by Jane Harper
‘So how did you finally find this place?’ Falk said.
They were alone but King kept his voice low.
‘A prisoner out at Barwon called in with a tip-off. He’s ex-bikie gang, facing a long stretch for assault, and has had enough, apparently. When he heard on the news we were looking for the cabin, he recognised a bit of leverage when he saw it. He says he had some mates who used to do the odd drug deal with Sam Kovac.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘He says Sam liked to show off a bit about his old man, boasting he knew stuff the police didn’t, that sort of thing. Sam brought them out here twice.’ King nodded at the thin trail at their feet. ‘The bikie wasn’t sure exactly where it was, but knew about the North Road and a couple of other landmarks – there’s a gorge a bit further up – so we were able to narrow it down. He reckons he might still have a bit more to add. He’s hammering out a deal with his lawyers as we speak.’
‘And you believe him about Kovac?’ Carmen said. ‘He hasn’t just stumbled across this place on his own and is trying to dress it up?’
‘Yeah. We believe him.’ King sighed. A tiny pause. ‘We’ve recovered some human remains.’
There was a silence. Falk looked over. ‘Who?’
‘It’s a good question.’
‘Not Alice?’
‘No.’ King shook his head. ‘Definitely not. They’re too old. Couple of other interesting things up there as well – you’ll see for yourselves – but no sign of her yet.’
‘Christ,’ Carmen said. ‘What has gone on there?’
Somewhere deep in the bush, invisible kookaburras laughed and screamed.
‘Another good question.’
Day 3: Saturday Night
Beth heard the crack of her hand against Alice’s cheek a beat before the smarting sensation flooded her palm. The sound seemed to reverberate around the cabin as her hand throbbed, hot and stinging.
For a single moment, it seemed to Beth like they were balancing on a knife-edge from which she – they – could still step back. Apologise. Shake hands. File a report with human resources on their return. Then, outside, the wind blew and Alice made a tight, angry noise in the back of her throat and, all together, they teetered and fell. When the shouting started, it came from every corner of the room.
Beth felt Alice grab her hair and drag her head downwards. She lost her balance and her shoulder crashed against the floor. Her lungs emptied, winded by her own weight. A pair of hands pushed her face against the ground and Beth could feel grit scraping her cheek and taste the rank dampness. Someone was pressing down on her. Alice. It had to be. In the closeness, Beth could smell the faint whiff of body odour and part of her mind found the space to be surprised. Alice had never seemed the type to sweat. Beth tried to claw back, but her arms were pinned at an awkward angle and she struggled, grasping at clothes, her fingers sliding off expensive water-resistant fabrics.
She felt a tug and another pair of hands scrabbling to pull her and Alice apart. Bree.
‘Get off her!’ Bree was shouting.
Beth wasn’t sure who she was talking to. She tried to twist free, then felt the thud and crash as Bree unbalanced and fell on them. The trio rolled heavily to one side, smashing into the table leg and sending it squealing across the floor. There was a sharp bump and someone across the room gave a cry of pain. Beth tried to sit up but was pulled back down by a hand in her hair. Her skull hit the ground hard enough to send a sickening wave from her gut to her throat. She saw white spots dancing in the dark, and under the weight of the fumbling, clawing hands, felt herself go slack.
Chapter 21
The track became only more difficult to navigate the farther they walked. After an hour, it disappeared almost completely as it crossed a stream, then re-emerged to veer erratically towards a steep drop by the side of the gorge King had mentioned. Sentry rows of identical trees started to play tricks on Falk’s eyes and he felt increasingly grateful for the occasional sight of police tape. He didn’t like the idea of doing this stretch alone. The rogue temptation to wander astray was ever-present.
It was a relief when Falk began to spot splashes of orange in the surrounding bush. Searchers. They must be getting close. As if in answer, the trees slowly gave way and a few steps later he found himself entering a small clearing.
In the centre, squat and bleak behind the lines of police tape and the flash of officers’ high-vis jackets, lay the cabin.
It was well camouflaged against the muted tones of the bushland and it looked purposefully lonely. From its gaping vacant windows to the unwelcoming sag of the door, it reeked of desperation. He could hear Carmen breathing next to him and, all around, the trees whispered and shuddered. The wind blew through the clearing and the cabin groaned.
Falk turned in a slow circle. The bushland pushed in from every side, with the occasional orange splash of searchers barely visible among the trees. From the wrong angle, he imagined the cabin would be almost impossible to see. The women were lucky to have stumbled across it at all. Or unlucky, he thought.
A police officer stood on guard near the side of the cabin, while another did the same a short distance away. Each had plastic sheets covering something at their feet. Both sheets sagged a little in the middle, but gave no hint at what was concealed.
Falk glanced at King. ‘Lauren told us they found the remains of a dog.’
‘Yep, that’s it there.’ King pointed to the nearest plastic sheet, the smaller of the two. He sighed. ‘The other one’s not though. The specialists are on their way.’
As they looked, the corner of the nearest sheet lifted in the wind and flapped back on itself. The guarding officer crouched to fix it, and Falk caught a glimpse of an exposed shallow ditch. He tried to imagine what it had been like for the women out here, alone and afraid. He suspected whatever he could conjure up would not even come close.
He realised he had always harboured a nagging feeling that the four remaining women had been quick to abandon Alice once they’d discovered her missing. But now, as he stood in front of that forlorn cabin, he could almost hear an insistent whisper in his own mind. Get away. Run. He shook his head.
Carmen was looking at the larger plastic sheet.
‘They never did find that fourth victim way back then. Sarah Sondenberg,’ she said.
‘No.’ King shook his head. ‘They never did.’
‘Any early indication?’ She nodded at the sheet. ‘You must be thinking it.’
King looked like he wanted to say something, but didn’t. ‘The specialists still have to take a look. We’ll know more after that.’ He lifted the tape across the cabin entrance. ‘Come on. I’ll show you inside.’
They ducked under the tape. The door gaped like a wound as they stepped in. A faint odour of rot and decay underscored the crisp heady scent of the eucalypts. And it was dark; the windows let in only a little daylight. As he stood in the centre of the room, Falk could first make out shapes, then details. Dust that had obviously once laid thick, now showed all the signs of disturbance. A table was shoved aside at an odd angle and leaves and debris lay scattered around. In a second room, he could see a mattress branded with a dark and disturbing stain. And, near Falk’s feet, soaked into the dirty floorboards under the broken window, was a black spatter of what appeared to be fresh blood.
Day 3: Saturday Night
Lauren couldn’t find the torch. Her nails were scrabbling against the filthy floorboards when she heard a thump and the screech of the table sliding across the room. She registered it flying towards her a split second before the corner clipped her face.
The shock squeezed the breath from her lungs as she toppled back, landing hard on her tailbone. She grunted and lay there, dazed, beneath the broken window. The old gash on her forehead throbbed in agony and when she touched it, her fingertips came away wet. She thought she was crying, but the liquid around her eyes was too thick. The realisation made her retch.
Lauren dragged her fingers across her eye
s, wiping them clear. When she could see again, she flicked her hands, the blood from her fingers spattering onto the floorboards. Through the window, she could see only clouds. Like the stars had never been there.
‘Help me!’ someone was screaming. She couldn’t tell who. She almost didn’t care, but then there was a thud and a loud wail. A torch came skittering across the floor, its beam bouncing off the walls at crazy angles, then it hit the wall and went out.
Lauren clambered to her feet, and staggered towards the trio on the ground, forcing her bloodied hands into the vicious huddle. She had no idea who she was grabbing as she tried to drag the group apart. Next to her, someone else was trying to do the same. Jill, she realised.
Lauren’s fingers found flesh and she dug her nails in, raking them back, not caring who it was as she struggled to put some cold night air between the bodies. An arm swung up from nowhere and Lauren ducked. It caught Jill on the jaw so hard she heard the woman’s teeth crack. Jill gave a wet grunt and staggered backwards, her hand clamped over her mouth.
The movement unbalanced the huddle, and as Lauren gave one final pull, it broke apart. There was nothing but ragged breathing, then the sound of each scuttling to their respective corners.
Lauren slumped against the wall. Her forehead was stinging, and now she could feel her right wrist aching where it had been bent back. She wondered if it was swelling up and ran a finger under the woven bracelet Rebecca had given her. It seemed okay for now, just sore. The bracelet was a little loose anyway, she probably didn’t need to take it off.
She sat up straighter, and the edge of her foot caught something. She reached down, her fingers finding the smooth plastic of a torch and she found the switch and clicked it on. Nothing happened. She shook it. Still nothing. It was broken. Lauren felt anxiety bubble in her chest and suddenly she couldn’t bear the dark a minute longer. She crawled to her knees, fumbling blindly around the floor until her fingers closed around a cold metal cylinder. She grasped it, feeling the weight in her hands. Beth’s industrial torch.
Shaking, Lauren turned it on, and felt a sharp relief as the cone of light cut through the dusty air. She looked down and could see her own blood on her boots, red and smeared, and another spatter on the floor near the window. She turned away in disgust and moved the beam slowly around the room.
‘Is everyone okay?’
The light landed on Jill, slumped near the makeshift partition. Her lips were swollen and caked with blood and she was clutching her jaw. She flinched under the glare and as Lauren moved the beam away, she heard Jill spit. Beth was lying on the floor nearby in a dazed heap, rubbing the back of her head while her sister sat bolt upright with her back against a wall and her eyes wide.
It took Lauren a moment longer to find Alice in the dark.
She was standing by the cabin door, when the faint yellow glow finally picked her out, dishevelled and flushed. And, for the first time that Lauren could remember in thirty years, Alice Russell was crying.
Chapter 22
Falk looked at the blood spatter on the floor.
‘Do we know who that belongs to?’
King shook his head. ‘They’ll check. But it’s recent.’
‘And what about that?’ Falk nodded at the mattress propped against the wall. A clear plastic sheet had been taped around it, but the stain on the fabric was plainly visible.
‘I’m told it’s probably actually advanced mould,’ King said. ‘So nowhere near as bad as it looks.’
‘It would look bad enough if you were stuck out here,’ Carmen said.
‘Yeah. I can imagine that would look very bad indeed.’ He sighed. ‘As I was saying, so far there’s no obvious indication of what’s happened to Alice. The other women said she took her backpack, and, sure enough, there’s no sign of it, so hopefully she did at least have that with her. But it doesn’t look like she found her way back here, or if she did, she hasn’t attempted to leave any kind of message that we can see.’
Falk looked around and thought of the message left on his voicemail. Hurt her. He pulled his mobile out of his pocket. The screen was blank.
‘Anyone been able to get a signal in here?’
‘No.’ King shook his head.
Falk took a few steps around the room, listening to the cabin creak and groan. It was an unwelcoming place, there was no question, but at least it had walls and a roof. The nights had been wild enough outside the windows of the lodge. He didn’t like to think about what Alice may have faced exposed to the elements.
‘So what happens now?’ he said.
‘We’re combing the surrounds, but it’s an absolute bugger to search,’ King said. ‘You saw what it was like walking in and the bushland’s the same in every direction. It could take days to cover the immediate area. Longer if the weather gets worse.’
‘Which way did the women walk out?’ Carmen said. ‘The same way as we came in?’
‘No. We came in by the most direct route from the road, but that’s not the one they took. There’s a northbound trail running behind the cabin. You have to push through the trees to find it, but once you’re on it, it’s clear enough. They were already on that path when they stumbled across this place. If Alice did try to walk out, best guess is that it would have been along that route.’
Falk tried to focus on what King was saying. But even as he listened, he knew that a small part of him had been holding out hope that when the cabin was finally discovered, Alice Russell would be too. Hoping that she’d found her way back to it, afraid and angry maybe, but alive. But as the damp walls creaked, he thought of the tight-knit trees, the graves outside, the bloodstain on the floor, and he felt the last remaining shred of hope for Alice Russell tear and scatter.
The cabin was empty. Whatever had happened to Alice, she was out in the open, exposed. Somewhere, beneath the howl of the wind and the groan of the trees, Falk thought he could almost hear a death knell toll.
Day 3: Saturday Night
The aftermath was quiet, mostly, apart from ragged breathing. Particles of dust swirled in lazy circles in the torchlight as Jill probed her mouth with her tongue. The flesh felt swollen and tender and a tooth on the bottom right wobbled a fraction. It was a strange sensation, one she hadn’t felt since childhood. She was suddenly reminded of the kids when they were small. Tooth fairies and dollar coins. Her eyes felt hot and her throat went tight. She should call her children. As soon as she got out of here, she would.
Jill moved and felt something by her foot. A torch. She bent to pick it up, wincing, and fumbled with the switch. Nothing happened.
‘This torch is broken.’ Her words came out muffled through thick lips.
‘So is this one,’ someone said. One of the sisters.
‘How many have we got still working?’ Jill said.
‘Only one over here.’ The yellow beam flashed as Lauren passed over the torch she’d been holding. Jill felt the industrial weight in her hand. Beth’s, she realised. Maybe it had been the best choice to bring camping after all.
‘Any others?’ No answer. She sighed. ‘Shit.’
Across the room, Jill saw Alice wipe a hand over her eyes. The woman’s hair was tangled and she had dirty track marks on her cheeks. She was not crying now.
Jill waited for her to say something. Demand an apology, probably. Threaten to press charges, possibly. But instead, Alice simply sat down and brought her knees up to her chest. She stayed there, near the door, hunched and very still. Somehow, Jill found that more unsettling.
‘Alice?’ Bree’s voice came from a dark corner.
There was no answer.
‘Alice,’ Bree tried again. ‘Listen, Beth is still on probation.’
Still no response.
‘The thing is, she’ll have to go back to court if you –’ Bree trailed off. Waited. No response. ‘Alice? Are you listening? Look, I know she hit you but she’ll get in a lot of trouble if any of this is taken any further.’
‘So?’ Alice spoke finally.
Her lips barely moved. She still didn’t look up.
‘So don’t take it further, okay? Please.’ Bree’s voice had an undertone that Jill hadn’t heard before. ‘Our mum’s not well. She took it really hard last time.’
No reply.
‘Please, Alice.’
‘Bree.’ Alice’s voice had a strange quality to it. ‘There is no point asking me for a favour. You will be lucky to be employed this time next month.’
‘Hey!’ Beth’s voice rang out, hard and angry. ‘Don’t you threaten her. She’s done nothing but work her arse off for you.’
Alice looked up at that. Her words slid out, slow and deliberate, cutting through the dark like glass. ‘Shut up, you fat bitch.’
‘Alice, enough!’ Jill barked. ‘Beth isn’t the only one here on thin ice, so watch yourself or there’ll be trouble when –’
‘When what?’ Alice sounded genuinely curious. ‘When your magical rescue party appears?’
Jill had opened her mouth to respond, when, with a spike of panic, she suddenly remembered the phone. She had slipped it into her jacket pocket before the scuffle and she groped for it now. Where was it? She felt light-headed with relief when her hand closed around the sleek rectangle. She took it out and examined the screen, reassuring herself it was intact.
Alice was watching her. ‘You know that belongs to me.’
Jill didn’t reply, and slipped the phone back into her jacket.
‘So what happens now?’ Bree said.
Jill sighed silently. She felt wholly exhausted. She was damp and hungry and in pain and repulsed by her moist and grimy body. She felt invaded by the other women.
