After the Darkness

by Brown, Honey

  Outside the open windows, on the footpath, a man was trying to unbuckle a squirming child from a stroller. He was dressed in a dark suit, and the mother of the child was opening the door of a BMW, readying a booster seat for the child. ‘Daddy, daddy,’ the toddler was crying, wanting to stay with him, refusing to get out of the stroller.

  With a weary sense of shock, I saw that the child’s father was the man I’d seen in the lobby at the Four Seasons Inn. He was wearing steel-framed glasses, his hair was short, his jacket expertly tailored. In the light of day, he was too young, too tall and too handsome by far to be Guy Grant. Jem was looking out the open windows at him also, having followed my line of sight. I could see she found him vaguely familiar.

  ‘I’ll ring and let you know when we’re settled,’ I said, getting to my feet.

  ‘Promise you’ll ring?’ Jem said, and grew teary-eyed. ‘We’ll still be able to contact you, won’t we, on your mobile? You won’t change that number?’

  ‘That’ll always stay the same,’ I said.

  Bruce had a similar type of conversation with his mates, although his conversation didn’t involve actual words. Long and uncomfortable silences spelt out the death knell for his friendships.

  ‘I heard them breathe out when I walked away,’ Bruce told me. ‘I heard it – the actual sigh of relief that I was leaving.’

  28

  Right before we were due to leave Delaney, Damien from Sunnyside police station rang and asked to meet with us. Fear swept over me. It was the first strong emotion I’d felt since the day I’d seen Finn and Ackerley together on the missing persons webpage. I was sure the Jag had washed ashore, or that the police had some kind of cross-checking computer program that picked up matching names and places in reports and investigations. The word ‘Delaney’ would have triggered an alarm, the name ‘Trudy Harrison’, the acronym MAD, had fired off an automatic email to … someone. Damien would want to see us because he had learnt through smart detective work and through techno wizardry that Finn Wieszczynski had links to us.

  Bruce thought the same thing. He said to me, ‘This might be it.’

  A part of us hoped it was.

  Damien came into the MAD office carrying a laptop. A shadow of a beard showed on his cheeks. He was out of uniform, wearing a T-shirt beneath a suit jacket, teamed with skinny-leg black jeans and a slim leather belt. His shoes were square across the toe, but fashionably long and slender. I was sweating beneath my clothes, sitting behind the desk, too nervous to stand. Bruce went forward and shook his hand.

  ‘How are you, Bruce?’ Damien tipped his head to the side. ‘How are things?’

  I saw him give my husband’s hand a meaningful squeeze.

  Bruce let go and backed away. ‘Oh, you know …’ he murmured.

  ‘Hello, Trudy.’

  ‘Hello, Damien.’

  ‘Thanks for meeting on such short notice. We’ll sit here, will we? At the desk?’ Damien pulled a chair nearer to me, making things less formal.

  The most likely spot for Bruce was beside me. But he sat where a visitor would usually sit. Bruce and I needed the desk between us. Being close to one another caused an unsettling intensity between us. With some distance, we could look at one another without feeling each other too acutely.

  Damien set up his laptop, and turned it around so we could both see it. He cleared his throat. ‘Nice town, Delaney.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Every main street needs a grove of trees like that.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Children good?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Damien grinned. ‘Small talk done?’ He was especially handsome when he grinned.

  ‘Seems like it.’

  ‘I’ve got something for you,’ Damien told us. ‘I suppose you can guess.’ He leaned around to look at the screen of his computer, and fell silent for a moment while he brought up an electronic folder. ‘Okay,’ he said, straightening. ‘First, you’ll have to excuse my excitement. I’m not usually like this. It’s just that after you told me about the call made from Trudy’s phone, and then with Ackerley being listed as missing, I did some tracking down. I’ve been able to retrieve the recording.’ His hairline lifted. ‘Interesting listening. You said you hadn’t heard it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You can listen to it with me. Before that, though …’ He clicked open the folder.

  On the laptop screen was a picture of James Ackerley. He was in a tuxedo. There were people queuing out the front of a theatre behind him. The footpath he was standing on was wet with rain. I couldn’t see his hairless forearms or his chalky teeth. What I could see was his greying hair, his lined face, and his lanky arrogance. I turned my head so I didn’t have to look at him.

  ‘Now, you’re sure this is not the man who attacked you?’

  Bruce was facing the computer screen, but his gaze wasn’t on it – he stared over the top of the computer.

  ‘Not him?’ Damien said.

  ‘No,’ Bruce murmured.

  Damien shifted his chair along, and sat forward to see the screen from our viewpoint. He angled it to improve the light.

  ‘I’ve got more photos.’

  Damien brought up an album of photographs on screen. He began clicking on them, enlarging each one in turn, layering them on top of one another. They were all of Ackerley. He was smiling at the camera in some of them, in another he was holding a designer beer in one hand and a curved glass trophy in the other.

  I stopped looking and watched my husband. His eyes were fixed on a point beyond the computer screen. The pictures were visible to him on the outskirts of his vision. He was calm, as long as he wasn’t looking directly at the photos. He moved in the chair with caution, not breaking concentration – it would take one glance down to ruin his composure.

  ‘Look carefully,’ Damien said. ‘You’re sure that’s not the man?’

  Bruce turned his attention to me. I shifted the computer more my way to save him having to look at it.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ I replied.

  Damien tugged down on the lapels of his jacket and smoothed his hands down over them. ‘He fits the description you gave at the station. Perhaps if we go to the recording.’ Damien moved forward to sit on the edge of the chair.

  ‘We don’t want to listen to it.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘No,’ I said with a nonplussed shake of my head. ‘We don’t want to hear it.’

  Damien looked over at the cardboard boxes stacked in the corner, and at the sofa pushed into the centre of the room. The pinboard was down and leaning against the boxes. He took an even breath. Once again he smoothed down his lapels on his suit jacket. He closed the computer as though to reassure us we were more important than anything on the screen or stored within the hard drive. He was more like a salesman than a detective at that moment. What he said next seemed practised. In the car, on the way to us, I’d like to bet he’d spoken out loud, finessing his pitch.

  ‘I can confirm two things,’ he said. ‘One – Bruce, I think you were right. I went to the city planning department and asked if Grant had put a call through about your business to anyone. And a couple of the men there were very cagey. My feeling is Grant did pull some strings to cause you trouble. A full investigation would uncover it. If it was before you came into the station – that’s proof alone. Two,’ he continued, ‘Grant is one of the voices on the recording. You can hear him fairly clearly since we’ve cleaned it up. The other voice is harder to hear. Grant and this other man are talking about what to do with a broken-down car. At first I thought it was your car they were talking about, but it becomes clear that it’s Grant’s car that’s stuck in a culvert … Do you remember seeing a car on the side of the road?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Grant seems to have just arrived. I think he’s had to walk. He says he wants to use the “Hundred Series” – which, interestingly, is the type of car Ackerley drove – to pull the car out. It’s unclear what the othe
r man says. We think he says he can’t leave “the two alone in the house” …’ Damien rolled his hand, as though to say this comment supported our story. ‘Grant says it won’t take long and that the car can’t stay where it is, it will draw attention and someone will report it as an accident. They argue. Grant talks about veering to miss a bird, and running off the road into the ditch.’

  Damien’s passion for police work was evident now he’d spoken at some length. I was focusing on the timbre of his voice, and on the details of his face, his lips, the way they moved, his wide nostrils, the dark hairs between his eyebrows, deliberately occupying my mind with small details. I had to. Too much of what he was saying was upsetting. Bruce was motionless, except for the rising and falling of his chest. We couldn’t let ourselves come to terms with what Damien was saying – not while we were sitting in front of him. We had to remain calm. My fingers fluttered nervously, involuntarily, where they were resting on the tops of my arms. I gripped my biceps to stop my fingers twitching. My head didn’t move, my expression didn’t change, but I told Bruce through my stillness that we couldn’t sit there for too much longer. The facts were suffocating.

  ‘It sounds like the other man walks off,’ Damien was saying, ‘and you can just about hear Grant’s heart sink when he realises the phone’s been on the line to someone. There’s a silence, then the call cuts out. He knows what’s happened, although he probably doesn’t know it’s been recorded. Sure you don’t want to hear it?’

  ‘We don’t,’ Bruce said.

  Damien sat back. ‘What I think happened next, was Grant took the other car and left to pull his vehicle out alone, maybe to park it normally so it wouldn’t draw as much attention. While he was gone, you two got free, and left. You said there was no car in the garage? And you don’t remember seeing any other cars at all?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘In your account –

  I remember because you two didn’t seem to notice the inconsistency – you both talked about the gate being closed while you were upstairs, just before you were attacked, but then you made no mention of having to open the gate when you left. I questioned that. I’ll admit it caused me some doubt about your story. But it makes sense now. Grant, in a rush, has left to move the car and reopened the gate. It’s open, so you drive straight out. If you don’t remember seeing the car on the road, Grant must have been coming from the Wensley direction, while you turned and continued down the coastal route. It seems to me you got away just in time, before Grant came back. Listening to the recording might jog your memory. If you can help us confirm even just a few of these things, we’ll be able to continue forward.’

  ‘Forward to what?’

  Damien opened the computer again and minimised the Ackerley photos. He typed a search into the internet browser, Great Ocean Road deaths.

  ‘Let’s see what this brings up.’

  He hit the return button. A list of news sites and related links came up on screen. Damien clicked on the first link. Two young men had gone over the edge of the Great Ocean Road six years ago. The car was retrieved, but their bodies were never found. There was a picture of the men, grinning at the camera: a couple of lads, enjoying life. Damien went back to the main page and clicked on the next link. A single man, touring Australia on his motorbike, had gone over the cliff edge, four years ago. The bike had been found on rocks at the base of the cliff. His body had never been found. This story was particularly poignant, because the young man was riding bravely against the odds – he’d injured himself in a workplace accident. Damien took a biro from his pocket and used it as a pointer to circle the young man’s name. Reuben. It wasn’t so much this that made my blood run cold; it was the photo. I felt Bruce freeze up also. The young man was on his bike with his arms crossed. His hands were intentionally displayed – he had no fingers on his left hand. The knuckles were prominent, the veins were standing out, his wrist curved and slender. Damien went back to the main page. He brought up a third story, but I wasn’t looking any more. Bruce wasn’t either. He’d made the connection between the man’s hand and the carved wooden stump we’d touched at the house. We’d run our fingers over it. We knew.

  ‘What was strange about these accidents,’ Damien was saying, ‘was that there were no skid marks. No sign of the vehicles losing control at the last minute. The Wensley police remembered the accidents for this reason. The vehicles were only found because the ground on the very edge of the cliff had scrape marks – as though the cars had been pushed over.’ Damien leaned forward, eyeing us in turn, trying to engage us. ‘What better way to get rid of a car, than over a cliff and into the sea? If it’s found, it was an accident, if the bodies aren’t in it, they were washed away. What happened to you wasn’t rushed or unplanned. Each thing you described, it takes time and experience to set up things that way. Bodies were able to be burnt away to nothing, vehicles were easily gotten rid of, missing people were easily explained …’

  Damien kept on talking. His voice had an excited waver. With a case like this he could be catapulted to fame. He was handsome enough to be a star. But he should have acted quicker on this occasion, and not turned us away. Not that Bruce and I were being mean-spirited. Bruce, in particular, wanted nothing more than to tell the truth. Damien was detailing how big the investigation could be: divers could scour the coastline, each car accident could be revisited, car bodies brought up from the ocean floor, old reports combed through. But for all that to happen, we would have to retell our story and go on record.

  ‘Grant knew the story was going to break. Even if Ackerley wasn’t your attacker, I can’t help but think that he was involved there that day. I know things weren’t handled well in the beginning. And I understand I should have told you Grant had left the country. It might not seem like it, but I was worried that without threatening you with an AVO, Bruce, you weren’t going to stop, and you could have got yourself into real trouble. I can promise you a thorough investigation now, though. You’ll both be looked after. As chief witnesses we can protect your names and identity.’

  ‘Can’t you just use our statements from that day?’ Bruce asked.

  Damien quietly responded. ‘They weren’t logged.’

  ‘You didn’t even write up our visit to the station?’

  ‘It was … No.’

  ‘Well, we’re sorry, Damien,’ Bruce said, ‘but we can’t help you.’

  ‘It’s not something we remember clearly any more,’ I said. ‘Our memories of it aren’t good. We wouldn’t be confident in retelling it. If anything, our confusion might hinder things.’

  ‘But there is no case without you.’

  Bruce leaned back in the chair and rested his hand across his lap. ‘We can certainly understand your frustration,’ he said.

  29

  The same removalist company that had handled 17 Tyler Street’s furniture was handling ours. The same radio was in my hallway, down by the skirting, turned up loud for talkback, and the same men were cherrypicking furniture to load into the trucks. To jurors or people going over a criminal case, these sorts of double-ups and matching details were, perhaps, what provoked puzzlement and gasps at the audacity. But to be in it, living it, the truth was that the removalists had done a good job of packing up Finn’s belongings, so I rang them to pack up mine. If we ever did find ourselves in court, at least it would be the one lot of removalist men for the defence and prosecuting teams to track down and question. Bruce walked up and stood beside me as we watched the trucks get loaded.

  It was spring and our place looked as good as it ever had. We’d pruned, planted, topped up, trimmed and shaped the garden. Bruce and I walked out to the gazebo. Filtered sunlight fell around us. The new leaves of the wisteria were sprouting through the lattice and up over the shingled roof. The jonquils and daffodils were in full bloom. The idyllic surrounds were dreamlike. I stared at a grey wren perched nearby. Its mate landed. The little birds perched on the seat. Bruce sat across from me on the other side of the gazebo.

&
nbsp; ‘Do you think it was one of those eagles that made Guy Grant run off the road?’ I asked.

  Bruce said, ‘We’ll never know.’

  There was the sound of the trolley being wheeled along inside the empty rooms of the house. The murmur of talkback stopped as the radio was unplugged and taken away.

  The house was empty except for the walk-in robe. In the small room, amongst the valuables we’d set aside to move ourselves – family crystal, jewellery boxes, a folder of wills and birth certificates – was the 1999/2000 tax box. In it were the things we’d taken from Finn’s house: his bag of clothes, wallet, shoes, favourite shirt and the money from his bedside drawer. We carried it down to the incinerator.

  We couldn’t bring ourselves to light the match, though. We felt we had stop then and not after we’d done one last unlawful act.

  We returned the things to the box and taped the lid down, packed the box into the back of our car.

  The children were at my mother’s. It wasn’t until we arrived there and Renee came out to the car, asking if we were all right, that Bruce and I realised we’d locked up our family home and driven away from it for the last time.