After the Darkness

by Brown, Honey

  ‘It seems no one’s been living there for a while.’ Damien went around behind the desk and sat down. He put his hands flat on the desktop. His fingertips were pale. He took a long, deliberate breath. ‘There was no body found in the workshop. The Wensley police are still there now. They’ve got permission to have a good look around. But as far as we can see … there isn’t a body.’

  I looked at Bruce. ‘How can that be?’

  His face had gone blank. He stared straight through me.

  ‘Are you sure you’ve got the right place?’ I turned to Damien. ‘It’s a big square place right on the cliff. There’s a sign out the front, advertising the gallery.’

  ‘I can have one of the constables take a photo of the house and send it through if you like.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Did they find the cabinet in the workshop, lying on the floor? It’s half suspended from the gantry. We walked out and left it like that.’

  ‘I can see something has happened to you,’ Damien said.

  ‘Not something.’ Bruce made a fist and placed it down on the table. ‘What we said – that’s what happened.’

  ‘Yes,’ Damien agreed. ‘We’re being as thorough as we can be, but right now we’re relying on the goodwill of the owner.’

  ‘There’ll be bloodstains on the concrete in the workshop,’ Bruce said. ‘Did they check for that? Through a sliding door there’s a workshop. It’s out the back of the double garage. They mustn’t be looking in the right place. There will be blood on the floor in the workshop. There’s a furnace, and a gantry.’

  ‘I’ll make sure they look again.’ Damien didn’t get up though. He took his hands from the desktop and sat up straight. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘To start an investigation we need that first thing – in this case, the body. You’ve explained there’s no weapon, no clothing. You’re saying it’s highly unlikely there were any witnesses. It makes it hard. It’s unusual not to have something.’

  ‘You think we’ve made it up.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What’s the owner’s name?’

  ‘He’s being very cooperative. He’s as concerned as we are.’

  ‘The crack in the top-storey window,’ I said suddenly. ‘Have they looked for that? Tell them to go up the spiral staircase to the gallery loft, and they’ll be a big crack in the window.’

  ‘It’s been looked at,’ Damien said.

  ‘It’s there?’

  ‘There is a crack. But the owner said it happened over four months ago. He suspects a bird caused the damage to the glass.’

  ‘Well, there you go,’ Bruce said, ‘he’s lying. The owner is involved. We put that crack there. Trudy did. Isn’t there some test you can do to see when it was made?’

  ‘Everyone believes something has taken place,’ Damien said, ‘but at the same time, there’s no body there; so you can see our dilemma.’

  ‘Not really, no – we’re sitting here in front of you telling you what happened. We’re telling you the owner is lying. Who is he?’

  ‘We’ll get you looked at, and get photos of your injuries. We’ll make sure we get everything we can now, so that if something happens in the future, we’ll have all the details. Your cooperation and full admission will be on file.’

  ‘You’re avoiding telling us the owner’s name.’

  Damien pressed his lips together.

  ‘I can find out,’ Bruce stated. ‘I can find out the owner’s name.’ Colour was creeping up my husband’s neck. His elbows were pressed into the armrests. ‘You know what’s happened – he’s covered it up. You can’t be serious that you’re not going to start an investigation because there’s no body? People hide the bodies, that’s the point.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Bruce.’

  I heard my husband’s teeth grinding together. ‘Let me guess – the owner is someone important.’

  ‘It has no relevance.’

  ‘Oh, I reckon it would.’

  ‘I’ll give you some time to get your head around this. It is confusing. I understand your frustration.’

  ‘You probably don’t.’

  ‘We’ve got your details. We’ll keep in touch. I’ll keep an eye on this.’

  ‘You do realise whoever got rid of the body has our card? They have all our details.’

  ‘That’s why you were right to come to us. You’re protected now.’

  ‘Are you going to give us real protection?’

  Damien got up and opened the door. ‘Have some time together. I’ll go and talk again to the Wensley police.’

  ‘Are you going to give us real protection?’ Bruce said, louder.

  Out in the office a group of young constables and station staff were standing in a huddle around a desk. They looked through the open door at us. Their conversation stopped. One man had a smile on his face. Bruce saw this too. He got to his feet.

  ‘I don’t think we will make full statements. From what you’re saying, we don’t have to. Is that right?’

  ‘We’d like it to be tidier. As much as we can do, we’d like to do.’

  ‘But it’s not looking like it’s going to be tidy for us.’ Bruce took my hand. I stood up.

  ‘Don’t go like this,’ Damien said. ‘If anything happens you’re going to need as much physical evidence as you can get. You’ve burnt your clothes. You should, at the very least, have your injuries photographed. My advice to you would be get this part done right, and have it there, just in case.’

  ‘In case a body turns up?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because then we’ll be under even more suspicion? How does that work? The body turns up and still we’re the liars. I’m not going to tell you any more. You’re discrediting our story right now, already. I’m not keeping on with this if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘Why don’t you go into the courtyard, stretch your legs. I’ll talk some more to the Wensley police. I can get them to send through photographs of the house and workshop.’

  ‘Why? To show us it’s all been cleaned up and there’s nothing there? I don’t want to look at that. You want me to look at photos that insinuate I’m deluded and this thing I’m saying happened didn’t even happen?’

  ‘No one’s saying that.’

  ‘It happened.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘We’ll go outside,’ Bruce said, ‘to our car. The car you can’t be bothered impounding. The one with a dead man’s DNA in it. We might go and get it cleaned. If you think something has happened, you’ll stop us. I’m not hanging around here begging and grovelling for you to believe us.’

  ‘Getting angry isn’t going help anyone.’

  ‘But mate,’ Bruce said with a sneer, ‘why would I be angry? I walked in here, confessed something to you, and now I can walk straight back out. That’s how you want it. So that’s what I’ll do.’

  ‘We should have the photos and tests now that we’re here,’ I said.

  Bruce lifted his chin and eyed Damien. ‘I can’t be bothered.’

  We left Sunnyside police station and no one tried to stop us. We’d been in there for two and three-quarter hours, about as long as we’d been at Reuben’s house. When we got to the car, Bruce leaned against the driver’s side door. He stared off down the street.

  ‘Do you think one person could lift the cabinet? With the help of the gantry?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, probably.’

  ‘We can’t just go home,’ I said. I looked across the street towards the station, wishing a team of police would walk out and apprehend us – at least that would make some sort of sense. ‘We should go to our local station. They’ll believe us.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ A light, insubstantial feeling came over me. I thought of the attack, and then I imagined it forever having a disclaimer hanging over it – not necessarily true. ‘What if no one believes us?’

  Bruce was only half listening, caught up in the things that troubled him. ‘We�
�re a liability to someone with money, and those incompetent bastards in there can’t even see that?’

  ‘Damien said we’re protected because we’ve spoken.’

  ‘How? Only the owner knows we’ve gone to the police. It hasn’t been miraculously broadcast to every homicidal maniac that we’ve been in and made a statement. They know in there that the owner is involved. He has to be involved. Why else would he lie about the window?’

  ‘Bruce … you haven’t told them everything about what happened. It might be the one thing that makes the difference.’

  My husband shook his head. He wouldn’t hold my gaze.

  ‘The police are at the gallery now. After we’d gotten away you mentioned another room. You said something about the “first room”. Do you remember another room? If they can find a secret room … You have to tell them.’

  I knew what a tall order this was. The police didn’t believe there was a body, or an attacker in the first place, and I was asking my husband to go back in there and tell them the nonexistent attacker had sexually assaulted him in a secret room. What if an examination revealed nothing – would the police then imply he’d imagined sexual assault as well?

  ‘I’d feel like I was digging my own grave if I went back in there. It’s obvious they’re more interested in protecting the owner.’

  A car travelled past and stirred up the leaves scattered on the road. Further down the street a man started up a leaf blower and began clearing his driveway of dry leaves. The sound of the noisy two-stroke motor travelled to us. I watched the man – one part of my mind recognising the normal task while another part of my mind seemed transfixed by the activity. My perception of things was warped. I looked around. Even the parked cars in the street seemed somehow not quite right.

  ‘Are we going to tell the children the truth now?’ I said. ‘Is telling them the right thing to do?’

  ‘If they don’t have to know …’ Bruce said. ‘I’m not sure. Would we be telling them to make us feel better, because we don’t want to lie? They’re not going to feel better. It would be different if it was being investigated and some sort of justice was likely, but this …’ he motioned to the street, the idyllic nature of it, to the man blowing leaves from the gutter. ‘I don’t know what this is or what it means? Do those cops expect us to go back home and forget it?’

  ‘We could tell the children some of it,’ I suggested. ‘We could say a man detained us and …’ As I thought about what to keep and how to word it, I saw what a flawed idea it was. Lie about how we got away? At the heart of my suggestion, I was meaning we could leave out the sexual assault. But was Bruce as conflicted about Reuben’s death? Did he want his children to know he’d killed a man?

  ‘Telling them some and not all only sets it up to be more confusing,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it’s right we tell them. I mean …’ he screwed up his face in frustration, ‘I can’t even tell them everything will be all right, because those fucking police make me believe it won’t be.’

  ‘What about other people? If we’re not going to tell the children, are we going to tell my mother? What about your parents? What about your brothers, Bruce? Could they somehow help?’

  ‘No,’ he said with bitterness. He leaned heavily against the door. After a moment his expression grew more reasonable. ‘Down the track maybe … I don’t know. I don’t want to get them involved in this …’

  ‘Maybe the police release us to see what we do?’

  Another car travelled past, a low-slung V8 with two young men in the front. The driver deliberately revved the motor in defiance and disrespect to the police as he passed the station. The window was wound down and I heard the two men laugh.

  ‘We’ll wait,’ Bruce said, opening up the driver’s side door. ‘The police will contact us. They’ll follow it up. They have to. Telling other people only sets things up for more trouble. And I don’t know if I can deal with sympathy or offers of help right now anyway.’

  He was referring to my mother. He climbed into the car.

  When I’d settled in the passenger seat and closed my door, he said, ‘When and if we do tell people, Trudy, you know I don’t want you telling anyone about all of it. I don’t just mean my parents or my brothers. I mean no one. Not even your mother.’ He started the engine.

  11

  The eight townhouses at our Cove Street development were toffee-coloured, with steeply pitched roofs, and cream-coloured windows and balconies. There were four on each side of the large double block, facing one another across a shared garden space. As soon as the interiors were finished – flooring, paint and drapes – a high front fence would be erected and tall timber gates put in, making the homes an exclusive, gated community. Missed calls and messages regarding them were banked up on Bruce’s phone. Tradesmen and council officials had begun to ring me in search of him. The plumber, in desperation, had rung the house. Bruce had answered.

  ‘We double-checked that,’ he said. ‘It’s the required fall.’ He was out of the shower, wearing a long robe and slippers. His hair was damp. The skin on his face was tight and glossy. Only a day had passed since we’d been to the police station – they hadn’t called – and it seemed a cruel amount of time in which to readjust and return to everyday living. There was a sense, though, that the world did expect that of us. We weren’t going to be treated gently.

  ‘Is Nico there? Can he sort it out?’ Bruce lifted his work satchel onto the window seat and began going through it one-handed. ‘That can’t be right … What degree of fall are we talking?’ He found the Cove Street plans and walked to the bed with them, opening out the drawings. ‘Where did they dig the hole?’ Bruce leaned closer over the plans. His gaze darted over the drawings as he listened, but not with the intensity it usually would. He closed his eyes, as though to summon and draw in his energy, focus on the task at hand. ‘Out of the question,’ he said. ‘We’re not cutting through four slabs to sink a pipe half a foot deeper. What’s the guy’s name? Why isn’t it the original inspector?’

  I could hear the plumber talking, although the only words I was able to decipher were the four-letter ones.

  ‘All right, I’ll be there in an hour.’

  I began putting his work clothes out on the bed: a long-sleeved shirt so that not too much of his skin would be showing, heavy steel-capped boots, and I fossicked out the watch the children had given him for his fortieth, five years ago, and put it on his bedside table. I took away the newer watch, the one he’d had on … that day.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve been stuck doing some other things,’ he was saying.

  I could hear the children arguing in the kitchen. I left Bruce and went to mediate. Summer had made the school lunches. The three lunchboxes were in a neat line on the bench. Not a cheese and Vegemite sandwich in sight. Two of the lunchbox lids were open and Renee was standing over the elaborate mix of baked slices, salsa-filled jacketed potatoes, corn on the cob and three-tiered sandwiches. She was red-faced, drink bottle in hand, hair frizzy and flyaway from being outside in the drizzly conditions with the horses. Summer was explaining why Renee’s lunch was the low-fat, smaller version of Steven’s.

  ‘Mum, look what she’s done!’

  Catering specifically for each sibling’s needs was part of Summer’s loving nature, but Renee didn’t see it that way. She reached to open Summer’s lunchbox, and Summer grabbed it from the bench. My younger daughter’s metabolism, as with her blonde hair, was a throwback to some unknown distant relative, a gene donor blessed with an effortless ability to burn calories. Summer’s lunch was probably twice the size and excitement of Renee’s.

  ‘Give it to me!’ Renee snapped.

  Steven was laughing. ‘Inspired way to tell you you’re fat.’

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘Steven, be quiet.’

  ‘Let me see your lunch, bitch!’

  ‘Renee, that’s enough.’

  ‘Give it to me!’

  The girls began wrestling over Summer’s lunchbox.


  ‘Oh look, I got a piece of lemon slice,’ Steven said. ‘Thanks, little sis.’

  ‘Go away,’ I said.

  ‘And full-fat mayo on my chicken sandwich …’

  Renee kicked in Steven’s direction.

  ‘Excellent,’ he encouraged, ‘some more exercise like that and you can have some lemon slice too.’

  ‘I’ll kill you,’ Renee spat.

  ‘By squashing me to death?’

  I put myself between my two eldest children.

  Summer escaped to the far side of the kitchen table. Renee gave up on her siblings, picked up the lunchbox and turned it upside down over the bin. ‘I’m not eating anything you make,’ she sneered at Summer. ‘Dad!’ she hollered.

  ‘Leave your father.’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘He’s on the phone.’

  Renee stormed off down the hallway. I followed. When I saw our bedroom door was shut, I ran. ‘Don’t go in there!’

  Renee got there before me and swung the door wide open.

  Bruce had heard us coming. He held the robe in front of him, partly covering his bare chest, backing up, halfway to the walk-in robe. He paused, not wanting to flee from his daughter. His work pants were on, buttoned, zipped up, but more than enough of his skin was showing for Renee to be instantly reminded of what had happened. She stopped short, gasped. As well as the ligature marks, scratches and grazing, there was a wide band of bruising across Bruce’s upper chest, a distinct and disturbing line. It hadn’t come about from anything that had happened to him while I had been in the workshop. Renee stumbled back into me, repelled by the sight of her father, the violence stamped into him like that, branded into him. I saw that she realised what Summer had – that we had lied about the true nature of the attack. Bruce couldn’t turn his back to hide his chest, because there was bruising at the base of his neck, the darkest purple in colour, aging slowly into black and green, and scratch marks down his back.

  ‘Sorry,’ Renee breathed. ‘I just wanted lunch money.’

  ‘My wallet is there,’ Bruce said quietly. He nodded towards the bedside table.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Renee murmured.