Brigitte shivered and looked at the glass she was holding. She’d have only one tonight. Two max. Outside, the sky was blue-black with stipples of yellow, like a bruise. She told Ella to close the door — it was getting cold; she could smell rain in the air. She added stock to the pot, and stirred listlessly with a wooden spoon.
She jumped and threw the spoon and the wine from her glass into the air — the security alarm. Fuck! Again. It must be faulty. The twins ran into the kitchen, hands over ears. Brigitte ordered the kids into the backyard. She turned off the soup and took her phone out to join them, hoping the operator from the security company would call quickly again and disarm the system.
After three minutes that felt like thirty, an operator still hadn’t phoned. A few of the neighbours came over to sticky beak, until rain started bucketing down and they scuttled, drenched, back to their houses. Brigitte herded the kids out of the rain, onto the porch, where the noise was excruciating. Somebody would call the bloody police soon. She glanced at Harry’s house, as if he could help somehow, but his lights were off. Brigitte’s pulse accelerated. Don’t panic, don’t panic.
Phoebe shouted at her, ‘Make it stop!’
She ran inside, and rifled through the kitchen drawers for the EG Home Security business card, squashing her thumb as she slammed a drawer shut.
She called the number from the middle of the yard, in the rain, so she could hear the operator. The operator disarmed the alarm and told Brigitte they hadn’t received a message from her system to respond. Odd. The operator had never known this to happen before — something must have gone wrong; she’d send somebody out to have a look first thing in the morning.
Brigitte stepped onto the porch — clothes and hair dripping — and asked for the system to be permanently disarmed, disabled, deleted, whatever.
‘But protecting your property is more important than ever right now,’ the operator said. ‘The economy is in turmoil, times are tough financially, which means the crime rate will rise. People who would normally not think of committing crimes will do so just to make ends meet. An EG Home Security intrusion alarm detector system is necessary in homes —’
‘Just disconnect it.’ She was shaking; her ears were ringing. ‘Please.’
‘Are you sure? Crimes are happening in places where they would normally not occur, even in areas with a low —’
‘I’m sure!’
‘You might like to take some time to think about it, Mrs Serra.’ A pause. ‘You’ve entered into a contract agreement with a term of three years with monthly payments of seventy-four dollars with GST, which includes all cablings and fixings. You will need to pay the total payment, being $2644, in full before we can annul your contract —’
‘That sounds a bit illegal. I’ll have to ask my husband, Detective Senior Sergeant Serra, to have a look into that.’
A pause, some keyboard tapping.
‘I’ll speak with my manager and …’ A voice in the background. ‘We’ll send you the necessary forms to cancel your contract.’
‘You do that.’
‘Is there anything else we can help you with, Mrs Serra?’
***
Brigitte stuck on a smile as she ate her soup; it tasted like dishwater. She ground lots of pepper into her bowl, and told the kids to eat from around the edges and to blow because it was hot.
Phoebe kept her head lowered but gave her a You’re so stupid, Mum look from under her long eyelashes.
‘Tomatoes would have definitely improved the flavour,’ Brigitte said.
Finn nodded and piled his soup with grated parmesan. Ella slurped hers, burnt her lips, and screwed up her face.
‘Would anybody like some bread?’ Nobody answered, but she got up to get some anyway.
Ella scratched at a mosquito bite on her arm.
‘It might be a flea bite,’ Phoebe said. ‘In the Black Death, fleas bit the rats and then they bit the people and the people got the plague and died.’
‘Stop it, Phoebe,’ Brigitte said.
‘“Ring Around the Rosies” is about all the people dying. It’s not “A tissue, a tissue, we all fall down”; it’s meant to be “Ashes, ashes …”’
Ella started bawling.
‘“We all fall down”, ’cause everybody died.’
‘I said, “Stop it”. Please!’
Brigitte’s phone rang. It better not be the fucking security company ringing back. She slammed her spoon on the table, and told the kids to be quiet. Aidan. Her heart skipped.
‘Heard there was a false alarm over there. Again,’ he said.
She went into the lounge room so she could hear over the kids. ‘Ella accidentally tripped the security system.’ A silly laugh escaped her lips.
‘You know we have to pay if services get called out?’
‘Don’t worry, nobody was called.’ He’d said we.
‘Kids OK?’
She nodded and swallowed, sure he could hear them bickering in the kitchen. ‘Haven’t found a flat?’
‘Not yet.’
‘You staying at Ray’s?’
‘Yeah.’ A pause. ‘Sorry for ruining your book. Shouldn’t have done that.’ His deep voice was soothing. Rational. Normal. Hard to imagine him tearing a book to shreds.
‘It wasn’t a good book.’ She heard a radio turned down low, the beat of windscreen wipers. ‘Where are you?’
‘Looking for a stolen car.’
She glanced into the kitchen.
‘Aidan …’
‘What?’
I love you. ‘Nothing.’
‘Gotta go. I’ll come see the kids next weekend.’
Weekend dad. How could this have happened? I’m sorry.
In the kitchen, Finn was trowelling butter onto a slice of bread, Phoebe was scowling into her bowl, and Ella was still crying. Brigitte walked around to Ella’s chair, and crouched to comfort her. She shot Phoebe a Very disappointed with you look.
As Ella exhaled, a snot bubble formed and was sucked back into her nose as she inhaled. ‘Wasn’t a accident.’
She felt Ella’s heart beating as fast as a bird’s.
‘Phoebe said if the alarm went off,’ she said between sobs, ‘Daddy might get worried and come home.’
***
After the kids were in bed, Brigitte poured a fourth glass of wine. Tomorrow, she’d really have only one or two, when her nerves weren’t shot from alarm bells. She sat at the kitchen table with the rain on the roof, and the radio for company.
The residents of Raymond Island have defeated the East Gippsland Shire’s plan to hike up ferry charges.
‘Hear, hear,’ Brigitte raised her glass to the radio.
The mayor said it’s incumbent on the Shire to be financially sustainable. They were testing the waters, so to speak, about the level of user-pays that is sustainable in the community as well. The community reaction was swift and staunch, and persuasive personal narratives were heard at last week’s meeting.
Brigitte sniggered.
Police were called when tempers flared between island residents and mainlanders.
Brigitte shook her head and thought about Harry’s bandaged hand.
The good people of Raymond Island have presented a very loud and clear message about their feelings on the proposed fee increase.
‘The ferry’s our pride and joy,’ said fisherman Jim Woodward. ‘It’s our road, our only road home.’
Nice sentiments, Jim.
The program was interrupted with breaking news of a police chase on the Princes Highway that had ended in tragedy.
Brigitte walked across to the breakfast bar to better hear.
A police officer has died, and two youths have been airlifted to the Alfred Hospital after their allegedly stolen car ran off the road during a high-speed car chase on the outskirts o
f Bairnsdale just over two hours ago. Police and paramedics tried to resuscitate the police officer, the sole occupant in the pursuing unmarked vehicle, which crashed into a tree, but the officer died at the scene. A police spokesperson said there was no report on the extent of the youths’ injuries as yet.
Time stopped for a moment. Brigitte glanced at Aidan’s roster on the fridge. His arvo shift should have ended two hours ago. Ice water surged through her entire body.
We’ll have more details for you as they come to hand. But right now, here’s a song from the guy whose name everybody has trouble pronouncing, ‘Somebody That I Used to Know.’
She turned down the radio and phoned Aidan. She tried to hold herself up against the sink, but her legs turned to jelly and she slid down the cupboard. Her backside hit the floor and a bolt of pain shot up her spine as her call went to voicemail. She tried Ray’s. Nothing. She heard the ferry moan as it headed towards the mainland.
It was dark out, starless, but she pictured shattered windscreen glass and red-and-blue light glittering the highway. It would be wet and very cold on the road. Would this — the waiting — be a memory, frozen in time, no matter how hard she would want to forget it? Why am I thinking about forgetting when there’s nothing to remember? Nothing has happened. Aidan was at Ray’s, drinking beer and watching some crap on TV to obliterate his day. He just hadn’t heard the phone, or had ignored it. She’d try again, and then she’d call the station. In a minute. Not yet. She couldn’t move.
She had so many things she needed to tell Aidan. How the girls loved him so much it almost broke her heart. Sorry. And how Finn needed a father, a male role model. Sorry. And she had this mole on her back that she couldn’t see properly in the mirror — could he take a look and tell her if it had changed. Sorry. She stared at the worn left knee of her jeans. Why did all her jeans wear out in the same spot? Sorry, sorry, sorry.
44
The back door slid, footsteps across the kitchen. Brigitte hauled herself up as Aidan rounded the breakfast bar.
He dropped his gym bag, glanced at the radio, and said, with the wrong timbre in his voice, ‘It was Ray.’ There were stains on his clothing the sombre colours of his Rothko Four Darks in Red — he’d been to the accident scene.
She shook her head slowly as she wrapped her arms around him. She felt his ribs through his cold, damp shirt. They clung to each other for a while before he pushed her away gently and went to the bathroom. She leaned against the breakfast bar staring at the photos on the wall, wishing she could step back into that petrol-blue wedding dress and press ‘Play’ again from there.
The shower ran for a long time, steam and the aroma of vanilla-bean soap slid from under the door. She tried Carla’s number. No answer. She left a message bubbling on about how sorry she was; call if there was anything she needed. Should have said nothing — there were no appropriate words. When the water stopped, she heard Aidan put his clothes into the washing machine.
He came out with a towel around his waist, and padded to the bedroom. She followed, and lay beside him on the bed. After a while, he said, ‘My shift was nearly over, so Ray said he’d go.’
She reached for his hand.
‘He was in the middle of the car, the windscreen, his eyes were open, but his head … Sorry.’
‘It’s OK. You have to tell somebody, Aid. Tell me.’
He hesitated, and then it poured out: ‘So much blood.’
She laced her fingers through his, and squeezed tight.
‘It reminded me of Drew Borchardt. And for a second, I imagined I saw Laurie Hunt in the driver’s seat.’
She looked into his eyes, saw the monster there, and for a moment thought she’d caught its tail.
He flipped to talking about Maree Carver. ‘She was almost decapitated.’
Red light on glass.
‘And at the Carver crime scene — Maree must have been held down and bled out like an animal at an abattoir, same as Zippy. That’s why there was no spatter pattern from severed arteries, just stains from a big pool of blood.’ He was shivering. ‘At Laurie Hunt’s, there was so much of it. And then when they took off Hunt’s balaclava and I saw …’
‘Talk to me, Aid.’
‘I can’t. I can’t breathe.’
‘You’re OK.’ She placed a hand low on his stomach. ‘Try to breathe from here. In through your nose, out through your mouth.’ She counted slowly, watching the rising and falling of her hand become less erratic. At 150, he had his breathing under control.
She cradled him like a baby in her arms, with the sensation of holding sand, or light. When he’d found some peace in falling asleep, she moved to get up and turn off the lights.
He reached out. ‘Please don’t leave me.’
They slept with the lights on.
45
In the morning, he was gone again. But he’d be back — he’d left his clothes drying on the line, and his gym bag next to the bed. When Brigitte moved the bag, a black notebook fell from the front pocket.
She glanced over her shoulder, and opened it.
17 March
Might not be sick after all. Not physically, anyway. Found this website called Beyond Blue. They have these forums. They say keeping a journal is supposed to help, write things down, thoughts and feelings. Dear Diary, stupid, but here goes.
Should be at the pub drinking green beer instead of doing this. Took the kids across earlier for dinner. They’re in bed now and I feel bad about getting angry with them over nagging for lemonade. Brigitte’s in Melbourne because her brother tried to top himself, and her pop died.
Physical: Heart palpitations, odd aches and pains, shakes, coldness/numbness usually in my arms. Hard to believe it’s crazy mental and there’s not something physically wrong. My heart, a brain tumour, or maybe lung cancer?
Emotional: Scared, angry, always on edge, on guard, a constant uneasiness that some disaster is about to occur. Sometimes I feel weird in a way that’s hard to describe exactly: detached, like watching from outside my body. Last week I was thinking about everything while driving and didn’t notice I was going in the wrong direction.
The nightmares and the flashbacks are the worst. I see the victims I couldn’t help when I was in Homicide. I see Drew Borchardt crawling across the floor of Laurie Hunt’s kitchen, blood pouring from the gaping gunshot wounds to his face. He reaches out a hand. Blood runs down it. He keeps crawling towards me, begging for help, but I can’t move. I’m helpless. More blood runs like little rivers along the joins of the tiles. And then they take off Hunt’s balaclava. The bullets hit at a very odd angle. It looked like a partial decapitation. Should have only fired once. Not ready to talk about that. This is what I signed up for. I should be able to deal with it.
Sometimes the flashbacks are not flashbacks. I can’t explain, but they are real. Hallucinations? This has happened before (after Laurie Hunt), but not for a long time. I saw Brigitte’s face on Maree Carver’s body in the water. And when I looked a second time, it was Phoebe’s face.
21 March
I no longer sleep like a normal person. I wake constantly and can’t breathe, can’t get air into my lungs, like there’s a weight on my chest. I feel frightened when I can’t stand it when the house is totally dark. I lie awake listening to every sound and wonder what it is. I have this compulsion to get up and make sure no one has broken in, and the house is secured and the kids and Brigitte are safe.
I got a good security system installed, but still don’t feel safe. The alarm went off in the middle of the night. Brigitte or one of the kids set it off somehow. Maybe it was a dream (or hallucination), but I swear I saw an intruder running out of the house.
I know I should see a shrink, but I can’t — they’d medicate me, or make me do something stupid like hypnotherapy. They Police would take away my gun and badge. Goodbye career (what’s left of it). Can’t do my
job properly, but don’t know how to do anything else. Can’t even find who killed my own dog.
Brigitte suspects a link between Zippy and the Carver file. I can’t look her in the eye, but more because she lied to me: told me straight up that nothing happened with that slimy prick Matt Elery in Melbourne.
Drinking too much. And smoking. When she smells it on my breath, Brigitte says nothing, just does that thing where she twists up her mouth and nose. It used to remind me of Samantha in Bewitched. Now it’s just annoying and condescending.
These Beyond Blue forums also discuss exposure therapy (something about revisiting the bad memories. Facing your fears, which would be pretty hard because I’m afraid of everything these days. I am weak, hopeless).
Good Friday
Made love with Brigitte last night. Felt like things were back to normal, but I know she was just pretending. Probably thinking of Elery.
I can’t explain it, but I need to find a way back home. Not home as in place, but how we were before Laurie Hunt. I’m scared we’ve come too far from there.
Can’t stop thinking about getting my gun, or the gun in the safe. There, I said it. This journal had better be helping. Would never do it, of course. Cowardly. Selfish. To those who would discover. To the kids. To Brigitte. I still love her even though I know she doesn’t love me anymore. Who would?
Sometimes I feel so sad I want to cry to let it all out. Other times I’m so angry I think I could hurt Brigitte. I’ve dreamed of hurting her. I am terrified that I will hurt her, or our beautiful kids. I need to protect them, but I’m worried they’re in more danger if I’m around. Whatever I do is wrong.
Dead in the Water Page 21