by Ann Michaels
Chapter 8
Saturday, 19th November, 1988
Harry de Groot
Become a Philosopher
‘I never knew what real happiness was until I got married. And by then it was too late.’ -Max Kauffmann.
The forceful, bullying sun coming through the window woke me early that Saturday morning, as I’d forgotten to close the blinds the night before. I’d been otherwise occupied. I looked in horror at the reddish, brown hair, which mushroomed across one of my black pillowcases and I rubbed my eyes tiredly, and wondered, how I had got myself into this situation.
This is what happened. I left the pub yesterday after my restorative single malt whiskey, with the intention of heading straight home to my bachelor flat, in Maroubra. I was ready to jump in a cab, from which a group of ladies had baled, when one of these ladies, who as it turned out, was my ex-wife, Linda, latched onto me like an animal with suckers.
‘She’s been trying to molest the driver’, hissed a schoolmarm type with 36Ds, who looked like she had sucked on the vinegar bottle, instead of her mother’s breast’
‘Yeah, she tried to jump over the seat to get at him’, added a frizzy haired woman with a chin like a jetty.
A rotund Shelia with a sombre woolly voice, who was wearing a pink sash, emblazoned with the word ‘BRIDE’, added, ‘And before that at the pub up the road, she was ready to pole dance and we had to stop her going off with this bloke who said that he was into black magic and drinking blood. He wasn’t quite the full quid.’
I could tell that Linda was very drunk, and so, I hesitated. I couldn’t just let my ex-wife, the mother of my only child, step off into the abyss.
‘Where’s Alicia?’ I questioned. The frizzy haired woman replied. ‘She’s with her grandmother for the weekend, and John, Linda’s hubby, is on a sales conference for a week. Do you know each other?’
‘Yep, we know each other’, I replied succinctly. And with that, I determined to go along and see if I could keep Linda on the straight and narrow, even as the thought and feeling ran through me that I would live to regret it. Sure enough, when I took Linda home in a cab sometime after 2 a.m, she couldn’t find her keys. Or said she couldn’t. I then brought her back to my place and spent an hour fighting her off. It would have been so easy to succumb; after all, we had fallen in love once and fancied the pants off each other. But a bit of alcohol could only make us momentarily forget all the strife, bitterness and headache, which had followed those euphoric times. I knew that she would return to reality soon enough, and so, I was determined not to be led astray. And besides, Linda had married again. But I also knew, whichever way I went, I would be blamed for the outcome.
The phone rang.
The call over, I put down the receiver and went to make coffee and to think about that report from the station. It seems that local police in the region where the abandoned orphanage was located, had interviewed a bored but essentially harmless gang of young people, who had admitted to stringing up that doll in the abandoned orphanage. They said that they did it to scare ‘other people’ away from their ‘clubhouse’. When questioned more closely, it became apparent that these ‘other people’, specifically consisted of a golden haired man and three women, who they had found in their clubhouse, performing ‘rude acts’, on numerous occasions; often using the chair with straps. They wanted to scare the ‘perverts’ away and get their clubhouse back. They thought the ‘scary doll’ must have worked, because after they had hung it there, they had not seen those particular people again.
I turned around. Linda stood in the doorway with a very sour frown on her elfin face. I knew she was pissed and that as far as she was concerned, I was to blame. And as expected, she proceeded to launch her artillery on all my character faults. When I could interrupt, I said, ‘do you have your keys now?’ This resulted in a death stare and further abuse. I picked up my coat and opened the door, holding my arm out in a courtly manner.
I dropped Linda home, and as she stumbled to the door, I almost felt sorry for her. But another part of my mind knew that I would pay for this, and my daughter, would be the currency.
Later Kerry rang. She was frantic. She had copied the Ruslen plans and information on Friday and put them on her desk to take home. But somehow, by the end of the afternoon that yellow envelope containing the information had disappeared. She hadn’t been overly concerned, though, at the time, as she thought she could slip in on Saturday morning and make fresh copies. But now, she was feeling very agitated, as she sat in front of the Visual Display Unit, having found that every bit of information about Ruslen’s properties had been erased. Everything.
‘It’s OK, Kezza. I know. I got a tip off yesterday. I should have told you, but other things came up. Anyway, it was wrong of me to get you involved. It was my mistake.’
I could tell Kerry was nervous by the sound of her voice; she said that perhaps, we should postpone our dinner arrangement as ‘these people you are mixed up with sound dangerous… I have to think about my family’.
‘You are right’, I said a bit flatly. ‘We will take a rain check.’
After getting off the phone, I wondered if I should call Dana and warn her… Tell her about the murder and the missing information. But I decided not to. I was in enough trouble already.
I grabbed my car keys. Today I would head out to Double Bay to a charity event at the Sailing Club, as Mrs Kristine Ruslen, Peter Ruslen’s mother, would be attending. Kristine Ruslen was involved in many charities and was known to be a generous donor. But what I was thinking about, was how my now dead informant, Keith, had used the word ‘she’, in relation to Ruslen. As far as I knew, Mrs Kristine Ruslen was no spring chicken, but she was well worth taking a look at.
No stone unturned, I said to myself, trying to bolster my flagging spirits.
Sometime later I groaned as I turned the car into Ocean Street. This promised to be a very monotonous and boring day.