Page 44 of The Vanishing Place
Effie looked out the passenger window, her mind clicking over the same two words, as her eyes scanned the verge.No body. No body. No body.
Lewis’s phone rang as they were headed back, and he pulled over.
“Okay,” he said at last. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. Don’t try to touch her.”
He exhaled as he hung up, then he turned to Effie. But she’d heard enough of the call to make sense of it.
“Apparently, one of the locals—”
She closed her eyes. “Just drive.”
Neither of them spoke as they drove back to the village, the clouds gathering and darkening overhead. By the time they reached the Koraha junction, the rain was battering so hard on the windscreen the wipers could barely keep up. The start of the long one-lane bridge came into view, and Effie stiffened in her seat.
She watched as the blur of bodies emerged, the collection of spectators gathered halfway across the vast bridge. Effie took a breath, trying not to hate them for it. After the car had eased to a stop, she climbed out, pulled a jacket on over her shoulders and forced herself toward the circus. She was a police officer. This was not new. This was not shocking. People were the same everywhere.
“Where is she?” Lewis asked, shaking the hand of a man with a wavy mullet.
“About two hundred meters farther along.” The man nodded in the direction of the bridge.
The Haast River Bridge, 20 meters high and 750 meters long, was striking. The vast strip of steel hung in the mist—grand and foreboding—before disappearing into the murky abyss. Effie wiped the rain from her face, her heart pulsing in her fingertips as shefollowed the exposed length of road with her eyes, ready to jump into the gray void without hesitation.
“We all backed off to this passing bay,” the man continued, “after what the kid did to Mim.”
Lewis frowned. “How is Mim?”
“Pretty shook up. The kid proper went for her.” The man shook his head. “Like a wild thing set loose.”
Wild.
The word, the weight and sharpness of it, stabbed between Effie’s ribs and she turned away. She looked out at the bridge, the horizon drowned in fog, searching for a sign of life in the watery distance. A blot of color. A flash of movement. But there was nothing. Just a wall of gray.
“Don’t you listen to him.” An older woman stepped from the crowd. “I’m just grand. Barely a graze.” Her face was scratched and bloodied, her cheeks torn by tiny fingers.
“Mim.” Lewis touched her arm. “What happened exactly?”
“Poor child’s terrified, that’s what. One of the boys spotted her, loitering way out on the bridge, and I volunteered to walk across. There was no sense us all trekking out and frightening the poor mite. But the child didn’t want me talking to her, I’ll tell you that much. The moment I opened my mouth, she ran for the barrier.” An expression, too soft for the woman’s weathered face, settled in her eyes. “A jump that high could break a thing like her. She’s nowt but skin and bone—”
“She was going to jump?” Effie stepped forward.
“She was definitely thinking on it. I tried to grab her”—Mim paused, touching a hand to her scratched cheek, and sighed—“but she darted farther along the bridge. Ran straight back to the railing. After that, I thought it was more dangerous for her if I stayed.” Mim looked right at Effie. “It was like I was the thing she wanted to jump from.”
Effie peered back at the bridge. “I need to get to her. She’s my responsibility.”
Lewis nodded. “I’ll keep everyone back.”
“Their homes would be a good distance,” she replied.
“I’ll try.”
As Effie went to walk away, Lewis grabbed her hand. Like they weren’t strangers. Like they hadn’t been living separate lives for seventeen years.
“You got this, bush girl.”
Lewis smiled and Effie turned away, momentarily glad of the rain on her cheeks. Of the water that masked her tears. It was pouring now. Not a meek sort of drizzle, but the type of wet that sliced through your bones. She ran a hand along the white railing and peered over the side. The river surged below, swollen by months of rain.
Please be alive.
Thick sheets of sleet and mist blurred the road, making it impossible to see more than twenty meters ahead. Twenty meters of hope at a time, that was all she had. For twenty meters at a time, the kid was still alive.
