“No, wait, listen to me, things don’t have to—” Heather began but Kate leaned down and with one big white paw squeezed Heather’s cheeks hard.
“The only witnesses are the Krauts, is that right?” Ma asked.
“Our Ned was running the food stand. No one saw them follow us to the ferry except for the Krauts,” Jacko said.
Ma lit a cigarette and waved for people to clear a space around her chair. The murmuring gradually ended and the crowd grew quiet. Heather’s head had stopped pounding and in the silence she could hear birds roosting in the distant eucalyptus trees. A jet was high above her, its vapor trail just visible in the moonlight. Everything was moving into the future. She was too. Tom, poor Tom, would be dead forever. She had to consider herself and the kids now.
“Please. I know what you’re thinking and it’s not going to work,” Heather pleaded.
“You forced us into this. You killed Ellen and tried to cover it up. This is on you,” Ma said.
“Don’t make things worse. You—”
“Matt! I told you to shut that bitch up,” Ma said coldly and calmly. “This is your final warning, girl. If you speak again without my permission, I’m going to have Lenny, our blacksmith, cut your tongue out with his leather-cutting scissors. Nod your bloody head if you understand. Not one bloody word from you. Do you understand?”
Heather nodded.
“Just the Krauts, eh? Matt, what if we dumped the car somewhere on the mainland?”
Matt nodded. “The car’s GPS will have stopped well before Stamford Bridge.”
“Jamie, could you smash the car up bad?” Ma asked someone whom Heather couldn’t see.
“Oh, yeah. Easy. Lotta drop-offs on the Red Hill Road. Some as deep as twenty-five meters. Car goes over one of those, little tampering with the fuel lines…boom.”
“What do you think, Ivan?”
He thought for a long time before finally clearing his throat. “I like the plan, Ma. Cops will find the car in a few days and just think, Ah, too bad, dumb Americans forgot which side of the road to drive on,” Ivan said.
“The Melbourne cops are smart, though—what if they come over here?” Kate asked.
“We don’t know nothing about any Americans; we keep ourselves to ourselves.”
“Oi, look, this is my decision, innit? Mine,” Danny said. “Under the old laws. They done me wrong, not any of you.”
“You cost us half a million bucks, Danny! You can shut your mouth!” Ivan said.
“What is it you want, Daniel?” Ma asked.
Danny strode into the center of the circle. Someone had passed him an earthen drinking jug and he took an enormous sip of liquor that was so strong, Heather could smell it from where she was sprawled on the ground.
“What do I want?” Danny said after a pause.
“There’s nothing they can give you now, mate,” Matt said.
“Yeah, no, look…I lost a wife and I heard there’s a girl. I want to see the girl. Bring her to me,” Danny said, wiping his mouth.
“Ivan?” Ma asked.
“Maybe not a good idea, Ma. If we’re going to go down this route, there can’t be any survivors,” Jacko said.
“I want my rights,” Danny insisted.
“You lost a wife, not a kid,” Matt said.
“I can’t take this violent bloody bitch. We can’t trust her,” Danny said, pointing at Heather.
Kate laughed. “You’re right. She’d cut all our throats, this one.”
“It’s my right, innit?” Danny said.
“What would the cops think, Ivan, if there were only three bodies?” Ma asked.
“I suppose the girl might have survived the crash, gone wandering for help, got lost, and her body was never found,” Ivan said.
“It might even help us,” Jacko said. “The cops will be focused on finding the missing girl over on the mainland. We won’t be part of the story.”
“Kill them all!” someone yelled.
Ma put her hands up for silence. “I’ve listened and I am going to sleep on my decision,” she said. “We don’t need to do anything tonight, do we, Matt?”
“No. And we don’t want to be running the ferry at night anyway. Nothing unusual,” Matt said.
“Tomorrow, if I decide that way, we can take the car over to the mainland and have Jamie crash it up the Red Hill Road. The rest of us can get to bed now. My legs hurt. I forgot me good ciggies,” Ma continued.
“What about me?” Danny said.
“Bugger you, Danny!” Jacko snarled.
“All right, we’ll let Danny take a look at the girl. Someone go get her!” Ma said.
“So the plan is we kill this one and the boy?” Kate asked, gesturing toward Heather.
Heather shook her head no. This was unreal. They couldn’t mean that. This was all some kind of mistake. A nightmare. A— “Maybe,” Ma said. “Where’s those ciggies?”
A little girl handed Ma a pack of cigarettes. She lit one up and passed the box around.
“Where are the Krauts now?”
“They’re still up at the house,” Jacko said. “I told them we were getting the ferry repaired and they bought it, but then the geezer said something stupid.”
“What did he say?” Matt groaned.
“He noticed the snorkel on the Porsche was bent and asked if someone had had an accident.”
“Shite!” Ma said. “You’ve really screwed things up for us, haven’t you, Daniel?”
“Ellen’s dead. I want me rights.”
“You’re getting your rights, Danny,” Kate said. “But, mate, because of you we’re going to have to kill two more people to be on the safe side.”
Heather got to her feet. “You cannot be serious about this! Have you all lost your minds?” she cried.
“I warned you! I bloody warned you. Didn’t I warn her? Take out her tongue, Lenny,” Ma said.
A large, tanned, lean bald man began moving through the crowd. He was wearing a leather apron and a singlet coated with filth. His eyes were black; his expression was dull. He reeked of dried blood and offal.
He grabbed Heather violently by the head and locked his arm around her neck.
She punched and scraped at his arm as he shoved two enormous fingers into her mouth. She bit the fingers, but it was like biting into blocks of wood.
“Yeah, I can do this. Jodie, go get me scissors, I’ll take care of her,” he said. Heather tried to scream but she couldn’t breathe or make a sound.
11
Olivia was listening to the yelling. She was very scared. She didn’t know what was happening out there. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do next. They had taken her phone, but the phone wasn’t her go-to source. Most kids her age asked Google or Siri or Alexa when they wanted to know stuff, but she had always gone to her dad. Her dad knew everything. Her dad knew everything about the world, and her mom had known the answers to any problem she’d ever had at school with friends or teachers or body image. Her mom had been as smart as her dad but she hadn’t liked to show off about it so much. One of her parents had always known what was going on and what she should do next.
But her mom was dead and her father had been taken away from her.
She was left entirely to her own devices, without her dad or her comfy blanket or her Lexapro.