Prodigal

by T M Heron

  “So, what do you do for a crust, Belinda?” I say, in a good-humored voice. I relish using vulgar colloquial terms when I’m “in character”.

  She swallows. “I’m a teacher aide.”

  I nod at the cheaply framed certificate hanging above her phone. It’s a Bachelor of Education. “Why only an aide and not a teacher?”

  “I, I have, I’m bi-polar. Teaching was—”

  “Never mind. Still, a teacher aide. How responsible. What on earth did you tell the school when you disappeared off to accost me the other day?”

  “Uh, I said it was a doctor’s appointment.”

  “What was wrong?”

  “N-, nothing.”

  “No, but what would you have told them? If they’d asked?”

  She looks confused. I put my tea on the table. “I’ll tell you what you would have told them. You would have told them that it’s none of their business. If they can trust you to mold the young impressionable minds of the future, then they shouldn’t be questioning you about why you need to visit a doctor.” I smack the table with my fist for emphasis. “Besides,” I add, “you’re bi-polar. You people probably go to doctors all the time.”

  I take another sip of tea. It’s not bad. “Say, how much d’you think a Crane Brothers suit costs? Because you ruined two of mine.”

  Silence.

  “They’re four thousand dollars apiece,” I say slowly. “That’s eight thousand your little visits cost me. Not counting the shirts, or my car. And it’s not like I can claim insurance on the clothing, is it?”

  Her breathing becomes shallow.

  “Are you able to reimburse me?” I ask.

  She nods earnestly.

  I slap her solidly across the face. “You’re lying, Belinda. Of course you can’t afford to reimburse me. You’re a teacher aide. Those suits are probably worth about thirty percent of your gross salary. Would I be right?”

  She doesn’t answer but starts crying. What can she reply? Crying is probably not a bad strategy. If it didn’t annoy me so much.

  “If you don’t be quiet, I’m going to have to hit you again,” I say. “I don’t want to. I only like hitting pretty girls.”

  I check my glove to ensure it’s intact. She tones it down a little.

  I sit back in my chair. It’s uncomfortable. None of Belinda’s chairs look particularly comfy and none of them match. I am repulsed at the thought of how she survives on such a meagre income.

  “What was her name?” I say finally.

  For a split second there’s hatred in her eyes. “Emma. Emma Morris.”

  “Emma Morris. Emma Morris . . .”

  I unfold the piece of paper I’ve been carrying in my pocket and start looking down it. It’s a list of everyone I’ve been with over the past six years.

  “Ah, okay. Emma Morris. Twenty-two Bayley Drive, Chartwell. Just round the road from you.”

  Belinda’s face contorts in horror. She’s realizing I’ve done this to more than one woman.

  I, on the other hand, am feeling vaguely better. Belinda Goodluck is not a Rape Crisis worker or a counsellor. Or anyone else who might have cottoned on that the person who took their friend is one of the Park Rape Team. She just represents one girl.

  “She told you then, I guess,” I say. “She wasn’t meant to do that. How many other people do you think she’s told?”

  “No one,” says Belinda. “She didn’t even want to tell me. She made me vow to tell no one.” And I swear she’s telling me the truth.

  “I knew something had happened. She became anorexic,” Belinda continues. “So I kept on and on at her. Until she told me.”

  “Well, then, something good did come of it,” I say warmly. ‘You women always want to look thinner.”

  I finish my tea in silence, then ask Belinda if there is anything to eat. She tells me there are chocolate chip biscuits, but I know they’d be budget.

  “Why didn’t you go to the cops?” I ask her.

  “She wouldn’t let me,” says Belinda. “She wanted the whole thing kept secret.” She starts looking tearful again. Her emotions appear to oscillate wildly between fear and grief.

  “And this is how you keep a secret?” I say, incredulous.

  “That was before,” she says.

  And then she lapses into tears again. It’s defiant crying now. Indulgent crying. She doesn’t care that I have no time for her tears. Experience tells me she’s not worried any more if I try to slap her quiet. She’s going to cry anyway.

  I clean my teacup with a corner of the tablecloth while I wait for her to calm down. “Before what?” I say finally.

  “Emma’s dead,” says Belinda. “She killed herself.”

  I wait for her to say more. But Belinda isn’t that focused anymore. The adrenaline has drained out of her along with all hope. She is exhausted. Calm. Accepting even.

  And suddenly I realize why Belinda has told no one, not even the cops. After keeping such a secret, a secret that eventually killed her best friend, Belinda decided to come after me herself.

  I run the idea around in my head a little. Recalling the intensity of the car-park attack. The wild look in her eyes when she threw paint over me. Little Belinda is a vigilante.

  Now I understand the situation I can’t be bothered hanging around too much longer. I have the information I needed. Plus, I’ve got a lasagna to organize.

  I stand in front of Belinda, hands behind my back. “Pick a hand,” I say. “Left or right?”

  Some of the earlier alarm returns to her eyes. “Please don’t, don’t rape me.”

  “When was the last time you looked in a mirror? I’m not going to rape you. Now, don’t be so unsporting. Pick a hand.”

  Belinda stares straight ahead as if willing the correct answer into her mind. If there is one. “Left,” she says finally.

  “Good choice.”

  I pull out my left hand which holds the paring knife. Swing it like a pendulum in front of her eyes. She veers her face away.

  “Okay, okay, pick another. Let’s see what’s in the right.”

  Before she can refuse to speak, I hold out my right hand. In it is a mobile phone I found on the kitchen bench. Belinda’s eyes close and open and she looks at me as if I’m the one who is mentally unbalanced. I hand her the phone. “Text your closest friend at work and tell them you’re taking the rest of the week off sick.”

  “But what will you do then?”

  “It’s part of the game. You have to do it to find out.” I wave the knife in front of her. “Spoiler alert.”

  She rears away from me again.

  “Kidding,” I say, but she’s too busy negotiating to see the humor.

  “If I do, you promise you won’t hurt me?”

  I sigh, scroll through until I find some obvious exchanges with work mates and write the text myself. I’m suddenly sick of the game. When I’m done, I say, “Belinda, you made a terrible mistake coming after me the way you did.”

  “I know.”

  I strangle her.

  Her neck is thin. My hands are strong. It takes longer than I’d thought. I wait around a bit at the end to make sure she hasn’t faked death. Prod her a couple of times. Then her bladder and bowels release and it’s obvious she’s dead.

  So much for that. Killing isn’t fun — not even when I try to inject humor.

  I leave her where she’s fallen and wander around the flat. It’s slightly creepy to be wandering around a dead person’s flat. I have an active imagination and can easily scare myself. There are hand-written messages taped to the fridge and bedroom walls. The kind of notes people who’ve read too many self-help books make for themselves, and my skin crawls with embarrassment as I read them. Keep taking your meds and don’t stop! One minute at a time, one hour at a time, one day at a time.

  There are several medications lined up on the dresser in her bedroom. She is taking Lithium and Seroquel — sorry, was. There are also bottles of various benzodiazepines. I’m tempted to poc
ket them but that would probably be asking for trouble. She clearly hadn’t taken any of them the day she showed up at Bakers.

  I put the cup I’ve used in a plastic bag. I tape a tiny square of foil to the top of her lingerie drawer. It contains five Ecstasy tablets with which I’m loath to part. But let the police have a think about that one.

  I hurl the teacup I drank from out of the window as I drive down Salamanca Road. It smashes. Just let them try to identify anyone from that. I peel the gloves off before I reach the city. When I refuel, I stuff them into a rubbish bin at the service station. No one gives me a second look.

  9

  On Thursday morning I scan the Dominion Post website for anything on Michelia or Belinda Goodluck. Nothing. I’m almost beginning to give up hope on Michelia. Belinda won’t have been found yet, of course. But you just never know. It’s not as exciting as waiting for Park Rape Team breaking news but I get a slight kick.

  I’m concerned nothing has come out yet about the Park Rape Team and Michelia. Nothing. Are the police trying to play me? Should I be making some kind of “statement” back?

  I flick through the remains of the first section of the paper. In truth, the Belinda episode has left me a little flat and unfocused. It took too long, and I was unable to see Savannah. Then, after all that I had to go back and have lasagna with Ava.

  On top of this there are still loose ends to tie up. Like trying to obtain the security footage from the associates’ car park. But I don’t feel particularly motivated.

  Feeling flat is alien to me. Belinda, the interfering bitch, completely upset my equilibrium. Her and whatever shit is happening, or more to the point, not happening with regards to Michelia. The police owe it to warn the city. Can it really be possible her parents haven’t reported it? They live in Khandallah, for God’s sake.

  To make matters worse I think in some small way I’m, well, grieving I guess, the death of the Park Rape Team. Grief is an unfamiliar emotion. But I’m allowing myself latitude as I’m sure it’s completely natural.

  What I really need is an all-night blowout over in Sydney with someone clever and fun like Mel. But Mel has barely spoken to me since our big night out at Lily’s.

  I am suddenly jolted from my melancholy by the leading article on the front page of the business section. At the top is a large photo of my estranged father. Below it a sad but glowing tribute:

  A grave loss for the business community and New Zealand at large. Harold (Harry) Arthur Ray, aged fifty-nine years, died of a heart attack one night ago in his sleep. Businessman, entrepreneur, leader, community man. Widespread shock is the reaction to this tragic, early and unforeseeable death of one of our greatest.

  I blink and look out the window.

  Another storm is riding in low over the city but inside my chest my heart is opening with all the warmth and vigor of the brightest summer’s day.

  “Well, well, Dad,” I say to myself. “Who’d have thought you ever do anything convenient?” I smack my fist on the desk. “Who’d have thought?” I yell.

  Jo comes lumbering in.

  “Go away,” I shout. “Don’t ruin this for me.”

  The burst of euphoria I’m experiencing is like a good hard snort of coke. First snort of the night, no less. And although there’s no crystalline residue on my fingers, inside my head billions of neurotransmitters are popping as a tide of serotonin floods through my brain.

  A shadow appears in my doorway that materializes into Anthony Hartman.

  “I’m very sorry, Jackson” he says, and for a moment I think that our shit security division must have contacted the cops over Belinda’s paint attack after all. The euphoric experience vanishes, and I can’t conceal my dismay.

  “I’m surprised to even see you here,” says Anthony. “I know you weren’t on the best of terms. But . . .”

  Ah, he’s referring to the tragic and unforeseen death of the great Harry Ray.

  “I can’t quite believe it,” I say. Which is the truth.

  Then I remember it happened one day ago. So, ostensibly being family, I’ve known it for twenty-four hours, not three seconds. “It doesn’t feel real,” I say.

  I don’t know why but when the moment commands a display of raw emotion, all I can ever come up with is clichés.

  “Being here won’t help you with any of that,” says Anthony.

  Leo Packer, head partner of mergers and acquisitions, and the man who currently benefits from all my new clients, appears behind Anthony. He has an undercut jaw and small shiny eyes like a budgie’s. If Anthony is sympathetic, or at least making a genuine attempt to look sorrowful, Leo doesn’t even bother. “Go home, buddy,” he says. “You should be with your family. Your people here are all good to go.”

  Of course they are. They’re working eighty-hour weeks and billing accordingly.

  I decide that perhaps getting the security footage can wait a day or two. Belinda may not be found for days. Even when she is, it’s unlikely anyone in Security has seen the car-park footage.

  Besides, I’m already feeling powerful. Both men at my door are intensely aware of the financial repercussions of having Ray Investments join as a client. And just like that the possibilities within my life have changed. I’m guessing right now that prick in Security would be readily expected to give me his best efforts at fellatio if that was what I needed in my time of sorrow.

  I have the sudden desire to comfort my mother. A woman I haven’t had access to in many years. A woman who has no doubt been pining a long time just to see me.

  ◆◆◆

  My sister is five years younger than me. Her name is Helena. When I was eleven and she was six Helena fell two stories off our pool-house roof. She lay there inert for a while and then our gardener found her, called my parents, who called emergency services and an ambulance took her away.

  When Helena regained consciousness, she felt no pain. She had snapped her three upper vertebrae when she landed and was paralyzed from the neck down. An enormous anti-climax all round.

  My parents hired two full-time nurses. Not one, but two. It was overkill, but my mother was devastated. And my father, although he could stand many things, could not bear for my mother to be unhappy. They built a new wing on our house with hospital facilities and a tetraplegic bathroom and in many ways our lives started to revolve around Helena.

  My parents gifted huge amounts of money to charities involved in stem-cell research. Specialized teachers came and went, but no one could get Helena to communicate. All she had was her face. Some people in Helena’s position can communicate by blinking, but no, not Helena.

  But I could tell what Helena was thinking. Right from the day they brought her home from her long stint in rehab I could read her face like a book. It was all there in the eyes. Even at the age of six. Anger, hatred, and unadulterated rage.

  Although not as fluent in Helena’s inner thought process as myself, my father also began to cotton on to Helena’s erratic facial mood swings when I was around. Even though she couldn’t talk, and even though they should have been focused on me, the unbroken interesting child, my father started distancing himself from me. He also started setting distance between me and my sister.

  When I turned twelve, much to my mother’s distress, my father prohibited me from being in a room alone with Helena. At thirteen, despite even more opposition from my mother, he shipped me off to boarding school.

  By the time I started my tertiary education he wasn’t speaking to me. And by the time I’d returned from doing an MBA at Stanford I wasn’t welcome home. At that stage the payments from my education trust fund were abruptly severed. A one-off payment for just $10 million appeared in my bank account. Financially, I was informed, I was on my own.

  And so, all because of Helena and her stupid tetraplegic moods, my monstrous inheritance was lost.

  It didn’t bother me overly until I started working. But in the business world where my father was famous, I was constantly reminded of all that I had lost.
And how much harder I would always have to try without his backing. And how easy partnership could have been if he’d wanted it for me. Instead, the one time I happened to run into him at a presentation, he told me I’d never make partner at any law firm in this city while he was alive.

  I think about this now as I drive and smile. In the end I have won. I have beaten my father. And now, once I get my mother on board, money never need be a consideration again. No matter what I want to do.

  I will be a powerful man. A serious player in this country. And by God I’ll have that partnership.

  My parents’ house is in Plimmerton. Not at the bottom part along the sea where all the affluent up-and-coming young families live, but right up the top where people’s front yards look like golf courses and most houses come with a heli-pad.

  The property is a joke because it houses three swimming pools, a tennis court, and a gymnasium. From what I have learnt about my father through magazines and television interviews he never worked less than a fifteen-hour day. My mother is no kind of athlete, and how much use does a tetraplegic have for swimming pools and tennis courts, let alone the gym?

  I imagine Helena’s nurses get more use out of the facilities than my entire family put together. This immediately begins to bug me. I can picture them living there, enjoying the pools and the sauna and spa and smugly playing tennis. They are over-paid and under-worked, no doubt. They probably even get to invite their working-class friends around to enjoy all of it, and this thought bugs me even more.

  By the time I’ve wound my way up the steep road to their driveway and down the sculpted lane to the house I’m worked up and not in the best form for a nostalgic family reunion. I calm down by picturing myself firing all those over-indulged peasants once my mother and I are best friends, Ray Investments is a client of Bakers, I am a partner and the will has been appropriately adjusted.

  With a bit of luck Helena will die before me. I haven’t been able to think this far ahead before and it excites me. I’d be sole heir. I wonder briefly about the expected life span of a tetraplegic. There are probably statistics about it somewhere. My thoughts for the future grow brighter and brighter.