Dead in the Water
Page 24
Brigitte hauled herself up. Nothing felt too broken. She hugged and kissed Phoebe, guided her into the saloon, beckoned to Ella, and cocooned both her girls in her arms. She turned them to the south-facing windows, not wanting to witness what happened next.
Through the open door, she saw hands grip the bottom rail. Aidan! He emerged from the water. Jeremy was still aiming the gun at something imaginary in the water on the other side. Aidan placed an index finger to his lips. In her peripheral vision, she saw Jeremy turn as Aidan climbed aboard. Aid, no!
There was a loud crack, a gunshot. Aidan looked into Brigitte’s eyes as he fell to his knees, water dripping from his clothes. She hadn’t seen Jeremy point the pistol. The gunshot and Aidan falling didn’t piece together. Time slowed down. If only there could be no choice: just an incident, an accident. She was disorientated. Jeremy laughed, and looked across to where the shot had come from on the mainland. Brigitte looked, too. A stocky man with a rifle: Steve Williams. Another shot, a lick of gunfire, a woman’s silhouette: Carla. The stocky man dropped. Jeremy stopped laughing and turned the gun on the officers in Paynesville.
Aidan slumped forward on the cold, steel floor. Brigitte heard herself moan. Ella’s lips formed the word ‘Daddy’ as she lay down beside her father and wrapped her arms around him. There was more gunfire from the mainland. Brigitte looked up; they’d missed — Jeremy was still standing, aiming at the shore, but jerking from one target to another.
Phoebe was having some kind of breathing attack on the bench seat. Brigitte couldn’t go to her, not while Jeremy still had the gun. He headed towards the island-side, behind the passenger saloon, where it would be impossible to clear-sight him from the mainland. He was mumbling something about his brother and Jesus, and soft green fields. How long before he returned his focus to Brigitte and her family?
She kneeled beside Aidan and reached under his shirt for his holster. She was sure his gun wouldn’t work after being in the water. But she had to try; it was their last chance. She glanced at Jeremy — still mumbling. Aidan wasn’t wearing a gun belt. Game over.
He rolled onto his side — foetal position — and moved his mouth. She leaned down, her face close to his, so she could hear.
‘Pock …’ he whispered against her ear.
Pocket? She brushed back his hair, kissed his clammy forehead, and felt around his hips — tentatively, the way she did her monthly breast-lump checks, terrified of what she might find, or, in this case, not find. In the front pocket. His service pistol. Tied inside a disposable glove, dry. Smart boy, Aidan. Smart boy. Smartest man I’ve ever known. When this was all over, she’d look up the manufacturers that supplied Victoria Police with disposable gloves, and send them a thankyou email. She checked Jeremy; he was leaning against the back rail, staring in the direction of the first jetty, singing again. She wiped her hands on the top of her onesie, tore open the glove with her teeth, and removed the pistol. It felt heavier than the one they’d kept in the safe.
She padded quietly to the rear door of the passenger saloon, trying to recall Aidan’s instructions of how to use the gun. She felt the base of the grip. There was a magazine in there. That meant there could be a round in the chamber, but she couldn’t remember how to tell. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Why hadn’t she listened properly? All she could remember was: The slide flies back with each shot, so never cross your thumb behind it. Cut it right off. A severed thumb no longer seemed such a big deal. She released the safety, held the gun in her right hand, and placed her left around the grip. Jeremy still hadn’t turned around.
‘Get down, Phoebe,’ she whispered as she stepped out of the saloon, closing the door quietly behind her so the girls couldn’t see. She stood with her bare feet shoulder-width apart, legs shaking inside her Hello Kitty onesie. Aidan had said something about lining up the sights. Think, Brigitte, think. But she couldn’t. She extended her arms, aiming at the back of Jeremy’s head. Fucking bastard! She pulled the trigger.
She’d closed her eyes, jerked the trigger, and the gun went off target; the bullet ricocheted off the ferry’s light post. She’d thought she had reasonably good upper-body strength from the gym, but the recoil bucked her arms back onto her face and she stumbled against the stair rail.
Jeremy turned. Deafened by the gunshot, she couldn’t hear his singing as he pointed the gun at her. She cowered against the stairs, squinting, steeling herself.
Fight or flight. Clawing, fingernails tearing at the edge of hope, she stood and raised the gun again. It is at the point of reaching true helplessness, having abandoned thoughts of the future, that we dismiss risk and fear. Imagine you’re placing your finger against something delicate, like glass. A strange calmness slowed her breathing and heart rate. Jeremy came closer, closer — close enough for her to see there was no magazine in his gun. Of course, Phoebe couldn’t reach the ammunition. For a moment, Brigitte considered lowering the gun. But Aidan was lying in a pool of blood and water, Ella and Phoebe cuddling behind him. And then the song, of which Jeremy’s lips were forming the wrong words, came to her: Tom Waits’s ‘Innocent When You Dream’. Oh fuck, Harry, I’m so sorry.
She couldn’t see it, but maybe Jeremy still had the knife he’d used on Harry. And he was far stronger than she. Still dangerous. Still self-defence? Or maybe the postman does always ring twice, but, at that point, she didn’t care. Gently. Don’t jerk the trigger. She didn’t miss the second time.
The bevelled hole in Jeremy’s head; the surrounding shredded flesh flaming, and tattooed with gunpowder; the fragments of skull, tissue, and brain matter flying out from the back of his head: more things to save for the doctor. Along with Harry, and Maree Carver’s butchered body, which she’d seen reflected in the Bateau House’s glass doors.
The burnt-match smell of gunpowder hung in the air. Brigitte placed the pistol on the floor, pointing towards the island. She went back into the saloon and lay down facing Aidan. His breath was faint against her cheek. She held him, tried to warm him. Blood soaked through his cold, wet shirt; she found the wound, covered it with her hands, and applied pressure.
She read his lips: ‘I lied about my greatest fear.’
‘Me, too.’
‘It’s losing you,’ he said. ‘And it’s left.’
She moved her hands over.
‘No. Left in the bottle.’
‘What?’
‘That saying. It’s not “any port in a storm”. It’s no port …’
‘Shh.’ She kissed him. ‘I love you.’
He fanned his fingers up and down.
‘And I’m sorry.’
She saw the lights of the Water Police and the Coast Guard approaching, an ambulance on the mainland.
Dear Glove Company, Thank you for manufacturing such a stellar product …
Behind his back, she felt Phoebe’s hand on hers and, despite the slippery blood, laced her fingers and gripped tight.
Wind ruffled around the ferry. The gentle rocking felt like the motion of her father’s semitrailer, where she had dozed, safe and warm, in the sleeper compartment as a little girl. Strange things came to her. The combination of her locker when she was a stripper at the Gold Bar: 18–9–26; 18–9–26; 18–9–26. The names of the streets she used to drive past to get to their old house: Gordon, Myrtle, Clifton; Gordon, Myrtle, Clifton; Gordon, Myrtle, Clifton.
The light fizzed, went out, and then came back on again.
She closed her eyes and she was slow-dancing with Aidan on the night they met. On the shiny timber wall, a lean figure towered over a Tinkerbell shape: their silhouettes reflected by the dance-floor lights.
Find our way back home, somehow: Red, right, return. Red, right, return. Red, right, return.
48
‘Today on One, Two, Three, Cook!, I’m going to show you how to make perfect filo pastry for your family,’ Maree Carver’s replacement said from behind a stainless-ste
el bench. ‘Filo pastry is a thin Greek pastry that is used in meat, egg, cheese, vegetable, and various sweet dishes,’ he said as he tipped flour into a big green mixing bowl. ‘One cup of water and about four tablespoons of olive oil —’
Brigitte pointed the remote at the wall-mounted TV, turned it off, and went back to the page of Cloud Atlas that she’d read three times, but still hadn’t absorbed. Clouds crossing skies — a metaphor for souls crossing time? She was up to the middle part: a post-apocalyptic world, written in gobbledegook, abridged English she couldn’t get her head around. She recalled a line from an earlier section: A half-read book is a half-finished love affair. Bullshit. She was never going to get through it.
A trolley rattled past. Shoes squeaked. Somebody coughed.
Sheets rustled; she looked up. Aidan’s eyes were open. As she rushed to his side, Cloud Atlas fell to the floor, her page lost forever. Some things are left half-finished in order to start anew.
‘Hey, sleepyhead.’ She smiled away her tears, and brushed the hair off his forehead. ‘Nice to see you.’
He looked at the jug of water on the bedside table. She poured a cup, and helped him sit up.
‘Careful.’ She held the cup to his mouth. ‘You must be like a sieve with all those holes in you.’
A trace of his one-sided smile.
He lay back, and the colour drained from his face. White. Green. He was going to be sick. She grabbed the kidney dish from the bedside table and caught the vomit; some of it spattered her shirt.
‘Wouldn’t do that for somebody you didn’t really love.’ She put aside the kidney dish, wiped his mouth with tissues, and, just to prove her point beyond a doubt, kissed him.
She buzzed for a nurse.
A nurse came and cleaned up the mess. ‘Heard on the grapevine you’re going home next week.’ She checked Aidan’s blood pressure and temperature, and wrote something in the folder at the end of his bed. ‘Why do the good-looking ones always leave me?’
When the nurse had left, Brigitte placed a hand on the covers. ‘Detective Senior Sergeant, is that …’ But he’d fallen back to sleep.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my family: Greg, Reece, Paige, Jaime, and my mother, Pam; Henry Rosenbloom, David Golding (my editor), and everybody at Scribe; a special thank you to Graeme Simsion for generous, ongoing advice and encouragement; and to all the people who helped and supported me — Fran Willcox, Anne Buist, Felicity Clissold, Jim Brandi, Linzi Wilson-Wilde, Maree Shelmerdine, Amy Jasper (for helping me research the wine in Paynesville and the sausages at the Bairnsdale farmers’ market), Anita Smith, Danny Rosner Blay, Nancy Sugarman, Emma Viskic, J.M. Green, Michelle Aung Thin, Rachel Mathews, Mark Brandi, Meg Dunley, Allison Browning, Krysia Birman, Connie Spanos, Shahera Souiedan, Diane Meier, and Kim Harrison. Thank you to RMIT (Professional Writing and Editing) and Sisters in Crime for the support. Thank you to the Jean Hurley Estate for the use of the House at Number 53. And thank you again to the police, forensic experts, and doctors who helped me with research (any mistakes are mine and not theirs).
This book is set in a real place, but I have taken some small liberties, such as adding a fish and chip shop here, a restaurant there, renaming a few establishments, and so on.
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Title Page
Copyright Page
1
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Acknowledgements