Mercy m-1

by Rebecca Lim

  ‘I’ll admit, I wasn’t pleased at the way Gerard singled you out at the beginning of the rehearsal,’ Paul says, his voice pitched so that only he and I can hear.

  ‘He’s always been guilty of playing favourites a little too much. It causes … talk.’ I look at him enquiringly, sure Lauren was one of those favourites.

  ‘It’s unprofessional,’ he continues grimly. ‘And I don’t agree with his approach. Jealousies inevitably arise. But in any case, that, my girl,’ he smiles at me for the first time that morning, ‘was another test. And you performed beautifully. Those two,’ his voice is slightly scornful as he inclines his golden head at Tiffany’s back, Delia’s, ‘are mere cattle. Ordinary. But you …’ He breaks into a grin of open approval, a light flush high on his extraordinary cheekbones.

  ‘I wouldn’t say Tiffany’s exactly … ordinary,’ I cut in, keen to hurry him along. My thoughts are on Gerard Masson. If I have to rote learn a freakin’ Christmas carol to get inside the man’s head, so be it.

  Groups of boys from the male chorus begin to filter into the hallway around us and Paul Stenborg drops his voice a notch lower. ‘She’s nothing,’ he insists.

  ‘Powerful, yes, I’ll give her that. But shrill. Not enough staying power. Good for the opera chorus at most. You, however, have what it takes to sing anything, anywhere.

  I’ve only encountered a voice like yours a couple of times before in my career, and in my opinion — and I will tell Gerard this; he’s asked my views on the subject already — you far outshine them. You are, in a word, superlative, my dear. You should never let someone like Tiffany get to you. There’s simply no contest.’

  ‘Oh?’ I say, and feel a sudden twinge of discomfort.

  Carmen? Can you hear this?

  ‘Gerard was right, you know.’ My gaze shoots back to Paul’s animated face at the mention of the man’s name again. ‘That mad, breakneck version of Mahler back there? He ordered me to force your hand this morning — and I have to say that you more than exceeded our expectations! He’s going to be very excited about what we’ve achieved this morning. Very excited indeed. Says he has great plans for you.’ Gerard Masson’s been laying unspoken traps for me? Formulating secret agendas? All this just makes me quicken my step towards the assembly hall. I have to get to him. I have to know.

  Beside me, Paul lengthens his stride, keeping up easily as he confides, ‘Genuine talent like yours is truly, incredibly rare.’ My eyes flash to the back of Spencer’s head at the words, but he doesn’t hear or look my way.

  ‘If you say so,’ I reply as we turn the corner, the corridor suddenly full of students headed the way we are.

  There’s that weird feeling again, like a stitch in my side, and I can almost hear Carmen begging me not to stuff this up for her, not to sell her too short in my quest to find Lauren. For an instant, I’m torn. Lauren first? Or Carmen? Who was I sent here to help?

  Paul places a hand on my sleeve, which makes me look down in surprise. I’d almost forgotten he was there.

  ‘Do you want to grab a coffee after today’s rehearsal? I can give you some pointers on how to handle Gerard —who can be a little … insistent,’ he says delicately. ‘Perhaps go over some of your career options? I have contacts —better than any Gerard may offer you.’ When I don’t respond, he says a little more sharply, ‘I don’t think you’re really hearing me …’ And it’s true. I’m no longer listening, suddenly can’t even hear what he’s saying, because I’ve just caught sight of Ryan standing beside the entrance to the assembly hall. His eyes telling me that he needs me.

  Paul makes a small noise of surprise, or protest, as I take Carmen’s sleeve out of his grasp.

  People stare as I push through the crowded corridor in Ryan’s direction. I hear the whispers: ‘What’s he doing here?’ ‘When’s the last time anyone saw him at school?’ I put my hands on his shirtsleeves in concern. I can tell from his face something has happened. There’s a look in his eyes I haven’t seen there before. Like the death of hope. Something fatal to his resolve.

  Plenty of people are taken aback at my familiarity, and heads swivel so fast in our direction that there’s a real risk of a general case of whiplash. It’s more reason for people to talk about Carmen, about him, but I don’t care. Seeing him like this has done something funny to my heart.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I say breathlessly. ‘Have they found her?’ My touch seems to bring his splintering gaze back into focus, his eyes so dark I can’t see his pupils. Shock.

  He shakes his head, his long, dark fringe falling over his eyes.

  ‘No,’ he says, and his voice sounds strange, remote.

  ‘But someone else just got taken. In Little Falls. It’s leading all the local news bulletins. She was a singer, too, a soprano. A little older. All the hallmarks of Lauren’s abduction. Happened over the weekend — they were trying to keep it quiet but the media got wind of it.

  Almost two years to the day. The media are already linking them together. You were right about that part, the singing thing. I shouldn’t have set so much store by a stupid … dream.’ He swallows hard.

  There are students standing close by, listening to us unashamedly, their mouths open. I dimly register Paul Stenborg moving past us into the assembly hall, his eyes dark with unexpected anger. I suppose he thinks I’m rude, but I don’t care. Carmen can wait, the competing agendas of a bunch of small-town music teachers can wait, when Ryan looks this way.

  I pull him down the hallway by his sleeve and out of the building, so we can talk. The harsh light outside accentuates his pallor, the dark beneath his eyes, in his eyes.

  ‘Does it mean she’s dead?’ he asks bleakly, and Carmen’s heart does a weird flip. It must be costing him a lot to say this.

  I parry the question, try to get him to look at me.

  ‘What does your instinct tell you?’

  ‘Instinct tells me she’s dead. Instinct tells me the sick bastard got tired of her and traded “up”.’ His voice cracks as he throws himself down on the front steps of an empty portable classroom nearby, puts his head in his hands, pushes his fingers into his eye sockets.

  ‘I don’t feel anything,’ he whispers after a long silence. ‘That’s the problem.’ I have to resist the urge to stroke his hair. It’s a new feeling for me and it makes me edgy. Why this need to touch him so often? I never initiate contact. It’s unnerving.

  ‘It works both ways,’ I reply cautiously. ‘If something really bad had happened, wouldn’t you think you’d have felt it?’ Ryan raises his head sharply, considers this for a moment. ‘Yeah, I guess I would have. Either way. You’re right.’

  ‘So what do you want me to do?’ I cross my arms tightly and wait for his answer.

  He screws up his face. ‘I don’t know. Go for a drive, look around. Hold my hand.’ He looks up at me, looks away, his fringe falling back over his eyes.

  He doesn’t mean that last part, I tell myself sternly.

  It’s just a figure of speech. I need to hold firm. Though it’s almost as if I can feel myself … falling.

  ‘If we don’t act quickly,’ he mutters over the soundtrack of my internal dialogue, ‘she’s going to suffer the same fate as Lauren. We can’t let that happen.’ He suddenly unfurls his long, lean frame and bounds up with a new energy. ‘I’m parked on the other side of the admin building,’ he calls back over his shoulder. ‘Come on.’ When I don’t move, he stops and strides back impatiently. ‘Sometimes I forget you’re not from here.

  Come on.’ He holds his hand out to me.

  I don’t take it. But not because I don’t want to.

  He shrugs. ‘Up to you,’ he says curtly, walking off again. I have to trot to keep up.

  As we head out through the school gates in his white, rusting four-wheel drive, I look at his breathtaking profile and think how it is that I don’t.

  I don’t ever forget that I’m not from here.

  Chapter 20

  We stop at a petrol station on the
outskirts of Little Falls and buy a paper. Singing has made me so hungry that I ransack the poorly stocked candy counter with Carmen’s modest stash of spending money at the same time, buying one of almost everything.

  When we get back in the car, we pore over the front page together, our heads so close I’m almost leaning on him.

  Little Falls woman, Jennifer Appleton, 19, university student majoring in fine arts and vocal performance, missing. Police hold grave fears for her safety.

  Ryan regards me with disgust as crumbs fall onto the page. ‘How can you eat at a time like this?’ he exclaims, shaking the paper clear.

  ‘Stress makes me hungry,’ I shrug, already screwing up my second candy wrapper and reaching for a third.

  I unwrap it and begin cramming it gracelessly into my mouth.

  ‘I heard you sing,’ he says, giving me a strange look.

  ‘I knew it was your voice, don’t ask me how, even though I couldn’t see you and didn’t know where it was coming from. Actually, it seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. And it sounded, uh, kind of effortless. Lauren used to joke about how tone deaf I am, but you were …’

  ‘What?’ I grin through a mouthful of chocolate and peanuts, sure they’re all over my teeth. ‘Barely adequate?

  Hopelessly grating?’ He rolls his eyes, thinking I’m fishing for compliments.

  ‘Pretty incredible, actually. But you’d know that. Lauren would hate me for saying it, because she’s always been known as the primo singing prodigy around these parts, but you’re way better than she is. Better than anyone I’ve ever heard before. Hard to believe a voice like that can come out of a body like …’ He looks down at the paper quickly and smoothes it out again. ‘But what would I know?’

  ‘You and me both,’ I say, making light of the weird alchemy that is Carmen Zappacosta at the present juncture. I throw candy wrapper number three on the floor and bring his attention back to the story on Jennifer Appleton. ‘This says she returned to her hometown to perform at her cousin’s wedding and disappeared sometime after returning to her parents’ place from the reception.’

  ‘It’s the first time she’s been back at all since she left school,’ Ryan frowns. ‘She was just doing this as a favour. Says here she’s in line for a scholarship at one of the big city opera houses when she graduates at the end of next year. Earmarked for greatness.’ I feel that twinge of discomfort again. Carmen? I know now it’s something she must want for herself, and I feel that momentary guilt again. That I’m in there batting for Lauren, for Ryan, and not for her.

  Or maybe you’re just batting for yourself, says that evil voice inside me.

  I shift uncomfortably in my seat. There’s probably a bit of truth in that. I grimace as the weird stitch pounds away in my side.

  ‘Physical description?’ I ask through my teeth.

  ‘Brunette,’ he replies distractedly, reading ahead.

  We stare at the small, grainy shot of Jennifer Appleton: a smiling, round-faced young woman with glasses and long, wavy hair.

  ‘Says here she’s tall,’ I comment.

  Ryan frowns. ‘Lauren’s short, only a little bigger than you are. Plus this girl’s older. They’re total physical opposites. Maybe we’re all jumping to conclusions about there being some kind of connection …’ It’s my turn to frown as I race ahead through the article. ‘Not if you read the crime scene description. It tallies with what I’ve …’ Ryan looks at me sharply. ‘… heard from, uh, various sources,’ I finish lamely.

  He shakes his head disgustedly, then scans the paragraph I’ve just read. ‘No signs of forced entry, blood everywhere, a syringe taken away for toxicology tests. Jennifer’s father drove her home then returned to the reception. Hours later, mother and father come back to find her gone. The physical evidence seems to stop at the front gate. Same as for Lauren. The perp was well prepared; very likely wore gloves and shoe covers to explain the lack of DNA at the scene. It’s like she vanished into thin air after the psycho got her outside. No tyre prints, no witnesses. Someone with local knowledge likely to be involved …’ He stares ahead through the fly-struck windshield while I read on, well into candy bar number four. The second last paragraph makes me grip his shoulder hard.

  ‘What?’ he says in surprise.

  I point wordlessly and he reads aloud: The spokesman for the Appleton family, Laurence Barry, is the director of music at Little Falls Academy and minister of the Little Falls Anglican Church. Reverend Barry was the celebrant at Julia Castle’s wedding, and a former teacher of the missing woman. He has appealed to anyone with information to come forward.

  Ryan shakes his head. ‘I don’t get you.’

  ‘He was there today,’ I explain. ‘At the rehearsal.

  He’s been at every rehearsal. Mr Barry’s the old guy, from the karaoke bar?’ Ryan’s face clears as understanding dawns.

  ‘He might have met Lauren the same way,’ I add.

  ‘In fact, I’m sure of it. The Little Falls, Port Marie and Paradise music students apparently get together for cosy shindigs all the time. Lauren was frequently the headline act. All this time I’ve been focused on Gerard Masson, but maybe Laurence Barry’s the missing link. Not many people would have known Jennifer was back. And there’s a church.’ Ryan starts the engine, throws the car into reverse.

  ‘Let’s go for that drive,’ he says grimly.

  ‘So that’s it?’ I say.

  We’re parked a block away from the Appletons’ residence. There’s still crime-scene tape forming a loose cordon outside the small timber home. One police car, its lights flashing silently, stands outside, and its burly occupants redirect local traffic and sightseers even as we watch.

  The scene is repeated outside the wedding and reception venue — a historic homestead on the Little Falls–Port Marie Road.

  ‘Not a lot we can do here during daylight,’ Ryan muses. ‘But there’s something we know that they don’t.

  My money’s on the church, anyway. Right dream, wrong place of worship.’ He turns the car back in the direction of town, and we park half a block away from the front boundary of the Little Falls Anglican Church, which is deserted.

  The sign out front reads: He wants you for His own.

  The words cause instant goose flesh on Carmen’s skin. They echo the very words Uri threw at me before he did his nifty vanishing trick.

  ‘Cheerful,’ I say, struggling to keep my voice controlled. ‘Could be appropriate, in the circumstances.

  Think Mr Barry’s doing a little advertising?’ Ryan, already getting out of the car, grimaces at my lame attempt at humour. ‘See anything that looks like the preacher’s residence?’ I shake my head, take a steadying breath. ‘But it could be around the back.’ We split up going through the small car park out front; Ryan heading right towards the church, me heading left towards the church hall.

  About five minutes later, Ryan gives a piercing whistle.

  Like the manse at the Paradise First Presbyterian Church, Laurence Barry’s place is a modest, brick, one-storey building. But it’s actually located inside the church grounds, and this time there’s some kind of external entry point at the rear of the house that’s covered over by a double-padlocked trapdoor made of rusting steel.

  Ryan hurries back to the car for his rucksack as I take a closer look.

  Confident Laurence Barry’s still back at the rehearsal where I left him, I crouch down and bang on the trapdoor with the heel of my hand. ‘Hello?’ I call out. ‘Lauren?’ Though I strain to hear anything, anything at all, there’s nothing but the wind stirring tree branches, a bird taking wing at the disturbance.

  ‘Jennifer?’ Still no sound. But there could be plenty of reasons for that, all bad. I sit back on my haunches.

  Ryan falls to his knees on the ground beside me, hands me the torch, and claws through his pack for a boltcutter. ‘This is the place, I know it,’ he says, breathing unevenly. ‘Everything fits.’ Privately, I have to agree; there’s something about the w
ay the complex is set up, where the car park is, the church. The physical layout seems to corroborate eerily with Ryan’s impressionistic dream.

  He snaps one padlock swiftly, then the second, stuffs the boltcutter back into his bag. He swings the trapdoor open and I hand him back the torch, wondering what we are about to find. There are concrete stairs leading down into the darkness. We look at each other with wide eyes.

  This could be it.

  I want to hold his hand so badly, I have to jam both of mine under my armpits.

  Ryan shrugs his rucksack back on and puts a foot on the first step.

  But then we hear the rumble of a car pulling up the narrow driveway that loops past the church, continuing onwards to the private residence we are in the process of breaking into. We freeze for an instant, before scrambling clumsily to close the trapdoor together without a sound.

  It’s close. In his panic, Ryan almost loses his grip on the door, and Carmen’s got as much lifting power as a ten year old. I almost crush her fingers as the edge of the door drops shut with an audible clang. I rearrange the broken padlocks hastily so that from a distance they look untampered with.

  We crouch in the long grass by the cellar door, and I hear a familiar snatch of Mahler whistled close by. The front screen door of the little house opens just metres away. Someone drops keys, grunts heavily before fishing them up and trying the door again. In the cool breeze, Ryan and I are perspiring heavily. The front door finally closes. Bolts are drawn home.

  ‘ Now,’ Ryan hisses, and we run low and quietly down the side of the house, back around the far side of the church hall, in the direction of Ryan’s car, hoping we haven’t been seen.