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this,’ he said, flicking off some of the poo. ‘Some security guards came, and the only place to hide was down inthe shit.’ He giggled. ‘They never thought of looking there. Walked right past me.’
    That’s when Dad turned up. He took one look at Nick and said, ‘Right — let’s get out of here.’
    Back at the ute, Dad made Nick sit on the deck with the bike.
    As we moved off, I asked, ‘Are you going to punish him?’
    He gave a little chuckle. ‘Punish him? How do you punish someone who thinks it’s great to be covered in chicken shit? You’d think that would be punishment enough.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘We’ll have to hose him down when we get back. Chloe will go ape if he goes inside like that.’
    We drove in silence for a time.
    ‘What worries me most,’ said Dad, ‘is that black slime. That’s come from those dead animals. Whatever’s causing the sickness will be in that slime.’
    ‘You think Nick might get bird flu?’
    ‘I don’t know … don’t know much about it. But last time bird flu broke out in Asia, people died. That was the main worry. That somehow the virus had crossed over into humans. They reckoned the big flu epidemics in the past were caused by that — the ones that killed millions of people.’

CHAPTER 7
    D ad rang the BIRT hotline first thing in the morning.
    All he told them was that his son had seen lots of dead sparrows around the place, including some outside a chook farm. Nick was most annoyed that he wasn’t mentioned, especially since he reckoned that he’d done all the work.
    After some discussion, Dad arranged for Nick and me to meet someone at the café in Portobello. He then headed off to work, but only after he’d got a promise from each of us not to mention anything about what we had done and seen the previous night.
    Nine o’clock was the agreed time for the meeting at Portobello. We left Harwood with plenty of time to spare.
    The woman who met us looked younger than my mum and older than Brio, which, I guess, made her about thirty.The dark-green uniform she was wearing suggested she was someone with authority. She introduced herself as Cathy Andrews.
    While Cathy sipped a cappuccino, I reported on the dead birds that we’d seen around the café and alongside the chook farm.
    ‘They could have been poisoned,’ she said when I’d finished. ‘Sparrows can be a real pain around poultry farms, and also around places like this.’
    I told her that I’d seen poisoned ones before, and these ones behaved differently, which wasn’t really true, but I didn’t want her driving off without investigating Peco. That was the whole point of the meeting.
    ‘OK,’ she said getting up from the table. ‘Let’s see if this place here has still got any of those dead birds.’
    After asking at the desk, she went out to her car. When she returned, she was wearing a full-face mask, white coverall, and rubber gloves up to her elbows.
    Nick giggled at her appearance, whereas I was a little alarmed.
    ‘Is that really necessary?’ I asked.
    ‘Maybe not,’ she replied. ‘But it’s the rules, and I don’t want to get into trouble with my boss for not obeying the rules.’
    She then led us around the side of the café, where we watched from a distance as she sorted through some rubbish bags. Five birds were located and bagged. After that, we parked the bikes behind the café before piling into her car for the trip to the chook farm.

    At first, we stood in front of the gate taking in the sheds and the surroundings.
    ‘I bet there’re dead birds everywhere in there,’ said Nick. ‘They shouldn’t be allowed to keep animals like that.’
    I gave him a dirty look, hoping to shut him up. It didn’t work.
    He turned to Cathy. ‘You’ve got to shut the place down.’
    Cathy studied him for a while. ‘We’ll see,’ she said. ‘First, I want to look at these dead birds you said you saw around the perimeter fence.’
    Once again she donned safety gear, and