Bitter Nothings

by Vicki Tyley

  She woke with a start, disorientated, the smell of oiled timber strong in her nostrils. Massaging her cricked neck, she looked back at the house. Was it a dream or had her phone rung? She struggled to her feet, the effort required almost beyond her.

  Brrring… Not the phone, the doorbell. Leaving her breakfast dishes on the table, she stumbled inside, making it halfway up the hall before it rang again.

  “Hang on,” she called. “I’m coming.”

  She opened the door.

  The tousle-haired man on her doorstep looked her up and down, his grin widening. “What was that about coming?”

  She slammed the door, the sound reverberating through her body. Her pulse in overdrive, she could do nothing except stand there, breathing in short, ragged gulps. Why now after all this time? Why at all?

  “Dervla?”

  “Go away. I have nothing left to say to you.” Her emotions were in enough turmoil without having Nathan Ward add to the mix.

  “Don’t be like that.”

  Her jaw tensed. “What are you doing here, Nathan?”

  “I’ll tell you if you open the door.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “No problem. I can keep shouting so long as you don’t mind those nice reporters eavesdropping.”

  She yanked the door open. “What reporters?” she asked, panning the street over his shoulder. “What the hell do they want?” She spotted a bald-headed man leaning against the driver’s door of a white station wagon and shrank back.

  “To talk to the daughter of a murder suspect? You’re lucky your phone number is unlisted.”

  Unlisted for a reason. “How did you find me?”

  He tapped the side of his nose.

  “Whatever.”

  “No, wait,” he said, planting his palm against the door as she tried to close it. “I rang Gabe. He told me.”

  “And why would he do that?”

  “Because I’m a good bloke?”

  “Erkkk,” she said, in a bad imitation of a buzzer. “Wrong answer.”

  “All right, all right. One of my work colleagues called your brother, saying she was an old school friend of yours, had seen the news and wanted to send you flowers. I admit it was a bit underhanded but hey, my intentions were honorable.”

  “That’ll be the day. Which reminds me, how is Fiona?”

  He lowered his gaze, rubbing his forehead as if he expected a genie to materialize.

  Dervla sniggered. “She dumped you. Now why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “No—” The phone rang. She rushed for it.

  “Hello?”

  “Oh thank God! What happened? Are you okay? Why didn’t you call me?”

  Sophie. Dervla hugged the phone to her ear as if it were her friend and not just her friend’s voice. “Your phone was switched off…”

  “Forget that. What a horrible, horrible thing to happen. Are you okay? Sorry, stupid question…”

  Dervla whirled around at the sound of the door closing. Nathan stood less than two meters from her, hands in pockets. She scowled at him.

  “Is anyone with you?” continued Sophie, not pausing for breath. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw the paper.” Her next words were lost in what sounded like a car door slamming. “I have to drive back to the cottage and pack my things first, but then I’ll be on my way. If I don’t break too many speed limits, I should be there in about nine hours. See you then, okay?”

  “Okay.” She eyed Nathan, daring him to move. “Drive safely.”

  “Boyfriend?” he asked her after she hung up.

  “None of your business.”

  He nodded, the corner of his mouth lifting in a self-satisfied smirk. “I knew it.”

  “You know nothing. Who invited you in, anyway?”

  “You left the door open. What else was I to think, babe?”

  “Don’t call me that. I’m not your babe. And you can damned well just go back out the way you came in.”

  He held up his hands in surrender. “Now, now, is that any way to treat a friend who only wants to help?”

  Dervla spluttered. “Excuse me. You wouldn’t know the meaning of the word friend or help. Unless you thought…” She clenched her fists. “Unless you thought fucking my best friend on the night of our engagement party was doing me a favor.” She still felt the pain of betrayal, though she didn’t know whose was worse, her best friend’s or her fiancé’s.

  “That was when I was young and stupid.”

  “Oh, so you’re older and wiser now? How convenient.”

  He laughed. “Can’t you see the grey hairs? C’mon, babe, you can’t hold that one mistake against me forever.”

  “Can’t I?” She jutted out her chin, her crossed arms crushing her breasts.

  His face fell, his hazel eyes holding hers in a gaze she remembered only too well. “Please don’t be like that.”

  With a sigh, she dropped her arms to her sides. “Seriously, Nathan, why are you here?”

  “I saw the news, wanted to check you were doing okay?” His eyebrows arched. “Are you doing okay?”

  “What do you think?”

  “What I mean is…” He scratched his head.

  “Why now after four years?

  “Not that you’re counting or anything.”

  She ignored him. “You didn’t bother when Mum died, but I guess you and Fiona were still together then.”

  At least he had the decency to blush. “I’m really sorry about your mum. She was a great lady. I know it’s no excuse but I didn’t find out she’d died until a few weeks later.”

  She ducked past him to the door and opened it. “I’m fine. Now if you don’t mind, I have things to do.”

  “Can I use the little boy’s room first?”

  “Out!” She jerked the door back wider. He could pee his pants for all she cared.

  “I’m sorry. Are we interrupting?”

  Her head snapped around at the sound of Todd Gleeson’s deep voice. He and DSC Stewart hung back, looking more like Mormons loitering on her doorstep than police officers.

  “Not at all, Detective Senior Sergeant,” she said, enunciating the rank for her ex’s benefit. “Nathan was just leaving.”

  Nathan pressed a business card into her hand. “Call me, yeah?” Then with a backward flip of his hand, he was off.

  She watched his retreating back, the waiting detectives temporarily forgotten. If only Nathan Ward were as easy to forget.

  Todd cleared his throat.

  “Sorry.” She stepped aside. “Come in.” Inside, out of sight and out of earshot, she added silently. “Do you have some news? Have you found my father?”

  “Not yet,” Todd said. “But it’s only a matter of time.”

  “You sound sure of that.”

  “You don’t think we will?” he asked, turning it back on her.

  “No. I mean, yes.” She threw her hands up. “Oh God, I don’t know what I mean.”

  DSC Stewart brushed against Dervla’s arm. “Perhaps this would be better done sitting down.”

  The two detectives trailed her along the hall and through into the living room. She didn’t offer coffee and they didn’t ask.

  “So if you haven’t found my father, why are you here?”

  Occupying the same seat as he had the day before, Todd said, “We’ve spoken to your father’s employees and none of them have any knowledge of his whereabouts. His PA assures us that if he was attending a conference or out of town on some other business-related matter, she would know about it. From that, we have to assume his absence wasn’t planned. Which brings us to the next matter.” He flashed an open palm in his offsider’s direction.

  DSC Stewart opened her notebook. “We understand from your brother that when your father needed time out, he often went bush.”

  Dervla frowned. “He used to. I don’t know if he still does. I don’t understand. If you’ve already spoken to Gabe, why are you asking me?
If anyone would know what my father gets up to these days, it would be him.”

  “Your brother did tell us he wasn’t aware of any plans your father had to go camping last weekend but thought that if he had, he or your stepmother may have mentioned something to you in passing.”

  She shook her head. “Gabe thought wrong.”

  “When you say your father used to go bush, was there a particular area he liked to frequent?”

  “You make it sound like he was going to a brothel. Like was there a particular prostitute he liked to frequent?”

  The detectives exchanged glances.

  “Forgive me,” Dervla said, flapping a hand in front of her face. “Lack of sleep has scrambled my brain. I know you’re just trying to do your job. I do want my father found. I do want whoever murdered his wife and children to pay. I do. Not one and the same, mind,” she added, just in case they thought otherwise. “It’s just that I feel like we’re talking in circles when you could be out there doing real police work. Honestly, if I knew anything – anything at all – I would tell you.”

  “We understand that you’ve had a dreadful shock and that you’re probably not thinking straight,” Todd said, “which is why some of our questions may appear to be unimportant or even irrelevant. Trust me, they’re not.”

  She bristled. When people – especially men – uttered that phrase, her bullshit antenna went up. Once bitten, twice shy, as her mother used to say.

  “If we come across as insensitive,” DSC Stewart said, jumping in. “I do apologize. It’s not intentional. We want what you want: answers. You can understand that, can’t you?”

  Dervla exhaled. “What was the question again?”

  “Where did your father use to go camping?”

  “All over. Anywhere within a day’s drive.” She shifted in her seat, uncrossing her legs and recrossing them. “Although if it was only an overnighter, he usually only went as far as the Toolangi State Forest.”

  “Any particular area that you know of?”

  “Dad liked to explore. Said what was the point of going back to somewhere you’d been before, when there are so many places yet to be discovered. Sorry, not much to go on, I know.”

  “It’s a start,” DSC Stewart said, writing in her notebook.

  “You should also know,” Todd said, “that we’ll be making a statement to the media later this morning. We’ll be releasing your father’s photograph, together with details of his vehicle, and appealing to anyone who’s seen him or the vehicle to come forward.”

  Dervla twisted a hank of damp hair around her hand. “I’m not saying he is, but if my father is hiding out as you suggest for whatever reason, what makes you think he’s gone bush and not jumped on the first international flight out of Melbourne?”

  “It appears that the backpack containing your father’s tent, sleeping bag and other camping gear is also missing.”

  “Says who?”

  “Gabe.”

  “Well, maybe Dad or Lucinda moved it.”

  “Maybe. Although, if he has left the country, he didn’t pay for the ticket with his credit card. Nor did he withdraw cash from his bank account.”

  CHAPTER 5

  A mugshot of her father, his dark eyes creased in amusement above pouched cheeks, filled the television screen.

  “…considered armed and dangerous, and should not be approached.”

  Dervla’s jaw dropped.

  “Anyone who sees or knows the whereabouts of Warren Andrew Johns should immediately call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000, triple-0 or contact their nearest police station.”

  She stood stock-still, unable to move.

  A stern-faced newsreader appeared on screen. “Protestors,” he said, already on to the next story, “disrupted…”

  Trust me, he had said. Her hand closed around the remote control, the urge to hurl it at the television strong. “Fool,” she shouted, her taunt aimed not at the newsreader but at herself. Would she never learn?

  She threw her hands in the air and with an exaggerated shrug, collapsed in a heap on the couch. Tears pricked her eyes. She blinked them away. Her father armed and dangerous? Absurd. Anyone who knew him would know that. Not unless…

  The saliva in her mouth dried. Not unless something terrible had happened and tipped him over the edge. Was it possible? Could he be responsible for the cold-blooded murder of a woman and her two young children, his own family?

  She sat bolt upright, bile rising in her throat. What was she thinking? The bastards had her doubting her own father. Sure, he was no contender for father-of-the-year but nor was he a killer. To believe otherwise would mean her whole life had been a lie.

  An overwhelming need to escape drove her to her feet. If she stayed locked up inside the house any longer, she would go stir-crazy. More stir-crazy.

  Two minutes later, keys and wallet in hand, sunglasses shielding her puffy eyes, she stepped out into the street for the first time since her world had imploded. The man next door was reversing out of his drive. He gave a cheery wave, obviously unaware of his neighbor’s connection to the family slaying making news headlines. She waved back, the normality of it somehow grounding, fleeting as it was.

  Head down, she walked quickly, paying scant attention to familiar surroundings. Why hadn’t her half-sister made contact? Unless Alana and her drug-addled boyfriend were on another planet, they had to have seen or heard the news reports by now. Dervla reached the top of the steep concrete steps leading down to the footpath alongside the Yarra River, hesitated and glanced back over her shoulder. What had possessed her to leave her mobile phone at home? What if Alana called? Or her father…

  She took two steps and stopped. Ten minutes to clear her mind. Was that too much to ask? The river and her sanity beckoned.

  Once on the trail, her pace dropped to a stroll, the few gum trees along the bank providing little protection from the midday sun, even for the parched foliage below. The air smelled earthy – a mixture of hops from the nearby brewery and baked eucalyptus. A cyclist whizzed past. Then another. Up ahead a small wooden jetty offered refuge.

  Halfway through backing down the wooden steps-cum-ladder to the jetty, her scalp tightened. Her hands gripping the rail, she peered up, half-expecting her gaze to encounter a pair of legs. She breathed out. Nothing. Just nerves.

  Ducks gathered on the water below as she dropped the last few centimeters onto the landing. She watched them for a moment, before her gaze was drawn to the footbridge down the river. Her heart skipped a beat. A man, his bald head like a beacon in the sunlight, leaned on the bridge parapet, looking her way.

  Taking a deep breath, she told herself not to be so paranoid. Not everyone was out to get her. Still, although she wasn’t close enough to see his face, something about him seemed familiar. On impulse, she waved.

  One moment he was there, the next gone. Was he tailing her? Had she spooked him? Or was he simply some poor office escapee taking five minutes out to enjoy the scenery? Not that she considered herself scenic.

  Suppressing the hysterical giggle bubbling in her throat, she climbed back up to the footpath. Then after positioning her keys between her fingers in a makeshift knuckleduster as taught in her self-defense classes, she headed toward home. And the bridge.

  Two chatting teenage girls, each carrying the requisite bottle of water, crossed her path without a glance in her direction. She hurried on, reaching the concrete steps leading up to street level in no time.

  From somewhere above her, she heard raised male voices. Her step faltered as she recognized the louder of the two as her ex. She hadn’t imagined it; someone had been following her. Call her cynical, but she didn’t believe in coincidences, especially when it came to Nathan.

  Her first instinct was to leave the two warring men to it and take a detour under the bridge, exiting the trail further along. But then, no one could accuse Dervla Johns of being a coward. That, bull-headedness, and plain curiosity drove her up the steps, two at a time.

 
Nathan had the bald-headed man from the bridge bailed up against the rail. “…you have two choices: tell me who you are and why you’re following her, or tell the police.”

  “Look, mate, I don’t know what your game is, but I don’t have to tell you a damned thing. I should be the one reporting you to the police.”

  “Is this a private party, or can anyone join?” She crossed her arms.

  Nathan jerked sideways, revealing the other man.

  Up close, he looked younger than she’d expected. Long, relatively unlined face. Bald head, part nature, part razor. Slight build. She placed him in his mid to late thirties. “Aren’t you the reporter who was hanging around outside my place earlier?”

  “Reporters ask questions,” Nathan interjected before the man could reply. “They’re in your face, not skulking around like some low life.”

  “You can talk,” she hissed at him. “What part of ‘leave me alone’ don’t you understand?”

  “I was worried about you, babe. And for good cause, too.” He jabbed a finger in the bald-headed man’s direction.

  She scowled at Nathan and shook her head. He’d keep. “I’m sorry,” she said to the other man, “I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced.” She thrust her hand out. “Dervla Johns.”

  The man blinked. “Err… John Bailey.” He wiped his palm on his jeans and shook her hand.

  Nathan’s mouth opened and closed like a fish gulping air.

  “So, John Bailey,” she continued, “what is it that you want from me?”

  “To get this lout and his conspiracy theories out of my face,” he said, throwing a look of daggers in Nathan’s direction. “He should be on a lead.”

  She couldn’t argue with that. “Okay, then what?”

  “Then I’ll be able to enjoy the rest of my walk in peace.”

  “I bet that’s not even his real name,” Nathan said, fists pumping.

  John Bailey, if that’s who he was, turned on him. “As if that’s any of your business.”

  “It is when you’re stalking my friend here.”

  “You really should see someone about those paranoid delusions of—”