by Gary Kemble
For some reason, when Phil had told him about the guy who jumped in front of the train, Harry had imagined it happening in Central Station. Maybe it was him harking back to his time in London, when it wasn’t unusual for trains to be delayed due to ‘body on tracks’. But it wasn’t like that at all. It happened out at Ipswich, west of Brisbane. Chris Lawrence had been on his way home from Walloon Quarry, where he worked as a blasting technician, AKA a powder monkey. Witnesses say his ute pulled up at a railway crossing as the boom gates came down. He put the ute in park, switched on his hazard lights and got out. He stood on the road as the crossing lights flashed and the bells rang. Just before the coal train reached the crossing, he sprinted around the boom gates and threw himself in front of the train. The driver didn’t even have time to sound the horn, let alone hit the brakes. Wouldn’t have mattered anyway; at that speed, the train needed three-quarters of a kilometre to stop. Police found his note on the passenger seat: I give my life for the Goddess. Same as the others.
Harry looked up from his computer, thinking about Chris and his sprint in front of the train. Clear blue sky, yellowing grass on the sides of the road, someone cursing as he made his dash. He thought about what Lily Sweeney had said to him about men being so easy to control.
John Moncrieff had also lived out west. Actually not too far from Chris, although according to the police reports, they’d never met. John had been a cattle farmer, but his sons didn’t want anything to do with diesel and dust. They’d moved away to Sydney and Melbourne. John’s wife had died three months previously. He had no close friends, and lived on the edge of a small town. The neighbours – if you could call people living a kilometre away neighbours – said the Moncrieffs were friendly enough but kept to themselves. One of the them had seen John in town a few months prior to his wife dying. Said they were looking at selling up. The local cops said he’d been saying that for years and had never done anything about it, hadn’t even got a valuation done on the property.
The sons returned for the funeral but didn’t stay long, and didn’t seem fussed on selling the old farm house. Neither of them could explain the note he’d left, about giving his life for the Goddess. The best they could guess was that he’d gone a bit loopy over losing their mum.
Harry squinted at the police notebook. The page had been scanned in but no-one had transcribed it. The notes said the sons didn’t seem that upset, but when asked what their dad had been like, were non-committal.
‘Just the usual,’ one of them said. ‘Bit strict.’
Harry rose from the desk and stretched his legs. Had Lily Sweeney found all these men at the gentlemen’s club? Zak, definitely. The cop, yeah maybe. And while Chris had been out west, Ipswich was only a forty-minute drive away. Harry could see a young guy like Chris wanting to let loose in the big smoke every now and then. But John Moncrieff? Didn’t seem to fit. Older guy. Wife dead. Maybe that pushed him over the edge.
He returned to the desk and scrolled back through the reports, looking for dates. Six weeks. It had all happened over the course of six weeks. Harry thought again about Lily Sweeney. Was she really responsible for this? Or was it just a coincidence that they’d all visited her? He didn’t have any proof she had cut them. There could be another connecting factor he couldn’t see.
Harry went to the bathroom and turned on the shower. He undressed, his body stiff. Goose bumps rose on his flesh. He stepped into the shower and let the hot water pound him.
Jeffrey Stafford was the odd one out. The only one who’d been harmed, rather than taking his own life. Harry needed to talk to his wife, if he could. Anthony Gillespie was another odd one out. He was still alive, although locked up tight. And of course, Don Clack, alive and on the loose. Harry should probably tell Phil about him, or tell Lee-Anne. Warn her. But he wanted a bit more time to try to figure out what was going on. Stafford needed to be his first priority.
* * *
Harry sat in the car, took a deep breath, and looked up at the house. It was a high set, looked like something that had been thrown up in the eighties. Double garage underneath, both doors down. The lawn, framed by garden beds full of wilting roses, was dry and unkempt. He wondered if looking after the garden was one of Jeff’s jobs. He wondered if his wife – he checked his notes – Kala, used to nag him about it.
You’re stalling. Get on with it.
He hadn’t had to do many death knocks in his time. While he was at the Chermside Chronicle, most of the deaths had been expected, such was the demographic. He got out of the car, prepared what he had to say. The mission brown stairs creaked as he climbed them. At the top was a rusty screen door. On the left of the landing was a window, with Thomas the Tank Engine curtains. Harry tapped on the door, and peered into the dim interior. A woman emerged from the gloom, walking on the balls of her feet. She had a finger to her lips.
‘Hello?’ she whispered. ‘I’ve just put the little one down.’ Her eyes were red, dirty blonde hair hanging down the sides of her face. She held one hand protectively on the door handle, as though Harry might try to barge in at any moment.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Kala Stafford?’
‘Yes?’ She peered past Harry, down to the street.
‘My name is Harry Hendrick, I’m a reporter . . .’
‘No. No, not interested.’ She started to close the door, then paused. ‘Did you say Harry Hendrick?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re the one who . . .’
‘Yep.’ Harry smiled. It could go either way. Since the election, he’d found the split about fifty-fifty. Half the people who recognised him still thought he’d made it all up; the other half wanted to buy him a beer.
Kala stared at him and blinked a couple of times. ‘What do you want?’
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ Harry said. And he meant it. ‘I wanted to talk to you about Jeff.’
‘Are you doing a story on him?’
Harry pointedly stared at the window with the Thomas curtains. ‘Might be better if I came in,’ he said.
A fragile smile formed on Kala’s lips. She opened the screen door and invited Harry into a lounge room dominated by a large TV and a tattered red sofa.
‘Can I offer you a drink?’ Kala said. She rubbed her eyes.
Harry waved it away. ‘No, but thank you.’
She gestured to the sofa. Harry took a seat. He felt something hard. He reached around and pulled out a Thomas the Tank Engine DVD and handed it to Kala.
‘He can’t get enough of the damn things,’ she said, and put it on a coffee table crammed with old magazines, kids’ books, and a half-eaten mandarin. There were pieces of dried-out peel on the stained brown carpet.
‘I’ve already spoken to the police,’ Harry said. ‘They said they couldn’t see any reason why Anthony would’ve wanted to hurt your husband. Is that true?’
‘Yeah, I mean they worked together. Jeff would come home bitching about him from time to time, but you know how it is. Just sounds like a . . . like a . . .’ She held the tissue to her mouth, as though trying to hold the grief in, but it bubbled out anyway. A tear ran down her cheek. ‘I don’t know what happened. From what the cops told me, sounds like Ant had a brain snap.’ She shook her head, willing it away.
‘How was Jeff in the days leading up to . . . his death?’
‘Ah, y’know, he was fine. Cops wanted to know the same thing. I had trouble remembering anything specific about him. The days just blend into one another. That’s how normal it’s been.’
Harry thought about Don Clack, union official, trying to give the stripper a lap dance. And about what Lee-Anne had told him, about his behaviour in the bedroom, wanting to cover his marks.
‘Any unusual behaviour?’ Harry said.
Kala sighed. ‘I just told you. No. Well, not lately.’
‘Not lately?’
‘Are you going to print this?’
Harry considered. ‘I don’t know. How about this? I don’t think I’ll need to. But if I do, I’ll
come back to you and get your permission. You’ll have final say.’
Kala stared at the blank TV screen. ‘I don’t see what this has to do with what happened anyway.’
Harry waited. She wanted to talk to someone about it, otherwise she wouldn’t have raised it.
‘He had some issues earlier this year. He got all weird.’
‘In what way?’
Kala sighed. ‘I thought he was having an affair. He went on a boys’ night out. He was all quiet the next day, like distant. I let it go. Told myself I was being stupid. Then a couple of weeks later, he was fixing the car, leaning over the bonnet. And I saw blood on the back of his shirt. Spots of blood.’
She closed her eyes and put one hand to the side of her face. ‘He didn’t want to talk about it. He got really defensive. So when he had his shower that night I used a five-cent piece to get into the bathroom. He had cuts all over his back.’
‘All over?’
‘Like, lines. About an inch long. Four, maybe five of them. Sort of in a circular pattern.’ She stared at Harry.
He looked at his notebook and waited.
Kala took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘I . . . that’s about it.’
‘What happened?’ Harry said. ‘When you saw the cuts.’
She pushed her hair back on her forehead. She was sweating. ‘I’m sorry . . . I don’t really want to . . . I shouldn’t have . . .’
Harry shuffled closer to her. ‘Kala. This is important. I think your husband may have been murdered . . .’
‘By Anthony? Bullshit!’
‘No. Well, not exactly.’ Harry closed his eyes for a moment, thinking about the best way of putting it. ‘I think Anthony may have been coerced. And I think the person responsible is also responsible for those cuts on your husband’s back. If you decide that you’ve had enough, that’s fine. And I’m really sorry to have to ask you. But if there is anything else you can tell me . . .’
Kala cried silently, staring into her lap. She grabbed a tissue and blew her nose. ‘Jeff broke down. Collapsed in the shower. Bawling his eyes out. I got in there with him, I was so worried. When he’d calmed down enough to talk to me, he said he’d been stressed out. More than stressed out. Depressed. He’d been having this treatment where they cut his back. Some new-age bullshit. But he was over it, he said, it was over. It wasn’t working. Said he just had to visit his therapist one more time to let her know . . .’
She shook her head again. ‘And I thought, he’s not telling me the truth. This sounds like an affair. But the cuts? What sort of weird shit was that? Anyway, he goes to meet her. Comes home. Seems rattled but okay. Next day, he tells me we’re going on a second honeymoon.’
She noticed Harry’s expression. ‘Yep. A week at Noosa. Some fancy resort. He’s organised to send the little tyke to his parents. Don’t worry about the money, he says, he’s been putting a little aside for it.’
‘Was it your anniversary?’
‘Not even close. I decided to just go with it. I figured he might open up to me, and tell me the full story. But no.’
‘So what happened?’
‘We went away for a week. We spent the week either getting smashed out of our skulls or . . .’ she looked down, ‘you know. It was like when we first met. It was exciting . . . a bit scary.’
‘What happened when you got home?’
‘He wasn’t back to his old self, but he was close. In some ways better. I think . . . no one likes to think they’ve been cheated on . . . but I think that’s what it was all about. That still doesn’t explain the cuts though.’
* * *
When Harry returned home he checked his email. There was one from Lee-Anne Stewart. He opened it and saw a WinZip folder attached. She’d come through for him.
There was another email from Johnny. The news there wasn’t so good. He’d spoken to his friend, and his friend was too scared to go public.
Harry’s phone rang. He looked at the screen but it wasn’t a number he recognised.
‘Hello?’
‘Is this Harry Hendrick?’ A woman’s voice.
‘Yes.’
‘This is Agnes Rowe, Principal of St Therese. I was wondering if you’d like to come to the school for a chat?’
‘A chat? Or an interview?’ Harry said.
‘I’m happy with either, if you’re happy to make an appintment.’
‘Sure.’ Harry checked his calendar. ‘How about Thursday?’
They agreed on a time that suited both of them. ‘I look forward to seeing you then.’
On a whim, Harry looked up the charity that Marcus Wilson, the alleged paedophile cop, was involved with. He wasn’t expecting to find much about Wilson. But when he navigated to the ‘About Us’ page he found a short bio, including an email contact. He cut and pasted the address into an email, and thought about what he wanted to ask. Clearly ‘Are you a paedophile and rapist?’ wasn’t the right approach.
Dear Mr Wilson,
I’m working on an article about the floods and the recovery effort, and wanted to see if I could interview you about some of the work you did during that period.
Yours sincerely,
Harry Hendrick
* * *
Given Harry’s reputation, it was likely Wilson would drop him a line, even if just to shut him down. It didn’t matter. At some point Harry was going to have to get his response to the allegations being made against him, so Harry may as well set the wheels in motion.
CHAPTER 20
Harry sat at the dining room table, headphones on, typing out Johnny’s interview. Like every other time he’d done this, the words never had the same impact they did on the first occasion. He’d distanced himself, now they were just words, looking for a narrative. As he typed, he made note of possible quotes. It was deplorable that such human suffering would fit into a mould, but there it was. There were only so many stories out there, repeated over and over again. This particular one had been told so many times, with so many victims and perpetrators. That was the only sad thing.
The small heater under the table was whirring away, only just keeping Harry’s toes warm. He could see golden sunlight shining through the front windows, and had promised himself a coffee on the front steps once he’d finished this task.
Harry typed away, thinking not of the words themselves anymore, but of other things. Mostly Bec. She still hadn’t called him. Hadn’t returned any of his messages or texts over the weekend. He was torn. Part of him was angry. This was one dinner, one time. In their previous life, she’d accused him of being unambitious. And here he was, chasing a story, and she wasn’t talking to him. The news, unfortunately, rarely followed a nine-to-five pattern. The other half of him wanted to do whatever was necessary to make things work with her.
A notification popped up. An email from Marcus Wilson.
Hi Harry,
Yeah, shouldn’t be a problem. My schedule is pretty jam-packed but we should be able to work something out. Do you want to do it over the phone or in person?
Marcus
Harry replied that in person was preferable.
Something caught Harry’s attention from the corner of his eye. Something small and black, sitting on the floorboards. He looked over – there was nothing there. The tattoo on the back of his neck stung. He needed a break. Johnny kept speaking in his ears. He rewound the file, hit play, and kept typing.
The black spot loomed again. This time, when he looked over, he saw a pair of women’s shoes sitting outside the door to his room. Black patent leather. High heels. Pointed toes. Harry blinked, rubbed his eyes. Sweat beaded on his forehead.
‘Hello?’
His voice echoed, but there was no response. It was possible someone was in his room. Someone had climbed in through the window, and snuck the shoes out into the hallway when he wasn’t looking. It was possible he was going crazy. He rubbed his arms, but the goosebumps were nothing to do with the chill. The previous year, he’d been convinced for a good while that he was
going insane. He wanted to put that behind him.
He got up quietly from his chair, crept across the floor. He half expected the shoes to disappear. But they refused to budge.
‘Hello?’
No response. As he neared his room, he saw that it wasn’t just shoes. They sat outside his room. Just inside were two black stockings lying on the floor like snake skins. Seams up their backs, toes pointing to the bed. He could smell her perfume – and another musky, altogether older and more organic, smell. He felt a stirring in his pants.
In his mind’s eye he saw her, stretched out on the bed, pale skin, dark hair. She stretched like a cat, let one hand trail over a breast. Her eyes closed in ecstasy as she pleasured herself.
Saw himself, tied up with the stockings, kissing the shoes. Crawling towards her. Crawling . . .
Harry blinked. He was on the floor in his bedroom. On his knees, pants around his ankles. Cock bobbing up and down. He turned, as though waking from a dream. No shoes. No black stockings. No naked dominatrix on his bed. It was only then that he noticed his phone ringing, on the dining table.
Harry stood, pulled up his pants and answered the phone.
‘Harry?’
He’d been expecting Bec. But no, it was Sandy.
‘Sandy. How . . . how’s things?’ Harry zipped up. He still felt dazed, as though he had just woken.
‘Me? I’m fine. It’s you I’m worried about.’
Harry sat down at the table, then remembered how cold it was. He took the phone out to the sunroom, opened the front door and sat in the sunlight.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. I’m getting bad vibes about you, Harry.’
‘You really know how to make a guy feel good about himself, Sandy.’
She grunted. He had no idea what she was doing, but he imagined her in her garden, weeding, clutching the phone to her shoulder with the side of her head, Mt Tibrogargan in the background. It was a comforting image.