Tunnel Vision

by Andrew Christie

  “You two childrens going to be okay on your own out here?”

  “Grandpa’ll be here tomorrow,” Rashmi said, lying easily to her “boyfriend.” “He’s bringing some fireworks for New Year’s Eve.”

  “All right then. Give me a call if you need anything.” Kurt gave Rashmi a kiss, and Billy helped her out of the cab. He just had enough time to grab their bags out of the back before Kurt turned the truck in a wide arc, bumping off the track and across some grass before heading back the way they had come.

  Rash stood by the door to one of the sheds, where she was unlocking a large silver padlock. “Welcome to paradise,” she said, throwing the door open.

  Billy looked around. The two sheds and the yard were in the middle of grassed paddocks and surrounded by wooded hills. God only knew where the nearest shop was. “We didn’t bring any food.”

  Rash looked at him, blinking for a moment. “I’m sure there’s something here. There always is.” She flicked a switch by the door and fluorescent lights flickered overhead. There was a table and an assortment of mismatched chairs on the concrete floor in the middle of the shed and a raised timber platform at one end. At the other end a kind of kitchen bench and some shelves ran along the wall between a fridge and a freezer.

  The first thing Billy did was check these out. The good thing was they were both working, but they weren’t exactly full. The only things in the fridge were a tub of margarine and a couple of bottles of water. The chest freezer was half full of lumpy-looking plastic bags. “What do you think these are?” Billy said, pulling a big brown-and-white plastic-wrapped parcel out of the freezer.

  “Beef. Probably.” Rashmi shrugged. “The guy who owns the cows out there pays Grandpa in meat for using the paddocks.”

  “Plenty of protein here then,” Billy said.

  But not much else.

  Chapter 18

  Wouldn’t Quit

  Manny and Ruth found Brunswick Heads easily enough, driving into the town through a park with tall trees on both sides of the road and emerging onto a wide street lined with houses.

  “This is it,” Manny said. “Where’s his house?”

  Ruth checked the map. “On the left, Larkin Street.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes. I’m sure,” she muttered. “Number twelve.”

  “Here?” Manny flicked his turn signal.

  “No. That’s just a laneway. It must be the next one.”

  He turned into a quiet treelined street, and they crawled past number twelve, craning their necks to peer into the leafy garden, but not stopping, not slowing down. Most of the house was hidden by the garden.

  At the end of the road, Manny turned left, then left again, and drove back down the laneway that ran behind the houses. The blocks were deep, and most of the houses were up close to the street, leaving deep backyards—mainly lawns—scattered with an assortment of sheds.

  “Can you tell which one it is?” Manny asked Ruth.

  “This next one. Here with the big garage.” A roller shutter door opened directly onto the lane. “What do you reckon he keeps in there?” They craned their necks as the car crept past.

  Manny kept going down the lane then turned back onto the main road at the other end. “Should we see if he’s home?”

  “Let’s get some lunch first. Have a bit of a look around this town.”

  “Okay, what do you fancy? Fish and chips?”

  “Sure, and I want to see the beach too,” Ruth said. “I don’t want to come all this way and not see the sea.”

  Okay, why not? thought Manny. He was much more relaxed about this whole trip now. They’d either find the gold or they wouldn’t. In the meantime, they could enjoy themselves.

  There was no one home when they returned to the house after lunch. They’d eaten their fish and chips in a park near a creek, watching holidaying families playing. Kids running about, playing on the swings, or in the water, mucking around in canoes. After they’d eaten their meals, they’d bought ice creams and walked across a rickety wooden bridge to the beach. The ice creams melted quickly in the sun, so their hands and mouths ended up coated with sticky ice cream. They located an outdoor shower at the back of the beach and took turns rinsing off. As Manny watched a tanned young couple using the shower to rinse the salt off their bodies, he wished he’d bought a hat when they were in Ballina. The beach was wide, with white sand running away into the distance for miles, it looked like—uninterrupted all the way south to Byron Bay. People were scattered about on the sand and in the water, most of them young and good looking. On the beach they were stretched out in the sun, the women with their bikini tops undone to avoid strap marks. A few older people were huddled in the shade of their umbrellas.

  “Come on,” Ruth said. “It’s too hot here, and we’ve got work to do.”

  Manny nodded, taking one last look at the waves and the girls in bikinis, before he followed her across the soft sand.

  Back on Larkin Street, he waited on the veranda while Ruth rang the bell and knocked on the door. When there was no answer, Manny let himself through a side gate and found a laundry window that wasn’t latched.

  Inside, there were glasses in the kitchen sink, and the beds in the spare bedroom had been slept in. It looked as if McPhedran had been there recently, and he hadn’t been alone. There was no way of knowing when he’d be back. They’d just have to wait.

  Ruth set about searching the house, muttering to herself as she went through each drawer carefully and methodically, making sure to put everything back afterwards. They didn’t want to spook McPhedran before they had a chance to talk to him. Manny found some keys in the kitchen and went to check out the garage they’d seen from the back lane. Inside, he found a couple of big ride-on mowers and a lot of other garden maintenance machinery: edgers, hand mowers, leaf blowers.

  Back in the house, Ruth showed him a photo album. “This must be him.” The middle-aged man appeared in a number of photographs. He was tall, tanned, with short-cropped grey hair. In most of the photos, he was squinting at the camera. An Asian-looking girl was in many of the pictures as well. Maybe an adopted daughter or granddaughter, Manny thought. While he waited for Ruth to finish her search, he poured himself a glass of McPhedran’s whisky and made himself comfortable. He knew from experience that Ruth wouldn’t quit until she’d gone through everything.

  He had just finished his whisky and was about to rinse out the glass when he saw a big man with lots of hair stop outside the house and open the letterbox. Manny ducked out of sight and watched through the slats of the blinds as the man pulled out a handful of letters and headed towards the house, followed by a white dog.

  Manny pulled out the Glock he had taken from Stevie Munro and moved quickly and quietly to the rear of the house. He found Ruth rifling through a filing cabinet in one of the bedrooms that was set up as an office. She looked up as Manny popped his head into the room and put a finger to his lips.

  “McPhedran?” she whispered.

  Manny shook his head as they heard the front door open. He signalled Ruth to stay where she was, while he moved behind the office door. Sounds came from the kitchen. A tap came on and glasses clinked in the sink. Over the sound of running water, Manny heard the man mutter something that sounded like, “Bloody kids.” The tap went off, and Manny listened hard, trying to track the man’s movements. When he heard the front door shut, he slipped back out into the hall and watched the man’s silhouette move past the front windows, heading towards the side of the house. The letters from the mailbox were on the kitchen bench, and the glasses from the sink had been rinsed and placed in the drying rack. He crossed the living room to the sliding door that opened onto the side passage and pressed himself against the wall next to the door. He heard the man moving about, muttering to himself and the dog. Then he heard the sound of running water and glimpsed the man pulling a garden hose along the path.

  The man spent twenty minutes watering, moving slowly from pot to pot, filling them u
p to the brim with water, always shadowed by the dog, who took care not to get splashed. When he had finished, he coiled the hose back up and went back out through the side gate. “C’mon, dog,” he said, holding the gate open. “Let’s go. I need a beer.”

  Chapter 19

  Five Piece

  It was just after 9:00 p.m. when John arrived in Brunswick Heads. He had driven straight through, only stopping for fuel and to take a leak. He ate as he drove—mostly service station sandwiches, the easiest thing to eat with one hand. John was used to long drives, to the need to stay awake and alert for long periods, but as he’d sat in a long traffic queue, waiting to cross the river at Hexham, he’d wished he had a decent sound system. It was impossible to find anything worth listening to on the old AM/FM unit in the ute. The Boxing Day traffic had been bad, particularly getting out of Sydney and at Hexham. There were plenty of places where he’d had to slow to eighty kilometres an hour because of roadwork, and at Macksville, the traffic had slowed to a crawl for half an hour. He’d resorted to listening to the Boxing Day test match in Melbourne. A sign of his desperation, as he hated cricket. Shouting abuse at the prattling commentators at least had kept him awake during the drive.

  Brunswick Heads was just off a new-looking section of motorway. A small flat town at the mouth of the Brunswick River. John found Larkin Street quickly, turning off the main road into a treelined residential street not far from the edge of town. Number twelve was set back behind a lush garden. As he pulled the ute into the empty driveway, his headlights swept across the darkened windows at the front of the house. He really hoped Billy and Rashmi were here. If Sally was wrong and they’d gone somewhere else, it would have been a bloody long drive for nothing. He opened the door and stepped out, his boots crunching on the gravel driveway. The night air was cool and scented with something sweet. Stretching his back and legs, he heard the sound of a television or radio coming faintly from one of the neighbouring houses.

  On the veranda he pressed the doorbell, peering through the window as electronic chimes rang somewhere inside. He could make out very little in the dark interior. A kitchen opening onto a living room. A dark hallway to the rear of the house. After a minute, he pressed the bell again then knocked. And then again, loudly. There was no sound from inside. The gate at the side opened onto a covered passage lined with pot plants. John followed it through to a large lawn with a couple of trees at the rear of the house. Further back, he found what looked like a garage or large shed. It was locked, but through the window he saw the dark shape of some kind of vehicle, and tools and garden equipment against the wall.

  He went back out through the side passage, closing the gate after him, and sat on the edge of the veranda. Yawning, he pulled out his phone and rang Sally McPhedran.

  “Are you sure they’re not there?”

  “As sure as I can be without breaking in,” John said. “Everything’s dark. No lights. No one home.”

  “I was certain she’d go to Dad’s.”

  John ran his fingers over his hair. “Still no word from him?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Can you think of anywhere else she might go? Any friends?”

  “I’ve called the couple of friends she has. Spoken to them. Talked to their parents. No one’s seen her.”

  John yawned again. “Okay, well, I guess there isn’t anything else we can do tonight. I’m going to find somewhere to sleep. I’ll call you in the morning. Maybe we’ll have gotten some bright ideas by then.”

  “Okay. Look, John. I’m sorry. Sorry it was a wasted trip. Sorry about it all.”

  “It’s not your fault. We’ll find them.” He yawned again. Exhaustion was creeping through him with the letdown of not finding Billy. His eyes were watering, and he couldn’t stop yawning. “Let’s talk in the morning.” As he walked back to the ute, John thought about calling Shasta but decided against it. He didn’t have anything positive to tell her, and he had a fair idea what she would say to him.

  As he backed out of the driveway, the reversing lights shone onto the side of a black Land Rover parked across the street, three houses down. He was pretty sure it hadn’t been there when he’d arrived.

  Dave watched the white ute back out and drive away. The left indicator came on, then a flash of brake lights, before it turned onto the old highway and disappeared. He put the Smith & Wesson on the seat beside him, started up the Land Rover, and put it in gear. He wanted to know who this prick was and where he was going next.

  It was pure luck that he had stopped at the supermarket instead of coming straight to the house. A last-minute decision to get some fresh milk for his tea had saved him from being there when the big guy in the ute had come calling.

  He’d been careless. Tired. So glad to get home again that he’d nearly run into the back of the ute parked in his driveway. The sight of it had woken him up pretty fast, though. He thought about running, heading straight back out of town. Half an hour to the Gold Coast. Pick up his stash. Disappear. Gone.

  But after seeing what they’d done to Stevie, Dave wanted to know who he was dealing with. And now he knew what one of them looked like and what he drove. Big guy, short-cropped hair. Was he working on his own? Dave needed to know who this bastard was and who he’d been talking to on the phone.

  John didn’t have any trouble finding a hotel. It was hard to miss, with music blasting from a five-piece band playing in the courtyard. There were plenty of people outside on the street—holiday crowds filling the footpath. More people were in the park across from the hotel, listening to the music, looking out across the river.

  The stage was tucked into the corner of the L-shaped building, set back behind some trees in the courtyard. The band was playing loud and fast to a mixed crowd of local hippies and tourists. On the dance floor, in front of the stage, everyone was jumping and sweating. Further back, the crowd was more sedate, standing with plastic beer cups in hand, nodding to the beat.

  John weaved his way through to the bar. The sight of plates of food on the tables reminded him of how crap the sandwiches he’d eaten on the road had been. The only customers inside the bar were a dedicated few punters, still working away at the poker machines. John asked the barmaid who to talk to about a room.

  “Pete does the accommodations, love. Don’t know if there’s any vacancies. We’re pretty full this time of year. Hang on. I’ll get him for you.”

  Pete turned out to be short, sweaty, and harassed-looking. He was wearing shorts and a green polo with the name of the pub on it, and he had a radio on his belt. “You’re lucky,” he said over his shoulder as he led John through to his office. “We had a cancellation this afternoon. Last thing. Just you, is it?”

  “Yeah. Just one night.” John pulled out his wallet. “Well, maybe two. Depends. When does the kitchen close?”

  Pete checked his watch. “Ten minutes.”

  The room was upstairs off a long veranda that overlooked the courtyard. The noise from the band and the crowd was intense. John threw his backpack on the bed and headed back downstairs to the courtyard.

  Dave watched the man from the ute in the mirror above the bar as he ordered a steak with salad and chips, and a schooner of Coopers Pale. He’d been in the courtyard earlier, when the tall man was carrying a backpack along the veranda to one of the hotel rooms that overlooked the courtyard. Dave was sure he’d never seen the man before, so who the hell was he? Who was he working for?

  He watched the man take his beer back out to the courtyard. The only free table was in the very back in a lower terrace. A long way from the music and from his room. When the man came to collect his meal, his buzzer flashing in one hand and an empty beer glass in the other, Dave made his way upstairs.

  The steak was good and the beer very welcome after the long day in the ute. John settled back to listen to the music and watch the crowd. The band wasn’t bad. Better than a lot of pub bands he’d heard over the years. The music finished at eleven thirty, by which time John had downed another
three beers. As the crowd drifted out onto the street, and the roadies coiled up their cables, John headed for bed.

  He wasn’t sure what he’d do tomorrow. Go back to Sally’s father’s house, he supposed. Talk to the neighbours, see if any of them knew where he was. Maybe use that open window to get inside, see if there was any sign of Billy or Rashmi. He’d have to call Sally again too, see if she had any other ideas. If nothing came of it, he’d have to head back to Sydney. A wasted trip. Shasta probably was right. The little bastards could be anywhere. If he and Sally couldn’t find them soon, they’d have to tell the cops and live with the consequences. He unlocked the door to his room, feeling for the light switch as he pushed it open. Air moved against his cheek, and light exploded behind his eyes.

  Chapter 20

  Absolute Dark

  Billy heard a mosquito somewhere close to his ear, the whine of its wings growing louder and more high-pitched as it came closer. He slapped at the side of his head, and the whine stopped. Had he killed it? He didn’t know, and it didn’t really matter—there were plenty more where it had come from; the shed seemed to be full of them. He scratched at the lumps on the backs of his hands.

  Now that they’d finally gotten to this farm, he didn’t know what they were supposed to do. They were in the middle of nowhere, trying to sleep on an old mattress on the floor of a shed. The metal walls and roof creaked and banged in the wind. And the cattle outside made noises too. Not neat, self-contained mooing noises, like in the books he’d read as a kid. No, these cows made messy roars and grunts. The noises of big animals with something to say. There were other animal noises too, besides the mosquitoes and cows. Scratchings and patterings. Mice? Rats maybe? Something enormous banged and skittered across the roof. Probably a possum, but it sounded like there was an elephant up there.