The Lost Man

by Jane Harper

  “Had a root?” Bub supplied from the passenger seat.

  “Yeah. Thanks, Bub.”

  It had actually seemed pretty funny, Nathan remembered. They’d all laughed about it. Cameron Bright, home on his school holidays, managing to nail a backpacker behind the dunes.

  “So that was it. Bit of gossip floating around. Pretty standard morning after,” Nathan said. “I found Cam sleeping it off in my car behind the service station with a pretty pleased look on his face. Jacqui went to track down Jenna, and me and Cam came home.”

  Jenna had slept in the staff accommodation at the pub, along with a few of the other casual workers. She had been fine on the drive back to their property, Jacqui had told him later. A bit quiet, perhaps. Embarrassed, maybe. Hungover, definitely. But fine. She hadn’t offered a word about Cameron, and Jacqui hadn’t asked.

  “And that was that, for about a day,” Nathan said.

  Cam had been grinning like an idiot out of Nathan’s passenger-side window the whole way home. He’d still been grinning when the call came through the next afternoon.

  “Then what?” Xander leaned farther forward.

  “Then Jenna said she wasn’t fine anymore.”

  15

  When he’d hung up the phone, Carl Bright had been the worst type of furious. The kind of stone-cold anger that made him particularly unpredictable and made Nathan particularly wary. He had summoned his eldest sons.

  “You two. In here.”

  Nathan and Cameron had jostled not to be last. They had stood with their backs against the wall as Carl had pointed at the phone. When he spoke, his voice was all the worse for its softness.

  “What’s this bullshit I’m hearing about some girl, then?”

  Nathan stared now at the road ahead. Bub was watching him from the passenger seat as Xander leaned forward. He tried to shake the old feeling creeping through him, but couldn’t entirely.

  “The stories from the party started to spread, obviously,” Nathan said. “Apparently, Jenna’s boyfriend found out what had happened with Cam, and was less than happy, as you can imagine.” He was quiet for a minute. “Then, next thing, Jenna and her boyfriend were back in town and had turned up at the medical center—”

  At the clinic, Jenna had spoken to a younger Steve Fitzgerald, fresher-faced back then as he found his feet during his first posting in Balamara. After that, she and her boyfriend had crossed the street and walked into the police station. Over a cup of tea, they had sat down with the sergeant at the time. It hadn’t been Glenn back then, but a cop not unlike him. When they’d left, the sergeant had phoned the Bright household as a courtesy from one local to another. Nathan could still picture the look on Liz’s face when she learned what was being said. Variations of the same two emotions: horror and disbelief.

  “What did Jenna tell the police?” Xander asked.

  “That she hadn’t wanted to have sex with Cameron, but she’d been too drunk to stop him,” Nathan said.

  There was a stunned silence in the car.

  “She said Uncle Cam raped her?” Xander sounded bewildered.

  “I think technically that word was never used,” Nathan said. “The cop at the time reckoned she never actually said that exactly.”

  Liz had wanted to immediately drive Cameron into town and speak to Steve Fitzgerald and the sergeant—maybe even speak to Jenna herself, if they could—and get all this mess straightened out. Carl wouldn’t let her. That boy is not going to be jumping through hoops because some uppity bitch has woken up and changed her fuckin’ mind, right? Cameron had hovered, white-faced. No one had asked him what he wanted to do.

  “So what Jenna was saying spread around town in about five minutes flat. But—”

  Nathan stopped, his eyes on the dusty track. “But loads of us had been at that party, and they’d been all over each other all night. Everyone saw it. I saw it, your mum saw it, Xander. Everyone who was there said the same thing.”

  Even people who hadn’t been there reckoned they’d seen it, by the end of the day. Jenna was a full three years older than Cameron, who was on his bloody school holidays, for Christ’s sake. And she was the one who’d been putting alcohol in the kid’s hand all night, even though he was technically too young to be drinking. Plus, there were plenty of girls at that party—sensible outback girls who didn’t take any shit from the local idiot blokes—so if Jenna hadn’t wanted something to happen with Cameron behind the dunes, all she’d had to do was call out and she’d have been okay. She’d let him drive her back to town afterward. If it had been some of the other blokes in town, then, yeah, maybe you’d give her the benefit of the doubt. But not Cam Bright. He was only a kid, and a good one, too. He was barely even old enough to know what he was doing down there.

  Nathan came to the turning in the track, and the car juddered as the wheels went over a rougher patch.

  “Watch out,” Bub said. “It was somewhere here that I wrecked those tires the other day.”

  “Along here?” Nathan could make out the peak of Lehmann’s Hill in the far distance. He glanced at Bub. “I thought you were coming from the north paddock to meet Cam?”

  They went over a pothole, and Nathan’s eyes were forced back to the road as the whole car lurched.

  “Track was too sandy,” Bub said. “I had to loop around. Danger spot’s further up, I’ll shout out if I see it in time.”

  Nathan was trying to work out where Bub would have joined the track, when Xander interrupted.

  “So what happened after Jenna spoke to the police?”

  Nathan thought for a moment. “Nothing, actually.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No. I mean, it was all pretty bloody tense for a day or two. Dad wasn’t happy.” It was one thing for Carl Bright to bag his own sons, but it was quite another for someone else to talk shit about one of them in public. Especially if that one was Cameron. “But it blew over before it really got started.”

  “What, just like that?” Xander frowned.

  “Yeah. Jenna’s boyfriend calmed down, apparently. Jacqui said they both went to her dad, told him they’d thought better of it and wanted to move on. Handed in their notice. Next day, they packed up and left. And that was the end of it.”

  Cameron’s color had slowly returned to normal over the following week. No formal complaint had been made, leaving his police record unblemished, which was more than a lot of people in town could say for themselves. And fair enough, too, had been the general consensus. It wasn’t fair that a good kid like Cam should have his life ruined by some drunk backpacker with a few hungover regrets.

  Xander sat back in his seat. “And he never heard from Jenna again?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “So why now?”

  “Yeah. Good question.”

  * * *

  Cameron had been over-prepared, as usual, Nathan thought as he stood on top of Lehmann’s Hill. They had managed to arrive with all four tires intact. As the ground had grown sandier, Nathan and Bub had gotten out and deflated them to avoid getting bogged. They’d driven up to the peak and examined the repeater mast, squinting in the sun.

  Nathan could tell almost immediately that they wouldn’t need the repair instructions Cameron had carefully printed out before he’d left home on the second-last morning of his life, or most of the tools and equipment he had gathered. The mast on the top of Lehmann’s Hill was suffering from nothing more serious than the wear and tear of constant exposure. A good clean-out of clogged sand and grit and a couple of replacement wires, and it would be good to go. It wasn’t really a two-man job, let alone three, so Nathan worked while the others watched.

  “Pass me that small screwdriver, Bub,” Nathan said, an hour later.

  There was no reaction. Bub was standing with his back to the desert and his arms folded, staring out at their own land. Xander was in the car a short distance away, awaiting an instruction to try the radio.

  “Bub? That screwdriver there.”

&
nbsp; “Sorry.” Bub handed it to him. “I was just thinking about some stuff.”

  “Oh yeah?” Nathan grimaced as a gust of wind blew some grit into his mouth.

  “I should’ve gone down earlier.”

  “What’s that, mate?” Nathan straightened up.

  Bub picked up a small rock and fiddled with it before tossing it down the hill. It rolled for a long way. There was nothing in its path. Lehmann’s Hill was not particularly high, but it was tall enough to offer a view. The paddocks glowed red and green from up there, and Nathan could see distant shadows as the odd herd of cattle wandered along. They were tiny. The other way, to the west, all was still. The desert looked pristine and untouched, with perfect ripples in the sand. Nathan had seen the landscape so often and in so many ways, he was almost blind to it at times, but sometimes, in the right light, it was still breathtaking.

  “I shouldn’t have waited for Cam for so bloody long. I sat up here in the car for ages.” Bub squinted out into the distance. Apart from the odd ripple of shadow, there was almost no movement. “I dunno why. You can see there’s no one bloody coming.”

  It was true, Nathan knew. A moving car was usually easy to spot.

  “This wasn’t your fault, mate,” Nathan said finally. “He could have been parked somewhere. Or coming from a different direction.”

  “Yeah, maybe. But even when you can’t see it, you can kind of feel it sometimes, don’t you reckon?” Bub said. “When there’s someone near?”

  Nathan nodded. Sometimes. Kind of.

  “Yeah, well, I felt bugger all. If I’d left then, got to the track before dark, I might’ve been able to raise the alarm earlier. It might not have been too late then.” Bub dropped his gaze. Xander was watching them, out of earshot, from the car.

  “I would’ve waited too,” Nathan said finally.

  “Would you?” Bub looked up at that.

  “Yep.” It was true. “You arranged to meet him here, you waited here. Nothing wrong with that.”

  Bub didn’t reply straight away. “I was pissed off with him. That’s why I left it so long.” He didn’t meet Nathan’s eye. “I thought he’d got bogged or got a flat himself. Decided I’d let him sweat it out on his own for a while.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s stupid. It was over bloody nothing.” He sighed. “I was half thinking about heading to Dulsterville next year. Become a roo shooter.”

  “Were you?” Nathan was surprised. It had never occurred to him that Bub might want to leave the property one day.

  “Yeah, I thought, maybe. Why not?” Bub sounded defensive.

  No reason at all, really, Nathan thought. Kangaroo shooting probably wouldn’t be a bad option for him, and it was the main industry in Dulsterville so there’d be plenty of work. Nathan had driven through the small outback town a few times on his way east. He’d seen the modified utes parked and ready for the night’s work. With their spotlights and their rifle rests mounted on the doors so shots could be taken through the open windows. Large spiked cages on the back to hang the carcasses. The collection point at the edge of town where the tagged ones were turned into cash for the shooters and pet food and fur products for consumers. It was a living.

  “So you going to do it?” Nathan said.

  Bub shook his head. “Cam thought it was stupid. Said I should stay and focus on things here.”

  “So? You don’t need Cam’s permission.”

  “Need money, though. Cash, I mean. Not all tied up in bloody long-term property investment stuff. I need to get the equipment, fix up the Land Cruiser. Find somewhere to live, that kind of thing.” Bub squinted into the sun. It was hard to read his expression. “I wasn’t asking for anything that wasn’t mine. I just wanted to free up some of the money—my money—in this place.”

  “Cameron said no?”

  “Not straight out. But he wanted me to think about it. Talk to him again next year. Make sure I was doing the right thing.”

  “Sounds sensible.”

  “But what do you think of the idea?” Bub seemed genuinely interested.

  “Me? I dunno, mate.” Cameron’s and Bub’s interests might not have aligned exactly, but Cam was probably right to suggest Bub think things through. “It depends. You don’t want to be too hasty. I mean, I only sold out in part, and I still ended up in the shit.”

  “Yeah, I suppose.”

  Bub looked dejected, and Nathan felt a bit bad. In all honesty, his brother would probably make a pretty decent roo shooter. “Look,” he said, “it doesn’t sound like the worst plan.”

  “Yeah, well, tell that to Cam.” There was an awkward moment, then Bub shrugged. “It’d be good, though. You ever thought of doing it? Money for nothing.”

  “No, not for me.”

  “Haven’t got the balls for it?”

  “Something like that.” Nathan tried to keep his tone casual. “Haven’t got the license for it anymore, either.”

  “Wait.” Bub stared, incredulous. “You haven’t got your gun license anymore?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Expired.”

  “Are you bloody joking, mate? When?”

  “Dunno. Few months.”

  Just over six, actually. Nathan had felt something start to change in him last year after his dog, Kelly, had died. Steve had called him on the phone from the clinic and made him do this questionnaire all about how Nathan was feeling and things like that. Nathan had toned down his answers, but after that, either Glenn or Steve had seemed to coincidentally find themselves in the region of Nathan’s property every couple of weeks.

  He’d started to feel a bit sorry for them, trailing all the way out to his place to check up on him with fabricated excuses so threadbare they were transparent. So when his license renewal had rolled around, he’d let it lapse, partly to put their minds at rest, he told himself.

  Nathan knew there must be some sort of watch list in their desk drawers, and he knew his name had to be on there. Probably high up, possibly even right at the top. Either way, ready access to firearms was unlikely to be on the recommended treatment plan, and he could tell it was making them nervous. So he’d surrendered his weapons to Glenn. Now Nathan’s rifle cabinet door swung open, unlocked, and every once in a while, when he found himself somehow standing in front of it, there was just an empty shelf.

  Nathan glanced at his son in the car. “Listen, don’t tell Xander. He gets funny about things sometimes.”

  Bub was still staring at Nathan as though he’d admitted to chopping off his right arm and losing it somewhere. Xander caught the expression and called something out of the window. The words got lost in the wind.

  “What’s that, mate?” Nathan shouted back.

  The car door opened, and Xander walked over. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. You okay?”

  “I suppose. Hey, listen, why didn’t Jenna say anything to Mum?” Xander said, in a way that suggested he’d been dwelling on the subject for the past hour. “When they were driving home together?”

  He looked upset. When he was five years old, Uncle Cam had given him a pony called Mr. Tupps. The pony arrived wearing a straw hat with holes cut for its ears, and Xander had been pink-faced with delight. He had phoned Cam every week for months to regale him with tales of what Mr. Tupps had been up to now.

  “Yeah,” Nathan said. “People wondered that at the time too.”

  Jenna and Jacqui had been alone in the car for nearly three hours. Jenna had been quiet, apparently, but then so had Jacqui, who would’ve been more than a little bit tired and hungover, if Nathan remembered rightly.

  “Mum would have helped her.”

  “Anyone would have helped her, mate. We’re not monsters.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “No, I know. Of course your mum would have helped her. If she’d said something.”

  It hadn’t only been that, Nathan knew. After whatever had happened in the dunes, Cameron had offered to
drive Jenna back to town, and she’d accepted. She possibly didn’t have many other options at that time of night, Nathan realized, but as Cam had pulled up outside the pub, the landlord had seen two people leaning toward each other in the front seats, their kiss illuminated by the dull yellow of the interior light. Jenna had then climbed out of the car and walked away in the dark to the staff accommodation block.

  “Looked completely normal, mate,” the landlord had told people later. “No worries at all there.”

  “And she didn’t tell anyone that morning while she was still in town?” Xander sounded uncertain.

  “No.”

  More than anything else—more than Cameron’s good nature, more than what anyone had or hadn’t seen at the party—it was the delay that swayed public opinion. The morning after the party, Jenna had sat in the bakery, drinking a coffee while waiting for Jacqui. The police station was fully visible through the bakery windows, and the medical center was at the end of the road. She had visited neither.

  “As far as I know, she didn’t say a word about it until her boyfriend heard the stories from the party.” Nathan dusted his hands on his shirt and nodded at the car. “Go and check the radio. See if this is working.”

  “It’s so weird that Jenna would suddenly contact Uncle Cam now, though,” Xander said.

  “Yeah. Try the radio.”

  “Because if it’s a coincidence, the timing—”

  “I know. The timing’s shit. Radio.”

  “So—” Xander didn’t move. “Do you think it’s possible that something bad actually did happen at that party?”

  “If I did, I would have said so at the time.” Nathan walked past him, pulled open the car door, and tried the radio himself.

  “But even if you didn’t think so at the time, now—” He heard Xander follow him.

  “But nothing, mate.” A bleep on the airwaves. The mast was working. “This is fixed. We can go.”

  “What if—”

  “Look—” Nathan’s voice was louder than he’d intended, and he took a breath, made himself lower it. “This is your Uncle Cam we’re talking about. He’s family. You know him.” Knew him.