They went out into the heat just as Senior Constable Clifford left Phaedra in the shadow of the shed and walked over to the helicopter.
‘What have you found?’ she said.
The wiry guy with the bald head was holding his hand over an iPad to shade it from the glare so he could read something. ‘Sagittarius is signalling.’
Yeah, they’d all worked that out. But signalling what?
Hux sucked in a breath and put his arm around Charlie’s shoulders. Whatever this was, they’d figure it out.
‘Sagittarius has just informed the Queensland Police Service that this helicopter has been carrying crystal methamphetamine, the penalty for which, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, is—’
TYSON: [sombrely] For trafficking a schedule one dangerous drug like ice? That’s twenty-five years imprisonment, man. Twenty-five years.
CHAPTER
18
She’d done it. The four-wheel drive was fully fuelled, the boot was stocked with enough groceries and water to keep her alive until her Sunday flight out, and the Cracknells had given her trip their blessing.
Set alarm for four am, she wrote in the new list she’d drawn up in her notebook, titled,Things To Do Before Tomorrow.
She’d already writtenCall LukeandRemember to unplug phone charger from wallandPay Maggie.
Speaking of, there was the publican herself, looking at her from the other side of the bar, eyebrow raised as though she was waiting for an answer.
‘I’m sorry, Maggie, did you say something?’
‘I said, do you want a drink?’
‘Oh, yes, please. What have you got in the chardonnay department?’ She was in the mood for a lovely, chilled glass of dry wine. Maybe two. And to hell with the slightly tight zippers on her outdoor shorts, she was pretty sure tonight she’d be having dessert; tomorrow she’d be on camp rations—tins of beans and powdered milk—so, please god, let the sticky date pudding she’d been denying herself for the last few days still be on the menu.
The publican turned to inspect her bank of low fridges. ‘There’s one with a yellow label and one with a green label. Which do you fancy?’
As good a picking method as any. She could always ask for some ice to water it down if it was undrinkable like the rosé. Yellow sounded more fun than green, didn’t it? ‘Yellow.’
‘Coming up.’
Jo closed her notebook and slid it under the latest edition of theJournal of Palaeontology, which she’d not been able to face reading while her dig plans had looked so dire because jealousy messed with her eyesight. But now! Well, now she turned the pages with—almost—a little shoulder shimmy. She’d be in the field tomorrow, trowel in hand, and she was determined to make the most of her time even if she found nothing. She was still going to be digging into the Winton Formation, wasn’t she? Only one of the largest, most well-preserved and accessible remnants of the Cretaceous era.
She was three sentences deep into a review of how the Australian synchrotron in the Melbourne facility had revealed replacement teeth within the jawbone of a near-complete Queensland sauropod skull (incredible!) when her phone rang. She looked at the screen and smiled. Finally, the woman who’d persuaded her to come back to Yindi Creek had called her back.
‘Jedda! I was getting worried. Are you all right? How’s your heart?’
‘This infernal machine I’m attached to hasn’t flatlined yet, so I must be doing okay. How are you?’
Jo hesitated. ‘Are you feeling well enough for me to tell you how pissed off I am at you?’
‘Go right ahead. It’s been a slow day here in Ward 3A, and I came to the end of my sudoku book, so at this point I’m ready to be entertained by anything.’
‘Corley Station,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d already led a dig to the site where the partial femur fossil was found?’
‘Didn’t I mention it?’
‘You did not,’ Jo said firmly.
‘Well, you know how digs are.’ Jedda sounded evasive. ‘You can be two feet away from the most incredible fossil the world has ever seen and not know it.’
Sure, true, but that didn’t explain why her old mentor had sent her out here under a total misconception.