Catherine Jinks TheRoad (75 page)

The old man frowned. Mongrel continued to bark. Del screamed at him again, in a power-tool voice that made everybody grimace and Peter’s teeth vibrate.

‘Mongrel, dammit, shut the hell UP!’

The dog subsided – at least for a moment. The old man said, ‘I’m not sure I get your drift.’

Noel sighed. ‘It’s hard to explain. It’s even harder to believe,’ he said. ‘This gentleman here – ’ he gestured at Ambrose ‘ – he didn’t believe me either, when he passed us this morning. I warned him that he probably wouldn’t reach Coombah, and he didn’t, you see.’

‘Because he ran out of petrol,’ the old man offered.

‘After driving for how long?’ Noel inquired, and several pairs of eyes turned towards Ambrose, who smiled again, apologetically.

‘I’m – I’m not sure,’ he stammered. ‘About three hours . . .’

‘Eh?’ The old man struggled to turn in his seat, and addressed Georgie. ‘Three hours? I thought you said you came from Broken Hill.’

‘We did,’ Georgie replied.

‘You can’t have been going very fast then.’ The old man adjusted his baseball cap, as Noel pressed Ambrose for more details. If he and Georgie had been driving for three hours, then they must have driven for at least two hours after first encountering Noel and the others. So how long ago had they been they picked up? Fifteen minutes, at the most? In that case, couldn’t they see that something was wrong?

‘You drive for two hours,’ Noel said earnestly, ‘and then it takes this gentleman here –’

‘Col,’ the old man supplied. ‘Col Wallace.’

‘It takes Mr Wallace just fifteen minutes to get back to this spot. What does that tell you?’

‘I – I –’ Ambrose seemed lost for words. He didn’t look at all like the supercilious yuppie who had scooted off in his zippy little car a couple of hours before. The ride in the back of the ute had blown him about, leaving his hair on end and his face reddened. His linen jacket was creased and dusty, his mirror sunglasses were sitting crookedly on his nose.

Georgie, on the other hand, looked pretty much the same. Her expression was a little sulkier than it had been, but she still seemed to be suffering from a headache, if her closed eyes and sagging posture were anything to go by.

She was squashed between Col and another man, whose appearance suggested that he might have been stranded for a greater length of time than Ambrose and Georgie. He had a thin, grimy face, greasy dark hair and a scrubby jaw. His nose was crooked. Peter wondered who he was, but missed Col’s introduction because Mongrel distracted him. The dog was beginning to growl. He stood shifting uneasily from paw to paw, the growl rumbling in his throat as if he had a little outboard motor sitting in there. Peter couldn’t tell what he was looking at, exactly, because there were people in the way.