Alison, Chris Waters here.”
“Yes, hi.”
“Look, just checking in to see what you thought of the story.”
“The one in the Sydney Morning Herald?”
“Ah, it got a run up north, did it? Hard to keep track of that stuff.” He paused. “What are you doing in Sydney?”
Alison dodged the question. “Have you got anything to tell me?”
“Well, hang on, I don’t want to go giving my yarns away.”
“We had a deal. I tell you what I know, you tell me what you find out.”
Another long pause. He clicked his tongue, flicked it from the roof of his mouth to the spot under the line of his lower front teeth so that when it smacked into place it made a clopping sound like a horse on a paved road.
“Look, I know we said that, but since then I’ve been doing my due diligence on this Watson fella and I’m not sure helping you find him is going to be ethically sensible.”
“What the fuck does ‘ethically sensible’ mean?”
“All right, probably that’s something I made up right then because it seemed easier than saying the guy is a cretin. He beat her, you know. Simone. That’s what her mother told me. I kept it out of the story for now because there’s no evidence she died from unnatural causes and the lawyers thought it was unnecessarily inflammatory. She was running for her life and you want to stroll up to him in the street and ask him some questions?”
Alison laughed. “You think I don’t know Gil’s a fucking woman beater?”
Another pause. “He hit you too, then?”
“Course he did. Not so clever after all, Chris Waters.” Alison didn’t really care if Chris knew the truth. He wasn’t her friend. After all this was over, she’d never have to see him again, or think about how she lied to him about what was going on in her life. It felt as though with every admission, this truth became less heavy, less difficult to bear. But it also became more real, less easy to push down.
“I just thought—”
“Leopards don’t change their spots.”
“So, what are you doing, then? Why so keen to catch up with him?”
“Because like you, I think Simone must have been coming to see me for a reason. I don’t think she coincidentally drove up my drive in the middle of one of the deadliest bushfires in Australian history. She needed me. I don’t know why, or what for. But she’s dead and I’m alive and I want to help her.”
“Alison, maybe she did come to see you, but maybe there’s nothing at this point left to be done. Maybe what she needed you for, she needed to be alive for.”
“Well, even if that’s the case, I need to know. Please help me. I promise, if there’s a story here, I’ll help you get it. I will. But I need to know.”
The line was silent. In the gum the lorikeet twittered and trilled. A skink snuck onto the table and sunned itself in a patch of weak light. Alison could hear the whirr of the washing machine. Spin cycle cranking up. “So, here’s what I know about Watson that I assume you don’t know. I’ll spare you the background pre-Simone, since I expect you know it already.”
“Sure do.”
“All right, about twelve months ago he and Simone had a big fight. A roof raiser. The neighbors called the cops and Simone, one black eye, one missing tooth, one broken arm, says she wants to press charges. Cops take him in, go through all the procedures, take her statement, take his prints, stick him in the lockup, give her all the usual advice, issue the AVO.”
“What’s that?”
“Apprehended Violence Order—restraining order. Then, the next day Simone walks back in and says she’s changed her mind. Won’t testify, doesn’t want to cause any trouble. The injuries aren’t his fault, et cetera, et cetera. The usual Stockholm syndrome scenario.”
“It’s not that easy to say you want to press charges in the first place, you know. I never did.”
Silence. “So they have to cut him loose and he goes back to their place. Nothing comes of it, no ‘reunion special,’ as I know the blueys sometimes call the inevitable beating the woman takes when he comes back.”
“Gross.”
“If you don’t laugh you cry, and crying’s just a waste of moisture.”
“Jesus.”
“It seems like everything is peachy, no more complaints from the neighbors, no more hospital reports, no more records at all of any problems that I can track down. And then, a month ago, Simone’s parents walk into the cop shop and file a missing persons. Not answering her phone, not replying to emails. Nothing.”
Alison was silent. There had to be more. “And Gil?”
“Gil. When the parents file the report, the coppers go pay him a visit. He says Simone left him. Thought she was back at her parents’ house. But they run some checks, and he’s using her bank account, has a second card for it. They ask him about it, and he says she never took it back and it’s his money ’cause she owed him rent. But they can’t find anything to suggest he did anything to her, or that he knows where she is.
“They check her phone records, and though he’s been calling, the calls aren’t ever answered. She stopped answering him around the time the parents say they stopped hearing from her. But they’re concerned. Because she’s not using her phone. He’s the only one accessing her account. They put him under surveillance. They search the flat. They lock the account. Nothing. They can’t find anything that would suggest where she is or whether he’s the reason she’s missing. And that takes us to the day of the fire. The first lead they have on her, and she’s dead in the middle of that shit show. Only now, somehow, Gil’s slipped the admittedly lackluster surveillance and no one knows where he is anymore.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. That’s all I have that you can’t already read in the paper or didn’t come from you.”
“It’s a lot.”
“Yes, it is. If she hadn’t been killed in the fire, I’d be sure he’d murdered her.”
“But maybe he did. The coroner could be wrong. They did two autopsies because they couldn’t tell the first time.”
“It’s a long bow you’ve got there, Alison.”
“What about the fingerprints?”
“What fingerprints?”
“On the car. They took mine to exclude them.”
“No prints on the car ’cept you and Simone.”
More silence, as she tried to figure out how to respond. “Thank you for telling me all this.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” She paused. “Can I call you again if there’s something I need to know that you might be able to help me find out?”
“If I’ve got the exclusive.”
“Yes. You’ve got the exclusive.”
He was quiet for a beat. “Alison?”
“Yeah?”
“He had money—quite a few thousand in the bank. Seems like a lot for a North Queensland cook.”
“He won some, and he was thrifty. He liked to bet on the horses. Big score on a Melbourne Cup in the noughties. But he barely spent his own money once he’d impressed you enough to think he was generous.”
“How so?”
“You said it yourself: he was using her money. He used mine too. He spent his on me for the first couple of months, but then it was different.”
“I see, what a guy.”
“We were the idiots who gave him our debit cards.”
“Alison—”
She cut him off; she didn’t want to hear about how it wasn’t her fault. “It’s fine, Chris, forget it.”
“OK, OK. Listen, call me anytime.”
“Thank you.”
They hung up as the washing machine began to beep. Alison hung the linen on the line and walked back toward the kitchen door. She looked at the window that opened into the lounge room, saw the couch where she’d slept the night before, the bars secure on the frame. Glanced down at the mossy tile. Her skin tightened and her scalp tingled as she noticed the small collection of cigarette butts on the ground there. At least ten, not old and faded, but newly ground into the brick underfoot, which was still smudged with ash. They were Gil’s brand.
Her heart a brick and her hands all thumbs, Alison stumbled back into the kitchen, smashed the door shut behind her, turned the key in the lock. Made sure it was locked tight.
He’d been here. In the night. Watching her sleep through the open window. Smoking. Making plans. She didn’t know what to do. Where was he now? Why hadn’t he struck when she’d sat out in the yard? Alone, vulnerable, careless, stupid.
She needed to get going. Alison shoved her things into her bag and headed for the front door. Outside, she triple-checked it was shut fast behind her, scurried across the street to her car, and settled in behind the wheel. Locked the doors and turned the key in the ignition before she even knew for sure which way she was heading.
Along King Street the midweek midday traffic snarled and snuck from light to light. Alison tapped her hands on the wheel, thought about the drive ahead. It was two and a half thousand kilometers to Cairns. Almost thirty hours of straight driving. She was a little under a third of the way there, and she was already exhausted.
She turned down Missenden Road, chucked a uey at the lights, and headed back toward the Princes Highway, south again. Alison chewed the skin of her upper lip and squinted into the glare of the traffic. Driving was a stupid idea. At the turn for the airport Alison flicked on the indicator, took the corner sharply. Time was more valuable than money; she’d learned that lesson enough times now to know for sure it was true.