32

The funeral home was too bright and stark after coming in from outside. The morose daughter at Sadie’s front desk paged her mother and stared at Alice, trying to place who she was, as they waited patiently on overstuffed couches.

‘Did you know,’ Teddy said quietly, ‘that the Clarke in Quentin & Clarke was Sadie’s husband? He drowned in the ocean. The rumour is that she murdered him.’

‘Oh yeah? And who started that rumour?’

Teddy thought about it. ‘Choker, probably?’

Sadie came out in a neat peach suit, looked at Alice and said, ‘It says in my calendar I have an appointment with someone called Gordon, but I’m going to guess I’m wrong, huh?’

Alice shrugged. ‘It was a trustworthy name.’

Sadie sighed. ‘Well, what the fuck happened?’

‘I’m sorry?’ Alice said.

Sadie led them into her office. It was as peachy as she was – soft dried flowers hanging limply from the walls, a lot of pale wood and pictures of country landscapes, everything smelling of chemical fruits. Sadie got a vape pen out of her pocket and exhaled a dense strawberry smoke all over them.

‘Imagine my surprise,’ Sadie said, ‘when I saw no mention of the dead body we put in your car, ever? Nothing in the news? What the fuck did you do with him?’

‘You think I’d be sitting here and not in jail if I did something?’ Alice said.

‘I don’t know. I don’t trust you.’

‘I don’t trust you either,’ Alice said. ‘I think you told people what I was doing.’

‘You,’ Sadie said, pointing the pen at Alice, ‘can get fucked.’

Teddy said, ‘We’re not here to fight. But do you know why we’re here?’

‘Fucked if I know,’ Sadie said.

‘Something went wrong with Darwin,’ Alice said. ‘How much information do you have about him dying?’

Sadie snorted. ‘You think I’d tell you?’

‘Consider it information sharing.’

‘I don’t need anything from you.’

Alice said, ‘Did your daughters prepare his body?’

Sadie sat back and put her hands over her belly.

Teddy said, ‘I’m going to the bathroom.’

She got up and left. Alice sat very still and watched Sadie. She didn’t look nervous, or anything but annoyed.

‘You didn’t prepare the body, did you?’ Alice asked.

Sadie said nothing.

‘You don’t know how he died.’

‘We don’t ask those kinds of questions.’

‘Surely,’ Alice prompted, ‘with your level of experience with dead bodies, you’d have some ideas.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Well,’ Alice said, ‘at the very least you can tell a shotgun wound from a heart attack, right?’

Sadie watched her.

‘Or a car accident,’ she said. ‘Or a fight.’

Sadie stayed silent.

‘Had you met Darwin before?’ Alice asked.

‘Had you?’

‘A few times,’ Alice said. ‘It’s why I got the job. I’d chauffeured him before.’

‘Good for you,’ Sadie said. ‘I’m not telling you anything. You came, we had the body, we gave it to you. That’s the last we saw or heard of it.’

Alice’s watch buzzed. Teddy had sent a message: got her outside.

‘Well,’ Alice said, ‘you’ve been an extraordinary help.’

‘Fuck you too,’ Sadie said.

Alice left and walked down the corridor to the entrance. There was no longer anybody at the front desk. Alice left the building and walked to the car, then got in the driver’s seat. Teddy was in the back, holding a knife – not the one that had Alice on it, since they were working together now – to the throat of Sadie’s front-desk daughter.

‘Caught one,’ Teddy said cheerfully.

‘Let me go,’ the woman said.

Her name badge said Sally, and Alice said, ‘Sally, this can be extremely quick and painless, and you can get back to your job fast.’

‘Fuck you,’ Sally said.

‘It doesn’t have to be like this,’ Teddy said. ‘And I even have fifty bucks I can throw in for you.’

‘I don’t want your money,’ Sally said, but her voice had changed. She didn’t mean that at all.

Teddy had heard it too. ‘I hope your mother pays you right,’ she said. ‘Otherwise, you should join your union.’

Sally went quiet.

‘Do you remember me?’ Alice said.

Sally nodded.

‘Do you remember who I drove?’

Sally said nothing.

‘I haven’t hurt anybody for a long time,’ Teddy said conversationally. ‘I didn’t think it was something I’d miss. But I really hate it when people don’t answer me.’ She rolled her shoulder. ‘Alice, I’m getting a little sore. Could you help me out?’

Alice reached under her seat and came back out with her Beretta. Teddy steeled herself at the sight of it, all that metal and death and potential if the wrong person got a hold of it.

Sally’s expression changed this time.

‘Teddy, do you want the gun and I drive? Or should you drive? I’m a better shot.’

Teddy knew that they couldn’t show fear – only strength, only the upper hand – but she was still close to saying no when Sally licked her lips.

‘I remember who you drove,’ she said.

‘Do you remember anything else?’ Alice asked. ‘For example, do you remember putting anything in with the coffin?’

Sally shook her head.

‘That’s a shame,’ Alice said. ‘We don’t want a lot of information, do we, Teddy?’

‘Just a little,’ Teddy said. ‘Such a small amount.’

‘You wouldn’t shoot me,’ Sally said. ‘They have you on camera taking me outside.’

‘Remember that you’re saying this to somebody you gave a body to that nobody has ever seen again,’ Alice said. ‘We are very good at our
jobs.’

Teddy crossed her legs the other way in the back seat. At the movement, Sally closed her eyes and shuddered.

‘Tell us,’ Alice said, in her dangerous voice, ‘what happened.’

‘I know you found it,’ Sally said.

Alice waited.

‘It was my sister,’ Sally went on. ‘She saw the name on the plaque, and she saw the letter with the seal on it, which Mum was pissed about – really pissed. She doesn’t like not knowing things. Emma thought maybe we could figure out where he was going and make some money from that. So she put the tracker in before Mum nailed the coffin shut. How did you get inside?’

‘Crowbar and line saw,’ Alice said.

Sally nodded, licking her lips again. Teddy asked, ‘You only add things to dead bodies in coffins, or do you take them away as well?’

Sally shut her mouth and glared.

‘What did you do when you saw the body?’ Alice pressed.

‘What do you mean?’

Alice moved the gun incrementally forward. ‘Had you ever seen Darwin Weiss before?’

‘Only on the news.’

‘And did that look like him?’

Sally said, ‘Did what look like him?’

‘Are you fucking joking?’ Teddy said, exasperated. ‘The body! His
body?’

Sally took a shuddering breath at Teddy’s ire, and said, ‘I don’t know, I didn’t see him. Emma said she didn’t think it looked like him, but she’s not great at recognising people anyway and – are you telling me that wasn’t Darwin?’

‘Jesus fuck,’ Teddy sighed.

‘So she prepared the body?’ Alice said.

‘Just dressed him – otherwise it was Mum. She does all that.’

Finally, a solid piece of information, then: Sadie, for sure, knew it wasn’t Darwin Weiss.

Alice needed Sally back onside; Sally wouldn’t want Sadie to find out about the tracker, and likely didn’t want her to hear how defenseless she was in this little moment either.

‘Listen, I don’t think anyone’s going to find that coffin now, and that works for me, too – I definitely left a trace when I found the tracker. So you’re off the hook.’

‘We didn’t even get paid all of the money that prick said we would,’ Sally said, her hands tight on the seatbelt beside her. ‘Because the tracker was found on that truck somewhere in Albury.’

‘But that’s not your fault,’ Teddy said, indignant again. ‘Which prick didn’t pay you?’

‘A newspaper-type prick?’ Alice guessed.

‘Yes,’ Sally said. ‘Emma had done an interview with him once for an article he did on – I don’t know. I didn’t read it. But she had his number and thought he’d be interested.’

‘It’s a pretty big secret for him to keep.’

‘She trusted him. I don’t know why.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘I do know why. She wants to get in his pants.’

‘Ah,’ Teddy said. ‘The age-old problem.’

‘Anyway, he was real mad when you found it and got rid of it.’

‘Was he the only person who knew?’

‘He’s the only person she told.’

‘Because I had other people on my tail,’ Alice said, thinking of Eddie, and wondering. She readjusted the gun, just to remind Sally why they were here.

Sally’s breath got faster, but she said, ‘Not us. Maybe that fuckwit Nick told someone. If you see him, tell him to pay up the rest.’

‘Is your sister mad at him?’

‘Not even.’

Teddy put the knife back in her pocket and got out her wallet. Sally exhaled, but her eyes didn’t stray from Alice’s gun.

‘So you don’t have anything else you’d like to tell us?’ Alice said, while Teddy produced a fifty-dollar note and stuffed it into Sally’s front shirt pocket. ‘Did your mother know?’

‘About the tracker? God no, she’d fucking kill us. She’s pissed as well about the contract. She signed one saying that as soon as his death was announced she could say that she was part of the process. But what’s happened? No fucking announcement, no exposure. We all signed NDAs. I bet you did too.’

‘No,’ Alice said, putting the gun away. ‘I just keep my mouth shut.’

‘Fuck you,’ Sally said, getting out of the car and stalking back to the office.

Teddy got in the front and Alice put the car into drive. ‘Well,’ Alice said, ‘that answers some questions, but not all. How did Eddie Roubicek find out where I was going?’

‘You only saw him that one time.’

‘But he knew I was going to be there – how did he know when I was going to be there?’

‘That,’ Teddy said, ‘I don’t know.’

Alice was struck, then, in that moment, that she never did get her holiday after all, and that it felt like it would be a hundred years before there would ever be a holiday again.

‘God,’ she said, pulling out of the car park, ‘there’s so fucking much going on.’