47

‘Change of plan, sweetie,’ Brigitte said as she turned back and headed to the little tin boat upended at the water’s edge, near where the forensic scientists had found Maree Carver’s bloodstains and the tree had glowed with luminol. She glanced over her shoulder at Harry. It was hard to tell, but he appeared to be looking in the direction of the park.

‘We’re going to take a boat.’ Brigitte lowered Ella to the ground next to the old tinny.

‘But you’re scared of the water, Mummy.’

She hesitated, looked at the first jetty, but the feeling of near-drowning was now like a long-ago dream she could barely remember. ‘Not anymore.’ She threw off her coat, and slid her hands under a side of the tinny, hoping to God — or anything else that could help them — that the oars were inside.

Her back spasmed, seized. White-hot pain. No, no, no, not now. Why hadn’t she had it seen to? She dropped to her knees. Objects receded to dizzy outlines. Sepia. Black.

She tasted dirt, and heard Ella crying.

Hands against knees, she pushed herself up. There was a crunch in her spine. She took a few steps around in a circle. It was OK. The pain was bearable.

Her back held up as she flipped the tinny over. Millipedes, worms, and God knows what else wriggled to deeper hiding places. She dragged and pushed the boat — no motor, but oars attached to the insides — to the water, kicked off her boots, and helped Ella scramble in. She ran back for her phone in the coat, and then waded a metre or so out before climbing-falling into the wobbly boat. Her phone went overboard; she reached for it, too late, and swore as it drowned in the strait.

‘Don’t worry. Just remember: red, right, return, Mummy,’ Ella said, as if they were going on a picnic. ‘So we can find our way back.’

‘OK, sweetie. Red, right, return.’ Wasn’t that the wrong way around? She saw water bubbling through a little hole in the port, no, starboard — whatever side. Any fucking port in a fucking storm. She gnawed her lip and started rowing, in a fashion.

‘Brigitte! Up here!’

She missed the water with her oar stroke as she turned her face to the ferry. Jeremy?

‘It’s all right. I’ve knocked Harry out.’

She squinted and could just make out the silhouettes of Harry slumped at the controls and Jeremy climbing down the stairs.

Brigitte and Ella hadn’t gotten very far; she stabbed the oar into the strait’s floor and pushed the tinny back to shore.

‘First-class passengers this way,’ Jeremy winked as they stepped aboard.

‘Did you get the gun off Harry?’

Jeremy nodded and smiled. ‘All taken care of.’

Brigitte wanted to kiss him. She held onto the thighs of her Hello Kitty onesie, heavy with water, and rushed into the passenger saloon, closing the door against the icy wind. She and Ella slumped on the seat, cuddling, teeth chattering.

It was almost over. All Jeremy had to do now was get them to the other side — five minutes max.

Phoebe would get such a shock when police knocked on the door of whichever friend’s house she’d gone to. Brigitte wouldn’t be too angry. She was going to try harder with her, be a better mother. And a better partner for Aidan. She’d help him to get better. She’d see a doctor, too: for her back again, and maybe other … issues. If she could face the water, surely she could brave a doctor visit. No more lies — to Aidan or to herself.

All the times Harry had sat drinking with her at the kitchen table, all the times he’d watched the kids. Waiting? How could she have been such a poor judge of character? She shuddered, not yet able to reconcile what Harry had done to Maree Carver, to Zippy, and almost … Don’t think about that now. Save it for the doctor.

She walked over to see if she could lock the door from the inside — no. Please hurry up, Jeremy. She returned to the seat and pulled Ella onto her lap, kissing the top of her head. The ramp folded up, and the ferry started cranking across the strait. A crescent moon illuminated the vehicles and dark figures — police, she hoped, waiting for Harry — moving about near the Paynesville ferry shelter. Steve must be over there somewhere.

Just over halfway across the strait, the ferry gave a sad kind of whimper, and then stopped dead. Brigitte’s heart thundered in her chest. She stood up. Harry’s awake. Or another broken chain. Please not now.

She left Ella on the seat and opened the door a crack to look outside.

‘Coast Guard to Paynesville.’ The radio from the upper deck.

She pushed the door open a little more, wanting to call out to Jeremy, but afraid of Harry hearing.

‘You know that secret cupboard in your bedroom?’ Ella said. ‘Phoebe knows the numbers.’

Brigitte turned to gape at her.

‘She says I can’t see inside.’

The fluorescent tube overhead flickered.

‘Do you read me, Paynesville?’ Static. ‘Paynesville, do you read me? Over.’ And then the radio died.

She heard footsteps on the stairs and froze. Just Jeremy’s Doc Martens — she saw them from the underside of the steel staircase. ‘Is everything …’

There was a second pair of feet, in front of Jeremy’s. Small feet, in pink Converse sneakers. Brigitte’s first emotion was relief.

She stepped out of the saloon, closing the door behind her. At the bottom of the stairs, Jeremy pulled down the rag from Phoebe’s mouth. In his other hand, he held a pistol — the one from their safe.

‘I’m sorry, Mummy.’ Phoebe’s speech was punctuated by ragged breaths. Snot and tears were smeared over her face, and there was a small cut on her forehead. ‘I just wanted to show the gun to Emily.’

Jeremy told her to shut up or he’d tie her up again. He must have had her hidden in the mainland-side operator’s compartment.

He pushed the pistol’s barrel into her temple. She flinched and hunched up her shoulders; a trickle of urine ran through her denim shorts and down her bare legs.

Brigitte looked at the goosebumps on her daughter’s legs and gripped the rail behind, her heart shifting from her stomach to her throat. ‘Shh. It’s OK, baby.’

Jeremy shook his head, and looked at Brigitte as though he didn’t recognise her.

Little strangled sobs like hiccups shook Phoebe’s body. Brigitte locked eyes with her, focusing on her own breath control, hoping that would somehow help Phoebe to control hers. She was back in the NICU — having only one want: for her babies to survive. Breathe. I love you. Everything’s going to be OK. Breathe. My beautiful little baby. Breathe.

She tried to think of something a police officer might say to negotiate out of the situation. How to keep things under control? Surely she’d absorbed something, but nothing came. She looked to Jeremy. ‘Why do you want to hurt us?’

Jeremy stared at her — through her — with dead fish eyes. What had happened to him? Drugs? Lack of drugs? She vaguely remembered him telling her he’d had depression. Maybe it was something more, and he’d gone off his meds.

‘We didn’t do anything to you,’ she said.

‘But he did.’ When he spoke, his lips made a popping sound — his mouth was dry.

Brigitte winced as he waved the gun in the air. ‘Who? Who hurt you?’ Steve would have called the Special Operations Group, and a hostage negotiator — she just needed to distract Jeremy until they arrived.

‘Serra.’

‘But he barely knows you.’

He seemed to struggle to form saliva in his mouth. ‘He killed our sister.’

Our? How many people were in his head? If he was hearing voices, God knew what he might do.

‘Me and Steve’s.’ He wiped his nose with the back of his gun hand.

Serra, Steve, he was saying random names now. Brigitte kept her eyes on the gun.

‘Our Laurie.’

Oh my fucking God. She remembered the initials on the scarf in Jeremy’s ute — not Lang Hardware. She remembered Steve dropping something on Harry’s boat — not his hanky.

He nodded slowly, a faint sneer tugging a corner of his mouth. The SOG weren’t coming; nobody was coming to help.

If she could just get close enough, she could snatch the gun from his hands, somehow. Or, he could shoot them all. Keep him talking, distract him. ‘You don’t have a dog, do you?’

He shook his head.

‘You paid those boys to say they killed my dog?’

He looked at the sky, and in a raspy voice, started singing: ‘Memories I’m stealing, but you’re innocent in your dreams.’

She’d heard the song, but couldn’t place it. Phoebe’s eyes followed Brigitte’s to the gun. She gave a tiny shake of her head: not yet. Jeremy was still staring heavenward, and singing. ‘In your dreams, in your dreams. Innocent in your dreams.’

She took a step towards him. He didn’t seem to notice. She glanced at the upper deck. Please, Harry, please wake up now.

Jeremy stopped singing. ‘It wasn’t meant to be Maree Carver,’ he said.

Anger overrode Brigitte’s fear. ‘No shit! You really screwed that up, didn’t you?’

That brought him back to Earth.

‘And the night after that stupid bogan band?’

He glared at her.

‘There are no short cuts to our house.’

‘Fucken Serra. We wanted him,’ he spat the word with no spit, ‘to know how it feels to lose somebody you love, but you tricked us. Same hair, same coat, you fucken cunts all look the same.’

‘Aidan had no choice. Your sister shot him first, and killed his partner.’

‘Bullshit!’

The fear returned and she stopped talking; he was waving the gun around too much, losing control. The passenger-saloon door creaked open, and she felt Ella against her backside. She pushed her back inside with a hip.

Jeremy looked around Brigitte and grinned. ‘I almost forgot the little one there.’

A few heavy raindrops hit the upper deck. Jeremy looked towards the sound, and she took another step. She could see Harry drooping forward. It wasn’t raindrops: it was crimson. Four darks in red. Nausea burned her throat, stung her eyes. She stumbled a step back, dizzy, dry retching.

Jeremy laughed. ‘Good old Harry. He so wanted to get into your pants, didn’t he?’

She gritted her teeth.

‘He was s’posed to find you all. Would’ve looked like he did it — like the animals back when we worked at the abattoir. Then Steve, or better still, Serra, was gunna shoot him. But he got here a bit early. The one time Harry didn’t do exactly what you told him to … Th-th-th-that’s all folks. Lucky Blondie here brought your gun for me this time. Knife’s a bit messy.’ His gaze flickered across to the mainland and back. ‘You know how this ends, don’t you?’

She felt herself dissociating, Jeremy’s voice coming from far away.

‘What, you didn’t read your boyfriend’s book?’

That jolted her back.

He tut-tutted. ‘I read it three times. I love the twist at the end. It wasn’t Detective Moore; it was Annaleah. First the wife, then the dog, then the kids, and —’

Jeremy’s phone rang in his pocket. Brigitte stared at him; he gazed into the middle distance for five rings, and then released Phoebe as he answered. He appeared to listen, and then replied, ‘Just fuck off.’

A negotiator?

Phoebe was cemented like a statue to the spot where Jeremy had been holding her. Brigitte held out her hand, but Phoebe didn’t — couldn’t — move.

‘Dumb fucken cunt,’ Jeremy said into the phone. ‘I’ve got a gun. Which one should I shoot with it first? Eeny, meeny, miney, moe.’ He listened again. ‘I don’t want anything. Fuck off! Just fuck off!’

A dog barked. The lights in the dwelling above Joe’s fish shop came on.

‘I don’t want your fucken help!’ Jeremy yelled, and threw his phone overboard.

Ella ran through the passenger saloon to the front of the ferry. She screamed and tried to scramble up the ramp, but slipped back down onto the floor.

Jeremy covered his ears. Now. Now was the time to snatch the gun. But Brigitte was cement like Phoebe, couldn’t move.

More shops lit up. For fuck’s sake, do something! Brigitte lurched for the gun. Jeremy was too strong; his fingers gouged into her flesh. He flung her aside, and she smashed like a doll against the rails. Ella screamed again. Brigitte braced herself for a bullet going awry.

‘Make her shut up, Brigitte, or she gets it first.’

A police siren screamed on the mainland, and was killed quickly. Another car. A door slammed. Raised voices, an argument. A splash. Somebody in the water. Floodlight. Jeremy monstered through the passenger saloon, arms barely moving by his sides. He placed a hand on the rail, jumped over into the vehicle section, and went to the port — no, the starboard — side, training the pistol on the swimmer.

Brigitte hauled herself up. Nothing felt too broken. She hugged and kissed Phoebe, guided her into the saloon, beckoned to Ella, and cocooned both her girls in her arms. She turned them to the south-facing windows, not wanting to witness what happened next.

Through the open door, she saw hands grip the bottom rail. Aidan! He emerged from the water. Jeremy was still aiming the gun at something imaginary in the water on the other side. Aidan placed an index finger to his lips. In her peripheral vision, she saw Jeremy turn as Aidan climbed aboard. Aid, no!

There was a loud crack, a gunshot. Aidan looked into Brigitte’s eyes as he fell to his knees, water dripping from his clothes. She hadn’t seen Jeremy point the pistol. The gunshot and Aidan falling didn’t piece together. Time slowed down. If only there could be no choice: just an incident, an accident. She was disorientated. Jeremy laughed, and looked across to where the shot had come from on the mainland. Brigitte looked, too. A stocky man with a rifle: Steve Williams. Another shot, a lick of gunfire, a woman’s silhouette: Carla. The stocky man dropped. Jeremy stopped laughing and turned the gun on the officers in Paynesville.

Aidan slumped forward on the cold, steel floor. Brigitte heard herself moan. Ella’s lips formed the word ‘Daddy’ as she lay down beside her father and wrapped her arms around him. There was more gunfire from the mainland. Brigitte looked up; they’d missed — Jeremy was still standing, aiming at the shore, but jerking from one target to another.

Phoebe was having some kind of breathing attack on the bench seat. Brigitte couldn’t go to her, not while Jeremy still had the gun. He headed towards the island-side, behind the passenger saloon, where it would be impossible to clear-sight him from the mainland. He was mumbling something about his brother and Jesus, and soft green fields. How long before he returned his focus to Brigitte and her family?

She kneeled beside Aidan and reached under his shirt for his holster. She was sure his gun wouldn’t work after being in the water. But she had to try; it was their last chance. She glanced at Jeremy — still mumbling. Aidan wasn’t wearing a gun belt. Game over.

He rolled onto his side — foetal position — and moved his mouth. She leaned down, her face close to his, so she could hear.

‘Pock …’ he whispered against her ear.

Pocket? She brushed back his hair, kissed his clammy forehead, and felt around his hips — tentatively, the way she did her monthly breast-lump checks, terrified of what she might find, or, in this case, not find. In the front pocket. His service pistol. Tied inside a disposable glove, dry. Smart boy, Aidan. Smart boy. Smartest man I’ve ever known. When this was all over, she’d look up the manufacturers that supplied Victoria Police with disposable gloves, and send them a thankyou email. She checked Jeremy; he was leaning against the back rail, staring in the direction of the first jetty, singing again. She wiped her hands on the top of her onesie, tore open the glove with her teeth, and removed the pistol. It felt heavier than the one they’d kept in the safe.

She padded quietly to the rear door of the passenger saloon, trying to recall Aidan’s instructions of how to use the gun. She felt the base of the grip. There was a magazine in there. That meant there could be a round in the chamber, but she couldn’t remember how to tell. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Why hadn’t she listened properly? All she could remember was: The slide flies back with each shot, so never cross your thumb behind it. Cut it right off. A severed thumb no longer seemed such a big deal. She released the safety, held the gun in her right hand, and placed her left around the grip. Jeremy still hadn’t turned around.

‘Get down, Phoebe,’ she whispered as she stepped out of the saloon, closing the door quietly behind her so the girls couldn’t see. She stood with her bare feet shoulder-width apart, legs shaking inside her Hello Kitty onesie. Aidan had said something about lining up the sights. Think, Brigitte, think. But she couldn’t. She extended her arms, aiming at the back of Jeremy’s head. Fucking bastard! She pulled the trigger.

She’d closed her eyes, jerked the trigger, and the gun went off target; the bullet ricocheted off the ferry’s light post. She’d thought she had reasonably good upper-body strength from the gym, but the recoil bucked her arms back onto her face and she stumbled against the stair rail.

Jeremy turned. Deafened by the gunshot, she couldn’t hear his singing as he pointed the gun at her. She cowered against the stairs, squinting, steeling herself.

Fight or flight. Clawing, fingernails tearing at the edge of hope, she stood and raised the gun again. It is at the point of reaching true helplessness, having abandoned thoughts of the future, that we dismiss risk and fear. Imagine you’re placing your finger against something delicate, like glass. A strange calmness slowed her breathing and heart rate. Jeremy came closer, closer — close enough for her to see there was no magazine in his gun. Of course, Phoebe couldn’t reach the ammunition. For a moment, Brigitte considered lowering the gun. But Aidan was lying in a pool of blood and water, Ella and Phoebe cuddling behind him. And then the song, of which Jeremy’s lips were forming the wrong words, came to her: Tom Waits’s ‘Innocent When You Dream’. Oh fuck, Harry, I’m so sorry.

She couldn’t see it, but maybe Jeremy still had the knife he’d used on Harry. And he was far stronger than she. Still dangerous. Still self-defence? Or maybe the postman does always ring twice, but, at that point, she didn’t care. Gently. Don’t jerk the trigger. She didn’t miss the second time.

The bevelled hole in Jeremy’s head; the surrounding shredded flesh flaming, and tattooed with gunpowder; the fragments of skull, tissue, and brain matter flying out from the back of his head: more things to save for the doctor. Along with Harry, and Maree Carver’s butchered body, which she’d seen reflected in the Bateau House’s glass doors.

The burnt-match smell of gunpowder hung in the air. Brigitte placed the pistol on the floor, pointing towards the island. She went back into the saloon and lay down facing Aidan. His breath was faint against her cheek. She held him, tried to warm him. Blood soaked through his cold, wet shirt; she found the wound, covered it with her hands, and applied pressure.

She read his lips: ‘I lied about my greatest fear.’

‘Me, too.’

‘It’s losing you,’ he said. ‘And it’s left.’

She moved her hands over.

‘No. Left in the bottle.’

‘What?’

‘That saying. It’s not “any port in a storm”. It’s no port …’

‘Shh.’ She kissed him. ‘I love you.’

He fanned his fingers up and down.

‘And I’m sorry.’

She saw the lights of the Water Police and the Coast Guard approaching, an ambulance on the mainland.

Dear Glove Company, Thank you for manufacturing such a stellar product …

Behind his back, she felt Phoebe’s hand on hers and, despite the slippery blood, laced her fingers and gripped tight.

Wind ruffled around the ferry. The gentle rocking felt like the motion of her father’s semitrailer, where she had dozed, safe and warm, in the sleeper compartment as a little girl. Strange things came to her. The combination of her locker when she was a stripper at the Gold Bar: 18–9–26; 18–9–26; 18–9–26. The names of the streets she used to drive past to get to their old house: Gordon, Myrtle, Clifton; Gordon, Myrtle, Clifton; Gordon, Myrtle, Clifton.

The light fizzed, went out, and then came back on again.

She closed her eyes and she was slow-dancing with Aidan on the night they met. On the shiny timber wall, a lean figure towered over a Tinkerbell shape: their silhouettes reflected by the dance-floor lights.

Find our way back home, somehow: Red, right, return. Red, right, return. Red, right, return.