After Ariel: It started as a game

by Diana Hockley

  In the lounge room, she invited him to sit, carefully poured the wine and then plopped down beside him.

  ‘Cheers!’ They clinked glasses. ‘You haven’t said a lot about yourself! What’s the matter? Tell me more?’ She grinned and, greatly daring, stroked the side of his face with a gentle finger.

  He caught her hand and tucked it into his. ‘What else do you want to know?’

  ‘Where you were born, have you any brothers and sisters – are you parents still alive? All that sort of thing.’ She snuggled closer, a thrill shooting through her as he angled his body toward her and leaned close.

  ‘I was born in New South Wales. My parents had a property in the country – sheep and cattle. They’re dead now.’

  Ariel looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Who taught you to play music? You said you could play anything?’

  A flicker of anger played at the edge of his mind at what he perceived as an accusatory tone. He shifted away from her, and picked up his drink. ‘I was about four when I got a drum kit for Christmas and I went on from there. I had to practice every day – clarinet, trumpet – you name it. I had to do hours on the piano too – classical.’ He paused, surprised that he had actually told her all that.

  ‘What? That stuff? I hate classical. It’s booooring!’ Ariel bounced up and went to the family stereo-system where she rummaged around, before holding up a CD for him to check the title. ‘Mozart! My mother’s!’ She rolled her eyes, unaware of his expression hardening.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with Mozart. He’s the greatest composer who ever lived.’ Fourthreetwoone...keep your cool. ‘Put that on and come over here and listen to something decent for a change.’

  Ariel, pouting, put the CD cover down and came toward him as the glorious notes of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto soared through the room. Ariel’s eyes widened momentarily, before she hastened to adopt an expression of indifference.

  Dingo forced a smile and moved to the end of the sofa. ‘Let me give you a foot rub!’ That always got them in. She hesitated a moment and then came back to the sofa, grabbed a cushion off a nearby chair which she placed at the other end of the sofa and settled herself, half lying. He smiled, picked her legs up and took her bare feet in his lap where he proceeded to massage her toes, her arches, then heels and ankles, working along her legs, his beautiful, powerful hands stroking, soothing.

  Ariel purred.

  CHAPTER 5

  Games

  Dingo

  Saturday, 4.30AM.

  Her arms and legs lashed at him. ‘No, no! No don’t!’

  ‘Come on, play with me! You said you would! Remember what we planned...’ His voice came out high-pitched. He forced it lower. ‘Hey baby, come on, you know you liked it back at the house!’

  ‘Get off, you’re hurting...’ She pushed her hands again his chest, as he knelt on her chest, terrified when she realised he was oblivious to the fact that she couldn’t breathe. She was vanishing into the earth under his weight. He felt something give deep inside her body. She tried to scream, but only a stifled grunt came out.

  ‘Hey, not ‘til you let me –’

  Dingo took her face in both of his hands and squeezed until her lips pouted, then angled his head, swooped in and starting kissing her. Ignoring her increasingly feeble struggles, he tightened his hands around her face, pressing into her cheeks, grinding his mouth down, down, uncaring of his own cheek cutting off the air supply to her nose. Strangled sounds emerged from her throat. Oblivious to anything around him, flushed with anger and sexual desire, he tried to pull her jeans down with one hand, sliding one leg back between her thighs. She wriggled her left leg up to flail uselessly at his body. His hands slid, as though by their own volition around her throat. Slowly, Ariel’s struggles weakened, but still he kept his mouth clamped down, her nostrils blocked by his cheek.

  She stilled.

  In the half-light, her face looked crumpled, as though a vacuum pump had sucked the air out of her.

  Something about her lips alerted him to...he pushed his body upright, realising that he had been kneeling on her, hunched over like a gigantic insect, sucking the lifeblood out of her body.

  ‘Ariel?’ She didn’t move. ‘Ariel? Speak to me!’

  He leaned back on his hands, horror slowly seeping through him.

  ‘Ariel? Are you all right?’

  Silence.

  ‘Ariel? Come on, get up. It was only a game.’ He waved his hand in front of her eyes. There was no response. Slowly he got to his feet, tried to pluck the wet denim away from his knees and then stretched a trembling hand to help her up, but Ariel stayed flat on her back, legs crumpled, gazing sightlessly at the rapidly lightening sky.

  The trembling took him by surprise, like on the documentaries, when the lions had caught their meal, the survivors shook for awhile before they settled down and returned to grazing. Fear trickled through his limbs, paralysing his thought processes, rendering him helpless to work out what to do next. What to do? Tears pooled in his eyes; he dashed them away with an impatient hand.

  Suddenly aware of his surroundings, he looked around, expecting to see a row of accusing witnesses pointing fingers at him. He felt like the last person left in the world, but he had company at his feet. Maybe...his heart turned over as he bent to gather her into his arms. Her limbs flopped. The muscles in his arms trembled uncontrollably under her weight, so that he was forced to set her back down and squat uselessly by her body, gasping for oxygen. Now he knew that grief was a colour, not the purple so beloved of religion, or the demented black of Central Europe but a wild, searing agony of red, digging deep no matter how hard he tried to shut it out. The tiny flame of hope which sprang to life with Ariel, flickered and died and left him alone in the bleak morning light. They’d been having fun. Just minutes ago, we were laughing and chasing each other. How had it happened?

  A flash of a baby’s face, so long ago and far away, limp in his hands, and the screaming broke over his mind. Adults all around, the baby being wrenched from his hands, the hush of shock before the sky fell in. I didn’t mean to hurt her! I didn’t meant it – I didn’t mean to hurt her...the beating from the demented woman, slamming him to the floor, the heel of a shoe cracking against the side of his face...his hand went to his head, involuntarily feeling for the scars under his hair, as it had done so many times. You don’t know your own strength! His mother’s voice so clear, the shame branded into his soul that day overwhelmed him with his mother’s constant refrain, so loud that he could swear she was standing nearby.

  Dingo wanted to lash out, to wipe the unctuous expression plastered on her face like the cosmetics she applied so lavishly. He knew she was dead because he’d seen her in her coffin – watched the undertaker screw the lid shut. Even she couldn’t have escaped her fate.

  He snapped back to reality, hunched over Ariel who, like the baby, would never move again. What to do. Branches and tree trunks piled nearby caught his attention. A piece of sacking lay in the grass nearby, half buried in the long grass. He dragged the sacking out, shook it and laid it flat beside Ariel. Trying not look at her face, he rolled her into the middle, shocked by the wetness beneath her.

  A bulge in her tight pocket attracted Dingo’s attention. Metal met his probing fingers and something else. Her house keys! He slipped them into his pocket and then eased a piece of thick paper out, opened the front flap and squinted at the print. Ariel’s used airline ticket from the Sydney to Brisbane flight. What was she doing with it in her pocket? It was then he realised she was probably wearing the jeans in which she’d travelled the day before. He quickly stuffed the ticket into his own pocket, grasped the sides of the sack, partially folded them and dragged the burden over to the pile. He pulled enough branches back to accommodate the bundle underneath and hauled it into the centre.

  Horrified, he gazed for a moment on the lovely, cheeky face on which he had rained kisses only minutes ago and then folded the edge of the sack over it. He reached down, gently ran his hand o
ver her still-warm ankle and pushed her bare, grass-stained feet out of sight, remembering her laughter as she’d shucked her shoes off and danced in the wet grass. ‘Race you to the boatshed!’

  He gathered up her sandals and tucked them underneath the edge of the sacking. Why she wanted to wear such delicate footwear for a dawn walk, he hadn’t bothered to enquire; now they just looked pathetic. Moving quickly, he placed the branches back over her, letting the leafy ends flop down. Finished, he moved back and stared at the pile. There was no sign of anyone underneath, but the furrows scoring the grass clearly indicated that something heavy had been hauled across it. He scuffed his joggers over the tracks, trying to obliterate the signs. If someone came along before the grass dried, they’d see them immediately.

  His hand was shaking so badly that he had to hold his wrist still in order to read the time on his watch. Had only ten minutes passed since – his mind refused to acknowledge what had happened – how it had happened – but some vestige of self-preservation niggled at his tumbling thoughts. He had to get out of there! Behind the trees, the sky was growing lighter by the moment. Splashing downriver sent his heart into overdrive. The rowers! He peered through the overhanging branches of a tree, thankful for its canopy hiding him from the world.

  The calls of the coxswain echoed across the water; the slap of oars sent his heart rate into orbit. The ramshackle boatshed nearby, Ariel had assured him, was no longer in use. ‘No one ever comes down this far – at least not often,’ she’d said with a sly grin.

  A movement in the distance drew Dingo’s eye. A group of walkers were charging through the park toward him – no, they’d turned up the street at the bottom of the green belt. Slowly his pulse slowed; safe for now. His backpack – where was it? Terrified, he turned full circle before he saw it lying on the grass near a fallen branch. He lunged and swooped, breathing heavily as he looped a strap over his shoulder. Safe.

  He pulled the hood of his parka over his head, hoisted his canvas pack onto his back and cast a glance around before turning to leave. Something white attracted his attention; a small piece of paper almost hidden in the grass. He picked it up – a note to Ariel from her mum with a phone number to call and a reminder to pick up the milk from the corner shop. It took several tries before he could stuff it into the pocket of his jeans. Then he noticed Ariel’s mobile phone lying in the grass nearby. What else had he forgotten? He picked it up and wiped it dry with the hem of his T-shirt. Sixty, fifty-eight, fifty-six...Ariel’s parents would call and there’d be no reply! When they came home and found her missing they would start looking for her and they’d find him. All the crime shows on TV showed the cops tracing people through their phones.

  He flipped the lid and checked out her Sent Box, reading her text messages to her friends – and her parents. They’d rung the previous evening as planned, but he knew they’d be calling again that day. A desperate plan materialised. Copying Ariel’s mode of phrasing, he sent a text message to her mother’s mobile phone purporting to be from Ariel, saying that she was going into the city for the day with friends, would stay with one of them and wouldn’t be home until – what would be believable – Tuesday? His fingers sped across the tiny keyboard. How could he finish it? Ah, yes. He scrolled until he found a name he thought he could use, then finished: ‘Gone 2 Heathers, c u tues luv Ariel xxxx’ That should do it.

  Dingo closed the phone with shaking hands, polished it thoroughly on the soft lining of his parka, and then walked down the short slope to the water. After checking there were no rowers in sight, he hurled it as far out into the river as he could, and then took the key out and threw it after the phone. Satisfied that neither would be found, he turned to leave. With one last glance at the pile of foliage up the bank under the trees, he headed back the way they had come, counting his steps as he went, trying not to draw attention to himself by hurrying. He pulled the hood of his jacket over his head and down so that it obscured most of his face.

  His vision blurred with tears which he dashed away, trying to clear the lump of grief in his throat. Stupid, stupid...he shouldn’t have allowed himself to feel for her that fast. He knew better than that, but what red-blooded male wouldn’t take what was offered so willingly and sweetly? But after all they’d been to each other she hadn’t wanted to play again...tears continued to trickle down his cheeks. He swiped them away angrily with the back of his hand. It was her own fault this had happened...one minute they were laughing and kidding, the next she’d gone limp like a tiny, double-barred finch with her chains around her neck. How had it happened? Mother, save me...

  Dingo could hardly see the lines on the pedestrian crossing. He stopped and turned back to count them...twenty three. Why not twenty-four? It wasn’t right. A pale streak of morning light peeped through the trees, throwing a line across the road at his feet. Twenty four! Nothing could happen now that the numbers were even. He took a deep breath, pulled the hood of his parka down to obscure his face and hitched his pack higher onto his back. He couldn’t return to Ariel’s home. They’d cleaned the house up, washed the dishes, cleaned the bath where they’d spent a very happy time and changed the sheets on her bed. ‘Like, mum’s got eyes like a hawk, Doobs. She’ll know straight away I’ve had someone here.’ So he’d left nothing there which would link him to Ariel...the hotel! All his things were at the hotel, but he couldn’t remember in which direction it was.

  Instinct led him toward the West End CBD, striding along, just a man out for an early morning walk, perhaps going to work or off to university, but then his stride got faster as the memories came battling into his mind.

  ‘She disengaged her feet from his persuasive hands, and hoisted herself onto her knees. Laughing into his face, she leaned over the back of the sofa and hauled up cushions which she pitched onto the floor, then slithered down into the nest, pulling him down beside her.

  ‘Seven cushions, why seven? What are they there for?’ He had to make sure the numbers were even before he could concentrate on her. ‘Don’t you have another one?’

  ‘What do you mean, another one? We’re gunna play of course!’ She laughed, noticing his expression, leaped to her feet and plucked another one from a nearby chair. ‘There you are then, if you insist!’ Laughing, she threw herself over his body, pressing her breasts against his chest, seeking his mouth.

  A deep shudder went through him, as he remembered how he’d ripped her shirt open and slipped his hands inside to cup her soft, firm breasts and brought her down to his mouth, and how they’d laughed, naked in the half-light, gazing at each in wonder. He’d cupped her cheek in his hand and softly stroked down her throat, following the track of his hand with kisses.

  Even now, he was getting hard, striding along the pavement, avoiding the cracks – one pace per paver – trying to look as though he knew where he was going, but his mind refused to co-operate. He couldn’t remember the name of the hotel. Then he realised it would be on the receipt in the pocket of his parka. He paused to drag it out, squinting to read it: The Commercial on Grey. He looked around. A dog barked in a yard nearby, startling him and then he realised he was standing at the alleyway leading to the car park belonging to the place, and the sun was coming up. Early morning Saturday workers trundled past toward the city. The sound of a dump truck collecting garbage bins came from just around the corner.

  Faint with hunger and exhaustion, Dingo stumbled up the back steps of the building, hoping no one would see him coming in. He couldn’t collapse. He had to be at the Concert Hall early; there was so much to do before the evening performance.

  Voices and the sound of clattering dishes came from the kitchen nearby, alerting him to the fact that breakfast would be served early for the business types who were in the bar the previous evening – well, if any of them stayed. He recalled noises coming from behind nearby doors as he had gone out to meet Ariel. Okay, so just go upstairs to the room, have a shower and get dressed and come back down with no fuss, no fear.

  One, two, three, fo
ur...he walked lightly up to the top landing and along the hallway to his room. Quietly sliding his key in the lock, he had the door open and whisked inside just as the door opposite started to open. It was vital that no one knew he had been out. He quietly closed his door. Thank God...thank God...I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.

  It was then Dingo remembered the photographer.

  CHAPTER 6

  Into Darkness

  Susan

  Saturday, 8AM.

  David always marvels when my internal clock awakens me when I need to, but that time there was no pleasure in my life-long skill. David had left, goodness knows for how long and doing God knew what. I had made coffee and toast at midnight, as he stashed the final bits and pieces he was taking with him into a battered gym bag which reeked like the proverbial footballer’s jock strap. Probably the whole department had used it at some stage.

  We stood just inside the back door leading to the garage, invisible from the street; he pulled me against his hard body and we kissed as though for the last time. I could feel tension in his muscular frame. I knew – not just suspected – my husband was going into a place of darkness, where men brutalised each other, a world where an undercover agent, or an informer, could be found shot or worse. Undercover means you immerse yourself into the part and think like your opponents – your prey.

  David, as always, had picked up my thoughts. ‘Susan, you’re not to worry. Nothing’s going to happen to me. It’s just a secondment, nothing more – the usual murder, mayhem and drug dealers.’ He drew back and cupped his hands around my face. ‘I’ll keep in touch. Just hang in there and I’ll be home before you know it.’

  Even though I’m a cop, David couldn’t tell me where he was going or what he was doing, but he knew that the less I knew the better and safer for me. Behind us, our dogs had whined, sensing my distress. He turned to fondle their silky ears and then opened the door. ‘I promise you that the moment I’m on the way home, I’ll call you. No matter what time it is.’