The Survivors

by Jane Harper

  They all fell quiet. Kieran could hear the dock creak as the boats rocked and resettled. Beyond the trees, the red brick of the police station was visible.

  ‘Do you always stay with your mum on Saturday nights?’ he asked.

  ‘Lately I have been. If I’m not working we’ll watch a movie or something. Go to yoga in the morning.’

  ‘So people might know that was a regular thing?’ Kieran said. ‘That Bronte would be alone in the house?’

  Olivia went very still. ‘Yeah. I suppose some people might.’

  ‘People do know that, Liv.’ Sean’s voice was caught by the wind. He didn’t look over as he spoke. ‘Most people who know you, know that.’

  Olivia stared at him, her face tense. Then she blinked hard. ‘Oh my God, I wish I’d –’

  ‘Stop.’ Ash’s voice was firm. ‘Stop that now.’

  Olivia fell silent but Kieran could guess what she was thinking. The road not travelled. He had enough of those thoughts himself, and they never led anywhere good.

  ‘Ash is right,’ he said, and Olivia looked up. ‘I know you know that, Liv, but it’s true. I mean, Mia and I sat on the beach for twenty minutes last night. If we’d walked back along the sand instead of –’

  Kieran stopped, remembering the walk home. Dark and still, and then, all of a sudden, not.

  ‘What?’ Sean said.

  ‘We saw a car. Last night. Driving way too fast not far from Fisherman’s Cottage.’

  ‘What kind of car?’ Sean asked, but Kieran could hear the real question loud and clear. Was it Liam’s five-year-old white Holden? Kieran didn’t know what the right answer was.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, truthfully.

  Sean frowned. He didn’t know what the right answer was either, Kieran thought.

  ‘You should tell Sergeant Renn about that.’ Ash’s voice was oddly light and Sean’s eyes flicked over. He stared at his friend, trying to gauge his tone. Ash pretended not to notice.

  Kieran looked from one to the other. He couldn’t read Ash either, which was a little unusual. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I will.’

  Sean turned back to the horizon, his head tilted in the way Kieran knew meant he was thinking. At last, he opened his mouth. ‘Listen, guys, about Liam –’

  He was cut off as Olivia’s phone rang. They waited as she answered, listening and occasionally nodding at the voice on the other end.

  ‘Okay. Thank you.’ She frowned as she hung up. ‘That was Chris Renn. He needs me back at the house.’

  Ash looked at her. ‘What for?’

  ‘I don’t know. He sounded –’ Olivia shook her head. ‘I’m not sure. I’d better go.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Sean said as she got to her feet. ‘About Liam –’

  He waited until they were all facing him.

  ‘Liam wouldn’t do this. Okay? He wouldn’t.’

  Olivia stood hand in hand with Ash, neither quite meeting Sean’s eye. The already strange atmosphere had taken a sharp awkward turn. Sean looked to Kieran.

  ‘You heard Liam and Bronte talking together last night, right? Not arguing or shouting. Did Liam say anything at all that sounded like a red flag?’

  He waited until Kieran shook his head.

  ‘So if Renn or someone asks,’ Sean said, ‘can you tell them that?’

  Kieran hesitated. ‘I suppose I can tell them what I heard. But, mate, I didn’t really –’

  ‘But you did hear them. I mean, if Liam had been acting weird or aggressively or whatever, you’d have noticed, right? But you didn’t. You said yourself last night that it was fine. So all I’m asking is that you tell the police that. Mate? Please?’

  The wind sent the boats rocking and creaking again as Kieran looked at his friend and made himself picture Liam.

  Not the Liam of last night, sullen with his grease-stained apron and the mop in his hand. But Liam of twelve years ago. Still a little boy then, dressed in a black shirt that had been bought especially for the occasion. Liam’s tears had run under his chin and soaked into the stiff collar as he was handed flowers to place on his dad’s coffin.

  ‘Kieran?’ Sean was pleading now. ‘If the police ask?’

  Kieran was trying hard to think of Liam, but his mind instead kept circling back to Sean. Not Sean at the funeral, though. A few days before that. Standing in Kieran’s living room, both of them eighteen and face to face for the first time after the storm.

  It was an accident, Kieran had started to say. Somewhere in the family house that now felt too big were Verity and Brian, both so odd and strained now, even in silence. Kieran had made himself try again. He’d forced himself to speak, knowing there weren’t enough words in the world to fix this. Hating it, hating himself.

  Sean had stopped him.

  I know, mate. It’s okay.

  The relief had been blinding.

  Kieran looked at Sean now. His friend was still waiting.

  ‘Listen, if the police ask –’ Kieran heard the deck groan as Ash shifted his weight, but he ignored it. Ash knew how things were. Whatever his problem was, he’d get over it. ‘If the police ask, yeah, I can tell them that.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Sean’s face cracked a little. ‘Thanks, mate. It probably won’t be enough to get him out of the shit, but it might help.’

  Kieran doubted it would even do that. ‘No worries.’

  ‘And look, I know Liam can be a bit –’ Sean stopped, and gave a helpless shrug. ‘But I appreciate you doing this for him.’

  I know, mate. It’s okay.

  It wasn’t Liam he was doing it for, but Kieran didn’t bother to correct him.

  Chapter 9

  Kieran thought Ash and Olivia might want to walk alone to Fisherman’s Cottage, but when he hung back to give them the chance, Ash waited for him.

  ‘You’re going this way, aren’t you?’

  Kieran nodded. Mia had texted to say she had got back to his parents’ house safely. While he hadn’t truly expected any different, he still felt relieved.

  They left Sean pulling on his wetsuit.

  ‘You’re going out to the wreck?’ Kieran asked in surprise and Sean shrugged, his face grim.

  ‘I can’t see any of this putting off the Norwegians. I’m fine, seriously,’ he said when he saw Kieran glance at the oxygen tanks. ‘Check them over yourself if it makes you feel better.’

  Kieran had followed Ash and Olivia out of the marina and onto the road. No-one suggested going the beach way.

  ‘So, Liam,’ Ash said as soon as they hit the tarmac. Sand blew across the road, crunching underfoot. Behind them, Sean and the Nautilus Blue were well out of sight but still, Ash kept his voice low. ‘The thing about Liam –’ Ash stopped again, choosing his words. ‘Look. I get it. He’s Sean’s nephew. They’re close. But don’t get sucked into saying anything about him that you don’t want to.’

  ‘I’m not planning to, mate,’ Kieran said. ‘Why? Something I should know about him?’

  ‘No,’ Ash said quickly, shaking his head. ‘I’m not saying that. I mean, I think Liam’s a bit of an arsehole, that’s not news. But let’s be real. We were all around when the storm hit, we all know the bloody background playing out here. So yeah, Sean’s probably entitled to ask for a favour and yeah, maybe he deserves to get it.’

  They rounded the corner and, up ahead, Kieran could see the first glimpse of Fisherman’s Cottage. Two police cars were parked on the road outside.

  ‘But whatever happened back then is done,’ Ash said. ‘That’s not going to change. So don’t let it tangle you up in something you’re not happy with now.’ A tiny pause. ‘Either of you, eh?’

  Kieran couldn’t help it. He shot a sideways glance at Olivia. She didn’t react, but then she always had been better at controlling herself than he had.

  It had been a very long morning. H
e could think of fifty good reasons off the top of his head for the tension across Olivia’s shoulders and neck. He didn’t know her well enough now to be able to tell what she was thinking. But that hadn’t always been the case. And Kieran suddenly found himself wondering, for the first time in years, how much his good friend Ash actually knew about that day of the storm.

  It had been a big summer. With their final year exams done and dusted, Kieran and Sean had launched themselves headfirst into the booze-soaked celebrations. Good weather had brought a lot of tourists through that year, including plenty of bored teenage girls who could think of a few places they’d rather be than on holiday in Tasmania with their parents. Kieran considered it his personal civic duty to show these girls a good time, and whenever the beach or caravan park or someone’s rented house came alive with music playing and beer flowing, Kieran was generally there, watching the sun both set and rise through bleary eyes.

  Ash had been right there beside him, of course, despite having already called it quits at school. When the students at Evelyn Bay’s secondary school finished Year 10, the state’s education system meant anyone who wanted to complete high school had to dig out their bus pass and spend their final two years travelling to and from the nearest college.

  Ash, who had coasted effortlessly in the top third of class for his first ten academic years, had gone to visit his dad and returned with the view that trailing ninety minutes each way on a school bus was for bloody idiots with nothing better to do. He couldn’t be talked around and, with that, Ash’s formal education had come to an end.

  It was great, though, Ash had used to say – a lot – over those next two years. He’d showed up on the first morning to wave Kieran and Sean off on the bus with a grin. Then he’d turned around and got a job at the plant nursery, worked out pretty quickly that he was pretty good at it, and started finding his own gardening work. He had money coming in. Not loads, but more than Kieran and Sean. The best bit, though, Ash reckoned, was the freedom. Being able to spend his days however he chose. Maybe so, Kieran had thought, but it still seemed that most days what Ash chose to do was hang around the bus stop in the evenings, waiting for his friends to come home from school.

  For Kieran, the summer of the storm had felt almost like a reunion, with the classroom finally behind them. They’d all been working. Ash had cooked up some idea to launch his own landscaping business and was flat out turning his grandmother’s garden into a showpiece. Kieran and Sean had worked for their older brothers, same as every year. Finn and Toby didn’t muck around when it came to the diving business and it was hard work – ‘Minimum wage for maximum shit,’ Kieran had used to complain to Verity, but he hadn’t really meant it.

  Olivia had been there too. Down at the beach in her bathers. Getting a beer from the fridge at a Friday night house party, looking as relieved as anyone to have put the tedious bus rides to college behind her. She’d been around a lot, but not with them. Because while Kieran and Ash had a strong preference for the holiday-happy girls who stayed at sea view cabins or the caravan park before disappearing back to the mainland two weeks later, Olivia and her friends had a strong preference for guys who were nothing like Kieran and Ash.

  She had time for Sean, though.

  Kieran would sometimes glance up from whatever sagging couch he’d landed on, trying to remember the name of the girl he was talking to, and across the party he’d see Olivia and Sean leaning against the kitchen counter, chatting quietly about something Kieran could only guess at. Kieran would look over at Ash, who would also be watching and shaking his head with the same baffled look.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Ash had said, more than once. ‘Is she just really into his whole shy virgin thing, or what?’

  Kieran had grinned into his drink. ‘I dunno, mate.’

  ‘I mean, look at him. And then look at her.’

  ‘Yeah. I’m looking.’

  ‘Then explain to me what’s going on.’

  Kieran laughed. ‘I can’t.’

  That wasn’t true, though. When Kieran thought about it, which he found himself doing surprisingly often, the answer was pretty obvious. Olivia and Sean were friends. They had taken a couple of the same classes during the final school year, and had been paired together on a joint project. This had once involved Sean spending a whole afternoon working from Olivia’s bedroom – about which he was infuriatingly light on detail, despite an extended grilling from Ash.

  ‘That’s it,’ Ash had said, putting his bottle down on a sticky countertop a few weeks later and a few drinks deeper than he should have been. ‘I’m going to rescue her.’

  And he had tried, marching across the party and throwing a heavy arm around Sean before cutting him off mid-sentence. Olivia, to the surprise of no-one but Ash himself, had blanked him until he’d been forced to slink away, red-faced, and spend the rest of the night muttering furiously into his beer.

  ‘You and Olivia are nice and tight, mate. You’re officially one of the girls now,’ Ash had said casually the next day, wiping the tiny hint of triumph off Sean’s face.

  Sean had looked to Kieran, who had checked his phone and pretended not to notice, partly because – for reasons he couldn’t quite articulate – he found the whole situation a little irritating himself. After that, Sean had mostly gone back to standing alone at parties, and everyone was happy.

  The police cars parked outside Fisherman’s Cottage were empty, Kieran could see now as they drew closer. Caution tape had been strung between the gateposts, barring entry, and a uniformed officer Kieran didn’t recognise stood watch outside. Other than that, he could see no activity at the front of the property. Whatever was happening, it was going on within the house or down on the beach, Kieran guessed.

  ‘Do you think I’ll have to go back inside?’ Olivia slowed as they got nearer to the cottage.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ash said. ‘Maybe.’

  They slowed with her, eventually coming to a complete stop a short distance from her home.

  ‘Liv, hey.’ Ash turned to face her, his voice soft. ‘It’s okay. Yeah? It’ll be okay.’

  When Olivia didn’t make any sign that she agreed, Ash reached out and took her hand.

  The next time Kieran had seen Olivia properly was a few weeks later as summer was slipping away. Kieran, for once, hadn’t minded too much when the heat began to dip and the tourists thinned out. His exam results had come in and were acceptable, if not overly impressive, and in a matter of weeks he’d be heading to Sydney where there was a uni place with his name on it.

  It had been a warm, lazy day when Kieran had found himself climbing the cliff path to the lookout. At the top, he’d stood on the edge, peering over. Below, he could see the strip of deserted sandy beach leading to the caves. The path down was not formally marked, but it may as well have been. The worn ground showed the way as clearly as any sign.

  The surface of the sea was calm above the Mary Minerva as Kieran picked his way down. On the edge of a rocky outcrop that was almost always under water, the sculptural memorial to the wreck glinted in the sun, facing out towards the site.

  The sea itself was empty, though. It was too early in the season for wreck diving, and even if it hadn’t been, Kieran knew his brother wouldn’t be out on the boat that day. Finn and Toby’s request to add a cave tour to their program had languished in the council’s inbox for months before unexpectedly receiving tentative approval. The news had sent them scrambling to pull together routes of varying difficulty that showcased the labyrinth of tunnels.

  Kieran really wasn’t sure what all the stress was about. The caves were technically off limits, but they had all been there enough times over the years to know which of the routes led to cavernous rooms lit by internal shafts of natural light, and which led to bottlenecks and dead ends that dipped below sea level. Either way, Finn had wanted to alter the beginner route, Toby had disagreed and, when both had been
summoned to a meeting by their accountant, they had dispatched Kieran with instructions to follow both courses and take photos at the turns.

  Kieran got through the job in about forty minutes and, back out in the bright light of the empty beach, had dropped his towel and bag on the sand and dived into the water. He’d simply floated, staring at the vivid blue sky, with no-one else around. He had been enjoying the peace when he sensed rather than heard someone heading down the cliff path. Finding his feet, he wiped the salt water from his face and watched the figure descend.

  Olivia.

  She was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, and her hair was tied up. She was alone. She spotted him in the sea, slowed for half a step, then continued down to the beach. Kieran stood and waded towards shore, suddenly very aware as the water dripped from his bare chest that the footy off-season strength program he’d been following in the gym all summer had done him no harm at all.

  Olivia thought so too, he hoped, from the tiny flicker of her eyes as she took her sunglasses off.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘I ran into Sean yesterday.’ She glanced around the empty beach. ‘He said you guys were working down here this afternoon.’

  ‘Just me now. He had to help his mum with something.’

  ‘This is working?’ Olivia smiled at Kieran’s towel, his wet hair. ‘I need to get myself a job like this.’

  Kieran grinned. ‘I’ve finished.’

  ‘Checking the cave routes?’

  ‘Just the easy one. Sean told you? It’s this thing our brothers are starting.’

  ‘Yeah. He said if I stopped by he’d show me. I’ll be gone for uni by the time the real tours start.’

  ‘Right. Well, he’s not here today.’

  ‘Oh.’ Olivia glanced back towards the path she’d just walked down, then hesitated. She turned her head and looked out instead at the water, then raised a hand and shielded her eyes as she studied the memorial to the Mary Minerva.

  ‘They look different from this angle,’ she said after a moment.

  Kieran followed her line of sight along the furthest rocks that snaked out from the caves and into the sea. At the very tip, the three life-size iron figures stood guard. The Survivors.