by Janine Grey
*
Fin braked so hard, the Land Rover’s usually forgiving brakes shrieked in protest.
His sigh of relief lasted just as long as it took him to confirm that Eliza’s ute was empty and that she was nowhere in sight. Her handbag was discarded in the front passenger foot well.
‘Eliza?’ he called.
She didn’t respond and, though he found her car keys on the bench, there was no other sign of her. Where would she go? Perhaps to the lookout where they’d met the day she’d returned to Ruin Flat. She might have gone for a walk while she waited, but would she have gone that far?
Hunting for clues, he looked around but nothing seemed out of place. His eyes glanced past the mine shaft and then back.
His tools weren’t as he’d left them. He strode towards them. The pickaxe was missing. Worse, the crate with the explosives was broken and its content gone.
Shit!
Had she taken it? Would she have gone down into the mine? And if so, why?
Just then, he heard a faint sound from the mine.
‘Eliza?’ Peering down into the shaft, he hoped frantically to see her through the darkness. But all was shadow. ‘Are you down there? Eliza?’
The echo of his voice died away to silence.
Head cocked to the mine, he waited another minute, wondering if he should go down to check the levels. But he just couldn’t imagine her going down there when he wasn’t around. It was much more likely that she’d gone for a walk. He peered down again, but couldn’t see anything.
Looking around, he realised neither of his hard hats were on their hooks, but that wasn’t surprising. Sometimes one or the other or both got left in the mine.
Deciding to try the lookout, he started to walk down the track and then backtracked to his workbench to scoop up her keys. If they missed each other, he didn’t want her to leave before they talked.
A movement at the opening of the mine drew his attention.
A middle-aged man was climbing awkwardly over the edge. Sweating and red faced, he crouched in the dirt, panting.
‘Who the hell are you?’ Fin barked. ‘What are you doing here?’ He saw that the man held Fin’s pickaxe in his hand, and approached warily.
The man rose to his feet. ‘Don’t even think about coming closer.’
‘Better put that thing down,’ Fin advised.
‘What, this?’ He lifted the pickaxe. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Where is she?’ Fin growled. ‘Eliza Mayberry, what have you done with her?’
‘You want to know where she is?’ The man tossed the pickaxe from hand to hand as if playing for time, weighing up his options.
Fin nodded.
‘All right, then we’ve got something to discuss.’
Fin had no idea what he was talking about, but he didn’t care.
‘Where the hell is she?’
‘Easy, mate. Let’s just take this real easy.’ The man backed away from the mine, both hands now tight on the handle of the pickaxe. He was powerful if overweight. Fin reckoned the guy could do some damage if he wanted to. Good thing he didn’t intend to give him the chance.
‘What’s there to discuss? You give me Eliza and I don’t break your fucking neck. Discussion done.’
‘Eighty thousand.’ The man looked around at the camp, derision on his sweating face. ‘I reckon you could get eighty, even ninety if you play your cards right.’
‘Dollars?’ Fin frowned. ‘What’s money got to do with it?’
‘Money’s always got something to do with it. Always. You let me call my people, set up a deal, and you get the girl and the cash. Have a holiday, take it easy.’
‘And you get?’ Fin bent his knees a fraction, waiting for the right moment to strike. He just needed the man to let down his guard for an instant, and he’d have him.
‘This shithole.’ The man sneered as he surveyed the mine camp. ‘You should be glad to get rid of it.’
‘All right.’ Fin forced his mouth into a smile and released the tension in his shoulders, his arms. ‘Ninety thousand, you said. I’d talk to any bastard who wants to give me ninety thousand.’
The man glanced towards the road just long enough.
Fin sprang.
*
Like a coffin, the tunnel closed in on Eliza until she felt almost nauseous from the claustrophobia. She closed her eyes. Either way, she was surrounded by darkness. She imagined she could hear the man’s breath just centimetres away, but she wasn’t sure. Maybe it was her own.
How long would he lie in wait for her?
Eventually he’d give up, surely. But how long would it take? Down here in the dark, time unravelled so that a minute seemed like an hour. Already she felt as though she’d been there for half a day, when in reality it was probably about twenty minutes. Her arm throbbed, and pins and needles streaked painfully up one cramped leg but she didn’t even have the room to shake it out properly.
Wriggling forward, feeling sharp rock scraping her hands and ribs, she found an opening with slightly more room, enough to sit up in. She took off the helmet, smoothed back her hair and retied it. The small gesture immediately drew back some of her composure. She returned the helmet to her head and the light flickered feebly back to life. In the brief illumination, she saw she was in a low cave, strewn with rubble. Then the light was gone again. She shook her head back and forth but the lamp stayed resolutely off.
Should she go back? She had enough room to turn, but would the man have gone? Even if he had gone up to the camp, he could still be waiting for her there.
Deciding to continue forward a few more metres, she shuffled sideways on her bum. Through her shirt she could feel cool moisture seeping from the wall. In fact, the air was noticeably colder now. The tunnel seemed to dip down, going further underground. No hope of another way out.
Eliza came to a halt. She would just have to wait a while longer and trust to luck that the man would cut his losses and leave. After all, what could she tell the police about him? Apart from providing a description, she had no other information that could identify him. She had no name, no car registration and no idea of what he wanted, except that he seemed to have something against her and Fin.
Leaning her head back, she closed her eyes and thought of Fin waiting for her at Treloars Cottage, of him taking her in his arms, of closing the door to shut out a world that had gone insane. She shivered as the temperature dropped some more.
As Eliza wrapped her arms around her knees, her right hand brushed something that felt soft, like fabric. Curious, she moved her fingers over it. She couldn’t make out anything in the pitch dark. With her other hand, she took off her hard hat and bumped it gently against the rock wall but the light was gone for good.
She remembered her phone and pulled it from her pants pocket. The light was weak and didn’t reveal much but when she saw what her right hand rested on, she let out a bloodcurdling scream.
*
‘What’s your name?’ Fin asked as he took his hard hat from the man’s head, tied his hands with rope and shoved him towards the car.
‘Call me Leonard.’
‘Well, Leonard. I’m going to lock you in my car. The police are already on their way. So you might want to think about the story you plan to tell them.’
‘Got nothing to say.’
Fin opened the rear door and bundled the guy inside. Cranking the window down so the bloke could breathe, Fin locked the door.
Leaning a hand on the warm roof, he looked at him. ‘I guess you were behind the break-in at Eliza Mayberry’s place this morning,’ he said conversationally, leaning a hand on the car roof.
The guy’s expression gave away his answer.
‘And the other stuff?’
‘Not the fucking lizard,’ he snapped. ‘That was – never mind.’ He clamped his mouth shut and stared fixedly out the other window.
‘What I want to know is why,’ Fin prodded. ‘I’ve never met you and you’re sure as hell not the kind of
person Eliza’s likely to hang out with. So what’s this all about?’
Fin didn’t expect a response and he didn’t get one. The guy was a low-level fixer, he reckoned. Fin had seen the type at MineCorp. The question was, what the hell was he supposed to fix out here?
‘I hope you’re getting paid well.’ The comment hit the mark and resentment burst out of the man.
‘Fuck you and that fucking nosy bitch.’
Fin shot a hand through the open window and grabbed the guy by the shirtfront, dragging him upright. ‘You need better manners, Leonard. Try to be polite when you tell me what the hell you’ve done with Eliza Mayberry or I’ll call the cops, tell them it was a false alarm and deal with you myself.’
The man’s eyes bulged in alarm, and though his mouth stayed resolutely shut, his eyes strayed towards the mine.
Fin swore under his breath and let go. Scooping up the hard hat and pickaxe the man had dropped, he raced to the mine and down the ladder to the first level.
‘Eliza?’ he yelled. ‘Eliza! Damn it! Answer me!’
It was then he heard a faint scream from far below.
CHAPTER 18
Crouched as far away as she could get from the bundle of rags in the corner, Eliza forced herself to take regular breaths. Her heart hammered and there was a roaring in her ears. Afraid she might faint, she dropped her head between her raised knees, staring at the floor until her stomach and nerves felt steadier.
The phone light had extinguished, but she didn’t need light to see the picture burnt into her brain of the human remains that lay in the lonely dark. Sections of his shirt and jeans still draped the bones, and his boots and belt were almost untouched by time. A dusty hard hat lay to one side. The rest – the man inside the clothes – was gone.
She had no doubts about whom she’d found, but if she had they were answered by the small faded photo she’d found in the dirt alongside the man. It was of a woman wearing a lemon-coloured shirt and holding a baby with a scowl not unlike the one the adult Fin habitually wore. The writing on the back was faint but unmistakable.
Mairi and Fin.
Logan had never left his family. He’d been here all along, his secret trapped in the dark almost ten metres below ground.
When she gave him his name it was easier to look at him, to see him as he once must have been – as driven and determined as Fin but perhaps a little easier on those who loved him.
‘What happened, Logan?’ she whispered into the dark.
Had he been trapped or injured? Maybe both. Perhaps he’d been working the level when it had caved in, offering no way out.
She wondered if they’d ever know for sure. But at least Fin would know his father had never left him. On the contrary, Logan had clearly adored his wife and child, their photo close to his heart as he breathed his last.
A tear dripped down her cheek. ‘I’m so sorry, Logan,’ she murmured. ‘Sorry you didn’t get to know your son. But I can tell you, he’s a good man. Stubborn and as hot-tempered as the outback, but a good man. You’d be proud.’
Her voice dropped away into silence and she let the tears fall a little longer. When she was done, she switched on her phone light, crawled to Logan with the photo and gently tucked it into his shirt pocket. It belonged with him.
In the distance, she thought she heard her name being called. When she listened again, she knew it was Fin.
‘I have to go, Logan. But I’ll make sure he understands. I promise.’
As she turned to crawl back out of the cave, the low beam of the phone glanced over a large lump of rock close to Logan’s outstretched hand. Something unearthly flashed deep in its dark heart.
Shaking, Eliza picked it up. It was large, grey and nubbly, almost the size of her entire palm. It would be easy to mistake it for just a piece of drab and worthless rock, she thought. Until it caught the light and a dark flame exploded deep in its core.
As she closed her fingers over it, she looked back at Logan.
‘You did it,’ she whispered. ‘You found it after all. You did what you set out to do.’ She thought of the note, written in a hand so unlike Logan’s. ‘You didn’t write that letter to Mairi, did you? You had no need. You’d found the opal. You could have lived happily ever after.’
Time’s short, the dark whispered to her like an echo in her head. Don’t waste it. You always have less time than you think.
She smiled at Logan. ‘We won’t waste it, I promise.’ When she’d tucked the opal safely into her pants pocket, she glanced at him one last time. Fin’s voice was louder now, vibrating with fury borne of fear. ‘Thank you for the opal, Logan. Mairi needs it now more than ever. I don’t understand what happened but I promise you I’ll use everything in my power to find out.’
Turning away, she began to make her slow way towards the man she loved.
*
‘Eliza!’ Fin called, his voice almost hoarse from screaming her name. ‘Eliza, for God’s sake, answer me!’
He sank down onto his haunches, head in hands. He’d walked just about every inch of the levels. There was nowhere else to search for her. He was going to have to make good on his word and beat Leonard to a pulp until he told the truth.
A small shifting of rock above his head forced Fin to his feet, ready to make a run for it. He glanced at the roof. Sand trickled down steadily, and he eyed it warily. It didn’t look like much but he knew how unstable this level was, and was glad he’d decided against blasting to access the lower section.
‘Ouch!’ Eliza’s voice sounded close by. ‘Fin? I’m here.’
‘Eliza?’ He crouched down again and there she was, her hand at least, extending from the channel he’d thought was impassable. Clearly he’d been wrong. ‘Thank God!’
He eased her carefully out as though she were porcelain. When she was upright, he ran his hands from her shoulders down to her waist and back up to frame her face. Her face was dirty and streaked with tears, her hard hat askew. But in that moment she was more beautiful, more precious than anything he’d ever seen before.
‘Are you hurt? Tell me,’ he said.
‘No, but Fin, there’s something I have to tell you.’
He brushed his lips with hers. ‘The fat guy’s trussed up like a chicken up top. Don’t worry. Did he touch you?’
‘No. But that’s not what —’
She stopped at the sound of shifting rock, and they watched as it closed off the narrow cavity she’d just come from as though it had never been.
‘I hid in there and he couldn’t follow,’ she said quickly. ‘At least he wasn’t game to try. Fin, there’s something important I have to tell you.’
Her heart was in her eyes and he felt his own flood with feeling. ‘I know, baby. Mick told me.’
‘Mick?’ she asked, wondering what her friend had to do with this. Right at that moment, the trickle of sand from the roof became heavier. Rock groaned ominously overhead.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said, grabbing her hand. ‘Before we bring the house down.’
Hand in hand, they ran down the level towards the shaft. Eliza went first, Fin following. Even as they ran, they could hear the thunder of rock behind them. Then they were at the ladder and, as they climbed, the sound of police sirens could be heard in the distance. By the time they reached the top, two police cars had pulled up, and one cop was already speaking to Leonard as he untied Fin’s rope.
Mick emerged from the back of the other, looking pleased with himself.
‘Thanks, mate.’ Fin wrapped one arm around Eliza’s shoulder and slapped on the back.
‘You two all right, then?’
‘Yeah.’ Fin glanced down at Eliza. She hadn’t said a word since they’d emerged from the mine. ‘We could do with some water from the Esky over there.’
While Mick found the water, Fin took her to her car and sat her in the driver’s seat.
‘She okay?’ Mick asked again, looking worried. ‘Shall we call for the ambos?’
Fin
looked at Eliza and she managed a wan half-smile. ‘Thanks, Mick, I’m okay. I just had a scare.’
‘Will you stay with Eliza while I talk to the cops?’ Fin asked Mick. From the looks of it, they weren’t making much progress with Leonard. They must have released him because his arms were folded over his chest. His mouth was set in a stubborn line.
As it turned out, the police had found his car stashed behind some bushes just fifty metres away and quickly identified him as Leonard ‘Twobit’ Twomey, a former standover man who retired because he didn’t have the stomach or the physique for physical violence. In recent years, he’d kept his head above water doing what they called dirty work – and Fin took to be surveillance and grunt work – for commercial organisations involved in sensitive business deals.
‘The Gold Coast boys want to have a talk to him about a few things,’ one of the police officers said to Fin later.
‘He seemed to want to cause trouble for us,’ Fin said. ‘I have no idea why.’
‘We’ll get to the bottom of it,’ the cop promised.
Fin wanted more than that. ‘There’ll be charges, I hope. He broke into Eliza’s place this morning, and I’m damn sure he was behind an accident here at the mine a few weeks back.’
The cop took his statement and spoke briefly to Eliza, who filled him in on the break-in at Treloars Cottage and events after she’d arrived at Ruin Flat. She answered in a quiet monotone that made Fin think she’d had a harder time than she’d made out. He was anxious to get her home, and was glad when the cops took Twomey away in handcuffs.
Mick promised to drop off Fin’s car. He saluted as he followed the cops out along the track to the road.
Fin sighed, feeling his adrenaline levels plummet. Eliza looked even worse than he felt. She was so pale he thought she might faint so he brought her a soft drink and crouched by the car door as she drank it.
‘Better?’ he asked, smoothing back her hair.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Maybe we should swing by the hospital. Get you checked out, just to be on the safe side.’