by Garry Disher
It came out in a heartfelt rush. Ellen linked arms with him again. ‘Something needs to change. But not yet.’
She sensed that he wanted to say more about working with her, but the moment passed. Instead he said, ‘Do you like living with me?’
‘Yes,’ she said firmly, not feeling a hundred per cent firm.
Hal said nothing but they continued companionably to the driveway entrance and up to the house. They’d bought a stir-fry mix from the butcher: all they had to do was toss it in a spitting wok and cook some rice. They would eat in tonight. They would eat together. They’d had a walk. This was a good evening and, in their line of work, good evenings were rare.
****
At their house outside Waterloo, Ludmilla Wishart was playing the piano. She played frequently, and expertly, and Adrian hated it. Her eyes, mind and body when she played were not there with him but far away, possibly in a better place-according to her-and he hated that.
He stopped her slender fingers on the keys and said, ‘I’m hungry’ She gasped and came back to earth. Hurried to the kitchen to make things better.
****
Scobie Sutton went home miserably from the Chillout Zone. Rather than accompany him, Beth had climbed onto her bicycle, saying she’d sit with Lachlan Roe until he regained consciousness. ‘He needs me.’
‘Beth, it could be days, weeks.’
‘He needs me.’
‘So do we, love. And he has his brother.’
‘That so-and-so!’
He’d tried his hardest but she wouldn’t listen. Scobie felt aggrieved, stuck between two uncomfortable forces: his boss and his wife. Neither one wanted or needed him, it seemed, yet they both held sway over him. He was betting that Challis would never remove Ellen Destry from a case. The benefits of sleeping with the boss. I’m still useful, aren’t I? he demanded. I could be tracking down witnesses, tracing, interviewing, eliminating. Instead of which you want me investigating the theft of a ride-on mower.
He boiled inside. When he got home at six-thirty there was Roslyn, a small, wan figure in the dark kitchen, her school atlas open at the mess that was the Indonesian islands. With a scrape of her chair she was on her feet and hugging him fiercely, weeping so copiously that her tears soaked his shirt. ‘Sweetheart,’ he said, overwhelmed.
She hugged him tighter, released him, returned to her homework. He tried to help her as he cooked chops for dinner, but the Roe brothers had taken root in his mind and he wanted to harm them in some way. He examined that notion, surprised that he didn’t feel any guilt.
****
Caz Moon knew where the anger had come from today, the courage, but she’d been a little in awe of herself even so. She hadn’t always been angry and brave. For months after the rape she’d been, in her own words, a mumbling mess, contained on the outside, contained enough to manage the surf shop, but distraught on the inside. She couldn’t believe some of the feelings she’d had: defilement, yeah, but guilt, too, for letting it happen. As if she’d had a choice!
To make it worse, her memories had been hazy at first, no clarity or definition, so she wasn’t sure what had happened. But slowly she pieced it together and even more slowly she’d picked herself up off the ground.
And now, as the evening light eased toward full darkness, Caz Moon couldn’t believe her luck. Here was Josh Brownlee again, queuing to get into Retro, the club behind the RSL hall, hitting on the youngest sister of someone she’d gone to school with, what was her name, Hayley, Hayley with a bare midriff, heavily kohled eyes, nipples like pebbles in the cool air, a skirt less than a whisker past her groin, chewing gum and enjoying Josh’s pickup bullshit.
‘Josh! Joshy!’ cried Caz. ‘Raped anyone yet? He’s a rapist,’ she informed Hayley, Hayley’s mates and everyone else in earshot.
Josh lunged at her, she dodged away laughing, and that cop lady was there again, saying, ‘Everything okay here?’
‘Fine!’ said Caz in her sparkling voice.
The cop glanced at Josh, then at Caz and murmured, ‘Do you want to report a crime?’
‘Me? No!’
‘Caz,’ said the cop flatly. ‘I just heard you accuse that boy of rape.’
‘Me? I was just kidding.’
The cop stared at her, not in the least bit satisfied. Finally she shoved a photo under Caz’s nose. ‘Have you seen this man?’
‘Not me,’ Caz said, striding off in her conquering-the-world way.
When Pam looked, the boy had disappeared.
****
16
That was Tuesday. Wednesday was Ludmilla Wishart’s thirtieth birthday and the first caller was her friend, Carmen Gandolfo, who sang Happy Birthday down the line as Ludmilla was about to eat her muesli. Ludmilla blinked back a couple of tears: Carmen was good for her, large in body and spirit, a real tonic. Plus it mattered that even though she knew what Adrian was like, Carmen had called her at home, not work.
They exchanged a few pleasantries, Carmen apparently slurping coffee or tea. ‘I’ll call in at your office later with a little something.’
‘Size doesn’t matter,’ Ludmilla said, ‘so long as it’s expensive.’
‘On my salary?’ demanded Carmen. Another slurp. ‘So, what have you got planned for tonight?’
Ludmilla said in a guilty rush, ‘Adrian’s taking me out to dinner.’
‘Darl,’ Carmen drawled, putting a lot of doubt and disapproval into the word.
With a whine that she hated, Ludmilla replied, ‘I can’t leave him, you know that. I’m scared he’ll hurt himself if I do.’
‘Utter bullshit.’
‘Please, Carmen.’
‘Get him into a MENS program. I can set it up for you.’
Carmen worked as a counsellor with the shire’s community health service. MENS-Men Exploring Non-violent Solutions-was a behaviour-change workshop for violent or abusive husbands or partners. Ludmilla knew there was a snowball’s chance in hell of Adrian entering such a program. He wasn’t some uneducated labourer but an urbane, highly educated professional; and he’d hardly ever hit her.
‘Please,’ she said miserably.
Last time they’d had this conversation Carmen had said, ‘It’s your funeral-and I mean that literally,’ but this was a birthday call, so Carmen steered the conversation onto cheerier matters. Ludmilla was soon laughing and buoyant, but glancing at the kitchen clock anxiously and keeping an ear open for Adrian, who was in the bathroom down the hall, scraping his electric razor over his lean chin. She didn’t have much time. She thanked Carmen for the call and was rinsing her cereal bowl at the sink when the phone rang again. Her mother said, ‘How’s the birthday girl?’
‘Hello, Mum.’
They chatted for a couple of minutes, then Ludmilla’s mother said, ‘Is that gorgeous husband of yours taking you somewhere nice tonight?’
Ludmilla had tried confiding in her mother several times in the past few years, but she simply failed to listen. She adored her son-in-law. Adrian could do no wrong. Bolstered by her conversation with Carmen, Ludmilla said the worst thing she’d ever said about her husband: ‘Mum, Mr Adorable punched me in the stomach last night.’
‘Oh, don’t be silly.’
‘I’m thinking seriously of leaving him.’
‘You’ve always been a complainer, Ludmilla. A marriage requires work. You need to try harder.’
Ludmilla realised with a start of fear that Adrian’s razor had fallen silent. She murmured urgently, ‘I’d better go.’
And there was Adrian, standing in the doorway, both hands behind his back. He cocked his head: ‘Your mother?’
How much had he heard? ‘Yes,’ Ludmilla said. She added reassuringly, ‘It was a quick call.’
To her relief, he nodded. Ludmilla couldn’t win sometimes. If she made a call, he’d see it as money they’d never see again. If someone called her-especially if they spoke at length-he’d feel that she’d removed herself from him. Often he’d time her, glaring pointedly at th
e Longines watch she’d bought him. He’d time her, calculate the distances she’d driven, count the money she’d spent on groceries.
His grins used to melt her. He grinned now, saying ‘Ta da!’ and bringing his hands out from behind his back.
He flourished a birthday cake at her. Chocolate, three candles for the thirty years, a scalloped edge and other fancy bits, ‘Happy Birthday’ scrolled across it in white icing.
Then Ludmilla frowned, looked more closely at the icing. ‘Hippy Birthday,’ it said.
Her face crumpled. ‘Adrian!’
‘Just a joke…’
‘I’m not fat.’
‘Ludmilla, it’s just a joke.’
‘I’m not fat,’ she wailed, touching her hips.
He was deadly quiet and serious now. ‘We have to face it, darling, your thighs are bigger.’
She collapsed into her chair at the kitchen table. ‘I can’t go on like this.’
Adrian was bright and shiny from the bathroom, groomed to within an inch of his life. He stood behind her chair, dug his fingers into her neck and murmured, ‘The only way you’ll leave me is in a coffin.’
She gasped, jerked away from him.
‘Mill,’ he said reasonably, ‘I could snap your neck, you know I could. Listen,’ he said, moving around now and crouching beside her, one hand stroking her between the shoulders, the other on her knee, ‘I apologise, I went too far.’ Suddenly hot tears spurted from his eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you. You mean the world to me. It’s all the pressure, the disappointments, am I good at what I do, why aren’t I getting any recognition.
‘Oh, Ade,’ she said, crying too now.
‘I shouldn’t take it out on you, I know I shouldn’t.’
Ludmilla knew that Adrian was chronically depressed. Although he’d had plenty of freelance drafting and design commissions since their marriage, for which he earned reasonable money, the jobs had been small-married friends getting him to mock up preliminary drawings for a house extension, for example-or otherwise disappointing, like the shire commissioning him to design a public toilet block for the Waterloo foreshore only to reject it, calling it too outlandish. The larger commissions, the offers of a partnership with a prestige firm, had been elusive. Meanwhile there were certain types of people, the legions of the vulgar, whom Adrian Wishart could not possibly work with, and standards he would not compromise. Ludmilla felt for him sometimes. It was hard for truly creative people.
‘I know,’ she sniffled, squeezing his hand.
He hugged her affectionately, sprang to his feet and briskly went about getting himself some breakfast. She envied the way he could recover from setbacks. Then the news came on, the police still investigating the assault on the Landseer School chaplain, a car bomb in Baghdad, some footballer arrested for drunk driving-’Your honour, consider the terrible pressure my client is under,’ Adrian chortled, making her smile.
Then he patted his lips. ‘Forgot to say, I’m playing squash tonight.’
He said it every year. And every year she said, ‘You are not, mister. You’re taking me out to dinner.’
Mock astonished, he jabbed his chest. ‘Moi?’
‘Yes, you,’ Ludmilla said. Inside, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
‘Completely slipped my mind.’
‘It did not.’
It was almost like love. They ate their breakfast in a warm glow and when Ludmilla next got up to clear a plate away, she heard the whiplash snap of his fingers. She turned: he was holding up his coffee mug for a refill.
She fetched the pot. Just as she was pouring, the phone rang. Ludmilla didn’t know who, apart from Carmen and her mother, would be ringing at this hour. She glanced anxiously at Adrian; he glanced pointedly at his watch.
She swallowed and picked up the handset. ‘Hello?’
It was Carl Vernon in Penzance Beach, sounding deeply distressed about the old fisherman’s cottage on Bluff Road.
****
17
Elsewhere in Penzance Beach that Wednesday morning, Pam Murphy was jogging. Like Carl Vernon, she lived on the bluff above the beach, but hers was a rented fibro-cement shack and it was several blocks back from any view of the sea, along a rutted dirt track at the edge of farmland. She didn’t know Vernon, and was only dimly aware of the push to save the fisherman’s cottage on the cliff top opposite his house. Still, she loved living in Penzance Beach, loved living so close to the water, which was only minutes away on foot.
Her route this morning took her first along the top of the bluff, the flat blue sea and Phillip Island showing between the dark pines on one side of her, a range of fences, yards and holiday houses on the other-silent weekenders, expensively curtained and gloomy at this hour on a weekday morning.
Then she came to a concrete cliff top bench, signs that warned of unstable edges, and a flight of wooden steps to the sand below. She pistoned down, then back up, then down again, until her legs burned and her heart hammered. She was running a marathon soon, and liked to push herself hard like this. Her body and mind crackling with alertness and energy, she began to lope along the beach, weaving in and out of the kelp drifts and exposed reefs at the edge of the water, where the sand was wet and hard. She passed old people walking dogs, a power-walker, seagulls, sharks’ eggs, the carcass of a seal. No dolphins keeping pace with her today, only a tanker far out on the water, heading for the refinery near Waterloo.
So a morning like most others, but Pam always noticed the tiny differences between one day and the next. The two breakwaters along her route were almost covered in sand this morning, for example, and yesterday there’d been no kelp. Had the wind risen last night, the waters raced? If so, she’d slept right through it. And with the blood beating strongly through her, body zingingly alive, she thought about Andy Cree.
She came to the little stile on the low plank wall at the bottom of the cliff, stepped over it and was lost in the ti-trees, their trunks and roots like dark hanks of rope. Dodging to avoid the traps in her path, all sounds shielded from her, Pam powered up the crooked track to the cliff top. Finally she burst through the bushes and onto the road.
And stopped in her tracks. She struggled to take it all in. There was a gap in the vista, but what? Then she realised: the old fisherman’s cottage had been flattened. Heavy bulldozers were growling and scraping among the pines. People were milling about, shouting angrily, some of them in tears. Eight security guards, beefy, beer-fed thugs dressed in black, maintained a line of defence between the protesters and the demolition crew. The latter, wearing hard hats, jeans, work boots and gloves, were wielding mallets and loading dump bins in concert with the bulldozers.
It was implacable, unstoppable. It was noisy, dusty and shocking to witness. Pam felt tears spring to her eyes and she crossed the road to join the protesters.
One man detached himself from the group. He was bony, grey-haired but fit looking, and Pam recognised him as someone she saw walking along the beach from time to time. He clearly knew her, for he said, in a clear, booming voice, ‘You’re a police officer, right?’
Pam nodded. ‘What’s happening?’ she said, even though she knew it was a dumb question.
She’d always liked the old house. She passed it every morning when she burst through from the beach below. She thought of it as part of the old Penzance Beach, a pretty house amid the million-dollar architectural wet dreams on either side of it, which were constructed of smoky glass, corrugated iron and tropical rainforest timbers and referred to as ‘our beach shack’ by the Melbourne stockbrokers and cocaine lawyers who owned them.
‘Can’t you stop it?’ the man said, clutching her wrist.
She removed it gently. ‘A bit late for that, Mr…’
‘Carl Vernon,’ he said. ‘Please, do something.’
Pam weighed her options. The demolition was well advanced and well organised. She was one lonely copper. She didn’t know the facts.
‘Perhaps they have permission,’ she said lame
ly.
‘Permission! The house was unique! It was classified by the National Trust yesterday!’
That was enough to go on with. Pam strode toward the site, Vernon beside her, saying, ‘They have no right. There was an emergency application for heritage protection lodged with the planning minister.’
They reached the security cordon. ‘Wait here, please,’ Pam said, and she made to step between two of the guards, men built like concrete slabs, no necks, shaven skulls. In its sweet, blind way, the state government had allowed the security industry to regulate itself, with the result that many security guards had criminal records and a penchant for methamphetamine-fuelled rage. Knowing that, Pam wasn’t intimidated by these jokers. ‘I’m a police officer,’ she said levelly, looking each man in the eye. ‘If you lay one finger on me, I’ll fuck you up for good.’
They blinked. She passed through to another thickset man, who wore the hard, unimpressed face of work-site bosses the world over. One foot propped on a pile of fence palings, he was watching a bulldozer tip rubble into a skip. Pam was astonished to see a mattress complete with a woollen underlay go tumbling in, followed by a refrigerator and a microwave. Then another ‘dozer roared in: a splintered wardrobe, a dusty rug, shards of glass, corrugated roofing iron, a woollen overcoat.
The foreman gave her a quizzical look and spat unhurriedly at her feet. ‘How did you get in here?’
‘I’m a police officer.’
Watching her wordlessly, he fished a sheet of paper from his shirt pocket. It was warm from his body, almost moist. She scanned it: a demolition permit.
‘But as I understand it,’ she said, returning the document, ‘the house was classified by the National Trust yesterday.’