‘Good for you,’ said Mack, and the two of them sat quietly while Mack wrote down streams of notes on his statement pad.
37
I had got home late after being with Evie, but luckily not quite as late as Mum. Mum had rolled in from the Fish Fry at one, with a toot toot from Mack’s car. I heard Tracy laughing loudly out the window, and then the sound of Fitzy spilling out also, hooting, drunk as a sailor. ‘BJ!’ she yelled. ‘Come get me!’
Mum had cracked up laughing, yelling ‘Jim!’—since Big Jim must’ve gone home earlier—‘Jim! You better get her!’ Then the sound of Big Jim opening their door and saying, ‘What have you done to yourself?’ as warmly as pie.
Mum’s keys had gone into the lock just as Backflip had finished eating her biscuits, so I had closed my bedroom door and lay thinking—of every detail I could possibly think about Evie, and her golden skin and her breathing. I lay there smiling, on the edge of almost laughing, until I fell asleep.
On the Sunday morning I slept until ten, which was three hours later than usual. When I woke up I could still taste the whisky and my eyes were stuck together with sleep. It took a moment to remember Evie again, and her twinkled hallway, and later her bedroom, with one low lamp, and a tiny single mattress on the floor with a quilt that we lay on after, with my hand on her stomach and my head tucked into her naked shoulder.
I remembered her quiet lungs after—how they made her body go up and down and my hand went up and down with her. I remembered that we kissed slowly and forever until I put my dress back on and said I had to go home and feed Backflip.
Evie didn’t get up. She didn’t put her clothes back on. She just got under her quilt and said, ‘Goodnight, Jean,’ like it was the most normal thing in the world.
•
When Mum finally got up on the Sunday, her heartburn was bad again. On top of that she felt ‘a little rusty’, as she described it to me while she took Panadol and Berocca and made fried eggs.
Fitzy was a little rusty, too; and so was Big Jim, even though he’d gone home earlier than the ladies. In fact, the day after the Fish Fry was one of Goodwood’s rustiest days on record. Never had so many kegs been required, according to Carmel Carmichael. Never had so much wine flowed, as freely as the river.
George phoned as I was eating my toast.
‘Where did you go?’ she asked, rusty, on the other end of the line.
‘Oh. I left,’ I said.
My mind went blank wondering what to tell her.
‘You went home?’
I paused, and then I said, ‘More to the point, is Lucas officially your boyfriend? Because you were not subtle. My mum has already mentioned it.’
It was true, she had. Mum said, ‘I think Lucas Karras took George to look at cows last night, if you know what I mean,’ and smiled from the couch.
‘Oh my god, kill me,’ said George down the telephone.
Meanwhile, Mum ate her fried eggs and put her plate down on the coffee table and stood in front of the living room bookshelves, holding her chest.
‘We need some medical books,’ she said. ‘We don’t have any medical books.’
•
Nan visited Mrs Bart and Jan that afternoon. None of them were rusty. Nan brought a banana bread for Pearl and a casserole for the ladies. They sat outdoors in the spring sun near the stables and Pearl rode Oyster around the paddock for a while, and then out and off towards the foothills of the mountain.
Jan did most of the talking. There was much to say about burly Joe. He’d be leaving soon—his wife had had enough. And then what would they do with the shop? Goodwood needed Bart’s Meats and Mrs Bart didn’t want to see it close. Jan was going to stay on longer and see if she couldn’t prime herself for some work behind the counter. If they could only hire someone to do the actual butchering, then Jan could certainly stomach the selling. She’d hold her breath and wear plastic gloves so none of the meat would touch her, and then she’d come home at night to a nice vegetarian meal, like always, and everything would be all right.
Mrs Bart stared beyond Nan, over one of Nan’s padded shoulders, and said she could quit the Secretary position at the CWA. Everything had carried on well without her since Bart went. If she quit her post, then maybe she could be a butcher. Stranger things had happened, and she wasn’t squeamish. There was even this part of her that just desired it.
Nan nodded and said maybe one of the young men in town could do the heavy lifting. What about that nice tall Ethan West? Or no, come to think of it, he seems to prefer live cows to dead ones. What about Davo Carlstrom? He seems to be at a bit of a loose end.
‘Isn’t Davo Carlstrom mixed up in the business with Rosie?’ asked Jan.
‘They were sweethearts,’ said Nan. ‘He’s terribly upset.’
‘Amazing they haven’t found a trace of her,’ said Jan, and Nan agreed that it was, while Mrs Bart stared—and she didn’t mention Bart’s missing Corolla, and she didn’t mention Mack’s questions about how well Bart knew Rosie, and she didn’t mention how she’d tried to talk to Bart about her, because surely he would care. Bart cared about everyone. He had time for everyone. What a horrible thing that Rosie went missing. And yet. Bart hadn’t wanted to talk about it at all. It was so odd, and it had always nagged at her. It was always somewhere in the back of her mind.
•
Doe Murray had hovered in the doorway of the police station for a long time before she left, looking up at the sky.
‘Do you need to try twenty-seven times?’ asked Mack. ‘Because I can go back to my desk and pretend you’re not here.’
He had found his discussion with Doe confusing, and illuminating, and frustrating, in equal measure. She had told him her concerns, but she had given him almost nothing he could go on. She said, ‘You mustn’t tell Roy I’ve been here. You mustn’t.’ And Mack had opened his drawer to look for Panadol.
‘I don’t need twenty-seven tries,’ said Doe Murray sternly as she stood in the doorway, which was, structurally speaking, the safest place at the station. She held her handbag to her chest with both hands, as if it were a baby, and she rocked back and forth in her comfortable-looking shoes. Mack stood behind her, in case she fell backwards.
Doe rocked. And with each rock she grew stronger, with each rock she grew braver, and on what turned out to be the final rock, she launched herself onto the concrete outside, exposed under the unbroken sky, and Mack watched her walk triumphantly off towards the safety of the awnings on Cedar Street and, ultimately, to her sunken, lonesome home.
•
By nightfall, Mum had dragged out an Encyclopaedia Britannica and had it wide open on the living room rug, studying diagrams of the heart.
‘Why would they call this bit the “inferior wall”?’ she said to Backflip, pointing at the big heart on the page. ‘That is not reassuring.’
A short while later, I heard her on the phone to Denise’s husband Brian who, apart from being boring, was also a doctor and had an office in Clarke where I’d been taken for several injections.
‘I just worry about an ulcer,’ said Mum into the phone. I could only imagine how boring Brian would have been on the other end of the line. ‘Okay, sure. Maybe I’ll come in later in the week,’ said Mum. And then, ‘Oh no, I wouldn’t worry about that! Ha ha ha ha. No, I think that would be a very rare thing, wouldn’t it—two heart attacks in the one town.’
Mum asked Brian to give her best to Denise and hung up. Then she cracked two Rennies out of their plastic packet and proceeded to move them around in her mouth. She sat on the rug next to Backflip with the big heavy book, tracing her fingers around the valves and chambers.
38
The news of the bodies in the Belanglo State Forest had disappeared from the newspapers. Two women had been found there—and their families had collected them properly now, and the policemen had continued searching with their soft-booted dogs, but they had found nothing else to speak of. By that month—October—they’d found no other backpack
ers, no further remains, no men, no women, no killer. And no scent or trail or trace of Rosie.
We didn’t know then that it wouldn’t be long now. That the calendar was just running backwards from the day when there would be answers. At that time, all there was were questions, which drifted around Goodwood like despair, and propelled Mack into Woody’s on Monday morning, first thing—as Roy Murray opened the roller door, his white hair as dry as old bones.
‘Morning, Roy,’ said Mack.
‘Mack,’ said Roy.
‘How’re you travelling?’
‘Yeah, fine,’ said Roy, who looked tired in the eyes like he had for months now, and who wasn’t even making much of an effort to hide it.
‘You didn’t stay for the wake?’
Roy busied himself with turning on the lights and the grill.
‘Nah. Look, I wanted to, but you know Doe. It was such a big deal to get her out of the house. We had to try ten times just to walk out the door. So, you know, I needed to get her home.’
Mack nodded. ‘Nice service,’ he said. ‘Quiet. Nice.’
Roy nodded.
‘How’s Derek?’ asked Mack, changing tack.
Roy flinched. ‘He’s all right. He’s working at least. He’s all right.’
Mack stood on the lino floor and looked at the bain-marie and the black grills behind. It was all so quiet when there was no frying; there were no meat smells. There was no Rosie.
‘Roy, I heard some things,’ he said.
Roy reddened. His entire face—the weathered skin, the swollen nose from drinking, the tiny spider’s webs of veins—went red so quickly and so intensely that he looked like he might burst a valve. He began to straighten things on the counter that were already straight. He attempted a surprised chuckle that came out like a cough.
‘What kind of things?’ he managed to say.
Mack looked at the red man—he looked at his red friend, really, because he would’ve considered Roy, in a general way, to be a friend—and by the look of his friend Roy’s face, he knew he was on to something, and Mack felt almost pitiful to keep on looking, and almost embarrassed that he had to ask.
‘You know what I’m talking about,’ said Mack, taking a punt on Roy’s redness; on his discomfort; and on his looking as sick to the stomach as Paulie Roberts. Mack took a gamble. He took Doe Murray’s fishy notions to Woody’s that morning, just as he had taken them to bed with him the night before. Mack had lain awake listening to Tracy’s sweet breathing—it always cheered him—but that previous night even Tracy could not help. Mack had half-slept and half-dreamt of Roy Murray, wet as the lake, yelling over and over: Derek! Derek! Derek! And there was Doe, too—an apparition—somewhere on the shore. She hailed him from near the sunken marshes. Mister Mackenzie! she yelled, incorrectly. And then, Roy! Derek! Bart! For fuck’s sake, so much yelling, thought Mack—who could neither sleep in peace nor wake from his ghastly half-dreams. Mack had taken it all with him to Woody’s that morning; and to Roy. And he made a snap decision. Mack—a man who did not gamble—decided to bluff.
‘You know exactly what I’m talking about, Roy. And it’s time we sat down in that booth back there and you tell me in your own words: everything. Because let me tell you, it’s not looking good from where I’m standing.’
Roy discoloured further; he headed towards purple now: the doleful shade of a bruise. He gulped air and swallowed and found no crack in Mack’s stony expression. If ever there was a face for playing poker. And without arguing he walked to the front of the shop and closed the glass door, leaving the roller shutter up so the daylight still came in, and he and Mack ushered themselves to the back booth, where no one ever sat. White-haired, red-faced Roy Murray looked like he might break down and cry like a big old baby as Mack waited patiently for him to make words.
‘Derek,’ Roy said finally, his eyes drained of any light.
Derek.
•
Mack sat in the booth and waited. Derek. The word hung there between them in the thick air.
Poor Roy Murray’s eyes were filled with tears. They were brimming like the lake after rain.
So far, Mack had managed not to mention Doe’s visit at all, just as she had requested. He had also managed to get Roy Murray to mention Derek, all of his own accord. Mack just sat still with his poker face and realised that asking questions was not always the most effective way of eliciting information. Perhaps he had been doing it wrong all these years? When presented with a red-faced man in such discomfort as Roy Murray, Mack didn’t have to say much of anything. He just suggested, and then he bluffed, and then he waited; and Roy was left to unravel all by himself.
‘Bloody Derek’, said Roy, putting his head in his hands and covering his exhausted eyes.
‘What’s happened, Roy?’ said Mack. ‘I need you to tell me in your own words.’
Roy Murray’s tears didn’t fall. He just kept on rubbing at his eyes. He put his thumb and finger there and closed them and rubbed them, and made a sound like ‘Gaaah’ in an attempt to squash his feelings. The sound was almost as animal as Judy White, almost as primitive. But nothing could be squashed. Nothing could be put out, or ignored, or left unspoken any longer. Roy Murray had been tired in the eyes since winter and the red rims around them puffed with his bad feelings.
‘Derek,’ said Roy finally, raising his head up to Mack, looking at him squarely. ‘Derek hurt Rosie.’
And with that, all the notions and half-dreams and visions that Mack had been carrying—like a wind inside him, blowing in all directions—all of it stopped. It stopped; and the hair on the back of his neck stood upright; and his stomach fell like being pushed off a ledge.
He stared.
‘What do you mean?’ he said flatly.
‘He hurt her, Mack. I saw,’ said broken Roy. And he told the rest of it without being able to look Mack in the eye for more than a few moments, and Mack—suddenly still inside—listened.
•
Derek Murray didn’t have any luck with girls. That was how Roy prefaced his story. That was all Roy could say in his son’s defence. Derek never seemed to have one: a girl. He was going to be twenty-one in November and he didn’t know how to talk to them, didn’t know how to look at them. He didn’t know how to like them either.
Rosie had worked at Woody’s for almost two years and Derek would go in and hang around towards the end of her shift sometimes, ordering burgers just so she’d have to make them. Roy knew Rosie didn’t like Derek at all. Roy could tell. But Derek couldn’t tell. He didn’t recognise the signals. Or he did, but he didn’t want to recognise the signals.
All Roy knew was Derek was up there at Woody’s at least three times a week last winter, talking shit to Rosie, trying to impress her, getting pissed off when she wasn’t impressed. And Rosie dismissed him with her signals, without being able to dismiss the boss’s son with her words. Roy saw now that he should’ve said something. He should’ve said, ‘Back off, son. She’s not keen on you.’ But he didn’t. He didn’t say anything at all.
On the Wednesday before Rosie went missing, she closed as usual and night fell quickly and cold. Roy was sitting at home when he realised he’d left his order book at the shop that morning, and he needed to fill it all out that night, which was one of the many chores he busied himself with after Doe had gone to bed.
The Murrays’ sunken house was not a far walk to the shops, but the air was icy so Roy hopped in his car to go get his book. Doe was making dinner and Derek was, well, where was Derek? Roy didn’t know. Maybe he was out drinking with one of his stupid mates, or out drinking alone. Roy knew Derek wasn’t popular, and Roy knew Derek liked to drink.
Roy pulled into the car park behind Woody’s and felt something when he saw Derek’s car. It wasn’t a terrible feeling exactly; it was more like apprehension. He felt ill at ease. There it was, Derek’s filthy Kingswood, pulled up at a hurried angle and parked badly. All the shops in that stretch were closed for the day, and the backs of them, whic
h faced the car park, were all dark—except for the stark light bulb above the back door of Woody’s, which burned white and illuminated the dumpster bins and brickwork.
Roy got out of his car and went towards the back door, which was slightly ajar and held fast with the plastic doorstop, like it always was when the shop was open, for extra ventilation so the meat smoke wouldn’t stick too much to the lino and the paintwork. Roy thought it strange that Rosie would still be there, but only strange by about half an hour, and maybe she’d been held up with the cleaning and closing up.
When he pushed open the door he heard muffled sounds of grunting. His own son’s grunting. And he heard a small cry from a girl—from Rosie—and he saw them in the dim hallway that led back towards the dark shop. And Derek had Rosie’s arms pinned hard against the wall behind her, and his jeans were lowered so his underwear was showing, and Rosie was gasping, struggling, clenching her teeth. Just as Roy entered the doorway he heard the sound of spitting, and Rosie spat a spray of spittle across Derek’s face as he said, ‘You want it, hey, angel?’, smiling, in a voice so vile that Roy could not recognise in it the sound of his own son.
Derek didn’t notice Roy coming in.
He looked mystified by what had happened to his face and how it came to be crowded with spit, and then he looked enraged.
‘You fucken bitch,’ said Derek, and Rosie lifted her knee and made contact with his groin and Derek went backwards towards the wall close behind him.
‘Fuuuuck,’ Rosie screamed—truly animal—with shudders of crying and shaking, and she looked up to see Roy standing in the doorway with his stupid keys in his hand.
She was clothed. Roy looked to see if she was clothed, and she was clothed. Her eyes were wild and smudged with eyeliner, and her face began to crumple as she looked at Roy, and walked towards Roy, and pushed past Roy, and went into the car park; and the sounds of her crying echoed just slightly around the bitumen and the backs of the buildings; and the sounds of her boots went fast and distant; and she was gone.
Goodwood Page 23
