‘Go,’ I commanded. ‘Ask.’
Tark jogged after the ferals and hailed them. They encirled him, bobbing in time with the faint pulse of the music, beaming at him like he was a strange and fascinating artifact. A conference commenced. Everybody had something to contribute. I hung back, impatiently awaiting the outcome.
The talk continued, back and forth, heap big pow-wow. The People’s Consultative Congress. Then, abruptly, the ferals resumed their march for the exit. Tark returned.
‘Off their faces,’ he reported. ‘But they know where Mongoose took Red and the others. They camped near the place on their way here, night before last. They heard this dog barking somewhere in the bush, nobody around, houses or anything. Mongoose went for a look, came back with fresh leaf. Said he’d found a dope patch. He wanted to go back in the morning, check it out, maybe rip it off. They said no, so he convinced Matt and his mates to help them instead.’
I didn’t like the sound of that dog.
‘They’re headed that way now,’ said Tark. ‘They reckon they’ll probably meet Red and the others on their way back.’
The ferals were trucking out the gate, disappearing down the road. Should I wait here? Should I follow the furry freaks, hope to connect with Red and the Prentice kids?
Should I contact the cops and share my concerns?
I decided on all three.
‘You wait here,’ I ordered Tark. ‘If I’m not back in half an hour, or if Red hasn’t shown up, contact the Lorne police. Mention my name. Tell them what you told me and what the ferals told you. Tell them I think these dope plants might be the ones at Rodney Syce’s camp. Tell them I’ve gone to find Red and the others. Okay?’
Tark was a fast study. ‘Rodney Syce?’ he said, ‘Wasn’t that the guy…’
‘Later,’ I said, stuffing the bottle of mineral water into my back pocket and starting after the vanishing ferals.
They were setting a cracking pace, moving faster than a runaway budget deficit. I hurried to keep them in sight as they powered along the roadside.
A dark-grey surfwear-stickered Range Rover came up the hill and whizzed past, Barbara Prentice behind the wheel. Come to collect Jodie and Matt, no doubt. Chances were, Tark would spot her, fill her in. Good.
Or was it? Barbara had connections with Jake Martyn. Could word leak back to him somehow?
The ferals had walked into a picnic area. Tree ferns, log tables, families. They entered a slot between the trees, the beginning of a hiking track. I pursued them along the narrow defile. The bush rustled around us. The path rose and fell.
I put on a spurt of speed and caught up with the rearguard feral. She was a thin girl, her collarbones jutting above a flat chest bandoleered with ragged scarves. A wide headband and a ring though her septum, she looked like the door knocker from a Mayan temple. She was sucking a Chupa-Chup and making a vibrating noise in her throat as she marched.
‘Excuse me,’ I panted, falling into step beside her.
She shook her head briskly and continued to hum, lips tight around her lollipop stick. Headphone plugs stoppered her ears, leading from a Discman in an embroidered sack on a cord around her neck.
‘I’m trying to find out…’
She shook her head again, making it clear she wasn’t going to speak.
Suppressing the urge to rip the wires from her lugholes, I hurried up the line to the next crusty. He was bare-footed with vulcanised soles, Celtic tattoos, a braided beard, a moonstone pendant and a walking staff incised with a rainbow serpent. All of twenty years old.
‘Excuse me,’ I gasped. ‘I’m looking for my son. He’s with a guy called Mongoose. I’m worried…’
Gandalf did not break stride. He beamed benignly and stroked his beard. ‘You’ve got to learn to let go, man. You can’t, like, stifle the people you love.’
‘I’m not trying to stifle him,’ I said. ‘I’m trying to find him.’ And then, it was true, I’d throttle him.
‘Find yourself first, man,’ opined the wizard. ‘The answer lies within.’
More likely it lay ahead. Stacking on the pace, I reached a brace of feralesses. One was tall and ethereal, all bracelets and bells. The other was stocky and wore a shearer’s blue singlet. ‘’Scuse me,’ I wheezed. ‘I’m looking for my son.’
Tinkerbell slowed a little and smiled beatifically. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Red,’ I said.
‘Cool,’ she said. ‘It’s, like, very vibrant.’
The little shearer sheila clocked me for a suit in mufti. She eyed me suspiciously. ‘We don’t know anyone called Red.’
‘But you know a guy called Mongoose, right?’
Grasping my line of enquiry, she shook her head. ‘It’s nothing to do with us.’
The wind was getting stronger, snatching at our words. I had a stitch in my side and a raging thirst. My ankle was throbbing and my new sandals were rubbing at my heels. I downed the last of my water.
‘I just want to know where they’ve gone,’ I pleaded.
Tinkerbell extended a long delicate finger threaded with silver rings. The trees on the side of the trail were thinning. Through them I could see a vast open space. A firebreak. The lead ferals, a cluster of young bucks, had left the path and started across it.
I checked the time. It was past one-thirty. The half hour had come and gone. Either Red and the others were safely back at the concert pick-up area or Tark had contacted the coppers. Should I go forward or back? I decided to press on, give it another few minutes.
The firebreak was a desolate gash in the grey-green fabric of the forest. Two hundred metres of torn earth, flattened vegetation and chain-sawed tree stumps. By the time I was half-way across, the pathfinder ferals had vanished into the bush on the far side.
Pixie and Poxie and Whacko the Wizard were nowhere in sight. The sky roiled with clouds. My brain was turning to mush. What was I doing?
A rutted track intersected the firebreak, two shallow undulations in the hard-packed dirt. I followed it into the trees for a couple of minutes, then sank onto a fallen branch.
Time to pack it in, go back the way I’d come.
The wind roared in the canopy and stirred up willy-willies of leaves and dust. Shards of bark and dry twigs flew through the air. The temperature dropped. Rain coming.
I pulled the empty water bottle from my pocket and cursed my stupidity. So much for my New Year resolution about going off half-cocked. I unpeeled the velcro tabs on my sandals and massaged my raw heels.
The Australian bush. I hated it. The sooner it was turned into woodchips, toilet paper and florists’ accessories, the better.
As I climbed to my feet, a spanking new Nissan Patrol came lumbering along the track from the direction of the firebreak. Bullbar on the front grille. It juddered to a halt beside me and a flush-faced, silver-haired man in a crisply ironed check shirt leaned out the window.
‘G’day,’ he said, in an unconvincing attempt to sound as if he hadn’t spent his entire adult life in a corporate boardroom.
‘G’day,’ I responded, spotting an opportunity. ‘Got myself a bit bushed here, mate. Any chance of a lift back to civilisation?’
A brittle-coiffed matron scrutinised me from the passenger seat, not entirely thrilled by the idea. Her R. M. Williams collar was rakishly turned up. Protection against the harsh outback sun for both a well-preserved neck and a string of rather good pearls.
‘Hop in,’ said the silverback.
I climbed into the back seat, inhaling the ambience of the leafy suburbs. The vehicle had a dashboard like a B-52. Traction control, six-speaker CD, floating compass, artificial horizon, dual airbags. ‘Murray’s the name,’ I said.
‘Douglas,’ said the man. ‘And my wife Pamela.’
The massive machine crawled forward. Douglas craned over the steering wheel, concentrating on the narrow, rutted track.
‘Bit new to this,’ he explained. ‘We’re planning a big trip to the Top End later in the year. I thought I�
��d get some off-road experience first.’
We bumped and rocked to the top of an incline, then ploughed downwards. Douglas hadn’t counted on an audience. He kept wiping his hands on his thighs. Wet patches darkened the armpits of his shirt.
‘Sure this is the way?’ I said. ‘You got a map?’
The wife had one on her knee. ‘This track leads to the Mount Sabine Road,’ she said primly.
You’re the one who got lost, her tone implied.
I lapsed into grateful silence.
Pamela stared fixedly ahead. I couldn’t tell if her tension was caused by her husband’s driving or a suspicion that the rough-looking stranger in the back seat was about to cut their throats and steal their expensive new car.
The track was little more than a fissure between close-packed trees. Branches scraped the doors and the vehicle yawed from side to side.
‘Honestly, Douglas,’ said his wife, clinging to the handrail. The minutes ticked past. I grew prickly with impatience.
‘I really appreciate this,’ I said.
Suddenly, Douglas hit the brakes hard and the Patrol lurched to a halt.
A wild-eyed figure was blocking our path.
He was compact and sinewy, his scalp razored back to a braided topknot. Sweat and grime covered his nut-brown skin and his bare chest heaved beneath a shark-tooth necklace. His army surplus pants had been sheared off mid-calf and cinched at the waist with a tattered saffron scarf.
He was semaphoring desperately for us to stop.
I hit the ground running and reached him in ten seconds flat. He had a sharp, tapered face, small ears and darting eyes. A mongoose if ever I saw one.
He teetered on the spot, sucked down air and steadied himself. He was much older than I’d assumed. Twenty-five at least.
You prick, I thought, bracing for the worst.
‘Need help, man,’ he panted. ‘I was, like, taking these young dudes to check out this place where I’d, like, seen this amazing platypus and next thing there’s this loony pointing like a shotgun at us and sort of herding us into this kind of shed but I’m like basically behind a tree and he doesn’t see me so I, like, see my chance to go get help so I make a break and…’
The torrent dried up and he paused to catch his breath. I clamped a hand around one of his Polynesian wrist tattoos. ‘Cut the outdoor-education crap, Mongoose. I know all about you ripping off the dope.’
The twerp stared at me, eyes wide with astonishment. His mouth did a passable impression of a dying carp.
‘Are those kids okay?’ I demanded. ‘Tell me exactly what happened.’
Mongoose licked his lips, cowering slightly. Probably because I was twisting his arm behind his back.
‘There’s five of them,’ he said. ‘Four guys and a chick. We were doing a run-through of this guy’s crop. He springs us, and suddenly he’s waving this gun around, yelling out stuff like, “Hands in the air, shuddup, get in the shed.” The others, they’re like totally freaked but, “Sure, man, whatever you say” and I’m out of there, so I don’t see what happens next. But there’s no shots, nothing like that. He’s, like, taken them prisoner or something. I think.’
Douglas was hovering apprehensively. All this, and he wasn’t even in the Northern Territory yet. He glanced back at the Patrol. Pamela stood a few paces behind him, fingering her pearls. In her other hand she held a bottle of water.
‘Where’s this happening?’ I said.
Mongoose flapped his free arm. ‘Back that way. Along a creek, bottom of a ridge.’
‘Take me there.’
He wrenched free. ‘What for, man? Take me to the cops, I’ll show them the way.’
‘The cops already know where it is.’
‘Bullshit. How could they?’
‘You don’t know the half of it, you dopey deadshit,’ I said, with more assurance than I felt. ‘Take me there and I’ll put in a good word for you at the trial.’
He accepted a swig of water from Pamela and gulped, his adam’s apple pulsing. As he drank, he eyed me warily as though I might snatch the bottle from his grasp and deck him with it.
‘You’re out of your fucken tree, man. No way am I going back there. Not without an army of cops.’
I turned to Pamela and Douglas and adopted my doorknocking-in-a-marginal-seat tone. ‘This sorry specimen has put a group of teenagers in serious danger. They’re in the hands of an escaped convict, a murderer. One of them is a young girl. We need to get to the police, ASAP.’
‘That’s what I’m telling you, man,’ bleated Mongoose. ‘Except I didn’t know he was a murderer, just some dude with a dope plantation. Dead set.’
I shoved him towards the Patrol. He shoved back. ‘Fuck, man,’ he said peevishly. ‘No need to get so heavy.’
I balled my fist, seething with anger, frustration and anxiety. ‘I’ll get as heavy as I like, pal,’ I said. ‘One of those kids is my son. And if anything’s happened to him, I’ll have you up on so many charges you’ll be meeting parole conditions for the rest of your sorry-arsed life.’
The sky was darkening, the trees groaning in the wind. I shivered, a coldness creeping through me. Finger by finger, I unballed my fist.
Douglas and Pamela had gone into whispered conference beside the Patrol. Now Pamela turned on her heel and strode towards the driver’s door. ‘For God’s sake, Douglas,’ she said. ‘This is an emergency.’
I followed Mongoose into the back seat. Douglas took the front passenger slot. Pamela got behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition.
‘Seatbelts,’ she commanded.
She slammed the Patrol into gear and gunned it along the rutted outline of the track. Lips tight, pearls swaying as the leviathan powered forward. She was, I knew at once, a formidable presence on the tennis club social committee.
Mongoose retreated into his corner. He smelled of sweat and fear and patchouli oil. But even in his deflated state, there was a hint of nervy charisma about him, an expectation that people would turn towards him. I could understand how his bush-warrior pose might appeal to a surly, insecure kid like Matt Prentice.
Redmond Whelan, on the other hand, should have known better.
I tried to picture the scene at Syce’s camp, imagine his reaction to the sudden appearance of a stampeding herd of plant-plundering adolescents. At least, if the funked-out Mongoose was to be believed, he hadn’t starting blasting away with his shotgun. On the other hand, he didn’t need a gun to be lethal. A shovel would do, or even an oyster knife. I didn’t want to think about it. Drop my bundle now and I’d be no use to anyone.
Pamela was boring ahead like a three-time veteran of the Paris–Dakar. I leaned into the gap between the seats and gave them a thumbnail of the situation. A police operation was in progress, I told them, but this was a new development. I said I was worried the police might get there too late. Didn’t mention the doings of the previous night. Fudged the reasons for my involvement. Clear as mud, but it covered the ground.
‘Dreadful,’ said Pamela above the grunt and thrash of the engine.
‘You’re a member of parliament, you say?’ Douglas sounded sceptical.
‘Labor,’ I explained.
‘Ah.’
The track divided. The right-hand fork, better-defined, ran uphill. Douglas fussed with the map.
‘Go right,’ said Mongoose. He shot a furtive glance down the side track.
‘Stop the car,’ I said.
Pamela hit the anchors and hoisted the handbrake. We propped precariously, bullbar angled upwards.
I loomed over Mongoose like a cobra. ‘It’s down there, isn’t it?’
‘I’m not going back, man. Not without…’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ I cut him off. ‘At least give me directions.’
‘Surely you’re not thinking of going alone?’ said Douglas.
‘How would you feel if it was Verity?’ said Pamela.
Douglas said nothing, but if I wanted to get myself shot, it was fine with Mongoose.
‘Track ends at a fallen tree,’ he said. ‘Somebody’s had a go at it with a chainsaw. Slope drops away, totally steep. Creek’s at the bottom. Follow it downstream, ten, fifteen minutes.’
I repeated the instructions to myself and opened the door.
‘What’s your shoe size?’ said Pamela.
‘Nine,’ I said. ‘Why?’
‘Give him your shoes, Douglas,’ she said. ‘And socks. He can’t go tramping through the bush in those sandals.’
Douglas unlaced his Timberlake hikers. A Christmas present, judging by their mint condition. He peeled off his cream cotton socks and handed them over. Socks and boots both were a perfect fit.
‘Take care,’ Pamela said, laying a motherly hand on my shoulder. ‘Good luck.’
The Patrol grunted upwards. I jogged down the left fork in my brand new seven-league boots, plastic bottle in hand. I ached in some parts and chafed in others, but the exhaustion had evaporated. I was hyper. Dark possibilities coursed through my brain.
The faint ruts, the barest figment of a track, sank deeper and deeper into the swaying grey-green immensity of the ranges. After ten minutes of thudding footfalls and heaving lungs, they were just a gap in the vegetation, a narrow seam weaving through the trees.
The trunk of a long-dead stringybark blocked my way, a decaying giant notched with incisions. Once upon a time, an optimist had tried to clear the path, given up. I vaulted the log and traversed the shoulder of a ridge. The ground dropped away to one side. Like, totally steep, man.
This looked like the place. Unless Mongoose had been winding me up. He wouldn’t dare, I told myself.
It was nearly three o’clock. Jake Martyn was expected mid-afternoon. Any time now. The cops, I assumed, had already established some sort of perimeter. With luck I’d connect with them or the fish dogs as I approached the camp. I half expected to see a hovering helicopter, squaddies abseiling down ropes into the tree canopy.
I plunged down the incline, skidding though clumps of parrot-pea and careening off grey-gums. The drop was almost vertical. Hurtling headlong, I snatched at anything in reach. Thorns and blades of native grass ripped my skin, wiry, like frayed cable ends. I fell on my arse and rode the seat of my pants to the bottom, steering with my feet.
Something Fishy Page 18