The Sound of Whales by Kerr Thomson Page B

done more to help. Much more.
    He walked away from the town now, gripped by a growing anxiety about the bloody knife that was under his bed. The road curved north but he cut across the grassland that led to the top of the cliffs beyond the castle. The police had searched the caves and found nothing. Fraser wondered if Jonah had hidden away his few possessions before he was stabbed and his body thrown into the sea. Where were his father’s boots? If they were discovered, it could lead back to him. The thought filled him with a sudden panic.
    Just before the clifftop, where the ground sloped up, there was a scattering of trees which weren’t quite thick enough to be called a forest. As Fraser approached he glimpsed movement. It was his brother, flitting among the trees like a deer. Fraser ducked behind some gorse and watched. Dunny chose the biggest beech tree and sat down in the shade of its branches.
    From his pocket Dunny carefully removed a stack of scallop shells, his tell shells. He separated them and laid the five of them out in front of him. From his other pocket he pulled his pen. Fraser watched his brother just sit for a while, staring at his shells, the only movement the flickering shadows of the tree, the only sound the distinctive ‘pee-wit’ cry of a lapwing. The grass, long and beginning to seed, swayed in the breeze and there was the distant sound of the sea.
    Dunny picked up one of the scallop shells, wrote something on it, then laid it carefully back down and did the same with the second. He wrote on all five shells, then piled them one on top of the other at his feet and leant back against the tree, looking up at the sky. Only the thin vapour trail of a plane broke the blue but far to the west the sky was grey, a band of clouds indicating the approach of another storm.
    Dunny sat quite still for a few moments, listening to the breaking waves. Then he pulled himself to his feet and lifted his tell shells, headed up the hill towards the cliff edge. Fraser followed, darting behind trees and keeping low to stay unseen.
    What are you up to? Fraser said to himself. Dunny had always been puzzling but in the last few months his behaviour had become truly enigmatic. Fraser didn’t know his brother any more.
    When he reached the top Dunny sidled towards the drop, then lay flat and pulled himself up to the very edge of the cliff. He leant his head over and looked down. Below him was the beach and the boulders but Fraser knew the cliff face curved inwards at the bottom, so the entrances to the caves could not be seen. The tide was coming in and the surge of the breaking waves was another portent of the coming storm.
    Dunny now carefully laid his scallop shells out in a line on the grass beside him. He picked up the first one, reached out over the drop and let go of the shell. He did the same with the second and third, then he stood up, pulled back his arm and launched the fourth shell into the air. Fraser watched it somersault as it fell, its pearly inside glittering in the sunlight before it vanished below the cliff.
    Dunny lifted his last shell and turned to face away from the ocean. He looked in Fraser’s direction and held up the shell as if he knew his brother was watching from somewhere. For you , he seemed to say. Dunny laid the shell carefully on the grass, then moved away along the cliff path, disappearing down the slope to the beach.
    Fraser waited until Dunny had gone, then crept over to the cliff edge. The shell lay on the grass. He kicked it over the drop. The ocean shimmered in the sun. There was a dark line on the horizon that was the mainland, and sailing up the sound a tanker carrying an unknown cargo to an unknown destination.
    Fraser headed back to town, sticking to the road and avoiding the beach. As he arrived at the harbour he heard a familiar voice say, ‘Fraser, son, where have you been?’ It was his father. ‘You’re going to miss the