It was an operator from EG Home Security. ‘Has your alarm been activated?’
Stupid fucking question. ‘Can you turn it off!’
‘Certainly. Is this Mrs Serra?’ she said.
‘Yes!’
‘I’ll need your code for clearance to disable the alarm. Could you please tell me your code?’
Fuck.
‘If you’ve forgotten your code or you’re not the resident, I’ll have to —’
She covered the phone. ‘Finn! What’s the code?’ He told her and she relayed it to the operator.
Her shoulders lowered and her nerves stopped jangling a little when the alarm ceased. She’d been gripping her phone so tightly her little finger had gone numb.
The operator told her to hold for a moment while she checked the video surveillance. Brigitte held, looking at the starless sky.
‘Are you there?’ the operator said. Her tone had turned from routine to sharp. ‘I can see a person in dark clothing moving around the side of your house. It looks like a man.’
Oh my God. Harry and the kids were asking what was wrong; she waved her hand for them to be quiet.
‘I need you to stay on the phone,’ the operator said.
She nodded.
‘He’s moving towards the back of the house.’
She stiffened.
‘Are you still there?’
Aidan emerged from the darkness, wearing black pants and T-shirt.
‘It’s just my husband,’ she said to the operator. ‘He’s a police officer.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’ A silly little laugh.
‘Security company?’ Aidan said.
She nodded.
He held out his hand for the phone and she passed it to him. ‘This is Detective Senior Sergeant Serra. There appears to be no home emergency. I’ve checked the premises and vicinity. No intruders. No property’s been stolen.’ He listened and nodded. ‘Yeah. Thanks. You have a good night, too.’
He handed Brigitte’s phone back. ‘Sounds like the alarm was accidentally tripped.’
‘Maybe it was a koala b…’
He glared at her and then turned to the kids, who were standing in a row like taxidermied owls. ‘Has anybody been playing with the keypad?’
Nobody answered, and Aidan stomped inside, shaking his head.
‘Everything all right now, then.’ Harry nodded and turned for home.
As she herded the kids inside, Brigitte glanced into the bedroom; Aidan was locking the safe.
26
The storm clouds were long, and in the strangest formations Brigitte had ever seen. They looked like emaciated human figures lying supine: people on their deathbeds. A shiver shimmied up her spine.
The sky spat rain on their black umbrellas — and Ella’s Very Hungry Caterpillar umbrella — as Brigitte’s family gathered around Papa’s gravesite. Without Aidan. There were a few carers and a handful of residents from the aged-care facility — most of the latter didn’t even know they were there — sitting on white plastic chairs or in wheelchairs. Joan and Ryan stood to Brigitte’s left, the three kids to her right. She wondered how many hundreds of people had attended Maree Carver’s funeral. She’d seen footage of it on TV: a huge affair in a beautiful church bathed in stained-glass light, ‘Amazing Grace’ or ‘Ave Maria’ played on an organ.
Atop Papa’s coffin was a bouquet of red roses, a bottle of sherry, a pouch of tobacco, some army medals, and that framed photo of Nana at the dance.
Kevin, the funeral celebrant, looked at the sky. Could he see the cloud-people on deathbeds, too? He walked over and whispered that they’d have to get started soon. Brigitte said she didn’t want to start without her husband. Kevin breathed into his hands, rubbed them together, and said they could wait five more minutes.
The sky grew dark and the cloud-people dissipated. Brigitte’s face and fingers burned from the cold. She clenched her jaw to stop her teeth chattering, and gripped her umbrella tighter as she scanned the cemetery. Please, Aidan, don’t do this to me today.
The wind smacked a blast of icy rain against their dark, winter coats — and Joan’s red coat. The photo of Nana blew face down on the coffin. Ryan started crying. Lightning illuminated the sky. Ella cried, too, and clung to Brigitte’s leg. Phoebe inched closer. Brigitte looked down at the top of her head and frowned — her hair was knotty; she hadn’t brushed it properly.
Finally, Brigitte saw Aidan walking towards them with his parents. Joan pulled back her shoulders at the sight of Lorenzo — son of immigrants, ex-policeman from a time when it was a highly respected job — hunched under his umbrella, walking ahead of his son and wife. He had swarthy skin, and when he stood straight, he was almost as tall as Aidan. Aidan shared his umbrella with Grace — ‘that Australian girl’, Lorenzo’s family had always called her. She was of Irish stock, small and as fair as Brigitte’s family. Lorenzo and Grace nodded respectfully, and then stood solemnly with their son.
Finn sidestepped to stand next to Aidan. Aidan ruffled his hair and reached down to hold Grace’s hand. The back of Brigitte’s throat ached.
‘I now ask Brigitte, Edward’s granddaughter, to come forward and light the Candle of Remembrance, which signifies unity, peace, and thanksgiving,’ Kevin said.
Grace dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. Funerals unearth the memories of all the past funerals we’ve attended. Brigitte remembered her dad’s send-off: ‘Lights on the Hill’, and Joan drunk, falling over, twisting her ankle. And she remembered Sam’s: ‘Into My Arms’, and lies about what a good husband he had been.
After several tries, the fucking Candle of Remembrance still wouldn’t light. Brigitte felt impatient eyes on her back; her hand trembled as the wind blew out match after match. A man cleared his throat. Thunder rumbled the ground. Kevin whispered they’d have to pretend. He rushed through Papa’s life story as the weather became more vicious. Several umbrellas blew inside out. One of the aged-care residents stood up to sneak away early, and his white-plastic chair blew away across the cemetery.
Brigitte was gobsmacked when Kevin invited anyone else to pay tribute to Edward, and Joan stepped forward to read a poem she’d written, the wind whipping her gold-and-silver hair dramatically around her face. The poem was about endings being beginnings. Brigitte wiped her cheeks.
Kevin thanked Joan and then asked Brigitte to extinguish the Candle of Remembrance. She looked at him, wide-eyed.
He mouthed the word pretend, and she came forward and pinched her thumb and index finger over the unlit candlewick. Nothing stupid like this would have happened at Maree Carver’s funeral.
‘We will go from this place now with enduring love and respect for Edward,’ Kevin said. ‘May you find strength and support in your love for one another.’
Brigitte looked at Aidan; he didn’t look at her.
‘And may you find peace in your hearts.’ Kevin exchanged a glance with Brigitte as he reached down and docked his iPod under a plastic cover. ‘As we now leave and say goodbye to Edward, we will listen to the song “Rhinestone Cowboy” by Glen Campbell.’
27
The kettle was empty. Aidan was in the way of the sink, restacking the plates Brigitte had already loaded in the dishwasher. She drummed her fingers silently on the kettle while he rinsed the dirty dishes thoroughly and racked them according to height. What the fuck was the point of having a dishwasher if you washed the dishes first? Impatience, or caffeine addiction, got the better of her and she pushed past him.
He held up his hands and stepped aside. He looked tired, but gorgeous. Clean-shaven, hair damp, wearing charcoal trousers and a cream shirt with a tie. His suit jacket hung over the back of a chair.
‘Court today?’
He nodded.
She made coffee and sat at the breakfast bar.
As Aidan gath
ered his keys and wallet, a wave of sadness and regret washed over her. Don’t leave. ‘Poor Zippy.’ She looked at the jumbo bag of dog biscuits next to the door. She’d have to take them to Jeremy’s house for his dog.
‘Uh-huh.’ Aidan looked at his phone.
‘Will you be home for dinner?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Nice of Enzo and Grace to come to Papa’s funeral.’
‘They’ve always liked you.’
‘You OK?’
‘About Zippy or Eddie?’
Annoyance overflowed the sadness and regret as he scrolled on his phone. ‘Anything else you want to talk about?’ Colin, Connor, Carl, for example?
He stopped playing with his phone, and pulled his jacket from the back of the chair.
The awkward no-kiss goodbye. She looked at his feet. Were they new shoes?
‘Aid …’
‘See ya.’ He walked out, and she rested her head on the breakfast bar, until her phone rang. It was Tate, from work, asking how she was.
‘Been better.’
‘Have you read chapter fifteen?’
Like this was a fucking book club. How could he be so insensitive? ‘Cloud Atlas doesn’t have chapter numbers.’
‘No. Of Dead in the Water.’
‘What?’
‘The dog. Detective Moore’s dog is killed. With a knife.’
Ice water inside her arms.
‘You have to tell Aidan.’
‘You’re being hysterical.’
‘If you don’t tell the police, I —’
‘Stop it, Tate!’
He stopped.
‘There’s always stabbings in crime books. The police would laugh at you.’
After she’d hung up, she went into the bedroom and took out Dead in the Water from her underwear drawer. In chapter fifteen, Detective Robert Moore’s dog, Sally, was stabbed to death. The local vet performed an autopsy (how would the local vet know what to look for?) and recognised that the wounds appeared to have been caused by a knife, single-bladed, serrated — the same type of weapon used in murdering Deanna Moore before she was dumped in the lake. The vet also discovered on Sally’s fur a substance, of which he sent a sample to forensics. Brigitte flicked forward a few chapters. The sample matched the substance found on Deanna Moore’s body: linseed oil. Other similarities were identified, and, from the wound pattern, the killer must have been left-handed.
She flicked back to the start, to the first time Moore had fired a gun. Left-handed. Too obvious, Matt: Moore killed his own wife and dog. The kids would be next. And then he could be with Annaleah, but he’d get caught first.
Ella came in for a good-morning cuddle, and Brigitte returned the book to the drawer. Coincidence, coincidence, coincidence. She’d kill Tate if he told Aidan about this.
On the way to work, she took a detour past Jeremy’s house in Gravelly Point Road. It was indeed gravelly out there, and the X-Trail was covered in dust. She lifted her sunglasses and double-checked the address Harry had written on a scrap of paper.
Amid wild grasses, heath, and tea-tree, on a neat green clearing, stood a brown weatherboard house with white window frames, doorframes, and lattice. She’d had Jeremy pegged as a brick-house kind of guy, but she actually knew nothing about him. Was he single? Divorced? Or was there a wife or girlfriend — or boyfriend — to tend the pink flowers in his garden? Did he have kids?
She heaved the twelve-kilo bag of dog biscuits out of the car, bending her knees, careful of her back. She struggled up the path and dropped the bag on the doorstep. The doorbell wasn’t working, so she knocked. No answer. Jeremy must be working. No wife, girlfriend, or boyfriend home either.
She smiled sadly at the noise of a puppy yapping, but couldn’t stickybeak over the fence because a stack of broken plasterboard ceiling panels was in the way. It sounded as though the yaps were coming from next door anyway — perhaps the neighbour looked after his dog while Jeremy was at work.
28
Ryan was up for Easter. He flicked on the porch light from inside, and Brigitte called to turn it off. They didn’t need it — outside, a big, full moon was shining through the eucalypts. She leaned forward to light a mosquito coil and a citronella candle on the table.
‘Sure you don’t want to come inside?’
‘No, I want to look at the moon.’
‘Freak.’ Ryan made a howling noise as he came out with a bottle of red and two glasses.
‘Are you supposed to be drinking?’ she said.
He pursed his lips as he poured the wine. ‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen,’ he said, looking at her Hello Kitty onesie that the kids had given her last Mother’s Day.
She pulled a blanket over herself.
‘What’s Aidan think of it?’ He handed her a glass.
‘Dunno. He’s never around lately to notice.’ She swished the wine around.
He sat next to her. He still looked pale, and a little diminished — not quite back to his bouncy self — as if somebody had drawn his image through old-fashioned tracing paper and the outline was lighter, the colours less vivid.
‘How are things?’ she said.
‘Fine.’
‘Really?’
He nodded and, from his shirt pocket, produced a joint.
‘Ryan Weaver, you are a bad influence!’
He lit the joint on the candle, took a few deep drags, and passed it to her. She hadn’t smoked for a long time, coughed, and felt dizzy immediately.
‘So what’s up with Aid? What happened?’ Ryan asked.
‘Nothing,’ she said, looking at him with wide, innocent eyes.
He narrowed his. ‘Bullshit.’
She handed the joint back and looked at the moon rimmed by a blurry haze. ‘Well, not as much as you think.’
‘How much?’
She shrugged. ‘Half. Three-quarters, maybe. No — more like half.’
‘You or Aidan?’ He passed the joint.
She frowned and thought about Colin, Connor, Carl as she inhaled and exhaled smoke. ‘You think it was him?’
‘I don’t know anything, Brigi. Just guessing.’
‘It was just one stupid mistake, Ryan. And it wasn’t completely my fault.’
He nodded slowly, waiting for more, but she wasn’t going to tell him about the flinch, or Aidan’s moods, and definitely not about the foiled blow job in the cop car.
‘Oh, Brigi, not that author guy again?’
‘What do you mean “again”? I hadn’t seen him for years before —’ She coughed. ‘Dead in the water.’ A long, long time ago.
‘Isn’t that the name of his book?’
‘It was nothing.’ She passed the joint and reached for her wine.
‘It’s not a lie if you believe it.’
‘What?’
‘Remember George Costanza in Seinfeld?’
‘The sea was angry that day, my friends.’
‘The Soup Nazi.’
They both cackled, and then her shoulders slumped. ‘Fuck, what am I going to do, Ryan?’
‘Some couples survive adultery.’
‘That’s a repulsive word.’
‘Some end up friends. Platonic.’
‘Another bad word.’
‘There are no good words for it, Brigi. Brother-sister-like relationship.’
‘Great. Just like you and me.’ She snorted half-heartedly, and sipped her wine.
‘You could try saying “sorry”.’ He got up and walked to the edge of the porch, stepped down, and crushed out the joint on the grass.
Headlights flashed across the trees and the back fence; tyres crunched slowly on the driveway.
‘I’m going to bed.’ Ryan laid another joint on the table as he walked towards the door. ‘Talk to him, Brigi
. Don’t be like me and Rosie.’
The new gate opened and clicked shut; the echoes of Zippy’s happy bark and Aidan’s silly laugh were still attached in her memory to the gate-sound. She stared at the golden candlelight flickering in the wind, waiting for Aidan to ignore her so she could get on with smoking and drinking in peace.
He walked across the porch, a little unsteady. He’d been drinking, too, shouldn’t have been driving. He didn’t rush inside to get changed, shower, or whatever else he was always in a hurry to do as soon as he got home these days.
‘Drink?’ She held up the bottle without looking at him.
He went into the kitchen and came back with a glass.
‘Cold,’ she said, rubbing her hands together.
He nodded, sat beside her, and poured himself a drink. She offered him some blanket, but he shook his head.
‘How was your day?’ she said.
‘OK.’
Maybe they could be friends. Brother and sister. Meg and Jack White. But the sensation in her pelvis when his leg touched hers was not something she ever wanted to feel from Ryan.
Sorry. Why couldn’t she just say it? She reached for the joint. ‘Want some?’
‘Where’d you get that?’
‘Found it.’ She lit up and took a couple of drags. ‘Look at the moon,’ she said, passing the joint to him, her hand lingering against his.
He coughed. ‘Where?’
She pointed and laughed.
He laughed, too. ‘How did I miss that? Is it a supermoon?’
‘No. But it’s pretty awesome.’ She felt floaty, far away.
‘Tell you something else strange,’ he said, exhaling smoke. ‘The night we reviewed the Carver crime scene with a group of forensic scientists. They came down to search in the dark for bloodstains.’
She shivered.
‘Sprayed luminol on the ground and vegetation near the first jetty.’ He passed the joint back to her. ‘And we all freaked out when the tree lit up like Christmas.’
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