Crimson Lake

by Candice Fox

  I was visibly shaking now. We could all see it.

  ‘No, no. Wait. Yes! Yes, wait, I remember.’ I laughed, absurdly.

  ‘You remember?’

  ‘I did stop,’ I admitted. ‘I stopped at a bus stop. You’re right. My rod was in the back. It was tapping against the back window. I stopped and shifted it away from the window, and then I got back in the car and drove off.’

  ‘So you admit now that you stopped off on the side of the highway at the 372 bus stop at approximately 12.45 pm?’ Davo and Morris glanced gravely at each other.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re changing your story.’

  I thumped the table. Frankie jolted in the doorway.

  ‘Tell me what fucking happened!’

  Morris put a picture of the child, Claire Bingley, on the table in front of me.

  I woke drenched in sweat on the porch.

  It was dark. The crocodiles were barking.

  I was in prison for 241 days. The morning I was arrested, I kissed my wife and infant daughter goodbye and drove in to work, stopping for toast and coffee at the station cafe before I ascended the escalator to the third floor of New South Wales Police headquarters on Charles Street in Parramatta. It was overcast. Light breeze ruffling the hair of the ladies out on the smokers’ balcony. Exactly a week had passed since Claire Bingley had reappeared on the roadside after her ordeal in the bush near Mount Annan. I’d seen the case on the news, but no one in my department had been talking about it. I was on drug squad. My head was buried in the mobile phone chatter of a coke-importing Lebanese gang who may or may not have been waiting for a new round of drugs to go through customs. Davo, Morris, Little Frankie and I had been watching their activity for a couple of months, trying to decide when we should raid them. It was all pretty standard stuff.

  The coffee and toast would be the last non-state-issued meal I’d have for months. I started noticing some whispering and some weird looks from people around the station at about ten. At eleven o’clock Davo, Morris and Frankie were called away to interview room five. I wondered why I hadn’t been asked to go with them, but I was on the phone at the time and couldn’t ask. Just before lunch, another colleague, Nguyen from the fraud squad, came to my desk and told me that the station chief wanted me to go to his office. He didn’t say why.

  I couldn’t bring myself to eat during the fourteen hours of interrogation I endured. Davo, Morris and Frankie started the interrogation. It was a conflict of interest, but my friends were so upset by the whole situation that no one stopped them barging into the room and questioning me upfront. I guess everyone thought they had that right. A couple of hours in, when they weren’t getting the answers they wanted, they handed me over to homicide detectives because the charges, when they would eventually be drawn up, would include attempted murder. I slept that night in the cells at my own police station, after hours standing by the slot in the door trying to get the attention of officers I knew walking by, trying to get some answers. Everyone was ordered not to speak to me. In a single day I’d gone from friend to enemy.

  I was never acquitted of Claire Bingley’s rape and attempted murder.

  That might have been the hardest part of it all. I was committed to stand trial, which told the world that the Director of Public Prosecutions thought that there was enough evidence against me that I might be convicted. Then, halfway through the trial, the DPP withdrew the charges, stating that the evidence wasn’t strong enough to satisfy a jury properly instructed beyond a reasonable doubt. They weren’t saying I didn’t do it. They were just saying they’d changed their minds – they didn’t want to keep forging ahead with a trial with the evidence they had, and risk having me acquitted, never to be re-charged with the crime again. The charges were effectively being set aside, maybe to one day re-emerge when the evidence against me was stronger.

  I didn’t know if anyone was still investigating Claire’s case. I was no longer a cop, and none of my old friends had ever spoken to me again. I woke up every day knowing that this could be the day I was rearrested and send back to prison.

  There’s only one way to survive on the inside. Total physical and emotional submission. It’s the most efficient way to spend time. The only way to remain sane.

  The inmate follows the routine. He reads the orientation handbook and acts according to it in all situations. He keeps his cell and uniform immaculate, his papers filed, his interactions with staff and other inmates courteous and professional. Any situation that arises, from registry to rape, is outlined in the rules of the prison. So the inmate is never required to enact his own judgement.

  When a fight breaks out, for example, the inmate’s responsibilities are clear. He immediately drops to the ground, places his hands on the back of his head, fingers interlocked, and waits for further instruction. During a routine cell inspection, the inmate remains quiet, follows the directions of staff and makes available all personal belongings for review. The inmate stays up to date with regulation changes throughout the prison, and is accountable for his actions in accordance with changed or updated behavioural guidelines. Ignorance is no excuse.

  There’s comfort in being organised. Up to date. Judgement free. The inmate becomes a gear in the ever-expanding prison machine. He fits and turns, a laser-cut cog.

  It’s when you let your organisation slip that you start grinding, creating sparks. Some people come to prison and make a point of being a grinding cog as long as they can. But nobody lasts long that way.

  I’d let myself slip since I arrived at Crimson Lake. I’d been free just over two months and didn’t have anyone writing my rules anymore. I’d taken up the drink, rented a beaten-up property on the edge of nowhere, and checked out of society. Sometimes I didn’t shower for days. Sometimes I just didn’t eat. Forgot all about it, until I was ravenous. I was tumbling, wheeling. But now was the time to cut the bullshit. Unpack my things. Stop sleeping on a blanket like a dog.

  I sat on the porch in the warm morning light, took out my phone, and found the number for a furniture store in Cairns.

  I didn’t order a television set. I was afraid I might see myself.

  Beneath the house, a rusty Victa mower had been left by the previous owners, so I fired it up and tackled the lawn. By mid-afternoon I was drenched in sweat and the geese were traumatised, but I’d reduced every inch of the property around the house to tiny spikes of lush green carpet. I left Woman on the porch and gathered the little ones up in my hands, laughing as their webbed feed pedalled frantically between my damp fingers. They fell to pecking and plodding over the lawn. I went to Woman and tried to pat her head. She hissed and snapped at me. I didn’t take it personally.

  By nightfall, I had a washing machine, a fridge full of food, a freshly made bed and a nice cane lounge for the porch. It wasn’t much, but it was all I’d proven to desire in my time at the house. I’d boarded up the front windows and swept away the glass. The geese snuggled together in their cardboard box for the night. I pulled the towel down in front of their box and stood looking with satisfaction at my lawn. Blessed organisation. I’d checked off the regulations of my own new life. Anything that came at me now would surely be covered by the handbook.

  The newspaper article about Amanda Pharrell mentioned an office in Beale Street. I washed my face, brushed my teeth and arrived at the office at eight o’clock, wearing a neatly ironed light cotton shirt and grey trousers. It was already too humid for the town’s resident wild dogs, who lounged under trees by the Crimson Lake Hotel.

  When I tried to decide what this was all about, I came up blank. Sean’s reasons for asking me to see Amanda were vague – the lawyer had learned during my trial that I over-worried about the small stuff and it was easier when he just told me what to do. I could only think that Sean had directed me towards this Amanda character because she was an ex-inmate, like me, and maybe she was having some trouble going about life as a pariah. Maybe he’d been involved in her case, way back when. Maybe he thought the two
of us would have tips for each other on how to get through the day when nine out of ten people in the world would like to see you dead. Maybe, if she was doing worse than me (which I could hardly believe was possible), I might be spirited on in my own recovery and the two of us could get through it together.

  Lying on my new bed the evening before, I’d been googling stuff about infant geese and read that if an injured baby bird won’t eat, it’s sometimes helpful to put it in the same box as another bird its age, so that it can be led by example. One orphaned bird cheers the other one on to survive. Maybe Sean thought that two public enemies were better than one. I didn’t know.

  My punctuality was a mistake. I stood outside the small converted weatherboard house crammed between the bank and corner store, and looked at the drawn blinds. I thought I heard meowing behind the door. I took the article I’d printed about Amanda from my back pocket and examined it, checked the address. I found myself reading the words again, incredible as they were.

  Convicted Killer Opens PI Agency

  Kissing Point Killer Amanda Pharrell began trading in private investigations this week from a shopfront on Beale Street. Pharrell acquired her private detective’s licence after serving ten years in prison for the stabbing murder of Crimson Lake teenager Lauren Freeman in 2004. While some district residents have expressed dismay at the business venture, Crimson Lake Local Member Scott Bosc said there are no licensing restrictions preventing Pharrell Private Investigations from investigating ‘everything from insurance fraud to murder’ in the greater tropical north. Pharrell indicated that the agency, which has been open three days, has already received inquiries.

  There was a handwritten note in the window of the little office.

  Hours 10 am – 10 pm

  After hours, see Shark Bar.

  The Shark Bar was an ageing tropical-themed diner, complete with potted bird of paradise plants and hibiscus-flower murals exploding over the walls. The counter was covered in junk – cups of novelty pens, battered three-month-old magazines, pamphlets for coral dives in Cairns and miniature solar-powered Hawaiian ladies who swayed at the hips. There was a waitress wiping the counter and two people at the tables; a colourfully tattooed junkie scouring newspapers and a lady reading a crime fiction novel, grey wisps creeping from her temples into her orange curls. I went over and sat down, and she lifted her eyes to me.

  ‘You start at ten?’ I said. ‘Jesus. This place really is a holiday town.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ The woman frowned.

  I sat back, disoriented.

  ‘You’re Amanda Pharrell?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Sorry.’ I laughed. Felt my face burning. ‘Sorry, ma’am.’

  I patted her novel in consolation, stood up and backed away. The anaemic-looking tattooed butterfly across the room hadn’t looked up. I went over and stood uncertainly by the table. One of her hands lay fidgeting with the edge of the paper.

  ‘Excuse me? Ms Pharrell?’

  ‘If it ain’t me, then Vicky over there is your last shot.’ Amanda looked up over thick-framed red glasses and motioned to the waitress with her chin. I sat down, unsure whether to feel relieved or disappointed. There were five newspapers between us, three in a stack on her right, one under her hands and one on the left. I reached out but she didn’t shake my hand, just stared like she didn’t know what it was.

  ‘Edward Conkaffey,’ I said. ‘Ted.’

  ‘Sean’s guy.’ She gave me the once-over. ‘I didn’t expect you to be so tall.’

  ‘I didn’t expect you to be so …’ – I looked at the tatts – ‘colourful?’

  She smiled. There was a twitch to her. A repetitive jerking of her head sideways an inch or two. I told myself not to stare.

  ‘You know Sean, do you?’ I said.

  ‘I do not.’

  ‘Well, this is interesting. How did you come to speak to him about me?’

  ‘He called me,’ she said. I waited for more. There wasn’t any.

  We examined each other in ringing silence. Her arms were skinny and veined, but there seemed to be an awful lot depicted on them. Radios and microphones, birds and angels, lush jungle plants hiding gaping Louisiana-style plantation houses. Feathers and beautiful women in portrait: black, Asian, a mixture. On her left hand, a rabbit in a three-piece suit.

  ‘Sean said you’d be able to begin work over the next week or so,’ she said. ‘That right? Or do you need the weekend?’

  ‘Sean said I’d come work for you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  I laughed.

  ‘Is that funny, honey?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, smiling. ‘It’s funny. It’s funny and annoying and ridiculous.’

  ‘What the hell did you think he was sending you my way for?’

  ‘I don’t know, to be honest.’ I shrugged. ‘I guess I didn’t think too much about it. I’ve been following his directions mindlessly for about a year now.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘I guess I wondered if maybe … Maybe he thought I could help you. Both of us being ex-inmates. I see you’ve been out for a couple of years, but –’

  She laughed hard. ‘Do I look like I need your help?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m doing fine, sweetheart.’ She patted my arm, patronising. ‘It’s funny that you assumed he wanted you to help me, rather than wondering if he wanted me to help you. You’re the one wearing Eau de Jack Daniels.’

  ‘It’s Wild Turkey.’ I sniffed the collar of my shirt.

  ‘Sean wanted you to get off your arse and get to work.’

  ‘Yeah, thanks.’ I cleared my throat. ‘I get it.’

  She smiled. The whole thing was steadily becoming absurd, uncomfortably absurd, a joke gone wrong. A prank. I glanced towards the door.

  ‘From what I understand, you run some homegrown private investigations firm?’

  ‘That’s right.’ She twitched.

  ‘And Sean thinks I’m just going to throw my lot in with you and start working cases like nothing ever happened?’

  ‘I don’t think he’s under any illusion that nothing happened.’ Amanda got bored looking at me and turned the page of her newspaper, examined the pictures carefully before letting her eyes drift to the text. ‘He’s well aware of what your life has become. That’s probably why he thought of me. Because I’m the only person in Queensland likely to hire someone accused of what you’ve been accused of.’

  My stomach really wasn’t taking this well. I looked at the door again.

  ‘He said you’re up shit creek,’ she said, smiling. ‘I had a look at your case. I think he’s right.’

  ‘Christ. Look, pardon me, Ms Pharrell. But just because you’re the only person in Queensland who would hire me for detective work –’

  ‘For anything, really.’

  ‘For anything,’ I conceded, ‘doesn’t mean I’m interested. I mean, you yourself. You’re –’

  ‘A convicted murderer?’ She looked up at me. ‘Look, sugarplum. Convicted, acquitted. Guilty, not guilty. Charges entered. Charges withdrawn. It’s all the same around here. If you don’t get it now, you will soon. You’re doing time. We’re both doing time.’

  I toyed with the napkin dispenser beside me.

  ‘Think about it,’ she continued. ‘What’s the real difference here, between you and me?’

  ‘There’s plenty of difference,’ I said.

  ‘Okay, you’re still in denial.’ She turned back to the paper, waved dismissively at me. ‘That’ll wear off.’

  We sat in silence for a long time, Amanda reading the newspaper like I wasn’t there at all, me staring at the top of her head, her glasses, the flaming orange roots of her dyed black locks. I couldn’t believe how casually she was talking about my life. My charred wasteland of an existence. She slurped her coffee, loudly, like a child. I sat bewildered and disturbed in my seat, the passenger of a car wreck, trying to reorient my up and down, trying to understand why my forward motion had stopped.
r />   ‘So how free are you to work?’ she asked finally.

  ‘Free?’

  ‘Available.’

  ‘I’m pretty available, I guess.’

  ‘What’s your background?’

  ‘Drug squad. Couple of related homicides,’ I said. My mind was spinning. ‘I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I mean, is your business real?’ I leaned forward, conspiratorial. ‘You actually have clients?’

  ‘It’s real.’ She smirked. ‘What? You think it’s a front or something?’

  ‘No, I just … You’re a convicted murderer. Don’t people wonder if you’re dangerous?’

  ‘I’m a convicted murderer,’ she whispered, her red lips spreading into a grin. ‘I am dangerous.’

  ‘So why do people hire you?’

  ‘Dunno.’ She shrugged. ‘Guess they think I’ve got the criminal mind. I’m on the bad-guy wavelength. I can sniff out the cheaters and the dodgers and the villains using my ultra-evil senses.’ She snuffled loudly.

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘It also helps that I’m the only private investigator this side of Brisbane.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Well, look.’ She leaned back and gave the weary groan of someone resigned to doing a huge favour that could possibly sink their entire business. ‘I’m willing to give you a shot. As a favour to Sean.’

  ‘But you said you don’t know Sean …’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Why don’t we try this out?’ she said. ‘We can head back to the office, and I’ll set you up with your pick of the case files this morning. We can use one of those as a sort of unpaid trial. See if you’re any good.’

  ‘What case files?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve got plenty that’d suit you.’ Her head jerked once harder, her ear almost touching her shoulder. ‘Infidelity cases. Insurance stuff.’

  ‘That’s just lovely, but I’m not interested in going around snapping pictures of bare arses in hotel rooms.’