Blood Secret (28 page)

42

She stayed by the opening until the light from Hayden's torch faded from the ammunitions bunker then aimed hers straight ahead at the darkness, clenching her teeth on the dread filling
her chest.

Don't be dead, Max. Be conscious enough to hear and
answer back.

‘
Max!
'

Her voice reverberated away, sucked into the depths of whatever lay ahead. She listened in the following silence. All she heard was the pulse pounding in
her ears.

She put the mallet in her pack, left the other tools in the bunker, then hitched her bag onto her back, glad the tunnel was high enough to stand upright. Ten steps in and she saw the elbow in the wall ahead, the engraving and the arrow pointing in the direction she'd come:
No. 4, Bennett's Bunker
. So the gun emplacement closest to the road was near the end, not the beginning. Would the maze get more complicated the further she
went in?

Stepping into the mouth of the new tunnel, she called again and sensed the space ahead of her. Narrow and never-ending. As she walked, graffiti moved past her on both sides like a cartoon reel in slow motion. Wartime scratchings and more recent:
MT was here; Jack Akkers, Corporal, 1943; Fuck you
. There was paint slapped about and sprayed on, the signature blocky letters of street artists; crude drawings; a devil's face, its red lines dripping like blood. None of it did anything to slow her breathing.

The air felt still and stale with the slightly sweet stink of something rotting. She moved the torch beam up and down, side to side, anxious to find the source of the smell before she walked into it. She was thinking bats and rats when she saw it. A brief, faint glint on the dirt near her feet. She moved quickly, focusing the beam on . . . a piece of . . . 

It was Max'
s watch.

*

There'd been noises. Intermittent distant echoes that'd found their way through the dark passageways like whispers. He'd tried shouting but there was no volume to his voice anymore or enough fluid left inside him to
make tears.

He closed his eyes, his mind reeling and spinning, turning inwards and backwards to the ever slowing march of his past, praying he could stay alive long enough for the source of the sounds to
find him.

Rennie. Working, painting, stressing about the big job. He barely saw her for days, which he was grateful for. He was ashamed and disgusted with James, worried about Naomi, anxious for Pav. Her bullshit detector would pick it up and he didn't want her involved. She'd wanted better stories in her life – this one didn't qualify.

It was the end of the week when Max started making demands. He got nowhere trying to reason with James and the shouting came back to him in dizzying, nauseating bursts. His cousin was going to leave a fucking mess and Max couldn't bring himself to just watch it happen. He told James he had to admit the affair to Naomi, give her a chance to get things in place before the baby came and gather her family for support. He told him he could take the profit to date, Max's share too, but the rest had to go back in the accounts – there were bills to be paid and business loans to close and Max wasn't going into debt for his cousin's mid-life crisis. If he didn't see the dollars in the bank, he'd go to the police. Funny how the ‘you're my cousin' argument made sense to James when there was a chance he might
lose something.

Max got drunk in front of the TV that night, watch­ing the Friday night soccer and trying to bolster himself for the next episode. He felt the disjointed numbness of it now, not sure if it was memory or his brain cells
checking out.

Saturday he . . . Had he spoken to Rennie before she left for the breakfast shift? He could only remember fortifying himself with painkillers so she wouldn't notice how bad his hangover was when he went see Pav at Skiffs later. Max cornered him in the kitchen, made him swear not to meet the supplier on his own. He needed cops or, at the very least, a friend who knew how to swing a fist. It was stupid bravado but it was all he could
think of.

And Dallas. He thought of Dallas a lot.

None of it – Pav, James, Naomi, Rennie, the whole mixed-up ugly mess – felt worthwhile, not even the fact that he wasn't the arsehole in the equation this time. He just wanted . . .

Pain sliced through him. Knife-edge sharp. Icy, burning. It made his ears ring and his brain hiss with static and his pulse pound in his throat.

Rennie scooped the watch into her hand, heart racing, the light jumping and leaping across every surface as she searched the darkness
for him.

‘Max! It's Rennie.
Maaax!
' The echo seemed to roll on for a whole minute. How the hell would she hear him? She waited for the sound to die and tried again, speaking slowly through the reverb. ‘Make a sound if you can hear me.' As she strained for a reply, the stench seemed to intensify. Whatever it was must be close. She crept forward, beam down,
and stopped.

There were indentations in the earth on the tunnel floor. It looked like scuff marks made by shoes and the pressure of large body parts, hips and butt. Then in the centre, where the surface was hard packed from fifty years of foot traffic, was a puddle shape and the unmistakable residue of old vomit. ‘Oh God, Max.'

Urgency and fear pushed her forward, moving fast, keeping the light trained ahead. The graffiti grew more sparse, as though only the strongest and bravest made it this far. Christ, she
hoped not.

She'd gone about three hundred metres when she saw the opening in the right-hand wall. Shining the torch around the corner, she saw only more rock wall and a long, dark tunnel. There were engravings on each face of the corner. She was standing in
Wangi Wangi Way
, the new passage was
East Street
. Which way did you go, Max?

Calling as she ran straight ahead, she reached another locked gate, turned around and headed back to the T-junction, the pack thumping on her back as she turned the corner and followed it. A dark, damp strip on the wall made her pause – water leaking in from above that reminded her Max had been missing for almost forty-eight hours and losing more fluids by retching. Then another junction:
Rathmines Row
carved into the rock. The tunnel to the seaplane base at Rathmines? Hayden said it was bricked up.

‘
Max!
'

She waited, turned left, heard a noise and stopped as the hairs on the back of her neck sat up.

‘
Max?
'

The echo died, the silence enfolded her. She waited. Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. There it was. Not a voice, not human. A brief, dull . . . scrape. It sounded like something dragged fleetingly across the rock.
And again.

She fought the urge to cry his name and listened, swinging her head one way then the other, not sure which direction it came from. She didn't shout this time. ‘I can hear you. Do it again if you can.'

Another scrape and another, and adrenaline fired like electrodes. ‘I'm coming!' She spun, headed the other way, feet pounding, light careering around the walls as she searched ahead.

A shape in the darkness at the furthest reach of her torch beam. Low down, hard up against the left-side wall.

‘Max? Is that you?'

It didn't move. It didn't look like Max. It didn't look like anything living. And she started to slow up, unsure, unnerved, dread rushing through
her veins.

She brought her bold game. It was in her voice. Firm, determined, hard-edged. It sounded fucking fabulous. Max let the stone drop from his fingers, glad she'd finally heard him, wishing she'd hurry up and get there. Wishing he'd curled in his foetal position facing in the other direction so he could see more than just the glow of light getting bigger and brighter. But man, after total darkness, he could hardly bring himself
to blink.

‘Max?'

There was hesitance in her tone. Maybe she thought he was dead. Maybe he was. He tried to swallow but his throat was like sandpaper. He nudged his head a little.

‘
Max
.'

A scatter of dirt and she was there, fingers on his shoulder, then crawling around his feet then her face in his. Oh God, her face. He thought he'd never see it again. He wanted to smile but only one side of his mouth twitched. She cupped his jaw in her hands and kissed him, pressed soft lips to his forehead, cheek, ear. She smelt of sweat and heat and fresh air and coffee and he wished he could get an arm around her, find enough voice to tell her he
loved her.

‘Don't try to talk. I've got water. Just hang on a second more.'

Then cool, wet, heavenly water was on his lips, his tongue, filling his mouth, trickling a magical course down his throat. He coughed, gagging on it, swallowing
on compulsion.

‘Slow down. There's plenty. It's going to be okay. You'll be okay. I'm going to get you out. I'm . . .' She was crying. For a few short moments, her shoulders shuddered, her lips trembled and a single fat tear slipped over an eyelid leaving a clean trail in the smudges on her cheek. Then she pulled it together, pushed the heel of a hand across her face. ‘I'm going to get you home.'

He couldn't take his eyes off her. All wild hair and fierce resolve – and his guilt at bringing her down here joined the rest of the pain in his body. ‘I'm sorry, sorry. I thought you'd leave.' It was more croak than
formed words.

She cradled his head in her elbow. ‘Shhh, it's okay. Try to drink some more.'

The water cleared his throat a little. ‘Tunnels?'

‘Yes, you're in the tunnels under the gun emplacements up at the point.' She fingered the crusted wound on his temple. ‘Where are you hurt?'

‘Right there.'

‘Sorry. Where else?' Her hands moved over him, feeling his arms, his pelvis,
his legs.

‘Neck hurts. Cracked ribs.'

‘How's your hip?'

‘Still there. Seems to work.'

‘I found your watch back at the entrance. How did you get here?'

‘Walked, crawled, dragged.'

‘So you can walk?'

‘Not if I don't have to.'

She picked up the torch, shone it one way then the other, uneasiness in her eyes when she looked back at him. ‘I'm sorry, baby, but you're going to have to. We can't stay here. It's not safe.'

He wasn't sure what the problem was. ‘Can't you call someone?'

‘There is no one else. It's just me. You and me. I don't know why you're here but I think I figured some of it out and we need to leave before anyone else realises and comes to check. Can you sit up?'

She wasn't really asking, was already hauling him up against the wall. He tipped his head against it, closed his eyes on the spinning inside his skull, trying to process what she'd told him. Just Rennie. She'd found him on her own. She'd figured something out. Did she know what
had happened?

She got his feet sorted, wrapped his arm around her neck, squatted underneath it like a weightlifter. ‘I can't carry you, Max. You've got to help, okay?'

‘I've lost some weight recently.'

‘Yeah, you look terrific.'

‘Not as good as you.'

Her face softened for a moment, her mouth lifting at one side. ‘We've both had better days. Use the wall for support. Here we go.'

He breathed hard against the nausea, the dizziness, glad his legs still worked and he didn't fall on his
face again.

‘Great. You're doing great,' she
told him.

‘I'm glad you found me.'

‘I'm glad you kept breathing.'

While he rested against the wall and drank some more, she swung a pack onto her back and lit up the passage with the torch. It looked like hell down here. It
was
hell but it was better with a
light on.

‘Right, let's go.'

Half carrying him, staying close to the rock so he could hold on, she hauled him in the direction she'd come. The entrance was back there? ‘How close was I?'

‘Close?'

‘To the bunker?'

‘I don't know where the next one is. I came in through the second gun emplacement, number four, the one closest to the track. I found your watch back there. I think it's where you started. How many entrances have you been to?'

‘I never found one. I took a punt, ended up here.' He closed his eyes. ‘Shoulda gone the other way.'

‘No. You did good, Max. I only heard about this place an hour ago. If you'd gone the other way, someone else might've found you first.'

She didn't want anyone else to find him? ‘I could've got out.'

‘No, Max. You were locked in.' She stopped, shone the light into an adjoining tunnel. ‘Do you need a break?'

‘Need a holiday.' He leaned against the sharp edge of the corner, sucking at the air, letting her words roll through his mind. Locked in. As in not meant to get out. As in left to die?

‘Sorry, babe, but we need to keep moving.' She took his
weight again.

‘Who locked me in?'

‘I thought you'd know.'

‘I thought I was down the mine again. I thought a lot of things. I wanted to keep you out of it.'

 

 

43

Saturday afternoon and the promise of another shit-storm on its way had terrified him. Life as he knew it, as he'd encouraged and nurtured and harvested, was about to be hit by a road train. He'd dug over the garden, needing the release, not knowing what else he could do. Then he'd watched Rennie paint for a while before Trish's party, her overalls splattered in colour, her lean arms strong and sinewy, her hair piled up on her head like a crazed halo. Whatever she'd been through, she'd survived and come here and loved him. And it frightened him that she'd see the fallout and leave – like she always said
she would.

Maybe it was better if she did. She didn't say it but he knew she loved him. Deep down in that place buried beneath all her layers. Maybe leaving would do less damage than staying and sifting through remains
with him.

Maybe she had.

Maybe she came back.

Maybe . . . 

*

‘Did I kiss you goodbye?' Max remembered the party now. The kid in the car park, the sharp words with Rennie, the dread that James would turn up and play happy father-to-be. ‘I can't remember leaving the party. Can we rest?'

Rennie had stopped talking a few metres back. Possibly she was just tired but he'd felt her spine stiffen and her pace falter when he told her he'd wanted to keep her out of it. What did
she know?

She wouldn't let him sit. She propped him against the wall and gave him juice this time. It tasted awful in his dry mouth but the sugar hit was sensational. It loosened his chest, made it easier to breathe, made him feel as though he could hold the weight of his
own spine.

‘Where did I go after the party?' he asked when they were
moving again.

‘I don't know. You left on your own around ten o'clock. Someone said you went to check the car in the car park. No one saw you again. Is that where you went?'

Was it? He focused on the torch beam illuminating the arched ceiling of the tunnel, the rough-cut rock, the hardened track down the centre of the floor, the nothingness beyond it. He remembered standing on the footpath and typing a text to Rennie, getting another one before he'd finished. And the glow of street lamps on the black tar of the car park, his shoes as he stepped in and out of the light. Vehicles were scattered about the wide-open space. A bunch near the dark centre, a few more spread out over by the pub, lights from its neon signs mirrored in their duco, music rocking behind its doors. ‘I didn't go to check the car. I got a text message.'

‘Who from?'

‘I don't . . .'
We need to talk.
‘I went to meet someone.'

‘In the car park?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Who?'

He slowed as a damp trail on the wall passed under his palm. The place he'd grazed his tongue on the rock. ‘It was . . . Over by the pub.'

‘Who did you talk to?'

They were boxed in by cars, a bunch of them parked side by side and nose to nose.
Who the fuck do you think you are?
The voice slipped into his memory as though it'd fallen through a crack. Deep and agitated. ‘It was all turning to shit. He wouldn't listen. He wouldn't let me explain. I told him . . . I said . . .' What?

‘It was a man you talked to?'

‘Yeah. It was a man.'

She didn't ask anything more. Maybe she knew something he didn't. Maybe it
had
turned to shit since he'd been down here. He wasn't unhappy to stop thinking about it. His head hurt and his neck throbbed and he thought he might puke the juice back up if he didn't concentrate on keeping it down.

When she stopped again, there was an edge to her voice that hadn't been there before. ‘You should drink some more.' She held out
the juice.

‘Water this time.' He watched as she opened the backpack again, saw packets of food and a first-aid kit as she shuffled things around. ‘How did you know I was in here?'

‘I didn't. Hayden told me about the tunnels.'

‘Hayden's here?'

‘He's waiting up top for us.'

Hayden and Rennie together? Why was Hayden even in Haven Bay? ‘How long have I been down here?'

‘I don't know when you got here but you've been gone two days.'

Christ, it felt like longer. Like a lifetime. ‘Why didn't you bring someone to help?'

She didn't answer right away, just took the water bottle from him, wiped the top and poured some into her own mouth. ‘I don't know who we can trust, Max. We should get moving again. Hayden's on his own up there.'

The way she said it made fear spark inside him – for his son, for his friends, for what might have happened while he was in his hole. ‘Tell me, what's going on, Rennie?'

She wrapped a supporting arm around him and hauled him on as she talked. ‘I'm not sure. Bits and pieces don't add up. This afternoon, Hayden told me James was up here yesterday. In his car. He drove it up the walking trail. He said he was looking for Hayden but Hayden reckoned he was already here.'

Max stumbled on for a few seconds in silence. Why was James looking for Hayden? And if he was up here, why didn't he check the tunnels? ‘So . . . you thought James didn't search the point properly?'

‘I'm not sure what James has been doing. He told the police you'd taken money. The cops asked all the wrong questions – about you, about me, about my family – and decided you'd left of your own accord.'

She watched him as they hobbled along, as though she was waiting for a reaction. He didn't have one, he couldn't put it
all together.

‘Hayden broke the password on your computer,' she finally said. ‘The one at home. We found the WTF files.'

WTF. He remembered that. By the time he started the file, the scrawled notes and bank statements were piling up and he was mad as hell. It should've been WTFJ. What the fuck, James? He decided not to confront his cousin until he'd collated all the figures and he could argue them inside out. He wasn't going to give James a chance to mount another patronising, you-don't-understand-the-accounting argument. Maybe the mafia-style shit Pav was dealing with had infected him but when he discovered James in his office one morning, Max got a little paranoid that he'd try to cover it up before he could confront him. He stored it all on a USB, deleted the documents on his office computer and put a password
on everything.

‘It's the money missing from the business, isn't it?'
Rennie asked.

‘Yes.'

‘Do you know where the money is?'

‘Some of it.'

She stopped, swore quietly as she pressed him into an elbow in the tunnel. ‘I think someone who knows where it is put you down here and hoped you'd die and it would all go away.'

His pulse thumped in his ears, pounded on the back of his skull. Pav said desperate people did desperate things.
You're going to ruin everything, you arsehole.
The voice again. Close range, spat in his face through gritted teeth. The lights over the car park, the music from the pub, the salty tang of the lake in the
night air.

‘Is that what happened, Max?' Her eyes were huge and burning with something he didn't understand. ‘Who was in the car park with you?'

He pushed thumbs into his eyes, tried to see it again. ‘The text said we had to talk. I met him in the car park. I said, Right, I'm here. So talk. He . . . he shoved a finger in my chest. He wouldn't listen. I told him . . . fuck, I don't know what I told him.'

She pressed her lips together, aimed the torch up ahead. A rectangle of lighter gloom appeared like a ghost. The exit. He wanted to run to it like he had that day with James, push through the bunker, throw himself into the light and breathe clean air. All he managed was a grunt of
extra effort.

‘There's something you need to know before we head down there.' Rennie spoke fast, didn't look at him. ‘Someone broke into the house and took my gun.'

He had a hundred questions but only one that mattered right now. ‘Where's Hayden?'

She wedged a shoulder under his armpit. ‘He's hiding in the bush. He'll be okay if he stays there.'

Christ, a gun. The bush wasn't bulletproof. As though she sensed his urgency, she lifted their pace, adjusting the throw of the torch so it didn't shine directly into the bunker, her words staccatoed as she hustled him onwards. ‘Listen, Max. I'm going up top first to scout around, make sure we're still alone. I've only got one torch so I'll have to leave you in the dark again.'

‘
No
. Just get me up there and call the police.'

‘The cops will take too long. We need to get off the point.'

‘Don't leave me here.'

‘You can barely walk. If someone's up there, I can't get you anywhere in a hurry.'

‘But . . .' He held onto her, thinking, not thinking, trying not to scare away the memory that was pushing at the edges of his mind.

A group of cars, a figure standing in their shadow, hunched and taut. Max had folded his arms over his chest.
So talk
.

Who the fuck do you think you are?
A finger in
his chest.

A push back.
I'm trying to do the right thing.

Rennie stopped him a few metres from the doorway, pressed him close to the wall. ‘Who was in the car park with you, Max?'

I'll give
you half.

‘He shoved me against the car.'

‘Who did?'

‘He had something in his hand.'

‘Max.' She shook his arms. ‘Was it James or Pav?'

It wasn't a guess, not like she had a list of his mates and was going to work her way down from the top until a name clicked. It was a choice: James or Pav. One or the other. ‘What are you saying?'

‘James came late to the party. Pav could've left and come back. Both had time to break into the house today.'

‘No, Rennie . . .'

‘Trust me, Max. The most dangerous people are the ones who say they love you.' She pulled a mallet from her bag. ‘Wait here.'

She didn't give him a chance to protest, just ran the final reaches of the tunnel, the tool firm in her hand. He wanted to follow, to beg her to take him, to be careful. Could only lurch a few steps forwards as she stood with a shoulder to the opening and flicked the torch beam around the small chamber on the other side. She then moved quickly to the opposite wall and disappeared from sight.