The Fourth Season

by Dorothy Johnston

  I pictured Laila listening to Ben Sanderson and Bernhard Robben talking, that weekend in October, the two men perhaps boasting a little to impress her. Ben might have mentioned his rich employer. Bernhard might have mentioned taking Cameron diving at Lake Jindabyne. Alternatively, it was possible that Robben hadn’t even met Cameron at that stage, and that Sanderson offered to introduce them. However it began, the conversation could have moved on to Cameron’s love of blue water sailing, and his interest in Bass Strait. It wasn’t hard to see Laila smiling, pricking up her ears. I wondered if she’d made her first move on Robben that weekend, or simply indicated that she was open to taking the acquaintance further. I wondered if it was a coincidence that 12 October was the date she’d turned up at Owen’s cafe for a spot of hacking.

  Twenty-eight

  Katya ran straight from the car to Peter’s room, curled up in a ball at the end of her brother’s bed, and refused to speak.

  With tears in his eyes, Ivan told me how he’d left his daughter on the soccer oval while he waited in the car, turning his back on the line of parents watching from the sidelines in the cold and wind. He hadn’t even got out at half time, when other spectators had mingled with their offspring, rubbing small hot shoulders with gloved hands, clapping thin backs. It hadn’t occurred to Ivan to see how Peter was getting on either, at the far end of the playing fields. Instead he’d nodded off, arms crossed on the steering wheel, only waking when his daughter ran shrieking and banging with her fists on the window.

  It was Brook who finally got Kat to talk. I sat behind him, listening in silence, while he leant forward, chin on one hand, elbows on his knees, extracting details in a quiet monotone. Peter sat on the bed with one arm around his sister. He was angry with both of us, but mainly with me.

  A man had come up to Kat while she was standing by herself at half time. He’d squatted down beside her and said he was sorry but her Daddy had had an accident and he’d come to take her home.

  Katya had stared at him, then run for the car.

  ‘He sounded like he knew Dad, but I didn’t believe him.’

  When Brook asked if he’d been a big man, Kat answered in a clear voice, ‘Not very big’.

  Brook stood up, squaring his shoulders, making a small performance. ‘As big as me?’

  Kat nodded, looking grave.

  ‘Was he dressed like me?’

  Brook plucked the sleeve of his jumper, which was neat and well-fitting. Brook would have looked neat if all he’d had to dress in was a sugar bag.

  Kat stared at the action and the jumper. ‘He was wearing a coat,’ she said.

  It had been a short coat. ‘The colour of dirt.’ And the man had short hair. He’d spoken ‘in a normal voice, only like he wanted me to believe him.’

  ‘But you didn’t,’ Brook said. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he was too nice.’

  ‘Too nice?’

  Kat nodded. ‘If Dad was hurt, he wouldn’t bother to be nice. It wouldn’t matter.’

  Brook smiled approvingly and asked what she’d done then.

  ‘I ran to see the car.’

  ‘Did you look back?’

  ‘No.’

  . . .

  I walked outside with Brook. He stopped and turned to me.

  ‘Sandra.’

  Brook put his arm around me and we stood for a moment like that, awkwardly, in the middle of the path. I leant towards him, wanting to collapse, but resisting too, as he resisted me.

  I remembered how he’d taken Katya for walks when she was a baby, wrapped up in her stroller like an expensive sweet, the pleasure it had given him, who never spoke of his own children, or let me ask about them.

  Brook pulled back. ‘That’s enough now, Sandra. I mean it.’

  We said goodbye and I watched his car move slowly down the street. The clouds were lowering, Black Mountain all but lost behind them. I told myself it was no thanks to me that my daughter had escaped. And she was no child to keep corralled. Not before today. Not after.

  When I went back inside, Ivan and Katya were sitting on the couch, Ivan with his arm stretched out, his large deft fingers resisting the impulse to curl around Kat’s shoulder. The TV was on and he was pretending to watch it.

  I heard the sounds of Triple J from behind Peter’s door, and knocked.

  ‘Have you ever seen a man like that at soccer?’

  Peter raised his head. His expression was remote and cold. ‘It’s hard to say.’

  ‘Has anyone ever approached you and tried to start a conversation?’

  ‘No.’

  I asked Peter if he’d noticed a red Hyundai driving up and down the street.

  ‘There’s heaps of red cars, Mum.’

  ‘Please keep a watch out.’

  I turned to go, knowing my son was counting the seconds until he was rid of me.

  ‘Good work, Mum,’ he said.

  . . .

  I checked my email and found nothing unusual. I went for a walk up and down the street, half expecting Cameron or Don Fletcher to appear from behind a tree.

  Ivan joined me in the office after Kat had gone to bed. He’d gone looking for the man. He’d spoken to the coach and questioned all the parents. Preoccupied with their own children, none had taken note of a stranger in a dirt-coloured coat.

  Ivan shook his head, running his hands through his hair. I saw how it gnawed at him, that the man must have been watching, waiting for his moment, perhaps smiling to himself at the sight of a father with all his senses shut down, dozing in a car.

  I didn’t sleep at all that night. Light-headed with fatigue and worry, I floated through the rooms, stopping every so often to stare down at my girl child, finding it inconceivable that I had put her safety at risk. The woman who’d done this seemed a different person, someone with spider legs, both malevolent and weak, dragging destruction behind her almost incidentally, as though at any moment she might turn round and say, so these are the consequences, are they?

  I wondered what Peter had said to his sister before Brook arrived. What was going through her mind now, as she slept? Was she dreaming? I thought of Laila’s parents and tried to comprehend, in some small way, what they must be feeling.

  Kat’s head was hot, black curls sticking to her forehead. As gently as I could, fearful of waking her, I loosened the sheet and straightened the pillow.

  When she was sleeping peacefully again, I let myself out quietly. A scraping sound might have been the wind at a window, but was more like the noise Fred’s claws used to make when he got up from his bed in the laundry.

  Ivan was standing like a statue just inside the kitchen door.

  ‘What are you creeping round the house for?’

  ‘I could ask you the same thing.’

  Ivan’s voice didn’t seem to be coming from his body, but a spot over by the fridge.

  ‘I’ll drive her to school and pick her up,’ he said. ‘I’ll speak to the teacher and the principal.’

  ‘Kat will hate that,’ I replied, and then, ‘We’ll share it. We’ll take it in turns.’

  My bed felt like an empty mouth in which I curled, waiting for teeth to snap shut around me. But dawn came quickly, a milky wash under the curtains that turned cream, then yellow.

  The four of us had breakfast together, Kat pale, her huge black eyes studying first me, then her father. She made lunches with her brother, Peter buttering bread and Kat handing him cheese and the pickled onions she had suddenly developed a taste for.

  Ivan said, ‘I’ll drop you off at school now, Solnyshko.’

  Kat giggled. ‘I’m not your little sun.’

  ‘But of course you are,’ he told her.

  . . .

  Around mid morning, Brook rang to ask how things were.

  ‘Kat’s gone to school,’ I said.

  ‘And Peter, how’s he bearing up?’

  ‘He’s angry.’

  ‘Sandra—’

  ‘Please don’t lecture me. Not now.’

/>   ‘I just think you make life hard for yourself.’

  ‘I didn’t ask for Ivan to fall in love with her.’

  There was a silence, and I thought Brook would hang up, but he cleared his throat and told me to take care.

  Katya was remote and quiet over the next few days. Ivan made her a special calendar, which she accepted with a distant smile. There were pictures of the two of them doing things together, one for each day of the week. After dinner one evening, I found Kat sitting in our office staring at a scene of her and her father playing soccer on the oval, Ivan with a Homer Simpson lumbering incompetence, Kat the star I had no doubt she could become.

  Kat and Peter formed an alliance which, beyond rejecting, no longer seemed to need me. I was unable to protect them, and they knew it. If Kat had reverted to babyish behaviour, cried or clung, or wet the bed, I might have reverted too, caring for a baby, with a corresponding narrowing and sharpening of focus. Instead, Kat accepted, without complaint, her escort to and from the school, the efforts we made not to leave her alone for any part of the day or night. She accepted them, at the same time as she shut us out.

  I phoned Owen, speaking to both him and Rita, explaining that I couldn’t go out in the evenings, and saying I was sorry.

  At night, I returned to trawling shipwreck sites, piling up more names and dates. Shipwreck Coast was right. At first I’d thought the phrase glib and probably inaccurate, but the more I read, the more I thought that Victoria did have a selling point for tourists, albeit ­tourists of a special, not very numerous kind. I got sick of reading about the beauty of Deal and Erith Islands, the spectacular bird-watching to be had on Flinders. A link caught my eye, and I moved to a site called ‘Sea Wizard’.

  The Sea Wizard was an ocean-going cruiser, solid and substantial-looking against the yachts and smaller craft moored at West Cove, Erith Island. Its crew were divers, film-makers and shipwreck experts who travelled the world making documentaries. In February, they’d been based off Erith Island, exploring and filming some of the eighteen known wrecks that lay submerged around the Kent Group.

  There was even a quote from an Australian writer who’d included a reference to these wrecks in a novel. ‘The Strait is an encyclopaedia of endings.’

  I clicked on one of the videos and watched two divers explore every nook and cranny of the Bulli, filming as they went, while the captain followed their progress on his monitor, comparing it with maps, and keeping up an informed commentary for viewers. It was professional documentary television, of interest to more than hard-core dive enthusiasts, and I wasn’t surprised to find references to programming on American history channels, and in Europe too.

  I learnt that the Bulli was a perfect dive both for beginners and the more experienced. Remarkably intact, it sat upright on the bottom of West Cove in less than twenty metres of water, visible from the surface on clear days. Despite its isolation, the site was sheltered and accessible. An English steamship, the Bulli had been wrecked in 1877 while carrying a cargo of coal from Newcastle to Launceston. Southerly gales forced it to seek shelter at Erith Island. At around midnight on 28 June, conditions appeared to have improved enough for the collier to get underway. But after again encountering rough seas once it had left shelter, the Bulli, attempting to return to West Cove, struck a submerged rock as it rounded Erith, and began leaking heavily. The cargo was thrown overboard, but the ship continued to founder, and the crew abandoned it, all of them reaching shore in safety.

  I searched the site to find out where the Sea Wizard had been before Bass Strait, and where it was now, but though I could have watched any number of wreck dives, from Florida to Japan, this information was missing.

  I watched another video. A sentence at the end of it made me prick up my ears and replay the scene in case I’d missed something.

  The narrator was describing the Strait’s underwater topography. He mentioned how little was known about the sea bed, but how recent moves to establish a marine park meant that some features had at least been mapped. Of particular interest was a forty metre canyon close to where another historic wreck, the Maria Rosa, was thought to have gone down.

  I spent the next two hours watching videos, until I became heartily sick of the narrator’s voice, and of the sight of rotting timber and barnacle-covered metal. The Spanish ship was not mentioned again, and I could find no reference to it in the masses of postings I read through. Perhaps that one remark had been entirely off the cuff. Perhaps the Sea Wizard’s crew had looked at the possibility of searching for the boat, and found it beyond them. But perhaps, just perhaps, they’d taken the idea further, and Laila had discovered their intention.

  I sent off an email enthusing about the site and videos, and asking about the Maria Rosa. One day passed, and then another. No reply. I let Brook know. He was polite, but doubtful that the Sea Wizard had anything to do with either murder.

  . . .

  What had Gregory Tarrant’s missed phone call to Senator Fitzpatrick been about? Perhaps Laila had been to see Tarrant, or had rung and told him about the Maria Rosa. She may even have asked for his help in finding it.

  After debating with myself as to whether or not it was a risk I could afford to take, I phoned Tarrant, told him what I’d learnt about the Sea Wizard, and asked if he’d heard of the film-makers. Tarrant said cautiously that he might have.

  ‘I was wondering if they’d contacted you wanting information.’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘I think Laila Fanshaw might have been interested in what the Sea Wizard was doing in Bass Strait.’

  ‘They were filming shipwrecks, weren’t they?’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Did Laila ask for your help in finding the Maria Rosa?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Tarrant said.

  Then he said he had another call and hung up, but I believed I’d had another guess confirmed. Laila had approached Tarrant wanting information, and she’d told him, or at least hinted at, something of her plans. Why the phone call to Fitzpatrick? And why had it been so important that Fitzpatrick had lost his temper when Frances had failed to put it through? I thought the answer might be that Laila had also talked to the senator about her plans, and about the three men that she meant to get to take her sailing to Bass Strait. Fitzpatrick must have warned her and been worried.

  Did that mean he knew Cameron Fletcher, or knew something about him, or would he have been worried about Laila going off on a trip like that with any three men? I felt sure that Fitzpatrick had tried to talk her out of it, and failed.

  I phoned Brook and left him a message, scared that even by ringing Tarrant I’d broken my promise. But I couldn’t, I could not, sit on my hands and do absolutely nothing.

  I called in to see Owen and apologise in person. But Owen was catching up on sleep after a bad night. Rita assured me that he understood, and that, in his heart of hearts, he knew it wasn’t viable to keep the cafe open.

  . . .

  Brook rang that night to say a detective constable from the NSW police had found a waterskier who’d seen Laila at Lake Jindabyne. He sounded conscientious, passing on this news, as though I’d be more likely to stay home and out of trouble if he fed me crumbs.

  Brook said nothing in response to my news except that Fitzgerald and Tarrant had both been questioned thoroughly.

  The waterskier had seen Laila jump out of a boat and wade to shore. His description of the boat matched Bernhard Robben’s. He thought there’d been three men on board.

  Twenty-nine

  On Saturday, the four of us formed a solid, silent phalanx as we walked from the carpark to the soccer fields. It was raining steadily. When I’d asked Kat early that morning if she still wanted to play, she’d looked at me scornfully and continued pulling on her shin guards.

  Though she slipped often on the wet grass, Kat played doggedly and held her own. A few of the children cried when they fell ove
r. One was taken off and not replaced. The coach, who smiled encouragement on better days, became earnest in his desire to teach his small fry a lesson in perseverance.

  At half time, they huddled in the club house, shivering and downing the mugs of hot chocolate that a couple of parents had thoughtfully provided. Other parents argued with the coach and referee that enough was enough. The kids were too busy comparing mud stains to pay much attention to the grown-ups.

  I looked around for Peter and realised he wasn’t there. Suddenly afraid, I ran to the club house door.

  Peter came panting through the rain.

  ‘Mum! I saw him! In the carpark!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mum,’ said Peter soberly, his wet shoulders heaving. ‘He’s gone, but I got the rego number. I was close enough to see.’

  It was the red Hyundai. I phoned Brook, but his mobile was switched off.

  The referee decided to push the match through to its conclusion. Kat was pleased. Ivan and I stood on the sidelines watching her tearing up the turf, growing green and black stains from hip to ankle, running, it seemed, for her life.

  Peter pulled me aside after the matches were over. ‘Should we tell her, Mum?’

  When I asked him what he thought, he said firmly, ‘Yes, I think we have to.’

  ‘Did the man see you, Pete? Did he know that you’d seen him?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘What made you go over there?’

  ‘I looked towards the carpark and saw a man standing by a car. He was just standing there in the rain watching the clubhouse. I saw that he was wearing a brown jacket, and the car was red.’

  . . .

  Kat’s team had won and the victory carried her through dinner. The rain had brought a sharp drop in temperature and I decided to light the fire. Ivan warmed pyjamas in front of it and made hot chocolate sauce to have with ice-cream as a treat.