by Rebecca Lim
I felt it evaporate quickly along Carmen’s nerve endings like accelerant poured on a bonfire, quickly burned off.
Leaving hardly an aftertaste.
‘The drinks were pleasant but not unduly … troubling,’ I say, and shrug.
Ryan lets loose another uneasy laugh. ‘Why the fainting act, anyway? From what Tod and Clint were telling me back there, you would’ve blown Tiffany away.
Why didn’t you sing?’ So Spotty Boy’s name is Clint. I wonder if he and Ryan used to be friends. Whether the three girls and three boys used to triple date, or whatever it is that small town youth do around here.
‘I don’t know any popular music,’ I reply after a moment.
Which is true. I don’t. Apart from the Mahler I’ve only recently committed to memory, I don’t recall any music at all. Just another failing of my diseased mind.
Maybe something expurgated to keep me safe. Or off balance.
Ryan shoots me a disbelieving stare before refocusing on the road. ‘You’re shitting me, right?’
‘Nope,’ I say casually, as we pull up to the Daleys’ chained front gates. ‘I guess I just like Mahler.’ Ryan lets the engine idle for a moment, turns to face me. ‘You are unreal,’ he mutters. He pops his seatbelt, then the door, and adds, not looking at me, ‘Sometimes … it’s like you’re two different people, you know?’ I watch as he enacts the usual ritual that entails getting into the Daleys’ place these days — unlock the heavy padlock that anchors the chain, unwind the heavy chain that anchors the gates, open the gates, return to the car, drive it forwards, then do it all over again, except in reverse. I can see what Stewart Daley was thinking when he came up with the new security measures, but that saying about horses having already bolted springs to mind. Neither the dogs nor the chains will bring Lauren back.
When the car finally stops, I open the front passenger door; the dogs catch my scent and whine, then begin snarling and howling in earnest. Barrelling into the barred side gate repeatedly with their bullet-shaped heads, their hard, muscular bodies, as if they have temporarily lost their minds.
‘Welcome home, honey,’ Ryan says, helping me down out of his car.
We head up the stairs towards Lauren’s bedroom. Apart from a dim nightlight on the upstairs landing, the house is in darkness and very quiet. All the bedroom doors, each blank white and identical, are neatly closed, as they have been each time I’ve returned to this house from school. I imagine Mrs Daley’s silent figure daily cleaning, cleaning. Putting everything but the thing she most desires, most longs for, back in its proper place.
‘You aren’t too tired to, uh, talk?’ Ryan asks as he follows me across the landing to Lauren’s bedroom door.
I’m in no mood for questions, but part of me is glad to have his company. Too glad. It could get to be a habit, and the thought makes me sound churlish as I snarl, ‘I’m rarely tired.’ He takes that as the ungracious yes it’s supposed to be. But it’s true. I don’t sleep very well. Still, it doesn’t slow me down any.
I turn the doorknob with one faintly glowing hand.
As the door swings wide and I turn on the light, I see — — Mr Daley standing in the middle of his daughter’s bedroom, holding a short, white nightgown that must have belonged to her against his cheek. He is crooning softly, the sound making goose flesh rise instantly across the surface of Carmen’s skin.
Chapter 14
‘Christ, Dad,’ Ryan hisses, darting a look down the hallway at his parents’ closed bedroom door. ‘What are you doing here? Jesus.’ Stewart Daley’s eyes are open and there are traces of tears on his cheeks, but there’s a slackness in his features that isn’t ordinarily there. I wave one hand in front of his face as he continues to make that soft, awful sound, rocking slightly on the balls of his feet. I circle him a couple of times to make sure.
‘He’s not, uh, here,’ I murmur after a moment.
‘What do you mean?’ Ryan says sharply.
He pulls the faded nightdress roughly out of his father’s hands and throws it onto Lauren’s bed, then gives him a hard shake. The two men, of a height, eye to unseeing eye.
Lauren’s wardrobe door is open, its little automatic light on. I walk carefully around Ryan’s father and pick up the nightie, throw it back inside untidily, close the door.
‘He’s …’ What is the word I’m searching for? ‘Sleep … walking.’ Ryan lets go of his father’s shoulders as if electrified.
‘I thought he’d got … over that,’ he says after a long pause. ‘He hasn’t done it for over a year. He did it a lot when Lauren was first … taken.’ There’s that pause again, like he’s measuring his words carefully. ‘Mum and I didn’t really bring it up with him, and it stopped, after a while. And when he woke, he never remembered a thing.’
‘And that’s what will happen tonight,’ I say quietly, taking the sleeping man carefully by the sleeve and turning him slowly around to face the hallway. He goes quiet and still, his eyes blank, dark pools.
Ryan hurries down the hall to his parents’ room and I hear a flurry of quiet words. Mrs Daley emerges, more skeletal than usual in her white, waffle-weave dressing gown, her paper-white face free of its usual careful make-up, her dark hair slightly matted from restless sleep. She takes one of her husband’s large hands in hers, and Ryan supports him on the other side as they walk him slowly back to his bedroom and sit him down on the edge of the marital bed.
Ryan’s mother doesn’t look at me all the while, and I withdraw back into Lauren’s bedroom to reduce the woman’s obvious distress. I see her gently close the master bedroom door until only a narrow sliver of off-white carpet is visible. The sound of voices never rises above a murmur.
Ryan joins me a moment later, turns Lauren’s white desk chair around and straddles it, facing me.
‘He didn’t do it,’ he says simply, his eyes holding mine. ‘You have to believe me. And neither did I — even Brenda will vouch for that, because we were together for most of the night. Still, half the town thinks it’s an inside job and the other half is willing to believe it. It’s two years tomorrow, did you know? It’s burned into my brain, how long she’s been gone.’ I am silent. I hadn’t let Stewart Daley touch me for long enough the day I got here to make a judgment about his guilt or innocence. Hadn’t let the maelstrom in his head fully play out before I cut the connection with him. Maybe he did it, maybe he didn’t. I am sure about one thing, however. Ryan is innocent.
Two years tomorrow. Two years of hopeless leads, and suspicion upon this house. Where would you even begin to unearth a buried mystery of two years?
‘Who saw her last?’ I say suddenly. ‘Was anyone with her on the day she was taken?’ Ryan frowns. ‘She’d spent the day with her boyfriend, Richard Coates. But she was home alone that night because they’d argued about going to the twenty-first birthday party of some stoner friend of his. Lauren detested the guy. Richard and Lauren had zero in common, but they were absolutely crazy about each other. Though they had some spectacular fights. I could always tell after they’d had a bust-up, even though Lauren wouldn’t say much about it. Mum and Dad were away for the night — at the theatre. Mum always said we might have moved away from the city but it didn’t mean we had to “live like savages” and give up on “the finer things”, though Dad didn’t see it that way. There hasn’t been a play written that he can’t sleep through from the moment the curtain goes up.’ His mouth quirks up at the corners before his expression grows sombre again. He meets my speculative gaze steadily. ‘My mother swears Dad was right beside her the whole night. And that’s what they told the police. She still blames herself, you know. Hasn’t been to the theatre, to anything, since. It’s like she cauterised that whole side of her brain,’ he adds, looking down.
‘The fun side. The ability to be happy. When we lost Lauren, we lost my mother, too.’ He’s silent so long I wonder if he is … crying?
‘So, this Richard guy,’ I say. ‘He got an alibi, too?’ Ryan finally comes back from wh
erever he’s been inside his head.
‘At least thirty-five half-drunk twenty-somethings insisted in writing that Richard was party hearty from seven thirty that night through till dawn. And Maury Charlton told the police he saw Lauren moving freely around her bedroom at 9.15 pm. Alone.’
‘I’ve got a choir rehearsal at 8 am tomorrow,’ I say carefully. ‘But I could always extend my double spares in the morning kind of indefinitely …’
‘You’re on,’ Ryan says, a shark-like grin on his face, his understanding pitch perfect.
*
I should be in study hall, considering the population profile and proclivities of the citizens of Upper Angola or somewhere, but instead we’re driving down the deserted coast road away from Paradise towards Port Marie. Along the way, we pass an abandoned military base, its mile upon mile of rusting steel fence culminating in a set of chained gates at least twenty feet high, peppered with the usual threatening messages about private property being exactly that.
A little farther along the stretch of swampy marshland that links the two coastal towns, there is a discreetly signed turn-off for an oil refinery. In the distance, I see a vast chimney, a plume of red fire issuing from its blunt concrete snout, hundreds of metres in the air. There’s a heat shimmer in the atmosphere above the salt plains that run right up to the distant refinery gates.
Apart from the flames, I see no signs of life.
‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ I say.
‘It’s like the name implies.’ Ryan grins without humour. ‘Paradise on earth.’ As we drive, he gives me a little background on the Paradise, Port Marie and Little Falls triumvirate. ‘Paradise was a hard living fishing port until that whole industry fell apart early last century and people like my folks began moving in and gentrifying — you get the “ocean views” and “lifestyle” without the price tag, and it’s only an hour and a half from the city. The old-school locals hate it. Hate us, I suppose. Port Marie’s always been like Paradise’s more genteel big sister — with better real estate and water views, less heavy pollution. Except for where we’re headed, that is. Little Falls is exactly as the name implies: it’s inland and features a small set of waterfalls that no one ever visits.’ It’s an overcast day and everything is grey on grey.
Before we reach the obligatory Welcome to Port Marie signage, we turn off onto an unsealed road plagued by deep ruts and potholes filled with gravel and muddy water.
‘It’s like something out of Deliverance, huh?’ Ryan mutters tightly.
I have no idea what he means, so I say nothing, just grip the handhold on the front passenger door a little harder so I don’t look like I’m trying to throw myself at him.
A little later, we crunch to a stop outside an unfenced, double-storey, fibro beach shack that never started off pretty and has been allowed to enter serious eyesore territory. Part of it was half-heartedly painted peach many, many moons ago and the rest is well, fibro grey, with a flat tin roof and cheerless lace curtains at each of the windows. The front yard is scattered with the carcasses and insides of slowly rusting machines, an overturned tin boat and three uncoupled outboard motors.
‘Richard’s into extreme biking,’ Ryan explains, popping the driver’s door then getting mine. ‘Lives with his old man; mother ran out on them years ago, so housekeeping isn’t a major priority.’ The contrast with Lauren’s domestic circumstances is breathtaking. ‘Nothing white-on-white about this place,’ I say.
‘You’re beginning to get the picture,’ he replies, a little ruefully. ‘Come on. There aren’t any dogs. Well, not that you can see anyway.’ With that cryptic remark, we head up the gravel-strewn drive together.
‘He left school last year, midway through,’ Ryan murmurs as he presses the doorbell. ‘Now he just races motocross bikes, does the occasional exhibition or freestyle gig.’ I raise my eyebrows and he explains patiently, ‘You know, arena racing, aerial stunt work — real daredevil, shit-your-pants stuff. After Lauren vanished, he had even less reason to do anything else except occasionally go on the circuit. He’s quite in demand, apparently.’ Ryan gives the doorbell another shove. ‘He’s a freak. I don’t know how he can live like this.’
‘He might say the same about you,’ I mutter.
The door swings open and a sweaty, whiskery old guy, with more beard than I have ever seen in my life, peers out. He’s wearing an open shirt, heavily stained under the armpits, and beat-up short shorts of an indeterminate colour that show off way too much bare, hairy leg for my liking. His distended, hairy, peek-a-boo midriff is unavoidably thrust into the space between us.
He snarls, ‘Don’t want any. Gonna set the dogs on you if you don’t piss off and quick.’ Ryan gives me a look as if to say, See?
And I get it, and get that Ryan somehow gets it too, because there can be no dogs with me standing here, large as life, the stiff breeze carrying my scent into the house. The only sound I can remotely discern is the faint tick of a clock somewhere in the hallway. If there were ever any dogs, they must’ve gone the way of the machines in the front yard a long time ago, the lie outliving them.
‘We’re here to see Richard,’ Ryan says pleasantly into the beery miasma that surrounds the older man.
‘Down the shops,’ the guy says curtly. ‘Wait for him, if you like.’ Then he shuts the door, hard, in our faces.
We wander through the graveyard of dead and dismembered motorbikes, mostly Japanese, some bearing fancy European tags I can barely pronounce.
Forty minutes later, just as we’re about to give up and turn back the way we came, a red two-door truck pulls up the drive, a mud-splattered bike anchored to its open tray with cables. There is a slight delay, a detectable pause, before the driver jumps out and walks towards us; a young man with dark blond hair, shaved close to his skull at back and sides but forming a Mohawk or quiff at the top so a long fringe falls half over his face and his extraordinarily pale, ice blue eyes. He’s in layered, motto-covered skater tees — the sleeves pushed high up both arms to reveal forearms crawling with tatts — and cargo pants with more pockets than I can begin to count.
Some of the pockets jangle and hang a little low and I imagine more bike parts secreted in them, the boy half-made of metal.
He is much smaller and slighter than I’d anticipated, and he looks very young to me, almost as young as Carmen does. Lauren and he would’ve made a cute couple, I decide. Like two dolls. A matched set. He couldn’t look less like his old man, and I wonder if every day, the old guy hates the very sight of him because he resembles his runaway wife.
Richard’s ‘Ryan Daley?’ is surprisingly tentative for an allegedly freaky daredevil of shit-your-pants proportions.
‘Rich,’ Ryan replies sombrely, holding out his right hand.
The two young men — so different in every way — shake and hold firm for a moment, and I wonder whose grip is stronger. Neither looks away and their grins are momentarily fixed and glassy. Unspoken guy rituals are still mostly beyond my understanding and I watch, fascinated.
‘And this is?’ Richard Coates says warily after they let go of each other almost simultaneously, like a secret signal has been imparted, both flexing their palms and fingers a little.
‘Carmen Zappacosta,’ Ryan replies. ‘A friend of Lauren’s from way back, from when we lived in the city.
We just wanted to talk.’ Richard’s brow pleats as he inputs my name. ‘Lauren never mentioned you, Carmen, but I’m always happy to talk. You sure, uh, chose the day though.’
‘Didn’t we?’ Ryan murmurs, looking down momentarily before meeting Richard’s eyes once more.
‘But Carmen kind of timed her visit to us for a reason…’ I shoot a surprised glance at Ryan’s profile, but it gives nothing away. Probably just a figure of speech. The guy’s a good liar, convincing. I almost believe him.
He continues smoothly. ‘She just wanted to hear about Lauren from you. How you spent your last day together. It would kind of be, um, sort of … a closure
Richard waves us towards a reclaimed park bench that’s set up under a giant street lamp fixed into the middle of the yard on a concrete block. The lamp wouldn’t look out of place in a park, or out the front of a government building. But it’s evidently been placed here — with little regard for home décor — and jerry-rigged up with electrical wiring, so it can be turned on at night to allow Richard to work on his machines.
I sit down on the bench while the two men remain standing. Ryan’s body language isn’t exactly relaxed, and neither is Richard’s, but they’re not hostile either.
Perhaps they’d be best described as watchful, because it’s evident — even after all this time — that each still doesn’t know what to make of the other. If Lauren hadn’t brought them together, I’m not sure Richard and Ryan would have even been in the same orbit.
‘We cut the last period of class that day to, um, hang out at Coronado Beach,’ Richard begins tentatively, his eyes flicking away from the taller boy’s briefly.
‘Near that turn-off to the refinery,’ Ryan interrupts for my benefit, his own dark eyes unreadable, ‘but the next crossroads along, heading in the opposite direction.
It’s not a popular hangout because there’s a vicious reef just out past the shallows that gives the beach its name — the Crowned One. Plus, the rip’s killed plenty over the years, and it’s a little too far from town. It’s probably polluted as well, given what goes on around there.’ I nod. Nice and isolated, then. I notice Richard doesn’t elaborate about what hanging out entails and we don’t ask.
‘And then we had a stupid argument about Corey’s party,’ Richard continues, looking down at his scuffed, old-school high-tops. ‘Things kind of snowballed. About my friends, what we were going to do with our lives, where we were going to be in a few years, and by the time I dropped her home — around five forty, the sun hadn’t quite set yet, I remember — we weren’t talking any more. She just stormed off into the house, and I went and got off my face at Corey’s with a bunch of mates, like I always did whenever Lauren and I argued, and by the morning … it was too late. To say anything.