Under the Midnight Sky

by Anna Romer

  ‘God, Abby. I’m an arse.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘I never meant to rattle you like this. I just wanted to do something good for you, after everything you’ve done for me. You’ve put up with my whingeing, my moodiness. You’ve been a real sport and I wanted to make it up to you—’ He winced, suspecting his jabbering was making it worse.

  Abby slid down the tree back onto the grass, burying her face in her hands.

  Tom swayed towards her. He let one crutch drop and then the other. Leaning on the tree, keeping his bad knee straight, he worked his way down beside her. Sliding his arm around her shoulders, he drew her against him. He half expected her to jerk away, but she surprised him by melting against him, her body a warm weight. She pressed her face against his chest and fisted her fingers in his shirt.

  Though she made no sound, no movement, he could taste her tears with each breath he drew in. Reaching down, he cradled the side of her head. ‘It’s okay, darlin’.’

  A magpie alighted on a branch above them, sending down a rain of leaves. The bird began to warble, filling the air with its sharp, sweet song. Tom rested his lips on the top of Abby’s head, breathing her scent. Wanting to hold her this way forever, protect her, distract her from whatever nightmare she was trying to outrun.

  The magpie ceased its song and flew away. Abby shifted to look at him. Her face was a breath from his.

  His pulse began to hammer. Without thinking, he tilted towards her and brushed his lips over hers. Briefly, she kissed him back. Her lips tasted every bit as sweet as he’d imagined, and he wanted more . . .

  She drew back, her eyes wide. ‘What was that?’

  He winced. Not the response he’d hoped for. ‘I thought it might take your mind off things. Off the caravan and whatever it made you remember . . .’ He trailed off and tried to cover his embarrassment with a smile, but it felt more like a grimace. What was he, insane?

  Abby gave a soft, uncertain laugh. ‘I guess it worked.’

  Her face was close, and he felt the quickness of her breath on his lips. He leaned in to test his theory a second time, but Abby drew away and tilted her head, giving him a frowny sort of smile.

  ‘Jeez, Tom.’

  ‘What?’

  Her gaze dropped to his mouth and she nibbled at her bottom lip. Then she laughed huskily and shook her head. ‘How the heck am I supposed to get you back on your feet now?’

  ‘Guess I’ll have to stay here,’ he muttered, his senses still reeling. ‘With you. For all eternity.’

  ‘Huh.’ Her smile widened. ‘Then you’re doomed.’

  Untangling herself from his arms, she got to her feet and gazed down at him. She was inching back towards the old Abby, the one with her guard up. Tom didn’t care. He was still drunk with the memory of her in his arms. Of her mouth against his. Still intoxicated by those moments she’d let him hold her close.

  ‘Come on.’ She put out her hands to help him up. ‘Easy does it.’

  It took an excruciating, pride-destroying millennium to get back on his feet, although it was probably closer to five minutes. But by the time he was standing and crutched-up, one thing was certain: something had happened to his heart. It felt squashed out of shape. Bruised. Fluttering and glowing like a candle flame in a windstorm.

  Abby was right. He was doomed.

  • • •

  After dinner I slipped back to the garden. The air was cold and it seemed to clear away some of the cobwebs, leaving my mind empty. I retraced my steps to the orchard and stood for a long time in the gloom, staring across the trampled grass clearing at the caravan. No longer magical, it was just a dark blob crouching in the shadows, somehow sinister. I went over and placed my hand on its teardrop-shaped flank. The plywood was rough from the weather and vaguely warm. When I shut my eyes, it shapeshifted into something resembling a cave.

  Can you describe it, Gail?

  It was dark inside and very dirty. I mean, there was dirt on the floor. But underneath the dirt it was metal.

  The cave existed. I was sure of that now. It wasn’t just a figment that haunted my dreams, but real and tangible. This afternoon when I looked inside the little caravan and breathed its stale air, a window in the back of my mind had opened and I’d slipped through. Just for an instant I’d been back in the cave, trapped in the dark, unable to breathe. Any lingering doubts about its existence had vanished. My cave was definitely a memory and not, as everyone back then had encouraged me to believe, a panic-induced invention.

  But what if it hadn’t been a cave after all, but something man made?

  I shut my eyes and summoned it again. The icy walls had shuddered under my palms, my fists, each blow echoing loud over my screams. All the surfaces I touched had been metal. But what sort of cave had a metal floor and walls—?

  An owl shrieked overhead in the darkness and I sprang away from the caravan, shielding my face. My heart began to punch against my ribs, so I buckled over, hands on my knees while I caught my breath. And there in the shadowy garden, with my pulse thumping in my ears, another possibility revealed itself. There was someone who might know the whereabouts of my cave; someone who may have known all along.

  20

  Wiping my damp palm on my jeans, I knocked on the door. A flake of paint fluttered to the ground, and somewhere in the back of the house a dog barked. I glanced along the verandah.

  Grass grew up between the decking boards, and a crate of mouldy newspapers had become a feeding ground for snails. For twenty years this place had been a spectre in the back of my mind – a haunted house that drifted in and out of my nightmares, barely remembered yet always there. To be standing here now, with my heart doing its best to leap from my chest, seemed like the worst kind of folly.

  I knocked again. Behind me in the street, a group of kids rode past on their bikes, laughing and skylarking. A lawn mower droned in a neighbouring street, and somewhere a television blared. As I lifted my fist a third time, a deadbolt on the other side of the door disengaged. The door rattled and swung open.

  A wiry man in a brown cardigan frowned out at me. ‘Yeah, what do you want?’

  ‘Mr Horton, I’m Abby Bardot from the Express. Have you got a minute? I was hoping to have a quick word.’

  Colour darkened his whiskery cheeks. ‘You’re that Radley girl, aren’t you? My word, you’ve got a hide coming round here. Why would I talk to you?’

  ‘It’s about Jasper.’

  ‘Haven’t you done enough?’

  ‘Please, Roy. It’s really important.’

  His eyes narrowed behind his horn-rims, and he glanced behind me into the street, working his jaw from side to side, as though chewing something leathery and unpleasant. ‘You’d better come inside.’

  I followed him along the hallway, dodging tall piles of taped-up boxes, squeezing past a battered bicycle that hung from the doorknob of a shut door. The other doors along the hall were open. As I trailed Roy towards the back of the house, my nostrils flaring at the mustiness, I glimpsed rooms with chenille bedcovers and old-fashioned lamps, and more boxes. One of the rooms – lit by a solitary bulb that made me wonder if Roy had been pottering in here when I knocked – caught my eye. A glass-fronted cabinet held a collection of hunting knives. Some were long and curved, most had grooved blades and wooden or steel handles. High on the wall above the cabinet were three antiquated rifles and what looked like a mummified cat. My palms grew damp again. Why hadn’t I told anyone I was coming here?

  ‘That’s Jasper’s stuff packed up there,’ Roy said over his shoulder, indicating the boxes. ‘I’m keeping it here for him till he gets out. All them cartons are full of books. He’s a big reader, so he is.’

  I followed him through to a tiny kitchen. The cupboards were tobacco-stain yellow, probably dating back to the 1960s. Everything was spotless, dusted and scrubbed. A small table and chairs sat in the centre of the room, and on the table was a pair of gardening gloves and a large newspaper parcel tied with string.

  ‘You picked a bad day
,’ Roy grumbled, grappling the parcel into his arms. ‘Grab them gloves for me, would you?’

  I held the door open as he went outside. On the porch, a black and white border collie sat to attention and started wriggling and whining, thumping its tail on the deck. Roy silenced it with a word, and it huffed a breath and flopped back onto the boards. I followed Roy down some steps.

  After the chaos of the front yard, the well-tended rear garden surprised me. An expanse of manicured lawn took up most of the space, flanked by long, narrow veggie beds full of bobbing seed heads and a few large zucchinis.

  Roy pointed to a spade propped against a rickety shed, so I grabbed that too and followed him to the far edge of the garden. He laid the parcel on the lawn and put on the gloves, then took the spade from my hands and began to dig a hole in the grass.

  ‘You said you’re with the Express. Is this a story you’re writing?’

  ‘No, Roy. It’s sort of personal.’

  He tossed a load of earth aside and plunged the spade into a fresh section of grass. ‘So what do you want to know?’

  ‘Did Jasper have a place in the forest, a caravan or something he might have camped in from time to time?’

  Roy stood to attention, sunlight flaring off his thick glasses. ‘Van? Jasper never had no van. What’s all this about?’

  I shaded my eyes from the brightness. Had Roy’s gaze just flickered towards the house? Was he now looking vaguely rattled – or was I so desperate to find a lead that my imagination was snatching hope out of thin air?

  ‘Whoever killed Alice Noonan kept her somewhere. For weeks, maybe as long as a month. They never found out where, and I’m just wondering if it might have been a vehicle of some kind, possibly a caravan.’

  ‘It weren’t my Jas.’ Roy put his heel on the shovel and drove it hard into the ground. He sent me a sideways look, but said nothing more.

  ‘Please, Roy. Will you think carefully, try to remember? I know it was a long time ago, but this could be important.’

  ‘He had no van.’ A load of dirt came up and thumped onto the grass. ‘He had no car.’

  ‘You’re absolutely sure?’

  ‘How could he? My boy never got his licence.’

  I rocked backwards. ‘No licence?’

  ‘He rode a pushbike, or walked. When we went cutting wood, it was always me who drove the truck. We fought over it all the time, my word we did. I even offered to help him go for the test, pay for it. It’s a bloody chore running a wood business with only the one driver, especially in winter. But Jas wouldn’t hear of it. Anyway, the cops know all that. How can it be important?’

  I shifted to the other side of the hole, and knocked a clod of dirt back into it with my foot. ‘Do you still believe your son is innocent?’

  Roy stopped again, shading his eyes with a cupped hand. ‘I don’t believe he’s innocent, Miss Radley. I know it without a doubt. My boy never killed them girls. I’d swear it on his mother’s life.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘My Jas was a good kid. But quiet, you know? Different. Uncomfortable around people. But he weren’t no killer.’ He went back to work with the spade, digging until the hole was knee deep. Then he crouched down and lowered the parcel into it. Getting back to his feet, he stretched the kinks out of his spine.

  ‘I’ll bet you weren’t expecting to attend a funeral today, were you?’ Roy wilted forward over the hole, the hardness in his face melting away as he gazed down at the newspaper bundle. ‘You see that little body down there? Sulphur-crested cockatoo by the name of Ollie. Did you know they can live for sixty years? This particular little old man was into his seventh decade. Died last night.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

  ‘He belonged to my boy. Young Jas rescued him after a bushfire. Going back yonks now, but I’ve never forgotten the day Jas brought him home. The poor bird was naked, all his feathers singed off. Ollie was already middle-aged. Might have once had his own little cocky family, but they were burned up. Bushfires are mongrels like that, aren’t they?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Jas was always rescuing animals. Helping helpless things. When he was six or seven, he turned up with this big old tomcat who’d gotten in a tussle with a car. Broken its jaw, so it had. Young Jas wouldn’t let the vet put it down, insisted they fix it.’ Roy smiled. ‘A year later I was still paying off the damn jaw plate, but I didn’t resent a penny. The boy loved that beat-up old moggy. It used to follow him around like a dog.’ Roy looked at me. ‘You know what they used to call Jas at school, his nickname?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mouse.’ He chuckled and shook his head. ‘Eleven or twelve, he must’ve been at the time. Went and liberated a mouse straight out of a neighbour’s trap, didn’t he? Trained the blasted thing to jump about like a circus animal. Used to carry it in his pocket, even to school. Wilbur, he called it. Cried like a baby when it ran away.’

  Roy collected the shovel and began to fill in the hole. ‘You asked me why I’m so sure Jasper is innocent. Well, truth be told, he was a good young fella. Gentle as a lamb. The sort who’d never hurt a fly, let alone them poor lasses they found out there at the reserve. My boy, he didn’t have a mean bone in his body. Until—’ He stopped shovelling and leaned back to blink at the sky.

  ‘Until?’ I prompted.

  With a sigh, he knuckled first one eye and then the other, then resumed filling in the hole. ‘You heard about those girls he got in trouble over?’

  The ones he’d indecently assaulted. ‘Yeah, I heard.’

  ‘Jasper had no idea about people. His mum died when he was a young’un, and I probably left him too much to his own devices. Failed to teach him proper boundaries. He never meant those girls any harm. Just wanted to talk to them. Told me later that one had pretty hair, that he just wanted to see if it felt as silky as it looked. He should never have touched her. If she’d been my daughter I’d have been up in arms, too. But Jas never meant any harm.’

  ‘It didn’t look good on his record.’

  Roy shook his head. ‘Jasper always loved animals. He could practically read their minds. But people? Poor young bugger had no idea, did he? Anyhow, after the girls made all that fuss, Jas went off the rails. Moved out of home and into a shared house with some uni students. He had a few jobs, but none lasted long. That winter he started helping me with the firewood business, chopping and hauling, doing deliveries. Then he stopped coming by to visit. I went over to his unit a couple times, worried about drugs. Thought he’d become one of them addicts, black circles under his eyes, his clothes filthy. He got real skinny. Started talking all this rot, too. I tried to get him to see a doctor, but he refused.’

  ‘What do you think it was?’

  Roy tossed the shovel aside and began to stomp down the earth over the bird’s grave. ‘Depression, maybe. It turned him into a completely different person. Before all that trouble with the girls, he was this sunny, lovable kid. Then afterwards, he was all storm clouds and rain, you know?’

  The sun had dipped closer to the horizon and shadows cut knifelike across the yard. I stared at the bird’s grave. Why were things always so complicated? I had hoped Roy might remember something about a caravan, that would help me make sense of my response to the one in Tom’s orchard and possibly lead me to Shayla – but instead I’d encountered a father whose faith was blinded by the little boy Jasper Horton had once been, unwilling to see the dangerous man he’d become.

  ‘I only met him the once,’ I said quietly. ‘But it was . . . after.’

  Roy watched me for a long time, his mouth pinched as he studied me with damp eyes. ‘Pity it wasn’t before, Miss Radley. You’d have liked him a whole lot better back then.’

  • • •

  By the time I got back to Ravensong, glimmers of dying sunlight shone through the trees and the sky was growing dark. I hurried around the house and up the verandah steps. Tom’s typewriter sat on the redwood table next to a pile of papers weighed down by a set o
f binoculars, but Tom was not there. Green eyes watched me from a dim corner, the cat’s black tail lashing through the dry leaves that had blown up onto the decking. Below him, safe within the prickly branches of the grevillea bush, a family of willy wagtails flitted after bugs.

  In the kitchen I set my groceries on the counter to unpack, but then just stood there in the stillness. For the past hour, driving back from town, Roy Horton’s words had replayed in my mind. Jas was always rescuing animals . . . helping helpless things. Roy seemed to think that this was proof of his son’s innocence; that being kind to animals attested Jasper’s inability to harm a teenage girl. But then I remembered what Lil had told me, the day we sat in the sunroom and revisited her early life. It sounds absurd, she’d said. Living in a couple of upstairs rooms, no outside contact. Yet, for a time, we’d never been happier.

  The young serviceman had been kind to Lilly and Frankie, fed and clothed them and created the stable environment they craved. He might have thought he was saving them from their lonely lives in Sydney. But what sort of saviour keeps someone trapped against their will? He had watched the sisters, perhaps for days or weeks before he made contact with them; his keen eyes taking note of their threadbare clothes and scuffed shoes, their wide-eyed eagerness for affection. And all the while he’d been scheming. Making his plans and preparations to steal the girls away from their mother and keep them locked up.

  Had Jasper, many years ago, once observed me the same way? A girl whose family was troubled and down-at-heel; a girl whose disappearance might not be noticed immediately? What about the other Deepwater victims – the two runaways, and Alice, whose mother was struggling to raise her alone after a messy divorce. Had he been observing them from a distance, too; biding his time, waiting for the perfect opportunity? Did he think he was helping more of his helpless things? It made a warped sort of sense. But what about Shayla? Had she been running from someone the day I found her? Not Jasper because he was in jail. Unless . . .