by Rebecca Lim
My intake of breath is audible once the video gets going. Filmed from a fixed point somewhere above head height, Mum is looming into the shot holding that impossibly large cup of milky coffee Paolo mentioned. The fluorescent light shining down on her crown makes her long, loose hair look white and her eyes huge in her heart-shaped face. She seems nervous, unhappy? I recognise the place almost immediately, with its overtones of corporate, frosty blue. It’s the bank. Mum’s bank.
‘It’s her work!’ I exclaim. ‘The foyer outside her work. I’ve waited out there for her, like, a million times. She made it to work?’
Wurbik nods and points to a small string of numbers at the edge of the picture. ‘That’s the date and time stamp, Wednesday. Allowing that she stopped for a coffee on the way’—he gestures at the takeaway cup—‘she walked straight to her place of work from home. But look.’
The piece of footage is in real-time, and I work out that less than a minute elapses before Mum looks both ways, hesitating, and then steps out of the foyer and back into the street. In a second she is gone, and the footage ends.
‘That’s it?’ I exclaim. ‘That’s all you’ve found?’
It’s the third day. I know, because I’ve been counting the hours. I feel a scream rising inside.
‘Wait,’ Malcolm says quietly. ‘There’s another one.’
While Wurbik trawls through the next folder, I tell them everything I learnt from Paolo: about the apricot jam biscuits she never ate and the milky coffee she never drank. ‘And she took her box of compasses!’
The men look at each other.
‘I went through the house so many times,’ I babble, ‘but they weren’t there. Not a single one. The tin, you know, it’s silver, flat, but rusty. Has a picture of a castle on it. No, no, a house, a big, grand, like, English house. And there’s a dark-blue label thing, across the front of it, with white writing in capital letters that say: THE OXFORD SET OF MATHEMATICAL INSTRUMENTS. It has to mean something, right? That she took them.’
‘Compasses?’ Malcolm queries, brow furrowed.
Wurbik pulls one of Mum’s old journals around the side of the laptop. ‘She used them to make these, yeah?’
He flips the cover open and I see it straight away, taped to the inside front cover: a badly photocopied astrological chart for someone whose natal house is Aries. I drag my pack onto my lap and rummage around inside with shaking hands, drawing out the dark-red journal I found wedged inside my gym bag. I push the police laptop back a little and line the two books up, side-by-side. The charts are an exact match.
Wurbik pulls the journal towards himself and exclaims in a low voice, ‘This the current one? The one she was working on when she…’
I nod.
‘Where did you find it?’
I tell them as the two men flick through the contents, glancing at each other again when they get to the old articles on Fleur Bawden.
Wurbik mutters, ‘Mal, that the compasses are missing would tend to increase the chance of it being client-related, wouldn’t you say?’
Malcolm Cheung nods before standing swiftly and, without warning, takes the journal out of the room. I made photocopies because I knew this would happen, but I still feel a pang that, just like that, Mum’s book is out of my hands and is no longer mine.
As the door clicks shut, Wurbik says, ‘That diagram was in all of the journals we recovered from your place. It’s like some kind of key. There are cases where if a client’s, ah, stars weren’t compatible with that thing? She would scratch them. She wouldn’t even start. We worked it out from the notes she left in the margins. There weren’t many, but there were a handful.’
Malcolm returns, empty-handed. ‘Is it hers, do you think? That chart?’ he says, sitting back down and crossing his arms over his chest.
‘She was a Scorpio,’ I say dully. ‘Well, at least that’s what she always told me.’ They can hear the hurt incomprehension in my voice. ‘You know: intensely magnetic to others, passionate, painstaking. Scorpios are considered the detectives of the astrological world who feel everything deeply. They’re supposed to be great at keeping secrets…’ My voice falters as I realise what I’ve just said. I push myself to continue. ‘It’s traditionally a house of great power and darkness. It speaks of profound transformation, death, the underworld. Pluto, you know, key planet.’ I see that they don’t understand; they have no idea what I’m talking about. I could be pulling all this out of my arse for my own amusement.
‘But Pluto isn’t even a planet these days,’ Malcolm interjects. ‘So how does that work?’
‘Asked Mum the same question,’ I say, shrugging. ‘Just telling you what she told me.’ I trace the outline of the photocopied chart. ‘It could have been hers,’ I mutter. ‘I couldn’t really—’
‘Getting a birth certificate will sort that out,’ Wurbik interrupts. ‘Got some questions.’ He writes Mum’s star sign down in his notepad, putting a large question mark beside it.
‘Shoot,’ I say warily as Malcolm Cheung shifts in his chair.
I confirm Mum’s full name, her birth month and mobile number; that she wasn’t in any relationship I was aware of and hadn’t been for centuries. I also confirm that, to my knowledge, we maintained the single joint bank account, details of which have already been provided.
‘It hardly ever has much money in it,’ I say, realising with a flash of horror that I haven’t thought about money. I wonder how much food is in the house and whether I’m going to make it through winter without a job. Shit.
‘Maternal grandmother’s name?’ Wurbik says, breaking into my thoughts.
‘Joyce Geraldine Crowe,’ I answer, puzzled. ‘She died before I was born. Sometime in the 1980s, I think.’
‘Great-grandmother?’ he presses. ‘Just maternal. In order to establish…’ There’s a clear moment of hesitation and I wonder at it. ‘…identity.’
‘Beverley something Crowe,’ I reply, frowning as Wurbik asks, ‘Also deceased?’
I nod. ‘In the 60s, before Mum was born.’ I look down, blinking. ‘After Dad died, it was just me and Mum. Though she talked about them a lot, said she got “the knowledge”’—I do talking marks in the air—‘from her mum and my gran learnt from hers. It came down through the girls. Beverley and Joyce actively made their living from it: private readings, funfairs, school fetes, whatever they could get. Mum was the first female Crowe in generations to hold down a “real” job as well, apparently. Said I was on track to be the first one not to earn a living from doing this stuff, that I was a “ground-breaker”.’
I snort-sob into the back of one hand.
Malcolm leans forward now and looks around Wurbik, straight at me and my damp lashes. ‘But you can do it, right? You’ve got it, too? This “knowledge”?’
I’m surprised when Wurbik and I both nod at the same time.
‘But I don’t, uh, practice,’ I say, cautiously. ‘I’ve always refused to. Mum never pushed it. It was her thing, not mine. But I can read them, her charts.’
‘Draw one up?’ Malcolm asks casually.
‘If I had to.’ They can hear the sudden, pathetic eagerness. ‘I want to be part, of the, you know, investiga
tion. I want to help in any way I can.’
Malcolm inclines his head, which isn’t really any kind of answer. ‘And your mum and dad,’ he asks, ‘they never married?’
I shake my head. ‘She always wished they’d gotten around to it. But she said it didn’t matter, anyway, because she felt married.’
‘Where were they living?’ Malcolm pushes gently. ‘When you were born?’
I tell them Mum’s Dimboola story and Malcolm gives a crooked smile and says, ‘Got called slant-eyes once, walking up to uni, with accompanying visuals.’ He lifts the outer corners of his eyes with his index fingers, lets them drop. ‘I was born in Caulfield East,’ he says in his broad accent, ‘about twenty-five minutes from here. It’s the only time I ever felt…’
He doesn’t finish the sentence as Wurbik mutters, ‘Try getting around a school full of skips with a name like Stanislaw Wurbik. Shall we show her the second one, Mal?’
There’s even less footage this time. You get a bird’s-eye view of a short stretch of concrete footpath, then a flash of bowed head going past, the plastic top of a takeaway coffee cup. Then there’s maybe ten seconds of Mum’s back, her shoulders hunched forward, slender legs outlined by slim-fitting trousers, the rounded edge of her tan handbag, receding out of the frame. At the very end, when she’s a thin blob only slightly less pale than her surroundings, you see a dark compact van come in from right of screen. Then, after a moment, it’s gone, and she’s gone too.
All the time, people are passing her, oblivious that Mum is in the process of vanishing.
I find I am shivering and hugging myself tightly. ‘You think she got into that van?’ I say in a tiny voice. ‘Do you know whose it is?’
‘We’re working on it,’ Malcolm says quietly, ‘because we want to find your mum as much as you do. But we need your consent to get that footage out. Someone might recognise her, or the vehicle.’
‘We’re not talking press conference,’ Wurbik rumbles. ‘Not yet. We just want to run the video through the usual media outlets. It’s the only CCTV we’ve got at this stage, but it’s good; clear. The second one was taken near the Flagstaff Gardens, on the edge of town. We think she entered at William Street, exited somewhere on King approaching Dudley Street. She was a long way off her usual route, and she’s very…’
‘…beautiful,’ I finish for him, because it was always the first thing anyone ever noticed about her, even before the damage to her hand. ‘So someone may remember.’
‘Yes,’ Malcolm replies.
‘Consent granted.’ My voice sounds weak, trembly, like it’s not coming from me. ‘Go for it, get it out.’
‘Just be prepared,’ Malcolm says, a touch of concern in his smooth voice. ‘You’ll get lots of questions, interest, from people who know you. Or her. Have some kind of standard response ready.’
‘If you need to talk,’ Wurbik adds, ‘you just ring me. All hours.’ He taps the front of his jacket and I hear a dull retort from the phone in his inner pocket. ‘I mean it. I’m your liaison, remember? You insisted. So call.’
‘Same goes.’ Malcolm extends his hand and a card. Both men stand, and I realise that’s all I’m going to get. I sling my laptop bag over one shoulder, my pack over the other, feeling awkward and bumbly and superfluous. Malcolm opens the door and says over his shoulder, ‘We’ll keep you informed, Avicenna, every step of the way. And thank you.’ He goes right, disappears round a corner.
‘I’ll call the minute there’s anything,’ Wurbik adds. ‘You’ll be sick of me before the day’s out.’ Then he gives my arm a kind of squeezy-pinch thing meant to be comforting before disappearing up a different corridor.
I work out at that exact instant that Malcolm Cheung isn’t Missing Persons Intelligence, he’s Homicide. I don’t even have to look at the business card in my hand to know, I just do.
But then I do. And seeing the word printed neatly under his name almost causes me to sit down on the floor right there, but a trim-looking policewoman in navy wool pants and a matching jumper with epaulets suddenly appears in the hallway, summoned as if by magic. She holds out a hand to me, palm up. Like an elderly woman, I take it, and soon find myself back outside, bereft under a sealed grey sky.
Something makes me look, I’m not sure why. I cross six lanes of traffic and Simon’s car is still there, exactly where I left it over two hours ago. He is asleep behind the wheel, his beanie jammed down over his eyebrows, head thrown back against the driver’s side headrest. He is wrapped up in a blue-and-white checked blanket that blends in so well with his plaid jacket that all I can see of him is his face. The purple bruise under his right eye is starting to go yellow around the edges. All the windows are rolled up tightly again, to keep the heat in, I suppose. And I suddenly get why his car smells like the inside of a fast-food outlet and a locker room, and it does something to my heart.
I go around the back of his car and pop open the crusty-looking boot. It’s filled with books, sealed cups of Suimin that you just add hot water to, tied-up plastic bags, packs of wet wipes, loose towels, plastic bottles of water, a set of purple dumbbells, a toddler-sized pillow. All the usual shit you’d need to get through a day. If you, maybe, didn’t have a house to keep them in.
My eyes fill and I dash at them angrily. I hear his car door open and then he’s standing beside me, still wrapped in the checked blanket. I don’t know what to say, and neither does he, and we don’t look at each other. So we just stare down at his life for a while, then he puts his hand on the raised lid and slams it closed.
He turns and sits on the boot of his car. I do the same and we’re facing down St Kilda Road towards the city, looking through the trees at all the cars driven by people whose lives are normal. He pulls his beanie off and twists it in his banged-up hands, while his massive genius brain tries to come up with an excuse.
I don’t apologise for getting him so wrong, all this time, because if I don’t talk about it then maybe the illusion that he’s The Guy Most Likely—the one who really has his shiz together—will not crumble and fail him.
‘I think there’s lentil dhal on the menu at my place tonight,’ I say in a low voice. ‘You’re welcome to share it. At least, until you piss me off, which might be all of five minutes; then you’re out on your arse.’
I imagine him trying to fold himself along the back seat of the car, with that child-sized pillow jammed beneath the rough beginnings of dark stubble on his pale face, and have trouble swallowing.
Simon exhales. ‘Deal,’ he says unevenly. ‘But only if we run through the talk. It’s just a talk. Your mum wouldn’t…’ I tense up, but he doesn’t finish his thought, instead saying softly, ‘She raised you to be strong. You can tell that. Within a second of meeting you, I could…’
I scramble off the boot before he says anything he can’t unsay, and bundle all my bags into the front seat, climbing in after them and closing the door.
9
Leaving Simon’s car parked on the edge of the city, we pool our loose change and get a bamboo steamer’s worth of xiao long bao and a small container of chilli-spiked soya sauce from the dumpling house two doors down.
Simon has a range of plastic bags from his car boot clutched in both fists. ‘Just like a homeless guy,’ he mutters as we head up the stairwell
to the accompanying rustle. ‘Thanks for the offer.’
I shrug apologetically as I unlock the front door. ‘Smells like teen poverty. Don’t thank me yet.’
Only hours ago, I would have killed to prevent him seeing this, but now it doesn’t seem to matter. Snapping on the light in the front hall, I say casually, ‘Just incidentally, if you reveal the location and condition of my crib, I will be forced to kill you.’
Simon’s laughter turns into a small sound of surprise as I light up the place in increments. It’s the bombsite I left it last night: everything hanging open; papers, books, cushions all over. As I pass through the living room, I turn on a lamp and fire up the ancient wall-unit gas heater. It hiccups a couple of times before roaring to life.
‘Were you…?’ Simon says hesitantly from behind me as I kick things aside on my way past Mum’s room.
‘Robbed?’ I reply, not bothering to explain. ‘No, I just like living like this. Bathroom’s that way.’
I shut the door to my bedroom before pointing him down the corridor, and he disappears into the tropics with his bundles of bags, swiftly engaging the bolt.
While I’m wolfing down my half of the dumplings at the kitchen bench, I hear water starting through the pipes and the mental picture of what he’s doing in there is enough to drive me outside. I head downstairs.
I can see Boon’s profile through the glass. Usually he has at least one customer with him, or a graceful-looking assistant in a flowing pantsuit with the kind of straight black hair I would trade my wavy mud-brown mane for in a heartbeat. But it’s late in the afternoon now, and he’s alone, so I open the door that leads into his shop from our stairwell. A bell tinkles and the old man looks up in surprise, his face clearing when he sees it’s just me.
