The First Cut

by Sisters in Crime Australia

I figured Valmai could wait, gave Kevin some bullshit excuse and followed the directions Dazza had given me. The wind had freshened slightly; out on the water a number of fishing boats plied their trade. The PAG office was located, along with a number of other community groups, in a ramshackle weatherboard building not far from the beach. Rod Shannon was about thirty, with dark hair and a good-looking face marred by a rather sneering expression.

  'Yeah, Lissa used to come in here. She made that.' He indicated a silk screen poster of leaping porpoises. The colours were crude but the poster had a certain vitality.

  'It's a pity she couldn't have put her talents to better use.'

  'Ah, well,' he grinned. 'Things weren't going well on the farm so she came into town to hawk the fork.'

  What a charmer. What a prince. I gritted my teeth and persevered but he couldn't tell me much except that Melissa had helped out with some PAG activities. I glanced around the room. Leaflets and posters proclaimed various environmental concerns and there were also a number of organisational charts and diagrams.

  'Is that the date the PAG meetings are held?' I asked, pointing.

  'What?' He followed my gaze then glanced at me sharply. 'Oh, yeah, yeah...we have them every month.'

  'You have them the night of each new moon.? Is that something symbolic?'

  'Eh? Oh, yeah, yeah.'

  'I see. And you do a bit of surfing?' A sleek, tri-finned board stood propped in a corner.

  'Yeah,' he laughed. 'Although it's been gathering dust. Things are so hectic - with everything that arsehole McCulloch's trying to do - I haven't had the time.'

  'Did you ever go surfing with Melissa?'

  'No.' He gave me another surprised look. 'Did she surf?'

  I left his office feeling annoyed and perplexed. Why had he denied knowing about Melissa's favourite pastime? His evasiveness only strengthened my desire to find out about her death. Something stank around here and it wasn't just the seaweed drying in the sun.

  That night I had the dream again but, unlike all the other times, the woman held up her arms and seemed to beckon me forward. The wind whipped her long black hair around her but when I got close, her features dissolved and the water pulled her from my grasp. I startled out of my sleep, sweating; the clock read 4.10. I went into the kitchen, made myself a cup of herbal tea and tried to put all the puzzle's pieces together. They all had something to do with the ocean - and with surfing. Perhaps a long walk by the sea was the place to work all this out. I started feeling drowsy; a woman's face appeared briefly behind my eyelids as I dozed off, but I couldn't tell who she was.

  The sea was jade-green and flat as a dinner plate. Huge limpid clouds stretched out across the sky, looking like the lost continents on antiquarian maps and, at the horizon, a smudged cobalt line delineated ocean from air. The wind would be at work out there, pushing the water up or flattening it down and, miles below, currents of warm water collided with currents of cold water to create the tension which broke the ocean's skin and came rolling in as tier after tier of white-cresting foam. The waves carried secrets, the unwanted cargo of ships and lives, which were tossed up on the beach or buried beneath the shifting dunes. Years might go past before a heavy storm stripped back the sand to reveal shards of rusted metal or the smooth-polished wood of ships' ribs.

  There were stories in the district of women walking on the beach last century, lifting dragging skirts as they waded towards the flotsam and jetsam of wrecks, but today there was only the sun shining benignly and a cormorant dipping its neck for food. It almost looked pleasant. I felt the breeze blow away the tension clustered in my temples and at the base of my skull as I walked but I still couldn't see the answer to the puzzle. A dead prostitute who read William Blake; greenies who held their meetings on the night of the new moon: all these things rolled around my mind like the stones and shells rolling about on the sand. I stood looking out to the ocean's dark secret places and at the boats on the horizon. The boats on the horizon. Suddenly, as I gazed at the boats, all the pieces clicked into place and I knew why Melissa Dalton had died.

  I was hungry so I went to the Chinese restaurant, which is Kololoroit's only 'ethnic' eatery. I've nothing against the Chinese although my father always speaks about them guardedly: 'They've been in my country for 1000 years and we've been friends for 100.' Excellent noodles. After I'd eaten I went back to the office, braved Kevin's wrath and made some phone calls. I had a trap to set.

  He was waiting for me on the beach that night, with the water still as black ice and the stars gleaming coldly above.

  'You dropped this.' I held up the small piece of quartz. 'I found it down here yesterday.'

  Peter McCulloch was no longer dressed in a suit or his mayoral robes. He wore jeans, a windcheater and an expression of extreme dislike.

  'I used to go with girls like you in 'Nam, you slant-eyed cunt. One of you miserable whores gave me gonorrhea, which I passed onto my wife when I came home. It made her infertile.? We couldn't have kids.'

  'You don't like women much, do you?' I said. 'Is that why you killed Melissa?'

  'The greedy little bitch wouldn't have kept her mouth shut! She kept asking for more and more money.'

  I remembered the Italian designer clothes. 'She found out about the cocaine smuggling, didn't she? She was out surfing one night and she saw Rod Shannon bringing it in. It was very convenient to have the development project acting as a smokescreen so the two of you could carry on your little business undetected.'

  He gave a short laugh. 'You're more than a nice pair of tits, Vee. How did you work it out''

  'Your wall planners. They had identical dates circled. It was stupid and arrogant of you both to have them displayed. When I asked Rod Shannon about his he got flustered and told me the circled dates were PAG meetings, but when I checked with another member of the group, I was told a different story. And the stuff about the new moon - which I thought was hippie tangential bullshit - made it just that much easier for him to go out on his board and collect the drugs. But he didn't count on Melissa's starlight safari. That's why he told me he didn't know she surfed.'

  'You'll never prove it,' Peter McCulloch grinned.

  'Oh, I already have. The fixation Melissa had with William Blake - when I checked with the harbour authority I found there's only one boat whose visits coincided with those dates - the Tyger. The captain got taken into custody this afternoon and I believe he's singing like the proverbial canary. You're in deep shit, McCulloch.'

  'And you're going to be in deep water, bitch,' he said, advancing across the sand. I hadn't been thinking. I'd let myself get between him and the ocean.

  'It's going to be so easy to hold you under for a few minutes.'

  'This is stupid!' but I knew whatever I said wouldn't help. I recognised an ego out of control, a maniac whose plans had gone wrong. I screamed as his hands closed around my throat. I struggled but he was stronger. As he pushed me down I had a brief vision of a woman staring lifelessly up at me. I couldn't breathe, things started to go black and I felt the water close over my head.

  I couldn't swim, of course. I'd had hysterics when they put me in the pool in primary school, so I was glad I'd strategically posted Kevin - and his best mate, the local copper - behind the dunes. I didn't like relying on men so much but they proved more useful than a pair of water wings. When they pulled me from the sea I was cold and choking. Kevin put his coat around me then took me home while the cop took Peter McCulloch somewhere else.

  'You sure you'll be all right?' Kevin asked anxiously.

  'Yes,' I replied and, strangely, after I'd eaten and had a shower, I was.

  It was as though being forced into the ocean had removed some old and heavy weight. That night I slept deeply and dreamlessly and in the morning I phoned my mother.

  'Mum,' I asked, 'what really happened on the boat out to Australia?'

  There was a long silence on the other end.

  'If you really want to know that,' she said at last, 'you'll have
to come home.'

  So I drove home through the green rolling plains until I reached that peculiar no-man's land of warehouses and oil refineries outside the western suburbs, where nothing grows, nothing survives, except a few scrubby trees sucking at the grime. When I got to my parents' neat brick bungalow in Footscray, my mother told me.

  It had been a long voyage from Vietnam, three nights and two days with no food and very little water. On the morning of the third day the boat had been attacked by Thai pirates. They'd swarmed on board, killing some of the men; then they'd started on the women. My mother had been heavily pregnant with my younger brother. That's why they'd spared her. Others weren't so lucky.

  'There was one girl,' my mother said. 'She was only about nineteen. She had a young baby. She was raped three times before she jumped overboard. I tried to stop you watching but that's what you saw, that young girl drowning. You were only three, I hoped you wouldn't remember...' Tears rolled down her face as she spoke, and I knew she'd never talked to anyone about this.

  'I tried to stop you watching but...' We held each other and cried.

  'Yes,' I said, when I could speak. 'I've always liked to know what's going on.'

  Two months later I stood on the sand where I had almost died and watched the big gold disc of the rising sun gild the water. It hadn't yet warmed the air but I had my wetsuit on; I had my almost-new board under my arm. I'd been learning for a month and was already improving. 'You're a natural, girl,' Dazza had said recently. I'm not a very religious person but as I paddled out to meet the first wave I said a prayer for Melissa and hoped she'd be happy to see me there because, when you overcome your deepest fear, a whole new world can open up to you.

  I didn't know whether I'd be staying in Kololoroit. I'd already had two job offers from larger papers. Perhaps I'd choose the one that had a beach nearby. Anyway, after all that had happened there didn't seem to be much enthusiasm for the development project going ahead. As I felt the surge of the water beneath me and stood to embrace its power I saw, far across the ocean, the grey arcs of porpoises leaping and rising, leaping and rising, against the waves.

  DIVINE INTERVENTION

  Louise Connor

  Jiminy, it's hot. I've got the whole oval to cross. I'm gonna get to Mum's work first; I've just gotta beat Petie and Paulie. They know, too, but not as much as me. I'm supposed to wait for them after school, but crikey, what can happen to them? It's only a bloody oval and the bridge. I told them old men live under the bridge and wait for you to cross by yourself and then they drag you under and suck your blood. But I made that up, so it can't be true. They're sooks, Petie and Paulie.

  I say a rhyme to make the time go faster. It always works. One, two, three, four, five, once I caught a fish alive. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten, then I let it go again. Why did you let it go? Because it bit my finger so. Which finger did it bite? This little pinkie on my right. I'm only a millionth, trillionth, gillionth of the way there. I say it ten more times and run as fast as I can while I'm saying it. I'm nearly there so I count pink elephants. Each pink elephant takes one second to say. Longer, if you say it really, really, really slowly. I'm up to twenty pink elephants. I can't run any more. So I walk fast. I've got to save my breath to get across the bridge, then around past the flats, then five pink elephants and I'm at the shops.

  I'm up the stairs and along the corridor past Doctor Baume's surgery, then in the door to Mum's salon. Mrs McDarmid's there having her blow dry. Once I called it a blow job by mistake and Dad laughed, but Mum roused at him and told me to forget it. I haven't, though, and one day I'll find out what the joke is.

  Mum's up to the teasing bit. She's doing up Mrs McDarmid like Helen Shapiro from Bandstand.

  'What are you doing here so early, Fi Fi?' she says, 'Where are the boys?'

  I say I couldn't find them, I thought they'd left already.

  I was going to drag out telling her, but I can't help myself. It just comes out, all in a rush.

  'Miss Steven's dead. Something hit her on the head, real hard, at lunchtime. Geraldine found her. She bawled so much, they called the doctor. I wish I was the one who found her, I wouldn't have been a cry baby. The cops are there; Dad, too. Ten police cars, at least, and an ambulance. It must have been murder. Geraldine's at home and her Mum won't let me see her. So I don't know all the facts. I bet there was a lot of blood, but we weren't allowed back in. I couldn't even get my bag. The whole of the school had to go into the church and say Hail Mary's and then we got questioned, one by one. Dad asked me, did I see anyone unusual? Of course I didn't, I would've said straight away, if I had.'

  All the time I'm telling Mum and Mrs McDarmid, I don't tell them I know who did it. I didn't tell Dad and I won't tell Mum. They won't believe me and they'll stop me getting the evidence. And I'm going to get evidence! He won't get away with this. He'll hang, like Ronald Ryan, even though my family's against capital punishment. Even my Dad, he says he doesn't want to ever be responsible for someone dying and, anyway, what if you find out ten years later that they didn't do it?

  But Garran Darby will hang for this. I can't be held responsible. He did it, and I know it.

  My Dad is a copper. I'm allowed to call him that, except when his boss comes round, then he's a police officer. Dad's a Detective Inspector. That makes him 88th in line for the top job and he's only young, he says, so you never know. One day he'll be famous and influential. My Dad says I'm a bit of a detective myself. I always find the chocolate biscuits every week, wherever he hides them. He gives me clues, but hard ones. And, twice now I've found the Christmas presents: once in the ceiling and once in the boot of the car. But I didn't tell anyone.

  My Mum asks heaps of questions. So does Mrs McDarmid. If I know the answer, I tell them and sometimes I have to guess. That's called 'deduction' and it's alright for a detective to deduce things, as long as you don't do it too much and keep an open mind.

  But I don't tell them about Garran Darby. That's because I haven't yet got all the facts.

  I know the motive: that means I know why he did it. Miss Steven didn't like him any more. She used to joke around with him, a bit at first. She likes me and Leo Maloney, and some of the others, but mostly me and Leo. But she had some kids she hated right from the start and you didn't want to be one of those. And Garran had gone from being a favourite to one of those. He wasn't the sick bucket monitor any more; that was Eddie Zabinski now, and, believe it or not, Garran liked being the sick bucket monitor. He always made a joke out of it to make Miss Steven laugh. Someone would spew and she would say, 'Go on Garran, do your stuff.' He'd go out and come back with his hankie tied around his face, like a sheriff, and the bucket and mop. Then he'd clean it up and she'd make a bit more of a fuss of him. Sometimes she let him clean her car for money. But then something happened, I'm not sure what, and he wasn't a favourite any more.

  You can always tell with Miss Steven if you are a favourite or not. I'm a favourite and Miss Steven especially likes my gogo dancing. Every Friday just our class has a concert and Miss Steven is the judge and the rest of the class is the audience and all the kids have to do something. I'm the leader of the gogo dancers so I get to pick who is in my group. I'm the leader because my sister, Sharon, is a real gogo dancer with The Union Jack. So is Danila Parda's sister, but my Mum makes Sharon and everyone's costumes, so I get to be the boss.

  Leo Maloney's in charge of the singers. They do, in order of my favourites, 'Ferry Cross the Mersey' by Herman's Hermits, 'Georgie Girl by The Seekers' - they're Australian, in case you don't know. And, I like 'Que Sera Sera' by Normie Rowe. He's Australian, too, but que sera sera means something Italian.

  If Miss Steven picks your act as the best on the day, you get to do it again. Me and Leo usually get to do it again. We are both top of the class, too; me of the girls and him of the boys. We fight about who is top between us two, but not really. We're equal top, most of the time.

  Last week Miss Steven made Garran Darby and Phil Hourigan cry into the
tear bottle all play lunch. She roused on them and then they started sooking.

  'There's a drought, you know,' she said, 'so we can't have you two turning on the tears and wasting water. Go and get the tear bottle, if you're going to be sissies, then you can at least do something useful. If that's not full when I get back after play lunch, there'll be trouble,' she told them.

  She always makes the boys do that, if they cry. She'd forgotten about it after play lunch, though. But Garran didn't. After school he nicked all her hubcaps. At least that's what Miss Steven and Sister Dominic said the next day. But Garran Darby stuck to his story and said he didn't and they couldn't prove it.

  What I know, that nobody else knows, is that Garran Darby went inside today at lunch time. We're not allowed inside, unless it's raining. I only went in myself to get my copy of Top of the Hit Parade from my bag because Danila Parda wouldn't believe me when I said The Seekers were Number 1. My sister gets me a copy every week because she works at The Groove Record Shop every Friday night and Saturday morning.

  But I couldn't get it because Sister Immaculata was going crook at Garran in the corridor.

  'You're a naughty, disobedient boy, Garran. Get outside now and I won't tell Sister Dominic this time. You know the penalty for disobedience, don't you? Six of the best with the Fluffy Duster,' she said.

  I didn't want that, either, so I went outside before she saw me. Garran Darby came out just after me, so he must've killed Miss Steven before Sister Immaculata caught him in the corridor. I'm going to find out for sure, though, before I tell anyone.

  I remember the other important bit of information I have for Mum.

  'Sister Dominic says there's no school tomorrow on account of Miss Steven dying,' I tell her.

  'Oh, fiddlesticks,' says Mum, 'what am I supposed to do? You can tell none of those bloody nuns have kids of their own to worry about. Can you do us a favour, Sue, and mind the kids?' she says to Mrs McDarmid. 'Today's set's on the house and we'll call it quits.'