The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies

by Kimberley Starr

  “Would you like to come?” Brigid asked suddenly. “To the funeral, I mean?”

  I shook my head. Not in this lifetime, I thought.

  * * *

  “How are they?” my grandma asked.

  I’d come home, feeling too useless to stay there for long. Andrew had emerged from the bathroom and returned to his bedroom, closing the door without a glance in my direction. And Brigid continued sitting on the veranda, stunned, as if no one had ever lost a parent before. Her reaction seemed unnatural. She should have been annoyed at her father for drinking so much and leaving them all. Like I was angry at my mother for making me live with Grandma.

  “They’re all right,” I said.

  “I suppose they’re miserable.” Grandma sighed, looking at me carefully, as if she suspected I might be miserable, too. “Come and have some tea. Talk to me.”

  “I don’t like tea.”

  Grandma cleared space on the couch beside her, relocating a pile of crocheted squares to the ground, near her feet. I ignored the gesture and returned to the ottoman where I usually sat when I came in here. In the corner the television flickered, its volume turned unusually low.

  “I lost my husband too, you know,” Grandma confided suddenly, her blue eyes wet. “Although she won’t really know pain until …” Grandma stopped, turning her eyes from the glare of the television to the slower glare of the window.

  “Until when, Grandma?” I asked.

  “The deepest pain is losing a child.” Her eyes were like my mother’s, only older. When I misbehaved, Grandma didn’t even yell at me the way she should. She was a pale and feeble imitation and I despised her.

  She flicked at the remote control, and the TV volume jumped. For a long moment I sat there with her, watching with minimal interest. A newsbreak came on, promising more information about Cameron Seymour’s disappearance in the six o’clock news. I already knew that nothing more had been discovered.

  Then, sudden as an electric shock, Grandma completely changed my view of what had happened. “I suppose Andrew will have to go live with his real mother now,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” I demanded. “Why would he have to do that?”

  “Well, she’s his mother. She’ll want him to be with her.”

  “Why? She hasn’t wanted him before.”

  “Maddy, you don’t know that’s true. Maybe she always wanted him but just thought he’d be better off living with his father.”

  “He’d still be better off staying here,” I said, standing.

  Grandma looked like she didn’t quite know what to say next. After all, she could hardly go on about it being better for kids to stay with their real parents.

  “She might be his mother, but she can’t love him,” I finished, leaving the room. “If she did, she’d be here. Wouldn’t she?”

  I didn’t hear her answer. Maybe it was because I didn’t want to.

  Three

  Detective Richardson introduces me to his colleagues, and there is the usual amount of bantering, the usual division of a crowd into those who consider profiling to be an infallible science, and those who rate it somewhere between phrenology and tarot reading. The inspector, Ken Richardson’s boss, offers me his hand, upper lip curved into a more pronounced sneer when he learns I’m not some woman friend Ken Richardson wants to impress with a visit to the station.

  “From Rockhampton, huh? What exactly do you think you can offer us?”

  I look around the incident room, papered with images of murdered boys, some taken straight out of school photographs, others showing various stages of putrefaction and rot. I wish I hadn’t eaten. There are shrugs and curious eyes that wrinkle into laughter when someone says, sotto voce, that psychologists are only interested in sex.

  The inspector crosses his arms. He looks like he’s tempted to wink. “Excuse us,” he says. “Not everyone’s had the honour of working with a profiler before.”

  “That’s not my full-time job,” I say, too quickly. “Not even Rockhampton has that many offenders. Actually, I’m a psychologist. I’ve been working on a paper about serial offenders.”

  The inspector rubs his hands together. “Great,” he says.

  “Do we get the chance to wire the bastard up to a plethysmy-thingy.”

  “Plethysmograph.” I close my eyes, breathing steadily. “I don’t use them. I’d be surprised if my colleague doing the evaluation does. Penile arousal is easier to fake than it is to measure.”

  The inspector raises one eyebrow at Ken Richardson as if to ask why, then, am I here?

  “Madeleine’s name came up when we did that background check on Cameron Seymour,” Ken tells him. “You remember that, sir.”

  “Of course I remember.” The inspector’s eyes sweep the room, demanding attention. “It’s not the only name that came up. There was also that swimming bloke. Andrew Coleman. I suppose you’re going to invite him in for a consultation next.”

  I try to force the heat to stay out of my cheeks.

  “You know Flipper Coleman?” one of the younger, uniformed officers asks me. Her pretty mouth curves up into a smile. Apparently, she means to sound sympathetic. “Can you get me an autograph?”

  “I’m sure Andrew has as much to say about Cameron Seymour as anyone else,” I tell the inspector. “But I’m a bit more qualified to offer a professional opinion. I can help you.”

  “Maybe you don’t understand,” the inspector says. “We’ve got the guy. We’ve already got a head-shrinker talking to him. You want my professional opinion? I’ll give it for free. Too many experts are more likely to help the defence than the prosecution.”

  “I’ve interviewed men like this before, Inspector.”

  He waves his hand beneath my nose. “I’m sure your thoughts about the killer’s deprived childhood will be a fascinating addition to our files. Just keep your involvement out of the papers. We have enough journalists handing around misinformation already.”

  “You’ll have to excuse him,” Ken Richardson says, after he’s escorted me to the shelter of a smaller office. “He’s a bit pissed off with the press. To put it mildly.”

  “Why’s that?”

  He passes me a couple of newspaper clippings. In them, a rounded-looking man (his face concealed, so that the perpetrator could just as easily be Ken Richardson himself as anyone else) is being led towards a police car by two very burly police officers.

  BRISBANE BOY-KILLER CAUGHT!

  screams one headline.

  BRISBANE CAN SLEEP TONIGHT

  soothes another.

  Lengthy articles follow, giving details about the location of the bodies that have been discovered so far, and opinions about causes of death.

  “None of this was meant to be public yet,” Ken says. Behind him, a small window gives a view of the soiled concrete building next door. “We’ve sprung a leak. Now we’ve got the perp, it won’t matter so much, but the boss is still bristly about having outsiders around.”

  “I see.” I keep reading. Another fact that can’t help the police mood is everyone’s knowledge of how the killer was captured. Despite the manpower assigned to the investigation, inquiries had gone nowhere near Bradley Ferris until one child managed to escape and raise the alarm. That little boy was the first person to bring the investigation to River Pocket.

  All around Australia, parents need answers. Where did the killer meet his victims? demands one of the articles. Hand at my side, I pat my pocket and feel the reassuring shape of my mobile phone. My own child is safe — if something was wrong, I’d get a message. I continue reading.

  These kidnappings weren’t the staged actions of someone acting out a campaign against the wrongs of society. This was the work of an opportunist, taking chances wherever he could find them.

  Recent reports that the killer looked after his victims’ broken bodies, wrapping them in sheets and leaving them in campsites where they looked like kids having a sleep-out, fill us with more horror, not less.

&nb
sp; The variation in the way the boys were taken must make us reconsider the paths we take in our everyday lives, the people we meet in the shops, in the park, even at our children’s schools.

  One of the Brisbane Boy-Killer’s victims was lured from a toy department while his parents’ backs were turned. Another vanished from a local park.

  Kyle Wilson, the extraordinary little boy who managed to escape, reports that the killer met him in a New Farm park and showed him a police badge (we can only pray it was fake) before asking for help to rescue a trapped kitten.

  One tragic aspect of this case is that our kids are often in most danger where they feel most safe.

  How are we to defend our children from this kind of remorseless predator? Teach them not to trust policemen? Toughen them against helping distressed animals?

  The question of capital punishment has, inevitably, once again been raised. And this time, there are far more people recalling that what we do with animals that kill is put them down.

  I raise my eyes to meet Ken Richardson’s. He’s leaning against his desk, watching me. On his wall hang bright finger-painted scraps of butchers’ paper. Although he wears no wedding ring, there’s a photo on his desk that shows him standing with an attractive-looking woman and two small girls. I let the article flutter down to the table.

  “Your family?” I ask, pointing at the photos.

  He nods. “My daughters. I’m divorced.”

  “Me too. Almost.”

  “We’re glad you could come. You said you have other business here in Brisbane?”

  “Yes. An … a doctor’s appointment. Tomorrow morning.”

  At the mention of something medical, private, Ken glances away. “Are you ready to go in?”

  No, I’m not ready. “I have a son,” I say.

  “I heard you earlier, on the phone.” Ken taps his finger on the desk. “Look, I know you’ve written about criminals like this before. Meeting them can be very different.”

  A regular, ordinary life has never had such striking appeal. “I’ve talked to them before, too. I can do this,” I say. “My job is different from yours. You need a confession. I just need him to talk and to guide the conversation a little bit.”

  We’re turning back towards the door when it’s pushed open. The pretty constable who wanted Andrew Coleman’s autograph pushes her head through at us.

  “Is the other psychologist still here?” she asks.

  Feeling strangely guilty, as if we might have been doing something unethical, I step into her line of sight.

  “Here I am.”

  “Oh, good. We’ve just had a message. Bradley Ferris has had some sort of fit. He’s had to be sedated. You won’t be able to see him until tomorrow.”

  I return to the pseudo-intimacy of my hotel room, the afternoon stretching out as hot and long as when I was a child. Instant coffee isn’t my favourite but it will have to do and I take a cup to drink on the balcony.

  But while I sip and flip through the magazine I bought downstairs, two children from the next room become increasingly noisy, arguing about an oversized beach ball that seems likely to go over their balcony rail at any second, one child or other still reaching after it.

  Where are their parents? Don’t they realise how noisy, how endangered, their children are? What if Lachlan is receiving as little attention as this?

  I close the magazine. Several floors down, the river winds its way past. Cars on the expressway are paralleled by passing ferries. To my left, in the west, there is business of my own that I have been avoiding: the house that my grandmother left me. The real estate agent I’ve used since it was refurbished promises me it is invariably let to professional couples with well-behaved children. Seeing no reason to go, I haven’t been there in years. Now, quite suddenly, I want to visit the place again.

  A little over thirty minutes later, changed from my suit into summery shorts and a hat, I push through sauna-hot humidity along the riverfront path, and race over the pontoon towards one of the blue-and-white ferries I saw earlier.

  The vessel’s engines begin to groan more loudly, preparing to accelerate just as I arrive. The river around it churns, whitened and frothy as one of the cappuccinos being sipped nearby. Now that I’ve decided to return to River Pocket, my own memory seems to call me to get there quickly.

  “Please wait!” I call as the gangplank is raised.

  The attendant scowls, but replaces the arched board and stands aside to let me pass. A couple of other passengers, obviously more organised than me, shake their heads and glance at their watches; I have made them late. I pass them, swaying into the body of the vessel. While I become familiar with the gentle motion, the weird sensation of having lost contact with solid earth, the ferry pulls away from the riverbank.

  “How do I pay?” I ask one of the seated passengers.

  He shrugs in the direction of the gangplank attendant. Having freed the ferry from its moorings, he’s followed me inside. I approach, pulling out my wallet.

  “How far do you want to go?” he demands, flicking a button on the register.

  I hesitate, eyes seeking out some sort of route map. “Um … up to River Pocket?”

  He shakes his head. “We don’t go that far. You’ll need to get a bus from Toowong.”

  Some things haven’t changed in twenty years. I pay my fare and find a seat outside, peering around as the boat gathers speed. I am little more than a tourist, a stranger in an unfamiliar time, if a vaguely recognisable place.

  I perch on one of the white fibreglass benches constructed for heedless sun lovers like me and squeeze my fabric hat into a ball, squinting at the sun. There are more and grander houses along the riverfront than I remember. Where I picture winding, muddy pathways to raft-like pontoons there are now sturdy timber staircases to moorings all but hidden by the size of the vessels they shelter.

  “Careful you don’t get sunburned,” a woman says, nearby.

  I turn to her, raising my eyebrows at the intrusion into my privacy. My neighbour is an overweight woman in a loose floral dress. She laughs, displaying a row of white teeth, and slaps her thigh.

  “Sorry, love,” she says to me. “Didn’t mean you. Was talking to Claudia here.”

  A little girl leans forward to gaze around her mother’s bulk and smiles.

  “I can’t get her to keep her hat on,” Claudia’s mother says, with the sort of helpless shrug that demands sympathy while still seeming somehow proud of her child’s wilfulness.

  I glance down at my own hat, balled in my hands, and bite my lower lip, guilty of setting a bad example. Then Claudia stands and walks towards me, screwing up her own hat in imitation of my gesture. Apparently she thinks she’s found an ally.

  I bow to the level of her face. “Hats are very important. The sun can burn you all up, like a —” What image to use? A similar conversation I’ve had, more than once, with Lachlan, comes to mind, along with the memory of his laughter. “It can sizzle you all up like a sausage on a barbecue!” I finish triumphantly.

  Unexpectedly, the little girl wrinkles her nose in disgust. “Ew!” she says, and steps away. I seem to have committed some unpardonable sin.

  “Mummy!” Claudia shrieks. “That lady said sausage!”

  Claudia’s mother laughs and pats the girl’s glossy hair, all hats forgotten. “Sorry,” she explains, turning back to me. “We’re vegetarians. Claudia thinks meat words are quite rude.”

  After this conversation, the woman seems anxious to talk, to reassure me that not eating meat doesn’t make her a menace to society, that she isn’t some evangelical vegetarian freak.

  “Of course, I don’t mind what other people do, I even thought of letting Claudia eat dead animals for a while,” she says. “On account of the iron and the B12.”

  I nod, almost overwhelmed by a sudden desire for a bloody rare steak. Or a quarter-pounder. People who believe in things always have that effect on me.

  “It’s good to be out again,” the woman continu
es. The ferry slows and her hair, until now an unruly halo of black curls, settles into more respectable dimensions. “Now they’ve caught that man, I mean. That monster.”

  I face her more fully, intrigued by the way my work has intruded into a conversation with a stranger.

  The woman senses my interest. “I almost lost Claudia, you know,” she says quickly. “At least, I thought I had. The kids were playing hide-and-seek a couple of weeks ago near the uni. Hide-and-seek, can you believe that? I never thought a game could seem so dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?” I repeat, as little Claudia removes her own hat once again and starts to tug on the edges of mine.

  “Claudia went missing for over half an hour. Turned out she’d fallen asleep under a big paperbark. Eaten too much at lunch-time, I expect. That always makes her sleepy. My husband went berserk when he heard about it. Well, he would, wouldn’t he? He wasn’t even there. He was at the office. And of course later on we heard that was the way the Killer worked, taking kids from parks, and that just sent a shiver down my spine. Didn’t it, Claudia?”

  The little girl nods dumbly. I offer my hat to her and it falls over her eyes like a mask. Behind me, there are footsteps. “You’ve missed your stop, love,” the attendant tells me. “Better buy a ticket for this part of the journey or you’ll be fined.”

  A taxi drops me off outside the River Pocket house where I once lived. Three children’s bikes, different sizes, lie prone in the driveway. From the road I hear the familiar summer sounds of splashes and shouting. The air seems full of cicadas, their buzzes and screams thick with heat. A nearby lawnmower scents the air with chopped grass. If nothing else, the neighbourhood sounds and smells the same.

  My grandma’s old Queenslander has been fully restored. The builder I commissioned to oversee the work has done a good job. Like the Colemans’ old place, it has been dragged into the twenty-first century.

  “Can you wait for me?” I ask the taxi driver, leaning into the window.