Authors: Belinda Pollard
“Don’t forget to tape this for Adam’s fiancée,” Callie said suddenly. “Like you did for Sharon’s son. Sheena might want to see it some time.”
Before Jack could reply, Erica burst into gusty tears, gulping in air in spasms. Rachel put her arm around Erica’s shoulders. “Shhh,” she soothed, rubbing Erica’s arm. “It’ll be okay.”
“No it won’t.” Erica buried her face in her hands. “It won’t ever be okay.” She eventually got herself under control again, and remained silent, staring at her feet, as each of the others made a short statement in tribute to Adam.
By the time the four of them were sidling along the last section of rock ledge leading to the night’s chosen camp, loaded with extras sorted from Adam’s pack and the ferns they’d gathered for the evening meal, they were exhausted and dispirited and incapable of taking much care to avoid any possible sniper.
Kain must have heard them coming. He was standing outside his tent, staring at them wordlessly as they rounded the last of the rocky barriers.
Rachel said, “Hello Kain.” She was the only one who bothered.
Jack scanned the cliffs and slopes above them, then looked down the narrow valley retreating below, as the river it followed zigged and zagged its way towards the ocean. The overcast skies had lifted slightly, and it was lighter now than it had been at midday, even though the evening was drawing in.
He turned back to the rest of the group, to find they’d all collapsed onto the nearest rock, unspeaking, their rucksacks abandoned askew on the ground. No one was making any move to set up camp. The mood was as damp as the muddy rock underfoot. It had been miserable enough on the trek from Adam’s resting place; now Kain’s presence seemed to be curdling the atmosphere even more.
Useful activity. That might help
.
Jack rummaged in his pack for Adam’s knife, and stood up, extending the fish. “Okay, who knows how to gut a fish?”
All eyes turned to him. Erica’s glance hit the knife and skittered away again.
Kain spoke first. “I’d have thought any fool would know how to gut a fish.”
“Kain!” Rachel was distressed.
Jack cast the fish on the ground and took a step towards Kain, his body rigid, the vicious knife still held tightly in a clenched fist. “Oh you would, would you? Well, you wanna know what I’d have thought? I’d have thought that any fool would help his friends in a crisis. Adam went surfing with you every weekend when we were kids, and he even got his arm broken rescuing you from bullies, and he died today and we had to bury him and you wouldn’t even help!” Kain flinched very slightly before lashing out with some target practice of his own.
“Help? No one wants my help! Everyone listens to you, Jack. Adam’s dead because of you, Jack. Sharon’s dead because of you, Jack. I said we should leave the girls back at Poison Bay, and this morning I said we should stay at the camp till the rain stopped. But no, you had to keep us all together and keep us moving, and now they’re dead.” His eyes narrowed to slits. “I hope you’re really satisfied with what you’ve done!”
The words seared Jack’s soul for the very reason that he feared it was true, that it was all his fault. He resorted to sarcasm. “Yes, Kain, that’s right. I’m the one who put a bullet in Adam’s brain, and I’m the one who held his hands over Sharon’s face until she choked to death.” He flung his arms wide, and several pairs of eyes followed the knife uneasily, probably hoping he didn’t accidentally release it into the air. “I confess! Don’t ask me where I got the gun though, because I haven’t got a clue. But I’ve got hands haven’t I,” he waved them in front of himself, and the knife waggled with the hand that held it, “so I could have killed Sharon.”
Kain became very still, and stared at Jack. “What are you saying about Sharon?”
Jack realized he had the upper hand over Kain with this one. He muted his fury and made his tone colorless. “Sharon was murdered too, Kain. Someone suffocated her. Callie recognized the bruises on her face. If you’d been around, helping the rest of the team, you’d have been there when we discussed it as a group earlier today.” He shifted his weight and tilted his head a little. “Come to think of it Kain, where were you that night? Go for a midnight stroll, did you?”
Kain stepped forward again, and pointed at Jack for emphasis. “You’re not pinning this on me!” He glanced at Callie. “That’s if it’s even true. Bruises on her face! What a load of crap.”
“Not nearly as much crap as you and your ‘sprained ankle’. How about we make a stretcher for you and we’ll carry you tomorrow—the people with the injured knees and shoulders and the diabetic with no insulin. Our suffering is nothing at all compared to yours, you poor little darling!” Jack shook his head in disbelief. “Callie was crushed in a landslide this afternoon, and even she helped with Adam, you stupid moron!” He almost choked on the last few words.
Kain came back at him like a snake, striking again. “You stupid moron!” he mimicked, his voice high pitched like a girl. “Come on, choirboy,
swear
at me!”
“You..! You...!” Jack seemed to have lost the power of speech. He advanced towards Kain, the knife still in his hand, everyone and everything else forgotten in a moment of all-consuming hatred and despair.
“Stop it, you two! Right now!” It was Callie, suddenly standing in the narrowing gap between them, fearless, a hand held up like a stop sign in each direction. Her tone brooked no argument. “Pull yourself together, Jack. This isn’t like you. You’ve got a knife in your hand, for God’s sake!” She frowned fiercely at him, and wriggled her fingers towards him. “Give it to me!”
Jack stared at the weapon, and clenched and unclenched his fingers around it, breathing hard. Who knew what was or wasn’t like him, anymore?
He turned away abruptly, tossed the knife down alongside the abandoned fish, and headed for the rocky ledge along which they’d come.
36
“Peter, it’s Jonesy. I’ve had a look through that coroner’s report you sent down, and I thought I’d better ring you straight away.”
Peter was instantly alert. “What have you found?”
“The body I’ve got on ice down here was meant to be the father of the girl’s baby, is that right?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“Well, either this body isn’t Bryan Smithton after all, or Bryan Smithton wasn’t that baby’s father.”
“How can you be sure without DNA testing?”
“The blood types don’t add up. It’s simply not possible.”
“I see.” He paused, thinking. “Bryan Smithton asked to see that coroner’s report a few months ago. Could he have realized what it meant?”
“Did he have a medical background?”
“He’s from a scientific family.”
“Then yes, it’s possible. But anyone with average intelligence and a suspicious mind could see that the combination of letters didn’t look right, and Google it. So I’d say it’s very likely your boy knew he couldn’t be the father of that baby.”
37
By the time Jack returned to the rocky platform nearly an hour later, after an uncomfortable interlude among the boulders a little further down the valley, first pacing like a caged tiger and then sitting in a dejected hunch, he’d had time to cool down and think about what he’d done. He’d been only trying to lift team morale when Kain attacked.
What a success. The morale must be positively stratospheric now
.
He couldn’t figure out why he resorted to schoolyard taunts whenever he disagreed with Kain. The man had a knack for bringing out the very worst in him.
Well, Jack would have to suck it up, apologies to everyone, and do his best to get on with Kain and ignore his taunts. Usually he was pretty good at ignoring insults. He’d had to do a lot of it growing up, being a religious nut. He couldn’t seem to let anything go past him today.
As he drew near the camp, probably more embarrassed than he’d ever been in his life, he took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. Rounding the last crease in the rock face, he saw tents had been set up and the fire had been lit. He could smell the fish cooking.
Callie looked up as he approached, and gave a small, tight smile. “Oh well,” her look seemed to say. Neither Erica nor Rachel looked at him, although they glanced swiftly at each other. The women were sitting around the fire. Kain hadn’t left as Jack had thought he might have done, but he definitely wasn’t part of the cozy tableau. He was sitting at a distance, his body angled away from the women, staring at the opposite side of the valley.
Jack shuffled towards the other man, hands in pockets. He looked at the ground and then at Kain’s face. “I think we need to talk.”
Kain shot him a quick glance and then resumed his consideration of the opposite slope. “I don’t.”
Jack shifted his weight, and tried again. “I’m sorry for the things I said.”
“I’m not.”
Jack inhaled slowly, silently and held his temper. “Well, that’s your choice. But I don’t think we can just leave things as they are. It’s not good for you or me, or the team.”
Kain remained silent, but at least he didn’t get up and walk away.
“I’ve been thinking about the things I said to you when we argued way back at Poison Bay, about you wanting to ditch the liabilities and stuff. I reckon they were pretty hurtful things to say, and I shouldn’t have said them. I can see now that they probably made you feel alienated from the rest of us.” He added silently:
And I really hope they didn’t turn you into a murderer
.
Kain still held his body aloof, but his focus had shifted to somewhere not too far away from Jack’s feet.
Heartened by the small sign of response, Jack continued, keeping his voice mild. “I have a tendency to just blurt things out, without thinking about the consequences. It doesn’t always occur to me at the time that maybe I’m just plain wrong. Well, I’m sorry I said those things, and I hope you’ll forgive me and see if we can start again.” He shrugged diffidently. “We’re all just doing the best we can out here.”
Kain stared at the ground near Jack’s feet for a long moment, and then stood. His eyes flicked to Jack’s face and then away again. “Okay,” was all he said.
Jack thought about trying for a handshake, and decided not to push it that far. He angled his head toward the campfire. “Come and sit by the fire.” He had a sudden realization, and quirked his mouth. “That’s if they’ll let us.” He received a variety of quick looks from the women, but the one from Callie was surprisingly warm.
Later that night, he discovered that the accommodation arrangements had changed. At some point, probably when he was having his boulder-field interlude, Erica had obviously decided to separate from Kain and share with Rachel instead. Kain disappeared into his tent with a decisive ri-ip of the zipper closing behind him. That left Jack sharing with Callie again, in the tent that he’d mangled and muddied after the landslide, so long ago and far away. Was it only this morning?
As he wriggled into his sleeping bag, he felt something slimy on his hand, and realized it was mud, still wet. Callie’s must be even worse. He recalled the battle to wrestle her barely-conscious body into it after the fall, fully clothed although he’d managed to get the rainproof layer and the boots off, with the rain still thundering down and the tent poorly erected and giving inadequate shelter.
“Should we offer to swap tents and sleeping bags with the others?” he said, keeping his voice quiet. There were no private conversations in a tent; the sound passed straight through. He got a muffled giggle in response. “Surely we could convince them there was something very special about this set up.”
“No chance, unfortunately. They saw the state of it in daylight.” She snorted. “Looked like a couple of pigs had been mud-wrestling in here.”
He sniggered, and then sighed theatrically. “I really hope the dampness of my sleeping bag warms up after a bit.”
“Yeah, then you can pretend it’s actually a sauna. That’s the effect I’m hoping for.”
They were silent a moment, and then she spoke very softly to him, her mouth close to his ear. “Jack, I really think Kain would have packed up and left this evening, except we had fish.”
He pondered that for a bit. “Can’t really blame him, I suppose, with the things I’d said to him.”
“Maybe. But I just got a feeling there was more to it than that. He’s making me uneasy. I’m… well, I’m scared of him.”
The statement went through him like an electric shock. He felt a surge of some kind of caveman emotion, fiercely protective. And he needed to know what Callie had seen and sensed—she was so much more perceptive than he was. Impossible to have this conversation with the others just a meter or two away!
“Do you want to talk about this now? We could go for a walk.”
“No. Tomorrow will do. We’re okay right now. And we could fall in the dark and kill ourselves.” She sighed. “I’m just so tired. I can’t bear to stay awake another minute.”
He was silent for a while, and then a sudden thought hit. “We were supposed to be watching out for Rachel.”
She inhaled sharply. “Damn. I forgot all about it.”
“She’s in with Erica. Do we even trust Erica?”
“I really don’t know. She’s definitely been behaving very oddly. But what could she do? Rachel’s not as weak as Sharon was. Not yet, anyway.”
“I don’t see how we can change the setup now.” He sighed in frustration. He just wanted to sleep and forget everything. The passivity of exhaustion was setting in. Nothing else seemed important in the face of that all-consuming need. But what if he slept and Rachel was dead when he woke up? Then, vigilance would seem far more important than sleep, but it would be too late. “At least our tents are side by side. We’ll just have to listen, from here. I’ll take the first watch—you go to sleep.”
Callie didn’t disagree, and after only a few moments she grew quiet, her breathing even. She was asleep. His ears strained for any suspicious sound. The wind was starting to pick up. How to tell the rustle of a tree branch or tent flap from the footstep of a murderer? He lay staring into the darkness as the night drew on, and longed for morning.