Out of Alice (20 page)

Jack was the first to recover. ‘Supposing we all sit down for a minute?' Taking Sara's arm, he led her to the collection of cane chairs on the side verandah. Helen had returned to the kitchen to make tea but Beth, with one ear on the children – Sam appeared to be receiving his welcome home present in the schoolroom – was an interested spectator, along with Frank and Len.

The latter spoke with restrained patience. ‘Is anyone going to tell me what's going on here? Are you okay, Sara? He said he was your friend.'

Jack waved him off and cocked an eyebrow at his sister. ‘Do you mind? We – Sara – could do with a bit of privacy here.'

‘No, of course not.' Her brown gaze was speculative as it shifted between the two of them. ‘We'll leave you to it.'

Sara sat stiffly, ignoring them all, her attention on the man called Paul Markham.

Her arms felt heavy and uncoordinated, just like her mind, which seemed weighted in treacle. Unaware of the others' departure, she said, ‘You've found Stella, then? What exactly are you saying? That I was adopted? But that can't be right! She would never —'

‘No.' Markham leaned forward in his chair, eyes on her face, ignoring Jack. ‘I did find her but she told me nothing. As good as spat in my eye. Miss Blake – Sara – I need you to tell me about your childhood, anything you remember.'

‘She can't. She lost her memory way back,' Jack snapped.

The man continued as if he hadn't heard Jack. ‘Because I'm pretty certain your so-called parents kidnapped you.'

She stared at him, speechless.

‘Kidnapped,' Jack said, eyes narrowing. ‘Why?'

‘Because JC Randall is among the hundred wealthiest businessmen in this country. Now, that is. But he wasn't too badly off in the early seventies either. I'm betting it was enough that the Blakes expected to make a killing when they snatched his kids.' He grimaced at the unfortunate pun. ‘Well, they did kill – the boy died. I'm sorry. That sounded terrible but it's the truth. Once his body was found, everyone figured his twin sister had perished too, and the actual investigation sort of lost focus, then gradually folded for lack of evidence.'

Startled, Jack said, ‘They were twins?'

Sara's hand closed over his forearm, her nails scoring his skin.

‘Benny's dead, then? You're sure?' Her face was paper white, her green eyes enormous.

‘I can show you Bennett Randall's grave,' Paul Markham replied softly. ‘And the spot on the map where the cairn is that his – your – father had erected where his body was found. Look, I expect this is upsetting for you, and I apologise but I've been over every inch of the ground in this story, from the family home at Vinibel Downs to plotting every campsite they visited on that last holiday when the snatch occurred. I've been working on it, doing the research, putting the bits together for over a year, most of it in my holiday time.'

‘What's in it for you?' Jack demanded roughly. ‘Is this Randall bloke paying you?'

‘JC – the transport man,' Markham said equably and watched Jack's eyes widen. ‘I see you recognise the name now. And no, he isn't. He knows nothing about it. I told you, I'm an investigative journalist. It's what I do. Turning up the stones to find the truth people would prefer to keep hidden. Getting the story. You did have a brother called Bennett, Miss Blake?'

‘I – he was Ben.' She cleared her throat. ‘I don't – I can't remember much about – about that time. Just little bits that have come back to me. I remember a dog, and playing with Ben. There was a garden and a creek bed and a stone wall. Once we were at the beach. My dad swung me up on his shoulders, and the sea was all frothy when it came in. We dug sandcastles. I had a yellow bucket and I think there was a caravan too.' She had removed her hand from Jack's arm, both lay in her lap now, her right index finger flicking agitatedly against her thumb. ‘Was it from – I mean, where did it happen? At the beach?'

‘It happened here in the Territory at a tourist spot called Kings Canyon. It's west of the Alice – a full day's drive, maybe even two, the way the roads must have been back then. JC and your mother went off for a day's hike. They were into all that nature stuff apparently. Anyhow, they left you kids with your governess, a young woman named Lana, whom they'd included in the trip. When your parents got back you were gone and she was hysterical – she was seventeen, only a kid herself. There were other campers at the canyon and they'd already started looking, but it took a day and a half for a copper to get out there and start a proper search. The Blakes – and you with them – were long gone by then.'

Jack straightened suddenly. ‘Of course! The Randall children. I remember that. It was on the news, in the papers . . . I was about nine or ten at the time.'

‘It made headlines worldwide,' Markham said. ‘Like the disappearance of the Beaumont children in Adelaide. That was earlier, of course. Randall owned a couple of properties then but it was long before he really started amassing his wealth, so it's a puzzle why the kidnappers picked his kids to snatch. But as I said it was headline news. Searchers covered the country. Even the army was brought in at one point and all to no avail.'

Sara stirred. ‘Kings Canyon.' She frowned. It didn't mean anything except – she shook her head, losing whatever she had almost remembered. ‘Yes, Helen told me about it, some station owner who lost his children, but I thought they were boys.
They found one boy dead, the other was never seen again . . .
That's what she said. How do you know that I was kidnapped?' she demanded. ‘What's your proof? There must have been hundreds, thousands of little boys called Ben and many of them would have had sisters. Was a ransom demand ever made, for instance? Anyway, it couldn't have been him, Vic Blake, because he was hospitalised soon after and died. I was seven when Stella told me.' She remembered her naive question,
Does that mean he's never coming back?
And her relief at Stella's answer.

Markham shook his head. ‘He was arrested about a month after the kidnapping, and tried and jailed on charges of grievous bodily harm against a bank guard in a botched robbery. The guard was bashed so badly he turned into a vegetable, spent the rest of his life drooling in a wheelchair. Blake got a twelve-year stretch with no parole. He died seven years later, still inside.'

A hundred conflicting thoughts and questions warred in Sara's head and it ached from the pressure of trying to think.

Could
any of this be true? Should she trust this man? He was plausible but he hadn't yet said how he came by his information. Indeed how had he, if Stella had refused to talk and Vic Blake was dead? And why, on that first meeting, had her reaction to this man been so overwhelmingly visceral?

There had been no time for thought. She had seen him looming above her on the beach and reacted. What if it was true, only it was
he
who had . . . No, that was patently ridiculous. He was too young to have been involved. Well, what if he was running a scam, pretending to find a long-lost daughter for a grieving old man, and had hit on her because he knew about her amnesia? But again, how could
anyone
know about her amnesia? Jack was the only one she'd ever told. Stella knew, of course. He'd said she wouldn't talk. Had he lied? He was pressing her again with questions, bending forward eagerly in his seat.

‘Think, Sara! Is it all right if I call you Sara? Do you recall anything at all about that last trip where you camped? No, put it this way, what's the last thing you
do
remember?'

She turned her head, shielding her eyes from his hungry gaze, her face white and distressed. ‘I can't.' Abruptly she stood, Jack rising beside her. ‘It's too much, Jack. I can't do this. If Ben's really . . .' Her voice wavered, she turned blindly and hurried down the verandah to her room, shutting the French doors behind her.

‘That's it,' Jack said angrily to the reporter. ‘Just leave her alone now, you hear me? God almighty, are you witless? You tell her the brother she's only just remembered exists is dead, and then expect her to answer a slew of questions?'

‘Come on,' Markham said disdainfully. ‘It's history. It's twenty-one years since he died.'

‘Not to her. To her it's like you just killed him.' His face screwed into an expression of disgust. ‘Muckrakers, that's what you journos are.' A thought struck him and his eyes narrowed. ‘How did you know she was here, anyway?'

‘I saw her pic in the paper. Some dopey competition for amateur photographers. I couldn't believe my luck! They didn't publish her name but there couldn't be two like her in the entire country.
Territory beauty winner,
that was the caption. So I got myself to Alice with a copy of the pic and showed it round the motels. It only took half an hour to pick up her trail. As for muckraking, mate,' he said, leaning on the last word with heavy irony. ‘You ever hear of justice? Or do you reckon kidnappers and murderers should get off scot free?'

‘Thought you said the bloke you're blaming was dead?'

‘Well, then, you don't think Sara's got a right to know her real family? Or JC Randall to know his child?'

Jack rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. ‘I suppose. Just leave her be for now – orright? Give her some time.' Grudgingly he added, ‘Come into the kitchen and have some tea.'

‘Thanks.' Markham eyed him as if he distrusted the truce but followed Jack down the verandah and through the doorway. The moment they entered, the conversation about the table ceased and all eyes turned their way.

‘Sit down, Paul,' Beth said, her face full of questions, and glanced at Jack. ‘Is Sara around?'

‘Not at the moment. Could I have a word, Mum?' With a jerk of his head he drew her towards the office.

Whatever request Jack made was lost in Becky's loud and immediate question. ‘How come Uncle Jack hit you, Mister? Did you do something bad?' Between reprimanding her daughter and pouring tea for her guest, Beth had taken her eyes off her brother and when she next glanced up it was to find both him and Helen gone.

The knock on the French door, some twenty minutes later, roused Sara from the trance of indecision that gripped her. Her mind could not settle to any one thought beyond the grey finality of Ben's death. A rebellious flicker of hope reminded her that it wasn't necessarily true. But of course it must be, if there was a cairn and a grave to prove it. Only why did she find that part of the journalist's story so compellingly believable, yet was still able to dismiss the rest?

Why would kidnappers keep their victims and raise them as their own? It didn't make sense. Desperate childless women might snatch babies from their parents; political victims might be taken and murdered; but in some parts of the world, Italy and Latin America for instance, kidnapping was a business. You took someone, named a price, the family paid a ransom and they got them back. However crude, it was a business. Things went wrong and victims sometimes died, as in the tragic affair of the young boy who'd been left trussed in the airless boot of a car and perished. It was a famous case, Australia's first kidnapping, that was periodically revisited by the media. As were the Chandler killings and the Beaumont mystery, baffling cases that had caught the public interest, but Sara had never heard of kidnappers keeping their victims indefinitely – unless it was for sexual purposes.

‘Sara?' It was Jack at the door. He tapped again, then inched it open; she saw he was holding her hat.

‘I don't want to, Jack. Not now. I can't —'

‘I know,' he said. ‘Come on. There's no need to talk to anyone. We're going for a drive.'

‘What?' She rose from the chair, her undisciplined hair blowing wildly in the fan's draft, and repeated stupidly, ‘A drive?'

‘Yes. A bit of peace and quiet. That's what you need.' He handed her the hat and switched off the fan. ‘Come on.'

Sara was in the cab of the Toyota before she thought to ask where they were going. The usual water bottle was in the footwell and there was a foam cool-box on the seat. She sat back and the bulk of the rifle pushed against the brim of her hat, toppling it forward.

‘That
bloody
gun!' She snatched at the straw as it slid from her lap. ‘Where are we going?'

‘Kileys.'

‘Why can't you carry it somewhere else? What do you want a gun for anyway?' she demanded peevishly.

‘To shoot dingoes and dying stock.' His voice was patient. ‘If a weak beast goes down, or a horse, it can take 'em a coupla days to die. Rifle's kinder.'

‘There aren't any horses,' she snapped. ‘Becky told me Len sent them down to your place.' Then she heard her tone and stopped, appalled. ‘I'm sorry. You're trying to help and I'm being h-horrible.' Her voice wavered and she blinked determinedly, staring out at the passing scrub as they followed the track down the horse-paddock fence.

‘It's okay. If it'll make you feel any better, I'll go back and flatten that little squirt again. What do you say, hey?'

‘Thank you.' Her smile was tremulous. ‘You're a good friend, Jack. I suppose it's not his fault – if what he says is true. But I don't know what to believe. One minute I'm sure that Ben is dead and the next that the whole story is totally unconnected to me. I've never even heard of JC Randall! If that was really my name, shouldn't it sound just a little bit familiar?'

‘Let it go for now,' he said. ‘You need a bit of space to get your head round it. Mum made us some lunch; we'll check out the bore and boil the billy and eat, then see where we're at. I always reckon new ideas are like stirred-up water. You've just gotta wait and let it settle, and everything becomes clear.'

‘It or them?' Sara asked bewilderedly. ‘What are you talking about, Jack? Water or ideas?'