An Isolated Incident

  ‘It’s May. I’m at the door.’

  ‘Hang on.’

  Several seconds of clicking and fumbling inside and the door swung open. May recognised the tracksuit Chris was wearing from the press conference the day she arrived in town. She barely recognised the face of the woman wearing it though.

  ‘You okay? You look exhausted.’ Which was a polite understatement. Very polite. Extreme understatement.

  ‘Yeah. That’s one word for it. You want coffee?’

  May nodded and watched as Chris took two coffee mugs down from a shelf above her head, dumped a spoonful of Nescafé in each and filled them from the apparently just-boiled kettle. Every movement seemed to hurt, but when May offered to help Chris shook her head – grimacing as she did – and carried on.

  When they were both sitting down, May told Chris she’d just come from the hospital. The man Nate had belted was a mess but there was no damage that wouldn’t right itself in time.

  Chris swallowed air. ‘How’d you know?’

  ‘Police tip. Listen, I –’

  ‘Christ. Please, May. Please don’t write about it.’

  ‘It’s news.’

  ‘How is two testosterone-poisoned idiots getting into a fight news?’

  ‘When one of them is related by marriage to a murder victim and the fight was caused by that victim’s sister . . .’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Story I got is that they were fighting over you.’

  ‘I didn’t want them to fight. I didn’t cause anything.’

  ‘’Course. Stupid choice of words. When the fight happened in the presence of –’

  ‘Only the start and I had no choice in that.’

  ‘Okay, but you understand why people will be interested.’

  ‘Honestly, I don’t.’ Chris closed her eyes. ‘Is he pressing charges?’

  ‘Seems likely.’

  A tear leaked out of Chris’s left eye; she swiped it away, looked at May directly.

  ‘Don’t write about it.’

  ‘Chris, I –’

  ‘Please. If it’s in the article his boss, his girlfriend, everyone will see it . . .’

  ‘Why do you care?’

  ‘Wish I knew, mate, wish I knew.’ She stood, shuffled across to the sink, bent with difficulty and splashed her face with water.

  ‘I won’t mention it in the article.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘But it’ll probably need to go in the book.’

  ‘The book?’

  ‘Yeah. I wanted to talk to you about that. About the possibility of a book. What do you think?’

  ‘About Bella?’

  ‘About the case. I’ve been sounding out a couple of publishers. There’d be interest for sure, but we need, well, we need an ending.’

  Chris looked at her blankly.

  ‘An arrest, at least. Preferably a conviction. But that will happen. Only a matter of time.’

  Chris’s nod was barely perceptible. May couldn’t bear to look at her.

  ‘And in the meantime I can be researching and writing, getting the bulk of the story done. I’d need your cooperation, of course. No point in a book about Bella without you. What do you reckon?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘You’ve upped your security,’ May said, taking note of a new deadlock and chain.

  ‘For all the good it did. For all the bloody good anything does.’

  May’s phone rang. She excused herself and stepped into the living room to answer.

  ‘Hi, May? It’s Matt. Um, Matt Drey, from –’

  ‘Matt, great to hear from you, what’s up?’

  ‘Um, just you asked me to call you if there were any, ah, developments that you might . . .’

  ‘Yes, of course. What’s going on?’

  ‘Can’t say, but if you just happened to come down to the Imperial Hotel right now . . .’

  ‘On my way.’

  May saw the police car before she’d reached the car park. By the time she pulled in she’d clocked the twenty or so people gathered in front of the blue-and-white tape strung from a corner of the hotel’s verandah to the fence dividing the property from the tyre shop next door. Matt was standing in front of the tape, chatting to the people he was clearly supposed to be dispersing. When he saw May his face lit up.

  May winked at him and ducked right beneath the tape, rushing past him towards the uniform crouched at the end of the passageway, looking at something just around the corner. A hazy lens dropped over the scene and she realised she was in danger of passing out. She paused, pressed her palm into the brick wall to her right, concentrated on breathing properly. There was nothing in the world she wanted less than to see what the cop was looking at, but then Chris didn’t want to be going mad from grief and fear and Bella sure as fuck didn’t want to end up the thing that made others mad with grief and fear either. Toughen up, woman, get down there.

  ‘Senior Constable Riley,’ she said softly, stepping up behind him.

  He turned, almost overbalancing as he quickly stood and moved forward to cut her off. ‘Fucking Drey.’

  ‘Oh, don’t blame him. One of the onlookers was creating a fuss about something and I slipped by him. What’ve we got?’

  ‘May, come on, you know you’re not meant to be here. Detectives will be here any second. We’ll be done for if they know we let a reporter in.’

  ‘I promise I won’t write anything about this. I’ll go wait out front for the official statement like everyone else, but just tell me, please, is it to do with Bella?’

  The man’s eyes went to the sky, he shook his head. ‘Can’t say.’

  ‘It’s a body though?’

  The cop ducked his head around her, must have determined the approach a detective-free zone because he abruptly stepped out of the way, giving May a clear view of what lay in the grass. She looked away but too late not to see the small, withered, yellow dog, its head at an impossible angle, its muzzle bound with grey tape.

  ‘Fourth one in as many weeks,’ the cop said.

  May looked only at the wall behind the officer’s head. ‘Yeah. I wrote about the others. Couldn’t get a run, though. Not much interest.’

  ‘’Cause they’re strays?’

  ‘No, I mean, outside of Strathdee. A dead animal isn’t a national or state story. Anyway, thanks. I better clear out before you get in trouble.’

  ‘Yeah – hey, in case the detectives are out there already, go out this way, yeah?’ He pointed along the back wall of the pub, towards the passage on the other side.

  She looked at the dog as she stepped over it, the terror of feeling its skull crunch underneath her shoe stronger than the fear of seeing its face. But she underestimated the cruelty of her imagination, heard and felt that crunch for days.

  Nate came around early afternoon. His eyes were tiny. As soon as he was inside my blood started icing up. I told him I was about to take a walk and he could come if he wanted. He looked ready to tear my head off but he agreed and the warmth came back into my hands and feet.

  We set off without speaking. All along the street curtains and blinds flickered and flashed as we passed. By night the town’d be buzzing with the thrilling and important news that two people who used to be married took a walk together in the fading light of an autumn afternoon.

  We rounded the corner and I started heading up towards the park, but Nate mumbled something about the creek being more private and so we turned left again, cut through the community centre’s backyard and stepped over the half-down fence onto the creek bank. I stumbled a little going down the slope, grabbed Nate’s arm. We used to come down here to fight or fuck when Bella lived with us but I hadn’t been for years. It was the same, more or less. More wild vines growing around the sides of the creek; less light, less air.
r />   Nate took his arm back and leant against a tree trunk. ‘So?’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘What’s the story? Who was the dickhead?’

  I sat on a patch of dry, spiky grass and tucked my feet up beneath me. ‘A mistake.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I slept with him. A mistake, like I said, but then he wouldn’t take a hint. Kept bothering me.’

  ‘He called you a whore.’

  ‘Yeah, well, men do that sometimes.’

  ‘I don’t think he meant it like that. It’s not the first thing I’ve heard . . . I mean, people watch what they say around me, I think, but I’ve heard stuff . . .’

  The vines on the opposite bank rustled as something slithered through them. One of the reasons Nate and me chose this as our private place was that the bustling, mostly invisible wildlife meant it had a reputation as dangerous, haunted even. When Bella was small some older kids told her that a bunyip lived down here, scared the living daylights out of her. She’d go around asking every adult she knew about the bunyip, trying to determine if it was real and, if so, how much of a danger it was. She had nightmares and everything. One time I found a picture she’d drawn of it, horrifying thing, like a giant croc with a bird’s head, but standing like a man. I remember saying, ‘It doesn’t look that scary; no claws, no teeth.’ And she looked at me like I was retarded and said, ‘It doesn’t need them. It hugs you to death.’

  ‘Are you going to say anything?’

  ‘What do you want me to say, Nate?’

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘That I’m a whore?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You’re seriously asking me if I’m a whore?’

  He looked up and out at nothing.

  ‘Sometimes, Nate. Sometimes I suppose I am.’

  He didn’t react right away, just stood there looking at the space in front of his face. ‘Right,’ he said at last. ‘Right.’ And then he took a couple of giant steps up the embankment and over the fence and left me there, didn’t look back.

  I don’t know how I expected him to react. The strongest, most terrible feeling I had was that I didn’t know him. We’ve loved and grappled and wept and torn at each other as much as any two people could, but when it comes down to it he’s trapped in his own skull and I’m here in mine and thinking otherwise is a romantic daydream.

  Maybe I should’ve tried to explain it to him like I did to you, explain how it happened accidentally and all, but I doubt it would’ve made a difference. I mean, it doesn’t make a difference, does it? If I’d thought up the idea myself and put an ad on Gumtree would it change the meaning of what happens in my bed? I started whoring accidentally and teenaged Nate got into his first fight accidentally but we’ve both made a thousand choices since then and here we are.

  Brandis called while I was walking home, wanted to know what the story was with the man whose head Nate had smashed in. I told him the briefest true version I could.

  ‘Did he ever mention Bella?’

  Everything stopped. My breath, my heart, the turning of the world. I flew back in time, went through every second I’d lived since she’d gone and then further, to see the things I’d only imagined again and again. I relived the night she couldn’t.

  ‘Chris?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You know his mother is at Strathdee Haven?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s visited her once a fortnight or so for the past three years.’

  I heard Bella sobbing while he lay beside me. Only in my head this time. Only in the torture chamber of my memory.

  ‘Impossible that he wouldn’t have got to know your sister at least a little bit in that time, I’d have thought.’

  ‘He never said.’

  ‘Which is a bit odd, for sure, but not necessarily indicative of anything sinister.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘He explained it by saying he thought you wouldn’t want a reminder of her.’

  ‘She hasn’t even been gone a month.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, reminder’s my word. I was trying to soften the . . . He’s got a foul mouth on him that one. The stitches and broken teeth might be contributing to that, I suppose.’ I could hear Brandis’s approval – admiration, even – and relief and shame and fear churned in my guts. ‘What he said, if you’ll excuse the bluntness, is: “It woulda killed the mood to bring up her murdered sister, I reckon.” ’

  ‘Right. Nothing sinister.’

  ‘Look, he’s a grub, no question, and we’ll take a good long look at him, for sure, but . . .’

  ‘Is he still in hospital?’

  ‘He’ll be out today.’ Brandis went quiet and so did I. After a minute he said, ‘He do something to you that I don’t know about, Chris?’

  ‘Nothing illegal.’

  ‘I can tell him to steer clear of you. Make it sound official. But if you want an enforceable order you’ll have to –’

  ‘I know. It’s okay. Thanks.’

  ‘Have you considered getting someone to come stay with you for a while?’

  I laughed a little then.

  ‘Chris, it’s important you feel safe.’

  Like he couldn’t even hear himself, you know?

  I told Old Grey I was taking holidays until further notice. God knows I had enough owing to me. He said he needed to know when I’d be back so he could rework the roster. I told him to fire me if he wanted and replace me full time and he said, ‘Don’t be silly, love. I’ll check in with you next week.’

  I flicked through the stack of phone messages Lisa and Carrie had written out for me over the past few days. Most were from long-ago friends or distant relatives wanting to check in or pass on their love and I tossed them in the bin as I went. I found the message I was looking for. Lisa had mentioned it when she handed the pad over on, I don’t know, whatever day it had been, twelve or so pages ago.

  Barbara Stein: Bella’s landlady. Needs to organise clearing out and return of bond etc.

  ‘Alright, Bel,’ I said, steeling myself for the call. ‘Time to get you moved back in properly.’

  Thursday, 30 April

  The invitation had surprised May but she managed to answer yes as casually and naturally as if she’d just been offered a cup of tea. She offered to drive and pretended not to already know the way.

  Immediately on opening the door they were met with a putrid stench. Like rancid flesh, May thought. Chris had stopped three steps through the doorway and dropped the bucket of cleaning supplies and the stack of flattened cardboard boxes she’d been carrying. Her whole body seeming poised for attack, or for being attacked. May, carrying her camera, with her own stack of folded cardboard boxes under her arm, stayed behind Chris’s left shoulder, waiting.

  The front door opened directly into a miniature sitting room with mismatched easy chairs, a coarse, bright striped rug, a dark wood coffee table and there, in the centre, the source of the foulness: a bowl of rotten fruit and a vase of long-dead flowers. At the far end of the sitting room was a vestibule crowded with a fridge, sink, microwave. On the floor to May’s left was a wonky plastic shoe tree, yellow ballet flats and sequinned thongs and sensible black low-heeled court shoes neatly gathering dust. To the right of where Chris stood was an open door, through which May glimpsed the edge of a bed. A little past that was another open door, glossy white tiles peeping out over the edge of the grey carpet.

  ‘Righto,’ Chris said and strode over to the coffee table, then pulled out a black garbage bag and emptied the fruit bowl without covering her nose or gagging.

  May ducked into the bedroom, her hand over her nose and mouth. Fucking soft. She concentrated on the details of the room, taking photos as she went. The faux-cast-iron double bed, made up with a matching quilt and sheet set of pale blue and yellow checks. A pine dresser, the type yo
u could buy from a discount furniture barn for $79. A red velvet jewellery box, open to reveal a small collection of silver bracelets and chains, each in its own tiny compartment. At the back of the dresser, three bottles of pharmacy perfume, each used almost equally, lined up next to three lipsticks, two bottles of foundation, one tub of moisturiser, one of hair gel, a pale grey eyeshadow palette and a tube of dark brown mascara. Near the door, a small bookshelf, same pine as the dresser, holding several bestsellers from the past three or four years plus Anne of Green Gables, Little Women and the entire Harry Potter series. Four framed photos: Chris and Bella together; Chris, Bella and their mother together; Bella’s dad Tony squinting into the sun, unsmiling; a tiny tabby kitten yawning up into the camera.

  ‘Did Bella have a cat?’ May called.

  ‘A few years ago she had this little darling. Mopey, she called him, because he was such a sook, mewling or sulking in corners if she didn’t pay attention to him every second.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  A long silence. May held her breath and headed out to the sitting room where Chris was wiping down the glass coffee table with a rag soaked in what smelt like bleach.

  ‘She had to get rid of him,’ Chris said, not looking up. ‘This bloke she was seeing, he was allergic.’

  ‘Did they live together?’

  ‘Nah. Used to stay here a bit though. I think he still lived with his parents, so this was the only place they could . . . Anyway, Mopey made him sneeze, I guess.’

  ‘Shame. I used to have a cat. Couldn’t take it with me when I moved into my terrace. My mum has her now. She loves her, so that’s okay. I miss her, though, which is weird. Never thought of myself as a cat person, but I guess I must be. Or that cat anyway. Pixie.’

  ‘Thing is,’ Chris said, dipping her rag into a bucket by her side, squeezing it out, ‘I don’t think he had allergies at all. I think he didn’t like Bella’s attention being on anyone but him.’

  ‘Jealous of a cat?’

  ‘He was a particularly needy cat, that one.’