by Joy Dettman
What the hell had he got himself into?
midday in molliston
Doors were open to the heat now, no gain in trying to lock it out. Let her in through the front door and out through the rear, maybe she’d take a bit of the heat from the old stove with her. Had to keep those stoves burning today – always a roast for Sunday dinner.
A few folk lolled on verandas or leaned in doorways, a few hands rose lethargically as Tom freewheeled down Railway Road, his head burning beneath his helmet, his back roasting beneath his vest. At least the beer he’d put away at Hunter’s was now coming out of him in sweat, preventing his blood from boiling over.
He was totalling up how many miles he’d ridden since dawn when he had to dismount at Kennedy’s gate. And the truck was there, parked in the shade of a stand of blue gums. He closed the gate behind him, pushed those pedals another fifty yards and sighted his new prime suspect working in his orchard.
He wasn’t expecting to see him. Some rethinking of options might have to be done here, and fast. Leaning the bike against the truck’s tray, Tom stood a moment, readjusting his mind to Chris Reichenberg’s position as prime suspect.
‘Hello there,’ he called. Dave placed a handful of peaches down as he turned to his visitor. ‘I suppose you’ve been in touch with the Squires, Mr Kennedy?’
‘Not this morning.’ Dave plucked another peach.
There wasn’t going to be an easy way out of this one. Tom scratched at his jaw, continuing the scratch up to his brow, lifting his helmet. ‘I’ve knocked on your door a few times today. I left you a note at six, asking you to get in touch.’
‘I haven’t been back to the house,’ Dave replied. ‘Thought I’d try to get a few crates in before lunch.’
Tom nodded, moved deeper into the shade of the young trees. ‘I’m the bearer of bad news, I’m afraid.’ Dave stopped picking peaches and stood waiting for him to get it out, so he got it out. ‘Your wife was found early this morning on Merton Road. She was dead on arrival at the Willama hospital, Mr Kennedy.’ Tom offered his hand but Dave was busy placing peaches in a wooden crate at his feet, placing them down slowly, keeping his head low. Tom withdrew his hand and made another fast readjustment of his thinking processes. ‘At this stage it looks as if it could have been murder.’ He waited for the guilty flinch, for the shifting eyes, but Kennedy looked up at him, looked him square in the eye.
‘How?’ he asked.
‘Her skull was fractured by what appears to have been a massive blow to the base of the skull.’
A shake of his head, and Dave’s hands reached again into the tree, that topic of conversation seemingly exhausted.
Tom stood on, not knowing what to do next. That coot’s little wife was dead, and he didn’t appear concerned enough to stop picking his peaches. What the hell did he think he was doing? Was he waiting to be read his rights and cuffed? Look, no handcuffs. Tom took his notebook from his pocket, needing to look busy while Dave finished filling one crate and began on another.
‘When something like this happens in a quiet little town, it’s logical to start looking around at any strangers. I suppose you’ve had a few pickers here this last week, Mr Kennedy?’
‘I had five here yesterday. We worked through until the light was gone.’ His words didn’t slow his hands. ‘They were supposed to be here today – or three of them were.’
‘Can you give me their names?’
‘The Henderson brothers. They’re Reg Curtin’s men – he loaned them to me yesterday. He had a mob of friends over from Willama, and all I had was Logan, Riley and Vern Lowe – unreliable, useless swine, all three. I got home from the cannery this morning, expecting these trees to be stripped, and I find no one here.’
Tom knew the Henderson brothers. They’d been coming up here at picking time for four or five years now. Logan and Riley he didn’t know, but the other name caused his heartbeat to step up its pace. Vernon, he wrote instead of Vern. Vernon bloody lower-than-a-crippled-snake’s-belly!
He’d known a Vernon Lowe in Melbourne, had taken pleasure in running him in, which he’d done regularly. How many Vernon Lowes might there be in the world? Not too many.
‘Lowe – would he be a woolly-headed, shifty eyed, scrawny little runt of forty-odd?’
‘That’s him. Skinny as a snake with a head of hair like an unshorn merino.’ No break in the picking. Dave was fast and careful – and starting to look like a carbon copy of his father.
Tom hadn’t been around Molliston before the war, though Rob had mentioned once how Dave Kennedy had been one of the town’s bright young lads, well educated and a brilliant footballer who had perfected the art of kicking goals over his shoulder while running in the opposite direction. Hard to believe this bloke had ever kicked a football. He looked dried out, worn out, deep wrinkles cutting their way down from eyes to chin. Thin faced, wrists of sinew and bone – he could have passed for fifty. Tom, who was damn near fifty, turned away, feeling a wave of pity for that bright young lad who had once kicked goals over his shoulder.
‘I could do with a drink, and you look as if one mightn’t go astray yourself, Mr Kennedy.’
Dave glanced at the sun. ‘It must be close to midday,’ he said, and he led the way to the house, Tom walking behind him, watching that gimpy leg still trying to march.
‘When I was down here earlier I took the liberty of looking in through your curtains. I noticed that one of your back rooms looked like it could have been turned upside down. Vern Lowe has done a bit of time for robbery –’
Dave didn’t appear to be listening. He removed Tom’s calling-card twig from his lock, glanced at it, then inserted his key, Tom feeling relieved when it went in and turned.
Heat. Stuffy, airless heat in that house, along with the smell of new furniture, glue, paint, stale smoke and something else, something rank, all roasting together in a modern kitchen, which must have caught every ray of the morning sun on its long unprotected windows.
‘Tea?’
‘Whatever is convenient, Mr Kennedy.’ He sniffed, wondering at that rank smell, unable to identify it.
‘I’ll have to light the stove.’
‘A cool drink then. Anything.’
‘There’s water on tap. It won’t be cool, but help yourself. I’ll have to light the stove sooner or later. I’ve got a bit of beef going off.’ He opened a firebox full of ash, sighed, closed it, and removed the circular hotplate. He crumpled a few sheets of newspaper and tossed them down the hole with a handful of chips and bark. He manoeuvred in a few larger sticks, added a good slosh of kerosene from a bottle, struck a match and threw it down the hole. There was a small explosion as blue flames leapt high, crawled across the face of the stove where the fluid had spilled, crawled over to the hob towards the open bottle. Tom stepped back, looking for cover.
‘It shouldn’t take too long. Squire paid a fortune for this stove. It heats water in a tank on the side – which reminds me, it probably needs filling up.’
‘Handy, I suppose – if you’re wanting to…’ He’d set out to mention washing the dishes, until sighting a pile of dishes in the sink. ‘…wanting to have a bit of a clean-up.’
No reply, Dave busy filling the stove’s water tank.
‘That bedroom, Mr Kennedy, as I was saying before. Would you know if anything is missing?’ Tom asked, still wanting to hang Vern Lowe for something. He’d started wanting to hang that snake-eyed little mongrel twenty-odd years ago.
‘My savings, Constable. Seventy-eight pounds. You may as well sit down,’ he said, his thumb pointing at a chair. ‘There is no question as to who took my money. My wife took it last night. She was leaving me. And no question as to who turned that room upside down either. I did, looking for my money.’
This man was stark raving mad. His wife was dead – with Tom pitying him, and looking for a reason to hang Vern Lowe – and he comes out with something like that! Tom stared at Kennedy’s back, watching him poke more wood down the hole, add anothe
r spurt of kerosene, create another explosion, then, thankfully, cork the bottle of kero and place it on the mantelpiece, away from the naked flame.
Dave set his kettle over the central hotplate and turned to his visitor. ‘Don’t get me wrong here, Thompson. I’m as sorry as the next chap that the girl is dead. I thought she must have caught that train to Willama last night, and had probably ridden back with it, gone to Melbourne – but my being sorry doesn’t make one iota of difference to anything, does it?’
‘I can’t say that it does, Mr Kennedy. So, do you know what time she left the house, if she left it alone?’
‘I didn’t see her leave, but if you didn’t know she’d been playing around with the youngest Reichenberg kid for years, then you’re one of the few in town who didn’t. That’s who she would have gone to.’ He sounded tired, looked beaten, looked as if he wanted Tom to get on his bike and ride away. Then he sighed, stretched his back, grasped the mantelpiece, taking the weight off his bad leg. ‘I found out she’d taken my money when I came in from picking. That was sometime after dark. We argued, I went out to load the truck – it could have been about nine. That’s when she would have gone. She’d told me straight out that she was going to Melbourne with Reichenberg, and that nothing I could do would stop her. I threatened to burn all of her clothes, and she said she’d run naked to him. That’s the girl I married, Thompson. If my mother had spoken like that to my old man, he would have cut her throat.’
He straightened his back, walked to his meat safe and took out a lump of beef, slid it into a pan, threw in a cup of water, then placed the meat in the cold oven, which wasn’t the right thing to do to a nice bit of beef. Tom didn’t know a lot about cooking, but he’d learned how to cook meat. He turned away; he wasn’t out here to give cooking lessons.
‘Do you mind if I take a look around, just to get an idea of things before the city chaps arrive and start asking me questions?’
‘Go for your life.’
He was in that ransacked bedroom when Dave came in and caught him looking at an army uniform hung over the foot of the bed. Dave claimed it. ‘I kept my money in a cigarette tin, in that breast pocket,’ he said, patting the pocket, making the medals clink. Then he hung it in the wardrobe and returned to the kitchen.
Tom stood on, looking in that wardrobe, staring at the long blue gown Rachael was wearing when she’d played the piano at the last concert. Not much else in there – a woman’s coat, a man’s suit, and a nice one, a few empty hangers. It looked as if the girl had packed a case before she left. He closed the door, ran a hand over the wood. Not bad looking furniture, the bed, wardrobe and dressing table a matching set. Only one item on top of the wardrobe, or only one that he could see; it looked like a rifle in a canvas bag. The top of a wardrobe was a common enough place to keep a rifle, out of reach of the kids. Tom felt the length of the bag. Definitely some sort of gun in there, but Rachael hadn’t been shot.
Back in the kitchen, Dave had stepped out of his trousers and was rubbing a rancid liniment into a thigh resembling the twisted branch of a rotten tree, a termite’s road map drawn on it. And no wonder young Rachael had left home, Tom thought, identifying that rank stink. How the hell anyone could rub that on their skin he didn’t know. He stepped fast to the open door, stood sucking in raw heat, and blessing it.
‘They put too much glass in this place, too many windows and no shade for them. It will be pleasant in winter. I, personally, would have set the house on the old site to take advantage of the trees. I’ve planted a few trees on the west side. They’ll grow in time.’ His hands continued spreading that stink. ‘It all comes down to time, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘Another few months of time and I could have . . . could have, but didn’t, and that’s life.’
‘We never know what’s around the next corner, Mr Kennedy. I don’t suppose you’d have any idea what your wife might have been wearing when she left?’
‘As I said, I didn’t see her leave.’ Dave’s hands continued to work that leg, kneading, slapping at wasted flesh, reaching beneath his drawers and rubbing the liniment into his upper thigh and hip. Tom turned his back, not wanting to see.
‘Any idea what sort of handbag she would have been carrying?’
‘Brown, big, she never moved without it. Schmidt made it. He does some nice leatherwork.’ His trousers back on, he stirred up his stove, tested the weight of the kettle, opened the oven and poured a little more water into his baking pan. ‘You’d wonder how she could do what she did, you know. One of her brothers died over there, the other one comes home shot to hell. That girl had no sense of family, or of what her family lost to those bloody Germans.’
Tom nodded in agreement, continuing to nod while reconsidering what might have taken place here last night. She’d met her boyfriend late at the pub. He knew that much. She must have found his money early, told him she was leaving, must have come back, to pack or pick up her case, and he killed her, then returned her to her boyfriend’s gate. Simple. Maybe too simple.
Tom took a good deep breath of air then walked across to lean against the ice chest, checking it for signs of blood. No smears, no splatters. He walked to the sink, filled a tumbler with water, which allowed him to have a good look at the sink, at the taps and tap handles. No blood smears.
Is a man with a new truck going to kill his wife then leave her to be found a few hundred yards from her home? Wouldn’t he dump her down a mine shaft, or somewhere miles from home where she wasn’t likely to be found, then tell everyone she’d taken off? That would have been the logical thing to do, but how logical was this chap? How logical does a chap feel when his wife of three months tells him she’s running off with an old boyfriend? It didn’t take much to set some of the returned boys off. A decent clap of thunder could still send Bluey Wilson ducking for cover, though he might laugh about it later. Maybe Dave had lost more than his testicles over there. How could a sane man live with the stink of that liniment?
Don’t get sidetracked here, Thomo. Think. Husband, with new truck, kills wife, dumps wife miles from home and the body just happens to be found. Questions are going to be asked. How did she get there? Who dumped her there? Who is the first suspect?
Husband with truck.
Husband kills wife, dumps her a few hundred yards from home, out front of known boyfriend’s place, then goes about his normal business of carting peaches. That could make him very sane and very clever. So, why hadn’t he been clever enough to act shocked when he’d learned she was dead? Because it’s not easy to act shocked if you’re not shocked, and sane, logical, clever buggers weren’t always good actors.
‘So, when she told you she was leaving you, Mr Kennedy, how did you . . . I mean, were you expecting it?’ Tom said.
Kennedy turned to him, recognising the line, and what might have passed for a smile played at his mouth. ‘She’d walk into a shop, something would catch her eye and she’d buy it, never asking the cost. Squire didn’t know how to raise dogs. Those kids could have anything they wanted as long as they did what he wanted them to do. You might have heard about Freddy Squire.’ Tom shook his head. ‘He was his own man, that kid, right from boyhood. Freddy wanted to go to war and Nicholas wouldn’t let him, so he packed his bags one night and went to war – became one of those army flyers. I saw a couple of them one day, buzzing around the sky like a pair of wasps, trying to best the other one. Unreal, watching them up there – anyway, that’s another story. What I set out to say was, I learned as a kid that you can’t hold a bird if it wants to fly. My wife wanted to fly. Does that answer your question?’
‘I suppose it does, Mr Kennedy.’
‘I was a fool to get myself caught up in that situation. I tried to create paradise here but, as Tige might say, this isn’t bloody France, is it?’
‘You’re right there,’ Tom agreed, though all he knew about the Frenchies was that they ate snails and frogs’ legs and cut off the toffs’ heads.
‘He’s got me over a barrel now,’ Dave said, lim
ping towards the bedroom. Tom tailed him, his mind on a rifle barrel, but his host stopped at the door and pointed towards the dressing table.
‘Look at it. Everything a woman could wish for. That hairbrush set would have cost a mint, but did she use it? No. She’d sit in front of that mirror brushing her hair with a little old brush made in Germany. She told me it had been locked in a tin trunk for forty years, and that old Joe Reichenberg had given it to her. I pitched it out the door one day. Thereafter, she kept it in her handbag.’
Violence was not uncommon in the bedroom, but the stink of that liniment in the enclosed area of the narrow passage was doing violence to Tom’s nostrils, so he backed up and returned to the door.
‘What time did you leave for the cannery this morning, Mr Kennedy?’
‘Before daybreak.’
‘Four? Four-thirty?’
‘It could have been. As I said, I don’t look at clocks.’
‘And your wife wasn’t here when you left?’
‘I thought I’d made that clear. She was gone when I came in from loading the truck, around eleven. The train had gone through. I thought she would have been on it.’ Dave was back at the stove, making a pot of tea. He didn’t wait for it to draw before he poured it. No sugar or milk was offered – and the kettle hadn’t been boiling. Tom emptied the tiny cup in one thirsty gulp, wanting out of the place. Something stank here and it wasn’t only that goanna oil liniment.
‘Those city chaps should be arriving soon. They’ll no doubt want a word with you this afternoon, Mr Kennedy.’
‘No doubt they will. Tell them they’ll find me picking peaches.’
Tom was out the door and heading for his bike, pleased to see it, to straddle it, eager to pump those pedals a few more miles. He glanced over his shoulder as his foot bore down, and he saw that poor pathetic bastard, head high, shoulders back, his termite-riddled leg marching him down to his truck.