by Tony Black
‘The report didn’t mention what she was doing prior to that.’
‘The boys at the Warrnambool station are writing it off as a swimming accident. Death by misadventure.’
‘She was last seen heading to work, waitressing at a private function, not heading to the beach.’
‘What? She couldn’t have taken a late night dip after work?’
‘By herself?’
‘Stranger things have happened, Clay.’
The reporter paused, turned the volume down a notch. ‘I checked the weather reports. On the night she went missing, the temperature got down to six degrees. Not exactly swimming weather.’
‘Maybe she was high.’
‘Tox screen found nothing.’
‘She was in the water for a week.’
‘Fair enough.’ Clay raised his drink, Eddie followed him. They looked at each other over their beers and Bec found herself oddly intrigued by the conversation’s rally. What had she just seen here? Locals in banter or was it really heating up?
‘Let’s try this on for size, Eddie,’ said Clay. ‘Given we know it was cold, and given that most eighteen-year-old girls don’t go night swimming by themselves, that leaves us with one missing puzzle piece that I can’t shake.’
Eddie frowned. ‘And what’s that?’
‘If she was swimming or on a boat or somewhere near the water, it seems more than likely she wasn’t alone. An eighteen-year-old girl, in summer, near water – they’re rarely by themselves, am I right?’
‘Well…’
‘Come on, Eddie, you work in Port Campbell. You worked in Warrnambool. When was the last time you saw a teenage girl at night by herself on the beach, or swimming alone, or on a boat by herself’
He put down his pint, raised flat palms. ‘OK, you got me. Never.’
‘So she was with someone. Which means that if it was an accident, someone would have reported it and got the search and rescue people in action. But they didn’t. Someone was probably there with her when she died, and they didn’t report it. Her folks called it in on a Tuesday and no one had seen her since Sunday. Doesn’t that sound odd to you? Someone was with her and they didn’t report it.’
Eddie didn’t respond. He picked up his beer and looked up at the bank of TVs on the wall. Clay took another drag on his cigarette.
‘Suicide.’ Bec offered the word slowly, in a low voice.
‘What?’ said Clay.
‘You’re ignoring the possibility she may have killed herself. She could have thrown herself off a cliff and ended up in the water. That could explain the head trauma, too.’
Eddie nodded, returned his focus to the high table and leaned on his elbows. ‘Look, suicide’s the second most common cause of death among teenagers after car accidents. Hardly a day goes by that the Warrnambool station doesn’t get a call about a troubled kid trying to top themselves.’
‘No way she killed herself,’ said Clay. ‘Happy-go-lucky kid, loved by her family, popular, outgoing, confident…’ Clay trailed off. Bec could see the wheels turning in his mind as he realised it was a possibility he could never rule out, no matter how gregarious and in control Kerry seemed to the world at large. Clay shook his head. ‘No. I know it’s possible, but I don’t think it’s plausible. I reckon there’s foul play involved.’
‘Forget it, Clay,’ said Eddie. ‘Anderson and his boys in CIU have closed the book on this one. There’s no motive, no evidence, no witnesses, nothing says murder about this, aside from you and your guesswork.’
‘Sorry, mate, but I don’t buy it,’ said Clay. ‘How come no one knows where she was working on the night she disappeared?’
‘Because maybe your Irish friend here is right. Maybe there was no function. Maybe it was just a way to get everyone off her tail so she could slip away quietly. I mean, who has a private function on a Sunday night?’
Bec surveyed both their faces. Eddie looked almost sad about being right, as if he felt sorry for shooting down Clay’s theory. Clay appeared to be clenching his teeth, unwilling to accept defeat.
Eddie nodded to some people entering the smokers’ area. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me,’ he said, ‘I’ve got some colleagues to catch up with.’ He smiled to Bec. ‘Nice to meet you. And thanks for the beer, Clay.’ Eddie drained his pint glass and wandered off to a raucous greeting on the other side of the balcony.
‘Thanks for backing me up there, partner,’ said Clay, his voice a low growl.
Bec was taken aback. The comment felt like a slapdown for something she didn’t deserve. ‘What the hell does that mean?’ she said. ‘Was I supposed to abandon logic and reason and shut my pretty mouth like a good girl? Or wave some pom-poms like I’m your bloody cheerleader?’
Clay’s jaw relaxed and a wash of tiredness slid across his face. ‘I’m sorry. You’re right. You were just playing devil’s advocate. All apologies.’
‘It’s not that your theory doesn’t hold water, it’s that there’s nothing to back it up,’ said Bec. ‘I’m not saying you’re wrong, but you need a bit of evidence.’
‘That should be the police’s job. Doesn’t it bother you that the cops have already pulled the pin on this one?’
Bec weighed up the question as she returned to sipping her wine. ‘I don’t know how the police operate in this part of the world, but I can only assume they’ve done a thorough investigation.’
‘Ha. Frank Anderson wouldn’t know thorough if it bit his fat arse and kicked him in the tackle.’
‘What a charming mental image.’
Clay relaxed enough to release a spontaneous smile; it was the first time he’d done so since Bec arrived at The Warrny. ‘Sorry for being a dickhead,’ he said. ‘I didn’t get much sleep last night.’
‘Does that have anything to do with a girl named Gabby?’
Clay winced. ‘Yes and no.’
He pulled out another cigarette and lit it. Bec assessed her glass of wine, which was already half gone.
‘Well, thank you for the evening’s entertainment,’ said Bec, ‘but if I finish this glass I shan’t be able to drive home.’
‘What? No! Sod that. Just get a cab. Or you can crash at my place. Your car will be safe in the car park.’
Bec eyed Clay but didn’t detect anything untoward.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Stay and have a drink with me. If you’re going to be my partner you really should stay and have a drink with me.’
‘Who said anything about being your bloody partner?’
‘Whatever. But stay and have a drink or three with me. It’s Friday night. It’s been a rough week.’
Bec took a deep breath. ‘All right. But you have to answer one question for me: did you really sleep with someone in exchange for an autopsy report?’
Clay grimaced and bit his lip all at the same time. ‘It wasn’t my intention. But, yeah, I guess I kinda did.’
Bec shook her head, laughing. ‘You whore.’
Chapter 9
Bec awoke with a strange smell in her nostrils. What is that: weed? These aren’t my bedclothes, it’s not even my bed. Where the hell am I?
She wasn’t worried. Twenty years of travel had led to her sleeping and waking in many strange places over the years. A bus stop in Barcelona. A beach in Thailand. A backyard in Berlin. A bathtub in Paris. She had grown less concerned about it. Clarity usually trickled in soon enough.
She was clothed. She was on a couch. A not-too-ratty blanket had been placed over her. A glass of water was on a nearby coffee table.
The previous night came racing home, but opening the door to it in her mind appeared to let the first tinglings of a hangover in, too. This was Clay’s house. A couple of empty bottles of red sat on the coffee table next to the glass of water.
She grabbed the glass and skolled its contents. Snippets of conversation and flashbacks of the evening swam into focus in Bec’s mind. Did I have a cigarette? Did I dance in Clay’s lounge room to The Cure’s ‘In Between Days’? Did Clay tell me he h
ad a daughter?
The mental image was there, clear, sharp, solid as a metal cube she could pick up and hold. Clay had gotten very serious at one point in the evening and talked about a daughter he’d never met. She’d be eighteen now, he’d said. Same age as Kerry Collins, he’d said, staring wistfully into nowhere. Bec had reached over to put a reassuring hand on Clay’s knee and knocked a glass of wine flying. It had broken the spell of Clay’s seriousness and he went back to making jokes and asking questions. Bec was thankful she hadn’t reached his knee. God knows where that would have led.
‘Morning. How’s your head?’
Clay stood at the door holding two takeaway cups; the aroma leaking into the room spelled coffee. He looked unwashed and unshaven, his hair an unstyled bird’s nest of sorts, but somehow he seemed fresh and lively. He was a poster boy for the day ahead, bursting with positivity. It was almost too much for Bec to take in.
‘My head’s starting to hate me. Yours?’
‘Fine. I’m well-practised. Match-fit.’
‘Right.’ Bec took the coffee he offered and cradled it like a precious gem while she gathered the strength to stand.
‘Good night, hey?’ said Clay. ‘That was fun. You’re all right, O’Connor. I knew your partying days weren’t over yet.’
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’ Her voice croaked, rattled in ways unfamiliar to her ears. ‘Right now, I’m wishing those days were well behind me.’
They sipped their coffees in silence. Clay leaned on the wall, eyed the chair but seemed to have too much energy to stay still. He loped across the room and opened the blind. Drizzle speckled the window and a grey sky hung over Liebig Street like a dark shadow.
‘First rain in two weeks,’ said Clay, staring out into the drab summer’s day.
‘Last night… you said something about a daughter.’
Clay didn’t turn around. ‘Did I?’
‘Didn’t you?’
‘Yeah, probably. I sometimes get a bit emo when I drink.’ He tried to deflect the question and put a brake on the conversation, but with just a stare Bec told him she was having none of it. ‘Mostly I’m a laugh riot, but I’m not averse to the odd deep-and-meaningful.’
‘So it’s true,’ she said.
‘It’s true.’
‘What happened?’
Clay turned to face her. He sighed as he spoke, ‘You really want to hear this first thing on a Saturday morning?’
‘It’ll take my mind off my hangover.’
He sat down in an old leather armchair. It was so battered it might once have been worked over with a baseball bat; Bec sympathised with the armchair – her head spun as she sat up on the couch to face Clay properly. The room was cold, matching the look of the day outside. As she wrapped the blanket around her, Clay reached for a pack of smokes on the coffee table between them. He lit up before he began.
‘Back when I was nineteen, I was living in Sydney. I met a girl, we fell in love, she got pregnant. Her parents were adamant that she keep it. They were of the God-fearing persuasion, so I tried to do the right thing and married her. In hindsight I’m not sure if it was the right thing, but nonetheless, we tied the knot in one of those registry office-type ceremonies. Seven minutes, no muss, no fuss.’ He paused, sneering, ‘Took longer to conceive the damned kid. Anyway, two months into the marriage and seven months into the pregnancy, she skipped out. We were living in a share house at the time. It was hell, but we couldn’t afford any better. I was studying journalism at uni and she wasn’t having the best of times with her pregnancy, so we were both living off government handouts. It was a bad time. I don’t blame her for bailing.’
He inhaled his cigarette and blew a lazy smoke ring that wafted against the window like it was trying to escape.
‘So, she took off,’ he continued. ‘I figured she’d go to her parents, so I rocked up there and talked to her dad, but he wasn’t having a bar of it. Told me to beat it. Blamed me for ruining his daughter’s life. I got angry and broke a window. He said he was going to call the cops, so I left. I then proceed to get blindingly, fall-down, off-your-face drunk for a week straight. I sobered up in between enough to go around to her parents’ house. Sometimes I’d go around there while still smashed. It didn’t make a difference. I went there in tears, I went there angry, I went there begging, I went there politely. Nothing changed. I never got to see her again.’
Clay inhaled once more and sat in silence for a minute as if trying to figure out how to tell the next part. Bec sensed the hurt he had been carrying around; it was still there, after all these years. Did that kind of pain ever go away? She’d borne her family’s wounds for long enough, but that was different. Families were always with you, in the folds of your mind; you never escaped them because, in truth, they were a part of you. The irrits they gave you, they put them there.
‘You know, I’m not sure if she was even there at her parents’ place,’ said Clay. ‘I didn’t see her there, and her parents never directly told me if she was or not. For all I know she was staying with friends, but for some reason that never entered my mind.
‘I visited the in-laws’ house every day for a month. On the last day, which I figure was only a couple of weeks before the baby was due, her dad hands me some divorce papers and tells me they’re moving away. Won’t say where. One more time, as nicely as possible, I tell him I still love his daughter and that I want to be a father to our child. “Please,” I say to him. “Please let me see her.” He just shoves the divorce papers in my face again and tells me to sign them. I don’t know what else to do. So I give up. I sign them. And do you know what he says to me? “God have mercy on your soul.” Then he closed the door and that was it. I got drunk again, for two days straight, and by the time I went back to the house they were gone. They’d moved. I didn’t know how to find out where. Haven’t seen her or her family since.
‘A couple of months after that I bump into a mutual friend who tells me my ex-wife had a baby girl. No idea what the name was. But he said he was sure it was a girl and that she was living with her parents in Newcastle. I drove up there the next day and spent a couple of days driving around trying to find her. I went to the hospital, I checked the phone book, I asked around. Of course I didn’t find them, it was like looking for a needle in the proverbial, but that was the last I heard – that she’d had a girl. I don’t even know if it’s true. But I feel like it is.’
Bec and Clay sat facing each other while he finished his cigarette, only the burn of dry paper and tobacco interrupting the silence.
‘Have you tried finding her since?’ said Bec.
‘You mean through Facebook and Google and stuff like that? Sure. I mean, I’m pretty technologically inept, but I’ve tried. No dice.’
Another awkward silence opened up, loomed above the room like the threat of more heartbreak to come, but this time it was cut short by a knock at the door. The shrill sound of crying hinges was followed by a female voice calling, ‘Yoo-hoo. Anyone home?’
Gabby Petrie appeared in the door of the lounge room carrying two takeaway cups of coffee. Her eyes blackened when she looked at Bec, wrapped in a blanket on the couch. ‘Who are you?’ She spat the words.
‘Hey, Gabby,’ said Clay, rising from the armchair and turning to face her. ‘This is Bec, my friend from work. Bec, this is—’
‘Did she sleep here last night?’
‘Yeah, but—’
With one quick movement, Gabby strode towards Clay and swung one of the cups of coffee like she was pitching a softball. Clay wore it like a bad first attempt at action painting.
In another swift manoeuvre, Gabby pirouetted on her ballet flats, her black skirt spinning up with a dainty flash, and she was gone. The slamming of the door shook through the apartment, followed by the dull thud of footsteps stomping down the back steps.
Bec was stunned. Clay, for some reason, didn’t look totally surprised. He licked coffee as it dripped from his top lip. ‘I think that autopsy report’s c
osting me a lot more than I anticipated.’
‘Cookies. Dinner. And now a T-shirt…’
Bec was racked by uncontrollable laughter as Clay sifted the sugar and brown liquid from his stubble.
Chapter 10
Radio had the story first, which annoyed Clay no end.
‘Warrnambool-based company Fullerton Industries has won the contract to undertake the one hundred million dollar upgrade of the Warrnambool Airport,’ said the newsreader. It was the 10 a.m. bulletin but the newsreader had already been heralding the item as an exclusive since 7 a.m. Clay had missed the boat – or plane, as it was in this instance – completely.
‘Member for Warrnambool Wayne Swanson announced the tender this morning during our breakfast programme.’
The broadcast switched to a voice grab from Swanson, who sounded like someone who was weary trying to play upbeat. Clay groaned inwardly as the MP mentioned jobs, benefits, and the phrase moving forward on three separate occasions before praising Lachlan Fullerton for putting Warrnambool on the map.
Clay found the newsreader’s voice grated as he pointed out, in an annoyingly cheery tone, that a date was yet to be set for works to begin, before moving on to the next item – a dead whale had washed up at Levys Beach.
‘Amateurs,’ said Clay, slapping the off button on the car radio.
‘Amateurs?’ said Bec. She was in the driver’s seat of the office Subaru, bound for Port Fairy. They were off to track down Swanson for an interview; Clay knew he was now playing catch-up, but his piece would at least be professional and ask the right questions. They’d also been told to grab some cheesy photos of holidaymakers for another space-filler story, which Clay was expected to write up as well, and he resented this as more punishment from the editor.
‘Of course they’re amateurs. There was no mention of the fact Fullerton and Swanson are already being investigated for the Gold Coast hospital deal. It’s just lazy journalism. They were too busy gloating about the scoop to do any real reporting.’
‘I don’t get it,’ said Bec. ‘If Fullerton and Swanson are already being investigated for one deal, why would Swanson award Fullerton another? That doesn’t make sense.’