Death on Dangar Island

Snake!

True to his word, as soon as they got home Gary made Israel sit down at the kitchen table and started to grill him. If he was going to get dragged into one of Israel’s crusades again, then he felt it was only fair that he should have all the facts. ‘Look, mate, we’ve known each other a fair while and you know you can trust me, so why not just tell me who’s feeding you this information?’

‘I am doing this for your own good, Gary. The less you know about it the better. If there is trouble from it then I don’t want you to be included.’

‘Spare me the mollycoddling, Israel. Stop holding out on me, and just tell me before I start going mental!’

‘All right, all right. Once you invoke the perilous state of your mental health, you make me choose the lesser of two evils. As it seems that you must know in order to avoid a nervous breakdown, I will tell you. Come here for a moment.’

They sat side by side and the professor held his phone out in the space between them. His finger hovered over a small blue square with the image of a white bird on it. ‘I know you feel that Twitter is a method of communication used exclusively by egotistical people to broadcast every small detail of their lives. I will now show you why you are wrong. I use Twitter primarily to monitor subjects that interest me and I very rarely say anything at all. There was an occasion recently, however, in which I found that I did want to say something, and it worked out remarkably well. I was interested in finding out more about our friend Mr Jenkins.’

The image of a heavy, dark man with reptilian eyes came to Gary and he shivered with revulsion. He’d only seen the man on television, but what he knew disgusted him. The previous year, while Wendy was sick, Israel had been involved in investigating a series of untimely and violent deaths in Sydney’s Sudanese community. Over a period of two months, three young Sudanese men were found murdered on the streets of western Sydney. Eventually, the police arrested another young Sudanese – a refugee Israel had been mentoring. Thanks to one of Israel’s little crusades they ended up arresting a different person altogether. That person was the corrupt Mr Jenkins, a now former member of the New South Wales police force.

‘As you remember, I was suspicious of Mr Jenkins’s activities in relation to my refugee friends, and I wanted to garner as much information as I could about him. I needed particular intelligence to help me corner this man but I did not know where to acquire the relevant facts. Out of frustration, I turned to Twitter. I tweeted a delicately worded question with no expectation I would receive a response, as I have very few followers. Luckily for me, one of them re-tweeted my query to their thousands of followers.

‘I received a response two days later from someone whose handle is @thepublicgoodNSW. This response turned out to be very helpful. The phrasing I used to couch the question could only have been understood by someone else with an intricate knowledge of the case. From there I had the starting point I needed, and a week later the information provided by the person calling herself @thepublicgoodNSW proved the case against Mr Jenkins. He was arrested that day.’

Gary’s face soured a little. ‘So who exactly is this person, and how does she get this info? And for that matter, why would you trust her?’

‘That is an interesting series of questions you raise, my friend. Publicgood’s Twitter biography is A servant of the public, acting in the interests of the people of NSW. More cryptically, however, the next line is the old quotation from Lord Acton, Absolute power corrupts absolutely. I think this gives the strongest clue to her motivations. She’s intent on “keeping the bastards honest”, as I have heard some Australians say.’

Gary couldn’t help grinning at the way Israel’s plummy, formal speech contrasted with the old Aussie political slogan. ‘You keep referring to Publicgood as “her”. How do you know Publicgood is a woman? Don’t tell me she’s got a profile picture up there?’