Catch

by Kenyon, Toni

  "Good thinking. What about the mad woman's room, could he be stuck in there with her?"

  "Well...I don't know."

  "Seems to smell worse up that end of the hallway." Matt screwed up his nose. It only added to his charm.

  "It smells foul everywhere." She hunted around in her drawer for some vanilla incense; that helped with most things.

  "Why don't I go and check Gina's room anyway?"

  "Not a good idea. If she's in there, you're the last person she'd want to see."

  He grumbled, "She's not exactly top of my hit parade either, but don't you think we should do something about this smell? It's disgusting."

  "Here..." Tamsen held up a packet of incense sticks. The frankincense scent reminded her of church, but they were the only ones available for the moment. "Light some of these and pop them in the holders around the house - it'll help with the smell."

  "Finding the source would help more."

  "Maybe darling Gina can help us with that." Tamsen couldn't help the sarcastic tone, it almost matched his.

  It wasn't on, she thought, coming home to this mess. She could feel months of frustration building, ready to explode. She'd made so many concessions for Gina's atrocious behavior - constantly repairing ailing friendships, smoothing over ruffled family members, dealing with despairing employers, not to mention the chaos the woman was causing with Matthew. Enough was enough. It was time to admit this just wasn't working.

  Tamsen knocked on the door and waited. The smell was definitely worse near Gina’s room. Could Azriel have gotten trapped there? Her stomach knotted, the tension ratcheting up another notch. Confrontations were just the pits, but at least she had Matt here with her for support. He'd need to stay well out of the firing line, Gina could likely detonate, but then at least he'd be here for Tamsen afterward, a huge help with the post-explosive fallout. Her own little bomb shelter.

  "Gina, are you in here?" Tamsen opened the door and was assaulted by an almost solid wall of the smell; she could damn near taste it, choking on it at the back of her throat. The room was dark and warm and it took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the dim light; Gina never opened the blinds even though Tamsen always told her it was unhealthy.

  She turned on the light and felt her knees go weak. She'd found the source. Overcome by nausea, she gripped the doorframe for support.

  "Matt!"

  "What is it now, babe?"

  She had no words. Opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Gaping, she thought of her fish.

  "Oh fuck!" His words rang in her ears.

  She felt his arms around her and then her knees did give way. With Matt still holding her, the two of them slumped to the floor as if their bones had turned to rubber, unable to hold the weight of their flesh. She didn't know if she wanted to laugh hysterically or cry. Maybe screaming would be the best option, but she had the absurd thought that seemed melodramatic.

  There. In the middle of the room, suspended over one of her hard-won wrought-iron dining chairs that had been kicked out from under her, was Gina.

  She was so obviously dead, all the life seemed to suck itself out of Tamsen too.

  "She's hung herself." An unemotional bald statement of fact.

  "I know." Matt's voice was a whisper. She felt the words on the side of her neck.

  "I suppose we know what the smell is now." A little giggle escaped from her throat. She couldn't stop it. Somehow it didn't feel inappropriate.

  "We do." Rocking her gently backwards and forwards, he made her feel safe and she didn't want him to stop.

  She couldn't stop staring either. She'd never seen a dead person; an urge to avert her eyes was competing with a need to gawk. A need to work out what the hell had gone through Gina's mind to get her to this final place.

  Tamsen didn't think Gina would mind her staring. She looked sort of serene, as if all her cares had been released - which in a way, she supposed, they had.

  Yet as peaceful as she looked now – despite bulging eyes and her tongue poking out sideways from swollen lips - Tamsen could tell Gina had struggled. Not just in life, she thought ruefully, but in death too.

  Was it panic, or a sudden will to live after she'd kicked the chair away - or fear of being damned to an eternity shoveling sulfur in hell? And what could have been so bad as to provoke her best friend to take her life in the first place?

  Tamsen stumbled to her feet. The weakness was subsiding, replaced by a feeling of utter and total acceptance. Moving toward the body of her friend, she felt Matt's hand on her shoulder.

  She turned toward him. His face was quite white - no mean feat with his complexion.

  "You mustn't touch her, Tams. We have to call the police. There's a procedure for these things. I'm sorry..."

  His voice trailed off and he cast a glance over her shoulder to the body behind.

  "I know - " her voice was barely a whisper " - but I need to say goodbye...sorry ..something..." She felt tears welling up. "I should have been here."

  "Don't start blaming yourself. This wasn't sudden - it'll be something that's been brewing for a long time. It's not your fault."

  Why didn't she believe him?

  "You go and call the police. I'll be okay." Would she, she wondered. Tears were streaming down her hot face; there was no way of stopping them and she wasn't even going to try. Her soul was weeping for her dead friend, but she, Tamsen, felt nothing except a comforting numbness.

  "You're sure you'll be okay?" He looked at her and she saw real fear in his eyes. What was it about death that frightened people?

  "I'll be fine." She gave a hysterical laugh. "She's less trouble strung up there than she ever was alive."

  Matt looked pained and she thought she'd better be quiet before she said anything else he might find offensive.

  "Please, just don't touch anything. Okay?"

  "You can take the lawyer out of-"

  "Tamsen!"

  "Okay, okay." She held her hands up in surrender and backed away from him. "I promise, I won't touch a thing. It's okay to talk to her, right?" His training had kicked in and he was being a lawyer.

  "Of course. I won't be long."

  "Take all the time you need, pal. We ain’t going nowhere." She looked up at Gina again. "Are we, girlfriend?"

  The appeal of hanging had definitely evaporated at some stage, judging from the welts and scratches Tamsen could see around Gina's neck. She'd lost a couple of fingernails, clawing at her neck and the rope; congealed blood sat in globules on the ends of her fingers where her nails should have been. It reminded Tamsen of making toffee, the way it set in tiny, hard balls in a saucer of cold water when you checked to see if it was cooked.

  There were rope burns too, on her palms and fingertips, as if she'd tried to climb back up the thick rope. God only knew how long it had taken for her to die, or how terrified she'd been. Tamsen felt an intense ache in the middle of her stomach, the work 'gutted' didn't come close to the physical pain.

  Desperate to touch her friend, all she could do was stand there. Her beautiful, beautiful girl, scratched, broken and so bruised. Blood, no longer circulating through her body, had gathered in her chin and at the ends of her limbs, giving her a strange two-toned look. It was as if all her essential energy was trying to find a way to return to the earth.

  "Why?" Tamsen addressed the question to her friend. Feeling the futility of life and the crushing finality of death, she wept - for every unsaid word, for every missed moment and for every lost chance. "Baby girl, why?"

  "Yes, that's right." Matt was over trying to explain what he'd seen in the bedroom. He knew he wasn't ever going to forget it. "I should go. My friend's in another room and I think it would be best if I get back to her. You're sending someone right away?"

  He only half listened to the telephonist assuring him they would have a squad car around there as soon as they could. God help anyone who had an intruder in the house and was really in trouble, he thought - not for the first time.

&n
bsp; "Okay. Fine. Thank you."

  He hung up the phone, and realized he was unsure what to do next. Unnatural death they called it. He wondered if there was such a thing as natural death anymore. This was the type of situation he read about in the morning newspaper. Two inches of words, that's usually all it took up. How could something that only took up two inches in the daily newspaper have such a devastating effect?

  Now he'd dealt with the phone call and the formalities, the things he was trained to deal with, he was left with Tamsen, the body and his feelings. He wasn't sure he was ready to deal with any of them.

  Christ. The woman had damn near been an alcoholic; surely there must be something around the place that could take the edge off? Food, drink - wasn't that what you did in these sorts of situations? He’d read somewhere once about a woman who, when delivered the news of her husband's death during the war, invited the man who’d delivered it inside for a cup of tea. Upon enquiring why she could possibly want a cup of tea when she had just been advised her husband was dead, she'd replied that her father taught her to just do whatever she had planned to do when she got bad news.

  Matt found next to no food in the pantry - no surprise there - but there was an abundance of dry mixers, and two huge bottles of ouzo. That didn’t appeal - he'd nearly choked to death on an aniseed sweet as a child and had never been able to get past the gasping feeling whenever he smelt ouzo.

  Thoughts of choking brought back vivid images of Gina hanging in the bedroom. He shuddered and opened the fridge – and was immediately assaulted by the smell of rot. It was all he could do not to dry-retch on the spot.

  He'd lived in some pretty hostile flats when he was at varsity, but the fridges in those places had nothing on this one. It was almost as if someone carefully selected from all of the food groups, calculated how long it would take for each item to perish, then placed them abstractly on a clear glass and waited for them to spread, puddle-like into each other. How the hell Tamsen, with her sensitive nature, had managed to live with this slob for as long as she had was beyond him. He had a sick thought that maybe they were all going to be better off.

  At least there were cans of brandy, safely stored in the door, and he grabbed a couple. Now to check on Tamsen. As much as he didn't like the idea of going back into that room - Gina was as loathsome a sight dead as she had been alive - he was cautious about leaving Tamsen there on her own for too long.

  The long walk down the hallway gave Matt time to think about the pleading, drunken phone calls while they were in Melbourne. Christ. What if the police pinned the timing of this back to the call he'd talked Tamsen out of returning?

  A wave of nausea hit him, terror holding a vice-like grip on his internal organs as securely as the rope that grasped Gina's neck.

  Tamsen had barely moved since he'd left, leaning up against the door frame and just staring. He couldn't tell if she was staring directly into space, not really seeing anything, or whether she was participating in some kind of morbid voyeurism.

  When he cracked a can of brandy open Tamsen jumped as if she'd been slapped. She took the can he passed her, and suddenly looked aware of her surrounds.

  "Matt, I know I had nothing to do with this and there's not a lot I can do now, but I can be here for all the official stuff. I wasn't there for her when she needed me."

  A vertical line ran down her usually smooth forehead and her nose was scrunched up. She looked like she'd just bitten a lemon. "That call I didn't return, it's been driving me insane thinking about it. Why did I listen to you?" Her voice had risen steadily. He could see the well of frustration and hurt erupting. "I made the fatal mistake of not being true to myself."

  She was getting hysterical. Pounding on her heart as if she were performing some sort of maniac pulmonary resuscitation. "And now Gina's paid the price!"

  Matthew was scared, really scared. He looked from the woman he'd grown to love, to the cadaver and back again. Tamsen had collapsed again in a crumpled heap on the floor, brandy can in hand, looking almost as if she were worshiping the corpse hanging awkwardly above her.

  The place gave him the creeps. He'd gotten used to the stench – though, hell, he might never get it out of his clothes. In fact, burning them once he got home would be the most sensible thing to do. But getting her out of this godforsaken room was the most pressing thing on his mind.

  "Come on, babe." His voice was soft, gentle; he wanted to tempt her from the bedroom. "Let's go and wait for the police in the lounge. They can't be too far away."

  He hoped not. The sooner they got the body out of the apartment the better. There was something inherently evil about the taking of your own life. You could take the boy out of Church, but religious principles ran too deep.

  "I just don't know if I can leave her again." The look in Tamsen’s eyes and the quiver in her voice was more than Matt could stand. If he spent another moment in this room he knew he'd break down and that was the last thing they needed.

  He bent and picked Tamsen up off the floor. A rag doll in his arms, she offered not an ounce of resistance. He struggled to maneuver them both out of the room without putting down his brandy - the thought of having to come back for it left him nearly as cold as the suspended stiff.

  In the lounge, Tamsen sobbed in his arms, her tears creating a damp patch on his chest. He tried to soothe her, burying his face in the sweet smell of her hair, whispering comforting platitudes. He drew in the scent of her hair; it reminded him of crisp green apples.

  The buzzing of the intercom intruded.

  "That'll be the police." Matt rose from the couch to unlock the doors and let them enter, his feelings of inadequacy dispersed, fallen leaves blown away on an autumn wind.

  "You don't have to stay, you know. I can deal with them myself." Tamsen's voice was as cold as a southerly gale and it cut straight through him.

  "I think they would like me to be here. They will want to ask questions."

  "Well, just as long as you understand that it's not me who's asking you to stay." She took a long drink from the copper can in her hand and he felt his insides wither a little.

  "I know." She'd cast him aside. Gina, damn her had played the masterstroke and won.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Sergeant McKean had been sympathetic and businesslike though he looked far too young to deal with the horror in her back bedroom. Even measuring in at a staggering six foot four inches, he still had the boy-child air about him many clear skinned blond men carried.

  It must be a hell of a job, Tamsen thought, arriving to collect a body, survey a scene; take notes from witnesses, discuss the state of mind of the deceased. Though how could she possibly imagine what had been going through Gina's mind when she’d strung herself up like a prize marlin?

  Tamsen coped with the interview process, the constable taking pictures, and even discussing the pleading phone calls in Melbourne. What she hadn't steeled herself for was the sight of her best friend leaving the apartment in a body bag.

  Blue canvas, suspended between two officers struggling with the awkward cargo. A life reduced to some sort of bizarre taking out of blue trash. She was certain the straps would give out and Gina would crash to the floor in the middle of the hallway. The last time anyone had crashed to the floor in the hallway it had been her and Matt, making mad, passionate love. How the hell had it all come to this?

  "Oh, Matt. No." She clung to him.

  She'd spent the afternoon clinging to him, one way or another, vacillating between that and wanting to beat the living daylights out of him. She'd been riding an emotional roller-coaster since they walked into the apartment, and now exhaustion crept in to take her, the same way the police took Gina. Numb and beyond feeling anymore.

  "Babe, it's okay. You've got to let her go now," Matt whispered. He understood that it seemed somehow disrespectful not to whisper.

  "Will you be okay, Mr Solomon?" Sergeant McKean's baritone voice broke into their quiet intimacy. "Someone from Victim Support will be in tou
ch with you both." He flicked through his notes again. "They can get you at this address." It was a statement, not a question.

  "I'm taking Miss Parsons to stay at my home for a few days. You can get us both there."

  The sergeant made further notes in his pad and shook Matt's hand. "Don't worry about seeing us out, Mr Solomon. We'll be fine."

  He looked directly at Tamsen, who was starting to feel nauseous. "Thank you for your assistance, Miss Parsons. We'll be in touch if we have any more questions."

  She couldn't imagine what other questions they could possibly have - she'd told them everything she knew, short of what Gina usually ate for breakfast.

  "Come on, you." Matt's tone gentle and loving. She wished he'd just yell and scream. She would if she could, but she didn't have the energy. "It's a good job you didn't start unpacking - we can just put your case back in the car and get the hell out of here."

  Past caring, she sat glumly on the couch and watched Matt retrieve her cases from the bedroom and put them at the front door. She didn't have the strength to fight with him anymore and knew she couldn’t stay the night in the stinking apartment. The place felt cold, death, destruction and darkness filling the void created by the universe when someone died. She knew she'd have to come back and not only physically clean up the mess in Gina's room, but also spiritually cleanse the area too. She figured it couldn't do any more harm to leave the bleak emotional and spiritual energy swarming around in the meantime.

  "I'll just get these down to the car and then be back up for you - okay?" Matt opened the front door and a bundle of black fluff shot between his legs. "Christ. What was that?"

  "Azzie, baby." Tamsen's spirit lifted a little above that of a bottom-dwelling catfish. Azriel never failed to lift her mood.