If Eliza Dacey had only had the common decency to wear shoes when she was murdered, Jack Quick’s life would have been a lot easier.
At the very least, he wouldn’t have been lowering himself into a hole in the ground.
When he’d pulled, the ground had bent upwards towards him. It was slow, heavy, but when it gave, it gave quickly. Jack stumbled. The door fell open, past its axis, coming to rest at a forty-five-degree angle. Dirt sprinkled from the vertices, rained into the black hole. The hatch was heavy, solid steel. Nestled neatly in a metal rim. It wasn’t designed to be opened from the outside, and, even freshly opened and closed, the disturbance wouldn’t necessarily be noticeable. Especially if you thought it was just concrete beneath. And, four years later, more invisible still. Under the earth or in the back of a closet, evidence in this case seemed to bury itself. Jack noticed rust on the sharp edges of the metal rim.
Not rust. Blood.
The hatch was heavy. Heavy enough to amputate two fingers if slammed. Jack swallowed.
Jack picked up his phone and turned the torch on. The floor below about two metres down. No ladder. Jack hung his legs over the black hole and lowered himself in. The metal rim lifted the tail of his shirt, scratched up his lower back. Not much further and he had no choice – elbows square, strength fading – he pushed outwards and let go.
He landed awkwardly, hitting something soft and spring-loaded, which sent him spinning sideways to the floor. He looked up, saw the dim glint of stars, the first brush of night through the square hole above. He stood. He’d twisted his knee. He’d dropped his phone. He winced. Limped over to pick it up.
In its light, he saw the room was about the size of a garage. Ten strides across and deep. He saw that he’d landed on an old bed. It had a flatbread of a mattress, and no pillow. A cord hung from the roof in the middle of the room. He pulled it. A single light bulb flared dully, but it was enough to see better. To see the scratch marks in the floor where the bed had been dragged from one side of the room to where it stood now, under the hatch. To see the regular door at one end of the room. Riveted, strong. Clearly locked. Jack had already guessed this led to a passageway through to the modern cellar. To see the pile of clothes on the floor. A t-shirt. A pair of jeans. Worn and mouldy. One running shoe.
To see the walls. Streaked with dried red. Stained. As if they’d bled.
The cord swung back and forth in front of him. Hung down to his chest. It was blue and yellow woven together. Polyester rope.
It started to come together in Jack’s mind. He shone his light under the bed. It was spattered, but there was a neater pattern too. Almost as if the drips had come in a square.
Eliza, down here for eight months, believing that locked, submarine-esque door to be her only in or out. Maybe she’d tried to get out through there. And after eight months there was nothing left to do but wait to die. And then Curtis had gone up and buried his axe in Andrew Freeman’s silos. And, behold, the roof started to bleed. After it stopped, Eliza would have had a red floor with a clear square in the middle of it. She was clever, she would have figured out that the formation of droplets equalled an entrance above. The wine marked it out. So she’d dragged the bed over, those scratch marks. Stood on it. Maybe she was just tall enough, or perhaps she balanced on the edge of the frame to push up with all her strength. A little bit of light. Fresh air. She’d have been excited, shoved harder. Squeeze through it. Run. Run. Run. The Wade homestead light coming on. Andrew Freeman’s light above. She’d have jumped up and down. Screamed for help. Andrew’s beacon flickering off. Nothing seen. Nothing said. Curtis grabbing her. Hauling her back to the new restaurant, to that cellar, and back into this room.
What next?
Eliza wasn’t a quitter. She’d have tried again. Maybe quickly. Before Curtis figured out what to do. Before he came back. He knew she could escape now, which meant she had become a liability.
In front of Jack, the floor was stained with wine, but there were darker blemishes too. Pooled under the swinging light.
Jack’s mind filled in the blanks. Maybe Curtis had come back while she was halfway out. Her legs, slithering up and out into the light. He imagined Curtis yanking her ankles. Eliza grabbing at what she could as she fell backwards, two fingers grabbing the lip just as the hatch slammed closed. Falling on the floor. Clutching her hand. Hatch not closed. Jammed with something. Her screaming. Sound siphoning through the thin slit of sky. Curtis roughly shoving the hatch up, dislodging the block, fingers scattered on the floor, closing the hatch properly now. Dragging Eliza up. The light bulb cord. Blue and yellow. Polyester rope. Curled around her neck. Toes skating on the floor, no purchase. The light blinking on and off as Curtis pulled on the cord. Fight going out of her. Like Andrew Freeman’s light, flickering out.
The only question was why Curtis had dumped her in his field. He could have kept her down here, and never been discovered. Why?
There was a metallic groan. The crunch of a bolt being slid back. Jack backed up, hobbling on his bad knee, towards the bed. Sat. The tip of the rifle came first, then the man.
At least, before he died, Jack would get to ask Curtis himself.
‘Who’d have thought,’ Curtis said, locking the door behind him, ‘us in a cell together.’
Jack didn’t say anything. Curtis flicked the gun up. Rise. Jack stood. Patted a hand in the air, in what he hoped was a calming gesture. Took a step forward.
‘We could’ve been a team, Jack. Hell, we could’ve been a good one. You pretend like I’m the bad guy. You knew what this was.’
‘I did.’
Curtis nodded at the clothes.
‘I was gonna burn those. Then’ – he shrugged – ‘well, you know.’
‘I don’t, actually.’
‘I didn’t have time. I took them off her. I was figuring out what to do with the body. But then she got up, I guess. Stupid of me to leave her here, but I didn’t think she was getting up, to be honest.’
Jack had an image of Eliza waking up. Half-dead. Undressed. Just enough life in her to crawl out of that hole a final time before collapsing. But why were her fingers in her mouth? A flash of the simplest answer. What do people do when their hands are full? Surely not. But, maybe she didn’t want to leave a part of herself behind. Just while she needed both hands to climb out of the hole. Courageous Eliza, dragging herself from the mouth of the earth, her own fingers in her mouth.
The most salacious part of his documentary was nothing but pure coincidence. The bareness of the truth didn’t suit TV. Of course it was Curtis the whole time. There had never been any truly convincing argument otherwise, just a competition to see who could shout the loudest on television. As with Liam’s accident, you get to be the truth-teller if no one is there to contradict you. Worse still, Jack had told the story enough times that he’d wound up believing it himself.
‘I listened to you while you fed me bullshit. Now I want you to tell me something real. What happened the night you killed Alexis?’
Curtis looked like he was watching a season finale loaded with fan-service moments. One hand left the barrel. Went to his mouth. You won’t believe it. ‘Fuck. Wow. Jack. Wow.’ He wiggled the gun one-handed. ‘You are endlessly entertaining.’
Jack didn’t say anything. Curtis returned his hand to the rifle.
‘I didn’t feed you anything. I told you exactly what you wanted to hear. You should have seen your eyes when I gave you something dramatic; it was like a drug to you.’
‘Just tell me why.’
‘Because of Sam Culver,’ Curtis said, as if it were all so simple. ‘Because she left that message about Andrew’s stupid wine. I overheard it. Then, when she told me what she knew, and it wasn’t as much as I thought she did, well, I’d already got her down here. Roughed her up. I didn’t have the heart to kill her, but I couldn’t let her go either. She made me do it, in the end.’
‘You were partners,’ Jack guessed. ‘You thought Eliza knew you were involved, but she
didn’t.’
‘Partners.’ Curtis chuckled to himself. ‘Sure.’ Then he paused, looking at his hands, seemingly surprised to see the gun there. ‘I don’t want to do this. You helped me out. But I guess I can’t let you walk away?’
Jack shook his head.
‘Up until now, I think you could have. But I see you’ve changed your mind on things. For what it’s worth, I don’t know why. I don’t see what’s different.’
‘I couldn’t live it with it anymore.’
‘That’s easy enough.’ Curtis shrugged, raised the barrel. ‘You won’t have to.’
Jack lunged forward and yanked the cord, switching off the light. Everything was plunged into darkness. He took a few steps sideways in case Curtis fired. He heard Curtis’s footsteps. Only two. He imagined him scanning with the rifle in the dark. Waiting for his eyesight to adjust. Waiting for Jack’s shadow to cross the square prism of dull light that shot down from the hole in the roof.
‘Come on, Jack,’ said Curtis, with his slow and heavy breathing, pauses between words. In the dark, it was like they weren’t in the same room anymore, Curtis’s voice crackling down a phone line as it had at the beginning. ‘Aren’t you a little bit glad it’s us, here, together. Your season finale.’ His voice echoed off the walls. ‘It won’t hurt. You can even keep your fingers.’
Jack had now managed to circle around Curtis in the dark. He pushed him hard in the back and, when Curtis stumbled in surprise, leapt on top of him. They scrambled in the dark. Curtis was flailing his arms, but all Jack wanted was a handle on the rifle, because if he knew where the barrel was he could avoid it. Curtis headbutted him and Jack felt his shoulder crumple with pain. The gun went off, and the cellar flashed white, the sound ringing in both of their ears. Jack held firm to the barrel and, with Curtis dazzled, yanked the gun away. Then he stood back up, under the square of light from the hatch, levelling the rifle at Curtis.
‘We both know you don’t know how to use that,’ said Curtis.
‘You’re right,’ said Jack, ‘but I don’t have to.’
He heaved the gun upwards, throwing it through the hatch in the roof, where it clattered on the grass, out of harm’s way. Curtis reacted almost immediately, pile-driving Jack into the concrete wall with a roar. Jack felt something break – a rib? – and slid down to the floor, groaning. Curtis turned and was up quickly, scrambling over the bedframe. Though he was fat, he was tall, and he’d pulled himself up through the hatch before Jack could catch his breath.
By the time Jack managed to lever himself to stand, using the wall as support, Curtis was standing in the hole, a shadow against the night. He hadn’t picked up the gun yet. He looked down at Jack and spat in the cellar. Bloody mucus bubbled on the floor.
‘Yeah,’ Curtis said. ‘This’ll be much more entertaining.’
He slammed the hatch closed.
Plunged into darkness, Jack staggered to the middle of the room and blindly felt for the cord. He turned on the light.
The main door was locked. The hatch closed. Curtis was probably figuring out a way to seal it, and then Jack would starve to death down here. Maybe that was the way Eliza had been supposed to die. He could try to open the hatch now, but Curtis would be watching the opening with the rifle. He’d be a slow-moving target pulling himself out of a hole with a broken rib. There was nothing he could do.
There was a muffled noise from above. Two cracks.
Curtis hammering something down, sealing Jack in.
If he’d have been filming this, he would have used a split screen. Jack cross-legged on the floor, waiting for death, side-by-side with a re-enactment of Eliza doing the same. He could almost hear the ticking clock he’d put in the background, subtly over the soundtrack.
Plink. Plink. Plink.
Hang on. That wasn’t a ticking in his head. That was a real noise: a soft, wet tapping. Something was dripping. A slow, metronomic splash on the floor behind him.
Plink. Plink.
He turned around. Thick drops were steadily landing on the floor. They were coming from one of the cornices where the hatch sealed with the roof. The droplets ran together along the seam and pooled, before drawing down in tiny stalactites, stretching like chess pawns until their bulbous heads snapped off. A deep red. Dripping down through the cracks in the roof.
Thick. Like blood.
Then there was a groan of a hinge, and a beacon of light poured in. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, but he could tell by the slim frame of the shadow above that it wasn’t Curtis.
His eyes focused. There – holding the rifle and a torch, tears streaming down both cheeks, torchlight shaking slightly, peering down into the hole, looking both the youngest and the oldest Jack had ever seen her – was Lauren Wade.
Regretfully, Ian had learned his lesson and this time parked on the turn, which meant Jack had to hobble back down the driveway to get to the car. His back and chest hurt. He’d been right, the main door did lead to a thin concrete corridor. There were circular stains on the floor, from long-gone kegs or barrels, and then a stepladder up to a door. The door at the top opened into the new restaurant’s cellar. The fourth wine incubator, not a unit at all, just a cabinet, dressed up with a glass front and rows of bottles inside, that swung outwards on hinges. Of course, Brett had only put in three. He would have chalked it up to Curtis being a cheapskate.
Ian sat them in the back of the SUV while he radioed Winter in Sydney. Their conversation was short, one-sided: don’t fucking touch anything this time. By the time Ian had figured out what was going on and got statements from Lauren and Jack, another car had arrived from Cessnock, and the incoming officer was stationed to stay with Curtis’s body, now under a white sheet.
Lauren still hadn’t stopped shaking.
Ian drove back into town in silence. He pulled up out the front of the pub, of all places, and helped Lauren out.
‘I’m sorry, guys,’ Ian said, ‘but I’m supposed to keep you here until Detective Winter arrives. He wants everybody in the same place and this is the only place big enough. We’ve rung around, still chasing a few stragglers. I figure you can at least have a drink. Ambo’s coming too.’ There was a lilt of optimism in his voice. As if he hoped that they wouldn’t notice they were being detained under the promise of beer.
‘Can I wash my hands?’ said Lauren quietly.
For the first time Jack noticed the blood and dirt. Ian shook his head. He was playing it straight this time. Lauren grunted and headed inside. Jack followed her.
The bar was packed, but it took little effort to cross to an empty booth by the far window – everyone moved out of their way. Alan was tending bar, as usual. Cashing in on the emergency gathering. Brett and his sons were propped on stools. Even Andrew and Sarah Freeman – Andrew sawing at a steak, not speaking – were at a small table. Mary-Anne was sipping a white wine, with a few people Jack didn’t recognise. In an obscure remembrance, he took his room key from his pocket and handed it to her. Mary-Anne curled her fist around the key as if it were wilting, and nodded. Enough said. Good to see the back of you.
Ian McCarthy had taken a position leaning on the bar, close to the doorway. His gun was still on his hip. Jack thought it was probably overkill, considering the real danger was under a white sheet bleeding through a trapdoor but, hey, if a gun made him more comfortable. Then it occurred to him that Ian’s job wasn’t to protect him, it was to keep him there.
Jack slid in next to Lauren at the booth, deliberately sitting beside her, rather than across. Alan appeared with two glasses of beer. Lauren scooted one aside to Jack, no coaster, condensation skid-mark. She picked hers up and held it against her neck, shut her eyes.
‘You gonna drink it or wait for it to evaporate?’ she said, after several minutes of Jack staring into the foam. He picked it up and took a reluctant sip. She needed normal. He could give her that. His acrobat wobbled inside. Now was not a good time. Maybe he should eat, too.
Eat. He spoke it silently to himsel
f. The way the mouth moved. Lips curled back. Eat. Such a teeth-baring word.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jack said, clearing his throat. ‘That you had to —’
‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘I can’t. I can barely think. It’s stupid, I don’t even remember it. Ian told me I shot him twice.’ She looked into her drink. ‘Twice.’
‘It’s okay,’ Jack said.
‘I’m glad you’re still here.’ She gave him an unconvincing smile. ‘We’ll never catch the copycat now though, will we?’
‘There’s finally proof Curtis is guilty. So now the cops have a pattern of behaviour.’
‘It’s easy to try the dead. The axe will stick to Curtis now. If it comes out?’
‘Suppose so.’
‘I guess it’s finished then.’ She breathed out deeply, relieved. ‘He probably did kill them both.’
‘You’ve been pushing me the whole time to find this copycat – and now you’re giving up?’
‘Does this look like giving up?’ She held up her bloodstained hands. ‘Fuck you. Maybe I’m ready to see my brother now. Really see him. And if the evidence points to him, then so be it. I should have listened to you at the beginning.’
‘No,’ Jack said, ‘you were right not to listen. You never should have. Winter will arrest me, when he gets here, and I have to tell him what happened.’
‘Arrest you?’ Lauren’s voice dropped. ‘This is fucking self-defence. I’ll back you up.’
‘It’s worse than that.’ Jack took a deep breath. ‘I’m involved.’
There was a blare from the roof-mounted television. Trumpets, as there always are in a news bulletin jingle, accompanying circular discs sliding over a globe. Vanessa Raynor Tonight was starting. That was the last thing he wanted right now. Ted Piper smiling smugly down at him. He wondered if he should call it in as breaking news, steal Ted’s thunder again, but Ian had been clear. Everything was under wraps until Winter arrived.
‘Turn it up,’ yelled Brett Dawson, banging a pint down. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ian tense with the noise. His hand went to his hip. Surely, he didn’t need that gun. Wait. Did Ian normally even carry one? Jack turned his attention back to Lauren.
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