by Jane Harper
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 he
r 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.
‘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 thr
ough.
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 radio, 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
