by Jane Harper
‘All right. First,’ she said, in as measured a voice as she could muster. ‘We are all going to calm down. Then, I want everyone to get out their sleeping bags, and we’re going to agree to draw a line under this. For now, at least. We are going to get some sleep and we are going to work out a plan in the morning when we’re all feeling a little more clear-headed.’
No-one moved.
‘Everyone do that now. Please.’
Jill bent down and opened her backpack. She pulled out her sleeping bag, breathing out in relief when she heard the others follow her lead.
‘Put your sleeping bag next to mine, Alice,’ Jill said.
Alice frowned but didn’t argue for once. She unrolled her bag on the ground where Jill pointed and got in. Bree was the only one who bothered going outside to brush her teeth with rainwater. Jill was glad Alice didn’t try to do the same. She hadn’t decided if she would have to accompany her.
Jill climbed into her sleeping bag, grimacing as it clung to her like a wet plastic sack. She felt the phone in her jacket pocket and hesitated. She didn’t want to take her coat off, but she knew she wouldn’t sleep well in it either. The hood and zips had tangled and pinched when she’d tried the night before and it was going to be hard enough to get any rest as it was. After a moment, she slipped it off as quietly as she could, tucking it in next to her in the neck of her sleeping bag. She thought she could feel Alice watching her, but when she glanced over, the other woman was lying on her back, staring at the tin roof.
They were all overtired, Jill knew. They needed to rest, but the atmosphere in the room felt toxic. Her head throbbed against the hard floor and she could hear the creak of bodies shifting uncomfortably. There was a movement from the sleeping bag next to hers.
‘Go to sleep, everyone,’ she snapped. ‘Alice, if you need to get up in the night, wake me.’
There was no reply.
Jill turned her head. She could see almost nothing in the dark. ‘Okay?’
‘It’s like you don’t trust me, Jill.’
Jill did not bother to reply. Instead, she put her hand on her jacket, making sure she could feel the hard edges of the phone beneath the fabric folds before she closed her eyes.
Chapter 23
Falk was glad to get out of the cabin. He and Carmen followed King into the clearing, where they all stood blinking a little in the natural light.
‘The trail the women followed out runs along there.’ King pointed behind the cabin, and Falk craned his neck to look. He could make out no trail, only a wall of trees with the occasional spot of orange as searchers delved in and out. They seemed to appear and vanish with every step.
‘We’re working through as fast as we can, but –’ King didn’t finish, but he didn’t have to. The bushland was dense, and dense meant slow. Dense meant some things were easy to miss. It meant some things never resurfaced at all.
Falk could hear hidden voices in the trees call out for Alice, then wait for a response. Some of the pauses seemed short and perfunctory. Falk didn’t blame them. It had now been four days. A searcher emerged from the trees and beckoned to King.
‘Excuse me a minute,’ King said, and headed away.
Alone, Falk and Carmen looked at each other. The plastic sheets lying at the officers’ feet rippled in the wind.
‘I really hope it’s Sarah Sondenberg under there,’ Carmen said, nodding at the larger sheet. ‘For her parents’ sake. Having to beg Kovac for information is the kind of thing that would haunt a person. At least the other families got a funeral.’
Falk hoped it was Sarah Sondenberg as well. He didn’t know what to hope for if it wasn’t.
He turned and surveyed the cabin. It had probably been well made when it was first built, but now it looked lucky to still be standing. It pre-dated Martin Kovac, he was sure, judging by the state of the wood. Who had built it? A long-forgotten ranger program? A nature lover who wanted a weekend bolthole, put up when legislation around parks was lax? He wondered if it had always seemed quite so lonely.
He walked over and tested the door, swinging it open and shut a few times. The hinges were so rotten they barely creaked. The wooden frame seemed to merely give way.
‘Not much noise. It would probably be possible to slip out without waking anyone. Or for someone to slip in, I suppose.’
Carmen tried it for herself. ‘There are no windows directly facing the back, either. So from inside, they wouldn’t have been able to see her heading for that northern trail.’
Falk thought about what the women had said and tried to imagine how it had played out. They said they had woken up and found Alice no longer there. If she had walked off alone, she would have crept away behind the cabin and into the dark. He thought of the timing of the voicemail message. 4.26 am. Hurt her. Whatever had happened to Alice Russell, it had almost certainly been under the cover of night.
He looked across the clearing. King was still busy in conversation. Somewhere behind the cabin was the northern trail. ‘Take a walk?’ he said to Carmen.
They waded through the long grass and into the trees. Falk looked behind him every few steps. They hadn’t gone far before the cabin disappeared. He was a little concerned they might miss the trail completely, but he needn’t have worried. When they found it, they knew. It was thin, but firm underfoot. A rocky bed had stopped it turning into mud in the rain.
Carmen stood in the middle of the path, looking one way and then the other.
‘I guess that way is north.’ She pointed, frowning a little. ‘It must be. It’s actually not easy to tell, though.’
Falk turned, already a little disoriented. The bushland was almost identical on both sides. He checked the direction from which they’d come and could see the searchers behind them. ‘Yeah, I think you’re right. That has to be north.’
They set off, the track just wide enough to allow them to walk side by side.
‘What would you have done?’ Falk said. ‘In their position. Stayed or tried to walk out?’
‘With the snakebite factor, I would have tried to walk. No choice, really. Without?’ Carmen considered. ‘Stay. I think. I don’t know. I wouldn’t have wanted to, not having seen the state of that cabin, but I think I would have. Bunkered down and trusted the search teams to do their jobs. What about you?’
Falk was asking himself the same thing. Stay, not knowing when, or even if, you’d be found? Walk, unsure what you were going towards? He opened his mouth, still not sure what his answer was, when he heard it.
A soft beep.
He stopped. ‘What was that?’
Carmen, a half-pace ahead, turned. ‘What?’
Falk didn’t answer. He listened. He could hear nothing but the rustle of the wind through the trees. Had he imagined it?
He willed the noise to come again. It didn’t, but he could recall it clearly in his mind. Short, subtle and unquestionably electronic. It took him a fraction of a moment to place it, but only a fraction. He put his hand in his pocket, knowing already that he was right. He usually heard that sound a dozen times a day. So often that, in context, he barely noticed it. Out here though, its strange and unnatural tone made him twitch.
The screen of his mobile phone was glowing. A text message. Falk didn’t bother to check what it said; the tone to alert him told him all he needed to know. He had a signal.
Falk held out the phone so Carmen could see. The signal was weak, but it was there. He took a step towards her. It disappeared. He stepped back and the signal fluttered once more to life. Falk walked a pace the other way. Gone again. There was a single sweet spot. Elusive and fragile, but perhaps enough for a broken message to get through.
Carmen turned and ran. Back down the trail towards the cabin, plunging into the tree line while Falk stayed exactly where he was. He stared at the screen as the signal flitted in and out and in again, not daring to take his eyes off it. Carmen reappeared a moment later, trailing a breathless Sergeant King. He looked at Falk’s screen, got on his radi
o, summoned the searchers. They delved into the bushland on either side of the trail, splashes of orange disappearing deep in the gloom.
Hurt her.
It took them less than fifteen minutes to find Alice Russell’s backpack.
Day 4: Sunday Morning
The clouds had cleared and the moon was bright and full.
Alice Russell’s blonde hair was a silver halo as she eased the cabin door shut behind her. There was a click and only the hint of a groan from the rotting hinges. She froze, listening. Her backpack hung over one shoulder, and she had something draped over her other hand. There was no movement from inside the cabin, and Alice’s chest rose and fell with a sigh of relief.
She placed her backpack silently at her feet and shook out the item draped over her arm. A waterproof jacket. Expensive, size large. Not hers. Alice ran her hands over the fabric, unzipping a pocket. She took something out, slim and rectangular, and she pressed a button. A glow, and a small smile. Alice slipped her phone into her jeans pocket. She rolled the jacket up and shoved it behind a fallen tree near the cabin door.
Alice slung her backpack over her shoulder, and with a click, a beam of torchlight lit the ground in front of her. She set off, quiet underfoot, heading towards the thick wall of trees and the path. As she disappeared around the side of the cabin, she didn’t look back.
Far behind her, on the other side of the clearing, through the papery strips of eucalyptus bark, someone watched her leave.
Chapter 24
Alice Russell’s backpack lay abandoned behind a tree. It was ten metres from the track, concealed amid thick scrub, and it was unopened. Almost, Falk thought, as though its owner had placed it down, stepped away and never returned.
Sergeant King had crouched over the pack for a long while, moving around it methodically, as if performing a choreographed dance. Then with a sigh, he had stood, sealed off the area, chosen his search team and cleared the site.
Falk and Carmen hadn’t argued. They found themselves heading back to the North Road the same way they had come, following the police markers and a pair of searchers who had been relieved from their shifts. They walked in silent single file, hesitating once, then again at various splits in the trail. Falk felt glad once more for the markings in the trees.
As he followed Carmen, he thought about the backpack. Lying there, alone, undisturbed, a man-made aberration on the landscape. It hadn’t looked like it had been rifled through, and he wondered what to make of that. The contents were probably of limited monetary value, but out here, where weatherproof clothing could mean the difference between life or death, worth was measured differently. Falk knew in his gut that Alice Russell would not have abandoned her backpack willingly and the realisation sent a chill through him that had nothing to do with the weather.
Find the belongings or shelter, the body’s always next. The words of the service station attendant kept running through his mind. He pictured the guy, behind the counter each time they had stopped at the service station before. Not that morning, though. The body’s always next. Falk sighed.
‘What are you thinking?’ Carmen said in a low voice.
‘Just that it doesn’t look good. Not if she had no equipment in conditions like this.’
‘I know. I reckon they’ll find her soon.’ Carmen looked at the bushland, hanging thick and heavy on both sides. ‘If she’s out there to find.’
They walked until the trees grew further apart and the daylight seemed a little brighter. Another twist and turn and they emerged, back on the North Road. Searchers and officers were huddled by the roadside, talking in low voices as the news about the backpack spread fast. Falk looked around. There was no sign of Ian Chase now and the Executive Adventures minibus had disappeared. The wind whistled along the open stretch of road and Falk pulled his jacket around him more tightly. He turned to one of the officers organising the returned searchers.
‘Did you see Ian Chase leave?’
The officer looked up, distracted. ‘No. Sorry. I didn’t realise he was gone. You could try to call him if it’s urgent. There’s a rangers’ hut with an emergency landline connection about ten minutes’ drive that way.’ He pointed down the road.
Falk shook his head. ‘It’s okay. Thanks.’
He followed Carmen to their car and she climbed behind the wheel.
‘Back to the lodge?’ she said.
‘I suppose so.’
She pulled away, the activity at the site growing smaller in the rear-view mirror until they turned a corner and it disappeared entirely. Cathedral walls of greenery towered over them on either side as they drove. There was no hint of the frenzy underway deep within. The bushland kept its secrets well.
‘That cabin was pretty well hidden, but it wasn’t unknown,’ Falk said, finally.
‘Sorry?’ Carmen was watching the road.
‘I was thinking of something Bree McKenzie said earlier. That prisoner with the tip-off knew about the cabin. So that’s one person at the very least. Who’s to say someone else hadn’t discovered it as well?’
‘Who are you thinking of? Our absent Executive Adventures friend?’
‘Maybe. For one. He spends a fair bit of time out there by himself.’ Falk thought about the throngs of searchers and officers and park workers at the search site. ‘But I suppose a lot of people do.’
They pulled into the lodge carpark and got their bags out of the boot. A ranger they’d seen before was behind the reception desk.
‘All happening up there, I hear?’ He looked from Falk to Carmen in hope of an update, but they just nodded. It was not their news to spread.
The door leading to the kitchen area was ajar and through the gap Falk could see Margot Russell. She was sitting at a table and crying silently, one hand over her eyes, her shoulders heaving. She was between Jill Bailey and a woman with the distinctive look of a community social worker. Lauren hovered behind them.
Falk turned away. They could speak to Margot later, now clearly wasn’t the time. Through the lodge’s large front window, he saw movement in the carpark. A dark head – no, two. Bree and Beth coming from the direction of the accommodation block. They were arguing. Falk couldn’t hear the words, but he saw them stop long enough to let a van drive by. The lettering on the side panel was distinctive. Executive Adventures. Ian Chase was back, from wherever he’d been. He nudged Carmen, who turned to look.
The ranger behind the desk had finished checking them in and handed over two keys. ‘Same ones as last time,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’ Falk took them and turned to leave, distracted as he and Carmen watched Chase climb out of his van. They were nearly out the door when the ranger behind the desk called out.
‘Hey. Wait.’ He was holding a phone receiver, his brow furrowed. ‘You guys are police, right? Call for you.’
Falk glanced at Carmen who shrugged, surprised. They walked back to the desk where Falk took the receiver and said his name. The voice on the other end was tinny and faint, but recognisable. Sergeant King.
‘Can you hear me?’ King’s words were rushed.
‘Barely.’
‘Shit. I’m still up near the site. On the rangers’ hut landline, reception’s always crap –’ He cut out. ‘Is that better?’
‘Not really.’
‘Never mind. Look, I’m on my way back. Are there any state officers there with you?’
‘No.’ They were the only ones in the reception area and the carpark was mostly deserted. Most officers must still be up at the site. ‘Just us.’
‘Okay. Mate, I need –’ Static. Nothing.
‘Wait. I lost you there.’
‘Jesus. Hear me now?’
‘Yeah.’
‘We’ve found her.’
There was a rattle of white noise. Falk breathed in and breathed out.
‘You get that?’ King’s voice was quiet.
‘Yes. I got that. Alive?’ Falk knew the answer before he asked the question. Next to him, Carmen stood frozen.<
br />
‘No.’
The word still came like a punch to the chest.
‘Listen.’ King’s voice was fading in and out. ‘We’re driving back now, quick as we can, but I need a favour. Who else is there?’
Falk looked around. Carmen. The ranger behind the desk. Margot Russell and her social worker in the kitchen with Jill and Lauren. The twins in the carpark. Ian Chase locking up his van and walking away. He relayed the list to King. ‘Why?’
More static. Then King’s faraway voice. ‘When we found her body, we found something else too.’
Day 4: Sunday Morning
The moon dipped behind a cloud, casting Alice Russell into shadow as she disappeared around the side of the cabin.
Across the clearing, the watcher stepped out from behind the wall of eucalyptus trees, fumbling with a trouser zip. The faint whiff of urine, hot against the cold ground. What time was it? Nearly 4.30 am, the wristwatch’s glowing figures reported. A swift glance at the cabin showed no movement there.
‘Shit.’
The watcher wavered, then ducked around the side of the cabin. The clouds parted and the long grass glowed silver and empty. The wall of trees was still. Alice was already out of sight.
Chapter 25
Two backpacks lay on the ground by the rear wheels of a rental car. The car boot was wide open, and the twins were arguing in low voices, their heads close. The wind caught and lifted their hair, mingling the dark strands. They turned their heads in unison, the argument shrivelling to nothing as Falk and Carmen approached.
‘Sorry, ladies.’ Carmen kept her voice neutral. ‘We need you to come back inside the lodge.’
‘Why?’ Beth looked from one to the other, an odd expression on her face. Surprise, perhaps. Something else, maybe.
‘Sergeant King wants to speak to you.’
‘But why?’ Beth said again.
Bree stood silently next to her sister, her wide-eyed gaze darting from face to face. She held her bandaged arm against her chest. Her other hand rested on the open car door.
