The Lost Man(44)

‘Wait.’ Bub stared, incredulous. ‘You haven’t got your gun licence anymore?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Expired.’

‘Are you bloody joking, mate? When?’

‘Dunno. Few months.’

Just over six, actually. Nathan had felt something start to change in him last year after his dog, Kelly, had died. Steve had called him on the phone from the clinic and made him do this questionnaire all about how Nathan was feeling and things like that. Nathan had toned down his answers, but after that either Glenn or Steve had seemed to coincidentally find themselves in the region of Nathan’s property every couple of weeks.

He’d started to feel a bit sorry for them, trailing all the way out to his place to check up on him with fabricated excuses so threadbare they were transparent. So when his licence renewal had rolled around, he’d let it lapse partly to put their minds at rest, he told himself.

Nathan knew there must be some sort of watch list in their desk drawers, and he knew his name had to be on there. Probably high up, possibly even right at the top. Either way, ready access to firearms was unlikely to be on the recommended treatment plan and he could tell it was making them nervous. So he’d surrendered his weapons to Glenn. Now, Nathan’s rifle cabinet door swung open, unlocked, and every once in a while, when he found himself somehow standing in front of it, there was just an empty shelf.

Nathan glanced at his son in the car. ‘Listen, don’t tell Xander. He gets funny about things sometimes.’

Bub was still staring at Nathan as though he’d admitted to chopping off his right arm and losing it somewhere. Xander caught the expression and called something out of the window. The words got lost in the wind.

‘What’s that, mate?’ Nathan shouted back.

The car door opened and Xander walked over. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing. You okay?’

‘I suppose. Hey, listen, why didn’t Jenna say anything to Mum?’ Xander said, in a way that suggested he’d been dwelling on the subject for the past hour. ‘When they were driving home together?’

He looked upset. When he was five years old, Uncle Cam had given him a pony called Mr Tupps. The pony arrived wearing a straw hat with holes cut for its ears, and Xander had been pink-faced with delight. He had phoned Cam every week for months to regale him with tales of what Mr Tupps had been up to now.

‘Yeah,’ Nathan said. ‘People wondered that at the time too.’

Jenna and Jacqui had been alone in the car for nearly three hours. Jenna had been quiet, apparently, but then so had Jacqui, who would’ve been more than a little bit tired and hungover if Nathan remembered rightly.

‘Mum would have helped her.’

‘Anyone would have helped her, mate. We’re not monsters.’

‘I didn’t mean –’

‘No, I know. Of course your mum would have helped her. If she’d said something.’

It hadn’t only been that, Nathan knew. After whatever had happened in the dunes, Cameron had offered to drive Jenna back to town and she’d accepted. She possibly didn’t have many other options at that time of night, Nathan realised, but as Cam had pulled up outside the pub, the landlord had seen two people leaning towards each other in the front seats, their kiss illuminated by the dull yellow of the interior light. Jenna had then climbed out of the car and walked away in the dark to the staff accommodation block.

‘Looked completely normal, mate,’ the landlord had told people later. ‘No worries at all there.’

‘And she didn’t tell anyone that morning while she was still in town?’ Xander sounded uncertain.

‘No.’

More than anything else – more than Cameron’s good nature, more than what anyone had or hadn’t seen at the party – it was the delay that swayed public opinion. The morning after the party, Jenna had sat in the bakery, drinking a coffee while waiting for Jacqui. The police station was fully visible through the bakery windows and the medical centre was at the end of the road. She had visited neither.

‘As far as I know, she didn’t say a word about it until her boyfriend heard the stories from the party.’ Nathan dusted his hands on his shirt and nodded at the car. ‘Go and check the radio. See if this is working.’

‘It’s so weird that Jenna would suddenly contact Uncle Cam now, though,’ Xander said.

‘Yeah. Try the radio.’

‘Because if it’s a coincidence, the timing –’

‘I know. The timing’s shit. Radio.’

‘So –’ Xander didn’t move. ‘Do you think it’s possible that something bad actually did happen at that party?’

‘If I did, I would have said so at the time.’ Nathan walked past him, pulled open the car door and tried the radio himself.

‘But even if you didn’t think so at the time, now –’ He heard Xander follow him.

‘But nothing, mate.’ A bleep on the airwaves. The mast was working. ‘This is fixed. We can go.’

‘What if –’

‘Look –’ Nathan’s voice was louder than he’d intended and he took a breath, made himself lower it. ‘This is your Uncle Cam we’re talking about. He’s family. You know him.’ Knew him.