Halliday stared over my shoulder, loaded chopsticks halfway to his mouth. ‘Hallo,’ he said. ‘What’s going off here?’ Pete Murphy and I followed his gaze. A small, ragged child was running across the road, making for the tables standing under the stars. I clicked my tongue in disapproval; even in Singapore City, little girls should be fast asleep in their beds at three in the morning. Ours was the nearest table to the road. Suddenly we had a fugitive hiding amongst our legs.

It was meant to be the holiday of a lifetime, a trip with friends and time together to bring back the old magic we’d once shared, my husband Mark won me over with his words. It wasn’t that we were unhappy, but after twenty years of marriage, we’d lost the old spark, and life had got in the way, as it does in many marriages, with the challenge of bringing up children and balancing a career. And so I said yes to the dive trip. It was our first morning, and I woke to the chorus of birds outside our room. Mark was draped around me and sweet memories of our lovemaking lingered. The holiday looked to be full of the magic he’d promised… that was until I stepped onto the dive boat.

It took Helen about ten minutes to make a basket trap with her shirt. She knotted the sleeves and tied the shirt wide open to a couple of branches that she had rammed deep into the riverbed. In time, fish would swim into the shirt and be unable to turn around. She waded out. Standing waist-deep in the water had rinsed some of the blood and semen from her jeans and singlet, but for now, preserving forensic evidence was the least of her worries. She berated herself again for choosing such a remote area of Brazil for her holidays when she could just as easily have picked Rio de Janeiro or somewhere back home in Australia.

Big Dave and I tended to change bars every so often. We’d get bored or something would happen and we’d get eighty-sixed or the bar would suddenly disappear like The Hole in the Wall or Mickey’s Mouse Hole, but mostly we would just go looking for adventure at different places, which was how we ended up at the Windy City Saloon out in Mojave. I had found the Windy City on a trip through the city of Mojave during a time I lived at Edwards Air Force Base with my wife Master Sergeant Michele Helm. That was about the same time I first met Big Dave Dodge at the Hole in the Wall Bar which was out in the desert from Edwards.

I gaped at the fiery-headed airman coming into Technical Wing’s Disciplinary office. In the six months I had been stationed at RAF Changi I had never before seen Halliday sporting the marks of battle. ‘Gawd help us, Red – what hit you?’ ‘A fist – what d’you think?’ ‘It’s not like you to get into a brawl – what happened?’ ‘Some bully-boys from Changi were wrecking Mary’s bar. I tried to stop them.’ Halliday shrugged. ‘There were three of them…’ ‘In the Great World,’ I stated. ‘Out of bounds – like you.’ ‘Okay, okay – that doesn’t make it all right to destroy someone’s business, does it?’

Earlier in the year my husband had died suddenly and unexpectedly leaving me reeling, feeling devastated and lonely. My friends had been brilliant in ensuring they kept me going out with them and I was invited to various events, but despite that I still went home to an empty, silent house with a bed that felt extraordinarily large and cold. There was no one to talk to, to care for, to care for me and cuddle; I missed that reciprocal sense of sharing. It was just plain lonely and I felt a constant empty space around me that my husband used to occupy. He was always just ‘there’ - my soul mate.

The hatch at my shoulder slid open. Technical Wing’s Adjutant, Warrant Officer Pocket, peered into my office. ‘Morning, SAC Newton,’ he said. ‘Is the Flight Sergeant not in yet?’ ‘He phoned to say he’s going sick, sir.’ Mr Pocket’s face dropped. ‘Oh, no – not today of all days.’ My Chief, Flight Sergeant Don Ellison, had picked a very good day to go sick. Tech Wing’s CO, Wing Commander Laurence Gilpin, had called a meeting to discuss RAF Changi’s upcoming inspection by the Air Officer Commanding Far Eastern Command.

I stared up at the high brick wall. Only windows; no doors or gates. I’d have to return the way I’d come. Except that I couldn’t remember the way I had come – I was lost. Lost late at night in a strange city, on a tropical island that, for me, had lived only in pictures until a short month ago. I’d have asked for directions – if I’d dared. The only people I’d seen during the past half hour were Chinese, all looking ready to cut my throat – I’d clearly strayed into one of Singapore City’s less wholesome districts. A window slid up in the wall that had baulked me. A man poked his head into the alley. Flame coloured hair, pugnacious jaw. His eyes met mine. ‘Anyone about?’

‘A very good morning to you, sahib.’ I looked up. A round-faced Indian stood in front of the desk. Eyebrows raised, I returned his greeting. ‘Morning, Pahkar. What brings you to Tech Wing Disciplinary?’ My surprise at seeing my barrack room’s bearer in my office was increased a hundredfold when Pahkar placed a small bottle on the desk. He waved away my frown. ‘Just an unworthy token to show my appreciation, sahib.’ ‘Appreciation? What for?’ ‘Ah…’ Pahkar touched the side of his nose with a forefinger. ‘For perceiving what a difference a full billet has on our comfort, Senior Aircraftsman Newton.’

The ochre sand dune jutted above the desert plain and from where I sat atop my mare, Twilight, the surrounding view of the barren landscape found here in far north South Australia, left me breathless. The Desert Oaks and Spinifex held together the fragile earth and offered shelter to many small creatures. The diversity of the land continued to captivate me, and I couldn’t think of anywhere else I would rather live. I looked across at my fiancée, Alex, sitting atop my stallion, Eclipse. He sat slumped comfortably in his seat, his legs thrust forward and sitting well back. Considering he’d not been born to the saddle, he rode like a pro and in comparison my upright posture exposed my years of riding the show circuit. How I wished I could change it to look as cool as he did.

I had a wretched childhood and I have become a wretched man. I survived a violent upbringing in foster homes where I was nothing more than an unpaid slave. My life on the streets started at fourteen and meant taking to crime. I learned the power of superiority gained through cold, calculated forcefulness. At seventeen, a magistrate offered me the military as a final option. “Join up and grow up, or be sentenced as an adult,” she said. During recruit training, I used violence judiciously. Not wanting to cross instructors, I did just enough to earn their praise during killing games until one of them, a sergeant, realised I was holding back.

Westminster Abbey, Churchill’s War bunker, Buckingham Palace, the Globe Theater. So far, Jack Harper was taking in all the sights and sounds of London, England. He had planned this trip for so long. He had seen all these sights on his first day and still had three weeks to go. As he rode the Tube from Saint Paul’s Cathedral, he smiled to himself as he thought about where he was going to eat dinner tonight.

The old prospector stopped talking. In the ensuing silence, the sounds of the African night pressed in from the blackness that surrounded the hotel veranda. Derek squirmed uncomfortably as trickles of sweat ran down his back, he reached for the beer at his side, and took a sip; it was warm and flat. The prospector looked up as a large moth dazed from its continual dashing at the only light on the veranda, fluttered onto the plank floor between them. “I’ll have another,” he said, holding up his empty glass. Derek gestured to the waiter lounging by the verandah rail, with a nod he disappeared. “You don’t believe a word do you,” the prospector grumbled.

L’arbre du Ténéré is the only tree marked on the topographical maps of Africa I was doing my final year anatomy and physiology when I met Mike Bullock. He was a final clinical year student and we both played for the hospital rugby side. He, as his name implies, was a big, solid, front row forward, while I fancied myself as a dashing wing three-quarter. He was one of those gentle giants who, whatever the circumstances, could never be really provoked. A true ‘man’s man’ – smart, pipe-smoking, six foot one inch, and fifteen stone seven pounds in his socks.

The wind doesn’t always blow in southern California’s Antelope Valley but it blows often enough that most of the trees lean, having been blown sideways since they were sprouts. Very often the wind rolls in from the nearby Mojave Desert and when the hot dry Mojave wind blows it stirs speculation in romantic hearts as to where that wind comes from. Of course there are all the scientific answers—uneven heating of the ground; rotation of the planet; seasonal considerations—but romantic hearts know that those are only facts not reasons.

The Hole in the Wall bar was misnamed because there was no “wall.” It was just a dry-brown, ghost town-looking shack so far out in southern California’s Antelope valley—a desert valley where there have been no antelopes in living memory—that I was always amazed it even had running water and electric lights. The shack sorta stuck up out of the creosote bushes in the bottom of this low place that might have been a volcanic crater a couple billion years ago. You could see the lights of the place for miles if the night was moonless. There was only one road (unpaved) leading to it, and it was made out of dust so gritty-fine it could blast the chrome off a truck bumper with just the slightest encouragement of a breeze.

He paused by the scrubby stand of bush, its thorny leaves sharp against his leathery skin. Raising his hand to shield his eyes against the searing sun, he scanned the horizon. Nothing. Jabbing the crude spear into the baked earth he took a sip from the goatskin pouch slung around his neck. The water, warm and tasting of damp soil, slid easily down his parched throat. How long had he been out there? Four days? Six? He thought of his parents back in the village, a random collection of mud huts set in a sweltering dust bowl. Their life had been one of increasing desperation since the drought and subsequent failure of their crops.

A dirt road led up to a high point where a group of partisans were encamped. Had it been daylight, on one side of the encampment, the Adriatic could have been seen in the distance. On the other side there was a steep, heavily wooded, embankment which ran down to the valley below, and the village of Tivari. The scent of pine trees filled the air and the camp was bathed in moonlight. There was one small camouflaged tent, and close-by, a dozen or so figures were huddled around a camp fire. The glimmer of the firelight on their faces, revealed a couple of woman amongst them. The flap on the tent opened and a man came out.