that a problem?’
‘No … just a hassle.’
Cryp numbers were unhackable quantum generated numbers – constantly changing. If you dialled the number and were accepted by the owner, then a regular ping would be sent by the owner’s phone to your phone to update and thus allow you to go on calling.
‘Do you have the phone from which the number was called?’ asked Lucia.
‘No.’
Another groan.
‘Okay,’ she sighed, ‘I’ll do my best, but you owe me.’
‘I already owe you.’
‘Well, at some point I’ll be calling in your tab, Conan Daniel Tooley. And I hope you’ll be man enough to honour your debt.’
There was a supercharged silence of several seconds as Conan wondered how to respond in a way that would continue the subtle flirting without putting their jobs in jeopardy. Calls into the Sydney office were routinely monitored for security purposes.
‘You know me, Lucia Francesca Baresi,’ he eventually replied. ‘I’m a man of my word and will stand ready to serve you when I return.’
‘Truly?’
Conan winced at her change of tone and said, ‘Gotta go. Let me know if you trace the number.’
He hung up and reviewed the meagre contents of the files. Not much to go on without the translations he’d requested. He drummed his fingers against the desktop for a few moments, then jumped up and walked back to Loongy’s office.
‘Hey, Tools is back! What you want, Sydney investigator?’
‘I need to have a look at their flat.’
‘Whose flat?’
‘Fong and Wing Ho … the dead blokes.’
‘What for?’
Conan just stared at Loongy for a few moments, then shook his head to clear it of the Through the Looking Glass imagery he was getting.
‘It’s standard procedure, Loongy … check out the victim’s home … try to get some insight. Who knows what we’ll find.’
‘It’s already been checked. There was nothing … just Habal Tong crap.’
‘You’ve been?’
‘It’s standard procedure … like you said.’
Conan leaned against Loongy’s door, trying to imply that he was comfortable – with no intention of going away.
‘There was nothing in the files from the flat.’
‘So?’
‘So … I’d like to see for myself.’
Loongy shrugged, as though indulging a madman, and said: ‘Not today, I’m busy. Maybe tomorrow.’
‘You don’t need to come. I have checked out dead men’s flats before.’
‘Oh, but I do need to come,’ smiled Loongy, unpleasantly.
‘Politics?’
‘Politics.’
• • •
There being little else he could usefully do, Conan decided to go and have a look at the derelict house where the bodies had been found.
Walking the streets of Ord City was like walking the streets of any oversize Asian city – hot, smelly and teeming with people. Initially a series of camps around Kununurra and Wyndham, Ord City had exploded since 2023 as refugees flooded in from the north and dollars poured in from all over the world – keen to invest in the infrastructure needed to house, feed, clothe and entertain a major new city on the northern edge of Australia.
‘Incredible,’ muttered Conan to himself as he pushed through the hordes of happy, pissed off, impatient, tolerant, temporary citizens – some of them less than two weeks from full citizenship.
There was graffiti everywhere, like any other city, but it was simply impossible to make out meaning in a multitude of scrawls and styles. Only occasionally did he see English, and that was usually just initials. AINANIA was everywhere – whatever that meant – but it was frequently crossed out or overscored with DEDD REFFO or just DR.
Conan had always taken an interest in graffiti. From his earliest days as a police detective (before transferring to the feds) he had picked up on gang information which the members had happily advertised on walls, assuming no one in authority would understand. Conan understood, which had led to a number of successful arrests and a fast-tracked career.
For a while.
But he was still naturally interested in how the people of the streets communicated and took his time getting to the back-lane address which had been scribbled on Michael Wing Ho’s card.
AINANIA he saw again and again, and suddenly twigged its meaning – ‘all is nothing and nothing is all’ – the most fundamental principle of Habal Tong.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Ord City was the way so many different races and cultures had blended in such a short time, despite so many ancient conflicts. The reason for the new harmony was mostly attributed to Habal Tong, according to numerous documentaries on religious integration and tolerance, but there was a darker side. Having combined all the best features of its component faiths, HT devotees were confident that they had synthesised the perfect philosophy, free from the trademark doubt that fluttered in the hearts of other believers. This confidence sometimes bred an unpleasantly arrogant fanaticism which was unsettling for the mainstream Australian population, already getting nervous about the imminent First Wave being released into wider society. There were mutterings about embracing Australian values before being let loose and any number of powerful voices were raised in protest. Not least the far right radical group – Dedd Reffo – who were dedicated to keeping refugees out of Australia. They had purchased a submarine from Somalian pirates (renamed the HMAS Eureka) and since 2024 had been sinking refugee boats in international waters, polarising the mainstream community. Most condemned them for cold-blooded mass murder, but others encouraged them and dinner party conversations in Sydney and Melbourne were getting increasingly heated.
The other polarising issue was the number of disaffected Australian youth who were converting to Habal Tong, spouting its tenets like counter-cultural axioms to rock the establishment. The biggest surprise of the 2025 census was the decline in those who regarded themselves as atheist or agnostic.
And clearly, all of those same battles were playing out in graffiti daubed on the walls of Ord City.
‘And the murder statistics,’ thought Conan as he arrived at the house in Ruddock Lane where the two men had been found, bearing the marks of two violently opposed groups.
It was an evil looking place – burned out and abandoned – and Conan forced himself to ignore the irrational tremors as he walked up the short path, littered with bottles, cigarette butts, syringes, hundreds of little Crimson vials and the faded flotsam of absent lives. The house, of course, was covered in graffiti, with AINANIA and DR the only writing he could make out amid the many alien daubings.
There was blue police tape across the entrance but it was unguarded, meaning the police were no longer interested in the place. That also was odd, reflected Conan, who was beginning to wonder why he’d been sent up when no one seemed to have any interest in the case.
Inside, the house stank of charred wood, damp and urine. There were scores of discarded needles, vials and a carpet of broken glass. Rubbish was piled in every corner and two mildewed mattresses were red-brown with old blood. Conan knew from the file that the bodies had been found face down on the mattresses – which should have been removed. He was also aware that the disfigurement of the victims’ faces had occurred while they were still alive – including the removal of eyes and tongues.
Considering the