Blood Secret

by Jaye Ford

  Rennie had spent too long in a different kind of life for her waking moments to be anything other than instant attention. Max, on the other hand, started with eyelid fluttering and throat clearing. It was followed with various combinations of dazed sitting, head scratching and face rubbing. She’d learned not to bother trying to get any sense out of him until he’d fought his way out of the fog. She usually left him to it, pulling on running gear while he was still squinting at the daylight, glad for him that his nightmares were confined to the darkness and not for the world around him.

  This morning, though, she’d only dreamed his pres­ence. He hadn’t tiptoed in and fallen into the clutches of slumber without waking her. He wasn’t there and she had no idea where he was or where to look.

  She watched the sun come up standing at the bay window in the living room, holding a mug of peppermint tea between her palms and thinking how Max called it her cat piss juice. But it was the kid in the four-wheel drive that she kept seeing in her mind, yelling abuse at them through the window, his face distorted with hyped-up rage, and the sensation it left her with was tense and agitated – and familiar.

  Rennie had lived with the hollow ache of dread in her gut all her life. She recognised it like other people knew hunger and tiredness. She was three years old when her mother fled with Rennie and her older sister, escaping their father’s escalating paranoia and violence. It was meant to save them but it started an obsession that would imprison them all for life.

  As a kid, Rennie used to dream through the eyes of another girl, someone with a different set of emotions and responses, who would see bright colours – lime greens and hot pinks and sky blues – instead of the muted, dark shades of fear. Awake, she used to tell herself she would have been that girl if fate hadn’t dragged her into another life.

  For the past eleven years, Rennie and Joanne had been free of their father’s pursuit but the dread remained, at least it did for Rennie. It was the soundtrack to her life, the volume rising and falling according to her circumstances. For the last five here in Haven Bay, it’d been mostly a whisper, sometimes almost too quiet to hear.

  This morning, it made her want to run. Not away, not like last night. She wanted the adrenaline-depleting comfort of a fast, exhausting pace. Sweating off the edginess had always made her feel less vulnerable and more capable. She still did it every day, along the lake mostly and mostly because she loved it. She tried not to think about the other reasons.

  She forced them out of her mind now.

  The sun had burned off the soft light of dawn and she went outside, glimpsing only briefly at the calm expanse of water beyond the fence before crossing the lawn again. The cloud cover that’d hidden the stars last night was gone and there was the promise of heat in the early morning glare.

  The garden along the rear fence was in full colour now, not the shadowy shapes of last night. A glossy-leafed, waist-high hedge was the backdrop to purple-covered lavender, a gardenia with its first creamy buds, grasses with feather-duster heads and other plants Rennie didn’t know the names of. Max was the gardener. She just pulled and dug where she was told, hosed and pointed proudly like she had something to do with it when the vegetables came in. Yesterday afternoon, Max had turned the soil around the whole garden, going at it as if it was a workout instead of leisure, adding compost from their bins and whatever was in the big bags he’d hauled home from the nursery. He once tried to explain the science behind it all and she’d feigned interest for about half a minute. This morning, she was grateful for his enthusiasm, that the soil was plumped up and spongy and footprints would be easy to find.

  She walked the length of the bed, finding only indentations where she’d crouched and listened. She unlatched the gate and stepped out. A magpie squawked as it flapped from the canopy of gums at the edge of the lake. A high breeze made the leaves sing as though there was a choir hiding in the branches whispering ‘shhh’. Left and right, there was only the long strip of grass and the bike track, a straight line of fences bordering one side, the eucalypts and water along the other. The mound of grass clippings that had freaked her out last night didn’t look anything like a body in the daylight. Perhaps it hadn’t last night.

  She walked to the lake’s edge, casting her eyes around the boats floating by their moorings, stepping onto wet pebbles at the shoreline to get a better view in both directions. The humps of upturned dinghies were the only interruption to the gentle curve of the bay.

  It was when she was trotting back to the gate that she saw why the tarp covering the grass clippings was still flapping in the breeze. House bricks held down three of its corners. A fourth was lying about a metre from the tarp. She glanced at her fence then back at the brick. Its trajectory was moving away from their yard. She remembered the noise she’d heard from the back door and how she’d stopped in her tracks halfway across the yard. Had someone gone through the gate then bolted as she approached? Had they stayed close to the fence line and knocked the brick off its corner as they ran?

  The brick could have been like that for days, she told herself. Could have been dislodged by the kids that rode up and down the path on their bikes. She walked to the house trying to ignore the pressing, uneasy thought of someone in the shadows, watching as she’d crept about with a torch and knife, as she’d called for Max and freaked out.

  Inside, Rennie dug out Max’s old address book, flip­ped through its dog-eared pages and dialled his sailing buddy Pete.

  He answered at a shout. ‘Yo, Max. Spoke to him. All sorted, mate. Thanks.’

  She’d expected to wake him. ‘Pete, it’s Renée.’

  ‘Oh hey, how you doing?’

  ‘I’ve been better.’ She explained about the party and the search afterwards. ‘Have you heard from him?’

  Pete’s voice dropped a few decibels with concern. ‘No, not this morning. The last I spoke to him was Friday arvo. He found a guy who could crew for me today.’

  It was Sunday, racing day at the yacht club. Max and Pete had sailed on the lake together since they were kids. They’d started in two-man sabots – and still had the trophies – then tried anything they could crew on until Pete eventually put the money together for his own racing yacht. Max had been his tactician for years – they had trophies for that, too – but for as long as Rennie had known him, Max had never crewed for Pete. The hip that had been crushed in a mine cave-in six and a half years ago didn’t cope with crawling around a boat and he tried to keep weekends free for Hayden. Instead, he’d become the go-to guy for crew. Max could find a spare sailor during a national championship if Pete needed one.

  ‘Will you let me know if you hear from him?’ Rennie asked.

  ‘I can do better than that. I’ll do a ring-around and ask if anyone else’s had a phone call.’

  ‘Thanks, Pete. Can you tell people not to ring unless they’ve heard something? I don’t want to tie up the phone.’ She gave him her mobile number then phoned the commodore of the Haven Bay Sailing Club, the president of the soccer club, the captain of the team Max coached, apologising for calling so early and getting a ‘No, haven’t heard’ from all of them. Then she tried his office manager, Amanda, who had already heard from James, and two friends from his days down the mines. Between them all, there were calls being made all around the lake.

  She put the address book in her handbag with her mobile and wrote two notes: one for Hayden telling him she’d be back later and to make his own breakfast; the other for Max – I’m worried. Call me. Please. She put his in an envelope with his name on the front and sealed it in case Hayden was tempted to help himself. Taking a photo from the buffet and hutch, she pulled the picture from the frame and slid it into her purse.

  At the second bedroom, she stuck her head in, turning her nose up at the smell. Hayden had only been in there a few hours and it already stank of smelly shoes and BO. He was on top of the covers in boxers and a T-shirt, looking like he’d
been knocked unconscious falling from the ceiling – flat on his back, arms spread, legs jumbled, mouth gaping.

  He’d told her, like she was stupid, that he didn’t have to go to school on Monday – he was at a private school, they broke up three weeks before Christmas. In the restless early hours of the morning, she’d considered driving him all the way to the airport to meet his mother. Rennie didn’t want him here while Max was missing. Yeah, okay, Max might be back any second; he might breeze through the door and say, ‘Hey, babe.’ And if he did, she didn’t want Hayden in earshot while Max explained why he’d stayed out all night, didn’t want Hayden’s adolescent sneer in her face if it got messy between them. And if Max didn’t, if he stayed missing or if he was . . . found, she didn’t want Hayden around while she tried to deal with it.

  And Hayden wouldn’t need her brand of coping if things turned bad. She didn’t know about kids. She’d never had any of her own and didn’t intend to. Her DNA was flawed; every member of her family had been screwed up and scarred by it and she had no intention of passing that on to a child. Besides, the life she’d had and the things she’d done hadn’t given her the skills for bringing up a normal human being.

  Her old hatchback was in the garage but the memory of the kid and his four-wheel drive made her take Max’s big work car instead, making a detour before heading to the police station in Toronto and going back along the road they’d taken to the party. It wasn’t the quickest route to the cafe and she remembered her impatience as Max had headed that way. But she’d seen his wistful gaze at the sunset, guessed the lure of it had been too much once he’d glimpsed it from the top of the hill.

  Now she took the bends slowly, alternating her gaze between the rocks on the edge of the lake and the lawns that sloped up to the houses, not really sure what she was looking for. Footsteps, skid marks, clothing, a wallet.

  She continued to the main road, turned and drove to the strip of shops where Skiffs was nestled between a bakery and a gift shop, and which was all but deserted this early on a Sunday morning. At the T-junction where the street met the lake again, where Pav and James had crossed with her to search the park, she went right and kept going for Garrigurrang Point.

  The point was at the tip of a long, narrow finger of land that stretched out into Lake Macquarie forming the safe cove of Haven Bay on the northern side and the more exposed Winsweep Bay on the south. The road followed the water’s edge, forming a loop around the base of the hill that split the peninsula into its two sides.

  The neighbourhood was not yet roused for the day: garage doors were closed, blinds drawn and there was only a single walker with a dog. She rounded the tip of the finger, slowing to cast an eye over the picnic ground. One car was parked at the end near the small jetty, presumably belonging to the man and child standing on the dock with fishing rods. She continued back along the south side, passing the main road again, this time heading out of town towards the highway and the police.

  Haven Bay wasn’t big enough to warrant a cop of its own. It was one of a string of small communities on the western side of Lake Macquarie and despite being on the shores of the largest saltwater lake in Australia, perfect for sailing and fishing and surrounded by large chunks of national park, tourists tended to drive right past, on their way to the vineyards in the Hunter Valley or the spectacular beaches of Newcastle and further up the coast. It was too close to Sydney and too far off the freeway for most people to bother with the detour, which was just fine with the locals. More than fine for Rennie. As far as she was concerned, the name said it all.

  Twenty minutes later, she was outside the police station, parked at the kerb and uneasy about being there. She had plenty of memories involving cops; most of them included sirens and flashing lights and the urge to run and hide. She got out of the car, reminding herself not all the memories were bad. Some of the cops she knew had helped – and that was what she needed now.

  She spoke with the officer at the front desk, a young woman, not the guy from last night. It didn’t matter; the details were on the computer. Rennie handed over the photo – Max at her birthday dinner last year. He’d put on a barbecue, Pav brought seafood marinated in coriander and chilli and Trish came loaded with new and out­rageously expensive paints and brushes that Rennie gushed over. Naomi and James were there, too, Naomi excited they were finally trying for a baby, James as unreadable about it as he was on everything. The picture was taken on the deck, Max working the barbecue, smiling, happy, being Max.

  The officer pulled out a missing persons form and found a pen. ‘You’re the person who made the phone call last night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She read from the screen. ‘Your name is Renée Carter?’

  She hesitated. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s your relationship to Mr Tully?’

  ‘I’m his partner.’

  ‘Business or de facto?’

  Neither explained what they were. She would never marry and she wouldn’t stay forever but they were . . . together, entwined, connected. She felt more for Max than she’d thought capable of feeling for anyone. ‘De facto.’

  The officer asked her to go through the details again, taking them down by hand – when she’d last seen Max, where they’d been, who they were with, what he’d been wearing, where she’d looked, the text message. And the incident with the kid in the four-wheel drive. Rennie had no problem repeating the licence plate number. It wasn’t the kind of detail she forgot. Then she signed a statement and it was official: Max was missing.

  7

  ‘Does Mr Tully have any favourite places, somewhere he might go?’ the officer asked.

  Rennie checked her watch, impatient with the cop’s unhurried questions and slow, neat handwriting. It was after eight; Max had been gone nearly twelve hours and urgency felt like a nervous tic in her gut. But she had enough experience of police procedure to know they followed the steps whether she was shouting or not. She took a breath, tried to think where Max might go.

  He was a social guy. There weren’t many people in Haven Bay he didn’t know and he liked to have a drink with his mates, with James. But he didn’t stay out and forget the time, or flop on someone’s lounge if it was late, or sleep in the car if he’d had too much alcohol to drive. He called or texted if he was late and he always came home. ‘His office, maybe. But his cousin checked and he wasn’t there. I’ve called friends, too. No one’s seen or heard from him.’

  ‘Anywhere he likes to go on his own?’

  He loved the lake. They’d watched sunsets and sunrises and storms making their way across. But he didn’t go there on his own. Quiet and alone wasn’t his thing – being trapped in a collapsed mine put an end to that.

  ‘Maybe the reserve at Garrigurrang Point. We take fish and chips out there sometimes.’ In summer they ate on the jetty, in winter they stayed in the car keeping out of the wind. Except there was nowhere in Haven Bay to buy fish and chips after ten o’clock.

  The officer wrote it down. ‘Anywhere out of town? Family or friends he might visit.’

  His parents retired to their old holiday spot in Yamba on the Far North Coast and his sister lived in Perth. Not exactly places he could drop into. He had a couple of schoolfriends in Sydney he caught up with every now and then but she didn’t think he’d go on the spur of the moment. ‘No.’

  ‘Is he taking medication that might make him confused?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Has he been unwell recently?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is there any reason he might want to go somewhere for a while?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Has he had been involved in any conflicts?’

  ‘Only the one with the kid in the four-wheel drive.’

  ‘Okay.’ The officer put her pen down and gathered the papers she’d been writing on. ‘Thank you for your assistance. I’ll update the computer with your info
rmation and we’ll continue with our inquiries.’

  Was that it? ‘Have you checked the licence plate number I gave you?’

  ‘We’ll be following it up.’

  ‘What about hospitals?’ Last night she’d imagined him lying hurt somewhere but maybe there was more to it. ‘It’s possible he was injured and someone found him and took him to get medical help.’

  ‘Our inquiries will include calling the local hospitals.’

  ‘That kid threatened him. If he assaulted him, he could’ve stolen his wallet. He could be unconscious or confused in a hospital without ID.’

  The officer didn’t nod, didn’t take a second to think about it, didn’t acknowledge her theory in any way. ‘It’s worth keeping in mind, Ms Carter, that people are reported missing every day and most of them are located quickly and without our help. As I said, we’ll be following up on the information you’ve provided and we’d appreciate it if you let us know if you hear from Mr Tully or find out where he is.’

  It was said firmly, although not unkindly, and the message came through loud and clear. Road rage kid or not, the cops weren’t rushing to put a search party together. People went missing all the time, no reason to panic yet.

  Easier said than done, Rennie thought as she headed to the car. The cops didn’t know Max like she did.

  She’d told him only fragments of her ugly story – few people knew all the details. The fact he hadn’t pressed way back when they met was one of the things that had made her stick around to see what was behind his silly grin. It turned out he was a better man than she’d thought possible. Almost too good to believe so soon after she’d finished the court-ordered counselling.

  But he had his own ugly story and he understood what it was like to be left alone, he knew about starting over and that trust was a hard-earned commodity.

  *

  Rennie drove back to Haven Bay, heading for Skiffs instead of home. If Max rang, he’d try her mobile first – and she couldn’t face pacing the house, waiting for the cops to pull a finger out and dealing with Hayden when he woke up hungry and cranky.