The Lost Man

by Jane Harper

  “Why were you late?” He spoke lightly, as though the thought had just occurred to him, but Nathan felt sure the question had been brewing for minutes. He looked at the cop, with his burned skin and wide eyes, and suddenly wondered if he’d misjudged him.

  “What?” Bub blinked.

  “Why were you late to meet your brother as arranged at Lehmann’s Hill?”

  “Oh. I got two flats.”

  “Tires?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Two flat tires?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s pretty unlucky.” The sergeant was smiling, but there was something new in his tone.

  “It happens,” Nathan said quickly, and he was relieved to see Steve nodding in agreement. “It’s not unusual, with the heat and the rocks. You wreck one tire, quite often you wreck two. And it’ll take you forty-five minutes to change a flat this time of year, an hour, even.” He could feel himself rambling, and stopped.

  Sergeant Ludlow was still looking at Bub. “That’s what happened?”

  To Nathan’s relief, Bub kept his mouth shut and nodded. The sergeant regarded him over his notebook, then scratched a few words. His expression was open, but again Nathan had the sensation of something lurking beneath. Nathan flicked his eyes toward Bub’s car. The front two tires did look newer. He caught Xander doing the same thing, and they both immediately looked away.

  The sergeant at last turned his attention from Bub to Steve. “Do you have any thoughts on time of death?”

  “Probably sometime yesterday morning, at a guess. Given the temperature and the lack of shade or water, I’d be very surprised if he lasted beyond twenty-four hours. The autopsy should tell us more.”

  “That doesn’t sound like long.” Sergeant Ludlow frowned. “What was he, late thirties?”

  “Forty,” Nathan said.

  “He did better than some would’ve done,” Steve said. “Twenty-four hours might even be a bit optimistic.”

  “How far are we from Cameron’s home?” Ludlow looked at the brothers again.

  “On foot, it’s about fifteen kilometers in a straight line northwest,” Nathan said. “Driving from here, you have to follow the dirt track west, then north, if you don’t want to get sand-bogged, so that route’s probably over thirty. Safest way is another ten kilometers on top of that—east from here to the rocks, then north along the road.”

  The rocks and road where they had found Cam’s car. Nathan exchanged a glance with Bub, and Ludlow caught it.

  “So even the shortest distance, you’re looking at a few hours’ walk home?” Ludlow said.

  “You can’t walk it, not in this weather,” Steve said, his voice muffled. He was looking under the tarp again. “That’s what went wrong with those three contractors sand-bogged out at Atherton a few years ago. You remember, Bub? You were on that search, weren’t you?”

  Bub nodded.

  “They were, what? Mid-twenties?” Steve said. “Tried to walk back. Got about seven kilometers, if that. Two were dead within six hours.”

  “What else is around here?” Ludlow walked to the fence and rested his hands on the wire. “That’s your land on the other side?” he said to Nathan.

  “Yeah.”

  “Could your brother have been hoping to find you?”

  Nathan saw Bub and Steve both look over. “No.”

  “You sound sure.”

  “I am.”

  “But—” Ludlow opened his notebook again. “Cameron knew you and your son were out doing a fence check?”

  “Yeah, I always do this time of year. But we weren’t around here.”

  “Did Cameron know that for certain?”

  There was a long silence. “No.”

  Ludlow ran a hand along the top wire, then opened his palm and looked at the dust. “Can you think of a reason why your brother might have needed to come to this spot?”

  “I don’t know why he would have needed to,” Nathan said finally. “But he knew it well.”

  “Was he out here often?”

  “I don’t think so anymore.” Nathan glanced at Bub, who shrugged. “But he used to.”

  “This is also the only bit of shade for miles,” Steve said. “It might have been instinct to seek it out.”

  Sergeant Ludlow contemplated that as he looked at the shape on the ground. Even beneath the tarp, it was unmistakably human.

  “How was your brother’s state of mind these past few weeks?”

  The question was delivered gently, and it took Nathan a moment to realize it was aimed at him.

  “I don’t know. I hadn’t seen him in a few months.”

  “How many?”

  “Four, maybe? When were we all doing that track work, Bub?” It had been the last time Nathan had seen either of his brothers, he realized now. Bub looked blank.

  “Four months,” Ludlow said. “So August, September time?”

  “Probably a bit earlier.” Nathan tried to think. “Actually, wait. It was around the first State of Origin match. Because we talked about that.”

  “June,” Ludlow and Bub said in unison.

  “Yeah, I suppose.”

  “So, six months,” Ludlow said.

  “Yeah, must be, then. We spoke on the radio sometimes.”

  “Often?”

  “Often enough.”

  “Was there a reason you hadn’t seen each other?”

  “No. No reason. I live nearly three hours away door-to-door. We’re all busy.” He turned to Bub for help, and was rewarded with nothing. “You see him every day at home, what did you think?”

  Nathan expected a shrug, but instead, Bub seemed to be thinking. Finally he took a breath. “Cam was a bit wound up lately.”

  Nathan stared at him in astonishment. How bad had things been if even Bub had noticed?

  “Wound up in what way?” Ludlow asked.

  Bub did shrug this time. He looked a little edgy. “Dunno. The usual way.”

  They all waited, but he apparently had nothing further to add on the subject.

  Ludlow checked his notes. “Cameron lived on this property with who else?”

  “Me,” Bub said, counting on his fingers. “Mum, Ilse—that’s Cam’s missus—and their two girls, Uncle Harry—”

  “Harry Bledsoe,” Nathan cut in. “He’s not actually our uncle, he’s a family friend. He’s worked on the property since before we were all born.”

  “So technically an employee?” Ludlow asked.

  “Technically, but no one thinks of him like that,” Nathan said.

  Bub nodded. “We’ve got a couple of backpackers at the moment too.”

  “Doing what?” Ludlow said.

  “Usual. Laboring, work around the house. Whatever. Cam hired them a few months ago.”

  “Would he hire in people often?”

  “Whenever he needed,” Nathan said. “There’d be contractors and laborers coming and going during the year, depending on what’s going on. Glenn—Sergeant McKenna—he knows all this.”

  Ludlow just wrote something in his notebook.

  Steve stood up and dusted his knees. “All right. I’d like to get him into the ambulance now. The sergeant and I can manage the stretcher, unless either of you particularly wants to help?”

  Nathan and Bub both shook their heads. Nathan was relieved. He suspected he would have felt the weight of that bundle for the rest of his life.

  Steve crouched down again. “I’m going to completely remove the tarp now, if you want to look somewhere else.”

  Nathan started to say something to Xander, but the kid was already turning away. City softness, he thought, but was glad. Bub’s eyes were fixed on the horizon.

  Nathan debated too long, and the decision was made for him. The tarp slipped loose as Cameron’s limp form was lifted onto the stretcher. Bub had been right. Their brother didn’t look injured, at least not in the traditional sense. But heat and thirst did terrible things to a person. He had started to remove his clothes as logic had deserted
him, and his skin was cracked. Whatever had been going through Cameron’s mind when he was alive, he didn’t look peaceful in death.

  Nathan was still staring at the stretcher long after it had been placed in the ambulance. Sergeant Ludlow turned back to the grave, unconsciously dusting his hands on the sides of his trousers. He suddenly stopped mid-motion, then took a step forward, studying the space where Cameron had lain. The exposed earth was sandy and studded with poor tufts of grass. The sergeant bent closer.

  “What is this?”

  Nathan felt Bub come up behind him on one side and Xander on the other. They all looked down to where Ludlow was pointing.

  Near the base of the headstone, where Cameron’s back had pressed against the ground, was a shallow hole.

  4

  The hole was about the size of three fists, and it was empty.

  Ludlow took a string of photos, then Nathan watched as he put a single gloved finger into the gap. The side immediately began to collapse as the soft ground trickled in. The land behaved like a living thing, and Nathan knew that, in a day or two, the area would have repaired itself seamlessly. Ludlow scrabbled deeper into the space, and Nathan wondered vaguely how far down the stockman had actually been buried.

  “I can’t see anything in there.” Ludlow wiped his palms on his trousers and frowned up at Steve. “Have you checked his hands?”

  Steve disappeared around the back of the ambulance, reemerging a minute later. “Nails are broken, and there’s some sand and grit clogged underneath. He could have dug it by hand, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Why would he waste energy doing that?”

  “Because his bloody brain was fried, wasn’t it?”

  They all turned at Bub’s voice. He was watching with his shoulders hunched and his arms folded across his chest.

  “What?” He gave a shrug. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? It was forty-five degrees yesterday. I dunno why Cam left his car, but the minute he did that, he was fucked. End of story.”

  Ludlow looked at Steve, who gave a tight nod. “Look, he’s not wrong. Dehydration leads to confusion very quickly.”

  They all stared into the scrabbled hole for a long time. Ludlow was the first to look up.

  “I’d like to see his car now.”

  * * *

  Nathan offered to drive the sergeant, and Bub didn’t argue. He looked relieved to be staying behind with Steve, who wanted to draw samples and get them in the coolbox before they were completely worthless.

  Nathan climbed through the fence with Ludlow and Xander, and they got into his Land Cruiser. It felt better for once, being back on his own side of the fence. The unnatural sight of Cameron laid out on the land he loved had upset the balance of the place somehow, as though there was a pollutant in the air.

  Nathan’s hands were not quite steady on the steering wheel as he tried to remember that last time he had seen Cam, back in June or whenever. Cam had probably been smiling, because he usually was. Nathan flexed his hands one at a time. He could only picture the face under the tarp. He was already wishing he’d looked away. As he started the car and pulled away from the grave, he realized Ludlow was saying something.

  “Sorry?”

  “I was asking if you and your brother deliberately bought land next to each other?”

  “Oh. No. Burley Downs Station was our dad’s, so me, Cam, and Bub grew up there. Then I got given some land on this side of the fence when I—ah—when I was married—” In the rearview mirror he could see Xander looking out of the window, pretending not to listen. “That was about twenty years ago. Our dad died around then, and eventually Cam took over Burley Downs.”

  “So Cameron owned it?”

  “He runs it. And he has a majority stake now.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah, but you don’t have to look so interested. It’s been like that for years. We all got a third when Dad died, so it was nice and fair. I sold half of mine to Cam pretty soon afterwards, and he manages the place. Organizes all the daily running and does most of the long-term planning. Bub has a third, and I’ve still got a sixth.”

  Ludlow made a note. “And how big is Burley Downs?”

  “Three and a half thousand square kilometers, with about three thousand Herefords.”

  “And the family looks after all that themselves?”

  Something felt very strange about the way Ludlow was speaking. It was only when Nathan opened his mouth to reply that it hit him. The man was speaking to him completely normally. Nothing overt, or implied, or threatening, or very occasionally, concerned. Nathan wondered how soon Steve would fill him in. Probably in the ambulance on the drive back to town. The story was decent small-talk filler, and it wasn’t like it was confidential. If anything, it was entrenched in local lore now, from what Nathan could tell.

  Ludlow shifted in his seat, and Nathan realized he was still waiting for a reply.

  “They hire in help when they need it, like I said. Mustering, you always need it, but there are contract firms, so you can call up and book the teams. It’s pretty much all done by helicopter and motorbike now. Cam would get in contractors when he needed help with engineering stuff or laying fences or whatever. But day-to-day stuff is mostly the family. Especially when it’s quiet. Like, there’s nothing happening now because the markets and meat plants are all closed for Christmas.”

  “You don’t need help milking all those cows?”

  In the mirror, Nathan saw Xander bite back a smile. “It’s beef around here, not dairy.”

  “So, what, your fridges are full of steak?”

  “And long-life milk. But, no, it’s not the same as with cattle on farms. Properties this size, the cattle mostly wander. Drink from the bores, graze, get rounded up when it’s their time.” They were almost wild in a lot of ways. Some of them barely saw a human from birth to slaughter.

  “And how big is your place?”

  “About seven hundred square kilometers.”

  “A fair bit smaller than Burley Downs.”

  “Yep.”

  “Why is that?”

  Nathan hesitated. Xander had gone back to staring out of the window. “Long story. Messy divorce is the short version.”

  Ludlow seemed to accept that without question, for once, and Nathan wondered if there was a similar explanation for the cop finding himself stationed fifteen hundred kilometers from Brisbane.

  “Who else lives at your place?” Ludlow said.

  Nathan didn’t answer straight away. “No one else full-time. I’m there on my own.”

  Ludlow turned his head and stared. “Just you?”

  “Yup. One-man show. I mean, contractors and people when I need them.” And could afford them.

  The sergeant was openly gaping. “And your place was what, seven hundred square kilometers? And how many cattle?”

  “Probably five or six hundred.”

  “Christ, that still sounds like a lot.”

  Nathan didn’t reply immediately. It was and it wasn’t. It was enough to overwork his crappy strip of land until it became a sandpit. It wasn’t enough to help him break anything like even.

  “But—” Ludlow scanned the extensive horizon all the way from one empty side to the other. “Don’t you get lonely?”

  “No.” Another quick glance in the mirror. Xander was watching now. “No, I’m good. I don’t mind it. And as long as there’s enough water, the cattle pretty much look after themselves.”

  “Not completely, though.”

  “No, not completely, but we’ve been lucky with the Grenville the last couple of years,” Nathan said, keen to change the subject.

  “What’s that, the river?”

  “Yeah. It picks up all the nutrients from the rainwater, so it’s good for the ground when it floods. Flooded last year, then a couple of years before that.”

  Ludlow squinted at the sun.

  “How much rain does that take?”

  “It floods around here without rain,” Xand
er said from the back seat, and Ludlow twisted around.

  “Really?”

  Nathan nodded. It was a strange sight, even after forty-two years, to watch the water rise, silent and stealthy, under a cloudless blue sky. The river would lap at its banks, swollen with rain that had fallen days before and a thousand kilometers north. He pointed outside.

  “When it floods, most of this is under water. The river gets ten kilometers wide in places. You can’t get over without a boat. The houses and the town are all built on high ground, but the road disappears.”

  Ludlow looked amazed. “How do you get out?”

  Nathan heard Xander laugh. “You don’t. A lot of properties become islands. I was stuck out at my place for five weeks once.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yeah,” Nathan said. “It’s all right, though. You just have to be prepared. No choice, it’s the geography.”

  He looked out at the red earth stretching around them. It was hard to imagine, but millions of years ago, this had been the bottom of a massive inland sea. Aquatic dinosaur bones had been dug up under this soil, and there were still places in the desert where mounds of fossilized seashells baked under the sun. Nathan suddenly remembered how he and Cameron had used to go dinosaur hunting when they were young, shovels in hand and bags ready to bring home the bones. Years later, it had been Xander’s turn, and Nathan’s pockets had bulged with plastic dinosaurs to bury when the real ones inevitably didn’t come out to play.

  The sergeant was writing in his notebook again.

  “Who are the neighbors?” he said.

  “Nearest property is Atherton.” Nathan pointed northeast. “The town’s south of that, then you’ve got another couple of properties east of there. The second biggest one around here is Kirrabee Station, and that shares a border with me. It’s owned by a company now.”

  It had previously been family owned, though. Specifically by Nathan’s father-in-law. Ex-father-in-law, Nathan reminded himself, because he preferred the sound of it. He put his foot on the brake as they approached a spot in the fence line where he could pass. Xander jumped out and opened the gate, and they bumped through, and were once again on Cameron’s land.