12

Mike the butcher greeted Brigitte and Ella as the door tinkled. Brigitte screwed up her nose. She hated the smell, the meat, the blood on Mike’s apron. She preferred the unscented, cryovacked meat at the supermarket, going to Mike’s only to buy cheap bones for Zippy.

‘Any update on the lady in the lake?’ Mike said.

Wasn’t that a Raymond Chandler novel? Brigitte shook her head.

‘Cops been questioning all the shopkeepers for some reason.’

‘Just normal procedure. They need to gather as much information as they can.’

‘Waste of time.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Wasn’t a local did it.’

‘What are you suggesting?’

‘Foul play. Reckon it was the husband.’

Mike had obviously read more Chandler, and watched more CSI, than she had.

‘You after dog’s bones?’

She nodded.

‘Got rump on special. Premium Black Angus Grass Fed. Very lean.’

‘OK, I’ll get a kilo of that too, please.’

‘Lot cheaper if you buy in bulk. For ninety bucks I’ll give you seven kilos.’

‘That sounds like a lot.’

‘You got a big freezer? I’ll make it ten kilos for a hundred.’

She twisted her mouth.

‘Can’t do better than that, ten bucks a kilo.’ He started piling up steaks. ‘You coming to the council meeting about the ferry fees?’

‘Don’t think I can get away.’

He winked as he sharpened his knife on the steel.

Brigitte took a bowl of corn chips and Cloud Atlas outside, and sat on the porch couch to read. In part two, the nineteenth-century journal was found by a 1930s composer. Separate stories, different styles, but somehow connected? Zippy lay at her feet. The last of the lazy golden sunlight streamed through the eucalypts at the fence-line. The kids were imprisoning creatures in their bug catcher. A rump steak stew was simmering on the stove. Domesticity. Joan would be appalled.

The annoying multicoloured bird she’d named Cheeky perched on an arm of the couch. He took two hops and then flew at her. She screamed and shoed him away. Zippy lifted his head and barked, but nothing would get rid of Cheeky — except a corn chip. She threw one for him, knowing he’d attack her again for more in a minute.

Zippy heard Aidan’s car first; his ears pricked up before it crunched up the driveway. He took off, barking madly.

Aidan swore as Zippy knocked him against the broken gate. Cheeky dive-bombed Brigitte’s head with renewed vigour. She threw him another chip.

‘So at one with nature,’ Aidan said as he stepped onto the porch.

She didn’t bother asking what was in his pocket.

Ella sprinted across the yard and followed him inside.

Brigitte heard him say: ‘Something smells good in here.’

Ella told him, ‘The husband killed that lady in the lake.’

‘What?’

There was a crash from the kitchen; Aidan swore and Ella giggled.

Brigitte put her book down and went inside to see what was going on. Aidan was barefoot, hopping in front of the fridge. The freezer door was open, a package of half-frozen steak on the floor.

‘What have you been telling Ella?’

‘Nothing. She just heard Mike gossiping.’

‘What’s all this in the freezer?’

‘Premium Black Angus Grass Fed steak.’

‘I thought we were supposed to be eating less red meat.’ He stopped hopping and examined his foot. ‘Don’t let Phoebe see.’

‘Why not?’

‘She’s vegetarian, remember?’

‘That won’t last.’

‘Stop being so hard on her. She’s a good kid.’ He picked up the steak, put it back in the freezer, and re-stacked everything so it fitted in neatly. ‘Why so much?’

‘On special at Mike’s. Lean and cheap.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Same way I like my men.’ It won her a half-smile as he took out a beer. ‘So, no news?’ she said.

‘Gunna be a media conference in Melbourne tomorrow.’

‘You’re not going down?’

‘No. But speaking of which, how’s your head?’

Touché. ‘Fine.’ She lifted his hand that was holding the cold beer, touched it to the bruise. ‘Or at least that’s what you used to tell me.’

He let that one go through to the keeper, pulled away, and went to the lounge room.

She tasted the stew and screwed up her face. Really tough. Bloody Mike. She heard the couch creak and Aidan turn on the TV news.

The reporter said: ‘Detective Senior Sergeant Steven Williams of the Homicide Squad has revealed that, after reviewing the crime scene, celebrity chef Maree Carver may have been murdered.’

Brigitte spat the unchewable meat into the bin, and rushed in to watch.

They cut from the agent’s photo of Maree Carver to footage of Steve Williams on the Paynesville foreshore. ‘The circumstances around Maree’s death are suspicious. She may have met with foul play.’ The wind ruffled his shirt, but not his crew cut. ‘Maree had been dining with local Gip TV staff at the Bateau House restaurant on The Esplanade in Paynesville on Thursday the seventh of March. It should have been a short walk to the Mariner’s Cove motel where she was staying, just 350 metres up the road. At about 10.30 she declined an offer from a male Gip TV staff member to walk her to the motel, insisting she would be fine alone.

‘Ms Carver had consumed some alcohol, but by all accounts she had not done so excessively.

‘I’ve been told by local residents that people would usually feel safe in that area at night. Having said that, we don’t know what happened to Maree between the time she left the restaurant and her body being discovered in McMillan Strait.’

Fade to footage of police vehicles and tape flapping along the foreshore. And then Maree Carver’s distraught husband, Michael Gorr, explaining why he hadn’t reported his wife missing when she didn’t answer her phone on Thursday night. ‘She was frequently away from home on work trips and often didn’t answer her phone. I didn’t think anything of it,’ he said. ‘I rang her mobile repeatedly on Friday morning.’

And back to the reporter. ‘Mr Gorr, who described his wife of ten years as his “best friend”, said he believed her phone was out of range or had run out of battery.

‘Detective Williams said Mr Gorr was not being treated as a suspect and police do not have a suspect at this stage. He thanked the community for their overwhelming response and cooperation, and said anyone in the vicinity of the area at the time should contact Crime —’

Aidan flicked channels to The Big Bang Theory.

‘Oh my God, what happened to her?’ Brigitte said, wringing her hands.

‘Dunno. It’s Homicide’s file.’

‘Was she raped?’

‘I said —’

‘What about CCTV?’

He sighed. ‘What about it?’

‘Don’t they have it on the ferry? Might have captured her walking past or something.’

‘I’ll let Williams know you’re available if Homicide need any extra help with this.’

She frowned.

‘They never release all the details, in order to trip up the suspect.’

‘There is a suspect? The husband?’

‘I told you —’

‘You must know something.’

He tossed the remote onto the couch as he walked out of the room.