by A C Praat
‘Sorry to pry but I’m supposed to be looking after that orchard. Those people were trespassing.’
‘We have a woman helping us with our enquiries. She seems to be the only witness.’
They were talking to Mishra. All that effort to protect her, and now this.
The police officer stood, obviously unwilling to offer more information. ‘Mr. and Mrs. Kruijer, Damon.’ He tipped his hat and walked around the side of the house.
‘Well, well,’ said Wil when they were alone. ‘Death on the orchard, how mysterious.’
Philip frowned. Wil seemed to find the whole thing amusing.
Who would his father have named as next of kin? His mother? They’d divorced so long ago. He dimly remembered a visit to an uncle in Scotland one drizzly, cold summer, but his father hadn’t been close to his family. He hadn’t seemed close to anyone. On that count, Philip was following in his father’s footsteps.
And now his father was dead. How much had Mishra told the police about him? She’d said his father had been helping the ADF with their investigations. Who was the man behind the shelterbelt?
So many questions.
Mishra’s message said she didn’t care who was looking for them – they should be together.
Come away, Philip.
He should feel sad. That’s what any decent person would do when they’d just lost their father. But he felt nothing: he wasn’t decent.
Other people had been a mystery to him his whole life and now it seemed he’d broken his own emotional compass.
‘Are you all right, Damon?’ Afra passed him the plate of biscuits.
Damon.
A wave of anger swept through him. Philip, he wanted to yell. My name is Philip!
Instead he said, ‘I need to borrow your car.’
* * *
Philip tried to ignore the sea lapping high up on the beach as he drove along the slim stretch of road edged by beach houses on his way to Mishra’s hideout. His anger had fled, replaced by a queasy roll of anticipation that wasn’t helped by the gentle sprawl of waves teasing the high-tide line.
If only he hadn’t lost his memory, and if only his father hadn’t died – then this hook up with Mishra would be so much simpler. Leaking the code would always be hanging over him. And now the bees had turned up in New Zealand. It might only be a matter of time before someone dobbed him in – whoever that someone was who released the bees in the orchard and killed his father. He had nothing to offer Mishra except more complication. Always he’d be hiding. And her life was in Adelaide.
The road ended at a turning bay in front of a stand of bush. When he stepped out of the car, the unmistakable whiff of seaweed and dead creatures hit his nose. Philip was tempted to retreat and run away again. It would be less torturous.
‘Philip?’ Mishra appeared on the sandy path between the trees and his heart stopped.
After a moment he remembered to breathe. His breath rushed out in one choking sob.
Mishra was crying too as she ran the couple of steps toward him and wrapped her arms around him. ‘I’m so sorry about your dad.’
Philip nodded into her hair, comforted by her fragrance and her warmth. He didn’t know what to feel about his dad, but this was real. The confusion of feelings resolved into ferocious desire as he held her.
Mishra pulled away. ‘Come on, Ra’s gone to see her aunt.’
He clutched her to him, unwilling to be separated even for an instant, as they walked down the short path through the trees to the cottage. The door was open. On the veranda he scooped Mishra up and stepped over the threshold.
‘Philip.’ She was laughing now. ‘You don’t know where you’re going.’
‘Show me,’ he panted between kisses.
She pointed to the door at the end of the hallway and he barged through it, stopping briefly to assess where to put her. A single bed beneath a sash window. Too many clothes, too many things between them. Still on his feet, he tugged his T-shirt over his head then pulled her back up to sitting so he could remove her dress. Philip groaned. She was naked beneath it, and God, she was beautiful. Her hands reached into his hair, her mouth greedy for his and then she was wrenching off his jeans, pulling him down to her, arching to meet him.
Hot. Wet. Within moments he was struggling to contain himself. ‘Mishra.’
Her answering moan against his mouth spiraled him up, up and out. And she flew with him.
Afterward, as she lay cradled against him, he drowsily relived their lovemaking in his head. ‘You weren’t wearing any underwear,’ he murmured.
Mishra laughed. ‘Disappointed?’
Philip smiled. ‘Surprised.’
On the wall opposite the bed, people stared down at them out of photos. He frowned and had a sudden urge to flip them all over. One, he noticed, already had been. It disrupted the pattern. He couldn’t decide which was more annoying: the stares or the ruined pattern.
‘Ra’s relatives. This house belongs to her uncle,’ Mishra said.
‘Why is that one turned over?’
Mishra propped herself up on her elbow, her head cradled in her hand. ‘It’s someone Ra doesn’t like, someone who hurt her when she was young.’
Philip stood and reached over toward the photo.
‘Philip!’
He flipped it over and looked at the faces peering back at him. There was something about the one crouched at the front, one hand resting on the head of dog, a cigarette hanging from his bottom lip, a blade with a skull tattooed onto his forearm.
‘What?’
Philip shrugged. ‘The one at the bottom. Reminds me of someone. But you know me and faces.’
Mishra joined him to look at the photo and sighed. ‘That’s Rex.’ She turned the photo back over.
Cigarette-Man? Rex, who had pulled him from the waves and kept his secret? ‘The man who saved me from drowning and got me back to the mainland was Rex.’
Mishra sank to the edge of the bed. ‘I know.’
He sat beside her. Was she angry with him? ‘I didn’t know who I was, Mishra. He kept calling me Damon.’ Slinging an arm across her shoulders, he squeezed her to him. ‘And I couldn’t figure out if you wanted to help me or …’ He sighed. His explanation was ruining everything.
Her lips turned up into a quick smile and relief stole over him. ‘But now you know - I was trying to help you. I’ll always try to help you.’ She shivered.
‘Are you cold?’ Drawing her down beside him, he flicked bedcovers over them both.
They lay quietly, Philip trying to work out what to say next. Every topic he could think of – the bees, what would happen to them, his father – seemed too hard.
‘I had to go to the police station,’ Mishra said into the silence.
Philip’s toes clenched as his mind brought back his father, dying, begging him to run. ‘The police came to the orchard this morning.’
Mishra wriggled until she sat up. ‘You talked to the police?’
He sat up too. Was she annoyed or alarmed? ‘My employer is looking after the block where … where it happened. They had to tell him.’
‘But –’
‘I’m Damon Hunter now, Mishra.’
‘But when they’re looking into your father’s death they’ll come across you. They already know about our relationship in Adelaide and that your dad was involved in the investigation of the leaks.’
‘The police think I’m Damon Hunter.’ Would they recognise him from photos? He looked different now with his long hair and beard. ‘And anyway, why would I kill my own father?’
Mishra flopped back onto the pillow. ‘It looks like he died because he was allergic to bees. Maybe they won’t take it any further.’
Irritation propelled him to his feet. He’d never been close to his father – maybe because they were both on the spectrum. That didn’t make any of this right. Hebden had sent someone to kill his father, or him – and he was going to get away with it.
Mishra tugged the covers over her shoulders. ‘W
hat is it?’
‘I heard someone else in the orchard – after I ran.’
‘Did they see you?’
Philip shook his head. ‘I doubt it. They were the other side of a shelterbelt.’
Mishra released a pent-up breath. ‘What happened?’
‘A man said, “It’s done,” and then he talked about someone else being good at his job and how nobody would be hearing from them anymore. He must have been talking about Dad.’
‘It’s done?’
Philip nodded.
‘But that means –’ She held out her hand to him and he dropped onto the bed beside her. ‘Philip that means they weren’t after you; they were after your father.’
‘With my bees?’
‘Your father warned me in Adelaide. He didn’t trust Hebden – I think they’d been friends once, but that friendship had turned sour. Maybe …’ She frowned. ‘Maybe it was revenge?’
‘For what?’
She squeezed his hand and leaned against his shoulder. ‘Does it matter? It means you’re safe.’
He looked down at her. A small smile lit her mouth, but her eyes still looked sad. People were so confusing.
‘Did he say anything else?’ she asked.
Philip cast his mind back: the grass irritating his arms, the backpack a cold lump against his sweaty back. ‘Not anything I understood. He had an accent: said Spasi- something? And he talked about going south to meet the General.’
The pressure on his shoulder disappeared. ‘What kind of accent?’
He shrugged. ‘Eastern European? Russian?’
Mishra pushed off the covers and clambered around him. ‘We need to tell Charlie.’
‘What?’ Why was she getting up?
‘Charlie Breen – the journalist who helped us expose the project?’ She pulled her dress over her head. ‘She’s been helping some refugees, testifying against a criminal. I’m sure she called him the general. Someone’s been following her too. We need to warn her.’
Philip slunk further into the bed and pulled the covers over his face. Too much. He didn’t want to know. He just wanted to find somewhere safe and disappear with Mishra.
‘Philip?’ She tugged at the covers but he held on. ‘Philip, I need to go up to the road to text Charlie. I’ll be back soon.’
The front door slammed, then opened again a moment later. ‘I’m sorry, I need to borrow your car. Ra’s got the truck,’ Mishra called.
‘Take it,’ Philip said from beneath the blankets. Charlie had helped him; he should return the favor, and if it was the same guy working for Hebden – he blew out a breath – nowhere was safe. He pulled back the covers and riffled through his clothes until he found the keys. ‘Here.’
‘I’m sorry, Philip. It’s all so awful.’ She kissed his cheek and fled.
His whole life had been awful since he leaked the code. Tess was dead. His father was dead. He couldn’t contact his mother without jeopardising his security. Didn’t even have a real name. And they’d gone ahead and developed the bees anyway. But the bees hadn’t worked. What if Mishra was right, and he wasn’t the intended target? Maybe the police would catch the man he’d overheard in the orchard and make him pay for killing his father. Hebden, his father had said. Had that man been working for Hebden?
Philip shivered and lay back on the bed, pulling the covers over him. How had he managed to screw up his life so completely? He closed his eyes; he was so damn tired.
Moments later, or so it seemed to him, the edge of the bed dipped and a hand rested on his shoulder. ‘Philip?’
He didn’t want to wake up yet, but he snaked an arm from beneath the blankets and wrapped it around Mishra’s waist.
She curled in next to him and they lay that way for a long while.
‘I might be staying in Wellington next year,’ Mishra said into the silence.
Confusion tied Philip’s tongue. That wasn’t the plan.
‘Astrid, my colleague down there, wants to do a life-swap – her post for mine, my house for hers.’
‘You’d be in New Zealand?’
‘I’d be in New Zealand.’
Hope gnawed the edges of his sleepy, dark thoughts; but he needed to be sure. ‘Is that what you want?’
Mishra rolled on top of him, sending all his arguments away.
‘I want us to end well,’ she said.
EPILOGUE
It was the Saturday before Christmas. Mishra skipped down the stairs in the Tuscan-style villa and found Philip seated at the dining table, studying his iPad, ignoring the tempting aroma spiraling from his coffee cup and fresh pastries laid out before him.
She snatched a pain au chocolat and dropped into the chair beside him. ‘They won’t be running job adverts this close to Christmas. Astrid says everything shuts down.’ A few weeks picking oranges on the orchard had convinced Philip that horticulture was not his calling.
‘They’ve taken him into custody.’
Mishra lowered her pastry onto a plate and stared at Philip. Weeks of careful questioning by the police about Roberts, interspersed with departmental meetings, had left her exhausted. And she’d hadn’t been able see Philip while all that was going on. Now it was Christmas. They were finally together and she didn’t want to talk about the events of the year anymore.
‘They’re saying he was responsible for human rights atrocities going back decades. He had help from people in high places – a global network.’
Who was he talking about? Mishra pulled the iPad toward her to scan the article for herself. Charlie had won: the General was going down. A smile spread across her face. Thank goodness. Her gaze snagged on another headline: ‘Senior Officer in the Royal Australian Airforce Under Investigation.’
‘Philip! Did you see this?’ She pushed the iPad between them, then devoured the article – a whistleblower had exposed an illegal covert operation in New Zealand. She watched Philip’s face as he finished reading, excitement raising goosebumps over her bare arms and legs.
‘They don’t give names,’ he said.
‘It’s Hebden. Who else could it be?’ She couldn’t stop grinning. ‘Philip, you know what this means?’
He glanced at her briefly, then dropped his gaze onto the plate of pastries. She squeezed onto his lap and wrapped her arms around him.
‘We’re safe?’ he muttered into her hair.
‘Yes, my darling, we’re safe.’
About the Author
Angelique Praat is a professional writer and social scientist who lives in Wellington, New Zealand, with her partner and two young boys. She uses novels to explore issues that interest her and to feed her writing addiction. Stop Looking is the sequel to The Empathy Code.
www.angeliquepraat.com