by Anni Taylor
“They must’ve been filming from the balcony straight across from ours.” The tall dark guy beamed.
The girl in the tight dress turned.
She had Phoebe’s face.
But she couldn’t be Phoebe.
“There’s that chick you porked,” the fat guy snorted. “She got out of there fast after we showed up.”
My brain refused to catch up with what was happening on the screen. My thoughts stuck in wet cement.
A voiceover began on the TV while the scenes repeated in a loop.
In the latest of a series of bizarre incidents, Phoebe Basko—the mother of missing Sydney toddler Tommy Basko—was seen cavorting half-naked with a group of notorious American pickup artists. The men are here to run seminars that instruct men on how to pick up women for sex.
Just days ago, Phoebe Basko was taken away by police from a Cremorne-bound ferry for accosting an elderly woman. Mrs Basko reportedly believed that the woman was sending her kidnapper-style letters about her missing son. This belief was found by police to be baseless.
Last week, Mrs Basko and her husband, Luke, received three letters in rhyme about their son, Tommy, and the day he disappeared from a Sydney playground. Police investigations have so far been unable to uncover the identity of the writer of these letters.
Pictures of Phoebe flashed on the screen. Pictures of Tommy.
Citrone threw up his hands as he turned back to his friends. “Her name’s Phoebe? And she’s married? And she’s got a missing son? Fuck, I had no idea. Explains why she was so secretive.”
Dots connected in my head, each point firing and exploding.
The man standing beside me had sex with my wife. And who knows how many of the others she’d slept with? But I had one name for certain. Dash Citrone. It was Phoebe he’d been texting.
By the time I pulled myself to my feet, I could no longer think or breathe. Swinging my clenched fist, I punched Citrone in the jaw. He crashed backward over the stool.
Arms grabbed me from behind. “Luke! Leave it alone!” Rob wrestled me away.
I should have been grateful that Rob was pulling me towards the exit. Because I wanted to smash Citrone into the ground until there was nothing left of him.
Rob insisted on driving me home, telling me he’d go back to the bar and smooth things over and make sure that Citrone didn’t lay charges.
Finally, I agreed. Rob was right. Something like this could blow up bigger than Ben Hur. Especially if the media got hold of it. Our company could be affected.
What the hell was Phoebe doing in a hotel room with American pickup artists? Was it an attempt to get back at me?
Rob dropped me outside my house.
I should have headed straight inside. But the rage I felt inside kept me there on the street. As Rob pulled away, I took out my phone, my mind raging, calling Phoebe every name under the sun as I tried repeatedly to get her on the phone. As I expected, she didn’t answer. If she wasn’t with Citrone anymore, where was she? Out partying with other men?
My chest sank as I turned and walked to my gate.
Something was in the mailbox. I realised I hadn’t checked the mail since last Thursday. I pushed the mailbox key in and retrieved three letters. Two bills and one plain envelope.
One plain blue envelope.
Phoebe wouldn’t, would she? She wouldn’t send yet another letter?
The answer came to me.
Yes, she would.
My wife was batshit crazy.
I tore the envelope open. And unfolded the thick blue paper inside.
My knees buckled when I saw what was on the page. I fell to my hands and knees, vomiting into the garden.
40.
PHOEBE
Sunday afternoon
I WALKED THE BUSY CITY STREET, barely feeling the cold air on my bare legs. I wasn’t wearing the tights that I’d been wearing when I left Nan’s house this morning. I’d dressed in a flash when Dash’s crowd had turned up.
God, they were pickup artists. Why hadn’t I guessed? Or at least found out Dash’s full name and looked him up. I’d been too focused on my own things.
Switching on my phone, I smiled at a text from Dash: Change of heart. Need to see you again. Tomorrow? Please?
He’d sent the message half an hour ago. I’d been making my way through the city since I left his hotel, and I was about to enter the playground. Normally, I avoided this area—the anxiety attacks that it triggered made me visibly tremble.
But I needed to remember more about the phone calls. After grabbing a coffee and croissant from a café, I continued on to the water play canals. The area was largely empty, the rain having driven most families away. And night was drawing in fast. In July, night fell by five. Only a scattering of children and their parents wandered through the playground.
Sitting at the edge of one of the canals, in the exact place where I’d last seen Tommy, I set my coffee and paper bag down beside me. I slipped off my shoes and let my toes slide down into the frigid water. Tommy had played with his yacht here. People stared at the strange woman sticking her feet in the water on a winter’s day, but I didn’t care.
I watched the tiny, trickling stream. Desperately trying to remember the voice on the phone that day six months ago. I ate a portion of the croissant and tossed the uneaten part to the pigeons.
I became aware of people on the edges of the playground that didn’t seem like parents or tourists. They were looking for someone.
One of them looked my way and froze.
Suddenly, I knew who they were looking for.
They jogged straight towards me, as though I was about to flee instead of sitting here quietly with my shoes off. Something about them told me they were police. Plainclothes police.
Something was wrong. Something new and terrifying.
The shorter of the two reached me first. “Mrs Basko? Phoebe Basko?”
“Yes?”
“I’m Detective Gillian Farley. And this is Detective Kelsey Donahue.” She gestured towards the second woman who’d arrived. “We’d like you to come down to the station with us. There’s an urgent matter.”
“About Tommy?”
Detective Farley eyed the other detective before looking back at me. “I’m afraid we don’t have any information about this. Detective Gilroy needs to see you. That’s all we know.”
This wasn’t about Tommy directly. It was about me. Was it the phone call from six months ago? Had they worked out who was at the other end of the call?
Holding my breath, I gave a sharp nod. I walked with them to their car—unmarked, of course. It was obvious to me that they knew exactly why I was being brought in. It was obvious in every attempt they made to talk about the weather and the jazz festival as Detective Farley drove the busy city roads.
I refused to talk.
I’d had enough of games.
There was an eeriness about the police station when I walked inside with the detectives. Everything seemed to be swept up, everything concentrated on one point. And that one point centred on me. The faces of the police throughout the station turned to me as I was escorted by the two detectives into the interview room. Elliot—Kate’s husband—was one of the constables behind the counter today. I avoided his face.
Three detectives with deadpan expressions waited inside the interview room. Trent Gilroy, Annabelle Yarris and Ali Haleemi.
I knew all their names, like characters in a TV series.
Luke was there, too. Just like another character. He eyed me with the same deadly serious expression as the detectives. Nothing like a husband would look at a wife. No sense of familiarity there.
What was happening? Why wouldn’t anyone tell me? What was it that had dragged Trent Gilroy into the station on a Sunday?
Trent asked me to take a seat. “Phoebe, I’m going to ask you a question, and then I’m going to ask you to look at something.”
I seated myself without answering.
“Firstly, the question,
” he said. “Did you send another letter?”
Was he testing me in some way? Or was there really, actually, another letter? I shook my head.
“Are you certain?”
“Why are you asking me?”
“Because of this.” He turned his laptop computer around so that I could see the screen.
I cried out loud.
An image of a piece of blue paper with fold marks.
A rhyme, like the others.
But more than that.
A large splash of dried blood—droplets of it sprayed across the printed words.
My stomach gripped itself as I turned my head, bile shooting into the back of my throat.
“Forensics has already made a number of findings about the blood,” Trent continued in a matter-of-fact tone. “Is there anything you want to tell us about the blood on this letter?”
“God, please don’t let it be Tommy’s.”
“We’ve run tests,” Trent said. “I have to tell you that it is Tommy’s blood.”
I covered my mouth with both hands, scarcely able to breathe.
Tommy’s blood.
I stared across at Luke. He stared back, his eyes grown fierce.
Trent watched the exchange between Luke and me and then spoke again. “The next thing I have to tell you is that the blood is not fresh. It’s old. The lab says it could be as many as six months old.”
Six months.
My eyes tracked back to the computer screen as I realised I hadn’t yet read the rhyme:
Little Boy Blue
Lie down to sleep
Unwanted baby
Rest in peace
A raw, physical pain tore through my body.
Rest in peace.
Tommy wasn’t supposed to be resting in peace. He was a little boy.
In desperation, I looked to Luke again.
There was no comfort in Luke.
No warm place in this room.
“Phoebe,” came Trent’s voice. “Your doctor is on her way here. I need to tell you that the case with these letters has now taken a very different turn.”
“Wait,” I cried, “you have a camera. You can see who put the letter there. You can see for yourself.”
By the look on Detective Haleemi’s face, I could tell there was a problem. “We took the camera away yesterday,” he told me. “We didn’t believe that it was needed anymore.”
Trent walked across to stand in front of me. “Forget the camera, Phoebe. We’ve already been through all that. We’d like to ask you some questions. I’ll inform you of your rights first. You have the right to remain silent and engage a lawyer before you communicate with us again.”
41.
PHOEBE
Sunday night
I WAS INSTRUCTED NOT TO LEAVE my neighbourhood. The police were in the process of gathering evidence. I wasn’t under arrest, but in all possibility, it was a matter of time before I was.
The process of searching the two houses I’d lived at had begun. I was to stay in the house while they were searching, next to Detective Annabelle Yarris, who’d been assigned to watch me.
Annabelle turned on the TV, either bored or to give me something to take my mind off the search. I discovered that the whole world knew about Dash and me and the hotel room. She switched the channel, but not before I’d seen exactly what the world had seen.
I had no secrets left. No privacy.
I wasn’t a person with rights anymore.
No quiet space in which to mourn Tommy.
No time to grapple with the contents of the fourth letter.
The police took three hours to search my marital home. Luke doled out tea and coffee to everyone from the kitchen, avoiding me completely.
The police made a mess of Tommy’s room. All of his things, everywhere. Things his little hands had touched tossed carelessly to the floor. They took away with them a book that had been passed down to me by my mother—a book of old rhymes: Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater, Georgie Porgie, Little Miss Muffet, Little Boy Blue . . .
Outside, a machine drilled down in Luke’s perfect lawn and took soil samples.
Having found nothing, they turned their attention to Nan’s house.
Nan’s face was chalky as I was brought inside. She’d already had a visit from the detectives—telling her what had happened and what was about to happen to her house.
She grabbed my hand, squeezing my fingers together. “I don’t understand this, Phoebe. Any of it.” It was a phrase she was to repeat over and over as the day wore on.
Annabelle steered Nan and I into the living room before the police flooded in.
I sat next to Nan on the sofa, too numb to speak.
Annabelle stayed with us, seeming oblivious to the state Nan and I were in. I guessed it was normal for her, seeing people like this, people in the worst situations of their lives.
With a rigid expression, Nan handed me a letter. An official government letter. It had been hand-delivered today. She had three months in which to find another place to live. The date for the demolition of her house was set. I reached for her hand, but I couldn’t give her any real comfort. All I had done was to add to her trauma.
The media appeared out of nowhere outside, like leeches in damp weather. Nan looked as though she wanted to go out and shoo them all away. The media had already had their juicy piece of scandal today. But now they were getting bonus gifts. Tommy Basko’s mother had not only cavorted with men in a hotel room, but she was the one who’d penned the kidnapper letters, and she was on the brink of being charged with her own son’s murder.
Bang. Clatter. Bang.
Doors and drawers being opened and closed. Nan trembled with every sound the police made through the house.
I noticed the chipped edges on the walls where the wallpaper met and the frayed edges of the carpet—things I was normally immune to. The house hadn’t seen anything new since my mother was alive. I knew that these were the things that the police were seeing. When you walked through a house for the first time, you zeroed in on all its spots and scars and wrinkles. Just like when you met a new person for the first time. But once you’d lived in a house for a while, or once you’d known a person for a while, you stopped seeing the faults. Luke always said that it was impossible for homeowners to see their own homes with fresh eyes—when they went to sell their house, they always overvalued it because all they saw were the memories.
Bang. Clatter. Bang.
I couldn’t bear the noises anymore.
With my arms over my ears and head, I tried to close it all out. I was an animal whose burrow was being torn apart by rampaging ferrets on the trail of a rabbit.
They’d forced their way in, and no one could get them out.
The sounds, the sounds the sounds. The hammering, the hollow echoes of walls, the protests of hundred-year-old floorboards as they were wrenched from their moorings. The ferrets were moving between the walls, beneath the floorboards, scurrying across the roof, digging in the yard.
Clatter. Clatter. Smash. There went another of Nan’s pot plants. They weren’t careful, the ferrets. They didn’t need to be. The ferrets had a licence to destroy your home.
But they’d never find Tommy.
Because they didn’t know where to look.
The ferrets didn’t know where to find the rabbit.
Nan clutched the arms of her chair as the sharp sound of metal on metal rang from outside. She rose to her feet. Annabelle tried to stop her.
“This is my property,” Nan reminded her curtly, her voice ragged.
Annabelle hesitated then stepped aside.
I stepped along the hallway after Nan.
In the courtyard, two police were on bended knee, breaking the lock of the toolshed. The ivy had already been ripped from the exterior of the shed.
Dread and blood rushed into my head until all I could hear was a drum thrashing. That drumbeat. I’d heard it at the back of my mind for so long. So long.
“Surely this
is unnecessary? It’s just an old shed,” Nan said bitterly, to no one in particular. She stepped in front of Trent.
Detective Yarris tried to lead Nan away. “Mrs Hoskins, if you’ll just step over here for a moment. This won’t take long.”
“Take your hand off me,” Nan told her.
Annabelle surveyed Nan coolly. “If I do that, will you stand here quietly?”
Nan reluctantly moved a few inches, not completely giving way.
A final hammering at the lock made it fall away.
Detective Gilroy strode forward.
The old shed seemed startled as Trent pushed its doors open and the glare of police spotlights streamed inside. All of its spades and rusted tins of paint and crates of tools exposed.
Everything grew quiet.
Dead quiet.
There was something in the shed that I couldn’t see.
Trent turned back to glance at me questioningly.
The dozen or so police in the tiny yard moved aside as I stepped to the shed.
I now had a view of two large plastic bags that I’d never seen in there before. The bags weren’t old. They hadn’t gathered the signs of age that the other things in the shed had.
There were mangled shapes inside the bags. Twisted things.
Pulling plastic gloves on, Trent edged his way in around the crates. Carefully, he untied each bag.
A police photographer stepped inside, snapping pictures.
Trent dragged out a large teddy bear—Tommy’s bear—half-destroyed, its stuffing spilling out. Trent pulled more things from the bags. All toys. The missing stuffed toys and trucks that had belonged to Tommy. Either smashed or cut open.
There was something large in the second bag. Detective Gilroy spread the plastic back.
Tommy’s nightlight.
Mangled.
My mind in chaos, I twisted around to Nan. “Who did this to Tommy’s things?”
She folded her arms in against her chest. “You did.”
I shook my head. She hadn’t understood my question.