At the time she’d wondered how you could want that – that total absence? How could you want to be unreachable, to remain unknowing all night long? It was less like sleep – which May knew to be filled with interruptions caused by mosquito bites, brothers’ snores and farts, suddenly too-heavy blankets or too-loud wind – and more like death. But now that sleep had become the too-rare, too-brief interruption to her pain, she understood. She yearned.
Back out through the trees May photographed the verge where the car must have stopped. There had to have been a car, because there was no other way to get here, unless the killer or killers had somehow persuaded the woman to walk the five kilometres from where she was taken. And it would have to have been persuaded rather than forced because most of the way would have been in full view of passing traffic and at least some of the time in daylight. That’s if she’d been brought here directly. May made a note to ask about the timeline at the press conference and headed back to her car.
Leaving the door open in hope of a breeze, she pulled out the tourist map the woman at the hotel reception desk had given her and studied the layout of the town. The road running off the highway exit ramp, John Street, bisected the town from north to south. Her motel was at the northernmost end, the more expensive place right before the Melbourne exit. Most of the west–east running streets cut across John and the parallel Elizabeth Street, forming a neat grid. A few stumpy streets, lanes and cul-de-sacs interrupted the pattern here and there. Wherever you stood in town there was a pub within four blocks. The nursing home where Bella worked was on King Close, a cul-de-sac off Elizabeth Street, close to the southern edge of town. This place, the place where she ended up, was just off the edge of the map, somewhere around the Pizza Genius and Imperial Hotel ads.
With luck, Bella Michaels was unconscious from the beginning and never knew what a drab, uninspiring journey her last one had been nor what an ugly patch of nothingness she bled out onto. With luck, she went from there to not in an instant and was absent for all that followed.
My phone rang early. The cops wanted me to come down for another interview before the press conference at one. They offered to send a car but I didn’t need that. I had Nate.
A few steps into the police station I stopped and looked around, confused. I knew I’d been there two days before but I recognised nothing. There was a poster advertising Neighbourhood Watch, another explaining about translation and interpretation services. A bench seat covered in navy vinyl, scratched blue and beige floor tiles, a wood veneer counter with thick, clear plastic reaching up to the ceiling. I could’ve sworn I’d never seen any of it in my life.
Nate touched my shoulder and asked if I was okay. I nodded and stepped towards the counter, but before I could tell young Matt what I was there for he smiled at me and pressed a buzzer and said, ‘Chris. Hello again. Detective Brandis’ll be right out.’
A vaguely familiar skinny middle-aged man with thinning brown hair and a too-tight grey suit appeared from behind a door I hadn’t noticed.
‘Thanks for coming in,’ he said, barely glancing at me, his gaze falling hard on Nate. ‘Brandis,’ he said, holding out a hand, which Nate shook while giving his own name. ‘You’re the ex-husband?’
‘Bella’s brother-in-law,’ I said, though it seemed no one was listening.
‘You’ll have to wait out here, mate. Or you can take off, if you like. We can get someone to drop Chris home later.’
‘I’ll wait.’ Nate stepped back to the bench without taking his eyes off Brandis. I was overcome with a sense of protectiveness. It’s always been that way. The more he acts like a goddamn macho bikie sergeant the more I worry about him being smashed up and broken.
‘Good-o,’ Brandis said. ‘We’ll try not to keep her too long.’ He led the way back through the door, pushing it shut as soon as I was in the dim hallway. An invisible lock clicked loudly and I flinched in recognition. The smell back there was familiar too: wet dog and mildew underneath a sharp chemical scent like floral toilet cleaner. We turned a corner into a windowless room cluttered with four or five wood veneer desks. A whiteboard on the far wall was mostly covered with a red felt cloth. HROAT scrawled in green marker peeped out from the bottom left corner.
‘Chris! Thanks for coming down.’ A young bloke with blond hair, thick blond eyebrows and a scaly pink nose rushed at me, placed a meaty hand on my upper back and pushed me towards a door to the right of the whiteboard. We stepped through into a small office which I recognised, but like it was something from a movie I’d seen once rather than a real-world place where I’d sat and talked and cried. The table, chairs, tissue box, blue plastic rubbish bin, black plastic laptop with attached oversized microphone all familiar but seeming to have nothing to do with reality.
‘So how you doing, Chris?’ the young one asked when I was seated. His face was all creased up, like he’d been practising concern in front of his mirror all morning.
‘I’m okay. How are you doing? You got someone yet?’
‘Chris, I gotta tell you, we’ve got nothing.’ Brandis opened his hands up as though I might not have understood what ‘nothing’ meant otherwise. ‘Jack. Bloody. Shit. No leads. No sightings. No theories. Nothing.’
‘Okay. But this thing this arvo, the press thing, that’ll help right?’
‘It will, it will. Get the public mobilised. Hopefully someone saw something, heard something. But we can’t rely on tips from strangers to solve this for us. We need the people who knew Bella to dig deep as well. Hard as that is for you, it’s what we need to do.’
The young fella sighed, his own personal heartbreak, it was. ‘Is there anything else you can think of that we should know about? Might seem something real small, not even worth mentioning. ’Cause, you know, sometimes it’s stuff like that which busts things open. Small stuff.’
‘I could tell you small stuff about Bella all day and all night. All month, probably. I can tell you how she did at school. What she got for her last birthday. I mean . . .’ I heard my own voice going all shrill, the way it usually went only when I was fighting with Nate. I wished they’d let him come through, but then he’d get riled up by their questions and my voice and it’d all be much worse. I took a breath. ‘I’m serious. I don’t know what you’re asking me. You want to know about how clean she kept her car? Where she bought her undies? What?’
‘Nah, nah. I guess, Chris, we just want more of an idea about who Bella was outside of work. Like, what did she get up to on a weekend, say?’
I told them about her friends that I knew, said they should talk to them about what exactly went down at the movies or bowling alley or bloody karaoke on a Saturday night. They were barely listening, I could tell. There was something they wanted me to say that I wasn’t saying and I had no clue what it was.
‘One thing we were wondering,’ the younger one said, after I’d run through the name of every person I’d ever known Bella to speak to. ‘Is it possible that Bella might’ve been moonlighting?’
My mind hooked on to the word and all I could think was how pretty it sounded. I imagined Bella climbing a ladder and flicking a switch, bathing the world with gentle white light.
‘Like yourself, I mean,’ he added.
Moonlighting. Bella wasn’t one for moonlight. She was a morning person if there ever was one. She must’ve been so tired on Friday night, on top of everything else.
‘C’mon, Chris,’ Brandis said. ‘We don’t want to bust your chops over it, but everyone knows you –’
‘No.’
‘Listen, you’re not in any trouble, we just need to –’
‘Not her. There’s no way.’
The detectives exchanged another one of those looks and my hand went hot with wanting to slap their faces.
‘You know it’s a high-risk profession,’ Brandis said.
‘What is? Cleaning up old people’s shit?’
?
??Chris,’ Brandis said and the younger one smiled. He fucking smiled.
We have to deal with this, I suppose.
The first time, three and a bit years ago, was an accident. It was a slow night at work and I got to talking with a long-distance truckie who’d stopped into the pub for a feed. At the end of my shift, when he said he’d be sleeping in his truck that night, I invited him back to mine. I’d been doing that a bit lately, asking blokes back. It hadn’t been long since Nate left and I wanted nothing to do with love, you know, but the other business, well, I’ve always found it a good boost, to be honest.
Look, I’m no great beauty but I’m handy with make-up and keep myself fit and, harsh as it sounds, the same can’t be said of most of the women my age around here. I’m not having a go, just stating a fact: being single and childless gives you more time to spend on making yourself look nice. In this town, most women my age haven’t been single and childless since they were young enough that they didn’t need to make any effort, so, in that – if nothing else – I have an advantage.
Point being, I’ve never had much trouble attracting blokes and in the years since I’ve been divorced it’s only been easier. This probably sounds sad to you, but sometimes it’s what’s kept me going. Like, there’ve been times I’ve felt so low, so down on myself and my life, and then some fella in the pub would start hanging around, finding excuses to talk to me. I’d catch him perving when he thought I couldn’t see. And it always gave me such a lift, no matter who he was. And if I liked him back, then even better. I tell you, it was a relief to learn, as a divorced thirty-four-year-old, that I could still feel that thrill, that bubbly, giddy, giggly excitement I had thought belonged to being sixteen and getting felt up in the movies for the first time.
I’m not talking about love. I’m resigned to the fact that Nate’s my one and only when it comes to that. And I don’t think it’s even lust, although I can and do get swamped by that now and again, my god. But no, I’m talking about something less dramatic but much sweeter. A crush, I suppose is the word. A crush that might only last a few hours and might end up in awkward sloppy kisses or might end up with mind-blowing sex or might never end up at all, just float away with the summer wind but that, while it lasts, makes you feel fresh and pretty and like your whole life is ahead of you.
Anyway, one night, I invite this bloke back to mine. It’s like a hundr– well, not that many, but like a bunch of times before. We have a drink or two and then a nice roll around under the covers and then in the morning he’s gone. But this time was different because this time after the bloke left there was a stack of twenties on the bedside table, folded up with a note saying: Had an early start. See ya next time I’m in town, gorgeous.
I went to the supermarket and stocked up and went home again and stood for a while looking at the shelves of my cupboard, at the brand-name packets of biscuits and muesli, the bags of Italian pasta and tins of Campbell’s tomato soup. I made myself a sandwich with the pricey, soft yellow cheese that comes in a wedge instead of thin slices between plastic and drank Moccona made with fresh milk. It wasn’t until I was in bed that night that the word prostitute jumped into my mind. It was a shock, but not a big one. A fleeing mouse when you turn the kitchen light on kind of shock. Ooh! And then, damn, and then, ah well. I slept soundly that night, and although I’ve had plenty of sleepless nights since, not one of them has been over the help some blokes give me with my groceries. Not one.
Not that I go boasting about it or anything. A couple of days after that first time, Bella came over and saw all the goodies I had in the kitchen. She hoed right into the choccy bickies and asked whether I’d won the lotto. I’d already thought hard about whether to tell her. I wanted to believe she would see it the way I did, but I remembered all the times we’d sniggered at the whores who haunted the off-ramp service station and the time she dumped a bloke because he admitted losing his V-card to a prozzy way back when he was a kid. ‘Coulda picked up anything from the dirty bitch,’ she’d said. I think I’d agreed with her. Why wouldn’t I?
When she asked I said, yeah, actually I had won the lotto. She knew I’d never place a bet on anything, on account of the troubles our mum had with the pokies, so I said some bloke at the pub had celebrated the birth of his kid by putting a bet on for the bar staff and that my share of the winnings had been enough to restock my cupboards. ‘Awesome,’ she said. She didn’t hesitate. I felt so rotten then, watching her hands, rough and red from all the cleaning chemicals she used at the nursing home, dip into the biscuit packet. She told me a story about slipping in some old man’s piss and she laughed while she said it but all I could think was how much lower that was than picking up a hundred for letting a sweet, lonely truckie share your bed.
That first bloke stayed over again next time he was passing through and that time he asked if maybe I’d be up for keeping some of his mates company when they came through as well. I said they were welcome to come into the pub and if I happened to be free on the night, then I might let them overnight in my house instead of in their trucks.
It’s worked out alright, really. Once or twice a week a bloke will buy a counter meal and a beer and ask me what I’m up to after work. Depending on my mood and my bank balance and whether I like the look of him, I’ll either say I’m busy or I’ll say I’m planning a night in and tell him what time I knock off. Either way it’s no skin off anyone’s nose.
I never tell them a price, never ask for payment. They know they’re expected to leave a little something on the table before they leave. A couple of blokes have taken advantage, leaving just a tenner or two. One bastard left me a six-pack of the beer he was carrying in his truck. It’s okay. I’m always busy when the tight-arses next come through town. Word gets around. Blokes who want a chance at sticking their wick in before crashing out in my comfy queen know to leave at least seventy the first time. If they leave more then I’ll remember and when I see them again, I show my appreciation.
I never spent the truckie cash after that first supermarket spree. It all goes into the pewter jewellery box my mum left me. When the box is full I take the bus out to the bank in Wagga. (Can you imagine the gossip if I turned up in the town branch with a couple of thousand cash?) At first I thought I’d just save enough to take Bella on a nice holiday up the Gold Coast, but I realised pretty quickly that if I kept it up I’d have enough for a deposit on a little house in a couple of years. I’d get a place with a spare room and Bella could stay there for nothing and save up her own deposit. Imagine that – the barmaid and the nurse’s aide, daughters of a drunken welfare queen and a couple of no-good womanisers, both of us homeowners.
So that dream, that dream that I was well on the way to making reality, that’s another thing those fuckers took from me.
Don’t think I’m not keeping track.
I didn’t tell the detectives all that, of course. They would’ve loved it, but. They dug and dug at me, asking me stuff that couldn’t possibly have a bearing on the investigation. Stuff that couldn’t have a bearing on anything except my dignity.
‘This is obviously something you don’t like talking about, but for Bella’s sake, you need to give us a list of your clients.’
‘Clients? You mean the drinkers at the pub? Geez, you’d have to ask Old Grey.’
‘You know what we mean, Chris. The ones you take home from the pub.’
‘Blokes I take home aren’t clients. They’re just blokes I take home. No one’s business, is it?’
‘Shitty thing about a murder investigation,’ Brandis said, ‘is that we have to make everything about the victim’s life our business.’
‘You’re not talking about her life, though. You’re talking about mine.’
The young one sighed again. God, I would’ve liked to slap him. ‘Your life was intertwined with hers. It’s possible some of your cli–’ He broke off with a goddamn smirk. Held his hands up. ‘Sorry. Your boyfriends.
It’s possible one of them might’ve taken an interest in your sister.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘Why not? You’ve got pictures of her in your place, don’t you? Bloke might’ve taken a liking, decided to look her up. Not unthinkable, is it?’
‘You think whoever did that to her liked her? Jesus.’
‘Alright, alright. Not a liking. Something else. Point is, it might’ve been the place of introduction so to speak. He sees her pic, he decides to –’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No man I’ve ever met could do that.’
‘You’d be surprised,’ Brandis said, so soft I wondered if he meant me to hear him.
‘Thing is, Chris, we have to operate with the assumption it could be anyone, and since anyone is a hell of a lot of people, we have to start close to home. Bella’s workmates and friends, her neighbours and relatives. Her relatives’ friends. So, you know, if you could give us your boyfriends’ names . . .’
‘Yeah, well, I would, but I don’t know them.’
He fucking smiled, that little shit. ‘You don’t know the names of the men you take home?’
‘Yeah, that’s right. I’m a big old slut. Not a crime, is it?’
‘Chris. Calm down. We’re not trying to upset you. Like I said, it’s a dangerous kind of . . . lifestyle you’ve got. It’s not a safe thing, bringing men you don’t know back to your place like that. Fucked-up men looking for women to do nasty shit to, well, a lot of the time they figure a whore is a good target. No one’s going to worry too much, you know?’