by Brett Adams
I adjusted my opinion of Hiero’s career aptitudes. This kid needed to get into engineering. Safer in the current economic climate. Paid better too.
A figure at the bottom of the last sheet in the set drew my eye, because it appeared to have been photocopied and pasted in. It was a strikingly barbaric looking device consisting of a bizarre knife that sprouted a second, curving blade, and a long cord knotted to a metal ring. The caption read, ‘Kyokestu-shoge’. Apparently Hiero’s research had reached as far back as feudal Japan and the weaponry of ninjitsu.
Fighting heavy eyelids, I skimmed the rest of the notes. They seemed to form a sequence of five murders in all, with each marked with a number in the top right corner in black permanent marker. Some sheets were full of black type with sketches filling the margins, others had great blocks of white paper. Hiero’s novel was dealing death in a variety of ways, some obvious (asphyxiation, poison, blunt force trauma), and some nonsensical (choice, observation—I mean, what?). No more large-breasted redheads, though.
I replaced the top sheet, and stared at it a moment.
How: Asphyxiation
Where: Point Walter
When: ‘Neath the Rising Sun
Who: Female jogger. Redhead . . . large-breasted
He had been a busy boy. I suppose it should have been gratifying that he had taken my advice to research to heart.
Sleep hit me before I decided what I would do with the folder. I binned the remains of my dinner and climbed the steps to my bedroom. The bed felt empty that night, and I blamed Hiero’s hormone-charged imagination.
Tomorrow I’d visit Bedbarn. Stop sleeping in one half of a queen-size bed.
3
Morning rose in glorious light, but I didn’t make it to Bedbarn.
A newspaper had been stuffed through my mail slot, even though I’d killed the subscription a week before.
I read it over breakfast. It was on page seven that I found the article about the assault.
The previous night the victim, described as being in her early twenties, had been jogging the path that winds around Point Walter, when a hooded man had leapt from the bushland adjoining it and wrestled her to the ground.
I didn’t want to hear if she’d been successfully sexually assaulted. My gaze flicked forward by habit toward the next article.
But it caught on a word in italics: kyoketsu-shoge.
Kyoketsu-shoge.
It came after the words ‘knife’ and ‘cord’, enclosed in parentheses, and was no doubt the late-night research of some bored intern, but there it was.
The attacker’s intent had not been rape. He had meant to garrote the girl. Murder her. With a kyoketsu-shoge.
My vision glazed for a moment, then refocused to read the rest of the article. With relief I read that she had ‘fought her attacker off’, escaping with minor lacerations to the throat—and, dangling from her neck, the weapon.
The kyoketsu-shoge was the sole reason the assault made news, and perhaps why it was crammed into the stop press.
A tearing sound briefly drowned my senses. It came from within, and I think it was the sound of my life peeling away from what the average guy calls Reality.
When it subsided, I tried anxiously to stick it back down.
Hiero’s dossier had said asphyxiation, sure. But how many assaults did the city of Perth host each year? Tons. Whole handfuls.
And assault by museum artifact . . . ? Not so much.
It said female, too. So what? Weren’t they all?
The article lacked a photo, so I couldn’t check if the victim had red hair or big boobs.
And another vote for the Reality column: the attack had happened at evening, which was the obvious time to strangle someone. But the dossier said sunrise.
But it also said, kyoketsu-shoge.
A relic of feudal Japan. Empire of the Rising Sun. The dossier didn’t say sunrise. It said, ‘Neath the Rising Sun.
Shit. (Peeling sound.)
I hurried to my writing bureau, where I’d left Hiero’s dossier, hunched over like an old man, and pawed through the sheets for the set I wanted—the one with a large number one inked in the top corner.
When I found it and re-read the notes on asphyxiation, a ripple of relief rolled through me. No, it didn’t say kyoketsu-shoge. It mentioned kyoketsu-shoge, among many, many alternatives. The stats were looking up again.
Come on home, Reality. The coffee’s on.
I stuck her back down, but as fast as I did, a corner dog-eared up.
I remembered the graze I’d seen on Hiero’s forehead the previous night. Sign of a struggle? He could have left Point Walter after dark and easily made my office by Eight. In fact, he had been ten minutes late—ten minutes late when it was usually me who found him waiting, slumped against my door.
And what if this girl who was attacked at Point Walter with a kyoketsu-shoge! had auburn hair and big tits?
“Murdoch police station,” said a voice. “How can I help you?”
I pressed the phone receiver to my ear. My mind went blank.
“Hello?” said the receptionist.
“Hi. I— Do . . .” (Professor of literature, note.)
“Sir?” she said, and the sunshine dropped out of her voice. “What is your name, and what do you want?”
“My name?” I said. My eyes darted around my study. “I’d rather not say.”
There was a pregnant pause on the line. It may have been my imagination that heard a sudden hiss, as if it switched to speakerphone.
“Would you like to be transferred to the Crime Stoppers hotline, sir?”
“Crime Stoppers? Yes, yes!” What the hell was I saying?
There was a click, and the line swelled with a community announcement about opening hours and a hospital commissioning. Then it cut out mid-sentence.
“Crime Stoppers,” said another female voice.
“I’m calling about the assault last night, the girl. The kyoketsu-shoge. I . . .” What?
“Do you have information pertaining to the crime?” said the voice.
“Yes. No. It’s information I want.”
“This is not a reporting service, sir. If you would like to—”
Then the mind-fart: “The girl. Did she have red hair and large breasts?”
The receptionist said a word I didn’t catch, then one I did, “Sicko.” She hung up.
I laughed. It was an odd sound. Then I dialed emergency.
“Emergency services,” said yet another voice. “Which service do you require: police, ambulance, or fire?”
Why weren’t all the questions multiple choice?
“Police.”
The line cut-over to a call tone, which was promptly picked up.
“Please describe the nature of your emergency.” A man’s voice. Clipped tones.
“I need to know—”
“Is there an emergency, sir?”
“No. I—”
“Then I must inform you that two false calls have been logged originating from this number. If you persist, charges will be pressed. Do you understand?”
I hung up. Dropped the phone like a snake.
Then I walked circles in my study with a palm pressed to my forehead.
A policeman had just been rude to me. Me, who had never received so much as a speeding ticket.
Okay. Okay.
I picked up the phone again and dialed international.
The call ping-ponged through the network, and rang for what seemed an age.
“Sparkes,” said my ex-wife.
“Kim,” I said.
“Shit, not today, Jack.”
“Good morning to you, too,” I said.
“It’s not morning here, Jack. It’s the afternoon. The morning finished hours ago, and I’m still trying to wash off the stink of faculty politics.”
“Play their game, Kim, and you stink their stink.” I couldn’t help it.
“Oh!” she said, and the sarcasm came dripping out of the handse
t. “I forgot I was talking to the man with the pristine arse. How’s that novel coming, Jack?”
“How’s Tracey?” I said.
“Always the segue,” she said, but the venom dried up. “Tracey’s on the east coast for two months. She’s taking a holiday, visiting friends. There’s a seminar by Robert McKee—some screenplay guru.”
“Screenplays? When did my daughter develop Attention Deficit?”
Kim laughed, and it made me smile till I remembered why I’d rung.
“Kim, be honest—”
“Always am.”
I told her about Hiero’s notes and the assault.
She said, “This Hiero, he’s in your exchange group?”
“Sort of. What do you think?”
“What do you mean, what do I think? Attention deficit. That would make a nice screenplay. Your student could be played by Leonardo Di Caprio, and you could be Tom Cruise.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I,” she said. “Or maybe Tom Hanks.”
“You think I look like Tom Hanks?”
“Call me later, Jack. I feel like crap.”
She hung up.
4
I didn’t sleep well over the weekend. Neither could I battle my insomnia with a book. And the newspaper boy seemed to have sorted himself out, as no more papers appeared.
When I got to my office Monday morning it felt like a month had passed. I was still holding my briefcase, with the key in the door lock, when a secretary collared me. Her name was Grace, and her eyes sparkled with gossip.
“Did you hear the news?”
“What news?” Why was I smiling?
“Rhianne Goldman was attacked last week. One of our students.”
“Rhianne?” I said, conscious of my lungs hauling air.
“Pretty young thing, on exchange from Santa Fe. Doing journalism.”
It leapt out of my mouth before I could shut the gate: “Does Rhianne have red hair, big breasts?”
Grace’s hand went to her own ample bosom and fluttered.
“I—” I said, wracking my brains for words that would patch my reputation. Couldn’t find any. Hang it. “Well? Does she?”
“Yes,” she said. “And, I suppose she is . . . quite well proportioned.”
“Big?” I said, and gestured for emphasis.
Her face froze for a second, eyes large. Then she shook her head and retreated down the corridor, her rubber-soled pumps squeaking on the tiles.
Escaping through my office door, I flung my briefcase down, and booted my computer. Within minutes I was scrolling through the university’s student database looking for two contact numbers. One each for Hieronymus E. Beck and Rhianne Goldman.
I found both, and scribbled them in my diary.
But which to call first?
The cautious half of my brain thrust my hand toward the phone, and dialed Rhianne’s number.
A male voice answered, “Yes?”
“It’s Jack Griffen. I wanted to speak to Rhianne.”
“Are you a reporter?”
“No, no—professor of literature. Rhianne is a student of mine. I wanted to see how she is.”
“Traumatized. Why don’t you call again next week.”
“But it concerns her degree. It could impact her visa. I must speak with her. I’ll be brief.”
There was silence, then the rumble of a receiver being put down.
A minute later a girl’s voice said, “Hello?”
“Rhianne, you don’t know me. I’m a professor at the University of WA.”
“You’re calling about my visa?” she said uncertainly.
“No. That was a lie, but please don’t hang up.”
More silence, then, “What do you want?”
“This will sound crazy, but I need to know if you recognized the person who attacked you.”
I heard rustling, and then a sniffle.
When Rhianne finally spoke, her speech sounded labored. “I can’t talk now. I have to go—”
“Please don’t hang up,” I said, louder than intended. “Just tell me if you saw him. What did he look like?”
Just tell me he was five foot nothing, or weighed twenty stone, or had dark skin.
She hung up.
I replaced the receiver, leaned back on my chair, and raked my hands through my hair. I screwed my eyes up and watched the firework patterns wriggle in the dark. When I opened them again my gaze fell on the whiteboard mounted beside the door. Half of its surface was covered in a tangle of green marker, a mind map for my novel, which was in permanent gestation. The other half of the board contained a schedule of my contact hours for the semester just finished. Lectures and tutorials were blocked out of a grid representing the week.
The sight of that grid usually depressed me. It said students. It meant work. Tunneling for coal in dark minds.
But today it prompted a different chain of thought. Students, always joking around. And Hiero, the biggest joker of all.
The realization burst over me as if the sun had emerged from behind a cloud and filled my office with light.
It was all one big joke. A last pull of the professor’s chain before Hiero left for home. And I’d swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.
A smile spread over my face, and my muscles relaxed in a wave from my neck down.
Definitely Hollywood.
Rhianne had to be in on it.
And the newspaper? said the cautious half of my brain. The police?
My office plunged back into gloom.
I wasn’t thinking straight. With a glance at the portal in my door, I trundled the bottom drawer of my desk open, and retrieved a bottle of Johnny Walker. I unscrewed its lid and took a nerve settler.
Before I replaced it I held the bottle to my eye and, with a shock, noticed it was almost empty. The cleaner must have found it. It was the first bottle I’d put there, and that was less than a month ago.
I called the second number.
No answer. Hieronymus would be gone, home to San Francisco. I wanted to talk to his host family.
I looked up his record again in the student database and scribbled the address on a post-it note. Some instinct made me record Rhianne’s, too.
Quarter of an hour later I was pressing the doorbell of Hiero’s billet.
Someone was home. A family mover was parked in the drive, and its hatch was open.
Footsteps thumped on a wood floor and the door swung open. A girl of about ten years stared up at me, but before she could speak her mother appeared and shushed her away.
“Hello?” she said.
“Hi. Sorry to bother you. Did you know your car hatch is open?”
She glanced past me at the driveway and frowned. “Ohhh,” she said, then shouted over her shoulder, “Renae!”
She stepped past me onto the porch, and I followed her to the car. She tugged a bag of shopping from the trunk and slammed the hatch.
“Thanks,” she said.
“No problem. You must be a glutton for punishment—big family and an exchange student.”
Confusion wrinkled her brow. “Sorry?”
“Hiero Beck, the American exchange student billeted here? He left Saturday?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Perhaps you have the wrong address?”
“Perhaps,” I said, and had a struggle keeping the smile on my face as I took my leave.
After that I brooded in my car for a long time, staring at the family mover parked in the drive without seeing it. My fingers drummed on the steering wheel until calm stole over me.
Enough prancing around. I needed to take an axe to the root.
5
The front door of Rhianne’s billet didn’t have a doorbell. I rapped on it with my knuckles, and grimaced at the racket it made in the quiet suburban street.
The door swung inward to reveal a gloomy entryway and a pervading silence. A man stepped out of the gloom and closed the door behind him.
/> “Can I help you?” he said, somehow making it a threat.
“My name is Jack Masters. I’m from immigration—” His expression tightened. “Here to help,” I hastened to add. “Rhianne’s visa expires this week, but given the circumstances she will be allowed an extension. She just needs to sign.”
“You have the paperwork already?” he said, suspicious.
I yanked the leather folder from my briefcase, and held it up, back to front. Hiero’s name taunted me from the reverse side.
The man disappeared back into the house, and I took it as an invitation to follow. From the entryway a flight of stairs reached up from the gloom into a loft lit by high windows.
“She’s up there,” the man said, jerking a thumb at the stairs. “The doctor said she’s still in shock. Don’t be long.”
He vanished down the corridor, and I mounted the steps.
Rhianne lay curled up in bed. She made a pitiful lump beneath the covers. When I entered the room she sprang into the corner like a disturbed spider, bedclothes snarled around her slight frame, and somehow managed to shrink even further. Blister packs of medication lay on a bedside table, half-used.
I came to a halt by the bed under her wide-eyed gaze. Her red hair was collected up into a loose ponytail, and revealed an alabaster neck scored on either side with angry red welts. A speckle of dried blood ran in a line down each welt.
Reaching for my most soothing voice I said, “I’m really sorry, but please, will you just look at this.” I held Hiero’s folder toward her.
She continued to stare until I’m sure her eyeballs must dry in their sockets, until at last she blinked. The spell seemed to break, and she took the folder.
“What is it?” she said.
“It’ll be easier if you just look.”
She laid it in her lap and, without remarking on what was printed on its cover, opened it.
A murmur of conversation floated up the stairwell as I watched her gaze zigzag over the first page, the one that foretold her assault in meticulous detail. I fancied I even saw her gaze dip to her bosom.
When she finished reading the top page, she flipped it over to read the next, then glanced up at me.
“What is this?”
