The Man in the Water

by David Burton

  ‘Shaun, listen. You’re not a detective.’

  He couldn’t hear her. ‘You’re not going to give me your phone?’

  ‘Shaun—’

  He went back to the table and grabbed her bag. It was a large leather tote bag. He’d seen it a hundred times. It had been under his nose the whole time. The piece of evidence he’d been missing all along.

  ‘Shaun. Stop.’

  He found her phone, unlocked it, and looked through the messages.

  ‘Shaun, for God’s sake …’

  There was nothing. Messages from him. From Will’s mum. From her manager at the IGA. But nothing from Simms. He threw the phone across the room. It hit the wall with a plastic clang. He heard the glass shatter when it landed on the floor. She jumped in fright. Shaun knew he wouldn’t find anything. Of course. He rummaged through the bag. There wasn’t another phone.

  ‘You’ve got another phone,’ he said, pointing an accusing finger. He went back to the bag. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Stop!’ she yelled. ‘Shaun, you’re being ridiculous.’

  ‘Liar!’

  ‘SHAUN.’

  He threw the bag across the room.

  ‘Shaun?’

  He wanted to scream.

  Instead, he did what he always did. What he’d done on the day he found Tyson.

  He ran.

  He didn’t know where he was going, but he knew he couldn’t come back. He grabbed his backpack, swung it over his shoulder and ran out the front door. His bike was lying in the driveway. His mum was still calling after him, but her voice sounded far away. Shaun could only hear the sound of the wind.

  He was pedalling as fast as he could down the main street, the dry trees and dust rushing by him. He thought of Simms. He thought of the tattoo of the key on his arm.

  Simms was right about one thing. He had to get out. He had to get out of this town.

  But where to? He had nowhere to go.

  It didn’t matter. He’d find somewhere. But he’d need supplies.

  On his left, he saw the miserable grey concrete of the town plaza. The IGA was still open. He veered his bike in a wide arc onto the pathway, riding up to the store’s front door. He dumped it and heard it land with a metallic crash.

  His mum’s manager was at the check-out. He may have said g’day to him. If he did, Shaun didn’t hear. He was only there to grab supplies and leave again.

  As he moved down the narrow aisles, he thought once more of Simms. He thought of him giving his mum a wad of cash. ‘Thanks for helping,’ he’d say to her. Had she actually carried Tyson’s body around, hiding it from him? And where had she hidden the money?

  He took a carton of energy drinks, a box of muesli bars, a handful of chocolates and three packets of chips. He cracked open an energy drink and took a swig. It tasted sweet. He felt it ping the base of his throat. He dumped his bag on the ground and stuffed the loot into it.

  That was when he saw it.

  Waiting at the bottom of his bag. He’d kept it there for a week.

  He knew where he was going now.

  Not everything would fit in. He threw the box of muesli bars back at the shelf. Now his mum’s manager was calling his name, asking him all sorts of questions. But Shaun ignored him and ran to the exit. He picked up his bike and started running. He jumped on and rode back onto the road.

  A loud horn pierced his ears.

  He’d gone straight into the path of a ute. It veered to miss him and he was spared by inches. He kept riding.

  His bag was heavy and uncomfortable on his back. And his mind began to focus on his objective. If he rode fast enough, he might be able to get there in a few hours.

  By the time he stopped, his legs felt like liquid. Night had fallen, and his skin was icy.

  He was nowhere. There was only the dark highway, stretching straight in either direction to the horizon. On both sides were empty paddocks, tinged with blue from the moonlight. A car hadn’t passed him for half an hour.

  He dumped his bike in the tall grass by the road and shrugged off his bag, unzipped it, sat, and reached for another energy drink. It cracked open with a metallic hiss and he slurped it down in a few thirsty gulps. He opened a bag of chips and then reached for the thin crumpled envelope from Viveco at the bottom of his bag.

  He hadn’t looked at it since the first night he found it. He opened it again now, read the letter, and handled the thick plastic card inside.

  Megan had told him they hadn’t returned Tyson’s things. With everything that had happened, maybe Scotts had forgotten about his room. The idea that Tyson had taken anything with him when he went ‘missing’ was ridiculous, Shaun knew that for sure. When he found him, Tyson only had his work clothes and his boots. His phone and wallet had to be somewhere. It was worth checking his room because there was bound to be some kind of evidence that proved something.

  Besides, he had nowhere else to go.

  For the first time in hours, he checked his phone. There was a series of missed calls from his mum. A few from Will. And Will’s mum. A bunch of text messages. He quickly scrolled through them, barely taking them in. He couldn’t bear the thought of reading them right now.

  Megan hadn’t sent him anything.

  His mum would be out of her mind with worry. There was a brief flicker of guilt in his gut.

  But he shoved that feeling aside. She deserved it. She’d lied to him. She still wasn’t telling him the whole truth.

  It didn’t make sense. Was she really so much of a liar that she had two phones? But if it wasn’t her, who was it? Had Simms’s mystery contact just never turned up? Had Peter beaten them to it?

  Then there was the Guinness can. He couldn’t figure out how or why it would be true, but the idea that Peter was somehow involved in Tyson’s death had kept coming up over the past week. If it was true, then maybe his mother was innocent.

  But then, maybe Peter wasn’t involved, and he knew something was going on between her and Simms. And that’s why Peter had shown up with the cricket bat at their place. So Peter wasn’t pissed at Shaun’s lie. He was angry at his mother for something she’d done with Simms.

  There were still so many pieces missing, and it had been weeks since he found Tyson.

  He had the mystery number in his phone. He could dial it right now and see who picked up. There was nothing to lose.

  Except he couldn’t. His phone had no signal. As soon as he went beyond the outskirts of town, he would’ve been out of range.

  He opened up maps, but just got a grey screen. He had no way of knowing how far he had come, or how much further there was to go.

  He cracked open another can.

  One way or another, he’d get to the camp.

  When Shaun saw the bright lights of the mine on the horizon, he felt as though he’d arrived at the edge of a gigantic mythical city. Just ahead of him was the turn-off to the accommodation. But he’d be foolish to take the main road.

  As he was weighing up the safest path to the camp, he felt his phone going ballistic in the bottom of his bag. He was back in range and was being flooded with text messages and missed-call notifications.

  He rode his bike off the road. The block of land for the accommodation was enormous. There was a rise about a hundred metres away from the camp proper. He rode into the tall yellow grass and climbed the hill. He was sore and bone-tired. When he reached the top, he dumped the bike and fell onto the ground, breathing in the still night air.

  Above him, the stars were crystal bright and smiling.

  He’d actually done it. He’d made it.

  Below him, the camp was arranged in four neat lines of metal huts. Each line was separated by a lit pathway. In the middle of them was an administration building. A few metres in front was a large car park and driveway. There was a sign that glowed with the bright orange and gr
een Viveco logo.

  It was quiet. Shaun couldn’t even hear crickets; only the dull metallic roar of machinery in the distance. The mine never stopped. The empty static of sound was occasionally punctuated by a machine opening, closing, pulling or pushing. Their cries sounded almost prehistoric, as if dinosaurs had returned and stalked the wide, open plain below him.

  He checked his phone again. He’d travelled a bit slower than he’d expected. It was late. He’d started out pedalling so fast that he’d exhausted himself, and the final stretch had been a slow crawl.

  He had revisited everything in his mind: the conversation with Simms, the argument with his mum, Megan’s quiet insistence that they remain friends. It still stung.

  He’d prove them all wrong.

  On his phone, there was a long list of messages from Will.

  Dude, one began. You okay? Your mum is here saying that you had a massive fight. Call me.

  Then another, a while later: R u ok?

  And again an hour later. Cops r here now. Everyone’s really worried. Why won’t u answer?

  Then another, just half an hour ago. If you get this, please let me know ur ok.

  Shaun felt a stab of guilt. Will had never done anything wrong by him. In fact, he’d been the only one who had believed him the whole time.

  He typed, I’m ok. Following a lead, but then paused.

  He didn’t know what else to say. Would he even see Will again? He couldn’t imagine going home now.

  He pressed send.

  His phone only had four per cent battery left. He switched it off and watched the screen go black. He’d need to save it for when he really needed it. There was no way to charge it now. The charger was still in his bedroom.

  As he looked back down on the camp, he tried to figure out where room 315 would be. There were no obvious signs that he could see from this distance.

  At the top of the driveway were three big buses. That was how the workers came in and out of the camp. They were waiting to take workers out to the mine.

  It made sense. At dawn, the buses would fill with the workers in the camp, drive out to the mine, dump them all there, and fill up with those on the night shift.

  That would give him a small window, twenty minutes maybe, to sneak into the camp when it was empty. That was his best chance of getting to Tyson’s room without getting caught. And it meant he could rest for a few hours.

  Satisfied, he lay back in the grass.

  In a few hours, he would find the final bit of evidence he needed to solve the murder of Tyson Grant.

  He was woken by the rumble of buses starting up, their low hum splitting the pre-dawn silence. He couldn’t remember falling asleep. His skin was freezing. He hadn’t thought about bringing a blanket or a jumper. There was a pain in the back of his skull where he’d been lying on his bag, the hard rim of a drink can poking into his neck.

  He stretched and looked over the camp. There were minor signs of life. Lights were on in a few of the huts. Soon a couple of men stumbled from their rooms, each carrying a small backpack and clad in a bright orange jacket. Like a ritual, they all sat by their front door on a white plastic chair that had been provided for them. Underneath the chair were their boots: thick, grey and dirty. They would leave them there overnight to avoid carting dirt into their rooms. They shoved their boots on with tired grunts, checked the doors were locked, and slouched off in the direction of the buses.

  He made a quick plan. He would sneak in, try to locate the room, unlock it, spend a couple of minutes looking inside, and then get on his bike and leave.

  He’d have to move fast. The mine itself wasn’t far away. It wouldn’t take long for the buses to return. He’d have to run down the hill into the back of the camp and try to find the room as quickly as possible.

  The buses were starting to fill up now, and the men were coming to life. The sound of their raucous laughter bounced gently up the hill.

  Tyson must have had mates. Hell, these guys probably were his mates.

  Shaun didn’t know what kind of life he wanted after school, but he knew he didn’t want to work in the mines. That made him unusual. Most of the kids in his year at school wanted to do mine work. Up until a few days ago, as far as he knew, it was what Will planned to do too. It was what their parents did, after all, and the money was good.

  That was the only point that made him hesitate. Maybe the dirt and the muck and the blokes were okay if you were being paid a hundred thousand dollars a year. He’d be able to buy his mum a new home and look after her.

  He snagged on that thought and swore to himself.

  He’d look after her if she wasn’t somehow involved in the cover-up of Tyson’s death.

  The more he thought about it, the threads of his mum being in on the conspiracy became looser.

  She wouldn’t have a second phone. She could barely work the one she had. He had to teach her how to download music about eighteen times. She would have needed his help to buy a new phone.

  One of the buses rumbled loudly. It was full and getting ready to leave. The other two weren’t far behind.

  Shaun crouched in the grass and grabbed his bag. He would have to take it with him in case Tyson had left a stack of clothes or other clues that he’d need to carry back out. He took out the rest of the food. There were two cans of energy drink left. He cracked one open, quickly drank it, and kept the other for the ride home.

  Shaun was ready. His bag was comfortably light on his back, and he crouched in the grass, poised to move.

  The first and second buses closed their doors and left. The third bus was noisy with the jeering of a few guys, who were shouting across at some poor bugger hobbling over, half-drunk from sleep, barefoot with his boots in his hand. The jeering grew louder the closer he got and with his final stumble onto the bus the blokes erupted into cheers. The door closed behind him.

  He waited patiently as the third bus edged out onto the highway, then began counting down.

  ‘Five—’

  The bus shuddered into a higher gear.

  ‘Four—’

  It gathered speed.

  ‘Three—’

  Shaun started sweating.

  ‘Two—’

  The bus was smaller now, shrinking into the distance.

  ‘One—’

  He stood up and ran.

  His legs were wild under him. He focused on not tripping on the way down. As the ground evened out and he hit the edge of the camp he crouched low, quickly looking at the rows of rooms, unable to see any numbers, but also not seeing any movement. When he got to the final row, he waited for the sound of footsteps, or the dreadful noise of shouting behind him. But there was nothing.

  He looked up. The concrete aisle had two rows of rooms on either side. To his left was 420. To his right was 418.

  He had overshot Tyson’s room. If his logic was right, the rooms that began with 3 would be behind him. And 315 would be a few rooms in.

  He heard a sharp melodic whistle and stopped. He pressed against a wall. He could hear someone moving and opening a door. Then the whistling became muffled. They’d gone into one of the rooms.

  Slowly he peeked round the corner. Outside one of the rooms was a cleaner’s trolley. The whistling was still going inside.

  He moved quickly, trying to ensure his feet made as little noise as possible. In seconds he was in the next aisle of rooms. As he checked the numbers, he let out the breath he’d been holding. He was right. He was outside room 320. And he couldn’t hear the whistling from here. He was safe. But he had to work fast.

  He arrived at 315 within seconds. He rummaged in his bag for the envelope and card.

  His hands were shaking as he took out the card and ran it through the reader by the door handle.

  The card reader beeped, and he opened the door.

  The room w
as spotless.

  No sign of life at all.

  The only sound was the cleaner moving along steadily, opening a door nearby. Shaun closed the door of 315 behind him and stood there listening.

  Inside, he was screaming. He had come all this way for nothing. The room was unremarkable. There was a single bed, made with fresh linen. On a small counter in the corner were a cheap plastic kettle and two white mugs. There was a tiny room off to the side – an ensuite. Cream tiles, brown stains round the shower drain.

  If Tyson had ever stayed here, all possible evidence had disappeared in the cleaning. Shaun knew it was feeble, but he got on his hands and knees and looked under the bed, hoping for a murder weapon or a trace of poison. Maybe a confession letter from Simms.

  But there was nothing.

  He sat on the bed and stared at the blank wall opposite.

  He tried to imagine Tyson sitting in the same spot. He would’ve had a bag with a change of clothes, his phone, his wallet. He had turned up at the lake with nothing but his work clothes and boots. And Megan said they hadn’t got any of his belongings back. So his stuff had to be somewhere.

  He replayed Tyson’s movements. If he’d finished a shift, the bus would’ve brought him back here to the camp. He would’ve grabbed his stuff, got on the shuttle back to town, and been dropped off. But no-one had seen him since his shift finished. That’s what the police had said.

  So if he’d been killed or hurt at the mine, maybe the murderers had taken his body straight to the lake, bypassing the camp completely. Which would mean his stuff was definitely still at the camp. It had to be.

  Shaun thought of the cleaner again. They must have come from the admin building.

  If Tyson’s stuff had been moved, that was where it would be now.

  He had no choice. He had to go. If there were other cleaners or staff on duty, they’d almost certainly be in that building and time was rapidly running out. The only other option was to leave the room, run to his bike and cycle back into town with no new clues. He’d prove to everyone he was a hopeless idiot. This was his only chance.