The sun was a gloomy yellow behind the clouds hanging low and heavy on the hills. Morning showers had soaked the already green paddocks and puddles were forming in the yard.
Clem sat herself down at the dining table, turned her laptop on, spooning muesli while she waited for the whirring and beeping to stop. She opened the email account, waited for it to load.
Torrens had reassured her at their Monday training session last night that the police hadn’t approached him again. Gerard had formed his own view about Torrens, so it seemed from the telephone conversation she’d had with him yesterday, but it did not appear to be one the police shared. Gerard would probably be there tonight at team training. He’d started turning up to training sessions these last couple of weeks—said he was keen to support the boys through the finals campaign, but she just couldn’t shake the feeling that he was continually watching her.
She looked at her inbox. There were replies from two of the five newspapers. She needed them all to wipe the articles—one article was as bad as five or fifteen.
She opened the first one, from the Daily Post.
Dear Ms Jones
Thank you for your inquiry. As you can imagine, we are deeply committed to informing our readers and take pride in our contribution as a historical repository of information. In light of this, our policy is to retain articles online indefinitely.
Thank you again for your inquiry.
Shit. She slammed her cereal bowl down, milk sloshing. She should have known. Unless she could show the articles were defamatory, she’d have no chance—and they weren’t, of course. They were all true: every line, every detail of the accident, of her conviction. It would all be there forever, hanging over her like a shadow.
A text message beeped on her mobile phone. She went to the bedroom, unplugged it from the charger. From Gerard. Resumé required today. She sat on the side of the bed, head in her hands, the rain coming harder, whipped sideways by a rising wind.
Why was he asking for her resumé again so soon? So insistently? Was he on to her? Had he realised she had something to hide? Or was it just her paranoia? All these lies she’d been telling, the appalling things she’d done…of course, it would mess with her head—why wouldn’t it? She scrunched her eyes shut, grabbed at her hair. What a fucking mess.
Her thoughts began to come together as she sat there. Whatever the reason for Gerard’s sudden interest, she wasn’t going to just sit back and wait for an ambush—certainly not from Gerard, not from anyone. She had to be ready. She stood up, paced the room. What she needed was a weapon, something to fight Gerard with if he came after her.
Then it dawned on her—she didn’t need a weapon, she needed a shield, her own kind of insurance, something to make him think twice before pursuing her past any further.
She snatched the car keys off the hook in the kitchen and the umbrella by the front door, rushed outside to the Commodore, splashing out through the puddles, the umbrella trying to fold back on itself in the driving wind.
‘Fucking bastard!’ she screamed. At the umbrella, at the wind and the rain, at Gerard. She opened the car door, the rain splashing onto the front passenger seat, opened the latch to the glove box.
Storming into the cottage, she slammed the door and threw the dripping umbrella on the floor. She slotted the first USB stick into the laptop, her hands wet and trembling. Why couldn’t people just leave her alone? Everyone wanting something from her, everyone telling her what to do, from Gerard to Mr Nicholls. Even Torrens.
Torrens. Well, he can stand on his own two feet, just like I have to, she thought. At some stage he has to learn there are no paragons in this world, none. It was all she could do to hold herself together—being a role model was out of the question. Absurd, anyway, if they only knew who she was, what she’d done.
Her anger brought a rush of clarity. Everything had become ridiculously complicated since Clancy had dropped his bombshell. She had chastised herself for not trying hard enough to keep him in the team, for intruding on Melissa and stirring up tension, but all along she had been second-guessing herself. She needed to back her judgement, keep swimming forward.
It was true—all this drama pursuing Clancy wasn’t what she’d planned, and God knows she hadn’t come here wanting to be some sort of hero. All she’d wanted was anonymity—to be some place where no one knew her past, so she could breathe despite the suffocating shame. It was a survival strategy. Signing up for the coaching job had been a mistake, but here she was, in the middle of Clancy’s pain and the town’s dreams. Each step she’d taken had felt like it had to be. And she’d be damned if Gerard and his resumé would be the thing to bring it all crashing down. Fuck him.
The file from the first USB stick appeared on the screen. The sound of the rain pummelling the tin roof was like thunder, the walls of the cottage shuddering in the wind. She selected the video file, pressed play. She could see lines of cars, distorted by the camera’s wide-angle lens, through a hazy, morning half-light. She checked the date and time in the bottom-right corner: 8 August 07:02. About a month ago, just before Clancy quit. The camera, mounted on the warehouse, showed the CTS car park the day after Clancy had quit the team: a bird flitted from the left side of the screen into the stunted wattles at the far edge of the car park, nothing for a moment, and then, at 07:03, a shape appears from beneath the camera. A male, carrying boxes, walking quickly towards the cars, scanning the car park from left to right. He reaches the first row of cars. It’s hard to gauge, looking down from above, but he seems tall and solid, a big man.
He keeps walking to the second row, stops at a red hatchback. The same car from the photos Gerard had shown her. Clancy’s car.
He opens the back door, throws the boxes onto the back seat, shuts the door hurriedly and turns back to the warehouse—her first glimpse of his face. He’s a long way away from the camera, but that hulking frame and thick beard are unmistakable: Frank Cranfield. It was what she’d suspected, but actually seeing it was a shock.
He walks across the car park to the right of the screen, turns and approaches the warehouse from a different direction. The counter at the bottom of the screen is at 07:05 as he walks under the camera and disappears from view.
‘Bastard,’ she whispered. ‘You dirty, lying bastards.’ Gerard had needed this tape to stop Cranfield asking for more money, ‘insurance’ he called it when he spoke to Brose that night: I want to be able to show him the footage, make him realise how it will look to the police. It’s best I have it on hand.
She felt the cottage tremble again with another huge gust of wind. She sat for a moment, her thoughts racing. So it was confirmed—Clancy had been framed—but she still had no idea why. Why had the company that owned the tattoo parlour paid Cranfield to do it? And why was Gerard involved?
As she removed the USB stick and inserted the other one, the rain eased, fading to soft plops, then nothing. The wind fled with it—one last gust and it was gone. The cottage let out a sigh, settling on its unsteady footings. In the sudden silence, with just the plop of drips from the guttering sploshing into the puddles beneath, she opened another video file and pressed play.
This time the camera was mounted high inside an enormous shed. Not the same shed she had been in to see Wakely, but the same size. An office on the mezzanine level was just visible in the top-right corner of the screen, steel steps descending from it to the warehouse floor below. There was no movement, no workers. She checked the date and time stamp: 31 July 10:50. A Sunday morning, over five weeks ago.
At first, nothing, just the grey of the concrete and the symmetry of the shelving, then, in the foreground, a forklift, a dark-skinned man at the controls wearing a pale singlet and jeans. He picks up a pallet on the forks and disappears to the back of the warehouse. A minute or two later, the forklift reappears. This time it passes much closer to the camera, and the man’s features come into view. It’s Clancy.
Movement in the upper right of the screen. Someone coming down the stairs—female legs. The footage is grainy and the woman is wearing some sort of hat, casting a shadow over her face. She stops on the bottom step, calls out to the man. The forklift keeps moving. The woman walks closer, holding her hands up to her mouth like a loudspeaker, shouts at him. The forklift stops and Clancy looks around. The woman is still out of focus, too distant to make out her features, but she’s wearing a short skirt, visor, polo top and sandshoes, all in white. Tennis gear?
They seem to be having a conversation, Clancy’s face side-on to the camera, the woman walking closer, her face obscured by the visor. He climbs down from the forklift, heads over to a row of lockers, the woman following. He pulls something out of the locker, clothing, a long-sleeved shirt, the top half in fluorescent safety yellow. The woman is standing behind him, very close. Her back is to the camera. She reaches out, puts one hand on his shoulder. Her touch is like a snakebite—Clancy spins around, pushes her off, backs away. He is speaking—there is an urgency, agitated hand gestures. The woman raises her hands in a shrug, takes a step towards him. He is shaking his head, shutting the locker with his other hand. He turns quickly, walks away, the shirt in one hand, heading for a door on the far wall. There is a sign over the door, just clear enough to make out: MEN.
The woman grabs something hanging on the wall. A clipboard. She walks over to him, waving it in the air, still with her back to the camera. He stops, turns around. He is shaking his head again, arms extended, palms up. Pleading? The woman strolls towards him—she’s tall, swinging her hips. The footage is grainy and she’s still got her back to the camera but a creeping realisation is starting to form in Clem’s mind as she watches her walk.
Clancy backs away again, starts turning towards the men’s room. The woman’s pen hovers over the clipboard. He stops dead in his tracks, his hand on the door, turning his face back to her again, slowly. His shoulders are dropping, his head is lowered—there’s a resignation in his stance.
She stands there in front of him, clipboard now dangling by her side. She is waiting for something. Clancy stands straight. Slowly, reluctantly, he removes his singlet. She watches, unmoving. He is bare-chested now, facing the camera, jeans hanging low around his waist. He tries to put the yellow safety shirt on, but the woman takes a small step closer, reaches out towards him. He shuffles a half-step back, towards the door. Her hand brushes his chest, feeling his skin, rests on his waist. He stiffens, rears back.
Clem’s heart is pounding. She wants to look away, but she can’t—she has to know. Is it who she thinks it is?
The woman leans in, closer still. They are kissing, the woman’s hand on his waist. Clancy pulls back, his head turning away from her. She drops her hand, steps towards him, his back is against the door now, her back arches a little as she presses her chest against his. They kiss again, longer this time, their hips together, Clancy’s hand around her waist, pulling her closer, her hand on his shoulder now, their heads moving gently. She steps back, takes his hand, loosely, and turns. She is facing the camera now, walking towards it, hips swaying, leading Clancy, his hand in hers.
The visor still obscures her face—but those long legs, that long neck. Could it be? Surely not…
They walk up the steel staircase. Only their legs are visible as they reach the landing. The door to the mezzanine office opens and they go inside. The door closes behind them and the warehouse is still.
Clem sat back in the chair, stunned. After a moment she fumbled for the mouse, rewound the video fifteen seconds, watched them walking towards the camera again.
This time she was sure. It couldn’t be anyone else.
Bernadette. The woman was Bernadette Holt.