He had panicked. He saw that now. Even if the police found it on the Indigenous boy they probably would not even recognise it. And most likely he had sold it already for drugs or whatever so it had already distanced itself from him. He should never have kept it but he could not bring himself to throw it away. It was all still so vivid, like yesterday. Sometimes he could still feel her lips on his. Even so, it had been a stupid, unnecessary risk. He put on his iPod. Pet Shop Boys came up first. He restrained a smile at the irony. He liked them. The music took him back in time to the time he first saw Jess. I must do everything in my power to know you better, he had told himself. He could feel her delicate arm in his grasp, smell her perfume. No, he must not pursue the thought. This was a new start. It had not been easy but he had managed to build a life where the past was dead and buried. Like Jess. Such a beauty and such a waste but you could almost say she brought it on herself.
He was lying on his bed naked but for a pair of silk boxer shorts. Picking up the catalogue he studied the lingerie models. He much preferred these girls in short teddies, homely, slightly amateurish, to those brazen, nude types spreading their legs. He wasn’t a prude by any means but they weren’t for him. These were the best age he thought: seventeen, maybe nineteen, before the world had corrupted them. His hand reached down his silk shorts and lingered …
No. It was no good, not while the boy was out there. How long since he’d had a proper sleep? He had to get over that. The police just weren’t that competent. He finished where he began; annoyed with himself for panicking.
What was I going to do? Hang around all day twiddling my thumbs? In spite of what I’d told myself the previous night, I rose at 6.00. Just four hours sleep but it had been as deep as a Chinese proverb. I drove to Cable Beach, slid into the ocean, swam. My breathing was getting better, my stroke a little more powerful. I sealed my brain to images of the desiccated corpse but allowed myself to wonder if this might be my last day on the job. If so, I was undecided whether to head straight back to Perth. I doubted I would. The Autostrada killer might be up here right now and we had unfinished business.
Back at the Mimosa, I grabbed all the free maps and travel guides I could find in reception and studied them while I ate a fruit breakfast in my room. The South Americans had claimed to have seen a man who resembled Max Coldwell, they thought, at Manning Gorge. That was probably an eight-hour drive from here. The first two to three from Broome to beyond Derby was on a sealed road. After that it was going to be hard yakka bouncing over hard, rocky ground. Still, if I left now I could be there mid to late afternoon. I checked my notebook. The girlie revue sExcitation was playing Derby tonight. There was a slim chance I could get to the gorge, take a look around, and if I struck out still make it to the revue. That’s if I still had a job. What the heck, I may as well take a look at the gorges. Right after I’d called my employers.
‘Yes.’
Dee Verleuwin’s voice was sleep-stained. I imagined her turning a blurry eye to a digital time display and cursing me.
‘There’s a body. It could be Ingrid.’ That woke her up quick. I gave her all the details I had, including the bad news on the DNA.
‘So what can we do?’
I imagined her searching for a cigarette. I told her I was off to follow the Coldwell lead but nothing about Autostrada.
‘I don’t know what reception is like out there, so don’t expect to hear from me until tomorrow,’ I warned. She said she would contact Feister and asked me to try and get back in touch with her as soon as possible.
It still surprises me that you can drive hours anywhere in this world and not see another soul but that’s what it’s like up here. Quite a few vehicles passed me en route to Derby but once I swung up to the Gibb River Road, traffic became a trickle, and then dwindled to nothing at all. Two and a half hours later, having passed a total of three vehicles, I stopped at the Imintji Roadhouse and enjoyed a tea and a pie. And I do mean enjoyed. I felt I’d earned it, like I was the latest in a long line of Leichhardts and Forrests. The tea wasn’t billy, and my arse wasn’t sore from riding camels or mules for days on end, and I’d had the luxury of a fast vehicle and air conditioning and Weddings Parties Anything on the CD player but, I tell you, I had felt keenly the isolation and the slim thread of my humanity in this crucible where, like a recumbent giant, prehistoric dead-earth and rock dwarfed me. The woman who served me at the roadhouse, her name was Jenny, was pleasant and chatty. I guessed even for her and her husband, who was absent at that time, a little human interaction was welcome. I told her who I was and showed photos of Ingrid Feister and Max Coldwell. Like a lot of people she thought the idea of being questioned by a private detective was exotic. The police and rangers had already asked her and her husband to keep an eye out but so far nothing. I mentioned I was heading to Manning Gorge and spoke about the South Americans, and was pleased she remembered them passing through. It gave them credibility and at least encouraged me that the cramps in my feet and the unrelenting vigilance weren’t futile. When I asked if it was possible the vehicle could be around without being detected, she replied that if it stayed away from the roadhouses and carparks there was a load of land and very few people.
‘But eventually somebody will spot you.’
I bought water, went to the toilet and, refreshed, slipped back into explorer mode. It was heading towards four by the time I reached Mount Barnett Roadhouse. It was hacienda style, red earth and gums. A young couple ran the place and they too were duly impressed by my occupation. They also remembered the South Americans, and had been primed by the police, but had nothing to report on Ingrid Feister, Max Coldwell or the vehicle. I paid the fee to gain access to the camping ground and gorge.
‘Is it possible to get to the gorge without coming through here?’
‘By foot, yeah,’ said the young guy, ‘but you’d need to be desperate.’
The sun had been beating its fist angrily on the car body for hours but my air con was holding out with a Rats of Tobruk spirit. It could have been worse. I guessed the temperature at a few degrees under forty. The flies were a problem though. They sought me out, crammed into my face. I drove a few k up the road to the campground, parked in what shade I could find and started on the path leading to the gorge. There was not a vehicle in sight. I was wearing shorts, runners and a long-sleeved army-style shirt. It was a weird experience, like I was the only person left in the world. My mind drifted to whether Coldwell had indeed had a falling out with Feister, killed her, maybe accidentally, and now was hiding out, unable to face the consequences. I walked the path for a while and then saw I had to cross the river to get to the gorge. Thoughtfully, polystyrene boxes were provided to swim your gear across. I only bothered with my shoes and socks. The water was cool and refreshing, the sky azure. I wished I had Tash and Grace with me, they would have loved this.
Once across the river I put my shoes back on and continued to follow the path, my clothes drying quickly. The sun isn’t part of life up here, it is life. It defines everything. The atmosphere was snap dry, the moisture in my clothes leaving me the way a former lover leaves their last kiss, quick and shallow, so it’s a memory before it has even ended.
Out of red earth studded by the odd big gum, there suddenly appeared an eruption of plant life. It wasn’t exactly lush but it was almost thick, with a variety of shrubs, some sporting little orange flowers. Cutting across this surprisingly green border I was confronted with an ancient landscape: rock pools, flat sheets of water trimmed here and there by a sprinkle of rivulets, and across the way low hills of rock, almost pink in the sun, made from chunky Lego-like pieces scattered by an infant god. I edged forward and stared down the gorge. A few hundred metres ahead the bush thickened. Trees edged down cliffs like a herd seeking water, or clumped in little headlands, poking right out into the surrounding pool. Some seemed to sprout from the rock itself. There were no cascades, maybe it was the wrong time of the season for that, but it was much bigger than I could have imagined, with many pools to swim in. The futility of me trying to locate any person up here hit me right then. You might have a chance from a chopper, maybe a plane even, but otherwise forget it. I spent the best part of an hour exploring, not from any belief I might find a clue but simply taking advantage of the opportunity to sightsee.
I was totally alone in one of those prehistoric dimples even nature itself seemed to have forgotten. If the long neck of a dinosaur had suddenly appeared over a ridge it would not have surprised me. I would have stayed but it was too long a trip back. I retraced my steps to the campground, swimming the gorge again. I couldn’t quite dry out on the way back to the car and had to wipe myself over with a spare shirt when I got there. I stopped at the roadhouse and let them know I was heading back to Derby. It’s funny, when you’re in the outback you instantly feel part of the community. I guess it’s the magnitude of space and the paucity of humans. I pulled up next to a dirt-covered diesel four-wheel drive and headed inside.
Sometimes it’s dumb luck that drives your investigation on. Inside the roadhouse were two young guys, modern Leyland brothers but with beards and tanned skin. They were slugging Cokes.
‘You should speak to these guys,’ said the young woman owner when I stepped in. ‘They might have seen the Landcruiser.’
Their names were Ben and Liam. They told me they were just leaving Adcock Gorge, about forty k back towards Derby, and had driven inland for a look around. In a slightly more wooded area they had seen a white Landcruiser. It was odd because it was away from the gorge. They saw nobody around and wondered if it was somebody illegally camping there.
‘Tom’s already called the police,’ said the young woman whose name, I belatedly discovered, was Emily. I thanked them all, got the boys to draw me a map and left, driving fast. It wasn’t just that it was a white Landcruiser – heaven knows there would be a few of them up this way – it was more that the car had been parked in such an odd place. Pushing as hard as I dared, it took me a good forty minutes to find the turn-off. The map they had drawn was surprisingly accurate and seven or eight minutes from the turn-off was the car, unmoved. You would have missed it if you hadn’t driven this way and reason told me not many people, after taking the turn-off, drove in the opposite direction to the gorge. I parked and climbed out, my excitement mounting.
It was Ingrid Feister’s car alright. Stained with red dirt and dead insects, but it was the car. Nobody was around. There was no sign of damage to its outside and the interior looked innocent enough, a couple of shirts and a blanket tossed on a seat. I mulled my next move. The sensible thing would be to wait but then a flock of birds took to the air in a sudden rush, over in the direction of the gorge. On impulse I climbed back into my car and drove through bush onto the main road to the gorge, keeping an eye on the position where I’d seen the birds scatter. I crossed a small creek, parked near the otherwise empty carpark and got out to find the temperature for the first time that day heading south. I beat a path through the bush, which was thick and spiky here, then angled back towards the gorge.
It was a pretty, box-like gorge with deep rock walls and white gums. A small sound, like somebody slapping water, pulled my head to the right and I glimpsed for the merest fraction of time, a figure. Male or female I couldn’t tell, but part of a limb, leg or arm, I wasn’t even sure. Curbing my instinct to yell out I circled around and down through sloping trees and rock ledges and edged around to where I had seen the figure. Up above me now, another plume of birds scattered to the blue sky. I made my way up the rock face as quickly as I could but I was not so young now and had to be careful not to slip. I reached the top in time to see something running away through the bush about fifty metres ahead. I gave chase and this time I did shout.
‘Max? Is that you?’
The pursuit was short – maybe ten seconds – and then I was back into much clearer territory of occasional spinifex. There was no sign of any figure ahead as I scanned left or right. That seemed impossible. Unless …
I heard the sound too late and turned to see a branch driving towards my head.
Clement sat on the floor cross-legged watching Phoebe roll dice and meticulously count out squares. It was her favourite Harry Potter board game, which he kept here in the Derby house for their times together. How much longer, he thought, would it remain so? How much longer would he know what her favourite anything was? She already had Facebook although that was heavily monitored by her mother. Snowy Lane had told him his wife and daughter were in Barcelona. One day that would be Phoebe with Marilyn … and Brian, no doubt. Would she even keep his name? For the first time it occurred to him that he may have another family of his own in the future. A young woman like Louise – and he wasn’t in any sense planning a future with her – but any young woman would likely want her own children. Complication upon complication, he thought as he rolled the dice. He’d hoped Marilyn might have been there when he called to pick up Phoebe but there was no sign of her, and Phoebe was waiting outside ready with her backpack. Perhaps when he dropped her back? When I was Phoebe’s age, he thought, life was so simple, wasn’t it? You read comics. You were the Human Torch or the Hulk. You rode your bike, you were driving a Formula 1. You remembered how many runs you had made when the backyard game restarted the next day. Of course there were bullies, kids at school who had it in for you. There was anxiety, no denying that, it wasn’t nirvana. Nevertheless, before puberty it was a lot less complicated. Nothing in life is harder than finding the right partner – except keeping her – that’s what he thought. He imagined Marilyn in the room with them, playing too, or just sitting on the sofa reading, and the intensity of his loss was so keen he could have cried.