by Garry Disher
He’d revisited Longstaff Street several times back then—with the investigation team, with Liam, with his father. In search of answers, first. Then, under apologetic pressure from her landlord, to clear out her things. But he hadn’t been back since and could see changes. Not so many shacks now: here, too, the old holiday places had been tarted up or replaced. The trees were higher, denser; front fences had been replaced by shrubberies that spilled out onto the nature strips. Audis, hybrids and small SUVs these days, not creaky, sun-damaged Corollas. But the road surface was still unsealed, and Charlie juddered past his mother’s old place.
New paint, bigger windows, an umbrella tree on a cropped green lawn and a mezzanine built into the roof. He rode to the end. The house slab was still there but no longer abandoned: a man wearing a yellow helmet and a hi-vis jacket was comparing the slab to a blueprint on a clipboard, another was churning the soil with a bobcat and a third had propped his backside against the bonnet of a twin-cab plastered with a builder’s logo.
They stopped to stare at him. He saluted and wobbled back to the main road and coasted right to the bottom, where he parked his bike against a fence and took the steps down to the beach where Billy Saul had drowned. Billy
Saul: the name instantly there in his head.
Others hadn’t forgotten him, either. Halfway down a cross had been stuck in the sandy dirt, two sun-faded white sticks hung with a faded Berwick Ballet School ribbon, along with fresh flowers in a murky little vase and a tribute board pinned with Christmas cards. How do you send wishes to a dead kid? He’d never been found. Maybe someone still hopes, thought Charlie, itching to read the cards.
He skipped with confused, unfinished thoughts to the bottom step and onto the sand. Pretty much unchanged in twenty years. The same little fingernail curve of sand, weathered boatsheds and an impression of houses and money brooding behind the banksias, pines and buttressing fence. Not, he thought, a beach you visited for riotous times. A shuttered, keep-out place, a good place to drown.
Time to go home. The tide was up, sealing him left and right, so he rode back through the town and out along the road to Balinoe then down past the Balinoe Beach store to Tulum Court. The usual mix of vehicles parked there: local cars, high-end city SUVs; an old Kombi with South Australian plates and a sticker reading Visit Coober Pedy: a Sunny Hole in the Ground. Here Charlie carried his bike through to the beach, then rode it along the narrow strip of hard sand.
The sea air was in him, and the sun was high. Plenty of people about. A big guy, overdressed in jeans, with a hippy beard and a metal detector; kids, parents and grandparents in the water, busy with buckets and turrets and moats. Charlie watched an old geezer with gappy shorts and explosive white hair help a little girl pat seashells into castle walls and his first thought was ‘paedo’. Why was that? The change that police work had wrought in him, seeing everyone as a suspect. Catching the man’s eye, he said, ‘A grandad’s work is never done,’ and got an affirmative grunt.
The job, and the mistakes he’d made in it. He’d be reinstated; maybe transferred to Traffic somewhere out in the Mallee. Or sacked. Or he could quit. All he was doing now was licking his wounds and waiting. And looking for Shane Lambert, as he’d been doing for twenty years. The thread that remained untugged. All those fruitless leads…
And if he couldn’t find Lambert, or if Lambert couldn’t help, if there were no new developments, then people would continue to believe his father was guilty. Even though no body had been found. Even though there was no history of violent behaviour—barely even a cross word, since his parents had stayed clear of each other, letting the divorce paperwork trickle through the system. Even though Rhys had been investigating a security van hijack that day. Just a couple of unaccounted-for hours when he was working alone, since, as he’d said at the time, ‘I didn’t know I’d need an alibi.’
Despite all that, the theories came thick and fast. Rhys Deravin had murdered Rose Deravin because he’d have to sell Tidepool Street and give her half of the proceeds. Or he’d blown his top and killed her in the heat of the moment. Or he’d killed her and hoped suspicion and blame would fall on her difficult lodger, Shane Lambert. None of these theories accounted for why her car was found abandoned out near Tooradin with a crumpled bumper, the driver’s door open and her possessions scattered up and down the road. Unless…Unless Rhys Deravin, the wily out-thinker, had staged a confused and confusing crime scene because, as anyone acquainted with him could confirm, he was too smart to leave loose ends.
7
CHARLIE HAD DISMOUNTED to steer his bike through the rocks at the last bend, and there was Mark Valente, shaking seawater from his hairy ears, his vitality unchanged in twenty years. Retired now, and Charlie had heard from Mrs Ehrlich that he spent his winters up north on the Gold Coast, his summers here on the Peninsula. Best of both worlds.
‘Heard you were back,’ Charlie said.
‘Heard you were back,’ Valente said.
‘Yeah, well…’
‘Thumped your inspector, apparently.’
‘Didn’t thump him.’
‘All right—gave him a friendly nudge that sent him arse over tit.’ Valente grinned. ‘God has left the sullen and the wicked behind.’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ said Charlie. He waited to be grilled or criticised, but the old cop had apparently lost interest and was looking around the beach disparagingly. Families with sun shelters and beach carts, Frisbees, teenagers on towels: even Charlie could see a difference in the place. He wanted to say, ‘Things change, Mark.’
Valente shook off his blue mood and fixed Charlie with a look from under water-beaded brows. ‘What’s on for you tomorrow?’
Christmas Day, he meant, and Charlie saw a hollowness in the old detective. Long divorced, like the others, he’d never remarried. No children. Never a girlfriend to speak of. Alone on Christmas Day and for god’s sake don’t ask me around for Christmas Eve drinks, Charlie thought.
‘Spending it with Dad and Fay,’ he said.
‘Liam?’
‘I’ll catch up with him tonight,’ he lied.
‘That lovely girl of yours?’
He didn’t mean Jess. And presumably he didn’t know about Anna. ‘Em? She’s been staying with me for a few days.’ Charlie checked his watch. ‘Still asleep, probably,’ he added, knowing it would disarm the old bruiser.
Valente chuckled. ‘Typical teenager. She’ll be with you for Christmas?’
Charlie shook his head. ‘Spending it with Jess. I’m taking her up to the train this afternoon.’
‘The lovely Jess,’ Valente said. ‘Don’t know what you were thinking, letting that one go.’
Charlie wanted to say: Fuck you, what would you know? She was the one who let me go. But he shrugged.
Before he could wheel his bike to the steps and up them and home, Valente said: ‘By the way, be careful who you speak to in the next few days.’
‘Sorry?’
‘A couple of cute little ferrets in town, knocking on doors. Doing a podcast, they said.’
‘About?’
‘Oh,’ Valente said, one slab of a hand stirring the air, ‘local history.’
‘Local history.’
Some of Valente’s hard old manner resurfaced. ‘Mind what you say to them, Charlie-boy.’
That’s how it had always been. Mark Valente the alpha figure, the ultimate father of all those cops’ kids back when Charlie was little, kicking a ball around. Throwing, catching, batting, running…Toeing the line.
Charlie went away intrigued. His bike on one shoulder as he climbed the steps, he thought: What could put the wind up Mark Valente?
Reaching 5 Tidepool Street, he stowed his bike on the back veranda and entered through the laundry door. His daughter was on a kitchen stool, tapping at her phone. Toast crusts; coffee dregs in a chipped mug.
Charlie made a show of checking his watch. ‘Astonishing. Not yet ten.’
Emma’s expression didn’t alter: faintly s
leepy self-satisfaction, irony and confidence. She was used to his routines. ‘The coffee’s fresh.’
Charlie perched himself on the adjacent stool and poured. Em leaned sideways, bumped shoulders with him and continued scrolling down the screen: Frankston line timetable for 24 December.
She pointed. ‘There’s a train at three-thirty. Will that give you time to drop me off and get to your appointment?’
He was seeing the therapist at four. Fifteen minutes from the station to Mount Eliza…‘Perfect.’
She had shown no curiosity about his appointment. The great adult–kid divide. Her world comprised university, housemates and friends: friendships betrayed, friendships confirmed. Her nails and her hair. Climate change. Instagram, never Facebook. Shit boyfriends and potentially okay ones; nothing serious. Shit retail jobs. Schitt’s Creek. Her old man’s inner life—even his surface one—didn’t register.
‘While I’ve got you…’ Charlie said. He slid off the stool and through to his bedroom, returning with a parcel he’d wrapped in beautiful paper using his thumbs and two left feet. He plonked it at her elbow, saying, ‘Happy Christmas, darling girl. Hope it’s a good one—the year ahead, too.’
She beamed a little, bumped shoulders again. ‘We’re doing this now? Wait here.’
He waited. Sounds came to him from her room: the crackle, snip and snap of paper, scissors, sticky tape. She reappeared eventually and he saw that it was a book. She knew she couldn’t go wrong with a book when it came to her dear old dad.
‘Oh brilliant, a tennis racquet,’ he said.
‘You wore out the one from last year.’
‘Your wrapping is a tad more skilled than mine,’ he said. He was attempting to extract the book without tearing the paper, while his daughter’s unwrapping was more of a great lusty laying bare.
‘Dad!’
‘It’s a wetsuit,’ he said lamely.
‘I can see that.’
‘A spring suit.’
He looked out at the sun-drenched front yard as if to reassure himself, and her, that summer days were not always this hot.
‘Perfect, Daddyo.’ She looked pointedly at the half-uncovered book in his hands. ‘Now you.’
He finished easing the paper away from the cover and spine. ‘Hey!’ he said in genuine delight. A bird book. ‘You’ve done well.’
‘You said the first thing you noticed coming back here was the birds, you didn’t know what half of them were.’
‘I know. Smart of you.’
Charlie gardened and pottered around after that, then listened to the midday news, ate a sandwich and read the Age at the outside table. He was doing the crossword when Emma emerged, kissed his cheek and wandered down to the beach with a towel over her shoulder, a straw hat, stuff in a string bag.
He watched her go. Her self-possession. The loping grace she’d inherited from her grandfather, who…well, she saw him from time to time, but when had she last spent a Christmas with him? When had Liam last spent a Christmas with Rhys Deravin, come to that?
Grief crept through Charlie, sitting heavily. The obligations and accommodations of Christmas. He himself hadn’t posted a single card, and he’d only received half-a-dozen—including from the Skoda dealer. He hadn’t phoned anyone. Hadn’t dropped in with a bottle of wine.
Checking for signal bars, he made his first Christmas call: Susan Mead, his old boss.
The sergeant was guarded. ‘Charlie.’
‘Just ringing to say season’s greetings.’
‘Same to you.’ She paused. ‘How have you been?’
The question seemed sincere. ‘Good. Twiddling my thumbs, mainly.’
‘At the beach, though.’
‘True.’ It was Charlie’s turn to pause. ‘Sue, if you’ve got time between now and the new year, you should visit.’
Her reply was immediate. ‘I can’t, Charlie. I promised Don and the kids. And Kessler’s new trial starts soon.’
‘Fair enough.’ Charlie heard the barb in the second half of her answer. It was partly down to Charlie Deravin that Kessler’s first rape trial had been abandoned. He found himself saying, ‘Good luck with it.’
‘Thanks. Look, I’d better go, lovely of you to ring, and I hope you have a good one tomorrow.’
‘You, too.’
That put a stop to Charlie’s dutiful Christmas calls. Who’d want to hear from him anyway? A question he’d asked himself even before he’d fucked up, even when he’d been a happy husband and father. What did he even have to offer people? It was a nasty, defeatist little pathology—or a big pathology—and maybe he should mention it to the therapist. Maybe this Dr Fiske would show him ways to live with himself.
Or not. Why should he tell her anything, come to that? Withholding information had always been his modus. And why was she working on Christmas Eve, for that matter? Because she was going on holiday and wanted to get all her appointments out of the way? Because guys like him were more likely to commit suicide on Christmas Day than on any other? She didn’t have to worry about Charlie Deravin: his very irritation at having to see her showed that he didn’t need to see her, right? It was just a formality, the police department covering its arse.
As Charlie sat there, he became aware of movement next door: scrapes, thumps, muttered curses. A man was setting a ladder against Mrs Ehrlich’s side wall. Cleaning out the gutters for her? Charlie watched: the man didn’t actually get on the ladder; he picked up his toolbox and threw it onto the ground with an arc of tumbling spanners, pliers and screwdrivers, let out a bellow of distress and gave the ladder a hefty shove. It scraped against the wall, gathered momentum and toppled over with a crash. Then he threw himself onto the ground and began to roll around and moan, drumming his heels against the weatherboard side wall, until Mrs Ehrlich came running.
Charlie started the dialogue in his head:
‘Oh dear, what happened, are you all right?’
‘I don’t know. It just slipped.’
‘Have you broken anything?’
As Charlie listened, the guy moaned again. ‘I don’t know. I was pretty high up.’
‘Lie still, I’ll call an ambulance.’
‘Hang on, I’ll just see…I can move my fingers and toes okay.’
‘What about your insides?’
‘I don’t know. A strain? Those things can take time to heal.’
‘Oh dear, look, best if you don’t move, you could make things worse.’
‘It’s just that everything hurts.’
‘I really do think I should call an ambulance.’
The guy ignored her and made more noises of agony. ‘Look at my pants. Shirt’s ruined…’
Mrs Ehrlich hesitated, as if offered a lifeline. ‘I can mend those for you.’
The guy felt it was time to inflect his voice with a little outrage. ‘The ground here—it’s too soft. You should have warned me.’
Hard as concrete, Charlie thought, if it’s anything like my garden soil.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Mrs Ehrlich said. ‘I didn’t know.’
The guy groaned, turned onto one hip and propped himself on an elbow. ‘The ladder looks like it’s had it. Toolbox…’
‘Let me pay for those,’ Mrs Ehrlich said. She paused: ‘Are you sure you don’t need an ambulance?’
The man seemed to search for a solution that benefited them both. ‘Have you got public liability insurance? Oh, wait. No, you could lose your no-claim bonus.’
Charlie parted the bushes and stepped out onto a lawn in better nick than his own. ‘Afternoon, Mrs Ehrlich. Can I help?’
Her grey hair bobbed. ‘Oh, Charlie, this poor man…’
Charlie stooped to offer the guy a helping hand and a face-splitting, empty smile. ‘Shit, mate, lucky you didn’t break your neck.’
The guy lifted a soft, uncalloused hand sulkily. He was about thirty, with inked forearms, buzz-cut hair and stained, fraying khaki work pants and shirt. He creaked upright with Charlie’s help, uttering a theatrical l
ittle moan.
A guy who plays the odds, Charlie thought. He’s betting I won’t talk Mrs Ehrlich out of giving him a few bucks.
Brushing himself down, the guy muttered, ‘Thanks.’ He bent stiffly to retrieve a screwdriver, presenting a skinny arse, and Charlie kicked it. Not hard.
The guy knew. He didn’t spin around but moved away, hunched over, braced for more.
‘Charlie!’
‘It’s a con, Mrs Ehrlich. This guy was having you on.’
‘Was not,’ the guy muttered, sprung like a schoolboy.
‘Mate, I saw it. I saw you push the ladder over.’
‘What?’ The expressions rippled across Mrs Ehrlich’s face. Wonder, dawning outrage, embarrassment. She was small, wiry—tough—but artless with it. She took a step, ready for battle. ‘Who the hell do you think you are? You’re a disgrace.’
‘Ah, fuck off the both of you.’ The guy rattled a few tools together and took off with his ladder bouncing behind him.
‘Look at him run, Charlie,’ said Mrs Ehrlich with bitter satisfaction. She shouted after him, ‘He’s a policeman, you idiot!’
Charlie winced. The community might know he was a policeman, but did they know why he wasn’t policing? ‘You okay? Anything I can do?’
‘Oh, the gutter can wait.’
‘I’m busy the next couple of days, but maybe early next week?’
‘No, no, that’s not necessary, Charlie.’
‘No problem,’ Charlie said, and eventually he went back through the gap in the hedge. Two hours later, as he was dressing for his appointment with the therapist and waiting for Emma to return from the beach, he heard a knock on the door.
He knew it was Valente’s ferrets: the podcast crew. Hipster twins, a man and woman in their twenties, dressed for Sydney Road, not dirt roads and beach shacks. She carried a binder; he had a polished-aluminium equipment case. Sound gear? A yellow Volkswagen was parked in the street.
