Bright Air Part 19

'Put the knife down and step away, or I'll throw this key overboard.'

He squinted at me as if wondering what kind of beast he'd fished out of the sea. I must have looked demented-bruised and sc.r.a.ped and swollen all over, the light of madness in my eyes.

'What's that, Josh?'

'Do what I say!'

'All right.' He felt in his trouser pocket and brought out a large clasp knife, which he carefully laid down where I'd indicated.

'Step back.'

He did so, and I darted forward and grabbed the knife.

'What happened to Carmel's boat, mate?'

'The currents smashed it on the rocks,' I said.

'Ah, well, reckon the same's goin' to happen to us if you don't let me start that engine.' He spoke slowly, as if he didn't want to alarm me, or perhaps because he thought my brain wasn't quite right.

'Then you'd better tell us the truth, Bob. We found a note Luce left, on the Pyramid.'

'A note? What did it say?'

'Just tell us what happened. Then I'll give you the key.'

He frowned, then spread his hands. 'Okay, I'll tell you, but I reckon I need to start the engine.'

I followed his gaze and saw that we were being drawn into the foaming swell that bordered the rocks. 'All right.' I replaced the key in the ignition and joined Anna on the seat as he went to the controls. We pulled on our clothes while Bob got the boat going and steered it out into open water. When we were a safe distance away from the rocks he throttled back and came to sit opposite us.

'You'll be getting quite a reception when you get back. They've had search parties out looking for you all weekend. They reckoned you must have gone up Mount Gower on your own like you'd said, and got lost or hurt on the slopes, but my hunch was you were out here, specially when I couldn't find Carmel's boat.'

'And you know why, don't you, Bob? Luce was out here, wasn't she? You brought her.'

He nodded reluctantly. 'Yes.'

'You'd better tell us everything, the whole truth.'

'Mm. You hungry?'

'G.o.d, yes!' Anna burst in.

'I've brought some sandwiches and coffee. Here.'

I eyed him warily as he got up and brought a backpack from the wheelhouse. Anna ripped open the top of a plastic container and began stuffing a sandwich into her mouth. Bob poured coffee from a flask into a cup and handed it to me. 'There's cold beer and drinks in the esky, but I reckon you need to warm up.'

I took the cup gratefully. The coffee smelled wonderful. I felt as if I'd been s.h.i.+vering for days.

'They finished their work on the cliffs below Mount Gower,' Bob began, in that same slow drawl, as if we had all the time in the world, 'and they still had a bit of time left, and Marcus wanted to have a look at b.a.l.l.s Pyramid. It's the only place where the Kermadec petrel breeds, and he said he was thinking of doing a field study there the following year. Of course, being climbers the others were keen to see it too, although I told them it was out of the question to land there. Marcus said, no problem, he only wanted to take a look at the birds from the boat.

'So I agreed to bring them out here, that was on the Thursday. It was a fine day, and I took them slowly round, stopping to let them look up there with their binoculars. There was a fair bit of whispering going on among them, as if they were discussing something private, but I didn't take too much notice. Then, when we got to the south end, Marcus asked if I could take them in closer. I did it, and next thing, while I was concentrating on the water ahead, with Marcus standing at my side distracting me, those two blokes, Owen and Curtis, put on wetsuits and dived overboard. They made it over to the Pyramid and climbed up onto the rocks over there. They had a line, and were towing gear. Turned out they had a radio, too, so Marcus could talk to them. They'd planned the whole thing. Marcus apologised and said they just wanted to have a quiet look at the place. They were all very excited about it, Luce especially. She and Damien followed the other two over there.'

'So Damien was with them that day, the Thursday?'

'Sure, and the other days too.'

'You went back again?'

Bob nodded, looking unhappy. 'They spent most of Thursday over there, but they weren't satisfied. They wanted to come back on the Friday, the day before they were due to leave. And Curtis and Owen wanted to stay overnight on the Pyramid, to observe the birds. I didn't like it, but in the end I agreed.'

'Why?'

He shrugged. 'Marcus made me a good offer for the hire of the boat. They seemed to know what they were doing. I thought it would be okay. Big mistake.'

He hung his head. I thought the bit about Curtis and Owen staying there overnight sounded strange, and wondered if he was lying, but I let him continue.

'What happened?'

'We went out the next morning, weather fine as before, but there was something wrong between them. They didn't seem happy, not talking, Luce especially. I thought they were just hung-over after the party the night before. Anyway, they went ash.o.r.e, and I anch.o.r.ed and we kept in touch with them by radio. Then around three in the afternoon something happened. They were up on Gannet Green, I'd been watching them with the binoculars. I had a line over the side and I got a bite. I was pulling it in-a nice big yellowfin-when Marcus began shouting into the radio. When I asked him what was wrong he just shook his head, angry. I landed the fish and he began arguing on the radio with someone. I couldn't really hear because he turned his back to me, so I looked up at the others on the rock. I could see the three men, staring upwards, but I couldn't make out Luce. Then two of them-Owen and Curtis-began climbing up the ridge above Gannet Green. I watched them through the gla.s.ses and then I spotted Luce, high above them and climbing fast.

'I asked Marcus what was going on. He wouldn't say at first, but eventually he told me that they'd had some kind of a quarrel, and Luce had stormed off.'

Anna and I exchanged a glance. This didn't sound right, not like Luce at all.

'Apparently Marcus had sent Owen and Curtis after her to calm her down and get her to come back, but they lost her. She was much quicker than they were, and it seemed she didn't want to come down. Time went by, no progress, and I started to get worried, the afternoon wearing on. They were high up and it was going to take them a while to get back to the boat, and I wasn't going to risk trying to pick them up in the dark. I told Marcus, and he radioed for them to return. He was mad, and said it would teach Luce a lesson to have to spend the night out on the Pyramid on her own. I didn't like that idea at all, but what could I do?'

There was something about the way he was telling the story that didn't quite jell with the impression I'd previously formed of him. He was too pa.s.sive somehow, playing for sympathy. The sun was warm on our faces, and I asked if I could have a beer. I felt I needed one. He opened up the esky for me and went on with his story.

'So they returned to the boat, just made it as the light was fading. I was trying to keep an eye on the cliffs, but I didn't get another sight of Luce. We returned to Lord Howe, n.o.body saying a word.

'When we woke up the next morning a gale was blowing. The forecast was bad. We waited from hour to hour for the weather to ease. The flight from the mainland was delayed, and Marcus decided to postpone their return for forty-eight hours. The storm didn't die down, though-if anything it got worse. In the afternoon I tried to take the boat out, but I couldn't get beyond the reef, the seas were too big. Maybe we should have called for help then, but we'd already told people that Luce was safe with us, lying down in her room.

'The next day, Sunday, the weather was better, and we set out first thing for the Pyramid. Of course, we hoped to see Lucy waiting for us at the south end, just like I hoped to see you two down there on Sat.u.r.day when I came looking for you. But there was no sign of her. We circled the rock several times and couldn't see a b.l.o.o.d.y thing. Then the three blokes swam over and started searching on foot. By late afternoon they'd found nothing, and we called them back.

'We were in a panic now, I can tell you. What should we do? By the time we got back to Lord Howe we'd convinced ourselves that she was a goner, and the main thing now was to cover our backs. I'm not proud of myself, but I have to tell you, if I was put in that situation again, I reckon I'd probably do the same thing. We decided on what we'd do the next day-spend the morning at b.a.l.l.s Pyramid for one last search, then go to plan B. And that's what we did. At midday we called off the search and I took them to the Mount Gower cliffs where we'd been telling Carmel we were. They knew there was a patch of dangerous loose rock some way up, and the plan was to fake an accident there, where it would be difficult for people to take a close look. That's when Damien got cold feet. He said he didn't want anything to do with it, and insisted on being taken back. So I landed Owen and Curtis at the foot of the cliff and took Marcus and Damien back to the jetty. At two Curtis radioed Marcus, and I raised the alarm with Grant Campbell. Of course, it was all far too late by then.'

'And you sent them off to the wrong place,' Anna said bitterly. 'Didn't you think she could still have been alive on the Pyramid?'

'I did go back there several times during the search, but there was nothing. So ... what did she say, in the note?'

'What does it f.u.c.king matter?' I said, hearing my voice crack. 'She died.' I glared at Bob. His air of penitent regret was irritating me. 'So what had happened on that Friday, Bob? What was the argument about? Why did she run?'

'I don't know, Josh,' he said, too smoothly. 'They wouldn't tell me. They just said something about a professional disagreement, as if I didn't need to know.'

'And you didn't insist? They'd put you in the position of being an accessory to murder murder, and you didn't insist on knowing why?'

'It wasn't murder, Josh,' he said in that soft sad voice. 'The way I saw it, they'd had a row, and she went off to calm down and think things through on her own. But her timing was bad-it was too late in the day, and a storm was on its way. It was just bad luck, for all of us.'

'Not for all of you,' I corrected him savagely. 'Only for her. The rest of you wriggled out of it.'

He turned away and made to get the boat moving, but I called angrily after him, 'Sit down, Bob! We haven't finished yet.'

He looked back over his shoulder at me, then shrugged and came and sat down again.

'Since you can't offer a reason for their quarrel, Bob, let me suggest one. It goes like this. You and your brother Harry have a racket going here, collecting rare bird eggs from nesting sites all over the island and selling them to smugglers and dealers, like the American who came visiting on that yacht while Luce and the others were here. Highly illegal, of course, but very lucrative. This must be the most perfect spot on earth to run such a business, but I suppose some exposed sites might be a bit hard to access without being seen. Like on Roach Island, say, with all those lovely endangered grey ternlet nests. But Curtis and Owen had the perfect opportunity to go there with impunity, and so you and Harry paid them to do a bit of collecting for you. And with them being such great climbers, you had the bright idea at the end of their stay to get them to do a bit of prospecting on b.a.l.l.s Pyramid too. Kermadec petrel, was it? Its only nesting site? Very desirable, no doubt. The only trouble was that Luce got wind of it, at the party you threw for the yachties, I think it was. Did she overhear something? She got suspicious, anyway, and finally, on that second visit to b.a.l.l.s Pyramid, she caught Curtis and Owen in the act. When she confronted them they panicked. They had to stop her from telling Marcus what they were up to, or they'd be finished-not just kicked out of uni, but up for a jail term, along with you too, of course.

'Did they talk to you before you set off that day, about their concerns that Luce was on to them? And did you tell them what they had to do if it looked like she'd make trouble? Stage an accident out of sight of Damien and Marcus? But she was too quick for them, wasn't she? She outran them, but in the end it made no difference. You just left her out here until she was exhausted and had that accident anyway.'

He'd sat there impa.s.sively right through the whole of this, listening to my accusations, showing no surprise or outrage. And when I finished he took a deep breath, rubbed his chin thoughtfully and said, 'Yep, I reckon you could have something there, mate.'

His calm was rather scary, and I wondered how I'd miscalculated. Clearly he was going to have to try to do something pretty drastic about us now, and me holding his knife didn't seem to bother him.

Then he said, 'You've just got a couple of things back to front. First off, Harry and I don't deal in eggs. Believe me, in this place you'd be crazy to try anything like that. You'd be found out in no time, and with everybody's livelihood tied up with wildlife conservation one way or another, you'd be as popular as a dingo in a kindy. But I wouldn't be surprised if Curtis and Owen were involved in something like that, only they weren't working for me.'

'Who then?'

'Marcus.'

'What? That's ridiculous.'

'Couple of years previously, at the end of one of his visits, I went to see him about something. He was packing up to go, and I caught him unprepared. He was placing eggs in a special foam container in his suitcase. He looked crook when he realised I'd seen it, but then bluffed it out, telling me it was all part of the research project, aiming to start a breeding program back in Sydney. He even showed me how the case had a little heater to keep them alive. Later I asked Carmel, in a roundabout way, how wouldn't it be a good idea to have a breeding program for the rarer birds on the mainland, and she said it might, but there wasn't one, and anyway it would be very difficult to get permission to remove eggs from the island to get one started. I decided to keep quiet about it. After all, he was the expert, wasn't he? Mr Wildlife Conservation himself.

'That was back when Marcus had two good legs, and was leading the fieldwork himself and doing most of the climbing. But four years ago he'd have needed someone else to do the collecting for him.'

I was stunned. This all sounded horribly plausible. Curtis and Owen were both intensely loyal to Marcus, and it was hard to imagine them getting mixed up in something like this without his knowledge and approval. I looked at Anna, her mouth open, about as gobsmacked as me.

'I'll tell you something else,' Bob added. 'That American you mentioned? Marcus knew him from before. He told me he was an old buddy from when he'd been at university in California.' He stared at me. 'Sorry, mate, but if you reckon something bad happened up there that day, you'd better make your inquiries closer to home.'

'What about Damien?' I asked. 'Are you saying he was in on it too?'

'What do you think? I'd say so. Not Luce, though. Straight as a die, she was. My guess would be that it was his job to keep her distracted while the others got on with it.'

'Distracted?'

'Yeah. He was her climbing partner, wasn't he? Can we head back now?'

Anna and I sat in silence as the great pinnacle shrank away behind us.

As we approached Lord Howe, Bob turned to us again, and said, 'So, what do you want to do?'

'How do you mean?'

'Well, are you going to 'fess up to stealing Carmel's boat and landing illegally on b.a.l.l.s Pyramid and forcing dozens of people to spend their weekend searching for you?'

'What's the alternative?'

'The alternative is that we say you set off on foot, along the base of the cliffs, to try to reach the place Luce was supposed to have fallen, and got lost, or trapped by the tide. Maybe one of you fell and twisted an ankle and couldn't get back, and the other stayed.'

Anna and I looked at each other.

'Why would you agree to that, Bob?'

'Because they'll tear you apart if you tell them the truth, and I don't fancy the questions you'd have to answer as to why you thought it was so d.a.m.n important to go out to the Pyramid. As far as I'm concerned, the less said about that place the better.'

'What about Carmel's boat?'

'I can sort something out, get her a new one.'

'We'd pay for it,' Anna said quickly. 'I'd insist on that.'

It was a moral hazard problem, I suppose, a rather neat one. Bob was offering us a way out of an embarra.s.sing predicament by doing something rather similar to what he claimed he had had to do in relation to Luce, forcing us to admit in effect that we'd have done the same thing in his shoes. It didn't appeal to me one bit, but I still wasn't sure about his story, nor whether I trusted any of the Kelsos, and it seemed to me that, without solid evidence either way, we were pretty much in their hands.

I exchanged a look with Anna. 'All right?'

She shrugged. 'As a matter of fact I do have a swollen ankle.'

'Good,' Bob said, and turned the boat towards the opening in the reef.

They made it easy for us to live with our moral turpitude. Everyone was so pleased to see us safely back, falling over each other to look after us, hailing us as heroes and Bob as scarcely less than a saint. And when I thought about it later, lying in a hot bath with a large whisky in my fist, it seemed to me that in a way it was true-our ascent of b.a.l.l.s Pyramid had been fairly heroic, and Bob had saved our lives. But I also couldn't shake the feeling that somehow he'd been let off the hook. I thought that much of what he'd told us was probably true-Luce going missing on the Friday rather than the following Monday, for instance, would be a risky thing to invent, and seemed to fit with the fact that we hadn't found anyone else who'd seen her during that period-but was it the whole truth? Once he realised we knew he'd taken Luce to b.a.l.l.s Pyramid this story was about the best he could have come up with to exonerate himself. And I still found his accusation against Marcus hard to come to terms with. I swung between incredulity and sickening doubt. And if it were true, the one I felt most bitter about was not Marcus, wrecked in his Castlecrag cave, but his lieutenant, Damien-Damien the survivor, in his luxury flat, the father-to-be. I thought of how he'd helped us, tried to steer us away from this, of how solicitous he'd been to Suzi and how he'd groomed Mary.

The thought of Mary reminded me how long we'd been away, almost a week. When I got out of the bath I phoned her and she a.s.sured me that everything was well. I didn't tell her about our little misadventure.

That evening Muriel Kelso insisted that we eat with them. We had both been examined by the doctor and Anna's ankle X-rayed and bandaged, and though he p.r.o.nounced us reasonably fit, suffering from mild exposure, Muriel still regarded us as invalids. I had been expecting her husband to give us a rough time, but I must say he was quite merciful, even benevolent in the face of our contrition. I laid it on pretty thick, how we'd totally underestimated the difficulties and should have listened to his wise counsel. 'You must be fed up with the whole bunch of us by now,' I finished.

'Oh now, that isn't true,' Muriel said. 'What happened to poor Lucy was simply a tragedy, n.o.body's fault. And poor Curtis and Owen! No, we feel great sadness, of course, but we can't alter the past. We just have to live with it. And you say Marcus isn't well?'

I said, 'Not too well, I think. He seems to have left the university on bad terms, and become a bit of a hermit.'

'Oh dear. We knew that he never came back here again to continue his research project, of course, but I don't see how they could blame him for what happened. And what about Damien? I hear he's a successful lawyer now.'

She said this with a certain intensity behind her bright smile, I thought. How had she heard about him?

'Yes,' Anna said shortly.

'And some lucky girl has finally managed to pin him down, I believe?' She was watching Anna keenly for her reaction.

'Lucky woman,' Anna said dryly.

Muriel smiled to herself, and Stanley changed the subject to more innocuous territory. I was intrigued by Muriel's interest in Damien, and later, when Stanley excused himself to make some phone calls, and Bob went out to get another bottle of wine, I brought it up again.

'It sounds as if you got the measure of Damien while he was here, Muriel.'

'Oh well, by the time you get to my age you've seen most human types. I recognised his straight away. The way he looked at the girls. It's a handicap, really-makes life exciting, of course, for both him and them, but I do hope he's settled down now.'

I heard Bob returning and said quickly, 'Did he try something on with Lucy, Muriel? That night of the party, perhaps?'

'Oh.' She looked at me for a moment, then gave her head a little shake. 'I gave you my advice, didn't I, Josh? Let it go. The past is gone. Whatever she or anyone else may have said or done, she was always true to herself.'

What the h.e.l.l was that supposed to mean? What had Luce said or done that Muriel knew and didn't want to pa.s.s on to me? I wanted to ask her more, but Bob had returned and the conversation switched to the cost of diesel.