Catherine Jinks TheRoad (36 page)

‘What?’

Graham held up a photograph – a headshot, cropped to fill a credit card pocket. The kid in the picture was very small, with brown eyes and missing teeth. Alec judged him to be about four or five; older than Janine’s son Ronnie, at any rate.

‘Don’t tell me there’s a kid out here somewhere,’ Graham moaned. ‘Jesus, Chris.’

Chris tugged at the gearstick. He strained to look behind him, ignoring Alec, squinting through the rear window. The four-wheel drive began to roll backwards.

‘What are you doing?’ Graham demanded.

‘We’ve got to go round,’ said Chris. He tapped the brake, changed gears, adjusted his position. ‘This machine might be tough, but I don’t want to mess with that tree, if you don’t mind. I’ll go through the scrub, here.’

‘Hey!’ Alec exclaimed. He leaned forward. ‘We can’t keep on! We gotta go back!’

‘I told you, we can go round. This is a four-wheel drive –’

‘I don’t bloody care what it is! Stop the car!’ Alec reached across Chris’s shoulder to grab the steering wheel. Graham knocked his arm aside.

‘Piss off!’ Graham was more astonished than angry. ‘What are you doing?’

‘What am
I
doin? What are
you
doin?’ Seeing Chris spin the wheel, Alec became frantic. ‘There’s a bloody
killer
around! We can’t stay here!’

‘We can’t just fuck off,’ Graham objected. Bump, bump, bump; the Land Rover lurched onto an ungraded surface, all saltbush and loose mineral. ‘There might be a kid in the house.’

‘There might be a bloody
gunman
in the house! For Chrissake, you don’t even have a phone! We gotta get help! Someone with a rifle! Chris, stop the car!
Stop the car!’

The car did stop, abruptly, and Alec’s nose hit Graham’s headrest. Chris glared into the rear-view mirror. ‘You want to get out, Alec?’ he inquired.

Alec stared at him, mutely.

‘You don’t happen to know something about this, do you?’ Chris went on, and Alec’s jaw dropped. ‘Because if you do, you’d better tell us. Now.’

Alec struggled with a sense of outrage that pushed the hot blood into his face and deprived him, for an instant, of the power of speech.

‘Fuck
off
!’ he spluttered at last.

‘Your truck’s parked up the highway. We don’t know you from Adam. You could be involved.’

‘Get
fucked
!’

‘Chris,’ Graham warned, ‘he’s got the axe back there.’

‘He could be fleeing the scene of the crime. It’s possible.’

‘Are you outta your minds?’ Alec squeaked. ‘This is the fuckin Twilight Zone and you’re blamin
me
? I ran outta fuckin
petrol
!’

‘Well I dunno,’ Chris said quietly. ‘I dunno what to think.’

There was a long silence. The air seemed taut. Alec was speechless. At last Chris sighed and said: ‘There’ll be a phone at the house. We can call the police from there. We should call the police.’

‘What we should do is get out,’ Alec reiterated, flatly. ‘We should call the police from Coombah.’