A spokesman for the Attorney-General declined to comment.
And, for those who didn’t have Twitter or get their news online or log onto Facebook, the print version of the newspaper would lead with the story on page one, next morning.
—
‘HELLO, IS THAT Karin Jones?’
‘Yes,’ I replied as I drove home, up the Ascot hill, navigating the narrow, winding roads, listening to the ABC news, which had kicked off the evening bulletin with a weather alert that another dust storm might be heading in the direction of Brisbane, accompanied by the dire prediction from the Bureau that this drought, which had ravaged the state, decimating the lives and well-being of thousands of farmers, had no end in sight.
‘Oh hi. I’m calling from the office of the Attorney-General. He has asked me to advise you that your position as president of the parole board has just been terminated, as have the roles of the other twenty-three appointees. This will be going out in a press release within the next five minutes. Thanks. Bye.’
—
‘HELLO PREMIER, YOU wanted to see me?’
The Premier of Queensland scraped into power the second time around with the merest of votes and spent weeks cobbling together a coalition from her party with a right-wing group that was anti-abortion and anti-immigration and anti-welfare, and a left wing Green party which advocated the total opposite.
‘Yes. Hello Ray. Oh, don’t bother sitting down; this will only take a second. You will rescind the dismissal of the parole board and you will do it now, before the press release goes out. Go. Do it now. Thanks Ray. Good to see you.’
‘But –’
‘The controversy of a convicted killer being released on parole I can handle, as can the government. The outrage that would follow a return to a tyrant’s redneck justice, I cannot. Nor can the government. Go. Now.’
—
BUT IT WAS out, the story. They both knew it could blow in either way. As he hurried down the corridor back to his office, to shout at his staff not to press ‘Send’, Ray comforted himself that it wouldn’t be hard to stoke the flames of the mob. The burning torches of Salem were not so far away, and he would inflame them. That’s what the people wanted. Her blood.
Giving it to them could do nothing but boost his popularity. Like every politician, even the stupid ones, he dreamed of being leader.
—
RAY CAME FROM an industrial farm in the north west of Queensland, one of those farms which had grown since the 1950s into a space of over a million acres and hundreds of thousands of cattle and, as a little boy, he would step onto the veranda of the homestead which his family had owned since 1835, and he would survey the three-sixty of land, flat and arid in all directions and think: this is, one day, going to be all mine and Cowboy Ray, when he was a teenager, driving in his white Holden ute, to woolshed parties with birds and blokes from around the area, from around a radius of at least three hundred K’s, would scull tinnie after tinnie of XXXX and then grab a bird and drag her outside. If her boyfriend would try to stop him, Ray would punch him in the guts. He would drag her outside across the dirt and into the bushes well away from the woolshed, under the sky of bright stars because they were in the middle of nowhere with not a town, let alone a city, anywhere near by, and he would throw her onto the ground, deep into the heart of the darkness where noone could see them and fuck her then ejaculate onto her face, which was his signature act, while her boyfriend was anxiously running through the bush calling out for her, knowing of Ray’s reputation, knowing that she was being raped by him, also knowing that Ray was the most powerful man in the area and actually, more than that, the boss to pretty much all of them so if you spoke out against him, you would lose your livelihood so let’s just drive home honey and not really talk about this, okay? Until one day a girl called Lil whacked him in the face as he tried to fuck her, when he was vulnerable, pulling out his dick and bashed his head onto the ground as she straddled him and said: you ever do that again, Ray, to me, to any girl, I swear I will fucking kill you.
And he never did. (That again.) Lil grew up to be a human rights advocate with the EU and Ray grew up to be the most redneck politician in Queensland.
It’s Not Like We Meant It
BETTANY WENT INTO FINANCE, WORKING FOR HER DAD. Together they raise money for start-up apps. Clemmie studied architecture but only lasted two semesters. Bronnie went straight to Spain and drank and partied for a couple of years before coming home. Chloe was engaged before she finished Year 12, and Mary-Anne had an issue with smack but is now clean. Donna is the only one of them, twenty years later, who isn’t married, living in Ascot, in a big house and driving a four-wheel drive and taking the kids to St Mary’s where they all went and where their mums all went.
They meet every second Tuesday at a cafe with the best French cakes, in the hip Racecourse Road just down from the – you guessed it – racecourse where, in their late teens, they would go, dressed in expensive clothes and hats as if they were debs at the real Ascot.
With the Brisbane River at one end and the Doomben racetrack at the other, Racecourse Road is less than a kilometre in length and one of the most exclusive streets in Queensland. Double Bay in Sydney and Toorak Village in Melbourne come to mind. Knightsbridge and Fifth Avenue also come to mind. On both sides of the road, wedged into the footpaths, are ancient Poinciana trees towering into a canopy over parts of the street. Nearby is Ascot Hill where they all grew up and now live, where Jen and Anthea grew up, where Anthea and Robbie live, where Karin and Warren also live.
A rarefied world. Soft and rarely threatening. There were divorces, there were tantrums, there were lying boyfriends and cheating husbands but there always are, everywhere. Still, the women, some nineteen years after they left their girls’ school, some nineteen years after they sat like startled rabbits in the witness box at the Brisbane Supreme Court and gave outlandish evidence, have managed to keep it together and exude a calm and a sense of control and confidence.
Normally when they gather on every second Tuesday they chat about the hubbies, the kids, the next holiday abroad and the local restaurant scene, especially if a new one has recently opened up to good reviews.
Not today.
‘She’s out,’ said Clemmie.
They had all seen the front page of the newspaper; even in 2019, they still got the hard copy delivered every morning.
‘Do you think she’ll come after us?’ asked Mary-Anne.
‘I don’t even remember what I said,’ said Bronnie.
‘Wasn’t it you who said she drank blood?’ asked Donna.
‘I did not say that!’
‘Someone did.’
‘We might have lied a bit or, you know, maybe embellished a few details.’
‘She stabbed me with her knife,’ said Donna, who had dramatically lifted up her shirt and pushed down her skirt to reveal the stab wound, in the courtroom. The OJ moment. ‘I have no regrets,’ she added aggressively.
‘Me neither,’ said Bronnie. ‘I think we should forget about it. And Mary-Anne? There’s no way Jen’s going to come after us. I mean, it wasn’t us who sent her to prison for twenty years. It was her.’
The other women nodded and then reached for the menus and Clemmie decided that a bottle of Champagne might be in order, not to celebrate but to calm the rattles within.
‘I mean, it’s not like we meant her to go to prison. We were just telling it like it was,’ she said.
‘No-one can blame us,’ added Mary-Anne.
‘No, we did what we had to,’ agreed Donna.
‘I just feel sorry for her mum and dad,’ said Clemmie. ‘Imagine if your kid turned out to be a serial killer.’
‘Or a mass shooter, like those kids in America. How often have you read about a mum coming home to find cops out the front of the house, telling her that their son has just shot dead half the classroom.’
‘Jen and Anthea’s mum was really nice. Whatever happened to her?’ asked Donna.
If You Ever Come By Here
Hey Rosie, it’s me. Guess what? I got out, I got parole, I did what you said and they let me go free. So, now I’m living on the Gold Coast, in Southport, which is pretty gronky but it’s so nice to see the sky and be able to go for a walk along the water whenever I want to.
I got your postcard. The Seychelles? Are you kidding me? Wow. I had a teacher from there. Did I tell you that?
Anyway, so, you know, I know it’s tough for us being out of there, and I know circumstances are different and you might have a guy or a girl who may adore you, but …
See me.
Yes?
Please.
I miss you.
Let me know. I’ve put my sister’s address at the bottom of this missive. (You remember when you said to me: What the fuck is a missive? And I told you and then we lay in one another all afternoon?) I’m living in a halfway house, so a little bit on the move, but my little sister will pass on any letters or postcards.
Hope you are well. Love you. Sending this to your ma and pa’s address. xx Jen xxxx
—
Dear Miss White,
Thank you for your letter to our daughter Rose, which we received last week. Rose often mentioned you and she was genuinely fond of you and we are sorry to inform you that she died eleven months ago. After leaving the prison she had some challenging times and even though she sent you that postcard from the Seychelles, she did not go there. She found the postcard in a second-hand shop. She drifted a little bit and fell in with some bad crowds and ended up in Humpty Doo, just outside of Darwin. She had plans to open a laundromat but this did not occur. She committed suicide. Normally we would not share these intimate details with another person because we are still grieving very much for the little girl we brought into this world, but we are because when we arrived at her unit in Humpty Doo, there was another postcard, this one from Malta, addressed to you but without a stamp and saying how much she missed you and loved you and wanted to see you once you had left the correctional facility and returned to normal life as she had. She also wrote that normal life was tragic and hard and she hoped you would have a better time in it than she was.
Yours sincerely,
Mr and Mrs Rogers (Parents)
PS Good luck.
—
A WEEK LATER I got another postcard from Rosie. From Goa. Hey babe, I love u. And a week after that I got another postcard, this one from Antananarivo – Hey babe, come to Madagascar and join me on a trek. I love u xxx
Both postmarked the same day of the card from the Seychelles. Her handwriting was faint, hard to read and I guess the post office took a bit of time to determine Anthea’s Brisbane address. No return to sender. So, you know, they did their job, the post office, they got the cards to me eventually.
And then they stopped arriving.
—
THE BROADWATER IS an estuary of shallow water on the Gold Coast, spanning from the village of Main Beach with its glitzy restaurants and oyster bars and elderly haw-haw men in white suits and Camparis, up past the bustle of gronky Southport and then on, past the staid Labrador, and in its northern reaches you can look across to Stradbroke Island. I used to come here as a kid, with Anthea, sometimes on our own, sometimes with mum and dad.
The ocean, wild and choppy, feeds into it, a deep flow of water churning through an open channel and every dusk you can watch the fishing boats chugging out, returning at dawn. Over there, on that side of the Broadwater is a narrow spit of land with the Palazzo Versace Hotel and Sea World and a Sheraton with Bentleys parked out the front, and, further up, on this side of the Broadwater, is a wild area of stunted trees in sandy hills, and just past them is the Pacific Ocean, where waves smash onto the beach. Back on the other side, across the estuary and along the Gold Coast Highway, is a beautifully crafted park where kids play and mums and dads have picnics and healthy people do tai chi at dawn and poetry readings in the evening. Pelicans swoop and the occasional houseboat sits on the water.
I walked along the water’s edge. The grass, which should have been green, was curled up and dead. There were clouds in the sky but it wasn’t going to rain. People had begun to ignore the promise of rain clouds, knowing they would drift away, leaving the ground hot and dry, like it was yesterday, like it would be tomorrow.
She was gone, really gone – dead. It’s easy to say and write, but harder is that feeling when you wake in the morning and reach across to her and she is in cinders and will never come back to you and all you have are memories, cinders of a past life when you held one another and laughed and argued and felt the swell of flesh and for all of that: you too are dead.
With her death, you also died. But.
You know: c’est la vie. Which, I guess, is the only way I can get through this.
Sometimes I wonder if I will meet her, on the other side.
I am free, out of jail, nineteen years later. No matter how alluring are the tentacles of grief, as if tempting me to sink into the black where abrogation of life is without stress and anguish, no matter how easy it would be for me to just end it all now, I have a new life to commence and I’ve been waiting for nineteen years, for me to return. And here I am. No Rosie. Just me.
Outed
ANTHEA HAD PREPARED ME FOR MY ENTRANCE INTO 2019. Orientation, she called it. Like arriving in a new country. A lot of it I already knew, having watched TV and read journals and books. Everything from AI, China’s quantum computing, facial recognition, 3D printing, #MeToo, Donald Trump, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the likelihood of WW3, last year’s Man Booker Prize winner and, because it was my crazy sister, which butterflies would be extinct by 2030. I had been tutored well. Or so I thought. I knew what to expect. Or so I thought. Little things, like the bath, like walking along the street, deciding on the spur of a moment to take a midnight stroll – they were the most profound. Little things were the things I didn’t forget.
What I wasn’t prepared for was being thrust into the public arena again, through the tabloid press, again.
I had devoted so much time to the killer’s profile, the victims and how they died, and on the wonderful fragments of freedom I would taste, that it didn’t occur to me the press would come after The Slayer again. Call me naïve.
And, like the night I stood with my Qantas bag, watching the police drive up the hill towards me, knowing that the end of that journey would be a conviction and prison because nothing else would placate the anxious public, I knew now that the end-point to the front-page news about my release would not be a lifetime of scrutiny, it would, after pressure on the government, be a new law enacted to put me behind bars again, once and for all. This time, Life would mean life.
There was also something else, something that had bothered me as I prepared to be paroled. I kept this to myself, my own private fear.
That the real killer would take advantage of my release and kill again.
I am no longer him. I am now his perfect alibi.
And now that the newspaper has outed me, he too will have thought through to the end-game, knowing that his window of opportunity is narrow.
But I have an advantage. For now. To make his kill, he needs to know where I am. No good striking out in the Botanic Gardens again, repeating The Slayer’s – Jen White’s – signature of the head-fold, torn mouth, tooth removal and the Taranis etching unless he can be sure I cannot account for my whereabouts. It will be a crisis if it’s discovered that I was seen by the occupants of Westaway House at the time of his killing.
So, he needs to be close. He needs to observe me, follow me and determine my routine, not that I have much of one at the moment. But he could lure me out into a place where there are no CCTV cameras. Be vigilant, Jen. In the meantime, I have the upper hand. The newspaper has outed me as being released and free to walk the streets of Queensland but they don’t know I’m living on the Gold Coast.
Not yet.
He can’t do anything until he knows where I live.
He will be looking
for me. He’ll find me. The media will find me first and he’ll follow.
It’s only a matter of time.
Fairy Dust
I HAD TO GET A JOB. IT WAS EXPECTED, BY GARY MY PAROLE officer, that I would find employment so, at the age of thirty-seven I did what all first-time job-seekers do: I went to McDonald’s.
I went to the one closest to Westaway House, in Southport, across the road from the Coast Guard and the Broadwater and off in the far distance, on the other side of the expanse of calm water, the channel to the sea, churning and deep green.
The manager might have been twenty, in what was becoming a depressing series of men a decade or two younger than me in roles requiring me to listen with respect and jump to their cues. He took me upstairs to a break room where the chairs were yellow and red and a TV repeat-screened an animation on how to be the best employee at McDonald’s.
‘Tell me about you,’ he said.
‘I’ve been in Los Angeles for the past twenty years, trying to make it as an actor and I just returned home last week.’ Did I just break my parole by lying?
‘Great. And so, were you looking at a long-term future with McDonald’s?’
‘Um. I hadn’t really thought about that. I was just looking for a job. But, yeah, of course.’
‘Short-term future, then.’
‘Not quite sure.’
He tapped into his iPad.
‘I like your eyes.’
Okay. Thanks. Do I have a job?
‘Here’s the thing …’
Here’s the thing:
‘In a few years’ time,
there won’t be any jobs here. Not for humans. It will be all AI robots who look like humans. Not yet. Not for a few years but that’s the future, so if you want a future with McDonald’s, you need to take that into consideration. That said, Jen, we do have jobs, now, part-time, and if you’re interested, even though you are a lot older than the usual McDonald’s employee, we can make this happen. Because you’re still very pretty.’
Blood River Page 26
