May 2020, Benevolence Day Three
‘Nina? Nina?’ Someone was calling her name. She felt strong, warm arms around her, a huff of breath against her ear. A hoarse, worried voice. ‘Nina, what’s wrong, please, please … Sweetheart …’
She blinked, trying to orientate herself. The flashback had been so powerful. She had been there, back in the past, held captive by the same emotions she had felt then. For how long? She wasn’t sure. She only knew that her heart was beating violently, her clothing was damp with perspiration, and there was a headache thumping behind her eyes.
The assistant-keeper’s cottage, that was where she was. And Jude. He was with her. He shifted beneath her, and she realised he was holding her, and they were on the couch. She was sitting on his lap, almost enveloped. There was a red mark on his jaw, as if someone had hit him. She had hit him during her struggles with Murray. She had hit Jude.
She was sick of this. Sick of feeling this way, of reliving the past, of being broken. She pulled away.
He let her go. He looked shaken, ill. Was he remembering the night his mother had collapsed? When Angela had died twice and he’d brought her back? Well, Nina wasn’t going to die. At that moment, she was full of conviction. No matter what Murray did to her next, she was going to survive and grow stronger. She was going to live.
She stared accusingly down at him. ‘You already knew it was Murray’s yacht. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said carefully, watching her. She didn’t blame him for sounding like he was trying to pacify a tiger. Flashbacks were frightening for her, but they must be terrifying for innocent bystanders. She tended to lose all contact with the present as she lived out the trauma of the past. Fighting, screaming, sobbing. She didn’t see or hear the people around her. It had only happened once or twice at work, and she’d managed to lock herself in the bathroom until she had talked herself down. Being here, knowing about Murray, had changed matters, escalated them. Jude must have thought she’d gone insane.
‘So, Murray is on the island? Your brother is here?’ She needed him to confirm it.
He cleared his throat. He seemed to have decided to go along with her and pretend what he had just seen hadn’t happened. ‘I think he must be. I know he has a yacht and I’m sure that’s its name. I’ve never been on it. I don’t have much to do with him anymore. I told you he’s got himself in with a dangerous crowd. He’s not the man you knew—’
Nina closed her eyes and turned away from him. ‘I know Murray better than you think.’ Her voice sounded rough. Her throat hurt. She stood in the doorway as the effects of the flashback faded. She was shaky and nauseous, and she needed to lie down and take some of her medication, but there was no time for that now. She swung around to face him again. He was still watching her like an unexploded bomb.
‘You said, before, that Lis saw Murray and Elle together in the archives.’
‘Yes.’ He got up and moved across to a table which was stacked with files and loose papers. ‘She saw them and she hid. She and Murray … well, the bad time I told you she was having, it was to do with him. She knew he was addicted to gambling, and drugs, too. He boasted to her that he could get hold of anything she wanted—cocaine, MDMA, the lot. She thought she could help him, but he let her know her help wasn’t wanted, so she threatened to go to the police. She thought that might change his mind, shock him into a realisation of what was happening to him. Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect. Murray sent a couple of thugs around to scare her off.’
Nina folded her arms, feeling cold. The sweat was drying. She needed a hot shower. It would have to wait.
‘Did they hurt her?’
‘A few bruises. Mostly, they just frightened the shit out of her.’ He was watching her carefully. ‘Nina, what just happened?’
She shook her head, stopping him before he could start. ‘What were they doing? In the archives, I mean. Murray and Elle.’
‘Lis wondered about that, too. She waited until they’d gone and tracked down the papers they’d photocopied.’ He handed her a file, the contents inside neatly marked. ‘She thought it might interest me. When she heard I was coming here to Benevolence, she wanted to come too. I organised it, even though I knew you wouldn’t be happy, but you didn’t understand what was going on, Nina. And you wouldn’t let me talk to you about it. About anything.’
He was right, but she couldn’t discuss that now. There was too much to take in. Murray was on the island. Her mind was reeling from that fact. And it wasn’t Murray the quiet boy who had laughed with her on the beach and calmly agreed to the future Colin had laid before him. No, this was the Murray she remembered from that night ten years ago, the stranger, the man with the savage laughter and the hard hands. The man who had destroyed her life because he thought he was owed.
‘Nina,’ Jude said wearily. ‘Listen to me. I’m going to make us some coffee, and then we’re going to talk. I’m not taking no for an answer this time.’ He turned to the kerosene stove.
Nina opened the folder. There were pages from the Hobart Recorder, a newspaper now defunct, as well as several other sources. She took them over to the window, where the light was better, and tried to read. The words bobbed before her eyes, meaningless; she couldn’t take them in.
‘Jude?’
The sound of his name brought both their heads up. Lis was standing in the doorway. ‘There were some more drugs tucked under the sleeping bag. White powder, this time. I gave it to Paul.’ She shot Nina a dirty glare as she strode into the cottage.
Jude added a third cup to the two he had lined up. Then, as if remembering whose drugs they might be, his face lost all trace of colour. ‘Christ,’ he whispered, his gaze catching Nina’s. It was a long time since she had seen him look that shattered, as if his world was coming apart, and it gave her no pleasure.
Lis was over by the open laptop, staring at the screen. Jude must have brought it inside when Nina was out of it. ‘Any luck with the drone?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’ Jude hesitated. ‘I was just about to tell Nina about the documents you found. The letter.’
‘Why tell her?’ Lis snapped.
‘Because Murray’s yacht is anchored just off Birds Nest Island,’ Jude said gravely. ‘We think he’s here, Lis. He’s been here all along, and Elle must know it.’
Lis digested that, scowling, but it was all pretence. She sat down clumsily on the couch and Nina could see she was terrified. ‘Bloody Murray,’ Lis gulped. ‘Well, Elle’s gone off somewhere. She was supposed to go up into the lighthouse with Arnie and me, but she said she had to get her other camera, and then she didn’t come back.’
Nina remembered Elle’s frightened face staring up at the drone. If she was in partnership with Murray, then she probably had a bit to be frightened about.
‘As for that,’ Lis nodded at the papers in Nina’s hands, ‘I found out Elle was doing a thesis. Some obscure jewellery robbery in the nineteenth century with connections to Tasmania. God knows how she discovered it. Anyway, she found a letter from a man called Roderick McNeil written on his deathbed. If Murray’s here, then that letter’s the reason why. He’s in debt to some very dangerous people. He can’t pay them back, he’s broke. He needs a bargaining chip, a circuit breaker. I think this is it. His way of getting them off his back until he can come up with a better plan.’
‘A letter?’ Nina sat down beside her on the worn couch, and began to search through the folder.
Lis made an impatient sound and snatched it off her, and leafed through it. She drew out a photocopy and handed it back. ‘The letter,’ she said.
‘Lis,’ Jude sounded a warning.
‘Do I really need to read this now?’ Nina asked. ‘Shouldn’t we be looking for Murray and Elle? I feel as if we should be doing something, not—’
‘You need to read it to understand what Murray is doing here,’ Jude replied, and set down her coffee on the arm of the couch. ‘Read it, Nina. Please.’
She met his eyes and felt something inside her shift. Here they were, she and Jude, and there was so much water under the bridge and yet … It felt as if some things were just as they had been ten years ago. She loved him, had never stopped loving him, and that was going to be a problem. But right now it felt like a blessing.
Nina cleared her throat, deciding to put away those thoughts for later, and focused on the letter. It took a little while for her brain to begin to concentrate properly; it was still struggling with the after-effects of the flashback. Halfway down the page, she began to have a clearer understanding of what she was reading, and went back to the beginning to start again, ignoring Lis’s impatient groan.
When she had finished, and before she could open her mouth, Lis handed her another photocopy. ‘Read this,’ she demanded.
Nina read it. She read about Albert Munro and Elsie Wright, who had run off together after Albert’s wife, Rochelle, was drowned in a shipwreck. She read about Rochelle’s yellow sapphire, which was actually orange and worth a fortune, and which she wore in the form of a brooch. How Rochelle’s body was washed onto the beach at Thankful Cove, and how Roderick McNeil had found her there.
She looked up, but before she could speak, Jude said gently, ‘Drink your coffee, Nina.’
Nina thought about arguing, but in the end it seemed easier just to do as he said. The coffee was good and she wasn’t sure what to say. They were trapped here on an island with no way of contacting the authorities, and it was possible the man they were trapped with was the one who once had raped her.
She suspected Jude might already have an inkling that something wasn’t right—the flashback would have been a clue—but he couldn’t know the whole story. And soon she was going to have to tell him.