The Lost Man

by Jane Harper

  Nathan followed him down the slope and at the police car, McKenna reached into the glove box. He drew out a fistful of cards. “Cases like these, I’m supposed to give youse these.”

  Nathan took them. The cards had the phone numbers and websites for a suicide prevention help line and a mental health charity.

  McKenna was watching him, looking uncomfortable.

  “Something else?” Nathan said.

  “Look, mate. That wasn’t meant to be a dig earlier. About no one reporting the car. And I wanted to say, I know you generally give town a wide berth—”

  “Yeah. Haven’t got much choice, have I?”

  “Well, that’s not true. You do have a choice, mate. You could have come and stirred up trouble over the years, but you chose not to, and I appreciate that.”

  “Glad someone does.”

  “And I know you say you’re used to it by now, but in light of all this, if you feel like it’s getting a bit much and you think you might…” McKenna trailed off.

  “Top myself like Cam?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. Look, if you ever feel like things are getting bad, you know you can come into town whenever you need to.”

  Nathan nodded. McKenna was an okay guy. What had happened wasn’t his fault—it was no one’s fault but Nathan’s own—and McKenna had been as evenhanded as he could be about the whole incident. It wasn’t easy being the only cop. He’d put in a good word for Nathan whenever he could, tried to build bridges. It wasn’t his fault it had made no difference.

  “Thanks, mate,” Nathan said. “I’m fine on my own, though.”

  “I heard you had your radio switched off when the search call for Cameron went out.”

  “So?”

  “So I thought we’d talked about that.”

  Nathan didn’t answer.

  “It’s not the first time, either.”

  “Didn’t know there was a law about keeping it on.”

  “Good as, around here. Don’t be a bloody smartarse,” McKenna said. “Anyway, look, don’t be shy to shout out if you need to.”

  “Yep. Okay.”

  There seemed to be nothing more to say, so Nathan waited as McKenna got into the police car and drove away. He watched until it was small, then walked back up the slope to the others.

  “What are those?” Xander was looking at the cards in Nathan’s hand, and Nathan passed them out. Bub rolled his eyes.

  Harry was looking out to the west, his expression its usual mask once more. “I want to go home along the tracks. Stop by the grave on the way.”

  “There’s nothing to see,” Bub said.

  “Still.” Harry slipped the help line card into his pocket, Nathan noticed.

  They all looked at Cameron’s car.

  “Who wants to drive it back?” Bub asked, and there was a silence.

  “We’ll do it,” Nathan said with a glance at Xander, who nodded.

  “All right.” Harry turned to head down the slope to his car. “Stick close. Just in case Cam did have some sort of engine trouble.”

  “No worries.” It was clear none of them really believed that.

  As Bub followed Harry down the slope, Nathan untied the police tape from Cameron’s door handles and climbed in. The driver’s seat was worn smooth, and he reached down and raked it back and forth until it was the right distance from the pedals. Its contours felt unfamiliar, having been broken in by his brother’s lighter frame. Nathan adjusted the rearview mirror and saw his own eyes reflected back at him. They looked enough like Cam’s to make him look away.

  “Harry knew where to turn.” Xander’s voice was quiet from the passenger seat.

  “What?”

  “He knew.” He nodded at Harry’s car. “On the way here. He knew which track led through the rocks to Cam’s car.”

  “Because Bub told him. I heard him.”

  “No. Bub said it after Harry had already started the turn.”

  “No.” Nathan tried to picture it. “It was before.” Wasn’t it? He’d been lost in his own thoughts at the time, not paying attention. “Anyway, Harry knew where the car was. He’d been told.”

  “I know. But you and I knew yesterday, and we still missed it. We’d even been here once with Bub, and we still got it wrong when we drove the other cop out. How did Harry know which gap to take?”

  “Because he knows this whole area like the back of his hand. He knows it as well as anyone. He would have been able to guess.”

  At the bottom of the slope, Harry’s car roared to life. Nathan shook his head and turned Cameron’s keys. The car started perfectly, as it had yesterday. Slowly, with his foot poised on the brake, he eased the car into motion and began to follow Harry and Bub toward the grave. Harry stuck to the fence line, retracing the journey they’d made the day before. Nathan could see shadowy heads moving in the car in front as the two men spoke to each other.

  “He would’ve just worked it out,” Nathan said again.

  “Yeah,” Xander said finally. He slumped back in his seat. “Yeah, probably. Sorry. It’s been a weird couple of days.”

  “I know.”

  Harry’s car started to pull ahead, and Nathan pressed the accelerator to keep up. He couldn’t see Harry and Bub moving anymore. Perhaps they’d said everything they wanted to say. Nathan watched the car pull farther away and felt a tiny prickle. Like the start of a rash, small and manageable but the wrong side of comfortable. He told himself to damp it down. This was Uncle Harry. Nathan had known the man literally his entire life. If anyone could read the land, it was Harry. It was not unreasonable at all that he could make an educated guess.

  Still, a tiny voice whispered in Nathan’s ear. It was a big land, and it was a good guess.

  10

  Cameron’s abandoned food was starting to smell in the back, and Nathan wound down the window a crack.

  “We could dump it,” Xander said, clearly thinking the same thing.

  “Yeah.” Nathan nodded, but didn’t slow down. The stuff in the back was Cameron’s survival gear. For reasons he couldn’t quite articulate, it felt strangely reckless to discard any of it now.

  Xander was still watching the shadows of Harry and Bub in the car in front. Nathan frowned to himself. He trusted Harry, he honestly did. With his life, probably, if it ever came to it. Still, as Harry turned his head to say something to Bub, Nathan found himself replaying that minute before they’d reached Cameron’s car.

  “It’s interesting that Glenn could see Cam’s car from outside your boundary,” Xander said suddenly. “It was pretty well hidden otherwise.”

  “Yeah. But you could say the same for lots of places. Cam could’ve dumped it in the middle of the road in broad daylight, and there’d be a good chance no one would find it for ages. How often does anyone come along there? Once a week? And then, it’s only us or the Atherton lot.”

  “I suppose,” Xander said. “It’s just so flat around here, if I didn’t want my car seen, I’d leave it around the rocks too.” He looked out at the empty land. “It’s shit that no one drove or flew by earlier. Even if Thursday was too late, Wednesday might not have been.”

  Nathan didn’t reply, but Xander was right. If the car had been found sooner, the alarm would have been raised immediately and help called to hand. Nathan suddenly wondered—he tried to stop himself, but couldn’t—whether the same would be true for himself. If it were his car found abandoned, and he in trouble or missing. Would the local passerby call it in? Or would all those people who still turned their backs on him discover that, actually, when push came to shove, they were no better than he was? He honestly didn’t know.

  It wasn’t Ilse’s fault, not even a little bit, but Nathan wouldn’t have even been in town that day if it hadn’t been for her. It had been his third weekend visit in a row to the pub. He’d stopped pretending to himself that he had business in town that made the trip worthwhile, and had gone anyway.

  On his second visit, they’d sat across from each other in the e
mpty bar, and he had found himself telling Ilse about his divorce and his son living fifteen hundred kilometers away. In turn, she had told him how she’d had to put her degree on hold and become a full-time caregiver when her mum’s cancer prognosis became terminal. She’d been engaged, but the daily grind of end-of-life care had proved a bit too much for him, and by the time her mum died, Ilse wasn’t engaged anymore.

  They had had another drink and, somehow, Nathan wasn’t sure how, they’d ended up smiling and finally laughing. Not about what had happened, but about other things, lighter things that made everything else seem more bearable. He couldn’t stop staring at her. He liked the way she looked and the way she looked at him. He told her about the sand dunes. She smiled and said she’d love to go with him one day.

  On Nathan’s third visit, he’d stayed again until closing time, and Ilse had reached out for his hand after he helped her lock up. The road had been deserted in both directions. She’d let him lead her away from the only streetlight so they could see the glorious night sky more clearly, and he’d found himself, as he’d hoped, in a dark corner, pressing her hard against the side of his four-wheel drive, with her mouth warm against his. In a heady mix of delight and disbelief, he’d thrown open the rear of his car where his sleeping bag was rolled out and waiting for him. Her skin was soft and hot as he’d reached under her shirt and felt her hands on his jeans. Then he’d held her tight and listened to her fast, rhythmic breath as the stars shone down on them through the dusty windows.

  Afterward, he had lain there looking at her, the car doors open to let a breeze in and the sleeping bag kicked aside.

  She had smiled, her teeth white in the dark. “What?”

  “Nothing. That was—” He tried to think of the word. Exquisite, revitalizing, transformative. “Great,” he said. It had been the first time since Jacqui had left, but it was more than that. He felt better than he had in years. “Really great.”

  “Thanks.” She’d laughed.

  He ran a hand over her. “So, what now?”

  She smiled again. “I’m pretty sure the backpackers’ handbook says this is the part where you disappear into the sunrise and I never hear from you again.”

  It was his turn to laugh. “No way.” He’d pulled her closer, feeling the spark of her skin on his as she rolled onto him. “That’s not what happens.”

  She’d been right, and he’d been wrong, as it turned out. But he’d really meant it, at the time.

  * * *

  “Why are they stopping?” Xander suddenly leaned forward in the passenger seat, and Nathan was brought back to the present. Up ahead, Harry’s car was pulling to a halt by the fence. They were nowhere near the stockman’s grave yet. They were nowhere near anything that Nathan could see.

  They watched as Harry jumped out, leaving the engine running. He crouched and checked the ground, touching his finger to the dust from time to time.

  “What’s going on?” Xander said.

  “I don’t know.” Nathan wound down his window and leaned out. “Harry! What are you doing?”

  “Looking!”

  “For what?”

  “Anything.”

  The St. Helens cop had said pretty much the same thing, but at least with Harry there was a chance it might actually mean something useful. Nathan wound his window back up and shrugged. “You heard him. Looking.”

  Xander sat back and waited. Minutes ticked by, and finally Harry got back into his car. They started moving again.

  * * *

  Ilse had left him just after dawn. The townsfolk may have been few and far between, but they were all early risers. She had kissed him as she buttoned her shirt.

  “I’ll drive you home,” Nathan had said.

  “No need.” She’d pointed to the accommodation block beside the pub. “That’s me.”

  “That close? We could have gone there.”

  She jumped out of the car and grinned. “What’s wrong? You didn’t have enough fun here?”

  “Yeah. I did.”

  “Me, too.”

  He was buzzing as he watched her leave. He’d pulled on his clothes, and the smile on his face had lasted the whole morning as he’d gone around town getting his jobs done. He was nearly finished, and filling up at the service station ahead of the drive home, when someone pulled in beside him. Nathan clocked the top-of-the-range four-wheel drive and felt his grin fade for the first time.

  He’d kept his head down as his father-in-law—ex-father-in-law—opened the driver’s door and climbed out. Out of the corner of his eye, Nathan thought he saw Keith Walker hesitate. Not for too long, though. There were only two pumps, and Nathan was using one. If Keith needed fuel, he had no choice. He picked up the empty one.

  “Nathan.”

  “G’day, Keith.” Nathan concentrated on the pump. He was going to fill up his tank and drive away. And that was it.

  Keith looked over. “I spoke to Jacqui yesterday.”

  Nathan watched the numbers on the dial turn around. “Oh, yeah.” Not a question.

  “And look, she’s instructing her lawyers to push back.”

  “Righto.”

  “Nathan, be reasonable. Asking for that level of contact, it’s too many calls and visits for a kid Xander’s age.”

  “My lawyer reckons it’s a pretty standard custody split.”

  “For divorced couples who live around the corner from each other, maybe. Not with you all the way out here.”

  “She’s the one who left. Not me.” Nathan shut his mouth, then opened it again. “Anyway, I would’ve thought you’d be happy to have Xander around.”

  Keith, with four properties, was one of the country’s biggest landowners and, in a good year, occasionally troubled the very tail end of the rich list. Now he shook his head, his mouth down-turned. “Kathy and I see Xander in Brisbane. There’s no reason for the boy to come out here.”

  “I’m his dad, Keith.” The pump clicked off. The tank was full. “So there’s one bloody good reason for you.”

  Nathan looked at his father-in-law properly for the first time. He was a bit pale and seemed tired. Probably stayed up too late counting his money, Nathan thought, as he went inside to pay. Through the window, he could see Keith watching him.

  Nathan had never been sure what it was about him that the bloke objected to so strongly. Keith hadn’t got along with Nathan’s dad, but that wasn’t exactly unusual. Nathan hadn’t got along with his dad either. And Keith had been all right when Nathan and Jacqui had first got together. Although, Nathan wondered, perhaps he’d just been biting his tongue, hoping the romance would run its course and fizzle out.

  It got worse the better things got with Jacqui, and by the time the wedding rolled around, Nathan was barely on speaking terms with his new father-in-law. Keith had tried to talk Jacqui out of getting married, more than once, as Nathan learned some time later, when Jacqui screamed it at him across the room.

  But the wedding had gone ahead, like it or not, and afterward Keith had carved off part of his own extensive property and called it a peace offering. It was a relatively small strip directly bordering the Bright family’s land, and Keith had presented it to the newlyweds as a gift. Consider it a foothold in Kirrabee Station, he’d explained. If they made it work and outgrew it, they could buy out more from him over time.

  Nathan had privately had a few doubts about that bit of land. The strip on that side of the fence had never looked good to him, but Jacqui had been excited, so he hadn’t said anything. She’d encouraged him to pour resources into it, set them up properly as a family property with one eye on the future. Nathan took the third of Burley Downs he inherited when his dad died, and sold half his share to Cameron.

  His new land swallowed up the money as fast as he could put it in. Jacqui couldn’t understand it. She encouraged him to sell the remainder of his Burley Downs stake. Invest more. Try harder. Her dad made good money from property, why couldn’t Nathan? He refused to sell the rest of his inheritance, and
that was their first big fight as a married couple.

  Jacqui went to stay with her parents for a few days. When she came back, Nathan voiced his opinion out loud that the land Keith had given them was a dud. That was their second big fight, and Jacqui had climbed straight back in the car and disappeared to her parents’ house for another few days. And it occurred to Nathan, as he watched her drive away from the shitty piece of property, that possibly that was exactly what Keith had been hoping for.

  * * *

  Nathan now felt the wheels go over a bump and told himself to focus. The ground was uneven, and Cameron’s car was unfamiliar. The last thing he needed was to get bogged in a sandbank. Up ahead, Harry’s car was slowing again. He had stopped twice more along the way, getting out to examine the ground along the fence line, or turn in a slow circle, taking in the surroundings.

  “What does he think he’s going to see at the grave?” Xander said as it came into sight.

  “I don’t know,” Nathan said. “But he’s known Cam since he was born. Maybe he just wants to see for himself.”

  “Maybe.” Xander didn’t sound convinced.

  * * *

  Nathan had missed Xander even more than he’d expected when Jacqui had finally left for good. She’d been threatening it for so long, it was almost a relief when it happened. She was absolutely sick of things. Nathan was a crap husband, crap dad, crap bloody provider, and she let him know it. Nathan had thought he would be glad to see the back of her, but the separation from Xander felt like a physical blow.

  He had found himself poring over the photos. Looking at Xander’s happy face, his small hands and his thick hair, already with a bit of a wave. Nathan even missed hearing him cry out in the middle of the night, like an engine warming up. When Xander had been a baby, Nathan used to sit next to the cot in the dark and play his guitar softly. It had been one of the only things that seemed to soothe him for a time, and Nathan had been surprised when Jacqui found that more annoying than helpful.