No Hiding Place

It came, as things often do, through perseverance.
I always knew I’d find you. Call it serendipity.
But I never forget a face. And from a thousand
feet up in a chopper there was little doubt
it was you; Zeiss 20x60 image stabilising binoculars
saw to that.

Like the Jackal, a master of disguise and forged
documents, you fooled everyone: priest, attorney,
chemist and now carpenter in Casuarina, New South
Wales known to locals as Barry Evans – not Eddie
Sweeney, bank robber. You had everyone fooled
until that fatal error, drunk and bragging in a bar

framed perfectly on a Polaroid by Aunt Isabel
last month. And now I’m here, with a crack team
of detectives, circling above your inflatable dinghy
in this idyllic beach setting, waiting for that
moment when at last we have you in our grasp,
in your final hiding place.