Officer Richard Bennett, Kath Bryce's uncle, and Ben Reilly, hopeful suitor to Kath, sat in the lounge room of Ben's rented house. Just two old friends reminiscing over the past. Except it was nothing that simple or pleasant.
As Kath's closest living relative, apart from her grandparents, it had pretty much fallen to Rich to welcome Ben into the family. This became even more his responsibility because, at the time Ben and Kath were going out, Kath was living with Rich in town. She took a lot of three unit classes at school that were held outside normal hours. So her and her grandparents had decided it would be easier for her to stay at Richard's during the week and return home on weekends. It was easier than making the seven A.M. starts and four to five P.M. finishes to and from their place, fifteen kilometres out of town.
The topic of Ben meeting her family, in that typical teenage way, had never come up. The only reason Rich knew Ben was because Rich had come home early one day and surprised them as they were about to have sex.
Barely an adult himself, Rich hadn't jumped and screamed and banned Kath from seeing Ben, but had spoken politely to both of them and asked to speak to Kath on her own for a moment.
Kath had dutifully followed him out to the kitchen, expecting to cop a roasting while Ben had sat on the lounge, trying to rearrange himself to hide a painfully obvious erection. Instead of the expected roasting though, Rich had sat Kath down at the kitchen table and spoken to her like an adult.
"Do you know what you're doing?" he asked, looking almost as awkward and embarrassed as she'd felt.
"I've got a fair idea," she answered.
"I mean," said Rich, badly flustered. "Is this what you want?"
Kath thought for a moment, then she nodded. "Exactly what I want."
"Do you love him?" he asked, his face getting redder by the second like a stove heating up.
"Does it matter?"
"It should."
"I think so. Yes."
"And does he love you?"
"What is this? A wedding? I don't know, I guess he does."
"Does he respect you?" said Rich, looking at her.
"Yeah," she'd been more positive about that. "He does, he treats me well."
"Okay." He sat back in the chair, considering. "Do you have protection?"
She stared at him, gape mouthed, and now she was going red too. "Do I look like an idiot? Of course we do!"
"Okay, okay," he held up his hands. "I was just checking. Off you go then, have fun. I'll be in my room, watching TV." He grinned. "Very loudly."
She smacked him in the arm as she stood up.
"One other thing," he said as she was leaving the room and she froze. "If you and this guy are serious I'd better meet him. Ask him if he'd like to come over for dinner one night."
Kath relaxed and ran back down the hall to the lounge room, where Ben was wondering whether he should just leave. Kath had recounted all this to him as they lay side by side in her narrow bed, painfully aware of the faint, accidental brush of skin against skin. They'd ended up not having sex that night. And when Ben had come over for dinner two days later he and Rich had hit it off straight away despite the age difference, there was six years between them, and remained good friends.
When Ben and Kath had started to drift apart it was hard to tell who'd been more upset, Kath or Rich.
So far, Ben's lunge-room furnishings consisted of little more than a pair of arm-chairs and a milk crate. He dropped into the other arm-chair so hard that it creaked. The silence was too loud, roaring in his ears, and Rich swelled up in front of him, as though viewed through a magnifying glass.
"Whoa, steady there," Rich caught him as he started to lean sideways in the arm-chair.
"She's dead, isn't she?" said Ben tonelessly, his face pale as a newly-shaved scalp.
"What?" said Rich. Ben's voice was so faint that he had to lean closer to hear him.
"Kath. She's dead. Isn't she? That's what you're here to tell me. Neil hit her one too many times and she didn't get up."
"Good Lord no," said Rich and laughed. But it was a tired laugh, devoid of any humour, and Ben thought he was closer to the truth than either of them would have liked.
Rich went on, "No, she's not dead. Although, in all honesty, Ben?" Rich stared at him and for a moment he looked absolutely hollow, that leering face of death all too visible beneath the skin. "For a moment there, when I saw her at the hospital, I thought she was."
"That bastard," said Ben. "That absolute, fucking bastard. He should be killed, that fucking son of a bitch should die. I should have taken her away, damn it. I knew I should have." He looked at Rich. "I was over there last night. You'll need to know that, won't you?"
Rich shook his head. "We already know," he said, taking a sudden interest in his neatly-trimmed fingernails.
"What?" said Ben. "How?" He felt sick in his belly and he knew. "Neil saw me, didn't he? He knew I was there."
Rich didn't look straight at him, still inspecting his fingernails. "One of her neighbours saw you leaving as well. But so did Neil, apparently he was on his way back from the pub. Saw you coming out of the house. Ambulance got called fifteen minutes later. When they got her in, they called us."
Finally Rich looked up at him. "He was still going on about you when we brought him in," he said. "His knuckles all bruised and swollen and trying to tell us you did it to her." He smiled again, that grinning death's head. "We arrested him pretty hard. He's still recovering."
"Good," said Ben. "I hope you gave him one for me."
"Believe me," said Rich. "We gave the arsehole just about one for everybody."
"So, how is Kath?"
"She's conscious. And she's out of the woods. But I wouldn't be taking her out water-skiing just yet."
"But she is okay?" persisted Ben.
"Yeah," said Rich. "She's fine. And she was asking for you."
Ben grinned, not realising how wound up he was until everything suddenly came uncoiled and he felt a huge weight release from his body. It was such a relief he could have floated away.
"She's up at the hospital here?"
Rich nodded. He looked at the floor between his shoes and shook his head. "I still for the life of me don't know what she sees in that guy. It almost drove us apart, y'know. We fought about it until I was blue in the face and it didn't make a lick of difference. I don't know why she was so damned stubborn about marrying him."
Ben had a fair idea. And he suspected it involved him and some weird, twisted idea of revenge.
He shrugged. "Who knows, man," he said. "I've never understood why girls stick with guys like that. I had a girlfriend for a while down in Sydney. Her mum was married to this absolute nut-case. I think he had some serious fucked up shit in his head. He'd go for months at a time and be perfectly fine, and don't get me wrong, he wasn't a Jekyll and Hyde type, more sort of a Mr Hyde and Mr Hyde's angrier, meaner brother. But yeah, he'd be fine, go for months at a time and then he'd snap. Abuse the hell out of her until she was forced to move out, then a week later she'd be back with him."
"You'd be surprised how often we see psychos like that," said Rich. "That's how we find most of them. Standing over their wives or girlfriends, blood still on their knuckles, trying to work out how the ground sloped away so quickly."
"Yeah. This guy, he was missing an essential part of his brain. That release valve that lets you blow off steam so it doesn't build up? He kept building up more and more steam until he went fucking nuts. Sad, really. And the stupid thing was, she kept going back to him."
"It can be scary as all fuck, too," said Rich. "A man crazy with anger is a man with no inhibitors. Someone you don't want to mess with."
"That's not Neil's problem though, is it? He's not crazy."
Rich laughed, a short, barking noise.
"Neil? Hell no. He's just one mean and angry son of a bitch." He paused. "Maybe he is crazy, but that's for the courts to decide. Anyway," he stood up. "I better get to work. Give me a bell, we'll get together for a
beer."
"Cool," said Ben, walking him to the door. "Your number still Triple Oh?"
"Very funny," said Rich. "Oh, and listen," he stopped at the door and stepped close to Ben. "If you ever run out on my cousin like that again I will hunt you down and shoot you through the head."
He blew it by cracking a big grin, he never could keep a straight face.
"I'm sorry," he said, chuckling. "I always wanted to say something like that. Seriously though, she was really hurt when you left."
"I know," said Ben. "I know."
As he closed the door behind Rich, Ben felt low enough to walk under a snake.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE