We didn’t need a copper on Dauntless. That was the last thing we needed. Some government man putting his nose in where it wasn’t wanted. I thought of Young Harry Barnes’s packages, and the shit he’d get into—and me and Button John—if a copper found out about those.
I lay down on my bed and folded my arms behind my head and stared at the ceiling instead.
I could still hear Will clattering around down in the kitchen, being just loud enough about it that it was obvious he was making a point. And the point, just like always, was that I’d screwed up. I listened out for a while longer, but he didn’t call me down for dinner. I glared at the ceiling. If Will was ignoring me, then I’d just ignore him more.
I waited until I heard him coming up the stairs, talking in a low voice to Mum, and then her bedroom door creaked open. A little while after that, it closed again. Will’s door didn’t creak like hers, so I watched the light under my door instead. When he turned the hallway light off, I climbed out of bed and slipped out of my room.
There was no light coming from under Mum’s door. Will’s light was still on though. He was probably reading. I tiptoed down the stairs and made my way into the dark kitchen. I opened the fridge and pulled out the butter, then felt around on the counter for the loaf of bread and the peanut butter. I made myself a couple of sandwiches and ate them at the kitchen table in the dark. Then I went into the living room and turned on the TV, just loud enough so that Will could hear it if he was listening and he’d know I was down here and not sulking in my bedroom.
Because sulking in the living room instead was totally different.
There was a wind outside tonight; the sort of wind that sounded as though it might be the prelude to a storm. Most of our storms on Dauntless came at night, rolling in from the horizon on the edge of the dark. If it came, I hoped it passed by dawn. I didn’t like it when the boats went out in bad weather. I didn’t wish that on Will, even if he was being an arsehole to me right now.
The picture of the TV froze a few times, shattering into pixels before resolving itself, so yeah, there was definitely a storm out there somewhere. I thought about what Button John had said about 4G. Maybe in a few weeks I’d be able to watch TV on my phone, like I had at school. Except where the hell would I find money to pay for a decent data plan? It wasn’t as though Dauntless Island had a lot of work on offer. Sometimes I thought I should have stayed on the mainland—sometimes I thought Will thought I should have too—but I’d been homesick there. I’d hated it. I wasn’t made for the mainland. I’d missed the sound of the waves rolling against the beaches, the crying of the gulls, and the taste of salt on my lips. I’d missed the horizon. I’d missed the people too. Life on the mainland seemed fast and complicated. Parts of it had been fun—the movies, the shops, the cars, McDonalds and Red Rooster—but I’d been lonely there. On Dauntless, everyone knew everyone. Sometimes that was a bad thing, like if you did something wrong the whole island would be lining up to tell your big brother, with Mavis Coldwell at the front of the queue, but sometimes it was a good thing. Like when everyone looked out for each other. You didn’t need to explain how things were; people already knew. Dauntless was like a warm blanket. There were days you wanted to throw it off because it felt like you were suffocating, but if the weather turned cold, you pulled it tight around you, edges tucked in under so the wind couldn’t bite.
Dauntless was home, the curve of the coastline carved deep in my bones, tidelines marked on the soles of my feet. There was nowhere else in the world that I wanted to be—if only Nipper Will would let me be here properly, let me get a job on a boat the same way every Harper had done for the last two hundred years. I was nineteen. I wasn’t a little kid anymore, but Will was still treating me like one.
I turned the television off when the picture cracked apart into broken puzzle pieces, then went back to the kitchen. I slipped out the back door and leaned against the old laundry tub. The cement edge of it dug into my arse. Outside the lean-to, the rain was coming down, and sheet lightning rippled through the clouds, illuminating them from behind. The light in the copper’s house was still on, but I couldn’t see anyone moving over there, just the tangle of oleanders in the backyard shuddering as the wind swept through.
So the last thing we needed on Dauntless was a copper, but the ember of an idea sparked in the back of my brain. If Nipper Will wouldn’t let me go out on the boats, and I was making fuck all picking up whatever odd jobs I could get around the island, then maybe I could go and see the copper tomorrow and offer to do his yard work. There was a bunch of old tools in Big Johnny’s shed that looked like they hadn’t been used in years. He’d let me borrow them, I was sure. I hadn’t done any yard work before—there wasn’t much call for it on Dauntless. Nobody had any proper lawns anyway, and if they wanted their yards cleared out they usually borrowed a couple of goats off Robbie Finch and let them take care of it. But a mainlander wouldn’t know about Robbie’s goats yet, and Robbie would never trust an outsider with them anyway. And I knew I’d be courting disapproval by volunteering to deal with the copper—and Dauntless did disapproval like nothing else—but if Nipper Will wouldn’t let me get a proper job, then what the hell did he or anyone else expect? If anyone had a go at me about it, I’d point them in Will’s direction.
The sky was split by a bolt of lightning, and a crash of thunder followed it. I pressed back against the laundry tub, my heart beating faster. I closed my eyes and could still see the lightning. Rain battered the tin roof on the lean-to, and I opened my eyes again. I sucked in a breath of cool air and tasted the freshness of the rain. Then, tilting my face to the sky, I wrapped my arms around my torso and settled in to watch the storm.
Chapter 3
DOMINIC
On Friday morning I woke up later than I’d meant to, mostly because the storm hadn’t stopped until around three in the morning. I’d already been weirded out by spending my first night in a new place, but adding thunder and lightning to that? Look, obviously I didn’t believe in ghosts or any of that bullshit, but I certainly had spent a lot of last night vividly remembering every ghost story I’d ever read as a kid. When I’d finally crashed out, all my plans of getting up at six had gone right out the window. It was almost nine by the time I climbed off my mattress and grabbed my phone to check the time.
My phone had no bars. It was basically an incredibly expensive clock and music player now. It was another one of those things that hadn’t bothered me when I’d signed up for all this, but now I was on this side of the move, felt a lot more isolating than I’d thought it would.
Still, at least the morning was a beautiful one. I pushed open my bedroom window to let the air in, and it was fresh and cool and carried the tang of salt. I looked down at my overgrown backyard with its sagging wooden fence, and then went into my living room instead, because the view there—the harbour, the ocean, the endless blue sky—was a hell of a lot more inspiring. I snapped a photo on my phone and turned it into my screensaver. Since I couldn’t send it to anyone else yet, at least I could appreciate it in the meantime.
And it wasn’t as though I’d be totally incommunicado. I had a radio, and, somewhere, a satellite phone. Besides, it was only a few weeks until the island got mobile phone coverage and I’d go back to ignoring my Aunt Carmella’s Minion memes and messages from guys I’d been at school with who’d turned into crypto bros. I’d miss Grindr though. It’d be the first app I’d open whenever I could swing some leave to get back to Sydney. That, and DoorDash, because my culinary skills didn’t go much beyond sandwiches and whatever I could shove in the microwave. Never mind policing; the real challenge on Dauntless Island would be feeding myself without dying of boredom.
I wasn’t officially on duty until the station opened on Monday, but I showered and dressed in my uniform anyway. I wanted to check the place out, but also make sure that people knew that the face and the uniform went together. When I got downstairs for breakfast, the cat from last night was sitting on top of the stove, looking at me like it expected to be fed. We were both very disappointed in the dry Weet-Bix I tipped into a bowl.
“I’m sure I have milk,” I told the cat. “The longlife shit. I know I bought some. I put it in the same box as the biscuits.”
There were also no biscuits.
Fan-fucking-tastic. Somewhere in the ferry terminal back in Newcastle, one of my boxes was sitting forgotten. Either that, or it was still on the cargo deck of the ferry and would spend the rest of its life shuttling back and forth between the island and the mainland. The point was, it wasn’t in my kitchen where it was supposed to be, and I didn’t even have any milk for my cereal.
Or for my coffee.
Shit.
So much for breakfast.
I found a tin of tuna and gave some to the cat. I waited until it had finished eating and put it outside in the yard. Then I remembered that Eddie had told me yesterday where the shop was, and figured that was as good an excuse as any to do my first unofficial foot patrol of the village. I found my radio and satellite phone and checked they were both charged. The radio was scratchy as hell, and there was a lot of squelchy feedback, but it worked. I left my firearm in the gun safe, which felt a little like stepping outside half naked, but I reminded myself that this was more community policing than frontline policing. You didn’t take your Glock to Coffee with a Cop.
The day was bright after last night’s storm, with nothing left over but a few wispy threads of clouds in the sky, and wet earth underfoot. Everything smelled bright and clean, and the taste of salt in the air was invigorating. I closed the door of the station behind me, and headed down the dirt road that curved along the harbour wall. There was a statue on a plinth in front of the church next door to the station, so I wandered over for a look. A guy in a funny hat stared out at the ocean. There was a plaque stuck to the front of the plinth:
Erected in commemoration of Josiah Nesmith, the hero who delivered the people of Dauntless Island from the tyrant George Hawthorne.
I’d never been into history much, but it might be fun to learn a little bit more about the island. Eddie from the museum could probably recommend a book.
The village was picturesque: sandstone cottages, the narrow band of beach that ran along the outer side of the harbour wall at low tide, and the lush green hill that rose up above the village and was topped by the white lighthouse. I was definitely going to get up there as part of my beat and introduce myself, and maybe score myself a tour. The view from the top had to be spectacular.
