He spent the next day appeasing his only current client, the owner of a chain of sadomasochistic clubs who wanted a due diligence report on a business she was buying. Surprisingly dull work, but it was quick, and it paid well. He declined Madame Douleur’s offer of a ‘dungeon experience’ in lieu of payment, and drove back to the Bay.
He reached the outskirts of town just as the sun nudged the horizon. A red-gold light on the rooftops, long shadows stretching, the time of day when he most felt the pull of home. Hard to know where that was these days. Or what it was. It had once been here, and then in Melbourne with Kat. The little flat in Collingwood, then the ramshackle house in Preston with the leaking roof. Evenings spent on the couch with her; the comforting rhythms of Saturday shopping and Sunday walks. The ultrasound pictures stuck to the fridge, the list of names pinned to the wall.
She’d be sitting down to dinner at her parents’ place about now. It was only a few blocks away, on a quiet back road on the edge of town. He could drive past, maybe catch a glimpse of her. Brush up on his stalking skills.
He headed for Hilvington Care; according to their website, he had half an hour before visiting hours ended.
Hilvington Care was in a sleek concrete building near the train station. Its lush garden of ferns and grasses was discreetly spotlit, with a simple brass plaque directing visitors to the main entrance. Lavender oil wafted through the air as he walked inside, almost managing to mask the underlying scents of disease and disinfectant. The receptionist was a wisp of a thing around forty. She was on the phone, scribbling furiously on a notepad. A personal call – just a hunch, something to do with the way she’d written fuck you Liam, fuck you Liam, fuck you Liam down the page.
Caleb waited for her to look at him. Waited a long time. Her centre part was three shades lighter than the rest of her hair and flecked with grey. No dandruff.
She finally lowered the phone a few centimetres. ‘Can I help you?’ The words were like a dare.
‘I’m looking for Mr Hirst.’
‘Rude sex,’ she said, raising the receiver to her mouth.
‘Sorry, what?’
She didn’t bother lowering the phone as she repeated her self. Places this slick usually hired staff with saccharine sweet manners – this was a woman having a very bad day. And he wasn’t stupid enough to make it any worse. He made an educated guess that she hadn’t actually said ‘rude sex’ and headed for Room 6, a small room in a corridor marked Long-Term Care. Its single occupant was a young man with greyish-brown skin and thin limbs, a slackness to his face that made him look empty. Fading photographs were stuck to the walls beside a curling banner that read Get well soon, Pete.
God. A feeling of having stumbled into some private sorrow.
He’d want the plug pulled. Better still, do it himself before he was that far gone. Not a gun or a hosepipe, but something that would look like an accident to those he left behind. The car, or a quick walk in front of a train. He shivered and backed away.
He finally found Mr Graeme Hirst in Room 16. These walls were bare of photos and banners, the only decoration the printed sign above the bed bearing his name. The carpet and wafting lavender had to come with a hefty price tag, but Mr Hirst didn’t seem to be aware of his surroundings. Caleb called his name, then tried again a little louder.
‘Mr Hirst, can you hear me?’
Graeme Hirst didn’t stir. Caleb had a growing feeling that Portia’s grandfather hadn’t given her the train card. He touched the man’s arm: soft and dry, no reflexive movement. He yelled Hirst’s name a few more times, then left.
The receptionist was off the phone but looking no happier for it. He checked the nameplate on the desk: Joy McKay. Either he was right about her having a bad day, or her parents had got the whole naming thing terribly wrong.
‘Hi, Joy, I –’
‘It’s Joy,’ she said, her mouth snapping shut.
‘Sorry, what?’
‘It’s not Joy, it’s Joy.’
Right, he’d got some subtle emphasis wrong. Hard to see how with a one-syllable name. Was it Zhoy? Joey? Impossible to know, go to plan B: abort use of name and clutch desperately at straws. ‘Sorry, I know that’s annoying. People sometimes call me Culeb instead of Caleb.’
She stared at him.
It was a gift, this way he had with women. Had to be born with it, couldn’t learn it.
‘I was just visiting Mr Hirst and –’
Her eyelid twitched. ‘What’s wrong now?’
‘Nothing. Nothing at all. I’m just after some information about his granddaughter, Portia. I’m looking into her death.’
‘Oh.’ Her hand touched her mouth. ‘I hadn’t realised she’d died. What happened?’
‘A car accident.’
‘Oh, that’s terrible, she was so young.’ Joy had the blank-eyed look of real shock with no tears; she’d known Portia and hadn’t liked her.
He handed her a business card. ‘As I said, I’m looking into her death, but I’m finding the Hirst family a bit difficult to deal with.’
‘Difficult? That family’s never happy.’ Joy sighed, but she didn’t seem to be fully invested in her crankiness anymore.
He rested an elbow on the counter. ‘I guess you’d cop the worst of it, being on the front desk.’
‘I’ll say. Portia strode around here like she owned the place. Telling us how to do our jobs.’ She pressed her lips together. ‘God, I can’t believe I’m talking that way with her dead.’
‘It’s the shock.’
‘Shock. Yeah, that’s it. And she was very dutiful towards her grandad, visited every week, even though he’s not really with us anymore. That’s a whole lot more than most her age would do.’
‘I don’t suppose you can remember if she was here last Friday?’
‘Oh, sure. She ran straight past me like I was invisible.’
‘She borrowed a Myki card from here. Do you know how she got it?’
‘One of our cards? That’s odd.’
‘You’ve got more than one?’
‘Sure. The staff use them for rehab, teaching our clients how to get around with walkers and things. We don’t give them out to visitors.’
‘Are they well secured?’
‘They should be. Everything walks off from around here – staplers, stationery, chewing gum. I had a bag of groceries stolen from the staffroom last week.’ She pulled a plastic container from an open shelf and dumped it on the desk: full of Myki cards. Damn.
He clutched at his last straw. ‘I guess you’d see anyone taking one, though?’
‘Sure. Unless I was on a toilet break, or at lunch, or showing a visitor around.’
He was back at the car before it twigged. He went inside again, catching Joy mid-yawn.
‘That bag of groceries you had stolen, did it have a packet of black hair dye in it?’
A blush rose up her face to her greying roots. ‘Jesus, do you want to know about my tampons, too?’
Excellent. Portia might have known where the train cards were kept, but only a staff member would have known the contents of a grocery bag in the staffroom.
‘Can I have a look at the staff roster for last Friday?’
That raised a genuine smile. ‘Oh, you’re funny.’
OK, he’d work it out for himself. He had the list of Hilvington staff from Sammi – all he had to do was interview them and find out who’d been working last Friday. All twenty-one of them. And the cleaners. And the casual staff. Fuck.
‘Yeah,’ Joy said. ‘I’m having one of those days, too.’
He drove back to the motel, slowing as he crested the hill that ran down to Red Water Creek. A police car was outside Dean Hirst’s house, its red lights flashing. A small crowd had gathered in front of it. More trouble for the Hirst family? No, people had their backs to the mansion and were looking towards the old scar tree. Please don’t let Rat-tail Luke and his mates have vandalised the tree, too. It would break so many hearts.
Caleb pulled over and made his way through the crowd, brushing against bodies stiff with shock. The tree loomed before him, a ghostly silhouette in the stuttering red lights. It had somehow grown an extra limb: a monstrous, weighted thing with limp brown arms and a lolling head, bloodied and unfathomable. A blade of light sliced the darkness as someone approached with a torch. It swept across the trunk and branches to the hard line of the noose, and finally came to rest on the battered figure of a young man. Jai Johnson.