by Lee Winter
“So is putting a hit on yourself. I must be in good company. Well?” She indicated the plant and waited.
“God. Okay, okay. Shit, I’ll mind your plant while I hunt you down,” Alison muttered.
“Good,” Natalya said, sounding pleased. “Normally Lola would do this, but I suspect she’s going to have her hands full soon.” She offered a wicked smile.
Alison turned the plant slowly around, admiring how immaculate it was, then suddenly grinned as a ridiculous thought came to mind.
“What?” Natalya asked suspiciously.
“I just think it’s funny: Friends plant-sit. So your request makes us friends, in spite of everything, and as unlikely as that sounds.”
Natalya scowled. “It does no such thing.”
“And you like me,” Alison added, just for the fireworks. She was starting to notice how much Natalya squirmed at the mere mention of emotions. It was curious.
“No.” Natalya pointed to her sternly. “And stop that.” She twirled her finger at Alison.
“You like me or you would have killed me,” Alison suggested with an innocent air.
Natalya looked faintly pained. “Don’t make me regret that choice.”
Alison tried not to react to the first actual, undiluted admission of who Natalya really was. They’d been dancing artfully around it all morning, but with enough vagaries to drive a bus through it.
She realised Natalya was looking irritated at herself for the lapse.
“I already knew,” Alison said quietly. “Of course I did. But I meant it when I said I’m not really here. I never was going to do anything with what we discussed today regarding Requiem. But since we’re officially naming the elephant in the room, could you just tell me one thing?”
“Wha-T?” Natalya said, hammering the T like a nail gun.
“Why do you do it?” Alison asked. “Is it for justice? I don’t believe it’s for the money.”
“The high fee is just to keep the riff-raff at bay. The scum who want their wives dead and so on.”
“Then why?”
“It’s about a power so immense it fills your entire soul,” Natalya said. “There’s something to be said for the satisfaction in holding up a mirror to these bottom feeders and seeing it in their eyes, the recognition of a life lived badly. As you said earlier, Requiem has her own sense of justice. She kills because it’s right. Because she excels at it. And, most importantly, because Lola wishes it.”
Alison inhaled. “Have you ever killed an innocent?”
“There have been other no-questions-asked jobs in the early days, before we realised the danger of them. Who can say whether those targets were innocents or not? Requiem prefers to think they were all guilty.”
“But now? Only the worst of the worst die, right?” Alison pressed. “That’s why you send a message? It’s not just for the gang bosses, is it? You do it so they feel afraid and ashamed for what they’ve done?”
Natalya studied her for a moment. “I wouldn’t deify Requiem as some righteous vigilante,” she warned. “She’s not worthy of the elevation. She’s her own creature, black of heart. Yes, she is magnificent, unfettered and free, and that can be intoxicating. But get close to her core and she is cold. She feels nothing. Not love. Not friendship. Not anything at all. Remember that.”
“I have an alternative theory,” Alison said. “I think Requiem feels so much that she blocks it all out by putting on a mask and becoming this assassin who makes the pain of feeling all that go away.”
Natalya gave a short laugh. “I wouldn’t try to psychoanalyse her motives. Understand this: She’s a lethal, wild beast, straining at the leash. Let her loose, and I promise she will take your jugular and feel nothing. Nothing but disdain.”
“I don’t believe you,” Alison said. “You don’t feel nothing; you can’t! You saved Hailey when you didn’t have to. You stopped me from putting my hand in the cone snail tank just now. And you didn’t kill me the day you were supposed to. I think Requiem feels more than she lets on. She feels something.”
“You’re very wrong. She’s a conduit, little more. As I told you earlier, sometimes Requiem lets the fleas go. And speaking of going, I think, now, it’s time you left. I have things to do.”
It was like the shutters had gone down and the air changed to ice.
“Sure,” Alison muttered. “But you’re right, I have a manhunt to organise so, yeah, I should go. I’m assuming you didn’t poison Charlotte with that steak?”
Natalya gave her head a minute shake.
Alison whistled, and the red heeler came bounding up.
“My furry traitor. You’re anyone’s for a nice steak, aren’t you girl,” she told her dog, but her voice was light. Alison glanced back at Natalya and remembered something. “Can you tell me one thing before I go?”
She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a photo. She’d found it when she’d first sneaked into Natalya’s home. She’d poked her head inside a few doors to get the lay of the land and found this stuck to a corkboard in Natalya’s anal-retentively neat home-office.
It was part of an entire series of surveillance photos, timestamped and ordered, showing Alison going about her day. Photos of her getting the newspaper, arriving at work, leaving work, hanging up the washing, taking the groceries from her car.
Underneath it had been a similar series of photos, these showing Viktor Raven at various destinations, too. His name had been crossed out in a red slash.
Natalya shot her an indignant glare.
“It’s the only thing I took,” Ryan said hastily. “And the only room I looked in,” she lied. “Just tell me: How often?” she asked, holding it up.
Natalya studied it. “Every second day. Sometimes daily.”
“I see.” Alison rammed the picture back in her pocket. She stared sourly at her. “Jesus. All these damn years! I’ve wasted my whole life. Even more than I thought.”
She wiped her eyes angrily. “Fuck.”
“Yes, you have wasted your life,” Natalya agreed, not unkindly. “So do something with that photo. Go, eat life, and be the woman you can be.”
Natalya paused. “Do you know how rare it is to surprise me? Yet you did. Completely,” she said, as though she still couldn’t quite believe it. “You are nothing like the woman I thought you were the first day I saw you.”
“You’re everything that I hoped you weren’t,” Alison said. “And a few things I hoped you were.” She considered her for a moment. “Can you remember something while you’re off dodging the police and finding yourself? Everyone in this world is capable of loving and being loved. Including you.”
“If you think that, then you don’t know me at all. And you never did.”
Alison sought the truth in her steady gaze.
“No,” Natalya said. “Stop that. Stop trying to filter me through your mainstream prism of empathy and emotions. There’s a reason I’m not like anyone you’ve ever met. It’s because I’m not. All I ever desire and feel is power—that’s it. When I play, when I hunt, when I fuck. There is nothing else inside me. For the last time, I don’t do love.”
“Sure,” Alison said and picked up the African violet. “Whatever.”
“Thanks for that.” Natalya nodded at the plant.
Alison firmed her shoulders. “You’re welcome. Oh, and you get an hour’s head start. Next time we meet I will arrest you. I expect I’ll see you very soon.”
“I like a woman who dreams big,” Natalya retorted.
“It’s not a dream,” Alison warned. “Don’t underestimate me. I promise you, that’s a dangerous mistake.”
“Good.”
“What?”
“That confidence in yourself. You always needed it. Now, can you remember something when you’re famous as the detective who couldn’t catch Requiem? Find some time for your real passion. You’re too good to throw away your music.”
She said it in an offhand tone but Alison was overwhelmed. Natalya thought she had
talent.
She studied the beautiful, maddening, aloof woman in front of her. A bloodless killer capable of producing profound, exquisite, passionate music. The same woman who said she only felt emotion when her fingers were on a cello.
“I’ll miss you, Natalya,” Alison said, before she could stop herself. She looked away in embarrassment. Well, that sure as hell cut her “I’m dangerous” speech to shreds.
She abruptly turned, unwilling to see any mockery on the face of a woman she’d come to care about in spite of herself.
Alison called Charlotte to heel and, as she strode across those perfectly manicured lawns to the security gate, head held high, she felt Natalya’s intense gaze tracking her.
She wondered, as she tapped in the gate code and heard the heavy metallic click, whether she was a fool to let the assassin slip through her fingers. Would this be her only chance to get her?
She glanced down at the precious bounty she held. No. This wouldn’t be the end. The African violet was a promise there would be more.
Alison smiled.
Until later.
Chapter 25
When Alison got home, she headed straight to her mother’s bedroom. She stood at the doorway and studied Elsie for a few moments. She looked older than her years, and the grey streaks in her hair were more pronounced than she remembered. Her mother noticed her and glared at the scrutiny. Her ample chest rose and fell in indignation. “What?” Elsie barked.
“We need to talk,” Alison said quietly but firmly. She walked to the worn chair beside her mother’s bed and sat. The green chair was decades old, wearing badly along the seams, but her mother had refused to have it reupholstered. If it was sent for repair it might come back in worse condition, she would argue.
Because change was like that—an opportunity for life to ruin things. Apparently.
It’s why the lounge room wall was still adorned with ugly, faded, striped, 1950s green and silver wallpaper that sorely needed replacing. On one wall were three painted plaster ducks. Alison had spent the better part of thirty-four years eyeing those loathed, chipped monuments to intransigence.
Her mother wasn’t big on change, be it plaster ducks, wallpaper, or attitudes.
“Talk? What about? Emily Ryan, you barge in here, it’s not even seven. No tea. No meds. No invitation.”
“Mother.” It was all Alison said but her tone brooked no debate. It was a tone she’d never dared use before. She clasped her hands in her lap as she considered her words. “I know you miss Dad. But it’s time we stopped the charade.”
“What charade?” Alison could see suspicion in her mother’s grey eyes.
“The pretence that you aren’t just keeping me around to punish me. That denying me a real life is just about hurting me because you’re unable to hurt him. I’m his proxy.”
“What nonsense! I’m sick! You’re here because you’re the only one who can look after me.”
“That’s not true,” Alison said calmly. “We could have used nurses. We had the money. Susan and I wanted to use our inheritance on making life comfortable for you with home help, and moving you somewhere nicer. But you refused to even discuss it.”
“Making you more comfortable, you mean. And you wanted some stranger in here, all day, doing god know’s what, while you just ran off and left me? You just want to abandon your responsibilities—you’re just like him. You are a wicked child. You always were.”
Alison let the insult hang between them for a few moments before replying.
“We both know that’s not true. Here’s the bottom line: I’m moving out. I need my space. I need Charlotte. And I’ve decided to stop being afraid.
“It’s also long past the time you stopped using me as a personal punching bag. I’m not Dad. He’s gone and he’s never coming back. You need to stop being so angry about life and so hateful to me. All I ever did was try to help.”
“If you had my life, you’d understand how hard it is just existing,” Elsie shot back. “And now you’re abandoning me? How dare you!”
“How dare I?” Alison looked at her in disbelief. She rose and carefully laid the photo she’d taken from Natalya’s noticeboard onto her mother’s bed. It showed her mother walking and laughing as she headed down the street with her 65-year-old neighbour, Norm Strickland. Elsie didn’t even have her walking frame.
“Every other day you go out with him, unassisted, and enjoy your day,” Alison said in a low, even tone. “Sometimes daily. And you made me believe you couldn’t exist without me. That you were helpless to do anything beyond the bathroom and shower basics. You’ve been lying to me for years.”
There was a stunned silence.
“Spying on me now?” Elsie hissed.
“No, not me. And stop dodging the subject. You pretended to be virtually immobile for years just so you could use me as some dog to kick around.” Her fingers curled tightly around the chair’s armrests.
Elsie’s expression shifted from outraged to defensive.
“You don’t understand. You’ve never known what it’s like losing someone you thought your future was with and it all got ripped away.”
“I do know what it’s like. Melissa was…” Alison stopped, feeling her heart about to beat out of her chest. She swallowed. “…was more than just my roommate. I left my life with her, and my music, for you.”
Her mother gave her a sour look.
“No,” Alison said, before she objected, “I know you needed me then and I don’t resent that.”
Elsie snorted derisively.
“Yes, I was devastated but I knew that you needed me,” Alison said. “But what I do resent with a fury that you will never understand was that I wasted fourteen years of my life after that. For what? To be a whipping boy.”
“You engaged in illicit relations with that Sydney woman?” Elsie asked, a sneer plastered on her features. “That’s disgusting.”
Alison closed her eyes briefly. When she reopened them, she allowed some of her fury to show.
“You don’t get to play the high moral ground with me, Mum. You just don’t. You can drop the act. I’m leaving now. I’ve wasted too much time on someone who couldn’t care less about my happiness. It’s time to have something more than this mockery of life.”
She stood.
“You’ll fail.” Her mother said it flatly. Cold and mean, and her tone hardened to bite deep as it always did. “You need me. I’m your security blanket. You’re nothing without me. People will see that about you. You won’t make friends because you find new people hard to talk to. I know this about you.
“So you’ll end up alone and wishing you hadn’t abandoned me. Oh, I know exactly where this is going, because I’m your mother, Emily. I know you well. I know you better than you know yourself.”
Alison had heard these words before. Just before she’d left for Sydney, in fact. She hadn’t failed then, no matter what her mother said. She’d had her opportunity taken from her and that was a big difference.
She straightened.
“I won’t fail,” she replied with certainty. “And even if I do have some bad days, I’ll pick myself up, dust myself off and move on. You, however, will have the reminder of what you did to me for the rest of your life. You will always know you failed as a mother and as a human being.”
“How dare you!” Elsie spat at her. She gave her a sideways look, wreathed with disgust. “Running off to be with some woman, I suppose?”
“If that’s where life takes me,” Alison said with a calmness she had not expected to feel. “But there’s nothing disgusting about love. People who deliberately ruin lives? That’s truly disgusting.”
She gave her mother a pitying look. “Have a good life. If you want me in it, you can apologise and I’ll consider it. If not, I’m more than okay with that. I need to be around people who aren’t angry, bitter, and afraid.” She smiled. “People like me.”
Alison suddenly realised it was true. As she turned to leave, her mother’s face be
trayed her internal panic.
“What’s gotten into you?” she asked sitting up straighter. “You can’t leave. I raised you better than to be disloyal. And come back here when I’m talking to you.”
“You’ve got two good legs, apparently,” Alison threw over her shoulder as she left. “Why don’t you come and talk to me?”
Alison tuned out the indignant bellows still emanating from her mother’s room as she made her way past the lounge and headed for her bedroom. She paused, taking a long, dispassionate look at her surroundings.
The smell of medication merged with the decay of ageing and the antiseptic bite of cleaning products. There was more to it, though. The lounge was a monument to bitterness and rigidity in every frayed, worn surface her mother refused to change.
Alison knew in her heart she no longer belonged in this room, this home, this life.
Her eye fell on those awful plaster ducks she was sure even her mother didn’t like. They were like a permanent mockery of everything she’d endured in this house.
Carefully, she unlatched them from the wall, leaving behind duck-shaped dust silhouettes on the old wallpaper. She contemplated them for a moment, then hurled them to the floor.
The violent noise of the shattering crash filled the house. She ignored the predictable, furious eruption from down the hall and smiled.
“What have you destroyed now, clumsy child!”
Just my stasis, Alison thought.
Because life was finally getting interesting.
* * *
Alison began to pack. It was kind of sad how few things she owned. It was as though some part of her brain always knew this life was not for her—temporary and not worth her time or effort.
She sat on her bed, noting its ever-present sag. She’d never liked her bed or this room. She studied it, with its old-lady roses wallpaper and regal trinkets, like a shrine to 1950s England where her mother had grown up. Alison had been denied a right to even her own identity in this room.
She reached under her bed and pulled out her dusty violin case. Her fingers tingled in anticipation and she paused in surprise. Well. That was unexpected.