Hindsight

by AA Bell

She waited at the kerb for the sound of a skateboarder to pass, then took a step.

  ‘Wait!’ Ben tugged her to stop. ‘Big dog. Okay … go.’

  ‘Every step is an adventure. I haven’t felt this excited since you smuggled me out of Serenity for my first day trip!’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ He led her around puddles of tourists on picnic blankets and locals on towels to the granite memorial which was shaped like a rectangular mushroom upside down; smooth and somewhat cooler than she expected due to the shifting shade from a large tree that also cast speckled shadows over the rocky cliff to the bay.

  ‘Seventeen-Seventy,’ Mira read aloud from the plaque, ‘bi-centennial commemoration of the naming of Point Lookout by Captain James Cook. I’m tempted to glance back and see what he really looked like, but there’s another guy up here at the moment — I mean, yesterday — who’s more interesting for the moment.’

  A skinny old man with a bald spot and long beard was irreverently using the memorial as a table and seat to spread open his newspaper, a late edition.

  ‘Sports fan. He’s on the wrong page.’

  Adjusting the shade and colour took her back too far in time, but minor manipulations of intensity swept him back enough pages. ‘Found it. Third victim was in yesterday’s late edition too — Chloe Greppia, beaten and left to die — and until then, the two suspects were Jake Markovic and …’

  Baldie turned the page, losing his interest too soon.

  ‘Oh, no you don’t!’ Mira adjusted her sunshades and found her place.

  ‘… and Dean Grey, both arrested for the first two beach murders. But then down here it says they were in custody when Chloe died, so police now suspect they had an accomplice.’

  Two of the four inset photos were faces she recognised, and shockingly they were the two she’d seen that morning, post-mortem from ten days ago. Stunned, she didn’t tell Ben. She shook her head, trying to get her thoughts straight. ‘Hang on, Markovics and Greys as both victims and suspects? That can’t be coincidence.’

  ‘Josh and Jake were brothers. And I’m pretty sure they’re the two friends who set me up for armed robbery, using Josh’s birthday party as their cover and alibi.’

  ‘Sounds more like ex-friends. One dead and one in gaol. Good riddance to them.’

  ‘Ordinarily, I’d agree, Mira. But there has to be more to it. Shelley was Josh’s girlfriend as well as Dean’s sister. So I think Shelley and Dean might have been active in framing me too, not just drunken idiots who failed to back up my alibi by confirming that I was at the party all night. But Jake and Dean loved Shelley as much as Josh did. So why would either of them hurt her?’

  ‘They didn’t,’ Mira said, remembering what she’d seen. ‘Josh and Shelley killed each other.’

  ‘Like the two bodies you saw this morning near the bridge to Likiba Isle? But the paper at the hospital said they were murdered a few miles further north, at Steiglitz.’

  ‘That’s not where they were killed, Ben. It’s where the other two were arrested.’

  ‘A frame job. It has to be. They all lived more than an hour away, much further south, and nearly never strayed north of the Gold Coast in all the years I knew them.’

  Mira glanced back to the newspaper, needing to flip back from the horse racing section again to ensure she hadn’t misread it. ‘This article is certainly sparse with its details, but I’m sure of those two faces. They’ll haunt me for a long time.’

  ‘Then I wonder what took them there?’

  Mira turned her back and took off her shades, causing the purple haze to turn blue as she gazed out over the ocean. She heard waves crashing against the rocks below, almost synchronous with the waves from yester-century. The crescent beach was a little slimmer but still beautiful one era, perfect the next. People came and went from the island, lived and died, and what did any of them really matter, when diluted in that eternal ocean of time?

  ‘Mira …?’ Ben said, moving closer.

  ‘Does it matter?’ She couldn’t bear the thought of going back there. Just the idea of getting that close to Serenity again made her stomach churn. She slumped against the monument. ‘Seeing the past can’t change anything.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to. It can guide our next steps into the future.’

  ‘How? They’re dead — or done for in gaol. They’re nothing more to do with you, Ben.’

  ‘Not necessarily. Listen, Jake and Chloe were lovers too, and now Chloe’s dead. Three guys and two girls, Mira. Do the maths — all friends with me, and all at that party with me seven years ago. So what does that tell you?’

  ‘Ha!’ she laughed, trying to lighten his mood. ‘That you weren’t the only one without a date that night.’

  ‘Bingo,’ he said, surprising her. ‘Dean and I both asked the same girl, which sparked an argument, so she stayed home, away from both of us — and can you guess who we asked?’

  ‘Ben, I didn’t know you had any friends at all, until I met Gabby.’

  ‘Bingo again.’

  Stunned, she couldn’t say anything for a long moment, until a terrible thought struck her. ‘Surely, you don’t think Gabby is the killer? I mean, just because Chloe was murdered after Jake and Dean were arrested … You said you trusted Gabby with your life, and she seemed so honest.’

  ‘She is. I’ve known Gabby forever, and I know how close she used to be to Dean, which is why I’m so worried about her now. I know he tried to see her a few times, while I was in gaol, but she accused him of falling in with a bad crowd — and if he’s in trouble—’

  ‘You think she may be in danger too? That’s a stretch. That party was seven years ago, Ben — and even if the murders are directly related to the guest list or the robbery, you should be more worried about yourself than a girl who didn’t turn up to the party. You’re more likely to be next — especially if you go poking your nose around the people who set you up the first time. You might as well go poke at a red-bellied black snake.’

  ‘I need to be sure Gabby’s safe first.’

  Mira scratched her cheek, as another thought occurred to her. ‘At least this explains why you wanted us both to stay safe inside the surf shop until you came back. You see danger everywhere now, don’t you?’

  ‘Getting framed, jailed and shot tends to do that. Look, I know it’s a stretch. I’m probably wrong — I hope I am — but three couples went to that party and now half are dead.’

  ‘Half dead,’ Mira said, wishing she could make him lighten up and back away from the whole mess. ‘Sounds like zombies.’

  ‘Be serious. You know what I mean. The others are headed for gaol — and yes, good riddance to them because they all testified against me. All except Gabby, who couldn’t testify one way or the other, because she didn’t go. But if she had gone to the party — Mira, if she had been there — I know for sure that she would have sided with the truth and me. Then I would have had a witness who could have backed up my alibi. I only needed one person to provide contradictory evidence and raise doubt. That’s all it would have taken to force a more thorough investigation.’

  ‘But you’re not worried about clearing your name. You know that will happen just as soon as the docs have proven that their new-fangled lie detector is infallible, regardless of whether the test subject is awake, cooperative or crazy. I mean, if they could tell my subconscious knew I could see the past, they can get to the truth of anything.’

  ‘That may not be fast enough for Gabby. Not if my gut instinct is correct.’

  ‘Gabby didn’t seem worried.’

  ‘Gabby only hears news through local gossip. At work she’s too busy, and at home she’s a hermit. She has no TV on her sloop, and no radio aside from her two-way.’

  ‘Surely local gossip should have been buzzing about three murders?’

  ‘Not likely. It happened on the mainland. Gabby and I may have attended the same uni as Chloe, but back then it was like being an expat in a foreign country.’

  ‘Then why didn
’t you warn Gabby at the surf shop?’

  ‘Are you kidding? She’d try to speak to Dean — get his side of things — and then she’d be in trouble for sure, if not with the cops, with the killers.’

  ‘Or both,’ Mira conceded. ‘Unless your mum is dating the only good cop in Queensland.’

  ‘What makes you think there is one?’

  Mira shrugged. She’d never met more than a dozen police in her whole life and they’d all been involved in tackling and restraining her to force her back to the ‘safety’ of whichever orphanage or psychiatric facility she’d escaped. None had ever listened to her side of the story no matter how much she struggled or screamed — not even Mel’s boyfriend, Detective Pete Innes-Grady, who’d been involved at least twice that she knew of.

  Mira scratched her cheek, perplexed. ‘I still can’t see how I can help — unless we find out where Chloe died. If we can go there, and nothing is there to stop me from looking back to see who killed her — you know, like being under water or in a plane … But even then, even if we can get in, it might only help if it’s obvious that her death might still have implications for Gabby.’

  ‘I told you it was complicated.’

  Mira laughed. ‘So this is the thing that’s been worrying you?’

  Ben stroked her arm, startling her with a tingle of goosebumps.

  ‘It’s too much too soon,’ he said. ‘I knew it. I’m sorry, Mira, I just …’

  ‘You just touched me unexpectedly. That’s all. Don’t feel guilty, Ben. Not about this.’ She turned towards his voice, wishing she could see him and make sure he knew how much she trusted him. ‘Asking me to open my eyes to the past for you is no trouble. I have to do it anyway. It’ll make a nice change using it to help someone else instead of just surviving. We can go as soon as we know where.’

  ‘Thanks, Mira.’ He rubbed her arm more tenderly. ‘I don’t know what I did right in my life to deserve you.’

  ‘I’ll make a list. In the meantime, we need to find out exactly where Chloe died.’

  ‘Steiglitz is only a small village. Eight streets, tops — and we know when she died roughly, so maybe I could drive around while you look for ghosts of cops with flashing lights. Then we can work backwards from that to find her killers?’

  Mira shook her head, preferring to stay as far away as possible from Steiglitz for as long as she could manage. That place was far too close to Serenity on Likiba, and she could feel the pull of her elastic shadow becoming stronger and tighter. ‘Starting anywhere near that area only helps if you’re confident those reports have any accuracy to them. I suggest we find somewhere that Chloe was alive yesterday, possibly waking up at home or wherever, and follow everything she did until the end. It can’t have happened too far into the day, or else how did the newspapers manage to make the late edition with the news of her death?’

  ‘You’re brilliant,’ Ben agreed. ‘I know where she lived.’

  ‘Great, then we can start right away.’ She made a move for his car, but he grabbed her round the waist.

  ‘Hold it,’ he said, keeping her longer and closer than he needed to. ‘You’ve already had a big day. Time to end it with a nice meal.’

  Fredarick typed all night until his fingers bled.

  His heart poured onto the pages as Braille dictation. Just notes at first. Connect the dots to find the outline for the larger story that was already in progress. No longer just fortune telling, he intensified his editing.

  He took the first line and retyped it in the middle of a fresh page more succinctly: Look behind you. Then he folded the page into a paper plane, preparing to cast it into the winds of time and help trigger the coming tragedy before the enemy was ready — but he still needed a final touch to ensure it reached its destination in time: his angel’s cooperation.

  With a kiss for luck, he launched it into the cold air of his dungeon, Sanchez catching it as he knew she would, before it pierced the flame of his candle.

  It must land before noon, he warned her in sign language, and knowing the clock in her office above had already chimed to mourn the passing of five in the morning.

  Today? she asked with her hands. Why?

  Because your trickery failed, my angel. As noble as your intentions may be, if you fail to send this final warning for her, there shall be no point in uttering a further word between us.

  Sanchez opened the plane to read the message, her eyes widening at the sight of it. She glanced over her shoulder, then her expression darkened as if she could hardly believe it. She sighed and closed her eyes to read it the traditional way.

  He watched the magic of her fingertips finding her place in his thoughts, and of his thoughts infiltrating her mind, and he shared the intimacy of the brief moment by mouthing along silently with her. Still, her face betrayed her feelings; a cocktail of astonishment, guilt and worry. She read it again.

  Look behind her for what?

  Trouble. Or worse if it arrives too late.

  I’ll need a courier, she said, coming to the foregone conclusion on time — and I’ll expect to read the rest of your work today, along with at least a page every day for a week. Okay?

  He nodded and watched her leave, then headed up to daylight too, keeping out of sight from her, knowing she’d place the call for a courier from her office — before changing her mind to take it herself.

  EIGHT

  Mira stirred gently at the first blush of morning, keeping her eyes closed to make her first blissfully free sleep last as long as possible.

  Blinking up at the dark blue sky, stained darker than usual by storm clouds obscuring the dawn, she became aware of the sour aftertaste of curry. It still plagued her despite scrubbing her teeth three times before bed in the bathroom on the second floor, which they all had to share. She’d used Ben’s personal supply of peroxide paste, which made her mouth feel squeaky clean as never before, but it hadn’t helped for more than an hour each time. She couldn’t find any regular or minty paste and didn’t dare to ask him about it, in case it made him feel guilty for not buying any when he’d picked up the bread and milk; especially when she should have thought of it herself.

  At least she still had fond memories of the meal before she’d taken her first bite; so romantic on the beachside patio. Through the greenish-violet shades of yester-months, she’d been able to find an evening which allowed her to share the moment with Ben’s ghost to accompany his voice. He’d been eating alone that night, but she much preferred to see him that way than to listen only while sitting at an empty ghostly table, or worse, in his mother’s lap during one of their rare meals outside together. Interesting, too, that she hadn’t found him sharing a meal with any other girls at home, as far as she’d been able to see so far — aside from Gabby, and even that had been so long ago, they’d been gangly teenagers.

  Dark clouds moved overhead, and she startled fully awake, realising that she should have been staring at the ceiling. Her glasses had fallen off during the night. Crazy to sleep with them on, she’d been told by staff at Serenity, but Matron Sanchez was the only one among them who’d learned her secret and could understand why waking without them could often be frightening.

  Glancing down, she saw through her invisible bed and how high she was above the fog-shrouded sand-dunes — three storeys! She reached for the head of the bed to brace herself, but her hand found only empty air and she overbalanced; fell with a shriek and a thud off the corner, which she clung to like a drowning sailor to a life raft.

  Disoriented in mid-air, and still clutching at invisible bed sheets, she realised she must have turned in the bed through the night and gone off the bottom end — something she never could have done at Serenity, where her metal bunk was so small in its stone corner and often fortified with rails, tight sheets and her nightly sedation. She didn’t dare to move for a long moment, paralysed by fear of falling further. Stretching cautiously with one foot, she edged around the bed, keeping fists full of the sheets until she found her lost glasses
on the floor around the next corner.

  Blue skies aged swiftly to greenish-violet, the stained ceiling reappeared above, the floor below, and she sighed with relief. Timber beams above and below never seemed so comforting. The bed, floor and windows appeared in the same instant, along with Ben’s ghost, sleeping soundly. Mesmerised by his peaceful expression, she watched him, aching to touch him. Shaping her hands around his handsome face, she imagined she could, and explored down his broad, bare chest to where the sheets had twisted lazily around his waist, which only served to make her ache all the more for him. Leaning over him, she bent closer to his yester-year cheek and closed her eyes briefly to deliver a kiss.

  He flinched in his sleep, smiled and drifted away again, as if she really had crossed through dreams and time to join him; a coincidence, obviously, but one that helped to make the moment feel a little less hollow.

  Look but don’t touch, she reminded herself, for his sake more than her own. She couldn’t bear the thought of him getting hurt again, even if it was only his career, or the chance to resume it. Accusations of inappropriate behaviour between her as a state ward and him as her authorised escort would certainly be the fastest and easiest way to tear their relationship apart, and if Mel wasn’t such a devoted mother, Mira could easily imagine her as cruel enough to sabotage their relationship that way — if only it didn’t mean hurting his career in the same stroke.

  Gabby was right, she decided. Mel was most likely to try driving them apart more subtly — ugly clothes, nuclear curry and reducing privacy — just the start, no doubt, but she’d be ready.

  Mira adjusted the shade and intensity of her ‘hues’ until she recognised the shade of yesterday, by which time Ben’s ghost had long since disappeared. Opening the drawers under the bed, she grabbed a bundle of soft surf fashion, and leapt for the mezzanine’s spiral stairs, gliding one hand all the way down the rail to the second floor. Tiptoeing along the hall past the other bedrooms, she soon reached the communal bathroom, which seemed dark and empty to her.