The Ottoman Motel (11 page)

Madaline smoothed the map out, realising too late that what she thought were wrinkles in the paper were really tracings of the lake's edge. The map Nat had brought was old: hand-drawn, photocopied more than once; some lines had two or three sketchy echoes, others faded in and out of clarity. Still, the general shape of the lake was there. It did look a bit like a bird. Not a magpie, really; maybe a hunched and curious vulture. In the top right-hand corner the lake fed into a thin channel that squirmed out towards the sea.

She picked the megaphone up off the corner of the map, and the paper flapped up violently, snapping like a loading sail in the wind. She jammed one hand against it as she tried to activate the megaphone with the other. Where the hell was Tommy? He was supposed to have arrived before her to get everybody ready but no one had seen him.

Madaline heard the whine of feedback and spoke into the megaphone. ‘Hello?' Her voice blared out and the searchers fell silent. There weren't nearly enough people for a proper search. Pathetic numbers, really. Kuiper and Tarden had done no more than trawl the back tables of the Ottoman, but it was better than she could have done herself. Some of them were wearing their orange SES jumpsuits but had rolled them down to the waist for easier access to cigarettes; it was also a subtle indication that it wasn't a real emergency. Nat was here, which was good, and Megan: a closed Ottoman meant a better turn-out than she had feared. They were bored bodies, Madaline thought, looking for something to do between the tides. She recognised all the faces, even if not the names. They were faces she'd dealt with, come up against, especially in the winter months; by late April, the phone calls would start at night. Mostly just boredom and bravado; most of them settled down after she arrived, happy for the attention. If they wanted to take it further, she'd cuff them and issue a few threats, but she hardly ever had to use the lock-up. At most, they'd get a summons to appear up at Byron or a tongue-lashing from Tommy for wasting everybody's time.

Madaline didn't like to admit it, but she was secretly glad of these outbreaks of real police work. Perhaps she welcomed the attention as well. None of them were bad people, really, they'd just become stuck in a life that offered no change and little reward. Not that she could talk.

A familiar blue and white four-wheel-drive came down into the carpark. Tommy's face was red behind the wheel. He parked and stepped carefully out onto the gravel, pulling on a reflective vest. Everyone had turned to look at him.

He waved his arms down at them as if discouraging applause. ‘How are we all?' His blinked his eyes rapidly. ‘This dry wind, bloody hell.' He came up into the circle of searchers, pulling a squashed pack of cigarettes from his back pocket. He lit one, sheltering it from the breeze with his body. ‘Madaline,' he said. ‘This is your operation. Just pretend I'm not here.'

Madaline gritted her teeth. The lazy bastard hadn't changed. Ever since she had arrived, he had treated her not as a welcome addition to Reception's police presence but an excuse to do less himself, to be a police officer only when it suited him. The first days of Stephanie Gale's disappearance had been the worst. The way he constantly threw responsibility to her, the junior officer. Back then, the world was not the freezing edge of a winter lake but the apricot arms of summer sand, stretching endlessly in both directions. The dark mass of the bluff, the beckoning crash of warm-weather waves. And Ned, in his perennial green jacket, despite the baking heat. Madaline in a uniform of even fresher fabric.

Had she known her feelings for him then? Probably not. So why had it all seemed so hard? Why had a routine search started to feel like the slowest torture?
It came back to her often, the memory of those first days. The same emergency service jumpsuits, the same expectant faces. They shot into her mind with the strange warm glow of ancient photographs.

Madaline found herself talking, her voice suddenly clear: ‘Thank you all for coming this morning. As you have no doubt gathered, time is of the essence. We have two missing persons who were last seen heading for this site at approximately six o'clock yesterday evening. Bill and Louise Sawyer, both of the Gold Coast, took a room at the Ottoman Motel with their son, Simon. They left him in the hotel room, heading to Magpie Lake.'

A different photograph flashed into Madaline's head: a stretch of cane fields, a cleared track narrowing back to the horizon. Her father, leaning on a shovel, foot propped up on the blade. The only way she could ever remember him: arms crossed like a single muscle against his chest, eyes etched into a permanent squint. A grimace, a fortress.

‘Their car was not parked here at the lake, but we have reason to believe they may still be here. Bill and Louise are both in their mid-to-late thirties, and have no experience in bush survival. We are to assume, unless we learn otherwise, that they are both in the vicinity of the lake. I have appointed four—' she shot a glance at Tommy, ‘five team leaders, along with myself, to guide the separate teams to different areas around the lake. Please see me to be allocated to a team.'

Her mother, sprawled on a cane chair. Christmas Day. The sweat from a true tropical summer shining her brow. In the warm Polaroid wash, her face reduces to shapes: fat circles of mascara, wedges of lurid eyeshadow, the fractal damage of self-crimped hair. Madaline, behind the lens, taking her very first picture.

‘Your group leaders will each have a map of the area they will search. Please stay with your teams, and report to your leaders anything you think is pertinent to the search. Leaders will alert me to any significant developments, otherwise we will reconvene back here in three hours. Remember water, remember a hat. This is a mostly contained area, and I am confident it will be just a matter of time until we find Bill and Louise. Any questions?'

The wedding waltz. That stupid tradition. Every face in the crowd blasted by a too-bright flash. Madaline with her back to the camera. Her hair is longer, plaited down below her shoulders. Will's face wears a look of rare contentment. The smile that stretched his lips ever since she told him
yes
. What the camera can't see—what history didn't record—was Madaline's animal groan, barely covered by the music, her tears misconstrued as happiness: her mortal fear that she'd made the worst mistake of her life.

Back near their new house on the Gold Coast there was a pretend beach. Instead of sand there were small smooth stones that
clicked and shrieked when you walked across them. The rocks sat beside a long pontoon that ran from the back of their house and jutted out into a canal. On the second afternoon after they'd moved in, Simon had gone with his father to the pontoon to
watch the flat orange sunset spread across the rooftops on the opposite shore. His father had his new camera slung around his neck, the oversized lens sticking out from his chest. The pontoon was covered in a rough ridged carpet that smelled salty and wet. The beach-stones were deep black, slippery as whale's eyes, the water milling around their edges. His father had picked up a handful and was at the pontoon's edge, skimming them across the water.

Simon had asked if they could go swimming in the canal. People don't go swimming here, his father had said, throwing his last stone. Simon let his gaze settle on the soft chop of the canal waves. A sadness overcame him: the thought that no one had ever dived into the water, nobody had ever swum with those waves to start a journey to the sea. The knowledge that this new place was no different from any other; it was just a new set of boundaries to settle within.

The water of Magpie Lake was quite clear up close, the colour of cold tea. A line of fine pale sand ran just past the shoreline, disappearing eventually into shadow. Simon bent down and dipped his hand beneath the water. He sank his fingers into the sand, releasing a swollen cloud of white that roiled in the gentle tide. The water was icy, but felt good against his hand. He thought perhaps the lake was friendlier in smaller pieces.

Simon's mood had improved. Madaline had spoken with such authority, such certainty, that it was impossible to think his parents would not be found. She was in charge now and he finally had hope. Like she'd said, they had no experience in the bush. How far could they have gone? Simon pictured his parents wandering out from the bush, flanked by searchers, clothes muddied and egos dented. It might almost be funny. He wished he'd helped Madaline more when she interviewed him. He wished he'd said important words into the tape recorder, remembered important things she could have written in her book.

Gin had removed his shoes and was already wading, knee deep, a little further out. He was pushing his hands through the water, palms down, as if trying to wipe the surface clean. Audrey remained some way up from the shore. For some reason, she hadn't wanted to come down to the water and Simon wasn't about to argue with her. Ned strolled along the foreshore a little way ahead, hands behind his back. After an initial burst of combing through the grass, none of them had wanted to keep going. It didn't matter to Simon: he knew his job now was to stay here and wait. His ears strained, waited, for the sound of a whistle.

He wondered how long they would stay in Reception after his parents were found. He hoped they could stay for a little while, hoped his mother could spend some time with Iris. Perhaps they could all stay at Ned's house, stay in one of the rooms. It would be like a real holiday.

Still squatting, Simon took his hands out of the water and wiped them on his trousers. He felt a hard lump at the side of
one leg, then remembered he was wearing Pony's army pants, with all the pockets. He found the pocket with the lump in it and pulled out a flat black stone the width of a tennis ball. He had a strong urge to throw the stone, skimming across the surface of the lake, the way his father had done at the canal. But then he thought of Pony, who seemed to keep stones like other people would keep seashells. He put it back in his pocket.

Just back from the sand, the ground was mostly grass, but in some places it had ripped open like torn material. Underneath the grass were slabs of speckled rock pecked and cobbled with spiky ridges. Around the exposed patches, some of the rock had crumbled away, broken off in horizontal tiers like layers on a stack of pancakes. Simon went over and picked a piece up. As he moved it in his hand, parts of it gleamed in the dim light; it was full of semi-transparent flecks, little minerals sunspot-dotted. Simon opened one of the empty pockets in his trousers and dropped
the piece of rock into it. He walked back to the shore, feeling the weight bump rhythmically against his leg. After a moment, he went back and put another rock in the opposite pocket. That was better. Balanced.

‘What are you doing?' Audrey's voice floated down from the grass bank where she was sitting with her legs crossed.

Simon spun around. ‘Nothing,' he said. ‘Just waiting.'

‘Aren't we even going to look at the map?' she said. ‘I thought this was supposed to be organised.'

Simon walked up the slope to where Audrey sat. ‘I don't think we're old enough to do a proper search. At least, Gin isn't. So we'll just stay here and wait.'

‘How is waiting supposed to help?'

Simon shifted his weight. He said, ‘It's just a matter of time.'

Audrey blew air upwards with her mouth, making her fringe flop up and down. She blinked, three times, quickly. ‘So if we just wait here, everything's supposed to work out, is it?'

‘Yes,' said Simon. ‘We just have to wait.'

Audrey sniffed noisily. ‘You don't see it, do you. You're not even worried.'

Simon looked at the red under Audrey's eyes. ‘Have you been crying?' he said.

Audrey stared intently past Simon. ‘No. Why would I be crying?' She rubbed one eye with the back of her thumb.

‘Are you okay?' Simon stood in front of her. He tried to block the sun so it wouldn't fall on her and make things worse.

‘I don't even know why you're worrying about me,' said Audrey. ‘You don't even care that your mum and dad are out there and they might not turn up or they might turn up dead or it might be you never know, and you're so calm and boring about it!' Tears began to fall on Audrey's singlet.

‘It's okay,' Simon said. ‘Madaline will find them. And you don't have to worry.' He tried a smile, but it didn't quite come.

Audrey's shoulders shook. ‘No she won't. She won't find anything. No one will find anything.'

Simon felt a ribbon of uncertainty shiver through his stomach. ‘How can you say that? How can you know that?' He didn't mean to sound so angry.

Audrey's mouth formed a bitter curve. ‘Because nobody just disappears. There's always a reason. Maybe they were sick of you and wanted to leave you here. Why is their car not here?'

‘What?' Simon bit his lip, so hard that he felt pain behind his ears.

‘They probably wanted to get away from you, so they left you asleep in the hotel and drove away.'

‘No!' Simon's voice trembled.

‘They're probably sitting at home right now, laughing at you.'

Simon felt the burn of tears in his own eyes. When he looked at Audrey's stupid face, he knew that he hated her. He thought of the worst word he knew.

‘You're a stupid
shit
!' he shouted, spitting the words at Audrey's eyes. His blood thumped in his head as he ran away from her, ankles straining in his stupid borrowed shoes. He flung them off with his feet and didn't care where they landed, he had to get away.

Away from Audrey, away from the lake, away from the town. He had to get back home where his parents were and make them let him stay.