Watcher's Web by Patty Jansen Read Free Book Online Page A

each other. He had pushed her up rocks, and she hadn’t felt
embarrassed by his touch. Why now? What was the harm in a chat? She
was just being paranoid. As long as he was talking, he wasn’t doing
anything else.
    “What about
you? Were you travelling to Sydney?”
    “Yes.”
    “Family?” He’d
have a wife waiting for him somewhere.
    “Business. I
have no family in Australia.”
    “They’re all
overseas?”
    He stiffened.
Averted his eyes. “Yes.”
    “What
country?”
    “New
Zealand.”
    No way. Not
with that accent. “Where did they come from before that?”
    He gave
her a sharp look. She could almost hear him think you ask too many
questions. The
suspicion meter went up again.
    She stammered,
“Well, I thought . . . because of your
accent . . .” But she let it go. Wrong subject. One
obviously didn’t go there with him. This man was one hell of a
strange puppy.
    He rose,
brushing leaves from his trouser legs, a useless gesture, since his
trousers were as filthy as dirt-caked as hers. “If you don’t mind,
and if it’s appropriate, I’d like to wash myself as well.”
    “Go ahead.”
Appropriate? He’d just been staring at her while she was naked and
now he asked about appropriate?
    He stumbled
his way to the waterhole, wincing and stiff. At the bank, he
finally took off that leather jacket. He folded it carefully and
put it on a rock, as if it was precious. He reminded her of one of
John Braithwaite’s young farm hands, who had a jacket that had been
given to him by some singer or other.
    Underneath the
jacket Brian wore a checked flannelette shirt, as was popular with
workmen. This one looked new, the red and blue stripes still
vibrant. He unbuttoned it and peeled it off, discarding it in a
heap on top of the jacket. His skin was ghost-white, with a tattoo
on his left shoulder blade. Some sort of emblem, but he was too far
away, and it was too dark for her to see exactly what it was.
    Next he
unbuttoned his trousers. She turned away, because there was no way
she wanted to give him the slightest impression that she was
interested in him.
    Water rippled
and splashed.
    Drops trickled
from the trees in increasing frequency. They pattered on leaves,
dripped down trunks. The little fern-gardens on tree trunks
glistened with moisture. The pool in the creek had already merged
with the night.
    By the time
Brian splashed out of the water, it was almost completely dark.
    It was
now raining in all earnest. There was nowhere to shelter—the
tarpaulin had been burnt in the nightly attack. Jessica found a
marginally dry spot under an overhanging tree branch, but tree
roots stuck in her backside, water trickled down the trunk and she
kept thinking about carnivorous slugs and then thinking about food
and that made the hunger pains worse. At times, too, tingling air
crept over her skin. Just like she had felt before the plane
crashed. She shivered. The accident had all been her fault. The
more she thought about it, the more certain she became. She stared
into the dark, her thoughts tangled in mires of worry. In her
thoughts, she faced a court investigation into the crash. A
mechanic would say, There was nothing wrong with the engine, Your
Honour. And then
everyone in the room would look at her.
    Ridiculous of course, but it kept her awake, and it stirred
unwelcome memories of a time when she’d been thirteen and innocent,
when the blue web was still something she thought she controlled
and she was facing a judge at least four times her age in a
wood-pannelled courtroom packed with folk from Barrow Creek who had
travelled to the city to see her put in her place. She could still hear the judge’s voice, speaking
clearly as if he thought she was stupid. You do understand, Jessica, that you’re
being accused of the murder of Stephen Lewis
Fitzgerald . . .
    She shivered
involuntarily.
    Every now and
then, she thought she heard Brian’s voice, mumbling something,
talking in his sleep. She couldn’t make out