Giselle, the stonemason’s daughter, was neither pretty nor wise, and though she was honest enough to concede the former, she was foolish enough to disbelieve the latter. All the girls in the village dreamed that one day handsome Prince Tyrol would ask them to be his bride and Giselle was no exception. Though Tyrol could choose whomever he wished, she reasoned that her plainness need be no impediment. After all, the richest man in the town was certainly not the most learned. Her chance, she believed, would come at the town festival where the single women all danced in the Prince’s honour, for one thing Giselle could do was dance. Her greatest rival was clearly going to be the beautiful Hilda. Hilda paraded around town wearing a golden pin in her bonnet which she said the Prince had given her. Giselle believed that Hilda was in fact a witch, her beauty but an apparition. The pin, which indeed looked like those worn by the Prince, may have been his after all but Giselle believed that it resided with Hilda through sorcery not merit.
The day of the festival arrived and so too did Prince Tyrol. The girls of the village swooned and the dancing was called upon to begin. One by one the young women performed, one by one they were eliminated, until only Giselle and Hilda remained. Hilda did everything in her power to sway Tyrol but Giselle’s belief was stronger than any witch’s spell. Much to Hilda’s anger, the Prince chose Giselle as the winner. That night he invited her for a ride on his wonderful carriage.
Giselle’s parents were beside themselves. This was the greatest honour anybody could imagine. Giselle’s heart beat in rapture as he drove her deep into the wood, his strong arms and wrists raising and then slowing the tempo of the horses until he hushed them to a halt beside a silver stream.
‘How fortunate I am,’ she thought. But no sooner had the thought crossed her mind than Tyrol had begun forcing himself upon her, ripping at her pretty dress, intent on taking her virtue. Gone was the handsome prince: Tyrol was revealed as a vile monster. She realised then that everything she thought she knew was false but it was too late now. Hilda flew at her, dragging her from the carriage and stabbing her again and again with Tyrol’s pin. Terrified and shamed, Giselle ran for her life but she had no idea where she was heading. The forest was dark and seemed to close in around her with every step.
Doreen finished reading and handed the paper back to Kitty.
‘You see the mark I got? C! “Child-like” is what the teacher called it. I would have got C minus except for my good spelling and punctuation! You know, animals can smell evil but we have no idea. We can’t see what’s in front of our face.’ Kitty folded her arms angrily. Doreen had been worried how Kitty was going to cope going back to school. A month into the school year, it didn’t seem good. This was the second time this week Kitty had called and asked to meet.
‘What about your friends? Have you told them?’
‘As if. I eat lunch with Jenny and Amanda. Jenny said she saw the witch strutting around town like she owned it. She’s got some job in the chemist.’
Doreen watched Kitty rip the cardboard coaster into confetti. It wasn’t the same girl she’d met back in mid-January. She wished she’d never had the stupid watusi contest, felt obliged to offer something.
‘The only advice I can give you is work hard and get good marks.’
‘And be what, a primary-school teacher?’
‘That’s a great job. Kitty, the worst thing about school is that you can’t go back.’
Kitty exhaled as if exhausted. ‘Sorry, it’s not your problem.’
Nalder entered, looked over and nodded at Doreen.
Kitty said, ‘He’ll order a pot of tea, he always does.’
‘What about your parents?’
‘Mum was so disappointed it didn’t work out with Todd, Dad too probably. Mum thinks the best thing in the world is to have babies to a rich man. I mean, that’s her goal in life. For me.’
Doreen said, ‘I’d settle for it.’
Kitty scrunched up her face. ‘You’re kidding?’
Was she? She wasn’t so sure any more. She loved her job at the Surf Shack but would she still want to be doing that in three years? Five? Sometimes a life devoted to cooking and gardening had a lot of appeal.
‘We’re not men, Kitty. We can bellyache all we like about it but that’s a fact.’
‘Why should it be that way? Why shouldn’t you run an insurance company or … be a mechanic?’
‘I’m not saying it’s the way it should be, just that it is. Maybe you can change it. It needs somebody smarter and stronger than me. Although to be honest, I have no desire to be a mechanic.’
Kitty gathered her things. ‘The Russians are talking about putting a woman in space.’
‘Guess they realised they needed somebody to clean the lavatory.’
Kitty smirked. Doreen always got a kick when they shared an in-joke. She stood, said, ‘I have to get back.’
Kitty hefted her bag, indicated Nalder, who was pouring tea. ‘Told you.’
Nalder was enjoying his habitual pot of tea in the Victoria. Saunders’ girl had passed pleasantries with him briefly before she had gone, leaving the whole room to him. His solitude was short-lived. Denham’s face peered in at the window, searching for his boss, tagged him. He entered, eager as a puppy that had discovered a squeaky toy.
‘Sorry, Sarge, I know this is your break.’
‘What is it, Constable?’
‘Just got a call from Pasquale Tonorelli out there on Cockatoo Ridge. His mower had broken down so he went next door to see if he could borrow one.’
That would be the old Carmody place, if Nalder had it correct.
‘No one answered but there was a car there, so he went in. There’s two bodies.’
The last sentence came out like air when a tyre has been slashed — which was something Nalder had been considering doing to the cars of those at the golf club who would reject him. Nalder picked up his hat and stood up from the chair, leaving the exact amount for the tea plus a threepenny tip.
‘We better go and take a look.’
Long before he reached the back door, Nalder caught the stink of bacteria that confirmed death and delayed discovery. It was still hot and humid, even at night. There would be truckloads of maggots. He’d called Doc Sorrow — his real name was Suwarrow but everybody shortened it — and asked him to get up there as soon as he could. The Doc passed for the official police doctor in Coral Shoals and surrounds.
‘Stay here,’ Nalder told Denham. He didn’t need him losing his lunch all over the steps. That’s what had happened to Nalder when as a rookie he attended his first murder-suicide. Not that he was pre-judging what he was going to find but when you got two bodies in a farmhouse, that was always the outcome. He knew of a couple near Armidale who had died because of some problem with a heater that had asphyxiated them but the three times prior to this when he had attended a scene with multiple bodies it had been a farmer taking out himself and his wife. Tonorelli was waiting by his old truck upwind of the smell. He was one of those wiry Itie types, probably in his sixties but strong as a bull.
‘You know anything about them?’ Nalder fiddled with his top pocket and notebook out of habit.
‘No. I seen a couple of blokes in the car a month or so ago.’
This was news to Nalder. ‘It’s two men?’
Tonorelli shrugged. ‘I think so. This heat, the flies … one was in men’s shoes, the other bare foot.’
Nalder understood: bloated, maggot-ridden, the features of the corpses would be indecipherable. He looked over at the car, a light blue FJ. Something sounded in his brain. Got it. The standover guys who Saunders said beat up his yardman. He could check the rego with what Doreen Norris had supplied. He left Tonorelli, crossed to the house and started up the steps. He’d never smelled anything this bad. He pulled out a handkerchief, held his nose and entered the kitchen. Empty beer bottles tried to stand straight on sloping lino, baked bean tins in the bin.
The carnage had taken place in the lounge room. Two lumps of goo remained, one on the lounge suite and one on the floor. The size of the feet told him it was two men. The drone of the flies reminded him of the model aeroplane club he used to take the boys to. At the feet of the body on the couch was a sawn-off shotgun. The head had been pretty much obliterated. Goo — blood, brain and whatever the flies had done to it — was spattered on the faded curtains behind. He edged over toward the other body. Head more or less intact. Unless fingerprints told a different tale, he ran it this way: the one on the lounge shoots the other one and turns the gun on himself, murder-suicide, thank you very much. The sash-window at the front was halfway open, easy access for the creepy crawlies but it had helped a little with the smell. He shoved it all the way up, stuck his head outside for a deep lungful of warm air. He carefully retraced his steps looking for anything like bloody footprints but, as he expected, saw none. He moved down the hallway, located a dunny. The hallway bent at right angles, a room each side. He turned into the one on the right, very basic. A camp stretcher bed, a pine dresser. On top of the dresser was a wallet and a few coins. No identification inside but there was a receipt on top of the dresser. In scrawled writing he made out ‘rent’ with a Toorolong address stamped on it. Above the drone of the flies he heard a car arriving. Doc Sorrow, thank God. They could get on with removing those things out in the lounge room. He didn’t envy whoever had the job of trying to get rid of the smell.
Since his trip to the Heads, Blake had been rudderless. Before, he had felt some kind of purpose: freeing Crane, bringing Clarke to justice, restoring his Garden of Eden. What had happened there had been like some horrible myth where the hunter snuck up on the cave of the evil monster, only to be confronted by the spitting image of himself. Carol had not been killed and disposed of by Clarke after all. She’d simply realised that when she tapped Blake Saunders, he was a hollow log. She ran, just as he had run from Philly, that simple. But he had been prepared to murder an innocent woman to maintain his illusion of freedom, of control. The worst thing was, part of him still regretted the decision to let Mindy be. There was that song, ‘Cast Your Fate to the Wind’. Well, that was what he had done, abandoned control of his own life.
All week he’d been drifting, the can with the printed film unopened in his garage. True to his word the film guy, John, had the developed print ready for him for pick-up by eleven a.m. the previous Sunday. All the way back to Coral Shoals he had driven, the canister at his feet, the phrase ‘Clarke didn’t kill Carol’ repeating over and over in his head. Harvey must have called again by now. He didn’t know for sure because he hadn’t answered his phone. He didn’t want to face Harvey, admit his failure.
By Wednesday, even though he had no interest in viewing a porn movie featuring the now deceased Val Stokes, he had scraped enough resolve to do so. A new idea had sprung up like a shoot in the desert. Perhaps her co-star or stars might not be Clarke himself. If that were the case then there could be more viable suspects. Duck had said that he could lay his hands on a sixteen-mil projector from the local scouts — he used to be one apparently. It transpired, however, that the projector had been loaned out to a group from Greycliff and not yet returned. Blake’s enthusiasm died like a fire built only of kindling. He told Duck to let him know when it was back and played a perfunctory set at the Surf Shack. Carol’s alibi of Clarke he confided to Doreen. She worked hard to show she too was disappointed that his theory hadn’t worked out but he was certain that already she was measuring Crane for a prison cell. Not even Dakota Staton was helping his mood as he mooched around the house. The phone rang, Nalder.
‘Meet me at the usual. I’ve got news.’
Frogs croaked, the smell of river water overtook that of gasoline around Nalder’s van, a leak somewhere, Blake thought absently. It was too dark to see each other’s faces clearly.
‘Harry Wakelin and Stephen Schneider.’ Nalder leaned back against the bonnet of his van, pleased with himself.
‘They never gave me their last names, just Harry and Steve.’
‘That’s them, sure and certain. Looks like one shot the other and then blew his own brains out. They had no ID but I tracked them through a receipt from the people who rented them the property. There were lots of empty beer bottles. Probably got pissed, argued. They both had records, Queenslanders. They’d only been out of jail a couple of months.’
Nothing in that surprised Blake. ‘So it looks like it turned out okay.’
‘Yes it does. I get the feeling you’re that kind of bloke, Saunders.’
‘What kind of bloke?’
‘The kind that things always turn out okay for.’
Blake wasn’t sure if there was an edge there, a hint. ‘Not always,’ he said. ‘I thought I had something that would clear Crane. It hasn’t panned out.’
‘Perhaps that’s because he did it.’
‘You really think he somehow cadged a lift with Stokes, brutally stabbed her without his clothes being soaked in blood, then found his way home without somebody noticing?’
‘It doesn’t matter what I think. It’s what twelve strong men and true think.’ Nalder opened his car door. ‘At least you can tell your yardy that he can sleep easy.’
Blake watched Nalder drive away. He’d shot two men dead and, whether they deserved it or not, nothing was going to happen to him for that. Crane on the other hand was looking at life behind bars. So much for justice. The unicorn was more real.
He went home and got drunk. A rare occasion for him. Music eased the melancholy. Maybe he was already dead? Maybe this was hell? He could make a case for it. Suppose back there in Philly at Repacholi’s garage he had ratted on Jimmy and they had shot him. Next thing he’s in the car being forced to see the result of his cowardice. Then he thinks he gets away but he doesn’t of course, because this is hell. The devil gives him a glimpse of what he might have got, had he deserved it: his own bar in a paradise, good people. But, little by little, that world is dismantled, like stage props being taken away, until all that is left is him: rotten, stinking, worthless.
He fell asleep in his lounge chair, woke sometime and dragged himself to bed. He got up at seven feeling like the way the Phillies played, forced himself into a listless session with the waves, skulked back to his house. He was putting his car in the garage when the garbage truck rumbled by. The guys in their footy shorts ran to different sides of the street. One stocky guy hauled his trash can up and ran back to the tipper with a cheery ‘g’day’, dumped his trash in then ran it back. It should have been one of those trivial moments that make up your day that you don’t even register. So why was it that he felt it was important? A memory there. He dredged. Something was glinting in the mud, pulling him towards it, closer, closer …
‘Did I see his car? Who, Clarke’s?’ Carol sounded annoyed. Perhaps she’d thought he called her for something more personal. He’d been going crazy killing time, waiting till she came in for work. The guy who answered the phone at the café said she wouldn’t be in till just before midday. At three past, Blake had called. He tried to encourage her.
‘Yes, when you drove in that night to his house. Was his car there?’
‘As if I would remem—’ Her denial was cut short as she recalibrated. ‘Wait, no. No, I didn’t see his car because my first thought was he couldn’t be bothered waiting for me and had gone out. But there were a couple of cars there. I guessed he might have driven a different one from the yard. But he was there asleep, I told you. I didn’t imagine it.’
This was critical now. ‘You said there was a kid asleep on the sofa. Was it his son?’
‘I guess. I never met his kid.’
‘You didn’t see Clarke at his place anytime between the previous Sunday and that Thursday when Valerie Stokes was killed?’
‘It wasn’t like a regular thing with us. He might have come to the golf club. His son was coming to stay with him. But you know that, right? Because he booked you to provide the keg.’
It only occurred to him now that she had been the one who had pushed Clarke in that direction.
‘That was you, sent him to me?’
‘I reckoned you could use the business. Listen, I have to start my shift.’ ‘Do you know what day Thomas Clarke arrived?’
‘Sorry.’
‘The kid you saw on the couch, do you remember …’ He searched desperately for ideas. ‘… what colour the kid’s hair was? How big he was?’
‘I don’t remember his hair. He wasn’t so big he couldn’t fit on the lounge.’
Blake had once seen Tom Clarke asleep on the sofa. ‘You said the kid fit. Were the kid’s feet way over the edge?’
‘I don’t know. How am I going to remember that?’
Well, he’d remembered. She sounded stressed. ‘I have to go.’
The clunk of the receiver cut out any chance of another question. Tom Clarke was big. Maybe it had been one of Tom Clarke’s friends she’d seen asleep on the sofa? Maybe Tom Clarke was out of there.
Something else clicked into place. He grabbed his car keys.
‘Let me see.’ Harold Travers stood on his porch, which looked high over the Pacific and, down to the left, the Ocean View Motel. Travers was a man about sixty-five who wore a cardigan even in summer. ‘It had to be a Thursday night because I put the bin out for the rubbish men and it was dented when I went out there on the Friday.’
‘Seven weeks ago? The seventeenth?’
‘That’s when your car was hit too?’
This was the tale Blake had spun after he’d walked up the long driveway and knocked on the door.
‘Yes, late on the seventeenth. I was parked down the road there. I remember because it was the night that girl was killed down there at the motel.’
‘Of course,’ said Travers with a shiver. ‘Ghastly thing. Some vagrant, I believe.’
‘Apparently.’ Clearly Travers had never understood the significance of his dented bin.
‘They come around that curve going downhill and get in too close to the kerb. Good luck catching him, though. He could be anywhere.’
‘I suppose I just have to look for a scraped fender.’
They both chuckled like it was the veritable needle in a haystack. But Blake had already pricked his finger. He knew which haystack and exactly where to look.
Kitty had been lunching with Jenny and a couple of other girls but it was just going through the motions. Their excited chatter about what boys they liked and which ones had looked their way made her feel resentful, angry. Today she couldn’t face it any more so she headed to the library where nobody would disturb her. To make it look like she was there for legitimate purposes, she peeled a book off the shelf, opened it at random and began reading, an activity never high on her list. It wasn’t that she disliked reading, more that she didn’t want to waste time she could spend on her true loves of dance and drama. She’d always wanted to be a ballerina, but if that didn’t work out, an actress would do. At first the words were just inscriptions on paper. She was reading but nothing was soaking in, her brain stuck on a loop of a drive-in screen and that maniac attacking the car. And then, without any preamble, the words in front of her coalesced and inveigled her to forget everything else. She read without realising it and was still reading when the bell went. It was a book by a woman, Edith Wharton, and though it was written many years earlier, it spoke to her no less clearly than Laurey Williams in Oklahoma!, as if some all-seeing person had been able to distil her life — Kitty Ferguson’s — and record it in this book before she had been conceived.
That night when her head touched the pillow and she closed her eyes, for the first time in weeks she was not assailed by Gene Pitney’s haunting ‘Liberty Valance’, or visions of a banshee swinging a shoe, or the sense of helplessness against the iron hands of Todd, but of brownstones and bonnets and the slow tick-tock of grandfather clocks. She gave into it completely, let it take her where it would. As if her history had been written on a seawall, then wiped smooth by an eternity of tides, she released everything she had been, offered herself free and clear to be whatever nature’s forces decided she could. For the first time in what seemed forever, she looked forward to tomorrow.