by Jaye Ford
The kid had tailgated them along this stretch, swerving into the lane that was now her running track. She alternated her gaze between the road and the water, searching for anything that looked like it had come from Max – watch, wallet, shoe, a scrap of the fabric from his clothes. The only way something like that would get there was if he’d been scrambling around the rocks or his belongings had been thrown from a car. It fit her father-released scenario and the one with the kid in the four-wheel drive. Not the version where Max had left her.
As her eyes moved in a side-to-side pattern and her legs counted the rhythm for her breath, she thought of other roads she’d run with awareness. It was one of the lessons her mother had drilled into her: know what belongs and what doesn’t – the homes, the cars, the faces. Familiarity was a useful tool when you were hiding from a ghost.
Her father’s pursuit started before Rennie was old enough to remember. Her earliest recollections were of arriving in caravan parks in the dead of night, sleeping on the back seat of a car and the large knife under her mother’s pillow.
She knew virtually nothing about her father’s life until after the murder. Evan Delaney was part of the investigation and eventually answered her questions. Her parents had met in the army: Donna was a training officer and Anthony was SAS, an expert killer who was kicked out when he developed tendencies for paranoia. That he was nuts was no surprise and the training explained a lot – why Donna gave up calling the police, why she never believed he’d disappeared, why even a whiff of something out of place and she’d pack up and run. The fact she’d survived as long as she did was evidence of her own survival skills, the ones she’d drilled into her daughters.
The first time around, Anthony was convicted of manslaughter. Donna was stabbed to death with her own knife, a fact his solicitor said was proof Anthony hadn’t met her with intent to murder and was, in fact, protecting himself. That he didn’t need a knife to kill wasn’t mentioned. He got six years non-parole. After his release, it took him just six months to find Rennie and Joanne.
They had a head start, warned by their solicitor that he was out. Rennie used to think it might have been easier on all of them if her father had simply gunned them down in the street, but the SAS training had screwed up his brain and the furtive, clandestine nature of it all was part of his game.
Why a game in the first place? It was simple, insane logic that made sense only to Anthony Hendelsen. His wife and daughters left him so they had to die. Killing Donna was only part of the assignment.
The first sign of him after he was out of prison was a note pushed under their door: Daddy’s back. They knew the drill and headed up the coast, keeping their eyes wide open for two fraught years. He left plenty more messages – caravans searched, tyres slashed, a cafe Rennie worked in was smashed up, a one-night stand of Joanne’s was beaten to a pulp.
One evening, he waited for them in a caravan park. No time to get to the car, barely enough time to run. Joanne was slower. Rennie doubled back. He brought his own blade this time and struck first, slicing her across the ribs. She made sure it didn’t happen again. She shot him twice – once in the shoulder, a second time in the thigh, trembling too much with adrenaline and fury to be more accurate. But it was enough to bring him down, swearing all kinds of wrath and retribution.
Rennie still remembered the rage that’d filled her up in those minutes he lay on the ground. Not a mindless, reckless, do-or-die insanity that lawyers convince juries of. It was certain, single-minded, unwavering vengeance. As he screamed threats, she’d walked the distance between them, ready to shoot him in the face and watch him die. It didn’t happen like that, though. The cops were there by then, called by a neighbour when the shouting started and their drawn weapons and urgent, uncompromising shouts were enough to pull her back before she turned into her father.
Rennie shook the memory off as she looked down the length of the main street. If she went down there, she could join the path on the northern side of the bay, be home in fifteen minutes. But she wasn’t ready to stop yet, couldn’t burn off the anxiety while the past was stoking its fire. She continued along the road to Garrigurrang Point, heading in the opposite direction to yesterday, glancing up at the steep short cut to the gun emplacements and out to the rocks where two stout men had lines out. She rounded the tip of the finger, ran along the grass at the water’s edge, eyeing the shore and the single parked car, then followed the path that meandered through the caravan park, a stretch of gums, wealthy suburbia and on to the barbecue area at the northern end of the main street.
He’d already seen her by the time she recognised him leaning on the passenger door of a car. He had a large takeaway coffee from Skiffs and something in a white bag. As she got closer, she made out the grease stains on the paper and figured Detective Phil Duncan had a thing for toasted sandwiches. He pushed off the vehicle as she slowed to a stop in front of him, uneasiness replacing the anxiety she’d run off.
‘How you doing, Renée?’
She watched him as she caught her breath. She didn’t see good news in his face. Or bad news. ‘Were you looking for me? Have you found Max?’
22
Max thrashed through broken, confused dreams then woke with his head on fire and vomited. His skull throbbed, his ears rang and there was fresh oozing from the wound on his temple. He’d sat through enough first-aid courses at the mine to know the signs of concussion: headaches, dizziness, disorientation, vomiting. He should probably rest but the solid, soundless darkness felt too much like the nightmare that had terrified him for years.
Crawling, stopping, crawling a bit more, he kept going the way he’d started. It took all his concentration and energy, which was just fine. If he kept remembering, there was a chance he’d suffocate on his own self-pity.
When he couldn’t hold his weight on his hands anymore, he collapsed, wheezing and gasping. Dirt scratched at his skin where his shirt rode up, creeping under the waistband of his trousers. It was in his hair, in the blood caked on his face, in his ears. It felt like it was in his mouth, too, but it wasn’t sand, it was thirst. Dry and cracked on his lips, raspy and swollen in his mouth. Not like the thirst you got on a stinking hot day or from running around a soccer pitch. Not the kind of thirst that an ordinary drink would quench. A glass of water wouldn’t touch it. He’d need a swimming pool. He tried to coax his saliva glands into action, felt his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth, the sharp dryness at the back of his throat. Make that two swimming pools.
In a cup or a mug?
Was she kidding? Do I look like a cup kind of guy?
The new girl’s expression didn’t change but her eyes said one of those guys. Except he wasn’t one of them; he was jaded and worn and down on himself. Nothing like he used to be when he was the guy who’d flirt with the waitress at the cafe. Not that it mattered – she looked like she wouldn’t take crap from anyone.
So a mug?
Thanks.
She came back with a cappuccino and serve of raisin toast. ‘There was a mix-up with an order. You look like the kind of guy who could do with some extra breakfast.’ No hint of a smile, something not so hard-arsed in her eyes, though.
Max, he told her.
Renée, she said. From around and about, wherever that was. Bit of a gypsy, never stay anywhere too long.
She didn’t look like a gypsy, at least not the crystal ball kind in the old movies. No make-up, no jewellery, no headscarf. Her thick, messy hair was simply twisted into a bump at the back of her head and held in place with a pencil.
I won’t stay, Max. I never stay. I don’t know how.
He opened his eyes, awake now, the smell of dirt in his nostrils and a vague sense of nausea in his gut but the darkness kept the dream afloat in his mind.
He might never have paid her much attention if he hadn’t been slouched at the end of the counter every day, waiting for the court and the lawyers and the psycholog
ists to decide how much his life was worth. How much the tonne of rock that fell on him was responsible for the state he was in. Was the stress caused by twenty-two hours in darkness or the realisation he’d failed as a husband and father? Was the grief related to the death of his friend or the end of his marriage? Was his anxiety the result of a shattered pelvis or losing custody of his child? He couldn’t move forwards or backwards until they came to a decision. So he sat in Skiffs, morning after morning, drinking coffee and feeling like shit. He was only lucky that Pav and Trish didn’t own a pub.
Renée was a distraction. She didn’t know about his boring, endless bloody saga, didn’t treat him like he was broken, cut him only as much slack as every other man who fronted up to the counter for a morning coffee fix and bloke banter. So he watched her working. Fast, efficient, a memory for faces and orders, a tad prickly. Then he just watched. It was obvious she was fit, even if he hadn’t seen her running by the lake. A little underweight for his liking. Plain – not as in a euphemism for ugly, more like an attempt to avoid standing out. And there was a stillness about her, some sort of combination of avoiding attention and containing her energy.
It was the eyes that got him, though. They were constantly moving: alert, observant, a little wary. When she settled them on him, it felt like X-ray vision with a bullshit detector.
Max moved his parched tongue around his mouth, rolled it over his dry lips, shifted to let the dirt trickle out from under the collar of his shirt. He should keep moving but he didn’t want Rennie to go. He held onto the vision of her in his mind, working the coffee machine, handing over change, watching the customers, that first smile.
Not the polite one she used for customers but a small, private curl of her lips that was directed straight at Max and went all the way to her eyes. It’d made his sad, old heart go pitter-patter.
He lifted his ear from the dirt. Was she down here, too?
‘Rennie?’
He spoke it as though she might be there beside him, the word bouncing back as a single repetition coming from further down the hollow space. Would she hear that? How big was this place? He filled his lungs and exhaled on her name.
‘Rennieeee!’
He waited for it to finish reverberating then listened into the new silence. He knew there’d been more than a secret smile between them. He couldn’t remember what or when, he just knew. The same as he knew he had to keep going. That he had to get out and . . . do . . . finish . . . something.
He heaved himself to all fours again, arms shaking with the effort. Hands first, now knees. Good. Three more, he told himself, and he could lie down. Hands then knees then a palm to the wall – the last part for reassurance that he wasn’t completely lost. Six. Now seven, now . . .
The end of the wall was so unexpected that Max snatched his hand back as if it’d been bitten. He sat on his haunches, eyes blinking in the blackness, not sure what to do for a moment. Maybe it was the edge of the world and if he leaned too far forwards, he’d tip into everlasting space.
‘Pull it together, you idiot,’ he said out loud. No company like your own.
He slid a palm to the edge. Okay, it was a corner. A little chopped up but it felt like a right angle. An elbow in the tunnel? He shuffled forwards, one arm out searching blindly for the opposite side but as his fingertips left the wall behind, a flash of panic made him lurch back, clinging to it like a rock climber. If he left it, he might never find it again. Might flail about in his nightmare for all eternity.
‘Right, then. Do the pebble trick.’
He pitched a few around, heard a combination of taps, clatters and ‘pffts’ on dry earth.
‘Great. A T-junction. Two tunnels. Max Tully, master of the fuck-up – pick a corridor. And don’t forget: the exit is down only one of them.’ He tried to laugh but the fear welling in his chest made it sound like he was choking. What if the exit wasn’t down either of them? What if it was back the way he came? What if there was a jug of water waiting for him and he’d gone the other way?
What if . . . this whole damn thing was in his mind?
Had the knock on the temple jettisoned him into some kind of altered state? Was he stumbling through a maze symbolising all the stupid, reckless choices in his life? Fuck. He rested his elbows on bent knees and sucked at the air.
Then another concept slithered through his mind. What if it wasn’t him that was crazy? What if someone had beaten him up and dumped him in here? He lifted his head. What if they were down here with night-vision goggles and a camera? Max Tully filling in tonight for Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs.
The darkness seemed suddenly smaller and more sinister. He scooped up handfuls of dirt, flung them about in every direction. ‘Hey! Hey!’ Pebbles pinged and bounced as his shout rolled off into the distance.
Fuck, Max. Calm down.
He rubbed at his forehead, trying to massage his memory for something recent. All he got were snapshots: Rennie laughing, slapping paint on a canvas, naked in his bed; James grinning with a beer, frowning at his computer; Pav, Trish, Naomi, Mum, Dad, Gran. A slide show of frozen moments of his life as his memories flew backwards.
Okay, what about forwards? What if he started at the last solid memory and hit play?
Rennie at the cafe, then what?
Rennie moving to the backyard flat . . .
Gran died the year before when Max was living in the flat, still going to rehab and doing handyman jobs around the house while he kept an eye on her. Except that afternoon, he didn’t stop in for a cuppa, didn’t have the energy to stay upbeat after the physio so he slipped down the yard and crawled into bed. The house was dark when he woke. He found her in her chair, knitting still entwined in her old, knobby fingers. It was the second time in nine months that he’d held a lifeless hand and the sadness and loss and regret got mixed up with all the other sadness and loss and regret that was piled up inside him.
She left the house to Max in her will. His mum told him it wasn’t the last-minute whim of an elderly lady: he’d looked after her and not only in the few months before she died. Max had loved her, he’d lost everything and Gran had wanted to give something back. It didn’t stop him feeling bad about it, though, especially when the news caused a few rumblings – his sister, Annette, and his two cousins, James and Lorna, had all expected to get a cut. Max had thought about selling and splitting the money but in the end, he’d just moved in. Not because he’d made any kind of decision – he had no job, no savings and nowhere else to go.
Rennie was asking about rentals in town, so he offered her the flat and she relocated from the caravan park while he was renovating. The compensation money from the accident had come in so he was mulling over his future while he knocked out walls and banged in nails. Good therapy, the psychologist reckoned. The exercise didn’t hurt, either.
He hardly saw Rennie the first couple of weeks then he figured out her routine. Early shift, afternoon run; late shift, morning run. After that, he managed to need a breather just as she came through the gate, sweating and panting hard: morning run, coffee break; afternoon run, a cold beer.
She was different away from Skiffs. Not so much attitude and a little more guarded but she’d stop for a chat, sometimes a glass of wine in the evening, sometimes two and a takeaway. She didn’t ask for answers he was unwilling to give and when he got the gist she was sidestepping his questions, he returned the favour and kept them to himself. Besides, he liked the mystery of her and not just where she’d been and what she’d done with her life. It was as though she was wearing someone else’s skin and there was another person entirely on the inside.
One evening, as the sun turned pink over the lake, he kissed her. She didn’t push him away, didn’t shut it down but when it was done, she stood and said, ‘I’ve got some things I have to do. I’ll see you later.’
He kicked himself. She didn’t want him – why would she? But the next
evening, he waited as usual on the half-built deck like a lovesick schoolboy. When she turned up, it wasn’t from a run and she had a cold bottle of chardonnay that she held out to him.
‘Sorry about disappearing last night,’ she said. ‘I needed to do a bit of thinking.’
‘And did you?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you think?’
‘That we should sleep together.’
He managed to catch his jaw before it hit his shoes. ‘Right, well. Good thought.’
‘Glad you like it.’
Okay, it was a trick. Had to be. Let’s sleep together but not yet. Let’s wait until we know each other better – a week, a month, until you go insane thinking about it. ‘Did you have a time frame on that?’
She answered with a kiss. Followed it with, ‘You doing anything now?’
He took her to the bedroom. There was no small talk, no awkward silence, no hesitation: she’d made the decision and wasn’t wasting time second-guessing it. She lost her clothes in under a minute and they were lost in each other for what felt like a lifetime. He saw the scar on her rib cage but didn’t want to break the mood by asking. And he got a glimpse at what was behind her outer layer. It was some kind of energy source that was bold and passionate and tender all at the same time.
He made like a guy, of course, and fell asleep while she was curled around him in the stillness afterwards. When he opened his eyes, she was dressed and about to leave.
‘Sorry to wake you,’ she whispered from the edge of the bed.
‘I thought we were going to sleep together.’
‘You slept.’
‘What about you?’
‘I don’t do the staying-over bit well. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ She planted a kiss on his forehead and left.
Max ran a dry tongue across his cracked lips now, not sure why the memory made him uneasy. Any memory at this point was good and that one was crystal clear and beat everything else he’d thought since he’d woken up in a black hole. That night had been spectacular, even her farewell kiss with a promise for tomorrow. He’d wanted her back, hadn’t slept for thinking of it, but that wasn’t the sensation that lingered with him now.