Chapter 4
The Kuranda Triangle
It wasn’t that we received any real help at the police station. We filled out the form with all the details, but that’s where the help ended. The questions were very formal and standard and not exactly in line with the worry we were starting to feel. All this had pushed the hunger aside, but we decided to go eat something anyway.
The restaurant was open, but the kitchen was already closed, so the only thing we could still buy was two bottles of juice, with which we wandered between all the closed stalls. We moved from one building to another, but the place was clearly empty. We didn’t know what to do, or to go back to Cairns without them. It was like saying that they had definitely disappeared, and we simply didn’t accept that.
It was on the third round when we decided to sit down. Obviously there was no sense in going around and around, so we found ourselves sitting on the same bench in front of the shop, that by now was closed. All the paintings had disappeared inside, only the nails indicated where they had been hanging. A little breeze came through and some curlews walked around not far from us.
The last colours of the day disappeared before the darkness, so we stood up and without a word we went to the car. On the backseat ws a bag with sweaters which they had taken with them for when it was getting colder.
We started driving towards the downhill section where the road was curving down the mountain. Every turn in the road became endless. The lights of the car reflected more on the sides than the road itself. The turns were so sharp that it was difficult to feel the connection between Kuranda and Cairns, but in the last turn the road straightened out and we started talking again.
“So what are we going to do tomorrow?” I asked. First thing we had to find them, but we had already done everything we could. What will be the next step? To wait? It simply seemed impossible in my eyes. “Maybe we’ll wait for the police, they will probably search places that haven’t been looking,” He said. We both knew it was nonsense. They didn’t just disappear. It was clear that something had hindered them to get out of the shop. Suddenly it became clear. “The shop. We need to go back to the shop,” I said, and continued, “They never left the shop. They’re there. I’m sure they’re there.” It became more and more clear. “But maybe somehow they left through the back,” he said. He hesitated when he said it, with the possibility of the confrontation with that strange man who was managing the shop.
In our memory the man became stranger every moment. Even the answers he gave in the conversation suddenly sounded unusual and different, as we started blaming him for our parents not getting out of the shop as we expected. It was clear that the next day we’d go straight back to him to have another talk. “Maybe we should have put more emphasis in what we wrote to the police, that they didn’t leave the shop,” He added after some thought. “We can do it tomorrow too after talking to him,” I said. At this point we stood in front of the gate of our house, we parked the car in the drive and got out of the car, forlorn and exhausted. We left the bag with the sweaters in the car for the next day.