The End of Myrtle Forest Road

The flooded carpark at the end of Myrtle Forest Road received four people in the space of perhaps ten minutes on the afternoon the storm broke over the foothills behind Hobart, none of them bushwalkers, and none of them present in the carpark for any reason that would have made sense to a member of the public who happened upon the scene afterwards.

By the time the first of them arrived, Luke Smith had already driven Adrian Pafistis's Toyota Hilux through the rear wall of the toilet block at the back of the clearing, by means that left the wall undamaged and the two men inside the vehicle no longer present in Tasmania. The wall would become relevant within the hour to other people in the carpark. The Hilux, and its occupants, would not.

Gladys Cramer arrived in time to see the Hilux pass through the wall.

She abandoned her own blue Toyota Corolla half-concealed by shrubs at the rear of the toilet block with the passenger door open and the interior light on, and ran for the slope behind the building. She fell at the foot of the wooden sign at the entrance to the Myrtle Forest Walk. The silver bracelet on her left wrist came off in the mud beside the sign without her noticing. Her left wrist was sprained in the fall. She picked herself up with her good hand, recovered the bottle of shiraz she had been carrying, and made for the trees in the wrong footwear for the bush.

Beatrix Cramer arrived through the same wall Luke and Adrian had used, by means of her own device, looking for her sister. She had been trying to reach Gladys by phone for some time. She came too late — long enough for the slamming of a car door to reach her from the front of the carpark before she had a chance to find Gladys, and short enough for Gladys's car to still be sitting where she had left it. Beatrix called her sister's name once into the storm. Then she moved into the toilet block, and from there into the furthest cubicle, and waited.

Detectives Karl Jenkins and Sarah Lahey arrived. They got out of the patrol car into the rain. Within their first minute in the carpark they had identified the two sets of fresh tyre tracks pressed into the mud — one of which ended at the undamaged wall of the toilet block in conditions that did not permit the explanation they would otherwise have favoured — and located Gladys Cramer's abandoned Corolla behind the same building. They drew their weapons in response to a clang from inside the toilet block, which was the sound of Beatrix Cramer's elbow striking a hand dryer and a broom going over against a cracked porcelain sink. They entered tactically. The interior fluorescent failed. Karl Jenkins drew his torch, identified a band of shifting colour bleeding out from beneath the door of the furthest cubicle, and kicked the door open.

In the half-second between the door swinging open and the door rebounding shut on its damaged hinges, Karl Jenkins saw a woman crouched low against the rear wall of the cubicle, with long silver hair catching the cone of his torch beam, framed in a vortex of impossible colour the cubicle was not capable of producing. He did not have time to identify her. By the time Sarah Lahey had shouldered the door back open with her body weight, the cubicle was empty. Beatrix Cramer had activated her own device in that half-second and had passed through the rear wall of the cubicle into the same place Luke and Adrian had gone earlier in the afternoon.

Sarah Lahey, who had seen the colours under the door but not the woman beyond it, went back out into the rain to look for evidence she could explain. She found Gladys Cramer's silver bracelet at the entrance to the trail within the minute, beside a set of fresh footprints in the mud. The initials engraved on the bracelet matched the registration on the abandoned car. She turned toward the patrol car to call it in.

Karl Jenkins reached her before she had taken her first step. He closed his hand around her arm above the elbow and stopped her where she stood, harder than he had intended to. He released her almost as quickly as he had taken hold of her. He said only that they should wait. The grip left an imprint in the fabric of her sleeve.

Sarah Lahey did not respond. She turned and walked toward the entrance of the Myrtle Forest Walk with the bracelet in her closed fist. Karl Jenkins watched her cross the threshold into the trees, and then he followed her.

Approximately half a kilometre into the bush, ahead of both of them and unaware of their presence behind her, Gladys Cramer was making for a road her childhood had taught her would meet a creek before the creek met Fairy Glen.