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calmed me down, but this latest revelation sent my equanimity, and the contents of my stomach, flying.
    Crouching in the sand, all I could see was a splintered image of Blakie Japanangka, his ferocious eyes and his filthy fucking knives.
    A kidney. Any doubts I had about the identity of the killer were resolved now. A kidney meant sorcery, and sorcery meant the madman on the hill.
    ‘Emily,’ asked McGillivray, putting a hand on my shoulder, ‘you okay?’
    ‘S’pose I am, but…I mean, Jesus…’
    ‘Jesus all right. Or juju. It’s crazy.’
    I climbed to my feet. ‘Have you spoken to Blakie?’ I asked him, wiping my lips and spitting a mouthful of muck into the sand.
    ‘Blakie?’ He flashed an angry glance at the young men. ‘Christ! Why didn’t somebody tell me Blakie was here?’
    ‘Maybe they were worried about your well-being. Lincoln had a bit of a blue with him yesterday, and look what happened to him.’
    ‘Blakie! Knew he’d kill some poor bastard one day. Where is he?’
    I nodded up at the ridge. I followed McGillivray’s gaze and watched him work out, just as I’d done, that the body could well have crashed into the scrub from its rocky summit. From Blakie’s camp.
    McGillivray put a hand to his mouth and bellowed at his off-siders: ‘Col! Ross! You too, Griffo! Get over here!’
    I tagged along behind the four cops as they made their way up the ridge.
    As I reached the summit I glanced back at the camp and saw Hazel, in the middle of the crowd of mourners. She turned around and looked right at me. I detected a movement of her head. Maybe she was hunting a fly, maybe it meant something else.
    Was she trying to stop me from doing what I was doing? Was she warning me? Or warning me off?
    Whatever her intentions, I had no time to alter the course of events. The cops came marching up to Blakie. He was sitting by the fire, as solid as a termite mound, but not as friendly. There was a cold gleam in his eyes: it could have been a reflection of his mood or the crystal into which he was staring. Blakie always had a crystal or two about his person.
    McGillivray eased his big butt onto a rock in front of him.
    ‘G’day Blakie. Remember me?’
    ‘Oh yes,’ Blakie responded, not raising his head. ‘ Kurlupatu Sergeant. Ma-killer-prey. Seen you travellin. Eagle wind.’
    ‘Emily here tells me you had a bit of a blue with…’ he paused; ‘…with that old man Kuminjayi yesterday.’
    I was pleased that McGillivray knew enough about Warlpuju beliefs not to say the name of a deceased person—from here on, Lincoln would be referred to as Kuminjayi—but I was sorry he’d included me in his explanation. Blakie turned those terrible eyes in my direction. They were like slits in the side of a burning forty-four. ‘Oh, she hungry as a hawk, that parnparr . Mebbe dove.’
    McGillivray glanced at me, momentarily nonplussed. ‘Yeah, well I’m sure she’ll fatten up when she gets a bit of that outback tucker into her, but it’s Kuminjayi we’re talkin about now, mate. You know what’s happened to him?’
    ‘ Yuwayi . Two-inch mudlark makin six-foot hole.’
    Mudlark. One of Lincoln’s dreamings.
    ‘Anythin you wanner tell me, Blakie? Bit of an argument, was there? Got out of hand? Be easier if you tell me about it now, rather than in at the station.’
    In at the station? Blakie didn’t like that idea much. His sideways glance was barely perceptible, but it said more than some people say in a lifetime.
    ‘This country…too many snake. Need fire. Bushfire,’ was his cryptic response.
    ‘Right,’ said McGillivray. ‘So you thought you better sort im out, eh?’
    ‘Oh, fire sort im out itself.’
    McGillivray nodded patiently. He’d been in the job so long he may well have acquired some competency in the language of the mad. Psychological illness was rampant among the Indigenous communities of the Centre, services to deal with it stretched at best. Cops were often the front-line