Second Sight

by Aoife Clifford

  Praise for Second Sight

  ‘Aoife Clifford is brilliant at showing how the past is a strong, pulsing stream that infects and directs the present. She’s done it again with Second Sight, a pacy, gripping thriller with thick ropes of regret, trauma, misunderstood love and misdirected duty slithering beneath.’

  Emily Maguire, author of An Isolated Incident and Fishing for Tigers

  ‘Skilfully plotted and intricate, Second Sight is another engrossing read by one of our most talented crime writers. Aoife Clifford’s second novel explores how the impact of decisions made decades ago can reverberate, to devastating effect, in the present. A story shaped by the ravages of bushfire, the secrets of a small town, and a returned local’s search for redemption. Highly recommended.’

  Anna George, author of The Lone Child and What Came Before

  ‘With its shifting viewpoints and sharply observed characters, Second Sight is a shrewdly paced account of a young litigation lawyer’s investigations into a suspicious fire and her own troubled history.’

  Garry Disher, author of Under the Cold Bright Lights and Bitter Wash Road

  ‘With Second Sight, Aoife Clifford confirms herself as one of Australia’s up-and-coming crime writers. A young lawyer’s investigation into a lethal bushfire leads her into danger, and the truth about her own troubled past. A compelling story about secrets, small town loyalties, and lies.’

  Emma Viskic, author of Resurrection Bay and And Fire Came Down

  For my siblings Ciara, Sinead, Aisling and Aidan for the love and the laughter

  ‘He lies like an eyewitness.’

  – Russian proverb

  1

  Here it begins. Trouble, I think, when I see the two of them slinking out of the pharmacy. There is nothing more dangerous than a bored teenager in a country town. It’s when the stupidest ideas start making sense.

  Sitting in my car, stuck in Kinsale’s traffic, I watch them. He’s a walking cliché, his hoodie pulled up over his head, and the girl wears a denim jacket that’s too small. She reminds me of someone, her face is familiar – unless what I’m seeing is a glimpse of myself twenty years ago walking out of the same shop.

  He slips his hand into hers and weaves through cars, pulling her right in front of me. The girl, hair streaked with salt, leans forward to stare through my windscreen. She looks at me with shrewd eyes. The boy yanks her arm and she skips across, escaping to the beach on the other side of the road.

  The traffic lights change and cars edge forward. Out of my side window, I glimpse the green ocean behind the enormous Norfolk pines that dot this part of the coastline. Before me is a tidal wave of slowly moving metal, all heading back to the city. The population of Kinsale expands and folds depending on the weather and locals know never to drive near the centre of town on summer weekends.

  The sun pours through the glass and warms my bones to jelly. I wind down the window to take in the salted scent of my childhood: sea mixed with the crusty tang from the deep-fryers in the takeaway shops. It’s all sunscreen, tan lines, peeling skin and bad holiday traffic.

  I flick on the indicator to turn into the centre of town, but the windscreen wipers go off instead. I’m driving a rental with nothing where it should be. More cars are banked up along the stretch of shops that subsist on tourist dollars. Only the pub, The Royal, is familiar to me.

  My phone lights up with a message from the expert witness, double-checking my arrival time. Legal cases can be won or lost because of your expert, which is why I’ve agreed to meet mine in Kinsale, a place best avoided under the circumstances. I shoot a text back explaining the delay and then creep up the hill in fits and starts, tapping impatiently on the steering wheel. It’s a kind of Morse Code, reminding me that I escaped this town once and I can do it again.

  A woman in a shiny silver SUV scoots up the inside of the cars, pretending there’s an extra lane just for her, and then attempts to merge in front of me, trying to jump the queue. She barges her way forward without even a cursory wave of thanks. There is a smug ‘My Family’ sticker set on her back window. The stick-figure mummy has one skater dude, a ballerina, a baby and a pet dog. There’s a gap where stick-figure daddy should be. Perhaps he has come unstuck.

  I follow the SUV until the ocean disappears from view. This part of town is quiet except for all the cars. Locals and tourists alike prefer the beach, the park or the pub. My turn-off is in a couple of blocks and then it’s another twenty minutes to the historic mansion, originally a homestead for a large farm, where I’m meeting Rob Eslake, the expert witness. It’s been nicknamed The Castle for as long as I can remember, a joking reference to the pretensions of the landowners who built it in the 1870s. It is almost time for another apologetic text when the sticker family lady decides she’s had enough driving and reverses to park. Without indicating, she starts squeezing her enormous car into a spot that leaves no room for error – except she makes one, backing straight into a LandCruiser parked by the side of the road next to me.

  It is more than a nudge but less than a crunch. Her mouth is reflected in her rear mirror and I read the emotions. The roundness of the initial shock, the downward sag of realisation, then the guilty glance over her shoulder, as if trying to assess the damage. Almost as quickly, she faces forward, lips determined, and rejoins the traffic.

  Beside me, the LandCruiser’s door opens. A man gets out – ripped jeans, a loose T-shirt, mid-brown hair cropped close to his head, a widow’s peak – clutching a mobile phone. He is so angry it has a cartoonish quality, as if a black cloud hangs above his head. He throws the phone inside his car and slams the door. Not stopping to check for damage, he marches stiff-legged around my bumper. By the time he reaches her, he is shouting.

  ‘You stupid fucking bitch!’ he yells. ‘You were going to drive away.’

  He smacks his hands against her window so hard that the momentum pushes him back and he launches again.

  Shocked faces surround me, frozen like shop dummies, all of us waiting to see which of us will do something.

  His voice sounds familiar.

  Putting up the window as a precaution, my brain whirs through the index of faces that is my own personal identity parade. ‘Luke Tyrell’ pops into my head, and when a mop of curly hair is added to the angry profile it’s confirmed, even though I haven’t seen him since we were bored stupid teenagers. Part of me is amazed that he has aged twenty years all at once but the rest of me is more concerned that he seems to have turned psychotic.

  If the woman in front of me had any brains she would do a U-turn and drive off, but the car, too clean, too new, suggests she isn’t local. Maybe she’s desperately checking her phone for an alternative route back to the city. Maybe she’s just frozen.

  Now Luke is pulling on her door handle but it’s locked so he kicks the door instead, a nasty, vicious kick designed to dent. The woman is getting out of her seat, scrambling onto the passenger side. Luke launches himself onto the bonnet, slamming his hands against her windscreen, his face distorted. He is hitting so hard that the car is actually rocking. The sticker family cheerfully wobbles, as if they’re waving goodbye.

  Do I call the police? The station is only a couple of streets away, within running distance, but it might be shut with those on shift out along the coast. The public expects the police to be genies, magically summoned with a phone call. Still, there is a chance they could be nearby, up on the highway in a booze bus or raising revenue by issuing speeding tickets. I hunt around the car for my discarded phone, which has somehow managed to slip between the seats and fall into the footwell behind me, out of reach.

  How long has all this taken? A minute, two? Luke is on fast forward when everyone else is caught on pause. My clumsy hands open the door and I stumble onto the
road. I don’t even know what my plan is. Call out to him and say ‘Hi, it’s me, Eliza, remember when?’ In the Mini behind me is a teenage girl, a learner’s permit stuck to her windscreen. Her mother is in the passenger seat. The same look of horror is clear on both generations. The girl has her phone out, videoing, while the mum has another phone up to her ear. She mouths ‘police’ to me.

  A man jogs up the hill towards us. He’s dressed in jeans and a dark polo shirt, with a ridiculous green hat on top of his head. A cheap, novelty plush one, like he’s celebrating St Patrick’s Day at an office do a couple of weeks early. He approaches Luke, calling out as if he’s trying to calm down a horse.

  ‘Whoa there,’ he says. ‘C’mon big fella.’

  He reminds me of my father, calm in a crisis. As he passes by he winks at me, like he’s a superhero in his spare time. Then he walks straight up to Luke and asks him what he is doing. His accent is Irish, or maybe that’s just the hat talking. It’s the way he sounds conversational that impresses me most. No judgement, just genuine interest, like they know each other, that they might be friends.

  ‘You’re frightening her,’ he says, pointing at the car. Luke turns his head and there’s a pause in the yelling as he gets off the bonnet, but only for a moment and then it starts again. All about the damage to his car and how she was going to drive off.

  Other people start to appear, like rabbits being pulled out of the green plush hat. Everyone is brave now. When Luke realises the situation has shifted, he pushes through the onlookers, yelling still, and disappears.

  Attention turns to the almost hysterical woman who climbs out of the passenger side of the SUV. People swarm, sitting her down on the footpath. Another man gets the keys and parks her car, right in front of the LandCruiser, which doesn’t seem ideal but it was blocking traffic and suddenly the road is clear. We are all in a terrible rush to get away including me, because I’m running so late for my meeting.

  I turn at the next intersection, testing out my old local knowledge. It is a shabbier strip, not as tourist friendly. A few of the shops are empty, and ‘closing down’ signs in a couple more give the place an apocalyptic feel, as if everyone is hightailing it out of here. Posters saying ‘Bayless – Best for Business’ appear in windows. Beneath the slogan, a blonde woman in her sixties with her hair fixed into a hard halo wears a plastic, politician’s smile. There must be a local election coming up.

  Bobbing up and down along the street, past Hooked-On-U Bait & Tackle, Surf City and the op shop, is a green hat. I could ask the good Samaritan where he is headed and offer him a lift. But I don’t usually offer lifts to strangers, and on closer inspection he does look a little strange. Maybe you have to be mad to calm down a crazy person. Mad, or a cop.

  Driving past, I see there is a confident swing to his arms, as if he knows where he is headed and can take his time getting there. So I accelerate past him, heading up the street, but as I do there is a sudden blur in my mirror: a gust of rage like a squall out at sea, voices yelling.

  In the time it takes to stop the car and turn around in my seat, Luke and the Hat Man are in the middle of the road, wrestling like two drowning swimmers clinging to each other. The hat is knocked clean off. They move so fast they merge into one.

  A raised fist. A punch. A fall.

  Before I can scream, Luke is gone and the Hat Man is lying on the ground.

  My hand slams on the horn before I burst out of my car. Rolling him into the recovery position, I hook my finger into his mouth to clear his airway. Bloodied teeth fall to the ground like chips of stone. A cut bisects his eyebrow. A woman appears and starts shouting for help but he doesn’t make a sound. Sitting next to him, squeezing his fingers with my hand, I ask his name, where he feels pain. His mouth doesn’t move and mine doesn’t stop, telling him he did the right thing, helping that woman.

  It feels like years pass before the wail of an ambulance floats towards us. After the Hat Man has been examined and then parcelled up, I grab an ambo, wanting to know the prognosis. He gives me the professional blank look they use when there is bad news you don’t need to hear.

  ‘We’ve called a chopper to take him to the city. You kept him alive.’ He gives me a comrade-like pat on the shoulder. ‘We’ll try and do the same.’

  The policeman who talks to me is a young constable, probationary at a guess. He had been assigned to traffic for the weekend, he tells me. A serious assault seems an exciting alternative.

  ‘Name?’ he asks. When I tell him it’s Eliza Carmody, he doesn’t seem to recognise the surname, so he can’t be local.

  ‘What do you remember, Eliza?’ He’s one of those people who use your first name a lot to demonstrate he’s on top of the situation. Before I answer he is already distracted.

  ‘Your eyes,’ he says. ‘They’re not the same colour.’

  It amazes me how people always assume they’re the first one to notice. I answer his question.

  ‘It was a king hit,’ I say. ‘Luke Tyrell did it.’

  ‘You’re an “eye” witness?’ he asks, smirking slightly. I can tell I’m becoming the punchline of his day but I don’t react.

  ‘Yes. I saw it all.’

  He takes down my details in his notebook and then heads back to his car, conferring with the second cop inside, who’s been radioing in.

  The passenger door is flung open.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  This cop is older, taller, with a slight stomach bulge over his belt. He has a ridiculous moustache on his face that looks like a Muppet has died. It wasn’t there the last time I saw him. Senior Sergeant Gavin Pawley, my brother-in-law, comes over. He grabs both my arms and guides me to the police car, putting his enormous hand onto my head so I don’t bang myself as he firmly places me onto the back seat.

  ‘Eliza, what on earth are you doing here?’

  My teeth are beginning to chatter and the words come out bite-sized. ‘Visiting a friend,’ I lie.

  ‘What friend?’ he asks.

  A momentary pause. ‘Amy,’ I tell him. ‘Amy Liu.’

  Kneeling down, he holds me upright.

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  I shake my head, fixated on the clumps of blood on my fingers.

  ‘You can’t drive,’ he says. ‘I’ll take you to your dad’s house to have a shower. You can borrow Tess’s clothes.’

  Looking down, I realise that my top is splattered in a stranger’s blood.

  ‘No,’ I say. This day has been bad enough without having to deal with my sister as well.

  ‘I’ll take you to Amy’s then. She can check you out.’ Scooping my legs into the car, he pushes me back until I’m resting on the seat. He has a quick chat to the constable, who agrees to follow in my rental car.

  ‘Can you get my bag?’

  ‘Sure,’ says the constable. He jogs over to where it lies, the contents spilled onto the road in my haste to get to my phone to call for help.

  The green hat lies beside it as though they belong together.

  2

  ‘Surprise,’ I say.

  We are at the front of an old-style bluestone home. Parched-looking geraniums swing from hanging baskets either side of the open doorway. Amy stands inside, an enormous stomach on tiny legs. She doesn’t flinch at the sight of me, but then, she is a doctor.

  ‘Tell me this isn’t related to your case, Eliza.’

  ‘None of the blood’s mine.’ I throw a warning look in Gavin’s direction but he’s on the phone and not listening.

  ‘Maybe I should be checking out someone else then,’ she says when he glances up. He directs Amy away for a quick whispered conversation. The blood is starting to harden on my shirt, clinging to me. Amy returns quickly and starts assessing the damage.

  ‘Look at you,’ I say. ‘How much longer?’

  ‘With a bit of luck four weeks,’ she answers. ‘Now let’s see if you have any cuts before we start panicking about hepatitis.’

  Later, I’m clean, my skin intac
t, wearing a T-shirt that belongs to Amy’s husband, Gus, and a cardigan of hers. I sit on the couch with a glass of inky merlot at my elbow, strictly medicinal. The green hat sits next to me.

  ‘This is great,’ I say, raising the glass.

  ‘Friends of ours made it. They’re using a new French clone of merlot in their vineyard,’ she says, stirring spaghetti marinara on the stove. ‘I’ve had it waiting here especially for you.’

  ‘How did you know I was coming?’

  ‘You had to return some time to visit Mick.’

  I look away because there are no plans to see my father. I have already said my goodbyes but that will be hard to explain to Amy, who has been my best friend ever since I tried sucking on her liquorice-black plaits in kindergarten. For years she’s been visiting me in the city and I’ve done my best to avoid return trips to Kinsale.

  ‘Where’s Gus?’ I ask to divert her.

  ‘The Royal’s trivia night. It’s a fundraiser for Janey’s election campaign.’

  I reach out for the security blanket of my phone to check if there are any messages from Rob in response to my garbled one cancelling our meeting. There’s nothing and my fingers swipe-swipe-click on the internet instead. The news sites have already posted about the attack, which seems far too quick but then this is the third king hit this summer and all other stories seem to have gone on holidays. The Hat Man is Paul Keenan, a twenty-nine-year-old tourist from Ireland. People who don’t know him are #prayingforpaul because apparently God regularly checks his Twitter feed. I want to see that his attacker is in custody ‘assisting the police with their enquiries’, but he is ‘yet to be apprehended’.

  ‘Are you sure it was Luke?’ she asks. ‘Luke hit him?’

  I see a raised fist and then the punch.

  ‘Definitely,’ I say. ‘Remember the fights he used to get in at school? I thought he’d have grown out of that.’

  Amy sighs. ‘It isn’t only Luke. This whole town’s on edge ever since – ’