by Juanita Kees
Maybe Mum had simply fallen into the water, unable to swim, too cold and weak to pull herself out. Maybe she’d become entangled in the water grass. But logic defied the reasoning. If she’d fallen in, she would have floated to the surface long before now.
The pump Tameka used every day, the water that fed the crops, the dam tainted with her mother’s blood—surreal, numbing. The first two divers went into the water.
‘Come back up to the house, Tikki. You don’t have to be here for this.’
‘I do. I need to see, to process, to understand. Everyone thought she’d abandoned us. Even me. But she was here, all the time.’
Constable Haines came over with a blanket in her hands. ‘If you’re going to stay, you’ll need to keep warm.’ She draped it around Tameka’s shoulders.
‘Thanks.’ Tameka clutched the edges of the blanket together with her free hand.
‘Mum is coming over later with a few of the ladies from the CWA to prepare hot meals and drinks for the team,’ Harley informed the young constable.
‘They’ll appreciate that. The water is freezing and that breeze is a little chilly. Cuts right through you.’ She tipped her head as Sergeant Riggs called her back inside the taped-off area. ‘I’ve got to get back. It might be a while before they find something, Tameka. I can give you a call if you want to wait at Harley’s?’
‘Thank you. I’m fine here.’ She owed it to her mum to stay, to see this through to the end or there’d never be a way forward.
‘No worries.’ With a little wave, Merryn Haines ducked back under the police tape.
‘Any sign of Louis?’ Harley sat down on the grass and tugged Tameka down onto his lap where his body protected hers from the wind. They watched the movement in and out of the water as the divers coordinated their search.
She shivered against his question. ‘No. He might still be with the police. A couple of detectives arrived from Perth late last night.’
‘He chose a good time to come back.’
She couldn’t ignore the irony in Harley’s words. ‘Or the worst time.’
He rested his cheek against her hair. ‘Did he say where he’s been for almost two weeks?’
Tameka shook her head, leant back against him and closed her eyes. ‘I don’t know what he’s told the police. He hasn’t spoken to me again.’
Not a bad thing, really. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what he’d been doing or where he’d been hiding. Especially not now. All she wanted was closure. And justice for Mum.
A flurry of movement and shouts dragged her attention back to the dam. She pulled out of Harley’s arms and stood. ‘They’ve found something.’
Two divers hauled a suitcase towards the shore, struggling to keep the lid closed and the contents from spilling out. The rest of the team entered the water to assist. Tameka ran with Harley close behind her, stopping at the taped-off area where they watched the suitcase being lifted from the dam.
‘Mum’s suitcase.’ She covered her mouth with her hand.
Years of being in the mud and water had turned the once hard plastic mustard-coloured case rusty brown. One of the forensics team donned a pair of rubber gloves as they placed it on the table they’d set up on the grassy bank. He reached for the lid to open it, the locks almost rusted away.
‘Jesus!’ Sergeant Riggs covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve. ‘Haines! Get the detectives down here now. And tell them to make sure Louis Chalmers is detained in custody.’
Tameka gagged as the wind picked up the stench of stale liquid, bacteria and a muddy soup of human remains. A bent and broken delicate skeleton, the bones stained yellow-brown, rested in the case with the rusty, petrol-powered chainsaw used to weigh it down.
‘No!’ She turned and reached blindly for Harley, felt herself clamped against his chest, his hand holding her head to stop her from looking any closer.
‘Tikki, I’m so sorry.’
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out what she’d seen, but the image remained burned into her memory. The voices of the dive team reached her ears. She heard words like airtight, mummification and slower decomposition spoken as if what they were examining hadn’t once been human. A mother. A wife.
A wife the monster her father was had carved up with his chainsaw and shoved into a suitcase. It could only have been him. It explained everything about his behaviour since her disappearance. Why she hadn’t taken Tameka with her.
It burned into her mind as surely as the fire that had taken Ryan after her father had padlocked the shed door. As surely as he’d left her to die then come back to make certain she had.
She let herself fall apart. She’d earned the right. She’d cheated death. She’d watch her father face justice for his crimes, and when the town turned on her for being Louis Chalmers’ daughter, she’d leave.
But for now, for this one last time, she was in Harley’s arms, crushed against his heart as he carried her home to Bakers Hill while she cried against his shoulder.
Chapter 22
‘How is she, love?’ Mum placed a mug of hot, sweet tea on the table in front of Harley.
‘Resting. With Loki.’ He’d left her huddled around his dog, lying on her side staring blankly at the wall, his heart aching as she closed him out.
‘The poor girl. Who would ever have imagined it, hey? At least we know Mai didn’t walk out and leave her. That will be a comfort to her when the shock wears off.’
Harley hoped with all his soul that it would be. God knew she needed some comfort. By this afternoon the news would be out and what couldn’t yet be confirmed by police would be speculated upon and circulated anyway.
His dad appeared in the kitchen doorway followed by Sergeant Riggs, who looked like he needed a drink. Harley didn’t blame him at all. He could do with a stiff shot himself.
‘I realise this is a difficult time, but I’ll need to ask Tameka a few questions.’
‘Is it really necessary, Riggs? Can’t it wait a little longer?’ Dad put a hand on the sergeant’s shoulder.
‘I wish it could, trust me. What the hell is happening in this town? It’s like we’re falling apart.’ He played with the broad brim of his police-issue hat. ‘What kind of man murders his wife and dumps her body in the dam? I’ll never understand it, Tom. Never.’
Harley ran a hand through his hair. ‘Kinda explains why he didn’t want us using the dam after Mai left.’ Surreal. Numbing. The thought of Tameka’s mum discarded in such a cruel, uncaring way by a man who clearly had no heart, ate at his soul. That Tikki had lived with a murderer all this time … Jesus, that was hard to take.
Sergeant Riggs nodded. ‘Yep, makes sense. Look, off the record until it becomes public knowledge, okay? The suitcase was lodged in the mud near the pump outlet. The boys think that with all the action the dam has seen lately because of the fire, the draw on the water dragged the suitcase out. Because the locks had rusted, it released some of the lighter items during movement. All that weighed it down was the chainsaw and years of mud.’
Tom shook his head. ‘So if it wasn’t for the fire at the homestead, poor Mai might never have been found.’
The fire. Harley rubbed a hand over his face. Ironic that the fire that could have killed Tameka was the catalyst for releasing the dam’s secret. ‘Will you be asking Chalmers about the fire too? Where he’s been since?’
Sergeant Riggs shrugged. ‘Tameka pretty much claimed responsibility for the fire. A cooking accident.’
‘With a fire blanket and extinguisher within easy reach? It doesn’t make sense, Sarge.’ Harley twisted the mug in his hands.
‘She had a pretty nasty bump on the head and you found her semi-conscious on the floor. I have no reason to believe it was anything other than the accident Tameka says it was.’
‘Then I’ll give you a reason.’ Tameka’s voice was quiet from the doorway, Loki by her side, but her words fell like rocks in the room. ‘The fire was an accident, but it wasn’t my fault. After this … I’m
done protecting him.’
Harley stood and held out his hand to her. He hated seeing her so pale and drawn, her eyes empty as if her soul had been ripped out. Maybe it had.
Sergeant Riggs placed his hands on his hips. ‘You’re aware of the consequences of a false testimony, right?’
‘Not a false testimony. Omission of facts.’ She placed her hand in Harley’s, her fingers gripping his tightly.
‘Do you want to do this down at the station?’
‘No, I’ll do it here because there is something else you need to know. That the Bakers need to know. About Ryan.’
Harley’s heart crashed to the pit of his stomach, the sense of impending doom he’d had since the picnic blooming to nuclear proportions. A part of him didn’t want to know, the other begged for answers.
‘Why didn’t you make a statement before now?’ The sergeant reached for the notebook in his pocket.
Tameka looked him in the eye and squared her shoulders, releasing her grip on Harley’s fingers. He placed a comforting hand on her back. She’d been through so much. He wanted to tell her to stop, to not say anything that would cause her more pain. But what the hell did she know about Ryan?
‘Have you ever been so afraid of the truth that if you speak it, you’ll only make things worse, Sergeant? That if you tell, someone else might get hurt?’
‘I’m finding myself afraid of many things lately,’ he confessed. ‘Why now?’
‘Because I have nothing left to lose. No-one to protect. And now I remember what I hadn’t wanted to remember as a little girl.’ Tameka turned to Shirley. ‘My only regret is the pain this will cause the Bakers. I’m so sorry, Shirley, but as much as I need to see justice done for my mother, I need to see the same for Ryan. I only wish I’d known this for sure a long time ago, but it was only during the fire in the kitchen that day that the memory resurfaced.’
***
Cold, numb and empty, Tameka tightened her fingers on the back of the chair. She’d agonised over telling the Bakers about what she thought she saw, a memory she was now convinced was the truth.
Her father’s face that day, angry beyond reasoning, his temper out of control as he’d come back to the house smashing everything in his way. They’d hidden, her and Mum, until the firefighters had arrived and Dad’s temper had settled into a cold, empty, emotionless mask when they’d discovered Ryan’s body inside the shed.
‘The fire in the kitchen wasn’t deliberate, but what started it escalated quickly. My father’s—stepfather’s—moods and temper have been out of control lately, more so than ever before. It didn’t take much to set him off.’
Numb on the inside, she drew a breath then told them about the events leading up to dinner. How he’d come into the kitchen demanding his food, reacted angrily when it wasn’t ready. Pushing her, cornering her against the range, ignoring the flames that licked at her shirt, kicking her and stepping over her to leave her to burn.
Shirley pressed a hand to her mouth, uttered a cry and leant against Tom. Harley’s arm moved around Tameka’s shoulders. She didn’t want his sympathy. She didn’t deserve it. Shrugging him away, she stepped over to the kitchen sink and looked out the window over the field of damaged hop bines Harley had started clearing, rubbing the scar on her temple.
‘While I lay there watching the flames, I remembered the day Ryan died. I wasn’t sure if it was a true memory or the exaggeration of an eight-year-old mind.’
Sergeant Riggs rocked on his feet. ‘It’s not unusual to suppress memories following a trauma. Especially in children.’
Tameka looked at her hands. ‘After today … I’m still not sure, but I have to tell someone. Because if my father is capable of murdering my mother and leaving me to die in a fire, he’s capable of what I thought I saw that day.’
Loki leant against her leg and whimpered. She reached down to rub his ears, turned from the window and sank to the floor next to him. She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her forehead to his warmth. Sensing her distress, Loki let her hold him, standing dead still.
‘We’d come back up from the dam. Harley had gone to look for his dad. I wanted to check on Ryan. He’d told us he was going to the shed to play inside the old ute he loved so much. I was afraid my dad would catch him in there and be angry with him. Dad liked his whip a little too much sometimes.’
‘Tameka, you don’t have to do this.’ Harley crouched down in front of her. ‘It might not be real.’
‘It’s real. I know it now.’ She raised her eyes to his, held onto his gaze as the rest of the horrible truth poured out. He’d hate her. God, she hated herself for hurting him and his family all over again. ‘When I got to the trees around the shed, I saw the flames. Then I saw Dad coming out of the shed. I wanted to shout, to warn him there was a fire, to check if Ryan was inside. I heard Ryan screaming, Dad laughing as he put the lock on the shed door.’ Her breath hitched and tears stung her eyes as she remembered the two cruel sounds colliding. ‘My father deliberately locked Ryan in the shed and left him to die. And I ran away.’
Shocked silence rocked the room. Harley stood and backed away, horror chasing disbelief from his face and replacing it with scorn. Had she expected anything less? She’d witnessed his brother’s murder and said nothing. For almost twenty years. The man she’d loved in every which way possible would slip away from her again.
Tameka couldn’t bear to look at the Bakers. The people who, even after Ryan’s death, had still welcomed her into their home. And Sergeant Riggs, who’d seen far too many deaths than a town the size of Wongan Creek needed in its history.
Tameka kissed Loki’s head, a final goodbye to the dog who trusted her explicitly, something she’d never know from humans again. She stood. ‘I’ll go down to the station with you now, Sergeant Riggs, and answer any questions the detectives have.’
She wanted to say sorry, to apologise for her father’s sins, but the words wouldn’t push past the lump of guilt in her throat. She wouldn’t be coming back. The only way clear for her now was out of Wongan Creek.
Chapter 23
Two weeks. Two of the longest bloody weeks of Harley’s life during which Tameka’s confessions had left his family reeling and bleeding from wounds they thought they’d had a bandage on even if they weren’t healed completely.
Dad had to be admitted to hospital with chest pains as he’d relived the day of Ry’s death over in his mind again. He’d been taken to Perth to see the heart surgeon, and the wait for news had been a long one.
Mum had withdrawn to deal with the revelations, the loss renewed, raw and bleeding because that disastrous day had never been far from her mind and Ry’s memory had stayed close to her heart.
And the guilt, pain and loss of Ryan’s death had haunted his dreams every night. If only … If only he’d not been distracted that day. If only he’d tried harder to make Ryan stay with them. If only he’d known back then what a monster Louis Chalmers really was.
Old man Chalmers—the lying, murderous bastard—had pleaded not guilty via video link and was now on his way to Perth to face court. It brought no comfort because nothing would ever bring his brother back and the actions of a vile and disgusting man had taken away two of the people he loved. Three if he counted Mai who he remembered as a quiet, reserved yet kind lady whose tentative smile grew whenever he and Tameka were together.
Harley tossed the pen down on his desk and pressed his fingers to his tired eyes. Behind him, the news on the telly reported that new DNA evidence had surfaced and Louis Chalmers had been linked to another cold case murder that happened almost thirty years ago. A woman and two young girls now suspected to be his wife and children. Where would it end?
Golden Acres had been seized as the proceeds of crime when they’d uncovered evidence that Chalmers had come by the property illegally, forging the sale and transfer when he’d come across the original owner, Hugh Fisher, in a nursing home, suffering from dementia.
Perhaps not so coincidentally, the same nu
rsing home had been destroyed by fire not long after the sale had gone through, a matter now under investigation again. It seemed Louis Chalmers had quite a fascination for lighting fires.
Tameka was officially homeless. If she ever returned from Perth. He doubted she would, and that broke his already trashed heart. She’d left with Riggs the day her father was charged with murder and had made it clear she had no intention of seeing him again.
Don’t follow me, Harley. It’s time you changed your menu.
Her words haunted him. He wanted to go to her, tell her it didn’t matter as long as she came home to Bakers Hill. She wasn’t to blame for Ryan’s death or anyone else’s.
She needs time to work through it, Harley. Give her the space to get the help she needs, to process … the same as we need to.
And here he was, taking his mother’s advice when he really wanted to be where Tameka was. When he wanted to be the one to help her, to understand all the things he didn’t, and to give her the love and stability he hadn’t known she didn’t have.
If anything had happened to her … if she’d died under Louis Chalmers’ roof … he didn’t want to contemplate what that meant. She hadn’t. He had to hold onto that little gem or drive himself insane. But Ryan had died at the hands of a ruthless murderer, and he couldn’t forgive that.
He thought about going into town, to the pub to hang out with his mates. Drink a beer or two, watch reruns of the footy season finals. Get away from the sight of the burnt homestead on Golden Acres and the equal emptiness that echoed off the walls of the house on Bakers Hill.
None of this was Tameka’s fault. When they got through this—the court hearing and a conviction—maybe she’d find her way back to him. He’d give her a little time and space, knowing she’d have Heather Bailey by her side looking after her welfare. And when all this was over, he’d go looking for her and bring her home, spend the rest of his life helping her find happiness and peace.