The Crocodile Nest (16 page)

It was still dark when Lora woke, although the birds seemed to think that it was dawn and that they should be greeting it with raucous calls. Sometime during the night she’d crawled beneath the covers, and now her pretty dress was crumpled and ugly. Not that she cared. She was never going to wear the thing again anyway: it would only remind her of last night’s humiliation.

The memory of what had happened surged back until she had to bury her face in the pillow, hoping to make it disappear. It didn’t; it only made the memory more vivid. As she lay there, she realized that if she didn’t do something then last night was going to wreck the rest of her holiday. She might be able to avoid seeing Luke, but that wouldn’t make the memory go away. The only thing to do was to confront him, and do it soon. Like right now!

A few minutes later, she was changed into more sensible
clothes and creeping through the lounge, hoping not to disturb Gran. It didn’t work.

‘Is that you, Lora?’

‘Yes, Gran. I’m just going for a walk.’

‘So early? Why?’

Lora sighed. She had to tell her grandmother sometime, so it might as well be now. ‘I’m going to see Luke to ask him why he didn’t turn up last night.’

‘He didn’t turn up?’ asked Beth, walking out of the bedroom in her nightie. ‘Did he ring and say why?’

‘All he did was send a text.’ Lora then described the horrible evening she’d had waiting one-and-a-half hours for a dinner date that never happened.

When she’d finished, Beth said, ‘That doesn’t sound right, Lora. Luke wouldn’t do that to you. He really likes you. He wouldn’t stand you up without a reason. Something must have happened.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know. But if he went off with that man, then it could be anything.’ She thought for a moment, before going back into the bedroom. ‘Just wait there,’ she called. ‘I’ll be with you in jiff.’

Riding in the Reva, Lora felt the first taste of fear—that, and shame. How incredibly selfish she’d been: never once had she considered that Luke might be in trouble; that something had prevented him from keeping the date. She’d been so disappointed that she’d just blamed him without thinking. Oh hell, how could she have been so stupid? If anything had happened to him, she’d never forgive herself.

Under Lora’s direction, Beth drove the Reva down the track behind The Nest. While Beth tried the doors to the workshop, Lora ran to Luke’s room. She knocked on the door. ‘Luke!’ she called. ‘Luke! Are you there?’

No reply. She opened the door. Luke was not in his bed, nor the bathroom. She felt the bed. It was cold, although it looked as though someone had slept on top of it at some time.

Beth came in. She took one look at the bed and said, ‘That wasn’t slept in last night—it was far too cold to sleep without covers.’

‘What do we do?’ asked Lora.

‘Find Ham would be a good start,’ replied Beth. ‘Do you know where his room is?’ Lora shook her head.

‘Then maybe someone in the main building will.’

There was a security guard half-asleep on a sofa in the foyer, but while he knew where the staff lived he didn’t know who was in each unit. Beth was about to set off in the direction he gave—prepared to wake everyone if need be—when Lora discovered that the morning chef was already at work in the restaurant.

‘We don’t open until seven,’ he said as they marched up to the counter.

‘We’re not after breakfast,’ said Beth. ‘We’re after Ham. Do you know where he sleeps?’

‘Yeah. In the staff quarters. The second unit from this end.’

‘Thanks,’ said Lora as they turned away.

‘He’ll still be sleeping, though,’ said the chef. ‘He wouldn’t
have finished here until late. He’ll not thank you for waking him.’

‘He will!’ Beth threw over her shoulder without pausing. ‘I’m positive he will.’

It took most of a minute of calling and knocking before a bleary-eyed Ham came to the door. At first he had trouble working out what was happening. Then, instantly, he was wide awake.

‘Luke went off with Chizza?’

Beth and Lora nodded.

‘To see Crazy Hazel?’

Again they nodded.

‘Oh hell!’ He spun around and disappeared into the room. When he returned, he was still pulling a T-shirt over his head. ‘Wait there!’ he ordered. ‘I have to tell Ellie so she can call the police.’

They waited.

Beth looked at Lora. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Terrible,’ Lora replied, her voice wavering.

‘It’s no use blaming yourself, Lora. That won’t achieve anything.’

Lora turned away. If she didn’t blame herself, then who was she to blame?

Ellie was with Ham when he returned. She gave Beth and Lora a grim look. ‘You are sure he hasn’t been back to his room?’

They nodded.

‘Then I’ll call the police. I was going to do it in a few hours anyway.’ She turned to Ham and gave him a hug. ‘Good luck,’ she whispered. ‘Find him and find him well.’

The sky was glowing in the east when they pulled out of The Crocodile Nest in Ham’s ute. First place to check was Chizza’s apartment: neither his truck nor his boat was parked where it should be. Without comment, Ham pulled out onto the main road and headed south towards the creek.

After several minutes of silence, Beth asked, ‘Where do the police have to come from?’

‘Mossman,’ Ham replied. ‘It’ll take them forever to get here. It’s almost sixty kays, and it’s on the other side of the Daintree River, so they have to use the ferry.’ He looked at his watch. ‘That doesn’t start running for another half-hour.’

After that, the silence returned. Lora gazed out the window without taking anything in. She worried about what they might find when they got to the creek, and also about how it might have been if she’d reacted differently the night before. She’d now convinced herself that Luke had sent the text so that at least one person knew where he was going. He would have been concerned going off with Chizza, knowing what the man was like. The text was his safety line, and she had ignored it.

It was almost daylight when they turned off the main road onto the track that led to the launching place. Ham travelled more slowly now, his eyes scanning the trees between the track and the water. The three of them looked, but they didn’t see anything before they reached the launching slope.

The last thing they’d expected was to find that area empty, too. For a while they stared through the windscreen, wondering
what they’d done wrong. Then Ham cut the engine and climbed out. The others followed.

‘Is there another boat ramp?’ asked Beth.

‘Not that I know of,’ replied Ham. He thought for a moment, then shook his head. ‘No. If they were going on this creek, here is where they would’ve come.’

Lora left them and walked down the slope towards the water.

‘Not too close,’ warned Beth.

‘I just want to look for footprints in the mud,’ she replied.

It took only a moment to find them: two sets, one small and the other much larger.

‘Look!’ she cried. ‘They’ve been here.’

Ham was soon beside her. ‘And so has the boat. Look, there are the tracks from the trailer.’

‘Could those have been from the other night?’ asked Beth.

Lora was walking up the slope, her eyes studying the ground. ‘No! The tide would have wiped out the other tracks. They came here last night.’

‘Then where are they?’ asked Beth.

Lora followed the track onto the shore. It wasn’t difficult—the water dripping off the trailer had left an obvious trail. Soon she was at a spot where there were still puddles on the ground.

‘It was parked here,’ she said, excitedly.

Ham was walking behind her, examining the tracks. ‘The boat was put into the water, but never taken out. By the looks of it, the trailer only went down to the water the once.’

‘Maybe they left the trailer in the water while they went to the island?’ suggested Beth.

Ham shook his head. ‘No, the track coming out isn’t as deep. The boat wasn’t on the trailer.’ He looked to the water. ‘It’s still out there somewhere.’ Then after a pause: ‘And so is Luke.’

Lora raced down to the water. ‘Luke!’ she yelled. ‘Luke!’

Next thing Ham yelled, much louder than Lora ever could. After three shouts, he stopped to listen for a reply.

There was nothing other than the sounds of the birds awakening to the new day.

‘Luke!’ Ham screamed. ‘Where are you?’

They listened. This time there was something. Faint, and nowhere near loud enough to fix the direction.

‘Do it again,’ urged Beth.

He did, even louder than before, and the reply when it came was also louder, coming from somewhere up-river. It sounded like a long way off.

They ran to the ute. In seconds, Ham had it turned around and flying back up the track.

Suddenly he jammed on the brakes, stuck his head out the window and yelled again. The reply was closer, but still some distance away.

Once again they were racing forward. Lora’s eyes searched through the trees, looking for anything human. ‘There!’ she screamed. ‘Stop! Stop!’

As soon as the vehicle slowed, Lora was out the door, running into the scrub towards the shore. She’d seen something. She knew she had. But when she got to the water there was nothing.

Ham came alongside her. ‘What is it?’

She looked around, certain that there’d been something.

Then came a voice. ‘Here. I am here.’

They turned, and there, halfway under a bush, lay Chizza.

In a moment all three were standing over the injured man. Although his trousers were stained red, they were not ripped or mangled in any way. His feet were bare and it was there that injuries were visible. It looked as if something had gone right through them, not just the once, but several times. On the ground below was a small pool of blood. While his face was very pale, his eyes still had plenty of fire, and he glared at his rescuers as if they were responsible for the mess he was in.

‘Let’s have a look at those feet,’ said Beth leaning down.

‘No!’ Ham said sharply, pulling her back. ‘Not until he tells us where Luke is.’

‘I do not know.’

Without warning Ham stepped forward and kicked one of Chizza’s feet. The injured man screamed, his face distorted with pain.

Ham stepped back and waited for Chizza to recover. Then he said, ‘Now, try again. Where is Luke?’

‘He fell into the water. I do not know where he is.’

‘Where did he fall into the water?’

Chizza looked towards the estuary. ‘Out there. I do not know.’

Once again, Ham stepped forward. He moved as if he was going to stomp down on the man’s feet.

‘No! No!’ screamed Chizza. ‘I will tell you.’

Ham held his foot in the air, waiting.

‘It was near an island,’ groaned Chizza. ‘I saw him swim that way. I have not seen him since.’

Immediately, Lora left the group to scramble through the trees until she was as close to the edge as she dared. Yes! There was an island further upstream.

With a thumping heart, she searched its shoreline. Oh, if only she knew what he was wearing—just knowing what colour to look for would make all the difference.

She must have scanned the island’s shoreline ten times without seeing anything before Ham arrived with a pair of binoculars. While he focused them on the island, Lora started looking in unlikely places: first the water, then the trees. And that’s where she saw something. It didn’t look like a person, but the red colour was definitely not natural, possibly a sweatshirt.

She grabbed Ham’s arm. ‘There!’ she cried. ‘In the trees.’

Ham raised the binoculars a little and moved them slowly across the island. Then he froze and a gasp escaped from his lips.

‘What is it?’ asked Lora.

He lowered the binoculars and passed them over. It took a painful few seconds to get them adjusted to her smaller head so she could see the trees clearly. Then the red shape came into view. It
was
a sweatshirt—one of Luke’s. But he wasn’t wearing it. He was draped over a branch with his legs and arms dangling down either side. The sweatshirt was over his back, with the sleeves tied under the branch, to stop him from falling off. There was no doubting that without it he would have fallen, for already he was hanging more to one side than the other.

Lora watched in dismay, praying that she would see some sign of life. Yet there was no movement. Nothing to suggest that he had survived the horrible nightmare.

Or was there…Did a finger move? With growing hope, she sharpened the focus to make it clearer. No! She was not mistaken: his whole hand was moving now, as if he was conducting an orchestra. It was the movement of somebody in the middle of a dream.

‘He’s alive,’ she said as tears welled in her eyes. ‘He’s alive.’

Ham and Lora were in the ute racing up the track towards the boat stuck in the mangroves. Chizza had told them where it was without Ham having to resort to further threats of torture. Beth was left to tend Chizza’s injuries using Ham’s pig-hunting kit. While it was designed to treat dogs rather than humans, Ham reckoned it was probably just the thing for fixing up a mongrel like Chizza.

Lora spotted a patch of white through the trees. ‘There it is!’ Ham skidded to a stop and jumped out, leaving the ute blocking the track. Lora was soon beside him.

Climbing through the mangroves was frustratingly slow. The aerial roots were at just the right spacing to trap a foot. One good thing, though, was that they were too thick to allow any decent-sized crocodile in. The last thing they needed was a confrontation with a mature croc.

The boat was jammed, rather than aground, so it was simply
a matter of prying a couple of trunks apart and the thing came free.

They were both aboard and about to push off when a voice called from the mangroves.

‘Hang on there, mate! I guessed you might need a bit of a hand.’ It was Andy. He was jumping through the mangroves, using a long walking stick that made the difficult task look easy.

Soon the engine was started and they were motoring towards the island. Ham was at the wheel while Lora brought Andy up to date with what was happening.

‘So, you reckon Luke’s OK? Let’s have a look.’

Lora handed over the binoculars.

Andy took his time, studying first Luke in the tree and then the ground all over the island.

‘Not the best of positions, is it?’ he commented grimly as he lowered the binoculars. ‘He must’ve gone up there to get away from Hazel.’

Lora looked at him in horror. ‘Is that Crazy Hazel’s island?’

‘Yep! Not the place I’d want to climb ashore. I guess he had no choice, but. And he’s done the right thing, getting up that tree.’

‘How are we going to rescue him with a crazy crocodile around?’

‘Aw look, she’s just an old girl with a few screws loose. We should be able to manage her so long as we keep away from her nest.’ He raised the binoculars again. ‘That’ll be the tricky part. It’s a bit close to that tree for my liking. Here, have a gander through the glasses.’

Lora soon had the nest in view. It didn’t look anything greatly
special. Not something you’d risk your life to see. She looked around for Hazel, but couldn’t see anything that might be a crocodile.

The boat slowed. ‘Where do you want to go ashore?’ called Ham.

‘Better take a decko first,’ replied Andy. ‘Find out where Hazel is.’

They were now so close to the island that Luke was clearly visible in the tree.

‘Maybe we can wake him?’ suggested Lora.

‘Worth a try.’

First Lora called out, and then they all did in unison. While there was a movement from Luke, there was no indication that it was in response to the yelling, and all it did was cause him to slip around the branch a bit more. Lora began to get anxious: this was not good—they’d yelled enough to waken the dead.

Then her eye was caught by a movement on the ground below the tree. Their yelling might not have roused Luke, but it sure had roused Hazel. She was now crawling towards them.

‘There she is!’ cried Lora.

Andy gave a nod. ‘Don’t need that decko after all, do we?’ Hazel came to the bank opposite the boat, opened her mouth and hissed.

‘She’s telling us to shove off,’ said Andy. ‘We’re going to have to shift her from here.’

‘If I had a gun, I’d shoot her,’ said Ham with feeling.

‘It’s all right, mate,’ said Andy, gently. ‘We’ll get him off.’

‘How?’

‘First thing: you drop me off on the other side of the island. I’ll keep Hazel at bay for you. Then you can go and get Luke.’ He turned to Lora. ‘Do you know anything about boats?’

Lora nodded.

‘Think you can control this thing?’

Another nod.

‘OK, then your task is to make sure the boat is always close—but not too close or you’ll upset Hazel some more.’ He looked from Lora to Ham. ‘What do you think?’

They talked through the plan until each knew their role. Then Lora took the wheel and guided the boat around the island, going in close enough for Andy to jump ashore with his stick.

Straight away they moved to be a few metres off the shore near Luke’s tree. Hazel had already gone away to guard her nest.

Next thing there was a mighty
whack
from the other side of the island. This was followed by another, even louder. Lora looked towards the noise and saw Andy swinging his stick at a tree trunk.
Whack! Whack!

Now there was another noise. It was Hazel. She’d moved to see what was going on and was standing a short distance from Andy, staring and making a deep, rumbling sound. Yet she was making no move to attack.

‘OK!’ yelled Andy. ‘I’ve got her attention—go get Luke.’

Lora eased the boat forward. Ham was already on the foredeck ready to jump.

‘Give it more!’ he ordered, impatiently.

Lora did and the boat kicked up, almost tipping Ham over.

‘Not that much!’ Ham yelled.

Before she had a chance to adjust, they hit the bottom. Ham half-fell, half-jumped onto land. Then he was scrambling up the bank, following the same path that Luke had taken when he’d first come ashore.

Whack! Whack!
Andy was hitting the tree again: Hazel must have been losing interest.

Now Ham was at the tree, searching for a way up. Luke had slipped around the branch until one leg no longer had contact with the branch. Any more and he’d be hanging, held only by the sweatshirt; that’s assuming the sweatshirt continued to hold.

Ham found some knobbly hand- and footholds and commenced climbing. The trunk was thinner than Ham and began to sway with the weight, rocking Luke’s body dangerously. Ham stopped climbing. The tree settled.

Whack! Whack!

Back climbing again, Ham was having trouble finding footholds big enough for his feet. The tree was designed for small bodies, not big ones. He resorted to wrapping his arms and legs around the trunk and hauling himself up like a bear. It worked, although it set the tree swaying again.

Lora watched with her hands to her mouth and her eyes wide with fear. This wasn’t going to work—Ham was far too big for the tree. What would happen when he climbed onto the branch? Surely it couldn’t support both of them?

Obviously Ham was aware of the problem, too, for when he got to the branch he shuffled around to the other side of the trunk and kept climbing. Only when he was higher than the branch did he shuffle back and drop down until one leg
was hooked over it. The tree swayed, but the branch held, and miraculously Luke’s body stayed in place.

Ham stretched and touched Luke’s face.

‘Luke!’ he called. ‘Luke, wake up! You’ve got to wake up.’

Luke stirred. His head came up and his eyes opened.

‘Thank God!’ whispered Lora. ‘Oh, thank you, God.’