‘Who’s her little spy?’ I fold my arms. ‘Is it Doherty?’
He moves behind the desk and puts the phone in its cradle. ‘Probably best if we don’t get started about him.’
‘Dad,’ I say, wounded by this new betrayal. ‘Mum’s still in touch with him?’
He turns at the hurt in my voice and his face softens. ‘Sounds like it. He emailed her.’
‘Why?’
‘He says I’m letting you run all over town getting worked up about Henry Weaver. He’s worried you’re causing trouble. Or that you’ll run into some.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Dad moves back around to where I’m standing and grips my upper arms firmly.
‘Listen, chook. I know you want to find Henry, but your mother’s already got her knickers twisted about how much time you’ve been spending on this stuff. The posters all over Sydney, the Facebook page. She says it’s interfering with your schoolwork and you don’t have any kind of social life.’
‘My grades are fine. And I do have friends. They all happen to live here. She’s the one who separated me from them.’
Dad sighs, dropping his hands. ‘All I’m saying is, if you keep making waves your mother will use it as an excuse to cut short your time here.’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘No, it’s not.’
‘So, what then? I’m supposed to do nothing about finding Henry?’
‘Ah, now. I didn’t say that.’
I frown. ‘But you said …’
‘Not to make waves. Waves are big and obvious when they smash up against things. Make ripples instead.’ He winks at me. ‘They still keep the water moving.’
‘David,’ Luisa says admiringly. ‘That’s very poetic.’
Dad clears his throat, suddenly self-conscious. He picks the note up off the desk. ‘Anyway, about this …’
Luisa lowers her head again. ‘I’m sorry for leaving the office open while I was in the garden,’ she says. ‘It was my job to keep it safe. I understand if you want me to resign.’
Dad blinks in surprise.
‘No way, Luisa,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘Dad needs you.’
‘And it’s obvious from this note—’ Dad places it down on the desk and taps it with his finger, ‘—it wasn’t burglars.’
I have my own suspicions about who it was. I keep thinking about the way Mason stared at me in the police station when I showed Doherty the polaroids, and how he had to know I saw him having that passport photo taken. Maybe he did see me following him in the bush behind his house. At the very least, Ivy probably told him I’d been over there, in Henry’s room.
LEAVE IT ALONE
I’m getting close to something and he doesn’t like it. As if sending a rock sailing through the reception window wasn’t enough, now he’s left another message telling us to butt out.
‘I think I know what this is about,’ Dad says. ‘And who’s responsible.’
‘Mason,’ I say.
Luisa sucks in a breath, scowling. ‘That boy! I tell Rina he’s bad news. First the fighting, then the broken window. Now she’s crying herself to sleep every night …’ She folds her arms and tuts.
‘I don’t think this was Mason,’ Dad says. ‘It’ll be something to do with my opposition to Jack Doherty’s Cutler Bend proposal. He’s sending me a warning to stop rallying support about reopening the road.’
‘He can’t do that!’ I say. ‘He doesn’t own the town.’
I’m about to tell Dad to report it to the police when I realise our predicament: Sergeant Doherty is Jack Doherty’s brother. Nothing will get investigated and it will all be brushed under the rug.
‘I don’t want you two worrying about this,’ Dad tells us. ‘I’ll sort it out.’
I’m still not convinced. If it was Mason out driving on the night of the storm, he’s hiding a lot more than I originally thought. If I’m getting too close to uncovering what that is, he might be desperate enough to leave me threats.
And, I realise with a sinking feeling, he might also be desperate enough to run.
* * *
‘How long does it take for a new passport to arrive?’
‘Well, hello to you too,’ Raf says, holding open the Nolans’ front door for me to step inside. He’s wearing a well-loved grey T-shirt and tracksuit pants, no shoes, his hair scruffy and sticking up at the back like he’s slept on it funny. ‘Still on a mission then?’
He leads me through to his bedroom even though the house is empty. I’d probably find some kind of thrill in this if I wasn’t so preoccupied. Sabeen’s already texted me to let me know she’ll be stuck at the pizzeria all afternoon with her mums for a big fortieth birthday party order, and she wants me to come down for dinner after they’ve finished up. We spoke on the phone last night about Rina’s catfishing. In true Sabeen style she forgave Rina quickly and wants us all to ‘go back to the way things used to be’. But I could hear a hint of helplessness in her voice, as though she knows this is becoming harder and harder to do. Finding out about Mason driving around in the storm has thrown her for a loop, so I held off on telling her about the threatening note. I’ll do it tonight when I can see her face to face.
‘I’m serious, Raf,’ I say. ‘You’ve been overseas. Do you know how long a passport takes?’
‘I dunno. My parents organised mine years ago. Wait a sec.’ He grabs his phone off his desk as I sit on the corner of the bed. I should have thought of googling it myself; my mind keeps jumping from one thing to another. I feel antsy and uncomfortable, like I’ve had too much sugar.
‘It says here,’ he tells me, ‘you should allow approximately three weeks to get a new passport.’
It’s been almost a week since I saw Mason having the photo taken, so it could potentially be another week or two until he receives his passport. The tension in my shoulders releases a little. We still have some time to figure this all out.
‘Hang on,’ Raf says. ‘There’s a priority service. You can get it faster if you pay an extra fee.’
‘How fast?’
‘Two business days.’
‘Two days?!’ My heart starts thumping double-time.
Raf places his phone down and drops into the swivel chair. He’s been editing again; a tranquil starry sky over Shallow Reservoir is staring back at me from both screens. It doesn’t calm me at all, though. Something about the inky water in the image unsettles me.
‘Why are you freaking out?’ Raf says. ‘You think Mason’s gonna take off as soon as his passport arrives?’
‘He might. Check this out.’ I pass him my phone to show him a photo of the threatening note stuck to our door. ‘Somebody trashed the motel’s reception area and left this.’
‘And you reckon Mason did it?’ Raf says, sounding unsure. ‘Why would he?’
‘I think he knows I’m closing in on him. We need to figure out what he was doing when Rina saw him driving around that night.’
‘If it was him.’ Raf chews his fingernail, his leg jiggling up and down. Seems my nervous energy is catching. ‘We don’t know for sure.’
I had a feeling Raf would do this. Even presented with all the dodgy stuff Mason has said and done, Raf is loyal. He’ll always reserve judgement until an admission of guilt, even if the evidence is stacking up. Mason is his friend, and Raf will find every possible excuse for his behaviour until Mason does something Raf simply can’t defend. Pushing Henry into the reservoir and smashing the motel window came pretty close. But somehow Raf found a way to rationalise Mason’s behaviour, to understand where he was coming from. At my most impatient, I’d be tempted to call Raf naïve and too trusting. But the truth is, he’s just genuinely kind.
‘Can you think of anywhere Mason could have gone that night?’ I say. ‘Places he hangs out?’
Raf ’s knee jiggles again. ‘I’ve actually given this some thought,’ he says. ‘We know he wasn’t at Rina’s, so if it was him, three other strong possibilities come to mind.’<
br />
I sit up, waiting for him to go on.
‘Firstly, the motel. Room Fifteen. He didn’t stay the night, although he could have come over for a couple of hours. If he was out driving between midnight and two, you weren’t there to witness him coming and going.’
‘True,’ I say. ‘Although he wouldn’t need to drive along Railway Parade to get from his house to the motel. Unless he was really going out of his way.’
‘Agreed. Which is why my second possibility comes to mind. The graveyard.’
‘Really? Mason still hangs out up there?’
‘I think so,’ Raf says. ‘There’ve been a couple of times I couldn’t track him down and I thought that’s where he might be.’
‘But it’s a graveyard. A bunch of headstones and a whole load of weeds. Would he really head there in a thunderstorm? It’s completely exposed.’
Raf nods. ‘I know. Which leads me towards my third possibility.’
‘Which is?’
‘Remember how paranoid we were leaving the bush hut that night, thinking we saw something in the trees?’
‘Wait,’ I say. ‘You think it was Mason?’
Raf sits back and chews his bottom lip. ‘How do you feel about an afternoon hike?’
* * *
It’s overcast again with an unseasonal muggy heat. It presses down on us from above and becomes trapped by the vegetation along the walking track, where there’s no hint of a breeze. Cicadas pulse steadily in the trees around us, their shrill hum rising and falling in waves. I glance at the back of Raf ’s neck and see a trickle of sweat slide from his hairline into his T-shirt collar. The small backpack I’m wearing is pressing against my back and sticking my T-shirt to my skin.
I’m not persuaded by Raf ’s suggestion about Mason visiting the bush hut that night, namely because Raf and I were there ourselves at the time Rina thought she saw Mason’s car. However, the car heading south along Railway Parade around one forty-five in the morning would fit, since Raf and I left the bush hut before two. There’s definitely a possibility he could have driven to the southern end of the reservoir and followed a shorter track to the bush hut from there. It doesn’t explain where he was the rest of the time, though.
When we reach the fork in the track where the sign points to Shallow Reservoir, I hesitate for a moment. A formless idea swirls in the back of my mind. Mason, Henry, the reservoir – a bad combination.
‘You coming?’ Raf says, twenty metres ahead on the other track. I catch up to him, wiping the sweat from my upper lip with the back of my hand.
It’s another fifteen minutes on a gradual incline before we reach the bush hut, and we’re both damp in the armpits and panting by the time we get there. Nestled in among the trees, it’s a rough wooden cabin only five or six metres wide and not quite as deep, propped up by a few low stumps. No one knows who built it originally, although Uncle Bernie said it was here long before he and his friends stumbled across it as kids. Every generation has made new additions over the decades, from furniture to knick-knacks to dodgy repairs. At some point someone managed to lug an old oil drum up here to use as a fire pit, perhaps the same people who added two weathered outdoor chairs. We brought an old rug and a battery-powered radio, and one time Sabeen and I even carried cleaning supplies from the motel to give it a halfhearted once over.
‘So what are we looking for?’ Raf asks. He walks around the small clearing, examining the hut from a few different angles. Surrounded by ferns, some green, others crispy brown and dying, the hut’s timber boards are bowing with damp and covered in lichen.
‘I’m not sure.’ I peer through one of the windows. ‘Evidence Mason was here, I suppose.’
Raf shoves the rickety door open and a long cobweb floats down across the doorway.
‘It looks just how we left it,’ he says.
I follow him in. The hut smells of mildew and the interior is gloomy due to the small grimy windows. The candles we lit on the night of the storm are still sitting on a wooden milk crate pushed up against one wall. I get a nervous hum in my lower abdomen when I glance at the rug where Raf and I sat cross-legged, eating pizza and laughing in the candlelight, flinching at the loudest booms of thunder and hoping the protection of the surrounding trees would help hold the hut together. All I could think about was whether I’d have garlic breath if I ever plucked up the courage to lean over and kiss him.
Raf moves around the hut now, randomly picking things up and putting them down again. He points at a couple of old whisky bottles that were already here. I shrug. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence that someone else has been here in recent months. Raf ’s eyes fall on the rug too and he throws me a quick glance, one eyebrow flickering with amusement. I fold my lips in on themselves to hide my smile.
‘Well, this is a dead end,’ he says, bringing his hands to his hips. ‘I was kinda hoping something obvious would jump out at us. Something big, screaming, “I’m a clue!”’
I release a long breath and step outside into the clearing, tapping my chin as I think. What was Mason doing that night? Where was he going?
‘What if something happened at Shallow Reservoir?’ I say.
Raf follows me out of the low doorway. ‘On the night of the storm?’
‘Mason pushed Henry in once. What if it happened again?’
His face falls as I say the words. ‘He wouldn’t do that.’
‘Maybe Henry followed him. An argument? A spur of the moment thing?’
Raf folds his arms and paces towards the rusted oil drum and back again. ‘So he pushed him in and left him to drown? That’s a pretty dark thought, Chlo. Even for you.’
‘Do you think I want to suggest it?’ I say defensively. ‘Leaving aside how this makes Mason look, it would mean Henry is …’
I can’t finish. Raf ’s face softens and he moves a step closer. ‘Okay, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Henry’s bike was found at the station, remember? It’s more likely he got on a train and whatever Mason was doing that night was related to that.’
I don’t want to say what I’m thinking, but now the seed of this idea has been sown, I can’t stop my brain from growing it. ‘What if Mason planted that bike at the station to make it appear like Henry got on a train?’
Raf ’s mouth opens. He stares at me without saying anything and I feel like I’ve gone too far. Then, in a quiet voice, he says, ‘Rina did say she saw his car at the station.’ As quickly as the words are out, Raf jerks away again. ‘Nah. No way. There’s no way! Mason wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t.’
‘He has a temper problem, Raf. He might have lost it and done something he regretted, then tried to cover it up.’
‘But it’s Mason.’ I’ve never seen his face so conflicted. ‘We’ve known him forever.’
‘How well do we really know our friends?’
He gives me a sober stare. ‘Dude. Enough with the crime podcast talk. We’re talking about people we’ve grown up with here.’
‘Every criminal has friends they grew up with,’ I say. ‘They were all once someone’s neighbour, workmate or school friend. People do bad things, Raf. They make mistakes and take wrong turns all the time.’
He shakes his head at the ground, kicking the toe of his shoe in the dirt.
‘What if Mason was out in that storm trying to cover up a terrible mistake?’ I say. ‘It was you who noticed the Weavers’ unusually clean kitchen.’
Raf rubs a rough hand over his face, looking overwhelmed.
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Let’s say something did happen to Henry at home. Or even at the reservoir. How does his note fit in? As far as we can guess, he returned to the motel that night while we were up here.’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘The timeline is key.’
‘And so is evidence, which seems to be lacking at this point. The only trace we have of Henry from that night is the note and his bike at the train station.’
‘Maybe Mason was driving around hiding other traces. Covering up somethin
g that may have got out of hand.’
‘Where, though?’ Raf says, gesturing at the towering trees surrounding us. ‘If you’ve got something to hide, where do you take it?’
‘Throw it in the reservoir,’ I suggest. ‘Bury it.’ My pulse quickens as I think about Mason digging in the bush behind his house. ‘If you really want to destroy all traces you’d burn it to ash.’
Raf looks over. I blink at him for a moment and realise we’re sharing the same thought. We both turn to the old oil drum.
Raf already has his phone out and the light on. He holds it over the drum’s circular opening and we peer inside. There are charred blocks of wood, a few charcoaled branches and a thick pile of ashes in the bottom.
‘What’s that?’ I say, pointing. Raf shines the light on a gap between woodblocks where a hint of green is visible among the black.
‘Fire destroys all traces …’ I say, reaching inside the drum and digging around. When I extract my arm, Raf ’s eyes widen at what I’m gripping in my blackened hand. The remains of a charred green baseball cap with the words Lucky-7 embroidered on the front. ‘Except for when it doesn’t.’
One hour before the storm
It was gone. The money was gone.
Mason groped the underside of the drawer and found nothing but timber. He wrenched it out, flipping it over and ignoring the contents spilling out around his feet.
No.
No!
He scoured the floor underneath the desk in case the envelope had fallen loose. He checked the other drawers. He crawled on his hands and knees over every inch of his bedroom floor.
Two thousand dollars. All the money he had in the world. His escape money.
Gone.
Mason’s heart thudded so hard it felt like it would burst through his chest. His hands trembled as he burrowed them deep into his hair, gripping it between his fingers and tugging, scrunching, ripping.
No, no, no.
She’d found it. He was so stupid. Why didn’t he open that bank account? Even if she’d found out about it, she’d have had no way of accessing the money. Ivy hassling him about it would have been preferable to this. Anything would have been preferable to this feeling of helplessness.
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