Fifteen

I dreamt of Jenny Bishop being chased away from a cafe by Ken Dollimore, woke up knowing Rose had more to tell me, packed an overnight bag, arranged with my neighbour to feed Fred again, and made a detour to the highway via Mitchell.

Margot Lancaster was sitting in her car outside the club. I pulled up and wound down my window.

Margot stared at me. There was sweat along her upper lip and hairline. Grey was showing through the black, pronounced in the carpark’s bald surroundings. She’d lost her appearance of being expertly put together, and looked as though she needed to lie down for a long time in a cool, dark place.

‘What happened to the wig box?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I think you do.’

Margot switched on the ignition, turned quickly and efficiently, and drove away, early light bouncing off the duco of her well-maintained black Nissan.

. . .

I made my way to the cafe in Glebe Point Road, hoping the same waitress would be there.

She was, but disappeared through swing doors behind the counter the moment she spotted me. I ran after her. By the time I got to the back door, she was halfway down an alley. It was as well for me that she was wearing high black platforms. I caught up and grabbed her by the arm. I was panting, but what I had to say was simple.

‘Who was Rose running away from?’

‘Ow, you’re hurting me. Let go!’

‘What’s his name? Where can I find him?’

‘How should I know?’

‘Did he know Jenny Bishop too?’

‘Let me go! Get away from me!’

The waitress yanked her arm free and ran back in the direction of the cafe.

I bought a felafel roll and a bottle of water at a Lebanese takeaway and sat down at a white plastic table on the footpath. My hands were shaking and I felt far too hot. I shouldn’t have taken my frustration out on the waitress. That had been dumb. I hadn’t realised how tense and anxious I’d been, but that was no excuse. Any hope I’d had of getting useful information out of her was gone.

. . .

I left my car parked where it was, and approached the Wigram Road house by a series of back streets.

From the nearest corner, where I stood indecisively, I watched a car accelerating up the hill with Ian in the driver’s seat. Beside him was a dark-haired young woman whom I took to be Francesca.

It was broad daylight, but that couldn’t be helped. I’d just have to hope their neighbours were at work, or away on holiday.

I could have broken the lock on the back gate, but climbed the fence instead. The kitchen door and windows were securely fastened. I didn’t want to force an entry. I tried the shed. That was padlocked too. But the bathroom window that I’d noticed on my first visit was slightly open, and the fly screen had not been mended or replaced.

I struggled up the pipe, thinking that if an athletic dunce like me could manage it, then anybody could.

I landed in the basin with a great deal less elegance than I would have liked, and wiped away my footprints with a wad of tissues. With no idea how much time I had, I gave Jenny’s room a quick once-over. Nothing appeared to have changed. I went in search of Ian’s computer, which was in the room he’d described as a study. I switched it on, and began checking emails.

There were hundreds of them, and none appeared to have anything to do with Jenny.

Thinking I heard someone at the front door, I ran to the top of the stairs and stood listening for a moment, but the door stayed firmly closed.

Ian used an old version of Outlook Express for his mail, and he hadn’t bothered with a password. I was almost at the end before I found two that looked as though they could have been for Jenny. The first seemed to be offering its recipient some kind of explanation. ‘We were just having a drink together’, it began. ‘We didn’t even know he drank there. We met up by accident. Nothing to get your knickers in a twist over’. The message did not begin with a salutation, nor was the sender’s name included. But I knew the sender’s address. I’d seen it on Simon Lawrence’s website. It was Stan Walewicz.

The second was very simple. ‘I warned you to stay out of it’, was all it said.

Both emails were replies, dated December 19th and 21st. The originals had not been saved, or not on Ian’s computer. I quickly printed them, using paper I’d brought with me.

Getting down the pipe was easier than climbing up it, though I scraped my hands and landed with a bump.

I was returning the way I’d come, along the back alley behind the houses, when I heard a click and a rumbling sound behind me. I swung round. A young man was wheeling a rubbish bin. It caught on a stone and he wriggled it, then looked up at me curiously.

. . .

I checked in to my favourite hotel, grabbed a bite to eat, then drove to Sans Souci.

Seven-five-sevens dived for land across Botany Bay. La Grande Parade was thick with traffic. The brothel’s street was less busy than the main ones, but still parked out. I left my car behind a bottle shop on the main street, then walked back and stood opposite the house like last time, watching to see who went in and out. Curious about a back entrance, I found a laneway connected to the row of houses. Each had a high fence and a solid gate.

I returned to the street, where I was less conspicuous, and rang the brothel’s number. A recorded voice told me they were open from four every afternoon till late, and that there were six lovely ladies waiting to satisfy my every wish.

A man dressed in a dark suit and lemon-coloured shirt came out the front door. He crossed the street, got into a Holden Commodore, and drove towards the sea. I noted down the registration number, just for something to do. A second man followed him a few minutes later. He was younger, wearing jeans, a T-shirt, running shoes. He turned right at the gate, away from me. I watched him till he turned a corner. Other pedestrians were minding their own business. I thought it better not to hang around there any longer.

The sun was starting to going down. I stood looking out over the sea for a few minutes, then back towards the Novotel, which, with all its lights on, resembled a huge berthed ship. The ground floor bar was full of people. Loudspeakers sent Savage Garden’s latest hit out across the esplanade.

Drinkers were standing three deep at the bar. A young bartender with lip rings had his work cut out. The front of the bar was brightly lit, but the corners of the room were dim.

Rose was sitting at a small round table by herself, facing the room with her back to the wall.

I walked across and said hello.

Rose looked up at me and frowned.

‘Have you found out who was following you?’ I asked.

She shook her head.

From the corner of my eye, I saw the barman lift his chin in my direction.

‘I can’t talk here,’ Rose said. ‘There’s too many people who know me.’

‘Right. I’ll leave you to it then.’

I crossed the road to the esplanade. Lights every twenty metres or so broke up the darkening walkway.

Rose had looked pale and scared. There’d been no impression of resilience or elasticity about her. I wondered if she’d been waiting for someone. I’d made another mistake by going up to her. I should have bought a drink, sat in a corner, and watched. I wasn’t thinking straight.

I walked to the edge of the esplanade, breathing in salt air and the strong smell of seaweed.

A tall man in dark clothes ran out of some bushes at me, with a peculiar, bouncing gait.

I turned and sprinted back the way I’d come, luckily catching a break in the traffic on La Grande Parade. Once in my car, I accelerated as fast as I dared to, heading straight for my hotel.

I parked at the back of the building, and climbed the stairs to my room two at a time. Footsteps echoed on the concrete walk outside. I grabbed my overnight bag, pleased I hadn’t bothered to unpack. The glass doors leading to my first-floor balcony were fastened with a simple catch. A black iron railing ran around the balcony at knee level. I balanced on top of the railing and aimed for the centre of a small patch of lawn, trying to remember not to lock my knees.

Leaves and damp grass rose to meet me. I felt my shoulder crunch as I rolled. Shadows took the shapes of young men in need of a shave. Fear entered through the gap between a car door and its frame.

Out in the traffic, heading south-west, I checked my rear-view mirror every few seconds. The man could have followed me and be sitting two or three cars behind. Once on the highway, if he stuck with me, he’d have a range of options. Would he be on his own?

I continued on through Liverpool to the highway. Nothing happened. Slowly, I began to relax. Near the Berrima turn-off, I stopped at a service station, not having a choice, since my tank was empty. There were three other customers in the cafeteria section, a couple and a single, grey-haired man. I chose a seat facing the entrance, ate a sandwich and gulped down two cups of strong tea. No one else came in.

My spirits lifted, and I settled into a pleasant feeling brought on by a full stomach topped with caffeine. I was more than halfway home. I began to enjoy the black and purple of the surrounding bush, when there were no cars coming the other way, no lights to block it out.

I crested a long hill, dipped slightly, climbed again. Headlights expanded from points of light, to beams, to arcs, before the driver dimmed them, and I dimmed mine as well. I counted the gaps in time between passing cars. One minute, three. I got up to seven.

Suddenly, from nowhere, there was a car right behind me.

We were on a divided, two-lane stretch with concrete barriers on either side. Lights on high beam filled my whole car, flashing off my mirrors, blinding me. I accelerated, so did the driver on my tail, trying to push me into the concrete barrier. I tasted blood, and knew my teeth had bitten through my lip. I was going to hit the concrete, but then I realised that, somehow, I hadn’t. I was rushing alongside, closer than a lover’s breath.

I tried to read his rego number in the rear-view mirror, and cursed myself for not being able to. My speedo was on 220. I could not go any faster. I forced myself to move my hands a fraction.

Three cars in quick succession loomed up on the opposite side, further blinding and disorienting me. I thought of police, and as quickly grasped that it couldn’t be. The third seemed to swerve, as though beginning to cross the median strip that divided my lane from his, but it must have been a trick of the lights because all three cars passed, and disappeared.

My pursuer’s lights had fallen back a little. I didn’t slacken my pace, and a few moments later I had the lane to myself.

I slowly released the pressure of my foot on the accelerator, and thought about what to do. I wondered if I should detour off the highway into Goulburn, find a police station. But I had no idea if the officer on duty would be sympathetic, or even believe me.

I decided to keep going. On the last stretch of the Federal Highway, I fancied I saw a pre-dawn inkling ahead—though it would not be dawn for hours yet—that look of surprise across flat paddocks that here was yet another day.

. . .

Brook responded to my furious knocking, and I half fell through his door.

My mouth wouldn’t work. I tasted blood again. I had too many teeth. I thought of my mobile sitting on the car seat, all the times I could have rung him from the highway. I’d been scared to—scared he wouldn’t be at home, or that Sophie would pick up the phone.

Brook brought me tea so full of sugar it was almost tart. I gulped it down. He undressed me and put me to bed.

When I woke a few hours later, he was calm, professional. I responded to his manner, watching myself doing so. I looked down at my body, the lines where my swimsuit ended in the unforgiving light. Brook opened the curtains, those thick, invalid curtains Sophie had made for him after his bone-marrow transplant. He plumped up the pillows, brought more tea and toast. I thanked him, waiting for my pulse to slow, body to settle, knowing that it wouldn’t. He had told me once, when I’d asked him why he wanted to keep on working, that it was a private test. He’d said this with a dry smile, making light of the challenge.

We met each other’s eyes, and I understood that he was not going to reprimand me. If I wanted to, I could recall other reprimands and fit them in, slots in a venetian blind.

Brook sat down beside me. I squeezed his hand, and he returned the pressure. My fingers ached to trace the line from collar bone to shoulder. I thought a grasp at life could be exactly that, knuckle and hunch of muscle—the promise, the capacity, then the falling back.

I wasn’t ready to return to my empty house, listen to it creaking as the new day’s heat began. My lip, where I’d bitten it, was sore and swollen. Brook brought me some cream to put on it. I asked him if I could stay for a few more hours. He left me, and I fell asleep again, thinking of Jenny Bishop, and the shadow Ed Carmichael had inhabited, in his blue dress and lopsided halo.

. . .

Brook filled his bedroom doorway like some hero from a TV Western, turning away from the hot noon outside. Groggy, hauling myself out of a dream, I imagined a saloon bar’s doors swinging shut behind him, that second’s squint as the sheriff adjusted from one set of dangers to another.

I’d been dreaming of Peter’s first summer, when he was three months old and one heatwave had followed another. In my dream, I’d been angling damp towels around his basinet, layer after layer, till he was in danger of being smothered by them.

I began to talk. Brook listened. I couldn’t bear to think that he was humouring me, but I didn’t want him to interrupt, or cut my story short. I described again the lanky, dark-haired man and his peculiar walk, the way I’d seen his reflection, then later watched him going into Simon Lawrence’s shop. On the Sans Souci Esplanade, he’d run out of the bushes straight towards me.

I showed Brook the emails I’d printed. He didn’t ask me how I’d come by them.

He shook his head and said, ‘A girl like that.’

‘Like what? A girl like what?’

When Brook didn’t answer, I said, ‘Maybe Jenny Bishop knew something about Lawrence that he couldn’t afford for her to know.’

‘That flyer?’

‘Wouldn’t have mattered so much on its own, I don’t think. But because Jenny was so keen to get even, she nosed around and picked up something else.’

‘The weight of opinion will be on the side that she overdosed.’

‘Do a bit of leaning,’ I said. ‘Change the weight.’

‘It’s not our jurisdiction. You know that.’

‘Try and get someone from Glebe to follow up the Canberra connection. At least make sure they know about it. Something might have happened while Jenny was here. Something did happen.’

‘It’s a weak connection.’

‘That can be my job then, to make it stronger.’

When Brook didn’t reply to this, I said, ‘Jenny doesn’t strike me as the type who’d sit home drinking on her own. Especially while her housemates were at a party.’

‘So?’

‘So someone may have kept her company. Her neighbour across the road heard a car start up just after midnight. I told her to get in touch with the police. Somebody should interview her.’

Instead of responding to any of this, Brook asked me if I was all right to drive home, and I said I was.

In the car, which felt like an old friend, I asked myself what prejudice had to do with love. I’d once put Brook in a box labelled sick and middle-aged, and he’d let me know how much that had hurt him. Yet I couldn’t bear to think of him labelling Jenny Bishop and dismissing her, couldn’t bear to think of him using phrases such as ‘girls like that’.

I recalled the Hansel and Gretel story, how the bread trail hadn’t worked, but lifeless pebbles had. Pebbles couldn’t be eaten, were no good to the birds, and so were left there to be followed. I thought of blood, and its absence from two violent deaths, how Jenny should have bled. It was an affront to the logic of death, of life abandoning a young body, that she hadn’t.