The Night Bell

by Inger Ash Wolfe

  “If you’d rather not jump over,” Brendan Givens replied dolefully, “you can come through this gate.”

  She stepped down and took one of Renald’s cases from him. “Don’t lock it behind us. No telling what might happen.”

  “I know what’s going to happen,” said Givens, downcast, but he said nothing else. They passed through the gate onto the field’s verge.

  “Someone’s worried about his job,” said Renald. Behind him, sixteen more uniforms flowed out into the afternoon sun.

  They spread out, twenty metres apart, and began to sweep. Their sticks moved back and forth in front of them through the wet stubble, lifting the sodden corn stalks up and tossing them aside. Rotted corncobs were mashed underfoot. There hadn’t been live corn in this field for at least two summers: they were walking on a layer of compost. It smelled like sweet, wet mould.

  Every fifty metres, the SOCOs pushed a red plastic marker into the earth and looped a yellow ribbon into the open catch at the top. Each officer performed their task alone, only dimly aware of the others moving at a stately pace up the field. When they got midway, Hazel looked behind herself and saw some of the patio diners looking over the fence. She imagined Givens was drinking in his office by now. She would be.

  They kept to a special channel and reported their finds. Sergeant Costamides found some broken glass. One of the Mayfair team called in a condom, another found a shoe. They trekked forward like a slow-moving wave, examining every bit of ground in front of them. In three hours, they reached where the houses on Fuzzy Zoeller Way stopped and the land went all the way up to the empty boys’ home and Concession Road 7. When they got to the road, they shifted five metres to the east and started back down.

  Hazel looked over her shoulder at the back of the old Dublin Home for Boys. It sat heavily on its plot, its gateless front pillars still facing Concession Road 7, aka Augusta Avenue. The orphanage was made of blocks of grey, local stone. Cheap when it had been built eighty years ago, it now had a fashionable brutalism to it that would make it an interesting building to convert into the promised second clubhouse, in front of which the world’s second-largest wave pool was to be installed, also as promised.

  Orphanages like Dublin Home no longer existed. There were no Victorian workhouses like the ones she’d read about in school. The places like the one her brother had spent the first decade of his life in were now demolished or abandoned, but they still bred secrets. Society doesn’t like to talk about its abandoned children. Behind every orphan or homeless kid is a hard story: a dead parent, an addicted parent, a poor parent, a rape victim, an act of passion or carelessness, a story of abuse. Imagine being a child in that world, she thought, passed from hand to hand with no guarantee of kindness.

  The kids often came out damaged, incapacitated in some way. Unable to love or to accept love. So often following a path their absent parents had launched them on, which led to unhappy families of their own, mental illness, drugs, wandering. So it had gone with Alan, who had been immune to his adoptive family’s love, and who fell at midlife and gave up. Plenty of Hazel’s cases brought Alan sadly to mind, but this one gave her a pang of grief.

  They continued in their long file back down the field as the sun declined in the west. Renald was complaining two lengths over. “Two more hours!” he called out. “There’s nothing here!”

  “We go until we’re done, Melvin. I’ll buy the drinks afterward.”

  He changed places with one of the Mayfair reps so he could holler more directly at her. “There are a hundred fields north of here, Hazel! That dog could have found that thing anywhere!”

  A couple of positions down the line, one of the officers drove a rotten corncob about fifteen yards with his hockey stick. She heard distant laughter.

  “Nice to see everyone at least enjoying themselves,” Sergeant Renald shouted to her.

  “Radio!” a voice called.

  “Use your radio,” Hazel shouted back. “They think you’ve found something, bozo.”

  He reluctantly raised his radio to his mouth. “Private conversation.”

  The call came again, airborne from a distance: “I need a radio!” Someone near the end of the line was making a big sweeping gesture with her hand. One of the Mayfair crew. She held her radio aloft in the other hand. Hazel watched the next closest officer jog over. He traded radios with her.

  “I found something,” the woman said, breathless.

  Detective Constable Victoria Torrance crouched over a white form, as if she was protecting it. It looked like the top of a huge, fossilized egg. But it was unmistakably part of a human skull. The officers gathered near, and a hush went over them. Some at the front went down on one knee.

  Hazel knew immediately what part of the skull it was. It was a portion of the forehead. Above the eye. Hazel felt above her left eye: that ridge. The bone was white and smooth, like the one the Fremonts had brought in. Torrance passed it to Fraser, who cradled it in his hand. “Superciliary arch,” he said. He ran his finger along the ridge. “The eyebrow grows over it.”

  “How old?” asked Hazel.

  “I can’t tell that. Not an adult though.”

  “God.” She looked around them. “This isn’t going to work. I knew it wouldn’t. We need more bodies. We need to be closer together.”

  “Neither Greene nor Willan is going to send anyone else,” said Renald.

  “Then we get anyone we can, on a volunteer basis if needed, to help us sweep this field.”

  “I bet they came from there.” Torrance was looking over at the boys’ home. “Could’ve been a graveyard.”

  “Do they hack the skeletons of dead children apart in your town, DC Torrance?”

  “Nice to meet you again, Detective Inspector. No, they don’t. But who knows what a century of heavy machinery might have done to the land here, especially if there was a graveyard.”

  “That is a popular theory.”

  Some of the officers drifted away, returning to the search. They circled out from where the bone arch had been found, their hockey sticks swishing through the dead stalks. There was no more golfing. “Lots of smut,” said Torrance.

  “What?” Hazel asked her.

  Torrance poked at something near her foot. It was a cob of corn with part of its husk still on. It had dried out on high ground. There was a foul, black protrusion poking through the husk. “Corn smut,” she said. “It’s a mushroom grows on corn. If you catch it quick enough, it’s delicious.”

  “Good to know,” she said. “Always a pleasure to have you fellows around.”

  “You fellows?” she said, laughing. “Did I do something to offend you, Detective Inspector?”

  “No, I apologize. Feeling short-tempered today. You can get back to sweeping with the others.”

  Darkness fell, but now no one wanted to leave. They strapped flashlights to their hockey stick shafts and kept searching, slowly, and the field turned into crosses of white beams sweeping over one another. At eleven, they were still less than half done, and they’d found three other fragments of bone. They were too scattered to make a pattern. If they were old, as Deacon had surmised the pelvic fragment had to be, animals could have carried these bones from all over. Their source wasn’t necessarily nearby. There could be bone all over the region, a rain of bone fallen on nearby fields. Calcium for corn.

  With the moon high, their shadows took on a silvery glint, the beams of their lights sweeping through layers of dark. Many of the houses around the perimeter were lit up, and those tenants with outdoor chairs or stepladders or sturdy tables were standing on them and looking out over the slow-moving silhouettes in their giant, common backyard. At times during the sweep, Hazel looked up to see the door at the end of the clubhouse patio open and Givens standing there, picked out in shadow, his arms crossed over his chest. Things were not going to get easier for that gentleman. She had called in the situation to Greene and word was going out: to Gilchrist and Fort Leonard, to the Queesik Bay Police Department
. More from Mayfair. In the morning, they’d have seventy to a hundred bodies in this field.

  At midnight, she decided to call it. “Come in,” she said into her walkie-talkie. “Buddy up and come in.” The beams turned and what seemed like two-dozen faerie lights began to bounce back toward the clubhouse.

  “Hazel?” came Costamides’s voice from among the approaching beams. “I don’t have Mel with me. My radio’s dead and we got separated. Can you get him?”

  “Mel?” Hazel called into her handset. “Sergeant Renald? We’re turning in, come back.”

  “Maybe his batteries are dead too,” Gerry offered.

  “And his flashlight?” Costamides emerged into the light. Hazel spoke into her radio again. “Clear this channel of unnecessary chatter, please. Everyone quiet. Renald? Come in, Sergeant Renald.” She heard an electronic gurgle and a short blurt of sound that was like a human voice, but maybe from another part of the dial – a commercial or a CB interruption – and she called out to the officers streaming past her, “Have you seen him?” They trod by apologizing, and she asked a couple of them to look for Renald inside the clubhouse. She spoke his name again: “Mel? Can you hear me? How can you be out of range?”

  Then a voice she’d never heard before said, “How can you stand so still within my sights?”

  “What? Mel?”

  “No.” She heard the gurgle again. “I have your face in my crosshairs, Detective. Your bewildered face blown up ten times in the lens. Why are you still standing there?” She heard the report of a gun and the ground leaped up in front of her. She lay on her stomach, frozen.

  “Shots fired!” someone shouted. “Shots fired!”

  “Shut up!” Hazel cried into her handset. “Who is this?”

  “Well, I have his radio, sweetheart,” said the voice.

  “Where’s Renald?”

  “He’s resting after a long day. You should go home and get your beauty sleep. Take your playmates with you.” Another chunk of wet dirt exploded beside her head. “Any more questions?”

  Her sweepers were surging back into the field at the sound of gunfire, and Hazel called them off. “Don’t return fire! Go back!” She crawled on her elbows and knees through the stubble. Up close, the dirt smelled like sulphur, like hell was cooling off below the tangled, rotting stalks. From her elbows and knees she shouted: “Rendezvous on Concession 6 outside the clubhouse gates! All personnel off the grounds!” She heard the crack of the gun again and involuntarily jumped up and ran crouching the final hundred metres to the clubhouse. Givens held the gate open for her. “And here I thought chivalry was dead,” she said to him. “Consider yourself on lockdown.”

  She was checked out by one of Mayfair’s people and pronounced fit to go back on duty. It was twelve-thirty on Friday morning and they were down an officer.

  Sandy and Oscar Fremont watched the search from their backyard picnic table. Together, they had lifted it and carried it over to the fence. They lived close to what was still called Concession Road 7, in a house done up Tudor-style, with stained wood beams laid in stucco over a wood frame. There was no real brick or stone in Tournament Acres. The houses were imitations of other times and materials.

  At nine o’clock, they went in to put on extra sweaters and open a bottle of red wine. They returned from time to time to observe the progress of the search, and later it was possible to tell from their footprints in the still-wet grass that they had come out three or four more times before finally going in.

  ] 7 [

  Friday, October 19, after midnight

  Sandy Fremont brushed her hair at the computer, using the internal camera as a mirror. She read an email from her sister.

  Sandy, please don’t be mad, but I’m not going to make it up for Christmas this year. Carol’s been invited to the Irish dancing finals right afterwards in San Antonio and David says we can’t afford to come to you and then jet off to Texas, and it means a lot to her. I know you’ll understand, sis. It just feels like the stars aren’t going to align this year. Please forgive me!

  “Oh, sweetheart,” she called over her shoulder. “Miriam isn’t coming!”

  “Coming to what?”

  “Christmas!”

  She heard Oscar walking back and forth in the bedroom. “Oh, that’s too bad.”

  Sandy put on her baby voice. “She and David have to take wittle Carol dancing in Texas instead.” He laughed. She turned out the light in the office and began down the hall. “Oh god,” she said, sighing. “What a dread business it must be, ferrying your spawn to and from things.”

  First, she heard him cough. Then his wine glass dropped onto the buttercream-coloured broadloom in their bedroom doorway, spilling wine everywhere. “Oh Jesus! Oscar! Did you have to take a glass in there?”

  Oscar lurched out of the room into the hallway and she started screaming. Blood gushed from his neck, and his hands scratched frantically at the dark red jetting between his fingers. A man appeared behind him in the doorway. He held a long knife, dripping red.

  “Whatsamatter?” the man said. Sandy stepped backward, avoiding her husband, falling toward her. The man approached her slowly and she retreated into the office, eyes averted. “Not happy here in paradise? You want to ruin it for everyone?”

  Sandy Fremont found her voice. “I don’t want it to be ruined for anyone. I want everyone to be happy!”

  “Look at my face.”

  “Just take what you want and let me get my husband some help! Please!”

  “Your husband doesn’t need help now. Look at my face.”

  She didn’t have to. She’d recognized his voice. She began to scream and lunged for the phone on her desk, but she never got the receiver off the hook. Two minutes after her death, however, she sent an email to Ray Greene.

  Hazel woke from a dream of walking across smashed eggs, their insides slippery under her feet. She reached out for purchase and woke with one hand in the air. She stared at it against the ceiling. She’d heard a sound in her sleep.

  She put on her glasses and checked the time. It was 6:15 in the morning – she’d been asleep for four and a half hours. She wasn’t sure at first if it was her or her mother who’d been making a fearful, choking sound, but then she was instantly sure that it wasn’t coming from her own bedroom. Emily was making a chugging noise, soft and low. Hazel threw the covers off and rushed down to her mother’s room. The sound was louder now. She flung open the door.

  Emily was sitting up in bed, both hands against her chest, whooping for air. Her pupils roved madly in a sea of white. Hazel rushed to her side and held her shoulders. “Try to slow it down! Mom, look at me!”

  Emily turned her terrified face to her daughter. Her pupils were like huge black nailheads. “I – I –!”

  “Don’t talk. Look at me. Go slow, slow down your breathing!” She tried to show her what she meant, but her own breath was fast with fear. She rubbed her mother’s back as if Emily were her own child waking from a nightmare. Gradually, haltingly, Emily began to breathe.

  “I –”

  “Just wait a minute longer –”

  “I woke up. I – Hazel –”

  “You’re better, it’s over now.”

  Her mother slumped forward a little, and Hazel held her up. After a silent minute, Emily finally said, “Goddammit.”

  “What?”

  “Your father will know I’ve been drinking.” When she raised her head she looked drunk. “Don’t tell him,” she said. Her eyes rolled back.

  Hazel almost dropped her in shock. “Mom!” She cradled her mother’s neck and head and laid her down on the bed. There was a rattling noise coming from the back of Emily’s throat. “Oh no! Mom? Can you hear me? Can you open your eyes? Oh god …”

  She rolled Emily onto her side and braced her with pillows, then ran to get her cell. It was out of power. Fucking thing. She raced downstairs and dialled 911 on the wall phone. “The Micallef house on Pember Lake! You know it?”

  “Yes ma’am,�
�� answered a male voice.

  “Send an ambulance.”

  Emily was fully awake by the time Hazel returned to the bedroom. What’s more, she was lively. She’d gotten up and had even made the bed, and she was sitting at her table, writing. Hazel approached her slowly. “Mom?” She looked over Emily’s shoulder. A list, in her mother’s tight, steady hand, read:

  money

  ¼ lb sultanas

  ¼ lb glacé cherries

  oatmeal

  pick up Alan

  “Mother?”

  Emily looked up, startled. “Oh, Hazel, I didn’t see you.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Of course I’m all right. Why are you home from school? Are you ill?”

  “No, I’m fine. I was … just going to make some tea.”

  “I’ll have a cup.”

  “Oh, it’s ready now actually. Come down before it’s too steeped.”

  “Don’t paw at me, child.” Emily stood up on her own. She was grounded, steady. Hazel dashed ahead into the kitchen and ran the tap water hot and filled a teapot halfway with it. Her mother came in and sat in her regular seat. When she wasn’t looking, Hazel dumped a teabag into the pot.

  “Where are my cigarettes?”

  “You don’t smoke, Mom.”

  “Where’d you put them?”

  “You ran out.”

  “The deuce I did, Hazel. Where are my cigarettes?”

  “Ah! The tea.” She turned back to the countertop, quivering. How long was the ambulance going to take? What was happening? Her legs were weak with fatigue and fear. She reached unsteadily for two teacups. They never drank tea anymore, only coffee, but her mother had preferred tea when Hazel was in school. She looked hard at the cups. She poured. “Milk?” she asked her mother without turning around.