There was a mud-splattered work truck parked near the corner of Milt Street. Maintenance was printed down one side. She couldn’t make out the driver, but she had the feeling they were watching the house. Fisher was pacing loudly in the hallway, speaking in urgent tones. Kate glanced in his direction. When she turned back to the window, the work truck pulled off the shoulder, did a U-turn and disappeared over the crest of a hill.
When Fisher came back into the room, he had turned pale.
‘What is it?’ Kate asked.
‘That was the Belport Police.’
‘… Yes?’
‘They…’
‘What is it, Fisher?’
‘They want us to meet them at Belport Medical right away,’ he said, wrestling against each word as it left his mouth.
‘The hospital?’ Kate cried. ‘Why? Is it John? Is he hurt?’
Fisher looked down at his hands.
‘Dammit, Fisher,’ Kate said. ‘What’s happened?’
10
THE WIFE
‘They found a dead body,’ Henry Biller blurted, his tone wild and giddy. It was Biller’s night off, but he had popped in on his way home from the Belly for some frozen pizza and gossip. He had strutted in through the big double doors with what Lori would call a shit-eating grin, his cheeks ruddy from the cold and one too many beers. He had come with a dozen theories about the increased police presence on the island, and he wasn’t the only one.
It was another cold and windy night, and Abby had expected a dead shift, but business had been unusually busy. There had been a steady stream of local foot traffic through her check-out, and everyone wanted to talk about one thing: what had happened at Beech Tree Landing?
Caddy Larson, who worked in the kiosk on the island ferry, told Abby that the morning run had been practically full of cops. She’d had to put an extra tray of egg-and-bacon pies in the oven just to accommodate them. According to Paul and Liz Ryan, who picked up a jumbo-sized tub of ice-cream and a bottle of Jim Beam, police were going door to door and asking if anyone had seen or heard any suspicious activity. Chris De Luca, who lived in a caravan out by the lighthouse, swore he’d heard the word floater on his police scanner.
Abby had told each of them what she’d seen at Beech Tree Landing and had drawn a twisted sort of satisfaction from the respect her story commanded. Theories ranged from a drug lab being on the island to some sort of mafia-related crime or a serial killer on the run from the law, but the general consensus was—
‘The cops found a body,’ Biller said again, clapping his hands together.
‘That’s the rumour,’ Abby said.
‘It’s no rumour.’ He came over, leaned on her checkout, and lowered his voice to a whisper, as if that made the news more official. ‘I’m telling you, they found a body on the island. Everyone at the pub is talking about it.’
‘Everyone in Belport is talking about it,’ Abby said. ‘What have you heard and who did you hear it from?’
‘A couple of coppers came to see me today,’ Biller said, grinning.
‘Came to see you? Today? In the store?’
‘Mm hm. Out-of-towners too. I think they shipped a bunch of cops over from the mainland to help widen the investigation. One of them looked like a foetus with a badge. The other one thought he was Columbo. They asked me if I’d noticed any strangers coming into the store lately, anyone with a suspicious demeanour.’
‘What did you tell them?’
‘I asked them if they could be any more specific,’ he said. ‘So, they showed me a photo of a man they were, quote, seeking information about. Pulled from some guy’s driver’s licence by the look of it.’
‘Did you recognise him?’
Biller hiked up his dusty jeans and stood with his hands on his hips. ‘He was in here a few days ago.’
‘What? When? Did you serve him?
Biller nodded, smugly. ‘There was nothing all that strange about him from what I could see. Looked pretty straight, and it wasn’t like he was paranoid and checking if he was being followed or anything. If he was caught up in something dodgy he certainly didn’t act like it, and that’s what I told the cops.’
‘That’s so creepy, that he was in here,’ Abby said. ‘What do you think happened?’
‘This many cops on the island, it has to be murder, right? So my guess is the guy in the photo is either dead, or the one who did the killing.’ He looked at her with small, sinister eyes. ‘What have you heard?’
She filled him in on what Caddy Larson had told her, and Paul and Liz Ryan, and Chris De Luca’s police scanner. Then she told him about the crime scene at the boat ramps, saving the best for last. Biller listened to all of it with a wild, buzzing expression, peppering the conversation with the occasional nod, wow or Jee-zus!
‘You actually saw the crime scene?’ Biller asked.
‘Uh huh,’ Abby said. ‘That whole area was crawling with police. They even had a boat on the water, and there were forensics people going in and out of the old ferry terminal.’
‘The ferry terminal,’ he echoed. ‘Well that raises a whole list of new questions.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, you know what they say about that place, right? What goes on in there?’
‘No, what?’
The wrinkles on his forehead deepened. Abby had seen this look a number of times, on the faces of many of Belport’s lifers. Biller was trying to determine her security clearance.
‘Maybe I shouldn’t say,’ he said.
Abby had lived on the island for nearly eighteen years, and for all intents and purposes she was a bona fide local. But she wasn’t a lifer. She wasn’t born up the road at Belport Medical. All communities had layers of secrecy, she guessed: hidden truths and secret doors. Abby’s years on the island had earned her access to a great many of those secret doors, but there were apparently still a few that remained locked.
‘Come on, Biller,’ Abby said. ‘What about the ferry terminal?’
‘Well, some people say the terminal is a, you know, a beat.’
‘A beat?’
‘A spot where gay men meet up for no-strings sex. So what I’m thinking is, maybe this was a hate crime or a blackmail attempt gone wrong or, I don’t know, maybe it was a lover’s quarrel.’
‘I don’t get it,’ she said. ‘Why would anyone want to have sex in that cruddy old building, gay or otherwise?’
Biller shook his head. ‘Oh, Abby. Sweet, naive Abby.’
‘Well whatever this turns out to be, it’s the biggest thing to happen since Big Jenny beached herself.’
Big Jenny was the name locals gave a fifteen-metre southern right whale that beached itself on Belport Island back in ’93. The corpse was too big to move, so the council had to carve it up and cart it away, one truck-load at a time.
‘May she rest in peace,’ Abby added.
‘I think you mean rest in pieces, love,’ Biller said with a wink.
Abby looked out through the glass of the shopfront. Full dark had fallen over Belport.
‘I suppose it was only a matter of time,’ Biller said.
‘A matter of time?’
‘Before the real world reached across the water and took hold of us.’
‘A murder on the island,’ Abby said. ‘It’s tragic, but also sort of…’
‘Exciting?’ Biller offered.
‘Does thinking that make me a terrible person?’
‘Love, thinking that makes you human.’
* * *
The end of her shift came around surprisingly fast. After locking up, Abby tallied the receipts and counted the night’s takings, which, Biller would be happy, took a little longer than it had lately. She dropped the cash into a chute down to the safe, then ran her hands over the bank of light switches outside the staffroom door. The supermarket went dark.
Abby walked purposefully towards her rusty little Volvo, bracing herself against the chill. She scanned the shadows while she walked, half expe
cting the Belport Killer to lurch out at her from the darkness. Touching the pointy end of the car key in her pocket, she felt her senses becoming prickly and alert.
The quiet of wintertime in Belport had been a shock when she first moved here, but it didn’t take long for Abby to accept it. In fact, after the madness of summer, she had come to crave that peace. But there were times – being startled awake by a creak on the roof, the snap of a twig in the woods, her brief walk between the supermarket and her car when the island was convinced there was a killer on the loose – when it still all-out rattled her.
Safely in her car, she was about to start the engine when a pair of car headlights flashed once in her rear-view mirror. She swivelled in her seat to look through the rear windshield and spotted the silhouette of a Jeep Cherokee parked across the street, in the shadow of the Uniting Church.
Abby cracked a window, craned her neck, and called out, ‘Bobbi?’
‘Yeah,’ a familiar voice called back. ‘It’s me.’
When Abby hopped in beside Bobbi, the interior light flicked on, casting Bobbi in an unhealthy yellow light. She looked terrible. There were sagging dark pockets beneath her eyes and her ponytail had fallen loose, releasing a tangle of wild hair down one side of her face. There was an open bottle of tequila in her hands, the cheap brand with the little red sombrero-shaped lid. She was still wearing her unflattering pastel-blue police shirt, an empty holster at her hip.
‘Shut the door,’ she said.
Abby did as she was told. ‘What’s wrong? Has something happened? Is it Maggie? The baby?’
The car light faded out and Abby watched Bobbi’s features shifting as she took a swig from the bottle, winced, then made a fist against the dashboard.
‘Maggie and the baby are fine. They’re great, actually, which is why I can’t take this shit home to them, which is why I’m here.’
‘What’s going on, Bobbi?’ Abby asked. ‘I’ve been waiting to hear from you since yesterday.’
Bobbi took another drink, and asked, ‘What have you heard about what’s going on in town?’
‘Only rumours so far. Biller thinks you guys found a body.’
Bobbi gazed down Bay Street and grimaced. Her eyes crept slowly back to the bottle, and she drank. ‘Biller’s right.’
‘He is?’ A sinister but not altogether unpleasant chill ran up her spine.
‘At the police academy, as part of your training, they show you a load of graphic photos,’ Bobbi said. ‘Gunshot victims, car crashes, suicides, you name it. It’s all shades of fucked up, but it makes sense. It’s designed to harden you up. They don’t want you puking your guts up every time you arrive at a crime scene. But the difference between the photos and what I saw today is like the difference between seeing a bear in the zoo and one in the wild.’
Abby’s heart began to thump. She felt woken up. She felt alive.
‘You saw the body?’ Abby asked.
Bobbi took a long drink, which was as good as a yes. Tears welled in her eyes. She dabbed at them with the sleeves of her police uniform. Abby’s instinct told her to reach across the car and give her best friend a hug, but Bobbi hated hugs, even from Maggie. So instead, Abby tucked a loose strand of hair behind Bobbi’s ear.
‘Do you know who it was?’ Abby asked. ‘Biller seemed to think he wasn’t a local.’
‘He’s a summer resident. He has a holiday place on the island, but God knows what he was doing here at this time of year.’
‘Thank God,’ Abby said.
‘Thank God? Thank God? What exactly are you thanking God for?’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. I just thought, thank God he wasn’t a local. Obviously, it’s tragic and horrible and fucked up either way, but it’s bad enough there’s been a murder on the island. If the victim was someone we knew…’
Bobbi traced the mouth of the bottle with her finger, then touched it to her lips.
‘Can I see his picture?’ Abby asked.
Bobbi turned with narrow, suspicious eyes. Abby had seen that look a handful of times. It usually came directly after she told someone about her taxidermy.
‘A couple of cops came to see Biller today,’ Abby said quickly. ‘They showed him a photo of the guy. If Biller served him, there’s a good chance I did too.’
It wasn’t the whole truth, and if Bobbi was a halfway decent police officer – and Abby guessed she was – then she knew too. Abby wanted to see his face for one reason and one reason only: curiosity. The same curiosity that helped insert a scalpel blade into the belly of a dead animal.
Bobbi took one last swig of tequila, then screwed the little sombrero-shaped lid onto the bottle. She flicked on the light, reached into her breast pocket and handed a photo to Abby.
It showed a clean-shaven, good-looking man staring into the camera. He wasn’t smiling, but there was humour in his face. The photo was cropped at the neck, but the collar of a charcoal-coloured business shirt was visible. It made him look corporate. A banker or a lawyer, maybe.
‘Do you recognise him?’ Bobbi asked.
‘No,’ she said, feeling disappointed. ‘What do you think happened to him? Do the police have a theory?’
‘It’s too early to tell, but you know Belport. There aren’t too many secrets here, and the ones there are never stay that way for long. Someone knows something.’
She took the photo back. ‘I should get back. Maggie will be getting worried.’
‘Are you okay to drive?’ Abby asked.
Bobbi nodded and whispered, ‘Thank you for letting me grief vomit all over you.’
Abby gave her hand a squeeze. ‘That’s what friends are for.’
11
THE WIDOW
The car park at Belport Medical Centre was vast and empty, aside from a lone police cruiser parked near the entrance. Kate parked and looked over at Fisher. He stared over at an ambulance pulled up outside the emergency entrance. There were two paramedics leaning against it, sharing a cigarette.
‘Are you ready?’ she asked.
‘Straight talk?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m not sure I can do this, Kate.’
‘You don’t have to, Fisher,’ she said. ‘They only need one of us.’
‘I couldn’t do that to you.’
‘Fisher, it’s fine. Stay here.’
‘The crazy thing is, if Pam were here, she’d be able to do it,’ he said, his voice soft. ‘I know you probably think she’s crazy, and I guess she is sort of crazy, but that woman’s faith is strong enough to get her through anything. It would be strong enough to get her out of this car; strong enough to get her inside.’ He turned to her and asked, ‘Are you sure?’
Kate nodded, closed the car door and walked towards the hospital. A heavy-set, plain-clothes detective was waiting for her in the reception area. She was slumped in a plastic chair, deep in thought, picking at her nails. She stood when she saw Kate approach.
‘Mrs Keddie, hello, I’m Detective Barbara Eckman. I spoke to your father-in-law on the phone.’ They shook hands.
‘Pleasure to meet you,’ Kate told them, even though it seemed an absurd thing to say. She smiled on reflex, then, remembering where she was, frowned.
Eckman cocked her head at a curious angle and stared briefly into the middle distance, as if trying to remember something she’d rehearsed. Then she said softly, ‘Are you ready?’
Was she? Her heart was pounding. Her body was trembling and cold. She sensed a primal darkness standing over them, following her like a shadow, and when she went downstairs and saw that body, it would clap around her shoulders, drag her down and stay with her forever.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m ready.’
Eckman led her to a bank of elevators and pressed the button. Stepping through the doors, Kate felt claustrophobic and tight. She pictured a fat cow being led down a pathway flanked by steel fencing, unaware of what lay ahead in the slaughterhouse.
‘When was the last time you spoke with your
husband?’ Eckman asked. Her tone was much more serious than the duty sergeant’s had been back in Melbourne. He had been talking to a paranoid woman with an overactive imagination. Eckman was talking to her as if she was a widow, even though she hoped desperately that she wasn’t. She clung to the dream Pam had described – John’s empty throne in the kingdom of heaven – and hoped it really was prophetic.
‘Two days before he was meant to arrive home,’ Kate said.
‘Do you have any idea why he might have come to the island?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t even know he was here until the alarm company notified me. He told me he was in—’
‘London, yes,’ Eckman finished her sentence. ‘I read the missing person report you filed.’
She caught something like an accusation in the woman’s tone, and wondered dimly if her clammy, nervous small-town cop routine might be an act. After all, wasn’t the spouse usually the prime suspect? If Eckman were gauging her responses, what did she think of them? Kate didn’t know how someone was supposed to act in this situation. Maybe she should have been sobbing or screaming or inconsolable.
They reached the basement and walked down a short corridor.
‘This is it,’ Eckman said. She paused outside a door and turned to Kate. ‘Mrs Keddie, if you need more time…’
‘No, thank you. I’m fine.’
Eckman considered her a moment, then opened the door and led her into a small viewing room. It didn’t smell like formaldehyde as Kate had expected. It smelled like artificial pine and cherry. The ceiling was low. If John were here, he’d have to hunch, Kate thought. Then the darkness that had followed her whispered: Ah, but you see, John is here, just on the other side of that glass.
She looked at a window that ran the full length of one wall, which presumably gave a view into the room where the body was kept. For now, the other room was concealed by a crumpled, lilac-coloured curtain. Kate closed her eyes and for one final time allowed herself to picture John on the front deck of the house, beer in hand, patting the place next to him.
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