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the open tins of food. We followed a network of footprints to another body that lay under a shrub a short distance away. Maggots crawled in open wounds. A few metres further a shallow grave had been dug up by dingoes. Half-eaten bits of body and clothing protruded. Must have been the first to die. A frypan and a pot lay nearby and I could see them weakly trying to dig a hole with the utensils, to bury their friend with the dignity he deserved. The first one to succumb to the heat and thirst. Was he their friend? I knew that many of them ended up travelling together with nothing in common but the desire to move to a new country. Thrown together by circumstance, by a small boat and even smaller van, now burying someone they might not even know the name of, but knowing that all too soon it might be them.
    â€˜How many in this van?’ asked Palmenter.
    â€˜Dunno,’ said Simms.
    Palmenter hit him. He swung his arm full-length and caught Simms on the jaw. Not hard, but deliberate.
    â€˜What the fuck, don’t know,’ he yelled. ‘It’s your job to know.’
    â€˜You said not to write anything down.’
    Palmenter hit him again, this time hard enough to knock Simms to the ground. ‘You remember. Don’t write it down. How hard is it to remember?’ He looked around at the scrub. ‘We got to know if thisis all of them.’
    â€˜Five, boss,’ I said. I had no idea, but then neither did he. He looked at me. Spanner had moved away when Palmenter hit Simms but I stood my ground. ‘Five. This was the last van to leave, I remember it had five.’
    No such thing, I made it up but it must have sounded believable. I had counted five bodies and I did not want to spend any longer here scouting around for more. Palmenter grunted.
    â€˜Well done, at least someone’s got a brain. All right then. Spanner, get a rope on it to pull it back up. You two,’ Simms and me, ‘put the bodies in the back. Quick smart. Lucky for us no one is ever going to miss these blokes.’
    We dragged the bodies into the van. We had to climb inside, then back over them to get out, but it would have seemed disrespectful to just shove them in. We wanted to lay them out carefully but it was difficult as the bodies were putrid and flyblown. Simms began retching when we dragged the maggoty body from under the shrub. It had been eaten, an arm came off and although I tried to avoid looking it was impossible not to look at the face that was half-chewed and crawling. Simms was vomiting but something in me allowed me to hold my breath and keep going. I was thinking how unpredictable Palmenter might be, what he might do if we both stopped working and knelt in the sand with spit dribble, dry-retching. Spanner rigged the 4WD and pulled the van upright, then hitched up a towline.
    Simms was quick to volunteer when we needed someone in the van to steer it. It might have been an attempt to redeem himself or perhaps it was to avoid being in the car with Palmenter. I couldn’t tell. He kept touching his jaw and it looked more like the pathetic subservient gesture of a minion than for the soreness he might have felt. Anyway, I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t want to be in with those five stinking bodies that, despite our reverently laying them out, had all tumbled to a mess on the floor as we righted the van.
    At the pit Palmenter instructed us to unhitch the van and push it over the edge and torch it. It rolled to the bottom and parked itself remarkably, as if someone had driven it there. Palmenter stood at the top of the pit watching while we gathered a few clumps of dried spinifex and climbed down to stick them under the wheels. Spanner took off the fuel cap and drained some fuel into a tin. He splashedthis around inside the van and onto the bodies, then he flipped the seat and pulled the fuel line from the motor and let it fall to the ground. Petrol began to leak out and soak into the