Into the River

by Mark Brandi

  Fab’s heart pounded. He picked up more stones and threw them, rapid fire, toward the shack, two of them pinging on the iron roof before another one crashed through the second window.

  He gripped the last stone tightly in his fingers. Then, the door creaked open ever so slightly, with a splinter of yellow light flickering through the darkness.

  ‘Who’s out there?’ The voice rooted Fab to the earth. That voice. The same as in the car all those years ago.

  Ben squatted low to the ground.

  ‘Is that you, Percy? Clear off or I’ll get me gun!’

  Shit.

  Fab dropped the stone. ‘Ben,’ he hissed, keeping his eyes on the shack. ‘Let’s go, c’mon!’

  Ben was searching the ground on his hands and knees.

  ‘Ben, forget it. C’mon, let’s go!’

  The door of the shack swung wide open and light spread out into the clearing. Fab could see Ronnie’s figure in the doorway, tall and lean and bigger than he remembered.

  ‘You can have the kid, Percy. See if I care! Now just fuck off!’

  Then Ben stood up with a big black rock in the palm of his hand.

  ‘Clear off, Wolfe! Ya last warning!’

  Fab tried to hold him back.

  ‘Ben, for fuck’s sake!’

  But Ben always had a good, strong arm.

  And Ronnie never saw him coming.

  Eight

  The sky had become an intense blue as dusk approached and, up above the ranges, the ghost of the moon appeared.

  He had to hurry.

  Inside the shack it was almost dark, but for the small wedges of grey light that filtered in through the broken windows. It smelled stale inside, like old furniture and engine grease. Fab felt for a light switch but there was nothing but the rough iron walls.

  He stepped cautiously into the gloom, hoping his eyes would adjust. His hands met a timber bench. It was rough and grimy. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, then opened them. He could make out the walls from the nail holes of dying sunlight that broke through the iron like tiny eyes.

  He moved slowly and ran his hands along the workbench. He could feel nails and screws, loose and rolling under his touch, but little else.

  He put his hands under the bench and a thick spider’s web entwined his fingers. He imagined a family of red-backs under there, scrambling through the weave toward the intruder. He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and forced his hands through.

  There was a timber shelf below the bench. He felt along it, the greasy dust coating his palms. His fingers knocked into a tin and it rolled and spilled a rattle of nails and screws. He pulled his hands out, wiped the black from his arms and stood up. It seemed to have gotten much darker, the eyes of light in the iron walls now dim.

  He heard the clank of tin up the driveway and he flinched. Ben. At least he hoped it was Ben. But maybe someone had seen his car and... Jesus.

  Keep it together.

  He stepped further into the darkness and his head pinged on steel. He put his hands up and felt something smooth and cool – cone-shaped. Something soft brushed his ear and he swiped at it instinctively. It was a string – a cord... the light! It was a pull cord. He yanked it and there was a stiff, bakelite click. The room lit up and Fab yelped as a blackbird squawked and fluttered around the shack, before darting out a broken window.

  ‘You all right?’ Ben called from outside.

  ‘Yep, fine.’ His voice cracked. ‘Just be a sec.’

  The iron walls were lined with makeshift shelves made from bits of old hardwood. Jam jars half-filled with screws and mismatched washers sat like rotten teeth. Rusted tools, shrouded in dust, hung from nails ringed with baling twine.

  A steel sink – an old laundry trough – was fixed against the right wall. It was filled with dirty dishes; a small tin pot sat on top with baked beans burnt inside. Between the trough and the bed was a small wood stove, its skinny chimney poking up through the roof. An axe leaned coolly against the stove – he must have used it for firewood. Fab picked it up and the weight felt good. It looked homemade, the handle fashioned from an old metal pipe, welded to the axe-head.

  Jesus, could he do this? He had to help Ben, but...

  A couple of old saws hung on the wall above the bed – one like a tree lopper – rusted, but thin and curved with a dark wooden handle.

  He couldn’t just leave things like this...

  He stepped onto the bed – the mattress was soft and thin and the frame creaked under his weight. He could feel something solid and square underfoot as he reached for the saw, like a box was squeezed under the mattress. Outside, he heard a gush of water as Ben filled a tin from the tank.

  He picked up the axe and headed back toward the door. But he stopped halfway – the box under the bed. He had time to have a look. Just a quick one.

  Just for a second.

  It couldn’t hurt.

  Nine

  When Fab came out of the shack he didn’t say a word.

  He’d been in there a long time and Ben had the cement buckets ready to go, just like he’d been asked.

  But Fab didn’t look at the buckets. He just stood in the doorway and glared with his lips quivering like he might be upset, his fists clenched and his body stiff. He was holding a small axe, but maybe he didn’t find exactly what he was looking for.

  ‘Get out of the way,’ he said.

  Ben left his buckets and moved back. ‘Fab, how are we gonna...’

  Fab dropped the axe to the ground, then pulled a small, rusty saw from the back of his jeans. He passed it to Ben. ‘Hold this,’ he said, but didn’t look at him when he said it.

  Fab knelt and lifted Ronnie’s body over onto his back. ‘I’ve gotta get this done quick. So if you wanna look away or whatever...’

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He grabbed the axe, stood up, and lined it across the shinbone of Ronnie’s right leg. He breathed in deeply, swung the axe high in the air above his head and brought it down with a heavy thwack.

  Ben gasped as the flesh split open; it was all pink but no blood ran out – it pooled inside the wound. He looked at Ronnie’s face, like he expected him to scream out, or at least flinch a little, but he stayed frozen – his mouth stuck open.

  Fab went at it like a real woodchopper. He even stripped off his shirt and was just in his white singlet, like on Wide World of Sports. The axe cleaved thick wounds with each swing, the meat peeling back like ripe fruit. It took a few goes before they could see the bone, shining through that pale, pink flesh. It was surprising how white it was. Fab had two big swings at the bone, but it only chipped off a couple of small pieces. It was really hard.

  ‘Now!’ Fab said, his breath a hot mist, chest heaving. He threw the axe on the ground and held his hand out. ‘Give me the saw.’ He took it from Ben, and ran his fingers along its serrated edge. ‘It’s a bit rusty,’ he smiled. ‘But he’s not gonna mind, is he?’

  Fab knelt on the ground, gripped Ronnie’s ankle with his left hand and placed the saw across the hard, white bone.

  ‘First,’ he said, as he started to saw. ‘First, we cut his feet off.’

  Ten

  It was an ill-fitting black suit that smelled like a jar of gherkins. He’d had to rely on legal aid to get him some clothes. He scratched at his neck – the collar was making him itchy. He’d even worn a tie for the first time in his life, a green one. The lawyer, for reasons she didn’t explain, reckoned green was a good colour.

  He looked out to the gallery – it was filling quickly with unfamiliar hard faces. City faces. Lawyers maybe. Or journalists. He wouldn’t really know the difference. He scanned each row once more – maybe he might have missed her. Or maybe she was just running late.

  But there was no sign, at least not yet.

  At the front of the courtroom, the judge’s bench rose in ornate Victorian grandeur. To the right of the bench was the dock that, while lower than the judge’s bench and with fewer adornments, imposed a darker presence. There w
ere two chairs inside. Fab’s was uncomfortable, with no cushion and a hard wooden back. He hoped it wouldn’t take too long, he could feel his shoulders starting to knot.

  He turned toward the sudden creak of the door behind him. Jesus Christ... he could hardly believe it.

  Ben’s hair was parted carefully to one side and at first glance he looked, in his blue suit, as though he could be part of the legal team. The suit definitely didn’t come from the same place as Fab’s, but it didn’t look sharp and new, either, it had seen better days.

  Fab tried to catch his gaze as the prison officer led Ben to his chair, but his eyes were fixed upon the gallery.

  He didn’t look that much different, not in the face anyway, just a bit more gaunt, his cheekbones showing through more starkly than he remembered. Fab reckoned he could have picked him in the street though, definitely. Would have known him from a mile away.

  ‘Hey,’ Fab said.

  Ben just stared straight out into the court, his eyes vacant. Maybe he didn’t hear him.

  ‘Hey, Ben!’

  He frowned a little, almost like he was annoyed. He started to turn and—

  ‘No talking!’ The officer grabbed Fab hard on the shoulder. ‘Keep your eyes straight ahead.’

  Fab took a deep breath in and out. He’d have to get a chance to talk to Ben later, surely. A chance to catch up about things. To explain.

  He looked out across the courtroom – the gallery was now almost full. In front, at the bar table, was the prosecutor – a small, grey bird-like man, who somehow looked familiar. At the opposite end of the table, lost in three piles of papers, sat the defence barrister, appointed by legal aid – a fidgety woman in her late twenties with brightly dyed red hair pulled into a ponytail, serious glasses that seemed far too mature.

  It looked a grave mismatch.

  ‘All rise!’ The bailiff called out gruffly and the room fell silent. In the wall behind the bench, a small redwood door opened and the judge stepped through, his wig slightly askew, a jowly red face. ‘The Honourable Justice Pemmick presiding.’

  Pemmick nodded to the courtroom, sat and then peered over small frameless glasses. He spoke softly. ‘Please be seated.’

  He looked to the bar table.

  The defence barrister stood. ‘Your Honour, if it pleases the court, I wish to advise that given the guilty pleas in this matter, I will be representing both defendants with respect to sentencing submissions.’

  ‘Yes, I am aware of that Miss...’ Pemmick searched his notes.

  ‘Rosetti. Ms Rosetti.’ She nervously pulled at the sleeve of her black gown, before sitting back in her seat.

  The judge looked to the prosecution bench. ‘Mr Fincke? Do you have any submissions in relation to sentencing?’

  The prosecutor, in his billowing black gown, rose. ‘Yes, your Honour.’

  ‘You may proceed.’

  The prosecutor studied the bar table for a moment, the room silent. Fab glanced across at Ben, who hadn’t moved an inch since he sat down. He scarcely seemed to be breathing.

  ‘Your Honour, the sentence for murder, as with all crimes, must reflect the gravity of the offence. The gravity of an offence may be weighed against many measures. For the victim, in the case of murder, it is the most grave and final act, that of the taking of one’s life. For the community, the offence of murder is, appropriately, the most serious crime of our criminal statute.’

  The prosecutor glanced at Fab, then back to the judge.

  ‘But what of this crime in particular? Well, we know that it occurred almost eleven years ago, but time does not diminish its impact. At its dark core, this was a crime against a man without defences. A man who, while asleep in his home, was intruded upon by these two men – intruded upon with evil intent on that fateful November day in 1995.’

  Fincke stared at Ben, then Fab.

  ‘They went to the shack with one purpose and one purpose alone – to violently attack and kill Mr Bellamy.’

  Fab looked again at Ben. He now seemed to be watching the prosecutor closely, his body arched forward and his hands linked under his chin, with thin wrists cuffed in steel.

  ‘Mr Bellamy, a recluse and loner, had little contact with the world outside of his work. Indeed, he had moved from the township of Stawell to his shack in the Black Ranges for what one can only assume to be reasons of solitude.

  ‘But first, let us be clear about one thing.’ He paused and raised the index finger of his right hand. He slowed his speech and punched out each word that followed with a chop of his left. ‘This was a crime of savage brutality.

  ‘Your Honour, we will submit that these were cold, calculated actions. They were not carried out in the heat of the moment, or in a panic. And these actions of Mr Carver and Mr Morressi may not ever have been discovered, were it not for one critical error.’

  Eleven

  The river flowed close to the highway, but Fab wanted somewhere a long way into the scrub, where it was hidden, darker, and deeper. Away from the trucks, the cars and the people. A place unknown, where it could sink, rot and never be found. He urged the Sigma along the rolling dirt track and through the narrow tunnel of trees. The headlights spilled from one bend to the next and, with every bump, the bin clunked in the back seat. They had been off the highway for a while now and he knew that, eventually, the road would meet the river again.

  ‘Wind down the window,’ he said.

  Above the engine he could hear it, not far away, rippling through the scrub, travelling north. He always thought it was strange how it flowed that way, like it was going uphill – against the grain and salty as the sea – sapped by farmers for generations.

  But it was deep in parts; you just had to know where.

  He braked and skidded the car to a stop.

  Ben turned to him. ‘Here?’

  Fab turned off the engine. ‘Here.’

  * * *

  Fab opened the back door and grabbed the bin by its handles. He pulled at it, but it was too heavy to manage on his own.

  ‘Get on the other side and push.’

  Ben did as he was told and gave it a shove. The bin squealed along the vinyl seat, thumped against the doorframe and fell heavily out into the gravel. Fab dropped his end on the ground, got back in the car and reversed it a little, so the headlights lit a path to the river. He left the motor running; he didn’t want the battery going flat. Not out here.

  Not now.

  He grabbed hold of the bin again and tried to drag it through the gravel by its handles.

  ‘I’ll help.’ Ben pushed from the bottom.

  Fab looked at Ben and remembered the steel box back at the shack. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth so hard, he thought they might break. They might break into small shards and tinkle sweetly, like broken glass, into his hands.

  It looked like... had he really seen... was it really?

  He’d have to go back. He couldn’t leave it there. Where someone, anyone, one day, might find it.

  He had to go back. When this was done. For Ben’s sake.

  * * *

  The wheels slid through the gravel and Fab glanced back over his shoulder – it was only a few metres more to the water’s edge and he felt a wave of relief. For the first time all day he felt like he could breathe, and the air was cool and sweet in his chest. Soon the body would be gone and—

  And that’s when he saw it.

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘What?’ Ben said, crouching low at the bottom of the bin.

  Fab dropped his end and put his head in his hands. ‘I forgot the number.’

  Ben stood up and shook his head. ‘Nah, you peeled it off. Back at the shack, remember?’

  ‘Not the street number.’ Fab pointed to the side of the bin. ‘There’s another one. Serial number.’

  74682.

  He wouldn’t be able to saw it out, not with the bin full of limbs and hardening cement. A wild panic rose inside him.

  Leave him. Save yourself. Drive away as fa
st you can.

  He took a long breath in and out. He steadied himself. He remembered.

  ‘Get me the drill from the boot.’

  * * *

  Fab worked neatly around the numbers, each drill-hole only a few millimetres apart. Somewhere in the distance, he heard the hiss of airbrakes – a truck stopping suddenly – maybe a roo crossing the highway. They’d be back on the road soon enough and they could get away from all this. It would all be done. It was just a small setback.

  After he drilled the last hole, he unfolded his pocketknife and began sawing the gaps between the drill holes. He was almost finished when a truck horn howled through the night air. He flinched, jutted the knife forward and pushed the serial number inside the bin.

  ‘Fuck it!’ He threw the knife down the road and looked up at Ben, standing like a ghost in the headlights.

  ‘You gonna get it out?’ he said.

  He’d have to unscrew the bolts, open the bin and reach down inside the cement and the limbs, feel around in that cold mess of Ronnie’s skin, meat and mortar.

  ‘Nah.’ He shook his head. ‘What are the chances?’

  Over Ben’s shoulder, down the road and through the scrub, a faint yellow glow appeared behind the trees.

  Headlights.

  ‘Jesus!’ Fab grabbed the handles and pulled the bin as hard as he could. He could hear it, a low rumble – an old car, or maybe a truck. He pulled with all his strength but the bin slid slowly, its wheels sinking in the gravel at the road’s edge.

  His feet came to the top of the embankment, from where it ran steeply down to the river. He could hear the water rushing below and see the car coming closer, the headlights now shining around the bend.

  ‘C’mon, Ben! Help! Push it!’

  Ben, who’d been watching with wide eyes, stepped in and shoved the bin with a deep groan. Fab only just got out of the way as it went rolling down the bank and crashing into the water. He looked down after it, but could see nothing other than the black ripple of the river below.

  He turned back to the road, the headlights now facing them squarely from twenty metres away. The car spluttered and backfired as it pulled up beside them.