‘It’s OK,’ she says, shutting me down. ‘Right now, everything must be very confusing. We can talk again tomorrow.’
They don’t want to hear that their case against Luke is falling apart.
‘No, this is important,’ I say. ‘I want to look at my earlier statement. I could have made a mistake. And there’s something else, something Luke said.’
I start talking about how Luke claimed the train wasn’t running that night and I don’t know if this is right but it must be easy to check and if it is right then the Kinsale bones must be Grace’s which would mean that she never ran away twenty years ago but something terrible happened to her.
I am babbling and their initial confusion soon turns to despair because their main witness, someone who looked so good on paper, professional, just what a judge is looking for, has turned out to be batshit crazy. Then, confirming their worst fears, I start to cry.
‘We’ll stop there,’ she tells me more firmly as I grab my handbag and open it, looking for a tissue. ‘You need to sleep.’
The male detective’s phone beeps. He shows it to the woman, she nods and he leaves the room.
The envelope with Grace’s necklace is still in my handbag. I am about to pull it out, to thrust it at her because I can’t cope with anything right now, but she is still talking.
‘I understand your brother-in-law has arrived. He’s just getting an update on the investigation and then he’ll come to see you.’
She gives me the gentle smile again to show me she’s on my side but her eyes tell me I’m nuts. She stands up.
I ask the time and she tells me. The hours have merged together and it’s much later than I realised. They must have got in touch with Gavin soon after I rang them. I can give the necklace to him. He will understand how important it is.
She’s standing at the door. ‘Is there anyone else you would like us to call?’ she asks. ‘A friend perhaps?’
When I don’t answer, she tells me to think about it and that she’ll be back in a few minutes.
The truth is there is no-one to call. I can hardly ring Amy, who is about to give birth any day now, and besides, she’s hours away in Kinsale. It’s bad enough that Gavin has to come here but at least he’s got a professional interest in this mess as well as personal.
In the last twenty-four hours, my carefully constructed world has begun buckling underneath me.
I shut my eyes and try to work out exactly how it came to this.
To read the ashes.
In my office yesterday I thought it was the fire corrupting all it touched, but my problems didn’t start with this case. I go all the way back to that New Year’s Eve on the beach. At the start of that night I had two best friends. By the end of it I didn’t. It’s as simple as that and yet I did nothing about it, a fact I have been running from my whole life. It is as if, in that water, my heart froze and by the time I got to shore it had splintered on its own fault lines. I have tried to pretend it was nothing, when it was everything.
And with that realisation there is a hush. The noises of a busy police station coping with the usual detritus of the night and the start of another day don’t go away exactly but they do become more distant and I am caught up with Grace, the past and present wrestling with each other.
She is dead, I’m sure of that now. She has rushed from runaway to missing to dead like stations passed on the train she never caught.
Dad’s office manager, Pat, told me about people’s responses to traumatic events. You can sink or swim.
There’s a knock, then the detective sticks her head back in. I imagine they’ve been outside the door furiously whispering their desperation about their only eyewitness going rogue, trying to work out how I can be contained and redirected.
‘Gavin’s on his way.’
They’ll be telling him to sort his sister-in-law out and get her evidence back on track.
‘Thanks,’ I say.
‘We’ll arrange accommodation for you – your apartment will be off limits for the time being.’
‘No,’ I answer. ‘I’ll sort that out myself.’ I’ve stopped flailing and am heading back to shore.
She’s uncertain about what this implies and tries to assess the nuances of it, but it doesn’t matter what she thinks, because my decision has been made. I need to follow the path back to the heart of the maze and find out what’s been there all this time.
21
‘You should have just given it to him,’ says Amy. Her belly extends almost to the steering wheel but she insisted on driving me here, so she could talk me out of what I plan to do.
‘This way is better,’ I say. ‘Gavin gets the necklace and will be forced to investigate. Besides, Grace’s family has the right to know that it’s been found.’
We are parked in front of the neat weatherboard bungalow. There’s an old Falcon in the driveway, the bonnet propped open like a hippo’s mouth. Aaron Hedland is peering into it. Twenty years ago he was a tall rangy boy, all long limbs in constant motion, but now he’s muscled up in an intimidating sort of way.
‘Show me the necklace again,’ says Amy.
I hand the plastic bag to her and she studies it the way doctors examine X-rays.
‘It’s hers,’ I say, but Amy isn’t convinced.
‘If the Hedlands take it to the police, Gavin won’t be able to dismiss them like he did me.’
‘You didn’t tell him about the necklace,’ Amy reminds me.
‘He didn’t give me the chance.’
Gavin hadn’t been prepared to even talk about the bones and he dismissed out of hand that they had anything to do with Grace. All he could focus on was Luke Tyrell and my witness statement.
‘I’m surprised Gavin let you come back to Kinsale,’ Amy says, ‘with Luke still on the loose.’
‘He doesn’t control my life. I’m still an adult.’
‘He just wants you to be safe. We all want that. I wish you’d come and stay with us instead of at that poky motel.’
I shake my head. I’m gambling that Luke doesn’t want to pay me another visit but, in case I’m wrong, I’m not risking Amy getting involved.
She hands the necklace back to me. ‘So you are going to walk in there, effectively saying that Grace is dead.’
‘I’ll be more sensitive than that.’
‘Eliza, I have to deliver bad news regularly. There isn’t a magical set of words that softens the blow. Have you stopped to consider that they might not want to know? That the slimmest hope she is alive is better than none?’
‘Is that what you do?’ I ask. ‘Don’t disclose a diagnosis to a patient so they won’t lose hope?’
‘I don’t give them a diagnosis based on a gut feeling. I run tests, analyse their symptoms. I have real evidence.’
I stare out through the front windscreen trying to choose the right words. Further up the street, kids are playing a game of kick-to-kick on the road.
‘This is her necklace. Those bones are of a young woman. I’m not making any of this up. Aren’t you worried about what happened to Grace?’
‘Of course I am but I’m also worried about you.’
‘I can’t fix what I did that night, Amy, but I can try and make amends now.’
‘And somehow manage to do something your dad tried for years and couldn’t?’ Amy closes her eyes, frustrated with me. ‘Can you hear yourself? All you are going to do is up-end people’s lives for no reason. It’s just like when we were growing up, you make rash decisions and get yourself into trouble.’
‘I have to do this.’
The car seems too small for this sort of conversation.
Amy shakes her head. ‘Well, if I can’t change your mind, then get out because I need to pee desperately. Call me if you need a lift home.’
‘Is everything OK with you?’ I ask.
‘Don’t start,’ she says. ‘I’m not the one acting crazy.’
She drives off, navigating her way through the neighbourhood footy game. I c
ross the road and walk up the driveway.
I’m not really sure how to start investigating, but returning Grace’s necklace to where it belongs seems an important first step.
Aaron is in the driver’s seat, turning the ignition key. The engine isn’t catching. My hand gives an involuntary half-wave on the opposite side of the windscreen from him. The shoulder length hair from his teenage years has been cut short to his skull. Dark eyes dart towards me, his eyebrows changing from frustrated to surprised.
‘Don’t suppose you know anything about cars?’ he says. His voice is deeper as well. It’s a nice voice, mellow, and friendlier than his appearance.
‘Only that I need other people to fix them.’
He gives a generous grin. Grace’s was the same. He clambers out of the car, wearing a ripped T-shirt and shorts with a swipe of grease on them. Geometric patterned black tattoos run down both legs and one arm, a mixture of beauty and menace.
‘Wish Mum agreed with you,’ he says. ‘I’m out here mucking around until she gives up and lets me take it to the mechanic.’
‘Want me to turn the ignition while you check out the engine?’ I ask.
Leaning back in the front seat, I can still feel the warmth from his body. It seems too intimate somehow, as if I accidentally brushed up next to him. I sit bolt upright and turn the key. There’s no sound, only a click.
‘The starter motor?’ I call out, mostly because my father complained about that all the time.
He frowns at the engine and then shrugs. Holding open the bonnet with an enormous hand, he unhooks the prop and slams it shut.
I get out and hand the keys back to him.
‘I’m Aaron,’ he says.
‘We’ve met before, a long time ago. I’m Eliza Carmody. I was a friend of your sister’s.’
‘Oh,’ he says and looks more carefully at me. ‘I remember you.’ I wait for the comment about the eyes, but he doesn’t say it. ‘You and Amy Liu.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Amy just dropped me off.’
He nods. ‘She’s treated Mum a few times.’
‘How is your mum?’
‘Have you come to see her?’ he asks. ‘She’s not home at the moment.’
‘Actually, I wanted to talk to you.’
The two of us sit at a kitchen table with a worn laminate top, warming our hands with cups of tea we don’t drink. We look at a photograph that Aaron has kept in his wallet for twenty years, folded over so often it feels as soft as cloth. The sixteen-year-old versions of us sealed inside its edges, stuck like insects in amber. I’m slightly blurred, moving just as the camera clicked, mouth wide open, half smile, half grimace, exposing too much top gum. My eyes are safely hidden behind sunglasses. Amy is on one side, her head bent down looking at her feet and Grace is in the middle, laughing, face tilted towards the lens, clutching onto me, her right arm thrown around my shoulders. She is wearing a necklace identical to the one that is lying on the table in front of us.
‘We found the picture in our letterbox after she went missing.’
‘It was taken while we were waiting for the bonfire,’ I say, recognising the clothes.
‘So she was wearing it that night,’ he says and his fingers trace the necklace in the photo. He reaches out for the real version, but before he touches it, he pulls his hand back and folds his arms. We both sit there thinking through the implications.
Eventually he stirs. ‘You want to take it to the police?’ he asks.
‘If you take it, they’ll give it more attention.’
He keeps staring at it lying there on the table.
‘I had started umpiring a few footy games, got a bit of money, bought it for her birthday.’
‘She loved it.’
‘And this was up at The Castle near those bones?’ he asks.
‘That’s what I was told.’
‘I heard on the radio that they were a teenage girl’s but I didn’t even think of Grace. The police told us she had left town. Even now, after all this time, the doorbell goes or the phone rings and the smallest part of me still hopes.’ He looks at me with glistening eyes.
The front door creaks open and, as crazy as it sounds, for a moment I think it is Grace. By the look on Aaron’s face he’s thinking the same.
‘Aaron, you home?’
It sounds just like her, except she’s tremulous as if worried no-one is there, and for a second I wonder if I’m going crazy, like hearing my father the night Luke broke into my apartment. Aaron is already standing up.
‘In the kitchen, Mum. We’ve got a visitor.’
Leaning on a walking stick, Mrs Hedland comes in.
She has changed.
A tall, angular woman, she is much thinner now. Her body seems to be made up of only hollows and absence. The veins in her neck are as prominent as tree roots. Her face is shrunken, her features larger, especially her eyes.
‘You remember Eliza Carmody, Mum. Mick’s daughter.’
There’s instant recognition of my father’s name. ‘Course I do.’ Hooking her walking stick over the crook of her elbow, she hugs me, a far friendlier gesture than I was expecting. ‘What a lovely surprise.’
Her eyes glance at the table and she sees the photo and the necklace. In a flash her face switches from curiosity to recognition. She clutches her mouth.
Aaron grabs her arm and gently guides her to a chair, beginning to explain why I am here. She leans forward, her breath becoming increasingly fast and noisy, hands outstretched in front of her, rigid as flippers.
‘C’mon, Mum.’ Aaron crouches beside her. ‘Try to get the breathing under control. Start to regulate it.’
He takes one of her hands, strokes it rhythmically and keeps placating her in a calm voice, but she is almost keening now.
‘What can I do?’ I ask. ‘Get a doctor?’
‘It’s just a panic attack,’ he says in a voice that suggests he has seen it many times before. ‘Try breathing through your nose.’
‘Can’t do this.’ Her voice is high and shrill.
‘You’ll be right, Mum. Do you want to go to the couch?’
He has to repeat everything several times because she isn’t taking it in. She stands suddenly, shaking. ‘Lie down,’ she says.
Aaron guides her to the couch in the next room. I see a blanket on a nearby chair and pass it to him, who wraps it around her.
This is what Amy was trying to warn me about. Grace’s disappearance wore down to a pebble for me, one that I have had to carry all these years but was able to ignore, but it has crushed her family.
I sit on a seat in the corner of the room, hoping they’ll forget I’m even there. After twenty long minutes the attack seems to have passed. Mrs Hedland remains huddled under the blanket but recovers enough to ask Aaron about the necklace. When he gets up to the part about taking it to the police, she looks at me.
‘Mick rang me every year on Grace’s birthday. Every year except this one. I still expected him to call even though I knew he couldn’t.’
I try to smile but it’s too watery.
‘He was always there.’ Aaron nods in agreement. ‘He’d drop everything to check whatever information came through. Told us to call him day or night if we heard anything.’
Pat and Alan had told me that Dad did everything he could but it’s reassuring to hear it from her family too.
‘We’ll have to go to the police, Mum,’ repeats Aaron. ‘See what they say about it.’ A tear runs down his cheek. Old wounds are reopening.
Mrs Hedland nods absent-mindedly.
Aaron dashes a rough hand across his face. Without a word, he peels himself off the chair and heads out of the room. Mrs Hedland watches him go. A moment later, I hear a basketball bouncing.
‘That’s the sound of my son thinking,’ she says. ‘You’ve given us a lot to think about.’
‘I’m very sorry.’
‘Don’t worry about him. Some people have a knack for happiness. No matter what life serves up, they can cope.
Aaron’s like that.’
‘And you? Will you be all right?’
The smallest shake of her head is all the answer I get. Her eyes slide away from me.
‘You go now,’ she says. ‘I’ll rest up here for a bit.’
Aaron is shooting hoops into an old rusty basketball ring attached to the garage. He gets every single one of them in cleanly. For someone so big, he moves fluidly, balanced and poised like every action is choreographed.
His head turns my way and he misses the next shot.
‘You’re good,’ I say.
‘Used to be. Dodgy knees these days.’ His voice is huskier than before.
‘I’m really sorry that your mother got so upset.’
He comes over and sits down on the doorstep. A simple gesture of his hand invites me to join him, so I do. We stare straight ahead, not looking at each other. In the distance is a row of maples, leaves beginning to turn flame red on their way to falling.
The words come out of the side of his mouth as though this conversation is being dragged out of him. ‘The police said she left town on a train, that she told people she was going to the city.’
‘The trains weren’t running,’ I say. ‘The line was shut down.’ I’d confirmed what Luke had told me with three different sources, even going through the old notebooks of a local train obsessive who lived across from the station.
Aaron slowly shakes his head as if he can’t quite believe what he is hearing. He picks up the basketball in his hands and pushes so hard against it I’m worried it will burst.
‘Why weren’t we told that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I used to imagine,’ and he’s talking in such a low voice that I have to lean towards him so I can hear, ‘that she was off seeing the world and left me stuck here, looking after Mum. I tried to convince Mum to move. Go back north to her people, or further west to her brother, but she could never leave this house because when Grace came back she wouldn’t know where to find us.’
He stands and hurls the basketball with such force, a great one-armed throw, that it lands right across the road before rolling into the gutter on the far side. The footy game has migrated to nearer the house and one of the kids runs over to pick it up.
Second Sight Page 18