Chapter 1
THERE WERE A
Dauntless Island appeared first as a smudge on the horizon, distant and hazy. As the barge drew closer, the island slowly revealed itself. First there were hills, a lighthouse, trees, and then more detail emerged: white sandstone buildings, a jetty, a harbour wall. I leaned on the rail of the ferry, the wind tugging at my clothes and hair, and breathed in the salt air. It didn’t do a lot to calm my nerves.
The barge did the four-hour trip to Dauntless on the first Thursday of every month. I knew that, but for the first time I was starting to get a sense of just how isolated Dauntless really was. On paper, it hadn’t seemed so bad, but three hours ago as I’d watched the mainland vanish into the sea, it had hit me that I was really going to be on my own. No friends, no family, and, when it came to my job, no backup if I needed it.
“You can be friendly,” the inspector had told me with the condescending smile of a man who thought he was imparting great wisdom to some clueless dumbfuck under his command, “but not friends.”
I’d nodded like I knew what he meant. I didn’t. I actually was a clueless dumbfuck—and he’d patted me on the shoulder and wished me luck.
The Dauntless Island Police Station wasn’t opening officially for another month, because some minister and a bunch of official hangers-on wanted to be there for the photo op, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be open for business on Monday morning at 8 a.m. With Senior Constable Dominic Miller behind the counter, waiting with a smile and fresh pot of coffee for all the locals who wanted to drop in and chat.
Did I even remember my coffee maker? I hoped I had, somewhere in the boxes of gear stacked on the lower deck. I glanced inside though the wide, salt-stained windows at the other passengers who’d come aboard with me at Newcastle.
There was was an older couple who appeared to be tourists. The man was digging through his backpack and laying out bits and pieces of what looked like an expensive camera setup on the seat beside him. His wife sat on the other side, engrossed in a book.
A younger couple sat in silence in the next row of seats. They looked to be in their early twenties. He’d spent the entire trip staring at the floor. The woman was thin, verging on frail, and she was wearing a knitted cardigan pulled tightly around her body despite the warmth of the day.
There were a few vacant seats between the young couple and the only other passenger, a guy of about their age who’d gone into the toilets and thrown up about half an hour out of Newcastle, and was now slumped over sleeping.
We drew closer to the island, and the barge shuddered as the pitch of the engines changed.
Inside, the sleeping guy jolted awake for a second, and then crashed out again.
A fishing boat passed by, close enough that I could see a couple of guys in bright yellow and orange coats on the deck. The Dauntless Island tourism website had promised me that I’d get the best seafood I’d ever tasted on the island, but I wasn’t sure I could trust it—it still used comic sans, music you couldn’t switch off, and clip art pictures of dolphins.
As we slowed to approach the jetty, the engines suddenly droning louder like the barge was fighting the pull of the sea, I pushed open the door to the passenger cabin and went inside. I took my seat near Hangover Guy. A few minutes later, the barge bumped up against the jetty, the engines cut out, and the crew yelled back and forth between themselves as they did whatever it was they had to do to tie us up.
We were at Dauntless.
The tourist couple was the first to move, bustling out of the cabin and down the stairs to the lower deck. The young couple stood next, and the man approached Hangover Guy and shook him by the shoulder.
“Robbie? We’re home.”
Hangover Guy staggered to his feet, dragging his fingers through his messy dark hair. “Thanks. You need a hand with your bags?”
The islanders spoke with a weird sort of accent. It was Australian, but it had a hint of something else in it too that had long ago vanished from the mainland. Whatever their ancestors had sounded like on the HMS Dauntless two hundred years ago—it would probably be offensive to admit I imagined it like Talk Like A Pirate Day—they’d kept a faint taste of it.
I left them sorting out their bags and followed the tourists down the steps.
There was something of a small crowd waiting on the jetty, a few people stepping forward to get involved with the barge’s crew. I walked down the gangway after the tourists, and then stood and waited a little way away from everyone who seemed to know what they were doing. A couple of guys were already hoisting some bags and boxes off the ferry and onto the jetty. When the barge only came once a month, I guessed it was kind of a big deal. A bunch of people were probably waiting for stuff from the mainland to get unloaded. It was going to be a hell of a culture shock going from next-day delivery to this.
The sunlight beat down on my shoulders, and I reached for my top pocket to grab my sunglasses, remembering too late that I wasn’t in uniform, and they were probably rattling around somewhere in the bottom of my backpack getting scratched to hell.
Right.
So.
Dauntless Island.
Here I was. First day of a new chapter of my life, and all that. First day being the only police officer in a community of several hundred people who hadn’t historically responded well to authority. Which was a nice way of saying that in the past two hundred years they’d frozen out or driven off any number of government officials who’d tried to live here. Oh, and famously hanged that first guy who’d told them to stop mutinying. Still, that was then, and this was now, right?
I cast a wary look around for anyone heading my way with a pitchfork or rope, but the people gathering on the jetty appeared to be ordinary. An older woman in yellow gumboots and a floral dress stomped past me.
“You watch that!” she yelled at the crew. “Last month I had broken jars!”
One of the guys onboard shrugged in a universal ‘what can you do’ gesture. “We just unload ’em, love. It’s the supermarket that packs ’em.”
