Putting the torch down on the bedside table I picked up her hand and felt for the pulse in her wrist. I couldn’t find it, but she might still be alive. I could try CPR, and mouth to mouth, and call an ambulance . . . I had placed both hands, one on top of the other, on her chest before it occurred to me not to be so bloody stupid.
Aunty Rose loathed the indignity of her illness – she had waited this long merely to organise her affairs and ours to her satisfaction. And then, in the capable, orderly manner she applied to everything in her life (with the obvious exception of cookery), she had left us. Even if it were possible to resuscitate her – and knowing Aunty Rose, she’d have made damned sure it wasn’t – I couldn’t do it.
Stepping back, I pointed the torch at her chest. I watched for quite a long time as the storm howled around the old house, but there was no movement of breath under the peacock-coloured bedspread. I straightened her head on the pillow and carefully rearranged her cap before bending to pick up the bottle on the floor.
There was a piece of folded notepaper beside the port bottle, half hidden by the satin fringe of the bedspread. Spud was barking down the hall and another sheet of corrugated iron slapped insistently on the roof, but I ignored the noise and sank into the armchair to read the note.
Aunty Rose had written to me quarterly ever since I left home for university, keeping me up to date with her skirmishes with the mayor (‘the man’s a complete tit, Josephine’), Matt’s latest adventures and the state of her tomato crop. Her letters were always scrawled firmly on that flimsy blue airmail paper that is almost a collector’s item in this age of email, and due to the author’s habit of dealing with her correspondence over breakfast they were usually filled with toast crumbs. The writing of this letter, though, was faint and thready, as if the effort of holding the pen had been almost too much for the writer.
My dear Josephine,
This is not suicide; it is simply the desire to spare us all the discomfort of my final nose-dive towards the grave. I have thoroughly enjoyed my life. I rather expected to enjoy another thirty years, but there you have it.
Having already asked far more of you than is reasonable, I do not hesitate to ask still more. Please remove the evidence before calling Rob Milne to pronounce me dead. I do not envisage him asking any awkward questions, but if he does, show him this note. He is a decent chap with far too much sense to subject you all to a coroner’s inquiry.
Matthew will inherit the house and land, and Kim my jewellery and savings. My only specific bequests to you are four dogs and one pig, but mentally I have bracketed you with Matthew. I confess I have bracketed you with Matthew for some time.
My best love to you all,
Rose
I laughed through my tears and, carefully refolding the note, put it into the pocket of my much-maligned onesie. Trust Aunty Rose to sweep out of life with a last grand gesture rather than just dwindling into oblivion. Never have I known a person with such flair or courage or kindness, or with such boundless tolerance – or, come to think of it, such a boundless capacity for wine. We were going to miss her terribly.
Torch in hand I strode down the hall to the kitchen. I collected a black plastic rubbish sack, a bar of Sard Wonder Soap, an armful of towels and the kettle, and went back to Aunty Rose’s room to remove the evidence.
Ten minutes later I sat back on my heels and shone my torch at the piece of carpet that had been stained with port. I had wet it and soaped it and jumped up and down on a towel to wick up the moisture, and now not the merest trace of a stain remained. I was quite a good accessory after the fact – perhaps if I tired of physiotherapy I could turn to crime. Or, more realistically, to carpet cleaning.
I collected up the empty foil sheets of pain medication and the port bottle, peered under the bed in case I’d missed any foil sheets, and played the torch slowly around the room. Everything was peaceful and neat, and the sequins on the bedspread glinted softly in the torchlight. I bent and kissed the still face on the pillow, swiped the back of a hand across my wet eyes and pulled the door shut behind me. I would put the towels in the wash and the pill packets down the offal hole, and then discover the body at seven and call the doctor.
From outside there was another of those ghastly screeches that sounded like someone trying to dismember a live piglet with a hacksaw, but I had lost all interest in the state of the roof.
When I came back into the kitchen Spud was at the door, still barking. ‘It’s okay, Spud, I can hear it too.’ And shooting back the bolt on the kitchen door I opened it and stepped out onto the porch, black plastic rubbish bag in one hand and torch in the other.
Spud pushed past me and stopped dead, growling.
‘Spud!’ I protested, stepping into my gumboots and dragging Aunty Rose’s ancient oilskin off its peg. A gust of wind caught it as I tried to put it on and it flapped wildly. ‘Would you please move, idiot dog?’ The torch beam swept across the back lawn as I wrestled with the oilskin, briefly catching a figure that cowered away from the light, and I screamed in terror.
It barely looked human. It was some kind of malevolent goblin, and beside it crouched a shapeless dark blot like the gebbeth in A Wizard of Earthsea. I clutched at my chest just like a heroine in one of Graeme’s over-acted cult horror films before realising that the blot was in fact covered with ginger bristles. It was just Percy, and Percy wouldn’t be consorting with the forces of evil. I steadied my torch hand and the goblin turned into the drenched figure of Bob McIntosh, spotlighted against the woodshed door.
‘Bob?’ I called. I dropped my incriminating black sack and stepped off the porch into the driving rain, pulling Aunty Rose’s oilskin tight around me.
I thought for a moment he was going to turn and flee, but instead he shrank back against the side of the woodshed. Spud stood stiffly at my side, and Percy waddled forward to snuffle at the pocket of the oilskin for possible treats. As a guard pig he was a miserable failure; surely the very first rule is not to fraternise with the prowler. Of course the price of Percy’s cooperation is pretty low – my estimate would be one chocolate biscuit.
‘What are you doing here?’ I demanded, shining the torch at Bob. He put up a shaking hand to block the light, and I lowered the torch just a fraction.
‘I – I just came to see if you were alright,’ he quavered.
‘And how is skulking round the house going to tell you that?’
‘I just wanted to check . . .’
‘To check what?’ I spat.
‘Your roof,’ said Bob, his eyes lifting to the house behind me in sudden inspiration. ‘You’ve lost some iron off the roof. The rain will come in.’
‘Yes,’ I said coldly. ‘Thank you. Go away.’
He took a sudden step forward and I retreated, startled. ‘You shouldn’t be outside in this awful weather, Josie. Now, let’s go inside and have a nice cup of tea, hmm?’ He reached out as if to lay a hand on my arm and I backed off another step.
‘Josie,’ he said, ‘I just want to look after you.’
‘Bob,’ I said firmly, ‘skulking round in the dark isn’t looking after someone. It’s sick. Go away!’ And I think I even stamped my foot for extra emphasis.
His smile never wavered, although the rain was streaming off the end of his nose and plastering his sparse hair against his scalp. ‘Now, now, Josie. Don’t let’s get worked up, or we might wake your poor sick aunty. And we wouldn’t want that, would we? We wouldn’t want to scare the poor lady.’
At that, I got properly angry. ‘Get away from me,’ I said bitingly. ‘Go away, you poisonous little worm, or I’ll call the police.’
‘The phone’s sure to be out,’ Bob informed me. ‘Now, Josie . . .’ He reached out and grasped me by the elbow, and I kicked him squarely in the groin. He crumpled onto the wet grass, and I felt nothing but satisfaction.
Bob made a high-pitched wheezing noise then pushed himself shakily onto his hands and knees before staggering to his feet. He tottered around the side of th
e woodshed and let himself out through the wooden gate under the walnut tree. I watched him vanish into the rainy dark without the smallest twinge of remorse.
I marched back to the house, picked up the rubbish bag and carried it across to the offal hole. Dragging back the heavy concrete cover I dropped it in. Evidence removed.
Turning, I shone the torch up at the roof. At least two sheets of iron had been peeled back to expose the naked beams beneath and a trailing length of guttering flapped scarf-like in the wind. It was as if the old house, without its mistress, lacked the heart or strength to defy the elements any longer and was giving up the unequal struggle. I shivered, suddenly tearful and forlorn rather than invigorated by righteous fury, and Spud pressed his wet body comfortingly against my leg.
I stroked the broad grizzled head and followed him across the lawn to the kitchen door. I opened it and he trotted in, stopping in the middle of the floor to shake himself briskly before retiring to his Spiderman beanbag by the stove. I snatched my keys and phone off the bench and ran down the path to my car. Matt was only just across the road, warm and reassuring and entirely capable of dealing with the situation. He would know what to do about the roof, and if Bob managed to extract his testicles from somewhere up by his liver and came back bent on revenge he would know what to do about that too.
Chapter 37
I BARRELLED DOWN Aunty Rose’s drive in my little car, shot out across the road and spun left up Matt’s tanker track. As I breasted the last slope something loomed out of the darkness in front of the car. I stamped hard on the brakes and slid to a halt about a foot away from the quad bike, abandoned at the edge of the track.
Leaping out of the car I scanned the immediate surroundings and failed to find Matt either lying unconscious in the ditch or wandering the open hillside. Bob, I thought wildly. Bob’s got him. And a vision presented itself to my overwrought brain, of Matt lying in a patch of scrub with blood from his multiple stab wounds congealing around him.
Or, I thought, dragging myself back from the brink of hysteria, the bike stopped and he had to leave it there. It might pay to at least check he wasn’t safe in bed before falling to my knees and rending the onesie in grief and despair.
I leapt back into the car, attempted a handbrake start and promptly stalled. Idiot. Okay, handbrake engaged, clutch in, turn the key – there you go. Around the bike, turn in at Matt’s gate, pull up behind the ute, just here . . . Again I leapt out of the car, and dashed across the lawn to hammer breathlessly on the back door. ‘Matt! Matt!’
The door was unlocked, and kicking off my gumboots I stumbled in, torch in hand. ‘Matt!’
There was no answer, and when I reached his bedroom door to shine the torch across the empty unmade bed I nearly did crumple despairingly to my knees. He had left Aunty Rose’s at nine, and he must have got home because the ute was here, but he hadn’t made it back in after checking the cows. It was – I checked my watch in the torchlight – quarter to four now. Where the hell was he?
I went slowly back up the hall to the untidy kitchen and leant against the bench with my head in my hands. The wind had dropped and the only sound was the steady relentless drumming of rain on the roof. There must of course be some perfectly logical explanation for Matt’s absence, if I could only think of it. Of course Bob McIntosh hadn’t murdered him in a frenzy of insane jealousy – that sort of thing doesn’t actually happen to ordinary people. I bet, said a small cold voice inside my head, that everyone who ends up in the middle of a homicide investigation thought it could never happen to them.
I suppose it was only a minute or so before I pushed myself up straight and wiped my nose Amber-like on the back of my hand. I would go to the cowshed. Perhaps Matt was calving a cow. Or – or cleaning the vat. At quarter to four in the morning. And from the shed I’d go next door to his mother’s, and if he wasn’t there – although I realised with a spasm of relief that of course he would be; she’d have summoned him to deal with some storm-related crisis – we’d call the police.
THE COWSHED WAS dark, and silent except for one calf that bawled sleepily back when I shouted. I drove far too fast back down the wet track, my fingers clenched white on the steering wheel. I swerved around the bike and out onto the road, and lost control for a terrifying second as I met a sheet of surface water. Grimly I straightened the car and continued up the road to the King homestead.
The house was dark, and I realised suddenly that if Matt was here he’d surely have come in the ute. Which was still at his place. But I got out, seeing as I was here, and ran up the path to the back door.
I pounded on the door and then grabbed the handle to try it. They’d never hear me over the rain – I’d have to bang on bedroom windows and frighten them out of their skins – but the door opened beneath my hand and pitched me forward into the hall. ‘Hazel! Hazel! Kim! Matt!’ I groped for a light switch and found that the power was out here too.
Torch in hand I searched the house, carefully opening every door although it was obvious nobody was home. The curtains were drawn and the beds neatly made up, and in Kim’s room a battalion of stuffed animals looked incuriously back at me from the armchair under the window.
With shaking hands I pulled my phone out of my pocket and scrolled through the numbers. Matt’s number rang out, so I tried Hazel. ‘Hello?’ she said tremulously, answering on the second ring, and I nearly dropped the phone in relief.
‘Hazel,’ I said, ‘it’s Jo.’
‘Oh, Josie,’ Hazel wailed.
‘Where are you?’ I asked.
‘At the hospital. Waikato.’
‘Where’s Matt?’
Hazel began softly and piteously to cry. I slid down the wall of her hallway – my legs didn’t seem to want to hold me up. ‘Is – is he dead?’ My voice came out as a hoarse croak, which was all I could manage from a throat stiff with horror. His mother continued to sob broken-heartedly into the other end of the phone, and I wondered dully just how on earth I was going to keep breathing without him.
‘Josie! JOSIE!’
I started, and picked up my phone from where it had dropped into my lap.
‘JOSIE!’ Kim howled into my ear.
‘What?’ I asked numbly.
‘Matt’s been hurt. He’s just come out of surgery.’
Hurt. Not dead. The relief rose up in my throat and nearly choked me.
‘Josie? Are you there?’
‘He’s not dead?’ I gasped.
‘No. No! He’s got some broken ribs, and they were worried about internal bleeding or something, but they seem to think it’s stopped. Liver lacerations, the doctor said.’
‘It was Bob,’ I told her.
‘Bob? What was Bob?’
‘Who hurt Matt,’ I said stupidly.
‘It wasn’t Bob,’ said Kim. ‘It was Cilla.’
‘Cilla?’ I repeated blankly. What on earth was Cilla doing lurking in the stormy darkness, bent on murder? I wouldn’t have thought she’d have it in her.
‘She hit him on the drive.’
‘What with?’ Scythe? Spade? Manicure scissors? Nothing in this whole horrible nightmare made any sense whatsoever.
‘Her ute,’ Kim said, in a careful voice. ‘She didn’t see him in time – she ran into the bike. Josie, are you alright?’
‘No!’ I said wildly. ‘I couldn’t find Matt, or you guys, and Aunty Rose is dead, and – and Bob McIntosh was skulking round outside the house, and . . .’ And at that point I lost it completely and burst into tears.
It was an inexcusable thing to do to an eighteen-year-old who was already propping up a hopeless mother. There was a brief pause on the other end of the line, and then Kim murmured very softly, ‘Is she really?’
‘Y-yes,’ I wept. ‘Kim, I’m s-sorry . . .’
‘Oh, thank God,’ whispered Kim, which was unexpected. But then she added, ‘She’d have been so worried.’
From somewhere behind her came Hazel’s voice, shrill with anxiety. ‘Kimmy? What’s wrong?�
�
‘Hang on, Mum,’ said Kim impatiently. ‘Josie, what did you mean about Bob?’
‘It’s okay,’ I said, taking a long shaky breath. ‘I kicked him, and he ran away.’
‘You what?’
‘Kicked him. In the balls. I think he’s been hanging around the house at night.’ I shuddered; the idea of having Bob McIntosh observe my love life made me want to take a nice hot bath with caustic soda and a wire brush.
There was another pause as Kim digested this. ‘Where are you now?’ she asked.
‘At your place.’
‘Lock yourself in – Mum, be quiet, I’ll tell you in a minute – Josie, I’ll call you as soon as we’ve spoken to Matt’s doctor, okay?’
‘Okay,’ I said obediently.
I put down the phone, rested my forehead on my knees and cried. It seemed, just lately, to be my only response to good news. I’ve always felt that dissolving into tears is one of the feebler and less useful ways of dealing with a situation, but sometimes nothing else will do.
At length I picked up the phone again and scrolled to Andy’s number. He answered straight away. ‘Kim just rang,’ he said by way of greeting. ‘Jo, are you okay? Do you want me to take you up to Waikato?’
‘No, thank you,’ I said, not without regret. ‘Andy, how would you feel about helping me milk two hundred cows?’
Chapter 38
ANDY’S FLATMATE WADE came along to help with the milking. His first act was to catch the toe of one gumboot on the half-step leading into the milk room and fall heavily against the hot-water cylinder. ‘Turn on the fucking lights, would you?’ he roared. His voice was barely audible over the rain pelting against the corrugated-iron roof.
‘The power’s out,’ I shouted back, pointing my torch in his direction. ‘There’s a generator in the implement shed.’ Or at least there had been fifteen years ago, when last I’d milked here in a power cut.
Sure enough, the generator was still there, underneath three hessian cow covers and about a thousand electric-fence standards. But it weighed one metric tonne (a conservative estimate) and the implement shed was across the tanker loop from the cowshed. We manoeuvred it painfully through the deluge and hooked it up in a laborious and amateurish sort of way. To my astonished delight it actually started, with a roar like a 747 taking off, and I turned on the lights.
Dinner at Rose's Page 27
