Deep Water

by Whitcroft, Isla;

  ‘I know,’ said Cate. ‘I’m sorry. But I’m taking my laptop and with that boosted dongle we’ll be able to Skype every day wherever I am – yes? And this time it’s only for three weeks. I’ve got to be back in time for school next term.’

  Half an hour later Cate was showered, refreshed and raring to see this new city. As she took her leave of the ever-smiling hostess, Nancy was nowhere to be seen.

  Just then, there was a chaotic arrival of black-clad young men and various musical instruments all crowned by a hubbub of English accents. Instantly Cate was forgotten as the hostess rushed to hold the door open for them. As she did so, Cate glimpsed a throng of teenage girls pushing up against the glass wall and heard the chants of ‘Lu-cas, Lu-cas,’ before the door was shut firmly in their faces.

  Open-mouthed with starstruck admiration, Cate watched as the four members of Black Noir brushed themselves down, straightened their sunglasses and set off through the lobby and into the lounge as if they owned it. The lanky figure of lead guitarist and singer-songwriter Lucas Black was leading the way, and bringing up the rear was the red-haired drummer Pete Simmonds, known in celebrity magazine speak as the hell-raiser. As he sauntered past Cate, he lifted his Ray-Bans, looked her up and down and gave her a broad wink.

  A few seconds later, Cate heard the familiar scream. ‘Babe!’ Nancy had obviously spotted her boyfriend. Cate grinned to herself and, taking a deep breath, slipped out through the doors into the throng of crying, screaming girls.

  ‘Did you see him?’ A girl with Lucas’s name written across her forehead in black ink was clutching at Cate’s arm. ‘Did you see Lucas Black?’

  ‘Can you get me in there?’ asked another. ‘I can pay you. A hundred bucks, and I’ll give you my iPad. Straight up.’

  Cate looked around at the anxious, hopeful faces and shook her head in bemusement at the fan frenzy. She liked Black Noir, but this was ridiculous. ‘Sorry,’ she said, as she pushed her way out to the blazing heat of the Australian sun. ‘Got a bus to catch.’

  CHAPTER 3

  Cate queued patiently in the dusty heat for the buses to the city. She had stowed her luggage away in a locker in the first class lounge and was now travelling light, her rucksack containing just enough for an overnight stay, and, of course, her beloved running gear.

  As the blue and white bus clanked and ground its way into the city, Cate looked around her avidly, trying to acclimatise to this new world. At first it seemed weirdly familiar. The cars were driving on the same side of the road as they did in the UK and the dual carriageway was virtually identical to any back home.

  But there the similarities ended. Giant eucalyptus trees towered above brightly coloured parakeets, which were clinging at bizarre angles to the spindly branches. Enormous bright green cacti lined the roads, along with trees bearing strange-looking spiky leaves and enormous fat flowers that curled like giant hands against the vivid blue sky. Even the grass on the verges seemed different somehow, more coarse, less lush.

  From the electric blue of the sky and burnt red of the soil, to the pinks, purples and blues of the bougainvillea blossoms which ran riot over fences and up walls, everything seemed to be imbued with vivid colour, like a child’s painting of a summer’s day. Cate, starved of warmth and colour as she had been for the last few months, felt as if she had been transported not just across the world, but to another planet entirely.

  As if to emphasise the point, out of the corner of her eye Cate suddenly spotted a flash of brown fur leaping easily from some scrubland and out along the kerb for a few metres before disappearing again. A kangaroo, thought Cate excitedly. Just here, on the street. Awesome. Now she knew she really was in Australia.

  All around her people were striking up conversations with total strangers, swapping stories of endless flights, travel tips, and asking about plans. At every stop the driver shouted out the name of the destination and waited patiently while people got on and off, cracking jokes with his passengers. It was a far cry from London, Cate thought, where people sat in silence on public transport and even making eye contact with someone was considered to be borderline weird.

  No sooner had she thought that than a couple of teenage girls sitting with enormous backpacks on their laps opposite Cate, smiled at her.

  ‘Where are you headed?’ The girl nearest to Cate spoke with a mid-western American twang. ‘You travelling on your own? We’re going to a hostel near Bondi – you’d be more than welcome to join us.’

  ‘Thanks, but I’m visiting friends. I’m off to the Parramatta Road. According to my directions I get off at Circular Quay and change buses there.’

  ‘The Parramatta Road?’ She looked at her guidebook, frowning.

  Cate smiled at them ruefully. ‘It’s just for one night,’ she said. ‘Then I’m headed up north to the Friday Islands.’

  ‘Nice,’ said the other girl. ‘We’ll maybe see you there. Once we’ve done Sydney and Melbourne and seen the Aussie tennis Open.’ She pointed out of the window. ‘Circular Quay. All change.’

  The bus pulled to a halt and the hydraulic doors swished open. Cate’s body was still insisting that it was the middle of the night, but she thought she should get something to eat, and she was desperate to at least take a quick look at the harbour and its famous landmarks while she was there.

  Waving goodbye to the Americans, she followed the smell of the sea coming in on the light breeze, and headed down towards the water, leaving the city skyscrapers and the office workers behind her. A hundred metres later, Cate stopped dead still in shocked wonder. There, looming above her, was the awesome structure of Sydney Harbour Bridge, the metal framework glinting in the sunlight, the perfect archway spanning over one thousand metres of water. As if this wasn’t spectacular enough, to her right stood the Opera House, rising out of the water like a shimmering space-age sailing ship.

  To see these two icons in real life was incredible, like finally meeting a world famous celebrity in the flesh. ‘Excuse me,’ she said to a young Japanese couple. ‘Could you take some pictures of me on my phone?’

  She would send the photographs to Louisa and to several other of her friends and family as well when she got back to the bus terminal. They were going to die with envy, she thought wickedly.

  It was a different crowd on the bus out west to Parramatta. No tourists now, just a few gum-chewing young mums with babies in pushchairs and the odd pensioner quietly reading the paper. Cate got out her phone and composed a polite text to Matthias to tell him she was on her way. The bus passed through the central shopping district, the streets crammed with chic-looking boutiques and vast department stores, the windows looking faintly ridiculous with their Christmas displays of snow and reindeer in the shimmering heat.

  Soon the shops and office blocks had been left behind and the monotony of the wide, straight road was broken only by a variety of fast food outlets and car lots. It was a depressing sight, and Cate found it hard to believe that the splendour of Sydney city centre was just a few kilometres away.

  The lots began to space out, the odd bungalow appeared and down the side streets Cate could see rows of terraced houses. The bus stopped and started, the young mothers climbed off, no one got on and soon Cate was one of the last few people left on board.

  She checked the address. 128 Tremlott St, Parramatta Road. ‘It’s the stop after the Big Benny Burger outlet,’ the driver had told her.

  Just as Cate was wondering if she had missed her stop, the driver caught her eye in the mirror and nodded to her. ‘Tremlott Street,’ he said shortly and pulled the wheel sharply to the left.

  Cate headed for the side road where a dirty sign confirmed she was in the right place. She glanced down at her phone but there was no reply from Matthias yet. She hoped he had remembered that she was coming.

  There was no pavement here, just a verge that had once been all grass but now, at the height of summer, only a few sturdy clumps of coarse grass remained, clinging bravely to the hard-packed reddish brown so
il. The houses had seen better days. Some just needed a coat of paint, others with broken window frames and tiles missing from the roof looked like they needed a major overhaul.

  The further away from the main road she went, the larger the buildings became, some two or even three storeys high. The gardens were wider too, separated by fences and hedges to give more privacy and there were even names on some of the gates – Avalon, Good Rest, Holly Cottage – that hinted at a once genteel past for this now unkempt neighbourhood.

  Finally she reached the peeling gate of number 128. It was a large brick house, three storeys high with a steep sided roof. The wooden veranda, which ran along the entire front of the house was decorated in a patchy, sullen grey, sections of it hanging at a dangerously steep angle. Several windows had been broken and boarded up.

  The drive was empty, but parked outside on the road was a black Japanese saloon car with blacked-out windows.

  Perspiring in the dense heat, Cate thought longingly of Nancy’s harbour-side suite. She could be by the pool now, lying under the cool shade of a parasol, wearing her treasured Maaji bikini and sipping a fruit cocktail.

  Cate made up her mind. She would go in, say hello, but make an excuse about being unable to stay the night and head back to the city instead.

  She pushed open the rickety gate. The garden was large, the nearest neighbours a good twenty metres away to either side and the high hedges gave the house a withdrawn and solitary feel. The front door was covered in graffiti sprayed in a vivid red paint. Ferals out, one slogan howled. Rich scum go home, ranted another, scrawled roughly alongside a primitive portrayal of a hangman’s noose.

  She was just about to knock when she noticed a printed sign telling callers to go around the side of the house for security reasons and headed off in the direction of the arrow.

  A few concrete steps led up to a narrow wooden door on the frame of which was bolted a metal security entry code pad. She pressed the red entrance button and up above her a small security camera whirred and clicked into action, pointing its long lens towards her face.

  There was silence. Cate tried the buzzer again, then thumped loudly on the door. Still getting no response, she walked to a nearby shuttered window, banged on it and shouted. Somewhere, in a house further down the street a dog began to bark, the only living sound in the stillness of the afternoon heat.

  She pulled her phone from her pocket and rang Matthias’s number. She listened intently, and from somewhere inside the house could hear the faint sound of a ringtone that carried on until she cut the call.

  Strange. Noah had sounded so certain Matthias would be there, and according to him these activists were glued to their phones – they were a lifeline keeping in touch with their network across the world and allowing them to organise rallies and demos at a moment’s notice.

  She shrugged. Perhaps he was in the bath, or asleep, or had his headphones on. Or maybe even he had simply forgotten Cate was coming, gone out and left his phone behind by accident.

  The front door only had a swipe card access point, and was edged in reinforced steel. The large metal hinges looked as if they wouldn’t give way to a battering ram. Cate gazed up at the windows at either side of the door and realised, with a start, that they too were shuttered up. This place was like a fortress.

  The silence was unnerving. No sound from the houses around her now, no traffic on the street outside, not even birdsong in the trees overhead. It was spooky and it was making her anxious.

  Suddenly she heard a noise coming from inside the house. Two sharp sounds, one after the other, like a hand clap, then silence again. Deep down, she knew something was wrong.

  Cate froze and listened closely, but there was nothing more to hear. Her heart was racing and she couldn’t help feeling uneasy.

  ‘Only a fool ignores their gut instinct,’ Marcus, her contact at IMIA, had always said. ‘That’s the first thing they teach you in subterfuge training. Listen to what your gut is telling you, treat it like another sense and use it in conjunction with your sight and hearing, smell and touch to evaluate the risk.’

  Cate moved around the house, sizing it up, looking for any chink in its armour that might allow her to look inside. But to her frustration every single window was blocked.

  She reached the far side of the house and walked right into jungle. Some sort of vine with long, drooping leaves had gone completely wild, covering most of the walls and windows, forming skinny bridges between the house and the branches of the eucalyptus trees which overhung the path to next door’s garden.

  It was hopeless. There was no way in. But just as Cate was about to give up, one small window up on the second floor caught her eye. Partially obscured by the vine, a corner of glass had been broken away. It was her only chance.

  She reached into the rucksack for her tracksuit bottoms, pulling them up underneath her skirt to give her legs as much protection from the rough branches as possible, and swapped her sandals for trainers. Ready for action, Cate eyed the tree nearest the window. Taking a deep breath and giving thanks for the years she had spent climbing trees as a kid, she reached into the branches and pulled herself up. The branches were surprisingly strong and, in less than a minute, Cate was ensconced in the upper branches of the trees directly opposite the broken window.

  She looked curiously through the window into a small room containing just a low couch with a sleeping bag on it and a small sink. Pretty basic and not very clean by the look of it.

  The window was nearly two metres away from her and she was a good five metres in the air. Now all she had to do was work out how to get in without killing herself.

  As she hesitated, Cate heard a door slam and the noise of heavy footsteps coming along the path. Looking down between the leaves, she saw two men appear from the back of the house. They pushed their way through the vegetation, spreading the vines apart, peering into the undergrowth.

  ‘I thought I heard someone at the door.’ The man was speaking Spanish – one of the many languages Cate knew. ‘We have to check it out.’

  The men were standing directly beneath her now. Cate froze, hardly daring to breathe, thankful for the curtain of vegetation that made her all but invisible. As quietly as she could, she slipped her hand into her pocket and pressed the off button on her phone. These men could be perfectly harmless but better to be cautious.

  She couldn’t see much, just the top of their heads. Both were heavily tanned and balding, one with a scar running from the middle of his head down around to his left ear. The other man stood for a few seconds to light a cigarette and she saw his right hand. It was burnt, the two middle fingers missing and, despite the heat of the afternoon, Cate felt suddenly cold.

  They gave one last look up and down the alleyway before moving off to the front of the house. A couple of minutes later she heard a car start up and drive off at speed.

  What was it she had heard? A crack of a whip, the slap of a hand hitting a face? Maybe her imagination was running away with her, but those two men had been real enough.

  Cate’s mind began to race. Perhaps Matthias was still inside, injured and in trouble.

  Reaching above her head, she grasped a couple of the thicker vines that had spread from the house to the trees and tested her weight on them. One snapped and she grabbed another, which instantly felt firmer, and pushed herself off from the branch with both feet. Her swing propelled her towards the broken window, the thick soles of her trainers hit the glass, instantly shattering the rest of it, the momentum carrying her through to the wooden floorboards on the other side.

  She raced across the room and opened the door cautiously. As soon as she did, she smelt it. At first she thought it was the smell of a cigarette, but it was too strong, too powerful for that. She peered out carefully onto the landing and, to her horror, she saw thick tendrils of smoke. Fire!

  Every fibre of Cate’s body was telling her to get out of there, call the fire brigade and leave it to them. But she knew that by the time help arriv
ed the whole house could be up in flames. If Matthias was in there and in trouble she would never forgive herself for leaving him. She had to act now.

  She reached into her rucksack, brought out her clean T-shirt and headed to the small sink in the bedroom, wetting it thoroughly before winding it around her nose and mouth. She took the main stairs two at a time down to the ground floor, all the while shouting for Matthias at the top of her voice.

  The source of the fire wasn’t too hard to spot. At the bottom of the heavily barricaded front door, was a pile of smouldering rags, the deadly smoke rising up the stairs towards her.

  A curtain was hanging from a rail over the back of the door and above that a thick wooden beam supported an open ceiling which reached up to the roof of the house. Once that curtain caught fire, thought Cate in horror, there would be no stopping it.

  When Cate had been in Serbia with her father she had witnessed a house being torched by locals; the owner was rumoured to have collaborated with the enemy during the civil war. The fire had taken a few minutes to take hold but then, like a mythical monster awakening from its lair, the flames had exploded into every crevice of the building, the owner and his family lucky to get out alive. Cate knew she didn’t have much time.

  She tugged on the curtain, desperately trying to move it away from the flames. Cate felt her legs scorching, the soles of her feet hot through the trainers, gave one last despairing yank at the curtain and felt it come away from the door.

  Struggling to breathe, her eyes watering in the smoke, she threw the heavy material down over the flames and then ripping off her trainers, began to beat down on the curtain.

  For several minutes she worked frantically, pushing the material down, cutting off the oxygen supply to the flames each time they reappeared, coughing and choking as the smoke rose in gusts. Then the flames finally died out, and the smoke began to clear.