Bitter Nothings

by Vicki Tyley

  He thrust a hand in her direction, the corners of his deep-set ebony eyes creasing in a hint of a smile. She took it, hoping like hell that his name would leap out at her. His grip felt firm and dry in her clammy one.

  “You remember Todd Gleeson,” Gabe said. “Detective Senior Sergeant now.”

  She forced a smile, the idea of throttling her brother forefront in her mind. He might have given her advance warning. “Of course,” she said, taking a step back. “You flatted together for a while when you were in uni.” That is if a constantly rotating shift of six or more undomesticated male students bedding down in a three-bedroom house could be called flatting.

  Dervla turned her attention to the woman. “Dervla Johns,” she said, proffering her right hand.

  “Detective Senior Constable Brooke Stewart.” She grasped Dervla’s hand and shook it, the policewoman’s fine fingers belying their strength. “Pleased to meet you.”

  Was she? Dervla certainly wasn’t pleased to see the police. Not least because of the reason behind their visit.

  Todd nodded a greeting at Emmett, eyeing up the cup he held.

  Gabe obviously caught the look, too. “Good idea,” he said, slapping Todd on the back. “Coffees all round?”

  “Thanks. White with one.” DSC Stewart moved away from the crowded doorway, her gaze sweeping the open-plan living room.

  Gabe snapped his fingers at his brother. “You heard the lady, white with one. And a strong black for my mate. Make that two.” He held up two fingers, which from their upward thrust had obvious other connotations.

  Emmet scowled but said nothing. Instead, he turned his back to the room and started taking cups one at a time from the shelf next to her small coffee machine.

  Her older brother ushered the detectives toward her dark burgundy leather lounge suite. Todd opted for the overstuffed armchair closest to the courtyard, his subordinate perching about a meter away from him on the couch. Gabe plonked himself in the other armchair.

  Dervla scratched under her right eye. Everyone else felt quite at home in her house, so why didn’t she? She remained standing, as if it somehow gave her an advantage. Behind her back, her left hand gripped the breakfast bar’s rounded granite edge.

  “So, Detective—” She coughed. If no one else was going to stand on ceremony, why should she? “So, Todd,” she said, a slight waver to her voice, “what can you tell us? What happens now? What’s happening…” She swallowed, the saliva drying in her mouth as she struggled with the words. “What’s happening with… with their bodies? When can we see them? Say our last goodbyes?” The words jarred. It was wrong, all wrong. They were only children, for God’s sake.

  “At this stage, except for what I’ve already told your brothers, there’s not a lot I can tell you. But be assured that we’ll let you know as soon as we do have anything.”

  She glanced at Gabe and then over her shoulder at Emmet. Both brothers avoided her gaze. “And what exactly did you tell my brothers?” Not that she didn’t trust them.

  Todd frowned, the hiss of the coffee machine behind her drowning out his words to Gabe.

  “Sorry, come again.” Another hiss. If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought Emmet was deliberately making as much noise as possible. “I missed that.”

  Gabe gave her a dirty look. “Why are you doing this, Dervla? You already know what happened. Don’t you think Todd has better things to do than repeat himself for your benefit?”

  “Fine. In that case, I don’t know why you’re here. If you’re not going to tell me what the hell is going on, I want you to leave. All of you.”

  Her older brother grunted. “God, woman, don’t start getting all melodramatic. You’re making mountains out of molehills.”

  She’d give him bloody molehills. Their father used to talk the same way to their mother. “What, you think the massacre of a family is a molehill? You think the murder of two innocent children, our own blood, is a molehill?” Adrenaline surged through her body. “And what about our missing father? Is that a fucking molehill, too, Gabe?”

  Remaining seated, he leaned forward, knuckles planted on his chunky thighs and elbows splayed like some ape trying to make himself look bigger than he actually was. “You forgot Lucinda.”

  Something snapped inside her. She lunged at him, desperate to wipe the smirk from his face. She didn’t care that he was twice her size. She didn’t care that she had never physically attacked anyone before. She didn’t care that he was her brother. She didn’t care.

  Strong hands hauled her back before she could connect with her target. She tried to wrench herself free, but the hands held fast. Her breath escaped in a whoosh, her fight deflating along with it. What had she been thinking? She buried her face in her palms, too mortified by her behavior to look at anyone.

  “You’ve had a huge shock,” DSC Stewart said close to her ear. “It’s quite natural for emotions to boil over in situations like this. Don’t worry, we see it all the time.” She gave an easy laugh and patted Dervla’s shoulder. “And take it from me, having brothers doesn’t help either.”

  Dervla drew a deep breath and lifted her chin. “Tell me about it.”

  Todd stepped aside and Gabe lumbered to his feet, his downturned mouth at odds with his raised eyebrows. “Steady on, Dervla, I really didn’t mean anything by it. Sorry.” He took a tentative step toward her, arm outstretched.

  She stiffened, her hip bumping against the breakfast bar as she edged backwards.

  “You know I would never intentionally do anything to hurt you,” he said, still advancing.

  The sound of shattering crockery split the air. Everyone in the room froze, Gabe’s hand suspended midair. Before he could realize what was happening, she ducked to her left, around the end of the breakfast bar into the kitchen.

  Crouched in the middle of the tiled floor, Emmet picked up shards of ceramic with one hand, dropping them into the other. Coffee had splashed everywhere, staining cupboard doors, settling in grouting. She grabbed the damp cloth from the sink and began wiping down surfaces, grateful for the distraction.

  “Here, give it to me. I’ll do it,” Emmet said, holding out his hand for the cloth. “You take out the coffees to the detectives. I’ll make Gabe a fresh cup when I’m done.”

  “I can do that.” Any excuse to delay the inevitable.

  He shook his head and then jerked it in the direction of the living room. “I’ve already heard what they have to say. And it won’t hurt big brother to wait for a few more minutes,” he added under his breath.

  She sighed and chucked the cleaning cloth at him. “At least be quick about it.”

  He caught it, stood, gave her a knowing smile, and deposited the cup fragments into the kitchen’s pedal bin. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Taking a moment to compose herself, Dervla tugged at the hem of her T-shirt, stretching it down over the top of her jeans. She breathed in, counted to five, and exhaled before turning to collect the two coffee cups from the bench.

  The detectives had retaken their seats. Gabe had relinquished the comfort of the armchair to hunker down between them, one elbow on Todd’s chair, the other on the couch. All three heads were huddled together. Gabe was saying something that Dervla couldn’t make out.

  “Sorry about that,” she said, a buoyancy to her voice she didn’t feel. She set the cups on the glass-topped coffee table. “So, are you going to tell me what all that was about?”

  Gabe stood, patting his shirt pocket. “What all was about?”

  “This.” She made a circling motion with her hand. “The big powwow.”

  “Just filling in a few blanks for Todd, that’s all. It’s been a while.” He pulled a cigarette packet and lighter from his shirt pocket, already moving toward the open glass doors. “Now that you’re here, you can take over.”

  She waited until Gabe was outside and out of earshot. “If I answer your questions, will you at least do me the courtesy of answering mine? I don’t think it’s a lot to ask,
do you?”

  “Not at all,” Todd said. “Although it would be easier if we were all sitting down.”

  The armchair’s leather cushioning squeaked as she sunk into it. She pulled her feet up onto the edge of the seat, her arms locked around her knees. She gazed down at her pearl-painted toenails. Fairy polish, Kayla called it.

  “Can we start with when was the last time you saw your father?”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, thinking. “Two, maybe three weeks ago. He dropped by with some print proofs for one of my clients.”

  “How did he seem?”

  “Fine, why?”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “The weather.”

  “Pardon?”

  “The weather. When my father doesn’t know what to say, he talks about the weather, and if he’s feeling expansive, global warming.”

  “Okay. Then what?

  “Is this absolutely necessary? There’s a killer running around loose out there somewhere. You’re wasting your time here. I’m sorry, I don’t know where my father is – I wish I did – but I do know he would never harm a hair on those kids’ heads. Never.”

  His face deadpan, Todd leaned back in his seat, straightening his left leg as if he were suffering from cramp. “And that’s why we’re here. We need to find your father to tell him about his family, as well as to eliminate him from our enquiries. Obviously, you and your brothers know your father far better than we do.”

  DSC Stewart reached for her coffee. “You want him found, don’t you?”

  Dervla started to nod and then stopped. The only reason her father would need to be found was if he was in hiding. And if he was in hiding…

  “Look, have you checked with his staff?” Her father owned a print business specializing in digital printing and signage. “He’s probably away at some conference or other.”

  Todd checked his watch. “We plan to talk to his employees, but wouldn’t he have mentioned it to you if he was going away?”

  “What makes you think he would tell me?” She unclasped her grip from around her knees to flick a hand in Gabe’s direction. “You should be talking to number one son.”

  “We’ve talked,” Todd said.

  “He obviously didn’t explain what a dysfunctional family we are then.”

  “He knows,” said a voice from behind her.

  She twisted around in her seat to find Emmet standing with one hand on the back of the chair, the other on his hip, and no coffee cup in sight. She cocked an eyebrow at him.

  “Detective Senior Sergeant Gleeson is smarter than he looks.” He snorted. “Besides, it doesn’t take a genius to see what a loving, close-knit family we are.”

  Todd narrowed his eyes at Emmet. “Back to my original question,” he said, returning his gaze to Dervla. “After the weather, what did you talk about?”

  “The job he was doing for my client. Business stuff.” She studied her toenails again. It pained her to have to admit to a near stranger that the most intimate conversations she ever had with her father revolved around print resolutions, color separations, and trim sizes. If she had been a teacher or a nurse, instead of a graphic designer, they probably wouldn’t even have that.

  “You say you last saw him two or three weeks ago. Have you spoken to him since? Or had any other contact with him at all?”

  She shook her head. “No, wait. He did phone and leave a message Friday, said it wasn’t important and that he would talk to me Monday. Today.”

  “How did he sound to you?”

  “I don’t know. A bit tired, I suppose.” She frowned, quickly adding, “But no more than any of us are at the end of a workweek.”

  “You didn’t call him back to find out what he wanted?”

  “No, I didn’t get it until late. If he’d really wanted to talk to me, he would have phoned my mobile. And anyway, when he said he would talk to me Monday, I just assumed it was to do with work.”

  DSC Stewart jotted something in her notebook.

  “What about your stepmother, Lucinda Johns?”

  The knot in the pit of Dervla’s stomach tightened. She’d never been able to think of her father’s wife in those terms. “What about her?”

  “When did you last have any contact with her?”

  “The eighteenth of October.”

  Todd’s dark eyes flared for an instant. “How can you be so sure?”

  “You mean, because I was so vague about the last time I saw my father?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Because,” she said, her voice cracking as she answered her own question, “it was Kayla’s seventh birthday…” Memories of her half-sister dressed in a silver fairy costume, complete with sparkling tiara and gauze wings, her round face flushed with excitement, flooded back. The normally more reserved Oliver, too, charging around the family room brandishing a cardboard pirate sword, his black eye-patch only adding to his cuteness. Dervla swallowed back tears. Not now. Not here.

  “How did relations between your father and stepmother seem to you at the time?”

  She bit down on her lip, tasting blood. She shrugged.

  “Tense?” DSC Stewart prompted. “Hostile? Civil? Friendly? Loving? What?”

  “I don’t know, okay?” She felt Emmet’s hand on her shoulder. “He wasn’t bloody there, was he?” She fought to keep the screech from her voice, fought to hold back the tears. Her father was never there.

  CHAPTER 4

  Two a.m. and Dervla stared unseeing at the off-white walls of her self-imposed cell. Claustrophobic as she found it, the toilet was the only room with permanent ventilation. Every other window in the house was locked tight. She’d made sure of that.

  The toilet seat lid squeaked as she shifted her weight, the hard plastic cold against the back of her bare thighs. She scrolled through her mobile phone’s contact list, stopping when she reached her father’s number. Should she or shouldn’t she? Inhaling a lungful of bleach-tinged air, she pressed the ‘call’ button. It went straight to his voicemail. She hung up.

  A few seconds later, she hit the redial button. “Dad, it’s Dervla…” She swallowed. As if he wouldn’t recognize his own daughter’s voice. “Where are you? You need to come home as soon as possible. Please call me as soon as you get this message. Please. It’s important.”

  Then she sent him an abbreviated version of the same message via SMS. If he was in a weak mobile reception area, a text message stood a better chance of getting through. Though the police suspected he might be in hiding, Dervla thought differently. She had to.

  She tapped her phone against her palm and thought about calling Emmet, then changed her mind. He’d looked dead on his feet when he left earlier. Gabe, too, his eyes as sunken as hers felt. They’d wanted to stay, keep her company, but she’d insisted she needed to be alone. Needed time to process everything that had happened. Or so she thought at the time. Still, she’d half-expected Emmet to return.

  Sighing, she sagged against the cistern and tipped her head back. The air filtering through the screened narrow opening at the top of the window was only marginally cooler than that inside. A perfect night for sitting outside in the dark, listening to a city that never slept. Except now, she feared the darkness, feared what she couldn’t see.

  …Marcus, Quentin, Sophie… Her finger hovered over the ‘call’ button. As much as she wanted to hear a friendly voice, a recorded message wasn’t quite the same. That’s all she would get with Sophie holidaying somewhere on Victoria’s east coast in a cottage, its main attraction being no mobile reception, no radio and no television. Incommunicado. And with an ex-husband making her friend’s life a living hell, Dervla couldn’t blame her. She racked her brain for the name of the place but came up blank. Even if she could remember, she knew no way of contacting Sophie in the middle of the night. No, Dervla thought, let her finish her holiday in peace. She’s due home Friday, anyway.

  Dawn arrived none too soon. Dervla showered, turning the cold water up as much as
she could bear it. Then she wrapped a towel around herself, and ignoring the water trickling down her legs, checked her mobile phone for a missed call from her father. Nothing. A quick streak to the answering machine in the hall produced the same result, the message indicator light a solid green. Shivering, she dashed back to the bathroom, leaving a trail of wet footprints in her wake.

  After patting her body dry, she combed out her hair, now dark with water. Next, she sprayed her underarms with deodorant, cleaned her teeth, and moisturized her face, all the while avoiding her reflection in the mirror. If she looked half as bad as she felt, she could do without the fright.

  Dressed for comfort in an old oversized T-shirt and stretch jeans, she headed down the hall, rechecking the answering machine as she passed. Pale morning light streamed through the glass doors, giving everything it touched a surreal glow. She crossed the Persian rug to the kitchen and raised the semi-opaque blind over the sink, letting in more light.

  The coffee machine gurgled, her stomach retorting with a growl. But like sleep, her appetite had deserted her. She went through the motions anyway, and popped a slice of multi-grain bread into the toaster.

  Five minutes later, armed with a double-shot espresso and a slice of dry toast, she sat down outside at the wooden-slatted table in the courtyard. With scarcely a breath of wind to stir the air, every little sound was accentuated. She heard her neighbor’s toilet flush and wondered, not for the first time, how three people could be shot in a suburban house and no one hear or see a thing.

  Not one but four gunshots. Lucinda had been shot point-blank, once in the temple and again in the chest. Both fatal wounds but the killer obviously wasn’t taking any chances. Kayla and Oliver, too, died instantly with one shot each to the head. Strangely, though, the children were found with their bedsheets pulled up over their faces.

  Under the watchful gaze of a family of ever-hopeful sparrows, she sipped her coffee and nibbled a corner of toast. After half a mouthful of what tasted like gritty cardboard, she gave up and doled out the rest to her feathered audience. She pushed aside the empty plate, slouched forward over the table, and rested her head on her forearms. Her eyes closed.