Darkness for Light by Emma Viskic

Author:Emma Viskic
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction, crime, Australian, deaf community, thriller
ISBN: 9781760686161
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction
Published: 2019-09-20T04:07:44+00:00

23.

Caleb fetched Alberto’s ladder and moved one of the cameras to cover the side fence. Rearranging lifeboats. Anyone determined to burn down the building would do it whether or not there were cameras. The only hope was that the arsonist really had changed their mind.

Frankie came outside as he was packing everything away. She held up the phone. ‘There’s an email from Fawkes.’

A short message containing a lot of information.

—harold holt pool in 45. just you. do laps in slow lane get head wet

‘What d’you reckon?’ Frankie asked. ‘Conspiracy nut?’

Good question. Holt’s death in 1967 was a favourite of the conspiracy theorists. The then prime minister had gone for a swim in rough seas off Portsea and never returned. Most people accepted he’d drowned, but some held out he’d been taken by a foreign government. Everyone agreed that naming a pool after him was in very dark humour.

‘Probably just careful,’ Caleb said. ‘Bad acoustics for a directional mic, and I can’t wear a wire.’ Or hearing aids. Which meant trying to follow an unfamiliar speaker with no intonation to guide him. An accent or lisp could stop him, a mumbler or fast-talker.

Frankie was frowning, apparently coming to the same conclusions. ‘I’ll go.’

‘No, it’ll spook him. I’ll change the location.’ He typed a quick reply.

—Can’t do pool. Need hearing aids

The message came instantly.

—39 mins

***

They made it with three minutes to spare. Caleb bought bathers and changed in record time, headed out to the large undercover pool. A soaring glass ceiling reflected the rippling water against the night sky. Nearly closing time, but the under-fifteen squad were still ploughing up and down the pool, teammates cheering them on; audible even without his aids. More than 110 decibels, then – he’d have to tell Tilda. Hopefully tonight; please God tonight. The kidnappers couldn’t want to keep her till tomorrow, surely. To guard and feed an upset nine-year-old, risk Frankie going to the police, an inquisitive neighbour. There’d be another video any minute now, the handover soon after. Had to be.

He dove in and got going in a steady freestyle, pausing at each end. Five laps, six, seven; increasingly worried Frankie would lose patience and come in. It had taken most of the journey to convince her not to act as back-up, and he wasn’t sure his arguments had stuck.

A shadow moved across the bottom of the pool as someone slipped into the lane ahead of him. He swam to the end, caught hold of the ledge. A man in his early twenties, with shaded goggles and a black swimming cap pulled low on his forehead. Long face and nose, thin limbs twitching with energy. Kat would sketch him in sharp vertical lines.

‘I’m Caleb.’

‘No shit. Why are you interested in Transis?’

No accent or chewing gum, just the rounded vowels of a private school boy. A prayer of thanks to the gods of lip-reading. Now to speak without auditory feedback; it’d be a short conversation if he accidentally started yelling.

‘I’m looking for a child who’s been kidnapped,’ he told Fawkes.

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