The long tufts of spinifex curled over on a gust of warm wind. Whispered voices broke with a gravelled edge and the sounds of violence disturbed a brown snake resting in a tight coil on the corner of a steep embankment. The snake’s head lifted, its tongue flickered and it looked at the shadowy figures, like a fighter adopting its stance. It unravelled itself and moved away, down the embankment into the large snarls of lantana and wild saltbush.

‘Stand him up.’ The voice came from a large broad-shouldered man, his shape caught briefly in the half-moon’s light.

The voice wasn’t much more than a whisper, though considering where they were, it wouldn’t have mattered had he yelled. The only sign of civilisation was the corona from the town’s lights to the west of them and even it had been dulled by the ocean mist. In the darkness in front of the blockish end of a derelict machine-gun post, a slumped man was pulled up by his armpits. He stood, his face lifting from the shadows and into the light.

His bottom lip was split in its centre and fell loosely either side of the gash.

‘You were in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

The punch that followed struck the beaten man on the side of his jaw, the sound of bone against bone echoing through the concrete walls of the machine-gun post.

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