by Emma Viskic
The door swung open.
Her hair was longer. She’d gathered it in a loose bun that tumbled dark curls down her neck. Dressed in black jeans and a rust-red jumper, she was a study in tones: her skin a smooth wash of burnt umber, sienna touches to her hair, the unexpected flash of blue eyes. The genes from all her Koori ancestors distilled to a heady perfection.
His mouth was suddenly dry.
She lifted her hand and, for a moment, he thought she was going to sign ‘hello’, but she jabbed a finger at him, then the ground, followed by a quick brush of her thumb down her chest.
Why was he here? Shit, he hadn’t thought this part through.
Her hands flew, but he could have read her words by her expression alone. ‘You can’t just turn up here without warning. That’s seriously not OK. Text next time.’
She was closing the door.
‘Kat, please. I need …’ He got the words out. ‘I need help.’
She halted, then swung the door wider. Light from the hallway shone on him, a bright blade in the darkness.
Her eyes dropped to the red stain on his T-shirt. ‘You’re bleeding.’
‘A couple of guys … they had knives.’
‘Knives?’ She stepped towards him. ‘Cal.’
‘I think the people who killed Gary … I think they’ve got Frankie.’
The shakes were suddenly back, his knees dangerously unstable. He braced himself against the wall. A touch on his shoulder, the warmth of Kat’s hand against his cheek. She lifted his face towards hers.
‘Ambulance?’ she said slowly. Her eyes were wide.
‘No. I’m fine. Just a bit wobbly.’
She slipped her hand into his, anchoring him. ‘Come in.’
She led him down a hallway of honeyed floorboards and arched doorways, into a small room that smelled of lavender and linseed oil. It was gently lit by beaded table lamps, and filled with books and jewel-hued rugs. One of her sculptures stood in a corner – a near life-size nude of flowing timber and bronze.
His eyes fell on a sketchbook that lay open on an armchair. ‘You’re doing trees again.’
She pulled her hand from his. ‘Not really.’
She closed the pad and sat, leaving the high-backed couch to him. The burgundy velvet upholstery was new, but it was the couch they’d bought together on Sydney Road. Their first purchase as a couple. It was ridiculously oversized, with deep cushions and clawed wooden feet, but they’d happily lugged it to each of the three homes they’d shared. They’d lazed on it with the weekend newspapers and pots of tea, talked, dozed, read.
Kat’s eyes were on him. ‘What did you mean, someone’s got Frankie?’
‘I can’t find her.’ He told her everything: the case, the unsettling police interview, Boxer, Grey-face. But nothing about Gary’s broken fingers, nothing about his butchered body.
‘They’re not looking for her? Even after Gary?’
‘I don’t know. Tedesco said they were, but they didn’t seem too keen.’
‘Do you want me …?’ She stopped, unusually hesitant. ‘Do you want me to make some calls?’
His kneejerk ‘no’ came out before he could stop it. He tried again. ‘That’d be great, thanks.’
She unearthed a phone book and started with the hospitals.
‘Give a description, too,’ he said as she began spelling out Frankie’s name.
‘About five foot eight,’ she said. ‘Short, grey hair.’
‘Purple tips.’
She flapped a hand at him. ‘In her late fifties.’
‘Fifty-seven.’
She swivelled away.
A restlessness propelled him to his feet. ‘She’d been drinking. They might have just put her down as a drunk. Make sure you …’
She uncurled from the chair and padded out.
Fuck.
He prowled the room, picking up books and small wooden carvings. A lot of white-bellied sea eagles, Kat’s totem animal. Some she had made, but most were gifts. He picked up a large stone bird with a misshapen head and heavy wings. It scowled back at him. No family member would have given her something so ugly, none of her female friends, either. Which left him with a very uncomfortable thought. He shoved it behind a large candle and kept moving.
Seventeen endless minutes later, Kat reappeared carrying a first-aid kit and a mug.
She set them down so she could sign. ‘Nothing. I’ve called all the hospitals with emergency departments within twenty kilometres of her house. And all police stations. I gave them her description, name and age.’
‘Did you …’
‘Emphasise that she may not be using her real name? Yes.’
‘OK. OK, thanks.’ He lowered himself to the couch. No news was probably good news.
Kat passed him the mug. ‘Sweet tea, good for shock.’
She knew the right tea for every occasion: Irish Breakfast to start the day; Darjeeling to end it; Earl Grey after languid afternoon sex. The day she’d left, she’d made cup after cup of Oolong. The smell of it still turned his stomach.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘And thanks for not hitting me with the phone.’
‘I rise to a challenge.’ She knelt and opened the first-aid box. ‘Let’s get this cut cleaned up.’
Dark tendrils of hair brushed the skin of her neck as she leaned forward. She smelled of sawdust and beeswax and that other indefinable scent that was only hers.
He edged away. ‘It’s fine. It’s stopped bleeding.’
‘It’s me or St Vincent’s,’ she said, suddenly sounding like the doctor’s daughter she was.
While he was still weighing the options, she eased the T-shirt from his side and began poking at him with something, possibly broken glass. He held his breath. Less embarrassing all round if he didn’t beg her to stop. When she started in with the sandpaper, he jerked involuntarily. She didn’t look up, but her hand briefly touched his; the barest of caresses. Tears started unexpectedly in his eyes.
She deftly bandaged the cut and sat back on her heels. ‘You OK?’
His skin was cold where her touch had been. ‘I am now you’ve stopped.’
A small smile flickered and went out. ‘You’ll have to get a few stitches tomorrow. A tetanus shot, too. But that’ll do you for now.’ She stood up. ‘I’ve made the spare bed.’
‘It’s OK, I can …’
‘Just come.’
The spare room was warm and smelled like Christmas; the combined aromas from the pine cones stacked in one corner and the river red gum branch propped by the window. Light from a rose-coloured lamp gently illuminated the sketches pinned to the walls. Preliminary works for a project, by the look of them. There were pine trees and wattles, but mainly eucalypts: saplings with spindly limbs and a touch of fire to their new-growth leaves. How would she capture their reddened tips? With metal? Timber? He felt her stiffen as he moved to examine them, so turned away. A crack in the curtain revealed the darkness outside.
‘You need a globe in your outside light.’ Security spots, a chain, a big slobbering Doberman.
‘What?’
‘It’s not safe, anyone could hide on your front porch. I’ll do it for you in the morning.’ Change her locks, too. The front one was a piece of crap.
‘No.’
‘It’s all right, it won’t take long. I think …’
‘I don’t care what you think.’ Speaking now, not signing.
‘I just meant …’
‘No. You don’t get to have an opinion about my porch, or my house or what I eat for breakfast. Understand?’
He nodded.
She turned her head as she left, but he’d caught the shine of tears in her eyes. The fabric of the universe was wrong. Kat didn’t cry often, but when she did, she cried openly. Hers was a family of sharers; her sisters, mother and father all airing emotions with a casual ease that had often left him feeling stunned after family visits.
He turned out the light and lay staring into the darkness; Kat’s scent was on the pillow.
>
9.
Caleb eased himself from the bed and dressed with wincing care. Strange how things always hurt more the next day: cuts, break-ups, sorrows. He found the bathroom, then followed the greasy smell of frying eggs towards the kitchen. His stomach did a slow, rolling loop. Maybe just dry toast for breakfast. He came to a sudden halt in the kitchen doorway. The cabinetry, table, and chairs had the matching blandness of an Ikea catalogue, but every accessible inch of wall was covered in pencil sketches; everything from lone figures to fully worked street scenes. He wondered if Kat was renting and, if so, how much her bond was.
A pot of tea and plate of fried eggs were on the table, but Kat was busy drawing. Hard, jabbing strokes – not a happy pursuit. He ventured closer. A white-bellied sea eagle was forming beneath her hand, swooping on a man with dark hair and eyes. Who knew a bird could look so menacing?
‘Morning,’ he said.
The pencil flew from her fingers and she spun around. ‘God, don’t sneak up on me like that.’
Her hair was hanging loose to her shoulders, still damp from the shower. Bare feet, faded jeans, and a light cotton top that brushed her breasts when she moved. She never seemed to feel the cold. Her blouse was patterned with tiny flowers in the red, yellow and black of the Aboriginal flag. Sunshine against the soft dusk of her skin. She’d obviously been busy the past eighteen months: designing fabrics, casting bells, creating new sculptures. Moving on. That was good, that was how it was meant to be.
He bent to pick up her pencil, had to pause for a moment on the way back up.
‘Is the cut sore?’ There was nothing but polite interest in her expression – the courteous inquiry of a dutiful host.
‘It’s fine.’
‘I’ve called everyone again. There’s still no word on Frankie.’
‘Oh.’ Shit.
Her face softened. ‘That’s probably good. The police would know if she was …’
Lying on a slab in the morgue. ‘Yeah.’
‘Is there anyone else you want me to call?’
‘No. I mean, thanks, I’ll email the rest.’
Neither of them spoke for a long moment. Kat’s eyes slid away and he began to feel uncomfortably like a regretted one-night stand. He pulled out a chair.
She plucked her keys from the table. ‘I’m off to the studio. Do you need anything before I go?’
He froze, arse halfway to the seat. That was a surgical cut: quick and muscle-deep. He kept his eyes from her uneaten breakfast as he straightened: lies worked best if everyone pretended to believe them.
‘No thanks, I’d better get out to Broadmeadows and tell the cops about last night. Thanks for, ah, thanks for everything.’ He turned for the door, patting his pockets. No car keys, no wallet: that was going to make things difficult. Kat’s studio was out that way … No, that would be pushing it.
‘My wallet’s …’ He cleared his throat. ‘Could I could borrow money for a taxi?’
She looked at the keys in her hand. ‘Broadmeadows?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I can …’ She screwed up her face. ‘I can drop you on my way if you like.’
Peak hour. It’d take at least thirty minutes to get there. Inches from her in the car. He should say no – clean breaks always heal faster.
‘Thanks, that’d be great.’
Kat’s ancient Beetle had a top speed of sixty, and an eye-popping mural that covered every inch of duco. It had been painted by someone with a deep love of the female form and very few inhibitions. Drivers slowed as they passed, often gesticulating. Hard not to imagine the sort of pervert she attracted every time she went out in it. He glanced at her. Unlike Frankie, Kat could drive and sign at the same time, probably knit a blanket and julienne vegetables too, but her hands hadn’t left the wheel for the past half-hour. Before the second miscarriage, their lives had been filled with silences as soft as an embrace. No speech, no sign, just her hand in his, the rhythm of their breathing. This was the bruised silence that had come after.
She was turning off Pascoe Vale Road. Nearly there. Ninety seconds if the traffic kept crawling. Say something. Anything.
‘How long have you had the Beetle?’
‘About a year.’
‘Good?’
‘Cheap.’
The police station was looming closer: a two-storey monolith of red brick and tinted windows.
‘And the, ah, mural, is that what I think it is?’
‘If you think that it’s an empowering celebration of womanhood, then yes.’
Well, no, he thought it was an orgy. ‘Not your work?’
‘A friend’s.’
A very close friend. A very close male friend? Maybe the same idiot who’d given her that fuck-ugly bird. The traffic began to flow and they were suddenly metres from the police station, pulling into a no-standing zone. Out of time. He was breathless.
She turned to him, but kept her hands on the wheel. ‘I hope it works out with Frankie. With everything.’
Her mouth formed such perfect shapes: gently catching the Fs against her lower lip, kissing the Ws. He could watch her all day.
‘Maybe email,’ she said. ‘Let me know?’
‘I will.’ A deep urge to hug her goodbye. Bad idea. Kiss her cheek? Shake her hand? And now he’d been staring at her too long. ‘Take care.’ He sketched a wave and got out.
He watched the Beetle edge back into traffic. A wave. A fucking wave. Seven years of marriage, a lifetime of yearning, and he waved goodbye. The car was moving pretty slowly; if he ran he could catch her. He turned for the police station. It was peak hour on the footpath as well as the road. Dark-suited people jostled each other, their elbows jabbing dangerously close to his throbbing side. Maybe he should write to her and apologise. A quick note. Sorry I’m such an arsehole. All the best with your life.
A familiar figure up ahead. Walking slowly towards him, head down, texting. Whippet-thin, with pasty, grey skin. His heart slammed against his ribs.
Grey-face.
Don’t stop, don’t attract attention. He lifted one foot, then the other, swung his arms. What the hell was Grey-face doing here? Had he followed them? He seemed oblivious, his eyes on his phone, no tell-tale glances or hesitations. Five seconds until they passed each other. Too crowded to run. Pedestrian barrier blocking the road. Three seconds. Walk past, hope it was a long text. Hope he wasn’t carrying that knife. Two.
Grey-face looked up.
Caleb tensed, shoulders squaring. But the man was turning, looking over his shoulder. Caleb followed his gaze: a uniformed officer was sprinting from the police station towards him, waving a piece of paper. An arrest? The young man came to a halt in front of Grey-face, chest heaving. Caleb closed the last few centimetres, his eyes on the constable. He was holding out the paper, saying something. Saying …
‘I’m sorry, Detective Sergeant, I forgot this.’
Detective Sergeant.
Easy movements, steady pace. Detective Sergeant. Don’t look back. At the intersection: a crazy choreography of cars turning left and right, impossible to cross. Detective Sergeant. And there was Kat’s Beetle, just beginning to move at the green light. He strolled towards it and climbed in.
Kat turned to him, her eyes a little too bright.
‘You should lock your doors,’ he said. ‘Anyone could get in.’
10.
Back at the house, Kat immediately set about making tea. A more involved process than usual. She fussed with strainers and spoons and plates of toast, and when she’d done all she could to avoid sitting with him, brought it all to the kitchen table.
‘Thanks.’ He grasped the mug with both hands; it was freezing in the kitchen, but Kat seemed oblivious.
‘You’re sure it was the same guy?’
‘Yep.’ No need to explain his bowel-loosening certainty. ‘Sorry about the panic. He wouldn’t have done anything outside a police station.’
‘God, Caleb, the man tried to kill you! I think you’re allowed a bit o
f a reaction. The other guy wasn’t there? The boxer?’
‘No.’
‘Just as well. You think he’s a cop, too?’
‘He didn’t have the look, but what would I know? I would have put Grey-face down as a mortician.’ He was shivering now, but Kat had kicked off her shoes. ‘Aren’t you cold?’
‘No.’ She slathered butter on a slice of toast. White bread.
‘What would your mother say if she saw you eating that junk?’
‘I think she’d have more to say about who I was eating it with.’
They’d fallen into their old pattern of mixing sign with speech. He’d forgotten how easy it could be.
‘On the bright side,’ she said, ‘at least Tedesco will believe you didn’t have anything to do with Gary’s death once you tell him about Grey-face.’
‘No. He thinks I’m bent. If I rock up saying some cop tried to kill me, he’ll show me the door. Or worse, go straight to Grey-face. They work in the same station, they could be mates.’
‘The investigating officer just happens to be friends with a suspect? That’d be a pretty big coincidence. Detectives don’t get to choose their cases, they’re assigned them.’
‘Coincidences happen. Hence the word.’
‘Paranoia, too.’ She took a bite of her fibre-free bread. ‘But OK, maybe you shouldn’t go there in person. Want me to ring?’
He was already shaking his head. ‘I’ll email, I’ve got his card.’ He dug a hand into his jeans and pulled out a business card. Not Tedesco’s, McFarlane’s.
Detective Sergeant Hamish McFarlane, Ethical Standards.
Ethical Standards. That didn’t make sense.
Kat was waving to get his attention. ‘What?’
He showed her the card.
‘Ethical Standards,’ she said. ‘Why would a detective from Ethical Standards be involved in a homicide investigation?’
Good question. Why? The information was all there; he just needed to sort it out. Pity his brain had turned to mush. Too little sleep maybe, or too much adrenaline. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes: they felt gritty. Think it through. Ethical Standards didn’t investigate homicides; he knew that much from Frankie. So why had McFarlane muscled in on Tedesco’s interview? Wrong question. Why had McFarlane been there the night Gary died? Leaning against the police station wall; watching, waiting. Long before anyone knew anything about the victim except his name. Oh, shit.