'How was it you came by my name?' I asked.

My client shrugged a little, as he sat with his shoulders hunched and his hands joined across the table, busy turning his fingers over nothing. 'Dunno,' he said without volume. His name was Kieran Harrison; a young man with thin paper eyes and a private demeanour that seemed more fragile than porcelain. 'Just opened the White Pages and picked out a name from the private investigators. Seemed like a good one. Holden Burke. Sounds honest.'

I sat back. 'That's funny.'

'What, about being honest?'

'No, just that I hardly get any business through the phone book anymore. It's all through Google now. Trying to stay near the top of the local searches is a battle in itself.'

He mumbled something, his eyes down and away from mine. 'Yeah, well, they don't allow us a lot of internet access,' he said. 'Don't want us seeing nothing emotionally damaging by mistake. They prefer to just pump us with enough antidepressants to tranquilise a Rhino and shut us off from the world till we're not their problem anymore. Look at this place—like a bloody old folks home.'

We weren't surrounded by old folks, but instead by a shuffling of other young men with blank gazes that stretched a thousand yards. Their faces were pallid and hollow, and had been made vacant by the ghostly wounds of lost battles. The room, a sitting lounge for visitors at the rear of the ward, was simple and quiet and painted with the silent warmth of unobtrusive afternoon sunlight.

'How long have you been recovering?' I asked.

'Four of five weeks, since the attack. Since they shipped me back from overseas. Still got a couple weeks to go before I can be marked officially discharged and released. Until then, it's just more pills and therapy.'

'At least it's not a military hospital.'

He took a moment of pause, his eyes closing and opening again to look back at nothing. 'It's the same thing,' he said finally, simply. 'You lose a leg, and you wind up in a hospital. You lose your mind, you end up in one of these. You get to go home either way but you've still lost something. Not your life, but something.'

I nodded. I didn't know what else there was I could say, so I opened my folder on the table and removed the results of my informational probe. 'Well, I got what I could on the man you told me about over the phone.'

Kieran peered across the table with faint energy. 'Jonathan Craig Fisher,' I read. 'Lieutenant of the Fifth Australian infantry platoon, dispatched to Syria in April 2016. General discharge earlier this month after heavy fire at Istabraq Mount.'

I looked at Kieran. He made no reaction. I read on, after clearing my throat: 'Returned after discharge to his wife and children. His home address is there. Is that what you wanted to know?'

'I guess so.' Kieran said. 'I didn't know he had a family.'

'He was your commanding officer?'

'Yeah.' He leant back. In the dry light falling over him from the high windows of the ward, I couldn't believe such a young man could seem so ashen. 'Fifth infantry—that was my platoon. I was in that attack at the observation point. I was sent back here. Not a lot of others were.'

'And you want to find your lieutenant.'

Kieran Harrison made a faint smile at nothing in particular. 'What's the limit of belief you've got?' he asked me. 'I mean, do you believe anything your clients tell you? Would you believe something that an entire military hierarchy wouldn't—like that one of their lieutenants is guilty of atrocities?'

I didn't say anything. Kieran looked me hard in the eyes for the first time, with as much force behind his vision as he had. I listened to him.

'None of them wanted to hear about Lieutenant Fisher. But the things we saw him do out there in the field...'

He paused, turned unpleasant memories over in his head, began to break a sweat.

'I remember once...this little girl dead on the ground. He just knelt down and picked a necklace off her body, an Arabian knot pendant. He held it up and grinned at us, like a trophy, said he was gonna take it home to show everyone what we did out there, the "justice" we brought to those people. I keep thinking of little things like that. Little moments. Pains—things that keep playing over in my mind...Listen, Lieutenant Fisher joined the army to kill. We all saw everything he did, and then he'd turn it all on us, the platoon—said he'd put us down his sights just like he did all those innocents if we'd ever report him.'

He looked away again, and sighed. He had a whole world in his sigh, something lost and ancient. His breaths were becoming shorter. 

'In some ways I'm glad for the attack at Istabraq. Half the platoon didn't survive, but the rest of us were shipped home. We get our discharges, just like the lieutenant. We're almost back to our lives. The other world is gone, and all the sins along with it, just like they never existed...But I...I can't. I can't let him go. Not after the things he's done. The things I've stood by and seen him do.'

'What about the media?' I said. 'If the army stonewalled your claims, you could break him by giving it away to someone outside.'

He looked at me with suddenness. 'Even if he's out, even if he's got a family, I don't doubt that he wouldn't find me and kill me if I really tried. That's who he is—he's evil, Holden. He won't go down. He wouldn't out there, and he won't back here, where has has ten times as much to lose...'

Kieran was breathing in short, sharp jolts. His shallow skin had glistened with sweat, and his wide eyes were breaking moisture.

'I...I need to take my pill...'

He grasped the table and tried to pull himself out of the chair; I took his arm and helped him to his feet, which stumbled a little in bloodlessness. 'It's okay,' I said. 'It's okay, Kieran...Listen, let me look into this a little while longer, then. I'll see what I can find out about Fisher, and maybe there'll be something concrete we can use. Sound good?'

'I don't know...I don't know what good it'll do anymore.'

'It'll be something, at least.'

'But what if he turns onto you?'

Kieran's eyes had turned to black stone. 'I'll have to take that chance,' I said after a moment. 'I'll get back to you. Just take some rest.'

I let him go back into the ward and disappear as I stood in the the visiting lounge and wondered whatever the hell it was I could do. I had Jonathan Fisher's history and his address, and nothing else other than a damaged soldier's claims.

I left the clinic with a sinking feeling in the pit of my gut; I still wasn't sure of what Kieran had wanted Fisher's location for, and what he would be capable of doing with it. He was a young man with years ahead of him and yet he'd already seen more death, more chaos than half the people in the world might see in their entire life. It'd done something to him, something bad, just as it had done to every other lost soul in that military clinic.

I didn't even know what else it was I could find out about Lieutenant Fisher through the channels I had access to, so I didn't have any clear destination in mind when I got back into my car and drove across the cooling afternoon sun. I drove to Newham, a quiet residential district on the other side of town, with short lawns of new grass and starter homes for the young and fresh of the world—22 Stearns Road, the address I had on record for Jonathan Fisher.

The house was a wide hangdog family bungalow with panelled eggshell walls and a well-groomed hedgeline. I knocked at the front door and didn't know who I'd expect; possibly Fisher himself, who I'd only seen in my report from his official military  portrait. Tall, dark eyes, well-built and heavy-framed—some kind of man that could seem like everything on the surface of the normal world, and yet somewhere deep down be capable of everything wrong with it. I'd seen that man too many times.

But I didn't see him again, at least not when the front door opened; a small woman with long dark hair had answered with a burst of a smile, which quickly faded into polite embarrassment.

'Oh, I'm sorry,' she said, brushing her hair back and shaking off her smile. 'I thought you were my husband. Can I help you?'

'Sorry to bother you, ma'am,' I said with the quick affect of an officious tone. 'I'm from the ADF Reintegration Centre. Your husband is Lieutenant Jonathan Fisher?'

'Well, yes' the woman said, 'but he's not a lieutenant anymore. He was discharged earlier this month.'

'I'm aware of that, miss. Our centre is committed to the rehabilitation of ex-servicemen into society. Is your husband home?'

She smiled regret. 'I'm afraid not, but he should be home any minute. He's picking our girls up from school. You're welcome to come in and wait if you'd like.'

She told me her name, but I already knew it from the file: Kelly. Married nine years ago to a rising young recruit in the Defence Force, the mother of two girls, six and seven. She apologetically cleared the living room of a scattering of bright children's toys as I came in and sat on the sofa.

'Has your husband spent any time at a military rehabilitation clinic, or in therapy, Mrs Fisher?'

Kelly sat across from me. 'Not that I know of, no,' she said.

'The reason I ask is related to the attack of your husband's platoon. Many of the surviving members are being treated for forms of post-traumatic stress disorder at official centres since your husband's discharge, and I was following up to see how Lieutenant Fisher has been acclimating to civilian life. Has he been having any adverse emotional reactions that you know of, Mrs Fisher? Any depressive episodes?'

She had a reaction of surprise and shook her head. 'No, nothing like at all. Jon's been so happy ever since he got home, so excited to be back with the girls and I.'

'Has he mentioned a member of his squad by the name of Kieran Harrison in any capacity? Or any other servicemen he knew during his service?

'No—he hasn't really spoken at all about his time over there, over than just how proud he is to have served. Jon is so very faithful to his country.'

'I see.' I leant back in the white cotton sofa and thought of a new in-road to take; as I did, I noticed the necklace hanging at her collarbone. 'That's a very lovely necklace, Mrs Fisher,' I said.

She flushed a little, her pale cheeks colouring, and she took it in her fingers. 'Oh, thank you—Jon bought it at a market in Damascus and brought it home for me.' I could see it clearer as she did: a smooth amber iron pendant in the shape of an Arabian knot. It gleamed dimly in the cooling light of the afternoon.

Kelly Fisher was still smiling amiably. 'It's a funny thing,' she was saying, the necklace twisting idly in her tips of her fingers, 'he actually brought it home for one of our daughters. Said it was something little girls wear over there. But she didn't want it. I don't know why, but she just got scared whenever Jon would try and put it on her, so he gave it to me instead. Well, you know, I don't think the girls have been able to understand yet what their daddy has done, why he had to leave them for four years and come back all of a sudden—I think that war is something they can't really comprehend yet.'

She released a breath and turned her attention back to me. 'But I'm so sorry, you aren't interested in all that...I just wish I knew where my husband was so you could be on your way.'

She checked the time again, and bit her lip.

'Have you called him?' I asked.

'A couple of times, before you got here,' she said. 'I don't know why he doesn't have his damn phone on so I could know if he was taking the girls to McDonald's, or something. If he didn't take the car, I'd drive over by the school and check if he's held up on something.'

'I've got a car,' I said. 'I could run you over there, if you'd like.'

'Oh, I couldn't be an imposition...'

I insisted she wouldn't be and we backed out of the driveway. Kelly sat with a still silence as we rounded the prim houses and parklands of the neighbourhood; I thought of asking if there was anything she was worried about, when we began to hear the high wail of a blaring horn somewhere nearby the school.

I turned a roundabout and followed its direction. What we found was a long thread of cars locked in a jam down a small lane; their drivers were standing by their open doors and peering somewhere toward the end of the street, toward the sound of the car horn still blasting.

Kelly sat up with a jolt. Her eyes widened. 'Oh, God—'

When she saw the police cruisers and the ambulance past the cluttered tableau of held-up cars in front of us, she tore herself from the seat and made a frantic dash down the road toward them. I followed but didn't stop her.

Kieran Harrison's room had only faint traces more of life than the visiting lounge of the ward did. I was sitting quietly on the end of his bed, waiting for him to make some kind of a reaction. I don't know that he had any more life to react with.

So I took a breath and went on. 'His daughters were unharmed,' I said. 'They were in the backseat when it happened. Not a scratch. The police told me Fisher died the instant his head hit the windscreen.'

Kieran made a sound. 'Just an instant,' he said. He wasn't looking at me. 'He never saw it coming. Never had a moment to know what was going to happen to him.'

I nodded lightly. 'Someone had just cut in front of him, Fisher hit the brake at the wrong time, spun his wheel in the wrong direction to avoid a crash...Either his seat belt was faulty or he just wasn't wearing one. A rear-end, just like a million that happen every minute. His spine just...snapped.'

He winced in phantom pain, and I bit my lip at my choice of words. Eventually, he stood and looked out the window of his room, at the swaying brush of the gentle fern outside touching at the glass which each movement of a breeze we couldn't feel.

'It's okay to not know how to feel, Kieran,' I said.

'No,' he said quietly. 'The problem is I'm feeling too many things at once—and I don't know which is the right one. I feel bad for his daughters and for his wife, to have their lives ruined in an instant like that. Just like Jonathan ruined so many other lives in an instant on the battlefield. I don't know whether it's better or worse that they don't know what kind of a person he really was.'

'Maybe it's better that way,' I said. 'Maybe it means your life can go on now.'

Kieran shook his head. 'Death is death. Here or there. Accident or intentional. I don't know if it's karma, or fate, or God, or just bad fucking luck that managed to kill Lieutenant Fisher before I could. Something did, and it means the same goddamn thing. Maybe it was just a bad driver and a shitty seat belt. Maybe it was someone else from our platoon that tracked him down—someone that was in the other car, or that had done something to his...I don't know. I don't think I'll ever know.'

'I don't think I'll ever know, either.'

For a while I watched him at the window of his room, and thought of how eventually he'd be released from that clinic after enough pills and enough therapy to mark him as safe to re-enter society. In the meantime, all the souls of the dead lands of the world were still there, somewhere. Jonathan Fisher was one, but Kieran Harrison wasn't. And neither was I, no matter how many times I came close.

***