by B M Carroll
You’re not thinking straight, Richard. You’ve let things get on top of you. You’re depressed.
I’m not depressed, Dee. I’m angry. Plain and simple.
What are you hoping to achieve with this? You’ll do yourself more damage than anyone else.
What am I achieving? Well, Aidan Ryan will know just how much it hurts to have his daughter taken away from him, for a start. I’m still working out the rest.
Turn back, Richard. It’s not too late. Turn back now, and everything will be OK.
Nothing will ever be OK again, Dee. Sophie’s life is ruined. And I’ve been looking on – doing bloody nothing – for the last year. I can’t bear it. Do you hear me? I can’t bear it any longer.
‘Are we sleeping in the car?’ Now that Jasmin’s found her voice again, she doesn’t seem to be deterred by the fact that she’s getting no answers from me.
Yes, I suppose we are. When did I last sleep in a car? A long, long time ago, before I had children. At a rock festival, if I remember correctly. The sun is gone now, and dusk is setting in, dimming the vividness of the scenery around us. Jasmin changes position in the back seat. She’s getting fidgety.
A few kilometres on I see a dirt track and I take the turn too late, the wheels skidding, orange dust billowing behind us. Jasmin yelps.
Shortly after, a declaration: ‘I’m hungry.’
Well, I am too. But I didn’t think to pack any food, so we’ll both have to put up with it. The track narrows. The trees are high and slender, leaning in on the car, forcing me to drop speed. After five minutes I’m down to a crawl and in serious danger of scraping the car. I decide we’ve gone far enough.
‘I need to pee,’ Jasmin whispers when we come to a stop.
Me too. I get out of the car, locking the doors after me, and walk out of sight, relieving myself against one of the gum trees. What now, Richard? You’ve got this far. Aidan will know by now. They’ll have got word to him (Sophie said he was away on some overnight operation). He’ll be frantic, imagining the worst. Just the way I was when I got the call about Sophie.
Your daughter has been in a serious accident.
I was at home when the call came through and I remember picking up the phone carelessly, saying a jovial hello, expecting that it would be Dee or Jacob or even Sophie herself on the other end.
Your daughter is in a critical condition.
The world stopped for me when I heard those words, and it’s never quite restarted again. I’m stuck in that moment, when my dreams and hopes for my clever, talented daughter shattered around me.
What will they say to Aidan?
We’re concerned for your daughter’s safety.
Should they be concerned for Jasmin’s safety? Should they? What’s the plan, Richard?
If I were a bad person, I would hurt her. Then Aidan would really know what it feels like to be in my shoes. To see your child, your beloved daughter, and all her amazing potential wither in front of your eyes. Sophie could have been anything. Anything! How would he feel if Jasmin were crippled? Unable to play soccer, or go to school for full days, or lead a normal life. Broken.
I came here with no plan other than taking her from school and driving far away and causing Aidan to feel a fraction of the worry I felt about Sophie. But now that I’m here, in the middle of nowhere, with hours at my disposal before they find us, it doesn’t feel as if I’ve done enough. I wasn’t going to harm Jasmin, I really wasn’t. But this rage I have, this terrible, helpless rage, seems to be growing instead of receding. The waste of what Sophie could have been. The waste of her talent and determination and her mind. It’s killing me. Turning me into someone I don’t recognize. But then again, this person – this man who abducts children and deliberates on whether to hurt them – is faintly familiar. Back when the children were young, I used to fantasize about killing anyone who threatened them: pummelling imaginary attackers to death, cracking their necks with my bare hands, gouging their eyes out. I used to fantasize about violence. I just didn’t imagine it would be a child I’d have to hurt, that’s all. A bright, intelligent girl. But she’s the only way. The only way to get to him.
Then Dee is in my head again, admonishing me in that overly loud voice she reserves for me lately.
Don’t do it. You don’t need to do anything tonight, Richard. We’ll talk about it in the morning.
53
Jasmin
Don’t cry. Daddy always says that my brain is my best weapon. Crying will just get in the way of thinking.
Don’t cry. Think. Think.
Richard has kidnapped me. That’s bad. Very bad. He wants to get back at my dad. Bad. The car doors are locked. Bad. Nobody knows where we are. Bad. He obviously hasn’t done much planning for this, that’s the only positive I can think of. If he’d planned it, he’d have known where he was going and not made all those sudden turns.
I’m trying to make a plan, trying to imagine what Daddy would do. He’s used to situations like this – they’re always practising for emergencies in the army. And I’ve been trying to remember the book I read a few weeks ago. It was a fiction book from the library, about a boy lost in a forest. Lucky for the boy, he was able to survive because he had all the important things he needed: water, food, torch, warm clothes. My problem is that I only have what’s in my school bag: my jacket, my drink bottle, a grain bar and an apple I was meant to eat before soccer training. I don’t have a torch, and that’s a BIG problem because it’s getting dark and we’re out in the middle of the bush. Richard doesn’t have a house here, so we’re obviously going to sleep in the car … if I’m alive to sleep in the car.
Don’t panic. Deep breaths. Daddy says that the first step in solving a problem is staying calm. I need to get out of this car. I’ll tell Richard I need to go to the toilet. Then I’ll make a run for it. But I’m not going to be able to run carrying my drink bottle and my jacket and my apple. And if he sees me with my bag on my back, when I’m just meant to be having a pee, he’ll guess what I have in mind. So I put on my jacket in the car, even though it makes me feel hot. And I gulp what’s left in my drink bottle, hopefully enough water to get me through. I’ll use some of my self-defence techniques if he catches up with me. Kick him in the kneecap. Smash my hand against his nose (he has no idea how strong I am after all those push-ups). I slip the grain bar into my jacket pocket, and a pencil – perfect for eye-poking, which Daddy says is the best self-defence technique of all.
‘I need to pee,’ I say when he finally stops the car. We’re deep in the bush, on a fire trail, and the trees are grey and spooky in the dusk. No one is going to find us here. My only hope is to escape.
He gets out of the car without answering me, and walks until he’s out of sight. I heard him lock the doors as he went, but I try them anyway. Trapped. Five minutes pass. Ten. Twenty. Don’t panic, Jasmin. Don’t cry. Don’t. A few tears blur my eyes, and I rub them away. He’ll come back, he has to. Keep planning. Am I going to run before or after going to the toilet? Am I faster than him? He’s old, so I must be a better runner. And Davy has been doing lots of fitness at soccer, so my stamina is good. I can keep going for thirty minutes, or an hour if I have to. Which way am I going to run? From what I can see, the trees and undergrowth are pretty dense. It’ll have to be the track we came in on. Which will make it easier for him to come after me. But if I can run fast enough, he won’t be able to catch me. And if he turns back for the car, I’ll have a chance to hide.
Finally – when my watch tells me he’s been gone fifty-five minutes – he returns, emerging from the dark and opening the driver’s door, cold air coming in with him. Is my jacket going to be enough to keep me warm?
‘I need to pee,’ I say again, trying to sound teary, which isn’t hard.
He completely ignores me.
‘I haven’t been since lunchtime,’ I plead. ‘Do you want me to go in your car?’
He sighs, gets out and comes around to open my door.
‘Thanks,’
I say, pretending to be friendly.
His grip on my arm is tight, too tight to wriggle free from. Once I’m outside the car, I realize it isn’t as dark as I thought. There’s a half-moon and some stars, and if I concentrate hard I can actually see a little bit.
Richard marches me to a nearby tree. ‘You can go here.’
My eyes dart around, establishing the most direct route to the track. I can’t afford to trip up, or stumble. As Mrs Stanley often says, Time is of the essence.
But Richard looks as though he’s planning on staying right next to me, which is not part of the plan.
‘I don’t want you looking at me,’ I tell him, my voice wobbly, which is good, authentic.
We stare at each other. Can he see how much I’m shaking?
‘Don’t you try anything,’ he warns, before taking a few steps back so he’s on the other side of the tree.
He’s close, closer than I imagined he’d be. I have the advantage of surprise, though. And I have the pencil gripped in my hand, just in case.
I move my feet in the scrub, and rustle my clothes, pretending that I’m about to pee. Then, after one last shaky breath, I launch myself into the dark, towards the barely visible track. His voice calls out in shock, and then he comes after me, his legs much longer than mine, but slower, hopefully slower. I run faster than I’ve ever run in my life, my legs thrashing down hard on the uneven ground.
You’re faster than him, Jasmin. Go. Go.
My breath is loud in my ears. I’m grunting with the effort. I can hear him behind me, panting in a ragged, old-man way.
‘Stop, you silly girl.’
Never. I am never going to stop. Each breath burns in my throat. My legs feel heavy, but I keep going, through the almost-dark, with him calling out every so often, begging me to stop. All my energy is concentrated on running. I don’t answer him, don’t turn around to establish my lead, not once.
I can’t hear him any more. He has stopped chasing me. This is where he’s going to turn back to get the car. Which means I have another minute or so of running on the track, then I’ll need to disappear into the bush, into the scary undergrowth where there could be snakes or spiders or a zillion other deadly things waiting for me.
Count, Jasmin. One, two, three … At sixty, even though I don’t yet hear the sound of the car, I turn into the bush, charging through the brambles, wincing when a branch snaps back and slaps me on the face. Then I walk straight into what feels like a huge cobweb, and it sticks to my face and my hair and I thrash my hands, trying to get it off me.
‘Yuck. Yuck. Yuck.’
Focus. Forget the cobweb, and the spiders living in it, and the fact that there could be one crawling on me right now. Keep going. Deep. Deeper. As far away from the track as I can, and in as straight a line as I can, because I need to be able to find my way out of here later, when he’s gone.
Here he comes, the hum of his car filling the night. Now the headlights in the distance, extra light that I take advantage of, moving with greater speed for a short while, until he’s closer and it’s time to crouch down and hide. The car is going very slowly now.
The headlights move past me. Hooray! He thinks that I’m further along than I actually am. Should I go deeper into the bush? What’s worse, the risk of getting lost, or being too easy to find? My school tights are torn, and I know, from my stinging skin, that I have lots of cuts on my legs, as well as on my face and hands.
Keep going, Jasmin. Go deeper. The deeper you are, the safer. Don’t be scared. Don’t cry. Don’t panic. Your brain is your best weapon.
Richard must have stopped further up the track, because I can hear his voice now, faint yet insistent.
‘Jasmin! Jasmin! I’m sorry.’
I stop again, because moving makes noise and, even though he sounds quite far away, I’m scared he’ll hear me and come in this direction. This is far enough. Here’s a tree I can sit against. Hopefully there are no spiders living in it. Or ants. Are ants nocturnal? Kangaroos are, and koalas. I’m not sure about ants … or snakes. My upper body is warm, thanks to my jacket, but my legs are quickly becoming cold and I pull in my knees tight against me. Don’t think about the animals. Or the cold. Think about Mum and Dad. Pretend that they’re right here next to me. Mum’s wearing her puffy red jacket and her purple jeans and she doesn’t care that the colours clash. Daddy’s in his uniform, of course. They have their arms around me, squashing me between them. Mum keeps kissing my hair and saying, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’ Daddy’s voice is very serious, ‘Keep your head, Jasmin. Stay calm.’ Now tears are filling my eyes again, hot as they roll down my face. I will never be naughty or mean to Mum and Dad ever again. If only I could get them a message to tell them this. What if they think I’m dead? Mum will be distraught. Daddy will be trying to find me. He is looking for me right now, I know he is.
‘Jasmin. Jasmin.’ Richard is still out there.
But I’m safe. There is too much track, too much bush, for Richard to search. I’m safe. He’ll give up in an hour, two at most. He’ll get tired, sleepy, and call off the search until the morning. Then my dad will be here for real. My dad and the whole army.
I can stay awake until then. Richard won’t catch me sleeping. He doesn’t know how long I can stay awake. Actually, that’s one more positive in this extremely bad situation: I am an expert at staying awake.
54
Aidan
There’s video coverage showing Richard’s car – the classic Mercedes – going through the toll booths on the M4, and then, forty-five minutes later, driving through the main street at Glenbrook. Apparently nothing showed up on the CCTV cameras on the flyover at Leura, which implies they’re here, on the mountains. Somewhere between Glenbrook and Leura.
It was too late to call off Panther. The operation was well under way by the time I got the radio message from the police.
‘Your daughter has been kidnapped. We are concerned about the mental health of Richard McCarthy, and for your daughter’s safety.’
Richard! How could I have so drastically underestimated him? Been so oblivious to the signs, the threat he posed? The police seem to think this kidnapping of Jasmin is a way of ‘getting even’ with me. Trying to hurt me as much as I’ve hurt him. Or is it more about hurting Jasmin in place of Sophie? Is this about us fathers, or our daughters? Richard: overprotective, obsessed, silently seething. Is this revenge? Desperation? Or is it, as the police suggested on the radio, a genuine mental-health issue?
My men are scattered around the mountainside, climbing cliff faces in the dark, advancing through the forest in the dark, canoeing and firing shots in the dark. I’m meant to be guiding them by radio, from ‘headquarters’ (a tent erected on a rocky plateau twenty kilometres from Katoomba). It’s inconceivable that my daughter is out there too, in the same dark, somewhere on these mountains. And I’m to blame. Richard wants to ‘get even’ with me.
Chloe was distraught when she came on the satellite phone. She was at the barracks. ‘I need to be there, with you, to be helping in some way …’
‘Chloe, I don’t want you driving up here. It’s dark, the road is unfamiliar, and you’re very upset. There’s little that can be done until the morning …’
‘Jack can drive me … I can’t just sit here and wait. I can’t, Aidan, I just can’t …’
I was relieved to hear she was with Jack. The chaplain would take good care of her.
But she was so upset she was hardly making sense.
‘Sophie pushed this girl …’
‘What? What girl?’
‘A girl at school. Down a ravine. She’s dangerous, Aidan. And it’s obvious that her father’s just as dangerous and vindictive.’
‘Hang on, Chloe. Slow down. Tell me what the schoolgirl has to do with Jasmin?’
Chloe struggled to deliver a coherent explanation, and I struggled to get my head around it. Did Sophie really push a girl down a ravine? And the police already knew about this? Yes, Chloe insist
ed. She’d told the story to the attending police officers when they asked if anyone had a motive to harm Jasmin. But it quickly became clear to the police that Sophie knew nothing about Jasmin’s whereabouts. After discovering that her father was also missing, it was in fact Sophie who put two and two together. At least, that’s what I construed from Chloe’s somewhat garbled account of what had happened throughout the course of the late afternoon and evening, until she’d been able to get hold of me … which hadn’t been easy, given Panther’s limited communications and extensive security protocols. It’s good that she went to the barracks. It had stopped her driving straight up here and delivered her into the safe hands of Jack.
Chloe broke down completely towards the end of our call. ‘Our girl, our little girl …’
The line crackled as the phone changed hands, and then a male voice: Jack. ‘I’ll stay with Chloe. We’ll be on the end of the line if you need to talk to her, or she needs to talk to you. I’ll drive her up there as soon as we have confirmation that it’s still the right place to go. Don’t want to head there and find out we’ve got it wrong, or they’ve moved on. Would be too distressing.’
The popular picnic and tourist sites and the local hideouts have already been scoured.
The police are limited in what else they can do until first light (other than send out as many patrol cars as possible, in the hope of spotting Richard’s distinctive car on the road somewhere).
‘Thanks, Jack. I’m grateful.’
‘I’ll pray for you all.’
‘Please do.’
First light. We can’t do anything until first light. It would be different if we were in the city: the street lights assist the technology in the night-vision goggles and can literally turn night into day for the search-and-rescue choppers. But not here, in the mountains, with no lighting and everything more or less monochromatic, in various shades of green.