The Lost Man

by Jane Harper

  “Go.” Nathan nodded at the washing line. “I’ll bring these in.”

  “Thank you.” She seemed about to say something more, then changed her mind. A sheet blew in front of Nathan, hiding her from sight as she walked away, and he pushed it aside in time to see her disappear into the house. He turned back to the washing line. The white linen was a dull red-gray in the deepening gloom.

  Across the yard, Bub was still standing by the grave plots, only his back visible. Nathan reached up for the next sheet, then stopped as Bub took a final swig from the can in his hand, placed it on the ground, and dropped a hand to his fly. A second later came the unmistakable sound of a long stream of urine cascading onto the ground. Nathan stood completely still. The noise ran on, steady before at last trickling away to nothing. Finished, apparently, Bub zipped up and sauntered toward the house without glancing in Nathan’s direction. A faint note in the air suggested he was whistling.

  Nathan didn’t move until he was gone. The family plot was shadowy as he walked over, taking care where he put his feet in the growing dark. He looked at the ground where his dad was buried and where Cameron soon would be, then crouched and touched the soil with his fingertips. It was already dry. The thirsty earth had drunk in the moisture. It was impossible to tell which plot Bub had pissed on.

  9

  It was still early, but Nathan could see the two little girls already out in the horse exercise yard. Cameron’s daughters. He watched them for a minute before climbing into the passenger seat of Harry’s four-wheel drive.

  Liz had lost the will or energy to protest, so Bub and Xander had both insisted on coming to meet the town’s sergeant out at Cameron’s car. No one said it, but Nathan suspected everyone secretly hoped that Glenn McKenna would have a proper look and be able to tell them exactly what was what.

  Bub didn’t speak to any of them as he climbed into the back seat next to Xander. Nathan had still been able to detect the faint whiff of urine when he’d left the graves the night before, but back at the house, he’d found Bub already in his bedroom with the door shut. Nathan had been debating whether to knock when he’d heard Harry shout out the nightly warning call. The generator was going off. Nathan had lowered his hand. This was not a conversation to have in faceless pitch black. Instead, as the generator fell still and the property was plunged into darkness, he had lain on the couch rehearsing what he would say. By morning, though, he woke to find that his ideas had evaporated, and what he’d thought he’d seen suddenly seemed a lot less clear.

  Harry started the engine and set off down the driveway. As they passed the exercise yard, Nathan signaled.

  “Pull over for a minute, Harry.”

  The eight-year-old, Sophie, was in the middle of the yard, guiding a horse in a circle on a long lead with one hand. Her other arm was in a sling. Lo, now five, was sitting by the fence, her head down as she drew something on a pad of paper. They were bigger than Nathan remembered, but then again, it had been a year. Nathan could see Ilse watching her daughters from the veranda. Cameron’s dog, Duffy, sat listlessly at her feet.

  “Hi, girls.” Nathan leaned out of the window and waved to his nieces as Harry came to a stop. “I didn’t get a chance to say hello last night. How are you doing? And you remember Xander, don’t you?”

  Sophie tied up her horse, and the girls took their time walking over. Lo in particular looked at Nathan like he was a stranger.

  “Come on, say g’day to your uncle,” Harry prompted when they stood unsmiling.

  “Hi, Uncle Nathan,” Sophie intoned. Lo, half a step behind her, didn’t say anything. They looked a lot like Cam, especially around the eyes, Nathan thought. Their matching dirty-blond hair would probably go dark as they got older. Xander’s had been the same.

  Nathan looked at Sophie’s sling. It was made from colorful fabric with ponies printed on it. “What happened to you?”

  “Fell off.”

  “Geez, you okay?”

  “Small fracture.”

  “That’s no good.”

  “No.”

  Was that a mild hint of sarcasm? Nathan couldn’t be sure. She seemed a bit young for that. “Well,” he said. “Be careful. I guess we’ll see you later.”

  The girls nodded and, after a glance toward Harry, ran back to the exercise yard.

  “They seem a bit stunned by everything,” Nathan said as Sophie picked up the horse’s reins with her good hand. “Her arm doesn’t seem to have put her off, at least.”

  “No.” Harry’s eyes were on the driveway. “Well, you know Sophie.”

  He didn’t really, Nathan thought as they pulled away. They passed Ilse, and she raised her hand in a wave.

  They drove in silence while the homestead fell behind them. Harry took the road route rather than cutting across the paddocks, and Nathan could hear the stones pinging off the bodywork, louder and more frequently than yesterday. Harry drove faster than Nathan tended to, but then again, most people did.

  Nathan had been barely twenty-one when his dad had had the crash. He’d been practically living with Jacqui by then, at her suggestion, in the same house he now called home. It had felt very different then, the novelty still shiny and new, and the sex still on tap. Jacqui was good to look at and even better in bed, and for a long time he’d loved her for it. Cameron had been away studying an agribusiness course, and Bub was still a little kid.

  It had been the completely unremarkable nature of the accident that had shaken Nathan as much as anything. Carl and Liz Bright had been driving back from town, as they had a hundred times. A cow had stepped onto the track, and Carl had swerved, as he’d also done a hundred times.

  This time, though, he’d been too slow, or the car had been moving too fast, or he’d been too sharp with the wheel, or not sharp enough, and he’d clipped it. The car had rolled and come to rest upside down. Carl had been pinned between the steering wheel and the roof. Liz was knocked unconscious and had woken up in the dark to find herself bleeding from the head and her husband bleeding to death. She’d used the radio to call for help. It had taken forty minutes for the first person to arrive and another thirty for the ambulance. Roughly four hours had elapsed from the time of the accident to either of them receiving basic medical attention. Not one other car had passed by in all that time.

  Nathan had been asleep with Jacqui when the call had come through. She’d made the right sympathetic noises as he’d pulled on his shirt and shoes, while also managing to convey on some level that she was a little pissed off he was leaving her in the middle of the night for a drama involving his own family. It was funny how high and bright the red flags flew in hindsight, Nathan often thought.

  Liz was already in the back of the ambulance when he’d finally arrived. A younger Steve Fitzgerald had been on duty, and had taken Nathan aside to explain the situation. Carl was still pinned, but there was no urgency to free him. He was well and truly dead. But it hadn’t been quick and wouldn’t have been painless, Nathan had later overheard Steve whisper on the radio to dispatch. The bloke might have had a chance if someone had come by to raise the alarm sooner.

  Inside the ambulance, with a blanket around her shoulders despite the heat of the night, Liz was almost unrecognizable under the crust of blackened blood.

  “She was lucky,” Steve had said. “She’ll heal.”

  Nathan had looked at his mum, dazed and battered, and thought she looked far from lucky. Then he had looked inside the twisted metal wreck of the car, and from that day forward had driven a few kilometers per hour slower than was strictly necessary.

  Nathan heard Harry grunt and looked over. The man’s face hadn’t changed.

  “You right?”

  “Yeah,” Harry said. “I was just thinking about that time you and Cam ran away to the stockman’s grave when you were kids. Remember?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  Xander leaned forward. “What was that?”

  Harry looked at him in the mirror. “You’ve never heard this s
tory?”

  Xander shook his head. Harry glanced at Nathan, who shrugged.

  “I wasn’t going to tell him, was I? It was a bloody stupid thing to do.”

  “Yeah. It was,” Harry said. “But you were only kids. What were you, twelve?”

  “Eleven. Cam was nine.” Nathan felt his insides twist at the memory of his brother, his dusty legs sticking out from below a loaded backpack.

  “Why were you running away?” Xander said.

  “God knows. I can’t remember,” Nathan lied. He could feel Xander watching him, and Bub, too, now. “And for the record, we weren’t running away to the stockman’s grave. It was a pit stop on the way to town.”

  They’d stuffed their backpacks, ridden out well before dawn. Nathan wasn’t sure what they’d thought was waiting for them in town. Something better. But they’d had a plan, he knew. They’d discussed it at length, and he could still remember some of the details now. He just didn’t want to talk about it.

  “So what happened?” Xander asked.

  “They didn’t get very far, for starters,” Harry said. “Their dad worked out what they were planning about five minutes after we discovered they’d left. We drove out here, parked by the grave, and waited for them to come over the far crest.” He looked at Nathan. “You remember that?”

  “Yeah, I remember.” The feeling of seeing the two men waiting there.

  “What happened when you found them?” Xander said.

  “We picked them up and drove them back home,” Harry said. “Held the horses’ reins out of the window, let them gallop along beside.”

  “Was Dad angry?” Bub’s voice came from the back. It was the first time he had spoken since they’d set off.

  “Yeah.” Nathan didn’t turn to look at him. “Yeah, he was.”

  “I’ll bet he was.” The atmosphere in the car felt heavier, and they fell silent. Nathan could see the rocky outcrop stretching ahead. Not far to go now.

  It hadn’t seemed like it at the time, but it was for the best that he and Cam had been found and picked up, Nathan thought. They’d have been lucky to last until morning at that time of year, even with supplies. Danger season. He knew now how stupid it had been. The rules of the outback might seem brutal, but they were written in blood. Just ask Cameron. Nathan was jolted from this train of thought as his head jerked forward a little. Harry tapped the brakes as Nathan heard Bub call from the back: “Right turn here.”

  Nathan looked up at the rocks, and the almost invisible gap leading through. They were there. He heard Xander shift in the back and glanced at him in the side mirror. His son was looking at Harry with a strange expression on his face.

  The police vehicle came into sight first, parked at the bottom of the slope. Cameron’s car was still waiting at the top, exactly where they had left it. Sergeant Glenn McKenna was standing next to it, and he raised his hand as they walked up.

  “You found it okay, then?” Nathan nodded at the Land Cruiser.

  McKenna nodded. “You can see it briefly if you’re coming from town. For a minute or so where the road rises outside your boundary, Nathan.”

  “Can you?”

  “You didn’t see it yourself?”

  “I don’t use that road.” Nathan looked the sergeant in the eye. “Only place it goes is town.”

  McKenna kept his gaze. “Fair point. Look, sorry I couldn’t be here yesterday. How was the other officer?”

  Nathan and Bub exchanged a glance. “Fine,” Nathan said.

  “I’ve heard good things about him.” McKenna nodded at the car door and frowned. “I thought he said this was unlocked.”

  “It was, when we found it.” Nathan handed over the keys. “He locked it.”

  “Why?”

  “In case anyone came by.”

  McKenna looked mildly amused, but said nothing as he opened the car and looked inside. He searched thoroughly, checking the same places as his colleague, plus a few more the other guy hadn’t thought of. Like Ludlow, he paused at the sight of the food and water in the back. Nathan could smell the sandwiches and fruit starting to turn. Eventually, the sergeant slammed the rear door.

  “I reckon we’ve got everything we’re going to get, so you’re all right to take this when you go.”

  Dismay crossed Xander’s face. “You’re not going to hold it for—I dunno—investigation or something?”

  “No, mate. I’m sorry.” McKenna shook his head. “Look, I honestly would if I thought it would help. I’d get the CIB boys to fly in from the city, do all their tests, but you have to make a case for it and they won’t come for this. There’s no sign of a struggle. There’s nothing damaged, valuable equipment hasn’t been stolen. I’m not sure what was going through Cameron’s head, but your uncle didn’t die in this car.”

  No one spoke for a minute. The crime scene tape tied to the door handles whipped in the wind.

  “So what do we know?” McKenna said, looking at the four of them. “Cameron said he was heading to Lehmann’s Hill, but for some reason he changed his mind. And it’s a fair old hike from here to where he ended up. He would have known what he was getting himself into, this time of year. On foot with no water. What time did he leave home on Wednesday?”

  “About eight,” Harry said. “Ilse and one of the casuals saw him.”

  “I’ve spoken to Steve at the clinic,” McKenna said. “The autopsy’s been booked, but he reckons Cameron was dead by Thursday midmorning, at the latest. Maybe even a bit earlier, given the temperature.” He looked at Bub, his voice gentle. “You told Sergeant Ludlow you thought Cam had been having a bit of a hard time of it recently, mate. What was that about, do you think?”

  “I dunno.”

  McKenna waited, but Bub said no more.

  “Look,” Harry stepped in. “Cam ran a tight ship, but he kept things close to his chest. You know that. But Bub’s right. These last few weeks, there’d been a few things going overlooked.”

  “Like what?” McKenna said.

  “Nothing big. But stuff he said he was going to do but didn’t. Fix the gate to the cattle yard, that kind of thing.”

  “He didn’t mention falling out with anyone? Someone from town?” McKenna asked, and both Bub and Harry shook their heads. “What about with either of you? His missus?”

  There was a tiny bristle at that, Nathan thought, but again both shook their heads.

  “Is that a no?” McKenna said. “Or a don’t know?”

  “No,” Harry said at the same time as Bub said: “Don’t know.”

  The sergeant eyed them each in turn, like a teacher at school, and Nathan started to feel a little guilty himself. Glancing up the line, he suspected he wasn’t alone. The only exception was Xander, who was still watching Harry with a curious look.

  “Well, I reckon anyone seeing the car standing empty like this would’ve done the right thing and reported it—” McKenna bit his words short. He glanced at Nathan, who stared back, steady. If he dropped his gaze every time someone mentioned it, he’d never look anyone in the eye again.

  “Anyway.” McKenna took a breath and went on. “No calls came in, so I think we can assume no one came by.”

  “Do you think Uncle Cam might have stopped to help someone and got in trouble?” Xander said. “A tourist or someone?”

  “Look, I won’t rule it out,” McKenna said. “But I haven’t heard of anyone coming through.”

  It wasn’t easy, Nathan knew, for a stranger to make their way across the district without the locals knowing about it. The desert tracks were closed in the summer, leaving exactly two roads in or out. Two choices, leading to two other tiny towns in opposite directions and hundreds of kilometers apart. Everyone was forced to stop for fuel and supplies at some point, and locals tended to stare at strange cars at that time of year. It wasn’t easy to sail through unnoticed. But, Nathan thought, it wasn’t impossible.

  “And things are okay on the property?” McKenna said as Harry nodded. “And look, there’s no point pre
tending this is a casual question: are your firearms in order over there?”

  “Yes,” Harry said, with a slight edge to his voice.

  “All accounted for? Locked up properly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’s the key kept these days? Locked up securely in line with regulations, no doubt,” McKenna said, deadpan. They all knew it usually hung by the back door.

  “I’ve got it,” Harry said, and Nathan looked over in surprise. “It’s been on my key ring for the past three weeks.”

  McKenna looked at him. “Any reason you’re carrying it?”

  “No reason,” Harry said. “Needed it one day and never put it back.”

  “Cameron didn’t ask for it?”

  “He didn’t need to ask. He could have just taken it. But no. Didn’t ask for it, didn’t take it.”

  “Right.” McKenna frowned. He looked like he might say something else, then changed his mind. He looked instead at Nathan.

  “What about you? Any change on the firearms front?”

  “No.” Nathan met his eye. “All still the same as last time.”

  “All right,” McKenna said. “How’s Ilse coping?”

  Nathan felt a tiny prickle at her name. “She’s not too good.”

  “And your mum?”

  “Not too good either.”

  “No. Well. Tell them I’ll give them a call. And you blokes—” McKenna hesitated. “How are you all going? Can be hard, this time of year. Lot of pressure from all sides. You all okay?”

  Nathan knew what he was asking. Anyone else feel like walking out into the nothing?

  “We’re good, I think,” he said when no one else answered. “I mean, considering. Good as can be expected.”

  “And you know you can always call me, or Steve at the clinic. If you ever need to just have a yarn or whatever.”

  They nodded dutifully.

  “Good.” McKenna beckoned to Nathan. “Come with me. Got some info in the car I need to give you.”