The sun was still behind the range when the Pajero, carrying the three of them, left the campground to travel the six kilometres to Kings Canyon. Sara was heavy-eyed; her mind had been too busy for further sleep. Jack had watched her as she came to the fire for breakfast.
‘Are you sure you want to go on with this? There’s no real need after all.’
‘We’ve come this far.’ She drew a long breath. ‘I may as well see it. Benny and I – we never got to the spring, you know.’
Paul, who was trying to pour from the billy, swore as it spilled, and jerked his head up. ‘You’ve remembered?’
‘Everything, yes. Well, so far as I know,’ she admitted. ‘Which is another reason for going. I’ll fill you in later. How did you sleep?’
‘What? Oh, fine. A few aches this morning. So your memory’s come back, that’s great!’
‘The memory of a six-year-old. It’s not proof,’ she said shortly, and was immediately sorry she had snapped at him. Relenting, she added, ‘I know why I reacted as I did at the beach though. I’ll explain that too, once we’re there.’
They parked where the track into the canyon ended, in a space where the wattle scrub had been cleared away for the purpose. As briefly as she could Sara spoke of what she’d learned. Paul listened carefully, his dark face thoughtful. When she had finished he nodded. ‘It covers all the points for me. It’ll make a hell of a story but whether it’s good enough for an arrest, or to convince your father, remains to be seen.’
Sara was stunned into silence and it was Jack who said roughly, ‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean? Chris’sake, man! Why wouldn’t he believe his own daughter?’
Paul flicked him a look. ‘Wake up, cowboy.’ His tone was unfriendly. Either he hadn’t forgiven the punch, or he didn’t like being questioned about his own world. ‘Old JC is a multimillionaire and his history’s well known. How many conmen do you think, through the years, have tried to sell him news of his daughter? Or even his actual daughter? You want my best guess? At least a dozen. It’s why he’s so hostile to the press. Only a DNA test will convince him. Give me the exclusive on this, Sara, and I’ll do my damnedest to get my paper to pay for the test. They’re not cheap. They take a while to process, too.’
Sara said, ‘I’m not baring my life again for anyone else.’
‘Good.’ He hesitated. ‘We should get the test started, I think, before I contact JC.’
‘Whatever.’ Until now Sara had not considered the reality of having a father. Not the actual man who had once underpinned her world. He would have changed, of course he would have, from the strong god-like figure she remembered, the one who had swung her up in his arms and ridden her on his shoulders. The one whose stern voice had let her and her twin know it when they had done something wrong. He had been the kingpin of their young worlds and if she’d had time since Jack had woken her last night to think beyond the events of childhood, she’d have assumed he would still be the same. It shocked her to think that he might doubt her, might demand proof of the legitimacy of her claim. Troubled, she put the thought from her mind and turned to Paul. ‘So, where were we camped back then, do you know?’
‘Not exactly, but probably somewhere close to here. The ground’s pretty uneven further in. You don’t —’
‘No.’ She didn’t wait for his question. ‘There was a little creek, like that one. That’s all I’d be sure of.’
‘Let’s follow it up, then,’ Jack said.
This early the canyon was in shadow, only the tops of the western side touched to red by the sun. Compared with the surrounding flatness its walls looked incredibly high, the upper reaches formed from sheer slabs of rock that towered above the eucalyptus foliage like an island rising from a sea of green. Jack took the lead, tramping through scrubby wattle and then a band of silvery grey shrub that he identified as holly grevillea. Its leaves bore the spikes to prove its name. Sara recognised spinifex and the clumpy growth that Jack had said was kangaroo grass. The creek widened and shallowed; the pad they were following clung to the gradually rising near wall, which was fractured and worn by weather and time.
Sara, using her arms to fend off branches and steadying her steps against boulders and tree trunks, wondered if it ever rained out here. The low scrub-covered sand drifts in the creek bed and the depth of bark and debris littered along its bank showed that it was an infrequent occurrence. Some of the wattle was in bloom, lending its fragrance to the morning air, and it was cool enough still for the birds to be active. There were honeyeaters in the grevillea, the bold flashes of parrots among the gum tops and myriad other smaller birds she couldn’t name. Above, in the brilliant sky, kites rode the updrafts on outspread wings.
Sara tried to reconcile it with her dream, but her recollections focused more on herself and Benny than the actual area. Besides, she had been smaller then. The scrub that now she could see through and sometimes over would have completely engulfed children. The boulders that were chest high must have been well above their heads. She looked in vain for the one they had climbed and slid down. There were so many possibilities and twenty years, even allowing for the slowness of desert growth, must have changed the look of the country.
Jack had stopped to pluck a switch for the ever-present flies. He cocked a brow at her. ‘Are you getting anything from it?’
She shook her head in frustration. ‘I’m not looking at it from the same viewpoint, that’s the trouble. They were half my height.’ In her mind’s eye she could see them trotting easily beneath the branches she was pushing her way through, the two bobbing heads with their billed hats and nape protectors, one red, one yellow. ‘It’s like returning to your primary school years later – everything’s so small and crowded, even the playground you used to think was enormous.’
‘It’s quite a sight anyway.’ Jack was gazing around. Paul was scribbling on a pad. ‘What’re you doing?’
‘Getting down a sense of the place. Who would ever think a crime could be committed somewhere this wild and remote? Though I suppose,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘that fact makes it the ideal venue.’
‘Not if the locals hadn’t buggered the kids’ chances from the outset,’ Jack argued. ‘The droves of people that came in to help with the search put paid to any hope of ever finding anything useful. The cops should immediately have cordoned the place off and got a tracker in, but I suppose by the time they got out here it was already too late. Randall might’ve been a property owner but he wasn’t desert-bred. Tracks last out here – sometimes for years, if there’s no rain or five hundred volunteers tramping ’em to death. I’d lay odds that, given a clear field, a tracker would’ve known —’
‘Jack,’ Sara said, an odd edge to her voice. They were deep in the gorge now and she was pointing ahead at a massive block of stone, the size of a room and so even that it almost looked square. ‘There! That’s where she was, by that rock – Kitty. That’s where she led us back from. Down to the creek first, then that way.’ Sara was moving as she spoke, going up close enough to touch the red solidity of the huge stone, then following its edge to the creek side. ‘We went down here.’ She trod unerringly as if in a trance through rocks and tangles of dead hop bush, angling across the shallow creek bed and, arrested by her sudden certainty, the men followed unquestioning.
Sara led them by degrees, stopping occasionally to turn aside where it was impossible to push through the scrub, but always veering back to her original line as if she could actually see the two little phantom figures before her. Her gaze was fixed ahead. Jack, exchanging a glance with Paul, wondered if there was some point on the canyon wall by which she unconsciously navigated. They were more than halfway back to the mouth of the canyon, the rock on the eastern side sinking so that the cliff became a steep buttress, when she abruptly stopped.
‘Here.’ Sara was casting about her as if suddenly lost. ‘I think it was somewhere here that he was waiting, or perhaps coming to meet her.’ The purpose seemed to leave her. ‘It’s where – at least, I think – where we started to struggle. But she was dragging me then and I – he carried Benny. He screamed and hit him and kicked. His face was so red from temper and from being held upside down, I expect.’
She moved aimlessly around the rocks as if she had lost her way, then sank down onto one, without regard for its position in the sun. Markham, Jack saw, had his camera out again.
‘It was twenty years back,’ Jack reminded her. ‘What is it that makes you think this is it?’
‘What?’ Her thoughts had been far away. ‘Oh.’ She blinked as if suddenly waking, the dazed look clearing from her green eyes. ‘I – I’m not sure. Did I say that? I’m sorry, Jack. Half the time it seems like yesterday and then there’s a sort of gap and I hardly know who I am or how old I am. The double timelines are doing my head in.’
‘I’m not surprised.’ He poured a drink from the water bottle. ‘Here, it’s heating up and you’re sitting in the sun. Come over into the shade. Have you had enough bush bashing, or do you want to go onto the spring? Could be a way off.’ He swung the heavy water container onto a rock and waved the cup at the journalist. ‘You wanna drink?’
‘Thanks.’ Paul took the container and Sara followed Jack into the shade. His quick eyes caught the movement of a small lizard that had been sunbaking on the stone as it whisked out of sight into a crack. ‘Keep an eye open for snakes,’ he cautioned her, then bent suddenly to a patch of faded colour half-hidden by red gravel and the siftings of old grey leaf litter.
It was his stillness, Sara thought, that caused her to notice. ‘What is it?’
He turned to her then, dumbly proffering the object he’d found, faded and half rotted but still recognisable as a child’s hat. The bill had peeled and the crown was missing but the red nape flap was still attached to the remnants, the once-bright colour faded now to an anaemic pink.
Sara took the rag in trembling fingers.
‘Oh, God. It’s Benny’s hat.’ She looked wildly about, tears starting to her eyes. ‘I was right, then. This is where —’ Overcome, she sank to the earth, cradling the pathetic relic to her breast, the tears rolling down her pale cheeks. ‘He didn’t have a chance,’ she cried. ‘They murdered him. He was a little child, Jack, younger even than Becky and they killed him.’
‘I know.’ His hand, warm and solid, patted her shoulder. Sara didn’t see his face twist in pain for her own suffering or the inimical look he cast at the journalist, as if fearing the man would breach her privacy by choosing to photograph the moment.
There was no further talk of finding the spring. Returned again to the campsite, Paul looked at Jack. ‘I’ve got all I need. So we’ll head straight back to Alice?’
‘The old mission for starters. Then we’ll see how we’re travelling. We’ve used up a fair bit of the day and I’m not driving that road in the dark.’
‘It’d be cooler,’ Paul protested. ‘And the track’s plain enough if you’re worried about losing it. We could be in town by midnight.’
‘We could do an axle too,’ Jack retorted. ‘This is the desert; you don’t take chances with it. You’re free to suit yourself of course but if it comes to it, we’ll be camping.’
Sara left them talking and packing up and got into the Toyota. She had said little since her display of grief. She placed the hat she was still clutching in the glove box. Her father might want it, either as proof of her story or as the last tangible link with his son. It was odd to think that she couldn’t guess how he would feel about it – about her. Did he still grieve for his twins or was his memory of them no more than an old regret? She hadn’t even thought to ask Paul if he had remarried. It seemed highly likely. It was more than twenty years since Mary Randall had killed herself. Which meant that Sara probably had half-brothers or -sisters. How would they feel to suddenly find themselves with an older sibling, supposedly long dead, who’d come miraculously back to life?
Muttering something uncomplimentary under his breath about the journalist, Jack slammed his door shut and glanced across at her.
‘You okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ Sara said and realised that it was true. Yes, she was exhausted and sad, bereft in a way that she suspected only another twin would understand, but the storm of tears seemed to have drained a weight from her chest, as if a bladder of hurt somewhere inside her had burst, leaving her freer and lighter. ‘Jack, I was just wondering, do you happen to know if JC Randall is married?’ It seemed too strange as yet to call him my father.
He started the motor and thought about it. ‘I dunno. Maybe. All I know about the man is that he owns a trucking company and he’s a venture capitalist – whatever the hell that is. I’ve never paid any attention, and any road it’s the sort of wealthy blokes that have racehorses and buy football teams, or go in for politics that make the news. He doesn’t. Markham would know though.’
‘I’ll ask him.’
She settled into her seat, tucking her hands under her hat as he swung away from the campground, the red dust the vehicle raised visible for miles across the flat stretch of desert that ran from the range to the far horizon.