by Candice Fox
Laney tried to downplay the seriousness of what she’d confessed to me with a very British shrug of her shoulders and swish of her hair when it was all out there in the open.
‘What can you do? Move to the other side of the planet, I guess!’
‘It was very daring,’ I said. ‘You must have picked Crimson Lake by throwing a dart at a map.’
‘Close enough.’ She smiled. ‘It was more that I did a Google search of veterinary practices around Cairns and found an empty patch. I’ve certainly had a lot of business since I’ve been here. People bring their pet cats in because they’ve been bitten by wild snakes. They bring their pet snakes in because they’ve been scratched by wild cats.’
She sipped her wine. Nearby, a frog started barking, making the nightly rain forecast.
We both noticed at the same time that Lillian had snuggled down onto the couch cushion beside Laney. The child was falling asleep, rousing herself only to put her head on the woman’s thigh.
‘Don’t go to sleep there, little Boo.’ I reached over and tickled my daughter’s feet. ‘You haven’t even had dinner yet.’
‘She’s okay.’ Laney stroked the girl’s head, lifting her curls from her neck and smoothing them across the back of her head. ‘Probably this heat is wearing her out. It sure did take some getting used to, I can tell you.’
‘I think she misses her mother,’ I said. ‘This will be their longest time apart since she was born.’
‘You said Kelly was nearby?’ Laney asked.
‘Yoga camp,’ I said. ‘That’s what I’m calling it, anyway. I think they do a bunch of things. Wellness and nutrition and … whatever. They’re up in the mountains.’
‘Why did you come here?’ she asked. ‘You decided to leave the police for private investigation – what – so you could make your own rules, or …?’
I took a deep breath. It was my turn to talk about why I was ‘on my own’, why I had chosen to come here, to the frayed green edge of society where only wild things felt at home. Step by step, inch by inch, I waded into a hot bath of lies by omission, as Amanda would call them, telling Laney things had simply fallen apart between Kelly and me, that I’d given up my job as a police officer due to conflict with my colleagues. Neither of those things were technically untrue, and yet, as she sipped her wine and took in my words, dread crushed deeper and deeper within me, making it hard, in time, to even get out full sentences. I knew what I was doing was wrong, even as I did it. Laney had just finished telling me how difficult she found it to trust anyone, how she’d questioned every single relationship she had after her break-up, even those she held with family members. She was a woman trying to step away from the fire, and here I was trying to lure her back into the flames while my sleeping daughter lay dreaming between us.
When campfires began to glow across the lake, and only the light from the kitchen windows fell on us, I noticed a mosquito on Lillian’s leg and stood.
‘I better get the mouse something to eat or she’ll be up at midnight,’ I said.
Laney followed me into the kitchen, taking our wineglasses and rinsing them in the sink as I fished around in the fridge for something for Lillian. Closing my eyes for a second was all it took to make the fantasy real. Laney and I putting Lillian to bed. The two of us staying up all night chatting on the porch, cuddling, looking at the water and listening to the call of the crocodiles.
I walked Laney to her van, watching her out of the corner of my eye, her lips trying to hide and then surrendering to a tiny smile.
‘I really like this place,’ she said, finally, as we stood outside the driver’s side door.
‘You’re welcome here any time,’ I replied.
I don’t honestly know who kissed who. One second I was trying to untangle myself from my doubts about saying Laney was welcome at my house any time, what that really meant, how she’d interpret it. The next second her arms were around my neck and her lips were on mine. I kissed her hard, desperately, aware even as I did that the seconds were draining away and that so long had stretched since the last time I had kissed someone, and there would probably be an equal stretch until the next time. Stupidly, I broke off the kiss and just hugged her, burying my face in her neck, feeling her hair against my cheek. It was probably a weird thing to do, but then as we kissed again she grabbed my butt with both hands and dragged me to her, the two of us pressed up against the side of the van like teenagers.
There wasn’t much to say when we drew apart. I glanced towards the house, not wanting to let Lillian fall too deep into sleep before I had a chance to say goodnight to her properly. Laney had her hands in my back pockets.
‘Look at us.’ She grinned. ‘Pashing in the dark.’
‘Pashing?’ I laughed. She giggled against me.
‘Isn’t that what you Aussies say?’
‘Maybe a million years ago.’
‘Frenching?’
‘Snogging,’ I said. She laughed hard. ‘Isn’t that what you Brits say?’
We looked at each other in the gold light from the house, smiling like idiots.
‘I gotta go.’ She trailed a hand down my arm and opened the car door. I waved as she drove off, my face burning, tingles of excitement and terror rushing up my arms and into my chest.
Joanna Fischer knew who she wanted to be.
She wanted to be Pip Sweeney.
She’d wanted it from the moment she was first introduced to her partner at the Holloways Beach police department, the beautiful blonde patrollie striding forward and pumping Joanna’s hand hard. Strong, confident shake. Good eye contact. Immaculate uniform.
At the academy, an old chief super had told Joanna the best thing she could do in the job was find a role model and stick to them, someone who had been around for a long time and had their head on straight. Pip had only graduated six months before Joanna, but she knew she’d found her role model just from the incredible self-loathing she felt around the other woman. Joanna was messy. Undisciplined. Always late and always on the back foot.
Pip always had a sassy return to change room banter from their male colleagues, always knew what was going to be covered in the morning briefing, what the job lists were, what the upcoming shift change would be before anyone else. She was a machine, sitting upright in her seat on surveillance detail for hours on end, her eyes trained on the house they’d been tasked with watching, her back rigid as a plank as Joanna sagged and dozed in the passenger seat.
She was perfect. While Joanna fumbled awkwardly around the families of car crash victims, Pip soothed them with soft, warm, gentle reassurances. Her handwriting on the crime scene reports was like calligraphy. No matter what Joanna did to try to emulate Pip, she could never quite get there. A curl worked itself loose from her wire-tight bun. Her ink smudged, and she stammered when reporting to their superiors. When Pip was called up to take an open detective’s spot in Crimson Lake – a ridiculously early promotion, something that would have left Joanna in nervous tatters – Pip had accepted the news with a curt nod and sincere thanks. While the two women celebrated that night over wine and expensive cheese, Joanna had curled on the other end of the couch and listened to her friend talk about her excitement over her new posting. She’d been in awe.
Joanna not only admired Pip, she loved her. Her life was lived in privilege, watching Pip in action, listening to her thoughts, laughing with her in the dark of a bar or her neat, stylish house on the lake. Sometimes Joanna thought she would give anything just to be Pip for a day. To have people look at her the way they did Pip. To have her power, her intelligence, her understanding. It was like Joanna walked everywhere with fogged glasses, and it was only Pip who could really see.
When Pip died, all Joanna heard was talk about Amanda Pharrell.
Pip had been trying to save Amanda.
Her death had been witnessed by Amanda.
Her last words were spoken to Amanda.
Amanda, Amanda, Amanda.
Joanna could feel her own memories
of her partner twisting and warping as thoughts of Amanda penetrated them. She would iron her uniform and think of Pip’s hands working a cloth and ink-black polish as she sat in the change room working on her boots, and then she’d remember Amanda in her stupid slogan shirts and glittering sunglasses wandering around the hotel like it was her personal mansion. None of her colleagues wanted to visit Pip’s grave. To talk about her. To honour her. It was all too depressing. Cops liked to be angry. They wanted to talk about Amanda, the walking curse, the murderer. They hated her. They didn’t understand her. They were afraid of her. All that talking, watching, whispering, it was a fascination that made Joanna boil inside.
If people wanted to talk about Amanda so badly, Joanna was going to give them something to say.
Joanna got out of her car and stretched, the muscles in her left shoulder gathered into a tight bundle beneath her shoulder-blade. Her day had been spent guarding operations at the DeCasper house, manning the outer cordon and facing off with journalists and neighbours who wanted to know what was going on. She’d stood in the sun for hours with her hand on her heavy belt, a glorified security guard, listening to the news reporters give their strange, hollow assessments of what little information had been released to the public, the camera operators taking atmospheric shots of the front of the DeCasper house from a range of angles. Joanna learned more from listening to the news reports than she had from her own command. The little boys’ clothes found in DeCasper’s house had apparently been sourced from the lost and found basket at his school. She learned that DeCasper’s brother’s house had been searched, and that Richie Farrow’s father had made a statement saying how furious he was that DeCasper had taken ‘the easy way out’ before giving police the truth.
Joanna tried to roll all the awful details she had learned out of her shoulders as she headed towards her house, cracking her neck as she walked up the front steps. She needed a bath, a glass of wine and an early night. She didn’t take notice of the motorcycles parked at the end of the street, visible as silhouettes in the cones of light from the street lamps.
The first indicator to Joanna that something was wrong came when her key didn’t meet any friction as she turned it in the lock, the door already unsecured. Her mind wasn’t fast enough, didn’t warn her to pause before stepping into the darkness of the living room. She walked in and the door closed behind her, pushed shut by a strange hand in the blackness. Joanna reached for the light switch, but another hand was already there, flicking it on.
There were two men standing beside her on either side of the doorway. Though her heart seemed to slam against the inside of her ribs, Joanna didn’t move, and neither did they. They were thickly built, greying, tattoo-covered men simply standing there in her living room, watching her as she came to terms with the situation.
On the coffee table before the television set, a display had been arranged. Joanna didn’t recognise the half-empty Jack Daniel’s bottle on the edge of the table, or the thick white package of powder split open at the centre, trailing dust onto the polished surface. There were three lines racked on a mirror she recognised as having been taken from her bathroom, a set of micro scales dusted with powder and handfuls of tiny plastic baggies tossed on the coffee table and the floor nearby. In the kitchen, to her left, it looked like someone had staged a small party. There were used glasses, empty ice trays, a couple of pizza boxes stacked on top of the recycling bin.
Joanna’s favourite armchair in the corner of the living room had been turned around on its rotating base to face the corner. As she watched in bewilderment, the armchair turned and Amanda Pharrell appeared, sitting with one leg folded over the other, a tortoiseshell cat resting in her lap. She had all the theatrical pomp and flair of the Bond villain she was obviously imitating, save for her delighted countenance, which cracked with an impossibly wide smile as the chair came to a stop.
‘Welcome, Constable Fischer,’ Amanda said, barely managing to get the words out before she broke into laughter. ‘We’ve been expecting you.’
She stroked the cat menacingly.
Joanna had to force the words out through her rising fury.
‘What … the … fuck … is …’
‘Allow me to explain my ingenious plan.’ Amanda gave a flourish of her hand. ‘You’ve just arrived inside your secret life. Yes, Constable Joanna Fischer; cocaine addict and maybe dealer. Drunk, slob and receiver of stolen goods.’
‘Stolen goods?’ Joanna stepped cautiously out from between the thugs at the door.
‘They’re not immediately obvious,’ Amanda said. ‘They’ve been artfully placed. In the bedroom cupboard, beneath a pile of folded blankets, you’ll find two brand-new Macbook laptops and a couple of iPhones. Beside the washing machine in the laundry, there’s a flat screen TV. They were ripped off from an electronics store in Brisbane three weeks ago.’
Joanna worked a muscle in her temple with her fingers, wincing as splinters of rage seemed to push up from behind her eyes.
‘More troubling,’ Amanda continued, ‘are a couple of handguns that went missing from the Crimson Lake police department’s armoury at the end of last year. I’m not going to tell you where they’re hidden. You’ll have to find them yourself. There are also two more bricks of coke like this one hanging around in here somewhere, and I’m afraid they’ve got your prints on them.’
‘How could they possibly have my prints on them?’ Joanna snarled.
‘Come on, a gifted magician like myself never reveals her secrets.’ Amanda smiled, coy. ‘Point is, all of this looks very bad for you. You’re lucky it’s just me, Jimbo and Rocko here, otherwise you might be in some very hot water. We won’t tell anyone. But you can imagine the consequences if this happens again. You’re at work. Maybe you’re two hours’ drive away, like you were today. The station receives a panicked call from a neighbour saying they heard a gunshot inside your house. The boss sends a unit here to see if you’re okay. They bust in and find this.’
Joanna folded her arms, the back of her tongue awash with blood from chewing the inside of her cheek, trying to contain the anger.
Amanda got out of her chair, flipped the cat and held it like a babe in her arms. She approached, and Joanna felt her eye twitching as she tried to maintain a rigid expression.
‘Imagine if some of this stuff turned up somewhere else in your life, Joanna,’ Amanda said. ‘What if you opened your locker down at the station one morning and you found a kilo of heroin? A bloody knife? Some pictures? What if you reached into the pocket of your jacket one day and found a key to a lock box registered under your name?’
‘You stupid little bitch,’ Joanna whispered.
‘If you so much as breathe in my direction again,’ Amanda said gently, ‘I will take everything from you. I will leave you crying on the floor of some filthy prison shower block while women I knew when I was locked up redesign your face with their shoes.’
The two women watched each other. The cat between them mewled and pawed at Amanda’s chin, and the small, tattooed investigator broke away first, joggling the animal like an infant as she headed for the door.
Joanna went into the bathroom when they were gone and took a folded towel from the rack beside the mirror. She sat on the edge of the tub in the searing white light, pressed her face into the towel’s soft folds and screamed. The rage soared out of her, hot and wet and loud, a muffled growl in her cupped hands, trapped by the fabric like smoke. She screamed until her throat was ragged and her temples were damp with sweat.
Give her what she deserves, she thought. Make her go away.
When Joanna was done she put down the towel and went to the mirror, took a few deep breaths to regain her composure. She balled a fist, looked at her reflection, and smiled.
Then she punched herself as hard as she could in the eye.
The call came in the dark hours of the morning. I answered it before I was fully awake, lost in the wilderness between dreams and consciousness.
‘We’ve go
t a problem,’ Chief Clark said.
‘What is it?’
‘That maintenance man, Dylan Hogan,’ he said. ‘You two may have been onto something. I put a squad car on him last night, and what do you know – they follow him straight from work to Bunnings Warehouse. They figure he’s just stocking up on things for the hotel, so they follow him home, but while they’re sitting on him they call the store to see what he bought.’
I sat up in bed.
‘Very interesting collection of things on the receipt,’ Clark continued. Rope, duct tape, plastic drop sheets, a hacksaw …’
‘Oh fuck,’ I said.
Lillian appeared in the doorway, rubbing her eyes.
‘Oh fuck!’ she yawned. I frowned at her.
‘All the items were bought with his personal credit card, not the hotel’s card.’
‘They could still be supplies for the hotel,’ I said. ‘He could be expecting to be reimbursed.’
‘I’m not through,’ Clark said. ‘The surveillance officers called the whole situation in. When I heard the list of items purchased I was suspicious but wary. I didn’t want to jump on this guy too fast and cause a media sensation, or uncover evidence that I wouldn’t be able to use without a search warrant. I called up for the warrant, and I was waiting for it to be rushed through when the two officers call me and tell me they fucked up.’
‘Oh sh–’ I watched Lillian climb up the side of the bed. ‘Sugarplums.’
‘They thought they heard a kid’s voice from inside the caravan. Keep in mind, I told these stupid fucks to stay inside the car and watch the caravan door. That’s all they had to do.’
I held Lillian to my chest. Her pyjamas were covered in dog hair. Celine stalked guiltily past the door towards the kitchen.
