‘Nah. It’s a terrible thing to think about a dead woman.’ She wiped her eye with the back of her hand. Sniffed.
‘What is?’ Jack said.
‘Useful,’ she sighed. ‘When I heard she was dead, I thought it might be useful.’ She broke the word into two syllables. A hiss and then a phuck like a pistol silenced. Use-ful.
‘It’s okay.’
‘It’s not.’
‘No. I guess it isn’t. But it is real. And that’s okay.’
And then Jack had his arm around her, and she was leaning into his shoulder. His neck wet. There was silence except the wind skating across the roof. They just sat, knitted together. Jack’s body moving with her breath. Up and down. Up and down. Tidal sway. The swell, it’s irresistible. She pulled away. ‘I feel like that . . . and I wonder if there’s a sliver of him in me.’
Jack didn’t have anything to say to that. Lauren thought there was a seam of darkness in her. She thought that made her less. There was a sliver in everyone. Unlike hers, which was nondescript – a shadow, a vein – Jack’s had a volume, a quantifiable shape and a size. You could measure his sliver: it was a size 9.
But he didn’t have the words to explain that. So he waited for her to speak again.
‘If my brother did this, he should rot,’ she said. ‘I’m ready to accept that now.’
‘And for Eliza, he will. But we both know Alexis’s killer is still out there. We saw them. We might be the only ones who can get to them before the evidence we have against Hush gets into police hands. As soon as it does, Curtis is going to look guilty. We need to catch them first. Otherwise I may as well go to Winter with everything we have, and hope he believes at least some of what I’m telling him.’
‘Don’t do that,’ Lauren said, and took his hand. ‘You don’t need to do that.’
‘I might not have a choice.’
‘I’ll help you find Hush,’ she said softly.
Jack nodded. There was silence. Lauren looked out the window. Jack chewed the nails on his free hand.
‘When you say you can prove it . . .’ She let the sentence trail off. And Jack really thought he was about to tell her this time.
But then Ian McCarthy wrenched open the driver’s door and settled himself into the car with a gruff sigh.
It was a short, wordless drive, punctuated only by the squeak of the brakes at the bottom of the Wades’ driveway. Then the click in opening, thud in closing, of Ian’s door, the crunch of gravel as he walked around the bonnet to Lauren’s. Click. No words. Thrust Lauren’s rifle at her. Get out. Thud. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Click. Thud. Engine.
They coasted through town. Jack focused on the rear-view mirror, willing Ian to glance back at him. Ian stared straight ahead. He turned into Mary-Anne’s street and stopped. They sat in the car, neither moving. Eventually Jack pulled on the door handle. The door didn’t open. Locked from the inside.
‘Jesus, Jack,’ Ian finally said, still staring forward. ‘You can’t go around waving guns at people. Especially not Andrew Freeman.’
‘I wasn’t —’
‘I don’t care. That’s it. You’re done.’
‘Done?’
‘Done. Pack up. Get out.’
‘I’ve paid until —’
‘Jack.’
‘I have a right to be here.’
At this, Ian swivelled in his seat. His forehead was splotched with red and he was sweating. Jack noticed his hands were balled into fists. Ian had a shotgun on the front passenger seat. Jack wished the car wasn’t locked. His nervous fingers pried the handle regardless, levering it in false escape. No result. Ian had him trapped here.
‘You have a right? You have a right?’ Ian was getting louder. ‘These people have a right to be left alone.’
‘I’m not —’
‘Andrew Freeman will get an AVO against you. Then you won’t have the right. I’m telling you now. The judge will rush it through. He can get it tomorrow morning.’
‘Listen —’
Then Ian was smacking the wheel, rocking in his seat. The car heaved and shook on its springs. Jack had never seen him mad before. Locked in the car with him, it was terrifying.
‘No, you listen! I am ordering you to go! I’m a fucking policeman, Jack, so for fuck’s sake, just fucking treat me like one for once.’
The car quietened. Steamed.
And Jack knew. And, God, he wished the door was unlocked now.
‘You watched it,’ Jack breathed.
‘I watched it,’ Ian said.
Jack’s carefully crafted episodes, pieced together to make Ian McCarthy look like a donut-eating, ball-scratching, gun-fumbling country cop, blithely trying to figure out who done these here murders.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You’re not. But tell yourself what you need to.’
‘Ian, I am,’ Jack protested. ‘I am sorry. For the whole series. Everything. It was supposed to just be TV. Just characters in some stupid story. I didn’t realise. Why do you think I’m out here? Curtis is free. Alexis is dead. I’m so sorry. But I’m close now. I can’t fix everything but I can set some things right. And it’s real, this time. And I’m so close.’
‘Leave tonight.’ The words scraped out of Ian’s throat.
‘Ian. Come on. Are these Winter’s words? Hold off for a few more days. Last favour.’
‘Last favour?’
‘Last favour.’
‘You took the forensics.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘Ian —’
‘At the funeral. You took the forensics.’
Jack nodded.
Click. Thud. Ian was out of the car. He was in his RM Williams, faded blue jeans, as usual. He was pacing back and forth. His pistol on his hip. Kicking at rocks. Arms in jagged movements. He looked like he was talking to himself. Back and forth he walked, stooping at intervals, fingers wish-boned on his temples.
Click. The back door opened, Ian against the sun. Above Jack, in shadow, he was as large and hulking as Curtis. An eclipse. Jack could smell him. His sweat. His hurt. Another man laid waste by Jack Quick. Chewed up. Spat out.
‘Nope.’ Ian shook his head, as if talking to himself. ‘Nope. You’re gone tonight.’
‘Winter doesn’t have to know.’
‘It’s not Winter, Jack. I volunteered to come out here on this call. I knew it would be you. Because you can’t help yourself, can you? Your last favour was the forensics. I got them for you in the first place. Because you asked me to. Because we were friends. Not this time.’ Ian stepped aside, the sky yawned wide and sunlight burst into the car. ‘I am not your friend. And I refuse to be your fool. Go.’
‘Ian —’
‘These aren’t Winter’s words, Jack, they’re mine: If you’re still here tomorrow morning, I’ll take great pleasure in arresting you myself.’
Jack packed. He had nothing else to do. He wiled away an hour sitting on his bed, turning things over. His betrayal of McCarthy was thick in his throat and gut. Ian had been helping him the whole time. He’d been trying to give Jack the forensic files to guide Jack to the axe wounds, but Jack had gone and screwed him over anyway. Even so, leaving them on the seat with an open window . . . McCarthy was a bumbling cop, sure, but that was like he almost wanted Jack to take them. Jack’s bag was zipped by the door, reminding him that he had, finally, run out of time.
Curtis Wade was a murderer. Andrew had known, and tried to guide Jack by planting the shoe. But so much was still unanswered. Why had Curtis killed Eliza? Who was Hush? Who killed Alexis? Who had stolen the Wades’ axe and kicked him in the jaw? He’d only solved half of the case. Hang on, he corrected himself, he hadn’t even solved half. He’d just unsolved the bit he’d fucked up. He shook his head. Making it about him again. He’d fucked it up. He’d got Alexis killed. And he’d helped the new killer get away.
Ian was right; he was doing more harm than good here. He’d have to figure it out from Sydney. He started loading his paper files back into their evid
ence boxes. He didn’t care for organisation, just shoved them in randomly. He filled two boxes and then neatened the bed, scrubbed the toilet bowl. He looked at the door, unscrewed and propped against the window. He thought about re-attaching it, but instead put two $50 notes on the side table and scribbled a note to Mary-Anne. If Brett charges you more than this for the door, give me a call. He left his number below. He grabbed his bag, took it downstairs and put it in the boot of his car. He did a return trip with the two boxes. He was filling the last one when he saw the blueprint of the Wade winery. He remembered Lauren handing it to him, what felt like years ago in his house. Something flapped in his mind, a door left open, banging in the wind. Lauren. He had to tell her.
He’d come into town to fix his mistakes, but before he left he’d have to tear it apart again. Once he told the police about the shoe, tomorrow morning, he’d be in a cell. Only the truth would do now. He shoved the building plans in, grabbed a few more pieces of paper, invoices, forensics, and put them in too. The blueprint swirled in his head. He pictured the view from the top of Andrew’s silo, except this time the picturesque view was superimposed with lines and schematics. The door in his mind slammed shut.
Could he be right?
His breathing quickened as he started the car. The afternoon was waning. Creeping up to five. Vanessa Raynor’s current affairs show would play at half past seven. Ted Piper was clinging to the last bit of infamy with this interview. His last appearance on Raynor’s show had been interrupted by the breaking news of Alexis’s murder. Ted would sure be pissed off if Jack upstaged him again. Another bit of breaking news. Curtis Wade proven guilty; Jack Quick arrested and charged with obstruction. He had Vanessa’s number, he could call her. He caught his tiny smile in the rear-view mirror, entertaining the idea. McCarthy could even bring him in. Slight redemption for Jack ruining his career. He’d be a hero cop. He’d like that.
Jack shook it off. He was creating characters and narratives again. How to spin the story. Against Ted. In favour of Ian. Not this time. This time there was no story. Reality beckoned. He thought it finally made sense, but he had to be sure.
He parked at the bottom of the Wades’ driveway and got out of the car.
He was ready to tell Lauren everything, especially if his hunch was correct, but before that he had one more confession to make.
He dialled his father’s number.
‘Hi Dad,’ Jack said.
‘Jack,’ his father said, ‘just turned the TV off. That horrible Vanessa Raynor show is about to come on.’ Whether Peter believed that or was defiant in solidarity was unclear.
‘Can I talk to Liam?’
‘Hang on.’ Peter offered no resistance. No: he can’t hear you Jack. He must have heard the crack in Jack’s voice. The sound of footsteps, stairs. Sitting down. The usual routine. Peter’s voice now echoing: ‘Okay. You’re on.’
‘Liam, hey buddy. It’s Jack. Just wanted to say hi.’
A moment’s absorption, while Jack pictured his words entering Liam through one of his tubes. Volume seeping into his skin. The scratching of the pencil in the background, the crinkling paper.
‘I wanted to tell you that I think we’ve finally figured it out.’ Jack was walking across the vineyard now, having eschewed the driveway. ‘You would have got it faster than I did, you were always so clever, but I caught on eventually.’
The soft rasp of a pencil.
‘I noticed that the schematic of the old restaurant lines up exactly with where Eliza was found.’ He was there now; he tucked the phone between his shoulder and ear as he worked with his hands. ‘And Brett Dawson was paid thirty-five grand to fill that old cellar with concrete. But then why’d he call Curtis a stingy fuck?’
The scrape of a pencil. The rustle of paper.
‘You got it, bro,’ Jack said, fingers plunging deeper, digging. ‘Just like the windows. Smashing them so he’d be paid to repair them. Brett Dawson wanted to be paid for the same job twice. He took Whittaker’s money but didn’t do the job, then wanted to charge Curtis to do it again, fill it in so the vines could grow. And the whole vine is dying, from the bottom of the field up to the new restaurant. Why? Because that’s how he goes in and out. Brett only put in three wine storage units. Not four. So there’s the answer. Couldn’t have done it without you, buddy. I wanted you to know that. We did it.’
Scratch. Scratch.
‘And’ – Jack’s breath caught in his throat – ‘I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry.’
He was crying now, his dirt-caked hands rubbing soil on his cheeks, on his knees in Curtis Wade’s vineyard.
‘I’m so sorry, bro. I should have been better. That day, at the Fist—’
The pencil scratched.
‘After you fell . . . I told everyone I wasn’t up there. I told everyone that you climbed it on your own. I never told anyone that I went up with you.’
Silence. No scratching.
‘And I never told Dad. I never told him that I said it was too slippery but we argued and you insisted I come with you and I caved. So I went up with you. And we were mucking around. And that’s how you fell. I never told Dad that.’
Last chance – you coming up or not?
Liam’s fingers, reaching out, slipping past his. Then his body slowly leaning backwards until there was nothing but air. Whump. So close. The graze of his brother’s fingertips burned onto his hands. Just another scar for his fingers.
And Jack had been so sure he’d get in trouble that when the orange-jump-suited rescue worker had asked him what happened, he said Liam had gone up without him. And then when the doctor had asked him, he’d said the same thing. And Peter, Peter had sat him down and asked him too.
Part of him, even then, realised that his story was the only truth that mattered. He controlled it. It doesn’t matter what’s true, it only matters what you tell them. And he’d given everyone who’d asked the same consistent answer, and built a fortress of half-truths. It wasn’t the first time he’d told a lie. But it was the first time he’d told one he couldn’t un-tell. And then he’d gone and made a career out of it.
Alexis had been wrong. The line isn’t drawn between the lies you can live with and the lies you can’t. They aren’t so well defined. The lies you can live with, sometimes they turn into the ones you can’t. Not this one. Not anymore.
Peter’s pencil was quiet. Crossword discarded.
‘I’m sorry, Liam.’ It kept spewing out of him. ‘I’m so fucking sorry. And if I had the courage to tell Dad this too, I’d tell him the same thing.’
There was silence. No movement of anything in the room, even Liam’s constant metronomic beeping seemed to take a deeper breath. Then Peter’s voice came from a distance, the corner of the room, picked up gently on the speaker.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘Dad —’
‘Of course you went up there,’ Peter said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Jack heard the creaking of springs which meant Peter had moved to the bed next to Liam. His voice was slightly louder, up close. ‘You were twelve years old. Liam was everything to you – you followed him everywhere. But I understand. What you saw. You wouldn’t have been able to process that. Hell, grown adults lie to make themselves look better. You, just a boy, trying to digest what happened to your brother. Of course you lied. Of course. It doesn’t matter.’
‘You knew?’
‘Watching you punish yourself, all this time. That was the hardest. But I thought I’d make it worse if I brought it up. I almost did. But then you got – started getting – better. I wished I could tell you it wasn’t your fault. But you just never seemed ready.’
Jack’s nose was wet. He used his forearm, gelling the hairs on his arm to his skin.
‘Tomorrow,’ Jack said, out of breath, ‘it’s going to be a tough day. Some things will hit the press.’
‘They’re all tough days,’ said Peter.
And Jack imagined Liam, silent on speaker phone, agreeing.<
br />
Then one of his fingers sunk into something soft. A dent. The rim of something. He told his dad he had to go, put the phone on the grass beside him. He dragged his finger down in a straight line. Across. Up. Across. He’d marked out a crude square carving in the ground, less than a metre square.
A hatch.
That was how there was barely a trace of her. So she fell from the sky, Lauren had mocked him. No. The opposite. She’d come from the earth.
Jack’s heart galloped. The old restaurant and the old cellar. The hole in the ground that Brett Dawson was supposed to have filled with concrete but hadn’t. This, the old entrance to that cellar, unnoticed by everyone, walking back and forth over the top of it, because it was supposed to be filled in. That was why the vines weren’t growing here – not because of concrete – there wasn’t any soil. How could they have missed it? The first time, the murder had been solved slam dunk. So quickly there was no real need to pick holes. Besides, Ian McCarthy had parked right on top of it, pushing the already overgrown door back into the ground, sealing it with two tonnes of incompetence. And everyone in town knew it had been filled with concrete, they’d all told him. Jack could hardly blame the police, because he hadn’t taken a second look either: it was like punching a rock with the expectation it was hollow. You just don’t need to check things like that: the solidity of the earth, the colour of the sky. The difficulty was that the real investigation was four years later. The evidence was overgrown, Jack had often thought. How true that had been. The entrance to the cellar, unopened for four years, would have overgrown too. When the serious investigation had begun, there was nothing but dirt and grass. Eliza’s tomb had sealed itself shut.
Jack wished he had a shovel. He scrabbled with his hands, pulling the surface covering of dirt and grass away. He cleared the ground around it, wriggled his fingers under a jagged edge, stood up and pulled.
The hole in the ground yawned before him. A mouth, ready to swallow him whole.
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