Blood Secret

by Jaye Ford

  She planned to call the hospitals herself but first she wanted to take another look around the car park in the daylight, see if she could find some hint to what had happened there last night . . . if anything had happened. She could also drink about a litre of Pav’s double-shot cappuccino. He’d be at the cafe by now, despite the party and the late night. Trish might even make an appearance – and company from either of them wouldn’t go amiss.

  It was past nine o’clock when she turned into the main street. It was a warm, sunny Sunday morning, a little confused about whether it was late spring or early summer, not yet pumping out the Christmas heat, and there were more than a few Haven Bay residents now out enjoying it. There weren’t enough shops or locals to generate a crowd but those that were there had their weekend faces on. Several adults chatted on the footpath, some little kids in sports uniforms were running about, there was a queue in front of the bakery and whatever club or school was taking their turn at the cake stall was doing an okay trade.

  Rennie parked behind the strip and went back to where Max had left the car last night. Keeping her eyes to the tarred surface, she walked all the way around the blue sedan that was in the spot now, looking for scuff marks, stains, broken glass – anything. She got on her hands and knees, checked under the chassis, then beneath the cars on either side and in front.

  ‘Lost something, luv?’

  An old guy in equally old shorts and T-shirt was standing above her, waiting to open up the blue sedan.

  She stood, brushed her hands on her jeans. ‘Yes, but it’s not here.’

  When he’d reversed out, she squatted over a dark circle in the centre of the space, rubbed a finger over it, held it to her nose. Oil.

  Her phone pinged with an incoming message. She grabbed it from her back pocket and shaded the screen with her hand.

  Max home yet? It was James.

  She wasn’t sure she’d ever had a text from him before last night. He and Max were close but her friendship was with Naomi. It wasn’t that she didn’t like James, more that they’d never really taken to each other. She was wary and needed a good reason to make a friend; he had a face that was hard to read, was stand-offish, unresponsive and smart in a way that made her conscious of her own interrupted education. She’d wondered more than once what kept him and Naomi together. Naomi was effervescent and sensitive, while he was sensible and even. Maybe they balanced each other out.

  And he was obviously concerned about Max. No. I listed him as missing person wth police an hour ago.

  On my way to check the plant. Wll keep in touch.

  MineLease housed and serviced its mine machinery at a plant outside Toronto, closer to its clients. Maybe the security alarms went off last night and Max had gone out there. Maybe that’s what he was telling her in the text last night. Luv u b back soon. But if that’s where he went, where was he now?

  Let me know either way, she texted back.

  She started a wider search of the car park, working her way down one side of the parking lane and up the other, then retraced the path she’d taken with Terry in the dark along the back of the shops, looking over the fences into the courtyards behind. There were chocolate wrappers, empty chip packets and drink bottles. A five-dollar note, a dog collar, three pens and a small screwdriver. Nothing that told her anything about Max. What had she expected? Clues to a scavenger hunt? She ran a hand through her hair as she eyed off the far lane. It was probably pointless to look over there, just as pointless as the rest of the search. But she couldn’t not check it.

  She walked along the rear of the cars that faced the pub, turned at the top and headed down the row pointing into the middle. Potholes, shiny pieces of glass, a soft toy dinosaur that looked like the victim of a hit-and-run. Halfway down, overlapping the white line between two parking spaces, was a mark that drew her attention.

  It wasn’t an oil stain. It was an uneven, ragged-edged splat of dark liquid. About the size of a large hand with half-a-dozen smaller satellite drops like a spill from a cup. Except the substance that had congealed in the gravel wasn’t milky or coffee-like. It was . . . rust coloured. She knelt, held a finger over it then pulled it back as realisation pitched in her gut.

  Blood.

  8

  Rennie shot to her feet, eyes flicking around the car park, instinctively alert. She glanced down the laneway beside the hotel, automatically registering it as the best escape route: out to the street and across the road to the path she’d run hundreds of times. She turned back to the blood, searched the tarmac and under the car next to it. There was no more, just the one large splat and the tight gathering of drips.

  It wasn’t a nose bleed; there was too much of it for that. She remembered the blood from wounds she’d inflicted, spilling as a hand slipped from a gaping wound, dripping from red fingers. No, there wasn’t enough here for a gunshot wound. Not nearly enough. It had to be from an injury, though. The position suggested a fight beside a parked car or in the roadway. A slash from a knife maybe, or a gushing head wound. She lifted her gaze to where they’d parked last night. Two rows over, six spaces further up the line. Would Max walk over here to have it out with the kid in the four-wheel drive?

  Did it matter? The fact was, Max was missing and there was blood in the last place he was known to have been. She pulled out her phone and dialled the police again.

  Half an hour later, Rennie was still waiting for the cops to arrive – annoyed it was taking so long, wondering if Hayden would ignore the phone if he was in bed, worried that Max might try to call while she was using the mobile. Unsettled, too, knowing the discovery of blood at another time, in any other place, and she wouldn’t have waited. Would already be on the expressway driving fast.

  She’d reversed Max’s car into a parking spot opposite the blood so she could keep an eye on it, making sure no one ran over it before the police got there. She used the time to google hospitals on her phone, finding pen and paper in the glove box to write down contact numbers and names of people she spoke to. There were three public ones in the region – Belmont, on the other side of the lake; Wyong, to the south; and John Hunter in Newcastle. The closest was a thirty-minute drive, even late at night. She called them all and was put on hold for minutes at a time while she waited to speak to someone in Emergency. As she sat, staring at the stain in the roadway, questions ran through her mind. Why was there only a single patch of it? Had it been staunched quickly? Had someone grabbed a towel from the back of a car or ripped off a shirt and wadded it on the wound? Maybe the bleeder got in a car and bled some more on the upholstery. Or maybe they’d been bundled in, unwillingly, forcefully.

  None of the hospitals had treated or admitted a Max Tully and there were no confused patients without ID. She tried a private hospital and a clinic. Then Cessnock and Maitland hospitals – both were an hour away at least and an unlikely choice if you were in Haven Bay and needed medical attention in a hurry, but she figured they were worth a try, to cross them off the list if nothing else.

  When a man climbed into a sedan in the car space beside the blood, Rennie tapped on his window and asked him to steer clear of the stain on his way out. Five minutes later, as a woman prepared to drive into the spot, Rennie stood in front of her BMW and waved her arms about before asking her to find another place to park.

  Both times, she got straight back in her car, not wanting to linger in the open. It was something she’d never felt the need for in Haven Bay but tension had settled deep in her spine and, like a child with a security blanket, her brain looked for the comfort of old habits. Maybe the caution wasn’t out of place today. The kid from the four-wheel drive was a loose cannon. He knew what she looked like and he might have another car or friends with vehicles she wasn’t watching for.

  When the phone buzzed, she’d been dialling a number from Max’s book. Trish’s photo on the screen made her close her eyes briefly, disappointed it wasn’t Max b
ut grateful to hear from her. ‘Trish. Hi.’

  ‘Hey, hon.’ Her voice was groggy and a little husky, like she’d been woken out of a deep sleep and forced to speak. ‘How you doing this morning?’

  Rennie remembered the champagne-induced state Trish had been in at the end of the night, imagined her still in bed, dry-mouthed, bleary-eyed, hair and mascara a scary duo, and decided not to rush straight into it. ‘I’ve been better.’

  Trish cleared her throat. ‘Ditto. Did Max turn up?’

  ‘No. I made an official missing persons report with the police about an hour ago.’

  ‘Oh, hon, that’s not good. Where are you now?’

  Rennie glanced at the blood across the laneway. ‘In the car park behind Skiffs.’

  ‘Are you arriving or leaving?’

  ‘Neither. I’m waiting for the cops. I found blood.’

  There was silence for a moment then confusion in her voice. ‘Blood? What do you mean blood? A lot of blood? Where?’

  ‘A patch of it on the pub side of the car park.’

  There were stuttering noises on the other end of the phone, as though Trish was sorting through a response that made sense. ‘I’ll come down.’

  She sounded like she might struggle walking to the bathroom to look for painkillers. ‘No, it’s okay. You should stay home and nurse your hangover.’

  ‘What, and not share the wonder of the mountainous bags under my eyes this morning? No, I’m coming down. And I’m bringing coffee.’

  God, coffee. The next thing she needed after Max – finding him, holding him, beating him around the head – was strong, hot coffee. ‘Thank you.’

  She hung up, held tight to the phone and wondered what she’d do without Trish and Pav. Wondered where she’d be now if they’d closed half an hour earlier the day she arrived in Haven Bay.

  Rennie and her sister, Jo, had left Victoria the morning after her court-ordered counselling finished, both of them restless and ready to move on after the forced year-long stay. They drove straight up the coast, stopped for a late lunch south of Sydney, pushed on north for another hour, then decided to call it quits for the day. The sign to Haven Bay was the first they saw with symbols for food and a caravan park. Jo was driving when they hit the small, tidy main street. She did a single, despondent lap and said, ‘One pub, one cafe, we ain’t going to be here long.’

  But the caravan park was on the water’s edge and the lake that afternoon was breathtakingly lovely – sailing boats skipping past, wisps of cloud, soaring gulls and a breeze that filled Rennie’s lungs with what felt like the first fresh air she’d breathed in . . . a lifetime. Maybe it was the counselling, maybe it was the sense of freedom or maybe it was the one personal goal the psychologist made her write down before she finished that final session – sketch a place through all its seasons. Whatever it was, after years of moving and running, Rennie had a sudden, urgent, burning longing to be still.

  They needed food and a stiff drink first, though. While Jo took the car to see what else the bay had to offer, Rennie walked the main street. Trish’s short-cropped, flame-red hair was hard to miss as she hauled tables from the footpath. Rennie followed her in, saw at first glance it was more than a pie, chips and milkshake joint. She hadn’t discussed it with Jo but their standard operating procedure had always been if someone landed a job, they gave it a minimum two weeks.

  Trish slapped her hands on the counter and doubled over laughing when Rennie asked if they needed staff. ‘Kitchen hand, waitress, barista?’ she’d tried.

  Still laughing, Trish turned her head to the kitchen and called, ‘Hey, Pav!’

  ‘What?’ he’d bellowed from inside.

  ‘Come see what just walked in.’

  ‘Trish, come on. I haven’t got time for this.’ He came to the door anyway, stood with his hands on his hips, more hot and bothered than angry by the look of him.

  Rennie had no desire to get caught in the crossfire of someone else’s argument but Trish shot her a glance, including her in a smug look of triumph and Rennie decided to give it a second to see where it went.

  It turned out Pav had just chucked a tantrum, stomping about only moments before, ranting about having no staff, the impossibility of finding staff, the glut of lying, stupid, money-pinching staff he was sick of firing and who were all too lazy to drive out to Haven Bay for work. Ra, ra, ra. He’d apparently shaken a fist at the ceiling, demanding the god of cafe owners to take pity on him and send someone with experience and maturity who could cook and make coffee and wait tables or any of the above. Then Rennie walked in and gave Trish her potted work history: fifteen years of cafe work and she’d have a go at anything they threw at her. Ten minutes later, she’d whipped up a cappuccino, passed Pav’s barista test and he was showing her the kitchen while Trish rang a friend to organise a better cabin at the caravan park.

  Two weeks later, when Jo was bitching about the lack of shifts at the pub and wanting to move on, Pav and Trish asked Rennie if she wanted to earn some extra cash helping them paint the inside of the cafe. That exercise had set her on a path she’d never seen coming. Of creat­ivity and belonging like she’d never known or expected. Things she’d ached for but had never been within reach. Things her sister thought were a load of fairytale bullshit that would only hurt her.

  Joanne was a hard case. The day she turned eighteen, she’d inherited custody of fifteen-year-old Rennie. She’d had no life, only a screwed-up family, bad memories and the burden of responsibility. Rennie figured that gave her every reason to have no faith in the concept of something better. But they’d once spent four months in a normal home with a mother and father and three laughing, joking, sports-mad kids and Rennie knew it existed. As she told the psychologist, though, she just didn’t think that kind of life was in her reality. She didn’t resent it; it was just the way it was, like every other ugly detail of her life.

  Dr Foy tried to tell her she had as much right to a home as anybody else, that she deserved to love someone who would love her back without wanting to hurt her, that she didn’t have to live in the shadow of her father’s violence forever. It sounded nice and Rennie had agreed – she just didn’t believe it.

  Then she met Max. Gentle, patient, willing to accept whatever she was able to give. He hadn’t asked why, was just happy to help her find a new way to live. He encouraged her to get lost in her painting, made her laugh as though she’d never done it before, like the girl in her dreams. And taught her about love.

  She should have left. Jo told her; she told herself. But she didn’t, and most days she convinced herself not to think about it. Her father was sentenced to fifteen years. She and Jo wasted six of them being wild and reckless and free of him until it ended in violence of Rennie’s making – and three days a week on Dr Foy’s couch. Then she’d landed here and spent five years learning to live like everyone else, knowing it wouldn’t last forever. At best, she had four to go before she had to shut it all down and run again.

  Now though, as she kept watch on the splat of blood and waited for the cops, she saw how her sister could be right. That the fairytale could hurt her as much as her parents had. To have it, to hold it, breathe and exist for it – then have it ripped away.

  9

  Rennie was shielding her eyes from the late morning glare, watching two uniformed cops string crime scene tape around the blood, when Trish found her. She had a large takeaway coffee in each hand, passed one over then used the free hand to give Rennie’s shoulder a gentle rub.

  ‘How you doing, hon?’

  Rennie didn’t know how to answer that so she gave her an update instead. ‘They’re sending out a detective and a crime scene officer.’

  Trish pulled in a breath.

  ‘Apparently, it could take a few hours for them to get here.’

  ‘A few hours?’

  She wanted to throw her hands up and shout, Yeah
, hours. Goddamn hours, can you believe that? ‘Uh-huh.’

  Trish switched from shoulder-rubbing to a quick squeeze of the arm. ‘Is this what you found?’ She stepped to the now completed enclosure of police tape.

  ‘Yep.’ Rennie gulped at the coffee, feeling its heat make its way to her stomach and the caffeine hit the tension in her shoulders.

  ‘What do they think?’

  Rennie glanced at the two officers who were back at the patrol car talking by the open driver’s door. ‘They agree it looks like blood and that in light of the missing persons report, they need to take samples.’

  ‘So they think it’s got something to do with Max?’

  She shrugged, frustrated, irritated. ‘Not necessarily. They take the samples in case it’s required later as evidence. In case it turns out Max didn’t pop off somewhere in the middle of the night by choice but is actually lying bleeding somewhere while they’re standing around talking.’ She turned her back on them, drank more coffee.

  Trish moved to her side. ‘Hey, you don’t know what’s happened. It might not be his blood. I heard there was a fight at the pub last night after we closed up. Someone else might have been bleeding out here.’

  Rennie nodded. ‘Yeah, you’re right, you’re right. He might not be hurt but it still doesn’t explain where he is. It just feels like a bloody waste of time standing around in the car park when I could be . . . I don’t know, not answering the same questions from every cop I speak to. I keep telling them he doesn’t go off in a huff and he wouldn’t leave without telling me. Max wouldn’t do that. What the hell else do they need to know before they do something more than this?’ She pointed at the crime scene tape with her coffee cup and glanced at Trish for corroboration.

  Trish’s eyes didn’t meet hers straightaway. They flicked to the blood, the patrol car moving slowly away, the single police officer left behind before settling on Rennie again. There was sympathy in her expression but that wasn’t all. She seemed hesitant and Rennie remembered Trish and Max went way back.