by Phyllis King
Check for a relative - also the whole handedness issue - L-handed = genetic
marker. But you’ll have to pinpoint the opportunist first and trace...
I stop typing at the sound of Brian’s voice, raised in the background. ‘Sorry, but you don’t just get to do that, it’s bloody...no, you listen for a second - she was happy, don’t you get it?... Well that’s what being retired fucking means, Jim. I’m sure you... Jesus Christ, I mean, she’s pregnant, can’t you just leave her alone?’
I’m out of the study now, watching Brian’s back, how it tenses and hunches and straightens and smooths. I feel a surge of emotion then, until Brian turns around glowering, thrusting the phone out.
‘It’s Jim.’
I nod - saying ‘obviously’ might be pushing things a bit - and take the receiver.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m sorry to call late,’ Jim says quietly, ‘but there’s been another one.’
My expression kind of dies on my face.
‘Are you there?’ he says, and I nod before remembering the phone.
‘Yeah. Okay.’
‘I’m sending everything up as it comes in. You’ll already have all the prelims, but we’re still waiting on toxicology, autopsy.’
‘Okay, fine,’ I sigh.
Jim’s voice sounds commiserating. ‘I’m sorry you turned out to be right. A bit over four weeks, like you said; but I don’t think there’s anything we could have done. Don’t bash yourself up about it, Arty, okay?’
I heave out a breath, then grimace at how it sounds. ‘Sure. No, it’s fine, Jim. I’ll just keep at it.’
‘Hope you find something the bastard’s given away this time.’
‘Me, too. Good luck on your end.’
‘Thanks.’ He clears his throat. ‘Your bloke’s a bit of a bull-terrier, isn’t he? Ah well, you’re lucky to have him. Look after yourself and I’ll be in touch.’
The call ends. I stand there hugging myself with my eyes closed until Brian puts an arm around my shoulders.
I spend the day in bed recouping - Brian calls it ‘recouping’ -and he takes Jack off for walks, so it’s just me and the baby in bed together, snuggling in. I feel the gentle kicks and squizzles with a sense of relief, and a deep calm settles on me, until I start wondering if this is how it’s meant to be. Surely the baby is supposed to be nurtured and nourished by its mother, not the other way round?
I give in to sleep. When I wake up, something is pinching the edges of my consciousness but it hides down in some crevasse while Jack climbs in beside me and we read together.
He and I intone the words together: We‘re going on a bear hunt, we‘re gonna catch a big one, what a beautiful day, we‘re not scared.
As the bear hunters traipse their way past the old familiar landmarks (back through the big dark forest, stumble trip) the thought suddenly coalesces.
I haul myself out of bed, take Jack out to Brian and ask him to spare me for a while. I notice his anxious, slightly frustrated glance.
I settle in my cushioned chair and start reviewing everything. I pull all the new witness reports and scene photos and do the cross-referencing. I go to the toilet once, while Brian and Jack are doing bedtime.
Then the next time I see Brian he’s bringing me a cuppa. ‘Arty, I know this is important to you,’ he starts pointedly, then he glances at the image on the monitor. His eyes flinch away and I take the mug from him.
‘Love, I’m sorry to dump you with everything, but... Could you pass me that inner-city Melways up there?’
He looks at me once, then reaches up for the book. I put my hand on his as he passes it over.
‘Not much longer, okay?’
He pauses, nods quietly, and leaves the room.
I keep working. I am trudging through the Shadow Roads, but maybe I’m getting someplace now.
I trudge the bloody roads for a week. My suspicions seem like just that - when I put them down on paper it all seems so half-formed, insubstantial. Not enough to bulk up an email.
I’m frustrated, edgy, and I growl at Brian and Jack; which makes me feel worse.
By Wednesday the whole thing is developing the characteristics of mental gruel. While Jack sleeps I take a shower, letting the hot water drum on my aching lower back. Too much time spent in that damned chair. I towel off, dress myself in that impossibly awkward way of late, slick back my hair as I lumber into the kitchen, putting on the kettle and some music, down low.
I stand at the benchtop and try not to think of how time is ticking away, counting down the hours until the next murder, and the next...
I wanna see the sun go down, Paul Kelly sings laconically, while the sun prepares to go down on another day wasted...
- where the beach needs reconstruction -
I lift my head.
- where the palm trees have it hard -
I feel a tenseness in my belly. My eyes dance around, and then I move - to the book-closet, grabbing the Melways off the shelf, lurching back into the warm kitchen while I flick the pages laid over my arm. I’m looking, staring.
Three bodies, three crime scenes, here, here, here. He kidnaps them, keeps them, kills them - but someone else is doing the cleaning and dumping; someone who knows the streets but not the landmarks, not the reconstructions or the...
This is important, this is big. I grab up the Melways and start towards the book-closet, but I only get three steps from the bench before an abrupt pulsing ache blooms low in my abdomen. Suddenly a little trickle of warm wet runs down the inside of my thigh.
I’ll give you all of Sydney Harbour, Paul sings. All that land and all that water.
‘Oh shit,’ I hear myself say. I put a hand under my belly as the trickle strengthens, becomes a gush. ‘Oh shitshitshit!’
I reverse course, head for the phone, leaving damp footprints. The first number I dial is on speed.
‘It’s me... You better come home... Yes, right now,’ I say, and laugh. ‘Good; see you soon.’
The second number I have to look up, and then I have to take a moment while I’m dialling to handle a pain.
‘Arty Shaw for Jim Templeton please... wait, please don’t put me on hold! Okay, thanks.’
I compose myself, looking around the inside of the house. Something is about to change, something dramatic is about to happen.
‘Jim! Jim, it’s me...fantastic, that’s good...look, this might be something. This guy who’s doing the dumping, he’s just going by the book. He put the first one in a CleanAway near Davis Street, but he didn’t know about the payphone near the corner, or he wouldn’t have done it, knowing he’d have potential witnesses. D’you understand?
‘And the second one - that was at the end of Raleigh Grove, but that street’s a No Through now - that’s why we got the clue on Kerferd, he had to backtrack before getting onto Bulla Road.
The third one, he was a bit smarter, but he’s still...’ I have to pause then, take a breath.
Then I continue. ‘Like I said, he’s got no idea about the landmarks on those streets, Jim. He’s just picking them out of the Melways for ease of access - near the on-ramps for the freeway.
‘We’re looking for someone from out of Melbourne, who’s using the Melways to pick his dumpsites and escape-routes. You should be looking for relatives from out of town.’
That’s when I have to stop and breathe, and everything goes a bit white, and that’s when Jim asks me if I’m okay.
‘You know,’ Anna points out drily, ‘you’re only perpetuating your own myth. They’ll be talking about this at the station for eons: “Oh my god, she called it in while she was in labour?”
I smile into the phone, seeing Brian and Jeanette through the bedroom door. Jack grins sunnily from the end of the bed.
‘Well, the important thing will be that it’s useful’
‘Knocking down the list to a single suspect - yeah, you could say it’s useful.’
‘Well, good,’ I say tiredly. ‘Let me know when they n
ail him. I think I’m going to have a bit of a holiday from Death World for a while.’
‘What did you call it?’
‘Oh, nothing.’
But it’s not nothing; it’s less than nothing. It’s gone now, maybe not forever but certainly for a good long while.
Because this is where it starts.
I lie next to you on the bed, your face level with mine, cushion-assisted. The pillows are soft, warmed by us. I touch your cheek, and it is like touching air. Your skin is still nebulous, the pads of my fingers dip onto you, and you lap against me. We are never so soft again.
We are under the covers. You snuffle, and I tug the brushed-cotton blanket closer to your face. I am alive to your every sensitivity.
Sweat is drying in my hairline, and my pelvis is gently aching. Soon we’ll sleep together; my hand lying over you, the way you’re used to, our hearts still beating in unison.
This is where it starts.
It starts with you, my beautiful, beautiful son.
<
Tallow
Eleanor Marney
Dear Tunney and Peter,
I’ve been in such conundrums about this letter. I didn’t know when to give it to you, or if I should give it to you at all. I considered enclosing it with my Will but finally decided that would be unfair. The posthumous surprise is the coward’s way out, I believe. I didn’t want you to feel like I was side-stepping the fallout from all this. I didn’t want it to be that way.
So I’ve written this to be given to you both on the 25th anniversary of our aloneness. I should apologise before I begin - this is not a happy story, but I must tell it anyway. James pressed me not to do it; he thinks you will contact the police. Maybe you will. I will have to trust you both. Whatever happens, I will have to bear it.
A part of me wants to ask your pardon, beg your forgiveness, but another part of me stands resolutely beyond that. I did what I did for you both, and I have a dogged feeling about it: that things happened as they did, and I can’t change them now in any case.
I don’t have regrets; which isn’t to say that I don’t still have nightmares...
This is how you make a candle.
Cut your tallow into pieces, then place the pieces into a large double boiler, over water that is already gently bubbling. Stir the tallow until it reaches 71 Celsius, and is completely melted.
Add the colour chips or scent to the melted medium - this is really a matter of personal taste. Keep in mind that anything added will affect the way the candle burns. But raw tallow can have a meaty smell, and you might not fancy the amber greasy look; like yellowing teeth or tobacco-stained fingers.
Cut the wicks to the desired length of the candle, plus five inches, and tie the wicks to the iron broach. Check that the temperature of the tallow is still 71C, then dip the wicks in the tallow for a few seconds. Lift back out, and allow the candles to cool between dippings, about a minute or so. Once the weight of the tallow stiffens and straightens the wicks, things will get easier. Make sure the wet candles aren‘t touching each other.
Continue dipping and cooling. Repeat the process until the candles have reached the desired, thickness, or forever, until your back and shoulders ache, and you wonder if this whole terrifying ghastly business will ever end.
Flora’s cards are labeled Tallow, just the creamy square of 240gsm with the secretive dark script, her name and the contact for the shop, very much like an exclusive club, a health spa maybe. The products are exclusive, you know it’s a good way to make something popular - people usually desire the things they think they’ll never attain. Flora recognises that yearning, but she doesn’t feel it any more. She has Douglas, and Tunney and Peter, to assuage it. She mines it only as a plank for the business now, working it into a recipe for commercial success. People desire, they desire candles and soap, even though candles and soap are really just fat and lye mixed together in the right proportions.
…standing there in your gown, smiling your Helios and Thank Yous for Coming to My Wedding, when Bev Dingle comes up, clutching her Winnie Blues, already half-pissed before the reception has properly started. Heedless of Douglas’ tall morning-suited bulk, she squeezes your arm. ‘Oh Flo,’ she sozzles out, ‘Oh Flo yer mum would be so proud, I dunno how ya snagged him, but ya snagged a bewdy there Flo, ya lucky girl,’ and then the press of the queue is pushing her down the reception line. You and Douglas exchange quick grins before you straighten, three more hours to go and you smile, stretch your face...
The soap is cut with a butcher’s knife from immense pale-grained blocks. She only sells by weight.
The candles are not for the faint-hearted. They are big, bigger around than Flora’s own thigh, and some as tall as herself. She likes the scale of them, an art form. She never uses colour, keeps the ice-white, or honey-gold, or brown-pear tones, as the focus. Natural is very in, like recycled wood paneling or free-range eggs.
...Dad only lived long enough to see the twins arrive, ‘the podling pair’ he called them, and he never liked you talking with that Melbourne accent, but the twins, weren’t they something, jus bewdiful, just what the doctor ordered, right before he had his stroke -
Tunney and Peter like to slide their fingers down the sides of wax mountains. Press their hands against a soap block, and then sniff the lavender on their skin. Flora likes to stand at the entrance to the shop and look at the graduating heights of the cold white pillars, the golden draped waterfall of dangling hand-dipped tapers, the massive chunks of soap, like something she’s chipped off a glacier. The sense of personal accomplishment is fantastic. You can’t buy that.
...but that was after Mum died. She was always into crafty things, making do, making soap, sewing her own clothes, the big Vacola jars labeled Peaches and Stewed Tomatoes, you can still remember the peaches, melting in your mouth after all these years...
The shop is entirely neat and pragmatic, much like Flora herself, a stylish amalgam that friends term ‘Quaker modern’; elderly gentrified industrial location and Flora’s old-fashioned wares in combination with glass, white paint, pale wood. She revels in it.
It is like a present, a gift to herself, after years of dutiful marriage and the shepherding of her twin lambs through gestation and infancy and now school-readiness.
Actually, the shop is a present from Douglas, a reward or an apology. Compensation for all the business trips and late-night meetings and the isolation of solo parenting, all wrapped up in an old facade, rejuvenated by limewash and varnished pine.
‘I think it’s more like a present from James,’ Douglas says as he curls an arm around her. She leans into his embrace.
‘Oh, James,’ she says, rolling her eyes.
A year after Douglas had introduced him she finally nailed the accent. Since he talked about himself so little, she waited until Douglas was getting beers from the fridge.
‘Afrikaner,’ she said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Your accent. It is, isn’t it?’
He smiled, not looking at her. ‘Most Australians wouldn’t know an Afrikaans accent if it bit them on the rear,’ he said.
She noticed he doesn’t agree or deny.
‘I remember. From my father’s cricket Saturdays. The radio broadcasts.’
‘Very clever,’ he said approvingly.
Flora still doesn’t know if it’s the truth.
James Fisk is their accountant. Douglas has known James for years, years before he knew Flora. That Douglas and James now work in the same firm is like a kind of inevitability. James comes for dinner, stays to talk business with Douglas. He’s part of the furniture of their lives, ordering the nature of it to some extent.
Now’s a good time to take a holiday, James says, before capital expenditure comes due. You should negative gear the rental property. You’ve been wanting that industrial tankage unit for the workshop, haven’t you? James says. You should buy it.
Really? Flora smiles, sipping her wine.
Seri
ously.
You said yourself it’ll make things easier, Douglas prompts with a grin. Increased productivity.
No, seriously, James says. And then I can claim on it for you in July.
The use of tallow or lard was the catalyst for the Indian Mutiny of 1857. To load the Enfield Rifle, the sepoys had to bite the cartridge open. It was believed that the paper cartridges were greased with lard, which was considered unclean by Muslims, or tallow, regarded as sacred to Hindus.
