The Ottoman Motel (12 page)

Tarden squinted at the copy of the map in his hands. It had been shrunk down on a photocopier, making its sketchy lines even harder to see. Not that he really needed it. He had travelled over the lake often enough, albeit approaching it from the other side. Just beyond his fishing cove, he had discovered a slim estuary that led directly through to Magpie Lake, winding through a long tributary. It was a maze: the water spread out like curling fingers, arriving at more dead ends than continuations. He had explored it for a week before he worked out how to navigate it. There were good crabbing spots along the way, muddy mangrove shores where the creatures were often left exposed for easy trapping. The last thing he wanted was the other searchers finding it. Even more so now.

He had volunteered to take a group out to the opposite shore, taking a large dark boulder as their landmark. The tributary was close to it, but he figured he could keep prying eyes away. This was just another reason to waste some time, lead his group on a fruitless search. But he had hours to kill. The groups were not meant to reconvene until a quarter past one, and Tarden was already sweating. He should have changed into shorts, should have brought a water bottle with him. His natural habitat was the early hours of the day or the waning hours of the afternoon. Mid-morning was a time for rest, for quiet things.

The sun had returned, wiping most of the thick cloud away, drawing the steam up from the landscape. Still, the wind was strong; tree seeds coptered down around him in alien invasions. Tarden wiped twin glugs of sweat from above his eyebrows. He'd caught the kid's face: Simon Sawyer. Those sad hopeful eyes.

The thing that most troubled him, though, was Robbie, who was leading a group at the other side of the lake. Any other day, he wouldn't have cared as much, but Robbie's composure was always shot when he was coming down. Couldn't he have just taken a break for one night? He was stressed, sure, but all he had to do was stay off it for a couple of days, make the trade, get on with their lives. And his walks now, too. Each night, leaving later and later, taking longer and longer to come back. Except last night. It was Tarden who'd come home late, to find a strange car idling in the yard.

And Robbie wasn't supposed to be like this. The Robert Kuiper he'd first met was the most level-headed person he'd encountered. Back then, Robbie read books, he'd meditated: kept the Zen, he liked to say. Somehow nothing fazed him, not even the inevitable horrors that befell a white-collar criminal thrown in the deep end. Drugs had been a foreign concept to Robbie then. He would have dabbled in a casual way, but juggling numbers had been his real vice. Tarden had spent countless hours teaching him the ins and outs of the trade, the correct lingo, the ways and means of that particular dark world; it was not an achievement he felt good about. But if not for those long conversations, who knows if they ever would have stayed together? Then again, they wouldn't be in quite so much shit now, either. Tarden knew it was a moot point. He was too enamoured, too loyal, too stupid ever to have cared.

As his mind wandered, Tarden's feet followed unconscious paths through the bush. He had stuffed the map in his back pocket, let the landscape guide him. His group followed him, in a line, whacking the grass with long sticks. The progress was excruciating. The bodies, corralled from the Ottoman, had mostly signed up for the SES years ago in a burst of short-sighted empathy. After the bushfires in '94, fits of goodwill shot through small towns like Reception, but they'd never really expected to be called out. That morning they all grumbled about not being back in time for afternoon drinks until Robbie had the bright idea of roping Nat Patterson in, meaning the pub wouldn't be open till everyone got back. The seeds of Robbie's guile still sprouted; it wasn't in Nat's nature to refuse a mercy mission. Everyone had a weakness, and it was Robbie's gift to know it. He had a strong influence over the locals. If Reception hadn't long ago been absorbed into the faint sprawl of an amalgamated council, he would have been a natural fit for mayor. Well, perhaps not.

That girl was here too, that waitress Megan. The one Robbie always talked about. She had been to their house once; Tarden was sure Robbie just did it to taunt him. He suspected the bastard had given her a sample, too. Particularly stupid, considering she spent half her time up the coast and worse still, she'd attached herself to one of the drivers.

This, though, wasn't the greatest of Tarden's worries. What preyed most on his mind was the thought of Iris—his Iris—wasting away in silence. She had never told him. When he thought of her sickness, whatever it was, his stomach cinched like a drawstring bag. Louise Sawyer was Iris's daughter; Simon was her grandson.

Tarden shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts, trying to return his attention to the patch of ground in front of him. The last thing he needed was to lose concentration. He needed to lead the team away from the hidden estuary and deep into the bush, where he'd make sure they found nothing at all.

Simon stumbled forward in his socks, not caring what he stepped on.
He
was the one who was lost, not his parents. They were back at home, laughing, drinking wine, enjoying life without a son they never wanted anyway. Audrey was horrible and stuck-up, but she was right.

The sand and rocks and water had disappeared, and Simon found himself threading through spiky grass and tough tall shrubs with gnarled branches, curled up like bodies protecting themselves from unseen harm. He smelled camphor and pine, felt fine dust on his tongue. He heard wind—the whipping fins of thin leaves—but no insect noise, no cicadas buzzing like he expected there would be: their absence seemed as sudden as sunshine.

He stopped by a tree with a natural saddle, leaned his body back against it. The stones in his pockets felt solid against his legs. At the corners of Simon's thumbs, the skin had dried and turned hard, leaving a pattern of white triangles. He picked at them with the nails of his index fingers while he decided what to do next. Before long, a burrowing pain distracted him and he looked down to see a trickle of brown-red blood snaking to each wrist. He bent to his knees and willed the blood further on, but it had already dried. Simon didn't notice Ned until he heard the crackle of his footsteps emerging from the taller grass behind him. Ned's jacket was covered in leaves and he seemed out of breath. ‘Simon,' he said. ‘Thank God.' He brushed down his jacket. ‘Where are your shoes?'

Simon said, ‘They're not my shoes.'

‘Audrey said you ran away.' Ned came closer. His face fell. ‘The blood, Simon—your hands—what happened?'

Simon glanced down. He must have started picking his thumbs again; the trickle of blood had become thicker. It looked like he was a robot, and the blood was his wires.

‘They just got dry,' he said. ‘They're okay.'

Ned took Simon's hands. ‘Your thumbs,' he said. ‘They're all cut up.'

Simon pulled his hands back. He raised one hand to his face. All down the side of his thumbnail, the skin had been pulled away, leaving it exposed and raw. It stung in the wind.

‘We should get you back to the carpark,' said Ned, blowing hair from his eyes. ‘We'll need to fix up that bleeding.'

Simon remembered Jack Tarden's finger, how he had bitten it bloody. ‘I can't go back to the carpark,' he said.

‘Why not?'

‘Because…because I can't.'

Ned put his hands in the pocket of his coat. ‘It's okay, Simon,' he said. ‘If you don't want to stay, I can drive you back.'

‘You don't understand.'

‘Actually,' said Ned. ‘I think I do.'

Simon felt the reckless heat of tears pressing again. He was so sick of crying. ‘You don't know!' he found himself shouting. ‘My mum and dad have gone and they've left me here and they don't care and they wish I'd never been born and they don't even love me and—' Simon closed his eyes to stem the wave that was surging up inside him. The word
love
ripped at the back of his throat, like some part of him being torn away. Without thinking, he reached out for Ned's jacket and—not knowing why—wrapped his arms around it. He felt Ned's hands patting him on the back.

‘It's okay,' Ned said softly. ‘You know that's not true. Where…why do you think that?'

Simon didn't want to say, but he did. ‘Audrey said so.'

‘Audrey?'

‘She told me Mum and Dad left me here and went back home.'

‘Oh, Simon, no. Audrey makes things up sometimes. She shouldn't tell lies like that—it's a really silly thing to do. She didn't mean it.'

‘But our car isn't here. It isn't at the lake.'

‘Maybe your parents parked it somewhere else. Maybe they decided to walk.'

The tears suddenly sprang from Simon's eyes. ‘But I called Audrey a
shit
.'

‘Hey,' said Ned, hugging Simon tighter as he pressed his wet face into his jacket. ‘Don't worry about that. I think everyone's just getting a little too excited.'

Simon dug his fingers in to Ned's back. ‘I don't want to be here,' he cried. ‘I don't want to.'

‘All right,' said Ned. ‘Maybe we should just take a rest for a minute.' He gently pulled Simon away from him and they sat down on the ground. ‘Simon,' he said. ‘I think I know why Audrey got upset with you, and why things are maybe a bit strange at the moment.'

Something in Ned's voice made Simon's shoulders relax. He had not realised he was clenching his body so tightly. He had not realised he craved something real. All he had felt, ever since he arrived in Reception, was that the truth was hiding from him. Everything was like an echo.

Ned took a deep breath, and worked the toe of his shoe deep into the soft ground. Here, just below the surface, was soft sand, sprinkled with mineral colour. Above it, among the blanket of weeds, were tufts of wispy red grass, shaped like sea anemones.

‘A few years ago,' said Ned, ‘nearly two years ago, someone else went missing here. Not at the lake but at the beach, near the headland, near my house.'

Simon saw the bluff clearly in his mind, remembered it from his first view of Reception: an angry foot lashing out at the ocean.

‘It was my wife, Simon. That's who went missing. Audrey and Julian's mother.' Simon's mind processed Ned's words. He pictured them stretching out, like a train track. ‘She was swimming,' said Ned. ‘She would go swimming every day. The same place, the same beach. And…it was like she was there one minute and then—' He opened his hands in front of his face. ‘That day, she never came back. And then there was just a space where she used to be.' He smiled grimly.

Simon continued to stare into the ground. He said, ‘Did they search for her…your wife?'

‘Yes. Everyone did. Madaline did. Everybody helped.'

Simon realised now why Audrey knew so much about searching, why she was so upset. He asked, even though he already knew the answer: ‘Did they find her?'

Ned sighed. ‘You've got to understand, Simon, that it was so different. It was summer—such a hot summer—and the sea, the tides…it was impossible, right from the start.'

‘She wasn't…no one found her?'

Ned nodded his head. ‘We don't know what happened. She—Stephanie—she left us.'

‘I'm sorry for your loss,' said Simon. He felt so sad for Audrey and Gin.

Ned smiled. ‘Thank you,' he said. ‘That's very kind.' He rubbed his hands together to shake off some sand. ‘That's why Audrey might have been a bit strange about things. She was…very upset when her mum went. She was quite a different person before it happened.'

‘Because she doesn't know what happened.'

‘I think so, yes.'

Simon sat and let the silence grow. It came up to meet him with the solemn steps of a friend he didn't have to greet. He pictured gentle waves at an ocean's edge, leapfrogging each other like a family of brothers, settling their scores on the sands of the shore.