat. Sure enough, a call soon came in that the vehicle had been found. Abandoned.

So now they were just looking for Watts.

Toby Watts, you’re being tracked.

Jack had placed an urgent request to view the CCTV footage from around where the car was located. He needed more than he could see on his smartphone, so he planted himself in the city office with the Central Command Unit to access full CCTV coverage.

Jack watched the CCTV footage of Watts’s car entering the street and Watts abandoning his car. The analyst followed Watts through the cameras mounted on roadways, parkways and different infrastructure, calibrating different cameras as Watts moved.

Watts was walking. His walk was purposeful, not aimless. He seemed to know where he was going, because he avoided the use of public transport and looked away from CCTV cameras when he noticed them. He’d been walking close to two hours. They tracked him from the eastern suburbs, through the city and then out into the south-western outskirts. He would soon disappear out of the area covered by CCTV.

Jack organised vehicles to scout the suburb Watts was currently walking through.

His phone beeped. It was Cath, who had gone to visit Shoana.

“Yep.”

“She’s in a state, so it’s hard to get any sense out of her. He tried to kill her. It’s like they may need to sedate her.”

“So we may need to wait for her to settle down.”

“How’s things your end?”

“Been able to track him but we’ve lost him at the moment. But I’m glad about one thing. Watts is on the other side of the river from the safe house. It’s a big river, and he doesn’t have a boat.”

“And he doesn’t know where Ruby is,” Catherine said.

<°)))><

Toby stood at the top of the driveway looking at the overstuffed letterbox. The rusty No Junk Mail sign hung on an angle supported by a solitary screw. Did anyone ever pay attention to those signs? He gave it a tap and watched it swing. He picked up the rubbish and threw it in the long grass near the timber fence.

He turned his attention down the driveway. Been awhile since he’d walked down there. Only been here a few times since getting out of prison, and his little brother Gill had run off to an island at around the same time. No one had looked after the house. Not that it deserved to be looked after. It was a nut house. Filled with drugs and dealers and violence and dark, dark things. But he’d be safe here now. Safer than when his dad was alive. But he missed his mum. She’d joined her spooky friends somewhere in another dimension. And he missed those times with the spooky friends.

The house was hidden down a long drive, behind another house. No one could see it. No one could see the mess. The real estate people called it a battle-axe block. They explained why. The driveway the handle, and the house the blade. He liked that.