The Island(36)

“Do you want me to go?”

“No, not yet. Let’s get it deep enough for all of us.”

“Are you saying that because I’m fat?” Owen asked. Heather couldn’t tell if this was a mordant attempt at one of his snarky jokes or not.

“I’m the problem. You’re not the problem,” Heather said. “I just wish we had a better tool to dig through this ground.”

“What about one of those hooks in the ceiling? Couple of them look loose,” Owen suggested.

“Perfect. You dig with the knife and I’ll see if I can reach one. Don’t hurt yourself.”

“I’ve used a knife before!”

Heather stood up cautiously and touched one of the hooks in the ceiling. Many years ago this place must have been used for hanging game birds or something of the kind. The hooks were rusted but firmly nailed into the crossbeams. The first one she touched was solid, as was the second. The third, however…she wiggled it and it started to move. Hans was very tall and she was on tiptoes. He could do this easily. She looked at him.

“No,” he said.

“Why not?”

“We are not getting involved in your trouble,” he explained.

“No, you just want to wait here all night, tied up by the neck, until the morning comes, when they are almost certainly going to kill you,” Heather said.

“Why would they do that?”

“Because they are going to make up some bullshit story about what happened to me and Tom and the kids, and you would be able to contradict that story. Therefore, the smart thing to do—the only thing to do—is kill you.”

“This is Australia, not America,” Hans said.

Heather nodded. Well, at least she’d tried.

“They are not evil,” Hans added.

“Perhaps they are worse than evil—they are bored,” Petra said.

Hans said something dismissive-sounding in Dutch.

All the hooks in the ceiling were too solid for her to remove. She was just going to have to dig with her knife and her bare hands. She dropped to the floor and helped Owen carve a furrow in the dirt big enough for both of them to wriggle under the wall. She dug with her nails and fingers. She would have used her teeth if she’d had to.

“OK,” Heather said. “Do we have everything?”

Olivia nodded. Owen grunted.

“I’ll go first,” Olivia said and she got down on her belly and began wriggling through the gap in the timbers. She was halfway through when there was the sound of a door slamming up at the house.

“Hey!” they heard someone yell. “What are those bloody Yanks up to now? Turn that bloody light off!”

Everyone froze.

“Turn that light off, someone! It’s coming right in me window!”

“Back inside, Olivia! They mean the light in front of the shed,” Heather whispered.

Olivia slithered back inside.

“Quick! Back to where you were, and put the ropes over your hands,” Heather said. The kids scrambled back to where they’d been sitting, and she put the nooses around their necks.

She heard a door open and someone come out of the farmhouse.

She put the ropes around her own neck and sat down. She was still fumbling with the rope around her wrists when she heard a key turn in the shed’s padlock. The door opened and Matt was standing there with a rifle in one hand.

“Everything all right in here?” he asked.

“Yes,” Heather said, panting.

“They want me to turn the outside light off. It’s filtering into the house.”

“That’s fine. Maybe we’ll sleep a bit.”

“We get up early round here. With the sun. I’ll make sure you get some food in the morning,” Matt said.

“Thank you,” Heather said.

“No probs,” he said.

“You’re very kind,” she said, just to keep him looking at her and not at the ropes the kids had hastily draped around their wrists. Not to mention the hole behind Olivia.

“I don’t know about that. All this…it’s Ma’s decision…well, like I say, I have to turn the light off, but, as you say, maybe you can get some kip, you know?” he said.

“When does the sun come up?”

“This time of year, around five o’clock.”

“Thank you. We will try to sleep until then.”

“Before you go, I would like to say something,” Hans said.

“Oh?”

Heather’s heart was in her mouth. She looked at Petra, but she didn’t appear to know what Hans was going to say.

“I want to ask about this lady’s husband. She seems to think that something happened to him. Is he, um, is he dead?”

“Yeah. He’s dead. Danny killed him. I couldn’t have prevented it. I didn’t see the blade on him. Fast bugger.”

“You understand that this has nothing to do with my wife or me?”

Matt nodded. “Duly noted. Get some sleep if you can,” he said, then exited and locked the door.

He turned off the light and Heather waited until he had gone back to the farmhouse before moving. She took the ropes from around her neck and removed the ropes from the kids’ necks.

“All right, Olivia, you go first,” Heather said.