The Summertime Dead

by Robert Engwerda

  ‘He told me to go for a walk.’

  ‘Yeah. You’re lucky then. Wish I could get out of here for a while. Soon as I’m eighteen I’m gonna do it. Nothing they can do to stop me then.’

  He sat watching the traffic idle by outside, some of it slowing to take the corner into Church Street. Now and then a pedestrian walked by but no one turned to look in the window. It was already too hot for anyone to be loitering around when they didn’t need to be. Loitering. It was a word his teachers used every time they had found him behind the gymnasium rolling a smoke, or in the shade of the wattles near the furthest school fence. When they found him anywhere but in the classroom in fact, a place he hated because they always seemed to pick him out for questions he didn’t know the answers to, and his only response had been to fool around. He’d been happy as Larry to be out of there, but soon his father was at him as much as the teachers had been, on his back over not tightening a gasket enough, or tightening it too much, or losing a wrench that eventually turned up in the boot of his father’s car. ‘Out of the frying pan, hey?’ his mother said when he’d complained.

  He was out of the frying pan alright. It was the fire he was in right now and he had never felt so bad. His Mum and Dad and sister stuck up for him, but outside of home no one wanted to go near him any more, not even his mates.

  He’d known Max Quade like he knew most people his age in the town. They’d been at school together even if he wasn’t a close friend. At dances Max talked to everyone. At his eighteenth birthday party, when everyone went to everyone else’s eighteenth, Max’s father had said of him, ‘Here’s a young bloke who won’t say a bad word about anyone.’ And it was no bullshit, he thought, not just a father bragging. That was Max. But then he knew what Max could be like, too, and he’d warned him off once about it, about him trying to sneak in on Rosy.

  He never did the wrong thing, himself, except by accident or by doing something stupid after drinking too much. He liked people to like him. And now he was like a shag on a rock, an invisible shag everyone looked right through. At first when Rosy and Max went missing everyone felt sorry for him, thinking the other two had run off and left him jilted. But that wasn’t the truth and he knew it even then. He knew something terrible had happened. Could feel it deep inside him. Though he hadn’t expected people to turn on him as they had, especially after the bodies were found. And his old man. He stuck up for him, but at the dinner table when his family was together he could feel a whiff of anger toward him that he’d somehow brought the family into the town’s bad books, even when he hadn’t.

  And all of that was even without what had happened to Rosy. He wanted to get angry about it, to pay back whoever had done it, but now he couldn’t even say what he felt to anyone because that would be another sign that he’d done it. People would say, See? There’s a temper on that boy.

  And when he felt like that, he went back into himself. He tried to shunt himself the other way and think of something good; of him and Rosy going out for a drive on one of the dirt roads out of town, how they parked behind the golf course clubhouse one night, out of sight of the road, and shared a can of vodka and orange and how he got up under her cashmere jumper and she let him put his hand down her pants to feel her bush. Her parents liked him and said to Rosy how well mannered he was and that he had a good job. But now they had turned on him too.

  When they told him what had happened to Rosy it came as a massive kick in the guts. It winded him so he could hardly speak. Spew came up his throat. He couldn’t talk, couldn’t explain himself and to the police that was as good as an admission that he’d done it. Not so much Senior Sergeant Cole, but the other one, Holloway. And he didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t even want to think about it. Now there were Melbourne coppers coming up and they’d want to grill him, probably today. He felt frightened, shaky, for what they might do to him. The detectives.

  He glanced to the counter where Ruby was making the milkshake. She was always way ahead of all the girls in town, older somehow. The way she wore short dresses and didn’t mind who got a good look. Her hair and makeup, jewellery, big bangles and the loopy earrings he’d seen in magazines. The music she knew about before anyone else. The way she slapped down anyone she didn’t like with a single sentence. When a mate of his asked her out one time she’d knocked him back with a sarcastic look on her face – ‘Like I’d want to go out with a big daub like you?’

  Boys and girls said she went all the way and didn’t care. That she was on the pill and kept them in her comb case so her father wouldn’t know. Sneering, laughing. Though none of this put anyone off her. It only made her top of the tree.

  Ruby had left school even earlier than him, gaining special permission. She’d been working here at the milk bar the last two years, was mad about The Beatles. That was supposed to be the reason she left school when she did, so she could catch the train to Melbourne to see them and hang around their hotel screaming her head off. She loved the Easybeats, too, had Harry Vanda and Stevie Wright written on her arm. At parties she would jump up and sing in the middle of the room.

  She was the only person he knew who would do that. You’d never catch him making a fool of himself in front of everyone. And even if he’d never been to Melbourne in his life at least his old man had given him the car, a second hand Falcon in good nick. On the weekends he’d put it over the pit, check out the muffler and exhaust, axles and tyres, sometimes paint the tyres black. Get it ready for taking out Saturday night. And that made him think of Rosy again.

  But Rosaleen was nothing like Ruby. She was shy and he liked that. She let him go an inch or two here and there but never too far that she couldn’t come back, even when he heard her breath come quicker the time she was that impatient she’d pulled down her bra and taken his hand to her tit. But each time he was with her he never really knew what was going to happen. When he thought he was going forwards with her she might take him back to first base. It was a mystery to him what she was like, how he couldn’t tell what was going on with her or what she wanted to do. What he did know, and she did too, was that they would always kiss and press hard against each other for ages and it drove him mad for her that she’d be up against him and getting him going so badly that he would have to wait until he was home to pull himself off. If it hadn’t already happened.

  ‘Nearly got it ready. You want ice-cream with it? Vanilla?’ Ruby sang out from behind the counter.

  ‘Alright,’ he answered distractedly.

  His Rosy. He wasn’t going to be with her ever again and a nightmare came to him of a dark paddock and someone big with his face hidden clubbing and bashing her until her head was all smashed in.

  ‘Here you go,’ Ruby said, setting the milkshake beaker down in front of him. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah. It’s bad what happened to Rosy. I suppose they’re all thinking it’s you?’

  He nodded, stirred the milkshake with the long metal spoon that came with it.

  ‘The coppers think I did it,’ he said, remembering Holloway.

  She stood close by him and he breathed in her sweet smell.

  ‘I know you didn’t do it,’ she said. ‘There’s not too many boys around here with it in them to do something like that. Boys around here, you can hardly get them to say boo.’

  Chapter 9

  That afternoon the Mitchell police station was kept busy with a run of complaints and thefts.

  Firstly, an irate Iris Hildebrand marched up to the counter to report that her daughter Josie had her new black bra stolen from their Hills Hoist overnight.

  ‘Are you certain it was on the line last night?’ Cole made the mistake of asking.

  ‘Am I certain? Do I look like a fool? Or do you think I’m near-sighted or demented? Of course I’m certain!’

  ‘Then just give me a second while I get my book.’

  And Cole si
ghed, listened and wrote as the tirade continued: Brand new it was. Do you think I can just afford to throw away my money like that? It’s a disgrace what goes on in this town with all those wretched fruit pickers and cannery people waltzing about.

  ‘How would you describe the item in question?’ Cole asked.

  ‘Don’t you know what a brassiere looks like?’ Mrs Hildebrand almost shouted.

  ‘What colour? What brand?’

  ‘It was black if you must know. And if you think I’m going to say what size in front of all these people then you have another thing coming,’ she protested, waving her arm at the open room behind the counter.

  ‘Fair enough,’ Cole sighed again.

  ‘So what are you people going to do about it?’

  ‘I’ll make some inquiries,’ Cole said as he completed his notes.

  ‘Inquiries baloney,’ she snapped. ‘I want action!’

  ‘And what sort of action would you like us to take?’ Cole asked pleasantly.

  ‘You could get some of your men watching my house, to begin with. Whoever he is, he’s bound to come looking again. Indecent, that’s what it is!’

  Cole was aware that, behind him, more than one of his colleagues was grinning at the verbal barrage being unleashed on him.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Cole offered.

  ‘You’d better!’ the woman warned as she turned on her heel and left.

  When the complainant had gone, Cole pointed to young Ben Whittaker and told him, ‘If we get another one like that today, you’re taking it.’

  The constable, all arms and legs, laughed.

  And it was Whittaker summoned to the counter by Janice when Margaret German, a teller at the State Bank, sheepishly entered and asked to see a policeman.

  Cole couldn’t hear what was being said as German kept her voice to a whisper. She was clearly embarrassed about something.

  ‘Another one,’ Whittaker said after she’d departed. ‘Three pairs of undies taken from Miss German’s line.’

  ‘It’s officially a spate,’ Cole decided. ‘And it’d be funny if it didn’t mean somebody in town has a bit of a problem. And if one thing didn’t occasionally lead to another. Did she have any clue as to who might have taken them?’

  ‘Nothing much to go on, boss. She’d noticed a car over the back fence, between her place and the property behind, when she called her dog in for the night. She thought the car might be red, or even brown, and its tail lights stuck out she said, whatever that means. Do you want me to go over there and take a look?’

  ‘I think you’d better. Talk to the neighbours too. See if they’ve had anything go missing.’

  While Constable Whittaker was gone there were another two complaints about items stolen from a garage and a backyard, as well as a phone call from Potter’s Grocery Store about a string of shoplifting episodes.

  ‘Mitchell’s like a town full of wild dogs in summer,’ Cole remarked to Janice. ‘And you never know which one’s going to bite you next.’

  ‘Only you do know where it’s going to bite you,’ she replied.

  As they did their best to attend to the various complaints, only Cole and Holloway remained at their desks, the detectives having also taken themselves out for the afternoon.

  Cole said, ‘I know we’ve all got a lot on our plates at the moment, Terry, but can you do some asking around in the morning, find out where Peter Quade banks and see what his financial situation is there? Maybe speak with the new newsagent too, ask about the details of the sale last year. If we can get a proper picture of what he’s living on we might know what sort of pressure he’s been under, or whether he might have had to go elsewhere to find money for his repayments. Be discreet about it though.’

  Holloway nodded assent. ‘Would you kill someone’s child for a debt though, senior? And someone else into the bargain?’

  ‘No, not usually. But we have to rule that out as a motive, however slight it might be. You never know what gets under people’s skin.’

  ‘You’re right there.’ He looked around the station. ‘Do you know what the detectives are up to? They left early.’

  ‘They’re just finding their feet. Familiarising themselves with the case until we know what the autopsies show. I guess they’ve probably gone out to where the bodies were found, taking a look at that. Gene Fielder told me they’ll bring us into the investigation here and there, as needed.’

  Holloway grunted, ‘As needed.’

  ‘Don’t worry. We’ll make ourselves useful. We’ve done a lot of our own interviewing already. We know the town better than they ever will. They’d be mad not to draw on us for that kind of information.’

  ‘They’ll think they know better.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘That silvertail detective. I could tell what he thought just from the way he looked at us yesterday.’

  ‘Anyway, we’ll do what we can for them. Even if not to them, we owe it to the Quades and Faradays to get to the bottom of it. And I’m sure the detectives will warm to all of us if they haven’t already. They seem friendly enough to me and we’ll get to know them better at my barbecue tomorrow night.’

  Holloway appeared distant. ‘Maybe,’ he said.

  ‘And speaking of which, I’m looking forward to seeing Audrey at ours, too,’ Cole said. ‘What are you doing with her, Terry? Keeping her locked up?’

  ‘She’s about,’ he answered. ‘Those things going missing from clotheslines. That woman this morning and then the bank teller. We had other reports didn’t we, going back a good while now, if I’m not wrong?’

  ‘I know. That’s what I was thinking too. It happens in summer, but we do get the odd report at other times too. I don’t think we’ve ever charged anyone for it though, have we?’

  ‘Only once. There was a lad from Queensland caught red-handed taking some intimates from a line. Remember, that was from the Faraday’s yard, too.’

  It came back to Cole with a slap. ‘You’re right. About two years ago wasn’t it? Can you remember his name?’

  ‘No, but I’ll go through the files and find out if you like.’

  ‘Thanks, that’d be great. I don’t know why it didn’t come to me earlier. That’s a good pick-up, Terry. You’ve got a memory like an elephant.’ He got up and stretched. ‘But can you hold the fort for a while? I just need to ask a few questions up the street.’

  ‘Sure, just so long as Janice takes the phone when it rings.’

  The light was blinding outside as Cole walked slowly to his car, opening the driver’s side door and leaving it open while he sat and tugged the racing section from The Sun on the seat beside him. He drank from a chilled bottle of Coke. It was only the provincial races today, nothing really worth a punt but his eyes scanned the fields at Bendigo searching for a second-string horse that might be worth a flutter, or a jockey coming in to some form.

  He pulled the car door shut and turned the engine over. He shouldn’t have been doing it, he knew. Going into the TAB in uniform. But it was likely to be quiet and he wouldn’t wear his hat. He’d get in quickly, lay his bets, and then get out of there just as quickly.

  Chapter 10

  The weather remained stubbornly hot for the Friday of Lloyd Cole’s gathering as he felt the heat coming off his barbecue. Occasionally he fed a strip of wood onto the coals, smoke rising to sting his eyes.

  Nancy had been stalking the house all afternoon and even now was pacing up and down, waiting for their guests to arrive. She’d fretted over decorations inside – flower arrangements in high fluted vases and furniture rearranged so as to encourage conversation – so Cole wondered if it wasn’t all too much. But she was delighted they were entertaining tonight and she looked forward to welcoming the detectives. And seeing her radiant and spritely the unease he had been feeling about her was dispelled, if only for the momen
t.

  ‘How do I look?’ she asked, twirling before him.

  She was wearing a red and brown dress with a white collar, and he couldn’t decide if the dress was too short or not. But her brown hair was cut fashionably in almost a bob, and she still had her tennis-playing figure and tanned complexion. She looked more animated than he’d seen her for a long time.

  ‘You’re an angel Nance,’ he said. ‘I’m going to have to watch out this Fielder character doesn’t set his sights on you.’

  She laughed and it made him feel good to see her so happy.

  ‘Is he married?’ she asked.

  ‘Now don’t you go getting any ideas,’ he teased as he flipped onions on the barbecue plate. ‘But I didn’t even ask him if he was. Not the other two either.’

  ‘Men!’ Nancy sighed comically. ‘Why don’t you ever ask the important questions?’

  Cole checked his watch. ‘The first ones will be here any minute. How are we looking?’

  ‘We’re looking just great. Oh Lloyd, this is so much fun, like the parties we used to have when the kids were small! Why don’t we do it more often?’

  He smiled noncommittally. ‘We’ll see.’

  It wasn’t just the alcohol, he thought pensively. There was something else too. Something that drink was triggering. One minute she’d be as good as gold, and the next her skin would be crawling with perspiration and her eyeballs rolling back in her head. The last time it happened he’d caught her before she’d fallen. The earlier times he hadn’t.

  Her embarrassment was so severe he couldn’t chastise her. ‘Oh, I must have slipped, did I?’ she’d said the first time, followed by a feeble excuse about feeling unwell the next, Nancy confused and disoriented as he helped pick her up. And this while they’d been in company.

  He visited the doctor with her, explaining with some difficulty to Doctor Browning the events leading to these attacks. It was the word the three of them used for delicacy and in the absence of a better term. But Browning did tests that proved inconclusive and they were left none the wiser. The doctor could only tactfully suggest that she should perhaps avoid alcohol altogether.