Dead in the Water

by Tania Chandler

  Cam looked around. ‘Where the fuck is that coming from?’

  Brigitte shrugged. It got louder.

  ‘It’s your bag, Brig!’

  She gasped, rushed for her handbag, and fished out her phone. Aidan. More guilt. ‘Very funny.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Changing my ringtone.’

  ‘Knew you’d like it. What do you want?’

  ‘You rang me.’

  ‘Returning your call.’

  ‘Sorry. My phone must have accidentally dialled you. Forgot to lock the screen again.’

  ‘What are you wearing?’

  She turned her back to Cam. ‘Aid! I’m at work.’

  ‘Me, too. Just dispatched two officers to an in-progress in Ross Street. Suspect allegedly removing roses from some old bloke’s front yard.’

  ‘Aren’t roses spring flowers?’

  ‘Always knew you were cut out for detective work. Let you know next time we’re recruiting.’

  She glanced over her shoulder at Cam. He was tapping his foot.

  ‘How about I drive over and take you out for lunch?’

  ‘Can’t. I’m in the middle of something. Bit late for lunch anyway.’

  ‘I’m open to other suggestions. I could wear a uniform.’

  ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Don’t say I didn’t offer.’

  A pause. Something in the silence?

  ‘Everything OK?’ he said.

  ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’

  ‘See you tonight.’

  She hung up and turned back to Cam. He was looking at his watch. ‘Is it true what they say about Italians?’

  She twisted her mouth.

  ‘He is Italian, isn’t he, your hubby?’ He adjusted the camera. ‘Got any brothers?’

  ‘Two sisters.’

  ‘Oh. Let’s go again. Ready? This is the one. Happy, happy, and, action.’

  Matt was probably bald. And overweight. She put on a big fake smile. ‘There’s also a great competition you can enter.’ She’d caught the taxi from the car-licensing place in Carlton. She looks so happy, even though they told her not to smile in the photograph on her probationary licence. She feels light. She’s going to tell him. She couldn’t remember exactly why she hadn’t told him, it was hazy — photographs, broken things, yelling on the stairs, closing doors. Their baby would have been eighteen now. She’d buried that thought all these years. She gestured with her hand and knocked over the bowl of eggs. ‘Fuck!’

  ‘Brigitte!’

  They cleaned up the mess, re-dressed the set, and started again.

  They were still shooting at four o’clock. Her face hurt from smiling.

  ‘There’s also a great competition you can enter, with fabulous prizes, including cookbooks and the latest kitchenware.’ She gave one final, vigorous stir, and looked excitedly at the camera. ‘Don’t miss this huge event.’

  The script said to taste the batter and make a face. She lifted a spoonful of the runny, white mixture to her mouth and tasted it. ‘I definitely need to be there,’ she said straight to the camera.

  ‘Cut!’ Cam was laughing.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Maybe don’t taste it. Looks like you’ve just given somebody a blow job.’

  ***

  Brigitte’s phone buzzed as she parked her X-Trail in the Paynesville Primary School car park. A text from Cam: Dinner for Gip TV staff with Maree Carver at the Bateau House 2nite 8pm. She groaned — a long enough day with Cam; she didn’t feel like going. She replied with a white lie about being unable to make it because one of the kids was sick.

  The twins were the last two in the school aftercare room, and the teacher was grumpy when Brigitte walked in. And she was late to collect Ella from the kinder-daycare centre.

  ‘I’m starving. What’s for dinner, Mum?’ Finn asked from the back of the car.

  ‘Fish.’ She parked on The Esplanade, outside Joe’s fish shop.

  ‘No fish for me,’ Phoebe said.

  ‘Get you some potato cakes instead.’

  ‘And chips,’ Ella said.

  ‘No, we’ll make a salad at home.’

  The kids complained as Brigitte went into Joe’s.

  She pushed aside the rainbow of door strips as she entered. There were two tables covered in red-checked cloths. Joe sat at one of them, doing the crossword in the paper, humming along with classical music. He smiled and put a hand on his knee as he stood; stiffness, a wince — she knew that pain.

  He asked how the kids were as he walked around behind the counter. She glanced through the fish and bubbles painted on the shopfront and saw Finn doing something to annoy Phoebe; Phoebe was yelling, and Ella was in the middle, crying. The car windows were fogging up. She turned back to Joe and asked how he was.

  ‘Not bad. Cold weather’s no good for my bones. Sylvia says we should move up north.’ He straightened the brochures on the counter top. ‘Saw Detective Aidan the other day. Some illegal fishing going on round the back of the island.’

  ‘Yes. Heard about that.’ A breeze from Bass Strait blew across the water and crackled the door strips. Brigitte pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders and ordered four bits of fish and a couple of potato cakes.

  ‘Flatty’s good today.’

  ‘Got bones?’

  ‘Fillets shouldn’t have too many. Nice with a parmesan-and-yoghurt crust.’

  She wrinkled her nose and said she’d stick with the flake, grilled.

  ‘So adventurous.’

  She shrugged.

  They chatted more about the weather and the kids while he cooked the fish, wrapped it, and took her money.

  ‘Going to the farmers’ market?’ he said. ‘Maree Carver’ll be there.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘We love her. Watch her on telly all the time.’

  Brigitte gripped the steering wheel as she drove onto lane one of the ferry and killed the engine. Heat climbed her body like ants. She wound down her window. The kids complained that it was too cold.

  Scott, the ferry operator, walked over to greet her. She heard his country music playing softly on the upper deck: ‘Back in My Baby’s Arms Again’.

  ‘Thought you weren’t working Thursday nights anymore,’ she said, pushing up her sleeves.

  ‘New bloke called in sick.’ Scott’s loose sweater billowed under his hi-vis safety vest as he waved a few more cars on board. ‘Heard you’re having tea with the telly chef and your hoity-toity friends.’

  She laughed. ‘Is there anything anybody doesn’t know about everybody’s business down here?’

  ‘Nup.’ He ambled across the three-lane vehicle section and climbed the checker-plate steel stairs to the control stand, above the sign that said, Users must follow the directions of the ferry operator at all times.

  The ferry buzzed underfoot and creaked in the wind. The hydraulic ramp groaned as it was raised. Panic, as always, turned from heat to ice water trickling down inside her arms to her fingertips. She looked at her white knuckles on the wheel and relaxed her grip. Crank: the gypsy wheels engaged the submerged chains and started to haul the ferry across the 150-metre strait between Lake Victoria and Lake King. She pulled down her sleeves and wound up the window.

  The floor of the car seemed to drop beneath her, like in a lift. She caught a whiff of diesel over the fried fish as she did her diaphragm breathing — slowly, in through her nose, out through her mouth — and counted: the techniques a psychologist had taught her to control anxiety after her breakdown following her first husband’s death. Techniques revisited after Aidan had been shot during the raid at Laurie Hunt’s house.

  It’s not always this bad, she lied to herself. You’re just tired. She blocked out the kids’ nagging, closed her eyes, and didn’t open them until she felt the jolt
of the ferry aligning with the concrete slip on the island.

  Zippy carried on as if they’d been away for a month. He jumped and knocked Brigitte back against the gate. The rusty bottom hinge finally gave way. She yelled at him. The kids ran inside and he turned his attention on them.

  She stuck her head in the door, and called that she was going to Harry’s to get some lemons for the fish.

  On the way, she stood on tiptoes to inspect the bathroom window frame. In the morning rush, she’d forgotten about last night’s commotion. There were some marks at the bottom. Indentations, scratches? She stretched to touch the wood; paint flaked away. Had something been leaned or pushed against it? More likely, the marks had always been there. She took a couple of steps backwards. There was a snapped tree branch hanging low enough for the wind to have blown it against the window. That’s all it was — what the crashing sound must have been. A fat koala, drunk on eucalyptus oil, climbed on it, weighed it down, and fell out of the tree. Aidan had been overreacting again.

  She reached up and used all her weight to break the branch off completely.

  Harry’s station wagon wasn’t out front of his house. She walked past a boat in his workshop. An unopened cardboard package from Lang Hardware was sitting on the bench.

  There was a half beer box of lemons on his porch and a note tucked behind a torn bit of screen on the security door: Brig and Aid. Visiting my mum. Back tomorrow. Help yourselves to lemons and anything from the veggie garden. Harry.

  The grass out back had been mown recently. One foot in front of the other, she stepped carefully along the neat brick path between the veggie garden beds. What was Zippy’s squeaky toy duck doing down here among the lettuce leaves? She picked it up. Naughty dog. They’d have to get around to fixing the gate.

  Aidan arrived home half an hour later — they must have just missed each other on the ferry. She met him on the porch. ‘Detective Senior Sergeant, is that a gun in your pocket?’

  He didn’t seem to find it amusing or cute tonight. Something was up. She followed him inside.

  ‘No kissing, no kissing.’ Ella giggled, standing between them, pushing them apart. But they weren’t kissing.

  Brigitte started telling him about Zippy getting out the gate again, but he seemed distracted and walked over to admire Ella’s latest painting stuck on the fridge.

  ‘Wow! You’re a great artist. That’s the best painting I’ve ever seen,’ he said without really looking at it.

  ‘It’s a cow and a farmer and the sun,’ Ella said. ‘For you to take to work.’

  He thanked her, crouched for a hug and a kiss, and she ran off to annoy Phoebe. He opened the fridge door, took out a couple of beers, and handed one to Brigitte. ‘Heard you’re gunna be famous.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ She laughed through her nose.

  Finn yelled from the lounge room for Aidan to come play Xbox.

  ‘In a minute, OK?’

  ‘Have you got any homework?’ Brigitte called.

  No answer.

  Aidan went to change his clothes in the front bedroom, which was really the back bedroom, but they never came in or went out the front way. Brigitte followed and stood in the doorway watching him. A frown, a slight wince as he took off his shirt and pulled on a T-shirt.

  ‘Your shoulder sore?’ she said.

  ‘Bit.’

  ‘Anything I can do to take your mind off it?’

  ‘Maybe later.’

  He slipped off his trousers, folded them, placed them on the bed, and took a pair of jeans from the chest of drawers.

  ‘Something else wrong?’

  He shut the drawer. ‘What’s for dinner?’

  ‘Fish and salad.’

  He stepped into the jeans. ‘Also heard your old boyfriend’s gunna be in Lakes Entrance tomorrow.’

  She felt her neck flush as she sipped her beer. Like her pole-dancing days, the subject of Matt Elery was taboo.

  ‘You going?’ he said, adjusting himself and zipping his fly.

  ‘Why would I?’

  ‘Dunno.’ He looked into her eyes, daring her to look away. ‘Just to see.’

  She held his gaze, took another mouthful of beer, and heard herself swallow.

  3

  A plan by the East Gippsland Shire Council to hike up the cost of using the ferry to Raymond Island has sparked anger among residents, said the 3GR announcer from the portable radio on the breakfast bar.

  Brigitte shook her head.

  About 540 people live on the tiny island, in the Gippsland salt-water lakes system, well known for its large koala population and colony of rare dolphins. The mayor said, ‘If you choose to live there, you have to be prepared to pay for it.’

  ‘Bastard,’ she said.

  ‘Talking to the radio again?’

  She felt Aidan’s gaze on her back as she bent to take a plate from the dishwasher.

  ‘You look nice today.’

  ‘Have to go in to work for a while.’ She straightened but didn’t turn.

  ‘Thought Friday was a Mummy-and-Ella day.’

  ‘I’ll take her with me. Just for an hour or so.’ She turned and he took the plate from her hands.

  ‘Long way to go for an hour’s work. Can’t do it from home?’

  ‘Cam wants to talk about this stupid farmers’ market commercial.’ She looked at the buttons on his shirt instead of his eyes. The top one was coming loose from its thread. She should tell him to get changed, and sew it for him. She took back the plate and placed it on the breakfast bar. The radio announcer said the weatherman predicted twenty degrees and sunny with a change expected tonight.

  The toast popped up in the toaster and Brigitte jumped.

  She hesitated at the roundabout out of Bairnsdale. No cars in the rear-view mirror. Dark clouds were brewing: the change was coming sooner than the weatherman had predicted.

  Ella asked where they were going.

  Brigitte wiped her palms on her new Country Road skirt. ‘Just to see somebody from work.’ She took a deep breath, held it, let it go, and flicked the indicator in the opposite direction from the Traralgon Gip TV studio. The taste of toast came up in her throat. Aidan was going to know. He always knew everything.

  She drove past a Crime Stoppers portable billboard standing on the grass embankment beside the road: If you see something, say something. She should have fixed Aidan’s loose shirt button. She pulled over and did a U-turn.

  After a few kilometres, she turned back again. The sky was clear ahead. It was greener down this way. Poplar trees stood erect along the roadside, unbending in the wind.

  Forty-five minutes later, Brigitte and Ella both gasped at the flash of deep blue water as the road descended into Lakes Entrance.

  The X-Trail’s engine ticked as it cooled in the foreshore car park. Ella chatted to her doll. Through the windscreen, the lakes looked calm; the yellow paddleboats for hire were mirrored on the surface. Brigitte turned her attention to her short fingernails, coated with clear varnish — the only nail polish she’d managed to find in the bathroom cupboard. Her hands were shaking.

  She checked her phone: email — nothing since she’d last looked; Facebook — a friend’s baby had made a mess of her rice cereal at breakfast, Cam’s puppy was sporting a new doggy sweater. There was a text from her brother, Ryan: Hey Lil Sis. LTNH. S’up? Luv u. She didn’t know what LTNH meant. And S’up — WTF? She’d call him later.

  She fished from her handbag a new lipstick, and removed it from its packaging. The name Harmony was printed on the bottom of the tube. She tilted the rear-view mirror, and steadied her elbow on her hand as she applied it.

  Ella asked what she was doing and if they were at work.

  ‘Thought we’d go buy a book instead.’ She rubbed her lips together. Just to see.

  At the end of a long, hard day, De
tective Robert Moore (the name sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place it) stands on the lake foreshore of some Godforsaken fishing town in regional Victoria. Below, police divers lift the body of a woman from the water.

  When the woman in the lake turns out to be Moore’s wife, he starts to lose control. Or was he ever really in control?

  DEAD IN THE WATER is a novel about the darkness that lies beneath the surface: murder, corruption, and obsessive love.

  Brigitte turned the book over. The shiny red title was splashed across a stormy sky, above a lone fishing boat drifting on inky water. She placed it on the table covered with royal-blue crushed velvet.

  ‘Who would you like me to make it to?’ he said without looking up. Not bald. Not overweight.

  A nervous smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. ‘Courtney.’

  He looked up and pushed dirty-blond hair out of eyes the colour of the crushed velvet. She’d forgotten all about the half-moon-shaped scar under his left eye.

  ‘Brigitte!’

  ‘Hi, Kurt.’

  ‘Oh my God, what are you doing here?’

  He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. She hid her left hand behind her back. Stupid. She glanced across at the kids’ reading corner. Ella was curled in a beanbag, concentrating on a picture book. She had the new purple boots Aidan had bought for her on the wrong feet.

  ‘I live down here now. On Raymond Island.’ Brigitte fiddled with her handbag strap.

  ‘Not in the house we … stayed at?’ His cheeks turned pink.

  She felt hers redden as she remembered the other scars on his chest, illuminated above her in the moonlight. Her stomach fluttered. Nineteen again. ‘My grandfather gave it to us when Aidan was stationed at Bairnsdale.’

  ‘You married that cop?’

  ‘Married two of them.’ Of course he knew that.

  ‘Bit more exciting than a writer.’

  As if that was ever really an option. She sneezed — the bookshop was dusty, with a wall of second-hand books as well as new titles.

  ‘The guy who drives the ferry down there came in earlier. Said he’d read my book three times.’

  ‘Scott?’

  ‘No, some other name.’ He looked around her; the people in line were shuffling their feet, clearing their throats. ‘Can you hang around for a bit? Have a coffee. I won’t be too much longer.’ He wrote something in her book and passed it back.