‘Please Peter, give yourself up. I still love you. But it’s time to stop this, please, for me.’
The woman’s accent, a weird mix of German, English and Irish, sent by the wonders of technology via satellite into a receiver in far-off Perth was further distorted by the crackle of the two-way radio. She persisted over and over. ‘Please, Peter, speak to me, pick up.’
At the radio itself there was no response but the chatter so organically different from the slow drumming of rain on spare earth, the default sound for hundreds of ks, was caught by the tall skinny man who had ventured out today to see if anything of his family’s fishing hut remained. He was not confident. The hut was just a few sheets of tin over a wooden frame, no more than a shelter, really. The sound of a small plane buzzing above had persisted for more than an hour now, since he’d started walking from his cousin’s. Just when it’s too wet for mosquitoes you get a big one buzzing over your head, he thought to himself. He assumed it was to do with the storm, maybe taking photos for TV. He hadn’t seen TV for a couple of days and his radio needed batteries but his experience told him it would all sort itself out soon enough. All he was thinking about was any of those big tides washing crocodiles in closer. Little dry gullies become creeks overnight, you had to watch yourself. That’s when he heard the crackling sound and diverted to investigate. Campers, is what he was thinking, and laughed. They picked a bad time for a camping holiday. The sound was stronger now, sounded like an old woman’s voice but all distorted. He stopped and once more there was only drumming rain and that electronic scratch. The police vehicle was ten metres away from him. He was looking at its rear. Seemed to him it might have been on one of the narrow walk tracks here and then, wham! A big branch had fallen right across the cabin, crunched it down like a soft-drink can. He jogged over, his old runners squelching with every stride. He approached cautiously from the driver side. The young man at the wheel, a policeman he guessed, was twisted, looking away into the distance with eyes of a dead fish in the bucket on the way home. The cabin had been pushed down right onto his neck by the big branch on top of it. Not a mark on him, but he was dead for sure. The old woman’s voice crackled through the radio again.
‘Peter, please answer me if you can hear me. It’s not too late, love.’