by Zane Lovitt
He pulls on the door and I walk into the unexpected pungency of furniture polish. A bottle of it sits on the piano stool. He’s preparing these items for sale. A dining chair before us gleams, arrogant.
‘Anthony,’ Rudy says. For a moment he’s about to tell me a story about his friend Anthony; then I remember that Anthony is who I am. ‘Check this out.’
The contract drops to the piano stool and Rudy squeezes himself between the random furniture, across the room to a chaise longue and a bronze lamp, two of the items he wants Beth to photograph and peddle to the high-end Melbourne furniture market. The windows are curtained, almost barricaded, and without the front door open I don’t know how Rudy distinguishes night from day in this room. Even now I can barely see the object he takes from the couch.
He carries it back to me, proffers it like it’s the last cup of water from the fountain of youth and I take it, thanking myself for wearing these gloves because the electricity of this thing, now that I see what it is, would be too much for my bare skin.
I’m like, ‘Wow.’
‘COLGATE’ is printed along the handle in bright new lettering, the brush head gone, the plastic abraded to a sharp point. It totals four inches in length but I suppose you could kill someone with it if you were determined.
‘Is this what your father used?’
‘No, I made it.’
‘I mean, did he use a toothbrush that was sharpened?’
‘Yeah…Yes.’
‘How long did it take you?’
He shrugs, but it’s not modesty. He just doesn’t know.
‘Rudy, if you’re going to do it in his sleep, how are you going to get into Tyan’s house?’
A long pause. A baffled scowl.
‘How do you know his name?’
Fuck. I can’t keep these lies straight in my head.
‘What?’
‘How do you know his…Tyan’s name?’
‘I read about it. What happened to your dad. I looked it up.’
This seems to confuse him.
‘Rudy, how are you going to get into Tyan’s house?’
He instantly forgets his confusion, eyes gleam like they’ve been wiped with furniture polish.
‘I know where he keeps his key. The back door.’
Another neuron fires. Tyan saying there was someone in his backyard. He thought it was paranoia.
‘You do?’
Rudy goblin-nods, unaware of how chilling that looks.
‘Under the mat…doormat.’
‘So you’re going to let yourself in at night, and then you get him with this?’
My gloves give the toothbrush back to Rudy and I’m glad for them all over again because I haven’t left any fingerprints.
‘I want to talk to him first.’
‘Talk?’
What is it with these two, they have so much to say to each other.
‘I want him to say it. What he did.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He lied.’ Rudy wails, can’t believe I have to ask. ‘He said my dad—’
‘But what do you think actually happened? You think Tyan killed your mum?’
‘No, but—’
‘Then how else did the vase wind up in your dad’s workshop? I mean, like, how else could he have found it there?’
‘You…I mean—’
‘They got the murder weapon, Rudy. Where did it come from if not the workshop?’
‘No—’
He cuts himself off, mouth works but nothing comes out. He has no theory about what happened. Only that somehow his father was framed by Glen Tyan.
My hand twitches in the air to placate him.
‘I’m just saying, we don’t know.’ This is me throwing Rudy a lifeline.
‘We don’t know,’ Rudy echoes, the same tightness in his voice that was so intimidating yesterday. ‘We don’t…We don’t know.’
‘But if we don’t know, isn’t it possible that Glen Tyan didn’t—’
‘What’s the news?’
‘What?’
‘You said there’s…you had news. You said I’d like it.’
And he stares at me.
I make a long sighing noise, allow myself to be distracted by a creak and a thunk that could be a footstep in the upstairs bedroom. More likely it’s a structural reaction to the cold that’s whooshing in through the front door.
Rudy’s eyes follow mine to the ceiling. More flaky paint. Long fat cracks in the plaster.
‘Yeah, sometimes I hear her up there. Just, like…walking around.’
‘Her?’
‘Mum.’
What could also be a reaction to the cold weather is the goose flesh on my arm. But now a thought creeps into my mind, keeps on creeping once it’s there.
‘Rudy, when was the last time you went upstairs?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘I don’t mean specifically. Just roughly.’
‘I don’t think…since it happened.’
Suddenly I feel the weight of the rooms above, crushing down like they’re filled with liquid. The cracks in the ceiling seem to split further even as I gaze at them.
‘Has anyone been up there since it happened?’
‘Just the police.’
‘The police. When it happened.’
‘Yeah…Glen Tyan.’
‘No one since then.’
Rudy shakes his head and I stare into a void of absurdity. The absurdity of that. No one has been upstairs in thirteen years. I almost laugh. Instead, I’m like, ‘Have you ever wondered why it is you’re preoccupied with your father’s death and not your mum’s?’
Rudy squints, can’t formulate a response.
‘Seriously, man. I mean, if you’re right, if your dad didn’t do it, who did?’
‘I know who killed my mum.’
‘Who?’
‘Ken Penn.’
‘Who the fuck is Ken Penn?’
‘He lived over…across from us.’
The name jangles in my mind. Ken Penn. A witness at Piers’s trial who was never called. I remember from the transcript.
‘What makes you think it was him?’
‘Him and Mum were…He was in love with Mum. He told me.’
‘They were sleeping together?’
‘Ummm…’
‘Which house did he live in?’
‘The big red one. Across from us.’
And he points. Through the open door and the pyramid trees and across the wide road there is indeed a red-brick house, made slightly taller than the other homes by the attic that it wears like a fez.
‘Does he still live there?’
‘He moved out after…And he never had a key. So he would have to have…had to break in.’
‘Do you know, why he would hurt your mother?’
‘He was supposed to go to Lorne. Like, with her. But he didn’t go. So they must have fought.’
‘You think they fought, because he didn’t go to Lorne, so he killed her?’
‘Yes. He killed her.’
‘Your father fought with your mother, too.’
‘I know. They were fighting over me.’
‘Did your dad ever hit your mum?’
‘No. Never.’
‘He pushed her, though. Remember?’
‘Yeah, but no. I was there. He didn’t. I mean, he did, but…’
‘Did you ever see him strike her?’
‘No.’
‘Not her death. I mean before that. When they used to argue.’
‘He never—’
Rudy wants to finish but doesn’t know how. He never hit her hard? His head turns away to the long hallway and the kitchen and his body follows, then just as quick he wheels back, eyes sparking with agitation.
‘Are you going to say the news? What is it?’
Yeah, tell him your news, Jason. That the contract is ‘enactive’. Tell him to go for Tyan tonight. Tell him it’s his last day as a free man.
I shake my head at myself.
<
br /> ‘I spoke to Tristan Whaley.’
‘You…ummm…’
‘That’s my news. I spoke to Tristan Whaley. The tall man.’
Rudy pales.
‘How…How?’
‘Don’t worry, I didn’t give anything away. But Rudy, he says he didn’t tell you Piers was innocent.’
‘He did.’
‘He only said that your dad could have been acquitted because of his mental state.’
‘No.’ Rudy turns another full circle on the spot, chasing his tail. Arms crossing his chest, planting on his hips, never resting. ‘No. He said it.’
‘And he gave me this.’
My hands shake but manage to bring the crumpled newspaper printout from my pocket.
Rudy takes it, his own childish face staring back at himself.
And I’m like, ‘Look at that, Rudy. Look very carefully.’
He steps back along the hall like he’s trying to escape from what’s in his hands, head shaking too much for him to read the print so it’s just the photos and the headline he’s denying. This builds to an agonised Naaaaaah and he dashes the pages to the floor and the shiv goes with it and he grasps a pink cloth and stoops over the piano stool and polishes. All one violent action.
I’m like, ‘Even you said he was guilty.’
He doesn’t respond, just rubs at that stool, so hard he’s already out of breath.
‘Listen, you—’
‘No. I never said that!’
‘You did.’
‘They told me to say that. They told me to.’
‘Who told you?’
‘Her.’ He flicks an accusing finger at the paper on the floor. ‘The lady.’
I pick up the pages, check her name. Not sure how to pronounce it.
‘Nina Chian…’
‘Yeah.’
‘Chiancelli.’
‘Yeah…’
‘She told you what to say?’
‘Yes.’
This morning, reading the article in Whaley’s den. The quotes hadn’t sounded like Rudy.
‘But why would she do that?’
He goes to blurt an answer, doesn’t have one. It comes out a fretted moan.
To upset him further would be cruel, but diffusing Rudy-theTimebomb means applying the formula:
Rudy + proof of Piers’s culpability = Tyan’s safety
‘Listen,’ I say, can’t really steady my voice. ‘Your father told me. In Severington. He told me he murdered your mother.’
34
He uses all the power in his forehead to ignore me.
‘He told me, Rudy.’ I fumble for details that will make this sound like anything other than an improvisation. But, like yesterday, I’m hamstrung by the fact that I have no idea what I am talking about.
‘We were outside on yard detail one day…And he told me it was true. Just like they’d said in court. And he made me promise not to tell anyone. But he said he had to get it off his chest.’
The mad scrubbing intensifies. Rudy turns the piano stool over, polishes the underside. Why you’d polish the underside I’m not sure. Unless you’re blind because inside you’re screaming.
‘He said he did it. That he’d never forgive himself. I don’t know for sure, but maybe that’s why he took his own life—’
What interrupts me is: Rudy slaps me. He’s fast, rears up quick and gets me hard on the shoulder. Makes contact and freezes in place, half-waiting for my reaction, half-shocked by his own.
‘Ow,’ I hoot. Not a reaction to the pain; a parent’s reprimand to a misbehaving child.
‘You…’ Rudy manages, a tense squeal and his hand flutters before slapping again. I grab his shoulder. Teeth clench.
‘Stop that.’
Another slap. The other hand. Suddenly it’s not cold in here but hot.
‘You got the teeth! You were his friend! He got you toilet paper!’
‘Your dad was guilty, Rudy. He told me.’
‘You’re lying!’
‘I’m not lying,’ I say, lying. ‘Look at that newspaper! You knew it was him.’
‘You were his friend!’
I step away before he can slap me again, back towards the door. ‘Your dad killed her, Rudy. Glen Tyan didn’t do anything.’
What comes from his mouth starts as No and evolves into something monstrous, the howl of a man watching his identity get murdered. He twitches like a voodoo priest casting a spell, pumped full of the agony of thirteen years. It’s the face of someone else, redder than his hair, red enough that he might be choking, but if he’s choking that doesn’t stop him coming at me, maybe to slap me again, maybe something worse.
My body reacts before my brain does. I bolt out the door but trip on the doormat and flail over the steps.
I am not running away. I am falling away.
At first it’s not an emergency, but then my jacket catches on the iron fence and my hand can’t break my fall.
Head first into the green mess and the tiles underneath. Crack. I don’t know what it is that does the cracking. Don’t think about it but stagger to my feet and run from the yard, sure that I’ve been stabbed with a sharpened toothbrush from behind but the way I’m running across Grand Street suggests that maybe I haven’t.
Don’t know if there are footsteps behind me, don’t look when I reach the car. The key turns and the door locks and there’s no sign of Rudy and I try to ease my blood down as I pull away but that doesn’t prevent a screech of tyres and I’m gone.
A block away I check again that the car doors are locked and I do it with one eye because the other eye is closed because it has blood in it because there’s a wound in my eyebrow.
And the fear comes. Or the post-fear. Angles into my lungs and stomach like Rudy stabbed me there with a syringe of something disgusting. It stays manageable until it’s not and I have to clutch at my abdomen, cross my arms over and squeeze from both sides. Pull to the kerb, a weakness in my neck that makes my head fall forward. Lights across my face. The beta-blocker I took at the football bugs out. Feel for the door handle. Open it, can’t lean far, yak. Tipping forward makes the streetlights move in a dance, sweat pours from my hair…
It’s fully dark when I wake. The driver’s door is open and I wonder if someone opened it while I slept but I remember it was me, my splash of vomit there as evidence. I take off the seatbelt and shut the door…
I wake again, or is it the same time? My right hand moves to my left eyebrow and there is liquid there and it is blood. The damage doesn’t feel bad but maybe it’s just numb. Maybe it is particularly deep. I need help. I need someone to help me.
I speed dial Tyan’s number.
‘Hello?’
But I can’t speak. Or don’t want to.
‘Hello?’ Tyan says again.
‘Rudy’s not coming tonight,’ I say. Bile burns my throat. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
And I end the call.
After a time I find it within myself to join the passing traffic, anonymous and lulled by the lights and the rain. There’s one person I think can help. I can go up those stairs and knock on that door and she’ll help me. The warmth inside, the softness of her home. She’ll be puzzled and disapproving but willing. She’ll take me in because we know each other. I don’t have a mother to run to and she will understand and take me in and she probably would have helped me sooner if only I’d asked.
I empty myself out of the car, stumble across the bitumen and feel again at the wound, how bad it is. The glove comes back bloodied and suddenly I’m a lunatic on the run and I survey the immediate area for dangers but there are none.
Up the steps to the door and I knock.
Hear nothing from inside. Maybe she can see me through the peephole, this ragged and desperate gentleman caller with a hand to his head to hide that he’s bleeding. The door opens wide and I feel the gust of warmth go through me and she smiles at first but this hardens when she sees the blood.
She says, ‘Timothy?’
35
‘Rudy…’ I say. That’s all it requires.
Because Beth is how I met Rudy, I figure the least she can do is not turn me away.
‘Oh. God…’
‘I had nowhere else to go.’
‘Come in.’
I do come in.
‘It’s not too bad. I’m sorry about this. I hope you don’t mind…’
‘What happened?’
It probably should have occurred to me that she would ask this question. I stumble in a pointless circle, stalling as I think of what to say, a diver in the depths of my own bullshit, attempting to neutralise my buoyancy. To her it scans as helplessness.
‘Here…’
And she ushers me through a warmly lit space where the TV plays mute and colourful items on shelves can’t be focused on, through a door and into her bathroom the size of a closet, with a smaller closet built into the wall where this girl presumably showers. She follows and turns on the light and there’s hot breath on my neck, but it pulls away as I take off the gloves and drop them to the floor.
‘I went to his house,’ I say, analysing the mirror. A black gash leers above my eye and my right cheek is swollen like a trackball. I don’t remember getting hit there. Blood has dripped down my face, a precisely barbered sideburn.
‘I went to see Rudy. Said I knew his father in jail. In Severington. I said we’d been really good friends.’
It’s not all that happened but it is what happened. And it takes saying it out loud for me to realise how numpty it is that I tried it.
She pulls at my jacket, helps get it off. ‘Gosh. Why?’
‘Rudy thinks this guy, my client, got his father sent to prison. That’s why Rudy’s got it in for him. He says his father was innocent. So I went and told him that Piers was guilty, had confessed to me. I thought, like, if I convinced him, like…fucking problem solved.’
A wet flannel appears in her hand. She dabs at my skull, clears the sideburns.
‘I think it’s stopped bleeding. I’m going to put on some Dettol.’ She opens a cabinet, having assumed the role of ER nurse without even a cautious pause.
The Dettol stings; I push through it.
‘We have to go to the hospital,’ she says. ‘You need stitches or else it’ll scar.’
I think about that. A scar to show Glen Tyan.
‘I just need to sleep.’
Beth smiles, strange, like I might be joking. Might be delirious with fever or infection or concussion or impending death.