JOURNALIST James Brandt lives in a brittle truce with his partner Dylan and his family, never talking about the homophobic attacks he exposed in his rural hometown, including the brutal death of a beloved cousin twenty years ago.

But this illusion of peace is ripped apart by the start of the state’s historical gay-hate crime inquiry, and the reappearance of the Joneses, who waltz back into Kippen professing to be queer allies. Yet when one of that notorious dynasty is found dead at a local water tower, it is James who stands accused.

With an under-resourced sergeant and a tech-savvy podcaster on his heels, James refuses to trust in a police force that has proven its inadequacy with gay-hate crime. In order to clear his name and flush out which member of this remote community took justice into their own hands, he will need to expose every secret, including his own.

The gripping and heartbreaking sequel from the author of Tank Water.

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The prologue of Dirt Trap

Daniel knew his own name but not much else. Somehow, he’d ended up leaning against the top gate, out of the heat with the butcher birds. Their chatter in the trees above his head made the view of the old homestead down the hill seem much less lonely.

That must be home. While he waited until he was sure, Daniel pulled out a hanky and dabbed the sore spot on his forehead where he must have hit the ground after he blacked out, but there wasn’t much blood on the white cloth with the soil and bits of wheat stubble.

‘You’re a duffer,’ he muttered, Father’s turn of phrase coming back to him.

He didn’t know what day it was yet, but Daniel had walked this stretch between Bill’s place and home a thousand times. His brother’s property was called Deloraine, and home, down the hill, was The Mulgas. A bit closer to the head of Brandt Lane was Glen Alpine, where Father and Mother lived. As little boys, the Brandt brothers had been drilled on the location of the three homesteads down the one lane, just in case they ever got lost.

But what was Bill doing leaving the wheat stubble when it should be burned off? 

Something red was catching the sunlight from one of the furrows. Rubbish blowing in from Bill’s shed, no doubt, so Daniel followed his own bootprints back into the heat to fetch it. Through the dusty haze, the sight of his brother’s place worried him. The cars between the house and the sheds were all wrong. Where was Bill’s old Ford? And whose was that expensive looking petrol guzzler parked by Deloraine’s home yard gate?

Daniel nearly stumbled again when it all came back.

He was old. Older than Father ever got to; and Bill was long gone.

Shit. It was Christmas, and his brother’s widow Doris had spent the whole of lunch suffering in silence because she’d been turfed out to live in the manager’s cottage while her daughter Yvonne did all the cooking. Brandt family get togethers weren’t like the old days when all the kids were happy. Yvonne and her husband Pete were pushing fifty and Daniel’s middle boy Jamie was even older, sitting there with his husband, mouths full of vegetarian muck while Jamie carried on about that dead poofter inquiry coming up in Sydney, trying to get someone to watch it with him on the internet.

The only young ones were Yvonne’s two girls, dragged home for the holidays so  everyone could pester them about what they were up to in the big city. They’d gawped at their phones while their mother and grandmother gave the men the silent treatment, not one of them prepared to talk about Tony, their dead son, brother and uncle. So Jamie had offered to drive Daniel home in that fancy European car still taking up space on Deloraine’s driveway, but he’d had enough of his middle boy’s drama for one day.

The red rubbish in the wheat stubble was his bag of gifts, and now he remembered  slipping a beer into it before heading home. He just needed a bit of fizz under all the gravy and pudding in his guts, then he’d come good.

But the bottle was empty, as though someone had pilfered his presents while Daniel had lain there, out cold. He glanced up and down the parched field, trying to spot whoever it was in the scrub while he patted his pockets looking for his old police notebook. When he came up with nothing, he panicked, tipped the whole lot out and saw the dark little book drop onto the black soil with the new socks and hankies. 

Relieved, Daniel shoved everything back in. ‘There’s no one watching, you old fool,’ he muttered, scanning the shadows stretching across the wheat stubble, half expecting Father had walked down from Glen Alpine to criticise all these crooked furrows. 

Yvonne’s husband was too cowardly to torch the straw like everyone used to, but Pete wasn’t a Brandt, he’d only married one and been handed Deloraine’s five thousand acres on a plate. What the place needed was Tony. The Brandt farms had a future when Daniel’s fine young nephew had walked the best cleared black soil for a hundred miles, pulling in the cheekiest crops in the district and marrying the prettiest bird, all right here down Brandt Lane. But Tony had been put in the family plot years before his father and anyway there was no point wishing.

By the time he was back at his top gate, Daniel could see traces of cloud drawing in from the south. That could mean a storm, so he stumbled down the driveway to get ready.

The big iron tank that once stood against the homestead was always cool to the touch when there was water inside, but this modern plastic replacement needed drumming to tell how much was left. Habit made Daniel slap a hand on the side, one ear against it to hear the hollow boom. If the top inlet was blocked by even the slightest bit of muck the rain would just bounce out, so he threw the bag of pointless presents into the long grass, ignored the pain in his belly as he hoisted up a ladder and took to the rungs.

The view from the top made him pause. Always the golden fucking light on granite-covered slopes, beautiful until a long wait for rain made it a harsh, dry joke. Daniel turned away and flopped his trunk onto the faded plastic top of the tank, scattering the butcher birds up the driveway. A few of them swooped overhead, took to the peak of the roof, then turn their heads to stare as he stretched one hand towards the tank hole.

The end of his fingers brushed something, so he shoved his body forwards, frustrated at the weakness of his arms after twenty years’ retirement. This bloody inquiry wasn’t helping. The best police work was always achieved on the quiet, and the last thing Daniel needed was the whole country seeing his mistakes in Tony’s case. Once they got out, Jamie, the one journalist in a family of farmers, would lead the charge against his own father all over again. 

‘The trouble with you journos is you just don’t trust experienced investigators,’ Daniel said, aiming his lecture at the closest bird as though it were his son. 

Just like Jamie, it fluffed its feathers and croaked out some back chat.

‘Smart arse,’ Daniel said, even though Jamie had been proven right about the police turning a blind eye to Kippen’s dead gays. Daniel had witnessed all three broken bodies in his time on the force, and he’d never get over his nephew Tony being one of them. 

He groaned and stretched one hand into the tank hole, getting wrist-deep in muck. But Daniel’s secret weapon was the old tin dirt trap he’d pulled out of the family rubbish dump in the gully down the hill. Round and deep like Mother’s trifle dish, its rim sat proud of the surface and dipped down to a thousand nail holes that worked better than any modern sieve. Daniel’s fingernails found them now, remembering how Father had made him punch out every one with an iron tack, back when sons stuck around. Not like Daniel’s three, one long dead, one lost to the city and Jamie living up the road with Dylan, making house at Father and Mother’s old place. 

A dead something came out with the first scrape, drowned bird or crispy frog. He threw it upwards and it spattered across the roof irons before the birds dived for it.

Daniel sat up and saw Tony down below, leaning against a verandah post. He laughed when he realised it wasn’t his dead nephew, just some other hairy head in the golden fucking light. ‘Thought you were someone else,’ he said, turning his back. 

But he spun too fast. Grabbing for the ladder, the muck on his hand made it slip and hit the top of the tank, the rumble spooking the birds. 

‘Hold this thing for me, mate?’ Daniel added over his shoulder.

The unexpected visitor lifted one boot onto the bottom rung and looked up.

Daniel couldn’t believe his eyes, because this was the bloke he’d been searching for.

‘Didn’t think I’d see you so soon,’ he said, chuckling because his knack of flushing out murder suspects was still spot on, even after those twenty years off the force. ‘I’ll get us a beer, then you can tell me why you hung up on me last week.’

But the boot swung, and a heavy jolt sent the ladder out from underneath him. 

A cry burst out of Daniel’s gob. His arms flapped but he dropped too fast to do anything about going off headfirst. The crunch of landing winded him, like falling under the scrum in footy, then all he saw were birds squawking off into the golden fucking light.

© Michael Burge, all rights reserved.