Authors: Belinda Pollard
“Huh!”
“Honestly, you guys!” Rachel exclaimed. “I coped with the news about Adam and Sharon much better than this horrible argument.”
“Oh, poor little delicate flower!” exploded Erica. “It’s all about Rachel. Whatever else we do, we mustn’t upset you! No one else is suffering here, we’re all having a lovely holiday.” She stood and stomped off into the rain, whipping her hood up over her head with a sharp snap.
Rachel burst into tears. Callie went to her, hugging her. Jack stood awkwardly, wanting to escape and yet wanting to help. But what could he do?
He caught Callie’s eye. “I guess I messed that one right up,” he said.
Callie spoke firmly. “You did an amazing job. That was never going to be an easy conversation, so what did you expect?” She raised her eyebrows, her mouth wry. “She’ll come back when she gets scared. Or cold. She’s left her pack here.”
“Oh.” He glanced at Erica’s rucksack, propped next to Callie’s, and then looked up the mountain for a bit, and then down at an angular rock. He started kicking it absentmindedly with the side of his boot. Rachel was still weeping into Callie’s shoulder. “Um, it’s just that we’ve got to sort out…” Jack began. He waved vaguely down the hill, not wanting to say “Adam’s body” in Rachel’s hearing when she was already upset.
“Yeah, I know. We’ll get onto that. Just give me a minute. Go and pick some ferns or something, why don’t you?”
He left, gratefully.
34
“Interpol called,” said Amber, as Peter walked back into the police station. Even his watch house assistant had volunteered for overtime this week. He wished he’d been there to take the call, but the fact was, the conversation with Ellen had been very valuable.
“Any news?”
“Brisbane managed to salvage a couple of suspicious-looking emails that had been deleted from Kain Vindico’s computer. I’ve printed them out and put them on your desk. They don’t say that much, but they seem to be referring to promises made in phone calls. Nothing strange on Erica Bonkowski’s computer. They’ve also sent through the coroner’s report on that girl who committed suicide. I forwarded it on to the pathologist. Was that the right thing to do?”
She looked uncertain, but Peter nodded in approval. He liked his team members to take initiative. She moved on to her last piece of news. “The records show that someone asked to see that report back in February this year. You’ll never guess who.”
Peter raised one eyebrow a millimeter and waited.
“Bryan Smithton, that’s who.”
35
The steep slopes were alive with waterfalls, even though the rain was taking a breather. Jack picked his way carefully around the landslip that held Adam in its grasp, looking for a path the group could use later. They needed to get upstream of the pile of debris before nightfall, and find a stable place to sleep in relative safety.
He paused at the peak of the mound, and looked up the river. The cloud had lifted, and he could see to the full thunderous height of the cirque at the head of the valley, with a lopsided pasting of snow—or was it a glacier?—at its center. The rim of the mountains was in front and to both sides, far above. He swung round to look downstream, taking in the majesty of more steep and lofty slopes marching away into the distance, following the twists and turns of the leaping river, their colors softening the further away they got.
In spite of the pains in his body, the ache in his heart, and the fear that never really subsided even when he was asleep, Jack felt his spirits lift. It was, quite simply, a glorious view. He pulled his shoulders back, filled his lungs with air, and reveled in the uncomplicated joy of being alive and the freedom of a hoodless head after so many hours of claustrophobic rain.
Thank you God.
Returning to his task with renewed motivation, he continued upstream, looking for a route that was sufficiently elevated in case the river rose any further. He could see what might be a usable camping platform further up, but he needed to make sure they could get there without too difficult a climb.
He clambered across a small field of boulders, and then sidled along a rocky ledge for a few meters. It was manageable—the drop wasn’t enormous. As he prepared to round the end of the ledge he glanced at the ground for his next foot placement, and saw something that made the blood drain from his face and his innards contract. A footprint, from a large boot. It could be no more than a couple of hours old—the heavy rain earlier would have washed it away.
Fighting down fear, he peered carefully round the corner of the rock face, dreading the gunshot that might be the last thing he ever heard. That’s if he could even hear it over the hammering of his heart in his ears. He could see nothing suspicious, but he didn’t have a full view of the rocky platform. He pressed himself in against the rock, and scanned the other side of the valley, and back the way he’d come, searching for anything that didn’t seem right. All he saw were rocks and trees and mountain scrub, looking back at him with blank faces. He craned his neck and tried to check above him, but it was pointless—all he could see was more of the rock face curving away upwards—and his head spun with dizziness at that strange angle, threatening to make him fall.
He pulled back in against the rock, and waited for his equilibrium to settle. Peering around the corner again, he dropped to the ground, and edged forward on all fours in the mud, constantly scanning for anything that moved. He peered round a boulder and saw it. A tent. Kain’s tent, if he wasn’t mistaken. Relief flooded his body, and then sucked back out again like a receding wave as he recalled what had happened to Adam. What if Kain was the shooter? Or he might even have met the same fate.
He stayed behind his boulder and called out. “Kain! Are you in there?”
There was movement at the mouth of the tent, and Kain’s face and shoulders appeared. He didn’t answer, but stared at Jack silently, his eyes dark and unreadable.
Jack said, “Are you okay?” He stood tentatively and walked towards the tent, trying to see if Kain had anything in his hands while also scanning the mountainside for signs of movement—a nearly-impossible combination of tasks.
“No, I’m not. I’ve sprained my ankle walking in that quagmire. We should have stayed back at the rock bivvy, like I said.”
“Yeah, probably.” Jack spoke dismissively, and half turned away. He’d actually been thinking the same thing himself, after the horrors of the past few hours.
But there’s no way I’m agreeing with you.
After a pause, Kain spoke again. “When the cloud lifted, I saw there’d been some landslides down the valley. Everyone okay?”
The question probably represented a concession of sorts, a white flag. But Jack doubted Kain’s sincerity, and found himself wanting to shock. His eyes slid back to Kain’s face. “No, we’re not okay. Callie was hurt, and Adam’s dead.” For all the reaction the bald statement got, he might have been reciting the train timetable. “Adam was shot,” he added.
That did the trick at last. Still crouched in the tent opening, Kain visibly recoiled and his eyes widened. “Shot? Who shot him? Who’s got a gun?” He stared at Jack.
Looks like Kain’s not the shooter.
“How should I know? That’s what we’ve been trying to figure out. The girls are terrified.” And the boy too, but there was no need to mention that.
Now Kain started to look around him, scanning the slopes and the cliffs above, unsettled. “What are you doing about it?”
“We’re being careful. We’re looking out for each other. But first of all, we need to get Adam’s body off the landslide. Will you come and help me with it?”
“I just told you, I sprained my ankle. I need to rest it.” He withdrew inside the tent.
Jack wheeled around, stomping back the way he’d come, so angry that his fear evaporated in its heat and he didn’t even feel the pain in his injured knee. He’d sidled back along the ledge and traversed the boulder field before he’d even registered what he was doing.
Slow down Jack. You’ll hurt yourself, or get yourself shot. And you’re supposed to be a forgiving person, remember?
“But, God, I don’t know
how
to forgive a pratt like that,” he shouted at the sky, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. “I know I should forgive him, and I know I’ve done plenty of things wrong myself, but I’m just
so
tired. How can he not help us?!” He subsided onto a rock, breathing roughly and trying to contain his anger. At last, not exactly tranquil, but capable of being moderately sensible, he continued through the muddy forest above the river.
As he approached the path he’d earlier picked out across the landslide zone, a flicker of light caught his eye, down near the river. Instantly alert, he crouched behind some ferns and watched. As moments passed, it dawned on him what he was seeing. A shaft of pallid sunlight had fought its way through a momentary break in the cloud cover, and hit a shallow pool of water that had been dammed by the landslide debris. The fleeting sunshine was now gone again, but he could see the tiny pond, not much more than a deep puddle, and something flickering within it. Something silvery. Fish! They’d been trapped by the very destruction that had swept Adam away.
Jack worked his way down the incline, now scanning the slopes around, now looking for a foothold, now looking at their prospective dinner. Eventually, perched above the pool with a foot either side, he plunged in a hand and grappled with one of the fish. It slid through his grasp and he teetered and almost fell, jerking his painful knee.
He rearranged his feet, and this time grabbed with both hands. Success! He lifted the fish up, and struggled to keep hold of it as it flipped and whipped in his hands. How to kill it?
And quickly, before I lose the thing altogether!
He looked around and spied a fairly solid rock within reach among the tangle. Grasping the fish firmly round the tail, he swung it over his head in a sweeping arc and brought it crashing down on the rock. It stopped whipping around, but he couldn’t tell if it was dead or merely surprised. Before it had any chance to rethink its position, he needed to catch its friend, and get them both away where he couldn’t lose them. He lined up carefully and plunged in after the second fish, repeating the process.
Catch in hand, he walked back to the women, light of step, an uncontrollable grin on his face. As he stepped back onto more-or-less solid ground and drew near to the little ferny grotto where he’d left them, he saw through the trees that Erica had returned, as prophesied.
Callie was facing the other way, but she heard him approaching, and stood to greet him, hands on hips. “Where the hell have you been? We thought you’d been shot or something, you stupid idiot.” Her voice was sharp, her face drawn.
He said nothing, just held the fish out at shoulder height in front of him, one in each hand.
“Oh!” She back-pedaled faster than anyone he’d ever seen, her eyes widening in delight. “I take it all back. You wonderful, wonderful man!”
***
Jack acquiesced with bad grace when the women resolved to share the precious fish with Kain.
“He might be quite badly hurt,” Rachel said.
“Maybe he’s having trouble walking,” Callie said. “But no matter why he’s done this or how we feel about it, we should still do what’s right.”
Jack noticed that Erica did not jump to her boyfriend’s defense. Things seemed to have cooled between them.
“It’ll be easier to light a cooking fire up there than down in this bog, I suppose,” he said, relenting.
That left Adam’s body to be dealt with, by an injured not-very-large man, and three women in varying states of diminished health and strength. Their need to get him down off the landslide debris was not purely sentimental. His rucksack, still strapped to his body, contained a significant portion of their survival equipment—not least his hunting knife, which they needed to prepare the fish.
It was hard to know who to excuse from stretcher-bearer duties. Each of the four had limitations that made it difficult. Jack longed to keep Callie out of it, because of the pummeling she’d taken in her fall. But aside from worrying that the others would find his concern for her transparent, one look told him that Callie would not be sidelined, and so he said nothing. Jack felt a quiet rage that Kain did not even care enough to come pay his respects to an old friend.
Perched precariously atop the mountain of shredded rainforest, they worked carefully to separate Adam from his rucksack. Jack saw that while Rachel gazed upon Adam’s face and even touched his cheek with tenderness, Erica deliberately did not look at the dead man’s face at all. She remained focused on the arm she was extracting from his rucksack harness. He glanced at Callie and she raised one eyebrow at him; she’d noticed it too.
The rucksack was heavy, so they took a corner each and carried it back to stable ground, then extracted Adam’s sleeping bag and a couple of ropes to knot at the corners, turning it into a makeshift stretcher. Struggling back down the treacherous mound with their burden a few minutes later, Jack found the thought flitting across his mind:
so that’s why they call it a dead weight
. He felt his muscles straining with the load, and heard his companions breathing hard.
The best plan he’d been able to come up with was to place Adam in his orange bag in an open area up towards the top of the landslip, where he’d seen a large flat boulder that seemed to have finished its sliding. The women were deferring to Jack with regard to decisions about the body. Perhaps, after Sharon, “offices for the dead” had become his responsibility. Team chaplain, as Adam had joked so many days ago. He hoped he wouldn’t be called upon to do it again.
The simple ceremony they’d conducted for Sharon had been filled with grief, and fear of the mountains. With Adam, everything had changed. They now knew that neither Sharon nor Adam had died of natural causes. Every rock and tree seemed to be watching them, every shadow concealed an assassin. Jack longed to get out of the clearing where he felt so vulnerable, back to where they could hide themselves under the tree cover—not that foliage had saved Adam.