‘You think I’m stupid,’ Ryan huffed. ‘I’m not stupid. I know it hurts Dad to bring all this up, but that’s the point. Sure, he goes to therapy now but he barely talks and he pads around the house like he’s on rails. He hasn’t changed his mind – he’s just saying what they want him to. I used to do the same thing at school, after Lily died. They kept asking me how I felt, and if I ever said “sad” they’d bring in the cavalry. Until—’
‘Until you just learned to stop saying you were sad,’ Jack finished. He’d done the same thing with his own mental health plan, when form after form was placed in front of him and he was trying to avoid the high-security wing in the hospital. He didn’t get better. He just lied better.
Ryan nodded. ‘Doesn’t matter what he says. It’s still there.’
‘Maurice said he was angry. You think he still is?’
‘He didn’t hit us, don’t get the wrong idea. Angry at her, maybe. At himself more though. I was fifteen-ish at the worst of it and I remember he didn’t sleep. Didn’t do discipline, either – I could get away with anything. He had a big shaggy beard.’ He exploded both hands in front of his chin to complete the picture. ‘They gave him a warning for hanging around the police station. Got suspended from work for stealing pills. Getting into scrapes. Other parents at school didn’t like it.’
Harry nodded his agreement. ‘Big blow-up at our parents once. I remember.’
‘He was a tin-foil hat away from Mum leaving him,’ Ryan said. ‘That’s when he cleaned up.’
They’d reached, through natural inertia or attraction to lights and sounds, the carnival. The grass turned from green to brown, trampled underfoot. Paper cups and chip packets formed in windy eddies between the fence posts. The sun was near setting, hanging over the ocean, and the colours and lights on the rides were starting to pulse into the navy sky. Families were trickling in, heads tilted up, neon reflecting in their eyes – it was like townsfolk drawn out to a field to watch a spaceship land.
Jack glanced at the others, pointing at the entrance. ‘May as well,’ he said.
Harry nodded.
‘I have to go pull beers. Work,’ Ryan said. Jack did his best ‘what-a-shame’ face, but didn’t quite pull it off. Harry put one of his giant hands on Ryan’s shoulder and gave him a squeeze. Ryan said, ‘You’ll keep me in the loop, yeah?’
They both nodded disingenuously.
Harry, impatient as usual, powered off towards the entryway. Jack turned to follow, but felt a hand on his elbow.
‘Jack.’ Ryan was staring at him with an intensity he hadn’t shown before. He pressed a piece of paper into Jack’s hand. ‘I bet he didn’t show you the photos, did he? His files?’ Ryan’s eyes flitted at Harry’s back, still walking away from them. He spoke in an urgent whisper. ‘Dad had a suspect.’
Jack unfolded the paper. It was a pencil sketch of the Ferris wheel. But it was more like a schematic: the height was marked out with a long vertical bar, 4.5 metres. There were calculations using the radius and the speed on the side. Numbers of distance and time. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Why do you think I waited for you at the prison? I was following him, not you. When I saw him visit Long Bay I knew something was up. Then I saw you were getting out. Why the hell is he talking to someone who investigates murders?’
Jack thought back to the day he’d left prison. He had assumed the questions Ryan was asking – ‘Did he seem weird? Like, his mental state?’ – were about Sam. I’m just interested in the links between them. The only real link left was Harry.
‘He? You mean Harry? Your dad told you his suspicions?’
‘No, I found this in his files.’
‘I don’t know what this means.’ Jack gave the paper back to him. ‘Harry’s got a pretty solid alibi.’
‘On the surface, sure. But now the only person who spent the night up there with him is dead. Look at those calculations: Dad was onto it. Why do you think he had a blow-out with Harry’s folks? Unless he was, you know, accusing their boys of something.’ Ryan tried to push the paper back, but Harry had realised Jack wasn’t beside him and had stopped walking, started to turn. Ryan scrunched the sketch into his pocket. ‘Before he gave up, he was trying to figure out how someone would not only get down, but get back up again.’
On the way to the entrance, Harry pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and squashed it into Jack’s hand. Jack unfolded it. It was the photo of Lily, jet-black hair with a blue streak, from her corkboard. That was why Harry, who Jack thought would have been more interested in her room, had hung by the door.
‘We have to give this back,’ said Jack. ‘This is all they have.’
‘You can give it back.’ Harry put both hands in the air, signalling he wasn’t involved. ‘Means you’ll have to admit to stealing it.’
As if summoned by the conversation they were having, they walked past a police car. Jack swerved, stashed the photo, and rapped on the driver’s window. It slid down with a whir.
Jack celebrated a silent victory as he saw the age of the cop inside. Old enough to be useful, and then a few more decades. For trees, you count rings; on a cop, you count the blood vessels in their nose. The further from the city you go, add in the scalpel marks to their cheeks and neck where skin cancers had been removed, stitched, scabbed and scarred over. Stale smoke wafted out the window. This guy had been on the beat a long time. Definitely thirteen years.
‘Hi,’ said Jack. ‘My name’s Jack Quick. I’m a reporter. Of sorts.’
‘Which sort?’
‘The sort that looks into cold cases.’
‘Oh, yeah? Not many of those around here.’
‘I’m honoured to be in the presence of the world’s best detective.’
‘Don’t be a fuckwit, son. There’s not much that goes unsolved here because everyone knows everyone. Someone goes missing – pretty good idea who done it. Got a hit and run – if anyone catches a glimpse they’ll know whose car it is. Anything more serious . . . well, it’s a small place. They get nervous. Smell it on them. Police work here is waiting.’
‘Murders?’
‘Only a couple of those here in my entire life – two’s a couple, yeah? – and both of them, both of them, handed themselves in. What’s your piece on again?’
‘Lily Connors.’
‘Thought you said you wanted mur—’ He paused, drummed his fingers on the dash. Then recognised Harry. ‘You spoke to Maurice.’
‘We have.’
The cop scratched a hand through his wispy hair. Let out a great hacking cough. Jack could tell he knew the case, if only by the exasperation Maurice must have seen a thousand times, and tried to imagine him thirteen years ago. Jack assumed, even back then, his doctor would have been begging him to quit smoking. People only remember medical marvels for what they overcome: terminal patients with five months to live who fight on for years; coma patients who sit bolt upright in bed, ask what year it is. But there were other medical miracles too, like a man who, after decades of smoking himself in his car like brisket, kicks on.
‘I know you probably think you’re helping them. They’ve lost a lot, sure, but they almost lost more.’
‘Ryan?’
The cop shook his head. ‘Apparently it happens to paramedics a lot. Their job is to save people, you know, and when they don’t . . .’ He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and hooked it into his top lip. ‘I guess it’s hard to live with.’
‘Maurice?’ Harry spoke up.
‘Planning to OD. Prescription stuff – luckily someone noticed some bottles were missing before he tried.’ He cupped his hand around his lighter. Spoke in a small echo. ‘Easily enough to lay him out. Want a dart?’
‘Ryan told us his dad was suspended for stealing drugs from the hospital,’ Harry said.
‘Yeah, well, he’s not going to tell you his old man tried to kill himself, is he?’
It made sense to Jack now. Ryan wasn’t only hoping to impress his father by finally solving
his sister’s death. He was scared he’d lose him too if he didn’t.
Jack thought back to his brother’s room, sifting through the stories of people who, seed planted, had been led to suicide. Of Sam, who had potentially been convinced to do the same. Because suicide, as an idea, is not something talked about. Train delays because someone’s painted the front windshield go unreported. Celebrity deaths get ruled as ‘non-suspicious’. Articles with even a passing mention of the topic list helplines and mental health links. Because it’s a topic so dark and so unspoken, a seed growing in shadow until – perhaps with the wrong words in the wrong ear – it blooms. Like the spike in suicides after the teen drama TV show Beth had told him about. An idea that fed on silence, on being tucked away. ‘Didn’t realise you’d thought about it,’ that juvenile guard had said, and Jack, who up to that point hadn’t been thinking about it, was suddenly thinking back over all the times he’d actually wanted to. And a trigger was one thing. Maurice had seen it. His daughter. The blood-vessel roadmap on her cheeks. The black slug of a tongue. That wasn’t a seed in the corner of his mind – that was a tattoo on the inside of his eyelids.
The cop took Jack’s silence as understanding. ‘Now you see why I want you to leave them alone?’
Jack nodded. ‘Just tell me, do you believe him?’ he asked.
‘I believe that he believes it, I guess.’ The old man’s cigarette flared as he drew breath. ‘But from a police perspective, it’s case closed. Without a doubt. There’s a room with a locked door, no evidence of anyone in or out that I saw, no disturbance at the property. The world’s changing, sometimes too quickly for someone like me, and police work, our law, the way we do things, is changing too. Maybe if it happened now . . .’ Another cough. Then he shook his head. ‘I’m putting ideas in your head. We barely have the fancy stuff down here now, forensics and all that, let alone a decade and a half ago. I’ll tell you what I told him. How does a murderer get out of a locked room? They don’t. Simple as that – no one’s there to pull the trigger, it can’t be murder. Word of the law.’
Can’t it? thought Jack, but he didn’t interrupt.
‘I was in that room, and I’m telling you what I told Maurice for eight whole years. Move on.’
‘She might have scratched someone,’ Harry said. ‘We were told she was missing a fingernail.’
‘I burn my fingers and this chat’s finished.’ The cop gestured to the nub of the cigarette still in his fingertips, shrinking with the time they had left. ‘Drop it. I don’t know how else to say it. Hell, I’ll tell you as a copper if it helps make it feel compulsory.’ He pointed to the badge on his shoulder. ‘Drop it.’
‘Is that a threat?’ said Jack. ‘We’re not doing anything illegal.’
‘I don’t need to threaten you. This is a small place – I tell anyone some skinny not-from-here bloke is here looking funny at little girls at the fair, and small-town justice will sort you out better than I can. You’re hard to miss, you two: big one, little one. Timon and Pumbaa. Oh, look.’ He flicked the cigarette butt out the window, where it bounced off Jack’s shirt with a spark, and raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. ‘Burned my fingers.’
The window buzzed up, halfway. The cop paused it. Considered a moment.
‘I’ll tell you this just so you don’t bother the Connors with it. You’re pissing on the wrong tree. I was in the room. I’ve seen it before, and it’s always the same. That’s the hardest thing to see, really, because you kind of see it through their eyes, at the end. I guess you’re right about one thing. She died fighting.’
‘The struggle Sue heard? Her fingernail?’
‘Not self-defence.’ He shook his head, grim with the memory of it. ‘She changed her mind. They all do.’
CHAPTER 23
The park was free to enter but you had to buy little perforated tickets to go on the rides. Tails of pink hung from kids’ fists and pockets. You had to buy in multiples of ten, but the rides cost three tokens each, ensuring you either left with one in your pocket or headed back to buy more. Harry bought ten. It was almost like a strange date. They walked around looking at the attractions. Harry bought a Coke and a deep-fried hotdog. Jack bypassed the food truck. For all his experience in vomiting, he drew the line at salmonella. Everything, including the rides, was on wheels: the food in a retrofitted RV, coffee in a kombi with the side cut out, sideshows packed into horse-float-like stands. Adding the caravans in the carpark, it was a moveable city. Easy to disappear into.
Harry stopped at one of the sideshows and handed Jack his coat. Jack noticed it had a familiar red stripe on the arm, filing the information for later. Harry handed over three tickets and tossed three rubber balls perfectly into angled red buckets.
‘Keep it,’ Harry said, when the woman tried to hand him an oversized panda. Perhaps a novelty plush was one irony too far on this faux-date. He turned to Jack as they walked away. ‘Spent a lot of time here as a kid. Lily used to work here and she taught Sam, and Sam taught me. It’s all backspin – roll it down the inside edge. Watch this.’ They stopped and watched the stand from a distance. The woman was explaining how the game worked to a family. She threw a ball into the furthest bucket and it settled. Seemed easy enough. Then she got the rest of the balls from the bucket and handed them over. The targets were close enough to be unmissable, but all three bounced out. The woman shrugged animatedly. Bad luck. ‘If the answer’s impossible, the question’s wrong. It’s not a level playing field. When she threw hers there were already two balls in there,’ Harry pointed out. He was right. She was showing a new kid now. Demonstrated with one ball, landed it, and took three out to hand to the next punter. ‘Deadens the bounce.’
It was an unspoken agreement where they were headed. Eventually they completed their circuit and stood beneath the Ferris wheel. Harry gave the attendant their three tickets each (they’d leave with one left, just as they were supposed to) and waited beside a steel step until a carriage came around. The same guy who had swished beer on his barbecue opened the gate for them. Black Singlet. He’d swapped the black singlet for a flannelette shirt and the stubby for a can of energy drink with a lightning bolt on it, but it was the same guy, with a bristly chin that could scrub toilets. His breath was foul as he growled at them to each stay on their own side of the cabin for balance. ‘Goes round three times,’ he said, and then, ‘No funny business.’ Jack couldn’t tell if he was presumptively homophobic or if he was genuinely concerned about structural integrity. Based on the man’s scowl and the maintenance history of the ride, Jack figured it was both.
The plastic seat was cold, with a right-angle. The whole thing jolted as it started to move. Harry, who was heavier than Jack by at least one metric unit of Traumatic Childhood, maybe two, immediately tipped the carriage his way. He was looking through the bars at the park. The lights on the Ferris wheel’s frame changed the colour of his face every few seconds.
‘How’d you find the Connors?’ Jack said, still turning over what Ryan had told him.
‘Hurting,’ Harry said. The wheel moved quickly. They were near the top now. The door was only held shut by a small metal hook like a bathroom stall. Easy to get out of. Jack watched the headlights from the main road light the treetops. He thought about Sam and Harry, up here together, watching the red and blue lights go through the trees, in the wrong direction, and not knowing what they were for. He wondered if his father had had a similar experience when Liam had been injured, if the orange SES helicopter had rattled his walls and rippled the treetops and if he’d thought, My boys are out there, or that it was someone else’s trouble.
Harry continued. ‘That room was sealed tight. No crawl space in the closet. Inside lock on the window, just like Maurice said. If it was all locked up tight, it’s difficult to see how anyone could get in and then back out without disturbing anything in that room.’
‘Maurice thought the police didn’t take it seriously enough. If they weren’t treating it as a murder scene, they might have misse
d something because they weren’t looking for it. Sue broke the lock, right? It can’t have been Ryan – he was only seven – and Maurice wasn’t home. Once she sees her daughter, she’s not going to be searching the room.’
Jack thought of something Celia had said: ‘You could have stolen my car while I was sitting in it.’ And even if Sue hadn’t been overly distracted, she would have had to phone the police, look after Ryan. At some point, once she got the door open, she would have had to leave the room. It was haunting, but in that situation, seeing what she would have seen, did you do something so simple as look under the bed?
Harry nodded. ‘The ball’s already in the bucket.’
Their carriage stopped at the apex. Jack looked down. It was a compact ride, but he was impressed by the height. The tops of people’s heads moved through the alleys and arenas below like blood cells in a vein. It was busier now, the crowd thicker. He wondered if someone would look up if he shouted. In the carpark, Jack saw the police cruiser, lights off. Surfboards stacked upright tiled the fence like dragon’s scales. Further away, white froth slapped the rocks and the sea reflected the stars like puncture marks. Like a constellation of broken capillaries.
‘Pretty high up,’ Jack said. He peered over the edge. ‘It’d be dangerous but it wouldn’t be impossible.’
‘Sam and I argued over that. Neither of us wanted to do it.’
‘Door opens pretty easy. Not locked.’
‘You checking my alibi?’ Harry smiled.
‘Just saying.’
‘Sam lost a finger. It was in the paper. He didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘Yeah,’ Jack agreed. His tone was petulant, but he actually did think Harry was right. Sam’s alibi was watertight. There was no denying he felt guilt over that night. Whether it was something as simple as missing her calls or not being there for her was up for debate, but he certainly hadn’t killed her. For one thing, it would be quite a feat of athleticism to get down there. And not only get down, but get back up. Secondly, why would he have written a letter saying he’d figured out Lily’s murder? Even if Jack disregarded the implausibility of those two events, there would be a witness. Someone who watched his brother climb down, ostensibly to get help, but who instead came back empty-handed and even climbed back up to sit with him the rest of the night. And why would Harry hire Jack when he already knew the answer?
Either Side of Midnight : A Novel (2020) Page 17
