18
Martina Ducote had wandered into the Grose Vale 7-Eleven at the base of the pristine Blue Mountains, off Bowen Mountain Road, a main arterial to the nearest signs of civilization. The killer had driven her, unconscious, a good two hours west from the city. Eden drove us up the sloped driveway of the gas station and parked beside two patrol cars. I could see four Grose Vale police officers leaning against the hoods, smoking.
Martina had been quiet for most of the journey, staring out the windows at the bushland rolling by, rubbing the bandages on her wrists. She had fixed her hair, and now it hung dead straight in a neat bob that framed her face. She was exotically beautiful despite the bruises and scrapes that lined her jaw. Big eyes and lips, a wondering look about her all the time, like she was trying to decide whether to up and leave her entire existence, shut the door on who she was and disappear. One foot in life, one foot out. She hadn’t even let the hospital keep her overnight, nor had she let us put an officer in her place. She seemed determined to get on with things. All of that could have been the rigid determination of a very strong woman or it could have simply been shock—a refusal to acknowledge the horror and instability that would, very soon, push its way into her consciousness and drop her like a stone.
In a way it was more helpful if she did go home, though we’d never have asked her to do it. If the killer ever went after her again we had her apartment covered by patrol units 24/7.
When I picked her up that morning she was dressed in a white top and jeans, and there were no friends or family to accompany her. I didn’t ask why.
We got out and did the characteristic chest-puffing and belt-adjusting with the Grose Vale cops, talking about the chill of the morning in the shadow of the Bowen Mountain. Martina stood by uncomfortably, watching as forensics officers wandered in and out of the crime scene in the store. The cops seemed to recognize her from the newspaper photographs. One of them whispered something to another about her looking better in the clothes she was in now than she did in the famous party dress that had been all over the news. I felt sickened by the sleaziness of it, even though I agreed.
“Okay.” The lead cop clapped his hands loudly. “Let’s get moving, huh?”
Martina led the way awkwardly and uncertainly, pausing by the wall of bushland at the side of the road, trying to find a way in. I held back some brush and let her through. We fell into a rough line, the Grose Vale cops at the rear, Eden in the middle, Martina and I up front. Eventually Eden got sick of the progress and went ahead, jogging and sliding sideways down the embankment like a mountaineer. Martina watched her disappear, one of the few times she lifted her head to look beyond her own feet. She must have tucked her hair behind her ear a hundred times as we walked together down narrow animal trails. The light was sparse, hitting the forest floor in small golden pools.
Martina’s hand brushed mine and we both apologized at once.
“It’s, uh,” she swallowed, “it’s totally different out here during the day.”
“Must have been scary, scrambling through here in the dark,” I said.
“People have asked me if I was scared he might chase me into the bush. I didn’t even think about seeing him again until I got to the gas station. I was more worried about getting lost out here. I didn’t . . . I couldn’t know how far it was.”
She seemed a little breathless suddenly, like she wanted to sit down. There was nowhere to do so.
The Grose Vale cops passed us without interest, splitting up at the bottom of the embankment and taking two paths winding in the same general direction.
Martina crouched for a minute or two, then rose up beside me, hanging on to my arm for support.
“My feet hurt.”
“If it was just you and me I’d probably carry you,” I said. For a moment she looked like she didn’t know whether to take me seriously or not. “I can’t be doing stuff like that with other men around, though. I’d make them look bad. They might hurt me.”
I shrugged helplessly. She cracked a half-grin.
“You couldn’t carry me with those bitch-ass arms.”
We walked for a long time in silence. When it got awkward we spoke briefly about stupid things. Whether it was too cold for snakes. The terrain. Why old people like bushwalking. She always seemed ready to laugh. I’ve never really been “the talker” in my job but I sure as hell knew Eden wasn’t going to do it. Sometimes talking rubbish with a victim could spur memories they didn’t know they had.
When the local cops lost their way they let us lead again. Martina stopped and squeezed her eyes shut, breathed for long moments, oblivious to the noise as Eden reappeared through the bush to our right. She looked up at a ridge of mountain above us, turned around and seemed to judge its relation to another distinctive peak where the rock jutted through the canopy like a broken tooth.
“That way.” Martina pointed to the north.
“She’s right.” Eden nodded ruefully. “There’s a farm up there, two hundred meters or so. I’m pretty sure it’s the one.”
“How do you know?” I asked, but she turned and jogged away. Everyone else followed. Martina stumbled and gripped me hard, and through my shirt I could feel her hand shaking. We were alone again.
“You all right?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure?”
“He’s not here,” she said, sounding as though she was struggling to believe her own words. “He wouldn’t come back here.”
The smell of smoke became overpowering, stinging in my eyes and throat. As we approached a break in the bush I noticed the leaves were coated in wet ash. We emerged into the long grass beside a barbed-wire fence.
A property sprawled before us, bleak and abandoned. Half of the grass was dead and shrunken against the earth and the other half was waist high. A small house had stood in the middle of a large field. Now it was a blackened carcass, ribs of charred beams reaching towards the grey sky. There was a fire engine sitting by the remains of the building, as well as a patrol car. Two female officers leaned against the hood, one writing a report, the other taking photos. I looked around for Eden and the others but they were already halfway across the field.
“You were wrong,” I told Martina. “He came back.”
She nodded. The female cops were surprised to see us arrive.
“So you guys couldn’t put two and two together?” I gestured towards the house.
“You’re not in Grose Vale anymore,” the lead male answered. “We’re in Kurrajong’s jurisdiction now. I’m sure if they’d known they’d have let us know—right, girls?”
“You’re Martina Ducote.” One of the Kurrajong officers pointed at Martina with her pen. “So this is . . .”
We all looked at the house. Firemen were walking around the black and wet innards, kicking things over, stomping on embers.
“Yeah,” Eden sighed. “This is the chop shop.”
He had done a good job of destroying the house. The heat had been so extreme that the cage from which Martina had escaped had melted and bent and was now a surrealist appropriation of its former self. The room with the operating tables had taken the explosion of several gas tanks. Parts of the table were embedded in the field fifty meters away, with pieces of scalpels, knives, saws and syringes. What remained of the defibrillator was a melted pool of beige plastic. I walked among the ruins with Martina, picking up pieces of burned paper and the broken halves of chemical bottles and slipping them into evidence bags. There were remnants of a couple of pieces of jewelry that had survived the fire: a gold hoop earring and a man’s watch.
Eden came over and walked beside us, told us that a check of the property’s deed showed it was government-owned land and that the house had been scheduled for demolition years ago, but hadn’t been a priority. I watched as Martina broke away and crouched in what must have been the living room, reaching out and coating her fingertips in ash from the floor.
I should have been looking for evidence. I should have been feeling something for Martina, a woman who had survived an entanglement with a monster, who had returned to the place where he had attempted to take her heart. But my mind was elsewhere. I hugged my jacket against the wind and looked out at the Blue Mountains.
A news van came into view, rumbling down the narrow service road towards the front of the property. There was no way of knowing if they were simply trying to cover the fire or if somehow they’d got wind that this was the killer’s chop shop. Two of the police officers were on their phones. I started walking, hoping to stop the reporters before they defiled the crime scene.
“Hey!” one of the Kurrajong officers cried from the other end of the field. “Hey! Hey! Come here, quick!”
I stopped in my tracks. Not only was she screaming so that her voice could reach us, but it had risen more than a few octaves. She sounded afraid. I turned and ran with Eden into the mess of grass behind the house. The cop was standing by a squat stone structure in the far right corner of the field. My boots crunched on glass and debris, even as I approached the barbed-wire corner of the property.
The structure was a well. Officer Sanders of the Kurrajong Police had gone right ahead and shoved the concrete lid halfway off the well. She’d stopped vomiting long enough to call us and that was all. I scooped up the end of my shirt and pressed it against my mouth, shading my eyes as I looked down into the dark.
The well was about six meters deep. I could see one dead milky eye staring up at me in the crescent moon of grey light. From the smell I could tell there were many more.