Vigil: Verity Fassbinder Book 1

by Angela Slatter

  She paused for so long I thought the answer was going to be a big fat ‘No’, but then, rather surprisingly, she said, ‘Serena Kallos. Her name was Serena Kallos.’

  ‘Serena Kallos?’ Dumbfounded, I felt the blood drain from my face. The missed calls. The forgotten appointment. Rescuing Lizzie had got in the way and I’d intended to ring her to apologise and reschedule. All my good intentions meant nothing now.

  The other woman stared. ‘You knew her?’

  ‘No, but she’d phoned, arranged a meeting. It . . . it didn’t happen.’

  She didn’t ask why and I was glad. I thought hard before continuing, ‘Was she related to anyone here?’

  ‘We’re all related at one remove or another,’ she said and smiled crookedly, and I was pretty sure she wasn’t telling me everything. Tonight I’d get only the minimum, at least until they trusted me.

  ‘Was she seeing anyone? Was she afraid? Was anything happening that I should know about? Is there anything you can tell me? Anyone know why was she calling me?’

  ‘Why should we tell you anything?’ The question shot from the group and was accompanied by some affronted agreement. Tough audience, this one.

  ‘Because I’m the only one who’s going to look into this,’ I said evenly, although my temper was starting to fray. ‘If you know who did this, fine: off you go, get your vengeance. Just don’t put this city in danger, because that will lead to a whole lot of trouble.’

  I paused, meeting unfriendly gazes, letting them know I meant what I said. ‘On the other hand, if you don’t know, then talk to me and I swear I’ll find whoever is responsible. This will be put to rights.’

  ‘Nothing will make this right. She will never sing again,’ the woman next to me said mournfully.

  ‘I can help. The police won’t – can’t – do anything about this. I’m your only hope.’ Even as I spoke I wasn’t sure that was entirely comforting.

  ‘I am Eurycleia,’ she said, ‘and you cannot help. Thank you for bringing this news. We will grieve for her, and deal with it in our own fashion.’

  I recognised a dismissal when I got one. Normally, I’d argue for a while, maybe call a few names, but Ziggi’s advice, bolstered by the memory of my abject failure with Aspasia, won out. A gracious departure meant the door remained open. Putting one of my cards on the picnic table, I said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  I left the photo with Eurycleia and headed into the night, my breath frosting.

  I didn’t think they knew who’d killed Serena Kallos. I did think they were scared. And I knew it would be a long time before I stopped playing ‘what if I’d made it to the rendezvous?’ Something also told me all was not going to be well, but I would hear from the sirens sooner or later. At that point there wasn’t much I could do except find other places to dig.

  I was almost trotting to stay warm and I found myself wondering if it was too late – too soon? too needy? – to call David when a movement caught my eye. Near a break in the fence, at the wooden ramp leading into the churchyard, some of the blackness was displaced. A figure retreated from the weak fingers of the park’s illumination, gestures wistful, sad as an exile. Someone was watching from the gloom. In spite of my better judgment, I followed.

  The church was an English one in miniature, its design, like so many things, transplanted from the motherland, but this was made with convict-cut stone, whetted with the blood of the banished. It was beautiful and uncanny in the moonlight. I circled it clockwise, growing used to the deeper darkness. A paved path led to a side entrance with a shallow stoop and an arched wooden door. Shadows shifted within. I had enough sense not to step into the porch – be careful of thresholds, Ziggi always said, you never know where they might lead – and retreated a few metres.

  Squinting, I could see that there’d once been another wall. Ragged stones clung at the corner, a metre of frayed brickwork hanging against the sky. There were absences in the remaining wall, holes where the masonry had been complete at one point.

  I was mid-step, wanting to take a closer look, when a rock hit me hard on the side of the head. The skin broke just above the eyebrow and the flow of blood was quick and warm. Running footsteps crunched down the cracked bitumen drive. Shaking off dizziness and swearing loudly, I followed, but by the time I made it to the main road my quarry was gone. I wiped the wound, winced, searching for the right words. ‘Fuckety fucks!’

  If someone – one of the sirens? – thought that would warn me off, they’d badly miscalculated. I did recognise that it was time to go home, though. Plotting revenge was always best done with a cold compress on whatever was bleeding or throbbing or aching.

  Screw it. I had a name to give McIntyre, and a new burden of guilt that was all my own. That was enough for now.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘I hate this place,’ Ziggi grumbled. ‘When are you gonna apologise to Aspasia?’

  We sat outside Shaky Jake’s, beneath a comprehensively large sun-sail, but he still wore a cap and big fly-eye sunnies. His skin pinked in the daylight, but apparently that wasn’t enough to make him run for cover, shouting, ‘I’m melting!’ He waved at the waiter, who deftly failed to notice.

  ‘I’m not entirely sure an apology is required,’ I hedged. I didn’t need to see it to know he’d rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, all right! When she’s stopped wanting to spit in my food.’

  ‘I’m gonna die of hunger.’ He switched from waving to making a gesture that was borderline obscene. The waiter, who was sporting green dreadlocks and a sixth finger on each hand, studiously continued to ignore us.

  ‘If you keep doing that we’re going to be banned from this one too,’ I pointed out. ‘You can’t go to Little Venice by yourself?’

  ‘If I’m schlepping you around, it’s a work expense,’ he explained. ‘Just apologise!’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’

  Given the conspicuous lack of service, the only meal I was likely to get was humble pie. The decor was nice and the location on the river at New Farm to die for, though the food was pedestrian at best – but beggars can’t be choosers. No matter what I might have said to Aspasia, Little Venice was never going to be in any danger of losing clientele to Shaky Jake’s.

  I stuck two fingers in my mouth and gave a high-pitched whistle. The waiter dropped the cup he was polishing and glared. We had a brief staring competition, and when he lost he grudgingly walked over to our table, pulling a pad from his pocket.

  ‘I was on my way over,’ he mumbled.

  ‘At roughly the same speed as a glacier. Long black and a blueberry muffin for me, latte and a honeycomb-chocolate muffin for my friend. No spit in our food and drinks, thanks.’ I leaned forward. ‘I’ll know it – and trust me, a withheld tip will be the least of your worries.’ A throbbing head wound, coupled with hunger and the knowledge I was going to have to apologise to Aspasia sooner rather than later was making me snippy.

  The guy stormed towards the kitchen.

  ‘How will you know if he does stuff to our food?’

  ‘I won’t, but he doesn’t know that.’

  Ziggi scratched at his thin ginger mop, then pointed to my face. ‘So, what happened?’

  ‘And here’s me thinking you’d never notice.’ The bruise was blue-black, a ways yet from yellowed edges, and there was a distinct lump, though the cut had scabbed over. ‘I visited the sirens without causing a riot.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘None of them knew – or would admit to knowing – why Serena Kallos called me. Afterwards, someone threw a rock at me.’

  ‘One of them?’

  ‘Could have been – it was dark. But it could have been someone else, possibly someone I offended.’ I glanced across the water at the open mouths of the old rain and sewage tunnels gaping in the bank opposite. They looked like they’d still be there when the skyscrapers turned to dust.

  ‘That doesn’t narrow down the suspects.’

  ‘It never does,’ I agreed. ‘Anyway, have you found anything on the
Winemaker? Deeds to the house? Fingerprints on the filing cabinets? Her licence and/or birth certificate down the back of the couch? A convenient scrap of paper that just happens to lead to an important witness? Anything? Anything?’

  Ziggi had an enviable number of contacts among both Weyrd and Normal, and yet despite having a state-of-the-art mobile phone, he kept everyone’s details in an elderly black address book held together with a rubber band. I didn’t make fun. The people he knew could ferret out things your average Titles Office clerk couldn’t even begin to suspect existed.

  ‘First of all, I’ve got a question.’

  ‘Mmmm?’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘Do we really have to do this?’ I groaned.

  ‘I saw you.’

  His fatherly tone might have been amusing and endearing if the image of him yelling, Precisely what are your intentions towards my daughter? at David, hadn’t been strobing in my mind. I shouldn’t have been surprised that I’d not even got away with one date.

  ‘Ziggi . . . look, it’s all new. David . . . David Harris. He’s very nice. No family. Does stuff with computers. Smart, fun, reliable.’

  ‘Normal.’

  ‘Normal Normal, which is refreshing.’

  ‘Does he know about you?’

  ‘That he might one day want to throw a rock at me?’ I grinned. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And he turns up when he says he’s going to and he doesn’t send me on jobs where I’m likely to get stabbed. I’m happy. And no, I don’t know if he snores yet – maybe I’ll find it adorable or maybe I’ll put a pillow over his face. But for now, I’m happy. It’s all so new, Ziggi; there’s so much potential and nothing’s gone wrong yet. Just let me enjoy it.’ My stomach rumbled. That humble pie was looking more and more attractive. I held up a finger. ‘And I am being careful not to mistake who I want him to be with who he actually is.’

  ‘Look at you, learning from the past. You make me proud.’

  ‘So, the house? Anything?’

  ‘Nah. Sorry. For all intents and purposes it doesn’t exist, although it’s still glamoured. Powerful ju-ju, to hang around after its maker’s death.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m thinking it’s a lot easier to hide than erase. In related news, there are no records of it in the Titles Office, nor of power, gas or water ever being connected. And no one ever registered to vote using it as a residential address.’

  ‘How’s that possible?’ I drummed my fingers on the tabletop to release the simmering frustration.

  ‘Did Bela come up with anything?’

  ‘Do you think you could avoid telling Bela that I’m still working on this?’ As our boss thought it was over I had no desire to listen to a lecture on letting things go.

  ‘I dunno – do you think you could apologise to Aspasia?’

  ‘It’s a deal,’ I grumbled. I loved Ziggi dearly, but he and Bela had been friends for a long time and sometimes stuff just slipped out. I decided not to tell him about the Boatman or the knife strapped against my ankle either, just in case.

  His gaze drifted away from me and he sat up straight, which could only mean one thing: our food was on the horizon, hopefully sans spittle. The plates made it to the table in none-too-gentle fashion and the waiter scampered away in case we tried to order anything else. Ziggi cut a cylinder from the middle of his muffin, stuffed a curl of butter inside, then gently massaged it to help the melting process along. It was messy and fascinating. I tried to maintain some dignity as I ate mine.

  Then Ziggi came out with, ‘Oh!’ A little bit of muffin made a re-appearance, but he didn’t seem to notice. He grabbed his mobile and waved it about. ‘Bela wanted me to show you this.’

  He queued the video with greasy fingers and delicately handed me the phone. I hit play.

  The clip had been taken at night from a rooftop or balcony in Fortitude Valley, further up towards the New Farm boundary. I recognised the glare of the Judith Wright Centre in the distance. The recording was grainy but I could see well enough as a wave of blackness swept along, somehow folding in on itself. Over the sounds of static and the late-night/early-morning city, I picked out the rhythm of footsteps somewhere on the deserted street. A breeze gathered pieces of garbage; newspapers, cans and cigarette butts, and bundled all of it into an ever-growing, rapidly forming body until it looked like a man, a man of rags and trash and darkness.

  It turned off Brunswick Street and continued down the incline, revolving madly and picking up speed as the sources of illumination grew fewer and dimmer. Just about at the bottom of the thoroughfare the thing threw itself right, then hard left, and gathered up what might have been a person hiding in the curve of a wall. There was no outcry; whatever – whoever – was lifted and spun about in the man-shaped maelstrom quickly ceased to be.

  At the very end of the strip, the streetlights bloomed again and the sound of footsteps was clear, but further details were obscured as the video degraded into a haze of grey and white.

  ‘Who took this?’

  ‘A friend saw it and sent it on. It’s been doing the rounds on the Internet. Everyone thinks it’s part of a trailer for an amateur horror film . . . but it made me nervous.’

  ‘Aw, Ziggi. Why show me this? Don’t add to the problems!’

  ‘Bela wanted me to suggest that it might have been responsible for some of the disappearances we’ve blamed on the Winemaker. And he might not be wrong, you know.’ He sniffed. ‘This stuff – is it just me, or does there seem to be a lot of it happening? You know, strange occurrences, I mean?’

  ‘Ziggi, you’ve got an eye in the back of your head – you are a strange occurrence.’ I sighed. ‘The amount of wine in that cellar? That was a bumper harvest. Whatever this is . . . I don’t believe it was taking those kids. Anyway,’ I said, returning his phone, ‘until this is proved to be something other than an amateur horror movie, it isn’t a priority.’

  ‘And the Baker thing? Bela asked me to ask,’ he said sheepishly. Bela was obviously anxious to stay out of my reach for a while.

  ‘Also not my top priority. I’ll get to it – Baker Père door-stepped me yesterday, for the love of fuck – but I’ll put money on the boy having done a runner to get away from his father.’ I rose. ‘Anyway, I’ve got to go. I need to buy some hiking boots.’

  Ziggi dropped his cup in shock, luckily not from too great a height. The liquid splashed about in the saucer a bit.

  ‘Oh, you heard me.’ I stood up. ‘See you later.’

  *

  ‘There certainly seems to be a lot of moisture in the air,’ I said the next day.

  The force of the afternoon storm was massaging my scalp through the cap, which might have been nice except for the icy trickle down my neck. David, a few feet in front, turned his head just far enough for me to see the grin, then continued trailblazing us along the walking track at Mount Holy-crap-I-can’t-believe-you-talked-me-into-this.

  ‘And what’s that smell?’ I asked.

  ‘That would be nature.’

  I’d said, ‘Sure, an easy ramble would be nice.’ With my leg doing so well it didn’t need to be that easy, but I am essentially lazy. He knew painkillers had formed one of my basic food groups for a while, although he didn’t know the circumstances of the injury. The walk itself wasn’t difficult, but the unseasonal, very hard, very wet precipitation was making me wonder about my companion’s sanity. He’d appeared to be so normal, but I suppose an obsession with the outdoors isn’t really as obvious as, say, a pair of wings or elongated canines. At least there was no one else around to see us slogging onwards like idiots through what I was pretty sure could be described as a monsoon.

  In all fairness he was, as I’d told Ziggi, not just Normal, but normal, and I hadn’t realised how much I’d craved that until that first time we went for pancakes. We’d talked and talked, and kept talking. David made me laugh, which still felt like a surprise present being given over and over. He was now occupying a large chunk of my thoughts and
I was in danger of turning schoolgirl: lying on my bed, feet kicking around, writing Dear Diary notes with a pink pen.

  He’d moved from Tasmania to do a computer science degree with a minor in marketing and had ended up staying in Brisbane. He had no family to speak of, no siblings, and his parents were long years dead. We’d established he’d had three serious previous girlfriends; he’d wanted commitment and two didn’t, the last had decided she’d rather go overseas. He was open and unaffected, and not at all embarrassed about answering whatever questions I’d asked. He’d even offered to build me a website, but I couldn’t imagine writing the copy to describe what I did – and anyway, it wasn’t like I needed to advertise, seeing as jobs found me whether I wanted them to or not.

  We’d planned more dates too: lunches and dinners slipped into the cracks of life, between his work and mine, and we spoke about ordinary stuff and we did ordinary things and I liked it. Which was probably why I’d agreed to a bush walk . . . Gods help me, the next thing would be camping. I stared at my feet in their embarrassingly new hiking boots, stared past them at the mud and rotting leaves and the yellows, dark crimsons and ochres of berries half-buried in the path. Then I lifted my eyes, blinking against the rain; up beyond the reach of the trees was a sky of darkest grey.

  Not that it bothered my boyfriend. Friend-boy. Whatever. He walked on, stoic in the early afternoon light until we eventually hit a sort of walkway in the middle of some crowded trunks and shrubby undergrowth. David pulled back a particularly creepy-looking plant thing and said, ‘Wait-a-while.’

  ‘Huh?’

  He grinned. ‘If it grabs your clothes it takes ages to get rid of them – wait-a-whiles.’

  Ah. Nature. Cue shudder.

  We pressed on, finally breaking through to a wooden platform hemmed by metal railings and hanging out over a waterfall. The sun put in an unexpected cameo through the clouds, weak and watery. Alongside ran the stream we’d been crisscrossing; it tripped around rocks and dived under fallen branches until at last it threw itself out into the air in one long glorious spray, bursting on boulders far below before reforming into a brownish-olive pool. Moss, the brightest green I’d ever seen, ran riot, even scaling the trunks of the trees circling the pond.