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the opposite side is enormous. It has a grader and a tractor and several vans in it. And the water tower and windmill are huge, so the building looks small even though it is quite a big house. It and the windmill were probably all that was here in the early days.
    Inside I discovered six bedrooms. I didn’t dare go into Palmenter’s bedroom. He had his own lounge and sitting area at the front. The office door was next to that. On the other side, to the left of the front entry, was another large sitting room where the girls must have spent a lot of their time. It felt feminine in some sort of way. Connected to the sitting room was a kitchen and dining area. The dining area had a long table and the kitchen looked more like a laboratory, white benches and glassware and cardboard files that I suppose held recipes. Cookie used to do their meals and send them over so I guess the kitchen here was only used to make coffee and snacks. Two corridors divided the kitchen on one side and Palmenter’s rooms on the other, from the girls’ rooms: Margaret’s room, four big dormitory rooms with eight bunks in each, and at the end, the showers and a clinic-type room with a white covered bed and medical stuff. On a remote station it was important to have some sort of place to treat people who might be sick or injured, but what with the kitchen and this room and the dormitory beds and shower room with three cubicles, the whole place felt more like an infirmary, like a convalescent home or prison rehab clinic, a feeling all the more so for the bolts on the outside of the bunkroom doors.
    It was spooky that time, but now with Spanner it seemed as if we were supposed to be there. It was only a small step from pretendingto Cookie and the muster crew that Palmenter was away and had left us in charge, to fooling ourselves that we were simply doing our job. I felt like I did when I helped Spanner down at the gene pool, hunting around for what it was we were after. Now, the two of us were going to hunt around in the office for things.
    The office was cool and uncluttered and in a way, old-fashioned. A dark oasis in the outback glare. It had the same relaxing pine smell as the interior of the car. There was a bookshelf along one side, books neatly arranged as if more for show than reading. I wondered who he would want to impress. No one that I knew of had ever been into this office other than Palmenter and his heavies. Perhaps earlier he might have lived at the station, a domestic life with neighbours and friends coming for dinner or a weekend. Had there ever been a Mrs Palmenter?
    Behind the door there were three filing cabinets. Spanner opened the first and withdrew a file. He knew exactly where the forms were kept.
    â€˜Start filling those out.’
    They were vehicle licence papers, transfer papers, hire documents and blank international drivers’ licences.
    â€˜If they get pulled over, this is how they prove who they are and that they own the car. None of them have passports, of course. You don’t have photo ID on international licences. Technically, they should have their own ID or driver’s licence from their own country but the cops never worry about that so unless they do something stupid this gets them past random stops.’
    He came over to the desk with a second file. ‘This is their names.’
    I looked at him, questioning.
    â€˜Not their real names, stupid. But foreign ones, names that are hard to pronounce. We write them in here,’ he pointed to the blank licences, ‘and some here; each car is different so if they do end up together or pulled over by the same cops they don’t see a link. This way, cops can’t pronounce their names and they don’t twig that they don’t react when you say their names. You know that old trick.’
    I hadn’t realised how well organised this end of the operation had been, or how paranoid Palmenter was. Not until we buried those five