The Leaves Forget, page 7
“So what do we do?” Andrew asks.
“This is the only lead we have, right?” I still hear that note of desperation in my voice.
Dad’s looking at his phone, frowning. “No signal up here.”
“If we’re going to Strahan,” I say, “we have to go back east towards Hamilton and then turn onto the A10, right? I think that’s the way. If we start in that direction I can check and make sure. And I can let Mum know.”
“Don’t tell her about . . .” His voice trails off and he gestures out towards the bush and the oubliette.
“No, of course not.”
Dad nods, thinking. “It’ll take us probably four hours or more to drive around there.”
“Be dark by then,” Andrew says.
“So be it.” Dad walks purposefully to the front door, unlocks it and strides out.
“What about Chloe?” I call as Andrew and I catch up.
Dad pauses, glances back at me. “What about her?”
That seems callous. “We just gonna leave her there?”
Maybe he can see the distress in my face, hear it in my voice. Andrew takes my hand.
“What do you want to do?” Dad asks. “We can’t bury her or anything. That’s evidence of a crime.”
“Call the police,” Andrew says. “When we get a signal on the way to Strahan. Call Beth first, tell her what’s happening, without mentioning Chloe, then call the cops. Tell them everything we know so far and give them the location of the conclave. Tell them about Chloe’s body, all that. Yeah? Tell them we’re going to Strahan.”
“I don’t want the police finding Jonathan before we do,” Dad says, and his eyes are like flint.
Andrew and I look at him, lost for words.
“If the cops take him in and he clams up, we’ll never find Liv. I want to talk to him before the police do.”
We fall into a thoughtful silence for a moment. I imagine my dad beating the shit out of Jonathan, like something from an action movie. He’s a retired tiler, for fuck’s sake. My childhood memories are of him coming home every day covered in white dust and dried grout, showering clean for dinner, but the stains of his work persistent in the creases of his fingers and under his nails. And now he looks ready to murder someone. But I can’t deny he has a point. At some stage we’ll need the police, but right now it’s entirely likely they’ll fuck everything up.
“She’s been there a while already,” Dad says. “So she can wait a little longer, can’t she? Another day or two won’t hurt. Of course we have to report this to the police, but not yet. Let’s get to Strahan. We visit that address and talk to Jonathan, find Liv. Then we call it in.”
“We’ll get in strife for not reporting it right away,” Andrew says.
“We’ll claim emotional trauma or something,” Dad says. “Just say we were so caught up in finding Liv we didn’t think to call at first, something like that. You remember when you were a teenager, Craig, and I had to pick you up from that party in Battery Point? You were all of, what? Sixteen? And you were drunk and you’d had a fight and when I finally picked you up and yelled at you for going without asking us permission, you remember what you said?”
“I said I didn’t ask because I knew you’d say no. Because I was too young?” I glanced sheepishly at Andrew. “There was this older guy I knew would be there and I had a massive crush on him.”
Andrew gives a crooked half-smile. “Sounds about right.”
“Yeah,” Dad says. “But do you remember your rationale?”
“I was pretty drunk, like you said. I don’t remember . . .”
“You were steaming drunk, son. You could barely stand. And when I yelled at you, you laughed and said, ‘Better to ask forgiveness than permission, Dad!’ Remember that?”
I can’t help a short laugh. “I don’t remember, no. But it does sound like me.”
“Doesn’t it. So let’s take a play from the Book of Craig. We’ll call the police after.”
It’s not right. It’s an ethically questionable choice at best, and we all know it. But we all love Liv and that means more to us than anything else. No one says anything for a moment, then Dad turns back to the car, gets in.
Andrew and I get in as well and Dad drives away. We don’t speak for ages as Dad heads back east then turns onto the A10. Andrew hands out some of the road snacks he bought and we eat and drink mechanically. The food has no flavour, just texture that seems to take twice as long to chew and swallow as normal.
The first sound is me calling Mum when I finally get a signal.
“Have you found her?” Her voice brings tears to my eyes.
“Not yet, Mum. But we’ve got more to go on. Listen, it’s a long story and we’ll tell you all the details later, but for now I want to let you know that we’re heading for Strahan.”
“Why?”
“We think that’s where we’ll find Jonathan now. The conclave place has been abandoned, but we got a lead. Stay near a phone like before, and don’t worry, okay? We’re not giving up. We’ll find Jonathan in Strahan and we’ll make him tell us where Liv is. We might even find her too, with Jonathan, right?”
Mum’s silent for a moment, and there are tears in her voice when she finally speaks. “Just be careful, okay? I love you. All of you.”
“We will. And we love you too. I’ll call again as soon as there’s anything to tell you, I promise.”
I hang up and open a map app, check the route. We drive on west, over the west coast range as dusk falls. It’s full dark as we turn off the A10 just after Queenstown, onto the B24, the Lyell Highway, that leads down into Strahan. Calling it a highway seems like a misnomer. It’s a narrow, single-lane road, twisting and turning, tall bush to either side hemming us in.
Then the bush begins to thin and the sky is huge and black with a blanket of stars and an almost full moon staring down like a baleful eye. It should be beautiful, but it just makes me feel small and useless. Irrelevant. Inconsequential.
Then the road winds gently and there are random lights, streetlamps and lit windows, and suddenly we’re in a small town, just like so many others. It looks entirely normal, wide streets and low houses. There’s a BP petrol station, a couple of people filling their cars.
My nerves are taut as I pull up the map app and put in Meredith Street. “It’s on the opposite side of town,” I tell Dad. “Turn right on Harvey Street just up there and keep going.”
He nods, face determined.
We cruise slowly through town, straight across a small roundabout, then Meredith Street is a T-junction ahead of us.
“Turn left, Dad. Jonathan’s address is right down the end near the water.”
“We doing this right now?” Andrew asks from the back.
“Yes,” Dad says. “Right now.”
22
“LAST ONE, THERE ON THE LEFT,” I say as we draw near. Dad kills the lights and pulls up to the kerb about twenty metres short of the property and then cuts the engine. His face is still set, determined, and I suddenly feel like we’re doing something wrong. Something illegal. But we’re not. Are we? We’re in the right here. Liv is missing. So why do I feel like Dad is about to do something that could have serious repercussions?
“What’s the plan, Clive?” Andrew asks. I hear uncertainty in his voice, and I assume it’s born of thoughts like my own.
My dad sniffs, knuckles white on the steering wheel in the eerily quiet car. The street is dark, a soft glow from a few nearby windows the only artificial light, and the nearly full moon painting everything outside in stark contrasts. “I don’t know,” he says eventually.
“We’ll just knock on the door,” Andrew says. “Right? The porch light is on, so someone’s home. We knock, we ask where Liv is. Anything else comes from that question, doesn’t it?”
Dad sits up straight. “You’re right, mate. Let’s go.”
My hands are shaking as we walk up the path to the front door, the brightly lit porch. I’ve never liked confrontation. I’m not a naturally confident person in the face of other people’s anger or aggression. Andrew has always dealt with that better than me, and honestly, I don’t really know where Dad falls on that scale. I’ve certainly never known him to have a fight, but I have seen him stand up for himself in arguments.
He once yelled down a road rage guy who slammed on his brakes in front of us and stormed out of his car, face twisted, fists balled. I was only a teenager, and terrified as my dad sighed and said, “Hell, no.” He got out of the car and stood tall, faced up to this burly fuckhead while the bloke ranted and yelled, accusing Dad of cutting him off. Which he hadn’t. My dad yelled right back, didn’t back down and I remember feeling a tightness in my balls and a sick swirl in my stomach, anticipating violence. Scared for my dad. Then Dad yelled, “Just get back in your car and drive away!” and the other guy spat on the ground at Dad’s feet and flipped him the bird before he went back to his car and screeched off, leaving black tyre marks on the asphalt.
Dad’s hands were shaking as he got back in the driver’s seat. “Arsehole,” he muttered. “All talk, these people.” But I had the sense he hadn’t been certain of that at the time.
“That was intense,” I remember saying and Dad just said, “Yeah.” And we drove home.
So if Jonathan gets defensive or aggressive now, I don’t really know what to expect of Dad or Andrew, but I know they’ll both be better equipped for it than I am. I’m so glad we’re all together here.
Dad doesn’t waste any time, hits the door, three heavy knocks with the side of his closed fist. There’s no response. Other lights are on inside, glowing softly through closed curtains. Dad bangs again.
“Someone there,” Andrew says quietly and we turn to see where he’s looking just in time to see a curtain drop back into place on a window beside the door.
“Was it him?” Dad asks. “A man, at least?”
“I don’t think so. I didn’t see much, but the hand was old and liver-spotted, looked more like a woman’s.”
“Old?” Dad knocks again, less aggressively this time. “We know someone’s home,” he calls loudly. “We really need some help. We want to talk. Please.”
In the silence that follows there’s a soft scuff on the other side of the door.
“Please,” Dad says. “I just want to find my daughter.”
More silence and I’m about to suggest we call the police after all, or think of another course of action, when a wavery woman’s voice says, “Jonathan took her?” Even muffled by the door and apparent age, I can hear hurt in her tone.
“Please,” my dad says. “What do you know?”
The door rattles, then opens a couple of inches before fetching up against a security chain. The woman’s face is wrinkled and thin, grey hair curling above wet, wide eyes. “How did you find me?”
“We found a letter addressed to Jonathan at this address.”
She sighs. “I told him to stop using this address a long time ago.”
“I think the letter was pretty old,” I say. “There was nothing inside, just an empty envelope lost under a fridge.”
“You’re not coming in,” the woman says.
“That’s fine,” my dad says quickly. “No problem at all. Just please, let us ask a couple of questions, then we’ll go. Can you do that?”
“Maybe. I probably won’t have answers.”
“That’s okay. What’s your name?”
“Ivy.”
“Hey, Ivy. Nice to meet you. I’m Clive. This is my son, Craig and his partner, Andrew.”
She nods, says nothing.
“My daughter joined up with Jonathan and his . . . group. Near Deverin? You know that property?”
“His father and I bought it decades ago. Used to live up there. We moved here and left that property to Jonathan when . . . Before.”
I can’t help wondering what she was going to say. When what? When things were less fucked up?
“You and your husband live here now full-time?”
“I do. Have for more than twenty years. Jonathan’s father died nearly a decade ago.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“You’re the only one who is.”
There’s a depth of maliciousness to her voice and a sudden hardness in her eyes that shocks me. This poor woman seems to be carrying quite a burden.
My dad nods, draws a slow breath. “Right. Do you know where Jonathan is now?”
“If he’s not up at Deverin, he could be anywhere.”
“It seems abandoned there now. I think maybe my daughter managed to expose him or something. We’re not really sure what’s happening.”
“Best you stay not sure.”
“What about his daughter?” Dad says and my stomach tightens as I remember the smell, the lank blonde hair over emaciated, stained shoulders.
“Whose?”
“Jonathan’s daughter. Chloe?”
The old woman’s mouth twists. “His stepdaughter. Her mother was a junkie, useless. She still with him? Surprised she didn’t run away yet, she’s probably old enough by now.”
Dad licks his lips. I see his hands shaking. This family is so broken in so many ways.
“How long has your daughter been missing?” Ivy asks, and there’s a momentary softness in her voice and eyes.
“More than a couple of months now.”
The old woman’s eyebrows rise slightly. “You should probably accept your loss in that case.”
A gasp escapes me and Andrew puts a hand on my shoulder. My father’s face hardens again.
“I can’t do that. Not yet. I need to know more. I need to find Jonathan at the very least.”
“Good luck to you.” She starts to close the door.
My father stops it with a palm. “Please! Where else might he be? Anything you might know could help. Any other properties he might own? Any people he associates with? Please!”
The woman pauses, staring at the ground. When she looks up there are tears in her eyes and pain is a mask across her features. “His friends since school and well into adulthood were Peter Franks and Matthew Kirby. Those two and Jonathan were always thick as thieves and they started all that nonsense up there at Deverin together. And Jonathan’s father, of course, egging them all on. But he’s long gone. They honestly could be anywhere, but they were all born here in Strahan. That’s why Jonathan’s father and I moved back here when we started to get old. If you can’t find Jonathan, maybe Pete or Matt are still around and might know something.”
“Are their families still in Strahan too?” my dad asks.
“Not Pete’s, they’re long gone. But Matt’s father, Justin, is still here. I see him from time to time. But I go out very little. I don’t know where in town he lives, but he’s still around somewhere. That’s all I know.”
Before any of us can do more, the door slams shut and we hear a deadbolt lock into place. I imagine Ivy leaning against the other side, shaking, maybe crying. Reliving all the trauma and loss of her life. I feel a depth of sympathy for her disproportionate to someone I only just met. That poor woman.
We stand in stunned silence for a minute, then Andrew says, “Remember Liv’s letters? She talked about a Pete and a Matt. Matt was together with Joanne.”
“And then there was Lee and Kristyn,” I say. “Liv said some had been there a bit longer than others, but I think only the women were new. Do you think all the men were in on it and the women had no idea? If Jonathan, Pete and Matt have been buddies since forever, maybe they set it all up like that? Pretended that Matt and Pete were like the women to put them more at ease?” I’m figuring it out as I speak, but it certainly seems feasible.
“Lee left,” Dad says quietly. “According to what Jonathan told Liv, she chose to leave. But maybe she didn’t.”
“If Pete and Matt are in on it together with Jonathan, we’re no more likely to find them than him,” I say, hating the echo of despair in my voice. “They’re probably still all together, wherever they’ve gone.”
“But Matt’s father is still here in Strahan,” Dad says. “We’re not out of options yet.”
23
SITTING BACK IN DAD’S CAR we fall into a confused silence for a little while.
Eventually, Andrew says, “She was his stepdaughter.”
“Children have so little agency,” Dad says. “That poor child was stuck with him, and he killed her.” A tear stands on my father’s cheek, then gives in to gravity and rolls. He wipes at it angrily with a sleeve. He’s never been one of those hard men, refusing to show emotion, but this might be the first time I’ve seen him cry. And how could he not? It’s hard for any of us to imagine Liv’s safety with a man who would throw his own stepdaughter in a hole in the ground and leave her to starve to death.
“Why didn’t she run away?” Andrew says, and he’s not really asking us. Perhaps he’s questioning the universe at large.
“Liv said she was sixteen, right?”
“Yes.” Dad stares ahead at nothing, just the night stretching away. “That’s too young still to leave, probably. I’m sure she wanted to, but was probably too scared to take her chances. Even grown adults need a lot of courage to walk away from abusive relationships. If Jonathan had been her father figure for a long time, and if she was still that young, where would she go? What would she do? That poor child had fewer choices than most, and probably thought she would still be safer with her stepfather, no matter how abusive he might have been. Without money or options, it was Jonathan or a life on the street. I can’t imagine she suspected he would be that cruel.”
“I wonder what tipped the balance?” I say. “What could have pushed him to a decision like that?”
