Cool Bananas

by Margaret Clark

There was a human torso, no head, no arms or legs, half covered with leaves and twigs.

  Flick collapsed onto the ground and was violently sick. She heaved and heaved, while Boofa whined anxiously beside her.

  When she’d recovered enough to stand up, she gingerly took the scarf from Boofa and draped it over a nearby bush so she’d be able to find the spot for the police. Then she scrambled to the top of the cliff, took Boofa to his home, locked him securely in his yard, and went sprinting down the road towards the store.

  CHAPTER 4

  ‘Life is a series of ups and downs,’ said Dr Fordham.

  ‘Yeah? Well, I think there are more downs than ups at the moment.’

  Flick was in her bus at the camping ground and the psychologist, brought in by the police to debrief Flick and to try to minimise the horror of her grisly find, was sitting opposite her.

  It had been awful. She’d burst into the store screaming about the body, even though she’d meant to be cool, calm and collected. She couldn’t stop screaming until Kay had given her a sharp slap across the face to bring her out of it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Kay had said with tears brimming in her eyes, ‘but I had to do that. You were totally out of control and hysterical. Now, tell me calmly what you’ve found.’

  And then Flick was icily calm. She repeated the whole story in a slow sort of monotone. The police were called and she had to do the same thing for them, sitting out in the courtyard on the same chair that she’d sat on just four hours earlier with Kiev, under the shady tree. With the retelling she felt a little better. When the police had heard her story and then the coroner had been flown in by helicopter and she’d repeated it yet again, she felt empty and drained. Now maybe the horror would go away.

  But Rob bailed her up outside the store.

  ‘So you found a body,’ he said. ‘Armless, legless and no brains either. What a little party animal she must have been.’

  ‘You’re disgusting!’

  ‘Nah. I’m honest. I’ve heard she was a druggo and a prostitute.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Skag told me.’

  Skag was Rob’s drinking mate and had a brother who was a cop, so it was feasible.

  ‘Well, even if she was into that stuff it doesn’t make a scrap of difference. She didn’t have to die like that.’

  ‘And you know, if we didn’t have those recyclable environmentally friendly wheelie bins with two compartments that the council insisted on,’ Rob added sarcastically, ‘you’d never have found her because she would’ve fitted into a garbage bag and someone would’ve chucked her in an ordinary wheelie bin.’

  Flick had just stared at him in disbelief. Everyone at Coolini Beach knew he had a lot of anger towards the council, because he’d had a part-time job in the peak period helping the garbos, and with the introduction of the big brown bins with their double compartments and bright yellow lids, he didn’t have that income any more. The trucks scooped up the bins with a mechanical arm and emptied them, so they didn’t need extra man-power to provide the collection service other than the driver.

  Mind you, Rob hadn’t been the only angry person. The twelve permanent residents didn’t seem to mind the introduction of the new bins, but the hundred or so other part-time residents certainly hadn’t wanted them. Although there had been big protest meetings, the council had ignored their valid arguments and gone ahead with the project. A number of residents had refused to comply but this meant that the truck wouldn’t take their rubbish if put out in ordinary bins or bags. Also, the bins weren’t big enough in peak times, but the driver wouldn’t take the overflow. And in strong westerly winds the lids blew back and rubbish spewed all over the place and ended up in the sea.

  To complicate matters, notices had been pasted on all the public rubbish bins near the store and along the foreshore stating that anyone depositing domestic rubbish in the bins would be fined $2000, which meant that travellers with caravans or tourists in transit then dumped their rubbish over the cliffs. And residents sneaked down to Kay’s big green bins under the cover of darkness and put their rubbish in them, which meant there was no room for her garbage.

  Kay said you couldn’t blame the holiday-makers because, although this scheme could work well in Colac or even Apollo Bay, it was crazy to expect it to work for a small village. She said it was bureaucracy gone mad and it should be made into a Monty Python-type movie so the whole world could see how stupid it was.

  But there were more important issues and, rubbish bins or not, the fact remained that Flick had found the torso, and the grisly image stayed in her mind, unable to be discarded into the big brown bins like ordinary rubbish, which was why Dr Fordham’s visit was important.

  Flick was a bundle of nerves. She couldn’t sleep and had ghastly nightmares that left her trembling and cowering against the bedhead. The strain of finding the body, which was determined to be that of Winter Knight, a well-known prostitute, was bad enough. But Flick was also on edge listening for the phone to ring in the store and praying each time it’d be Kiev for her. Although only three days had elapsed since Flick had seen Kiev, it felt like three hundred years.

  She also felt guilty about Tim. Should she tell him how she felt about Kiev and break it off? But what if Kiev didn’t get in touch with her and she’d busted up a promising relationship?

  Liz still wasn’t speaking to her, which had caused so much tension that Flick had moved back to her bus and Kay had sent Roxie, her daughter, to stay with Liz.

  ‘Everything seems to be going wrong,’ Flick groaned, putting her head in her hands.

  ‘Everything?’ Dr Fordham tapped his pencil on the table top and surveyed her over his glasses.

  He was a balding little man who’d probably never seen a dead torso in his life, had never fallen in love with a TV star while supposedly going with someone else, and certainly had never experienced a major bitch fight with his best friend.

  ‘Everything!’ said Flick firmly.

  ‘Let’s deal with your trauma over finding the body,’ said Dr Fordham, pushing a piece of paper firmly towards her. ‘Can you draw what you saw?’

  ‘Why would I want to do that?’ Flick stared at him in amazement.

  ‘Please just do it.’

  Flick drew a few tentative strokes and then found that the pencil seemed to have a will of its own, making great jagged lines and squirls across the paper with what looked like a trail of teardrops down one side. Or maybe they were drops of blood.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Dr Fordham, when Flick finally pushed the paper across to him and put her head down on the table, resting it on her folded arms. ‘There’s been a lot of pain in your life, young lady.’

  Next thing Flick found herself pouring out the story of her father’s death and her mother’s remarriage and subsequent rejection of her, followed by her sister’s indifference and the final straw, Todd’s rejection.

  ‘But how can finding a decapitated body with missing limbs on the cliff face and my father’s death be connected?’

  ‘I think you haven’t grieved properly,’ he said. ‘Anyone would be in shock after finding what you did, but it’s also been compounded by missing parts of your life that have been abruptly severed — your father’s death and your mother moving away and starting a new life in which there is no place for you. Plus you don’t seem to be close to your sister, and your boyfriend rejected you, so really you’ve done a good job coping with everything. Don’t be so hard on yourself. By letting a lot of this stuff out, you’ll find some peace. I suspect that tonight you’ll have a deep, nightmare-free sleep.’

  When she went back to the store after her counselling session, Kay gave her a beaming smile.

  ‘There was a phone call for you.’

  Flick’s heart seemed to leap into her throat and hang there.

  ‘Who?’ she croaked.

  ‘Tim. I told him to ring you back at four.’

  ‘Great. Thanks, Kay,’ said Flick, trying to put some enthusi
asm into her voice.

  ‘He knows about the … um … well, you finding the torso. Your name was in all the major papers.’

  Flick knew about that, although the police had protected her from journalists wanting an interview, knowing full well that they would try to extract the ghoulish details and would probably embellish them to create a more sensational story. But, she couldn’t help thinking churlishly, if Tim had read about it in the Brisbane Courier, surely Kiev must have seen it too — that is, if he was still in Australia. Maybe he didn’t want anything to do with a girl who’d found a murder victim with the improbable name of Winter Knight.

  ‘Can you start getting the scones done for the Devonshire teas?’ asked Kay gently.

  Since the gruesome finding, Kay had treated Flick as if she was made of fragile porcelain and would snap in half at a terse word. Flick wasn’t sure what was worse: Angela’s constant cross-examining of what Kiev had said, Liz’s ice-maiden treatment, Braden’s braying about death, lost souls and fallen women, or Kay’s over-solicitous manner. They were all driving her up the wall.

  Flick started setting up for the Devonshire teas. She put out starched white cloths, and set the tables with fine china cups, saucers and plates, a silver sugar bowl and milk jug, and two little pots, one filled with Kay’s homemade strawberry jam and the other with whipped cream. The scones were cooling, wrapped in linen tea-towels. When the afternoon tour buses came in, Devonshire tea was included in the fare, so Kay, having been phoned by the drivers, knew exactly how many to cater for and when the buses were arriving, and was subsequently paid the amount due by the bus company. It was a fantastic arrangement, and as Kay said, much easier than doing assorted lunches.

  Roxie, a progressive and inventive worker, had suggested that lunch boxes be made up ready with salad rolls, cakes and fruit for the bus tour lunches, but that had proved too hard, because some people wanted ham, chicken or salami, some liked different kinds of cakes or fruit, some preferred hot meals, and some just wanted a bowl of soup or a bucket of chips, so the idea had been abandoned.

  Flick loved serving the Devonshire teas. Everything seemed so elegant, with the silver service and the white tablecloths. Kay’s scones were freshly baked, floury and light, the jam had real lumps of strawberry, and the cream was from the dairy down the road. The tables were always packed with customers.

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ Liz hissed in her ear as she hurried past with more pots.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘After the bus has gone we’ll ask Kay if we can take a short break,’ said Liz.

  ‘I don’t think she’ll give me a break. I’ve already had two hours off, what with the psychologist and lunch.’

  ‘All right. I’ll say it now. What are you going to do about Tim?’ Liz faced her across the expanse of tables with her hands on her hips.

  ‘Tim? Tell him the truth,’ said Flick.

  ‘Which is …?’

  ‘That a famous guy flirted with me and kissed me on the lips,’ Flick replied lightly. ‘It meant nothing. And anyway, we were being chaperoned by Sylvester the snake.’

  ‘So,’ said Liz slowly, ‘if Kiev walked through that door right now he would mean nothing?’

  God don’t strike me dead for lying, thought Flick as she looked steadily into Liz’s eyes. ‘No.’

  ‘Oh. I’m sorry, Flick. I really thought … the way you looked at him …’

  ‘Star-struck, that’s all.’

  Liz darted round the tables and gave Flick a big hug. ‘I’m so glad,’ she said. ‘I know Tim’s crazy about you, and if you did anything to hurt my brother I’d never forgive you.’

  ‘That’s a big call,’ said Flick, stiffening. ‘Look, Liz, I love Tim now, but I can’t guarantee how we’re gunna feel about each other in a year’s time.’

  ‘If it’s true love you’ll still feel the same,’ said Liz stubbornly. ‘Look at me and Josh. I fell in love with him when I was fourteen and I know people say it’s just puppy love and all that rubbish, but it’s not. He’s the guy I want to be with for the rest of my life. Romeo and Juliet fell in love when they were just teenagers.’

  ‘Yeah, and look what happened to them,’ said Kay, who was eavesdropping on the conversation from the doorway. ‘Dead. Now, would you two stop mooning round the place thinking about love and start thinking about work? How many times do I have to tell you? The bus is coming over the bridge right now and you haven’t even got the scones on the plates.’

  ‘Sorry, Kay.’

  Tania and Sophie were ordered to serve the other customers behind the counter and make cappuccinos. Flick fleetingly prayed that Sophie wouldn’t blow herself or anyone else up with the coffee machine and started putting scones on plates. Angela was strolling back from her break with her arms wrapped round Nathan, who was supposed to be on lifeguard duty. Liz nudged Flick as Nathan gave Angela a deeply passionate kiss in front of the disembarking busload of tourists.

  ‘On again, off again,’ said Flick drily. ‘And it looks like on again right now.’

  ‘You know, they actually suit each other.’ Liz watched as Angela limped into the store. Kay muttered something under her breath.

  ‘I went over on my ankle,’ said Angela, ‘and Nathan rescued me. Wasn’t that nice of him?’

  ‘Fabulous,’ said Kay. ‘And was that mouth-to-mouth resuscitation I just witnessed?’

  Angela giggled and limped over to the freezer, where she casually took out a packet of frozen peas, sat down on a chair behind the servery and applied the packet to her ankle.

  ‘I’d wrap them in a tea towel first,’ snapped Kay. ‘Or you might get frostbite.’ She tossed a tea towel over to Angela.

  ‘Oh goodneth,’ said Braden, coming into the kitchen. ‘Whath Angela done now?’

  ‘What do you mean now, you moron?’ A sore ankle wasn’t improving Angela’s temper. ‘Can someone make me a mug of tea?’

  But Kay, Flick and Liz didn’t have time to give tea and sympathy to Angela, because the customers were sitting at the tables and there were thirty Devonshire teas to do. Braden wisely butted out and went through to the coolroom to prepare the ingredients he and Nathan would need for the pizzas, to get more supplies to restock the fridges, and do his usual jobs.

  Once the bus-load departed, it was time for a quick cuppa. Angela’s ankle was inspected and since there was no swelling at all and not even a sign of any bruising, Kay pronounced Angela fit enough to do some work.

  Things had just settled when Rob came strolling through the door. Flick and Liz looked at each other and suppressed a groan.

  ‘News,’ he said with a triumphant glint in his beady eyes. ‘Guess what?’

  ‘What?’

  Kay winked at the girls. They always had to play this ‘guess what’ game with Rob. It was part of his power trip. But somehow he had access to the latest information and it was always correct, so it was worth playing his stupid game.

  ‘They’ve got the bloke who done in Wintry.’

  ‘You mean Winter, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah. Her. Some nutter who she’d been screwin’ done it. Sawed her up, put it all in the boot of his car, then chucked the bits over the cliff.’

  ‘So how come the arm was found round at the other point and the other, um, parts haven’t been found?’ Kay looked sceptical.

  ‘Dunno. Some bits must have landed in the sea an’ a shark ate ’em,’ said Rob as if he was talking about butcher’s scraps.

  He really was the creepiest person, but then sometimes he did come in useful for delivering pizzas when Kay was extra busy, although she always made him put on a clean T-shirt and shorts, and scrub his hands with a nailbrush and carbolic soap.

  ‘Ugh.’ Liz shuddered.

  Flick didn’t say a word. Mentally she was gently placing the mutilated pieces of Winter Knight in a velvet-lined coffin and saying a private little prayer for the woman who’d died so violently at the hands of a maniac.

  ‘But there’s more,’ said Rob import
antly, swaggering over to the drinks fridge and pulling out a bottle of Coke. He took off the top with his teeth, spat it into the bin and took a long swig from the bottle. Then he looked at Kay.

  ‘There’s a takeaway food van startin’ tomorrow. Across the road.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I just saw them puttin’ it there with me own eyes. Stick ya head out the door an’ take a look for yerself.’

  ‘But …’ Kay was aghast as she stared out at the large white van that had just been towed into position by a big truck. ‘That’s against the law. You can’t have a food van stuck in the middle of nowhere.’

  ‘This isn’t the middle of nowhere,’ Rob pointed out. ‘This is Coolini Beach, an’ it’s called free enterprise.’

  ‘They still have to get council approval,’ snapped Kay, marching to the phone and dialling furiously.

  The others quickly busied themselves with chores. Even Angela, sensing a big storm brewing, got off her chair and started checking the ice-cream fridge.

  ‘It’s true!’ Kay shouted, slamming down the phone. ‘Forget rules about fair trade. Forget ethics. Forget everything decent. The council’s given permission without even consulting me. I’ll just bet money changed hands. I’ll just bet it did. It’s illegal. I’ll sue. I’ll —’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Flick. ‘It’s a food van. You’ve got a general store and a cafe. Where’s the competition? Okay, so they might do a few burgers and hot dogs and ice-creams, but who cares? The people will come here, not go there. There is such a thing as customer loyalty, you know.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Kay, cheering up. ‘Why am I getting steamed up about nothing? And you, Rob, owe me for one Coke.’

  CHAPTER 5

  As the days progressed, however, Kay found that she had quite a bit to worry about.

  The hot food van sold pies, pasties, sausage rolls, hamburgers, and fish ’n’ chips, takeaway tea or coffee, ice-creams and cold drinks. They also sold a few chocolate bars and crisps.

  ‘Cheap and greasy,’ was Kay’s verdict when she walked back to the store from her trip up the road to inspect it.