Later, everybody milled around in the foyer or spilled out onto the lawn, a few clutching cardboard cups of orange cordial. The vibe was buoyant. Doreen felt like an intruder and would have gone home but she wanted to congratulate Kitty. Kitty emerged, a gaggle of people telling her how wonderful she was but she was only half-listening and when her eyes found Doreen she raced to her.
‘What did you think?’
‘You were terrific.’
Kitty squeezed the life out of her. ‘Thanks to you.’
‘No. No thanks to me. That was all you. I showed you a few steps that was all.’
Kitty started dragging her. ‘Come and meet my parents. I’ve told them all about you.’
Doreen allowed herself to be pulled across the lawn to where a couple, their backs to them, were talking.
‘Mum, Dad, this is Doreen.’
They turned.
Doreen’s heart stopped. Kitty’s mum had a little stole around her shoulders and Doreen tried to concentrate on that because Kitty’s father was somebody she recognised: Adrian, the man she’d brought back to her place from the golf club.
It was like looking through a haze with everything in slow motion. She saw his recognition, his shock and attempt to kill it but, though her legs were jelly, she fought to smile politely as you would to a stranger, and focused instead on Kitty’s mum, a pretty woman who had been to the hairdresser. She extended her hand, they shook. Kitty’s mum gushed about how wonderfully she had helped Kitty. The words were a 45 on 33 rpm. Her head was pounding, she wanted to burst into tears. Somewhere in the background some excited members of the cast had broken into ‘Some Enchanted Evening’. When she finally risked a glance at Kitty she was met by glacier eyes.
She knew.
Get away, get away, get away. Her heels clipped through the carpark to where she had parked the Beetle. The stars that had seemed to twinkle like sequins were now pennies on a dead man’s eyes. She reached the car door, fumbled for a key.
‘You bitch.’ Kitty ran at her. ‘You fucking slut.’
Doreen’s cheek reverberated with the power of the slap. Kitty was crying, fists balled, punching her arms now.
‘Why my dad? Why? You fucking tramp.’
What could she say? I didn’t know, didn’t realise? But you had known it was somebody’s husband, somebody’s father, hadn’t you? You’d just used loneliness as a convenient blindfold. She stood there accepting, knowing her pain was nothing to what Kitty was feeling. She wanted the punishment, the more the better. She could not forgive herself, let alone expect forgiveness from others.
15. The First Stone
Blake’s knuckles rammed hard on the door of the sleep-out. Duck lived out the back of his grandmother’s, what they called here a weatherboard. There was a stumbling, shuffling. He’d no doubt been asleep. It was just after one a.m. Blake had tried to wait for the new day, had driven around the town’s near silent grid going out of his head. There was no point heading home trying to catch zeds. He had to know. A bolt scraped on the inside of the door as it was pulled. The old wooden door swung open. Duck was half-asleep, wearing black footy shorts and a fleecy shirt. He rubbed his eyes.
‘What’s up, mate? What’s happened?’
Blake shoved inside. He’d only been here twice before. It reminded him of a teenager’s bedroom: comics, an old game of Crow Shoot stacked neatly in a box on top of Scrabble. Duck’s parents had moved north years ago but Duck had stayed and learned the plumbing trade. His nanna cooked, did his washing and gave him a rent-free room where he could practise his drums.
‘The night Valerie Stokes was killed, where were you?’
Duck blinked. ‘What do you mean where was I? We did the gig.’
‘After that?’
‘I came back here. What is this?’
‘You gave that weed to her.’
‘No. I told you, maybe somebody else …’
‘Don’t lie to me, Duck.’
‘I’m not. There were kids out the back, I might have given them a joint. For fuck’s sake …’
‘You screamed out of the carpark, Panza saw you.’
‘So?’
‘You were meeting Stokes at the motel.’
‘You sure you haven’t been smoking my joints?’
He grabbed Duck, shoved him against the wall.
‘You killed Stokes.’
‘What?’ Duck couldn’t cover the fear in his voice by surprise.
‘You lit out after her. You drove up the coast to the motel.’
‘I told you, I drove home. You’re fucking crazy.’
‘Your van was spotted at the motel.’
It was a lie but when you lie to somebody who is lying himself, sometimes the shell hits the magazine. He saw the horror in Duck’s face, could almost hear the rush of thoughts through his brain.
‘I didn’t kill her. Honest, man.’
‘Come on, Duck. When the kid turned up, she was already dead. He saw your van leaving.’
Duck was breathing heavily now. Blake realised he should have brought a weapon but he’d been too distracted. He tensed in case Duck made for something.
‘I promise you man. I did not see Valerie Stokes. I did not give her dope. I did not kill her.’
‘Your van …’
‘Okay. Yes, I was at the motel. But not to see Valerie Stokes. I met with somebody else.’
He was desperate now, throwing out his life jacket to keep the boat afloat.
‘You expect me to believe that?’
‘It’s true. That’s why I rushed there.’
‘Fine. Who is she? What’s her name?’
Duck’s eyes bulged, he looked like he was going to throw up.
‘Duck, if you’re telling the truth, give me her name.’
He went to talk, couldn’t. Tried again, weak. ‘It’s not a she.’
Blake didn’t understand. Duck must have read his confusion.
‘That’s why I couldn’t say anything. I was there. With a man.’
Blake stood there, mute, his feet set among two piles of comics on the floor.
‘I’m a homo, Blake.’
Blake didn’t know any homosexuals. Well, he probably did without knowing it, he figured. In his days hanging around the Mob it wasn’t the sort of thing you advertised.
‘You’re saying that’s why you were at the motel.’
‘His name is Michael. He’s a family man. Please, the cops have already interviewed him and cleared him. Don’t tell them about this, for his sake.’
‘This Michael live around here?’
‘Toorolong. I can put you in touch if you don’t believe me.’
Blake was weighing it slowly. ‘Tell me what happened that night from when we finished.’
‘I’d met up with Michael earlier that day.’
‘Where?’
‘Where do you think? The kind of place we have to: dark places that smell or are broken, deserted.’
‘So you’d already made a rendezvous?’
‘Yes. The motel suited him. I loaded the van and left: nearly hit the blonde from the dance comp. Not my fault, she pulled straight out in front of me. She’d been shouting at her boyfriend, wasn’t watching.’
‘This was what time?’
‘Ten maybe.’
‘You went straight to the motel.’
‘Yeah. I got there a little before ten-thirty. Michael had been waiting for a couple of hours. Neither of us saw anything down near the far unit where she was. I don’t even remember her car.’
‘You didn’t see or hear any other cars coming or going?’
‘I wasn’t thinking about other cars. It was quiet though, late Thursday, who’s around?’
‘You left, when?’
‘About half past eleven.’
That jibed with what the Clarke kid said. According to the motel guy, Stokes hadn’t checked in till nine forty-five that night. If Clarke was telling the truth and she was dead when he arrived, she was killed between n
ine forty-five and eleven fifteen. If Duck was telling the truth, she could have been killed while he was doing whatever he was doing.
Duck said, ‘This is crazy. I did not kill that girl. I’m not even attracted to women. It’s just an act.’
‘Why?’
‘Why do you think? You were going to have a poofta in your band?’
‘If he keeps time.’ He told himself that was true but to be honest it was nothing he’d thought about. ‘I want to speak to Michael, and I want your fingerprints.’
‘You going to tell Panza and Doreen?’
‘What you do is your business, Duck. Just don’t lie to me.’
‘I’m not.’ His bottom lip quivered. ‘You don’t know how hard it is.’
‘I get it. But if you’re using this as an excuse …’
‘I’m queer, man. That’s the simple truth.’
After he left Duck’s, he drove to the beach and listened to the waves crashing in the dark. He’d made Duck put his fingers into an inkpad he used for receipts from his plumbing business, made him press them into paper. How else could he eliminate him? If they matched the prints in Stokes’ car, he’d know Duck was lying. But he didn’t think so. The image of him as some cop, Duck some criminal, poked and prodded him like a school bully. Why couldn’t he have let it be? Okay, he’d wanted to clear Crane, there he had justification, but Thomas Clarke wasn’t his responsibility. It probably was just the Clarke kid grabbing at straws; he saw Duck’s van, he wanted to blow smoke.
Yet something refused to let him leave it like that. He didn’t know Val Stokes. She was nothing to him. Sure he’d been to the Cross, he understood her life, sounded like she was on the up and up, had a boyfriend now but she’d lapsed, slid back for the chance of easy money. It was probably a trick gone wrong, a risk of the game. He wasn’t judging her, far from it. What he’d done for a living, that was shameful. No, it wasn’t because he wanted justice for Val Stokes. It was as if he had to push on, because this was his home now. He’d never felt like he had a home before. Somebody had murdered Val Stokes and in doing so had trashed his turf. That’s why it was personal, that’s why he had to see this through. Right, Jimmy?
Nalder had been given a copy of the set of prints found in Stokes’ car, just in case some local crime generated the same set. Blake had to study these fingerprints closely but he could see pretty clearly that the set of prints the police had found did not match Duck’s.
‘Whose are they?’ Nalder had wanted to know when Blake had laid down the paper with the prints.
‘They don’t match, so it’s not them. That’s all that matters.’
‘Don’t keep me in the dark, son.’
‘I find something, you’ll get it.’
‘I don’t want you to find anything,’ the cop had said. ‘I like everything fine just how it is. The only reason I’m helping you is that if the Clarke kid didn’t do it, the murderer is still out there. That’s the only reason. No grandstanding.’
Grandstanding was the last thing Blake wanted. He drove up to Toorolong and drove by the house that Duck said was Michael’s. Kids’ scooters outside an ordinary-looking place. Duck had arranged for Blake to meet Michael at the Toorolong pub and had told him that Michael would wear green. The beer garden was a few pieces of lumpy furniture, a lattice fence. Blake was the only person there. Michael appeared through a little archway that led directly to a rear carpark.
‘Don’t worry. Duck told me all about you. I knew I’d recognise you. Mind you …’
He gestured at the empty garden. He was younger than Blake would have imagined, thirty-one or two, a cheap suit, jet-black hair. Duck had said he was some kind of salesman. Michael went inside to get himself a beer. It was a little after five, and chilly, but it was private and pleasant under the trees. A labrador wandered past. There was a minigolf course across the way, thinly populated on a weeknight. Michael came back out and sat opposite him on a weathered wooden bench.
‘You arrived at the motel at what time?’
‘About seven-thirty. I stayed in my room, listened to the radio. I didn’t hear anything much — maybe a vehicle coming or going but I wasn’t looking. I knew Duck wouldn’t be getting there till around ten.’
His story matched Duck’s.
‘He came straight to your room?’
‘Why wouldn’t he? You know Duck. You really think he could stab some woman to death?’
Blake didn’t answer. He knew lots of people who killed and who looked like a greengrocer or a schoolteacher. There was nothing exclusive about murder. He was living proof.
Crane had his pants rolled to his knees as he waded in the shallows looking for interesting shells or detritus from passing boats.
‘You thought it was somebody else?’
‘Yeah, but that didn’t pan out.’
After Toorolong, Blake had felt in need of companionship. His field of choice had narrowed to Crane or Doreen. Crane was on the way in from Toorolong.
‘Why can’t you accept it’s the kid?’ Crane studied a twisting shell, declared it unworthy for collection, tossed it back.
‘The blood. The shirt. I saw the photos. She was butchered. I don’t buy that an eighteen-year old does that, then showers, puts on a shirt, pukes because now he’s thinking about what he’s done. If he killed her, then puked, then showered, maybe.’
What he was thinking about was a kid named Maurice Ekerman who had been a year younger than him. Ekerman was weedy, glasses, not super bright. He had a stepfather who treated him like shit. The stepdad used to wash his car on the street every Sunday and he would berate Maurice Ekerman about everything he was doing wrong. Sometimes Ekerman would come down by the railyards where Jimmy and Vin and, if he was lucky enough to get an invite, Blake hung out and drank soda and looked at dog-eared girly magazines. Often Ekerman would have a bruise, on his face, arms. They all knew it was the stepdad but that wasn’t unusual. Most of them had bruises from stepdads or real fathers or ‘uncles’, who were basically men screwing moms. One morning when Blake had been walking down Ekerman’s street he saw a whole mob of cops milling around the Ekerman brownstone. There was a squad car too, and a coroner’s wagon and, naturally, a crowd. Then the coroner’s wagon drove off and he had a real sick feeling in his stomach because he knew it was Maurice Ekerman in there and that they all should have done something long before. He should have done something long before. And then there was like a gasp from the crowd and he saw two cops exiting the Ekerman house and between them, hands cuffed behind his back, was Maurice Ekerman. He was covered in blood, even his glasses, his cheeks, chin. Turned out he had taken a kitchen knife and carved up the stepfather. If Tom Clarke had murdered Val Stokes, he was sure that’s what he would have looked like.
‘If the evidence is that slim, he’ll get off.’ Crane had finally found a spider shell up to scratch and was wading back to shore.
‘Whoever left prints on the ceiling of her car, I think, is our killer. And I would much rather know that than leave it to a jury to acquit the kid because the evidence is weak. You sure you didn’t see who it was?’
‘Certain. He was just a shape.’
They picked up their sandals and headed towards the beach shack that Crane had mostly rebuilt.
‘You’re off the booze?’
‘For now.’
‘How rough is that?’
‘A tempest, sir, a veritable tempest.’
‘You up to working tomorrow night?’
‘I hope you use the term loosely. If so, I’ll be there.’
It was weird doing the gig. Things had changed forever. Neither he nor Duck had addressed their previous meeting before they started. Panza was oblivious. It was probably the best Duck had played and the crowd was the biggest yet. They loved everything they did. Not just ‘The Twist’ and ‘Apache’ but even the original songs. When they finally left after two encores, Crane was waiting side of stage.
‘Nice set,’ he said. ‘Now I get to wreck the vibe.’
Crane was received with moderate applause. Those with previous experience of him almost uniformly left for the bar. The ones who stayed were devotees. Crane stood legs apart, took a deep breath, seized the microphone like it was his tango partner.
Get out of your clothes, get into your scuba
There’s a strange new world, man, happening down in Cuba
They’ve got cubists and communists and hotsky-to-Trotskyists
Staging a revolution that might threaten the constitution
The peasants are comin’ at us with a flower and sickle
But JF can take ’em down by the thousands for less than a nickel
He’s got missiles pointed in the right direction
One mighty stratospheric ejection
JFK’s ready to rhumba, all action and A-bomb no time to slumber
Get out of your clothes and into your scuba
We’ll soon be exploring the lost city of Cuba.
He was side of stage wiping down the guitar when he looked up saw Duck. Crane was still rolling in the background.
‘Great gig.’
‘That’s it, Blake. I’m quitting. I’ll see out the weekend.’
Blake stood there with the rag in his hand, not exactly surprised. He said, ‘You don’t have to do that.’
‘Yeah I do. Time I moved on. Sydney or Brisbane. Besides, I’m not good enough for your stuff. I’m a plumber, not a drummer.’
‘This is all coming together now. You were great.’
‘You don’t know how many gigs I wanted to hear you say that.’
Blake felt ashamed in a whole different way.
‘Things can’t be the same, Blake. You know that. You think about me different now. It’s there in your eyes.’
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