by Chloe Hooper
The man had to let me out because the passenger door was jammed from the inside. There were hills in every direction, but I’d crashed in what seemed the one flat spot. The bags of apples still sat on the chair, but there were no houses nearby. To the east mountains were still illuminated. Trees made abstract marks against the bleached grass. To the west the sun had set: there were just undulating shadows, the sound of waves. A baton was being passed, and the night animals would soon take over. I unlocked the car, opening up the bonnet. It was getting colder, but I didn’t want him to see me shiver lest it turn him on. What frightened me most was the sense of his strength and his slumped shoulders. When he straightened up it would be with fury. I watched his hands inside the car. This was the world shutting me out. For all I knew he could take apart every working object in the engine.
“Your fan belt’s fucked.” He laughed, pulling out a long stretch of rubber. “Has someone got it in for you?”
“You think someone did it deliberately?”
“Well, it looks a bit like it.”
“How would you know?”
“Well, you couldn’t say for sure.”
I took a deep breath. “What seems to be the problem with it?”
“It’s been cut with a razor blade, or maybe a sharp pair of scissors.” He smiled at me. I thought he was trying to be sympathetic, but then pleasure settled into his expression. “If the fan belt had snapped it would be shredded.” He was enjoying himself. He looked down again, still smiling. “Some cunt’s also cracked a bleeder.”
“I’m sorry?”
“They’ve cracked the fucking bleeder on your brake caliper. You’ll need brake fluid.”
Shaking my head, I stared into the engine. The man stood too close and I hoped for an approaching car, half expecting to see Veronica’s fingerprints. I started talking softly about my day. I’d heard that made killers less likely to kill. If they knew you better, they’d start identifying with you. You’d remind them of their niece or the girl next door, and although it might piss them off, they couldn’t bring themselves to go through with the murder. “The kids in my class came on an excursion here just a few months ago . . .” I began, realizing this “identification” theory was stupid: a lot of people would be thrilled to kill a family member or neighbor. “The kids are nine years old and very sweet, so curious about the world, interested in everything . . .”
“Take off your panty hose.”
I stood, openmouthed, staring at him.
He pulled out a knife. “Take off your panty hose, Miss Byrne.”
I started to do as he said, my spastic shadow copycatting against the razor grass. I started taking my panty hose off, in a way I hoped was completely asexual. We’d been warned in high school to make ourselves as unattractive as possible in this situation. Try to burp, or even fart, the teacher advised, seem dirty or repellent in some way. I took off my shoes. I pushed the panty hose’s elastic waist down, then pulled from the knees.
“Do it behind the Merc.”
I walked awkwardly behind the car, the lowered crotch constricting my movement. The road dropped down into a ditch. For miles the grass waved in one direction, then swayed away, changing its mind. Nothing: nothing but a crow making her cow sounds in the wind. I choked back a sob: this was my chance to run, but where to? And now barefoot, how far would I get? I heard him pacing. I struggled to take off the panty hose. He’d smell the sex on them, and go ahead with whatever it was he had planned. I remembered the woman’s high-pitched voice: was she trying to warn me? Or merely to stop him from going out and satisfying the urge? Suddenly the truck’s huge headlights bathed everything in sulphur. I said a prayer. Then, squinting, I limped slowly back to him. Trying to get out of the light, I handed the panty hose over. He looked at me with his swollen eyes—one animal sensing completely his advantage. He examined the panty hose, pulling them tight. I whimpered as he wrapped the nylon round his fingers. Then with his knife he cut it loudly into strips.
With the spotlight he’d illuminated the engine. He turned from me and bent back under the bonnet. I stood, shocked, watching him. A cool breeze touched at the back of my bare calves. He wrapped the nylon legs around a series of pulleys. “Don’t know what you’d have done without yours truly,” he said. I couldn’t answer; every cunning little platitude had left me. The man didn’t care. “You’d have had to eat apples until someone came by, heh?” He laughed. “Sleeping in your car until you heard the banging on the roof.” He told the story—that I hadn’t heard since primary school—of the father and son driving, the father going for help after the car’s breakdown; a maniac waking the son by banging the father’s head on the car roof. The hunter told this story like it was his own, then he called me over to look at my new fan belt. The cotton gusset stared back at us: I started to cry. “You must be cold?” When I didn’t answer, he added wearily, “I’d get home if I were you. It’ll take you a while. You’ll have to go slow. Keep your hand on the hand brake.”
In the rearview mirror I could see him standing in the middle of the road, watching my car crawling away. Every time I looked back he was still there monitoring our distance. All I wanted was to accelerate. When eventually his spotlights faded I was still barely able to breathe. Night was falling: a blanket with no edges. Driving in the dark on this road it felt like the world had ended and no other souls, but he and I, had made the cut. I drove on so slowly, tears streaming down my cheeks. I hummed a string of notes from the music Thomas had played me. It was stupid heading back to Endport, but I was literally unable to stop. If I could I’d have glued wings together. Instead I said a prayer around each corner, at the crest of every hill, while night creatures sang sweetly, “No!” “Wait!” “Stop, you’ll die!”
• MURDER AT BLACK SWAN POINT •
Missing is such a polite word.
Warwick Wallaby felt the thirst but it was too dangerous to drink water. He lay under a melaleuca tree, listening as all the leaves whispered rumors, and a light breeze spread the word. “What happened to Margot?” they rustled. “Was the abandoned car a hoax?” The wallaby took his bottle from the hollow, then swigged. “Why couldn’t I be given a new coat of fur, and end my days as someone’s fat old Labrador? Imagine starting over and going to a place where no one knows you.” Warwick drank again. “What a relief to go ‘missing,’” he thought. “‘Missing’ is such a polite word, compared to, say, ‘slaughtered,’ or ‘extinct.’”
The spirit warmed him. Warwick closed his eyes. He was what was known as a psychic detective: if given one of the victim’s personal objects, from a crime scene, he could sometimes imagine this crime in his head, even seeing the gnarled faces of the guilty. Unfortunately nothing belonging to Ellie Siddell had been available, but, with remarkable foresight, a magpie had swiped one of Margot’s socks from the Harveys’ line.
Now Warwick held the item, bracing himself. “Footsteps. A key turning in a lock. A long road . . .” Shaking, the wallaby reached again for the bottle’s nipple. “A slamming of a door. Lamplight.” The dregs of gin ran down his throat: he threw the bottle to the ground. Above the kookaburra mocked him, but he ignored this laughter. Already he’d seen too much carnage. His mother shot, his father shot, his seven sisters and brothers shot one night, off one paddock. Other animals had fed from their carcasses. “Why?” He saw this scene too clearly. “Why?”
In the distance was a little gray house: the home of Miss Kate Byrne, the schoolteacher. Warwick bounded toward the picket fence, up the garden path, and ah! there was the lass’s garbage bin. He tipped it over, and picked carefully through the refuse for another beverage, just a little something to quench a thirst. It was almost certain a hunter would be waiting by the watering hole; another bastard wanting his balls for a child’s coin purse. The wallaby’s paws were trembling. He was sweating. Insects seemed to crawl under his fur, and the bird’s laughter echoed on and on—a rumor was going round the bush that Warwick’s gift was no more than a dole of delirium tremens.
“It is not true!” He picked through the garbage, shivering, as the ants moved down his tail.
The wallaby froze. There was the sound of a car approaching; the steady rumble of an oversized German engine. Terrified, he stood clutching at the sock. But “oh so bright!” He was caught in the headlights unable to move! “So very bright!” Nothing in the bush was so bright: his pupils closed down. “Where am I?” he called. Everything appeared in x-ray: white trees grew against a black sky. The trees, burning on his retinas, were outlined in red. In the distance Warwick heard gunshots. “Where am I?” he screamed silently toward the light. “Where?” And then, the sock still in his little paw, he felt his eyes roll back. “A bottle being broken, glass splinters like licks of flame. Blood on white tiles. Blood on the carpet. A car parked by a cliff . . . Oh no!” Warwick saw the face. “Oh no!” He saw the face . . . and it was too horrible!
OUR HOLIDAY HOUSE was the perfect location for a crime photographer. Past the picket fence lay a wooded pathway, dappled with light. It cut through a tangle of shrubbery—convenient for shallow graves—and led to a gray weatherboard house. The house, appropriately weary, slightly slumped, was built just after the war. Not wanting to seem ostentatious, my grandfather had painted it battleship gray. He was an executive at a chemical company and, later, on the eve of retiring, he bought enough of this color on staff discount to sink a fleet. Inside, my grandmother strived for what she imagined to be California chic. She decorated the living room in the fashion of a Perry Mason novel. The Case of the Moon Jungle Interior. A flying saucer lamp hovered over a black-hole dining table. Malign potted plants waited in every corner to wrestle you on the orange fireball of a rug. It was not necessary, of course, to go retro to get good crime shots: the interior of any crime scene becomes shabby and dated as soon as the photograph has been taken. Even in black and white the image looks yellowed, as if the corpse’s decay had infected the film.
Reaching into my handbag I found the mini-bottle of shampoo and sewing kit I’d pilfered from the hotel. I dumped them on the dining table, then wandered around each room checking that the windows were closed; that no one was hiding in the closets next to the moldering life jackets. You are safe here, you have always been safe. In the pantry was the Scotch I bought for Thomas: one shot burned away the taste of cordial but I kept hold of the bottle.
Walking to my bedroom, I turned on the television—people in a sitcom burbled, then laughter. I lay on the single bed, not moving an inch. Slowly I could distinguish gradations of dark. To my left was a sampler my grandmother had worked: little animals in waistcoats jumped around Psalm 33. Above the headboard, another sampler made the plea, If I should die before I wake I pray thee Lord my soul to take. I lay still. There were all these extra minutes fear made you alert to. Old houses harbor the most inexplicable creaks and groans. Pouring another glass of Scotch sounded like a gurgling scream; canned laughter, a window smashing. At a certain hour, as dark swelled, ax murderers started growing in the flower beds. Or else Margot did. You are safe here, I embroidered. You are safe here, as you have always been.
I thought of the odor inside the man’s shed—metallic, sweet—it had been the animals he’d had strung up on the other side of the wall. Through the fly wire, his workroom must have been attached to a drying shed. It was no wonder there had been flies everywhere. I had stood stupidly on the animals’ skins while meters away hung their carcasses. I could still smell them. Perhaps it was on my clothes or in my hair. I sniffed at my shirt, then stood up and stripped. Holding the bottle, I walked toward the bathroom. The telephone rang—I froze. My heart was beating fast. I closed my eyes; to the sound of each ring, I wailed, “No!”
Veronica had two modes. She cultivated all that languid ennui to hide pure cunning. I had seen her overwhelmed by murderous thoughts: Veronica with bright, bright eyes, all caffeinated like a jerky little bird. She had despised me from the moment we’d met. I’d been ridiculously naive. On that excursion, just as I had been studying her, she had been studying me; her every compliment, her every kindness, dosed to some precise formula. Veronica had known we were at the hotel and had returned early from her book tour, cutting the fan belt and brakes. She’d wanted me badly frightened, but not hurt. At least, not hurt yet. Veronica had plans for me. After all, she had written her own textbook on how to kill one’s rival. The phone kept ringing.
I pictured Thomas and Veronica playing out the Harveys’ roles: An adulterer in a finely cut suit walked through the door of his family home and greeted his wife, who was suspicious, who had been suspicious for a long time. His wife demanded the truth. The man was tired from his fucking or tired from his lying, and thought, You want to know? “Yes,” he told her. “Of course I am having an affair, of course I am.” His wife grabbed a wine bottle, hitting him. He stood there stunned; she cried. He didn’t think to call his girlfriend.
They pulled a chair into the bathroom and he sat down while she touched his wound with warm wet cotton wool. She’d caught him having his fun, he’d been punished, and now she was fixing up her little boy. Lying just underneath his anger was his sense he was ridiculous: he would never get away from her. They went to bed and lay next to each other. His head throbbed. She started to cry again, but he figured she’d gotten the anger out of her system. He held out his hand. She would not take it. He retracted the hand and waited on his side of the bed, eager for annihilatory sleep.
“How would you feel,” I’d once asked Thomas directly, “if your wife were to murder me?” We were lying next to each other in the spare room. For a moment he’d been silent. “I’d put my head in my hands and think: Kill me! I did it! And that’s what Harvey would’ve been thinking: Why didn’t she kill me? The bitch slept next to me. She could’ve driven a knife into my chest! She could have taken scissors to my dick!” Thomas paused. “Although if someone was sitting on top of me, holding scissors, and it occurred to her to go off and kill some little slut, which would I choose?” He turned to look at me. “Let me get back to you on that.”
The telephone stopped. I stared at it another minute before ripping the plug from the wall. Veronica had forsaken all goodness. She was so amoral she thought of this terrorizing as her art; as the purest form of self-expression. I remembered another time, asking Thomas, “You don’t think Margot survived?” “Absolutely. And now she’s drinking a cocktail.” “Wouldn’t it be cocoa?” “No,” he’d warned gnomically. “You can’t be sophisticated and virtuous.”
I walked into the bathroom. My legs were scratched. I could still smell meat. It could have been in my hair. It could have been on my skin. I poured sweet gunk into the bathwater, then looked up. A fluorescent tube was over the mirror. I searched my face for traces of doom.
Inside all the true-crime books were the same photographs. Publishers must have recycled them, knowing we were all secretly physiognomists. They’d found the ultimate photograph of a murder victim in her school uniform which they reused over and over, alternating others from their doomed girl series. There was a shot of doomed girl sun-bathing, one hand raised to shield her eyes from the sun as she laughed into the camera. Blowing out candles on a birthday cake, doomed girl was surrounded by the kids with whom she did volunteer work. It was perverse; newspapers chose the prettiest photos, as if any witness would recognize the victim who didn’t have her face squashed against a car window, gun to head. Maybe the appeal, for young male readers, was that they could’ve saved them. Or, that they could’ve killed them. For young women, doomed girls are annoying. It’s a reminder one should start locking the doors of the car. A photo of a schoolgirl with bangs and a dental brace stands for never walk home alone on an ill-lit street.
I saw myself still wearing the black underwear that had gotten me into this trouble in the first place. Shivering, I took it off. “I’ll go away,” I whispered. “I’ll go away anywhere. I’ll leave this town and head straight to the mainland.” I checked the water temperature. The main reason for not leaving immediately was my class.
I would break it off with Thomas, but I’d put so much into teaching those kids. I hadn’t fulfilled all the goals I’d had.
The sigh on entering the bath: the relief of it. I didn’t swim as often now; if I did I’d be overwhelmed by sadness. “I’ve missed you,” I’d say aloud, but then in a second the yearning passed and I didn’t even remember what it was I’d lost. Fear, I realized, had made me slightly numb. Walking down the street I sometimes had trouble smiling at people. I would see them coming and think, In thirty seconds look up and smile. In ten seconds. Get ready: smile, you must smile. The expressions on people’s faces betrayed how odd they found me. “Kate, are you all right?” the teachers asked. “You seem jumpy.” “Oh, I’m fine,” I’d answer. But I had barely any flight mechanism, and my fright wasn’t too good either. It’s called counterphobia when you rush headlong into the thing that frightens you the most. It can feel a little like not caring: quicksand one sashays toward.
I lay back and bubbles surrounded my neck as would a white fur stole. The Scotch bottle rested on the soap stand. I felt like a woman who knew about the world. Taking slow sips, I applied all my experience to Ellie’s situation: Graeme had probably told her his marriage had been on the rocks long before her arrival on the scene. In fact he’d told her he and his wife were thinking of separating, they were discussing it.
