Sugar Town

by Robert Nicholls

  What shall we do? What shall we do?

  We’ll look at them. Look in their eyes. And they’ll think we’re not afraid. And they’ll free us to the light. Together, as one, they turn. But the shadows are blind. They strike her down and, one by one, they crawl inside her head. There is light all around, but in her mind, the shadows lie down, heavy and satisfied as hogs, and they fall asleep there. But she – the little girl, the grown woman – she knows! She knows that in their sleep, they dream of her.

  Bridie’s dream has one last image for her. It’s the Reverend, sitting, working at the great desk in his study. She, the little girl / woman, touches him and he wraps his arms around her, blubbing like a baby against her breasts. ‘Forgive me,’ he cries and she looks around to see who is there. But there’s no one! Not her, not the little girl, not the Reverend. Only the shadows, pig-happy and grunting in their sleep.

  * * *

  The sun, when it finally brought that dreadful night to an end, found us – an old man, a young woman, a girl and a boy, a live goat and a dead one, along with a smoothly opaque, faintly coppery, pear-shaped metallic object from space – all gathered on the small veranda of the house. Amalthea had washed the dried blood from Rosemary’s wounds, one at the back of each rear leg and one at her throat. The hair on her legs beneath the cuts had been syruped into place, sheathed with thick masses of congealed blood. On her belly, the skin was torn and flayed, flecked with gravel, where she’d dragged herself. But on her chest, below the slash on her throat – Isak’s cut – the blood had been little more than a spatter; testament to Isak’s belief that she was nearly gone when he found her. She was covered now, not with blood but with a sheet, to hide the gaping wounds.

  We sat about aimlessly, shocked almost into silence, watching the new day’s beginnings. When we did speak, it was softly as though the sun might rush back into hiding if we raised our voices. Asael told us that Queenie had woken him with a high-pitched keening wail, even before Isak had turned up and I didn’t feel the least compelled to question him about his medication. Who was I to question? Somehow, between him and Queenie, Bridie had been woken from her sleep and Garlic brought back from the dead. When I nodded an appeal in Rosemary’s direction, he shook his head.

  “Too much of her is gone, I think.” And that made as much sense to me as anything else I’d seen or heard in recent days.

  “It’s Monday,” he said. “Are we going to school, Ruthie?”

  “No. Not today. And don’t call me Ruthie. Call me . . . ! Call me . . . Afraizia!”

  “Okay.”

  Isak had showered away the blood from his hands and arms and found himself a different shirt in Amalthea’s wardrobe. He sat, propped against the wall, arms on his knees, with the butt of the rifle between his feet. He had seemed, when we first found him, to be very small and fragile. But I could see, now, that there was a solidity about him; an aura of permanence and stillness – like he was made of earth. No one asked him where he’d been or where he’d gotten the rifle or why he’d come back. He seemed, for the moment, to be where he belonged.

  Which was a great deal more than I could say for myself. For the first time, that morning, I was truly frightened of the possibilities that surrounded us. We’d spoken of rape and we’d spoken of lying and we’d spoken of murder. We’d seen a house burned. But nothing had been as real as Rosemary’s blood and the cruel cuts on her body. That morning it seemed that, in the very early hours, something terrible had awoken in Sugar Town.

  * * *

  We were still there, waiting for some idea of what to do, when we heard Kevin’s motorbike turn off the main road. Its progress stopped for several minutes, just out of our sight, the motor left running. Then he came on, slowly, weaving this way and that, studying the road as he came. When at last he rumbled into the yard I could see, dangling between the pincers of two fingers, a long-bladed knife.

  He took in our little band on the veranda, his face agog, probably as much at our sombre stillness as at the sights of Isak and Queenie. When his eyes fell on Rosemary and the lightly speckled sheet that covered her, a strangled sound escaped him and he went to Amalthea, arms wide. She cried then, for the first and last time.

  * * *

  Kevin had fresh bread in his saddle-bags, so some things were clearly going on as normal. He’d spent a fruitless hour in the night, patrolling the streets of Sugar Town on his bike, looking for signs of Rosemary. Then he’d slept a few hours and risen as usual, at four. Hoggs had been at the back door, as always, ready for work.

  “And did he say how the Mayor was?” Amalthea asked scornfully. “Whether he enjoyed the fire last night? Or better yet, did he say where the Mayor got to in that hour or two when no one could find him? That’s a thing we’d all love to know!”

  There was a grimness about her that was as new as the cuts on the backs of Rosemary’s legs. Kevin shook his head and began to speak, but she cut him off with an outthrust finger.

  “Don’t you dare! I might have half-way bought it last night but not today! Nothing could be more deliberate than what they did to Rosemary! And they’re connected, those two things! I promise you that!”

  “I know,” he said. “I know. I believe it. Listen! I swung by the showground on the way here, to see if Bessie and Arturo got away all right. I couldn’t stop thinking about what you said last night; that soon there’d soon be no evidence at all of what happened to Bridie. Police records gone, the Reverend’s notes gone! Gracie, Rita, Les and the Reverend – all gone. I counted you in there as well, Isak – as one of the people who’d never be heard.”

  “Oh, I’ll be heard all right!” Isak said. “Take no ear-strain to hear me.” He bounced the butt of the rifle against the floor boards. Thunk thunk!

  “So what about Bessie?” I asked. “Has she gone?”

  He shook his head. “They’d planned to get away at first light. But someone paid them a visit in the night. They found a gas bottle this morning – one of hers – with a hose attached – running into her caravan.”

  It was one of those moments when you cover your mouth because you’re frightened of what might come out of it. It came out anyhow.

  “Shit a brick!” I whispered. “What happened? Is she okay?”

  “She’s not called Madame Zodiac for nothing, Ru. She’s fine. She was with Bandini in his caravan. Anyhow, I told them about Bridie and about the house burning. It was her home too, after all, for a number of years there, and Bridie was . . . well, they were close. Very close – especially after Rita died. So I thought she should know. Then, when they told me about the gas bottle . . . ! I’m convinced! Somebody’s obviously very desperate – dangerously desperate – to have this history left in the past.” He gestured toward Rosemary. “This . . . just adds certainty.”

  Thump-thump went the butt of Isak’s rifle and, “Fuckin’ oath it does!” he said.

  “So they’re leaving?” I asked and Kevin shook his head.

  “Don’t know! They’re airing out Bessie’s caravan and talking it over. But Bessie wants to see Bridie. And she’s got it in her head that she left things in a muddle here once before. This time, she says, she wants to see it right.”

  We all fell silent. It sounds so easy, I was thinking; to ‘set things right’. But where do you start? It was no help to me that, at some point through the morning, I’d experienced a sort of mental click, like a stepping stone had winked in and immediately out of existence at the corner of my eye. Things were shifting so rapidly.

  “They have to come here,” Asael said quietly.

  And to our questioning looks he added, “They’ll be safe here; with Queenie.”

  I imagine everyone’s mind turned, as mine did, to a picture of those two lonely caravans, half out of sight at the bottom of the showgrounds. Obviously, Asael was right. If they were staying in Sugar Town, it couldn’t be down there.

  Groaning with exertion, using the rifle as a crutch, Isak climbed to his feet.

&
nbsp; “The kid’s right. I’ll get ‘em.”

  And tucking the rifle under his arm, he headed off in the opposite direction, into the cane.

  “Have some breakfast first!” Amalthea called out to him but he waved without looking back, taking the long way around to the showground.

  In a déjà vu moment, Kevin and Amalthea moved Rosemary’s corpse inside, to the spot where Garlic had so recently lain, and Asael picked up Queenie, carrying her easily to a corner of the living room where she again balanced lightly on a pinpoint of her round bottom. I stayed outside, looking across the yard at the dark patch of blood, wondering if it would be wrong to fetch a bucket of water and wash it away.

  Nearer, on the grass, Kevin’s motorcycle ticked and gurgled as it cooled and beside it lay the knife he’d carried in from the road. He’d spotted it, he’d said, just fifty meters up, where the greatest mass of blood could be found. So that’s where Rosemary had been attacked. Would someone have brought her there, to make sure she was found? Or had someone found her at that spot, almost home; almost safe. Someone who had already set up a gas bottle to empty into Bessie’s caravan. Someone lurking.

  And suddenly, there was that mental click again – that stepping stone, winking at me from the void. Only this time, my eye caught and held it long enough for my mind to register it. It was the knife! I’d seen that knife before! Only yesterday, in fact! Right here in this house!

  It was the knife Darryl Sutton had produced to use in butchering Garlic who, as it turned out, had still had not only a beating heart in his chest but friends to protect him..

  I picked up the knife between two finger tips, the way Kevin had. The blade was long and thin, narrow as a rapier from years of sharpening. A proper butcher’s knife. Dale, I knew, had a school-based apprenticeship with Ansell Williams, the butcher. What did that mean? Obviously it meant he’d borrowed or stolen a knife and he or Darryl or probably both of them had used it to maim Rosemary! But why? And why booby-trap Bessie’s caravan? Dale and Darryl wouldn’t know Bessie from a hole in the ground! And then to leave the knife on the road? Even for the Suttons, that was some stupid!

  I took it inside and laid it on the floor behind the front door, out of sight. Even I know that the more obvious something appears, the more careful your scrutiny should be.

  * * *

  As it happened, I wasn’t the only one who recalled seeing it in Darryl’s hand. Half way through breakfast, Amalthea gave a surprised grunt of remembrance and left the table, muttering about that knife. I had to tell her where it was.

  “Just wanted it out of sight,” I said in answer to her question. “I only touched the tip of the handle – with two fingers, like Kev’. What’re you going to do with it?”

  “Sergeant Morrow,” she said narrowly. “Frieda says he’s a good cop. Even Kevin’s willing to stand up for him. I think it’s time to put him to the test.”

  Plans started to be made then; because whatever else happens, the day moves on. Kev’ needed to get back to the bakery to relieve Hoggs. And Asa’ and I obviously had to go to Bridie, though I had thoughts beyond that, as well. Amalthea was off to the police station.

  “I’ll take Garlic,” she said. “He’s not strong yet, but I can’t risk leaving him alone; not with whoever’s-out-there still on the loose. And we’ll come straight back, in case Bessie and her friend move their caravans here.”

  That meant Queenie would have to stay on her own. The last thing we did was agree amongst us that we would remain mum about Isak.

  Chapter 19 – Exposure

  I have this theory that, when a thing disappears, some remnant of it remains in the space it inhabited. The details of it linger, as though that particular volume of air is a slightly different colour. I was thinking that as I sat in the yard beside the stinking pile of ash and rubble that had been our house. If I squinted my eyes in just the right way, the house was still there! And it struck me that the same is true for people; that it takes a while for their auras to fade when they move away from us. Some longer than others, I expect. It might even be true for parts of people. Like, if you tell lies, there might be a detectable place where your honesty used to be. Or if you became a coward, there’s an empty place where your courage used to be. I was counting on that as I waited for Dale Sutton.

  * * *

  I’d gone with Asael to the hospital to check in on Bridie and I confess that I’d been nervous about it. Despite her promise that nothing like the pills would happen again, it just seemed to me that the unexpected kept bobbing up in terrifying ways in our lives. It was a comfort to see Matron, still there at the front desk, looking like the Guardian of the Gate. She waved us on through.

  Bridie was sitting up in the bed, reading, and Asael was so excited that he started to yammer at her practically before we were in the room. The story of Rosemary’s death was top of his list, of course, and he blurted out Isak’s name before I could gag him. I reminded him, as calmly as I could, that we were keeping our ‘friendship’ with Isak secret for the time being. As far as anyone in the area was to know, Isak had gone walk-about and couldn’t be found.

  I probably would have let Bridie in on it anyhow – just a bit more quietly. As it was, I showed her Gramma G’s ring and tried to explain how the old man had come to be temporarily in residence at Amalthea’s house. I also kind of suggested that he was frightened of Doctor Dabney (which I thought was better than saying his intentions were murderous!) and that was why I was trying to stifle Asael.

  I didn’t say anything about his confession of murder, though I supposed that, some day, the topic of Les Crampton would have to come up between us. Nor did I say anything about Isak’s intention to uncover conspiracy in the town. I would have kept the gun-thing to myself as well, but Asael had already blabbed it. The only option left to me was to make out that he was just a nervous old bloke who wanted to be left alone, and that both Kevin and Amalthea thought it would be best to keep his whereabouts quiet for the time being (which was also only a bit of a lie). As it turned out, only the ring interested Bridie and even that she quickly shrugged aside.

  We chatted on aimlessly for a bit until I casually put my plan into action, proposing that I slip over to the house and take some photos. For the insurance people, I said. And to show Bridie just how severe the damage was. She was content to let me go and, happily, Asa’ was content to stay at the hospital.

  On the way out, I detoured past Johnathon Cranna’s room and found him up and dressed, in his wheelchair.

  “Ruthie! Lovely! I’m glad you haven’t wiped me from your social calendar!”

  The broken leg was rigid out in front of him and looked very uncomfortable, but his face seemed to light up when he saw me. Who can resist a smiling reception?

  “I don’t have a social calendar, Mister Cranna,” I smiled in return. “But if I did, I’d make sure you were on it.”

  “Ah,” he said, and laughed. “First of all, I thought we’d gotten past the ‘Mister Cranna’ stage. My name’s Johnathon. And people who’ve been through as much together as we have should be on a first name basis. Don’t you think? And secondly, seriously, because my head seems clear for the first time in ages, I want to make sure that I’ve properly thanked you for saving my bacon!”

  He held out his hand and I took it for a shake, which lasted just a little longer than I would normally have expected.

  “I’ve always been a sucker for bacon,” I said, a little cheekily. “You’re up and dressed! Are you going home?”

  “Maybe. Roger’s still assessing the situation. But I live in hope. Listen, I heard about your house! And about your sister’s . . . well, you know! That old busybody Bessie Crampton, they say . . . bringing up ghosts from the past. It never rains but it you-know-whats, eh? But listen! Bessie never was right in the head, you know! And I say that with the deepest respect and affection and gratitude for what she did for your family – especially after your poor mother’s tragic death. Is Bridie alright? Are you
alright? Is there anything I can do?”

  “No, no, thanks! I think we’re okay. I’m just heading over to the house now to check out the ruins.”

  “Well, look! If you need anything in the short term . . . a place to stay or whatever . . . I’ve got a whole hotel there and I’ll make space for the three of you for as long as you need it. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Thank you, Johnathon. That’s very generous.” He was so charming and immaculate and handsome. The faintest hint of aftershave hovered around him. “Look, I’d best be getting on. I hope the doctor’s report is good news.”

  He nodded gratitude and, as I started to leave, he called me back.

  “Ruthie, can I tell you something? I wouldn’t ordinarily burden you with it! And my conscience is giving me curry, even as we speak. But from what I’m hearing, the way things have been going, I think I’d be doing you a disservice to keep quiet.”

  He held out his hands, reaching for mine – so serious and sombre. I went back to him, more than a little intrigued.

  “Not everyone knows this,” he started, “but, back those years ago, when . . . you know . . . what apparently happened to your sister . . . Sergeant Morrow actually did manage to identify a . . . a primary suspect! Yes! He did! And that person . . . was none other than Les Crampton! Bessie’s husband! No doubt about it! Now I don’t know what stories Bessie’s been telling, but I just think you should be aware that she might . . . and I’m not saying she has, but she might . . . have ulterior motives! You know? Hoping to protect his memory? Hoping maybe even to protect herself! Who knows what she knew and didn’t tell, eh?”

  I don’t know what level of shock he expected from me, but I’m fairly certain I didn’t register any at all! Aside from the fact that it was all stuff I already knew, my major reaction was pleasure that he was volunteering information to me. I’d defended him when Amalthea challenged his silence and, to my mind, he was vindicating me, as well as himself. So, though I’m sure I didn’t register any shock, I expect some hints of gratitude and pleasure might have leaked through. In any event, he seemed to take encouragement.