Free Prohibited Zone by Alastair Sarre Page B

detainees might all be murderers and terrorists? And when more atrocities are committed inside their so-fucking-called safe haven?’
    â€˜I suppose not.’ I was feeling hot. I turned up the power on the air conditioner and took a swig of water from my bottle in the central console. I offered some to her but she ignored it. ‘What atrocities?’
    â€˜I’ll tell you later.’
    â€˜No, tell me now.’
    â€˜No.’
    We bypassed Port Pirie and moved inland from the gulf. Soon we had bypassed Crystal Brook as well. The land was flat and barren; the only features were salt lakes and salt pans, where the bitterness of the earth concentrates. It was sheep-grazing country, but only just. If you raked all the friable soil on one of those hundred-hectare paddocks into a heap you’d barely have enough to fill a garden pot. The occasional farmhouse was still occupied, but many had been abandoned, their limestone walls crumbling. Good luck earning a living out here. In the 1860s a surveyor called George Goyder had drawn a line across the state that ran roughly east to west through Crystal Brook. Don’t bother sowing crops north of it, he told farmers, because the rainfall is too low. But most of them had to find out the hard way.
    â€˜So did you orchestrate the whole thing?’
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜Did you stage the protest to help her escape?’
    â€˜No comment.’
    I glanced her way; she had a determined profile and a small mole on her cheek I hadn’t noticed before. I wondered how much of yesterday had been planned, including her encounter with me.
    â€˜Poor bastards,’ I said.
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜I mean that you’ve given them all false hope. You incite them to escape, and then what? They’ll have a miserable time on the run, hiding in culverts, eating ants and drinking their own piss. You might not have noticed but it’s summer. It’s hot out here. Not a good time to be wandering around lost. And if they don’t die they’ll be recaptured and put in prison and have bugger-all chance of ever getting a visa. And they’ll find out that people like you have gone and found other things to do.’
    â€˜Are you always such a cynic?’
    â€˜Are you always so sanctimonious?’
    For twenty minutes the conversation dried up, like a salt lake. We approached Snowtown, where it probably hadn’t snowed for ten million years.
    â€˜Wasn’t Snowtown where –’
    â€˜Yes. It’s renowned for its novel method of storing human remains.’
    A few years ago, eight bodies had been discovered rotting inside plastic barrels, which were stored in a disused bank vault in Snowtown. The victims had been tortured and murdered by four men, who had done it partly for the pensions of the victims and partly for the sheer fun of it. In total they’d killed at least eleven people, some of whom had been stored elsewhere. Most of the murders had been committed in Adelaide and the victims moved to Snowtown for safekeeping.
    We passed a large sign advertising the no-doubt luxurious Snowtown accommodation. ‘Feeling tired?’ it said. Someone had scratched underneath: ‘Of life?’ We crossed the railway line and continued south past salty Lake Bumbunga through the hamlets of Lochiel and Nantawarra.
    She pulled out a small penknife from her satchel and started peeling her mango. Using the tip of the blade she etched longitudinal lines down its full length and then pulled three segments back, revealing the pale orange flesh beneath. Her fingers were nimble and efficient. She offered me a slice and, when I nodded, popped it into my mouth.
    â€˜Thanks.’ It was a moment of surprising intimacy; maybe it was a gesture of reconciliation. The flesh was sweet.
    The land started to undulate as we approached Port Wakefield and now was mostly covered in wheat stubble. The town was nestled among mangroves