Dead in the Water

by Tania Chandler

  She looked at the author photo: a nice shot of Matt gazing with those intelligent eyes. Blue, blue eyes. Her hand shook as she lifted her glass to her lips.

  She read the first chapter. The protagonist, Robert Moore, was, of course, a misanthropic middle-aged detective with a failing marriage, a couple of kids he felt no affection for, a drinking problem, and a brilliant, logical mind. Why didn’t crime authors ever write about healthy, well-adjusted police officers with happy family lives? It was predictable, but she shivered as a body was pulled from a fictitious lake that sounded a lot like Lake King.

  On page ten, Moore had a flashback to the first time he’d fired a gun. He was left-handed, but had taught himself to shoot with either hand. The smell of cordite was on page eleven. Aidan had told her that cordite hadn’t been used in ammunition since World War II, yet in every crime-fiction novel she’d read (admittedly, not many), the smell of it always hung in the air after gunfire.

  It was revealed in chapter three that the body found in the lake was Moore’s wife. Brigitte read to chapter five while she polished off the bottle of wine, and then put the book down. Matt’s style reminded her of the crime-mystery story in Cloud Atlas, but his wooden protagonist disappointed her. One of her writing and publishing lecturers at uni had told her that fictional characters were one-third invention, one-third somebody the author knew, and one-third the author. What had she been hoping for? One-third of Matt on the page, some of his essence? She drained the last drop from her glass. Maybe a sex scene with a character who was one-third Matt to think about in bed tonight? She looked at the empty wine bottle — she should have bought two.

  She went in search of something more to drink. Nothing good in Kerry’s cupboards. A bottle of cooking sherry. No bloody difference, all sherry’s for drinkin’. She smiled at Papa’s voice in her head. There was also a dusty bottle of vintage port that looked too expensive to open. Ryan would have opened it, and Joan would have already drunk half of it. Any port in a storm: the family curse.

  Poor Ryan. Fucking Rosie, bitch. She sniffed. The sniff turned into a sob. And then another, and another as the ball of pain between her chest and throat finally dislodged. She leaned against the cupboard and put her head in her hands.

  When there were no sobs left, she wiped her eyes and poured a little glass of cooking sherry. She sat back at the table, unsteady, raised her glass to Papa, and sipped. Papa was wrong about the sherry; she screwed up her nose. Or, maybe not — the second sip wasn’t so bad.

  Her phone was sitting next to Dead in the Water. Nick Cave was singing ‘Push the Sky Away’. She could remember the first four digits of Matt’s number, keyed them in slowly, and then stopped. Of course, she wouldn’t call him.

  Another couple of sips of sherry.

  What would be the harm in calling? Really? She opened the book to see his number and keyed into her phone the first eight digits. Just to say ‘hi’, an old friend. Somebody that I … She cancelled the call.

  Quarter to nine on the wall clock. She downed the sherry and dialled all ten digits of Matt’s number, quickly, hoping that he wouldn’t answer.

  Her heart stopped for a beat when he picked up on the third ring.

  ‘Hi. It’s Brigitte Weaver.’ She hadn’t used her maiden name for sixteen years. She kidded herself that had she said ‘Serra’, he might have not known who it was.

  ‘Brig! I’ve been worried about you. After what happened to Maree Carver down there. You OK?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘The police questioned me about it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Because I knew you, they said.’

  Fuck. Aidan must have known she’d seen him.

  ‘Silly, but I never mentioned I saw you in the bookshop,’ he said. ‘Hope I don’t get into trouble.’

  She hesitated, and he asked again if she was OK.

  No, no, no, don’t cry now. ‘My grandfather died tonight.’

  ‘I’m so sorry to hear that.’

  Silence. Awkward.

  ‘I’m in Melbourne,’ she said. ‘So … I just thought …’

  ‘Are your family with you?’

  ‘No. Just me.’ She fiddled with a piece of Kerry’s papier-mache fruit. ‘I better go.’

  ‘Well, nice to hear from you.’

  ‘You, too.’

  ‘Take care.’

  Another pause.

  ‘Bye, Matt.’

  She hung up, returned the pear to the wooden bowl, and then had a shower.

  When she came out of the bathroom in her pyjamas, there was a text on her phone: Matt’s address in Northcote.

  18

  The streets looked as though they were lined with silver, but it was just the rain. Drops sprinkled the taxi’s windscreen — little starbursts in the tail-lights of the car in front. The driver pulled up outside a Victorian cottage with a blue corrugated-iron roof and a picket fence. Always in a taxi to his door: wasn’t there a song about that? Paul Kelly? The porch light was on. Brigitte paid the driver, and pulled the hood of her cream trench coat over her hair as she stepped out.

  The gate squeaked as she pushed it. She paused and looked back at the taxi. It wasn’t too late to leave; the driver was looking at his phone with the interior light on. She latched the gate behind her, hesitated again, and then continued up the path to the front door.

  She remembered the last time she’d seen him (before the bookshop): five years ago, he’d visited her in hospital, after her breakdown. She’d had nothing more to say to him then. So why was she here now? Just to see — again? Because of the cooking sherry?

  A heavy drop of rain fell from the awning and onto her nose, probably streaking her make-up. She rang the doorbell, pulled off her hood, and brushed rain from her coat. The taxi drove off, tyres sloshing on the wet road. Brigitte stepped from foot to foot, the high heels of Kerry’s boots clicking on the porch. They were a size too big and her feet slipped inside. She shoved her hands into her pockets. Her right fingers found a shell, and a lolly that Ella hadn’t liked and had spat into a tissue the last time they’d gone to the cinema. In her left pocket, she traced her thumb over the wedding band on her finger. The alcohol was starting to wear off. She should have stayed at Kerry’s house, in her pyjamas. And she shouldn’t have shaved her legs.

  Maybe the doorbell wasn’t working. Good. She was turning away when she heard footsteps inside. A light came on, illuminating the stained glass above the door. A lock unlocked. The door opened. He smiled, golden down-light framing him in the entrance. He was wearing a long-sleeved black T-shirt and faded jeans. Warmth, and the familiar, comforting smells of fabric softener and cooking emanated from the house.

  She could also smell that he’d been drinking, too, as he hugged her politely, stepped her inside, and closed the door. The feeling of almost drowning. She eased him away, politely, and looked down at his socks — she couldn’t tell if they were black or navy in the dim light.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ he said.

  She shook her head.

  ‘There’s soup on the stove if you’d like some.’

  Some people are feeders and some are fed. He’d always been a feeder, a nurturer.

  He led the way down a narrow hall — polished floorboards, John Brack prints, a gilded mirror, ornate cornices, two rooms off to the right.

  In the lounge room, there was a red leather couch, a tapestry-covered armchair, and a chocolate-coloured shag rug. Brigitte fiddled with her handbag strap. Matt turned down the volume on his retro record player — the same music she’d been listening to at Kerry’s. She placed her bag on the couch, and fumbled with her coat buttons.

  He took her coat and hung it in the hallway.

  ‘Drink?’ he asked.

  She shrugged. ‘What are you having?’

  ‘Something strong.’ He picked up the empty tumbler
glass from the coffee table, and walked off through the archway.

  She stepped into the adjoining study that would have once been a dining room. The floor-to-ceiling shelves were chock-full of books; a ginger cat slept across the computer keyboard on the roll-top desk.

  Brigitte looked at the framed photographs on display. They appeared to be all of one child. Ethan? A blue-eyed baby in a yellow grow-suit swaddled in the arms of a woman whose face was out of shot; a very blond toddler with a severe fringe playing at a park; a pre-schooler in a pavilion at the Royal Melbourne Show, ice-cream on his face; a school boy wearing a Northcote Primary hat. The most recent photo had been taken in Matt’s lounge room — the boy sitting on the red couch, holding the ginger cat. The boy looked about the twins’ age.

  The cat twitched its ears. Brigitte stroked it — ‘George’ on his collar tag. George’s fur rippled. She hoped Aidan hadn’t overfed Zippy. She bet he’d taken the kids to the pub for dinner, and let them drink lemonade. What the fuck was she doing here?

  Matt came back with two serious glasses of whisky. He handed one to Brigitte, apologising for having run out of ice, and tilted his head at the lounge room.

  He sat in the armchair and she perched on the couch, at the very edge.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ A concerned smile.

  She shrugged, not trusting her voice.

  ‘Very sad to lose a loved one.’ He swished the drink around in his glass.

  ‘My brother’s in hospital, too. Attempted suicide.’

  ‘Oh, Brig.’ He stood and moved towards her, but she held up a hand and he sat back on the chair.

  She downed half her drink, and indicated with her chin the photos in the study. ‘How old’s your son?’

  ‘Just turned ten.’

  ‘Live with his mother?’

  He nodded. ‘Can’t believe you had three.’

  ‘Me neither.’ She drank some more and relaxed a little into the couch.

  She told him about the twins and Ella and life on the island, tracing her fingertips over the stitching on the armrest. ‘And I have a perfect job as a script writer for a local TV station.’

  He looked impressed. ‘Do you still write fiction?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘A shame. You were very good.’

  No, she wasn’t. Part of the stitching had come loose; she smoothed down the threads. ‘I miss the city.’

  ‘Does Aidan know that?’

  Nobody knew.

  Matt sipped his drink, and nodded and listened to all the things she missed about the city: the sounds, the shops, the anonymity, decent coffee, cats. He stretched out, knees apart, drink hand on the armrest, his other arm draped along the chair’s back. He’d always been a good listener. Feeder and listener.

  ‘The island doesn’t feel like home.’

  ‘Must be strange down there at the moment.’

  She frowned and tilted her head. The room tilted with her and then started to spin.

  ‘Poor Maree Carver. I feel so sorry for her family.’ He shook his head. ‘Just awful. Her throat slashed …’

  For a moment, the room stopped spinning. They never release all the details, in order to trip up the suspect. She went cold, gripped her glass tighter, and glanced down the hallway, saw her coat hanging on a hook. The sound of a truck gearing down on Victoria Street rumbled through the house.

  ‘I can’t believe they went through all the gory details on the news.’

  The news! Of course!

  ‘The media coverage has been salacious.’ He shook his head. ‘Her poor kids.’

  She nodded and gulped the last of her drink, almost laughing out loud at her stupidity.

  They sat without speaking for a while, awkward, listening to Nick Cave singing about prostitutes and mermaids.

  When Matt left the room, she played Russian roulette with herself: if there was a text from Aidan on her phone, she’d leave straight away. She fished her phone from her bag — spun the cylinder. No new messages.

  Matt came back with the bottle of whisky, but she covered her glass when he offered her another.

  ‘Just one more,’ he said. ‘A nightcap.’

  She sighed, like she had no choice, and slid her hand away so he could pour.

  ‘Didn’t think I’d be seeing you again. Not after you stood me up at the coffee shop,’ he said as he sat down, placing the bottle on the coffee table, one of the sharp corners still covered with a plastic child-safety guard. ‘Remember that night on the island we went swimming?’

  She looked up at the framed Nick Cave poster on the wall, as if trying to remember. As if she didn’t still have nightmares about it. ‘When I almost drowned? And you left me?’

  ‘You didn’t almost drown.’ He laughed it off. ‘And I never left you.’

  She stared into her glass. ‘How come you didn’t look for me after the car accident?’ Why had she asked that? They’d been through this before. She was slurring her words.

  Matt leaned forward in his chair. ‘I did look for you. For a long time, even after Detective …’ He searched the corner of the room for Sam’s name. ‘Your first husband warned me not to.’

  He was lying.

  ‘You really want to know the truth?’

  She knew the truth, but nodded anyway.

  ‘I figured you just didn’t want to be found.’

  She didn’t stop him this time when he moved across to the couch and sat next to her. He didn’t smell of cinnamon and bergamot anymore. The heavy, herbal-musk scent coming off his skin must have been synthetic — she sneezed.

  ‘That you were too young,’ he said. ‘And didn’t really love me.’

  He’d given up on her, she knew that. She’d been too much of a mess. It was a long time ago. It didn’t matter anymore. She wanted to go home. She went to place her glass on the coffee table, but missed, and it fell to the rug.

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’ His voice seemed to be coming from far away.

  She stared at the glass, unable to focus clearly. Shouldn’t have drunk the whisky so quickly. Or the cooking sherry, or the wine. She felt his hand on the back of her head, stroking her hair.

  ‘First I heard of you again was when the other detective, your Aidan, turned up all those years later.’

  She brushed his hand away. ‘There was a baby.’ Shut up, Brigitte. Shut up now! She turned and looked into his eyes; his face blurred into two. ‘I lost it in the car accident.’

  ‘I know.’

  How could he know that?

  ‘Aidan told me.’

  She shook her head. Aidan had never told her that he knew.

  ‘He knew everything, Brig. Somehow he put all the puzzle pieces together. All the pieces he wanted to anyway.’

  She narrowed her eyes: What are you talking about?

  He raised his eyebrows: You know exactly what I’m talking about. If anybody asks, can you say I was with you last night? Words she had regretted as soon as she’d said them down the phone line, nineteen years ago.

  ‘I could have been an accessory after the fact.’ He was slurring his words, too.

  She looked at her knees. ‘You might as well have been driving that car.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t have done the same?’

  ‘I didn’t kill Eric Tucker.’

  ‘Half?’

  She raised her head and glared at him.

  ‘Three quarters?’

  ‘You know it was Sam.’ The know had come out as a growl.

  He tapped a finger on his nose. ‘Don’t worry, postman doesn’t always ring twice.’

  She didn’t know what that meant, but was sure he wasn’t talking about the book, or the film with Jack Nicholson. Matt put his glass on the table and went to the bathroom, leaving her staring up at the Nick Cave poster. Contact one ghost
from the past, and all the skeletons start rattling out.

  She jumped when she heard her phone. It rang out before she found it in her bag. A missed call from Aidan. He called again. She rejected it and threw the phone back — the loaded chamber.

  The landline rang in the study, and Matt answered it. After a few ‘hellos’, he hung up. A wrong number.

  ‘Let’s not talk about the past anymore,’ he said.

  Best idea all night.

  He swayed, and smashed his shin on a non-childproof corner of the coffee table. ‘Ouch!’ He fell against her on the couch, laughing and rubbing his leg.

  And then, somehow, his face was too close to hers. He kissed her. Or she kissed him. Their teeth clashed, clumsy.

  ‘You shouldn’t have come, Brig.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have texted me your address.’

  He took her chin in his hands and kissed her without awkwardness this time, kissed her like Aidan used to. Strange but familiar. And wrong.

  The landline rang again, and she pulled away.

  ‘Just telemarketers,’ he said.

  She touched his hair. Very wrong. She closed her eyes, and their tongues found each other as if nineteen years had not gone by. The room stopped spinning and started falling. Matt’s old place in Fitzroy, her hand holding tight to the bannister, cinnamon and bergamot, Matt standing at the top of the stairs. A little blue Tiffany box tied with white ribbon. And she was young again, that girl again, wanted again. They fell back together on the couch, mouths attached.

  One of Kerry’s boots flew off as she wrapped her legs around his hips. He ground against her. Very, very wrong.

  ‘I never stopped thinking about you.’ His face was hot against hers.

  Oh, fuck — a cramp in her thigh. She gritted her teeth and ignored it. His hand was inside her shirt. Could he feel her scars? Broken in the same places — a drunken musing.

  ‘Crazy to think what we could have had,’ he said, breathless, mouth against her ear.

  What does that even mean? Sounds like a line from an R.E.M. song. Having is not the same as wanting, she thought vaguely as he fumbled with her jeans button.