Richard House - The Kills

Ford shook his head.

‘You have this idea about how big it is, but you’ve no real idea just how big until you’re there. Mathieu worked out that we could drive three hundred miles a day, which didn’t sound so bad. But everything is the same. The same bush. The same trees. The same sky. Whatever direction you head in everything is the same. On the first afternoon we were driving to these mountains. The radio said there was a fire four hundred miles away which didn’t sound so bad, until we realized that these mountains weren’t mountains, they were smoke from the fire which took up the entire horizon, and we were driving toward it. Mathieu found a campsite and we decided to stop. Another fire had passed through a week before. Everything was reduced to sand, to charcoal. There were no trees, but you could smell the eucalyptus even though the trees were gone. The sky was grey, just smoke, and the sun was red, you could stare right at it, this red circle. That night the fire crossed the highway three hundred miles south, and we woke up to a clear sky and drove onto the Nullarbor Plain, which is this stone desert. Endless.’ Nathalie poured herself the last of the wine.

‘How was your daughter?’

‘Elise? She slept most of the way. At first everything was strange and interesting, but by the second day she just listened to her headphones and slept. I forgot to say but this was the same time as the tsunami. We came off the Nullarbor when we heard the news. We listened to the radio and it didn’t make sense. It didn’t touch us until we heard about Thailand, and we realized that if the town of Cham Lek was gone then the hotels at Ban Hai would also be gone. It didn’t make sense. We were at this place where the desert stops at the ocean, it just stops, like the end of the world. We found a campsite and Mathieu called home. It sounds stupid now, but no one knew what was going on. They knew we were in Australia but there was this idea that we were also going to Thailand. People were worried for us. We kept saying that we were lucky. We were lucky. Anyhow. Mathieu looked at the tsunami and how we’d changed our plans as a sign. I couldn’t see it. And that’s when everything, in the end, started to come apart — because I wouldn’t see this as a sign.’

Done with speaking, Nathalie set her glass at her feet and excused herself. Ford watched as she walked into her room, a weight upon her, and was surprised when she did not return. Martin and Eric both paused and looked to him and he became uncomfortable.

* * *

Ford lay in bed curled on his side. Nathalie’s broodiness drew out his own. Their situations unnervingly similar. He turned the dog tags between his fingers one by one.

3.6

Parson sat in the car, parked at the side of the road, door open, one foot firm on the dusty blacktop, the sun falling hard on that leg. A choice ahead of him. A map of Turkey open across his lap, buckled over the steering wheel. Earlier in the morning, after seeing the coach station at Kopeckale and learning the bus routes, he’d circled the main points of exit: Ankara, Izmir, Istanbul, then numerous cities along the long western coast, which meant, clearly, heading west to the coast, or north then west to the cities. The bus routes superimposed on this showed three key towns: Kopeckale, Narapi and Birsim, where the buses offered a choice of north-to-south and east-to-west routes. Three feasible options.

He decided on Birsim but couldn’t make himself go. Something about the open plains on either side sucked out his interest. When the call came, he’d been sitting in the one place for over thirty minutes.

The call, from HOSCO, but no one he’d spoken with before, said that they had information about a sighting. Sutler.

Parson pushed the map to the back seat, clear on his directions. He drew in his leg, shut the door, and felt certain as he started up the car, lucky.

3.7

In the morning Ford waited while Eric took a shower. The clap of water sang loose across the courtyard. Nathalie spoke with Eric while he showered. Eric’s phone lay on his bed beside his pillow.

‘But you should say? You must tell her. I don’t understand why you don’t want to go? Everything is finished here in two or three days, we can spend a week on the coast before you go. You have to go, she will be disappointed if you don’t go.’

He couldn’t hear Eric’s reply.

‘Tell her,’ Nathalie insisted. ‘Talk to her. If she’s in Rome she might prefer to stay. You should let her know that you want to change your mind. She might have other things she would prefer to do?’

Eric returned to the room with a towel wrapped about his waist. He asked Ford how he was, then took off the towel to dry himself. Along the boy’s right buttock ran a sour yellow bruise and a trail of parallel scratches. Eric tested the skin, the gesture seemed strangely feminine.

‘I slipped.’ Eric twisted about, stretched the skin so he could see. ‘A dumb mistake. Don’t tell Nathalie. She’ll only make a fuss.’

Ford straightened his bed. ‘I need to get online.’ He decided to be forthright. ‘Can I use your mobile? I’d like to see if I have any messages.’

‘Sure.’ Eric picked up his phone, unlocked it, and handed it to Ford. ‘The code is 4221. That button for the internet. I think it’s charged.’ He pressed a small square centred key and demonstrated how to move the cursor.

‘Hold a key down to select different letters or numbers.’ Eric stood beside him, and left only when he heard Martin complaining to Nathalie outside. The shower was cold. The breakfast stale. And now they have to wait.

Ford sat at the edge of his bed, he drew the dog tags over his head and selected the first one. The phone, being small, had a tiny keypad. To avoid making a mistake he used Eric’s pen to hit the numbers and unlock the phone. He found the HOSCO website and worried that he could be traced, that his account would be blocked, that, somehow, the moment he signed in, his location would be revealed and everything would be over — and while he knew this was unlikely, he couldn’t shake the idea.

As the first security screen loaded the page locked and the cursor would not move. The signal bars faded and Ford held the phone up, then moved about the room to see where the signal was stronger. When he sat down, closer to the door, the bars returned, and the page loaded with the cursor blinking over an empty text box.

The first number from the first dog tag: 42974615.

He entered the first four numbers: 4297 and pressed the keys carefully and watched them appear after a little delay: 4–2 — 9–7.

He checked the final four numbers from the first dog tag: 4615.

When he pressed 4, the preceding number disappeared. He re-entered 7, then 4, waited for the numbers to appear, and they came up in reverse: 4–7.

He balanced the phone on his knee, wiped his hands down his face, picked up the phone and deleted the last two numbers.

Three numbers disappeared.

Ford squinted at the screen: 4–2 — 9.

He waited, the numbers stayed in place. He held his breath then typed 7, waited for it to appear, then with particular care pressed 4 (pause) — 2 (pause) — 9 (pause) — 7 (pause).

4 — 2–9 — 7–4 — 2–9 — 7

Catching his mistake before he hit ‘enter’. He deleted the entire number and re-entered from the start and watched it appear, correctly, on the small screen.

Finally, satisfied, he moved the cursor to ‘enter’, then clicked. The screen turned black and returned with a small message set dead centre in white script: SESSION TIMED OUT.

Ford held the phone out at arm’s length. He couldn’t be sure, did TIMED OUT mean that this was a second unsuccessful attempt, or simply that he’d taken too long?