He dials triple zero, asks for the police, explains quickly, voice low, what he’s found, requests that police and ambulance both attend, warning that there is the potential for danger, that the police should enter first. The dispatcher starts to ask questions, but Martin can’t afford to wait any longer. He interrupts to tell them of the boy in the car—if anything happens to him, at least they’ll find Liam. Then he hangs up and starts moving towards the stairs.
chapter two
She opens her eyes, but cannot see; tries to speak, but cannot talk. She closes her eyes again, almost slips back into sleep. It must be dark. No. It’s not that. There is motion, a sense of movement. She feels the vibration, can hear the sound. A car. She’s in a car. Or a van or a truck. But the weight of fatigue is too great. Her eyes close and she drifts away.
A loud sound, a vibration. She comes awake, and still she cannot see. But now she can feel the cloth that brushes her eyelashes when she blinks. She’s blindfolded. She rolls her eyes around. Yes: there, to her lower left, the slightest seepage of light. She tries to open her mouth to speak, but it’s taped shut. A fog comes rolling across her mind and it’s all she can do to stay awake, to stave off the temptation to fall under once again. But it is coming in too strong, a dark tide. She feels herself taken.
Awareness comes seeping back in; again, she opens her eyes to darkness. But the mist is lifting from her mind. She’s sitting upright, in a car. She can feel the cushioning beneath and behind, the shape of the seat. There are industrial smells: oils and grease and solvents. She tries to move her hands but they’re tied together. She attempts to lift them to her eyes, to remove the blindfold, but it’s no good: their movement is restricted. Breathe, she tells herself, breathe. And don’t betray your weakness. She realises she’s not fully gagged; there is nothing in her mouth, it’s just been taped shut. She can’t speak, but she could easily make a noise. She decides against trying. Instead, she sits back in the seat, feigns unconsciousness, while trying to work through what has happened to her, what might happen next.
The man. She remembers him now. The man in the suit, as unfamiliar and unlikely in her coastal home as a priest or a politician, out of place with his fidgety nervousness and abrupt manner. What had he said? That he knew her, that they had met before? In Riversend, her home town in western New South Wales. Had he said that, or did she dream it? There were no men in suits in Riversend. Only at funerals were there men in suits. And then she remembers: at the end, after the killings, the policemen and the reporters, all wearing suits, setting themselves apart, setting themselves above. That was it: a policeman. He’d said he was a policeman, had shown her identification. She remembers that now. A policeman.
God, she feels tired. Remembering is like lifting weights.
She closes her useless eyes, trying to concentrate, to push her mind through the treacle. Her memory of the detective is hazy, but she feels it wasn’t so long ago that she was talking to him. In her lounge room. In their house on the cliff. Claus. He said his name was Claus. Why is it so hard to remember? Has she been hit? Has she been drugged? She pushes against the headrest, slowly flexing her neck muscles, but there is no pain. Not hit then; drugged. She congratulates herself for working that out, then realises that it doesn’t help. She flexes her arms one way, then the other, testing the restraints: her wrists are bound painfully together, so too her ankles, with another cord threaded through the seatbelt, preventing her from lifting her hands above her midriff. She tries moving in her seat: but the belt holds her firm. To her left, there is nothing, but to her right she encounters resistance. The side of the vehicle. She leans as far as she can, presses her bare arm against the hardness. It’s warm. The sun, she thinks. The sun warming the side of the vehicle. If it’s the afternoon, then they’re driving south. But she can feel no sunlight on her face. So not a window, then. She must be in a van, or a truck. Makes sense. They could hardly have her sitting up, bound, blindfolded and gagged next to a window. She tries to follow the pattern of movement; there is no accelerating and decelerating, no rounding of corners. The engine and road noise have a constant pitch. They must be on the freeway, heading south. South towards Sydney.
South towards the past.
She breathes deeply, trying to quell the rising sense of panic. A detective came to her home, drugged her and kidnapped her. She tries to make sense of it, to imagine alternatives, but only one conclusion is possible: it’s the past, come to claim her. After all these years, just as she was beginning to believe she had achieved escape velocity, fled its orbital pull once and for all. The past; she’s sure of it.
MONDAY
chapter three
The sun rises from the distant sea, rays spearing
