Murderer's Thumb

by Beth Montgomery

  ‘Who’s Barry?’ Adam asked.

  ‘Local copper,’ he said.

  They sat on the ground with their backs to the skeleton, as if ignoring it would somehow make it go away.

  ‘Who do you reckon it is?’ Adam said.

  ‘No flesh on it,’ Loody said, opening his cigarette packet. ‘S’pose they’ll do forensic tests and everything. Don’t they check their teeth for flllings or something? They’ll find out sooner or later.’ He lit a cigarette and offered Adam one.

  ‘No thanks,’ he said, raising a hand. The cigarette fumes made Adam feel sicker. He squeezed his lips together and swallowed the growing bitterness. His throat was dry as if packed with sawdust. ‘Got any water?’ he said.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To drink.’

  ‘Nah, you’ll keep till we get back,’ Loody said, glancing around at the bone still trapped in the prongs of the tractor. He snorted in disbelief. ‘Amazing shit! I wonder how long it’s been lying there?’

  Adam shook his head, his brain struggling to function. Normally his curious nature would have kicked in immediately, making sense of things. Now he just felt dazed. He had to start asking questions to clear the fog.

  ‘Must’ve been here a while,’ Loody went on. ‘The soil on top didn’t look any different…not disturbed. Just looked like the rest of the ground.’

  ‘When was the silage made? Adam asked.

  Loody sighed. ‘Six years ago…my first year.’

  Adam thought out loud. ‘So it must have been buried no more than six years ago and not in the last few months…’

  ‘Yeah…those boots…like a girl’s boots…oh shit, you don’t think…’

  ‘Think what?’

  Loody’s face had drained of colour. ‘Well those girls, Em and her friend.’

  ‘What girls? What are you talking about?’

  ‘They disappeared…a few years back. Em was the boss’s daughter. Emma Thackeray…the police said she was a missing person. Thought she’d run away from home. She was mates with the other girl, the one with black nail polish and blue hair. She went too.’ He twisted around to look at the boot. Although the vinyl was caked in blackened silage, it was unmistakably a boot. ‘Those boots,’ he whispered. ‘Jesus, it must be one of them.’

  Adam picked at his sneakers where a thin strip of rubber was coming loose on the toe. ‘What time of year did you make the pit?’

  Loody searched skyward for a memory. ‘Must’a been October, something like that.’

  ‘Did anyone know about the pit, apart from you and the Thackerays?’

  Loody glared at him through a curtain of smoke. He took a deep breath, then exhaled with a long whoosh. ‘Christ, Adam, you sound like a copper! I don’t know. That was a long time ago. Everyone makes silage in the spring. I suppose heaps of people knew we were making it. What I can’t work out is why they’d bury someone in it. Cows won’t eat it now. It’s all black…all spoilt.’

  They were silent for a few minutes until Adam spoke, ‘What were they like?’

  ‘The girls?’

  Adam nodded.

  ‘Well, the other one was weird, city type…you know black clothes and black lipstick, really white face…that was Lina.’

  ‘A goth?’

  ‘What?’ Loody frowned.

  ‘The gothic look.’ Adam struggled to explain. ‘Kind of …as if…as if she dressed like a vampire.’

  ‘Oh yeah, eggsactly. Plus she was into reading palms. Bit cracked if you ask me. Bit of a bitch really. Liked to nick stuff, too, so they say.’

  ‘What about Emma?’

  Loody cleared his throat before he answered. ‘Em was a country kid…bit of a tart I suppose…but good fun. Never hurt anyone. We were all shocked when she vanished, just went missing from the house. Never got on the bus into the city. They reckon she must have hitched a ride. Just pissed off. Apparently she’d threatened it enough…I dunno.’

  ‘Where was this Lina girl last seen?’

  Loody swore and shook his head. ‘You sure you’re not a cop?’

  Adam forced a grin. ‘My grandfather was,’ he said. ‘Even joined the army, Military Police,’ he said.

  ‘Bullshit?’

  ‘Nah, serious. Died on duty and everything. Some crook shot him in the back. Guess I take after him. Mum reckons I do.’

  ‘Better watch your back then. Don’t ask too many questions round here. People don’t like talking.’

  ‘So what are you doing now?’

  ‘Fuck off, smart arse.’

  ‘Well someone’s got to fill me in. I’m like my grandfather, remember, I need answers!’

  Loody sighed. ‘Oh yeah, about who? What?’

  ‘About Lina. Who was she?’

  ‘Don’t know her last name. She wasn’t a local. Just another city slicker,’ he sneered and ground his cigarette butt into the dirt. ‘Foster kid of Frank Pickett’s, I think. Anyway she hardly ever went to school…she used to get on the bus, then nick off for the day. Didn’t go to school the day she went missing. Everyone assumed she just shot through, back to the city. Who knows?’

  At the sound of a car, they both looked towards the gate. It was a standard police car. A tall, uniformed, sandy-haired policeman with a small beer gut stepped out, opened the gate and then drove in, parking a few metres from them.

  Adam and Loody stood up.

  The policeman got out and hitched up his pants as if the belt he wore was useless. There was a gun, walnut-coloured and chunky on his right hip. Adam couldn’t take his eyes off it.

  ‘How you going, Barry?’ Loody said.

  The policeman gave a slow nod. ‘Got some company, have you?’

  Loody jerked his head towards the tractor. ‘Over there.’

  ‘I meant your mate here,’ Barry said, eyeing Adam up and down. ‘You just moved in at Thackeray’s old place?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m Adam Statkus.’

  ‘Barry Timothy. Play footy, Adam?’ Barry asked.

  ‘Yeah. Haven’t played for a couple of seasons now, though.’ He loved football and wished he could get into it again. Kick to kick in the park with Brock was no substitute for the real game.

  ‘Pre-season training’s started, Mondays and Wednesdays for now. You ought to drop in. We could do with some height.’

  Adam frowned and motioned towards the silage pit. ‘Don’t you want to check out—’

  ‘Good of you to shut the gate, Barry,’ Loody interrupted.

  ‘Stiff isn’t going anywhere, is it?’ Barry said deadpan. ‘Been threatening to walk off, has it?’

  Loody glared at the policeman.

  Barry chuckled. ‘Just having a lend of you, mate. Found something suspicious, eh?’

  ‘Looks like a leg,’ Loody said, taking a deep breath.

  ‘Does it now?’ Barry said. He walked over to the tractor, peered at the bone and discarded boot. Then he took out a notebook and started scribbling.

  Adam followed Barry over to the tractor and explained how they’d found the bones. He thought Loody was with him, but he hadn’t moved. He stood clenching his fists, frowning at the silage.

  ‘I’ll need your phone number, Adam,’ Barry said.

  ‘Why? Uh…do you have to?’

  ‘Got a problem with that?’

  ‘No it’s…it’s just I can’t quite remember it yet,’ Adam lied.

  Barry gave him a strange look. ‘Never mind. I know where you live. You might want to think about counselling, you know. Don’t want this messing with your head.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ Adam said, turning away from the protruding bone.

  Barry clapped him on the back. ‘Come on. You guys can go home now.’

  They walked back to the John Deere where Loody was waiting.

  ‘You’ll have to lower the silage,’ Barry said. ‘Don’t want forensics straining their necks.’

  Loody gaped at him.

  ‘Don’t think about it, son, just do it.’

  Loody hesitated,
spat in the dust. The spittle flew at least a metre and a half, as if he was in a competition. He strode to the tractor, slipped into the seat and lowered the grab. When the jaws reached almost to the ground and could go no further, he opened them slowly so the silage spilled onto the ground. The impact caused the bundle of grass to fall apart. Loody swung down from the yellow tractor and marched back to the John Deere.

  ‘Come on,’ he said to Adam.

  ‘Tell Colin he’ll have to get his silage somewhere else,’ Barry shouted after them. ‘This is a crime scene, now.’

  Loody spun round. ‘But there’s no other feed. Can’t we use the other side of the pit?’

  ‘No one’s to come in here, unless it’s police. We don’t want anyone tampering with evidence.’

  ‘Colin will go sick.’

  ‘That’s not my problem, son.’

  Loody pulled himself up into the cabin. ‘What a fucken mess!’ he yelled as he slammed the door.

  ‘You all right?’ Adam asked.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he snapped. But Adam could see Loody’s hands trembling. He started up the John Deere and headed for the gate, his face grim.

  ‘Can’t use the silage,’ he muttered. ‘Jesus! What are we going to feed the herd? Doesn’t he know there’s a fucken drought! May as well start looking for another job. Can’t milk starving cows.’ He hunched over the steering wheel as he drove and lit another cigarette.

  Adam sat in silence, numb from Loody’s rage. He’d just met this bloke and here he was at his most vulnerable. How could he console him, stop his ranting? It was easier to let him go on.

  Loody glanced at him, his eyes wide with fury. ‘What am I going to say to Colin? How do I tell him I’ve found his daughter’s dead body?’

  THREE

  ‘I can’t believe it, it’s just not possible…what am I going to say?’ Loody went on and on like a recorded message.

  Adam was silent, but his mind was racing. Here he was, stuck in the country, kilometres from where he thought the action was and he’d found a body. It was like being on the set of CSI or Midsomer Murders, shows he never missed on TV. But they sure didn’t have the impact that he felt now, the buzz of con flicting emotions: fear, curiosity, suspicion, fascination. He imagined his grandfather, Witold, must have felt like this every time he investigated a crime scene. Then there was the nausea. Had Witold spewed too?

  Loody dropped Adam off where they’d first met. Adam watched the tractor rumble down the road to the new brick house. It left huge V-shaped tread marks in the dust.

  Patterns fascinated Adam. Even as a toddler he had arranged toys in specific order or painted neat recurring lines and shapes. His old man was proud of Adam’s accuracy and eye for detail. He’d make a fine draughtsman one day, Kazek often boasted, just like him. Adam’s mum Rosemary would sigh and say Adam was just as obsessive and anal as Kazek.

  She could talk. Look at her now, pale and anxious, peering out the window at him, her cropped fringe sticking out untidily. She looked like a startled cockatoo with its crest up. Every day she did a dozen circuits of the windows, checking each approach to the house for any sign of Kazek. It gave Adam the shits. Why couldn’t she stand up to the old man, press charges and go ahead with an intervention order? Just because it wasn’t granted the first time, didn’t mean she shouldn’t try again. It was too much for her though. Even the Clerk of Courts sneered at her in disbelief. A seventy-year-old stalker! Get real, he’d said. Rosemary was so shattered that she didn’t trust the legal process any more. She didn’t trust anything any more: phone calls, knocks at the door, letters and parcels.

  Now she’d freak out about the dead body.

  On the verandah Adam kicked off his expensive sneakers. His socks were wet with sweat. He left them at the door too; they sat squat, like giant vol-au-vents. Meatloaf ’s ‘Bat Out of Hell’ greeted him as he walked inside. He went into the lounge room and turned off the stereo.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ his mum called from the spare room.

  Adam could hear the whirr of her potter’s wheel. She was at it again, making those stupid pots that collected dust. The house would fill up with them, like every place they moved to. He looked in on her from the doorway. ‘I can’t believe you like that crap, Mum.’

  She sat dwarfing her potter’s wheel in a pair of old jeans and a dirty oversized T-shirt. Her salt and pepper bob fell forward to shade her face. She looked up and wiped her cheek with the back of her hand, smearing clay across her face. Combined with her messed up fringe it made her look scruffy. But then she always managed to drop food on her clothes or smudge her make-up. Empty cardboard boxes were heaped up behind her, and Adam’s big white telescope was on its tripod to her right. She was shaping her latest creation, something tall like an urn, but off-centre.

  ‘No need to switch it off,’ she said.

  ‘You do the same to me.’

  ‘Because it’s always so loud.’

  He shrugged. ‘I’ve got something important to tell you. Come and have a coffee.’

  The top of her urn wobbled and collapsed. ‘Damn!’ she said, punching down the clay and glaring at Adam.

  ‘What’s wrong? Not my fault your pot crashed.’

  ‘I’ve told you not to interrupt me when I’m doing this!’ Fuming, she pounded the clay into a lump.

  Adam shook his head. ‘Get real, Mum. It’s not as if you’re making anything important.’ He hated her obsession with pottery—she couldn’t spare him ten minutes.

  ‘It’s art, Adam, and it is important!’ Her voice was shrill.

  ‘Looks crap to me,’ he said.

  ‘Bloody hell, Adam!’ Rosemary shouted, bashing the mound of clay in despair.

  He retreated before she had time to throw it at him.

  ‘Just had a look round the farm,’ he said to her as she entered the kitchen. ‘Went for a ride with Loody, one of the guys who works here. Drove down the road to get some silage and found a dead body.’

  Rosemary stiffened. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said we found a dead body. A cop came and everything.’

  She stared at him for a few moments. Then she started clawing at her thighs, leaving grey-white streaks of clay as she ran her fingernails up and down her jeans. She always did it when she was stressed. It pissed him off.

  Finally she spoke, ‘Where’s that coffee? Put plenty of sugar in yours.’

  ‘I hate sugar in my coffee,’ he snarled.

  Rosemary moved to the sink and washed her hands, scrubbing violently.

  Adam was sure one day she’d draw blood.

  She peered at him over the top of her glasses. ‘You’ll be in shock…you need sugar.’ She watched him spoon ground coffee into the coffee pot. ‘So what did the police say?’

  ‘Not much, just took my name. Didn’t tell him our number.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Said he’ll catch up with me soon.’

  ‘Did they offer you help…you know, counselling?’

  ‘Yeah, if I wanted it.’

  ‘And do you?’

  ‘Dunno. Wait and see.’ He took his time pouring the water and pushing the plunger.

  She sighed and touched her throat, red from heat rash. She rubbed at it then resumed the assault on her legs, scratching up and down, up and down. ‘So…where was this…body?’ she said.

  Adam summarised the story and passed her a mug of coffee.

  ‘Do they know who it is?’ she asked.

  ‘Didn’t say. Loody reckons it must be one of the two girls who disappeared from here six years ago.’

  Rosemary gulped her coffee. She coughed and blubbered, eyes streaming, hand over her mouth.

  ‘You right?’

  ‘Mmm…it reminds me of your father. You know when he watched the news and he was totally mesmerised whenever mass graves were found. It didn’t matter if it was Albania or Bosnia or somewhere in Africa or Asia. He’d go spare if they found bodies.’

  Adam nodded. ‘Yeah, he a
lways went psycho.’ He didn’t need to be reminded of Kazek yelling at them to shut up, the haunted glint in his eyes, the silence that followed, sometimes for days. Crazy old bastard.

  ‘As long as you don’t react like him.’

  Adam shook his head. ‘Nah, I take after Witold, remember: cool in a crisis, tough enough to get to the bottom of any mystery. Ha ha.’

  Rosemary shook her head. ‘It’s not a joke, Adam. He was so tough he made enemies and was murdered.’ She twitched in her seat. ‘Nasty business.’

  He drained his cup, screwing up his face as he swallowed. ‘It really is gross with sugar, Mum.’

  She smiled to herself. ‘Do you good. Listen, do you still want that bureau for your room? We may as well move it now.’

  ‘You bet. I’m sick of doing homework in here.’

  The desk stood in a corner of the lounge room. Its writing surface was pale and scratched and marked with ink stains. Adam could imagine the colour coming back into the timber if it was restored. The desk would be beautiful then with its sculptured legs, ornate hinges and knobs. But the drawers were the best bit. There were heaps of them and he couldn’t wait to fill them with stuff. The desk was part of the old furniture the Thackerays left in the house when they rented it out. Mostly junk, Colin’s wife, Olwyn, had admitted, except for the desk and a piano. They’d be worth a bit one day but they had no room for them in the new farmhouse.

  Adam dusted the desk with a rag before they each took a side and lifted. Something rolled inside one of the drawers. They repositioned to get a better grip, lifted again and tottered along the wall towards the doorway. As they manoeuvred through, the rolling noise continued.

  ‘Sounds like a marble,’ Adam said. Whatever it was, it was irritating.

  FOUR

  Adam slid back the desk cover, exposing all the compartments. Some of the drawers had come open. He checked inside. They were empty, but the largest drawer in the middle was locked. He shook the desk and heard the rattling again. Whatever the object was, it was definitely in the locked drawer. He felt in all the compartments for the missing key. Nothing. Then he ran his hand under the desk. His finger-tips brushed against a raised object: cardboard, tape? He got down on his knees and peered underneath. A pale shape was taped to the underside, near one of the legs. He peeled it free. It was a piece of folded paper. Inside, in small loopy handwriting, was a message: