Plenty, Jack thought. Your brother is a killer of women.
He didn’t answer her question. ‘Alexis and Curtis didn’t’ – he could barely get it out – ‘see each other outside of court, did they?’
Before Lauren could answer, a third voice cut them off.
‘He wishes.’
They were at the driveway, at the point where the ever-changing landscape of the pebbles precluded footprints. The point where Eliza disappeared from the earth. The front decking of the Wade house was on their right. Eliza could have easily walked straight up and knocked on the door. Gone inside the house without leaving a trace.
Curtis was leaning against the railing, drinking out of an enamel mug. ‘Having fun with your friend, Lauren? You’re lucky she thinks you’re useful, Jack.’
Lauren ignored him. Turned to Jack. ‘Do you want to come back tomorrow?’ Then she whispered, ‘He’ll settle down.’
‘Alexis’s funeral,’ Jack said.
‘Oh. Shit. Doesn’t make sense us both driving, can I hop in with you?’
‘You’re going?’
‘She stuck up for my family. Of course I’m going. Besides, her killer-boyfriend might be there.’
Jack wondered if that was disrespectful. Then again, he hadn’t even thought of it. It was a good opportunity to have a look around.
‘You’re at Mary-Anne’s?’ she asked. ‘See you tomorrow, then.’
Jack gave a noncommittal nod. He was aware of Curtis watching them. He couldn’t be seen at the funeral with Lauren, but he’d have to talk her out of it tomorrow.
Lauren bounded up the stairs, gesturing for Curtis to come inside. He turned to put an arm around her, but she weaved out from under it, recoiling at his touch. This must be so hard for both of them. A family without a mother or a father now. Both of them untethered, their surname hated, not just by this one small town but the whole country. Lauren had some broad shoulders to take all that on. It was more than self-preservation, he thought, and more than being scared. She wanted to see justice for these dead women, the right person in prison.
She opened the door, guiding Curtis inside now. Jack heard her mutter something about it being time to go in, admonishing him for what was in his cup. A murmured protest. She gave a retort, not properly heard but Jack got enough of her tone and cadence to guess the words: I can smell it, Curtis.
Lauren bobbled in the passenger seat next to Jack. He’d tried to sneak out early, stepping over the blackening banana in his doorway, but Lauren had already been there, sitting on his bonnet, legs swinging in the air. She was wearing a black pantsuit with a white blouse, barefoot, her heels perched on the roof. Jack didn’t have the heart to argue; he tossed his bag in the back and they got in. Five minutes into the drive, Lauren buzzed down the window, stuck an arm out, hooked her heels with her fingertips and brought them back inside.
An hour later, they still hadn’t spoken. Lauren’s jiggling head matched the bumps in the road, and Jack didn’t know what was pissing him off more: the elasticity of her neck or the fact that she was sitting next to him at all, which meant that he had to go back to Birravale. Though Mary-Anne hadn’t asked him to check out, and he hadn’t returned his key either. He was going back whether he liked it or not.
‘Do you think they’ll be there?’ Lauren broke the silence as they purred across the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
‘Who?’
‘The murderer.’ She angled herself around in her seat, practically leaning out the window to glimpse the sails of the Opera House. Jack didn’t bother. Like every other Sydney commuter, he’d become numb to the majesty of the bridge and what was around it. Sure, the bridge was one of the architectural marvels of the world. But it was also just the way to work for any Sydney-sider. It still looked incredible from the aerial photos but, up close you could barely see the Opera House for the barbed wire enclosed walkways, the train tracks and the traffic. The Opera House’s supposedly pristine white sails were rust-dark with water stains. Up close, seeing how things were built, the majesty was removed. Just like people themselves, the nuts and the bolts of them, the traumas and the bruises. Everyone likes the final product, but no one wants to see it close enough to know how it’s all stitched together. Just like his TV show.
Jack peeled off to the Cahill Expressway, which quickly opened up a better view of Circular Quay, the Opera House and the bridge. He feathered the brake in sympathy to let Lauren have a proper look. Then they dipped into a tunnel and into the eastern suburbs, weaving through terrace houses and roadworks. Another twenty minutes and they were in the beachside suburb of Maroubra. Jack slowed as they came up to Alexis’s family church; he’d planned to park around the corner so he and Lauren wouldn’t arrive together. The church itself was old and regal, with rough, large bricked walls. The front facade was peaked and triangular, though the stained-glass window and large wooden double doors were both arch-shaped. The way the roof peaked, that triangular prism, the angularity of it, it looked almost like Andrew’s or Curtis’s country homestead. If you added a verandah, wood instead of stone, you could worship at that altar.
The church yard was empty, the street not yet clogged with cars. They had an hour and a half until the service started.
‘We’re way too early,’ Lauren said, as if it weren’t her fault Jack had tried to sneak out early. ‘Coffee?’
Jack certainly didn’t want to be the first one there. The last sight the grieving family needed was him sitting in a pew with Curtis Wade’s sister next to him. That was next-level gate-crashing.
There’d be coffee shops by the beach, he figured. He parked on the main road. Lauren sat with her door open to put on her shoes. One of the heels was roughly glued on. Jack supposed she barely had use for heels in the country; these were funeral and court-case shoes only. Jack was in jeans and a t-shirt, he hadn’t wanted to drive in his suit. He got his bag out of the back and pointed to a public toilet block down near the water.
‘I have to change.’
‘I’ll order you something,’ Lauren said, gesturing to a café over the road. ‘What do you want?’
‘What you get,’ Jack said.
The road ran parallel to the beach. The sea hissed and rolled like it was boiling. Some tiny black dots were out far, bobbing up and down, waiting for the temperamental sea to serve them something they could use. Jack wasn’t close enough for spray to fleck his cheek, but salt hung in the air, opened his nostrils. There were two men showering in the open showers just off the car park, a surfboard propped against the coppers log beside them. One was half-in half-out of a wetsuit, which was hanging off him like the black skin of a rotten banana, peeled to the waist. The other man was in his underwear, thick black hair on his chest, facing up into the stream with cupped hands around his cheeks, letting the water pepper his face. Shampoo foam bled out of his hair. Either a vain man, Jack thought, to bring his own hair products to the beach, or a backpacker.
The toilet block had a polished concrete floor and wet, crunchy sand underfoot that hung together in clumps. Glued together by salt and piss. Jack locked himself in a cubicle – there was a steel toilet without a seat – and changed by draping his clothes over the door, standing on his sneakers. He wobbled as he threaded his trousers one leg at a time. This wasn’t how it used to be. He’d used to put his knees on such a floor, if he had to. Any floor used to do. Not today.
Walking back out in his suit – which, being grey, he hoped was reverential enough – Jack saw one of the men drying himself in the car park and changing into proper clothes, half-shielded by the door of his car. Jack recognised the car first – a silver SUV. He caught a glimpse inside: filthy, the opposite of Andrew Freeman’s vacuumed carpets. Then he properly saw the man: it was Ted Piper. Out for a surf before the funeral. Jack’s first thought was that it wasn’t very respectful, his second was that Ted had never struck him as a surfer. But he knew hardcore surfers didn’t care for such things as grief, if the ocean’s calling. They chased that pull, addicted to the dram
a of the sea. The swell, bro, it’s irresistible. Funeral or not.
Jack hurried back towards the café. He definitely didn’t need a confrontation with Ted before the funeral. And perhaps sipping a soy latte with a potential serial killer’s sister wasn’t very respectful either.
Because there was a pull on Jack as well, just like Ted and the ocean, that same addiction to the drama. Lauren was sitting outside; she waved. The swell bro, it’s irresistible. She’d ordered food. He really fucking wanted it.
Jack told Lauren that he’d go first, and she could follow in fifteen minutes.
‘You’re like a high-schooler getting dropped at school by their mum,’ she said, but agreed.
‘I thought you were home-schooled?’ Jack said.
‘Jesus, Jack. Creepy much?’
‘If having a team of researchers look into a woman is creepy . . .’ He got out of the car.
People were still milling on the large stone steps of the church and Jack willed them to start heading in. He knew he couldn’t get in and out completely unnoticed, but he still wanted to minimise the attention. David Winter and Ian McCarthy were talking by the door. Winter was using his hands. McCarthy, at least a foot taller, was nodding. Around them, people started to move, splitting around the policemen, as if tidal, filtering through the large arch doors. Winter produced a yellow A4 envelope, handed it to McCarthy, patted him on the back, and joined the current of black backs into the church.
Jack watched as Ian squeezed the sides so the mouth of the envelope opened. He glanced into the church, then at the envelope in his hand. He thought for a second and then quick-stepped down the stairs, over to his Toyota. He didn’t need to open the door; country cars always have their windows cracked. Ghosts of Blue Heelers in the back, Jack supposed. Ian slid the envelope through the window onto the passenger seat, as if posting a letter, then hurried up the steps and into the church.
The mingling on the steps had thinned. Jack didn’t recognise any faces. Now was as good a time to make his entrance as any. He crossed the street, taking the long way behind the back of Ian McCarthy’s car. Curious, Jack peered in through the window. There was a McDonald’s coffee in the console. The yellow envelope was on the passenger seat. The window was descended generously into the sill.
Jack stood there a while. Last favour, he thought, recalling his text message to Ian. He figured people might look over if he hovered too long, so he got moving, rubbing his shoulder.
As at the police station, there was a hush when he walked into the church. A few seconds of silence. Then a sound like crinkling paper, whispers trickling through the gathering.
I didn’t think he’d come.
Who told him it was on?
Someone should ask him to leave.
He took a seat in the last pew, scooted to the end. People swivelled to catch a glimpse of him. Lauren would fare better – not as many people would recognise her. But if they caught on – if that whisper rippled through the church when she came in – they’d both have to leave, and quickly. It wouldn’t take much to explode this powder keg of grief.
Heavy piano music ricocheted off the stone walls. Alexis’s coffin was on the altar, open at the midpoint and lined with white satin. But the coffin was empty. The ever-cautious Winter must be hanging on to Alexis’s body. The family would have a smaller, private ceremony later. Jack looked around. On one wall, a projector cycled through photos of Alexis. There was one of her in a mortarboard, holding a scroll, graduating from Law. Another of her hiking. One of her drinking from a comically large stein in Europe. He wondered if Eliza’s family had put together a slideshow, if they had pored over the images to choose those that best captured her life. How had they felt when the memories they’d chosen to remember her by were replaced by billboards and TV ads of her bone-white skin and strangled neck?
He scanned the gathering. The church was filling up with familiar faces. Many of them from the same faux-family that had followed Eliza’s ghost through Sydney, those interns and film crews and journalists who had come to know Alexis. Cameramen normally seen exclusively in cargo shorts with Bose headphones cradled around their necks, who wouldn’t wear a tuxedo at their own wedding, were stuffed into black suits. He saw Lauren sidle in the back, clock him, and stand in the opposite corner. He silently thanked her for her discretion. Winter hadn’t taken a pew; he was standing by the door. Was he investigating the room or here to pay his respects? Ted was there too, hair still wet, in his favourite blue suit. He’d found a seat near the middle. This was almost more a networking event than a funeral.
And, on top of it all, there might be a killer here too. The pew creaked as Ian McCarthy shuffled in beside Jack.
‘I didn’t know you were coming,’ said Jack, even though he’d seen him outside. Ian’s jacket had patches of dust on the shoulders. He was another man Jack had never seen out of jeans that doubled as a tea towel. ‘It’s odd seeing you like this.’
‘Whole bloody thing’s odd. Poor girl,’ McCarthy whispered. People were looking at them talk.
‘You don’t have to sit next to me,’ Jack said.
‘She would’ve wanted you here.’
‘She would have preferred none of us were here, I think.’
Ian fiddled with his tie. ‘Just wanted to let you know you’ve still got some friends. You got a program?’
Jack held his up. It was a folded A5 booklet with an image of creeping vines on the front. In Loving Memory. A phone rang somewhere in the church. Someone mumbled, ‘Sorry, always forget that,’ and turned it off.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ McCarthy said. ‘You still reckon Andrew Freeman might be a bad egg?’
Jack turned slightly, aware of the rustle of his jacket. It was a papery crinkle, too loud in the church.
‘It’s a line of enquiry,’ he said.
‘Three million worth of damage,’ Ian said. ‘You think it’s enough to kill over?’
‘Not sure.’ Andrew’s words echoed: It’s not real money.
‘Thing is . . .’ Ian looked at his hands. ‘He didn’t claim it.’
‘What?’
‘The three mill is guesswork. Andrew wouldn’t have the insurers out. He didn’t lodge a claim. Never a dollar in. Apparently.’
‘Why wouldn’t you lodge a three-million-dollar insurance claim?’
Ian shrugged. ‘I thought that too. I’m no finance cop. Maybe it means something, maybe it doesn’t. But I thought you’d like to know. Strange, hey?’ Ian nodded, information passed on. He shuffled out.
Jack tried to process the information. Andrew didn’t want an insurer out to his property? That made sense if Andrew was up there strangling people. But Andrew had seemed so benign, and he hadn’t cared about the money, so there wasn’t any motive. But then why lie about a witness? Unless putting Curtis behind bars really was just small-town bigotry. Prejudicial police work rather than a deliberate effort to hide anything more sinister. Still, Andrew wasn’t in the church today, Jack noted.
Again, Jack thanked his luck that Ian McCarthy didn’t watch TV. That he thought Netflix was a flyscreen door. You’ve cost a lot of people their jobs. Thankfully, Ian seemed to be doing okay despite how Jack had smeared him. Besides, Jack thought, it was a reputation not so unearned. Not ten minutes ago, Ian had left a yellow envelope exposed, behind an alluringly cracked window that an arm – not any arm, but a particularly skinny one, perhaps – could reach, depending on the owner’s willingness to risk a bruised shoulder.
Jack absentmindedly rubbed his shoulder again.
The service was starting. Jack picked up the program and opened it, could barely pay attention to the first hymn. He checked behind him. Winter wasn’t looking and Lauren was leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. He was safe, tucked away in the corner. Jack opened his jacket pocket and withdrew the envelope. It had made the worryingly loud crinkle as he’d moved to welcome Ian. Jack unfolded it, peeked inside. Photos. Splayed hair on a steel table. A bloodied and bruised face
. Severed fingers. Photocopies of reports, too. He looked up at the altar. The priest was beginning to talk. Photos of Alexis flashed beside him on the wall. Jack looked down in his lap, and Alexis stared back up at him there too.
After the service, everyone was welcomed to visit the community hall next door for a cup of tea and cake. The priest seemed to hang on the word everyone. Jack might have been imagining it, but there seemed to be a shift in the air. The people in front of him looked like they were itching to turn around. They needn’t have worried; Jack was leaving right away. Unfortunately, they only opened the door beside the altar, which led straight into the wake. Jack waited until the end of the line had mostly faded down to the stragglers hanging back to talk to the priest. Someone shut the projector off with a clunk and the room dimmed, Alexis disappearing. The envelope rustled in his breast pocket as he stood. He smoothed it. It should be easy enough to walk straight through the hall and out the door.
It wasn’t. The community hall was packed. Long tables of cakes and square-cut sandwiches lined each wall. A card table with a hulking steel coffee urn was up the back. Grief requires energy. People turned as he entered, though Jack avoided eye contact. He was used to the dullness in the air when he walked into a room now. He just wanted out. The fastest way to the door was by going around the end of the trestle tables, walking through the gap between the food and the door. He couldn’t see Lauren, she must be already outside. They’d agreed to meet at the car.
‘Bringing a date to a funeral. That’s low. Even for you,’ Ted Piper said, when Jack was halfway to the door. Thankfully there was a table separating them. Ted had half a sandwich in his mouth and a handful of cakes and other morsels on a paper plate. He was picking more off the platters and adding to the pile.
‘Who do you —’
‘I saw you at the café.’
‘We’re not at war, are we?’ Jack pointed to Ted’s stockpiled plate.
‘Fuck off.’ Ted licked his fingers. ‘Why is Lauren here?’
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