Chapter 20

Harry walked across the petrol-station forecourt, sun baking down on his head. Cars edged past and out onto the highway, heading north. It was a perfect day for a quick trip up the coast.

He slipped into his car, not for the first time wishing that he had a decent ride with air-conditioning. The hangover wasn’t anywhere near as bad as he deserved. He’d woken up a little later than usual, but still forced himself out for his run. After a shower, some paracetamol and breakfast, he felt almost normal. Harry popped out the Counting Crows tape. The time for crying was over. He opened his glovebox and pawed through it until he found was he was looking for. He slid the tape in.

The opening guitar riff of Rage Against the Machine’s ‘Bombtrack’ pulsed through the speakers, and Harry grinned.

He flashed back to the night before, and shook his head. It wasn’t like him. He was usually a melancholic drunk. Not angry, or aggressive. And certainly not sleazy. Redwood was going to be a big problem now, particularly if it turned out that he did indeed have something to do with Rob’s fate. And Christine…She showed a bit of interest in him in the wake of the break-up, and this was how he repaid her? He’d texted her an apology, but she hadn’t responded.

Harry pulled out onto the highway, the Corolla struggling to get up to the 100 kays-per-hour speed limit. Big, shiny four-wheel-drives roared past, most likely forgoing off-road adventures in favour of braving the speed bumps on Noosa’s glitzy shopping strip, an hour or so north of Brisbane. Like members of a secret clan, drivers’ had plastered their rear windows with stickers proclaiming membership of elite schools, and ‘My Family’ decals – stickmen playing golf, women going shopping – masking the reality of overwork and mortgage stress.

The highway threaded through endless suburbs packed with low-set brick homes on small blocks, huddling behind concrete noise barriers. Meagre farmland, two giant radio masts towering over dusty cattle. Eucalypt scrubland looking dry and diseased despite the recent rain.

Then more houses, orange and grey under the sun. Satellite suburbs for the wage slaves. Estates with posh-sounding names that would be forgotten before the houses needed a fresh coat of paint. Crystal Waters. Freshwater Lakes. Paradise Grove. Streets that curled in on themselves like fractals, lined with McMansions and postage-stamp gardens.

Harry passed a billboard for ‘Eden Valley’, a new estate somewhere to the north-west. A nuclear family and a dog, walking in a luminous green rainforest. The Swenson Constructions logo stamped in the bottom right. He wondered again about Nick’s revelation. If the company really was on the brink, and Cardinal killed The Towers, it looked as though there were a lot of projects that would go unfinished.

After about half an hour the suburbs gave way to pine forests – hectare after hectare of plantation timber. A few years earlier a man broke down in one of the plantations. He left his car, got lost, died of thirst. Looking along the rows of identical trees, it wasn’t hard to see how easily that could happen.

Harry pulled off onto Steve Irwin Way, leaving the state forests behind him. Mount Tibragargan loomed over the road – it had always amazed Harry how a geological formation could look so much like a giant face, staring out to sea. At Landsborough he cut across the rail line, then passed a small block of shops and a cricket oval.

Harry checked the street directory on the passenger seat. He loved his iPhone, but there were some things he still liked to do the old-fashioned way. He turned down the volume on the music, concentrating on finding the right street. Lots of low-set houses, established but by no means old. A couple of girls pushed their bikes along the side of the road. He followed the streets back from the highway, towards the mountain. The trees on the sides of the road got bigger, the scrub thicker. The standard house blocks stretched to half an acre and then a full acre.

Harry was struggling to read the numbers on the mail boxes when he saw the woman waiting on the side of the road. She was dressed in old jeans and a t-shirt, with a broad-brimmed straw hat casting her face in shadow. She looked like she’d been doing some gardening. She waved. He pulled over.

‘Harry!’ Not a question. She hurried around the side of the car, opening the passenger door. Harry picked up the street directory and threw it on the floor, just before she dropped into the seat.

She thrust a hand at him. ‘Sorry. Sandy. Sandy Flores.’

‘Harry Hendrick.’

He took her hand. She felt fevered. She was about his Mum’s age, but had clearly spent a lot of time outside in the sun. Deep lines spread out from the corners of her eyes and her mouth. They struck Harry as the sort of lines one got from smiling a lot. But she wasn’t smiling now.

‘Turn around,’ she said.

Harry stared at her.

‘Quickly. The spirits sent me a message last night. About you.’

Harry got the car moving, pulling into Sandy’s driveway so he could turn the car around.

‘A message?’

‘Well, not so much a message. A vision. A place. It’s important.’

‘Important how?’

‘I don’t know! It was like this with the boy. That poor boy. The spirits gave me a vision, showed me where he was. Quick. It’s fading.’

Harry pulled back out onto the street and switched the stereo off. He remembered the article he’d found online. She found a body, just the wrong one. A body. She knew where Rob’s body was buried. Or the spirits knew, and had passed on the information to her. Where would it be? All the way back in Brisbane? Or somewhere up here, in the state forests he’d just motored past? Row after row of pine trees, tombstones stabbing up at the sky.

She directed him to Landsborough, back the way he’d come.

‘You used to do readings? Why not any more?’

‘Shh!’

She laid a hand on his arm. ‘I’m sorry. Sometimes these messages are strong. Sometimes they’re barely audible or visible. This is the latter. We can talk later.’

When they got to the highway, Sandy sat there, head pivoting left and right as cars zoomed past. He could feel the stress radiating off her, smell her sweat.

‘Which way?’ he asked.

The car behind beeped. Harry raised a hand. A couple of Harleys boomed past, heading north. The car beeped again.

‘Sandy?’

‘North. No…south! South!’

Harry pulled out, wheels spinning slightly. Heading towards Brisbane. As they pulled into the traffic, Sandy looked behind her, then ahead, then behind her again.

‘No, no, this looks right,’ she said.

Harry offered her a doubtful look. All the enthusiasm he’d felt this morning, the sense that he was finally going to get some answers, was evaporating. He could feel heat rising up his neck, his scalp prickling with sweat. Panic threatened to take over. What if this was it? What was the next step if this turned out to be as fruitless as it appeared it was going to be? Another trip to the counsellor? A visit to a psychiatric hospital, where they could lock him up so there could be no more nocturnal visits to the tattooist?

He felt so stupid. It was clear they were all in on it. Sian, lying through her teeth. And then laughing about it behind his back with Mack and the rest of them.

No.

The cacophony cut off in his head, just like that. One word. Did he speak it or did someone else? It didn’t matter. He could feel calm returning. His heart rate dropped. The sweat evaporated. He breathed deeply. He was in control of this situation. He was staring down the scope, target firmly within the reticle. He saw the man with the silver hair walking towards the compound. But this time he took the shot. The round opened his target’s head like a melon, blood fanning out on the mud-brick wall. And he felt no remorse. No sadness. No guilt. He felt like a soldier who’d just done the world a favour.

‘…housing estate.’

‘Huh?’ For a moment Harry remained in Afghanistan. Then he saw the truck looming large in front of him and wondered how the hell he’d kept the car on the road. What was it the counsellor had called it? Dissociative fugue.

‘The place. It’s in a housing estate.’

‘Are they talking to you?’

‘No. Yes.’

She turned away from him, staring out at the rows of pine trees. ‘It’s as though someone is trying to talk to me. But they’re a long way away, so all I get is the image.’

‘A long way away? Like Brisbane?’

She laughed, placed a warm hand on his arm. ‘No, not in that way.’

She kept her hand on his arm. ‘That’s one of the tattoos, I take it?’

Harry glanced down, as though he’d forgotten it was there. ‘Yeah. That’s the Fajar Baru one. Will touching it give you anything?’

She shrugged, and drew away. ‘Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. Usually it’s jewellery. Clothing. But I need to stay clear.’

‘Won’t touching the tattoo help?’

She shook her head. A cattle truck roared past in the overtaking lane. Harry glanced over and saw rolling eyes peering at him between wooden slats. The truck stank of shit and death.

‘No. This is…this is something else.’

Harry was starting to think he really would end up driving all the way back to Brisbane when she spoke again.

‘Look for a low brick wall out the front, and green grass,’ she said.

Sandy stared out the side window. Again, Harry felt like this was going to be a waste of time. She’d seen the Eden Valley billboard from the highway, he imagined, absorbed it subconsciously and then regurgitated it as a vision. Except, he recalled, the sign didn’t feature a low brick wall and green grass, it featured an advertising family. Mum, dad, boy, girl.

They rounded the corner, and Harry saw the low brick wall with the green grass. There were also a few weeds. The wall carried a sign: Cedar Falls. There was no cedar to be seen, no waterfalls either.

‘Can you feel it?’ she asked.

Harry nodded. Tension, in his shoulders.

They entered the labyrinth. Curving streets, houses that weren’t identical but clearly siblings. Generated by a computer at a glitzy showroom somewhere. One-storey, two-storey. Single garage, double garage. Some took up their entire allotment of land, some left enough space for a small lawn out the front, cowering behind the faux stone letterbox. This was a housing estate in the prime of its life. All the blocks had been sold, built on and had the landscaping done. But none of the houses had got to the point where they’d started to look dated or seedy. A few had Christmas lights out the front, or a tree positioned so it was visible through the front window.

At every intersection, Sandy asked Harry to wait. Occasionally a four-wheel-drive would roar past, but mostly the only cars he could see were parked in driveways, some being washed. Left. Right. Right. Left. They reached the end of another cul-de-sac, turned around. Sandy asked Harry to pull over. She stared up at the house. A small girl – probably five or six – stared back at her from the garden, then ran into the open garage.

The sun was high in the sky. The car was hot. Harry’s back was sweating and the tattoo there started to ache again. He was irritable.

‘No, not here,’ she said.

Harry pulled out. Repressed the urge to sigh. Up and down streets. They were starting to retrace their steps now, or at least that’s how it felt. Here or there a curtain flicked. The men washing cars stared at Harry’s battered Corolla, rather than ignoring it as they had the first time past.

‘Here,’ Sandy said.

Harry pulled over to the curb. The house was one of the low-set variety.

‘Didn’t we just go past this place?’ Harry said.

Sandy ignored him. Harry peered out at the letterbox, the small lawn. This one looked like it had been put down fairly recently. The garage door was open, but empty. The front door ajar. Harry switched off the engine.

‘Here, what?’

‘Here.’ She gestured with her hands, as though this would make it clearer. ‘This is the place.’

‘And what does it have to do with me?’

A curtain twitched. The hairs on the back of Harry’s neck stood up. Sandy grabbed his hand, squeezed it. She was sweating. The warmth of her hand told him his was cold.

‘I don’t know, sweetie,’ she said. ‘But I don’t sense danger. Not any more.’

Harry’s pulse throbbed in his ears. He wished he’d bought a bottle of water at the servo. His stomach felt light, insubstantial. The last time he could remember feeling quite like this was as he leant in for his first kiss, on Peregian Beach back in the ’90s. An equal mix of fear and excitement.

He climbed out of the car. His legs felt weak, but it was good to stretch them. While he’d been sitting in the car he hadn’t realised how badly they’d been shaking. He took a deep breath. Looked again at the house.

He walked behind the car and saw the screen door open. Someone stepped out from the shade into the sunlight. He saw everything at once. Her rumpled white blouse, hanging loose at the unbuttoned cuffs and around the neckline. The trendy jeans, custom frayed before they reached the store. Big Jackie O sunglasses, masking the apprehension that still showed around her mouth and in her stiff-legged gait.

But most of all, he noticed the tattoos. And that was funny, because she’d gone some way to hide them. But since Dave’s buck’s night he saw them everywhere. Young women, old men, Sailor Jerry rip-offs on kids’ arms. This woman had a tattoo on the inside of her forearm, poking out from under the shirt sleeve. Another only visible between the bottom of her singlet and the top of her jeans. Her long brown hair was tied up in a bun, a pencil holding it in place, and he knew that if she turned he would see the grid there, in the same place as his.

Her shirt glowed in the sunlight. Harry squinted and held a hand over his eyes in a bad TV salute.

She stopped just behind the letterbox, resting one hand on it. Using it as a shield. Wedding band. Whopper of an engagement ring. Harry walked up to her, then realised he didn’t know what to say.

‘I…ah, I’m here…I’m here about Rob and Kyla,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said, and started backing up the path.

Harry ducked around the letterbox, trying to catch up with her. ‘Yes. I’m Harry. Harry Hendrick.’

She flinched at the words. Turned and wrenched the flyscreen door open. ‘No! This isn’t real. This isn’t real.’

Her legs buckled. Harry pushed through the doorway and caught her. She wasn’t heavy but he was having trouble keeping upright himself. Even in the house it seemed too bright. He could taste dust in the air. It was as if electricity was surging through the ground, into their bodies.

When he touched her he felt something big and heavy drop into place. Some dark machine somewhere cranked up a gear, and cogwheels churned away, opening a doorway to a terrible place. He didn’t care. He could feel her body against his, this woman he knew nothing about. She carried secrets. And maybe together they could work this thing out.

The woman regained her footing. ‘No!’ she said, slapping his chest. ‘No! No! No!’ Turning her open hand into a fist.

He pulled her closer, protecting her. Thinking of Rob and Kyla. He didn’t have the full story, but he knew it didn’t end well.

You used a shottie. Half his fucking chest is gone.