by Phyllis King
He then dropped the actual stories into the bin. Even though I’d guessed this was what was going on, I felt fresh anger now that the evidence was before me. This man had conned me into having false expectations about my writing - just so he could make a fast buck.
Aware that the longer I stayed, the more likely I was to be spotted, I stepped away from the window and made my way back towards the car.
But I must have made more noise than I thought, because as I was walking across the drive, the front door opened and Peter Williamson appeared on the deck.
‘Did you want anything?’ he called.
I turned round. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ve come to the wrong address - I was looking for number 13.’
‘Farther up,’ he said, frowning, and pointing up the road.
I thanked him and hurried back to Edwina’s car, wondering if he’d actually rumbled me with the camera. Oh well, I thought, I couldn’t help it if he had and I had the evidence now.
‘How’d you go?’ asked Edwina.
‘Okay,’ I said. I’d told her what I’d done and about how he had confronted me at the last minute.
‘Oh well,’ she said brightly. ‘Looks like our work here is finished. Let’s go and have some lunch and a drink, shall we, while we work out what to do next.’
We ate at the pub in Wattle Bark Bay’s main strip. The food was basic but good, and it had James Squire on tap - a bonus.
‘I think we should contact trading standards with our allegations and DVD footage,’ I said.
‘I don’t know,’ said Edwina. ‘I’ve been wondering...’
‘Wondering what?’
‘Well, wondering whether we should challenge him with this and see if we could make some kind of deal with him.’
I eyed her suspiciously. ‘What sort of deal?’
‘Well, what about he gives us prizes in this current contest in exchange for our keeping quiet about what we know?’
I’d always known that Edwina was ambitious. And up till now I’d found her determination to succeed admirable. She worked hard at her writing, putting in a lot more hours a day than I ever managed. I didn’t always like her pushiness, but recognised that this was the world we lived in: self-promotion got you places.
But this suggestion brought her right down in my estimation.
‘I don’t want a prize in his contest,’ I said quietly. ‘I want him exposed for what he is.’
‘But if our names appeared as winners, it would look good on our CVs. And we could warn him that he has to do honest judging in future contests otherwise...’
‘Otherwise what?’ I responded curtly. ‘You make that kind of deal with him, Edwina, and you’ll be as caught up in the scam as he is and in no position to make further threats. Anyway, I thought you said exposing the crime would generate good publicity for your writing?’
‘Well, yes, it would,’ Edwina concurred, uncomfortable with my sudden hostility. ‘Forget I mentioned it, Leah. It was just a thought.’
When we’d finished, we headed back to the cottage. Edwina said she wanted to work on polishing one of her stories for a while. After spending so many hours cooped up in the car, I felt in urgent need of exercise, so I spent an hour or so walking along the beach, thinking all the time about what to do next in terms of exposing Peter Williamson. Perhaps trading standards wouldn’t be interested, I thought, but there was always the press - perhaps one of the literary magazines might be willing to publish an expose? Or even The Age or the Herald Sun!
As I made my way back to the cottage, I noticed that some of the locals were putting out their kitchen rubbish bins and their recycle bins. That meant the garbos were obviously due the following morning; and that gave me an idea.
Edwina was still tapping away on her laptop when I left the cottage again, camera on my shoulder. I’d told her of my plans to look for the stories among Peter Willamson’s garbage, photograph them in there so that the date showed up, and remove them if they were in any state to touch.
Edwina had liked the idea of gathering further evidence, but wasn’t motivated to help. So, taking her car keys, I went off to do the dirty work myself.
I pulled up a couple of houses down from Williamson’s place. The house was in darkness and his car was missing from the car port; he’d gone out and I hoped it was for a long time. The bins were on the nature strip - I opened the recycling one first and was in luck. Even if Williamson was a conman, he’d still done the right thing and dumped all his papers in the recycle bin. I trained the camera on the stories, then took them from the bin and bundled them into my car.
I’d just started driving away when his Commodore turned into the street and into his drive. I smiled to myself and drove back to the cottage. Edwina was in the shower, so I checked the footage I’d taken, then changed the tape, putting the old one into my handbag for safe keeping. Later on, after a supper of fish and chips, I showed Edwina the stories. She read one or two of them, dismissing them as rubbish. Then we left them on the kitchen counter and got ready for bed.
I woke at the sound of the front door closing and sat up, bleary eyed. Edwina had gone out - I heard her car revving up outside. I got up, hoping she’d gone to buy us some breakfast, but had a sinking feeling when I went into the living room and realised that the stories we’d left on the counter were missing.
A quick check of the DVD camera confirmed that the tape had gone - Edwina had obviously gone to Peter Williamson’s to cut a deal.
I checked my handbag and took out the tape - I played it back in the DVD player attached to the TV. It was the one with the footage, so Edwina hadn’t cottoned on and swapped them around. She’d gone to Williamson’s with a blank tape.
I smiled, then put the tape back in my bag. Taking the bag into the bathroom, I showered, then got dressed and waited for Edwina to return.
‘You were out and about early,’ I said brightly.
‘I’ve been to visit Peter Williamson,’ she told me. ‘I know you didn’t like the idea, Leah, but I thought it was worth trying to cut a deal with him instead of running to trading standards, who really wouldn’t be interested. He’s agreed that future competitions will be judged honestly.’
‘Oh yeah?’ I said.
‘Well, we’ll have to trust him on that, I guess,’ she said. ‘But I’ve come away with prize money from the Spring contest.’ She produced two cheques from her pocket.
‘I thought it was best I had first place,’ she said. ‘After all, I’ve placed well in a few contests. So it makes sense, given my track record, that I’d finish ahead of you. So I’m first and you’re second. But we’ll pool the prize money; $1500 between us, that’s $750 each. That’s fair. Here.’
‘Oh, you can count me out,’ I said. ‘I don’t want any money.’
‘Are you sure?’ she asked me. ‘I’ve - well, I’ve given him the tape, Leah. In exchange for not exposing him.’
‘Well, I’d rather have exposed him,’ I said. ‘But you can certainly keep all the money and tell him he needn’t give me second place. I’m not interested in a placing. I’m through with writing fiction. I don’t think it’s my forte.’
‘Really?’ she said, trying to mask her delight. In her eyes, one less would-be writer in the world trying to gain a publisher’s attention was a good thing, I guess.
‘Really.’
‘Well, you may be right. Though I don’t think you’re a bad writer,’ she added, generously. ‘It’s just I don’t think you’re cut out to be a novelist.’
I didn’t think I was either. But I could write clear, concise stories, and I’d thoroughly enjoyed the little bit of sleuthing I’d done over the past 24 hours.
When Edwina disappeared into the bathroom, I took the tape recorder from behind a cushion and slipped it into my pocket. I could see the article now: short-story contest scam and the ‘pretend’ win by would-be writer who helped uncover it.
I grinned, longing to be home so I could phone a magazine editor. I was glad Edwina h
ad introduced me to the Write Place. My new career as an investigative journalist had just begun.
<
Playing Chicken
Corinna Hente
Those birds sound odd, Bec thought to herself. And my head hurts. And what the hell am I lying on?
She opened her eyes cautiously; already dimly aware she might not be happy about what she saw. It had been a big night and the later hours were missing altogether. And that might be a good thing. Or not.
Bats. She blinked, and again.
Definitely bats, making that high-pitched chittering sound they make, grooming and stretching their wings as they hung upside down from the branches of the gum trees. She heard a bunch of perky kayakers splashing by. And almost the oddest thing of all was that her whippet, Billie, was sitting delicately beside her, clearly waiting for her to wake up.
She sat up, leaning back on her hands and taking in her surroundings. She saw that she was underneath the flying fox colony at Yarra Bend, nestled in a wild part of the park between the river and the golf course.
At least she was fully dressed, except for her shoes, which were paired neatly beside her on top of her handbag. It looked like Billie had used them as a headrest for much of the night. She lay back down again, trying to piece together what had happened.
Michael!
They’d met for drinks again, the second time this week, him coming on even stronger. Definitely keen. And then, for some reason, they’d picked up her dog and then his to come down here for a lively and romantic moonlit walk.
So where was he? Why would he have brought her here and abandoned her? Not that it would be the first time some bloke had fled the morning after but for a change Michael had seemed to actually like her, not just fancy her..
Too many questions for her fuzzy head. Bec gathered herself and her belongings and started walking back to the main road.
With each step her headache grew. Coffee was becoming an urgent need. She hadn’t thought she’d had that much to drink, but she must have since her head felt vile.
Why did she keep doing it? Surely, at some stage, she’d be old enough to be a bit more sensible. After all, she was 29, old enough to know better, old enough to have a trace of dignity.
Bec laughed, then groaned at the painful movement of her skull. Who was she kidding?
Struggling along the dirt path, closing her ears to the shrill morning sounds as much as possible, she was startled by the cold nudge of a dog’s nose against her hand. She could see Billie well ahead, chasing rabbit smells. She looked down and it was Toby, Michael’s beautiful wolfhound. And enormous great gentle thing, now looking up at her bewildered and lost.
‘What’s the matter, Toby? Has the bastard abandoned you too? Clearly something monumentally strange had happened last night, now if she could only work out what.
Home right now was Pippa’s place, less than one km from the park. Bec was between flats again, and Pippa was letting her stay while she sorted herself out. There was always a spare room there, but it came with consequences, since Pippa fostered abandoned and sick cats and dogs and the place usually reeked of cat pee. Bec was grateful and Billie was enough of a dog to think it was perfect, but it couldn’t last.
As Bec turned into the street, she gave her watch a final check. If all went well, she could still get to work without being too late. She worked at a newspaper and was often sent on late jobs, so occasional lateish starts were tolerated, as long as they didn’t have something lined up for her first thing.
Then she saw the police cars right outside Pippa’s place, the ambulance, the neighbours standing out in the street looking on curiously and judgmentally - Pippa had always been a bit of a blot on the middle-class street since any money she had went on animal welfare causes and not on making her house look nice.
Bec broke into a run, arriving at the gate in a chaos of fear and excited, barking dogs. Just in time to see Pippa being wheeled out on a trolley, blood all over her face and hair, pale as death, eyes closed.
Reaching out to touch her hand, Bee’s arm was abruptly grabbed. Police.
‘Don’t do that,’ a deep voice advised. ‘She’s very badly injured so the less movement the better. I take it you know her? Could you help us out here?’ He led her to the front porch, sat her down in one of the tatty armchairs, sat down opposite and waited.
‘I’m Bee, Rebecca Mather. I’m staying here at the moment,’ she managed. ‘Is she alive? Will she be OK?’
‘She’s alive, just, the rest I don’t know. There’re taking her to St Vs. Can you tell us who she is?’
‘Her name’s Pippa March. This is her place. But what happened to her?’
‘She’s been bashed; maybe she surprised someone burgling the place, maybe a fight. A couple of the rooms have been trashed. Perhaps you can have a look, tell us if there’s anything missing.’
Bec shook her head, confused. Why would anyone break into Pippa’s place? It was clearly the poorest house on the street, surrounded by houses that specialised in conspicuous consumption. The only thing she had worth anything was the TV. She used to leave it on when she was out to give the animals company.
The policeman indicated he was ready and she followed him in. Trashed was right.
The lounge room and Pippa’s bedroom had been torn to pieces. Her own room looked like that too, but that was normal. She wasn’t tidy at the best of times and since she was only here for a short while, she wasn’t even trying. They paused at her door and looked in at the mess, boxes and piles of clean and dirty clothes, books, plates, all kinds of crap.
In response to the policeman’s raised eyebrow, she grimaced.
‘No, this is how I left it. I didn’t know I’d be having company. But Pippa was always fastidious. She knew if she left anything out of place, some dog would chew it or some cat would spray on it. She would never have left it like that.’ Bec walked back into Pippa’s room and looked around more carefully.
‘Look, I don’t know exactly, because I haven’t been here that long, but there’s nothing obvious gone.’
Then came the hardest question of all. Was there anyone who hated her enough to do this to her? He held up a picture of Pippa, looking wildly appealing with a mess of long black curls and a megawatt smile.
‘Well, maybe. She was an animal libber, you know, anti-factory farms for chickens and scientific tests on monkeys, and she made a lot of noise and never gave up. She could really give people the shits, because she always cared more about animals than people, and she despised anyone who would hurt an animal. Nothing would shut her up.
‘But it’s hard to imagine anyone would hate her this much. She can be annoying, but when she tries she can charm the birds out of the trees, as they say.’
Then Bec remembered a conversation last night. ‘I don’t even know why she was here. She was supposed to be at her mum’s.’
The reality of seeing Pippa looking so silenced, so hurt, finally hit Bec and she burst into tears. And right on cue, everything got even worse.
‘She was gay, wasn’t she?’ The detective’s question came out of the blue.
‘Yes, why? Are you saying that’s why she was beaten up?’
‘Were you two lovers?’
‘What?’ Bec was stunned.
‘Were you lovers? And can you account for your whereabouts about 5 am?’
‘What? Me? What are you talking about? I love her. I’d never hurt her.’
‘And most people who get bashed in their homes are hurt by people who say they love them. So where were you about 5 am?’
Bec realised that she should have seen this coming. She also knew that lies were pretty pointless, even if she’d ever been any good at telling them. If only the truth was just a little less embarrassing.
‘We weren’t lovers. I wasn’t her type.’ She said it flatly, had no idea how on earth she’d get through the rest.
‘As for where I was at 5 am, apparently I was passed out under some trees near the bat
colony at Yarra Bend, almost certainly in no state to do anything that violent to anyone. And as for whether anyone else can verify that, I have to say I just don’t know.’ She could feel the humiliation flooding her face as she continued. ‘The guy who was with me when I crashed left me there at some stage, no idea when.’
She could swear the detective was smirking at her.
‘And do you know his name?’
She let the look in her eyes show him just what she thought of that question, but swallowed her anger as best she could. After all, if she was being honest, she could see his point.
‘Michael Best. He’s a photographer at the Daily Mirror.’
