by Sarah Bailey
After she leaves, I look squarely at Paul, who seems to be having trouble swallowing.
‘We know you were in the city when your brother was attacked, Paul. Right near the crime scene.’
‘No, I wasn’t,’ he says sullenly.
‘Yes, you were. We have you on tape.’
He twists his hands in his lap, his eyes fixed on the grass in front of us.
‘Why do you keep lying to us, Paul?’ I say.
‘Do I need a lawyer?’ he finally asks.
‘Up to you,’ I reply. ‘I’d like to think we can straighten this out but, if you prefer, we can do this formally and you can arrange legal counsel.’
‘I don’t want to go back to Melbourne.’
‘That’s fine,’ I say. ‘But you need to tell me what you were doing in the city on Wednesday, 15 August. We know you were with Joanne until around 4 pm but we have a recording of you walking away from the crime scene about fifteen minutes after your brother was stabbed. What were you doing there, Paul?’
He smacks his hands on the wooden bench either side of him. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Were you trying to get close to Sterling, Paul?’ I prompt. ‘Was there something you wanted to tell him?’
‘I don’t know,’ he repeats.
‘Were you angry at him?’
‘Sort of.’ He kicks at the ground. ‘But it wasn’t about that. It won’t make sense if I try to explain it.’
‘Well, let’s just start with what you were doing there?’ He doesn’t reply. I sigh. ‘Okay, so we know you and Sterling spoke on the Sunday evening before he died. Is that why you came to Melbourne? Did he say something during the call that upset you?’
Paul draws a line in the dust with the tip of his boot, throwing a quick glance at the farmhouse. Then he erupts, jolting to his feet. ‘We needed money, okay! Mel’s kid needs to go to a special school ages away from here.’ He gestures around us. ‘Mum and Dad won’t admit it but their house is falling down around them and the farm’s a mess. Sterling brings us some fancy shit we don’t need when he visits and thinks it’s job done. It was a joke, an absolute joke.’
I don’t say anything for a moment, letting his rage fade into the country air.
Then I speak calmly. ‘So you called Sterling to ask for money?’
Paul looks surprised to be standing up and doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. ‘It’s Dad’s sixtieth soon. I thought that maybe if we said we needed money for his birthday, we could use it to help with a few things.’
‘Why didn’t you just ask him directly? Explain what was going on with the farm. Surely he would have understood.’
‘He already thought he was so much better than us. We don’t want his bloody handouts.’
‘I can understand you didn’t want pity, but he was family.’
‘Don’t you get it? We didn’t want his help,’ hisses Paul, fury bursting from him, ‘but we really needed it.’ He leans toward me menacingly. ‘Do you know how hard it is to make a life like this work?’
‘I’m sure it’s very tough,’ I say.
‘Tough!’ he spits. ‘A farming life is hell on earth and Sterling bailed on us right from the start! He never lifted a finger on the farm but he sure liked bringing it up in every bloody interview. It was good for his image when it suited him.’ The blue rings of Paul’s eyes are on fire.
‘What did he say when you asked him for money?’
‘I said we wanted to plan a party for Dad and that we needed a deposit for the hire place, and he started talking about all this stuff we should do, basically taking over and I just lost it. He had no idea. I said that he just needed to give us the money and that Mel and I would sort everything else out, and he got really upset, saying we always left him out and that he wanted to come up with ideas too. As if it was all about him.’
‘Did he agree to give you the money?’
‘Yeah,’ admits Paul. ‘He said he’d transfer it to me.’
‘How much are we talking?’
‘Five grand.’
‘Okay, so Sterling agreed to give you some money. I still don’t get why you were in the city, Paul.’
He paces on the spot and grabs at his hair. ‘I don’t know! I don’t know why I do half the things I do.’ He smacks himself on the forehead with open palms and makes a primal grunting noise. ‘I’m an idiot.’
I look at his puffy face and can’t help feeling a bit sorry for him.
A tractor starts up in the adjacent field and the roar of its engine drifts across the paddocks. The sun is high above us and I’m clammy inside my jacket. All the open space is making me feel uneasy.
‘I just wanted to see the movie being made,’ he says to me finally.
‘You wanted to watch the film shoot?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know!’ He looks at me, pleading. ‘I just wanted to see it, I guess. My brother is a famous movie star and I’m earning less than twenty bucks an hour doing shitty odd jobs.’ He wipes his sleeve across his forehead before sitting down heavily and burying his head in his hands. ‘Everyone always asks me about what Sterling’s doing, and I thought for once it would be cool to say I was there. That I had a VIP pass and watched it live. Sounds fucking stupid now.’
‘Tell me where you went,’ I say.
‘I parked my van near the MCG then I walked up to the corner of Spring and Flinders to where all the barricades were.’ He licks his cracked lips. ‘People were everywhere but I pushed in to the front, and I could see the director—he was sitting up high on a machine and he had a little screen so you could kind of see what the movie would look like.’
‘Did you see Sterling get attacked?’
‘Yeah, sort of. I didn’t know what was going on until everyone started screaming. I could hear Lizzie mostly and then people were going crazy but I didn’t really know what had happened.’
‘Why didn’t you stay? If you thought your brother was hurt, didn’t you want to make sure he was okay?’
Paul looks at me and shrugs. ‘Dunno. I just didn’t. We’re not like normal brothers.’
‘You came to Melbourne quite a lot, Paul, didn’t you?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Did you ever see Sterling, maybe without him realising?’
‘I knew where he lived,’ replies Paul.
‘Is that a yes?’ I press.
‘I saw him sometimes.’
‘When did you come to Melbourne last week, Paul?’
‘I drove down on Monday,’ he admits. ‘I like going there. It’s like I’m alone even though there’s so many people. Around here everyone’s always asking about Sterling—you can’t get away from it. Even in Castlemaine people know who I am. In Melbourne I can sort of just disappear.’
I sense a movement at the farmhouse door and I can make out Melissa’s silhouette behind the flyscreen.
‘Did you ever speak to your brother when you went to Melbourne, Paul?’ I ask.
‘No,’ he shakes his head vigorously. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Why spy on him then?’ I press. ‘Why seek him out?’
‘I dunno,’ he says, looking at me desperately. ‘I guess I just wanted to see it for myself. You know, his life. I always felt like it could have been me.’
Saturday, 25 August
2.18 pm
I pull up on the street outside Dad’s place. It looks exactly the same—with the exception of a large orange pot bursting with flowers, right next to the front door. The colour is jarring against the neutral colours of the house.
I quickly call Fleet and update him on my chat with Paul.
‘So he just happens to be in the city metres from where his brother was attacked but had absolutely nothing to do with it?’ says Fleet, noisily chewing into the phone.
‘That’s what he says,’ I say.
‘You believe him?’
I sigh. ‘I think I do.’
‘You don’t think he got a taste fo
r the idea of having some cash and the potential of a huge payday pushed him over the edge?’
‘It’s possible. He’s definitely angry. He’s intensely bitter about Sterling’s lot in life compared to his own. And he’s a pretty lonely guy.’
‘But?’
I try to articulate the hopelessness that Paul Wade had omitted. ‘He’s confused. He wasn’t cut out for farming, clearly he couldn’t cope, which made him feel even more directionless. He was supposed to be the son who inherits the farm and does the right thing, so now he’s dealing with a big dose of failure. He isn’t in a relationship and I’m guessing he doesn’t have a good track record with women. Matthew and April are quite dependent on him and Melissa, which has led him to feel even more resentful of Sterling. I think his little escapes to the city are his way of being anonymous.’
‘I don’t know, Woodstock,’ says Fleet. ‘Lurking around the city, hitting up sex workers and spying on his brother? He sounds totally looney tunes.’
‘I think he honestly believes all of his bad luck was somehow due to his brother’s success.’
‘But why follow him around?’ presses Fleet. ‘It’s fucking creepy being watched by your own family.’
‘I think he just wanted to see for himself the amazing life that Sterling had. In a weird way it justified his resentment.’
‘I guess we all have our secrets,’ says Fleet, muffling a burp.
‘I guess so.’
‘Are you going to speak with him again?’ he asks.
‘My gut feeling is that he wasn’t involved but I suppose it depends on the tapes. Has anything else turned up showing him closer to the scene?’
‘No. And I tend to agree with you—angry or not, I can’t see Paul pulling this off. It had to be planned and he couldn’t have planned it, at least not on his own.’
‘Motive, but without the means.’
‘Creepy, but with no clue.’
I laugh. ‘I should go.’
‘You still back on Monday?’ he asks.
‘Yep. Monday afternoon, hopefully. There’s just some stuff I gotta do here.’
For a second I think he’ll ask me to elaborate but he just coughs into the phone.
‘Let me know if anything else turns up on Paul,’ I say. ‘I can easily swing past the farmhouse again if I need to.’
‘Will do, Woodstock,’ replies Fleet before hanging up.
Throwing my work phone into my bag, I check my personal phone and see a missed call from Josh. I realise I haven’t even let him know that I’m away. Surely whatever relationship we have is becoming more tenuous by the day due to my rampant neglect.
Bird calls whip through the warm air as I get out of the car. On closer inspection, Dad’s house looks neater than usual: the lawn is trimmed short and there’s a new doormat.
I press on the buzzer and hear the sound dance through the house.
‘Gemma!’ says Rebecca, clad in an apron, her neat bob swinging as she pulls open the door. ‘My goodness, this is a surprise.’
I smile stiffly, intensely annoyed to find her here.
‘Ned!’ she calls out behind her. ‘It’s Gemma!’ She beams at me, clasping her hands together. ‘Your dad is going to be thrilled.’
Dad appears and wraps me in a hug. ‘Gemma, sweetheart! What are you doing here?’
‘I had a lead to follow up on one of my cases nearby, so I thought I’d call in.’
‘The Wade case,’ says Rebecca knowingly. ‘His folks don’t live far from here. Remember I told you that, Ned?’
‘Can you stay for Ben’s soccer presentation on Sunday?’ asks Dad. ‘He will be so excited.’
I nod, wishing Rebecca would disappear.
‘I can’t believe they make you work on the weekend,’ she says, patting me awkwardly on the arm.
‘It’s not really a nine-to-five job,’ I retort.
Dad clears his throat. ‘Come in, sweetheart. You look tired. Rebecca has been baking—you can probably smell it. Come in, come in,’ he fusses.
Stepping inside, I can immediately smell Rebecca’s homemaking efforts. Dropping my bag next to the couch, I take in a vase of flowers on the bench and a floral throw rug across the couch.
‘Now let me just cut you a slice of this cake,’ Rebecca says, holding up a knife. ‘It’s still warm.’
‘I’m not really a cake person,’ I say.
‘Gemma…’ says Dad.
‘What? I’m not.’
‘That’s fine,’ exclaims Rebecca. ‘What else would you like instead? I have some lovely homemade soup, or I can make you a sandwich?’
‘Just a water is fine,’ I say.
Dad eyes me as he settles on the couch. ‘So, when do you go home?’
‘Monday,’ I say. ‘I’ve got to get back. It’s been a pretty full-on few weeks.’
Dad shakes his head in sympathetic disbelief. ‘It all sounds very bizarre, darling. I hope you’re being careful.’
I wave his concern away. ‘It’s fine, Dad.’
Rebecca hands me a large glass of water and places a plate boasting a huge slice of fruit cake on the arm of the couch.
‘Thanks, Bec,’ says Dad, giving her a smile.
‘Thanks,’ I mutter, sipping too quickly on my water and spluttering.
Dad and Rebecca chat about the latest Smithson news, jumping in and out of each other’s sentences. I grip the water glass. I’d forgotten how high-pitched her voice is.
‘So are you both coming to the soccer thing tomorrow?’ I ask.
Dad holds Rebecca’s hand and nods. ‘We sure are. Ben formally invited us. He wrote us a little card—it’s around here somewhere.’
‘Cute,’ I say, irritated but trying to hide it. ‘I’m obviously going to go and see Ben this arvo and hang out with him for a while. But then I thought that you and I could have a late dinner tonight, Dad, after Ben goes down?’
He smiles at me before exchanging a look with Rebecca. ‘Well, sweetheart, we already have plans but you’re welcome to join us.’
‘We’re having the neighbours over for dinner,’ adds Rebecca. ‘Do you know the Parsons? No? Well, anyway, it would be lovely to have you come along.’
Something is building inside me and I find myself getting to my feet just like Paul Wade did earlier. ‘Is there any way you can postpone the dinner?’ I swallow. ‘It would be good to just hang out with you here, Dad, and catch up properly.’
‘Gemma.’ He shifts so that he’s more upright. ‘Sit down, sweetheart.’
I’m about to protest but something in his look makes me reconsider. I sit. ‘What?’ I say stiffly.
‘Darling, I wanted to tell you this earlier but I didn’t because, well, I wanted to tell you in person.’ He removes his glasses and rubs each eye in turn before putting them back on. ‘And now I guess it’s as good a time as any.’
‘What is it?’ I ask, my eyes fixed firmly on him.
‘Well,’ his voice wavers, ‘Rebecca was spending so much time here that we thought it made sense for her to move in.’
All the saliva in my mouth disappears. ‘Right,’ I manage to choke out after a few beats. ‘When did that happen?’
‘About three weeks ago,’ says Rebecca. ‘I’m just getting a few bits and pieces done to my old place, painting the fence, and then I’ll be popping it on the market.’
Dad squeezes her hand and then looks at me again. ‘It’s all going so well, Gemma,’ he says softly. ‘So well, in fact, that we’ve also decided to get married.’
‘Married?’ I blurt.
‘Yes. There are no firm plans or anything. Who knows, we might never get around to it, but at some stage hopefully we’ll make it all official.’
My chest stretches and I feel like I’m going to pass out. ‘Married,’ I say again.
Rebecca holds out her hand. ‘We got my mother’s old ring reset,’ she says, showing me a gold band featuring a row of sapphires. ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’
‘Where are Mum’s rin
gs?’ I ask suddenly, realising I have no idea.
Dad looks alarmed, shooting a quick glance at Rebecca, who is still admiring her ring.
‘She was buried with it, sweetheart,’ he says. ‘She only wore a wedding band.’
‘Well,’ I say, aware that I need to keep speaking, to fill this moment with words. ‘Congratulations.’
‘I did mean to tell you sooner, Gemma,’ says Dad. ‘I just didn’t want to tell you on the phone. That didn’t seem right.’
‘It’s fine,’ I say, springing to my feet. ‘It’s great.’
‘Yes,’ says Dad nervously. ‘Well, we certainly think so.’
I look at my watch, overwhelmed by the smallness of the room. The smell of cake. ‘I have to go. I should get over to Scott’s.’
Dad scrambles to his feet. ‘Will you come back for dinner?’
‘I’ll set up the spare room,’ says Rebecca, glancing back and forth between us.
‘No, no,’ I babble, ‘I think I’ll just hang with Ben.’
‘Let me give you some keys so you can get in later,’ says Dad.
‘No need,’ I say. ‘I’ll stay at Scott’s.’
With Dad and Rebecca watching me, I grab my bag and back away from them, a smile plastered on my face. ‘Have a nice night. And congratulations, like I said. I’ll see you at Ben’s soccer thing.’
Saturday, 25 August
2.59 pm
My heart refuses to calm down as I drive the short distance to my old house. I feel high, every skin cell on edge, my brain whirring so rapidly that I’m actually thinking about nothing at all.
Turning sharply into my old street, I breathe around an unexpected sob as I pull up a few metres from what’s now Scott’s house. I put my hand over my mouth, looking at myself in the rear-view mirror, riding out the surge of emotion. I know this is childish, ridiculous. Mum has been dead for years and Dad has a right to be happy. I don’t even live here anymore. What is wrong with me? I run through this internal dialogue, listing all the reasons why this marriage is a good thing, but my hands won’t stop shaking and I teeter dangerously on the brink of tears.
Behind me, Scott’s car turns into the street. For some reason I hadn’t even considered the possibility that they would be out. He parks the car in the driveway before jumping out to retrieve Ben from the back seat. Ben emerges holding a football and kicks his short legs in the air, making Scott laugh until he puts him down. He runs across the front lawn before turning around and yelling something to Scott.