David stood over Lachlan until the cops arrived. The occupants of the room heard the sirens pour down the road long before they arrived, turning the quiet suburban street into a fiesta of lights and action. Residents, formerly invisible, appeared in the street to partake of the excitement and offer evidence which was part conjecture and mainly invented.
Lachlan Reynolds was taken away in an ambulance to have his arm dealt with but Hana and Phoenix were detained by ambulance staff and police. “I just want to go home,” Hana begged over and over until finally they listened. Logan summoned Angus to deal with the distraught Dora Dobbs
“I’ll take her back to mine,” Angus said, his complexion paler than usual. There was an uncharacteristic tremor in his fingers and Logan watched him with curiosity.
“Two female officers will accompany you,” Odering said as the principal led Dora away by the arm. Angus stuffed the frail Dora into his mid-life-crisis car parked on the driveway, his arm firmly around her shoulders. He caught Logan’s eye and the younger man gave him a nod of acknowledgement. But there was something else in Logan’s eyes and Angus quickly looked away, his shoulders slumping in defeat.
“Take your wife home for now,” Odering told Logan. “She’s not making much sense so I’ll pop round in a while and take her statement. I’m sure she’ll give me the convoluted version, as always.” He waggled his eyebrows and Logan glared at him.
“Yeah, well if you weren’t such a useless detective, she wouldn’t have to give you a statement, would she?”
“Because of my psychic powers?” Odering asked and Logan balled his fists. “Careful, Logan,” Odering hissed. “You know how much I’d love to arrest you.”
Back at The Gatehouse, a shocked Hana dealt with the physical needs of her daughter as an antidote from the deep shock that seemed to surge unchecked through her arteries. She felt muddled and at the same time intensely numb. When the zip of the change bag caught on itself and refused to budge, Hana yanked it with too much force, disconnecting the zipper on one side and detaching the metal catch from the surface. It was sharp and the tiny piece of twisted metal stabbed into the pad of her middle finger as she tugged and it gave up the fight.
Hana sat back on her heels, her daughter’s bare legs kicking into the air, riding an invisible bicycle. Phoenix sucked her thumb and looked around her, her grey eyes flicking from one object to another in the cavernous bathroom. Feeling detached still, Hana stared at the cut on her finger, watching as the blood rose to the surface and then stalled. It wasn’t deep enough to properly weep and the blood got on with its job, clotting and blocking the inner layers from the air and sealing the gash over with its specially designed formula of natural chemicals.
Hana felt disappointed. She expected it to bleed. She wanted it to bleed. Not prolifically, but perhaps just enough to drag her from the ‘nothing’ place she felt her mind had gone. She squeezed the end of her finger, hoping she might be able to persuade it to blood-let some more. A tiny bobble of red rose up to the surface but disappeared back to its work as soon as she released the pressure. You can’t even bleed properly, idiot! You can’t do anything properly! Hana cruelly admonished herself, feeling only disappointment.
A memory of another time rose unbidden and looking down at her left wrist, Hana saw the blood gushing in a rainbow arc of red and scarlet from the open wound. It splatted on the neat driveway, making the same noise as water wrung from a soaking wet cloth. Hana shuddered and closed her eyes, forcing the image to disperse and wishing she hadn’t invited it. She gripped the scar with her right hand, closing her fingers over it roughly. The pain sparked to life, the suspect shard of glass inside the vein causing damage again with its microscopic points. With a gasp Hana let go. But it worked. She was back in the bathroom, on her aching knees with her daughter wriggling on the mat. “Oh God,” she prayed. “Why me?”
Hana fitted the tiny leggings back over Phoenix’s gangly legs and watched as the little girl flipped awkwardly over onto her front. The child set off on a big adventure to examine the sink pedestal, the bottom of the toilet and the side of the bath.
Hana watched her, the numbness dissipating. For Phoenix, everything was intriguing and new. Every surface was to be explored and touched - reaching for a greater understanding of her surroundings like an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Hana woodenly packed the detritus from the change bag back inside its folds. The zipper dangled sadly from one side of the opening, the contents rolling around unchecked inside like something half disembowelled. As the baby tottered up onto her knees in order to grab at the toilet seat, Hana shook herself and stood up, retrieving the child and bag in one swift movement.
Outside in the corridor, she almost fell headlong over her husband’s legs. Logan sat outside the bathroom door on the split level landing, his back against the wall and his legs stretched out in front of him. He heard the door opening but didn’t retract his feet fast enough as Hana bowled out of the room. “Whoa, steady.” Logan jumped up, righting Hana by seizing her wrists in his strong hands. She hissed in pain and dropped the bag, managing to keep hold of Phoenix who wrapped her legs around her mother’s waist. There it was again - the sharp feeling of reality which came with the stabbing reminder. Hana clung to it, trying desperately to stay in the here and now and not let her mind begin its dreadful wandering. “Sorry, sorry,” Logan said, wincing in sympathy as Hana automatically looked down at the site of the pain.
“It’s ok,” she replied softly, dragging her gaze away from the livid scar as her husband hefted the baby onto his hip. “It’s helping.”
Logan looked at his wife warily, not really understanding but afraid for her. “Hana,” he began, “about before. About the diary and stuff. I...”
Hana cringed visibly and held her hand up in front of her face. Her eyes closed and she shook her head. “I can’t do this now, Logan.”
He reached out for the bag feeling chastened, noticing it was wide open and the contents rolled around inside haphazardly. Wisely he made no comment. “Let’s chuck the bag in the bedroom and then we need to go downstairs. Your best mate wants a word with you.”
“Anka?” Hana said, the hope in her voice pitiful.
“No babe, I meant Odering. He’s downstairs.” Logan tried to mask his disdain for the detective.
Hana’s shoulders visibly slumped. “I need a plaster,” she stalled.
“In the kitchen cupboard, I’ll get one.” Logan nudged her with his hand as he hurried down to the bedroom to dump the bag inside the door. Hana didn’t move. “Let’s get it over with,” he urged.
Odering sat at the kitchen table sipping a very dark brown cup of tea. “This tea’s bloody awful,” he complained to David. “It tastes a bit...spicy.”
The liquid looked incredibly bitter, as though the tea bag had been thrashed to within an inch of its life to yield a colour as vivid as that. David looked smug and Logan smirked as he sat at the table. “Don’t make me one like that,” he said to him.
The soldier turned back to the sink and began clattering around with more cups. Hana fiddled with the plaster Logan gave her and wondered whether to decline a drink, if that was the calibre of tea making the British Air force produced. In a fit of clumsiness, she dropped the paper packaging from the plaster and began to grovel around under the table, retrieving the pieces.
When her mug of tea appeared on the table, Hana stared at it. So did Inspector Odering. Hana’s looked drinkable for a start, a decent shade of rimu brown with a goodly helping of milk. Odering peered across at Hana’s cup and then back at his own, a disappointed sigh escaping his lips. Behind his back, David lifted his right eyebrow in a quizzical, humorous manner and Logan looked away to avoid laughing out loud. In the twenty minutes since Logan left the pair alone, Odering had managed to upset David already.
Hana exhaled loudly as Odering’s pocket book appeared from his suit jacket and everyone looked at her. “Oh,” she said, pointing, “you’ve got a new one.”
Odering humphed and flipped the blue cover open, staring at Hana and growling, “Yes, Mrs Du Rose. I used up the last one on you!”
Hana glanced at her husband in time to see him grit his teeth and look away. She saw him look at David and it was clear they shared some private joke at the policeman’s discomfort. Odering took another swig of his tea, pulling a face as he instantly regretted it. He pushed the mug away in distaste. As Hana began laboriously relating her story for him to write down in his book, David replaced the tea bags in the pantry cupboard.
As Logan watched, a jar appeared in David’s hand. It was only a view of the lid and part of the label, but it was enough to make Logan’s eyes widen and the snort become harder to keep in. The label said Curry Paste and the jar disappeared back into the pantry as David’s shoulders heaved with suppressed laughter. Logan peered at Odering’s mug and saw the beginnings of a greasy film on the rim around the edges of the liquid. David leaned back against the work surface; his combat pants looking frayed and worn around the knees. He folded his muscular arms and fixed his face into a neutral stare, as though not plugged into anything. As Logan stole a last look at him, the soldier made an offensive gesture with his hand, instantly turning it into a two fingered scratch either side of his nose as Odering turned and shot him a hard look. “When the children are quite finished!” the detective snapped and Logan snorted and then swore.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said, clasping Hana’s hand in his. “Keep going. You’re doing great.”
“You’re not even listening.” Hana’s voice contained a whine and Logan glared at David and then wished he hadn’t. The soldier’s face was blank and it made it somehow funnier.
Logan tried to focus on his wife as he let Phoenix down onto the floor, registering the heated debate beginning between Hana and Odering. “But you know it all, you just said so,” Hana argued. “So I don’t need to tell you then, do I?”
“Yes you do need to tell me, Hana!” Odering’s frustration made him speak to her with familiarity. “Why do we always have to do this? Will you tell me the bloody facts?”
The policeman’s hand banged heavily on the dining table and Phoenix stopped crawling and looked at him, her lips turning down into a pout. Logan’s eyes narrowed and his face hardened, ready to defend his wife. “Don’t talk to her like that,” he threatened.
Odering fought for control, his jaw bone snaking under the skin of his face as he gritted his teeth together. “Please. Just. Tell. Me. From the beginning. It’s been a long day. I’m supposed to be at my daughter’s birthday party in under an hour’s time and I need to get your statement.” He didn’t add, ‘Before my wife divorces me,’ but it hung in the air nonetheless. He was a man on the precipice of disaster.
Hana’s mouth clamped shut on her ridiculous protest, feeling instant guilt. Vik routinely missed birthday parties for Bodie and Izzie. Humbled, she related her tale succinctly and without debate, while Logan made the man another drink. Phoenix found a little green pea on the floor of the kitchen and Hana started in alarm as the little girl raised it to her mouth. David got there first, hoisting Phoenix into his strong arms and rattling a packet of biscuits in her face. Excitedly she dropped the pea without hesitation. David stuffed her into the high chair and buckled her in, handing her the chocolate biscuit while her father rammed a bib over her head and rolled up her sleeves. Her eyes were wide with anticipation as the biscuit rose up on clumsy fingers, slotted into the hole in her face. She sucked it with her eyes tightly shut, savouring the new flavours.
Hana tried to concentrate on Odering’s slow scribble, wondering where the pea came from. “We haven’t had peas yet,” she said out loud, seeing the detective’s face squeeze into a scowl.
“So, what happened when you got to the house?” Odering asked.
Hana dragged herself back to him. “Another visitor let me in, a tiny lady but then Dora saw me and I gave her the casserole. Maybe that was where the pea came from.”
“What pea?” Odering banged his hand on the table. His ears twitched backwards in a fear reaction as Logan swore in a low grow behind him.
Hana tried to continue. “Dora invited me in and I went because she seemed so sad and I know what that’s like. Whenever I saw her at school, she looked at me like she wanted to talk to me. I thought it was because I was a widow.”
David looked interested. It was a fact he hadn’t known about Hana Du Rose and it put her earlier perplexing statement into context for him. She knew loss.
“What happened when you entered the property?” Odering asked, trying to force Hana to stick to the facts. Conjecture and surmising would be of little use in the witness stand.
“Nothing really,” Hana said, to everyone’s surprise. “Phoenix was asleep in the car seat and Mrs Dobbs thanked me for the casserole and for coming. She did seem odd, but I thought she might be medicated; I was medicated after my husband died. I realised when she mentioned Renton was missing and that he was the man I played tennis with, that I knew something quite important and decided I should leave. I didn’t realise Lachlan was listening behind the door between the kitchen and the lounge.” Hana stopped and bit her lip. “Lachlan appeared and stopped me leaving. I had felt uneasy but thought perhaps it was the awkwardness of the situation. Grieving people do tend to make me nervous because I’m always sure I’ll say the wrong thing - which is easy to do. Lachlan just stood there, leaned against the door frame casually at first. I remembered him as soon as I saw him. He still had the sandy hair and the same gangly body. It’s odd because when I saw him, the first thing I thought of was that really skilled backhand he did. It’s what won him that stupid trophy. He had a pistol in his jeans and he threatened Dora and I with it. He tried to get Phoe away from me but I wouldn’t let him take her.” Hana’s gaze roved to the chocolate coated baby and her eyes narrowed with relived horror.
“Eventually, he made me go into the lounge with him and he took the missing trophy off the mantelpiece. ‘Remember this?’ he said, as though it was a harmless ornament. But I saw the blood on the wooden base. He hadn’t even bothered to clean it off. I knew then what he’d done.”
“What had he done, Hana?” Odering pressed her.
Tears began to run down Hana’s face. It was as though a dam burst somewhere inside her head and she leaked profusely, without sound or control. Logan rested a hand gently on her thigh under the table and she sought it out with her fingers and gripped it. The tears fell, but she continued on, concentrating on breathing and getting it all out. It wasn’t just sadness which cascaded down, but anger, pure livid anger.
“He killed him, the tennis player. Renton was so gentle, such a kind, lovely man. I didn’t recognise him from the school tennis club, but I should have. That’s why he knew me. Vik coached the teams for a good few years while we were playing doubles. They change so much as they grow up sometimes, but he was always white blonde. I remembered him as soon as I saw Lachie and that’s when I realised.”
“Realised what, Hana?” Odering asked. Logan struggled to sit still and even Phoenix stopped licking her bare biscuit. Only David looked impassive, leaned against the work surface, arms and legs crossed, his body inclined gently backwards.
“The tennis player was Alan Dobbs’ son. That’s how he had the keys to everything. The cops looked for a ‘random guy’ but he wasn’t. That’s why nobody knew who they were looking for. Because he wasn’t just some stranger. He was Renton Dobbs, the deputy principal’s son and an Old Boy of the school. Lachlan was his half-brother. He killed him with that damn trophy!”
“But we found the car you described on site. It had the ball serving machine in the boot and the racquets you mentioned a few weeks ago. One of them had ‘Lachlan’ written on it in black ink - just like you described.”
“Yes but you knew it wasn’t Lachlan!” Hana exclaimed.
Odering looked warily at her, shaking his head. “How do you know that?” he snapped, instantly alert but not expecting the answer he got.
“You told me,” Hana replied. “When I was going out the front gates this morning, you pulled up alongside me and I asked how you were getting on finding out who killed Lachlan Reynolds and you said, ‘Who?’ You’d already moved on to knowing it was someone else. At first I was relieved, thinking maybe it wasn’t the tennis player who died, but then I got to wondering and realised I knew something. Only I didn’t understand what it was at the time.”
“I must be slipping,” Odering said under his breath, at the same time relieved it wasn’t Bodie who gave the game away.
“It had to be the tennis player who died, because you emphasised how blonde the dead person’s hair was. His build, his clothing everything, sounded like him. So if he wasn’t Lachlan, then who was he? The men were half-brothers, because Lachlan called Dora, ‘Mother’. The police wouldn’t have let Dora know Renton was dead, because they had no idea who he was. Poor Dora.” Hana looked crestfallen. “She’s lost her husband and her son. All she has left is a killer. No wonder she was so distraught.”
Logan leaned in and wrapped his arm around his wife’s shoulder. Phoenix squeezed her eyes tight shut and pointed what was left of the manky biscuit at them, saying, “Ahhhhh,” in the cutesy voice they used for her.
“Can we go back to what happened when Lachlan Reynolds showed you the trophy?” Odering dragged Hana back almost to the beginning, much to her frustration.
“Dora saw the blood on the trophy at the same time as I did. She dropped her cup and it smashed on the floor. She lunged for Lachlan and he pushed the trophy at her. He said, ‘Here you go, Mother Dear, take it. Have what’s left of your perfect son.’ It was dreadful. Dora stood looking at it, tears rolling down her face.” Hana gulped. “She cuddled it to her and it was so sad. Lachie laughed. He seemed to think it was funny. I could see how desperate Dora felt, but didn’t know what to do. I needed to keep Phoe safe and my heart was pounding so hard.” Hana put her right hand up to her chest and then looked at her husband. “It didn’t go off though,” she said smiling gently at him. “I’m think I’m all better now.”
“Bloody hell, Hana!” Logan pulled his wife into his shoulder and rested his face in her hair. He felt strangely overcome by emotion and didn’t want the other men in the room to notice, turning his head away from their gaze. Hana stroked his cheek with the back of her hand. Out the corner of her eye, she noticed Odering looking surreptitiously at his watch and bit her lip.
Phoenix leaned forward and fingered the soldier’s trousers with her dirty fingers, looking hopefully up at him. It worked. The packet rustled and another biscuit made its way into her sticky, chocolate encrusted fingers. She looked at it, suddenly not sure she wanted it. But she flattened out her tongue and laid it against the side of the biscuit. The taste of chocolate assailed her taste buds and the wave of nausea bubbled up in her chest and then subsided. Phoenix screwed up her face at the rotten taste of bile in her mouth and laid the biscuit flat on her tray, pushing it around in the dribble and making little chocolate tracks on its white surface.
Hana took a deep breath. “Dora asked Lachlan, ‘Why,’ and he replied, ‘You know why.’ I didn’t understand but I knew I had to keep still for Phoe’s sake. It made it impossible for me to run or fight or do anything with her there. Lachie seemed crazy. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. It didn’t matter in the end. Phoenix woke up and I had to feed her to keep her quiet. She laid on my lap and seemed to know she had to keep still. Lachlan left me alone but he made Dora run around fetching us drinks and food. I had to sit in the chair and not move, otherwise he waved the gun at me. I wasn’t scared for myself but he was so unpredictable, I couldn’t be certain he wouldn’t hurt the baby or Dora. He let me go to the bathroom once and I said I had to take Phoe so that I could change her nappy. There was no way I was leaving her. They all came and waited outside the door. Oh no,” Hana looked ashen. “The dirty nappy’s still in the bathroom. It’ll stink the place out.”
She looked appealingly at Odering, but he shook his head. “It’s the least of my problems right now, retrieving a Code Brown from a hostage house.”
Hana was made to run through her story a number of times until she grew sick of the sound of her own voice. She recalled vividly the bright floral print on the seat covers and the chintzy wallpaper which dated the owners. Lachlan was both calm and terrifying. His blue eyes were hard and unyielding, refusing to listen to the pleadings of his birth mother and he made them wait and wait, for something, or someone.
“It’s really weird,” Hana commented. “I know Lachie already killed Renton and possibly Alan Dobbs but there was this odd sense that he was waiting for someone else. He was happy to sit there with us. I don’t know how long his patience would have lasted, but he seemed convinced that something else needed to happen in order for it to all be over.”
“Did he say, or do anything that led you to believe that?” Odering asked sharply and Hana racked her brains. She and Dora were made to sit, but Lachie moved freely around the room, simply telling his mother to ‘shut up’ whenever her pleadings and tears became too much for him. He waved the pistol a few times and threatened them. Hana shut her eyes and thought about him standing in the doorway. It was an odd place to stand unless he was expecting someone to burst in on him and wanted to be ready. Lachlan was ready for David, only he hadn’t been as ready as he thought he was for the soldier. Hana shook her head. “That’s because it wasn’t David he was expecting. It was someone else.”
“What?” Odering asked, narrowing his eyes in confusion.
“I could see the red in his hair glinting in the sunlight. I knew he couldn’t ever have been the tennis player. Nobody could dye out a colour like that, not without having obvious regrowth at the roots. The lounge faced towards the back of the house, but Lachlan kept going out into the hallway. He stood so he could still see us both but he was watching out of the windows either side of the front door. Dora spent most of the time crying but a couple of times I heard her praying. She kept saying, ‘God forgive me, God forgive me.’ I felt so sorry for her. Once she said under her breath, ‘I should never have told him,’ but I had no idea what she was talking about. Eventually, it became really difficult keeping hold of Phoe, because she wanted to get down and crawl around and I couldn’t let her do that. I fed her and fed her until I thought she might explode, because it makes her want to sleep.”
“What did Lachlan do when Mr Allen knocked on the front door?” Odering asked, glancing backwards at the soldier who hadn’t moved a muscle since he handed the biscuit over to the baby. “Did he become upset or agitated?”
“Excited,” Hana said without hesitation. “Very excited. It was like ‘game on’ - like the thing he waited all afternoon for was about to happen. He couldn’t seem to contain himself. He made sure the gun was loaded and went behind the door. He instructed Dora to ‘let him in’ as though he knew who it was and she went off to do it.”
“How could he have known it was me?” David piped up abruptly. “I didn’t even know it was going to be me, until about ten minutes before I walked up the steps.”
“He couldn’t,” Odering answered shortly, his daughter’s birthday party disappearing before his eyes. “It was someone else, a male. The big question is, who?”
He got to his feet and went down the hall into the huge lobby to make a phone call. Returning to the kitchen, Odering collected his notebook and pen together and slipped them back into his pocket with a tired sigh. “Thanks for your statement, Mrs Du Rose. It’s been enlightening. Someone will call you tomorrow to come in and sign it. I should go now.”
“To the birthday party?” Hana asked, rising to her feet and following the tall police inspector back outside. To her dismay, he shook his head.
“No, I need to go and interview Mrs Dobbs now. She must know who Lachlan was waiting for.”
“Don’t do that, please don’t.” Hana reached out and touched the policeman’s arm gently. Logan appeared in the kitchen doorway and watched his wife, resenting her momentary physical contact with the other man. As though she sensed his presence, Hana let go and dropped her hand to her side. Odering turned slowly back from the front door and looked straight at her with a question in his eyes. “Go home,” Hana implored him. “The party will be a couple of hours at most. Do that first. Delegate the rest to someone else and pick it up again later. Explain to your wife you’ll have to go back to work after the party, but please go. It’s probably the most important thing you’ll ever do - support your children. We don’t get to go round again, to make up for the lost moments. And they never forget.”
Odering’s face was full of his internal wrangling. Hana pushed her advantage, on behalf of the children who hardly knew their father and the wife who was manoeuvring for divorce on the basis of neglect and irreconcilable differences. “Go home!” she told him forcefully - and he went, closing the door quietly after him.