by Morgana Best
Melissa turned to me. “That was weird. He asked us if we had any questions, but then he left pretty much straight away.”
I agreed.
“Misty, would you take my camera and take some photos of the gorge, please? I’m not going anywhere near the edge.”
“I thought we were leaving,” I said, as she handed me the camera.
“We were, but I’ve forgotten to take any photos, and you know that Skinny will want some.”
“Okay.” I walked over to the old, brick wall which served to keep tourists on the safe side of the gorge. I’m not good with heights either, but there were rocks jutting out on the other side of the wall, so it was not a sheer drop. I leaned over and took several photos. Just as I was finishing up, I saw something on a ledge below and to my left.
“Melissa!” I screamed.
“I’m not coming over there. I told you!” she called back.
“Melissa, there’s a body, down on the rocks!”
Chapter 3
I had never seen a dead body before, at least not in person. I was used to watching crime shows on TV where actors were wearing special makeup, but I’d always shrugged off the visuals as if they were nothing. This, however, was an entirely different matter.
I took one more look over the brick wall that encircled the viewing platform. I scrunched up my face and turned back to Melissa.
“Are you sure it’s a dead body?” Melissa inched closer. “Oh Misty, do you think he’s dead?” Her voice was trembling.
I bit my lip. “I don’t know. I think so. He’s too far down to see clearly. Did you want to see for yourself?”
Melissa shook her head. “No way! Heights freak me out. Dead bodies do too, not that I’ve ever seen one.” Despite her words, she edged closer and closer toward the edge of the lookout platform.
I threw one last look over the edge at the dead body before hurrying back to the road. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cell phone. “I’m calling 000.”
000 is the Australian equivalent of 911. The operator who answered asked me if I wanted fire, police, or ambulance. I told her that I wanted police and ambulance. “I’m out at Bakers Creek Falls near Hillgrove, and I just saw what looks like a dead body, half way down the cliff face.” After a few minutes of explanation, I clicked off my phone and looked up at Melissa, who appeared to be close to tears. “They said they’re on their way, but because we’re so far out in the middle of nowhere, it’ll take them a while.”
Melissa sniffled. “Misty, how are we supposed to just sit around with a dead body so close to us?”
I moved away from the road and sat down, my back braced against the brick wall that kept people from tumbling down the steep face of the cliff. Or at least it was supposed to keep people from doing that, but judging by the body that lay beneath us, it didn’t always work.
Melissa shook her head slowly from side to side. She turned back to the road and looked both ways along it. “It’s kind of creepy out here,” she said.
I craned my neck and looked up at the sky. It was a soft blue with hardly a cloud in it, only a handful to the north, all white and fluffy and full. The sun was hanging just above the tree line to the west. “At least it’s not dark,” I said, and Melissa agreed.
The two of us sat in silence for some time. After a while, Melissa took a deep breath and then climbed to her feet. She stood in place for a moment, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She wiped her palms on her thighs and took a deep breath. Then she stepped slowly forward. She kept doing so, putting one foot in front of the other at a snail’s pace. She bent at her waist as she neared the edge of the lookout area, and then reached forward with one hand to grip the top of the guardrail, right next to where I was sitting.
I watched as Melissa edged forward slowly, leaning out over the guardrail. I reached up and slid a finger through one of Melissa’s belt loops on her jeans, trying to make her feel more secure. Suddenly, she backed away from the guardrail, forcing my finger painfully from the denim loop.
“Ouch!” I said, but I didn’t complain further when I saw her face. She was as pale as the midnight moon; all her color had drained away. Melissa threw her hands up to cover her mouth. When she pulled them away and spoke, her voice was quiet, and I had to lean forward to hear her, even though it was mostly silent in the lonely Australian bush.
“There’s a dead body,” Melissa said. “We can’t stay here.”
I tried to be the voice of reason. “We have to wait for the police, and besides, the dead body can’t hurt us.”
Melissa grabbed my arm. “Misty, can you hear that? A car?”
A car slowly came into view. However, it was not the police who turned into the viewing area, but the man who had stopped briefly to talk to us only earlier.
“I think it’s that historian guy, Gerald Whatsit,” Melissa said as his car approached.
The car came to a stop, and Gerald got out of his car. “Ladies, I’d only just gotten home when I heard a police call go out that there was a dead body here. Are you both all right?”
I was shocked. “You can listen to police radio? But they encrypted that some years ago.”
Gerald’s whole demeanor at once changed, and he narrowed his eyes at me. “I have a crypto board and a high gain directional antenna. It’s necessary, living out here. So, may I ask what kind of body you found?”
“The dead kind,” Melissa said somewhat rudely.
Gerald’s eyes darkened. “I meant, is it a child, a man, a woman?”
“A man,” I said. “Come and see.” Gerald followed me to the viewing platform and looked over.
“Oh dear, how dreadful. And what’s that around his neck? It looks like a camera hanging by a strap. I can’t see it too well.”
I peered over the edge too. “Oh yes, I can almost make it out. It does look like a camera.”
Gerald shook his head. “That’s so sad, someone being silly enough to try to take photographs from the other side of the barrier. Well, I’d better be on my way.”
Gerald hurried to his car and drove away in a cloud of dust.
“He’s a bit strange,” Melissa said.
I simply shrugged, but did not have time to respond, as we saw a police car driving up from the other direction. The car was bright purple, with the word ‘Police’ emblazoned down each side on top of a thick, white stripe. The car was followed by a big, white van with ‘Police Rescue’ on the side.
Melissa turned to me. “Finally!”
A tall, slender officer stepped out of the vehicle. “Hello there. Are you the ladies who reported finding a dead body in this vicinity?”
I nodded. I looked at his name tag that read ‘Constable Peter Jefferson’. “He’s half way down the cliff,” I said, pointing over my shoulder. “I think I can make out a camera next to him.”
Three men from the white van rushed to the cliff edge and looked through binoculars. “He’s definitely deceased,” one of them called back to the police officer. “We won’t need the specialty casualty access team paramedics.”
A young police officer hurried over and spoke with the other constable. His name tag read, ‘Constable Colin Kindly’. “Those cliffs are sheer, straight up and down. Nothing would have slowed him down.”
“Not a good way to go,” Constable Jefferson agreed.
The young officer looked at Melissa’s camera. “Have you taken photos here?”
Melissa nodded.
“I’m sorry, but we’ll have to take your camera with us.” His tone was firm. “It’s possible you might have something in your photos that would help us to determine what happened to the victim.”
Melissa and I exchanged glances; Skinny wasn’t going to like this. “How long before I get it back?” Melissa asked.
“We’ll arrange for you to have it back once we check its contents for evidence.” He took the camera from her and hurried to his vehicle with it. When he returned, Constable Jefferson nodded to him, and he pulled a smal
l notebook from his breast pocket, along with a pen. He flipped a few pages into the notebook and then held his pen at the ready. When Jefferson saw he was good to go, he spoke. “I’ll need your names, addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth first please, ladies.”
After he had collected our information, he asked, “Now, tell me how you came to be here today.” He peered over the edge, and pointed his pen toward the body’s location. “That’s pretty far away from anyone up here to see without looking for it.”
I agreed. “I didn’t see it at first.”
“Have either of you seen anyone else at the lookout today?
“Yes,” Melissa said. “A local man named Gerald, err, I forget his last name.”
“Wakefield,” I said.
Melissa nodded.
“Gerald Wakefield,” the officer repeated. “Did he stop by before or after you discovered the body?”
Melissa scratched her head. “Actually, both.”
“Both?” His brow scrunched.
“We met him before I saw the body, but not long after we called you, he came back. He gave us his business card.”
The police officer stretched out his hand to me. “May I have his business card, ma’am?”
“Sure.” I handed him the card.
“He was the only other person you saw in the vicinity?”
“No, there was also a wildlife photographer named Ethan Williams. He said that he’s local. He was here when we arrived,” I said.
The constables nodded, and then Jefferson turned to Kindly. “We’ll need the helicopter to retrieve the body.”
“How can a helicopter get close enough to that cliff face?” Melissa asked.
“NSW Police are quite used to cliff retrievals,” Constable Kindly said. “We have new helicopters that have auto hover autopilot technology.”
Constable Jefferson spoke. “Okay, now you ladies are free to go. If you remember anything, please let us know.” He took his notebook and jotted something down quickly. He tore the page out and handed it to me.
“That’s the station’s number and my name,” he said. “If you think of anything at all, give me a call.”
I nodded and folded up the paper.
“Thanks,” I said, and Melissa and I hurried to her car, keen to put this unpleasant business behind us.
Chapter 4
I was staring at my computer screen when I heard a knock at the door. I managed to pull my feet away from Diva without being scratched, for once. Diva always liked to sit either on, or directly in front of my feet when I was at my desk. I always liked to sit with my feet stretched out in front of me. Clearly, Diva’s likes and my likes were in direct conflict, which is why I always had scratches on my ankles.
I opened the front door, and was relieved to see Melissa standing there, holding a plastic bag filled with cartons of Chinese take out.
“I come bearing gifts,” she said, as she stepped in.
“Thanks so much. I’m starving.”
“It’s been a long day,” Melissa said, “what with driving all the way back from Armidale this morning, and we have to work all week, starting tomorrow.”
I forced a laugh. “You might have work all week starting tomorrow,” I said, “but soon I’ll be part time. Being part time is quite a change for me.” A familiar pang of worry about my finances, or lack of them, ran through me. I was only just managing on a full time wage; how would I cope with less pay?
I made my way into the kitchen to fetch a couple of forks, two wine glasses, and a bottle of red, while Melissa placed the bag of food on the small coffee table in front of the couch.
“So what have you been doing all afternoon?” Melissa asked. “Getting used to being a lady of leisure? And why is your cat glaring at me?”
I stopped poking around in the various food containers. “She wants some of our food.”
“Well, why don’t you give her some?”
I sighed. “You don’t understand. Diva wants us to give her our food, but she doesn’t want to eat it. She wants to sniff it, and then glare at us. Look, you give her a tiny piece of your food, and I’ll fetch my laptop. I want to show you something.”
I returned just as Diva was alternating between sniffing the little piece of chicken that Melissa was offering her, and then glaring up at Melissa.
I took a sip of wine, and then said, “You have to see this.” I placed the laptop on the table, turning it so Melissa could see. I played a news video that showed aerial footage of the police helicopter hovering over the edge.
Melissa turned away. “I’m eating. I can’t watch anything so gruesome.”
I shrugged and turned the screen so that it faced only me. “Listen to this,” I said. We both listened to the news report for a few minutes. It said that while the police had nothing but praise for the local media, the Sydney media’s helicopter had been hindering the police’s PolAir helicopter, making the retrieval difficult.
The report went on to say that the man had fallen over the edge and that there were no suspicious circumstances. It said he was a tourist from Britain.
“How do they know that he fell over the edge at this early stage and wasn’t murdered?” Melissa asked.
I shut the laptop and leaned forward, exchanging the laptop for my carton of food. “Good point. Although they did know who he was. I suppose that might’ve been from a missing person’s report or something. They were only retrieving the body at the time of the news report, so at that stage, they wouldn’t have any idea what happened to him. Anyway, I suspect there are only two choices. Either he fell, or someone pushed him.”
“It creeps me out,” Melissa said. “Who knows how long he was down there? Maybe he wasn’t dead at first, you know? He could have fallen; I guess he probably did, but maybe he fell a week ago. Maybe he died alone down there after days of being thirsty and hurt. Maybe he was paralyzed.”
“Oh, Melissa, please don’t say that!” I shuddered at the thought.
Just then there was a loud knock at the door, and Melissa and I looked at each other. “Were you expecting anyone?” Melissa asked.
“No, not at all.”
I opened the door to see Julie, the post lady, standing on the doorstep. “I knew I wasn’t interrupting you when I saw Melissa’s car outside,” she said in a loud voice.
“It’s a Sunday,” I said pointedly.
“Oh no, silly, I don’t have any mail for you. I just came to invite you to a party.” Julie looked over my shoulder and craned her neck into the hallway.
“Would you like to come in?”
With that, Julie pushed past me and hurried down the hallway into the living room. “Hi, Melissa. I’ve just come to invite you and Misty to a party. Oh, red wine, just what I need!”
I dutifully went to the kitchen and returned with a third wine glass.
When I returned, Julie had made herself at home and was leaning back in a deep armchair, with Diva purring around her legs.
“Diva doesn’t like many people,” Melissa said, as I poured Julie a glass of wine.
Julie bent down to stroke Diva, who didn’t object. “All animals like me. Cats, dogs, even cows. Anyway, I’ve come to invite you both to a housewarming party next month, seeing that we’re moving into our new house soon.”
We both thanked her.
“I’ve invited some men for you, Misty.”
I groaned loudly. “Oh, please don’t, Julie.”
Melissa, the traitor, nodded. “Good idea. Misty, you’re hopeless with men. If someone doesn’t set you up on a blind date, you’ll be eighty before you know it and you will still be single.”
I glared at Melissa and thought I’d have words with her later. She had the good sense to look uncomfortable, and squirmed in her seat.
I knew it was not going to be a good week. I had discovered a body, and tomorrow, Skinny was going to cut my hours from full time to part time. The only thing I had to look forward to was going to a party where lots of highly unsuitable blind
dates would be lined up for me.
Chapter 5
I woke up the following morning with a bad feeling that something awful was going to happen. Before my first coffee, it dawned on me exactly what it was. Today Skinny would be telling me that my hours would be cut. I was dreading her gloating over it; in fact, my stomach was churning so much that I couldn’t eat any breakfast. I made an extra coffee to compensate and then headed to work through the drizzling rain, telling myself that it wouldn’t be as bad as I thought.
I was wrong.
“Misty!” Skinny’s screeching voice hailed me from her office. I would prefer to listen to fingernails running down a blackboard; that would be a far more pleasant sound. Melissa shot me a sympathetic look as I walked past her desk.
Skinny’s first words surprised me. “Misty, you shouldn’t have personal visitors here at work. This is a place of work, not a social club.” She stopped talking and gave me her best glare.
I feigned ignorance. “Visitors? I haven’t had any visitors.” Not invited ones, anyway.
Skinny ignored me and pressed on. “I’m afraid I have some bad news, Misty. We can’t afford so many full time journalists, so we have decided that from next Monday, you will be the one to go onto casual rates and work part time. We will give you the payments that are legally required, of course, including the holiday pay and sickness pay we owe you.”
Although I had known this was coming, I was afraid I was going to cry, so I dug my thumbnail under my little fingernail and took a deep breath.
Skinny hadn’t finished. “Misty, I’m sorry to tell you this when you’re not well.”
I was puzzled. “What do you mean? I’m fine.”
Skinny did her best to look apologetic, and failed. “It’s just that you look pasty-faced and bloated.” She stood up and pointed to the door. “Well, don’t let me keep you. I’m sure you have work to do. Part time work doesn’t mean part time effort.”
I walked out, seething, torn between wanting to cry and wanting to scream.
