Poison Bay

by Belinda Pollard

  “No, I’m not. I’ve sprained my ankle walking in that quagmire. We should have stayed back at the rock bivvy, like I said.”

  “Yeah, probably.” Jack spoke dismissively, and half turned away. He’d actually been thinking the same thing himself, after the horrors of the past few hours. But there’s no way I’m agreeing with you.

  After a pause, Kain spoke again. “When the cloud lifted, I saw there’d been some landslides down the valley. Everyone okay?”

  The question probably represented a concession of sorts, a white flag. But Jack doubted Kain’s sincerity, and found himself wanting to shock. His eyes slid back to Kain’s face. “No, we’re not okay. Callie was hurt, and Adam’s dead.” For all the reaction the bald statement got, he might have been reciting the train timetable. “Adam was shot,” he added.

  That did the trick at last. Still crouched in the tent opening, Kain visibly recoiled and his eyes widened. “Shot? Who shot him? Who’s got a gun?” He stared at Jack. Looks like Kain’s not the shooter.

  “How should I know? That’s what we’ve been trying to figure out. The girls are terrified.” And the boy too, but there was no need to mention that.

  Now Kain started to look around him, scanning the slopes and the cliffs above, unsettled. “What are you doing about it?”

  “We’re being careful. We’re looking out for each other. But first of all, we need to get Adam’s body off the landslide. Will you come and help me with it?”

  “I just told you, I sprained my ankle. I need to rest it.” He withdrew inside the tent.

  Jack wheeled around, stomping back the way he’d come, so angry that his fear evaporated in its heat and he didn’t even feel the pain in his injured knee. He’d sidled back along the ledge and traversed the boulder field before he’d even registered what he was doing. Slow down Jack. You’ll hurt yourself, or get yourself shot. And you’re supposed to be a forgiving person, remember? “But, God, I don’t know how to forgive a pratt like that,” he shouted at the sky, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. “I know I should forgive him, and I know I’ve done plenty of things wrong myself, but I’m just so tired. How can he not help us?!” He subsided onto a rock, breathing roughly and trying to contain his anger. At last, not exactly tranquil, but capable of being moderately sensible, he continued through the muddy forest above the river.

  As he approached the path he’d earlier picked out across the landslide zone, a flicker of light caught his eye, down near the river. Instantly alert, he crouched behind some ferns and watched. As moments passed, it dawned on him what he was seeing. A shaft of pallid sunlight had fought its way through a momentary break in the cloud cover, and hit a shallow pool of water that had been dammed by the landslide debris. The fleeting sunshine was now gone again, but he could see the tiny pond, not much more than a deep puddle, and something flickering within it. Something silvery. Fish! They’d been trapped by the very destruction that had swept Adam away.

  Jack worked his way down the incline, now scanning the slopes around, now looking for a foothold, now looking at their prospective dinner. Eventually, perched above the pool with a foot either side, he plunged in a hand and grappled with one of the fish. It slid through his grasp and he teetered and almost fell, jerking his painful knee.

  He rearranged his feet, and this time grabbed with both hands. Success! He lifted the fish up, and struggled to keep hold of it as it flipped and whipped in his hands. How to kill it? And quickly, before I lose the thing altogether!

  He looked around and spied a fairly solid rock within reach among the tangle. Grasping the fish firmly round the tail, he swung it over his head in a sweeping arc and brought it crashing down on the rock. It stopped whipping around, but he couldn’t tell if it was dead or merely surprised. Before it had any chance to rethink its position, he needed to catch its friend, and get them both away where he couldn’t lose them. He lined up carefully and plunged in after the second fish, repeating the process.

  Catch in hand, he walked back to the women, light of step, an uncontrollable grin on his face. As he stepped back onto more-or-less solid ground and drew near to the little ferny grotto where he’d left them, he saw through the trees that Erica had returned, as prophesied.

  Callie was facing the other way, but she heard him approaching, and stood to greet him, hands on hips. “Where the hell have you been? We thought you’d been shot or something, you stupid idiot.” Her voice was sharp, her face drawn.

  He said nothing, just held the fish out at shoulder height in front of him, one in each hand.

  “Oh!” She back-pedaled faster than anyone he’d ever seen, her eyes widening in delight. “I take it all back. You wonderful, wonderful man!”

  ***

  Jack acquiesced with bad grace when the women resolved to share the precious fish with Kain.

  “He might be quite badly hurt,” Rachel said.

  “Maybe he’s having trouble walking,” Callie said. “But no matter why he’s done this or how we feel about it, we should still do what’s right.”

  Jack noticed that Erica did not jump to her boyfriend’s defense. Things seemed to have cooled between them.

  “It’ll be easier to light a cooking fire up there than down in this bog, I suppose,” he said, relenting.

  That left Adam’s body to be dealt with, by an injured not-very-large man, and three women in varying states of diminished health and strength. Their need to get him down off the landslide debris was not purely sentimental. His rucksack, still strapped to his body, contained a significant portion of their survival equipment—not least his hunting knife, which they needed to prepare the fish.

  It was hard to know who to excuse from stretcher-bearer duties. Each of the four had limitations that made it difficult. Jack longed to keep Callie out of it, because of the pummeling she’d taken in her fall. But aside from worrying that the others would find his concern for her transparent, one look told him that Callie would not be sidelined, and so he said nothing. Jack felt a quiet rage that Kain did not even care enough to come pay his respects to an old friend.

  Perched precariously atop the mountain of shredded rainforest, they worked carefully to separate Adam from his rucksack. Jack saw that while Rachel gazed upon Adam’s face and even touched his cheek with tenderness, Erica deliberately did not look at the dead man’s face at all. She remained focused on the arm she was extracting from his rucksack harness. He glanced at Callie and she raised one eyebrow at him; she’d noticed it too.

  The rucksack was heavy, so they took a corner each and carried it back to stable ground, then extracted Adam’s sleeping bag and a couple of ropes to knot at the corners, turning it into a makeshift stretcher. Struggling back down the treacherous mound with their burden a few minutes later, Jack found the thought flitting across his mind: so that’s why they call it a dead weight. He felt his muscles straining with the load, and heard his companions breathing hard.

  The best plan he’d been able to come up with was to place Adam in his orange bag in an open area up towards the top of the landslip, where he’d seen a large flat boulder that seemed to have finished its sliding. The women were deferring to Jack with regard to decisions about the body. Perhaps, after Sharon, “offices for the dead” had become his responsibility. Team chaplain, as Adam had joked so many days ago. He hoped he wouldn’t be called upon to do it again.

  The simple ceremony they’d conducted for Sharon had been filled with grief, and fear of the mountains. With Adam, everything had changed. They now knew that neither Sharon nor Adam had died of natural causes. Every rock and tree seemed to be watching them, every shadow concealed an assassin. Jack longed to get out of the clearing where he felt so vulnerable, back to where they could hide themselves under the tree cover—not that foliage had saved Adam.

  “Don’t forget to tape this for Adam’s fiancée,” Callie said suddenly. “Like you did for Sharon’s son. Sheena might want to see it some time.”

  Before Jack could reply, Erica b
urst into gusty tears, gulping in air in spasms. Rachel put her arm around Erica’s shoulders. “Shhh,” she soothed, rubbing Erica’s arm. “It’ll be okay.”

  “No it won’t.” Erica buried her face in her hands. “It won’t ever be okay.” She eventually got herself under control again, and remained silent, staring at her feet, as each of the others made a short statement in tribute to Adam.

  By the time the four of them were sidling along the last section of rock ledge leading to the night’s chosen camp, loaded with extras sorted from Adam’s pack and the ferns they’d gathered for the evening meal, they were exhausted and dispirited and incapable of taking much care to avoid any possible sniper.

  Kain must have heard them coming. He was standing outside his tent, staring at them wordlessly as they rounded the last of the rocky barriers.

  Rachel said, “Hello Kain.” She was the only one who bothered.

  Jack scanned the cliffs and slopes above them, then looked down the narrow valley retreating below, as the river it followed zigged and zagged its way towards the ocean. The overcast skies had lifted slightly, and it was lighter now than it had been at midday, even though the evening was drawing in.

  He turned back to the rest of the group, to find they’d all collapsed onto the nearest rock, unspeaking, their rucksacks abandoned askew on the ground. No one was making any move to set up camp. The mood was as damp as the muddy rock underfoot. It had been miserable enough on the trek from Adam’s resting place; now Kain’s presence seemed to be curdling the atmosphere even more. Useful activity. That might help.

  Jack rummaged in his pack for Adam’s knife, and stood up, extending the fish. “Okay, who knows how to gut a fish?”

  All eyes turned to him. Erica’s glance hit the knife and skittered away again.

  Kain spoke first. “I’d have thought any fool would know how to gut a fish.”

  “Kain!” Rachel was distressed.

  Jack cast the fish on the ground and took a step towards Kain, his body rigid, the vicious knife still held tightly in a clenched fist. “Oh you would, would you? Well, you wanna know what I’d have thought? I’d have thought that any fool would help his friends in a crisis. Adam went surfing with you every weekend when we were kids, and he even got his arm broken rescuing you from bullies, and he died today and we had to bury him and you wouldn’t even help!” Kain flinched very slightly before lashing out with some target practice of his own.

  “Help? No one wants my help! Everyone listens to you, Jack. Adam’s dead because of you, Jack. Sharon’s dead because of you, Jack. I said we should leave the girls back at Poison Bay, and this morning I said we should stay at the camp till the rain stopped. But no, you had to keep us all together and keep us moving, and now they’re dead.” His eyes narrowed to slits. “I hope you’re really satisfied with what you’ve done!”

  The words seared Jack’s soul for the very reason that he feared it was true, that it was all his fault. He resorted to sarcasm. “Yes, Kain, that’s right. I’m the one who put a bullet in Adam’s brain, and I’m the one who held his hands over Sharon’s face until she choked to death.” He flung his arms wide, and several pairs of eyes followed the knife uneasily, probably hoping he didn’t accidentally release it into the air. “I confess! Don’t ask me where I got the gun though, because I haven’t got a clue. But I’ve got hands haven’t I,” he waved them in front of himself, and the knife waggled with the hand that held it, “so I could have killed Sharon.”

  Kain became very still, and stared at Jack. “What are you saying about Sharon?”

  Jack realized he had the upper hand over Kain with this one. He muted his fury and made his tone colorless. “Sharon was murdered too, Kain. Someone suffocated her. Callie recognized the bruises on her face. If you’d been around, helping the rest of the team, you’d have been there when we discussed it as a group earlier today.” He shifted his weight and tilted his head a little. “Come to think of it Kain, where were you that night? Go for a midnight stroll, did you?”

  Kain stepped forward again, and pointed at Jack for emphasis. “You’re not pinning this on me!” He glanced at Callie. “That’s if it’s even true. Bruises on her face! What a load of crap.”

  “Not nearly as much crap as you and your ‘sprained ankle’. How about we make a stretcher for you and we’ll carry you tomorrow—the people with the injured knees and shoulders and the diabetic with no insulin. Our suffering is nothing at all compared to yours, you poor little darling!” Jack shook his head in disbelief. “Callie was crushed in a landslide this afternoon, and even she helped with Adam, you stupid moron!” He almost choked on the last few words.

  Kain came back at him like a snake, striking again. “You stupid moron!” he mimicked, his voice high pitched like a girl. “Come on, choirboy, swear at me!”

  “You..! You...!” Jack seemed to have lost the power of speech. He advanced towards Kain, the knife still in his hand, everyone and everything else forgotten in a moment of all-consuming hatred and despair.

  “Stop it, you two! Right now!” It was Callie, suddenly standing in the narrowing gap between them, fearless, a hand held up like a stop sign in each direction. Her tone brooked no argument. “Pull yourself together, Jack. This isn’t like you. You’ve got a knife in your hand, for God’s sake!” She frowned fiercely at him, and wriggled her fingers towards him. “Give it to me!”

  Jack stared at the weapon, and clenched and unclenched his fingers around it, breathing hard. Who knew what was or wasn’t like him, anymore?

  He turned away abruptly, tossed the knife down alongside the abandoned fish, and headed for the rocky ledge along which they’d come.

  36

  “Peter, it’s Jonesy. I’ve had a look through that coroner’s report you sent down, and I thought I’d better ring you straight away.”

  Peter was instantly alert. “What have you found?”

  “The body I’ve got on ice down here was meant to be the father of the girl’s baby, is that right?”

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “Well, either this body isn’t Bryan Smithton after all, or Bryan Smithton wasn’t that baby’s father.”

  “How can you be sure without DNA testing?”

  “The blood types don’t add up. It’s simply not possible.”

  “I see.” He paused, thinking. “Bryan Smithton asked to see that coroner’s report a few months ago. Could he have realized what it meant?”

  “Did he have a medical background?”

  “He’s from a scientific family.”

  “Then yes, it’s possible. But anyone with average intelligence and a suspicious mind could see that the combination of letters didn’t look right, and Google it. So I’d say it’s very likely your boy knew he couldn’t be the father of that baby.”

  37

  By the time Jack returned to the rocky platform nearly an hour later, after an uncomfortable interlude among the boulders a little further down the valley, first pacing like a caged tiger and then sitting in a dejected hunch, he’d had time to cool down and think about what he’d done. He’d been only trying to lift team morale when Kain attacked. What a success. The morale must be positively stratospheric now.

  He couldn’t figure out why he resorted to schoolyard taunts whenever he disagreed with Kain. The man had a knack for bringing out the very worst in him.

  Well, Jack would have to suck it up, apologies to everyone, and do his best to get on with Kain and ignore his taunts. Usually he was pretty good at ignoring insults. He’d had to do a lot of it growing up, being a religious nut. He couldn’t seem to let anything go past him today.

  As he drew near the camp, probably more embarrassed than he’d ever been in his life, he took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. Rounding the last crease in the rock face, he saw tents had been set up and the fire had been lit. He could smell the fish cooking.

  Callie looked up as he approached, and gave a small, tight smile. “Oh well,” her look seemed to say. Neithe
r Erica nor Rachel looked at him, although they glanced swiftly at each other. The women were sitting around the fire. Kain hadn’t left as Jack had thought he might have done, but he definitely wasn’t part of the cozy tableau. He was sitting at a distance, his body angled away from the women, staring at the opposite side of the valley.

  Jack shuffled towards the other man, hands in pockets. He looked at the ground and then at Kain’s face. “I think we need to talk.”

  Kain shot him a quick glance and then resumed his consideration of the opposite slope. “I don’t.”

  Jack shifted his weight, and tried again. “I’m sorry for the things I said.”

  “I’m not.”

  Jack inhaled slowly, silently and held his temper. “Well, that’s your choice. But I don’t think we can just leave things as they are. It’s not good for you or me, or the team.”

  Kain remained silent, but at least he didn’t get up and walk away.

  “I’ve been thinking about the things I said to you when we argued way back at Poison Bay, about you wanting to ditch the liabilities and stuff. I reckon they were pretty hurtful things to say, and I shouldn’t have said them. I can see now that they probably made you feel alienated from the rest of us.” He added silently: And I really hope they didn’t turn you into a murderer.

  Kain still held his body aloof, but his focus had shifted to somewhere not too far away from Jack’s feet.

  Heartened by the small sign of response, Jack continued, keeping his voice mild. “I have a tendency to just blurt things out, without thinking about the consequences. It doesn’t always occur to me at the time that maybe I’m just plain wrong. Well, I’m sorry I said those things, and I hope you’ll forgive me and see if we can start again.” He shrugged diffidently. “We’re all just doing the best we can out here.”