by Zane Lovitt
‘You thought he did,’ I look to my own grip on the kitchen table as I speak. ‘You thought he’d kept the vase he used, but you couldn’t find it. So you bought a second one.’
‘Fuck off…’
‘You knew where to buy it. And you cleaned it with the same detergent they had at the house. That’s why there were no fingerprints.’
I’m not sure, but Tyan seems to roll his eyes.
‘Then you got Cheryl Alamein’s blood on it. And you took it to the workshop. And you pretended to find it.’
‘Don’t be bloody stupid.’
‘But you got it wrong…’
‘Fuck this for—’
‘You thought he’d confess, but he didn’t. So it went to trial and you didn’t care because Piers Alamein was guilty. You were the Polygraph. You could always tell if someone was lying.’
‘This is bullshit.’
‘You got it wrong. If he was weird with you it’s because he thought Rudy had something to do with it. But it wasn’t Piers.’
‘Then who was it?’ The incredulity is back.
‘Ken Penn!’ Rudy yells this from the floor.
‘No,’ I say. ‘Not Ken Penn. A man named Des Blake. He broke in, Cheryl surprised him and he hit her with the vase.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘He’s in a hospice in Fairfield.’
Tyan blinks back thoughts. He wasn’t expecting actual proof.
I’m like, ‘He’s dying and he left a confession. A signed statement that he killed Cheryl Alamein.’
Tyan’s gallows arm goes slack, the one that had followed Rudy on his slide to the lino. Still he holds it out there like he’s offering it to us. His head retreats two inches on the axis of his neck.
‘Come on,’ He grins, indignation stifling his voice. ‘You’re making this up—’
‘I’m not.’
‘Anthony?’ Rudy’s face is scrunched skin, eyes in there somewhere. I don’t try to remind him of my real name. Instead I say to Tyan:
‘It all goes public once Blake dies. Any day now.’
‘Why are you saying this?’ Tyan really wants to know. I thought Rudy was Paul Heaney, that he’d somehow convinced himself the past hadn’t happened. But here is Tyan, seeing me as if for the first time, righteous and wounded. ‘Why…?’
‘Because it’s true. Because you fixed up an innocent man. And he went crazy. And so did his son. That’s what happened.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘You just have to admit it.’
Tyan’s thoughts seem to cave inwards. But only for an instant before he straightens that arm again, points at Rudy’s head. Rudy flinches, grabs at nothing.
‘Stand up,’ Tyan says to him.
‘Tell him,’ I say.
Rudy is such a mess down there beside the shine box, his arm flapping useless and his head beating against the door, that I don’t know if his brain would receive the information if Tyan did tell him.
‘Stand up,’ Tyan’s voice is sludge.
Rudy hears that. His pencil arms push to the floor and he gets to his feet. Ready. Shrunken and terrified and willing.
I say, ‘He deserves to know the truth first.’
‘It’s bullshit,’ Tyan roars, inhales hard through his teeth and burns at me. And I soften my voice.
‘Tell him the truth, Dad.’
That’s what I say to end it. That’s the capper. Call the man Dad and see what happens. Tyan’s grip loosens, the revolver lowers an inch and drifts. He goes to speak but doesn’t. He peers at the figure of Rudy, somehow both cowed and stoic, then back at me and then at nothing, beaten in a game that has gone on so long.
The gun lowers another inch and he wants to speak again. That face, though. I know that face. I know the face that comes before a confession. Tyan knows it.
He whispers: ‘I had to.’
Rudy and I extend to him. Like, imperceptibly. The way flowers extend to the sun.
What comes next—within a second of realising that I’ve done it, that Tyan is capitulating, that he isn’t going to shoot Rudy Alamein—is a gunshot.
Two gunshots, actually.
70
Prostate cancer is a terrible disease. The tumour squeezes your urethra so you never really feel relieved, kind of always have to go. Every moment of your life gets planned around your access to a toilet. You’re up six or seven times a night. You worry whenever you leave the house.
It’s a terrible disease so you can’t blame the guy. What, he should have held it in so that we could all live happily ever after? He should have stayed in bed so we could somehow cathartically dispel all our bad ju-ju? He should have undergone a stabbing pain in his guts tonight so that none of us had to? Freddie probably doesn’t even know the light from his bathroom window, the one that throws across the fence and into Tyan’s kitchen, is like daylight compared to the darkness that preceded it.
What happens now takes place at such speed that only a Thruware botlog can capture it.
20120714 23:49:28:66 Freddie feels the stinging in his groin for the first time tonight.
20120714 23:50:36:03 Freddie gets out of bed. He has no idea what’s going down in the house next door. Even if he heard anything, even if he bothered to look, all he’d see is that the lights are off in Tyan’s kitchen.
20120714 23:50:42:89 Freddie switches on his toilet light.
20120714 23:50:42:90 The stupid light lights up Tyan’s kitchen.
20120714 23:50:42:95 Rudy, who already thought he was about to die, shrieks and recoils.
20120714 23:50:43:01 This recoil includes a kick into the shine box that’s still in place beside the door. The pistol inside is still loaded, still on a hair trigger.
20120714 23:50:43:02 The pistol discharges.
20120714 23:50:43:04 We all jerk at the noise and the flash. Tyan jerks back.
20120714 23:50:43:05 Tyan’s firearm, the one he’s holding in his hand, discharges.
20120714 23:50:43:06 Exploit resolved, retrieval j98::%lo07, link#1…
A ringing comes from somewhere but that might just be my ears. Movies don’t prepare you for how loud guns are—so loud it feels like I’ve been shot. My instinct is to look where Tyan’s gun had been pointing: the refrigerator where he keeps his food and any jars he’s too weak to open. The ringing doesn’t come from there, might be from behind me. I look around. Behind me is just the stove.
Tyan stumbles forward. A step. He triggers the kitchen fluoro. The room blazes. I want to step towards the fridge as well, want to know what that ringing noise is but I can’t step forward. Something holds me back. Something behind me has a grip and it’s keeping me in place. I rotate to see what it is and on the stove there’s a steel saucepan. It is empty and it is ringing. A tiny lunk of black metal lodged in its side.
Tyan gapes at me.
‘Fuck.’
I want to look at Rudy for some hint of what has happened but I can’t. Something is preventing me from turning. What is that? Why is that saucepan ringing and how is it that loud?
To find the rope that has lassoed me I wave my hands around my waist like a hopeless nightclub dancer. Tyan responds with an appropriate, ‘Oh fuck, Jason.’
No rope that I can find. What I feel is how slippery my belt is. I dab at my stomach, feel the wet even through the leather of my gloves.
‘Oh, wait…’
I collapse and the moment the back of my head hits the lino the ringing stops and I hear my own screaming. A monotonal complement to the voice in my head: this is happening this is happening this is happening this is happening this is happening.
Any expectation that I could get shot and then bitterly prop myself against the wall and ask for a cigarette is properly laid to rest now when I defecate slightly.
A thumping noise from Rudy, like he’s punching the door and I can hear him moan. Is Tyan hurting him? I can see only the piercing fluoro tube on the ceiling, press down on my stomach because that’s what you’re supposed to do
with wounds.
Tyan is there. He hasn’t moved. Stands by the light switch, gazing at me like he’s just realised for the first time he has a son.
‘Fuck,’ I slur. ‘You shot…’
Tyan steps closer. Eyes as big as eggs. Points aggressively at the fridge.
‘It bounced…I didn’t…The bullet bounced.’
When I cough I feel fluid in the crack of my arse.
‘Don’t hurt Rudy.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t shoot Rudy.’
I cough again, feel the fluid suction against the floor.
‘Rudy,’ I shout. ‘Rudy, man…You gotta go…’
Tyan’s sweaty face, its grey whiskers and chapped lips, it turns to look at where Rudy must still be cowering against the door.
Tyan blinks.
‘Rudy’s dead.’
‘Don’t shoot him…Please don’t shoot him.’
‘I’m not going to shoot him. He’s dead.’
Tyan steps out of my eye line, leaving only the light on the ceiling.
‘Don’t shoot him,’ I rasp.
Tyan’s voice from somewhere. A soft voice. Equable.
‘I won’t. Don’t worry, matey.’
The effort it takes to roll and look there at the door, a place only inches away but which feels like football fields, prompts a sleepy wave to crash on me and suck me under water then let me back up. The pain in my stomach has numbed like a burn.
Tyan stands over Rudy and he blocks my view but I can see feet and some legs and they’re not moving. Two of Tyan’s fingers press against Rudy’s neck and he draws them away at a speed that indicates how much of a pulse they found.
‘You said…’ I have to summon my voice like an angry parent. ‘You said they weren’t real bullets…’
‘They’re not.’ His disapproval of Rudy returns to his voice, disapproving this time of his mortality. ‘There’s no wound. He just died.’
Tyan shifts and there’s Rudy’s face. A child sent to the electric chair. An angel so surprised by something that he expired. One leg bent awkwardly beneath him because his personal comfort is no longer at stake.
‘Fuck,’ I say again with a weird sob.
Tyan murmurs, ‘I don’t know what happened…’
And I figure Rudy doesn’t know either. Piers Alamein’s AVRC. His heart condition. Risen again in his son. His last gift to Rudy in a long line of shitty gifts. The Alamein curse claiming one more oblivious victim.
‘Ambulance?’ I say. I really do phrase it like a question. Tyan was a cop; for all I know he’s got a quick-solve for heart conditions and bullet wounds and people dying on your kitchen floor.
‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘Someone heard the shots.’
I roll on my back and cry out at the wet slapping sound that depicts just how much blood there is beneath me.
‘Where is it?’
‘What?’
Tyan raises the gun, but really he’s just pointing angrily at me the way he would with a finger.
‘The confession. Blake’s confession. Where is it?’
‘It’s not…’ I blurt. ‘It’s not…’
‘What?’
‘It’s not…’
Tyan steps closer. Now he really shakes that gun like he’s going to shoot me. On purpose this time.
‘It’s not what?’
‘It’s not real. I just said that. I bullshat you…To make you tell.’
Marnie’s final words. Risen again in me.
At that, Tyan grabs at his hairline like this is too much information.
‘I knew it. You fucking stupid…’
He whirls away in disgust, considers the room. The corpse against the door. Holds his hand to his head to help him think.
‘Okay. You’d come to visit. We were sitting in the kitchen. And then he came in.’
I say, ‘No.’ But Tyan doesn’t hear.
‘You’d never met him. He didn’t know you. He came in, and I had this…’ He holds up the black firearm, so shiny it could be wet. ‘I warned him but he said he was here to kill me.’
And I say, ‘No, Dad.’
‘We saw the toothbrush. It looked like a knife. He ran at me—’
‘I’m not lying anymore.’ My guts are in my throat.
‘What?’
‘I’m gonna tell.’ I try to repeat it but don’t have the strength.
‘Tell them what?’
‘Fuck you.’
‘But…’
And he gapes at me. Gun limp. All the regret of life in his face. I’m turning dog.
Slowly this time he turns away, considers the room again as if he’s just found himself here and doesn’t recognise it. The muscles in his forehead twitch, widen his eyes in bursts.
‘I gonna tell them,’ I manage. But there’s no need because he gets it.
‘You know what that means?’ Tyan says, fretful. ‘You know what has to happen next?’
I want to be cool when I say this, but I’m mugging at the brightness of that fucking fluorescent oblong on the ceiling. Still, my voice is nice and hoarse.
‘What happens next doesn’t matter.’
71
He gazes at my wound, or at least, where my gloved hands are piled over my wound, weakly stemming the flow. And he’s sad, like I’m already dead and he’s grieving. Like there’s nothing to be done.
Then he moves into the hallway, out of sight.
I shut my eyes. All I can see is the blood in my eyelids because of the kitchen light. I guess it’s nice to know there’s still blood in there somewhere.
Tyan returns. He’s got a new-looking tracksuit on and the gun in his hand is different. It’s silver while the black one is tucked under his arm. He seems to unfold the silver gun and a series of droppings fall into his waiting palm. Then he puts the black one down on the counter along with the bullets and puts his keys there as well and he comes at me with the silver gun.
I know he’s not going to shoot me. I mean, I know that.
Down on his knees now like he’s going to say a prayer over me. I feel compelled to demonstrate for him that I am in fact still alive.
‘Fuck…’ I say.
‘You stupid bastard,’ Tyan wheezes. ‘You stupid, stupid bastard.’
He pats at my pockets, pulls out my phone with two delicate fingers, then he lifts my lifeless right hand, blood-smeared and dripping, yanks on the glove to get it off.
It’s a father’s-discipline face. A this-is-going-to-hurt-me-more-than-you face.
‘I’m sorry, matey.’
The glove comes away with a gross thwacking sound and he drops it like a soggy condom to the floor. Then he presses the revolver into my hand, inches my finger over the trigger. The hand and the gun fall to the floor.
‘You stupid bastard. I was going to do the test…the DNA test…’
‘Why bother?’ My voice is a slithery grunt. ‘I know who you are.’
He stands, backs away, moves to the sink and washes his hands. Washes my blood off his hands.
It takes every muscle in my body to raise the weapon so that, when Tyan turns back and sees, it’s pointed at him. But it’s hardly pointed at anything. It’s swaying like I’m drunk.
If this thing was loaded, I’d miss.
Still, it stops Tyan dead. His shoulders collapse and his stomach appears to expand, like he gives in. He scrutinises this bloodied harmless fool on his kitchen floor, waiting for it to happen.
And I pull the trigger. And the trigger goes click. And the hammer goes click. And that’s all it does.
But it appears to trigger something in Tyan. His face curls into an outrageous grimace and his eyes bind shut and a sob bursts through his tautened mouth and he looks away to hide himself. Like my gun has shot him through with raw emotion.
His pudgy frame lurches to Rudy’s corpse, stops short of it and leans across. He locks the door, lowing in long draughts through his nose. A funny way of crying, a cow in labour. I’ve never heard anything
like it. Something wholly new, a musical note undiscovered until now. You’d think he was the one who’d been shot by his own father.
I whisper, ‘Hey…’
I try to speak but can’t. I try to shout at him but likewise.
Tyan moves past me with a purpose, keeping a wide berth of something I can’t see but which I assume is a river of my blood. At the sink he drops my phone and opens a drawer and brings out a kitchen knife and he’s weeping now like slowmotion laughter: heee…heee…heee…
He smashes the phone with the butt-end of the knife, runs water over it, twists it in his fat hands to be sure.
From somewhere now we both hear the sound of a police siren.
‘Hey, Polygraph,’ I say again.
He drops the pieces in the pocket of his tracksuit and looks to me, already disappointed in what I’m going to say.
I say, ‘Come here.’
He steps closer, wipes tears from his face.
And I’m like, ‘There’s something else I’ve lied about.’
The curl in his lip makes me lol. The confusion in his eyes is a blessing.
‘What is it?’
‘Can’t you guess?’
‘Tell me.’
I only laugh because that’s literally all I can do.
The siren closes in and Tyan looks to the sound, then back to me. His time is up. He takes the black gun from the bench and I see the tears shine on his face. When he looks at me for maybe the last time ever, I see red in his eyes. A shoulder-shudder. Tyan surveys the room for some kind of option but there’s none. If there’s any place in the world that isn’t going to help you when your life is at a crossroads, it’s this dismal kitchen. With another squeal, a child whimpering, he steps through to the hallway and he’s gone. The door clicks shut, deadlocked.
The police siren is piercing now, and now it stops. Here’s me, actually pleased to hear the party van outside. The irony. Tyan’s keys are there on the counter, so no one’s getting in without an axe or a brick through the window.
But first they’ll evacuate the neighbours. That poor bastard next door with his bladder. Where’s he going to pee while he’s standing outside in his underwear?
