The Carnival is Over, page 6
‘You could be right.’ He shook Cec’s hand, surprised by the iron grip of the stubby little fingers.
On the way back they stopped at the Black Lion Inn, a faux-Tudor oddity that stood just off the highway, surrounded by stony olive-green sheep paddocks all the way to the grey horizon. They sat in the beer garden drinking schooners of Resch’s and carving their way through plate-sized steaks. Ross said, between forkfuls, ‘This Victa with an A Smith? Can’t be his real name.’
‘Not sure about V for Victa as in mower,’ Mick said. ‘Either someone can’t spell, or it’s a deliberate misspelling. I doubt Smith is his surname. Maybe there’s a V in his real name.’
‘What, Vincent, or Venables or Vennings or something?’
‘Maybe. It’s all academic anyway.’ Mick shrugged and finished his beer. ‘Until that second cheque turns up.’
‘What are you hoping to find, digging around in these cheques?’ Ross probed. ‘It’s nothing to do with Tony Poulos, is it, Mick? We’ve put that to bed. Haven’t we?’
‘Hm.’ Goodenough studied his plate, apparently more intent on his steak and chips. In fact he was thinking about the names in the deputy mayor’s diary. He thought he might take a quiet look into that mysterious David character, before involving anyone else. See if there was any connection with V for Victa, of the so-called Smith Family. On that last cheque Tony Poulos posthumously wrote.
11
Hal got off the bus quarter of a mile from home and started walking up the hill. The rain had stopped, but the light was fading and there was a gloomy look on his face. Allie again. Why did she wait back for the next bus when she saw me get on? Ever since she got that promotion to admin, it was like she wanted nothing to do with him. Why?
He saw a beer bottle on the grassy verge, and skipped up to it, was about to put his boot into it when heard a car cruise up beside him, then slow down twenty yards ahead. An old two-tone brown FB Holden rust bucket sat idling noisily on the roadside, grey smoke streaming from the exhaust. Two rough heads in the front looked back at him: Pelican Shit in the passenger seat and his hairy mate, Spider, at the wheel. Oh shit. Five minutes from home and no help in sight. Well, he wasn’t about to turn around and run. Not for those pricks. Hal kept on walking along the footpath towards them.
Spider got out and stepped onto the nature strip. He was bigger than Hal had thought. Not tall and skinny like Pelican Shit; nuggety, with powerful shoulders in a tight T-shirt, tattoos along his muscly arms and spiderweb tatts on his elbows, meaning he’d done a stretch in gaol.
‘Eh mate, come for a spin.’ He grinned, flashing broken front teeth. ‘Get in.’
‘Ah, no thanks. Gotta get home, things to do.’
‘Mummy’ll wait. Ya mates won’t. Get in.’
‘You don’t know my mother. Thanks, anyway.’ Hands in pockets, Hal kept walking.
Spider stepped out, blocking his way. Hal tried to step around him, Spider stuck his thick tattooed arm in front of Hal’s chest.
‘It’s not a fucken invitation. Get in.’
‘Get in, cunt,’ Pelican Shit echoed, through the car window. ‘If I have to get out of the car, you’re dead.’
Hal looked from Pelican Shit’s death stare to Spider’s mean eyes, to the houses along the quiet street. No one to help. Nowhere to run. But if he got into that car, he might as well book himself straight into the hospital. He lowered his head and barged past Spider.
Tried to. A powerful hand grabbed his shirt and swung him around. A powerful fist sank a punch into his stomach that left Hal doubled up, gasping for breath, staggering. Spider seized his neck in a chokehold and started to bundle him towards the open car door. Hal dug his heels in, writhing and flailing his arms, but the hairy chokehold tightened around his neck like a noose. Big fluorescent spots floated up across his vision as Hal was dragged towards the open door.
‘Hal,’ a high-pitched voice rang out. ‘Where you going? Hal?’
Evan in his school uniform, clutching his schoolbag and gaping at him from the footpath, began walking over. Towards these maniacs.
‘Stay out of it—Evan, stay back!’ Hal managed a muffled ’ay ’ack before Spider tightened the chokehold and trundled him up to the car. Evan dropped his bag and ran over.
‘Who are you? Where you taking my brother?’ Evan’s voice was a piercing shriek.
‘Ay ack!’ Hal warned. The last thing he wanted; Evan being dragged into the car too.
‘You heard him, peanut,’ Spider growled. ‘Mind yer own business.’
Next thing Evan grabbed his brother’s arm, yelled, ‘Let him go!’ and pulled with all his thirteen-year-old strength, as if Hal was the rope in a tug of war against an impossible foe.
‘Piss off, ya little turd,’ Spider said.
Pelican Shit got out of the car, shouting, ‘Grab the kid too.’
‘Hands full—you grab him,’ Spider yelled.
Evan’s banshee wail shook the quiet street. ‘HELP! They’re kidnapping my brother—he-elp!’
Pelican Shit hesitated. Along the street faces appeared at doors and gates, young mums, older ladies. A concerned-looking housewife called, ‘Are you boys all right?’ Her neighbour, a heavy-set older bruiser in a blue singlet and clodhoppers went one better—he came stamping down the path to his gate, thick arms swinging.
‘What are they doin’ to you, sonny?’
‘They’re bashing my brother up!’ Evan’s panic was shrill and real. ‘He’s done nothing, they’re kidnapping him!’
Hal didn’t know whether to be mortified or relieved when Big Blue Singlet shoved his gate open, clomped over and said, ‘Let him go, youse pricks.’
‘It’s nothin’ to do with you, champ,’ Spider sneered, but he eased off on Hal’s throat. Hal squirmed out of his grip, but Spider had hold of his shirt.
Evan shrieked at the top of his voice, ‘Let him go!’
‘Pick on someone your own size,’ the old bruiser warned.
The lady from next door cried, ‘Leave them kids alone, or I’m calling the police.’
‘Call ’em, Tammy,’ Blue Singlet said, swaggering towards Spider. ‘Piss off, you perves. You been told.’
Spider bristled, and the older bloke looked like he might have bitten off more than he could chew; then Spider dramatically flung his arm away from Hal’s neck. Hal stumbled back onto the nature strip, sucking air into his lungs and rubbing his stomach. Free. Evan rushed to help him to his feet.
Pelican Shit smirked over the roof of his car at Hal. ‘Your lucky day, mate. See you at work…Oooowwl.’ He gave a wolf-howl as they jumped in and roared off, laying rubber and flinging gravel, and leaving the neighbours tut-tutting and shaking their heads.
Later as they walked the rest of the way home, Hal nudged his little brother, proudly. ‘Still got a good set of lungs on you, Evan.’
‘Lucky for you. Who are those idiots anyway?’
‘Just a couple of dickheads from work.’
They had some explaining to do to their mother, who was not happy about Hal ripping his work shirt, and suspicious about the scrapes on his arm and the bruises on his neck. Hal lied about how he’d jumped off the step too early as the bus was pulling in, and had tripped and fallen onto the road, with everyone on the bus watching. ‘Lucky Evan was there to help me up,’ he said. ‘It could have been embarrassing.’
‘Yeah,’ Evan grinned. ‘All those girls watching you make a complete fool of yourself.’
Hal gritted his teeth, and tousled his little brother’s hair.
12
The rain held off until they arrived in Moorabool around 7 pm, though the ionising smell of earth and water hung heavy in the air. As Mick and Ross left the car in the parking area at the rear of the cop shop, a jagged bolt of lightning pierced the plum-coloured sky and an ear-splitting clap of thunder shook the ground. Down came the rain, in big stinging drops at first, then teaming down like a reprise of January’s floods. They bolted for the back door, taking the steps two at a time, their uniforms sodden by the time they got inside.
‘Watch my clean floor, would you,’ Neridah said, throwing towels at the men.
‘Where’s Constable Petrovic?’ Mick asked, as they wiped themselves dry.
‘Peter left over an hour ago.’ She said she’d also been about to call it a day when the rain came.
Ross muttered, ‘Send her down, Huey.’ The three were silent for a moment, listening to the pleasant sound of rain beating on the roof tiles, then Neridah cleared her throat.
‘You might get a call tomorrow morning, Mick, from this um…troubled-sounding woman who rang just after you left.’
‘Troubled? About what?’
‘She wouldn’t say. She was young, and she sounded frightened.’
Mick asked, ‘Did she say why?’
‘Wouldn’t tell me. She wanted to talk to Sergeant Goodenough—nobody else—wouldn’t leave her name or number.’
‘Did you ring the operator, ask for the number?’
‘Of course. She said it came from a public phone box. So I couldn’t ring back.’ She gave a terse shrug.
‘Not a lot we can do then, until she calls back. You’ve done all the right things,’ Mick reassured her.
‘I know.’ But she had a bad feeling about it, as if she had somehow failed the woman.
Mick dialled information for the number of the Tweed Heads police. He got a Senior Constable Offing on the line and explained that he needed to contact Mrs Vicki Hastings in a flat at Tugun Street, Coolangatta.
‘Yes, I know it’s the other side of the border,’ Goodenough said, pre-empting Offing’s protest, ‘but the lady’s a New South Wales resident. From Glen Innes. She has information we need for a possible fraud case, and I don’t have time to put the paper trail in motion with Queensland Police.’
‘Yeah, I know the feeling—and they’re just across the road,’ Offing snorted. ‘You don’t have to live with it…When did you want it? Yesterday, I suppose?’
‘The sooner the better, thanks.’
Offing said he’d send his probie to pick the lady up and bring her back to call him.
The rain stopped as abruptly as it had begun. The thunder rolled on, the sky grumbling, rather than threatening another deluge. From the porch, they watched the dry lightning moving south. No floods this time. Ross offered Neridah a lift home, and they hurried out to Bligh’s car while they had the chance.
Mick went to make himself a cup of tea, but could find only Neridah’s French stuff. He wrinkled his nose in distaste, poured a glass of tap water and gulped it down. He was contemplating the gritty aftertaste when the phone rang. For a moment he thought it might be Neridah’s troubled woman again.
‘Sergeant Goodenough, Moorabool police,’ he said.
It wasn’t her. It was Vicki Hastings, sounding beside herself. The probie hadn’t told her why she was to call Moorabool Police; only that it was extremely urgent. He’d whisked Vicki a mile over the border to the Tweed Heads cop shop, leaving her husband in charge of the kids. Mick reassured her it wasn’t a matter of life or death, but it was important. He said the magic words ‘banking enquiry’ and she became calm and businesslike. He reminded her of the ID she’d written down for a man called Victa Smith.
‘Yes, I remember. The cheque for fifteen hundred. You don’t get them every day, and you don’t see Victor spelled with an A that often, either. He wasn’t there himself. It was his mother who presented the cheque, along with a signed authority for her to cash it. And Victa’s ID. And of course, hers.’
‘Right. What did she give you?
‘A pensioner’s card; she was a war widow.’
‘Do you remember her name?’
‘Vera…no, Valda Smith. I don’t remember the address; somewhere in Llangothlin. For the life of me I couldn’t think why you’d name your son after a lawnmower. But there it was, on his licence: V-i-c-t-a. And she seemed put out when I questioned the spelling.’
‘What did she look like, Vicki?’
‘Plump, fiftyish, kind of a blowsy woman…quite tall with a purple rinse in her hair. She was all dolled up—mauve twin-set and pearls, a hat on like she’d got dressed up just for the bank. And there was something about her breath… smelled strongly of mints.’
‘Mince? As in fried?’
‘Peppermints. As in to cover the smell of gin. It smelled like she’d had a couple already. And this was well before lunch, it was quarter past…no, twenty past eleven. Well, I paid her in twenties and tens, that’s what she wanted. She took it without even counting it. Crammed it in her handbag and waddled off, swinging it…a big vinyl handbag.’
‘Did you see her get into a car?’
‘No. I watched her walk down the block, but she disappeared around the corner, and then I…had other customers. I can picture that big handbag swinging. Was it dark brown…? Maroon, that’s it.’
Mick thanked the wonderfully observant Mrs Vicki Hastings and let her return to her holiday. He scrawled a line under the name Valda Smith. Like Vicki, he felt a bit suss about a woman who would name her own son after a lawnmower. Shouldn’t be too hard to track her down; he’d put in some calls tomorrow.
It was after eight, and the dogs would be starving. Driving the neighbours mad with their barking. He’d left them alone far too long lately. He was locking up when the phone rang again, so he hurried back to answer it.
This time it was life or death. Death, to be more precise.
‘Police? Oh my—my God—’ A man’s voice. He couldn’t seem to stop gasping.
‘Sergeant Goodenough of Moorabool police,’ Mick said calmly. ‘How can I help you?’
‘She’s—killed herself.’ The gasping stopped for a moan of despair. ‘Ooh my God—Oh Jesus…’
Mick felt his heart thudding. It was always like this, the sinking stomach, the racing heart, no matter how many bodies you’d dealt with. ‘Who has killed herself? Take your time.’
‘…wife. Ex-wife.’
Goodenough paused. ‘And you are?’
‘Dan Makepeace. Her husband, I said. Ah hell!’ he roared. ‘She’s gone and done it. She’s…fucking cactus.’
‘Dan? Are you sure she’s dead?’
‘She’s drunk enough weedkiller to level a forest. She’s… Ohhhh…’ He let out a long, keening moan.
Mick wished, selfishly, that he’d eaten the apple Neridah had offered him an hour ago, and reached for his cap. He asked the man for the address and told him to stay put.
‘Where else am I going? I live here.’
‘She lives there too?’
‘No, she’s my ex, I told ya. Lives with her mother. God knows what I’ll tell Jessie…Why you taking so long? Hurry!’
13
The house was a faded blue fibro box just off the back road to Inverell, veiled from passing traffic by a row of spindly poplars. It sat on an acre of uncut lawn so high it almost covered the path. On the driveway side a battered prime mover was parked in front of a rusty tin garage and a couple of rickety sheds.
Mick Goodenough waded through the paspalum, sticky heads of it clinging to his trouser legs, all the way to the front door. The door was ajar but he knocked; hearing a cry from the rear he walked in. A skinny apparition about Mick’s height, with lank greasy hair past his shoulders, lurched along the hall towards him, baggy jeans and oil-stained T-shirt flapping on his scarecrow frame.
‘Dan Makepeace?’ Mick walked over. Dan grunted, pointing a long finger into a back room. A smell wafted out, of vomit, excreta and something acrid and chemical: the aromas of death.
‘She’s in there?’
‘Where d’you think she bloody is?’ His voice was a swirling soup of emotions: rage, shock, grief, confusion. Goodenough lowered his hand gently onto Dan’s shoulder. The hard angles of his face seemed to soften and melt like wax.
‘I told her…she oughta leave…she hated the place,’ he gasped between sobs.
‘This house?’ Mick said, unsurprised, glancing down the hall towards shoddy rooms in need of a good paint job—or demolition.
‘The bloody abattoir!’ he roared, and glared at the scratched purple fibro wall, pulling his fist back as if he’d like to do the job himself.
‘Calm down. Punching holes in your wall won’t help, will it?’ Mick grabbed his shoulders and kneaded the trembling muscles. ‘What’s your wife’s name, Dan?’
‘Christine. She was talking about coming back…to me.’ Racked by silent sobs again, Dan wiped the back of a grimy hand across his eyes, smearing his face into a mask of grief.
‘I just got home and I…’ he pulled himself together, and blew air through his lips, as if stricken with a jolt of awful clarity. ‘I found her there. Oh no, why did she…Why?’
‘I’d better have a look at Christine, OK?’
Dan gave a resigned nod.
‘Will you sit down here, and wait for me, Dan?’
Lips compressed, Dan gripped the architrave around the dining-room doorway and waved Goodenough into the next room down the hall, then staggered into the dining room and onto a chair.
Mick entered the cluttered living room. A TV set propped against the back wall, a tattered sofa, a coffee table and some chairs adrift in it—one on its side on the floor about a foot from the dead woman’s head. One pale hand was wrapped around the leg of a second chair as if clinging to flotsam in the sea of empty beer cans and dirty plates; the other was outflung towards the coffee table. Christine lay on her back amid the rubbish; face up, eyes glassy, vomit over her mouth and chest, her dress pulled up above her underwear. Legs akimbo, frozen in death.
He placed his fingers on her carotid artery. The skin had a bluish tinge to it and was cold to his touch. No pulse. His gaze fell on a glass tumbler on the coffee table, an inch of murky fluid in it. On the lino under the coffee table lay an empty bottle of 2,4-D Amine, a herbicide used for killing trees, which he picked up with his handkerchief and studied. Not a quick and painless exit. It must have taken a long hour of pain and convulsions before she found the release she was looking for, Mick thought. A very unpleasant way to commit suicide.
