by Sam King
“What?”
“His family’s gone to Italy for the Christmas holidays.”
“I think his mother’s Italian,” Luke said.
She wasn’t. With a name like Karen she couldn’t possibly be. But with Martin in Italy, he wouldn’t be able to say anything about the film — if he really had seen it.
“Did you really show him that film, Tom?”
“Luke did.”
“Oh, please. Can you stop lying?”
“Why is that a lie?”
“You know it’s a lie.”
“Is it a lie, Luke?”
“I did show him, Mum.”
“You showed him.” She felt betrayed. “Why did you show him?”
“Tom wanted me to.”
There it was again. Tom was holding something over him. She sighed and put her head in her hands.
“Mum,” Luke said a moment later, “it isn’t that bad. I didn’t show him the beginning, where Tom said … you know. I only showed him the rest.”
“Fuck you’re a liar.”
“I’m not a liar.”
“You so are, Luke.”
“So he didn’t see Tom’s bit at the beginning?” she asked him.
“No, Mum.”
Well, perhaps that wasn’t so bad then. The film simply showed a couple of boys fooling around. Yet when Martin did come home again, Jean would no doubt make something of it. The point was to get rid of the film. No matter what the boy said, there could be no real incriminating evidence without the film.
Chapter 38
The next few days passed uneventfully. Odd Jobs Pete failed to show on Tuesday, and when she rang him, said he couldn’t make it until Friday afternoon. On Friday morning she received a call from the hospital, a usual enough occurrence seeing as Ralph was a patient and she was his support person. It was one of the doctors. He seemed to think Ralph was deteriorating. She considered this calmly, but she was as antagonistic toward them as he was. She’d heard too many stories. The doctor wanted to give Ralph electroconvulsive therapy — an electric shock to the brain. She took in his meaning, and then said, “You can’t be serious.”
“He seems to be obsessed with murder. He says his nephew’s a murderer.”
She gripped the phone tightly, but said nothing.
“We’re not asking for your approval. We’re simply letting you know that we’re applying for the procedure.”
“I don’t think that would be in his best interests. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even think hospitals did that anymore.”
“It can be very effective.”
She doubted this.
Ralph phoned half an hour later, distraught with the news. He could fight it, he said, but he needed a lawyer.
“Could you help me out?”
“Of course we can. There’s no way they’re giving a brother of mine an electric shock.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll find you someone good.”
“Okay.” He paused for a moment. “Is Tom there?”
“Tom? No. He’s at school. Last day today before the holidays.”
“Could you ask him to give me a call sometime?” he said, and then hung up.
Odd Jobs Pete failed to show at all, which meant it was now the weekend again and she had no solution for the iPad.
Michael came home with a smile on his face. He said he was taking them away for a week, to a guest house at Katoomba.
“I’ve got the week off.”
“Great,” she said, but a guest house at Katoomba didn’t sound particularly exciting. What they really needed was a beach, a beach far away.
“We leave in the morning,” he said.
She nodded.
That night she woke at two a.m. and thought of trying the lock on the filing cabinet with a bobby pin. She got up, found a pin, and then walked down the hall. The house was silent, the ticking of the grandfather clock the only sound. She turned on the light to the sewing room and then stood in the doorway, staring at the filing cabinet. It seemed an ominous thing now. She moved toward it and squatted. Then she began working the pin in. After fifteen minutes, she knew it was hopeless. She didn’t know how to pick a lock.
“Hell.” She bit her lip. “And damn that man,” she said, thinking of Odd Jobs Pete.
She took a seat at the sewing machine and wrung her hands. When the boys were younger, she’d made clothes for them, yet she hadn’t sat in here seriously for a few years now. She stared at the needle on the machine and thought, as she’d often thought, how dreadful it would be to get your finger caught beneath it. But would it actually puncture a finger? She supposed so.
She sat on for minutes, and then reluctantly turned to the filing cabinet again. She was going to have to go away tomorrow, to Katoomba, and leave the iPad in the filing cabinet. If someone came in, if someone stole it … but it didn’t pay to think of such things.
She walked back to the bedroom and got into bed.
“I think I’m going to go insane,” she muttered, and then fell asleep.
Chapter 39
The weather in Katoomba was a few degrees cooler, with a crisp sharpness in the air. They took a journey on the skyway over the Jamison Valley, the car suspended more than two hundred and seventy metres above the ravines below them, with rainforest and spectacular waterfalls on display through the glass floor. It was breathtaking, and more than a little frightening. She was aware of a slight feeling of vertigo all the way.
On the second day they walked down into the valley, and then took the cableway back to the plateau again. They spent time in the gift shop, ate a lovely old restaurant, and shopped for souvenirs.
The rest of the week was a little quieter. They went to a bushrangers museum and toured a few historic houses. Back at the guest house, they swam in the pool and played croquet on the lawn. The boys were incredibly well-behaved, and if it hadn’t been for this thing with the iPad, she would have genuinely been able to enjoy herself. Gradually, though, her mind left the problem. The only thing that happened to disturb them during the whole week was Luke, who lost his phone on one of the trails.
On Monday, she’d arranged a lawyer for Ralph, and on Friday, before they left, she called him to see how things were going. He said the hearing was Monday.
When she got home again, she had to stop and think what it was that had been on her mind so urgently all this time. Then she remembered the filing cabinet and the iPad. She supposed it was safe enough in there for the moment. She couldn’t reach it and neither could anyone else.
On Saturday morning, Jean rang the doorbell again.
“I need to speak to you, Susan.”
“Of course, Jean.”
“I’ve been on the phone to Italy, to Martin Lockheed and his mother, and it’s just as I imagined. There’s more to this than I thought. Apparently the boys were playing a game, at least Tom was, and he had Jude swallow that toy, you know?”
The words came tumbling out of her in a rush.
“Have you been away? I tried you yesterday. But really, to me this sounds like manslaughter.”
Susan felt like closing the door in her face, but instead, she stepped out and closed the door behind her. She didn’t want Michael to overhear them.
“I’m having that iPad looked at too. It’s with a professional. He said there’s some hope of retrieving the film. Surely you saw it, Susan. If you did, then you must know the boys were playing a game. Martin said that Luke egged him on, that he told him to swallow the toy.”
“Tom.”
“Is that what happened? Was it a game?”
“Maybe it was, Jean. But it was innocent enough. If you’d seen the film you’d agree. If you see it. You’d have to.”
“What happened exactly?”
Susan sighed and then told her more or less what had happened, as she guessed Jean had heard it from Martin Lockheed.
“That isn’t what’s in the police statements. It isn’t what you say, and it
isn’t what the boys say.”
“I know, but … but I hadn’t seen the film then, and Tom, well, Tom must have been worried. It was all innocent enough. If you saw it, you’d have to agree.”
“Agree? You must be out of your mind. Your boys made Jude’s life a living hell and now they’ve gone and murdered him!” The last two words sounded a little insane.
Susan drew her head back.
“Apparently there’s Luke’s iPad as well. Apparently the film was on that.”
Susan gulped.
“Martin said you’d taken one iPad, but that they had the film on another. So I’m here, Susan, to implore you to show me that film. The copy.”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t?”
“That iPad’s been lost.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not lying.”
The front door opened and Michael appeared. “What’s all the fuss?” he said.
“Susan has that film and she won’t hand it over.”
“What film?”
“The film of my son’s death, of him being murdered.”
“I don’t know what this is about,” Susan muttered.
“It’s on the iPad.”
“But we gave you the iPad,” Michael said.
“Yes. One iPad. But you have another. Tom’s.”
“I think you’d better calm down, Jean. Would you like to come inside?”
“No. I’m going home to phone the police. Either you give me that iPad or that’s my next course of action.”
Susan felt like wrestling her to the ground. “You can’t,” she muttered.
“You just watch me.”
She turned and marched away.
“Is there a copy of the film?”
“No. Of course not.”
“I never saw it.”
“No. I know.”
“You didn’t think to show it to me.”
“I just wanted to … get rid of it.”
“What was on it?”
Susan sighed. “Nothing. It was nothing.”
“It didn’t sound like nothing.”
She bit her bottom lip and then told him, making the circumstances sound as light as possible.
“That doesn’t sound like nothing.”
“I know, but … it was. You’d have to see it to understand.”
“And that’s now impossible?”
“Unless Jean retrieves the film.”
Chapter 40
She visited the sewing room four or five times on Sunday and stared wanly at the filing cabinet. Then it occurred to her she could visit Ellen and look for the key in her garden. She didn’t want to leave the house, but she did, taking a novel she said she needed to return to the library, and saying she’d be an hour or so.
She didn’t want to bother Ellen, so she walked around the house and into the back yard. She trailed along the garden beds looking for anything glinting in the bright afternoon sunshine. There was nothing, so she opened the shed and found the garden fork. The only bit she really remembered doing was around the roses, so she started there, turning the soil over once and then again. There was a hard crust on it now, but it was dark and damp underneath, with worms wriggling to the surface. She worked at it for ten or fifteen minutes and then jumped at the sound of Ellen’s voice.
“Susan!”
“I lost something,” she said.
“You lost something?”
“Yes. A key.”
“Not your car key?”
“No.”
“But what were you doing in my back yard?”
“No — I mean I lost it the other day, a couple of weeks back.”
“Oh, I see. And you’ve only just realised it.”
Susan nodded. She turned back to the garden and began to fork again, but it was hopeless. The key could be anywhere. It might have fallen out of her bra at any point during the day.
She put the fork away and mounted the rear stairs. Ellen was on the veranda.
“No luck?”
“No.”
“That’s a shame. Do you want a cup of tea?”
She nodded. She felt downhearted now. But surely she was making a big deal out of nothing. There had to be some way to get into the cabinet.
“What you need is a locksmith,” Ellen said.
“A locksmith?” That was the answer. A locksmith. Why hadn’t she thought of that.
“A locksmith can get into anything.”
She drove home feeling happier.
On Monday morning, Ralph rang, nervous about the hearing. He wanted her to come, and she agreed, though it would mean bringing the boys along and leaving them outside. They groaned when they heard, but she wasn’t in the mood to hear them tell her how well-behaved they’d be if she left them at home on their own. Her major preoccupation was the filing cabinet, and the idea that one of them might get into it.
On the way to the hearing, she had to pick up the car from the repair shop in Lane Cove. It was ready. She took a good look at it before they left, and found it difficult to believe she’d ever crashed it.
When they arrived at the hospital, Ralph was dressed in a clean shirt and trousers, but was wearing thongs.
“Don’t you have any shoes?” she said.
“Not with me. These clothes aren’t even mine. They’re from lost property.”
She nodded. “I can bring you things from home if you need anything. I’ve told you that before.”
“I’m fine.”
They waited outside the room where the hearing was to be held for more than fifteen minutes. Then the doctors appeared along with the lawyer, a man in his twenties.
Ralph wanted Susan to speak as his support person, and she entered into a gusty diatribe on the failings of the medical profession in the past and how electroconvulsive therapy sounded medieval.
“Do you have any data on the long term consequences?” she concluded. “As I understand it, my brother would lose his memory for at least a short time, and possibly even lose some of his memory permanently. Is that worth the risk?”
The doctors said they’d considered all other treatment options. But then the lawyer spoke. In ten minutes flat he proved that Ralph was competent enough to make decisions on his own treatment and that was it. The board agreed.
They left the room with the lawyer and shook hands at the door.
“That was great, sis.”
“I’m not sure I did anything.”
“No. You really told them.”
She shrugged.
“Oh, there they are,” Ralph said, meaning Tom and Luke, who were bounding down the corridor towards him. “Tom’s the murderer,” Ralph said to the lawyer. “Luke’s innocent.”
Chapter 41
At home, she made some lunch for everyone, some sandwiches, and ate with the boys in the kitchen. As soon as they’d disappeared, she picked up her phone, meaning to search for a locksmith, but just at that moment it rang. It was Samantha.
“Hi,” she said.
“It’s Sam.”
“Yes, I saw.” She’d keyed her number in at the reunion.
“I’m in a little trouble, and I wondered if you could help me.”
“Trouble?”
“Yes, my boyfriend’s left me, and I need a place to stay. Is there any chance I could crash at your place.”
She sounded stoned, her voice slurred. Susan couldn’t help remembering what she’d heard at the reunion, that Samantha was a prostitute, which meant the boyfriend might very well be a pimp.
“I need someone to pick me up.”
Susan closed her eyes and gripped her forehead. This was the last thing she needed. “Where are you?” she said.
“At the Cross.”
Susan nodded, her worst fears confirmed. She considered driving into King’s Cross, but automatically rejected the idea. It was full of drug addicts and prostitutes and it was the last place she was going. “If I pay for a taxi, do you think you could make your way h
ere.”
“That’d be great. What’s the address?” Susan told her, and a few moments later the conversation ended. She considered making up the guest room and walked upstairs with this idea in mind. Then it occurred to her that she could pay for a motel. She could make some excuse and pay for a motel, even for a few nights.
Samantha arrived about twenty-five minutes later. The boys were swimming in the pool. She answered the bell and then walked out to the taxi, giving Samantha barely a look. She handed her card over and asked for a receipt. It was more than thirty dollars.
She turned to Samantha, then drew her head back sharply. All she could see were bruises, and one very slight black eye. She felt terribly sorry for her and drew her into a hug.
“You know,” Samantha said as she released her, “I really loved you.”
Susan nodded. “You want a cup of tea?”
Samantha smiled.
In the kitchen, she put the kettle on and asked Samantha what had happened.
