Charlotte Pass

by Lee Christine

  They concentrated on the perilous descent, glad of their sturdy mountain boots as they skirted around granite boulders and picked their way to the bottom. In the gloomy dawn, ravens swooped and called overhead, their mournful cries cutting through the steady rumble of the grooming machine.

  As Ryder turned towards the sound, Vanessa Bell’s voice rang in his head. The groomer was the only person in the vicinity when she discovered the remains. But not this morning. The groomer was on the other side of the valley smoothing out the snow that had fallen overnight.

  ‘Can you give this top priority?’ Ryder asked as the gradient began to level out. Up ahead, the village emerged through the murky dawn like an old-fashioned photograph developing in a dark room.

  ‘A skull would expedite things.’

  ‘What’s the chance of dental records from 1964 existing today?’

  ‘Good. Many practices have only changed hands a couple of times. Her records are probably archived.’

  ‘With luck there’ll be a copy in the file.’ A movement up ahead caught Ryder’s eye. The two uniformed police officers who’d been first on the scene, and who’d done an excellent job keeping the site dry and secure overnight, were waiting on the footbridge that crossed Spencers Creek. The same footbridge where he would meet Vanessa Bell. After he’d spoken to Flowers.

  ‘Are you heading back to Perisher on the snowcat?’ Harriet asked.

  Ryder’s gaze shifted to the accommodation Vanessa had called Long Bay—still shrouded in semi-darkness. He shook his head. ‘I have a feeling I’m just getting started.’

  Four

  Ryder walked into his makeshift office and set a takeaway coffee on the desk in front of Flowers. ‘Those bones have been in soil.’

  The coffee wasn’t a peace offering. Ryder had needed a caffeine hit, and though he might have been a lot of things, stingy wasn’t one of them.

  ‘Thanks,’ Flowers said, surprise showing in his tone. ‘What do you think happened?’

  ‘I don’t know what to think.’ Ryder gestured to the takeaway cup. ‘Bring it with you. Harriet said there’s a possibility erosion has occurred further up the slope and washed some of the bones downhill. We need to find the rest of them before it starts snowing again. Oh, and how tall was Celia Delaney?’

  ‘Tiny. Five foot one.’

  Ryder took a breath and nodded as they left the suite.

  In the foyer, the inn’s owner, Di Gordon, was unlocking the hotel shop. ‘Morning,’ she said without a smile. ‘I saw lights out on the hill earlier. Are you finished up there now?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Ryder replied, matching her brusqueness. He had been entirely unimpressed when he met her at check-in the previous day; her lack of concern about the human remains found was only equalled by her evident worry that the police presence would disrupt the planned festivities for Aidan Smythe. ‘We were speaking to Terry Harrison yesterday.’ He pointed to the doors that led outside. ‘His quarters are in Long Bay, right?’

  She nodded, looking none too pleased. The woman had the kind of thin-lipped, unsmiling mouth Ryder didn’t like.

  Outside, the first oversnow transport of the day had arrived from Perisher to deposit the entertainment at the front door. Instrument cases and a PA system were being unloaded by a handful of retirement-aged men. Dressed in denim and adorned with silver jewellery and black hats, their faces boasted more stress lines than their well-worn leather jackets. A white sticker on a battered musical case revealed they were ‘The Other Miller Band’.

  ‘I’ve seen those old guys play—at Marble Bar in Sydney,’ Flowers said as they tramped across the bridge. ‘Their style’s kind of a jazz–rock fusion.’

  ‘Huh. I wouldn’t have picked you for a jazz buff.’

  ‘There’re a lot of things you don’t know about me. Have you seen them? They’ve been around forever.’

  ‘Nope. The Chili Peppers are more my style.’

  ‘No shit?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Vanessa Bell opened the door to Long Bay, a piece of Vegemite toast in her hand. Her hazel eyes widened. ‘You’re early. I haven’t checked the mountain yet.’

  ‘There’s been a change of plans.’

  She gave a faint nod, her gaze direct. ‘Okay.’

  Ryder took her in with a single glance. She wore a long-sleeved, black thermal top, black leggings and thick ski socks. The stretch material clung to her body, and her dark hair fell in tousled waves past her shoulders. One long piece of hair had caught in the neck warmer that was looped around her throat. Her gaze shifted beyond Ryder’s shoulder to where Flowers stood behind him.

  ‘We’re here to see Terry,’ Ryder said, a little more gruffly than he’d intended.

  Her eyes flicked back to his. ‘Sure, I’ll get him.’

  He watched her spin around, appreciating the urgency with which she moved. Vanessa Bell wasn’t a time waster. Ryder got the feeling she knew what was important in life. He watched her saunter off down the hallway past a row of jackets hanging on the wall. Overcrowded and claustrophobic was how she had described Long Bay. A bit like boarding school.

  ‘Close the bloody door!’ someone hollered from a room off to the right. ‘Were you brought up in a cave?’ Loud shrieks and laughter followed.

  Ryder turned and raised an eyebrow at Flowers. ‘Sounds like a fun place.’

  Terry appeared within a minute, ‘Charlotte Pass’ embroidered on the breast of his hoodie. Thickset with uncombed, sun-bleached hair sticking out in every direction, his uneven gait suggested arthritic knees as he came towards them.

  ‘Morning,’ he said, stopping for a few seconds to push an empty ski bag against the wall.

  ‘Morning, Terry,’ said Ryder. ‘We need to search a section of the mountain. Are ski patrol able to rope it off for us?’

  ‘Yeah, no problem at all.’ He turned and shouted over his shoulder for Vanessa.

  She reappeared with a rustle of clothing. She’d slipped on her ski-patrol uniform and was fixing her hair in a ponytail. A few steps behind her was a broad-shouldered bloke with a tanned face, a messy man bun and a short-cropped beard. Dressed in long johns and a fleecy top, he was holding a glass of milk and listening to their conversation.

  Terry turned to look at them. ‘Okay, so you’re rostered on, Vanessa?’

  ‘I am,’ she said, slinging a wide leather tool belt around her hips and buckling it up.

  ‘What’s the snow report say, Johan?’ Terry asked the bloke with the milk.

  ‘Ah. Twenty centimetres fallen up top.’ Johan spoke with a heavy European accent Ryder couldn’t pinpoint. ‘There’s a quarter of that on the lower elevations, and a fifty-centimetre dump forecast for mid to late afternoon.’

  ‘Right.’ Terry turned back to Vanessa. ‘Vee, you go with the detectives. I’ll come up shortly and give you a hand. Johan can do your sweep this morning.’ Then to the European: ‘Go and get dressed.’

  Johan sighed and turned around, muttering that it was supposed to be his morning off.

  ‘Thanks for this,’ Ryder said to Terry, stepping back so Vanessa could slide past him.

  ‘No dramas. We’ll get it roped off. You don’t want punters coming down through the trees while you’re trying to work.’

  The estimate Vanessa had given Ryder turned out to be spot on. In the daylight, he could see where the groomer had worked the day before, smoothing out the snow for the tube run some fifty metres from where she had discovered the bones, down the slope from the snow fences. Ryder considered the space, looking up and down the hill, wondering whether the vibrations from the grooming machine could have disturbed the soil in the area and caused some slippage. Harriet’s explanation of soil erosion over time seemed more likely but, even so, Ryder extended the search area past the snow fences and left to the boundary of trees.

  Now, he could see Flowers’ police issue heavy weather jacket as he combed through the terrain higher up. Terry had joined them, and he and Vanessa had rolled out more orange
fencing and hammered it into place.

  He looked skywards at the angry black clouds weighed down with moisture. The wind was picking up, and across the valley ski instructors were setting flags in place for a downhill race taking place after lunch. Aidan Smythe would do the honours and fire the starting gun.

  ‘Sergeant!’

  Ryder swung around to see Flowers beckoning him. He headed up the slope, his boots sliding on stones slick with ice, clumps of snow clinging stubbornly around tree roots. It was probably another false alarm. So far, they’d found the matted pelt of a dead pygmy possum, or a rat—Ryder wasn’t sure which one—a kid’s teddy-bear beanie and a rotting bird carcass.

  ‘What have you got?’ he asked, drawing level with his partner.

  Flowers led the way into a tight space between the trunk of a snow gum and a huge, overhanging boulder. He was holding up an item for Ryder to see: small, pink, about two inches long. ‘It’s one of those plastic-coated wire twist ties.’

  Ryder looked from it to Flowers. ‘Like the thing you wrap around bread? Jesus, Flowers, you brought me up here for this?’

  ‘It’s not much on its own,’ Flowers countered, ‘but look around—they’re scattered all over the place. They’re different colours, too. You can’t see them unless you brush away the layer of snow. They’re caught in the strawy grass. Look at this one further up.’

  Ryder moved around Flowers to where he was gesturing and went further into the narrow area between the tree trunk and the boulder.

  ‘It’s close to the roots,’ Flowers said from behind him. ‘It’s pink. I can see it from here.’

  Ryder leaned over and scrutinised the area around the tree roots. It took a few seconds of hunting to locate the pink wire tie, but there it was, its plastic coating corroded in parts to expose the rusty wire inside.

  ‘Weird, hey, how they’re twisted into small circles?’ called Flowers.

  Ryder shrugged. ‘People tramp all over the mountains in spring and summer.’ Tilting back his head, he peered at the boulder towering above them. ‘Hikers could have sat up there and tossed their rubbish down here. It’s probably a popular resting place. I’ll ask Terry or Vanessa.’

  ‘Ask us what?’

  Ryder swung around at the sound of Vanessa’s voice. They’d followed him up the slope, and were standing further down, their hands resting on their hips.

  ‘Flowers, can you speak to them, please? I want to check this out a bit more.’ Leaving his partner to question Vanessa and Terry about hikers in the area, Ryder pushed further into the narrow space between the snow gum and the boulder. This section of the slope was slushy, with tufts of grass poking through the snow where the overhanging rock and tree branches had sheltered it from the weather. Ryder spotted a tiny speck of blue caught in a tuft close to the bottom of the boulder.

  Pulling off his gloves, he squatted low to the ground. It was a tight fit, the space so narrow he could barely rotate his shoulders. He reached for the circle of blue wire and froze, his scalp crawling inside his woollen beanie. Something very small was caught in this one. Careful not to disturb the area around him, he extracted the wire tie from the damp ground matter and held it aloft. A tiny, dried-up flower hung limply from the circle of wire.

  Ryder patted down the wet grass, his fingers digging into the freezing soil as he felt for any anomaly. He was close. He sensed it. Felt it in his guts with the same certainty as when he’d flung open the driver’s door that terrible day. He shifted onto his knees, searching the area around the tree and under the boulder. Within minutes he’d pulled more wire ties from the semi-frozen soil.

  ‘Here!’ he called over his shoulder. ‘There’s something here.’

  ‘Use this,’ said Vanessa, slipping into the crevice. She unclipped a spade from her tool belt and passed it to him; it was the one she had used to dig shallow post holes before she hammered the orange fencing into the ground. Terry wore a similar belt.

  Ryder took hold of the handle and drove the spade into the earth. The frigid air stung his nose, and the terrain beneath his knees was cold and sharp.

  ‘Vanessa, let me in there,’ he heard Terry say. ‘I’ll help.’

  Vanessa retreated out of the narrow space and then Terry was there.

  Ryder looked up at the mountain manager. ‘It’s pretty frozen where you are, but here where I’m feeling with my fingers, it’s looser, like it’s been disturbed.’

  They worked together, excavating the area as best they could with the tools they had on hand. Every now and then they would stop digging to wrench away handfuls of tufty grass or to prise stubborn stones from the partially frozen soil.

  With one eye on the deteriorating weather, Ryder unzipped his ski jacket and flirted with the idea of calling in the experts. But they were racing against the storm, the barometer falling like a stone. Any damage he might cause by going in heavy-handed—well, he’d cop that criticism if and when it came.

  ‘Detective.’ Terry tapped something with the tip of his spade. Ryder sat back on his haunches, watching as the mountain manager put his spade aside and worked his fingers into the soil. ‘I feel something long and hard.’ He looked at Ryder with wide eyes. ‘I dunno, it could be a bone.’

  A chill shot down Ryder’s spine.

  ‘Sergeant?’

  He looked up at the urgency in Flowers’ voice. His partner had been sifting through the pile of loose soil. White-faced, Flowers held up a small, narrow object covered in dirt. ‘Is this a … rib?’

  ‘May I?’ Vanessa reached for the object. She ran her fingertips over it for a few moments, feeling the shape, then peered around Flowers to look at Ryder. ‘Phalanges.’

  Ryder moved forward, calculating dimensions in his head. Terry had touched what he thought was a long bone. Flowers had found a finger. Had they discovered the rest of the skeleton?

  ‘Give me some space.’ Ryder wiped the sweat from his forehead with his parka sleeve and started to dig. When the tip of his spade struck something hard, he cast it aside.

  ‘Here.’ Terry handed him a three-blade ice pick with a wooden handle.

  Ryder worked alone, making a crater around a bulbous object buried in the earth. Dirt caked beneath his fingernails as he chipped away the half-frozen soil until finally he cast aside the ice pick. Gently, he laid his hands on the object, feeling its ridges and contours with the pads of his frozen fingers. Then slowly and carefully, he coaxed it from the soil.

  He stood awkwardly and followed Terry out of the claustrophobic space. He placed the object on a tuft of snowgrass beside the finger and long bone. Squatting, he stared at the skull. One side of the cranium had caved in, and two chilling hollows stared blindly at the daylight for the first time in God only knew how long. Ryder had only set foot in a church a few times in his life but, in this moment, he had an unbearable urge to make the sign of the cross.

  Vanessa drew level and for the briefest moment laid a light hand on his shoulder. When he looked up, she was staring at what he had uncovered, her eyes glistening. Terry’s face was devoid of colour. Flowers was coughing like he might start retching any second.

  Ryder pushed himself to his feet. The mountain manager looked like he was going to fall over. The sooner Ryder got him talking the better. ‘The old chairlift, Terry. When did it operate?’

  Terry sucked in a deep breath, blinked hard then shifted his gaze to Ryder. ‘The one over there? It opened in 1963, I’m pretty sure, and was dismantled the following year.’

  1964.

  The year Celia had gone missing from Charlotte Pass.

  ‘Detective Flowers,’ Ryder said, ‘we need a forensic pathologist up here right away. Call Harriet and tell her to turn around. Find out what extra personnel she needs. Then call Queanbeyan. We’ll need to chopper the extra help in from Canberra.’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant.’

  Finally, Ryder looked at Vanessa. Calm. Competent. Compassionate, too, judging by the tears she was still trying to blink away. He softened his voic
e, remembering how she’d touched his shoulder moments earlier. ‘Those plastic wire ties Flowers found, they weren’t for holding someone’s sandwich bag together. They were for holding posies of flowers.’ He reached into his pocket and displayed them in the palm of his hand for Vanessa and Terry to see. ‘Some are in worse shape than others because they’ve been exposed to the elements for different amounts of time.’ He picked out the blue one and held it up for them to see. ‘This would be the most recent. It still has a dried flower attached to it. They look like they’ve come out of the same packet.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ asked Terry.

  Ryder glanced at the mountainside grave wedged between the granite boulder and the roots of the snow gum, then looked to the village far below.

  ‘I’m saying somebody’s been coming up here and leaving posies on her grave. I’m saying that someone has known exactly where she’s been all this time.’

  Five

  Ryder turned off the audio book when he reached Kooragang Island. The narrator’s well-modulated voice had drawn him into the music biography during the seven-hour drive from Jindabyne. Coffee and the riveting memoir had kept him alert, filling his head with the crazy exploits of the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s lead singer, and distracting him from the unpleasant task ahead.

  He glanced at the dash and checked the time. Twelve minutes past eight. Taking a deep breath, he loosened his grip on the wheel and flexed his fingers. To his left, a long row of coal heaps destined for China and farther afield loomed over the narrow road like small black mountains in the darkness. On his right were the loaders, giant pieces of robotic machinery that lit up the night sky brighter than a theme park. And, up ahead, the Stockton Bridge was a sharp arc of lights spanning the Hunter River.

  Ryder recalled one of the old coppers he’d worked with telling him about Stockton’s inaccessibility before the bridge was built. ‘It’s the only suburb on the other side of the river, so it was hard to get to in the old days. A punt used to take the cars and trucks across.’