by Jane Harper
‘Look.’ Alice was frowning at the paper. ‘I bet it was. I thought we’d got there too soon.’
‘I really don’t –’
‘Bree.’ Alice silenced her. ‘It’s not right.’
For a moment, there was nothing but the strange hush of the bush and Beth looked up at the gum trees. Their bark hung off in slack strips like flayed skin. They seemed very close and very tall, all around. Boxed in, she thought suddenly.
‘So what now?’ There was a subtle new note in Jill’s voice that Beth couldn’t quite place. Not quite fear, not quite yet. Concern, perhaps. Keen interest.
Alice held the map out so Jill could see.
‘If we’d made the proper turn, we should be here.’ Alice pointed. ‘But if not, I don’t know. We’re probably somewhere more around here.’ She made a small circling motion on the page.
Jill leaned close, then closer again, the lines deepening around the corners of her eyes.
She couldn’t read the map, Beth realised. The print must be too small. Jill might have been scanning the page, but that paper could be blank for all the good it was doing her. Beth had seen her grandmother pull off a similar pretence, when she didn’t want to admit her reading vision was shot. As Jill did a reasonable job of pretending to examine the page, Alice was watching her with an interested look on her face. She had clocked it too, Beth thought.
‘Hmm.’ Jill made a noncommittal noise and handed the map to Lauren. ‘What do you think?’
Lauren looked a little surprised, but took the map. She bowed her head, running her eyes over the paper. ‘No, I don’t think it’s right either,’ she said. ‘Sorry, Bree.’
‘So what should we do?’ Jill was looking at her.
‘I think we should turn around and try to retrace our steps.’
Alice groaned. ‘Christ. Retracing takes absolutely ages. We’ll be out here for hours.’
‘Well.’ Lauren shrugged. ‘I’m not sure what other choice we have.’
Jill’s head turned back and forth between the two as though at a tennis match. Bree was standing only a metre or two away, but she might as well have been invisible.
Alice looked back at the trail. ‘Would we even be able to retrace? The path’s pretty faint. We might lose it.’
Beth saw with a start that Alice was right. Behind them, the route they had forged now appeared fluid at the edges, blending seamlessly into the background. Beth automatically felt for her cigarettes. Not in her pocket. Her heart beat a little faster.
‘I think it’s still the best option,’ Lauren said. ‘The safest, anyway.’
‘It’ll add hours to the hike.’ Alice looked at Jill. ‘We’ll be walking in the dark again before we reach the campsite, no question.’
Jill glanced down at her new boots and Beth could tell the prospect of extra kilometres was not a popular one. Jill opened her mouth. Shut it again and gave a small shake of her head.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said finally. ‘What’s the alternative?’
Alice studied the map, then looked up, her eyes narrowed. ‘Can everyone else hear a creek?’
Beth held her breath. The faint rush of water was almost drowned out by the blood pounding in her ears. God, she was unfit. The others were nodding, at least.
‘If we went wrong here, that creek should be this one here.’ Alice pointed at the map. ‘It sounds near. We can use that to orientate ourselves. If we work out where we are we could try to cut through and rejoin the right path further along.’
Lauren had crossed her arms over her chest, Beth noticed. Her lips were pressed together in a line.
‘Do you think –’ Jill cleared her throat. ‘Do you feel confident we can orientate ourselves from there?’
‘Yes. We should be able to.’
‘What do you think?’ Jill turned to Lauren.
‘I think we should retrace our steps.’
‘For God’s sake, we’ll be out here all night,’ Alice said. ‘You know we will.’
Lauren said nothing. Jill looked from one to the other, then down at her feet once more. She gave a tight sigh.
‘Let’s find this creek.’
No-one bothered asking Bree what she thought.
Beth followed as the sound of water grew more distinct. It had a different quality from the roar of the falls the day before, thicker and more muted. They pushed through a bank of trees, and Beth found herself on a muddy ledge.
The clay ground fell away near her feet, dropping more than a metre to a swollen brown strip below. It was definitely more river than creek, she thought as she stared at the water. It had been engorged by rainfall and left a foamy tidemark as it lapped at the bank. Floating debris hinted at a rapid speed beneath the surface.
Alice pored over the map, while Jill and Lauren looked on. Bree drifted at the fringe, looking forlorn. Beth slipped off her pack and thrust her arm inside, feeling around for her cigarette packet. She couldn’t find it and despite the cold, her palms began to sweat. She pushed in deeper. At last, her fingers closed around the familiar shape and she pulled her arm out, dragging clothing and odds and ends with it.
Beth didn’t notice the shiny metal canister rolling away until it was too late. It bounced out of reach of her outstretched fingertips, turned one more revolution towards the bank and then dropped over the side.
‘Shit.’ She shoved the cigarette pack in her pocket and scrambled after it.
‘What was that?’ Alice’s eyes flicked up, hard above the map.
‘I don’t know.’ Beth peered over and breathed a half-sigh of relief. Whatever it was, it was suspended in a tangle of dead branches above the water.
‘Great.’ Alice was looking now. They all were. ‘It’s the gas canister for the stove.’
‘The . . . what?’ Beth watched the metal shimmer as the branches swayed.
‘The canister. For the stove,’ Alice repeated. ‘We need that to cook our meals tonight. And tomorrow. Jesus, Beth. Why did you drop it?’
‘I didn’t even know I had it.’
‘We split the communal stuff, you know that.’
A stray piece of wood rushed along in the water, colliding with the branches. The canister wobbled, but held.
‘Can we get by without it?’ Jill said.
‘Not if we want to eat dinner tonight.’
Another surge in the water and the canister quivered again. Beth could feel Alice’s eyes on her. She stared straight down at the swollen river, knowing what was coming. Alice stepped in close behind her and she felt an invisible hand prodding her spine.
‘Fetch it.’
Chapter 10
Beth was leaning against the wall outside the hospital, one hand shoved in her coat pocket, and her eyes slitted as the cigarette smoke drifted across her face. She straightened a little as she saw Falk and Carmen come out.
‘You finished in there?’ she called. ‘Is Bree okay?’
‘She’s a bit uncomfortable,’ Carmen said as they walked over. ‘She reminded you to ask the nurse for painkillers.’
‘I did. It’s too soon. She never listens to me.’ Beth turned her head to blow smoke away from them, fanning the air. ‘What’s the latest with Alice? Still no sign?’
‘Not as far as we’ve heard,’ Falk said.
‘Shit.’ Beth picked a fleck of tobacco from her lower lip. She glanced at the trees encroaching on the back of the hospital lot. ‘I wonder what’s happened to her.’
‘What do you think?’
Beth focused on her cigarette. ‘After she walked off? Who knows. Anything could happen out there. We all tried to tell her.’
Falk watched her. ‘What is it you do at BaileyTennants?’
‘Data processing and archiving.’
‘Oh, yeah? What does that involve?’
‘Pretty much what it sounds l
ike. Filing, data entry, making sure the partners can access the documents they’re looking for.’
‘So you have access to the company’s files?’
‘The unrestricted stuff. There are confidential and deep archive files the senior partners have to access themselves.’
‘So did you see much of Alice Russell at work?’
‘Yeah, sometimes.’ Beth didn’t sound happy about it. ‘She was down in the data room a fair bit, getting bits and pieces.’
Falk felt Carmen shift next to him.
‘Did you two chat much while she was down there?’ Carmen said mildly. ‘Talk about what she was looking for?’
Beth cocked her head, something flitting across her face. Calculating, almost.
‘No, she didn’t talk to anyone in data processing unless she had to. Anyway, it’s all Greek to me down there. I don’t get paid enough to think.’
‘And what about out on the retreat? Did you get along any better with her out there?’ Falk asked, and Beth’s face hardened, her cigarette frozen halfway to her mouth.
‘Is that a joke?’
‘No.’
‘Then no. Alice Russell and I did not get along. Not at work, not on the retreat.’ Beth cast a glance at the hospital doors. ‘My sister didn’t mention it?’
‘No.’
‘Oh.’ Beth took a final drag and ground out her cigarette butt. ‘She probably thought you knew. Alice didn’t like me, and she didn’t bother to hide it.’
‘Why was that?’ Carmen asked.
‘I don’t know.’ Beth shrugged. She pulled out her cigarette pack, offering it to Falk and Carmen. They both shook their heads. ‘Actually,’ she said, putting one in her own mouth. ‘I do know. She didn’t like me because she didn’t have to like me. I didn’t have anything to offer her, I wasn’t interesting, I’m not Bree –’ Beth waved a hand vaguely up and down herself from her sallow face to her thick thighs. ‘It wasn’t hard for Alice to make things difficult for me and she took her chance.’
‘Even with your sister there?’
Beth gave a crooked smile. ‘Especially with my sister there. I think that’s what made it fun.’
She cupped her hands and lit up. The wind ruffled her hair and she pulled the coat tighter around herself.
‘So Alice gave you a hard time,’ Carmen said. ‘Did you stand up to her? Push back at all?’
There was the briefest ripple across Beth’s features. ‘No.’
‘Not at all? It must have been frustrating for you.’
She shrugged. ‘There’ll always be someone acting like a bit of a bitch. It’s not worth me rocking the boat. Not while I’m on probation, anyway.’
‘What are you on probation for?’ Falk asked.
‘Don’t you know?’
‘We can find out. It would be easier if you tell us.’
Beth’s eyes flicked to the hospital doors. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and took a deep drag before answering.
‘What kind of cops did you say you were again?’
‘AFP.’ Falk held out his Federal Police identification and Beth leaned in to look.
‘I’m on probation . . .’ She stopped. Sighed. ‘Because of that thing with Bree.’
They waited. ‘You’ll have to give us more than that,’ Carmen said.
‘Yeah, sorry. I don’t really like to talk about it. A couple of years ago I –’ She seemed to inhale the rest of the cigarette in a single draw. ‘I wasn’t doing so well. I broke into Bree’s flat and stole some of her things. Clothes, her TV. Some stuff she’d saved up for. Some jewellery our nanna had given her before she died. Bree came home to find me loading it into the back of a car. When she tried to stop me, I hit her.’
The last words tumbled out like they had a bad taste.
‘Was she badly hurt?’ Falk asked.
‘Physically, nothing too bad,’ Beth said. ‘But she’d been smacked on the street by her twin trying to steal her possessions for drug money, so yeah. She was badly hurt. I badly hurt her.’
It sounded like a phrase she’d had to repeat often in front of a therapist. She finished her cigarette but took her time putting this one out.
‘Look, to be honest, I don’t really remember much of it. I had a drug problem for a few years, since –’ She stopped what she’d been about to say. Ran a hand over her arm. The movement reminded Falk of her sister, picking at her bandage in the hospital bed. ‘Since my final year of uni. It was stupid. I was picked up straight away by the police trying to sell her stuff. I didn’t even know I’d hit her until my lawyer told me. I had a record by then, so I got sent away. It wasn’t Bree’s fault. Obviously. But I mean, she didn’t go to the police. She could have, no-one would have blamed her. A neighbour who saw us fighting was the one who reported it. Bree still won’t talk about it. She doesn’t talk to me much anyway. Most of what I know about it comes from the court documents.’
‘What happened to you?’ Carmen said.
‘A couple of months in a correctional facility, which wasn’t so good, then a bit longer in rehab treatment, which was better.’
‘They helped you recover?’
‘Yeah. I mean, they did their best. And I’m doing my best. Recovery is an ongoing thing, but they taught me to take responsibility for my choices. And for what I did to my sister.’
‘How are things between you now?’ Carmen said.
‘Okay. She helped get me this data job, which was great. I was studying computer science and technology before I left uni, so the BaileyTennants work’s a bit mundane, but it can be hard to find anything on probation so I’m grateful.’ Beth’s smile came out a little forced. ‘We used to be really close, though. We dressed the same every day until we were, like, fourteen, or something ridiculous. Way too long. Like we were the same person. We seriously used to think we could read each other’s thoughts.’ She glanced at the hospital door. ‘We can’t.’ She sounded a little surprised by that.
‘It must have been frightening for you when she got bitten,’ Falk said.
Beth’s mouth went tight. ‘Yeah, it was. I was so scared I was going to lose her. I’d got up early to go for a pee and just dozed off again when Bree came crashing in clutching her arm. We had to get her to a doctor, but bloody Alice had gone AWOL. We ran around like headless chooks trying to find her, but there was no sign.’ She ran a stubby thumbnail over her lips. ‘To be honest with you, I didn’t give a shit. I only cared about Bree. Alice could fend for herself, as far as I was concerned. We were just lucky Lauren knew how to navigate in a straight line, or we’d still be stuck out there. She kept us going north, got us to the road so we could follow it round. I’ve never been so happy to see tarmac in my life.’
‘Did you actually see Alice walk off?’ Falk asked, watching her closely.
‘No. But I wasn’t surprised. It was what she’d been threatening to do.’
‘And we hear she took the phone.’
‘Yeah, she did. It was pretty bloody selfish, but that’s Alice for you. Anyway, it didn’t really matter. It never worked.’
‘Never?’
‘No.’ Beth looked at them like they were slow. ‘Or we would have called for help.’
‘Were you surprised Alice wasn’t already at the meeting spot when you got back?’ Falk said, and Beth seemed to consider the question.
‘Yeah. I was a bit, actually. Especially as we were probably on the same track, only a few hours behind her. If we didn’t pass her, and she didn’t make it back before us, what happened?’
The question hung in the air. Falk could make out the sound of the police helicopter circling far off in the distance. Beth looked from one to the other.
‘Listen.’ She shifted her weight and her voice dropped a notch lower. ‘Was Alice up to something?’
‘Like what?’ Falk said, keeping h
is face neutral.
‘You tell me. You’re the AFP.’
Falk and Carmen said nothing, and eventually Beth shrugged.
‘I don’t know. But I told you she’d been requesting a lot of information from data processing. The thing is, she’d started to come and get the stuff herself, which was a bit weird. I only noticed because she used to send Bree down to get it, but then she began coming herself. And she was accessing the restricted items more regularly. It’s just now with her missing . . .’ Beth glanced past them at the hills towering in the distance and shrugged again.
‘Beth,’ Carmen said. ‘How sure are you that Alice walked away from that cabin of her own accord?’
‘Look, I am sure. Fair enough, I didn’t see her do it, but only because she knew we would’ve stopped her. She didn’t want to be stuck out there. She’d already tried to convince Jill to let her go back alone after the first night, but Jill said no. Then again at the cabin, the same thing.’
‘So there was some tension between them?’ Carmen said.
‘Of course.’
‘Because when we saw Jill Bailey briefly, it looked like she had a bruise on her face. Around her jawline.’
There was a long pause while Beth examined her cigarette. ‘I’m not quite sure how she got that. I know she tripped a couple of times on the hike.’
Falk let the silence string out, but Beth didn’t look up.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘So things weren’t great between Jill and Alice.’
‘Yeah, but that wasn’t totally surprising. Alice could start a fight in an empty room. And she was already pissed off, way before Jill did anything. Alice had been in a bad mood since the first night when she had her little heart-to-heart with Daniel Bailey.’
Somewhere behind the hospital doors, Falk could hear the insistent beep of an alarm.
‘Daniel Bailey?’ he said.
‘Jill’s brother? He’s the chief exec. The men’s group came to our camp that first night and he took Alice off for a private chat.’