The Survivors

by Jane Harper

  Kieran and Mia watched him go, then looked over at Sean, who had sat down again in the corner.

  ‘Maybe we check Ash is okay then call it a night, hey?’ Mia murmured.

  ‘Yeah, I think so.’

  ‘I just want to put some money in Bronte’s collection box. Thanks –’ she said as Kieran handed her some cash to add to what she was fishing out of her own purse. ‘I’ll see you at the table.’

  Kieran could hear the faint sounds of Ash and Olivia talking outside as he sat down opposite Sean. He couldn’t make out the words, but the tone floating through the closed window had the feel of an argument.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ Kieran said as Sean looked up. ‘Try again tomorrow?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’ Sean raised his eyes to the window as the voices outside grew a little louder, then died away again.

  ‘Should one of us go out?’ Kieran said, but Sean just shrugged.

  ‘Wait until they come in. They do this sometimes. It runs its course, they make up.’

  ‘Even after what George said?’

  Sean managed a thin smile. ‘Was any of that news to you? Was there anything said over there that you didn’t already know about Ash?’

  Kieran thought, then shook his head.

  ‘No,’ Sean said. ‘Me neither. Or Liv, I reckon.’

  ‘It might have been news to Ash, though.’

  Sean sighed. ‘God, you’d hope not, by now.’ He looked up as the door opened, and Julian came in, along with Sergeant Renn. They were talking, but both fell quiet as they seemed to sense the lingering atmosphere in the room. Julian recovered first and beckoned the waiter to the coffee station to take Renn’s order. Renn took a seat to wait, seeming almost as surprised as Kieran had been to find the place so empty. He leaned back heavily in his chair. He looked like he’d had a hard day with Bronte’s parents.

  ‘What did you make of the meeting at the library?’ Kieran asked and Sean rubbed his face with his hand.

  ‘Liam didn’t do it,’ he said, his voice smothered. ‘I know him. I’m not sure what more I can say.’

  Kieran didn’t reply, and eventually Sean looked up.

  ‘You too, hey?’ He sounded resigned. ‘Throw away the key?’

  ‘Mate, no.’ Kieran shook his head. ‘I honestly have no idea. You know Liam better than I do. And the cops haven’t made a move on him, have they? So that’s something.’

  They both looked over to Renn, who had taken a computer tablet out of his bag and was looking at the screen, flicking through in a way that was unremarkable but suddenly felt very familiar to Kieran.

  ‘Pendlebury was down at the caves earlier,’ Sean said, reading Kieran’s mind. ‘I saw her from the boat.’

  ‘Yeah, I saw her too. Mia and I were –’ Kieran saw Mia heading towards them, and moved over to make room for her. ‘I was just saying to Sean that we saw Pendlebury at the caves.’

  ‘Did she say what she was doing?’ Sean said. ‘Seemed like she was there for a while.’

  ‘No. She was looking at The Survivors.’

  ‘Oh.’ Sean frowned. ‘Why from the beach? Why not the lookout? Or the water, even?’

  ‘Don’t know, mate.’

  Sean shook his head and drained the last of one of the beer glasses. Outside, Ash and Olivia seemed to have fallen quiet. Kieran was wondering if they were still there, when he heard Olivia say something. Her tone was blunt. The restaurant was so empty, it was hard not to feel like they were eavesdropping.

  ‘I can’t believe people have abandoned this place,’ Mia said. ‘After how many years?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Sean said. ‘Julian says they’ll come back, once this is all over. But who knows how long it’ll go on?’ He sighed. ‘Have you been on that local chat forum? There was something a few days ago about a boycott of this place, I think.’

  ‘There was,’ Kieran said. ‘A lot of people weren’t in favour, though.’

  ‘No? I can’t face going on there. Some of the stuff people were writing was unbelievable. Listen –’ Sean stood up. ‘I need another drink. Do you want anything? While we’re waiting for Ash?’

  Kieran looked at Mia and they had a silent conversation.

  ‘Thanks, mate,’ Kieran said. ‘We’ll have one with you while we wait.’

  Mia watched him leave, then turned to Kieran.

  ‘Listen, I meant to say, there was something else about your dad on the forum,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I saw it before. It’s nothing to worry about –’

  Kieran had already got out his phone and was pulling up the EBOCH site.

  ‘It was someone saying he looked frail at the meeting,’ Mia said. ‘Here –’

  She leaned over and touched his screen, scrolling until she found the comment. She was right, it was nothing more than that, but still Kieran’s heart constricted a little in his chest at the sight of anonymous strangers gossiping about his dad’s health.

  ‘Maybe we could ask Renn if he could get it deleted,’ Mia said. ‘I mean, like George said they were doing. If they’re deleting some posts, how hard is it to delete that?’

  ‘He thought it was only stuff to do with the investigation, though.’

  ‘I know, but still.’

  Kieran scrolled through, scanning the comments for any further mention of Brian. He couldn’t see any immediately, but there was an ocean to wade through now. Mia had been right, the people of Evelyn Bay were absolutely spilling their guts about each other. It made him feel depressed to look at it. Kieran was about to close the screen when his gaze snagged on a rare deleted entry.

  This comment by Theresa Hartley has been removed for violating EBOCH guidelines.

  Kieran frowned. Theresa Hartley, Mia’s music teacher with the granddaughter at Bronte’s uni in Canberra. What had she managed to stumble across, Kieran wondered, that was deemed by the police too hot to share? He located the search function on the site. Theresa had been reasonably active, he saw now, with several dozen posts to her name. Several dozen, but only two deleted ones.

  Kieran tapped on her earliest deleted comment and the thread claiming Bronte had been caught on the beach having sex popped up. Of all the lurid remarks on that topic, Theresa’s had been removed. Kieran tried to think. What had she said originally? The replies to her post were still visible. Having sex doesn’t mean she wasn’t a nice girl, someone had responded to her.

  That was it. He remembered now. Bronte was a nice girl, Theresa had written. Her granddaughter said so. And then she’d posted a link. Kieran pulled up his own browsing history. The link to the social media site he felt too old for was still there. He clicked through and the tribute page to Bronte popped up.

  Kieran looked through the latest posts. There were some sketches, a poem that struggled to rhyme the name Bronte with anything useful, a few drawings. He scrolled down to one image and paused as he felt a stir of recognition.

  It was a photo. Not of Bronte, but of a beach. Evelyn Bay’s beach specifically. Kieran could see Fisherman’s Cottage in the corner. It was the first photo in a gallery simply entitled ‘Summer Scenes’.

  Kieran opened the gallery. More ocean shots. All local, he could tell. A streetscape of the town itself. An artfully taken shot of the outside of the Surf and Turf. The Survivors, as seen from the lookout.

  Had Bronte taken these photos? She had, Kieran felt sure. Not only from the fact the images were posted on her own tribute site, but because the photos had the familiar style he’d seen in the art book in her bedroom.

  He scrolled on. A few pictures of the cliff path, then they were back to the seascapes. The pictures had clearly been taken recently but – Kieran stopped again, his thumb hovering above the screen.

  He was staring at another photo of the beach. This one had been taken down low, near the sand as the waves rushed in. Kieran ignored the close-up sight o
f a thick cord of seaweed, his eyes instead drawn to the background. In the distance, small but recognisable, three people stood near the surf. A man in board shorts holding a baby, a dark-haired woman and a big guy with a big dog.

  Kieran, Mia and Ash, on the beach on Saturday afternoon in Evelyn Bay.

  Kieran stared at the photo and tried to process what that meant. He and Mia had flown in, Bronte had captured them in this photo, she had chased Audrey’s hat and, less than twenty-four hours later, she was dead. He touched Mia’s arm and held out his screen.

  ‘The link to these was deleted from the forum,’ he said under his breath.

  ‘Really?’ Mia glanced over towards Renn as she took the phone.

  Kieran watched her face as she scrolled through, waiting to see if she would come to the same conclusion. Like him, she froze at the beach shot, leaning in close to the screen.

  ‘Wait. We saw her take this one. Didn’t we?’ Mia’s voice was hard to hear. ‘When was that? Was it the same day her camera went missing?’

  Kieran nodded.

  ‘But –’ Mia looked worried. ‘If her camera went missing that night, are these the photos from it?’ She was staring at the pictures. ‘How are they online?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  Kieran sensed movement behind him and turned. Olivia.

  ‘Listen, we’re going to head off,’ she said as she approached, with Ash half a pace behind. They came to a stop at the table, both wearing identical blank expressions. Kieran couldn’t tell if their argument was concluded or continuing.

  ‘No worries.’ He looked at Ash, whose eyes were raw in a way Kieran had never seen them before. ‘Listen, mate –’

  ‘What’s that?’ Ash cut him off. He was looking at the photo on the screen in Mia’s hand. When she didn’t answer, he reached out and took the phone without asking. He stared at the image. The seaweed and, in the background, the figures in the surf. ‘What is this?’ he said again.

  Olivia leaned in, trying to see, as Sean appeared behind them with three glasses in his hands.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he said, looking from Kieran to Ash.

  Ash didn’t answer, just touched the screen to enlarge the image.

  Sean slid the drinks onto the table and wiped his hands on his shorts and tried again. ‘What’s on the phone?’ He looked at Kieran. ‘It’s yours, isn’t it?’

  Kieran glanced at Mia. She had her eyes on Renn, who was talking to the waiter.

  ‘There are some photos online.’ Kieran spoke very quietly. ‘We think they might be from Bronte’s missing camera.’

  ‘Are you serious?’ Olivia stared for a second, then her hand darted out towards the phone. Ash simply turned his shoulder slightly, blocking her.

  ‘Wait, is that you in that picture?’ Her eyes snapped from Ash to Kieran and Mia. ‘You as well?’

  Ash held the screen close to his face as he scrolled. Sean was crowding into his other side, trying to see, but Ash kept his body twisted and the phone out of reach.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Olivia was saying. ‘What’s going on? Why are you in those photos?’

  Ash stopped suddenly, his thumb hovering over the screen, his mouth a downturned line. He blinked once, slowly, as though he would be surprised if he could find the energy.

  ‘Well,’ he said, his voice flat. ‘At least we’re not the only ones.’

  He dropped the phone onto the table, face up, and Kieran crowded in, feeling the other three do the same. A fresh photo was on the screen and Kieran scrambled to register what he was seeing.

  It was a rock pool, craggy and deep. The water collecting in its crevices looked slick and almost oily, reflecting a naturally filtered image of the sky and the clouds. And something else.

  Someone was standing by the pool, a little way behind the photographer, possibly unseen by her. The mirror image of his face was captured in the pool, the expression warped by soft ripples, but the identity clear.

  ‘Liam.’ Olivia drew in a breath.

  ‘Wait –’ Sean said, but it was no good. In a collective, instinctive reaction, they all looked towards Renn.

  ‘Wait,’ Sean said again. His hand shot out and landed on Kieran’s, which was already covering the phone. ‘Guys, listen. Please. Just wait a second –’

  ‘It’s too late,’ Kieran said.

  Renn was watching them now, coffee cup forgotten. Computer tablet still open in front of him, finger poised mid-swipe. He looked at their faces, and at the phone they were crowding around, and his hand twitched against the tablet screen. If Kieran hadn’t been sure before, he was now.

  ‘It’s too late, mate,’ he said. Sean’s palm was heavy on his wrist. ‘They’ve already seen them.’

  Chapter 29

  Kieran opened his eyes in the night to find Mia already awake, her face lit up by her phone. They lay side by side and went through Bronte’s photos together, slowly examining each one. The beach, the shops, the seaweed, Liam, themselves. Each time they reached the end of the gallery, they scrolled back to the start and went through again. The process didn’t take long, there were only fifteen shots.

  ‘This can’t be all of them,’ Mia whispered at last. ‘They’re so … mundane.’

  Kieran shook his head against the pillow. He’d been thinking the same thing. Mia stared into her phone, then clicked a button and the screen went blank.

  ‘I don’t like it that we’re in there,’ she said into the darkness.

  She finally fell back into an uneasy sleep but Kieran lay awake for hours, closing his eyes at last only to be woken what felt like moments later by Audrey.

  Ash had simply walked out of the Surf and Turf the night before without saying goodbye. He had stood apart while the rest of them pored over their screens, and the next time Kieran looked up he had gone. Olivia had tried calling, and eventually her phone had beeped with a text.

  ‘He’s at home.’ She reached for her bag and was gone, the door slamming behind her. Through the window, Kieran saw her turn in the direction of Ash’s place. Sean had barely said anything, other than to ask once more that they not show Renn the photos. Kieran and Mia had agreed, mainly because Kieran felt sure it made no difference either way. They had sat there for a bit longer, all glued to their phones, until eventually Sean had looked up, his face heavy.

  ‘You guys go, if you want to. I’m just going to sit here for a while.’

  Their offers to stay had been turned down until it had become awkward, and at last they’d left him sitting alone with his thoughts in the near-empty Surf and Turf.

  The morning had dawned with a flat blue sky and Mia was yawning as Kieran settled a fractious Audrey into the pram. Brian sat in his chair and watched them put their shoes on. Kieran could hear Verity tackling the remaining boxes in the kitchen.

  ‘Still nothing from Ash?’ Mia said, and Kieran checked his phone. He shook his head. He’d left a few messages. All had gone unanswered and Mia eventually texted Olivia.

  ‘Okay, she says Ash let her in last night, but didn’t come to bed,’ Mia said, reading the reply as they stepped outside. ‘When she woke up this morning, he’d slept on the couch and had already gone out.’

  ‘To work?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Right,’ Kieran said, starting down the road now. He stopped as he realised Mia wasn’t following. She was looking the other way, shading her eyes.

  ‘Let’s go the beach way,’ she said.

  ‘We’ve got the pram.’

  ‘We’ll carry her down then. Just a little way.’

  ‘Why?’ It would be the first time Mia had set foot properly on the sand since Saturday night, as far as he was aware.

  ‘I don’t know, really. I want to see the spot where Bronte took our photo. And the others.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure the cops have already
done this,’ he said, nodding at the phone in her hand. ‘Traced her movements, or whatever. That’s got to be why Pendlebury was looking at The Survivors the other day, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Still.’ Mia shrugged. ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘But I’m not sure there’ll be anything to see that we haven’t seen before.’

  He was right, at least about the beach. They identified as accurately as they could where they had first seen Bronte, beachcombing and crouching in the surf to look at seaweed. Now there was nothing at all to distinguish that spot from the long stretch of sand on either side. Further along, though, above the tideline outside Fisherman’s Cottage, Kieran could still make out a shimmer as the wind ran through the plastic-wrapped bouquets. Mia stood near the surf, holding her hair in a fist as she followed his gaze.

  ‘Let’s go back to the road,’ was all she said.

  Kieran couldn’t see the Nautilus Blue in dock as they neared the marina. On the off-chance, he knocked at the door of Ash’s and Sean’s beach house, but it was clear no-one was home.

  ‘Hopefully he’s at work at the cemetery or somewhere, licking his wounds,’ Mia said, but she was frowning.

  ‘Probably,’ Kieran said. ‘Knowing Ash.’

  Although, really knowing Ash, Kieran thought, it was unlike him not to bounce straight back from something.

  They walked on, past Lyn having a cigarette beside the delivery entrance of the Surf and Turf. Mia slowed a little further along, as they compared their position with the angle on Bronte’s photo of the streetscape.

  ‘Maybe this is stupid,’ Mia said as she found herself edging up against the dusty window of the newsagency to get the right line of sight.

  ‘Maybe.’ Kieran nodded up the street towards the residential end. ‘But at least we’re in good company.’

  Pendlebury was leaning against a low wall, her computer tablet out again. She had been squinting from the screen to a sandstone cottage, but was now watching Mia hold her own phone out. They all looked at each other, then Pendlebury raised a hand and beckoned. A polite order, rather than an invitation.