Bright Air - Barry Maitland [77]
‘They don’t look as if they’ve fallen out, do they? They look just like good friends at a party.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’ve been thinking about your theory. If it’s true, none of them—Bob, Damien, Marcus—will admit it, will they? We’d need to have evidence of some kind to make them, and there’s really only one place where it could be.’
I turned away. I didn’t want to hear this. ‘The last place we know for sure where Luce was,’ she persisted. ‘Balls Pyramid.’
I shook my head. ‘We’d never find anything out there now.’
‘We won’t know until we try.’
I looked at her in disbelief. ‘Are you crazy? That is a seriously dangerous place, Anna. You saw it. They’d never agree to us going there.’
‘No, I’m sure they wouldn’t.’
‘Oh no. Look, maybe—maybe if we told Grant Campbell, he might do something, organise a search out there.’
‘When his best mate, good old Bob, tells him we’re mad? Of course he won’t, and neither will anyone else.’
‘Sergeant Maddox?’
‘Not without something more substantial than an obscure map reference that might mean anything or nothing.’
‘I wish I’d had more time to note the readings that Owen entered into Carmel’s log. I mean, we’re assuming that he put down false readings, but suppose he didn’t? If he had a map reference for Balls Pyramid in there somewhere, then we would have evidence, wouldn’t we?’
It was clutching at straws, but I wanted to deflect Anna. She had a gleam in her eye that I’d sometimes noticed in the old days, and which had briefly been rekindled in Orange. Next thing she’d have us stealing a boat and heading out across the open sea with ropes and magnifying glasses and lashings of ginger beer.
‘Shouldn’t be that difficult,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘To have another look around Carmel’s office. There could be other stuff there about what they were doing.’
‘What, break in?’ I saw the look on her face. ‘Bloody hell, Anna, larceny’s gone to your head. Remember what happened the last time.’
‘We got what we wanted, Josh. Without it we wouldn’t have come this far. But this time you can go in, and I’ll keep watch.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Or I’ll go alone.’
I sighed. ‘All right. On one condition—that they don’t have a burglar alarm. I’m not going through that again.’
‘Fair enough.’
We went out that evening to eat at a restaurant not far from Carmel’s office. The street was deserted as we walked back, and I ducked into the shadows and had a look around the outside of the bungalow. There were no warning stickers, no alarm boxes, no indicator lights.
We returned to our cabin and waited till midnight, then crept out, wearing the darkest clothes we had. When we reached the place, Anna waited in the shadow of a tree across the street while I padded down the drive beside the bungalow. I wasn’t sure how she could help, but it was reassuring to know she was out there. At the back of the building I selected the window next to the rear door, wrapped my jacket around my elbow and slammed it through the pane. The noise was shocking, and I stood motionless for a long time waiting for some reaction—lights, dogs, voices. There was nothing. Not a thing. Just the sighing of the wind in the palms.
I reached into the hole and slipped the latch and climbed in, my feet crunching on the broken glass inside. Anna, ever resourceful, had given me a tiny flashlight with which I picked my way through to the front office, where I closed the venetian blinds. Even so, I didn’t dare risk turning on the lights, and used the pencil beam to grope across to the filing cabinet. It was locked.
There was a board fixed to the wall nearby, with keys hanging from hooks. None of them looked small enough. One caught my eye, and I lifted it off its hook and examined it; then, with a buzz of guilty excitement, I slipped it into my pocket.