After the Darkness

by Brown, Honey

  Finn went across and opened the back patio sliding door. He did it without me having to ask. He pulled back the vertical blinds and pushed the door as wide as it could go. The cold wind blew in. His head was lowered, and he snuck a look across at me.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  The pilot light lit easily. The heating system was self-explanatory.

  Finn was in the kitchen crouched in front of the oven.

  ‘I’ll head off,’ I said. ‘Good luck with everything.’

  He opened his mouth to say something, but then changed his mind and smiled instead.

  Outside the rain was being blown sideways with the wind. I ran to the car. I pulled the door shut, and sat in silence, breathing.

  Weather lashed the car.

  Inside was warm and padded.

  My skin was covered in goosebumps. The interior of the car felt secure; everything was yielding. If I pushed the dash, it seemed to give a little. The steering wheel had inlaid leather grips, and when I pushed my fingernails into them, small half-circles showed. The roof interior was finished in the same soft trim that was around the door handles, and if I pushed the heel of my hand against it, I made a dent.

  Tears pricked my eyes.

  I didn’t know how to face my mother. I didn’t know what to say. All I knew was that the thing inside me would slip, smash, and everything would show. She would shatter my composure. It had to be all or nothing – a solid and complete wall – or else a torrent of water would sweep me off my feet. It wasn’t like I even had a choice. I couldn’t tell her.

  I must have sat in the car for some time like that – patching up the cracks that seeing my mother had caused in me, breathing, touching the interior of the car, checking the compliant nature of things – because when I came to my senses the car windows were fogged. I started the engine and put on the air conditioner to clear the windscreen. Finn’s garage door was open and Finn was leaning against his car, watching me. It looked as though he’d been there for a while.

  I wound down my window, sniffed and wiped my nose.

  ‘Sorry!’ I called, and shrugged. ‘Losing my mind.’

  When I arrived at Cove Street, Bruce walked up to me. He took me by the arm and turned me around, leading me away from the townhouses, out of sight of the group of tradesmen standing on the nature strip. They were milling around a pile of soggy cement sheeting.

  ‘Something occurred to me,’ Bruce said. He waved his phone at me. ‘And I know I’m right.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘I was thinking about how this audit happened just after we leave behind our business card. That’s quite a coincidence – that it’s our card and then it’s our business that gets this sudden hit. And do you remember that conversation about the glass flooring and that comment about knowing people in local government, something like that?’

  I did remember it. A muted memory, one I deliberately dimmed. I nodded vaguely.

  ‘Well …’ Bruce squeezed his phone, as though he felt affection for it. His demeanour had an almost excited element to it; a vast change from the subdued man I’d woken to that morning. ‘The owner of the cliff house has got connections to council. I just found out his name. He has links with local government.’

  The change in him made it hard to process what Bruce was saying. I had come expecting something very different. ‘You found out his name? How?’

  ‘I rang up the biggest crane hire group, asked if they remembered doing a job on the Great Ocean Road near Wensley. And bingo, they did.’ Bruce’s coat was dark with rain on the shoulders. The hood was hanging down his back. A gust of wind blew through and the tree above us released a shower of heavy droplets. ‘I said I’d lost his details – I’d spoken to the owner about the construction and he’d told me what crane company he’d used. I bullshitted. I said we had a job coming up and we needed cranes. The man remembered it. He looked it up on the computer and had it all there. He gave me the owner’s number. Let’s not talk about it here. I’ll follow you home.’

  ‘Did you tell the crane company your name?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What if they tell the owner you were asking around?’

  ‘Who cares? Let him know – I’ll be pleased if he knows. Don’t you see? It’s the owner who put a call through to council – to have us shut down, to cause us trouble.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Guy Grant.’

  I let the name sink into me. It settled uncomfortably, as though it had not yet found its place. ‘What makes you think he did that?’

  ‘He runs some charity thing in Melbourne, has council links. The crane mob said he’s originally from America, but has heaps of business ties here. We’ll see what we can find online about him. Then we’ll decide what to do.’

  I saw the tradesmen glancing across at us. A truck carrying a rubbish skip came down the road. As a result of the pipe we had to replace, the development looked like a bomb had hit it. There were rolled-up sections of turf, lengths of piping, sheets of reo, deep tracks from earth-moving vehicles in the mud, and tradesmen’s utes parked like scattered playing cards amongst it all. The truck put down the empty skip. The men started picking up the wet cement sheeting and throwing it in. A couple of the crew waved hello to me. I waved back.

  ‘I should have a look at what’s been done while I’m here.’

  ‘It’s under control,’ Bruce said. ‘Don’t worry about it. We’ve got to find out more about Guy Grant. This is what I was trying to get the police to understand. A man with influence is dangerous to us, in so many ways.’

  ‘But the council said no one put in a complaint.’

  ‘They’re bloody lying. I know it, Trudy, I can feel it – the owner moved the body, he knows who we are, and he’s doing this. He’s watching us.’

  13

  Guy Grant was in his late fifties. He had dark hair and pale skin. He was a short, unimpressive-looking man. His features emerged blandly from his small head. He had an American accent and spoke in hesitant, disjointed bursts (we watched video footage of him being interviewed on Lateline). In one short clip he was rubbing his eyes behind his glasses (he sometimes wore a pair of glasses with light, steel frames). It was an unguarded moment. He’d either forgotten where he was or thought that the cameras weren’t on him. When he glanced up, his gaze was cold and hollow. Bruce played the clip over and over.

  Amongst other things, Guy Grant had established a charitable foundation called WithArt. He owned studios throughout the city and stocked them with free art supplies, for the underprivileged and homeless to use. The principle was that self-worth and a positive outlook could be restored through art. Exhibitions of the artists’ work were gala yearly events. Guy had started the charity in his thirties (his wealth was considerable, into the hundreds of millions, from what we read) but it wasn’t familiar to me. Despite the obvious art link, we found no references to Reuben in anything we read.

  ‘I have to go and pick up the children from school,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll ring them and get them to catch the bus to your mother’s.’ Bruce leaned close to the screen. He clicked on an image and tried to enlarge it.

  ‘We can’t send the kids around there; I put off talking to her today.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Bruce said, without looking up.

  ‘I was going to tell her today, but I couldn’t.’

  He glanced sideways at me. ‘We agreed not to tell anyone. What were you going to tell her?’

  ‘We said we’d wait.’

  ‘I don’t think we should tell anyone at all,’ he said, while scrolling through information on the screen.

  His demeanour, focused on the computer while we were having such a conversation, struck me as too much to deal with. I had to walk away from it. I got up and went into the bedroom. I shook my head.

  ‘Trudy?’

  ‘So we’re not telling anyone?’ I called. ‘We made that decision, did we?’

  I heard him get up
. He came and stood in the doorway. He held out his arms. I went to him and let him hold me. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said against my hair. ‘I’m sorry if having this man’s name and information makes it harder. I should have realised it would upset you.’

  ‘I don’t know what you think you’re going to do.’

  ‘I’ve got to look into it.’

  ‘He might not be involved.’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘I don’t think if he’d gotten rid of the body he would risk ringing around and causing trouble; he would have assumed we’d gone straight to the police. Maybe the only reason he lied about the crack in the window, or even moved the body, was to prevent bad publicity. Maybe he wants it all to go away. He might not have even known Reuben. You said yourself you didn’t think Reuben had built the place or was the creative one. What if Reuben was just a squatter?’

  ‘He wasn’t.’

  ‘What if he was some homeless person who’d been to this charity and knew the house was empty, and Guy Grant could see how an attack and a death would affect the charity and its reputation, so he covered it up?’

  ‘Reuben was the architect, Trudy. What I sensed was that he was lying about who he was in a different aspect – the sort of person he was.’ A tone, detached and empty, appeared when Bruce said this.

  ‘You think Reuben was telling the truth when he said that he built the place?’

  ‘Yes. At the time, I knew something about him wasn’t right, and I assumed it was about the house. But when he was explaining how it was built, he knew what he was talking about. He was educated, more educated than that man.’ Bruce pointed into the study, towards the desk and computer.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I need to know that everything we do from now on isn’t going to be undermined. I need to know if this man moved the body, because if he did, if he knew Reuben, and knew the sort of man he was, and he covered it up – that makes him dangerous. I don’t think I’m being unrealistic about this. You were in that foyer, you heard what Reuben said about exactly this sort of thing – it’s who you know, it’s bending the rules.’

  ‘That doesn’t answer my question. What are you going to do?’

  ‘We’re dealing with murderers, Trudy. We can’t assume everything is going to be all right.’

  I disentangled myself from him. ‘What makes you think chasing after them is going to make us any safer?’

  ‘Are you going to get the kids?’ he said as I went to leave.

  ‘And I have to see my mum,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to say to her … Are we really not going to tell anyone, Bruce?’

  ‘If I can work out what happened, and prove it was real, maybe then … I can’t stand the ridicule of people not believing us again, Trudy. I won’t handle it.’

  Mum’s house had become too big for her. She couldn’t bring herself to leave her kitchen behind, though. The oven was industrial-sized and the cooktop had six burners. There was space for a full fridge and freezer. Her dishwasher was state-of-the-art, and her old-style sink wasn’t manufactured any more and couldn’t be replaced. And then, I guess, there were all the memories of me growing up and Dad before the cancer. Bruce and I had suggested we’d dismantle the kitchen and she could take it with her; we would put in a cheap kitchen in its place and sell the house with the new one installed. She couldn’t afford this extra cost, though, and she refused to take any money from us.

  I stopped by her house after picking up the children. Summer was with me. I’d dropped Steven and Renee down the street to hang out with their friends at McDonald’s.

  Summer went straight through into the house, looking for her grandmother.

  ‘Gran,’ she called, ‘where are you?’

  My mother was in the laundry. Washing her smalls in a tub of soapy water. Her underwear was small: plain cotton briefs and bras. She wouldn’t be caught dead in nanna knickers.

  ‘Ahh,’ she said, ‘my young apprentice.’

  Summer clicked her fingers and did a little dance. She sang the words to a popular song – something about the party getting starting now that she’d arrived.

  My mother looked past Summer at me.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ I said, contrite.

  She smiled, small and warm.

  My kiss on her cheek was a little too precise, though.

  Summer had taken pictures on her phone of all the food she’d been cooking at home. While my mother dried her hands, Summer held the phone in front of her face and went through them.

  ‘Yes, good,’ my mother said. ‘Did you make the pizza dough yourself?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What temperature was the oven at?’

  ‘The right temperature.’

  ‘Attitude already … I like it.’

  I left them and went into the kitchen.

  My mother had those tap fittings you see in disabled bathrooms, the long bunny-ears type you push sideways to use. This was the only concession she had made to her arthritis. I filled the kettle and put it on. Bringing Summer was my way of trying to keep the conversation light. They came into the kitchen talking to one another. My daughter was a bundle of energy, leaping up and down on the spot. She was telling Mum about the type of restaurant she wanted, and the menu she would have.

  ‘Good,’ my mother said, ‘eye the prize. Project yourself well past all the training. Put yourself in that restaurant, in the kitchen, buy the implements in your head – you can never dream too much. If some sucker says you should come back down to earth, you tell them if they’re so keen on staying grounded they should get busy digging their own grave.’

  ‘My teacher already tried to bring me down. I told her I wanted to have my own restaurant, and she said I should concentrate on getting an apprenticeship first.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake. I feel like going to the school and slapping her.’

  ‘I don’t remember you slapping any teachers when I was at school,’ I said.

  ‘It’s a food thing, Mum,’ Summer explained. ‘All school does is teach cooking as measurements, the five food groups, charts and washing up. They don’t get what cooking is about. The teachers never even taste the food we cook. They have no love for it.’

  ‘They’ve lost all sense of it – they probably never had it in the first place.’

  ‘Do you want tea or coffee, Mum?’ I said.

  ‘I can’t decide. Tea, I guess.’

  While pouring the water I noticed some wet towels caught in the rain out on the line. I finished making the cup of tea and went out the back to collect the washing. In the laundry, I put the towels in the machine to spin the excess water out of them. I stood and waited. Mum came in.

  ‘I can’t stay long,’ I told her. ‘I’ve dropped Steven and Renee down the street.’ I leaned down and checked that the drier was empty. ‘Is there anything else you need me to do? Should Summer chop some vegies for you? I could quickly change your bed?’

  ‘Trudy, darling, I know about the attack.’

  My back was turned to her. I stayed that way, frozen. The last stages of the spin cycle began. The washing machine began to whirr. ‘Where’s Summer?’

  ‘She’s in the kitchen. I know you want to keep it quiet. I understand it’s really shaken you.’

  Her tone was too relaxed. ‘How do you know? Who told you?’

  ‘Bruce rang just before. He said you haven’t been coping very well. He’s worried. But perhaps talking is all you need? I imagine it must have been a real shock. It’s good they didn’t get your purse, though.’

  The washing machine began to rock on its legs. The towels inside banged about. I lifted the lid. The spinning slowed. I stared down at the rotating drum, lost for words, unsure what to think.

  ‘He said it was a bit touch and go there for a while. But there wasn’t much the police could do.’

  ‘He told you we went to the police?’ I turned and leaned around her to check for Summer in the hallway. ‘What did he say?’

&nb
sp; ‘Don’t be angry with him, darling. He said you might get upset that he’d rung. I think it’s nice he called. He’s worried about you. And it’s probably good for him to talk and get it off his chest. He did mention to me he’s not going to tell his parents or his family.’ She smiled grimly. ‘I can imagine – what would his father say? Although Bruce told me the reason you didn’t want to say too much was that one of the muggers was pretty badly injured. He should tell his father and his brothers that,’ she said with a sniff and an arch of her eyebrow.

  I pulled the towels out of the machine and put them in the drier. ‘How long do you want these in for?’

  ‘I’ve always believed anyway,’ she continued, ‘you know I have, that Bruce is the toughest out of that family. It certainly doesn’t surprise me that he beat the muggers off.’

  ‘Should an hour do it?’

  ‘Oh … an hour on warm. Trudy?’

  I turned and faced her. She came forward and pressed the back of her fingers against my forehead. Her small hands were bent and cold. ‘You’re warm, darling. Your eyes don’t look right. Is it the mugging?’ she asked. ‘Or is it something else?’

  ‘Just … stressed.’

  ‘You should have your thyroid checked. Does your heart race sometimes?’

  I felt my own forehead. ‘It’s been busy at work.’

  ‘We’ll set Summer up with something to do in the kitchen and we’ll go out to the patio and you can talk about what happened. It sounded pretty nasty.’

  I turned my face away. She was looking at me closely, squinting with concern. My heart was racing, and it wasn’t from an overactive thyroid.

  ‘I told Steven and Renee I wouldn’t be too long. I really should get going. I’m fine, Mum; it’s normal stress with work. The mugging was … not that bad. Harder for Bruce. You don’t have to worry about me.’