Part 15 (1/2)

'We're both experienced climbers, and we've brought our equipment ...'

He was shaking his head firmly. 'No, no, no. Lucy's was the first fatal accident we've had on the island in years. I was very doubtful about what they had planned at the time-there are no mountain rescue services within five hundred kilometres of here. I blame myself now for letting myself be persuaded. There's no chance that we're going to allow anyone to repeat the exercise.'

I made to argue, but he raised his hand to silence me. 'No. We agreed in the end to their proposal because Lucy and the others were doing important scientific conservation work, but we have no intention of encouraging mountaineering thrill-seekers here.'

'We just want to pay our last respects at the actual place, Mr Kelso,' I said. 'I understand that it was the island's administrative board that approved their program. Perhaps if we put in a proposal?'

'Won't make any difference. In any case, the board doesn't meet for another month. I suggest you take some flowers with you tomorrow, and Bob will get you as close to the place where she fell as he can.'

Bob had been watching this exchange with a trace of wry amus.e.m.e.nt in his eyes, as if his father and I had been having the sort of tussle he'd been used to losing for years. He turned his head towards the door as his brother Harry came in. He was fresh out of the shower after a day leading a group through the rainforest in the southern uplands. He had the same brown outdoor complexion as his brother, but he seemed leaner and tougher. His dark hair was cut very short, and I thought he looked as if he might have been in the army.

His father said, 'We were just explaining to Josh and Anna that there's no possibility of them climbing up the cliffs where Lucy fell, Harry.'

'You're climbers too, are you?' He looked me over as if a.s.sessing me. 'No, Dad's right. We've had a bit of rain recently and the cliffs are running with water. If you take a boat down there you'll see a few good waterfalls. The view from the sea is fine anyway, if you've got binoculars.'

'Exactly.' Stanley shook his head to dismiss the topic.

Harry said, 'You had any dealings with Marcus lately?'

He said it almost as if they were old mates, and I looked at him in surprise. 'Yes, we saw him recently.'

'How's he doing these days?'

Muriel Kelso bustled in at that point, a very different character from her husband, and the atmosphere in the room immediately brightened. Her welcome was irresistibly warm, her face, haloed by fine silver curls, glowing as she hugged Anna and then, slightly to my embarra.s.sment, myself. 'My dears, how wonderful to see you both here. Are you comfortable in the cottage?'

It was almost as if she'd personally invited us to stay there, instead of Anna booking it on the internet. Her charm seduced us all, and even Stanley became more mellow. She was sure that our stay would help heal the wound of the loss of our dear friends, and she insisted that her family would move heaven and earth to make it so. She only wished she'd been able to persuade Lucy's dear father to come and do the same. But I remembered Sophie Kalajzich's a.s.sessment of her, and could see the tough old bird beneath the charm.

'Who were you talking about when I interrupted?' she asked.

'Marcus,' Harry said. 'I wondered how his leg was doing. We heard he'd been sick again.'

This was news to me, and I was surprised they were still in touch. 'He did look a bit frail when we saw him, but he didn't mention being sick.'

'Poor man,' Muriel said. 'A brilliant mind. I believe the accident affected him deeply.'

'Did you know him well?' I asked.

'Well, yes, he'd been coming here for, what, eight or nine years before the accident. He'd become like one of the family really.'

Stanley grunted, and from the look on his face I guessed he didn't quite share his wife's enthusiasm.

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I found it hard to get to sleep that night. It wasn't the food that kept me awake, for Muriel had cooked her son's trevally as perfectly as she'd managed everything else. Nor was it the wine we'd consumed, which was excellent and plentiful enough to have knocked me out. It might have had something to do with that muttonbird, still giving its baby cries, heart-rending in the night.

There was something I'd intended to do earlier, and had been deflected by Bob's presence when we'd returned. I'd wanted to look again at the sheets of paper with the codes from Luce's diary, while the log records I'd studied in Carmel's office were still fresh in my mind. I got them out of my bag and sat up in bed to study them.

The first thing I noticed was that they all had an extra four numbers at the beginning of each string, which I soon realised was the date. Given that, and Carmel's lucid explanation, the whole sequence became intelligible. It was the final entries that interested me, and here I did notice something odd, for there was a single entry for Thursday the twenty-eighth of September, the day on which Owen had taken over the reporting. It was the very last line in Luce's diary, and it ran: 2809 1325 57J WE 23674 85849 149.

I stared at it for a while, struck not only by the date, but also by how different it looked from all the other lines. Here, for example, was the previous reading, taken on the Wednesday: 2709 1508 57J WF 06588 04470 103.

That was similar to all of the entries from the previous two weeks, when they'd moved from Roach Island down to the southern cliffs. For a start, the two groups of five digits-the eastings and northings readings-were quite different. Even more significant, I thought, the WF symbol on every other reading on the list had become WE in that final entry. Could that have been a simple typo? I tried to remember what Carmel had said about the WF, and recalled that it identified the hundred-kilometre squares into which the UTM zone 57J was subdivided. If it wasn't an error, the final entry must have been taken in a completely different grid square from all the rest. Wherever it was, it was big, for the final three digits showed that they were 149 metres above sea level.

I sat there staring at the numbers for a long time until they became a blur. I felt sure that Julian, d.i.c.k, Anne, George and Timmy the dog would have instantly understood this vital clue, slamming down their ginger beers and rus.h.i.+ng off to tell Uncle Quentin. But I hadn't the faintest idea what to make of it.

17.

I woke to the smells of toast and fresh coffee. Anna had been up since dawn, she told me, and I noticed a small bunch of flowers lying on the kitchen worktop. Muriel Kelso had given them to her, apparently, to take to the accident scene. In the light of a new day it seemed a thoughtful gesture, and I wondered if I'd misread the Kelsos, put off by Stanley's domineering manner. Soon Bob tapped on the cabin door and gave our gear a quick squint-a backpack with a bottle of water and windcheaters, but no climbing equipment. We followed him down to the beach and along to the jetty where his boat was moored. It looked as if it was designed to take small groups out fis.h.i.+ng or sightseeing, with a covered wheelhouse at the front and bench seating around the middle and stern.

Bob steered us out into the calm waters of the lagoon, turning the boat south to run parallel to the long beach, several kilometres of deserted golden sand. We pa.s.sed the end of the airstrip and continued towards the foothills of the first of the two southern mountains, Mount Lidgbird. Here the reef closed in against the sh.o.r.e, and Bob turned us towards the pa.s.sage between the lines of foaming surf that would take us out into open water. The swell out there was quite heavy after the calm of the lagoon, and we pitched and yawed as we got clear of the reef and turned south again beneath the increasingly formidable basalt cliffs of the mountains.

I know next to nothing about boats, and I was interested to watch Bob and ask him how things worked-especially the GPS navigation equipment next to the wheel. He was pleased to demonstrate it, pointing out the features on the glowing map of the island on the screen and our position on it.

'So, these figures show our position in degrees?' I asked.

'That's right, degrees decimal. You can switch the readout to degrees, minutes and seconds if you want ...' he showed me, 'or to UTM.'

'Neat. What about the reverse? Can you put in a map reference and it'll show you where it is?'

'Yeah.' He pointed ahead to a steep valley between the two mountains and handed me binoculars to look for waterfalls. I went back to join Anna and spoke quietly to her.

'I need a couple of minutes alone in the wheelhouse. If we get the chance, see if you can keep him occupied out here.'

'What are you doing?'

'Not sure yet. Are you all right?' She looked grey.

'This heaving up and down ... I feel a bit sick.'

'Concentrate on the mountains. Look out for waterfalls. See? Over there.' There were several silver threads of water cascading down the immense black cliffs.

I stayed with her as we moved under the shadow of Mount Gower, its dark flank looming overhead as we approached the point of South Head. The sombre blackness of the basalt cliffs was oppressive, and as Bob throttled back the engine and turned the boat closer to the sh.o.r.e I realised that this must be the place.

He joined us and pointed to an area halfway up the sheer wall, where white birds flitted in and out of the shadows. 'That's where they were working. I put them ash.o.r.e on that narrow beach over there.'

I scanned the cliffs with my camera, then with the binoculars, hoping to see some sign of the protection they might have used to anchor themselves up there, but it was too dark and too high up to make out any details, and the image swayed with the movement of the boat. The idea of working unsecured in such a place seemed unthinkable, and I blurted out, 'I can't believe she wouldn't have had a rope.'

He shrugged. 'Yeah.'

'Where did she come down?'

He pointed to a spot where waves broke against the base of the cliff, sending spume high up the rock face. 'Reckon that was it. Don't want to get any closer. The currents are treacherous down this southern tip of the island.'

Anna gave a little sob and reached into the bag for the flowers. She was looking very pale. She leaned over the side and dropped the blooms over. They drifted away, tiny white petals against the dark water. Then she suddenly gave a retch and ducked her head, being sick.

As Bob went to her, I backed away towards the wheel-house and began fiddling with the GPS controls. One thing I had managed to do the previous night was memorise the coordinates of Luce's last entry, but first I had to convert the instrument to UTM readings.