‘Oh no, don’t do that,’ Anthea replied. ‘I thought we’d all go out for lunch. And I was talking to Robbie last night, and he’s going to organise a lawyer to come to see you here, to discuss all this crazy stuff that the Attorney-General is on about. Robbie says you can take legal action against them because what they’re saying is illegal.’
I wonder if my sister read this morning’s newspaper. I wonder if she might be a little anxious that a new investigation will be mounted and that she might actually become a suspect. Does she think I might tell? She’s hidden, possibly destroyed, the evidence of the teeth, but what would happen if I told Lara Ocean what I saw?
Well, to be honest, most likely nothing. Because no-one would believe me. But if I were the killer, I would be a little nervous having someone aware of the truth.
‘Just stay one more day. The girls would be crushed if you left again, so soon.’
Saturday lunch with the girls, maybe a movie and then some homemade pizza for dinner.
‘Just one more day,’ she implored.
—
BECAUSE I NEED you to stay one more day and night so that I can do what has to be done. The story in today’s newspaper, Karin’s little anthem to truth and justice, made it clear I was in danger. If the police re-open the case, they will ask questions. The question: Did we go after the wrong sister all those years ago?
And then there’s Jen. For the moment she and I are dancing the dance of silence. But how long can that last? Once you have a valuable piece of information, it’s just a matter of time before you release it, on purpose or not. And I do not want to be beholden to an angry, resentful sister for the rest of my life. Like dad’s cancer, her feelings for me will fester.
Before, when I was planning the new kill, after the self-doubt, it was for fun, a return to the glory of the blood-lust. But now, the new killing will be for self-preservation.
Who Are You?
‘WHAT’S HAPPENING? HAS THIS GOT TO DO WITH THOSE three guys who almost had their heads cut off?’
‘What?’ asked Jen, in a total daze, sitting on the end of her bed, staring out to space, staring out through the window at the rain. All the footpaths on the hill had flooded. It was three in the afternoon and cars had their headlights on and had to drive slowly so as not to slide away in a cascade of water.
‘What are you talking about?’ she said.
‘Don’t you read the newspapers or watch the news?’
‘No. What three guys?’
‘One in the Kangaroo Point Cliffs and two in the Gardens. Someone killed them by sawing into their necks and almost decapitating them.’
‘Are you fucking kidding me?’
‘Nup.’
I was freaking out.
‘Why would they think it’s you?’ I asked Jen.
She had just come back from being dragged out of the house by those two cops. The tall Asian woman with dyed blonde hair, in black jeans, t-shirt and Docs, with a pistol tucked into a holster like Lara Croft and this stumpy old guy in a spick-suit with patent leather shoes had come to the house and I’d watched them, from the edge of the kitchen, as they asked Jen and mum a few questions before they took her away.
Now she’s back.
She reached out and held my foot and began to cry.
‘Is this really happening?’ she asked me.
When I first saw them, the cops, in the house, I started to shut down. They think Jen had something to do with the killings? How did they get here? Why is it her they’re talking to?
I’d seen these two cops when I was hiding in the shadows at the first crime scene, after I had realised that I’d dropped one of those weird daisy flowers that I had kept from the school trip to Stradbroke Island, out of my backpack where I kept the blades.
Now they were here.
I didn’t mean it to be her. You have the wrong fucking sister! I wanted to shout.
But. Of course I did not. I remained silent. Doing nothing, saying nothing, was easier.
Then they took her and mum away, in the rain, leaving me alone in the house and I just stood there, in the living room, staring out into the backyard. I think I stood there, like that and without moving, for about two or three hours. Aside from figuring out – after I killed that first fear, which was totally spontaneous; he was just walking in a drunk walk along the jogging track at Kangaroo Point and as I got closer to him on my skateboard, realising that it was just him and me and nobody else, I took off my backpack, pulled out my cleaver blade and chopped him, on the back of the neck as soon as I skated past him, leaping off the board and chopped him and he fell to the ground under a very tall bougainvillea bush which was convenient because I could then straddle him as I cut into his neck and face, all of this, the tooth and the carving on his chest, done on the fly, me thinking after I pulled out the tooth, hooray! and then immediately wondering how I could keep on mutilating him, hearing the words of Taranis and Ogmios, who were my gods, as I rode the dying fear like a cowgirl would ride a dying horse – aside from figuring out as I stood, having finished with him and his blood, which was beginning to wash off me as rain came to reward me, aside from figuring out how to ensure I left no traces of me behind and that nobody had seen me kill him, which nobody had, I had not contemplated at all that the cops might find a trace which could lead them to my sister.
I hadn’t thought at all about the possibility of another person becoming a suspect. I’d just been thinking about me and ensuring that it wasn’t me who the cops came looking for.
Well, I was successful there. It’s just that they came after the one person who mattered more to me than anyone.
As I stood in the living room, by the stupid white Christmas tree and its flashing lights which kept blinking at me, as I stood and stared out through the big French windows into the back yard, focussing on how all the trees seemed to be heavy with the deluge of rain, like they were weighted down, slumped towards the grass, I thought:
I must confess.
Save my big sis; release her from the horror, and I decided I would and then, after a few hours, she came home. By then I’d gone back upstairs to my room and fallen asleep. I think it was her crying, the sound of her tears through the adjoining wall, that woke me.
I comforted her. She had no idea that three men had been brutally and spectacularly killed by the river. Fuck knows what planet she’d been living on. I thought mum was the only space cadet in the house.
And then, I just decided not to. While I was comforting her. That was my opening and I let it slide to another world. The world gone wrong.
I guess I didn’t really think through the ramifications of that decision either. I didn’t imagine she would go to jail for Life, like for almost twenty years but, as it became more and more clear that she was the number one suspect for the cops, helped no end by those horrid not-friends of hers from school (Donna, are you listening, bitch?) I started to feel okay about it.
At first it was serious big-time guilt but that ebbed after a little while and I actually felt good, like I had gotten away with these amazing murders, which would go down in the history of Brisbane and I began to feel really buoyed about people starting to understand the power of Taranis and Ogmios; I was their ambassador and that made me feel very good, very strong. I was like a butterfly, free from its cocoon.
I loved my sister and I still do but I love me more.
It’s not like I meant it to happen.
It tore me up when she got Life. For a couple of days I was a mess and I vowed to visit her and stay loyal to her. I vowed, after I killed the aoife down by the river, rolling her into the water, that I would not kill again, to ensure that I stayed free until Jen’s release. I was an addict but I was strong enough to wait and back then, after I decided not to confess, to let her take the fall for me, I was only caring about me. Everything was about me, the world circled around me. Ogmios and Taranis, silly teenage fantasies that they were, a child’s attempt at identity, circled around me.
&nbs
p; Me, me, me.
And then Maxi. And then little Jen, named after my rising guilt and confirmation that life was not just me, my life; life was about others as well. The lives that I had brought into the world.
It wasn’t so easy for me, after Jen went to jail. The whole Sister Death thing, the parents-collapse thing, losing all their money and moving to Bald Hills. Fighting the addiction of killing. The butterflies helped. Hunting them, killing them, mounting them in my never-ending collections. I love them like I love my sister. I can’t help killing them although I would never use that word with my students or in any of my lectures or academic papers. I am preserving them.
I am, I have to confess, excited about killing again.
It’s planned. Everything is planned.
To be honest, I won’t actually be that sorry to see her go. Jen. Back to jail. I enjoyed it when she was in prison and she depended on me and I think I’d like that through to the end of her life and I think it would be good for the girls too, to be caring towards their auntie Jen, as I have been over the last two decades. It makes you feel good about yourself. I know how that sounds but there’s no point in saying something unless I am totally honest.
I sometimes think about eviscerating Robbie. While he lies next to me. I have fantasies of taking out the cleaver and straddling him and digging into his pubic bone, like I did to Miss Homeless and cutting him up, up to his neck and then doing the swish across the neck and folding his head onto the pillow and grooming his smile so he and I could look at one another, lovers in death. I don’t love him and never have. I couldn’t give a rats if he died tomorrow. I love the girls.
It will be good, this last kill, the kill that will put sis back behind bars forever and will free me forever. It’s better this way.
Mea Culpa
‘HE’S HERE,’ SAID SIMON.
Seeing Damon was not a priority and certainly not on a hectic day such as this, Karin’s letter sending the government into a tailspin of crisis when the Attorney-General had been planning on defending his decision to sack the parole board with a press conference, with the Premier forced to stand behind him for the sake of the law-and-order votes, not to mention the increasingly popular mooted new act in parliament to put ex-cons like Jen away for the rest of their days. Now everything was in turmoil with the suggestion we had got it wrong twenty years ago.
I was confident I’d ride it out, having announced a new inquiry. But the phones were ringing non-stop and both the Premier and the Police Minister and the Attorney-General wanted the time of my assurances to ensure that any bad press would be sheeted away from them to me.
However, we all knew but did not say that the public trust a police commissioner a lot faster than they trust a politician. Thus, they had to tread carefully around me. Every politician wants one of two things: a front page photo of themselves and a Hollywood movie star and the steadfast assurance that their police will not attack them. I had the upper hand. I would never say it out loud, but as long as I had the complete support of the rank and file, I was the most powerful person in the state.
I got up from my desk and walked out of the office, down a plush carpeted corridor and into the boardroom. Closing the door behind me.
Damon, twenty years older, balding and pudgy, rose from his chair. I didn’t even get a look-in with a hello or a thanks-for-coming-in or a this-has-to-be-quick; he just unleashed:
‘Sorry, I don’t get it. Have I done something to offend you? Like, is it your life’s journey to make me some sort of joke? Twenty years’ ago, telling me you’re gay. Okay, fine, whatever. Did I try to come onto you? I don’t think so. Did I try to harass you back to dinner again after it was very patently clear that you didn’t want anything to do with me? I don’t think so. Which is why I told your mother that the casino date was not going to happen. I stayed clear, gave you space, let you get on with your life. But now, after twenty years, after I send you a text, you respond by getting someone to break into my house. What? You think I am a person of interest? That’s what you call them, right?’
And on it went. There was a clock on the wall behind him. I stared at the second hand as it registered one minute, twenty-six and then he stopped.
—
HEY MUM, DAMON came by the office today. He spoke at me for one minute and twenty-six seconds about what a bad person I am for not treating him with respect and for allowing Billy to break into his house. Remember Billy, mum? The old copper who spoke with the funny accent? You met him at the Christmas party I dragged you along to. When was that? Was that back in 1999? I think it was. When I was investigating my first big killer, you remember, you loved talking about her, saying she drank the blood of her victims. Remember I escorted you up to the Homicide office where all the blokes had their wives and girlfriends and Billy came directly over to you and like Michael Caine in a movie, reached down, took your hand and kissed it. And you blushed. Remember that night? The Christmas tree which almost fell over because our boss Kristo got a bit drunk and fell backwards into it. My first big case after my first big year in the big league. Homicide. My partner being the oldest and most experienced and he kissed your hand. Later he told me he thought you had all the elegance of the Orient.
I’m sorry about Damon, mum. He is an okay guy. Just weird. I guess I did abuse him but you know what they say about an investigation, don’t you? You told me, when I was a kid, reflecting on your years as a cop in Hong Kong, before you got the horrors after I said I was going into Homicide and not Fraud: eliminate everyone and leave no stone unturned and don’t judge a book by its cover and even a nasty killer can help a little old lady cross the road.
I’m sorry mum. I’m forty-six and left over. No-one’s coming for me now mum. I have a confession: I am okay with that. I’ll die alone mum, in another forty years’ or so, listening to the sounds of the clack-clack of the horses out the front of my little house.
While we’re on the mea culpas, I’m sorry I bombed you with the flakes of my fucked-up life, the moonage daydream of an angry teen. I didn’t mean to hurt you.
Hey, I can write some Mandarin now. Is this good enough, mum?
The Fire Next Time
DARKNESS FELL SWIFTLY.
I was in the mind of the killer. I was her. Lying in bed, on edge, knowing what she had planned for the night.
She had forgotten that over my years in prison I had plenty of time to step inside the mind of the murderer. Be him. Be her. Think like her. Act like her. Understand her every move. I knew what she would do. From the moment, early this morning, imploring me to stay for just one more day, one more night. Using the girls as cover. They really want to spend all of Saturday with their aunty. Using the bogus excuse of the lawyer who could help mount a legal challenge to the Attorney-General’s proposed new law, the Jen White law. The lawyer didn’t turn up. So sorry, Jen, he’s been called away on last-minute business.
She was acting to the script I had written. This morning, before the girls finally emerged from their sleep, I had returned to the killer, stepped inside her dark and twisted mind.
Now I was waiting.
—
OUR BIGGEST CHALLENGE will be the CCTV, won’t it, little sis? Not like twenty years ago, when Brisbane had hardly any cameras in parks and on city streets and we could skate to the Botanic Gardens and not be filmed. Now there are cameras on every street corner. We have to find somewhere less visible and somewhere close, because we can’t use the car – it might wake me up, and having big sis asleep in her room is part of the plan. I will have no alibi, so we have to find a park close by. We can’t afford to rely on a random victim walking along a footpath on the hill because it’s very quiet up here on the hill, after about eight p.m., after the last of the dog-walkers have returned home. And we have a timeframe issue. Our kill has to be tonight because I’m going back to the Gold Coast tomorrow. Tonight has to be it. But that’s okay because there are a few parks nearby and one of them is just perfect, isn’t it? I know our first inclinati
on is Oriel Park, which is very close, only four streets away and there is no CCTV there and some of its areas are perfect. The massive bamboo thicket. The brick toilet block. The towering Norfolk Island pine trees. The ring of houses where everyone goes to bed early. But it’s too uncertain. We could wait in Oriel Park for eighteen nights before a possible victim strolled in. We need a bit more flash and zap. We need a pub that closes at two or three a.m. and disgorges the drunk and the young into its dark streets. The Breakfast Creek Hotel, a magnet for all ages, especially on a Saturday night. Great for food. Great for live music. Great to pick up a fuck for the night. Great to get smashed with the boys or the girls. Five bars, a restaurant, a steak-house, a beer garden. And what is it about the Breakfast Creek Hotel, that old, huge rambling complex of a pub built well over a hundred years ago in that creepy faux French Renaissance style of architecture, that makes it so perfect a target? Out the front is your Brisbane River but right behind it is a racecourse. Where the greyhounds and harness racing happens, once or twice a week. And all those narrow, dingy little streets around the racecourse is where the drunks have parked their cars. Lots of trees and shadows. A mangrove-infested creek, running off the river, close by. It’s a no-brainer for us. Ten minutes to get down there, ten to wait and strike, three minutes to head-fold, cut the sides of his mouth and extract the tooth. Ten back home. All done, in well under an hour.
—
I HEARD THE stirrings at 2.15 a.m. The soft touch of her feet on the floor in the room next to mine. She was moving quietly. Tiptoeing. I heard the door softly open and feet scurry up the stairs.
I was ready. Fully dressed, as she would be, in black tights, black sweatshirt and a peaked cap. Black runners. Her clothes. She had opened her wardrobe to me and told me to borrow anything I wanted. We were the same size. I waited until I heard her upstairs then got up and waited in the corridor downstairs. When I heard the front door open, I moved quickly up into the darkened lounge area.
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