White Throat

by Sarah Thornton

‘It’s all right, mate. I’ll be back soon. Just wait there for me.’ His eyes flickered left and right. Not sure about all this, not sure at all. The gate began rumbling back.

  There was a cool damp in the air as she walked across the covered timber walkway. Full gloss green crowded across from both sides, narrowing the path and forming a complete canopy above her head. She could smell the mist and the musty earth, the rotting foliage deep down. Birds called in languid bursts; in the quiet in between, she heard her sneakers creaking on the timber, felt the sweat turning to salt on her back. She imagined Helen walking up this path—first to seek donations, later to enjoy an evening meal, a night of intimacy with a man who’d professed interest in her cause, and in her. You would have given him all of yourself, of course, free and generous.

  Oh, Helen.

  She rang the doorbell and waited on the slate portico, blackened timber columns keeping guard. She felt a tremor in her fingers. What was she getting into here, at this fortress? Jackson would have seen her car here on the app. He’d be deciding whether to follow. Wiseman? Had the ambulance arrived? But she’s dead, you saw that she was dead. She gulped, gripped her fists, tried to focus.

  This was for Wiseman too, now. Wiseman and Helen.

  The door was frosted glass, surrounded by more glass in timber frames. She could see Doncaster coming down the staircase. He’d want to check her out before he opened the door: she waved her hands to signify she’d brought nothing with her.

  The door opened. There he was in his pale, redheaded glory, a touch of sunburn on his muscled neck. He seemed bigger, stronger than before. His mouth was set in a hard line as he ushered her silently inside. There didn’t seem to be a way to make the situation less awkward so she just nodded and kept her head down.

  ‘Come this way.’ He led her across the tiled foyer onto a vast deck surrounding the bluest of infinity pools and looking straight out into the raw cool of the forest.

  Damn, outside. This was not ideal. She flicked the switch on the listening device in her pocket. She hoped it worked as well as the last one. This was one of the waterproof ones that had been held up in the mail. She headed for the outdoor table, a heavy teak job. She turned to face him as he made his way out, a grim look on his face, took her hand out of her pocket and leaned back on the table, her fingers slipping underneath and pressing up, holding it there ten seconds before gently releasing the pressure. The device stuck firm.

  ‘Thank you for seeing me, Andrew,’ she said, ‘Um, I don’t quite know where to start.’

  He stood just outside the door, keeping his distance. Out of range?

  ‘How about the part where you smashed up the fuel filters on my boat? Or the bit where you stole my spear gun? Or, no—the masterstroke—the mess you made of my inflatable?’ he said, his sneer mocking her.

  He killed Helen. He knows I know. She gave him a slow nod, her eyes ice cold, and walked around the table towards the pool with her back to him. So follow me out here you bastard, around about near the table would be good. She said nothing, just stood there, staring at the forest. Its magnificence, the broad sensation of its life-filled green, the sort of thing Helen would have delighted in and fought to save.

  He would have known that. He would have taken Helen out among the trees then swum with her in this very pool. Luring her. Clem hated him. From deep down in her gut, she hated him.

  Doncaster took a few steps closer to the table. Good.

  ‘You’re not going to apologise?’ he said, coy.

  She stood there, still with her back to him. The neat geometry of the blue pool tiles should have soothed her. But her blood boiled with an intensity that made every nerve in her body jangle.

  She heard him take a few more steps. Come on, get a little closer, you pig.

  ‘You know you’re quite an intriguing figure, standing there.’ She heard him take another few steps towards her and stiffened. ‘With your silence and all.’

  She turned around slowly. ‘You know, you’re quite intriguing yourself. In the way repellent creatures sometimes are.’

  He thrust his hands in his pockets, rocked back on his heels, eyebrows raised. It was water off a duck’s back. He didn’t care what she said. He knew she had nothing to link him to Jackson and without that, she couldn’t touch him.

  ‘I’ve been wondering what Helen was thinking—how she was ever attracted to a man like you.’

  There was a look of mild surprise as he registered that Clem knew about the relationship. Then he quickly regathered his cool.

  ‘I generally find women are aroused by powerful men.’

  She supressed the urge to punch him. It was close to admitting a relationship with Helen but not quite. It signified that he was being cautious, though, despite his confidence in her inability to link him to the murder. He was wary, careful. Did he think she might be wearing a wire?

  ‘I’d like to know, specifically, what it was Andrew. Why you fucked her and then killed her. We can speak freely can’t we? I have nothing with me. My phone is where I lost it earlier today. It’s just me.’ She stared at him, saw the flicker in his eyes. Yes, she was sure—he thought she was recording him.

  The idea came to her and she was surprised at her lack of hesitation. She didn’t baulk as she undid the top button on her shorts, ‘You can make sure if you like. There’s nothing here, no wire, no recording device. This is not some form of entrapment.’

  His eyes widened, his gaze dropping to her hands and what was underneath, the tanned flesh of her stomach, the top of her underpants as she unzipped her fly. He did not try to stop her.

  ‘I actually want to know. I want to speak freely with you, Andrew, and I’d like you to feel equally relaxed about it.’ She kept going. Her shorts fell to the ground. She pulled her singlet up over her head and let it flop to the deck. Standing there in just her underwear, she felt a shiver. Andrew Doncaster, thirty years her senior, muscled, powerful, perhaps the wealthiest man she had ever met, owner of everything in the world he wanted to own. And he was standing there, looking at her. She felt possessed of a wicked power, something she’d never used in this way: something hidden inside her own body and suddenly released.

  ‘Do I have to go further?’ she said. His eyes darted over her body, he seemed to be arguing with himself, tempted but uncertain—teetering on the edge.

  ‘Perhaps this to reassure you?’ she removed her bra, unclipping the hooks and letting the straps slide from her shoulders. It fell to the ground beside her singlet. She felt the sun on her back, warm and welcome, she felt the absolute authority of her body over this man. She felt simultaneously outrageous and composed as she turned slowly so he could inspect her.

  He shifted his feet, widening his stance as if his balance was unsure. Shook his head with the slightest of movements, disbelieving. ‘You’re very convincing.’ He would not stoop to demand she take off the last of her clothing.

  ‘Good,’ she nodded. ‘Then tell me, please—tell me about Helen.’ She reached for her bra, began putting it back on. He looked disappointed.

  Pathetic. What did he expect? She’d stripped off for one reason only; the purpose had been accomplished. It both amused and enraged her that he thought she might have other ideas.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ he said.

  ‘Well. I already know why you murdered Helen, so how about you tell me when you made the decision to do it?’

  His mouth dropped open. ‘What the fuck?’

  ‘Oh come on, Andrew. I know about the resort, and I know about your affair. I just want to know the background. How you came to decide on it.’

  ‘You’re crazy. Why are you asking me these questions?’

  ‘Because I want to know. I want to understand…power, I guess,’ she said, hoping to appeal to the thing that counted most for Andrew Doncaster. ‘Like when, for instance. Was it before you lured her up here? Did you always have it as a Plan B to kill her if she said no to your offer to buy Turtle Shores? Or did you just decide wh
en she turned you down?’

  The alternative close: pick one, arsehole, and condemn yourself.

  Doncaster was considering her, calculating. Assessing his position, and what she was likely to do. And something else… something else was coming to the surface.

  Yes, that was it: the urge to brag. A smug leaning back and thrusting of his hips forward, hands in his pockets, looking down at her. He wanted to boast about it. Come on, put it out there, motherfucker.

  He shrugged as if accepting she was powerless here. Then, standing right next to the table, a metre from the listening device, the great, the untouchable Andrew Doncaster began to talk.

  ‘Strategy always comes first,’ he said, smirking. ‘But Helen was pretty good in the sack. It became more difficult to execute as time went on.’ He spoke as if it wasn’t him he was talking about but some other player on a grand stage. Someone he’d delegated a task to. ‘She had this way about her, with her eyes and that smile. Definitely a turn-on, even beyond her obvious…physical gifts.’

  Clementine had put her shorts and singlet back on. They felt like armour. She sat on the arm of a timber sun lounge with one leg bent up so her foot perched on the edge of the cushion, trying to look casual.

  ‘So, yes, there was a strategy from the start and if she hadn’t been so stubborn, the rest wouldn’t have been necessary.’

  ‘Stubborn?’

  ‘Yes, stubborn. The resort will be fucking great for this community, jobs-wise. And the happiness it will bring to families all over Australia…to see this beautiful place. I mean not everyone can afford Fraser Island, right? World Heritage my arse,’ he snorted. ‘Just means you only get to appreciate it if you can afford a weekend in a high-end resort and a four-wheel-drive tour. It’s the most elitist piece of bullshit I’ve ever come across. My father, my mother—they could never experience it.’

  ‘So not important to preserve it for its own sake? Only valuable to the extent humans get to colonise it?’

  ‘Oh Christ, don’t start with that self-righteous horseshit. You sound like Helen,’ he said, his face looking like he’d eaten a lemon.

  Watch it, Jones. Don’t get him worked up, just get to the decision to kill.

  She wondered about Jackson. Maybe he’d decided not to come here, too dangerous. Don’t count your chickens.

  ‘Fair point. I was getting pretty sick of the dogma too, towards the end.’

  He looked wrong-footed: suddenly unsure of her, as if she was a sand blow drifting before his eyes.

  ‘I mean, I’m leading the show now but it’s only because there’s nothing better to do in this shithole. I’ll be leaving soon anyway, thank God,’ she said.

  It seemed to settle him, she saw his shoulders relax a little.

  ‘So you made an offer for Turtle Shores and she knocked it back?’

  ‘I made a very generous offer and she wasn’t interested. The woman had no concept of planning for her senior years. I mean, I even offered to have my accountant organise a self-managed super fund for her, you know, look after her, and it wasn’t like she was set up. I mean, she was getting a part-pension, for Christ’s sake! Never ceases to amaze me how some people will not help themselves.’

  Not Helen. Not a woman he’d been intimate with. Not even a woman: just a faceless pensioner. Clementine breathed deep, exhaling her abhorrence, willing him on to the next step. It was quiet. A breeze shuffled and clacked the palm fronds against each other. Hosts of small birds were chattering in the forest all around the pool; every now and then a whipbird cracked out a request.

  ‘So, where do you go from that?’

  ‘Well, I had no choice.’

  ‘But do you just call someone?’ She was conscious there had been no clear admission, she needed to keep him going.

  ‘It’s not that different to hiring a tradie, really. There are people who arrange these things.’ So close, but not quite.

  ‘Did you have sex with her afterwards?’

  ‘Oh, fuck me! Charming. You hire a contractor to kill someone, then have sex with them? No, I did not. I respected Helen.’

  She didn’t want to breathe at all in case she mucked something up. The man had said it. And he’d said it in such a way as to congratulate himself for being a gentleman about it. She felt her hands trembling with the shock. This man had also ordered her own death. For all she knew, the killer was waiting for her just outside somewhere, or on his way. Her mouth was bone dry and her skin crawled with a prickling heat.

  ‘And me? You’ve made arrangements for me too, haven’t you?’

  ‘No hard feelings, Clementine—it’s just business.’ He had the audacity to grin and wink at her. He was relaxed now, the unassailable greatness like a force field: all his wealth and his forest lair and his women and his ‘tradies’.

  ‘Who’s the middle man?’

  ‘Some low-life in Sydney. Calls himself Jerry.’

  ‘How do you find these people?’

  A shrug. ‘Networks.’

  ‘And the killer?’

  ‘Never met him. Closest I got was after you jumped overboard and he gave chase in that tinny,’ he looked amused. ‘Like a Roadrunner cartoon.’

  ‘He shot at me.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s the general idea, sweetheart.’

  Sweetheart? Are you kidding me? That alone is worth taking you down, you dinosaur.

  ‘And an old lady. He shot at an old lady,’ said Clem.

  ‘Every project I’ve ever done, there’s always someone complaining.’ He waved a hand in the air. ‘I put up a shopping centre, the corner store has a whinge. I build a casino, the social workers moan about gambling. Jesus! No one would do anything if there wasn’t some sort of downside. It’s not a perfect world—get over it.’

  It was done. ‘On the record’ done. She had the hit, the middle man, the intent, the context, everything. Now she only had to get out of there with the recording.

  ‘Hhhmm. Yes, I totally understand. Whingers, all of us,’ she said. ‘But speaking of projects, the resort won’t be going ahead.’

  ‘Really?’ He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘You’re not getting Helen’s land.’

  He laughed. ‘Bollocks. The settlement’s going through tomorrow.’

  ‘The stat dec you signed, the false declaration you gave about never having any relationship with Helen.’

  ‘Oh that,’ he sniggered. ‘Any decent lawyer would tell you it wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.’

  ‘Can I borrow your phone for a moment, please? There’s someone I think you should speak to.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I lost my phone earlier today. There’s someone who has some important information to give you about Turtle Shores.’

  He stared at her for a second then shrugged, took out a phone from his pocket—cheap, probably a burner, the one he’d used to contact Jerry.

  ‘What’s the number?’ he asked.

  She recited the number, thanking the gods that it was so similar to her own. Doncaster put the phone on speaker.

  It rang and kept on ringing. Pick up, now. Please pick up. Finally, she heard the click and the distinctive sing-song voice she remembered from the funeral.

  ‘Maggie Jeppeson’

  ‘Hello, Maggie, it’s Clementine. I have you on speaker and I’m here with Andrew Doncaster.’

  ‘Oh, fabulous, just the man I want to speak to,’ she chirped.

  ‘Andrew, this is Maggie Jeppeson,’ said Clem. ‘She’s the executor of Helen’s estate and Press Secretary and Head of Media for the Premier of New South Wales.’

  Andrew frowned, his jaw clamping into a square.

  ‘Hello, Andrew,’ said Maggie, warmly. ‘How fortunate that we get to speak first before you hear from the lawyers. I much prefer the personal touch.’

  Doncaster shot a look at Clementine. ‘You have something to tell me?’

  ‘Yes, I do, rather. You see Helen was a dear friend of mine, a very dear friend. I didn’t see
as much of her after she moved to Piama—God only knows why there, of all places—but anyway she made a particular point of seeing me a few weeks back. She wanted to tell me she’d just ended a relationship and it had prompted her to think about what was important to her—’

  ‘Look I’m sure you ladies find this fascinating but I’m afraid I have a short attention span for chick flicks.’

  ‘Ha! Yes, she mentioned your short attention span,’ said Maggie. ‘It was a feature of the sex, too, she said. Lots of early arrivals.’ Maggie laughed.

  Clem was intent on Doncaster. The muscles in his face clenched, sending a shimmer across his jaw.

  ‘Anyway, the long and the short of it is—excuse the pun, darling—Helen told me nothing mattered but that her land remained as a wildlife sanctuary. Forever. They were her express words to me. So, in short, Andrew, you won’t be getting your grubby hands on it.’

  ‘Oh, fuck me. This is ridiculous,’ said Doncaster, looking like he’d swallowed a turd. ‘Let me spell it out to you. There’s a binding contract, it’s settling tomorrow and there’s nothing you can do about it.’

  ‘Well, you see, I can and I will,’ said Maggie. ‘You told some naughty fibs when you entered into this contract.’

  ‘Pfft,’ he snorted, looking relieved. ‘The statutory declaration? Lawyers’ll make short work of that. So if that’s all you’ve got, then I think this call is over, and I’ll see you in court.’

  ‘Well, no, actually, Andrew, I haven’t finished yet. I don’t really give a fig what the lawyers might have to say about it—that’s just the context for the real game. I intend to have some fun with this because the thing is, Mr Doncaster, I know you killed Helen, which puts a very different spin on everything.’

  Doncaster’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat and his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists.

  ‘What utter rubbish. There is nothing to connect me with Helen’s death. Nothing.’

  Clementine cut in, ‘That’s where you’re wrong, Andrew. There’s plenty. In fact, I expect the police around here shortly,’ she lied.

  ‘Utter nonsense! Totally false!’

  ‘Spare us the performance, darling,’ said Maggie. ‘It doesn’t matter what the courts do to you because I’ve got enough to hang, draw and quarter you in the most brutal court of all: the court of public opinion, which I rule, you understand, sweetheart. Yes, Queen Maggie presides over that domain. Ha! Do you think the public actually need you to be convicted before they are convinced deep down, in the very depths of their dark hearts, that you are indeed a murderer, darling? Look at poor Lindy Chamberlain!’ She didn’t draw a breath. ‘Your name, Andrew, will stink to high heaven. No government or council will ever approve another development or project or anything that has the taint of your hands on it ever again. I shall see to that.’