The Practice Baby

by LM Ardor

  ‘It wasn’t,’ Leah said feebly.

  All her aggression was gone. She was terrified of Adam. Dee had to accept her on her own terms. There was no way to get through to her otherwise. She put her hand on Leah’s.

  ‘It’s okay. Don’t worry. Let me see what I can do to find out what’s happening.’

  They sat quietly for a while.

  Dee wondered how Leah knew what was going on in Sydney.

  As if she had read Dee’s mind, Leah explained how she hadn’t left the camp since she’d arrived but sometimes Jimmy got lifts into town from National Parks workers who maintained the fire trails or he cadged lifts from four-wheel drivers in exchange for dried kangaroo meat and skins. He brought occasional news and luxuries like vegetables. It was lonely but she felt safe. The insurance company had been around to her flat but the flatmates told them she was gone with no forwarding address. No more had happened with the insurance but somehow she knew about the break-in and that whoever it was had turned over her room. She seemed grateful that Dee had stored her boxes but wouldn’t give any details of with whom or how she was communicating with the outside world.

  Life in a bush cave without modern communications would be tough. For a vegan, the diet of freshly killed bush animals must be a shock. That Leah tolerated it was testament to her fear.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ Dee asked. ‘You can’t live like this the rest of your life. Why don’t you come back with me and we’ll go to the police together?’

  Leah dropped Dee’s hands and jumped up. ‘If I go back he’ll get me too. Don’t you believe me?’

  The girl turned and moved back towards the trees. She stepped into the scrub.

  ‘Leah, wait! What if I go to the police? I’ll tell them what’s happened and you can stay here till we know it’s safe. I won’t tell anyone where you are till I know.’

  Leah didn’t say anything but she stopped at the edge of the clearing.

  ‘Tom said you could trust me. You can. Besides, who else is there? Unless you want to spend the rest of your life in hiding.’

  ‘I know.’ Leah’s voice was small.

  ‘I’ll talk to the police. I know a woman who works at the Glebe station. How can I get in touch to tell you what happens?’ There were so many things she needed to know. Leah was almost invisible already.

  Leah stepped further into the trees. Dee stood up from the ground and stumbled towards the creek.

  ’Bugger,’ she said and grabbed at a low hanging branch. The branch broke free to show its bright pink and cream centre. Dee managed to regain her balance.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Dee heard from where the girl had disappeared.

  ‘Yes, I guess my leg went to sleep. But no, I’m not really okay. I need to find out what’s going on. Can’t you stay and talk? Please, Leah, don’t you want to find out what happened to Tom?’

  ‘I already know what happened to Tom. I don’t want it to happen to me or to you either,’ Leah said with a tone of exasperation. Dee could also hear a tremble in her voice. She was frightened and she was right to be.

  ‘Come back, please. I’ll listen and do what you want but you have to explain it to me.’

  Leah emerged. Dee walked over and took her hand like a child and led her back into the sun. They sat together on the cushiony grass. The sun was overhead and patches of light made the clearing seem less remote, more normal, like any safe and sunny place. Leah had her back in the sun, her face was in dappled shade. It was hard to read.

  ‘If I go to the police,’ Dee began, ‘I have to tell them all of what’s happened if I want to convince them to do anything. Can’t you tell me?’

  ‘Okay.’ Leah sighed. ‘But you have to promise you won’t say anything to let them know where I am.’

  Dee nodded. Leah sat, mute. She wanted more. Dee said it aloud. ‘I promise, nothing that will give a clue about where you are.’

  ‘All right—you know Tom. He was really excited about a baby. When we went to GenSafe we got there as they opened. He looked over the counter and saw the receptionist enter the password for the appointment database—that included billing details. Of course he had “a bit of a look” at the records. Lots of patients were paying money into an overseas account; big money. Minimum payments of $10,000; some up to $40,000. Tom was suspicious. When he checked the couples out, they weren’t the right age range for IVF. Not enough older couples and not enough with long medical histories. Then all the information from Orange made him more suspicious that something was going on.’ Leah paused.

  She had more to say. Dee held her breath and waited.

  Leah looked around; she moved closer to Dee and whispered, ‘The professor rang Tom on the Friday before he died. He knew about the hacking. He was trying to find out how much information Tom had. Tom was worried. He said the professor was dangerous and made me stay at my grandmother’s. He told me to take his laptop.’

  ‘There might be some clues about what happened on the laptop. Do you think you could let a friend of mine look at it?’

  Leah looked down. ‘I don’t know,’ she said in a way that sounded like no. ‘Anyway, Tom found more information about the professor after that.’

  ‘Have you thought the laptop might be a danger to have around?’ Dee said. ‘It might be safer if you don’t have it.’

  Somehow she needed to get Leah to trust her with the laptop. If Tom thought someone was after him he might have passed the files over to Leah on the laptop and wiped them from his own system.

  Surely he would have had some other backup too? Dee remembered how excited he had been when he last saw her. When she was back in Sydney she’d look again at her notes, go over the consultation. What was she missing?

  ‘Leah, if you want I’ll have the computer copied and sent back to you.’ Leah raised her head. She seemed interested. ‘That can’t happen here though. If I can take it, I’ll have it back to you in a few days.’

  ‘No one else can have it.’ Leah was emphatic. ‘You have to promise you’ll have it with you the whole time.’

  ‘I have a good friend …’ Dee started to say.

  ‘No!’ Leah started to get up again.

  ‘Okay, no one else. I’ll keep it with me the whole time,’ said Dee. ‘Do you have a password?’

  It was like pulling teeth.

  ‘Once you’re back at the pub I’ll get it to you. Once you’re safe.’

  The wind picked up. There was a sharp crash from the bush behind them. Both of them jumped.

  Dee said, ‘Shit, what’s that?’

  Together they turned their heads to discover a small branch had snapped and fallen a few feet away. They both laughed.

  ‘Aren’t you scared out here in the bush?’

  Leah shook her head. ‘It’s safer than the city. No one comes down into the valley without us knowing.’ She paused and in a quiet voice said, ‘I know he’s looking for me.’

  Even if misguided, Leah’s fear was useful in keeping her out of danger. It was pointless to reason with her, to reassure her about one danger and then tell her to fear another. Raj hadn’t discounted Adam and perhaps Dee needed to be open to the possibility that a person she knew could be a killer. She couldn’t promise Leah any long-term security in Sydney. It was important to use logic not emotion when someone else’s life was at stake.

  Dee wanted to put her arms around the girl but that would spook her. Like a bush creature, she had a safety distance and retreated if Dee came closer than her escape zone.

  ‘Okay, I’ll keep it with me all the time and bring it back next weekend. How will I find you?’

  ‘If you come back someone might follow you.’

  ‘That’s unlikely.’

  ‘No, don’t come back. There’s no internet out here so it’s no use to me. Can you find somewhere safe to keep it? Not with you or at the surgery.’ Dee nodded. ‘I’ll get in touch if I need you.’

  It was easiest to agree. The girl had a point. Any contact with Dee could mean other
s would find Leah.

  ‘How do I get the laptop?’

  ‘Be on the veranda of the pub after five today. If there’s no one else there it’ll be delivered to you. If anyone else is around you’ll have to wait.’

  37.

  Dee sat with her back to the wall and one glass of red in front of her at the small metal table on the veranda of the pub. The view was of a dense green picnic ground fenced with rough wooden posts. A few she-oaks and a row of weeping willows shaded a concrete picnic table. An ancient stone fireplace served as a BBQ.

  At 4 pm a VW campervan pulled up with a pair of grey nomads who slowly unpacked an awning, then a folding table and chairs and made themselves a cup of tea in the fireplace. Dee’s phone was on the table. Even with no signal it felt a comfort, a connection to her life outside this valley. She checked the time again.

  Twenty minutes to drink one cup of tea. How long would they stay? She could befriend them and warn of the dangerous axe murderer in the parts to move them along. Maybe she could pretend to be crazy and move them along that way. That could backfire; she was already behaving like a crazy woman, disagreeing with the pathologist’s report and running around like an amateur sleuth.

  She went inside. Her credit card worked in the public phone at the bar. Finally, Eleanor answered her mobile. The others were all outside with Jim, the motel owner’s son. They were cleaning the fish that they’d caught for dinner tonight. They’d had a great day. Eleanor wanted Dee to look at her picture with a three-kilo snapper on Facebook and didn’t comprehend that there was no internet, not even 3G.

  ‘Jake and Shane are having a barbie with all the fish we caught.’

  ‘How old are Jake and Shane? Will there be alcohol?’

  Dee made Ellie promise to be in by 10 pm and told them she’d try to be home tonight. Eleanor didn’t seem to be missing her. How much parental supervision would there be at the BBQ?

  ‘Put your sister on the phone.’

  ‘But she’s already over there.’

  ‘Tell her I said she’s in charge. She needs to be the responsible adult.’

  ‘Mum, we can look after ourselves. I’m nearly fourteen!’ Dee could hear the eye-rolling in her voice. She thought Eleanor would be the easy one, the one to do teens without the extremes. Everyone who had grown-up children told her she was wrong. Bugger; sweet Ellie was morphing into a teenager too.

  Outside, the old codgers continued to flutter around unpacking milk crates. The billy can they’d boiled water in for tea went back on the fire. It boiled and the woman tipped in a packet of pasta. Fifteen minutes went by. Dee wanted to tell them to check the pasta packet; ten to twelve minutes was enough. Another five minutes, far too long for pasta, and the man painfully drained the water off. He was plump and the first few steps when he moved were stiff and flexed. Some form of arthritis, probably osteo, Dee diagnosed automatically. She judged by his slight limp he had a left hip problem.

  A snail would have beaten him at setting up the table. The female partner was quicker, positively buzzy next to the tortoise, but handicapped by an obsessive need to repack every item she took out of a crate in exactly the correct place. While the pasta cooked she hung her washed underwear on a small line inside the van. Inside, rather than under the awning. Dee could hope it meant they were going to move on, that they didn’t intend to stay the night. If the force of her silent entreaties could make them move they’d be long gone by now.

  Eventually, after packing and repacking four milk crates, Buzzy pulled out a can and tipped beige sludge from it into the pasta. The mush they’d produced could have been consumed through a straw but the pair ate slowly, no doubt observing the mantra to chew each mouthful a hundred times. Maybe all the chewing was an attempt to wrest flavour from the stodge.

  As the sun went down behind the hotel the mosquitoes descended. Dee was equipped with repellent, tropical strength. The tortoise was swatting away at his bare arms and legs. At 6.45 pm he stood and tottered across the road to the hotel carrying a toilet bag and towel. Please don’t let him stay, Dee begged the gods.

  Dee understood Leah was frightened but the melodrama of waiting till no one was around was surely unnecessary. The nomads couldn’t be any danger, except perhaps to human tastebuds.

  The tortoise ordered a middy of beer and a gin and tonic for his partner. Then he left her to drink alone as he headed for the ‘for customers use only’ bathroom. Twenty minutes later, he emerged. The woman had her shower while he sipped on a single beer. Dee noticed he had clubbed fingers, a sign of heart or lung insufficiency.

  Joe was on his third glass of red and sat next to Dee on the veranda.

  Somehow the nomads got underway, no doubt to find a free camping spot off on a bush trail. Toilet and shower access was cheap at the price of two drinks.

  Dee waited another half-hour. Joe produced toasted ham and cheese sandwiches. Could she tolerate another night in the saggy bed? After the dusty ride she’d have to brave the dirty shower before bed. And Joe was hanging around; he’d given up his day to help her. Did he expect some payback for the ride?

  The last of the brief twilight had passed. There was no moon and beyond the six feet or so of the veranda lights was total blackness. Joe came out and walked over to her. The barmaid from the afternoon shift had disappeared.

  Under his arm he had a cloth bag. He sat down and chatted briefly leaving the flat object in the bag on the table. It must be. Dee felt it. Yes, it was a computer.

  ‘Did Leah say anything else?’ Dee asked.

  ‘No. She said you’ll know.’

  ‘Thanks, Joe. It’s good to know Leah has a friend.’

  Joe mumbled something Dee couldn’t hear and got up. She’d embarrassed him. She felt relieved he didn’t try anything on and simultaneously ridiculous that she’d assumed someone twenty years her junior would be interested in her.

  38.

  The events of the day had spooked her. It was eight o’clock. Her choices were a two-hour-plus drive along a precipitous winding dirt road down the mountain or another night in the hotel. Joe had primed the jukebox with eighties country and western tracks and had opened another bottle of wine. They were the only two people at the hotel. Smoke came from the chimney of a stone cottage two hundred metres up the road and at 8.30 the lights in the windows were extinguished. There were only three other houses in the town that weren’t derelict but no lights or smoke betrayed any sign of human occupants.

  Exhaustion dragged at her eyelids. She looked across the table at Joe. The alcohol had loosened him up. His eyes were wide. He leaned forward, forearms on the table. She let his stories of motorcycle rides through the mountains of Columbia flow over her with an occasional ‘Umm’ or ‘Really?’. Dee was on mineral water. She could smell the alcohol on his breath.

  Her thoughts were of a real bed, a decent shower in a clean bathroom. Most of all she wanted her innocent baby Eleanor, her half independent, half vulnerable Oliver and her beautiful sweet and sour Beatrice. When she tuned back in, Joe was in Nepal crossing a rope bridge in the foothills of the Himalayas.

  Dee shrugged and stretched her arms. ‘Well time for me to get moving.’

  ‘You know there’s wild pigs and roos all over that road at night. If you hit a pig or blow a tyre there won’t be another car till tomorrow.’

  Was it self-interest or chivalry? He was a good bloke, must be bored out of his brain here.

  ‘I’ll be careful. My children will be expecting me. Any chance of a coffee?’

  The decision was easy. Joe boiled the kettle. Dee kept the computer in its cloth bag over her shoulder as she gathered her things from the room and paid for the accommodation. If she thought like Leah then she’d believe anyone could be hiding in the shadows, watching for their moment to snatch the bag. Her world had opened up with Tom’s death. So many things she’d once thought ridiculous now were within the realm of possibility—including a murderer out of sight in any shadow. She shook her head and told herself to get a
grip, to stop being silly. The advice was no longer convincing.

  After another dose of instant coffee, Joe walked across the road with her to her car.

  ‘Take it slow, use low gear for braking, don’t swerve to avoid an animal on the curves.’

  It was good advice. Dee knew the perils of driving on winding narrow dirt roads were multiplied at night in the bush. A spooked kangaroo or wild boar could wipe out a car.

  He’d made her a coffee for the road in a takeaway cup. Dee stowed the computer in the footwell on the passenger’s side seat and hid it with her bag. It would take about two hours to go less than eighty kilometres; then she would be with the kids.

  *

  A kilometre down the road at the edge of the abandoned town she saw the campervan pulled over next to the lantana-draped ruins of a cottage. In a hundred metres the bitumen stopped and the road started down the mountain. The taller trees met above the narrow road. The road was a ribbon of red dirt and stones etched out of the side of the steep hill. On her left the ground had been cut away and raw earth formed a wall; on the right the hill fell away as steeply as it rose above her on the other side. The car headlights barely penetrated the dense, dusty undergrowth. Dee plunged downwards in a tunnel defined by the car’s headlights.

  The local ABC radio station had an earnest American woman spruiking a way to make funerals more participatory. Dee had an image of the corpse being exhorted to say a few words and laughed, although she agreed that the funerals she’d been to where friends and family took an active part were better. After twenty minutes, the reception faded to static. Dee scanned for other channels. These hills were remote and unpopulated—no phone coverage, no radio.

  There was another hour and forty minutes to go. Roadkill every hundred metres or so reminded her to keep her speed down. The curves in the road were hypnotic. She yawned. The single glass of wine wasn’t helping her alertness. The sensible thing would be to stop the car for a nap. After several kilometres, the road widened briefly after a small bridge. Dee pulled over. She turned off the headlights, put her seat back and closed her eyes. The bush was loud. Behind her, water splashed on rocks. There was a sudden loud rustling about a metre away on her left. Her heart leapt up in her chest. She quickly reached to check the doors. They were locked. When she braved a look there was nothing; but her eyes weren’t adapted to the dark yet. She must have spooked some creature at the creek.