Beware of the Dog by Peter Corris Page B

been taken from where I’d been observing the house. They were back in their case, safely tucked away. No whisky, that’d have been too much to ask, but where was the jacket? I swore and searched again but it wasn’t in the Land Cruiser.
    I sat behind the wheel while the light morning traffic crawled past. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry. I’d been feeling fine when I’d arrived in Katoomba, now I didn’t feel so good. The morning sun coming through the windscreen made me hot inside my sweater but I’d been warned against sudden changes in temperature so I didn’t take it off. I sat, sweated and swore. I’d been warned about getting emotionally upset, too, but I kept on swearing.
You nearly died and were on drugs for a couple of weeks,
I thought.
That could have screwed up your memory.
I tried to recall in detail my actions before I’d gone up the rock pile and I found that I couldn’t.
    I started the motor and headed towards Mount Victoria. The weather changed abruptly the way itcan in the mountains. Some cloud came over and some mist came down, a heavy mist, needing an occasional swipe from the windscreen wipers. Not ideal conditions for searching for something brown in a couple of hundred hectares of bush. I took the back way in and bumped along the tracks until I found where I’d parked before going up to watch the house. This was the right place, surely—right rocks, right trees. I convinced myself and got out to search. The mist was almost a drizzle. I grabbed the groundsheet from among the camping gear and draped it over my head.
    There had been a fair bit of rain up there and the ground was slushy. Things started to come back to me as I probed around. I’d worn the jacket into town but I’d put the parka on when I got back here because I’d thought I might have a long cold wait up on the rocks. I’d got the binoculars and the whisky from the seat, put them on the ground and taken off the jacket. Then … I remembered. I’d slung the jacket up onto the top of the Cruiser intending to put it away safely. And something had broken the chain of thought. It came back to me—a train whistle from the track across the valley, a long, clear sound that had cut through the chill morning air.
    When had they found the Cruiser? I didn’t know. If it had been late in the day they might not have seen the jacket and just checked the vehicle over before driving off. In which direction? I searched both ways on both sides of the track for about twenty minutes before I found it. An overhanging branch must have brushed it off the roof. The jacket had fallen into a bush and lay, scarcely disturbed from the way I’d folded it, in a natural leafy shelter.It was wet and slimy and a white mildew had formed around the seams. I stood under a tree, water dripping from the groundsheet and felt the jacket. The photograph was still there, not as crisp as before, but still there.
    I ran back to the Cruiser, put the jacket on the seat beside
Rabbit at Rest
and got moving. I needed the wipers now and the heater. My hands and feet had become cold during the search and aches and pains had started up in various places. The warm air circulated around me and I took a few experimental deep breaths. No wheezing, chest clear. It was some minutes before I realised that I’d turned onto the Electricity Commission service track automatically and was now heading for Salisbury Road. I had an impulse to turn around and go back the way I’d come, difficult though the manoeuvre would be on the narrow road. I’ve never understood old soldiers’ desires to visit the battlefields where they’d fought and bled. I never wanted to see mine in Malaya ever again, and I felt the same about the Lambertes’ cabin.
    But I kept going and there it was—a collection of blackened foundation pillars, a chimney and fireplace and a set of stone steps that led nowhere at all.