The Survivors

by Jane Harper

  ‘Friends? No, I don’t think so,’ Olivia said. ‘George must have twenty years on her. I think he just knew her from around the Surf and Turf.’

  ‘Is his wife here with him?’

  ‘He’s not married, is he? He doesn’t seem married. He’s always in there alone.’

  ‘Oh.’ There was a pause and a muffled noise, and Kieran realised Mia was checking her phone. ‘No, you’re right, it says here that he and his wife have split. That’s sad. Maybe that explains the sea change. I think they’d been together for a while.’ Mia was quiet for another moment. ‘They met when they were both interning as journalists on a newspaper in Sydney and have a five-year-old daughter. Separated last year. Amicable, blah blah. He’s in this article going on about mutual respect and how he’s never felt so creatively free.’

  ‘He should try telling his laptop that,’ Olivia said, and Kieran heard the sound of a drawer opening and shutting. ‘He seems to spend a lot of time frowning at it.’

  ‘Wow, she’s already engaged again,’ Mia said. ‘Took his daughter and moved to America with her new fiancé.’

  ‘That sounds quick.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Mia said. ‘Reading between the lines of mutual respect here, I’d say he thinks so too.’

  Kieran went over to Bronte’s desk. He reached among the art supplies for the torch and stopped. Lying near it was a small pair of wire-cutters and a tiny skeletal sculpture of a crayfish, spun from intricately twisted copper strands. Kieran picked it up and held it gently in his palm, looking at the wire he guessed had come from his parents’ shed and that Bronte had brought to life, almost unbelievably, as this creature. He wondered how many hours she’d spent on it, and suddenly felt very sad.

  ‘Ash can’t stand George, though.’ Olivia’s voice floated out from her own room. ‘It’s a bit awkward at work sometimes, when they’re both there.’

  ‘Because of the garden?’ he heard Mia ask.

  ‘Yeah,’ Olivia said. ‘Which I can understand. Ash tried really hard to buy the place from his gran, but she needed a certain price to cover the retirement home, and in the end they couldn’t make it work. Then George comes along, and he can afford it, fair enough. But when Ash heard he was ripping up the garden, he went to talk to George – professionally, you know – and asked him to consider keeping part of it. George didn’t want to, so Ash offered to do the landscaping himself, at least have a hand in it, but George wanted to bring in some gardener from Hobart. Award-winning.’ Olivia sighed. ‘I feel bad for Ash, but there’s nothing he can do, it’s George’s house. And George tries not to rub it in, and he’s always been nice to me at work. I’m not sure this is quite what he expected when he moved here, though.’

  ‘But he would have known what he was getting himself into,’ Mia said. ‘Small-town life. It’s not like he hasn’t been here before. I was telling Kieran before how Gabby and I took his writing workshop that summer.’

  ‘Oh.’ Olivia sounded distracted. ‘Yeah, George mentioned something about that at work once but Mum was there with me so I kind of shut him down. I got the sense he didn’t really remember Gabby anyway. Not well, at least.’

  ‘Probably not. The groups were pretty big. They were free community things, you know? One-day workshops. So you had tourists and everyone mixed in there.’ Mia gave a small laugh. ‘And we were two fourteen-year-old girls writing stories about running a pony stable. I mean, I never saw G.R. Barlin roll his eyes at my work, but he may as well have.’

  A cupboard door slammed and Audrey started in her sleep and began to stir as Kieran heard footsteps in the hall.

  ‘Chris?’ Olivia’s voice came from near the back door. ‘I’m done in my room. I’ve left my bag out if you want to check it. I just need to find Bronte’s work keys, if that’s okay?’

  Another slam, this time the screen door. Renn coming inside. ‘There were some keys in her desk, if you know which ones you’re looking for.’

  ‘Thanks. Oh –’ Olivia appeared at the door of Bronte’s room and looked surprised to find Kieran in there. ‘What are you doing?’

  He jiggled a now wide-awake Audrey in the sling and nodded at the torch. ‘Renn said it was okay.’

  ‘Right.’ Olivia moved over to the desk. There were three drawers and she pulled open the nearest one. Kieran could hear Mia and Renn talking in the hall but couldn’t make out what they were saying over Audrey’s soft grumbling.

  Kieran moved the wire crayfish back to where he’d found it. Bronte had started another similar sculpture, he could see, but hadn’t got far enough for him to tell what it would have been. It lay twisted and unfinished beside the large sketchbook. Still bouncing Audrey, Kieran turned the book towards him, curious now.

  ‘You should take a look. I think she’d want people to see her work. She was really good.’ Olivia dropped her head as she rummaged through the drawers. ‘She worked hard. I don’t know why I had to be such a bitch about it.’

  Kieran looked over. ‘I’m sure she didn’t think that.’

  Olivia managed a tight smile. ‘I would have, if I were her.’ She pulled out a set of keys, examined them, then tossed them back in and shut the drawer. She moved to the next one and Kieran hesitated, then dragged over the desk chair and sat down. Audrey was writhing in the sling so he took her out and sat her on his knee while he opened the cover of the sketchbook.

  Bronte hadn’t been kidding when she’d said she dabbled in different types of artwork. The book looked like the place where she had worked through her ideas, and the pages were swollen with paint, glue and pencil marks. Kieran lingered over dozens of outlines of the wire crayfish, as well as designs for a sea dragon. Over the page were watercolour paintings of the view of the coast from Bronte’s window. She had taken reference photos at different times of day, and slipped the printed pictures between the pages.

  Bronte had definitely been into drawing, and to his eye, she’d been good at it. He flipped through sketches of Evelyn Bay’s town centre, and scenes he recognised from along the cliff path to the lookout. She had also drawn people. He turned a page and Julian stared out from the paper, his face all angles. On the next page there was an outdoorsy young guy Kieran didn’t recognise. A reference photo tucked into the spine showed he had dark hair and stubble and was muscular, wearing just a pair of board shorts. Bronte had focused only on his face in her drawing.

  ‘This the Portuguese boyfriend?’ Kieran said, and Olivia looked over.

  ‘Marco? Yeah, that was him. Sean managed to dig up his last name, by the way. He and Bronte had gone snorkelling once, so it was in the payment records.’ Olivia shut another drawer and opened the final one. ‘Jesus, where are they?’ She nodded at Audrey. ‘She’s got hold of something, by the way.’

  Kieran looked down at his daughter, who had fallen suspiciously quiet. She had managed to grasp a black electrical cord that was snaking across the desk and was clutching it in her chubby hand, doing her best with limited coordination skills to get it into her mouth.

  ‘No. Sorry, Audrey.’ Kieran reached for the cord. ‘What have you got here, anyway?’

  The cord was a little unusual, thicker than a phone cable and with an odd-shaped attachment at the loose end. He’d seen something like it before though, he felt. More than once, probably. He ran his hand along its length, trying to place it as he tugged it away from Audrey. She had a tight grip and in the end Kieran had to prise it from her fist. Audrey shrieked in protest.

  ‘What’s she after?’ Mia said, the sound bringing her to the door.

  ‘Nothing. A charger or something.’

  Kieran pushed the cord aside and swapped Audrey to the other knee as he turned back to the book. More sketches. Lyn the waitress wiping a table. George Barlin, looking much more candid and realistic than in his author photo. Olivia with her head down.

  Kieran was about to point out the drawing to Olivia when he stopped.
A pair of familiar eyes gazed out from the opposite page. Verity. She was staring into the middle distance, her chin tilted up, and had been caught seemingly unaware in the pose. Kieran looked at his mother. It was a little unnerving to see her in this setting, in this dead girl’s rented room. It was an excellent likeness. It was impossible to ignore the hollow look in Verity’s eyes.

  When had it been drawn, Kieran wondered, and under what circumstances? He couldn’t imagine Verity posing willingly, but when he flipped through to the handful of loose reference photos tucked inside the back cover, they were only of scenery. He leafed through them. The beach, the town, the lookout. No faces.

  Maybe Bronte had drawn people from memory, or maybe she’d got rid of the photos when she was finished. She had kept the photo of the Portuguese boyfriend though, Kieran thought, whatever could be made of that.

  He turned another few pages and the portraits gave way to watercolours of the coast and seascapes, with more reference photos tucked in alongside. He looked at the paintings of the beach and thought about the first time he’d ever seen Bronte, down at the water’s edge. She had obviously been looking for ideas then, he realised now. He remembered her holding a length of seaweed in her hands. Crouching down by the shore.

  Audrey was grizzling again on his knee, still trying to reach the black electrical charger.

  ‘For God’s sake, Audrey.’

  Kieran tried to wind the cord out of the way but it was plugged in under the desk. He began to push it out of sight instead, then stopped. Something was edging its way into his thoughts. After a moment, he slowly reached down to the skirting board and pulled the plug free.

  Beside him, Olivia extracted a set of keys from a drawer with a noise of relief.

  ‘Finally.’ She held them up in faint triumph, then looked over to see Kieran holding the charger. ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said but, curious now, he stood and ran his eye once more over Bronte’s minimal belongings. The bed, the clothes rail, a small chest of drawers, the desk, the mirror propped against the wall, a small bookshelf. Not many places to put something, and yet the whole room had that same rummaged-through feel as the rest of the house. More so, in fact, which was not surprising. The police would have been particularly thorough in here, he guessed.

  Kieran wound the cable around his hand, still keeping it out of reach of Audrey, much to her disappointment. He could see no sign of what he was looking for, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. For the sake of completeness, he put Audrey over his shoulder and leaned down to check under the bed. A few pairs of shoes were lined up beneath, along with a battered suitcase. Streaks in the dust suggested the police had already checked there, and more than once.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Olivia’s voice had an edge to it and Kieran looked up. The daylight streaming through the window cast her face into shadow.

  Mia appeared at the doorway. ‘What’s going on?’

  Kieran stood again and frowned. He held out his hand, dusty now from where he’d pressed it against the floor. The black charger dangled from his palm.

  ‘That first day we saw Bronte on the beach,’ he said. ‘Didn’t she have a camera?’

  Chapter 20

  Kieran held out the camera charger. Olivia looked at it, then over to Bronte’s desk, where the black length of cord had been plugged into the wall at one end, and into nothing at the other. Finally, she reached out and took it from Kieran, winding the cord slowly around her palm.

  ‘Excuse me.’ Olivia’s voice was strangely calm as she edged past Mia in the doorway, walking down the hall to the living room, where Sergeant Renn had her overnight bag open and was writing down the contents in his notebook. It was very difficult not to look furtive carrying out a task like that, Kieran thought, and Renn was no exception, straightening quickly as they came in.

  Olivia went up to him, the cord in her outstretched hand.

  ‘Is it her camera, Chris? Is that what you’re looking for?’

  Renn’s eyes went to the charger, then to Olivia’s face. He didn’t reply out loud, but at last his head inclined a fraction. Yeah.

  ‘Do you think someone took it?’ Olivia’s voice was very quiet. ‘The person who hurt her?’

  A small shrug this time, perhaps involuntary. Possibly.

  ‘Why, though?’ she said. Renn didn’t react at all to that one, Kieran noticed.

  Olivia was staring up at him. ‘Why didn’t you feel you could ask me? Chris? You could have just asked me if I knew where it was.’

  ‘We did, Liv,’ Renn said finally.

  ‘No. No, you asked if anything was missing.’ Olivia sounded like she wanted to be angry but didn’t have the energy to be anything but sad. ‘That is a very broad question, isn’t it? I mean, Bronte kept all her stuff in her own room.’ She looked down at the charger in her hand. ‘She had to keep all her stuff in her own room because I had a go at her in her first week for leaving things lying around the house.’

  Olivia squeezed her eyes shut at the memory.

  ‘I answered everything you asked me, Chris, the best I could,’ she said when she finally opened them again. ‘If I missed something, it was because I’d come home to pick up my mat on the way to yoga with my mum and found Bronte was dead.’

  Sergeant Renn looked at her, and Kieran remembered the hot flush that used to creep up his neck. There was no sign of that now, but his expression had softened a notch.

  ‘Yeah. All right,’ he said quietly. He nodded at her overnight bag. ‘Look, I’ll help you carry this to the station. Get someone to give you a lift to your mum’s.’

  ‘I was going to stop by Ash’s place.’

  Renn stroked his chin, almost certainly thinking of Trish Birch outside the police station. ‘Not really any of my business, Liv, but I reckon your mum might need to see you more.’

  Fresh anguish crossed Olivia’s face, and she bent down to zip up her bag.

  A figure was trudging along the road as they all stepped out through the front gate. Sean, Kieran could see. He turned his head as he passed Renn and Olivia setting off together towards town and slowed his pace. They acknowledged him, but didn’t stop.

  ‘What’s happened? Is Liv okay?’ Sean asked as he reached Kieran and Mia outside Fisherman’s Cottage. He looked fresh from the sea, his skin still damp where it met his shirt. The Nautilus Blue must be back in the marina. Sean clocked his own torch in Kieran’s hand, then looked up, confused. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘The good news is that you get this back.’ Kieran handed over the torch and explained about the missing camera. Sean’s face creased as he listened.

  ‘Do they think something’s on the camera?’

  Kieran shrugged. ‘Renn didn’t say. It looked to me like Bronte was more into drawing than photography, anyway.’

  ‘Yeah. That’s what I heard.’ Sean stared at the house. ‘So what does this mean for everything?’

  Kieran could see the concern but, behind the flicker of the eyes, something else. A calculation. What does this mean for Liam?

  ‘I don’t know, mate,’ Kieran said, honestly.

  ‘Did Renn say anything else?’

  ‘He barely said anything at all,’ Mia said, and Sean looked over. ‘I’m pretty sure he only confirmed the camera thing for Liv because he felt bad about what her mum said earlier. Trish cornered him outside the station. Was going on about how they need to take things seriously this time. I guess she still thinks he and Sergeant Mallott didn’t do enough for Gabby.’

  Sean turned his torch over in his hands, his face troubled. ‘I thought they did take things with Gabby seriously. It all felt pretty thorough considering –’ He stopped awkwardly. Didn’t glance at Kieran. ‘Considering everything else going on during the storm.’

  ‘Yeah, they did take it seriously,’ Mia said, her voice hard and flat. ‘I had to go into
the police station with my parents three times in those days before Gabby’s bag was found.’

  ‘That many?’ Sean looked surprised. ‘What for?’

  ‘Because the librarian told them Gabby and I had been arguing.’

  ‘Were you? What about?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Mia lied. ‘We weren’t.’

  She didn’t look at Kieran, and he didn’t look at her. They had already had this conversation, within the first year they’d been together, on what was the anniversary of the storm and of Gabby’s disappearance. They had been in Kieran’s student flat, trying to go about things as normal but both becoming increasingly withdrawn as the day stretched out. Mia had been making dinner and finally dropped the knife she’d been using on the cutting board with a clatter.

  ‘I didn’t tell the police the truth,’ she said. ‘Back then, when they asked what Gabby and I were fighting about.’

  The words seemed to come out of nowhere but Kieran could tell they had been brewing all day. Longer. For years, probably. He looked up from the couch and waited. Surprised, but at the same time, strangely not. The day of the storm had been so surreal, he felt there was nothing about it that could surprise him now.

  Mia breathed out. ‘We were arguing about you.’

  ‘Me?’ So Kieran could still be surprised, he was interested to find.

  ‘I had this stupid –’ Mia rolled her eyes. ‘God, I don’t know. Schoolgirl crush. On you. It was ridiculous. You didn’t even notice I was alive back –’

  ‘Mia, I did –’

  ‘No.’ She held up a hand to cut him off. ‘You didn’t. And that’s exactly how it should’ve been. I was fourteen, you were eighteen. So it’s fine. But all the girls in our year knew you – you and Ash anyway – and I’d told Gabby that I had this thing for you. Then on the day of the storm, in the library –’