by Joy Dettman
Bob got out of the car to walk behind Sarah while she checked the front door and windows. There’d been no break-in.
‘You’ve bought a wreck,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Sarah admitted, and looked where he was looking, at the guttering. It had grass – or trees – growing in it, and was more rust than metal. The wrought-iron railing around the front porch may not have seen paint since it had been installed in the sixties.
But they didn’t have to move in with Bob and his mother; they didn’t have to move ever again, and even if they couldn’t find workers to make their house beautiful, they could find someone to pull it down and build a new house, because the land it stood on was their own, and to Gramp, holding on to his last few acres had been everything.
‘How much did you pay for it?’
‘Six hundred and fifty.’
‘The land is worth that much,’ he admitted.
DAVE AND POP
On Wednesday, Marni found a painter opposite the school gate. He was loading a ladder onto a paint-spattered wagon, and she nicked across the road to ask him if he had time to paint a very messy old house.
‘Where do you live?’ he asked.
‘Not far around the next corner,’ she said, and gave him their address. He didn’t write it down, but half an hour later his spattered wagon was in their driveway and he was pressing Mrs Vaughn’s doorbell.
Marni ran around to the front yard. ‘Mum’s not home from work yet,’ she said. ‘I can let you in to have a look.’
‘Inherited it, did she?’
‘Yeah,’ Marni said, because it was easier.
‘How bad is she inside?’
‘Worse than outside.’ Which looked pretty bad today. April was over and the Magic Faraway Tree was losing its leaves and making a mess about doing it, and without its green to hide behind that poor old house looked worse. She retrieved the key from beneath the pot, and, not feeling good with him standing behind her, she handed him the key then stepped back to wait on the porch steps. He was tall as well as heavy, and close up he looked … rough … and she’d found him on the street, didn’t know his name, or phone number, and shouldn’t have invited him here.
But she liked the way he’d called that poor old house she, like it was a living thing, old and unlived in, unloved and pink with embarrassment because no one had ever loved it enough to give it a bit of care.
Mrs Vaughn’s ghost didn’t scare him out as fast as it had scared out the last painter they’d got inside. She was beginning to think he’d moved in when she heard him coming back up the passage. She held her ground on the steps and looked at him expectantly. He didn’t shake his head. He shook the wrought-iron railing, gave it a kick with his paint-splattered boot where it joined onto the house. He rapped around the corner window frame with huge knuckles, then stepped back, rubbed his chin, and said, ‘Your mum’s got herself a good solid old house. You don’t get rooms that size these days, or those ceilings. She’s got big problems, though. That spouting, for one.’
‘Spouting?’ Marni asked, and he pointed up at the rusted-out guttering. ‘Oh, yes. She’s waiting on a quote to fix that. Will you be able to do the painting?’
‘It’s not going to be cheap,’ he said.
‘She can pay you. She’s got a good job … in the city.’
He was going. She cleared the steps to let him go. He didn’t go far.
‘I’ve got a few small jobs on right now,’ he said, and Marni waited for what came next, but he didn’t say he was too busy, only asked for Mum’s phone number. Marni gave him her own and he said he’d get back to her.
On Saturday morning they drove their car to a place in Vermont to have its scratches checked out, and the man who checked them didn’t believe the nearly eight thousand and sixty kilometres on the speedo.
‘Only driven to church on Sundays,’ he said.
‘To doctors and funerals and into a fence,’ Marni said, and when he told them how much it would cost, Marni told him they’d get back to him.
The painter didn’t get back to them, not that week.
They were sorting through old clothing on Sunday night, deciding what to keep and what to toss, when a current affairs program started and they saw their policeman on it, Ross, from the plane to Perth. He was speaking about their two hundred thousand dollar reward – offered anonymously by a wellwisher.
‘Robert De Niro,’ Sarah said.
‘Robert De Niro is old.’
‘I mean before, when he is young,’ Sarah said.
‘You liked him.’
‘You talk rubbish,’ Sarah said.
‘I meant the actor, Mum.’
‘Oh,’ Sarah said.
Their policeman spoke about Danni, missing since the fifteenth of March. He spoke of Monica, who had survived for two months and two days. The woman interviewer asked if he had reason to believe that Danni Lane was still alive, and his reply gave Marni goose bumps.
‘She’s alive, but time is running out for her,’ he said.
‘Do you think she’s still alive, Mum?’
‘I don’t know,’ Sarah said.
‘Is it possible that Danni died within days of her abduction, as with Lisa Simms?’ the interviewer said.
The man they knew as Ross didn’t reply for a moment. The camera stayed on his face, then he looked right at it and spoke directly to Marni.
‘Other than the mark of bondage on the ankle of Nancy Yang, the killer has not marked his victims. As stated in earlier interviews, Lisa’s injuries were consistent with those of a hit-and-run victim.’
‘Do you have any new leads?’
‘The short answer is no. An abduction/murder, where there is no relationship between the offender and the victim, is always the most difficult. We have no crime scene, no obvious motive.’
‘During the early weeks of the investigation into Danni’s abduction I believe Crime Stoppers received hundreds of calls. Are all calls followed up?’
‘We’ve received thousands of calls. The public is our eyes and our ears, and to answer your question, yes, every call is investigated.’
‘Is it realistic to believe that Danni is alive?’
‘The taking of those girls is a game of the killer’s own devising. He made the rules with his first abduction and to this point he has not deviated. We believe that he will deliver Danni’s body to a place where it will be easily found. She hasn’t been found, so she is alive.’
The woman spoke of the other victims, of Danni’s parents. Ross kept his replies brief. She mentioned the FBI profiler then the channel cut to a commercial and Sarah and Marni returned to their sorting until Ross returned and spoke of the killer’s cars. They showed pictures, and one of the cars was a metallic dusky blue Hyundai hatchback, and it was Mrs Vaughn’s car – their car.
‘He’s Raymond Vaughn, Mum,’ Marni wailed. ‘We’ve bought the murder car!’
‘Stop!’ Sarah said.
‘He used to drive it all the time. He used to take it for whole weekends to charge up its battery. It’s him, and I’m going to call Crime Stoppers.’
‘You call nobody,’ Sarah said. ‘They make thousand of the same car, same blue.’
‘Ross said we’re his eyes and ears, and Raymond’s got murderer’s eyes and he probably poisoned his mother too, or suffocated her with one of her pillows – which is why he had to buy new pillows and stuff for her bed.’
‘Move,’ Sarah said. Marni was standing in front of the screen. She moved and turned to look Ross in the eye, and he looked at her eyes, and he spoke to her.
‘We are few. Our resources are stretched to the limit. You are many. Don’t forget Danni Lane. Help us find her before her time runs out.’
Then gone, to be replaced by a smiling man wanting to sell them funeral insurance, no medical test necessary. He got muted.
‘How do you know that Raymond Vaughn hasn’t got Danni hidden out – out where he lives?’
‘Because he married, and you stop now
, or you watch no more these things.’ She held up a pair of tattered denim shorts. ‘You want these?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think I fight them off you for washing last summer.’
‘I wasn’t a millionaire then.’
CHAINS
He seemed to live here now or to be somewhere around here for most of every day. He emptied her bucket every day. She heard water running outside but never heard a toilet flush.
He taped her hands and mouth when he went away for hours at a time, but he never left her taped up at night and his kitchen stove never went out so his kitchen never got freezing cold. He still gave her cold baked beans and spaghetti, which she refused to eat unless she opened the tins, but he also gave her other things, a fried egg sandwich one day, and today he’d come back from wherever he’d been with fish and chips.
She’d smelt them when he’d carried the parcel inside, smelt them more when he’d unwrapped the paper, and had almost choked on saliva behind his grey sticky tape.
He used big scissors to cut that tape from her wrists, then left her to peel off what he’d put over her mouth while he served half of the fish and chips to a party plate then tossed her what was left in the paper. There was a huge slab of fish and a pile of chips in it, and a slice of lemon. She’d eaten the lot, even the slice of lemon.
He always took his laptop computer with him when he went out, probably to charge the battery somewhere. He spent a lot of time on his laptop and drank a lot of red wine from a plastic glass. If he was on the internet, he must have had one of those flash drive wireless things. There were no cords in this room for broadband, no cords at all.
He had an old-fashioned power point near the sink and a light globe, but no power. People had their power cut off if they didn’t pay their bills, but he didn’t look poverty stricken.
It was like her whole world was this room and she knew it well now. Outside was outer space, and like the scientists, she could only make an educated guess at what was out there. Her father and grandfather would still be out there searching for her.
Animals that got caught in traps gnawed their feet off to get free. A man in America who’d got his arm trapped by a rock had cut it off with a pocketknife. If she’d had a knife, she would have cut her foot off. If she’d had a knife, she wouldn’t need to cut her foot off. She’d cut that collar off. If she’d had a screwdriver, she would have unscrewed the chain from the wall. She didn’t have anything. He wouldn’t even give her a spoon to get the beans out of the can.
She’d tried using the edge of the padlock as a screwdriver. It was too long, too fat, and her foot kept getting in the way of it. She’d tried rubbing the chain against the chimney bricks, which had marked the bricks but not the chain.
She’d felt like his dog, but he knew she wasn’t, because all she had to do was point to the bucket, and he’d go outside or up the passage and give her time to use it, which meant that he had to be totally mad. He’d taken her clothes off and put the other ones on her, but he left the room so she could squat on that bucket. Nothing about him made sense.
When she’d been in the cage, he’d never emptied that bucket. Out here, he washed it every morning and poured disinfectant into it. Probably didn’t like its stink in his kitchen.
She stank. Her hair stank. She washed her face and hands some nights, with water from her bottle. She’d asked him for paper towels a couple of times but hadn’t got any. She’d asked him for something to tie back her hair. Hadn’t got that either. It was like he didn’t hear her, like she’d stopped hearing that dog barking.
He’d heard the helicopter this morning. It had been flying so low it made the house shake. She’d thought police helicopter and he had too, because he’d come running inside. The dog had barked at it.
In the cage, the only way she could tell night from day had been that grey smudge of comet. Out here there was no total dark. He lit his lantern at night and when he put it out and went to bed she could still see glimmers of light from the stove and sometimes a long wide slit of moonlight that came in through the side of the blind.
She did her exercises when he went to bed. She conjured up Michelle and did squats with her, and jumps on the mattress, push-ups, sit-ups, the splits and leg lifts like she’d had to do when her mother had made her go to ballet, and after that pile of fish and chips she’d have kilojoules to spare tonight.
She added more rules to her cartoon man locked in the castle video game.
Get strong – bold print and underlined.
Keep him calm.
Never take your eyes off him.
Check everything he gives you to eat that doesn’t come out of a can. Wished he’d go to bed. Her bones were aching from sitting.
March, the middle of March when the outside world had ended, and with no bars to count, she’d lost track of how many days. She counted bricks now. Knew that April must have been over.
ECOSYSTEM
No one came forward to claim the two hundred thousand dollar reward. On Monday, the plumber sent his quote, via email. It wasn’t cheap but they wanted to get something started so they sent a fast email back accepting his price and asking how soon he could do it. He replied and said he’d be unable to start until the trees leaning on the house were cut back.
Then on Tuesday, the painter with the paint-spattered wagon and boots drove in as Marni was leaving for school.
‘Mum about?’ he asked.
‘She goes to work at half past seven,’ Marni said. He gave her his handwritten quote. She didn’t look at it, just asked him how soon he could start.
‘I’d need to speak to your mum,’ he said. ‘Ask her to give me a tingle, will you?’
‘She’s deaf, but she said if I ever saw you again to tell you we want it done as soon as possible. Have you got an email address?’
‘That’s a good place to stay away from,’ he said. ‘Tell your mum I’d have to fit her in between a few smaller jobs, but if she’s happy with the quote, I can make a start on it this arvo.’
‘Hold on a tick,’ Marni said and she sent his words via text, hoping her mother would feel her mobile’s vibration. She did, and her reply came back fast.
Tell him to go ahead. Ask if he can buy the paint and how much deposit he wants.
Marni read the text to him, then offered her mobile so he could read it for himself.
He refused it. ‘The wife’s got one,’ he said. ‘Tell your mum, a couple of hundred will do for starters. I’ll need to do a lot of cleaning and repairing before she needs to worry about paint.’
He already knew where that key was hidden, and before she left for school, he told her to call him Dave and he gave her his landline number. She keyed it into her mobile as she ran.
His old wagon was parked in the driveway when she returned. Mrs Vaughn’s front door was wide open, so she crept in and caught him up a ladder, washing the kitchen ceiling.
‘G’day,’ he said. ‘There’s a couple of colour charts on the bench. You might get your mum to have a look over them.’
‘White will do.’
‘A bit of colour never goes astray—’
‘We just want it to look clean.’
‘I’ll go snow-blind,’ he said, and he climbed down from his ladder to talk. ‘Tell your mum she’s got big problems in her shower. There’s an ecosystem of mould growing in there. Painting it will be wasting my time and her money, love.’
‘Can we fix it?’
‘Anything’s fixable. It needs stripping back to basics though, and your pipes need looking at.’
‘You can’t do it?’ she asked, hopefully.
‘I took offence at tiling forty years ago and got out of the game. My old man owned his own tiling business for thirty years. Want me to ask him if he’d be interested in taking a look?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘He’s as deaf as a post and no Speedy Gonzales.’
Marni didn’t know Speedy Gonzales. ‘We don’t care. We live out
the back,’ she said, and back he went up his ladder to wash the build-up of nicotine from the ceiling, and Marni went out the back door, also wide open. Maybe he needed the fresh air.
Sarah wrote him a cheque that night for five hundred dollars. He didn’t turn up before Marni left so she took it with her to school. His wagon wasn’t in the driveway when she returned, and maybe she knew why. Mrs Vaughn’s ghost was doing her block inside, smashing ghostly plates. Her front door was open.
Marni stood listening for a moment, then crept in – and ran into a very old Dave, pushing a wheelbarrow full of broken tiles.
‘Hold that screen door for me, darlin’,’ he said. She held it. He came out, upended his barrow on the porch and went back for more. She followed him.
‘I’m Marni,’ she said.
‘Call me Pop,’ he said.
For the next two hours, she became Pop’s apprentice. While he did the wrecking, she did the loading and the barrow pushing.
He was almost as deaf as her mother and spoke as if it was the rest of the world that was deaf, but they’d wrecked the shower room and built a small mountain of tiles and rotting masonite on the front porch before Dave arrived at a quarter to six to pick up his father.
They found a gardener that night on the internet. He came when he said he would, but started backing off when Marni told him they wanted to get rid of most of the trees.
‘You need a tree lopper, not a gardener,’ he said and made his escape.
They found a tree lopper in the local paper, and when he asked what sort of tree, Marni came clean about their forest. ‘They’re not big trees. There’s just a lot of them.’
He must have driven by to have a look, because he phoned the next night to say he could do the job on Saturday morning, for cash in hand, then told them how much cash he expected to receive in his hand.
Marni hired him. On Friday night they tied rags onto the trees they wanted to keep – the two camellias, the fig and the magnolia – and notes that read, TRIM ONLY PLEASE, and lucky they had because the tree loppers arrived at seven, three big dark-skinned men who parked a truck with a tree-eating machine attached in the street, and within minutes, their chainsaws were cutting and their machine chewing up Mrs Vaughn’s forest. To escape the noise of it, Sarah and Marni went shopping, and when they returned, the spiky plum, the wattle tree and the letterbox had been eaten – and fifty per cent of the camellias, fig and magnolia – and the tree eater was still spitting chips.
