The bottom bedroom was down under the level of the street, like a sump in the earth, with no sun and no warmth. He went and stood before the closed door, saw the fresh wounds in the wood where the workman’s crowbar had forced the lock. His mouth suddenly went dry and his hand began to shake as he lifted it. The image of a dream he’d had years before flashed, unbidden, into his mind. Walking through a desert, dying of thirst, he’d come upon a stone structure with just a single door; wooden and painted blue. He’d stood before the door and had clearly heard the sound of running water coming from behind it. A fountain. A well. Salvation was to be had if he opened the door, stepped inside the cool interior, drank, but just as he’d been about to do so he’d seen the fresh blood running out from inside, across the doorstep, and he’d turned and run away.
He shook his head and squeezed his hands into fists and put one of them up against the wood. The hinges squealed as he pushed the door open a little way. He reached round and found the key still in the lock and then he pushed the door all the way open. In the silence that followed he heard a car go by in the street overhead, the whirr of fan and fan belt, hiss of monoxide. His eyes adjusted. Up high, the light from the grimy window barely illuminated the room and its solitary occupant.
She lay in her underwear on the only piece of furniture: a single bed hard against the wall. A rusted chrome frame. A flat base of diamond-shaped mesh to support a mattress. She looked as if she had died during a peaceful sleep—fingers interlocked over breastbone— but he could see the dark track where the blood from the wounds in her wrists had run down across her torso and dripped onto the floor. Down by her side he saw the knife where she’d dropped it.
“Shit, sweetheart, what’d you do this for?” he whispered.
She hadn’t been dead very long; a few days or so at most was his estimate. She held something in her hands. Photographs. Holding his breath, he pulled them from her dead fingers as carefully as he could. He glanced at them briefly before putting them in his shirt pocket and then he slid the button on the torch forward and shone it around. Her clothes and belongings were in a pile near the foot of the bed. He took a deep breath and shone the torch on her body, starting at her feet, then up to her thighs. Very young, he thought. Very young. Fifteen, sixteen. Gently, he ran the back of his finger along the outside curve of her hip, then moved the torch along. Armpits unshaven. Hair quite dirty. Clean, it might have been a dark golden blonde, maybe the strawberry variety. He reached out and rubbed a lock between his thumb and forefinger as if he could assay it.
He shone the torch directly onto her face and stared, stricken. It had been disfigured, gnawed by rats or some other vermin. Her lips were missing—just a ragged smear now—and her nose, part of her cheek, some of her chin. She seemed denatured, godless, devised by a cabal of wasted jokers and cast out by the same from the world of the living; this room the terminus of all her dreams, all her desires. His heart began to thud painfully inside his chest and then his knees let go.
“Fuck me,” he croaked.
He knelt on the floor for what seemed like minutes. When he was able he shone the torch across the floor and around the skirting board, the beam shaking along with his hand, a cool draught coming up through gaps in the floorboards. In one corner he saw a hole, its edges knurled by the sharp teeth of generation upon generation of rats. The floor was scattered with their droppings. He wondered how long they would have taken to strip her to the bone. He switched off the torch and stood—his knees popping—and turned to leave, the rat shit crackling under his shoes like so much black rice. He picked up the bundle from the end of the bed and then paused at the door to look back at her, shrouded—mercifully—by the gloom once more.
He could almost hear the sound of it. The dissonant chords of a particular and bloody evil. There was a cold, sharp smell—like ammonia, like vinegar—and his mouth felt instantly dry, as if it were suddenly full of salt. Salt. He could almost see the long turquoise swells lining up to break. He closed his eyes. Anywhere but here, anywhere but here, anyone but him. Then the long white curve of beach in his mind became not unlike a single rib, a breast. He felt faint then, and very queasy. As he walked from the room sweat broke out across his forehead and back and chest and he fought the urge to turn and make sure she had not risen from her bed to follow him.
“Sergeant!”
“Yessir!” The man tried to fold his newspaper but the middle fell out onto the muddy ground. Gibson looked at it lying there.
“Do you know what’s happened in there?” Gibson asked, a little breathlessly.
The sergeant nodded, shrugged. “I think so. I’ve been in and had a look.”
Gibson was about to shout, but he could see in the sergeant’s eye the evidence of a desperate wish that he’d been able to resist his curiosity.
“She’s not a pretty sight, is she,” said Gibson, shaking his head, exhaling, his eyes flicking around the yard.
“No, but I’ve seen worse. Accidents and such. But when it’s like that . . . intentional . . . so young . . .” He shrugged again.
“Yeah.” Gibson nodded. “Yeah.”
He stood with one hand on his hip, the girl’s pathetic belongings in the crook of his other arm.
“There’s someone asleep in there,” he said, eventually, pointing to one of the cars in the lane. “Don’t forget to ask him if he knows who’s been dossing down in the kitchen here, all right? And if he saw her, obviously.”
“All right,” said the sergeant, a little surprised, but glad to be getting on with something.
Gibson walked up the yard and slid back out through the gap in the fence.
“You off already?”
“Swain’ll be here in a while. He’ll take care of it.”
Gibson jumped into his car before the sergeant could say anything else and roared off down the lane. The sergeant watched him go, heard the squeal of his tyres as he braked heavily at the end of the lane, just missing the little old lady who’d stepped out in front of the car.
He resisted the temptations of the various hotels he passed as he drove, directionless, around the city. He wanted nothing more than to erase the memory of what he’d seen but he knew another day and night on the tiles might just kill him. He headed out to The Gap and sat for a long time staring out at the Pacific. He only remembered the photographs in his pocket when his hand went in there looking for his matches. He pulled them out. There were three. He fanned them and then looked at them closely in the bright light. The first, blurred and indistinct, was of a girl standing next to an odd-looking man with a glum expression on his face. Me and Billy was written on the back in childish printing. The second was an even more blurred photograph and no matter how hard he tried he could not make it out. The edge of trees, something there in the shadows maybe. An animal perhaps? He couldn’t tell. Nothing was written on the reverse. The third photograph seemed to have been taken early, or maybe late, in the day, the sunlight angling in, hard shadows. Gibson stared. It was the same girl as in the first, but just a little older, her long hair slightly unkempt and fairer at the ends. She stood next to an elderly man in a black suit. She wore a dress that looked like it might be faded blue and there were darker marks at the seams where it had been let out. Her eyes, though hidden in the shade from her raised hand, could just be seen, staring into the camera, staring out at him. Gibson blinked, looked away, then back. She seemed like some bright-eyed sentinel on the border between two worlds, a knowing witness to the tricks of time; the here and now, the day—the world outside—and the past, the truth, whatever you wanted to call it, caught by the camera.
He closed his eyes and rubbed them and then he looked at the photograph again. Just a girl once more. Now she reminded him a little of his own mother when she’d been young, before she’d had the misfortune to meet his father, but then it hit him.
It was her eyes. She had the same eyes as Frances—the same sad, faraway look in them. He wiped his mouth and breathed out slowly. He could barely rem
ember his sister’s face now, but he remembered her eyes. He flipped the photograph over, his hand shaking once more. Me and Father Carney. Some sort of priest maybe.
He looked over his shoulder at the bundle he’d tossed on the back seat and then reached for it. He ran his hand through the clothes and came across a little cowrie shell on a cord of leather. Something of her personality. He turned it over in his hand before hanging it from the indicator stalk and continuing to look through her belongings. He thought for a while that there was nothing else of interest but then he felt something hard wrapped inside a blue cardigan. It was a bible, about six by four, in a cardboard slipcase. He slid it out of the case and flicked through the pages and then he turned to the inside cover. Darcy Steele, it said. Angel Rock.
“Darcy Steele,” he whispered.
He flicked through the pages again. Words were written in thick pencil across the printed pages. He closed the book up, flicked through it again. The writing couldn’t be seen unless the book was opened completely. He wondered about that for a little while and then he opened it up and began to read.
From the title page of Genesis to about halfway through the book she had kept a diary of sorts, the original text written over with large, childish printing in a soft grade of lead pencil. Sometimes he read the solemn words of the Pentateuch underneath and between her own clumsy lettering and the contrast had an odd and unsettling effect on him, as if her own words had become part of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, burrowing into the ancient texts and changing their essence.
The writing looked years younger than the age she looked in the most recent photograph. Words were often misspelt and the sentences crude, but she still managed to express herself well enough. He sensed an intelligence frustrated by a lack of skill. There were no dates but Gibson reckoned that there were at least two or three years’ worth of events contained within the covers. She listed small events: her jobs around the farm she lived on, what she had for dinner, what the weather was like, wind, storms, rainbows, aeroplanes in the sky, sightings of birds, wild animals at the edge of the bush, the births of calves and kittens. He could almost see her in his head, walking around the farm, but the farm was swathed in darkness, and silent. Family members only appeared if they infringed on her domain in some way. Sonny helped her with a baby bird. Her father drowned kittens. Then there were a lot of entries about Father Carney, then some about Grace. The bulk of the diary, however, was concerned with Billy. If Gibson hadn’t seen the photograph of him he would have said he’d been an imaginary friend, for he seemed to be a secret from everyone else in her circle. She saw him nearly every week and had what could only be described as adventures: expeditions to water-falls, quests for gold in forgotten creeks, climbs to the tops of giant trees. Then Billy gradually faded from the pages. Darcy didn’t say why. He suspected a gap then, maybe of a year or so, judging from the change in her handwriting. There was a little bit more about Grace, but then something caught his eye and made him go cold all over.
Something’s watching me from the trees, read the entry. He closed the bible, sat and stared at it for a few minutes, and then repeated her words.
Something’s watching me from the trees.
He drove back to the station and parked his car, then walked down to the café. It was still early. The streets stank of vomit from the night before as if signalling a new and unpleasant season. Grandad was standing outside the Quality hosing the concrete and sending a river of foul water along the gutter. The smell caught in Gibson’s nose and made his stomach flip. Grandad nodded his head to him as he walked by as though he barely knew him. Once inside the café he ordered coffee and food although he had little appetite. He lit a cigarette. The ceiling fan reproduced itself in miniature in the sugar spoon. The clock on the wall tocked away and Grandad came in from the street and shuffled along behind the counter, making faces at empty cups and dirty plates, reading them like a medium might, passing them through the gap in the wall where steam billowed and Peter the dishwasher worked before a steel sink, already washing dishes from the early trade, a cigarette in his mouth and one behind his ear ready to go, the walls around him papered with a glossy harem of naked women as if it were a garage and not a kitchen. It was Gibson’s favourite place to eat and it seemed to settle him now. Sometimes in the evening, after the café had closed, he would sit with Grandad and Peter at a table, eating and talking, playing euchre, a triangle of smoke, lamentation, caprice.
The food came. Grandad slid the knife and fork down and across the tabletop like an old cardplayer. Bacon, eggs, toast. Coffee. He tucked in, suddenly hungry, but his gums hurt when he chewed. Each tine of the fork seemed to have been sheared off roughly and carelessly. The metal, Stainless 18/10 stamped on the reverse, felt underweight and crude and grabbed at the inside of his mouth. Grandad stopped by his table.
“You right, Gibson?”
“Why?” He wondered whether what he had just seen was written all over his face, whether he was pale, whether his hands were trembling.
“No reason. Just askin’.” Grandad sat down opposite and helped himself to one of Gibson’s cigarettes, lit it and sat there smoking and watching him eat.
“Listen,” said Gibson, wiping his mouth. “What would you do with, say . . . a hundred grand?”
Grandad thought about it, resting his chin in the palm of his hand as if it tired him.
“Thinking of robbing a bank?”
“No. Go on, what would you do with it?”
“I’d pay off my house. Buy another one. You can’t beat owning property.”
“Mmmm. What about Peter? Go and ask him.”
Grandad arched an eyebrow but then he went away. He came back after five minutes or so.
“Well, what did he say?”
“He said he’d be off to India on the next plane to sit at the feet of his guru and reach nirvana. Said he’d give the rest of the money to beggars.”
“He’s not serious, is he?”
“He had a straight face when he said it.”
“The same one you’re wearing?”
“The same.”
Grandad gave the faintest of smiles and went back behind the counter.
“Wouldn’t you leave your job? Wouldn’t you leave town?”
Grandad shook his head. “Leave this?” he asked, his waved hand indicating the café.
Gibson smiled grimly and nodded.
“Thinking of selling the house?” Grandad asked, raising his eyebrows. “You won’t get that much for it.”
Gibson shrugged. “I’m thinking about it. Maybe when my mother dies.”
Grandad gave him a strange look. “Things are the same wherever you go,” he said, picking up a stack of plates and passing them in to Peter.
“Maybe,” said Gibson, but Grandad didn’t hear him. After a while he steeled himself and pulled Darcy’s bible from his pocket. He started again from the beginning and then, with mixed feelings of relief and dismay, found that there wasn’t a great deal more following the entry which had chilled him. It was disappointing, and he wished she’d kept writing, but the diary seemed to belong to her past—a record of happier times—and he guessed that that was why she had kept it with her.
He sat and smoked and drank coffee. He read the diary a third time and spent hours trying to conjure a solid reason for what she had done from the flimsy pages. In the end there was only the one line which offered any clue and he sat and pondered the words with glazed eyes and ash from his cigarette dropping unnoticed onto the table. In the afternoon he yawned and stretched and went and sat at a back table with Peter and Grandad. They’d locked up for the day and soon the table was covered in ashtrays and empty plates, tins of Signet and Three Nuns. Grandad poured shots of Johnnie Walker into ice-filled glasses and they toasted each other. While their wits were still about them they played chess and backgammon and then they started on chequers and cards. Gibson welcomed the way the drink took the edge off things and he was soon wisecracking as loud
ly as the others. It was past ten o’clock when Grandad called it a night. Gibson downed the last of his drink and then he and Peter staggered outside to Elizabeth Street and hailed a cab heading up to the Cross.
“Where’d you get to yesterday, you silly cunt?” spat Swain as soon as Gibson walked through the door of the station the next morning.
“Around,” replied Gibson, mildly.
“I had to twiddle me thumbs there all morning before the fucking coroner turned up!”
“Ah, well . . .”
Erskine came into the room. “Shut up, Swain, will you?” he said. “It’s Monday for Christ’s sake.”
“Her name’s Darcy Steele,” said Gibson. “She’s from a place called Angel Rock.”
“Angel Rock?” snapped Swain, leaning forward in his chair.
“Yeah. You heard of it?”
“Where’s your head been, you sleepy bastard, Gibson? Up your arse? Those two little kids who went missing, the brothers, that’s where they’re from. Only been in every paper in the fucking country.”
Angel Rock Page 9
