‘Can I help you?’
‘I want to report a vehicle I think may have been dumped.’
‘Okay.’
‘It’s a white van. It’s been there a couple of days now.’
‘Uh-huh.’
Ana’s eyes fall on a snow globe sitting by the phone. A Tasmanian devil is trapped inside, the snow-capped peaks of Cradle Mountain behind it.
‘Where are we talking?’
‘It’s out on Forest Road. I noticed it when I was walking my dog.’
The cop nods as he jots down notes on a pad, not paying too much attention.
‘That woman who was killed, it’s close to where she was found …’
Something instantly changes in his demeanour. He studies her more closely, a look Ana can’t read on his face.
‘I thought it might be significant. For the case.’
‘You do know you only get the reward if your information leads to a conviction, right?’
Ana feels the blood rushing to her face, suddenly feeling guilty even though she has no idea what he’s talking about.
‘I don’t … what reward?’
‘Twenty thousand, posted by the husband.’
Is he seriously implying she’s trying to scam her way into claiming the reward?
‘I don’t know anything about that.’
‘Right. It’s just you’re the tenth person we’ve had in here since it went public this morning.’
Ana fingers the mobile phone in her pocket, drawing strength from it. This creep has no idea who she is. Right now she could happily pick up that tacky snow globe and smash his smug little rat face in with it.
She looks past him to see another cop – an older man – stepping out of an adjoining room with a mug of something in his hand.
He stops in his tracks the minute he sees her. An unguarded look of apprehension passes over his face but is instantly replaced by a professional nod in her general direction as he continues into a glass-walled office at the back of the reception area.
Ana’s stomach is suddenly in her mouth. He’s aged since she last saw him, his thick mane of hair almost completely grey now. He still has that roguish quality she imagines must have attracted her mother. Officer Lynch, as she always referred to him, making a point of using his title, even though he never came to the house in uniform. He always laughed when she said it, like they had some secret that no one else was in on. To Ana, though, he was always just Ray.
‘Your name?’
Ana’s eyes are still on Lynch, who she can see through the glass partition. She’s waiting, counting very slowly in her head. She’s only to five when he feigns a casual glance back through the glass and meets her eyes across the space between them. Within seconds fifteen years disappear. It’s all she needs.
He remembers.
‘Miss?’
Ana looks back at the young cop.
‘I don’t care about any reward.’
She steps back from the desk and heads for the door.
‘Hang on, I just need a few more details for the report,’ the young cop calls after her.
Ana’s mind flicks back to yesterday, to the uniformed cop who knocked at her door. She didn’t get a good look at him but she’s sure of it. It was him, Officer Ray Lynch. Did he know then that she still lived there?
Fuck the report. She’s out of there.
TWENTY-TWO
The house sits nestled within the silhouette of the surrounding forest. The afternoon is oppressive, the rain now a steady drizzle. A faint but constant sound radiates out from behind the garage doors. Like a heartbeat. Like the house itself is alive.
Hidden in the garage, Ana’s car is surrounded by a shadow of damp concrete from where the rain has been dripping off it. Next to the car, the door leading into the house is closed but the basement door has been left hanging wide open.
The sound is coming from down there, a repetitive dull echo that rebounds off the walls and up the stairs. The source is Ana who is perched on the second landing tossing River’s ball against the wall. Again and again. She’s focused on the rhythm, letting it wash over her until that’s all there is …
Her hand, the ball, the sound.
Since she got home Ana has been down to check on Luke more times than she can count. He’s been out cold for more than ten hours since his last collapse and although she has tried to keep herself busy while she waited she hasn’t been able to switch off her mind. It hasn’t helped that she’s eaten all three chocolate bars she bought at the service station and has been in the midst of the worst sugar high. At first it was Lynch that consumed her. Just like all those years ago, conflicting feelings churned in her guts about him but mostly it was the fear that he might come looking for her. The last thing she needs now is him snooping around, trying to ease his guilty conscience. She wondered briefly what he would make of all of this. Would he be surprised or would it make sense to him, that this is how she turned out?
The longer she waited the more her attention drifted back to the man below … to Luke. It was the recurring thought that he might never wake again that plagued her, that maybe that one burst of life from him was it. She worried that the last two pills she gave him had pushed his concussed brain into a coma and that she’d soon have the choice of exposing herself or slowly depriving him of life support.
Digging a grave.
That thought worried her enough that while she was trawling the Internet for breaking news on the van she read and watched everything she could find on loss of consciousness and concussion. That only made it worse. The car accident, the blow to the head, the alcohol, the sedation, each one of those things in isolation is listed within the major causes of loss of consciousness, and the longer a person is out for the more danger there is of further complications. With that a whole cascade of fresh concerns arrived – brain bleeds, bruising, swelling, a myriad of things Ana can’t see that could be going on right now in his head.
After what happened that morning she has kept her distance, only playing nurse long enough to use a flashlight to check the responsiveness of his pupils to light. Everything seemed normal there, which means he’s probably not in a coma.
Probably.
Ana’s eyes flick back to Luke as she catches the ball and holds it, sure she saw movement on the periphery of her vision. She barely breathes as her eyes move across his prostrate form. She has that feeling again, that he’s been lying there secretly watching her this whole time – is watching still. Ana cranes her neck until she has a clear angle on his face. His eyes are closed. She relaxes back, her hand squeezing the ball.
Since she decided to park herself here on the stairs and wait, she’s been trying to organise her mind, preparing what she might say when he’s finally awake, but she keeps getting distracted, her mind drifting back to how his skin felt under her hands. No matter what she does she keeps getting pulled back there. She reminds herself there is a chance this man will kill her if he gets his hands on her but it doesn’t make enough difference to stop her. The yearning is stronger than the fear, stronger than whatever sense of right and wrong she has left.
Ana returns her focus to the ball but fumbles the catch. It bounces off her hand and rolls across the basement floor into the shadows. Her eyes shift to the mattress but nothing has changed there. In a sudden move she scoots across to retrieve the ball but as she takes her first step back to the stairs she freezes. This time there’s no doubting she saw movement. He’s stirring. More than that, he’s awake.
Ana stays in the shadows, closely watching his panic build as he comes to full consciousness and realises he’s bound. At first he struggles furiously but then abruptly stops.
He’s spotted the open door at the top of the stairs.
In a rush, survival instinct takes over. Frantically he manoeuvres himself towards the stairs, his bound body flopping like an injured seal desperate to reach the freedom of the water. Ana suppresses a sudden terrible urge to laugh.
She sees the
exact moment he realises the utter pointlessness of his effort to reach the door and shifts his focus back to his bound limbs. First he attacks his ankles but his fingers prove useless against the thick layers of tape so he moves on to his wrists, frantically pulling at the tape with his teeth. All the while his eyes remain glued on the way out.
Even in the midst of rabid panic he somehow manages to stay focused. It’s both impressive and disturbing and Ana wonders now how she ever thought he looked like an angel, fallen or otherwise. Intense eyes dominate his face, a darker shade of green than she remembered. He looks wild, like something driven out of the jungle, that even bound and powerless is still dangerous.
Ana is so caught up in his struggle that it takes a moment for the realisation to hit that he could actually manage to get his hands free while she’s trapped down there with him. In that moment she completely forgets the ball in her hand. It slips from her fingers and hits the floor with a soft thud. She sees Luke freeze but all she can do is watch as it bounces across the concrete and into the light.
He repositions himself, tracking the reverse trajectory of the ball. There’s something predator-like about the way he moves, even with his body incapacitated. Ana shrinks back into the shadows but stops as his eyes find her, pinning her to the spot. Neither moves a muscle as they stare across the space at each other. Two animals caught in the same cage. Only he can’t really see her.
‘Who are you?’
The voice is less imposing, a slight tremor betraying his attempt to hold it together. Ana can see it clearly now. The fear he’s trying to hide, even from himself.
She takes a small step forward, just enough for him to make out she’s a woman. She can see his mind trying to place her.
‘Do I know you?’
Ana wanted him to wake up but now he has her mind has gone blank. A vulnerable unconscious man in her basement is one thing but this man and his questions is something else entirely. She has no idea what to do or say.
Does he really not remember her?
‘Where am I?’
Ana looks at the door.
‘Please, talk to me. I don’t understand what’s happening.’
Ana remains where she is, mute with uncertainty. She thought she’d know, that she’d take one look into his eyes and just know, but she can’t read him at all. She’s not sure what she expected but it wasn’t this crippling sense of doubt.
The tension gets the better of her but before she can get her body moving towards the door his voice stops her.
‘Talk to me. Please …’
‘I’m not supposed to talk to you,’ she whispers.
‘What do you mean? Who …?’
It was the first thought that came into her head – to invent someone else for him to focus his fury on, an anonymous puppet-master from above.
Stepping boldly into the light Ana brings a finger to her lips and gestures upstairs.
Luke’s eyes drift to the ceiling. He looks baffled and for the first time doesn’t even try to hide his fear.
‘No, no, there … there has to be some mistake. I’m not supposed to be here. I can’t …’ He looks at the door and then back down at the tape wrapped around his hands, once again struggling to get free of it.
The ruse is working but Ana knows she’s not capable of maintaining the charade for long. She needs to get her story straight, prepare for the questions she knows will keep coming. Mostly she has to get his hands away from that tape.
‘You must be hungry. I’ll come back with food,’ she promises, propelling her body towards the stairs.
‘No!’ Luke throws himself forward as if to tackle her but she’s already beyond his reach.
‘Wait! Please … I … I need to go to the toilet.’
Somehow in the midst of dealing with the situation, the thought of him being a real person with bodily functions hadn’t occurred to her. She should have thought of it, having cleaned him up once already, but she didn’t.
Without another word she bolts the rest of the way out the door. Thinking on her feet she runs straight across the garage and grabs hold of a plastic bucket. Going back down there is the last thing Ana wants to do but she steels herself and returns to the door. Eyes downcast, she quickly descends and darts across to place the bucket within his reach.
Once again his voice stops her before she can escape.
‘I can’t … I’ll need help.’ He struggles upright and finally takes in the ridiculous pyjama pants he’s wearing before putting his focus back on Ana. ‘Please can you help me?’
Ana can only shake her head.
‘At least tell me your name?’
Ana bravely faces him.
‘Rebecca,’ she says, not taking her eyes off him for a moment. ‘My name’s Rebecca.’
Ana waits for some sort of recognition in his eyes but there’s absolutely nothing there, not the tiniest flicker.
‘I’m Luke,’ he says. He looks, and sounds, the epitome of the confused innocent man.
He brings a hand to his head, wincing as he feels around.
‘Can you get me something for the pain?’
Ana nods as she starts backing away.
‘I should go … they’ll be wondering where I am.’
‘Who are they? Please … what do they want with me?’
That’s the big question, isn’t it? What do you want with him, Ana?
‘I think they want to hurt you.’
She breaks free of his gaze and runs, snatching up the keys on the top step and slamming the basement door behind her.
Ana fumbles her way through sliding the bolt closed and securing the padlock. She can hear his voice calling after her, reaching for her through the door, pulling her back.
She crouches down and brings her eye to the peephole. Luke is spotlit by the hanging globe and is once again frantically chewing at the bindings on his wrists. She should have secured them behind his back, or taped them to his torso so he couldn’t get at them with his teeth.
Ana pulls away as he suddenly looks up at the door.
He can’t see you.
Maybe not, but it feels like he can.
His sinewy body is suspended, every part of him straining to sense the presence of his captors on the other side. Once more she sees him glance up at the ceiling before he returns his focus to the tape on his wrists.
There’s nothing at all vulnerable about him now. This is a man determined to find a way out.
Ana is not exactly sure what she was expecting when he woke up but this man is like meeting someone completely new. Not the spectre she ran from in the forest, not the furious creature who both thrilled and terrified her as he tried to beat his way through the door, especially not the dark angelic lover who has come to inhabit her more aberrant thoughts, threatening her in a much more than physical way.
She’s not sure what to make of this version. Is he Carla’s Luke, she wonders, or Rebecca’s? Every reaction she just witnessed from him, including the determination she sees now, would make sense if he was innocent but everything could be a lie, an action of a desperate and dangerous man.
As frightened and confronted as she is by him, there’s a part of her that wants to be up to this challenge. The challenge of him. That part of her enjoyed the thrill of having to think on her feet, got off on not knowing what might come next … That part of her is excited.
This isn’t a game.
No, it’s not.
Ana isn’t forgetting how serious this is but as she steps away from the door she’s already anticipating the next round.
He knows, she said.
Her husband. He’d been acting differently. Asking questions.
It was getting too risky, she said.
She disappeared for weeks after that.
Nothing.
He knew the street where she lived from that first time he followed her but stopped himself going there.
Instead he was nice to his wife.
Unlike the husband, she never susp
ected a thing. She was too busy checking her own reflection to notice shifts in his.
It wasn’t vanity that made her blind, although she had her share of that.
He thought it was fear. The fear of losing. Of ending up alone.
It was buried deeper in her than in most but he knew it was there.
He also knew it was no longer enough for him. The pretence.
Still he tried. To be what she wanted.
To believe she was what he wanted.
It worked for a while. Until it didn’t.
TWENTY-THREE
Ana empties a can of soup into a pot on the stove, spilling it down the sides in her haste to get it heated. The hotplate sizzles, acrid smoke curling up through the air before it burns itself away. She takes no notice, her attention locked on the baby monitor, through which she hears Luke’s growing frustration as he continues to gnaw away at his bindings. The phone rings. Ana ignores it, barely reacting when Lenny’s voice comes from the answer machine.
‘Hey, are you there?’ Lenny waits. Ana never answers her phone until she knows who it is and he knows that. It’s why she uses the old answer machine rather than voicemail. ‘Guess not …’ Lenny’s tone is tense, their last encounter still sitting between them. ‘I just wanted to know how River’s doing. I’d like to see him before … you know … I mean if … Anyway, let me know if you need anything. I’ll be closing in an hour and can easily drop around.’
Ana glances out the window, surprised that the day is almost gone.
Time is doing strange things, fucking with her mind. One day interminably long, the next lost in a flash, while he and she together occupy some other zone, existing only in that deepest recess of her house, where no one else has ever been. It’s only been two days but it’s already too easy to forget that there’s another world out there.
They must have his van by now. Of course it’s also possible it’s sitting in some lot for impounded vehicles with no one any the wiser. It would have been smarter to call the Hobart detectives and report it directly to them. She could have made it anonymous. If she’d done that she might not have even known Ray was back in town and would never have had the discomfort of that particular window into the past being opened.
Lonely Girl Page 14