Poison Bay

by Belinda Pollard

  Another silence stretched, until eventually Callie spoke. “I just don’t know how to make all of this fit with the picture of someone so desperate they’d blow their brains out.”

  Jack said, tentatively, “I’ve wondered, sometimes, if she really meant to do it.”

  The group stared at him. Rachel said, “Do you think the gun went off by mistake?”

  “No, not exactly. It’s more that…” He rubbed his face vigorously. “I don’t quite know how to put it. I’m not saying she wasn’t genuinely upset. But the words she said that night sounded so… scripted. Rehearsed. Not that a different type of person wouldn’t practice a statement like that. Anyone would, if it’s the last thing you’re ever going to say. But it had the edge of the actress in it, somehow. Remember when she’d be a character with us, and just play that character all day, and you couldn’t get her out of it, no matter how annoying it got? I just wonder if maybe she was so engrossed in playing the suicidal teenager that she forgot it wasn’t a role. Got so caught up in the drama of it all that she just… played the scene out to the end.”

  A thoughtful silence followed. Callie recalled the scene in Bryan’s luxurious living room, and those words, carved into her brain a whole decade ago. The careful laying of blame. The desire to punish. Each look and turn of Liana’s head. The inflection of her voice as it rose and fell and paused. It wasn’t a stupid idea. What if she’d just wanted to get their attention, but then become carried away?

  Callie murmured, “I’ve always thought it was an odd method for her to choose. Her beauty was so important to her. Why not take some tablets, and still be beautiful?”

  “You can’t stand in front of a roomful of people and threaten them with a bottle of tablets,” Kain said. “We’d have taken it off her.”

  “And she wouldn’t have done it alone—she needed an audience,” added Erica. “She needed to see how it made us feel. A bit like being at your own funeral, I guess.”

  Jack nodded. “And the gun helped her get our attention really quickly. It was a pretty good visual aid. Very theatrical.” He found himself miming the movement of holding a shotgun under his chin, seemed to realize what he was doing, and plunged his hands into his pockets, looking awkward.

  “I wonder if we could have said or done anything differently that night, and stopped her,” Rachel said. “I’ve wondered and wondered about that, over the years.”

  Jack reached out and quickly squeezed her arm. “We all did the best we could at the time, Rachel. We were paralyzed when she stood up in front of us with that gun. We didn’t know what to do. We were just kids really.”

  “Do you think Bryan knew?” blurted Callie.

  “Knew what?” Jack said, puzzled by the non sequitur.

  “That Liana was cheating on him.”

  “Well, they say the injured party always knows,” Erica said. “Although, in my experience, that’s not necessarily the case.”

  Callie saw some kind of sub-text flicker between Erica and Kain, but she couldn’t read it. What was there between these two that she didn’t know about? She filed the thought away to come back to later, but aloud she said, “I’d have to agree with you there. You don’t always know. What did Liana say about it?”

  “She was trying to keep it from him. So she didn’t think he knew. But she could have been wrong, of course.”

  Callie turned to Kain. “Did you get any sense that he knew about you and Liana? Even just since we came to New Zealand?”

  Kain stared at her, his eyes wide. She’d accidentally hit a nerve. “I don’t think so. I’m not sure.”

  It was then that they heard the engine. Somewhere between a whine and a hum, but definitely mechanical. Jack leapt to his feet and motioned for quiet, straining his ears. Everyone stood and stared into the sky, scouring it in all directions. It was difficult to track the direction of a noise in these encircling mountains.

  Jack saw it first. “There!” His finger stabbed at the sky to the south of them. Callie caught the glint of sunlight on metal. It was under the cloud cover, probably a few kilometers away. Distances were hard to estimate when everything was enormous.

  “Callie, quick, your jacket!” Jack extended an arm towards her.

  She stared at him, uncomprehending.

  “It’s the brightest thing we’ve got!” he said.

  She unzipped the bright orange garment and wriggled her arms out of it. The wristband on the left sleeve caught on her watch strap, and she flailed the arm in desperation. “Help me!”

  “Hold still,” ordered Jack, deftly unhitching the sleeve. Then he ran to the edge of their little clearing in the scrub with the sleeves of the jacket gripped firmly in both hands, and started swinging their rescue banner in a wide sweeping arc over his head and to the ground on each side, left then right then left then right.

  They had to see it. Surely, if they were searching for them, they had to see it.

  “Please God,” said Jack, and swung the jacket, over and back, over and back, making the biggest movements he possibly could, an ant in the land of the giants.

  “No-oo!” wailed Rachel. “They’re going the other way!” She started sobbing, taking great gulps of air, standing rigid, her hands over her mouth.

  Jack kept swinging, his breath becoming louder.

  Everyone else stood like alpine statues, numb and disbelieving, as they watched the little aircraft fly away, until their senses struggled to register it at all, and they could only imagine the echo of its engine in their ears, the after-image of its fuselage on their retinas.

  Rachel collapsed to the ground, weeping without restraint, hunched over her knees, her head buried in her hands. Erica roused herself from paralysis, and went to sit alongside Rachel, reaching her arms around the other woman’s body, her own eyes filling with tears.

  “Jack,” said Callie. Still he swung. “Jack! They’ve gone. You’ve got to stop.” She walked up behind him and reached for his shoulders, trying to still him, without getting injured by the zips and attachments of the flailing orange jacket. “Jack, stop!” He let his hands fall in front of him, still making small swinging movements, the jacket sleeves still held tightly, his chest heaving.

  Callie ran her hands down his upper arms and then reached forward around his chest, gripping her hands together in front of him in a bizarre cross between a straitjacket and a hug. His arms became still against the restraint, and Callie relaxed her grip a little. She rested her cheek along the slope of his shoulder, leaned her weight against his back, and spoke again, her voice barely a whisper now. “Oh Jack.”

  Kain stood aloof from the others, staring to the south in the direction the plane had gone. He was very still, his expression unreadable.

  41

  When they told him the body retrieved from the orange bag on the mountain was a woman, Peter felt a wave of coldness wash over him. And then when they told him the name on the passport tucked carefully alongside, he felt relief. He was being unprofessional. Each life mattered equally, whether or not the mother of the deceased had cooked eggs in his kitchen.

  And where was she, all this time?

  “Amber, have you seen Ellen today?”

  “She was here really early. She borrowed my car.”

  “Your car?” He stared at her. Amber’s car was less reliable than the Fiordland weather.

  “I did warn her about it.” Amber looked uncomfortable.

  “Well let’s hope we don’t need to launch another search before the day is out. Do you know where she was going?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “Wonderful. So when the car breaks down we don’t even know where to look.”

  “She’s not helpless you know.” There was an edge to Amber’s tone. Everyone’s nerves were beginning to fray.

  “Yes, I know that. I would have liked her to confirm the ID of this body, before we send it on to the pathologist, that’s all. He will just have to do his best with the passport photos.”

  42
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br />   The loss of the plane was devastating. Bone numbing. Grinding through their hearts and souls and empty stomachs and weary bone marrow. As they kept slogging up the shoulder blades of this giant mountain, an hour passed, and then another one. No one spoke the question aloud: “Why didn’t they see us?”

  If we were under tree cover, you could understand it, thought Callie. Or far down in the valley, just atoms in a jumbled mess of rocks and scrub. But we were held high on the upstretched mountain, in the open, waving a fluoro orange banner. If they can’t see us there, how will they ever see us anywhere?

  No one had suggested waiting to see if the plane came back. They had all headed instinctively for Somewhere Else. Anywhere that the plane had not already been, so that they might somehow find themselves in the place where its little plexiglas eyes might look next. And, this time, be seen.

  Callie’s injuries from yesterday’s crushing fall were back with a vengeance. Earlier, the endorphins generated by the morning’s vigorous exercise had dulled the sensations of pain, and with feelers of sunshine probing through the high cloud, the grandeur of the panorama had spoken to her soul. But now, each step jarred through bruised and torn muscles and ligaments, and there was a particularly sharp pain in her right side that razored into her lungs with each footfall. There was damage in there, and she was afraid that very bad things might lie ahead for her if it wasn’t treated soon.

  But mostly, she was terrified of what the lost opportunity may mean. The possibility of a search plane had been an unvoiced hope in her heart, a mini El Dorado that they had been hiking towards, well ahead of the elusive lake they had vowed to seek in the east. Once it became clear that they were overdue, surely searchers would come looking, buzzing round the sky in planes and helicopters. Rappelling down out of heaven like the emergency workers on TV shows, in helmets and safety suits. Stretchering out the injured. Saving them.

  It had never occurred to her that the search plane, when it came, might not find them.

  The vastness of the landscape was whispering no beautiful sweet nothings now, just evil insinuations with an after-breath of sulfur. I will hold onto you, no matter what. My concealment is total. You will never leave me alive.

  Ahead of her, Rachel was moving up the mountain step-by-step in Erica’s wake, and Callie could hear her breath sometimes catching on a sob. They were out of the scrub and onto a stretch of rocky moraine, each step a different size and at a different angle. The wind was picking up, buffeting them, and making progress even harder. After the search plane, Rachel had pulled herself together and dried her eyes, trying to put a good face on it for everyone else as well as herself. She had been as determined as the rest of them to keep moving. So much fitter than the rest of them at the beginning, her form was beginning to fail. She was still eking out her insulin, but had used her last glucose tablet. Now she had only ferns standing between her and a potentially fatal hypo, and her spirit was breaking. Callie saw each stumble and twist as the other woman’s boot hit angled, unstable rock.

  She turned her head and spoke quietly to Jack, laboring behind her. “I think Rachel needs a rest.”

  He looked past her at Rachel, and then his gaze shifted further up the mountainside. Kain, in the lead, had stopped and turned back. He waited near Erica until the others drew near enough to speak without shouting. At least they could stand in a circle in this terrain, unhemmed by vegetation.

  “I can’t see the way forward,” Kain said. “I’m not sure if we’re going to find a pass over the mountain up this way after all. We obviously can’t get over the summit, in our condition and with our skills. And what looked like a pass from down in the valley isn’t so promising now.” He shook his head and half turned, indicating with his hand in the direction they’d been heading. “Up there, to the right, we might be able to sidle, and then scramble to the top. But I’m not sure.” He turned back to them. “And what’s on the other side is another matter, as usual.”

  Callie looked up and around, scanning the mountain for answers, the same as the rest of them were doing. Which way? They couldn’t have spent a whole day climbing only to have to descend again and find another way, another valley. And the mess and the landslides that lay down below. It was unthinkable to have to go back through it.

  They’d been leaving it to Kain to choose the route, following passively. Pleased, really, that Kain had stayed near instead of striking out so far ahead. There’d been a change in the man, a thaw. It had become even more pronounced after the talk about Liana. Or the search plane. Something had hit Kain between the eyes.

  He spoke again, drawing all eyes back from the mountain tops. “How about we find a spot out of this wind where Rachel can rest, and I’ll go on a recce. That way I can leave my pack behind and move a lot faster.”

  “Perhaps one of us should come with you,” Callie said.

  “Not you,” Jack said. “You’re injured.”

  “We’re all injured.”

  “I’m not,” said Kain, his sprained ankle apparently forgotten. “And I won’t be out of sight. Jack should stay with you girls, just in case anything happens. There’s someone out here with a gun, don’t forget.”

  “And a big knife,” added Jack. “Adam’s knife is still missing, too.”

  Callie saw Erica flinch, and wished the men didn’t have to speak so bluntly. Everyone was scared and disorientated enough already.

  Kain continued, “Yeah, well, they’ll have trouble sneaking up on us out here in the open. But now that Adam’s dead we’ve only got two men, so I’ll go alone, and that’s that.”

  “Oh, and we’re helpless little females are we?” snapped Erica. Kain could be condescending to women, but her voice was much sharper than it needed to be. “No handbags to hit the nasty bogeymen with. Funny how we’ve managed to get so far without our lipstick, isn’t it?” She virtually spat the final words, and Callie was shocked.

  Kain’s only reply was to stare at her. He then started shouldering out of his pack, preparing to proceed exactly as he had decided.

  Erica turned abruptly away, her face red, and started helping Rachel find a spot to rest in the windbreak provided by a large boulder.

  Kain set off up the mountain without a backward glance.

  ***

  Callie was still puzzling over Erica’s outburst when Jack moved close to her and spoke so that only she could hear. “Were you offended by what Kain said?”

  She shook her head. “Kain can be a bit old-fashioned about women, but I don’t think that’s what caused that. It’s just tension between the two of them. And there’s something else as well.” She glanced across at Erica, busying herself with Rachel’s sleeping bag. “She’s trying to divert attention at the moment. Like a cat that’s done something embarrassing and then starts washing itself.” Callie narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. “I actually have a hunch it was the mention of Adam’s death that set her off.”

  “Really? You think it’s grief? What a strange way to show it.”

  “She could hardly say ‘I can’t stand it when you talk about Adam’, could she? So she said the next thing that came into her head. But I think it’s more than just grief. It looks like guilt, to be honest. But whether it’s because she actually did something, or just a general feeling of responsibility, I don’t know.”

  He stared at Callie, and then at Erica. “She’s certainly been very weird about Adam. Ever since he first went missing, in fact. All that hanging back and long silences. We were all scared, but there was something different about her reaction.”

  “I know. She knows something, I’m sure of it. But how do we get her to tell us what it is?”

  “Why don’t we just ask her?”

  It was a revolutionary idea to Callie. “But why would she tell us the truth?”

  “I have a strong feeling that Erica is longing to tell someone the truth. It’s eating her up from the inside. She wants it gone from her body.”

  And so they waited until Rachel was resti
ng, wrapped in her sleeping bag in the fitful sunshine. They’d already chosen a position about ten meters away, where each could sit on a small boulder, keeping Rachel in sight, while avoiding disturbing her too much with their voices. Erica crouched on a rock adjusting the straps on her rucksack. Callie hung off at a slight distance while Jack walked up to the other woman.

  “Erica. Can we talk to you please? It’s important.”

  She looked up at him, and then beyond him at Callie. Both continued to regard her silently. She seemed to sense their serious intentions, and drew a deep breath, but raised no protest. “Okay.”

  Once they were seated in a circle, Callie looked at Jack, his signal to take charge. Direct confrontation was his gig. She was just waiting to see how it unfolded.

  Jack took the hint. “Erica. What happened to Adam?” He looked at her steadily. She blanched visibly and stared at her hands, now twisting in her lap.

  “What do you mean: what happened to Adam? Why do you think I know anything you don’t?” Her voice quivered. Exhaustion? Anger? Nerves? Fear?

  “Erica,” he said again, leaning just a little forward. “What happened to Adam?”

  She gulped a huge breath, her glance flickering around the mountain slopes, and burst into a torrent of sobs. She hunched over her knees and covered her face with her hands, weeping uncontrollably. Callie began to move, ready to console, but Jack caught her eye and shook his head, just once. She subsided back onto her boulder, even though withholding comfort when another person’s grief was so violent was as piercing as a physical pain. She decided to trust him.

  Gradually, Erica’s sobs softened a little, and Jack spoke again. “Erica.” His voice was gentle now. “What happened to Adam?”

  The words were wrung from her; little more than a guttural whisper. “It was an accident.”

  43

  Callie was glad Erica couldn’t see the expression of utter shock on her face, and she turned her head to stare at Jack. He raised his eyebrows a millimeter.