The Evil Twin

by Sam King

  “There!” she said, and handed it to Jean.

  Jean frowned, staring at the blackened ruin of the device. “It was on here?” she said.

  “It might still be.” Michael sounded concerned. “It’s difficult to destroy that type of information.”

  “Can I keep it, then?”

  “No,” Susan mouthed, and reached for it.

  Jean frowned at her. “What is it, Susan? What’s on it? I need to speak to Martin Lockheed about it, but I need to see it too.” She turned the iPad over. “What are you trying to hide?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Of course not, Jean.”

  “I see.” She hesitated, glanced at Michael, and then said, “Could I get a bag to put this in?”

  “Of course, Jean,” he said. He turned to walk back into the house.

  Jean glanced at her angrily. “I thought you were my friend.”

  Chapter 34

  In the kitchen, everything was confusion. Both boys were up. Luke had the dishwasher open and Tom was toasting bread. Michael reached for a plastic bag and then took the device from Jean. Tom turned and saw the iPad. His eyes widened. He glanced at Susan.

  Be careful what you say now, she thought.

  Michael tied the plastic bag, though as he was doing this, Luke became aware of what was happening. He blanched, staring first at his father and then at Jean.

  No one said a word. Jean reached for the bag, took it from Michael, and then turned it over in her hands. She looked shaken, but gathered herself in a few moments.

  “Tom?” she said to Luke. “I need to speak to you.”

  “I’m Tom,” Tom said, turning from the toaster.

  “Well, perhaps I need to speak to both of you.”

  “Luke wasn’t there,” Susan said, all but spitting the words.

  “Well — maybe, but even so, he might be able to shed some light on things.”

  “We have no problem with you talking to them,” Michael said.

  Jean nodded. “Perhaps I could speak to Tom alone.”

  “Of course you can.” He turned to Tom. “Tom. Leave that.”

  Tom’s toast popped up just at that moment. He turned away from it reluctantly.

  “In the lounge room, Jean?” Michael said.

  “Could we go down to the play room. I really want to map things out in my mind.”

  “Of course.”

  Michael walked out of the room with Jean and Tom in tow. Susan turned to Luke.

  “She won’t really want to speak to me, will she, Mum?”

  “I don’t think so. I’ll tell her again you didn’t see anything.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I know that.” She hesitated. “But you have seen the film.” She lowered her voice. “Did you tell Martin about it?”

  He stared at her for a moment and then lowered his eyes. “Tom did.”

  “What did he say?”

  “I don’t know. He was laughing about it.”

  “It isn’t something to laugh about, Luke.”

  “I know that.” He looked on the verge of tears again, but she was too angry to give him a hug.

  Michael walked back into the kitchen.

  “I need to use the bathroom,” she said.

  She stole into the hall and crossed it to the stairs. Then she crept down them, careful not to make a sound, until she could hear Tom’s voice.

  “He was spreading rumours about me.”

  “Rumours?”

  “He said I sucked Martin’s cock.”

  “And you didn’t?”

  “It was Luke.”

  Moments of silence followed. Then Jean said, “Show me where you were standing.”

  “I was over here, by the radio. I was switching stations.”

  “And where was Jude?”

  “He had the toy cupboard open, and he was standing in front of it.”

  “How? Like this?”

  “Yes, but be careful. He pulled it down on top of himself.”

  “The whole cupboard?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t hit him, did you?”

  “Hit him? No.”

  “And you didn’t encourage him to swallow the toy?”

  “Of course not. He did that himself. I didn’t say a word.”

  “You didn’t say a word?”

  “No. Nothing.” He sounded close to tears now. “You can read the police report.”

  “I have read it. But I’m not sure it’s accurate. You and Luke had a set against Jude, didn’t you?”

  “A set?”

  “You didn’t like him.”

  Silence. But she could imagine Tom turning this over. “It’s not as though I murdered him.”

  “No?”

  “I’ve told you what happened. I was fiddling with the radio. When I turned around, he was choking.”

  “But why would he put a toy in his mouth?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “He was always doing stupid things.”

  “He wasn’t a stupid boy.”

  Silence.

  “He wasn’t, Tom.”

  “Maybe.”

  “He was a good boy.”

  “I know that.”

  “You did something to him, didn’t you?”

  She felt that this had to end. Jean was openly accusing him. She took a few definite steps down the stairs and into the room.

  “How’re you going?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I’m any clearer on what happened.” She hesitated. “Could I speak to Luke?”

  “Luke was with me.”

  “I know that, but perhaps he knows something.”

  “What is there to know, Jean?”

  “You tell me.”

  Susan stared at her for the space of a few moments and then gripped Tom. “Come on,” she said. She walked upstairs and found Luke and then told him Jean wanted to speak to him. She trailed downstairs with him again.

  “I was with Mum,” Luke began. “I didn’t see anything.”

  “I know that, but perhaps you heard something. Or perhaps someone’s said something.”

  Luke shook his head determinedly.

  Jean began to question him on his movements, but it was just as Susan remembered things.

  “That’s precisely what happened,” she said.

  Jean nodded slowly, obviously unconvinced. She turned to the shelf and picked up the plastic-wrapped iPad. “I’ll get the film off this,” she said.

  Chapter 35

  Susan spent the next few hours lying on her bed, wondering if Jean would be able to retrieve the film from the iPad or not. Then it occurred to her that something was wrong. Jean said Martin had seen the film. Martin had slept over on Thursday evening, which meant he couldn’t have seen it, at least not then. And in fact there would have been no time in which anyone could have seen it. She had kept a close watch on the iPad until it was burnt.

  She turned this over in her mind for a few minutes, certain she had the circumstances right. Even so, she didn’t feel easy. In her mind’s eye she watched the iPad blacken and buckle all over again, but somehow it wasn’t enough. The film still might be on it. Jean might be able to retrieve it, and if that happened, well, she didn’t like to think of the consequences.

  Could she possibly break into Jean’s house and steal it? Perhaps this evening? She pictured herself in black, in the dark, breaking a window, and then guffawed. No, that wouldn’t be possible.

  She turned over and suddenly realised what had happened. She caught a brief glimpse of an iPad lying on Luke’s floor the other morning and understood all at once that the boys had switched iPads on her. The covers were interchangeable. Luke must have been showing Martin something, and she guessed it was the film.

  But how? When?

  She remembered knocking on Tom’s door Wednesday morning. He’d been showing Luke the film. And then after
wards, Luke had walked out of his room with Tom’s iPad, which must have been his, simply with the dark blue cover clipped onto it.

  Hell, she thought.

  She got up quickly, and as she did, she remembered failing to find the film on the iPad she’d burnt. All she’d found was a few photos of Martin Lockheed. And they must have in fact been Tom’s photos. And it must have in fact been Tom who had done what Luke had been accused of at school. Nothing else made sense.

  She marched furiously along the hallway and rapped on Tom’s door.

  “Tom! Tom! Open the door!”

  Silence.

  Michael emerged from the study, and she turned to him, feeling distraught. No matter how things turned out, he couldn’t be allowed to see the film.

  Tom opened the door.

  “I want your iPad.”

  “My iPad.”

  “I’m confiscating it.”

  “What’s this about?” Michael said.

  “He’s changed the code, so I can only suppose he’s hiding something.”

  “Are you hiding something, Tom?”

  “Mum’s losing the plot.”

  “What?”

  “You’re losing the plot.”

  “Give me the pad.”

  Tom turned into his room and retrieved the iPad from his desk, the iPad that in fact must have been Luke’s. He handed it to her, a tongue pushed into his cheek.

  “Took you a while to work it out, didn’t it, Mum?”

  She took it angrily. Her overriding concern was to delete the film, but with Michael standing beside her this wasn’t possible. She took it into her sewing room and locked it into the filing cabinet. Even if she did have time to delete it now, she didn’t know the code. She’d have to get that out of him also, or burn this pad as well — as it was.

  She felt as though she was going crazy. She slipped the key into her bra, something she never did, and turned back into the hall.

  “Maybe we could have a cup of tea,” Michael said.

  She nodded, frazzled. “You can get ready,” she said to Tom.

  “Ready?”

  “We’re going over to Grandma Ellen’s.”

  Chapter 36

  Ellen answered the door on her sticks, looking a little less frail than she had the other day. She was bewildered to see them, and perhaps she’d been resting, but when Susan told her they’d come to do the garden she brightened up.

  “Oh, you are good boys,” she said.

  Both of them smiled.

  After ten or fifteen minutes of talk, they trailed out to back shed as a family, with Ellen on the veranda. Every gardening tool they could possibly have needed was neatly arranged, and within a few minutes they were all at work.

  The soil was sodden after the rain, with a deep, loamy smell, and it turned easily. The weeds weren’t as bad as Ellen had made out, but the day was humid and hot. Within a few minutes Susan was perspiring madly. She turned the fork around the roses, bent forward, and then plunged it deep. She went off to the house in search of water, and ended up spending the next hour or so talking to Ellen on the veranda.

  The boys moved to the front and she walked through the house with Ellen. They stood on the front veranda for a while while Ellen called out the odd direction to Michael and the boys.

  Then she said, “How about some afternoon tea?”

  This sounded like a wonderful idea.

  In the kitchen, she buttered some scones, cut some cake, and made some sandwiches. Ellen puttered around, fussing over the tea, but it was obviously difficult for her to manage much with the sticks.

  Michael and the boys came in.

  “Wonderful job,” Ellen said, “but wash your hands. We have afternoon tea ready.”

  They disappeared into the bathroom and Susan smiled at Ellen. It was so nice to be here, so nice to have the family all together. Something about Ellen made her feel comforted, as though everything would be all right.

  They ate in the lounge room, Ellen on the straight-backed chair again and Michael on her recliner. Susan sat on the lounge with the boys, the afternoon tea spread before them on the coffee table.

  “It’s a terrible thing to have a death in the family,” Ellen suddenly said when the conversation flagged.

  Michael said, “We haven’t had a death in the family.”

  Ellen waved him down. “In the home, I mean.”

  “Oh — you mean Jude. You know about that?”

  “Susan told me.”

  “Luke killed him,” Tom said. “He murdered him deliberately.”

  Luke lashed out at Tom, striking him on the chest with an open hand. Tom gripped his wrist and tried to hold him back, but Luke was furious. A few moments later, the boys were on the floor, locked in a wrestling hold. Michael bent over them and hauled Luke up, though Luke managed to get in a final kick.

  “Sorry,” Susan said.

  “But what a stupid thing to say, Tom.” Ellen looked dismayed. “You don’t joke about murder.”

  “I wasn’t joking. He’s a killer.”

  “You are.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re a fuck.”

  “I don’t go around trying to steal paintings — or sucking other boys’ …”

  “That was you, Tom,” Susan said. “I’m sure that was you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. You’ve got some hold over Luke, haven’t you? He told Mr Mason it was him, but it was you, wasn’t it?”

  Tom turned away, but he looked chastened. Obviously it had been him. Luke wouldn’t do such a thing. But both boys were red in the face now and they had to go. They said goodbye to Ellen and made their way out to the car.

  “Tom, you need to stop this nonsense,” Michael said as they were pulling away. “That boy died as a result of a tragic accident, and it isn’t the sort of thing you make a joke of.”

  “Yes, Dad,” Tom said.

  Chapter 37

  That evening, while Michael was taking a shower, Susan stole into the sewing room and then reached into her bra for the key to the filing cabinet. It wasn’t there. She had lost it gardening this afternoon, she finally decided, after she’d walked into the master bedroom and taken off her bra.

  So now the iPad was locked in the filing cabinet and there was no key.

  She slept fitfully that night. Every few minutes she woke and turned over. She saw Jude’s face again, rearing up at her, and the photos she’d seen of Martin Lockheed, of him smiling. She pictured Tom laughing at her, and Luke crying. And at three a.m., unable to bear more of it, she got up.

  She sat in the kitchen over a cup of tea and cried. She felt as though her life were falling apart. By six a.m. she was dry-eyed and staring at the wall. She decided to gather herself and made a second pot of tea. Then she set about thinking.

  The iPad was locked in the filing cabinet which meant it was safe enough, at least for the moment. Later today, she would try to get it open. Then she would delete the film and burn the iPad. That made sense. Jean wouldn’t come back again today, and even if she did, only Tom (and probably now Luke) knew where the iPad was. Michael had watched her confiscate it, but he hadn’t realised the significance. If he saw Jean again, it might occur to him.

  At a few minutes after eight, the boys came down for breakfast. It was Monday again, which seemed incredible. This time last week her life had been a comparative bliss it now seemed. Everything had crashed down on them on Tuesday, and perhaps by next week, things would be back to normal again, or would they ever be normal? She didn’t know.

  She drove the boys to school and then searched for tools in the garage. Michael wasn’t much of a handyman, but she found a file, a screwdriver and a hacksaw. She supposed she’d make do with those.

  Upstairs, it proved hopeless. She spent more than an hour trying to pry the drawer open, but it was no good. She needed a professional, some sort of handyman.

  She walked downstairs and found the local paper. There was somebody called “Odd Jobs Pete,” and
she phoned him. She explained about the filing cabinet, but he was talking to someone in the background at the same time. He said he could come tomorrow, at around three, and she said that would be fine. She rang off.

  That afternoon, when the boys came in, she was sitting in the kitchen once again. She made them a fresh pot of tea and cut some cake. She really needed to get baking again. Ordinarily she baked something on a Monday, but she’d done nothing today, simply sat and stared, it seemed.

  “Martin’s gone to Italy,” Tom said.