Crocodile Farm

23.

On the road, Elliott sits up front with Lucy while Dimitri tries to teach a card game to Benji and Sofia.

"It's a game where no one knows the rules," Dimitri explains, his enthusiasm palpable. "Well, I mean, I know the rules. But you have to play the game and learn the rules as you go along. It's designed to test your mental capacity – that's brain power, son – and your ability to adapt."

"It sounds heinous," Sofia says, tapping her long-nailed finger against her lips.

"It's the most fun you can have with your clothes on," he says. "Come on, dvoyurodnaya."

"Do you speak Russian?" Lucy calls into the back, her eyes fixed on the road. Every time she asks anyone a question, Elliott feels like she's logging away the answer for later, waiting for each piece of information to become useful. He imagines her brain as an enormous filing cabinet, everything categorised and neatly tucked away. His own brain feels like it would more resemble his living room: papers strewn everywhere, dog piss in puddles near the door, smashed coffee table.

"Da," Dimitri says, grinning up at her in the rearview mirror. "But this one, she's new school."

"I was born here," Sofia insists, and Elliott is reminded, forcibly, of her voice in the dark last night, the quiet solidarity between them.

Dimitri waves a hand at her; it's a familiar argument between them.

Elliott looks over to Lucy, the relaxed confidence on her face. This must be normal for her, being behind the wheel of a car – if she's evaded capture continuously for seven years.

"Why are you on the run?" he asks.

"Hmm?" She doesn't look at him, just raises a single eyebrow.

"Ayesha said you were on the run. Why are you running? I mean, why couldn't you leave of your own accord?"

"It's not an easy place to leave," Lucy says. Her eyes flick to the rearview, but whether she is checking for pursuers, or keeping an eye on the escalating card game, is not clear.

"Well Ayesha is just – you know – living her life out in Padstow?" He's aware that he borrowed Sofia's phrase; conscious of her intake of breath behind him as Benji succeeds in sweeping the game.

"Ayesha's not living her life in Padstow." Ayesha's voice comes from the back. Elliott had thought she was dozing, her book open on her lap. "Not anymore, anyway. She's on the road with you." She doesn't sound that upset about it.

"Well, she obviously got the retirement package or whatever," he presses. "But it sounds like you didn't. Did you make them mad?"

"Careful, Elliott," Ayesha says. "Leave the investigating to the investigators."

Elliott realises that the card game has ground to a halt, and that Dimitri and Sofia are listening to his questions.

"I took something important, when I left," Lucy says. "And because of that, they're not sure they can trust me to keep quiet about what I've seen there." Her voice is grim, and she doesn't look at him. "I guess they think it'd be most prudent to eliminate me."

"What did you take?"

A sly smile at the corner of her mouth. "Well. When did you get so eager for answers?" Before he can press further, she says, "We're out of fuel," and veers the car quickly into a petrol station.

"Everyone wait here," Lucy says, and goes to get out.

"I need the bathroom," Elliott blurts out. What he needs is headspace: somewhere away from the others, all these bodies and their crowded breathing. He feels suddenly claustrophobic, panicky, like he can't think for himself.

Lucy meets his eyes, her mouth set in a grim line. "OK. Stay here."

She goes into the shop and returns with a key attached to a wooden spoon.

"Be quick," she says and nods towards the bathroom, round the back of the station.

The room smells of old urine and there is damp toilet paper trailed across the floor. Inside, Elliott stands, looking at his own reflection in the grimy mirror. He has a hungry look about him, his face is hollow: the sinew at his neck juts out, and there is a dark purple line of bruising over one cheek. His black hair, which has always been shaggy and long, is now matted at the back, and greasy at the front. He feels disheartened by his appearance: as minor a detail as it seems, he'd hoped he was making something of an impression on Sofia. This ghoul in the mirror is no one's idea of attractive.

He smooths over his hair. He doesn't look like himself, but he doesn't feel like himself. And suddenly he stops. Somehow he has become co-opted into this arrangement, somehow he has come along for the ride. But it is not his fight. He doesn't care about Crocodile Farm. Destroying the facility sounds risky and is not going to bring back Belle. He just wants to live a quiet life. Maybe he can get Dolphin and take off, run away from the highway, lie low for a few months and then return to his life. Or start a new one, anyway: he could get a guitar from somewhere, pick fruit to keep himself, and start again. Maybe if enough time passes (and they're still alive) he can return to Sydney, track down Taz and Darcy. He has an enrolment at university next year: he can pursue that.

This isn't his quest. Lucy can take the others – Sofia and Dimitri and Ayesha have their own axe to grind – but he can opt out. She can't force him to take part.

He steels himself, looking at his face in the mirror. Then he decides that he is going to have a coffee, Lucy be damned.

He walks out of the toilet, round the front of the station, and slips in through the heavy doors without acknowledging Lucy, who still stands at the van, filling it with petrol.

He goes to the coffee machine in the corner. He has no money, but they can't stop him. He feels light, weightless. He plucks out a cardboard cup and holds it under the nozzle, selects "Latte" and presses the button.

While he waits for the cup to fill, he turns and sees a Yolkin station is playing on the screen above the counter. He stops short when he sees a photo of his own face, younger, more tanned, unsmiling. A passport photo he doesn't recall having taken. And then beside it, a picture of Sofia, grinning, sunlight illuminating her face, wearing a cocktail dress.

He cannot hear what the news channel is saying, the volume is too low, but the untertext reads: "Dangerous criminal Elliott Perlman wanted in the kidnapping of Sofia Petukhova, granddaughter of Pyotr Yolkin."

The hot coffee runs over his hand and he jumps and cries out.

The man behind the counter looks over to him, as though noticing him for the first time – and then he looks up at the news station, almost in slow motion, his mouth open.

Elliott drops his coffee and runs outside. Lucy is replacing the pump; she looks up in surprise.

"We have to go," he says.

She doesn't question him. "Get in."

They screech out of the station as the man runs out from inside and stands, furious, in their wake.

"What's happening?" Dimitri says from the back.

"They think I kidnapped you," Elliott gets out. "They had my picture. They think ..." but he is too out of breath and surprised to finish his sentence.

Lucy nods. "That's what they do. That's how they get you." She sighs. "We'd better lay low from now on."