Crimson Lake

by Candice Fox

  My wife.

  Surely she’d seen something. Heard something. This sort of twisted, depraved appetite didn’t just manifest instantly at the sight of a kid standing alone on the side of the road. It must have been something I’d been hiding for a long time. Maybe all my life. Surely I’d revealed my true self to Kelly at some point in our eight-year marriage – made a strange comment while drunk, left some questionable internet searches in my browser history, got a little handsy with the neighbour’s kid in the backyard pool one Saturday afternoon.

  At the end of the day, the true test of Kelly’s culpability in my crime had to have been the arrival of our daughter. Surely when Kelly gave birth to Lillian and I’d held the warm, struggling infant in my big hands for the first time, some primal maternal alert had pinged.

  These dark thoughts completely took me over, so that when I eventually wriggled out of their grasp I found myself parked in the main street of Holloways Beach, my hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead with my jaw clamped shut. Two women seated in the outdoor area just beside my car window were staring at me, wondering perhaps what had got me so rigid with thought. I jumped out of the car and walked quickly away from them before they could recognise me.

  I’d recognised Dynah’s turquoise apron the first time I met her in the Freemans’ kitchen from a cafe called ‘Starfish’ on the main drag at Holloways Beach. The footpath was littered so tightly with tables that I had to slide sideways between people enjoying their lunches. The occasional upwards glance from diners sent minor electric shocks through me. Did they recognise me? What would they do if they did?

  I found Dynah ringing up bills at the counter. It was only when she looked up at me with those tired, world-worn eyes that I realised how incredibly rude I was being, just barging in here hoping to pick on her again about her long-dead sister.

  She glanced sideways at her manager. It was a look that told me instantly that not only had she seen the news, but that she was going to tell him exactly what she’d seen and exactly how that related to the big, bearded guy at the counter.

  ‘Please.’ I held my hands up. ‘Please don’t.’

  ‘What do you want?’ she said.

  ‘I’ll order.’ I glanced at the huge chalkboards behind her. ‘I don’t want to cause you any trouble. I’ll get a chicken sandwich and a ham and cheese. Take away.’

  She rang up the food reluctantly. The hand that darted out for my money was swift, frightened. I went to a table at the side of the room to wait, and when she brought the food out in a carry bag she surprised me by sliding into the seat across from me, reaching out and grabbing my hand, her touch hard, unkind.

  ‘You need to let this fucking thing go,’ she said, leaning close so that I could see the fury in her eyes. ‘You’ve got enough troubles of your own right now, mate.’

  I took out my phone and opened the email from Eleanor Chapman. I put it on the table before us and pointed to the photograph of Lauren Freeman, the one with the mysterious hand hanging over her shoulder.

  ‘Whose hand is that?’

  ‘Jesus Christ, are you even listening to me?’ Dynah snapped. She shook her head ruefully. ‘No wonder you’re in such a fucking mess. You’re a complete dumbass. Mate, you’re all over the news. They’re saying you tried to kill some kid down in Sydney.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I nodded, still holding the phone. ‘That’s what they’re saying.’

  ‘So what are you doing coming after me? I’d be hiding somewhere safe, if I was you.’

  ‘Well, there’s more to my story than the official version, Dynah,’ I said. ‘I think you can tell that, or you wouldn’t be speaking to me right now. I think you’re a good judge of character. And you know what? So am I. And I think there’s more to your sister’s story than the official version, too.’

  She sighed at me. Glanced at the doorway to the kitchen, where the manager was watching carefully. He’d probably given her five minutes to clear up whatever the problem was with her mysterious visitor and then get the hell back to work. Time was running out.

  ‘I’ve been reading Murder in the Top End,’ I said. ‘And a couple of things about it bother me. First, it paints a picture of Amanda Pharrell as being a complete weirdo. A freak. Now, I’m all right with that. She is a complete weirdo, and she would have been back then. Maybe not the sinister and violent kind of weird described in the book, but certainly not normal.’

  ‘So what’s your problem, then?’ Dynah asked.

  ‘My problem is that the book gives no account whatsoever of Amanda suffering any bullying while she was at school,’ I said. ‘Think about it. The girl’s bananas. A loner. Her dad’s an alcoholic and her mother wants nothing to do with her. She’s a dreamer. A social outcast. So why didn’t the popular girls make her life a living hell?’

  Dynah sat staring at me, her arms folded over her chest.

  ‘My second problem is with your sister,’ I said. ‘She’s stunning. Clever. Athletic. I mean, she’s dead, and half the people she went to school with are still claiming to have been her best friend. She’s got the whole cohort twisted around her little finger even from beyond the grave.’

  Dynah said nothing.

  ‘So why no boyfriend?’ I asked. ‘No mention of any boyfriends whatsoever. That’s what bothers me the most, you know? I mean, plenty about this bothers me, don’t get me wrong. There’s the totally ludicrous notion that a girl like Lauren and someone like Amanda might be parked in the bush together not far from a school party just, what, having a chat? Painting each other’s nails? They’re saying she and Amanda arrived at the party together, shared a pre-party drink, planned to go off together and have a good night in full view of all Lauren’s school buddies. And yet there’s no evidence whatsoever to suggest Lauren even looked at Amanda once before that night. That they’d ever even had a casual relationship. Spoken. Passed notes. Been over to each other’s houses. So Lauren’s going to drive her to the party? With no concern at all for what that might do to her social status?’

  Dynah sighed heavily.

  ‘But no boyfriend?’ I scoffed. ‘Come on. A girl like Lauren would have had a queue of potential –’

  ‘There was no one else there,’ Dynah said. She stood up fast, towered over me at the table. ‘There was no one else there, all right? Just leave it alone. Leave the fucking thing alone.’

  ‘I wasn’t asking –’

  I stood, but the manager was coming around the counter, obviously noting his employee’s distress. Dynah wiped at her eyes. I showed her the photograph of her sister again, and the arm hanging over Lauren’s shoulder.

  ‘Who is this guy?’ I asked, one eye on the approaching manager. ‘A friend? A teacher? Why was the relationship secret?’

  ‘He had nothing to do with it,’ Dynah spat. She whirled around and almost knocked her manager over, the guy trudging towards me to give me what I deserved.

  I didn’t get what I deserved. But I had what I needed.

  I sat for long hours in the car down the block from Ormund Smitt’s house while Amanda whipped the young man into a paranoid frenzy. She was having far too much fun with the situation. Now and then she lay back on the grass and giggled at what she was writing, thumbs dancing over the buttons, pretending to be some government ghouls in an icy office block somewhere putting their strategy together to bring Ormund down. It was frightening how easily she could tap into the boy’s ludicrous terrors. And how much she seemed to be entertained by that terror.

  When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I asked what she was saying.

  ‘I was texting that we know that Ormund knows where Jake is, and that we’re going to get him to tell us, even if it means using our old-school torture methods.’

  ‘I feel faintly queasy about how unethical this is,’ I said, leaning my arm on the car door. ‘What happens if you convince this kid that all his conspiracy theories are true, and top-secret agents are going to come waterboard his arse –’

  ‘When I convince him o
f that,’ she grinned.

  ‘When you do,’ I sighed, ‘and it turns out he doesn’t have a clue what happened to Jake?’

  ‘If he’s innocent, we’ll have wasted an afternoon, and provided a lonely young man with plenty of wank material for him and his end-of-the-world cronies.’ She sat up, picked blades of grass from her spiky hair. ‘Ted, I’ve known people like this. There are plenty of them in jail. Conspiracy theorists. Paranoid delusionals. Psychics and mediums. They concoct these stupid theories because they’re lonely, and they want to feel important. Imagine if the world really was going to end, and you were the only person with the special intellect necessary to divine that information from a bunch of otherwise innocuous books. What a way to stick it to the big boys who picked on you in high school.’

  ‘I suppose.’ I glanced at the house through the fading sunlight.

  ‘And imagine then that someone actually comes out of the woodwork and confirms it for you – Yes, Ormund, you discovered our secret. September 11 was a stunt by the US government. There was a shooter on the grassy knoll. The rapture is coming, and Jake Scully did know. We’re not happy about it, but we’re admitting it. You were right all along, Ormund.’

  She slid down onto her side, reading another message back from the boy.

  ‘He loves it,’ she said. ‘Deep down inside.’

  I looked up as I heard a screen door bang, and the willowy figure of Ormund Smitt emerged from his house. He shouted something back through the door, then marched purposefully towards his car, giving a cursory glance up and down the street. He bent and looked under the engine before getting in, searched up to the end of the car. For what? Bombs? Tracking devices? The cruelty of the situation weighed on me. This kid was obviously crazy.

  ‘Lee Harvey Oswald,’ I murmured.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘The shooter on the grassy knoll. It reminded me. Lee Harvey Oswald said he didn’t shoot JFK. He said he was just a patsy. A crazy patsy for whoever really wanted Kennedy dead.’

  ‘Start the car.’ Amanda was slapping my arm. ‘Ormund’s on the move. Keep on him. If I lose you, call me when you end up where you’re going.’

  I started the engine at the same time as our target. Ormund pulled what was probably his mother’s blue Tarago out of the driveway and took off down the street.

  While I was following Ormund, and the sun dipped below the mountains, Fabiana called me again. I’d been ignoring her calls, but now I had something to focus on, something to do with my hands while I spoke to her. I was feeling reckless. I answered the call and pressed the speaker.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d pick up,’ she said after a long stretch of silence, in which she must have been regaining her composure. ‘Ted, I’m sorry. What I did was –’

  ‘Illegal? Unethical? A complete betrayal of trust?’ I said.

  ‘All of those things.’ She sighed.

  ‘Mean. It was strangely mean. You didn’t seem like that kind of person when I first met you. Although, maybe I was just kidding myself.’

  ‘Ted,’ Fabiana breathed, ‘listen. I’ve been … I’ve been so mixed up over this case. They sent me up here to hunt down a predator and squeeze something out of him. Either some hideously lit snapshots or, better yet, a videoed stream of abuse for the front page of the website. But you’re not anything like what I expected you to be. You’re … You’re …’

  ‘Gentle?’ I said.

  ‘Well.’ She considered, laughed in spite of herself. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Gentle, handsome, tall,’ I said. ‘A young guy. A nice guy. Good to women. Good to animals. All my bills are paid. All the tea towels in my kitchen are neatly folded.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, that’s lovely,’ I said, trying to contain the anger in my voice. ‘How about you stop thinking about what a great guy I am, and start focusing on my actual fucking case?’

  There was silence while she thought about my words. The Tarago slipped between the cars ahead of me, turning off towards the coast.

  ‘I’d like to think that if I was the hunchbacked old fiend with the crazy eyes you’d been expecting, you’d still have pursued my innocence by having a look at the evidence. I don’t want people supporting me because I’m relatable. I want them supporting me because I’m innocent.’

  ‘You’re so angry. What’s happened?’ she asked. Her voice was smaller. A little hurt.

  I drove in silence. The phone on the dashboard shone, the call live. I considered just hanging up. But as I breathed, long and low, I started calming down. The exhaustion rushed up again, tried to douse the flames.

  ‘People are hassling my wife.’ I rubbed my face with one hand, gripped the wheel with the other. ‘It’s hard. Okay, she abandoned me. But she never had anything to do with this. This happened to her as much as it happened to me, and she doesn’t deserve the hassle. I’m trying to bury myself in my work to get away from it all, but people are turning up at my house now. It’s scary.’

  ‘Listen,’ she said again, ‘can I meet you tonight?’

  ‘No,’ I laughed. ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘I won’t be recording you.’

  ‘Why the hell else would you want to meet with me?’

  ‘Because I believe you, Ted.’ I heard the strain in her voice. ‘And other people are starting to believe you too. I know it hurts. I know what I did was wrong. But that video has made a few people out there start to challenge what they think they know about you. I think we can do more. I think there’s a chance you won’t have to live like this forever.’

  I held onto the steering wheel, tried to believe her. I didn’t.

  ‘Would you just give me a few minutes to talk?’

  I looked at the phone on the dashboard, the blue people mover ahead of me on the highway off ramp heading into the lush forest lining the grey streak of ocean in the distance.

  I used my phone to drop a pin and sent the map to Amanda. I assumed she’d take a back route through the bush to try to catch up to Ormund and me. Ormund parked the car by the side of the road and I stopped just out of his line of sight, slipping out into the bush and tucking my gun into the back of my jeans. There was a part of me that was still sceptical about Ormund’s involvement in Jake’s disappearance. The kid seemed like a true delusional when we’d talked to him on Skype, someone so caught up in their fantasy world they hardly seemed capable of operating in the real one. But underestimating him would be a mistake. Thunder cracked overhead as I followed the narrow-shouldered young man down a trail into the mangroves.

  We were deep in croc country now. The air was thick with the sickly sweet smell of pythons, and now and then in the distance I heard what might have been a croc bark, the huge reptiles waking for the twilight hunt, calling to each other across the water. Between the trees I glimpsed the creek, but it was a long way off, parallel to us as we made our way through the bush. Now and then Ormund stopped to look into the growing darkness, a hand reaching out absent-mindedly, plucking the seeded heads off reeds at the edge of the path. I crouched and waited, wiped sweat from my brow with the edge of my T-shirt. I needed the rain. When it began to mist I licked it off my upper lip, grateful.

  Without any kind of warning I suddenly became aware of Amanda. She appeared behind me like a ghost, hands by her sides, an eyebrow raised in questioning. I pointed up the path at Ormund. She was walking towards me as though on eggshells, still panting from her frantic ride, her jeans sprayed with mud up to her mid-thighs and hair slicked back with sweat.

  We followed Ormund for a half an hour. Everything ached, my battered legs tired on the uneven ground. Before long, the mangroves opened onto the creek bank. There, the young man began to peel away the palm fronds and clinging vines covering a large, square object.

  I raised my gun and stepped out of the bush into the clearing.

  ‘Get down,’ I said. ‘Down on the ground, Smitt.’

  Ormund whirled around and looked at me. His face was se
t, eyes glimmering in the fading light, the fear and guilt of a young son caught in his father’s office. He seemed not to see the gun at all.

  ‘I won’t tell you where he is.’ Ormund was shivering. He seemed suddenly, impossibly small.

  ‘We know where he is, Ormund,’ I said ‘He’s dead. You were obsessed with him. You led him out here in the middle of the night somehow and you killed him.’

  The young man snorted, looked away.

  ‘Were you in communication with Jake?’ I asked. ‘Did he say something you didn’t like?’

  Ormund seemed to decide to rush at me and set his feet, his eyes blazing. I shifted my weight and he thought better of it, backed up against the car.

  ‘Why did you do it, Ormund?’ I asked.

  ‘You couldn’t possibly understand it all.’ Ormund shivered, mumbled something I couldn’t hear. ‘You couldn’t possibly …’

  He glanced at Amanda, back at me, and then turned and bolted for the water.

  ‘Fuck!’ Amanda cried, half in frustration, half in amusement. ‘He’s going for the creek!’

  We shouted for the boy to stop, but he sprinted into the water, arms forward, crashing through the muddy brown creek like a child would at the beach. Amanda didn’t slow as we ran to the bank. I put an arm out and held her back.

  ‘It’s not worth it.’ I looked up and down the bank, tried to spot any crocs there, sliding on their fat bellies into the water after the boy.

  I realised I was panting, my lungs clamped tight against my ribs, as we watched Ormund swim towards the opposite bank. What would I see if he was taken? A sickening splash. An arm reaching. And then the red stillness of the water. I couldn’t watch. I covered my face with my hands and turned away, shoved fingers into my ears.

  ‘God, no, please,’ I moaned. I didn’t want to hear the scream. ‘Please. Please.’

  ‘He made it.’ Amanda laughed beside me after a time, slapping me hard in the arm. ‘The crazy fucker made it.’

  The vines that Ormund had pulled down from the trees around Jake’s car had not died. Like all jungle plants, they were too hardy, too strong, their furry fingers suctioning to the windows and doors, the leaves continuing to uncurl across the glass and inside the wheel mount. If we hadn’t found the vehicle, I knew the rainforest would have eaten it completely in time, wrapped its tentacles around its windows and doors and drawn it into itself, the way an octopus pulls a struggling crab into its sucking mouth. We stripped away the vines, shoved back the palm fronds, their razor edges digging at our hands. The inside of the car was dark. I pulled open the driver’s side door and flicked the switch of the roof light.