Snowy’s words kept echoing through Alicia’s mind as she stood at the kitchen bench, preparing a sandwich from the platter Lynette had left for them.
Atonement? What kind of atonement? What did he mean by that? And what of Donal Murphy, the man who’d been killed in the fire? If he didn’t leave behind a wife and kids, as Snowy had suggested, then who exactly was Blake in relation to him? And why was he so fixated with the guy? Snowy had called Donal a “lad about town,” so she had to wonder—was Blake Morrow Donal’s illegitimate love child?
“You still thinking of old Snowy?” said Claire, creating her own tasty concoction from the cold meats and salad, Perry and Missy beside her.
Alicia nodded, glancing around. The others had already eaten and left them to it. But they all demanded to know where the four of them had vanished to, and she had managed to put them off with a line about scouting for signs of a way out down the mountain. What else could she say? I’ve been hassling an old geezer about the past, and the others were checking voice mail.
Besides, as Lynette reminded them before she followed the others out, “The plan is very simple, people! We’re supposed to be getting fire ready, not spending our precious time trying to stitch Blake up!”
Then she’d told them to “clean up after yourselves” and stormed out of the kitchen.
“She’s cranky with us,” said Missy, stating the bleeding obvious.
“She’s feeling on the outer,” explained Alicia. “She believes in Blake’s innocence, and she knows we’re suspicious of him. I really don’t know why she’s so taken with the guy.”
“About that…,” began Claire just as Simon stepped back into the kitchen.
“Hey there. I thought I’d help with the washing up,” he said, then noticing the awkward silence, asked, “Everything okay?”
His eyes were firmly on Claire, who reached for a sliver of cheese before turning her gaze upon him.
“We’re tickety-boo, thanks Simon,” she said, before thrusting the cheese into her mouth and staring at him, like she was throwing him some kind of challenge.
Now Simon was the one looking awkward, blinking back at her, his hands shoved into his trouser pockets.
Alicia watched this exchange curiously, then picked up her sandwich and said, “Shall we eat out on the deck? Might be nice out there now.”
“You mean hot and smoky,” said Missy, clearly not reading the vibe.
But Alicia preferred hot and smoky to the frosty atmosphere that had just descended inside.
~
After brushing the dead leaves from a table and chairs on the paved terrace outside the dining room, they all took their seats and Claire looked a little more relaxed, but it wouldn’t last. Perry had also noticed the tense exchange, and he rounded on her now.
“You and Mr Crete have a little tiff we don’t know about?” he said.
“Mr Crete, hey? Are we still calling him that?” she replied, smirking as she chomped into her sandwich.
The others watched her furtively for a few moments, then Alicia said, “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s going on, Claire?”
Claire finished chewing, then sighed. “This is what I’ve been trying to tell you all morning. Simon Crete is the imposter!”
They looked at her expectantly, so she ploughed on. “I had been thinking about Mr U. N. Owen from And Then There Were None. You know, Mr Unknown, the imposter with the fake name?”
“Yes? So?” said Perry, pulling a piece of onion from his roll with a grimace.
“So, I started playing with everyone’s names, just testing them out.” She was lying here, of course. It was only Simon’s name she had been playing with, but they didn’t need to know that. Claire felt mortified enough as it was. “Anyway, I kept thinking Crete was such a weird name, and then I checked the guest book in the lobby, and well, it all got even weirder. Simon’s middle name is Edward!”
They were munching away, staring at her, waiting for the punchline, so Claire burst out, “Simon Edward Crete. S. E. Crete. Secret! Get it?”
Now her friends were looking at her like she’d lost the plot entirely, and for a moment Claire felt such relief. Yes! She was mad. Of course Simon wasn’t the imposter! He was far too lovely and far too normal.
Then Missy bobbed her head about and said, “S. E. Crete. Secret! Oh my, that does sound kind of fishy. Just like U. N. Owen. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that! Good work, Claire. Wow, it’s all very sneaky.”
And now Alicia was clicking her fingers and nodding. “And don’t forget Simon’s the one who refused to give his credit card when we booked in. Would only pay cash. That’s a bit of a giveaway that he’s faking his name. But why would he do that? What’s he got to do with all this?”
“Maybe Simon’s related to this Donal Murphy fellow?” said Missy. “His age works in better. Maybe it’s Simon’s dad not Blake’s? And Simon’s real surname is Murphy!”
“Or it could all be a coincidence,” suggested Perry, who was still fixated with Blake. “People do have funny monikers, you know. I went to school with a Wayne Kerr. He had a tough time of it.”
Missy and Claire blinked blankly while Alicia burst out laughing. “Wanker? Really?”
He nodded. “Poor bugger.” He looked at Claire. “We could just ask Simon. See what he’s playing at.”
“I’m not going to ask him!” Claire gasped. “He could be the imposter that Vale was talking about. Which means…”
Her voice trailed off as her eyelashes flickered furiously. It didn’t bear thinking about. Could the calm, controlled man she’d just fallen for really be a cold, ruthless killer? If that was the case, she really was the most dreadful judge of character!
“He must have some ID on him,” said Perry. “You could take a peek in his wallet and check out his driver’s licence, Claire.”
“How am I going to do that without giving the game away? And why me?”
He nudged his eyebrows high. “I think you’d have a better chance of getting an invite to his room to look at his etchings, I mean wallet, than I would. He’s obviously got a crush on you.”
“Really? Do you think so?” She sounded almost wistful, then gave herself a shake. “I am not going into that man’s bedroom, Perry! Especially if he is…”
Again, she couldn’t say the words.
Alicia finished her sandwich and checked her watch. “Look, maybe we should leave it for now. I don’t know what Simon’s playing at, if he’s playing at all, but I do know Lynette is right. We need to focus our energy on getting off this mountain. We keep getting distracted, but there’s no point solving two murders if we end up burnt to a crisp.” She shuddered at the very thought. “Once we’re out of here, we can worry about who’s who and what’s what.”
Begrudgingly they all agreed, but Claire wasn’t feeling quite so agreeable towards Mr S. E. Crete anymore.
Alicia dusted herself off and pushed her plate away. “Do one of you mind taking that back to the kitchen for me so Lynny doesn’t bite my head off? I’m heading back to the escarpment to call Jackson. He’d definitely be there by now, and maybe he has some good news for us.”
She pulled out her smartphone and frowned. The charge was running low. She would have to be quick.
“Want us to come with you?” Perry asked.
“No, you need to hunt down that Lyle book Snowy told me about and find that elusive paper road. It could be our only escape.”
Whether they were escaping an oddly named killer or a burning inferno seemed almost irrelevant at that point.
~
As Alicia stepped back onto Repentance Way, groaning at the thought of another bloody walk, someone was watching, their own irritation growing.
How many times did that woman have to trek off into the forest? What was she playing at? And how could this finally be over if she didn’t butt the hell out?
A sigh, a groan, then the angry voyeur turned away.
~
Perry searched the library for the Lyle family story, but his mind kept wandering to another book—And Then There Were None. Was Simon Crete just trying to be clever, emulating a plot device from an Agatha Christie novel? Trying to show off to his fancy new book club?
Or was it more sinister than that?
He had his suspicions about all of them, but he couldn’t see Simon as a killer. Not really. He’d put money on Ronnie before he put any on Simon. Still, he’d been wrong before and the Finlay girls were right. None of this mattered a jot if they ended up perishing in a fire.
He needed to focus and find this book Snowy had spoken of.
After wading through the biography section, he checked out nonfiction and still came up empty-handed. That’s when he spotted the shelves crammed with romances and crime novels. Hadn’t Snowy made some jibe about it being amongst the fiction? Alicia thought he was joking, but what if he wasn’t?
Two minutes later, Perry was pulling out a thin volume with an off-white hardcover and a black-and-white family sketch of the Lyle Lodge on the front. Above it was the title The Lyle Family Dynasty and below it the subtitle From Logging to the Lodge, by Juliette Lyle-Hampton.”
“Bingo!” he said, placing it to his chest with delight.
~
By the time Alicia had made it back to the escarpment, she was sweating beneath her T-shirt, feeling prickly and irritable. She knew that the rainforest was normally cool, even midsummer, so the heat was more than annoying; it was extremely worrying.
To mollify the fire, they needed cold air and lots of rain, and they needed it fast.
It had just gone two in the afternoon, and Snowy was nowhere in sight. She pulled out her phone and noticed some new messages from her family and some friends at work, but the battery was fast draining, so she quickly texted a group message assuring them all, somewhat dishonestly, that she and Lynette were fine, then called Jackson.
The line was very crackly this time, but his relief at hearing from her came through loud and clear. “Thank goodness you’re okay! I’m at RFS headquarters in Lyleton now and ready to do what I can. How’s everyone up there? How are you holding up?”
“We’re fine, Jackson. Getting the place fire ready. I think all the tasks are keeping us from going insane.”
“Good to hear it. I know what you’re like.” He braced himself and then said, “Any more bodies?”
She would have laughed, but he was being serious and with good reason. “Thankfully, no. How about you? Did the fire chief manage to get closer to that burnt-out car?” She wanted to know if it was the lodge van down there, burnt to a crisp, or if it was Blake’s old Mercedes. And if that was the case, had they also recovered a body?
“Visibility is extremely low, and it’s still too dangerous to check it out,” he told her, “but there’s no clear signs of life, so they’re focusing on other priorities—which includes getting you lot out of there alive.”
“Thank you,” she said, wondering if he realised how triggering that sentence was.
“I asked Benson about this Blake Morrow fellow you mentioned last time we spoke, but he hasn’t had any contact with anyone fitting that description or seen anyone driving around in an old Merc.”
The fact that Blake hadn’t identified himself when he got into Lyleton was a bad sign and they both knew it. If Blake hadn’t got caught in the fire on the way down the mountain, why hadn’t he checked in, called the cavalry as he promised he would?
As far as Alicia was concerned, there could only be three answers to that: Blake hadn’t survived the drive, he’d survived and kept going, or he’d turned back. And if that was the case, where was he and why was he still in hiding?
“The whole town is abuzz with the fire,” Jackson was saying. “The smoke here is so intense, and anyone who’s not RFS has packed up and cleared out.”
“Lucky them,” Alicia said. “Smoke’s not so bad up here; maybe we’re gonna be okay.”
“Or maybe it’s more about how the smoke moves in the hot air,” Jackson said, making her heart skip a beat. “Listen I’ve got some bad news for you.”
“Oh good,” she said. “I was afraid things weren’t grim enough.”
He chuckled briefly. “Sorry, but I thought you should know—Benson says the fire is suspicious, at least in part. They’re not yet sure how it started, but there are clear signs of accelerant in at least one location—Cooper’s Crossing. We’re lucky it’s going down the mountain, not up at this stage. I’m not sure how they work all this out, and what, if anything, it means for you. I wasn’t even sure I should tell you but—”
“No, I’m glad you did,” she said. “Don’t keep anything from me, Jackson. We need all the information we can get.”
“That’s what I figured. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the lodge. Teenagers and pyromaniacs start fires all the time. Occasionally they even work for the RFS—gives them a sense of purpose, excitement.”
“It’s certainly exciting.” Her tone was droll.
“Honey, we’re doing everything we can to get through to you. I’m hoping to have you in my arms by close of day.”
She sighed. She was hoping for that too.
“If there weren’t so many trees around the lodge,” Jackson continued, “they would have winched you out via chopper ages ago.”
“If there weren’t so many trees, it wouldn’t have happened in the first place,” Alicia quipped, but she didn’t blame Mother Nature for this. Not one bit. If what Jackson said was true, it was a human being who drove halfway up the mountain and set the place alight.
Or did they drive down?
Jackson took Alicia’s silence for what it was and said, “Don’t overthink things. Stick to the plan we talked about earlier. Get your supplies together and be ready for an evacuation. Any luck finding the maps of the fire trails? Benson gave me one I can email across to you now, if you like?”
Alicia glanced at the phone battery and said, “You can try, but I’m low on charge. It’ll probably drop out any second. Perry’s onto it though.” There was no time to mention the paper road—or Snowy for that matter—so she added, “We’ll find a way out.”
“I really don’t know why the owner isn’t stepping up a bit,” Jackson said, his tone now testy. “They should know the tracks off hand, should really be the one phoning in too, not you. You’re a paying guest!”
“Owner?” she said, not understanding. “You mean the manager? Vale? He’s dead, remember?”
“No, Benson said the owner is also up there with you. At least I think that’s what he said.”
“We’re all alone up here, Jackson. There’s no owner. It’s just me and the book club, unless they’re keeping their identity a secret…”
She gasped, suddenly thinking of S. E. Crete.
“You okay, babe?”
“Did Benson say it was the new owner up here? The one who recently bought the place?”
“Um, I’m not sure, to be honest. Look, I might have got my wires crossed about that one. You’re going to be okay, so please don’t panic. Just hold tight, stay vigilant and—”
And then the line went dead.
~
Groaning at the disconnected call, Jackson thrust his phone into his pocket and returned inside the concrete, besser-block building that housed Lyleton’s RFS headquarters. He smiled at the young girl sitting at the front desk. She was sixteen if she was a day but had a phone at each ear and was reading something out from the computer in front of her. Something to do with the humidity levels and how unseasonably low they were.
She grinned back at him, looking completely unfazed, and he wanted to pull her into a hug and thank her for everything she was doing, and all for complete strangers. He wanted to thank every single one of them, the entire motley crew—and motley was the perfect word for this lot. Apart from Benson—the town’s head librarian would you believe?—there were two teenage boys, barely out of school, a young mum and her own mother, pushing fifty, a couple of local tradesmen covered in tatts, and at least two councillors, one in his midseventies. They were all members of the community, with their own homes and loved ones to worry about, yet their only concern at this point was for the guests at Lyle’s Lodge. Until they got them all out safely, Benson told Jackson, they would not rest.
It filled him with so much confidence, and humility too.
This lot were volunteers and would not be paid one red cent for their efforts. At least coppers got a pay cheque and plenty of accolades. These were Australia’s true heroes, he decided, swallowing back the lump that had developed in his throat.
He made his way to a small desk at the back of the office where he’d set himself up and tried to focus back on Alicia. She said she was okay, but he knew better. He hadn’t asked too much about the murders, desperately wanted her to focus on getting the hell off that mountain, but he knew what Alicia was like, and he knew the book club too. There was no chance they weren’t poking about the corpses, doing a little sleuthing. And who could blame them? If the killer was still up there with them, it might very well be their only chance.
His mood grew dark, thinking about that.
Like Alicia, Jackson was wondering about the missing book club member. Like her, he wondered whether Blake was somehow responsible for the murders and had conveniently cleared off or if it was worse than that and he was still up there, lurking in the woods, looking for more prey.
Most murders were logical. Jackson knew that from experience. But every now and then you came across a lunatic whose actions defied logic.
Were the Murder Mystery Book Club up against a psychopath this time? And if so, he didn’t like their chances. This lot thought they were clever, and most of the time they were. But, like Agatha Christie herself, they relied on facts and clues and reasoning—all things a psychopath sneered at.
You didn’t need any of that to commit murder; you just needed a thirst for blood…
Jackson wiped a hand across his face, trying to refocus. All this worrying was not going to help Alicia, but maybe Google would. He stabbed at the keyboard in front of him, tapping in the name she had given him earlier—Blake Morrow.
Who the hell was this Morrow bloke?
Expecting very little, Jackson was surprised to find thousands of search possibilities appear before him. He zeroed in on the most salacious option, a news site with words like “police statement,” “blackmail,” and “shattered lives” and frowned as he tapped the page open. Then he sat forward and began scanning it, shaking his head incredulously.
He wanted to call Alicia straight back, but of course he couldn’t. Her phone had died and she wouldn’t be contactable for hours. Groaning now, he caught the eye of the young girl and offered her a reassuring wave, then glared back at his computer.
Oh, Blake Morrow was after blood all right, just not the kind Jackson had been expecting.