The Lost Man(3)

‘Why is he flying so late?’ Xander had said, squinting upwards. Nathan hadn’t answered. Night flying. A dangerous choice and an ominous sign. Something was wrong. They’d turned on the radio, but by then it was already too late.

Nathan looked now at Bub. ‘Look, I heard enough. Doesn’t mean I understand it.’

Bub’s unshaven jaw twitched. Join the club. ‘I don’t know what happened, mate,’ he said again.

‘That’s okay, tell me what you do know.’

Nathan tried to tone down his impatience. He’d spoken to Bub on the radio briefly the previous evening, as dark fell, to say he would drive over at first light. He’d had a hundred more questions, but hadn’t asked any of them. Not on an open frequency where anyone who wanted to listen could tune in.

‘When did Cam head out from home?’ Nathan prompted when Bub seemed at a loss as to where to start.

‘Morning the day before yesterday, Harry said. Around eight.’

‘So, Wednesday.’

‘Yeah, I guess. But I didn’t see him ’cause I’d headed out myself on Tuesday.’

‘Where to?’

‘Check a couple of those water bores way up in the north paddock. Plan was for me to camp up there, then drive over to Lehmann’s Hill on Wednesday and meet Cam.’

‘What for?’

‘Fix the repeater mast.’

Well, so Cam could fix it, Nathan thought. Bub would mostly have been there to pass the spanner. And for safety in numbers. Lehmann’s Hill was on the western edge of the property, a four-hour drive from home. If the repeater mast was out in that area, so was long-range radio contact.

‘What went wrong?’ Nathan said.

Bub was staring at the tarp. ‘I got there late. We were supposed to meet at around one but I got stuck on the way. Didn’t get to Lehmann’s until a couple of hours later.’

Nathan waited.

‘Cam wasn’t there,’ Bub went on. ‘Wondered if he’d been and gone but the mast was still out so I thought probably not. Tried the radio but he never came into range. So I waited a bit, then headed towards the track. Thinking I’d run into him.’

‘But you didn’t.’

‘Nup. I kept trying the radio but no sign of him.’ Bub frowned. ‘Drove for about an hour but I still hadn’t made the track so I had to stop. Getting dark, you know?’

Under the brim of his hat, his eyes looked for reassurance and Nathan nodded.

‘Not much else you could do.’ It was true. The night was a perfect shroud of black out at Lehmann’s Hill. Driving in the dark, it was only a question of whether the car would crash into a rock or a cow or roll off the road. And then Nathan would have had two brothers covered by a tarp.

‘But you were getting worried?’ Nathan said, although he could guess the answer.

Bub shrugged. ‘Yeah and no. You know how it is.’

‘Yeah.’ Nathan did. They lived in a land of extremes in more ways than one. People were either completely fine, or very not. There was little middle ground. And Cam wasn’t some tourist. He knew how to handle himself, and that meant he could well have been half an hour up the road, slowed down by the dark and out of range, but snug in his swag with a cool beer from the fridge in his boot. Or he might not.

‘No-one was picking up the radio,’ Bub was saying. ‘No-one’s ever bloody up there this time of year, and with the tower out –’ He gave a grunt of frustration.

‘So what did you do?’

‘Started driving in at dawn, but it still took ages before anyone picked up.’

‘How long?’

‘I dunno.’ Bub hesitated. ‘Probably a half-hour to get to the track, then another hour after that. Even then, it was only a couple of those idiot jackaroos over at Atherton. Took them bloody ages to get hold of the manager.’

‘They always hire dickheads at Atherton,’ Nathan said, thinking of the neighbouring property to the north-east. It sprawled over an area the size of Sydney. It was, as he’d said, staffed by dickheads, but was still the best chance around there of connecting with anyone. ‘So they raised the alarm?’

‘Yeah, but by then . . .’ Bub stopped.

By then no-one had seen or heard from their brother for about twenty-four hours, Nathan calculated. The search was well into the urgent phase before it had even started. As per protocol, every surrounding property would be informed and it was all hands on deck, for what it was worth. Over those distances, hands were few and far between and it could take a long time to reach the deck.

‘The pilot spotted him?’

‘Yeah,’ Bub said. ‘Eventually.’

‘Anyone you know?’

‘Nah, contractor based down near Adelaide. Been working on Atherton for the season. Some cop got him on the flight comms, told him to do a flyover and check the roads.’

‘Glenn?’

‘No. Someone else. From police dispatch or something.’

‘Right,’ Nathan said. It was lucky the pilot had seen Cameron at all. The stockman’s grave was two hundred kilometres from Lehmann’s Hill and the main search area. ‘When did he call it in?’

‘Mid-arvo, so most people hadn’t even made it to Lehmann’s by then. It was pretty much only me and Harry out there still, but I was about an hour closer so I said I’d drive over.’