After the Darkness

by Brown, Honey

  ‘We can do it now,’ I said.

  ‘Bridget came by train,’ Finn explained. ‘We’ve been hanging around town, trying to kill time until ten.’

  They didn’t look like my kind of tenants. I considered sending them on their way before they’d even sat down. Finn must have sensed it.

  ‘My new job is shift work,’ he said quickly. ‘I had a late shift and had to stay in town overnight, so Bridget came down on her own.’

  ‘Take a seat.’

  ‘It’s been hard with the hours,’ he said pulling his chair close to the desk. ‘It seemed easier she jump on the train and meet me here.’ He sat with the manila folder he’d brought with him across his knees. Bridget perched on her chair, a shy smile fixed on her face. Finn glanced at her. He fiddled with the edges of the folder. ‘Bridget is studying in the city. She boards there.’ There were dark circles under his eyes and creases in his shirt. He tucked his hair behind his ears and blushed.

  ‘You’ve done the virtual tour of the townhouse?’ I said. I turned the computer screen around so we all could see it and clicked on the property. ‘I like to go through the online tour with prospective tenants,’ I explained, ‘and make sure we’ve got the right place for them. You can ask me any questions as we go. I can arrange an inspection, but this is often enough. It means I can avoid taking people through when tenants are still living there. You’ve done a drive-by?’ I asked. ‘And seen the area?’

  ‘It’s a nice area,’ Finn said. ‘I love that there’s an old-fashioned milkbar on the corner.’

  On the screen was video footage of 17’s front door. The door swung open. There was a view down the hall. The handheld footage was shaky. I’d never noticed before how disorientating it was. I pressed the up arrow key on the computer and the camera moved down the hall. I stared at the screen. Images of Reuben’s house flashed before my eyes. I was back there, in the first room with the bench, looking in the mirror, tapping my shoes on the polished concrete floor … I was on the second level, looking at his bed, the faint antiseptic smell filling my nostrils …

  I continued to press the arrow key and move through the townhouse. I heard myself answer a question about the kitchen and my voice echoed hollowly in my head. I understood that life would now contain moments like this – sudden instances where I’d step outside myself, and reside in a strange and vacant place. I could hear myself breathing.

  I got up from the desk. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m going out for a quick breather. Please feel free to continue the tour and look at anything on the site.’

  I stumbled from the office and out onto the footpath. The last of the mist had disappeared and the sun shone brightly. My hands came to my face.

  What were we thinking? What was I thinking? Of course we couldn’t do this. Bruce had killed a man. Kicked in his head. A man had tried to kill us. I’d been terrified, truly and horribly afraid. Tears blurred my vision. I looked up the street. I stifled a sob.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  It was the young man. Finn. His gaze was pained, yet there was straightness in his shoulders – he knew something of sadness. He was not embarrassed now.

  ‘Sorry, I’m just …’

  ‘You’ve got a message.’ He held my phone out towards me.

  Even through my haze I found it strange he’d picked up my phone and brought it to me. Or maybe my behaviour was such that I encouraged over-friendliness? I took the phone from him. My hand was shaking. The message was from Bruce.

  Come home, he’d texted.

  ‘Bridget and I might come back later,’ Finn said with warmth. He had freckles all over his face. His hair was dark red. It was an unusual colour, unlike any red I’d seen before.

  ‘No, it’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’m okay.’ I walked inside. ‘Sorry about that,’ I said to Bridget. She smiled weakly at me. ‘I need to get this place leased.’ I said it as much to myself as to them. I sat down and got out a blank application form. ‘What have you got?’

  I poised my pen, ready to write. My hand trembled.

  Finn returned to his chair. ‘What have I got?’ he murmured questioningly.

  I nodded towards the folder in his hands.

  ‘Oh …’ He opened the folder and passed me a sheet of references. There was also a letter of recommendation, from his mother, by the looks.

  ‘Have you got your license?’

  Suddenly hot, I took off my jacket. My thoughts wheeled chaotically. Did Bruce’s text mean the story had broken? Under the pretence of referring to lease-related information, I turned the computer screen around towards me and got up the ABC news site. I scrolled down the news items, found nothing, and brought the SBS site up on screen.

  Finn took out his wallet. Bridget was playing with the clasp on her watch, clicking it in and out, in and out. I’d set them both on edge.

  I confirmed with Finn that the address on the license was his parents’ address, and I asked for their names and phone numbers. I wrote down his email address.

  ‘To clear up any risk of a mistake …’ I took out a flyer of the property and passed it to him, ‘this is 17 Tyler Street. It’s three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a double garage, and it’s three hundred and forty a week.’

  ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘I want it so much,’ he added softly.

  ‘I’d need two weeks’ rent in advance, and that would be held over until the end of the lease term. You’ve got no references from other places you’ve lived in?’

  ‘No, sorry. I’ve been living at home with my mum and dad.’ He rocked side to side in his chair. ‘I know …’ He smiled at Bridget. ‘It’s a granny flat. It’s separate from the house.’

  ‘Where do you work?’

  ‘At the Four Seasons Inn out on the highway.’

  ‘I’ll need a pay docket as well. A character reference from your employer would be helpful.’

  He took a pay docket from his folder and passed it to me.

  I took a breath. ‘Do you mind if I send a quick text?’ I got up and walked over to the pinboard.

  Has something happened? I typed. I sent it and returned to the desk.

  ‘Right,’ I said, ‘where were we?’

  The pay docket had food stains on it. Finn’s wage the week before was six hundred and fifty dollars, take home. He wasn’t going to be able to afford the place. I sighed. Interviewing more people seemed out of the question, in my current state of mind.

  ‘That’s the base wage,’ Finn said. ‘I’ve just started there. I’ll be promoted after the trial period. I also have a … an allowance.’ He leaned over the desk and pointed to a section in the letter from his mother. ‘I get money each month from my parents.’

  I read the section of letter he’d pointed out. My mind had trouble taking in the words and their meaning. I frowned.

  He laughed. ‘It’s embarrassing, I know.’

  ‘You get ten thousand dollars a month from your parents?’

  ‘It’s embarrassing, right?’

  ‘Have you got some kind of documentation of it, other than this?’

  He passed me a bank statement. ‘My parents are fairly wealthy,’ he explained. The account balance was one hundred thousand dollars. The transaction record showed the monthly deposits of ten thousand, and no withdrawals. ‘That’s the bank account I’ll use for the direct debit,’ he said. ‘I was saving up to buy my own place. I was going to stay at home until I had enough, but I wanted to work somewhere away from the city, somewhere less competitive. The industry is very dog-eat-dog.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I’m a chef.’

  I stared at him. Bigger coincidences happened all the time, but I was in an altered state. I took it as a sign. ‘That’s amazing …’ I said. ‘I really can’t believe that. My daughter wants to be a chef. She only told me last night.’

  He tucked his hair behind his ears and lowered his head to avoid my stare. The tops of his ears turned bright red.

  I passed him back his pay docket and ban
k statement. ‘I’ll get the contracts drawn up and ring you. And you take these and fill them out.’ I slid across a stack of forms.

  ‘Have I got it?’

  ‘The place will be vacant at the end of this week. You can move in any time after that.’

  ‘I’ve got it?’

  ‘If I’m not around, I’ll have someone come to the office and organise keys and things. I’ll ring if there’s a problem. Have you got my email address?’

  On the desk was a small glass dish holding our business cards. I reached across and picked one up. The moment the card was in my hand everything else disappeared.

  Nothing but the card was visible to me.

  Our business card …

  I remembered that one of our cards was lying on the floor in Reuben’s workshop. Our business card was within a few short metres of Reuben’s body. It might as well have been stuck to his forehead.

  Finn eased the card from between my fingers. Again, through my fog, his actions struck me as oddly forward, but it barely registered, gone from my mind in a second, replaced with – How could I have forgotten our card? We’d had time, all that time, while looking for a way out, I could have stopped and picked it up, but no … we’d left it. I’d left it.

  ‘Thank you,’ Finn said. ‘Maybe you could email me about getting the electricity and other things like that worked out?’

  A text arrived on my phone. I looked at it.

  Need you here, Bruce had sent.

  ‘Yes,’ I said to no one in particular.

  I expected police cars parked at random angles to our house and the front door wide open, Bruce in handcuffs, being led away. But he was sitting on the side steps drinking a cup of tea.

  ‘Our business card,’ I said before I’d reached him.

  He shook his head, not understanding.

  ‘The business card you gave him upstairs, it was with the coffee cups in the workshop. He’d taken it down there. We left it there – our card is in the house. Our names and numbers are right beside his body.’

  Bruce put down his cup. I watched the information sink in. He looked at the garden bed while he thought. At first he seemed perplexed, then weariness took over. ‘We forgot the card.’

  ‘I had it in my hand. I know exactly where it is. After his body, it’s going to be the next thing they see. It’s right there. It’s beside a smashed cup. Can we go and get it? We simply go back there, pick it up, and come back home. We can do it in a day. It’s only the long drive that makes it seem an over-the-top thing to do. Even if we’re caught doing it – it’s better than leaving the card there ready for the day he’s discovered.’

  ‘We’re not going back for the card.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We’re just not going to do that.’

  ‘But the card changes everything. It’s all going to come out. Why did it have to happen to us? Why did we stop? I don’t understand. I don’t. I hate that we saw those eagles – I hate those birds. If we hadn’t slowed, we wouldn’t have stopped, and it wouldn’t have happened …’

  I broke down crying. I sat on the bottom step and wept.

  Bruce leaned in from behind and held me. ‘We’re going to the police,’ he said against my shoulder. ‘It’s going to be all right – it’s what we should have done. It’s my fault. I wasn’t thinking clearly. It’s going to be all right as soon as we go to the police. It feels like this because we’ve done the wrong thing. Once we do the right thing, it will be easier – I promise. It won’t be anything like you’re imagining.’

  10

  We drove into an outer-city station because Bruce wanted some distance from our hometown. He didn’t feel comfortable about talking to our local police. The station we chose was a big one in a nice leafy suburb, Sunnyside. The station was having a quiet day. We walked in the front doors. I’d stopped crying. The octopus was lying doggo in my brain – this action had harpooned it. I took from this that Bruce was right. Everything would be easier from here. I’d changed into comfortable clothes. Bruce had on his sunglasses. His gait was stiff, but he wasn’t hobbling, his face had good colour. He looked normal enough. I’d not yet rung my mother. After we told the police the story, I could tell my mother. The police had to come first, now that we had decided to turn ourselves in.

  ‘I’d like to talk to a sergeant or someone in charge,’ Bruce said to the woman at the desk.

  ‘Okay, sir. Can I ask why, and let them know your name?’

  ‘My name is Bruce Harrison.’

  The woman knew something was awry. She glanced at Bruce’s hands. She looked at my eyes. There was a two-way mirror behind her. I wondered who else had detected a shift in tone, and spotted that air about us. The police were adept at honing in on people moving outside the usual social constraints.

  ‘My wife and I were involved in an incident,’ Bruce said. ‘Someone has died, and we’d like to report it.’ He took off his sunglasses.

  ‘No problem, sir. Stay right there.’

  It was going to be a busy afternoon at Sunnyside police station. I wondered how often people walked in and said such things. What a strange profession police work was.

  A young constable took us down a corridor and through the main office. He chatted as he led us, talking about the weather, asking where we were from. He made a comment about how sore my eyes looked, and said he could organise someone to look at them. He mentioned that Bruce’s hands could be looked at too, and perhaps bandaged. If the young man thought we were in need of some medical attention now, he’d have been shocked to see us two days ago. We were taken to what looked like a spare office and told to sit and wait. It was the first step in the process. I wondered where we would go from there, and whether the rooms would become progressively more unpleasant.

  A sergeant walked in. He left the door open. He was of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent. His skin was dark, his hair wiry and black. ‘Bruce,’ he said with a nod in my husband’s direction. ‘Trudy,’ he said with less abruptness, ‘I’m Senior Sergeant Johnson. This doesn’t sound too good.’

  He stood over us. Bruce rose from his chair and shook his hand.

  ‘It’s not,’ Bruce said, sitting again. ‘It’s hard to know where to start.’

  ‘Sum it up, and then go back to the beginning.’

  ‘Sum it up …’ Bruce looked at me.

  My hands were in my lap. I had butterflies in my stomach.

  ‘We were attacked in a person’s house,’ Bruce said. ‘He tied us up. He was going to kill us. We got free, and …’ Bruce brought his hand to his forehead and pressed with his thumb and forefinger. He blinked back tears, or perhaps disbelief. ‘In getting away, I killed him.’

  The sergeant nodded.

  ‘In self-defence,’ Bruce added.

  ‘Okay then.’

  The sergeant said we could call him Damien. I couldn’t help but think it was a tactic, a way to lull us into opening up. Everything Damien said was warm and congenial, but his body language was intimidating. He was very good-looking. It was difficult to guess his age. When he held my gaze, I found his handsomeness both disarming and alarming. He seemed aware of this, and kept his face turned away most of the time, looking out the window or at the walls, always listening though. He listened very carefully.

  Bruce finished and Damien left the office. We were stunned by his quick exit. I reached across and rested my hand on Bruce’s knee.

  ‘This is better, you’re right, we’ve done the right thing.’

  Damien returned with two more officers. They smiled and sat down behind us. Damien leaned against the edge of the desk.

  ‘Right, could you please tell all that again?’

  The police believed us. They were supportive and kind. During breaks in the story, while calls were made and coffees fetched, they asked us if we had children, and what sort of work we did – they returned us to our normal lives and gave us a break from reliving the ordeal. They agreed what had happened to us was terrible. They’d heard
all sorts of stories, but none quite like this. Bruce edited bits. He made it sound like we were only separated from one another for a few minutes. In my mind it was more like half an hour. He didn’t mention that he’d got wet, and nowhere in his story was it clear to me how he had got wet. My husband was omitting critical details. He did explain that we had considered not reporting what had happened, and that we’d burnt our clothes. He told them that we’d panicked, and that, looking back, we’d been in shock. He said the drugs he’d been given didn’t help either; he’d only starting thinking clearly that morning.

  They said they would give Bruce a blood test. Given that the attack had happened only two days ago, drugs would still be detectable in his system. The chemical spray used on me might be identifiable too. We would be given full medicals, and samples would be taken. Our car would be impounded. The head of the Crime Investigation Unit was being called in, a detective experienced in high-profile cases. We would have to re-tell the story and make official statements. We had a long day ahead of us. But first …

  They had to check the story.

  Bruce and I were given some lunch. We got a Subway roll each and some Subway cookies. Bruce had a coffee and I had a cup of tea. I guessed that Damien was getting a patrol car to drive to Reuben’s house. Things would start in earnest the moment the body was found and the death confirmed.

  Bruce and I spoke softly to one another once we were alone. We talked about the children and how we would text and tell them to walk to my mother’s after school, and how they might react when we told them the truth. We agreed we would take it one step at a time. It was much better to avoid second guessing what would happen next.

  Damien came into the office alone and shut the door. He smiled tightly at us. ‘We’ve been able to get onto the owner of the house. He’s a businessman living in the city. He gave the Wensley police permission to force the garage door and search the property. I’ve just spoken to them now.’

  ‘We assumed our attacker owned the property.’

  ‘The garage door should have been open …’ Bruce murmured.