The Lost Man

by Jane Harper

  “How would you know?”

  “Does she look happy to you?”

  “Hadn’t really thought about it.”

  “I’d keep her happy,” Bub said, with a meaningful nod, in case Nathan had failed to fully grasp his intent.

  “Yeah, all right. Never mind that—” Gunfire rang out on screen. “Listen, can you—” Nathan reached over and paused the game.

  “What’s your problem?” Then Bub’s annoyance faded as quickly as it arrived. “Is something wrong? Is it about Cam?”

  “No. Well, yeah, kind of. I wanted to talk to you. It’s—” Nathan faltered. “I saw you last night.”

  “What? When?” Bub’s eyes flicked to the doorway where Katy had been, and his cheeks reddened. Nathan wondered what he was thinking.

  “Outside in the garden,” he prompted.

  Bub frowned.

  “Taking a slash on the gravesites?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Bub actually laughed. “So?”

  “So what do you think you were doing?”

  “It was only on Dad’s. Like you’ve never done it.”

  Nathan hadn’t, in fact. Possibly because he had never thought of it. “Do you—?”

  “Do I what, mate?”

  “Do you do that often?”

  “Time to time, whenever I’m passing and can muster it up.”

  “But … why?”

  “Nate, mate. Come on.” Bub turned back to his game, nothing more to say.

  It might never have occurred to Nathan to piss on a grave, but he knew Bub maybe had a little more incentive. The key with Carl Bright that you had to learn quick and early was to stay out of his way whenever you could and keep your head well down the rest of the time. Bub, born late, had never gotten the hang of it. Being an accidental baby was hardly his fault, but it hadn’t helped his cause. Liz had never once hinted that Bub’s arrival hadn’t been entirely welcome, twelve and ten years after his brothers, but Carl hadn’t bothered to hide it.

  It might not have been so bad if Bub had followed Nathan, rather than Cameron, who Carl seemed to find the least offensive by some margin. But Bub’s slowness and his difficulty finding the right words had infuriated their dad. And Bub was completely unable to sense when it was happening. Nathan had tried to help him, showing him the signs to watch out for and growing frustrated himself when Bub didn’t get it. Cam had tried too, but it was no good. Bub literally couldn’t see it to save himself.

  Nathan looked at Bub now, older but still the same in some ways. “Look, Dad’s grave is one thing, but Cam’s going to be there too, you know.”

  “He’s not there yet, though.” Bub had restarted the game, and his eyes were glued to the screen. “Anyway, I wouldn’t do that to Cam, would I?”

  “I don’t know,” Nathan said, and Bub looked up sharply.

  “Me and Cam got along fine, thanks. Better than you two did.”

  Nathan opened his mouth but was saved by a call from the kitchen. Dinner was ready.

  “You’ll kill the tree if you keep on doing that,” he muttered as they went through, but Bub shrugged.

  “Like I give a shit. It’s just a tree.”

  The atmosphere around the kitchen table already felt subdued. Ilse turned to Nathan as he sat down next to Xander.

  “How did it go out there?” she asked neutrally. She was flanked by her two daughters, and seemed to be working hard to maintain a brave face.

  “Okay. Glenn’s going to call you,” he said. “He let us bring Cam’s car back. It’s outside.”

  Ilse gave a small nod. “Thanks.”

  Nathan felt a soft hand on his shoulder now and moved his chair to give Liz space to sit down. She looked even worse under artificial light. The skin around her eyes was taut and shiny from crying. Katy put a plate in front of her, and Liz stared at it with a faintly puzzled air. The phone in the hallway started ringing, and Liz and Harry both pushed their chairs back.

  “I’ll get it,” Liz said. “It might be Glenn.”

  “What did he say to you all?” Ilse asked as Liz left the room.

  “Nothing much we didn’t already know,” Harry said. “He asked a bit about Cam’s state of mind. How things were going on the property.”

  “And what did you tell him?” Ilse was watching Harry closely.

  “What you’d expect. That things were going well here, but Cam had been worried about something.”

  “Did he ask what?”

  “Of course.”

  “And?”

  Harry’s face barely moved but he kept his eyes on Ilse. “And none of us were much help. So I reckon he’ll be wanting to ask you.”

  Ilse shot a look at her daughters, who were watching now. “Maybe we should talk about this later.”

  For a few minutes, the only sound was cutlery against plates and the ticking of the kitchen clock. Nathan cleared his throat and turned to Harry.

  “I thought I’d go to Lehmann’s Hill tomorrow. Try to fix that mast.”

  “That’d be good. Bub can give you a hand.” He looked at Bub, who nodded.

  “It’s fine,” Nathan said. “Xander’ll come.”

  Harry shook his head. “It’s a long way and the radio’s down. Take Bub, too.”

  Nathan opened his mouth to reply when Liz appeared at the door, her face strangely fixed.

  “Glenn needs to talk to you,” she said to Ilse, who stood up and left the kitchen.

  “What’s wrong?” Harry said.

  “Nothing. Everything’s fine.” Liz flashed a rigid smile at the girls. “But a quick word outside, Harry, if you don’t mind.”

  Nathan saw his confusion mirrored in Bub’s and Xander’s faces. They heard the slam of the screen door as Harry followed Liz out and, a moment later, the hum of low voices on the veranda. The backpackers looked at each other, their meals forgotten on their plates.

  A minute passed, then another. No one came back. Slowly, they all picked up their forks and continued eating. After what felt like a long time, Nathan heard fast footsteps in the hall and the screech of the screen door again. Another murmured voice on the veranda, inaudible but with a new sense of urgency in its tone. Ilse, he thought. He waited, but still no one returned to the kitchen. Finally, he pushed back his chair, six pairs of eyes on him.

  “Back in a minute.”

  The conversation stopped dead as he stepped outside. Harry cut himself off mid-word, and Liz looked up. She had both arms wrapped tightly around herself. Ilse, who appeared to have been looking from one to the other, now fixed her eyes firmly on Nathan. He wasn’t sure what she was trying to tell him, if anything. The yellow porch light cast a sickly glow over them all.

  “What’s going on?”

  No one answered him straight away.

  “Anyone?” he tried again. “What did Glenn say?”

  Harry shot a look at Liz. “He was going through the police records this afternoon for his report and he found a reference to Cameron.”

  Nathan frowned. “Did Cam do something?”

  “No,” Liz snapped, and Ilse’s jaw tightened.

  “Apparently, about two months ago, someone rang the cop shop asking about Cameron,” Harry said, and looked at Liz. “You tell him. It was you Glenn spoke to.”

  Liz shook her head, a tight jerk of the neck, and glanced at Ilse, who waved her hand impatiently. “Christ, you just tell him, Harry.”

  Harry sighed. “Someone called the police station, but it wasn’t Glenn who took the call. It was when he was on medical leave for that week or so, you remember?”

  “Vaguely,” Nathan said. “Matt covered.” The usual stand-in sergeant from St. Helens. He was an okay bloke.

  “Right. Well, Glenn noticed a minor entry on the log and asked Matt about it. Matt reckons he got a call at the station from a woman saying she used to know Cameron and asking if he still worked on this property.”

  Ilse was now looking out into the night with a thousand-yard stare.

  “So Matt says yes,” Ha
rry went on. “Offers to pass on her details, but she says something like: ‘No, it’s fine. As long as Cameron’s still there, I’ll get in touch myself.’”

  Nathan felt a seed of disquiet unfurl and grow. “Okay.”

  “Matt doesn’t think too much of it, but he mentions this woman to Cameron when he sees him in town a few days later. Thinking it’s an old girlfriend or whatever.”

  Ilse folded her arms firmly across her chest.

  “But apparently, Cam wasn’t too happy to hear this,” Harry said. “Told Matt he wasn’t interested in hearing from her. Not to pass on his number or e-mail. Get rid of her if she calls again. So Matt thinks, fair enough. Old girlfriend.” Harry glanced at Ilse. “New girlfriend, maybe. None of his business. And that’s that. Quick note in the log, nothing more to see.”

  The creases in Harry’s face deepened.

  “Until all this, obviously,” he said. “Glenn saw the log this afternoon, got the story from Matt, and thought he’d better call us and see if this woman’s name rang any bells.”

  “Well, don’t bloody keep me in suspense, mate,” Nathan said. Liz was examining the floorboards, and Ilse was still staring out into the night.

  “It was Jenna Moore.”

  Nathan breathed out. “Shit.” He hadn’t heard the name in more than twenty years, and he had to dig deep to fully unearth the memory. Dusty and buried, it rose up through the years and clicked into place, and by then it wasn’t a bell ringing in Nathan’s head, it was an alarm.

  14

  They set off for Lehmann’s Hill just after dawn. Nathan drove, with Bub next to him and Xander in the back.

  He adjusted his mirrors as the sun’s reflection rose, blinding red behind them. They were heading west, toward the desert, and the sky loomed huge above the perfect flat horizon. By the time they hit the edge and turned north, they would be able to see the dunes: huge sandy peaks running north to south for hundreds of kilometers.

  Xander had helped Nathan collect the mast repair instructions and tools from Cameron’s car before they set off. The equipment was all there. If Cameron had never intended to go to the mast, Nathan thought, he’d made an effort to hide the fact.

  The house had barely disappeared from view behind them before Xander leaned forward from the backseat. “So what’s the story with this woman that everyone’s whispering about?”

  He’d clearly been itching to ask, and Nathan couldn’t blame him. Dinner the night before had been swiftly abandoned as Nathan had stood out on the veranda with Ilse, Harry, and Liz, whispering and talking themselves in circles. It wasn’t long before Lo and Sophie had poked their small heads around the screen door to see what was happening, followed by Xander.

  Ilse had hastily bundled the girls back inside, ostensibly to put them to bed, and hadn’t come back. Nathan had shaken his head at Xander—Not now, mate—and the boy had reluctantly retreated. Liz, stiff-limbed and red-eyed, had eventually gone inside without another word. The sound of soft crying had floated out on the night air. Nathan wasn’t sure who it was. He and Harry had talked until it was time to turn the generator off, then Nathan had lain awake on the couch for hours. His eyes felt gritty in the morning light, and he rubbed them now with his knuckles. It made them worse.

  “Jenna Moore,” Bub said from the passenger seat. “That’s who they’re all worried about.”

  “Did you hear much about that back then?” Nathan said. It had all been before Bub’s time. He would have been—Nathan worked it out—only about seven when it happened.

  Bub shrugged. “This and that.”

  Nathan realized both Bub and Xander were looking at him expectantly. Out in front, a cow stepped onto the track and wandered across. He slowed to let it pass, but it stopped dead, turning its head to look at them. Nathan came to a halt and waited, then sounded the horn. The cow didn’t move, just blinked slowly.

  “Christ. Back in a sec.”

  He put the car in park and jumped out, walking slowly toward the animal. That was enough to get it moving, followed by the small herd waiting on the other side of the road. Nathan automatically ran an appraising eye over them. They looked healthy and well fed. Cameron—or Bub, Harry, whoever, he quickly corrected himself—would have no trouble finding a market for them when the time came.

  “Anyway,” Xander said impatiently, leaning forward as Nathan got back in. “Who’s Jenna Moore?”

  Nathan focused on the road as he drove. He realized he had never actually told the story out loud—he’d never been asked to—and suddenly wasn’t sure where to start.

  “It was all years ago,” he said eventually. “I was nineteen, so Cam must have been seventeen. Yeah, he was, actually, because he was still underage.”

  Bub gave an amused grunt from the passenger seat at the suggestion that Balamara observed the legal drinking age with any real enthusiasm.

  “It was around this time of year,” Nathan went on. “The week between Christmas and New Year, when everyone who’s coming back has come back. All the property kids were home from school or uni or their city jobs or whatever they’d been doing.”

  Cameron had been on holidays ahead of his final year of boarding school in Brisbane, while Nathan had been splitting his time between working on Burley Downs and nurturing a hot and heavy mutual flirtation with golden-haired Jacqui Walker next door.

  “There was this party in the dunes outside town,” he said. “I can’t even remember who organized it. Some of the Atherton guys, I think. Anyway, we all drove in for it. Some kids we’d done School of the Air with back in the day, a few of the station hands, backpackers, that kind of thing. Most people had left school, so were more my age than Cam’s, but he was welcome to come along. Everyone knew him, obviously.”

  It had been a good night, Nathan remembered. Warm, but not too hot, for once, and the inky sky was heavy with stars as they parked their utes and four-wheel drives in the sand. Someone lit a campfire and cranked up the music as the booze was passed around.

  Nathan had driven there with Cameron, and had spotted Jacqui the minute they’d pulled up. She had been sitting by the fire with another girl, who was laughing at something and idly braiding and unbraiding her thick hair in the orange glow of the flames. They were both sipping beer. Jacqui had seen Nathan and given him one of the smiles she’d been giving him lately, and Nathan had nearly fallen over himself in his haste to get out of the car. He’d almost forgotten Cameron was even there until his brother appeared at his shoulder, his tall shadow flickering against the ground.

  “The girl, Jenna, was working on Jacqui’s dad’s property,” he said. “She was English, out here backpacking with her boyfriend. The boyfriend had had to stay behind and work at the station, so she’d come alone to the party with Jacqui.”

  It had been a good turnout, for around there. Fresh beers were cracked open as soon as a bottle ran empty, and the sound of laughter and chatter had swelled as mates caught up in person, for the first time in years, in some cases. The numbers at the party grew as a handful more people arrived, then dipped occasionally as the booze flowed and the night wore on, and couples—some established, some brand-new—made the most of rare face-to-face time by disappearing together into the dark of the dunes for half an hour. Nathan was biding his time. Neither he nor Jacqui was expected home that night, and they had plans and a mate’s empty house waiting for them in town. Cam knew where the back of the car was when he was ready to crash out.

  Nathan remembered putting his arms around Jacqui and seeing her hair shine in the light of the campfire as she smiled at him. He knew what was in store later and was feeling pretty great about life in general. He wasn’t sure when he’d first noticed Cameron and Jenna together. Maybe when Jenna had stood up to get them both another beer, stretching her arms high above her head and exposing a flash of taut skin as Cam gazed up at her. She had definitely been watching Cam watching her, as she’d walked slowly all the way over to the coolbox, then slowly all the way back, and sat down again ri
ght beside him. Nathan could picture that clearly.

  “Jenna was older, I remember,” Nathan said. “I think she was about twenty at the time.”

  Cameron had been at that awkward in-between stage. In his school uniform, face scrubbed and hair combed, he looked like a teenager. In his work clothes, on the property, with his back and shoulders and forearms honed from physical work, he could be mistaken for a man. In the uneven firelight through the hazy film of alcohol, he could have been either.

  “And it was obvious Cam was interested,” Nathan said. “A couple of people said Jenna had this boyfriend back on the station, but it didn’t seem to bother her, so it didn’t bother any of us. I didn’t see her even talking to anyone else much, it was mainly her and Cam together for most of the night.”

  Nathan had had a few drinks himself by the time he’d next looked over and seen Jenna sitting in the sand by the campfire, leaning against Cameron’s legs. Cam said something, and she laughed. He said something else, and her face tilted up so it was close to his. They were each holding a beer bottle. Their free hands were entwined.

  When Nathan had looked over next, they were kissing, and Cameron’s hand was now stroking Jenna’s semi-braided hair. Nathan had fleetingly wondered if he should have a quick man-to-man word with his younger brother, but suspected Cam wouldn’t thank him for it. Then Jacqui had stretched up on tiptoe and whispered something in Nathan’s ear, and all at once it was time to go.

  They’d tossed Nathan’s car keys at Cameron and told him to give Jenna a lift back to town later, or make sure someone else did, then driven to their mate’s empty house as fast as Jacqui’s red four-wheel drive could take them.

  Nathan glanced at Xander now in his rearview mirror.

  “So I left the party with your mum to make sure she got back to town safely—”

  Bub smirked and Xander pretended not to notice.

  “—And the next morning, we ran into a few people from the party. A girl Jacqui knew and a couple of the blokes from Atherton, and everyone was talking about how, after we’d left, Cam and Jenna had—” He saw his son’s reflection and hesitated.