‘So?’ Nathan said, because he couldn’t think how else to respond.
From outside, he heard the faint sound of someone calling his name. ‘Nathan?’
Ilse. He turned towards her voice, then made himself look back and focus on Simon.
‘I thought you’d want to know,’ Simon was saying. ‘One night when Harry was going to turn the generator off. I heard them from the caravan. Not the specifics, I wasn’t trying to listen in, but there were definitely words exchanged.’
‘Nathan?’Outside, Ilse’s boots clattered up the wooden steps of the verandah.
Simon took half a step closer. ‘Listen, Cameron sounded pissed off. More than I’d heard him before. And Harry was getting angry, saying that he’d lived here for more than forty years, been around longer than Cameron had. Something like: “I know more about what’s going on here than you think.”’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I don’t know.’ Simon shrugged. ‘And that was pretty much it. I think Harry walked away then. And I might not have thought too much of it, but –’
He stopped as the screen door opened at the end of the hall. Ilse appeared in the light of the doorway.
‘Oh, good. There you are,’ she said. She sounded a little breathless. ‘Harry’s not around. Are you free? I need your help.’
‘Yep. Give me a sec.’ Nathan turned back to Simon. ‘But what? Quick.’
‘But then Harry has never mentioned it.’
Chapter 21
They had left the track three kilometres earlier and the wheels of Nathan’s car bumped over the uneven ground.
‘Hopefully it’s still stuck,’ Ilse said as the holding pen came into sight in the distance.
‘Yeah.’ Nathan hoped so too. A calf tangled in the fence wire was one thing; trying to catch a calf running free with wire wrapped around it was an absolute pain in the arse.
‘There it is. I can see it.’ Ilse pointed through the dusty windscreen. They were the first words they’d exchanged in fifteen minutes.
Cameron’s card lay open and discarded on the seat between them.Forgive me.
Nathan scanned the herd of cattle. The cows bristled at the sound of the car engine and began walking almost as one, in a wave of movement. A single animal remained, watching her calf wrestle with the wire that trapped its hind leg.
‘I saw it while I was riding,’ Ilse had told him earlier in the hallway. ‘I didn’t have anything to cut it loose.’
‘Right,’ Nathan had said. Something like that was ideally a two-person job anyway. ‘Give me a minute. I’ll meet you at your car.’
There had been a slight hesitation. ‘Mine’s not working. Take yours?’
‘No worries. Keys are on the seat.’
Actually, where was Ilse’s four-wheel drive?Nathan had wondered as he’d watched her leave. He hadn’t seen it since he’d got there.
Nathan had written their destination in the log book by the phone, then ripped out an empty page and scribbled a message for Xander. He’d looked back at Simon, who was still hovering.
‘You’re sure that’s what you heard with Cam and Harry?’ Nathan said. ‘You’re not trying to cause trouble?’
‘No.No.Why would I?’
‘Have you told anyone else? Bub or anyone?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
