‘Now I want you to go home, Lee, and have a good think about what we’ve talked about this morning. You’ll go home, and then we’ll go home, and soon we’ll talk again. Alright?’
The boy meekly nodded, sobbed, the reddening handkerchief pressed to his nose.
‘Interview concluded then,’ Fielder said, and left the room.
Chapter 17
With conditions inside the police station sweltering, the officers were given an early finish with Cole, a constable and Janice staying on to guard the fort. If Cole had felt uneasy about Fielder’s methods before witnessing Lee Furnell’s beating, he felt positively sick about it now.
There was no one but Furnell in Fielder’s sights, and any attempt by the detective to look for other suspects was only window dressing, he knew.
A few days ago he had spoken with Peter Quade’s son, Conor, wanting to follow up on the remark his mother had made about him knowing Rosaleen Faraday, the comment about him taking her to a dance. When questioned about it, however, Conor had resolutely stuck to his claim that his mother was mistaken. She must have been thinking about someone else, he said petulantly, maybe even his brother.
But Cole wasn’t so sure. In a small town like Mitchell where there were few places to socialise, the odds were highly in favour of them knowing each other. The only question then was how well acquainted were they? The fact that the Quade brothers usually kept company together only made it seem more likely that Conor knew Rosaleen Faraday well, too.
Cole had gone to Max’s funeral just before lunch, the only member of the force to attend this time, and was glad of the space to quietly observe proceedings. As expected, Lee Furnell didn’t show, and the gathering at the church was noticeably smaller than at Faraday’s funeral. Other than witnessing the genuine grief of family and friends, there had been little to note.
When it seemed like they’d done enough at the station for the day, Cole dismissed Janice and the constable and locked up the station.
He dug his hand into his pocket and fished out a wad of crumpled betting slips, tearing them into small pieces and dropping them into a wastepaper basket. Winning was too hard, he thought, losing too easy. He wondered why he wasted his money like he did.
And even before he got to his car Cole felt beaten up by the heat. He opened his car door to let a rush of hot air escape before climbing inside and winding down the windows. The vinyl seat cooked beneath him, so too the steering wheel in his hands and he knew they’d have to do something about undercover parking behind the station. It was a flag they flew every summer, but still nothing got done.
They were too much of a backwater out here. No one cared until someone got killed or went mad, or both. He turned the car’s engine over. As he went to reverse out of the station yard he spied Phillip Jarvis’s bag still on the back seat. Better drop it out now, he thought. Jarvis clearly wasn’t returning for it.
He drank a Coke on the way to the Jarvis property, the surrounding parched landscape again reminding him how hard farmers were doing it. And where they didn’t have an allocation of irrigation water, or where the allocation wasn’t great enough, it was harder again still. The land looked nothing short of dead, irrecoverable.
The Jarvis property seemed deserted as he idled up their driveway. Only a dog barking at his legs as he got out of the car brought someone to the front door. The twin’s mother.
‘Why didn’t you phone first?’ she wanted to know. ‘We might’ve been out.’
‘I only wanted to drop Phillip’s bag in to him, that’s all. And it’s not far too far of a drive.’
‘He’s around the back,’ she said, closing the door behind her. ‘Go and give him the bag yourself. You’ll get no thanks for it otherwise.’
There was no attempt to keep the property tidy, he saw. It was as though where something fell was as good a place to leave it as any. He walked past the garage and in the gap between the almost-shut doors caught a glimpse of Phillip Jarvis’s car. The shells of two other vehicles sat outside the garage on tyreless rims, a hillock of automotive detritus dumped alongside them.
He found Phillip washing his hands at a rainwater tank.
‘Brought your bag,’ Cole said, holding it up. ‘Thought you might be wondering where it had got to.’
‘Thanks, Mr Cole,’ Jarvis said. ‘It could’ve waited though. There’s nothin’ in it. Nothin’ worth worryin’ about anyway.’
‘Think you’ll sign up again for next year?’ Cole asked. ‘You played pretty well toward the end of the season.’
‘Might do.’
‘You should get Giff on board, too. He’d enjoy it.’
‘Giff? I don’t think so, Mr Cole. He’s hopeless. He’d hardly know what end of the bat to hold.’
‘Is he around? I’d like to say hello.’
‘I dunno where he is. Probably up the back of the farm fixin’ a fence or somethin’ Have a look if you want.’
‘Never mind, I’ll ask him next summer anyway. It’s up to him then if he does or doesn’t want a game.’ Cole surveyed the junk lying around: a refrigerator with no door lying vanquished on its back, old tyres stacked one atop the other from largest to smallest, fleecing shears, hammers, spools of fencing wire rusting on the ground. He asked, ‘When’s your Dad coming home?’
‘He … he … won’t …’ Jarvis’ strangled answer died on him, a look of terror on his face, and Cole immediately regretted his thoughtless question.
‘I’m sorry, Phillip. That wasn’t very smart of me.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Mr Cole.’
‘It does. I’ll make sure I’m around when the time comes.’
‘No. No please don’t …’
‘I’ll be careful about how I do it,’ Cole said, but he wished he hadn’t said anything in the first place.
Cole castigated himself all the way back into town, determined that when Ken Jarvis was released from prison next, he’d stay close by to try to ensure no harm came to the family, a forlorn hope though that was.
And as he often did, instead of going directly home he took the car through a succession of streets, criss-crossing Main Street’s spine and driving south and north of it to the town’s fringes.
He liked this time alone in the car at the end of a working day. It was as though he was planting a full stop at the end of a sentence. He liked the feel of being in the car and leisurely patrolling the streets, not watching out for anything in particular but rather taking in the streets and houses and people. It was something he could never fully explain, but having been born and raised in this town he felt a sense of responsibility to it, ownership even. His mother and father had grown up here, his father’s father before that. He often cruised by what had once been the family home, the solid redbrick house that had been sold after his mother died with its proceeds split as inheritances with his brother and sister. It was a sore point with him, one of the few he ever harboured, that he couldn’t hang onto that house and it was always with a wistful feeling that he drove by it.
Someday, he thought. If he didn’t keep burning money at the TAB the way he did.
He turned back into Main and slowly took in the shops, milk bars, the banks and chemist, Potter’s grocery store, the newsagency on the corner, the old picture theatre, The Majestic, that had shut last year after decades of service. The post office, the Union Hotel, the Albion Hotel, the florist, further on the cabinet-maker, Tomlinson’s Sporting Goods and the tyre dealer, the funeral director just beyond that. And the other commercial places he didn’t notice this time, or the buildings lying vacant.
The end of the cricket season. It began easing open that feeling inside him again.
Swinging the wheel into his street he was glad to be home, their dog Whisper waiting for him on the front veranda.
He gave the dog a scratch under its chin and it followed him inside, where he smelt dinner
cooking. Early, he thought, when they might just have had cold meat and a salad.
‘Are you there Nance?’
‘Just a minute!’
And the instant she came through the door into the lounge room he knew. The slight stumble. The ruffled, anxious mannerisms.
‘Nance …’ he began.
‘You see, I’ve gone to a lot of trouble, Lloyd. I thought I’d make something special for you to let you know how much I love you. I was at the butcher’s this morning and Gary said there was a nice piece of brisket with my name written on it, so I thought I’d cook it for you because I know how much you like it too. And then I had to think what else I might make with it and …’
‘Nance,’ he said and drew her to him. ‘You don’t have to do that for me. You know that. It’s like an oven in here and I would’ve been just as happy with something cold.’
‘But I wanted to do it for you, Lloyd. I know how hard you’re working on that case and what with that Fielder fellow breathing down your neck I know it’s not like it normally is in the station.’
He held her close and kissed her damp forehead, felt the air humid in her hair and on her bare arms as he let his slip down her. She smelt strongly of drink.
‘You don’t have to do any of that,’ he said, letting her go. ‘I’m just happy to be here with you.’
‘Oh Lloyd, I’m so glad!’
She’d spilt something down her dress, flour, and it had gotten wet and then she’d tried to wipe it off making a worse mess of it.
‘Tell me what I can do to help then,’ he said.
‘Maybe see if dinner’s nearly ready,’ she said and they went into the kitchen where he opened the oven door.
‘It looks done,’ he said, peering in.
‘You have to cook it slow otherwise it’s not so tender, so I put it in a few hours ago,’ she said.
And then some, he thought, the meat shrivelled and the roasted potatoes and carrots on the verge of charring.
‘This is ready, Nance,’ he said as he set the oven tray on the cooktop. ‘How about I carve the meat for you?’
‘But you haven’t had a cold drink yet,’ she objected.
‘I’ll have one with dinner.’
‘But you should really have one first.’
‘I’ll manage,’ he reassured her.
As he carved the meat and served up the roast vegetables, he looked at her and said, ‘What time did you start, Nance?’
‘The dinner? Well, I lost track of the time you see …’
‘I don’t mean the dinner,’ he said quietly. ‘I mean drinking. What time did you start drinking?’
The question flustered her and she rubbed her hips as she searched for a distraction.
‘Goodness.’
‘Nance?’
‘Well it was so hot, you see. So hot that I really needed to cool down so I just poured myself a little gin and tonic. Just one.’
‘I think you’ve had more than one,’ he said.
‘No, I don’t think so. Or maybe just two.’ A panicked look came over her. ‘You aren’t cross with me are you, Lloyd? I just wanted to do something special for you and I was going to the trouble and felt all excited and it was so hot I thought just the one.’ She glanced his way nervously. ‘You aren’t angry with me now are you? I know what Doctor Browning said, but I didn’t think one would hurt.’
‘One probably wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘It’s just the ones that come after it that do.’
They sat quietly over the dinner table and sometimes she just looked at him without saying anything, or stared at her half-full glass on the table, its blocks of ice reduced to slivers.
Finally the silence became too much to bear for her and with a nervous flutter in her voice, she said, ‘If Alan and Vicky were here, I’m sure there’d be more things to do, and I wouldn’t be tempted like that.’
‘It’s not their fault. They’ve grown up and left, that’s all, Nance. That’s what children do. They grow up and go away. It’s a sign we did a good job as parents that they’re happy enough to do that. It’s not anyone’s fault, not yours, not mine. We just have to be glad for them and make the best of our own lives. But I want you to be able to go to places and not be embarrassed. I want you to feel good without getting on the drink.’ He gave her a wistful smile. ‘It’s not agreeing with you, Nance, and I’m as responsible for it as you are.’
‘You? How could you be?’
‘We should be doing more things together. I shouldn’t be leaving you on your own as much as I am.’
Nancy had knife and fork in her hands, as though about to cut a piece from the brisket, but she put them down by her plate, leaving her hands beside them.
She was unable to look at him, but asked, ‘Do I embarrass you too, Lloyd?’
He put down his cutlery.
‘I wish it didn’t happen,’ he said. ‘But what I wish for and want doesn’t mean anything if you don’t want it, too.’
‘It’s just, with the children gone and you at work …’
Her voice trailed away.
‘I’ve always been at work, Nance. Maybe we should go away for a while. A holiday.’
‘You don’t trust me, do you?’ she said.
‘It’s not that,’ he said. ‘It’s just I can’t stand seeing what’s happening to you.’
‘Here then,’ she said, as if it was finally decided. She rose unsteadily and taking her glass he heard her in the kitchen, something running in the sink. She called out, ‘I poured it down the drain! That’s the last time!’ only to see him standing in the doorway.
She smiled. She stood waiting for him to say how happy he was that she was changing. That everything was going to be fine.
He looked away so she wouldn’t see his disappointment. He’d heard it a hundred times before.
Chapter 18
Audrey Holloway sat in her chair watching television as her husband stared at it from his. She was fidgety now, wondering whether he would retire to bed as soon as the program finished, or whether he would stay up a little longer, as if to exasperate her on purpose.
The Mavis Bramston Show. She didn’t even understand why he watched the show. It was a comedy, sketch comedy they called it. Sometimes as he gazed at the screen she might notice a softening around his eyes, or his lips working into the beginning of a smile, but she never heard him laugh out loud. It was as though he couldn’t allow himself to be happy, that he had to be stubbornly deliberate about it even if front of his wife.
He yawned and she looked expectantly at him but he made no effort to move from his chair.
All the curtains were drawn. Now that it was well dark they should have been opened, and the windows, to let in any breeze there was. The still, close air in their lounge room reminded her of what an Egyptian tomb must be like, those pharaohs, with her entombed in it.
‘They say Mr Menzies was upset about something on this program last week,’ she said.
He turned in his chair as if surprised to find her there.
‘I didn’t hear that.’
‘Something about making fun of him.’
‘I don’t know anything about it.’
‘What do you think about our new Prime Minister, Mr Holt, Terry? Do you think we should be sending soldiers to Vietnam?’
‘I’m trying to watch the show,’ he grumbled.
She discreetly checked her watch. It wasn’t that late yet and if Terry kept to his usual habits he would be off to bed at nine. There was no reason to think he wouldn’t this night.
She was feeling hot, uncomfortable. Once she went to the bathroom and splashed water on her face, felt it trickle coolly down the neck of her dress. And sure enough, as she sat back in her chair and her watch ticked over nine o’clock, Terry leant out of his chair and crossed to the television.
‘I
’m off to bed,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to leave this on or not?’
‘You can turn it off. But I might stay up a while,’ she said. ‘It’s too hot to sleep. I might go outside and get a little air.’
He didn’t answer and she heard the bathroom door open and shut. It struck her that through all of their married life she had never known him to leave the bathroom door open while he was in there. Why, she wondered?
But in ten minutes he would be in bed and asleep soon after. She knew he wouldn’t wake until seven in the morning, not even if there was a fierce storm or cars loud in the street.
They kept single beds in the bedroom, and even then she often slept in the spare room when his snoring was too loud, or the bedroom too hot, which was most nights now.
She remained seated in the darkened lounge room another ten minutes before making sure he was asleep. She would’ve applied scent but knew she couldn’t risk it. She waited another five minutes, and then another five, before she opened the front door as carefully and silently as she could, even though she’d told him she was going for a walk.
It was quiet in the street. The only sound was the occasional clatter of dishes from a house or a cat’s plaintive mewling. Further down the street where Churchill Street crossed it she saw a red Zephyr passing slowly through the yellow-lit intersection. Now and then she walked by someone sitting out the heat on their front veranda, but she avoided their eyes and kept her own to the street as if awaiting a friend’s car.
It was silly, she thought, at this time of night. She wondered if she shouldn’t turn back right now. He might not even be there. But even as she was agonising over it her feet kept taking her forward, beyond the intersection and on ahead, over Main, her path cutting right to eventually take her behind the motel from where she could swing around to Gene’s side of the establishment.
But what if Terry woke and found she wasn’t home? She panicked for a moment and exhaled audibly. She’d told him she was going out walking. And even if he did wake, at this time of night she had at least half an hour’s grace – the excuse of her walk.
The Summertime Dead Page 10