The Perfect Crime, page 5
Her aggression took some of the heat out of his anger. ‘Is he or not?’ he said.
‘He is not here.’
‘Well, if you’re his wife you need to know something. He’s out there trying to fuck anything that moves, including my wife. You should keep an eye on him, tell him to keep it in his fucking pants, all right?’
The woman’s face had changed at that, not in the way he had expected. No sadness, or none he could see. It was a complex expression, but the way her eyes bore into him, he knew she was angry. With satisfaction swelling in his chest, he drove his old ute back out toward home.
•
He goes to the bedroom, opens Marg’s old drawers where her clothes are still neatly folded, collecting mothballs. When she disappeared, he didn’t go through her things; some warm clothes were gone and a few personal items with her old suitcase. That’s why Jack Treloar, the constable from town, probably had his own theories. ‘I know you think she might have left, Ted. But you need to be prepared for the possibility that there is another explanation. I’m sure she will turn up and this will all be a misunderstanding, but she’s not taken many clothes, money or a vehicle. You think a woman would just set off without her make-up and perfume? You think you could bugger off into the world without a bit of money to make sure you land on your feet?’
He didn’t tell Constable Jack Treloar about the letters he found, the ones he tossed in the offal hole in a fit of rage. He didn’t want them to know why she was gone. It says a lot about a bloke when his wife leaves for another man. The thought still brings on a crackle of rage at the back of his neck.
•
He drives all the way out to Ngapuna today, before a plan really crystalizes. This time, he’s not planning on knocking down the door of ‘Charlie,’ but looking for who might be taking his lambs. Having arrived, he now feels almost silly. It’s Sunday afternoon and nothing is open but the service station. The entire ute trembles when he kills the engine. He doesn’t need gas, he’s still got two-thirds of a tank, but he fills it up anyway with one hand on the cab and his eyes squeezed against the wind, aimed down the road at the shadowed main street.
When he pays, the cashier pushes a receipt across the counter. He takes it, drops it into the pocket of his shirt.
He goes to leave, but pauses, turns back. ‘You ever know a bloke – Charlie?’
‘Me?’ he asks. ‘No blokes called Charlie around here.’
‘He left? Maybe a couple of years back?’
‘No blokes called Charlie that I know,’ he says without glancing up.
He’s driven thirty minutes out here, and despite it all he doesn’t want to leave without something. ‘Right,’ he says, before drawing a breath. ‘You guys get trouble out here with the Māoris?’
The clerk glances up again, a young face but weathered by the country, cheeks pocked. The boy could be a front rower. ‘Trouble?’
‘Pinching livestock?’
He pokes out his bottom lip and shakes his head just once. Only now does Ted notice the greenstone fishhook nested in the open collar of the man’s shirt. Shit, he thinks. He’s dark-featured, Ted should have guessed. Probably a mix, he thinks.
‘Nothing like that round here, you might have the wrong end of the stick.’
‘Yeah, probably,’ he says, flicking his eyes toward the exit. The room suddenly feels hot.
‘Where you come from?’ the man says.
‘Not far.’ Ted glances past him to the calendar pinned to the wall below the clock. The corners peel away, the image is a landscape painting. Earth tones, a fine brush, mountains in the distance.
‘Sorry,’ Ted says, glancing down.
‘What for?’ The man frowns.
Ted clicks his tongue.
•
He heads back toward the main road and soon he’s taking the turn-off, down that old familiar gravel track toward Rodge and Sue’s. He passes a bus shelter. There’s almost no paint left, and the wood beneath is wind-chewed.
‘Lambs can’t just vanish,’ he says to no one. ‘They just can’t.’
Rodge was a butcher and for years he was the one to come out and butcher Ted’s lambs, but for the last couple of years, since Marg left, it’s been Ted who does it. He feels the rope of thick blood leap from the lamb’s throats. He carts the guts and organs himself by hand down to the offal hole. Pulling the concrete cover off, he tips it all down deep into the earth. He thinks now about Marg, those letters. They were planning on leaving together. They’d not told anyone. That’s what the letter said anyway. He’s been spending more time sitting out there on the hill at the top of the paddock still talking to her, like she’s there with him, her tea-warmed breath misting the morning air. He tells her everything.
•
The following Saturday he hangs an old copper bell from a hook in the tack shed. He attaches baling twine and gives it a gentle tug. The sound of the bell is a muted ting, but loud enough. Only a man could get in, take a lamb and get out without leaving blood or anything else, Rodge had told him. Ted hadn’t noticed boot prints in the frosty grass that morning, but had he looked?
He runs the twine through the slat windows. He finds the old fencing wire in the back of the shed under a dusty tractor tyre. He ties off a length of it with the twine and runs it along the eastern side of the property between the farm and the road with Shep at his heels. He punches a stake into the soil at the end and ties the wire off. Then at intervals of roughly fifteen metres he uses wedges of firewood to keep the wire half a foot off the ground. It’s tight enough, he thinks, looking over the paddock down toward the gully and the fence beyond. Wind tousles the pines. This is how he fixes things: he rolls up his sleeves and does it himself.
‘All right, Shep. Let’s test it out.’
Back in the shed, he dials Rodge’s number.
‘What can I do you for, Ted?’
‘Could you stay on the line and listen for a moment.’
‘Listen for what?’
‘Just for a bell sound,’ he says.
‘A bell?’
‘I’ve run a wire along the fence, connected it to a bell in the shed.’
He laughs. ‘You’ve rigged up your own alarm system?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Better off sending 10,000 volts through fence.’
‘And electrocute half my flock.’
‘They’d know they’d been shocked, that’s for sure.’
‘I’ll stick with the bell.’
He hears him sniff. ‘All right, hurry up, I’ll listen out.’
‘Two minutes.’
He lays the handset face up on the work bench, and strides out to the roadside, his gumboots thumping. As the wind strengthens, a mist flows from it silently over the grass. He takes a moment to step on the wire, then he hooks the boot under it and lifts it emulating a man tripping. Then gives it a couple of good tugs with his fist before rushing back to the phone.
‘Well?’
‘Yeah, I heard it.’
‘How many times?’
‘Maybe five, six.’
‘Beauty,’ he says. ‘Thanks for your help.’
‘And you’re going to sit out there all night? You’ll freeze your balls off and miss the game?’
‘I’ll have it on the radio,’ he says. He cares less for the game these days, although he’d never admit it. Since he lost Marg, most things have lost their colour.
‘Be good to beat the bastards over there.’
‘Especially after last year. Never know, they might poison our food again like the World Cup.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘Right-o, I’ll be seeing you,’ Ted says, hanging the phone up.
If it came to it, if he was ever backed into a corner, he thinks about how long it would take to get to his rifle. It’s possible, he knows, to hold the rifle out and rest the barrel against your temple. To reach the trigger with your thumb. But he’s not rehearsed it for weeks. He’d have to do Shep first. That’d be the hard part. But he’d never leave the farm.
•
At twilight, he shoots another rabbit. The same spot down near the fence line at the back paddock. The shot carted the body over itself halfway down the hill while the two other rabbits scattered. As he goes to hang it on the fence post he sees where the last rabbit was, there’s only a nail. Birds have gotten at it, he thinks. But where are the bones? For just a moment he has the feeling that someone is watching him. He looks down at the long greying hairs of his forearms, then up toward the pines at the edge of the property.
•
His alarm sounds. An early riser he always has been, but never this early. He kills it and scratches at his eyes. Shep still doesn’t sleep on the bed but he’s close, Ted can hear him breathing as his feet find the floor. He pulls on his jeans, a singlet, his flannel shirt and a Swanndri over it all and tucks the last wisps of his white hair into an old hide hat. The rain came late and heavy through the night, the pot on the floor of the kitchen is half full. Turning the kitchen light on, he watches the cockroaches scatter, one under the fridge, one under the stove.
He makes himself a hot cup of tea, and a piece of Marmite toast which he eats in three bites. He takes the torch now, killing the lights inside the house. He pauses at the door for a moment, then heads back into the house for the rifle.
•
The commentary leaps into the shed when he switches the radio on, kick-off is just a few minutes away.
‘… at capacity of fifty thousand people, and I can tell you there are a lot of nervous Kiwis in the ground who have made the trip over. Great anticipation amongst all …’
It’s possible, Ted realizes now, that even the police are probably focused on the rugby. Those on duty listening to the game in their cars or at the station. The first professional sports team to tour ‘post-apartheid’ South Africa. Police are hopeless anyway, he thinks. Were no use when it came to searching for his wife. They probably laughed about him, some poor old codger, a cuckold abandoned by the wife that was always too good for him. They would have called her flighty, seeking a better life, a crazy one.
•
Focusing on the radio, as much out of curiosity as anything resembling passion, he keeps his eyes on the bell hanging above him. He hears his wife’s voice and feels a prickle on his neck. Go back to the house, you old fool. Another sound outside now, the scraping call of an opossum. He could spotlight it, knock the pest from its perch with the rifle.
•
By half-time the opossum has fallen silent again. With Japie Mulder’s try, South Africa are up 15-6. He doesn’t hear the bell tinkle, but when he looks up again in the dark, he notices it move. Just a hint. He freezes, suddenly conscious of his heart beating. The bell is turned, the wire is tight as though a foot is still standing on the wire, then it moves again with a single soft ding as it settles vertical again. This is as far as he had planned. He wasn’t sure if it would work at all, or if anyone would come, but now he knows he must act. He can’t just sit here. Then he hears something. Movement out there in the paddock. The lambs, the herd, fleeing.
It could be a shadow in the wind spooking them. It could be anything. He rises and walks slowly toward the window. He sees nothing but fog. He looks back to the bell now, finding it still leaning. He hears that voice again, not quite external but not entirely in his head. He wishes Shep was here, he wishes someone was here. Marg, with that hair she was always dyeing to keep the grey out of and those eyes that were once so sharp. He still has all the magazines from the travel agents, the cruises and resorts still circled in her black marker. The places we could have gone. But it was here on this farm, in the family house arched like a cathedral they stayed. They were never the ones to come home with fresh tans and books of photos. Of all the postcards they have, banded in the drawer with their wedding album, they’d never sent a single one, and it was all she wanted. ‘Someone needs to tend the bloody farm,’ he says to no one. That’s how the arguments always ended.
•
He tightens his belt and takes the rifle with him out into the night. The grass cracks beneath his boots as he makes his way. He opens the gate gently, lifting the latch silently. He’s electric with anticipation; someone is out there.
Moving through the paddock, closer, and closer. The flock emerges like fists of white rock through a receding tide of fog. They rise, begin to move. It’s too dark, too foggy to count, even if they would stay still long enough for him to get close. He senses something, a presence nearby. There are no headlights on the road. He continues toward the lambs and they part now, flowing away, sending their tentative bahs out into the atmosphere. There is one orphaned sound. Not a lamb calling in fear, but one distinct agonizing cry.
It’s coming from back toward the shed. He rushes, his boots thumping and arms swinging. By the time he gets up the hill each breath is pained. But the sound is louder now, with an echo. The heavy concrete cover is missing from the offal hole, the lamb has fallen in there. It must be a five-metre drop at least. It would have snapped legs, unless the rotting offal was soft enough to cushion its fall. But why is the concrete cover off? Another thought comes unbidden: what if it didn’t stumble into the hole, what if someone dropped it in there?
He turns. And seems to hear the blow, the crunch, before he feels it. Red, black, and he’s dazed. Something strikes the side of his leg and he trips. Then hard hands are pushing him, turning him so his feet lose the earth. He slides in. ‘Please,’ he calls as he reaches for the edge of the hole, but his fingers don’t grip. He tumbles, a steep sudden descent, then a crunch. Pain all over. The smell fills his head, and he feels the wetness of the lamb beneath him. He looks up and sees a face looking down. It’s silhouetted by the tinsel of stars. Then the aperture of night closes like an eye as the concrete cover grinds into place once more. He screams but he knows that no one will hear him, no one will come for him. No one ever came for her.
•
We were not lovers. We never planned on being lovers. We met at the library in town, of all places. We were two girls from different towns, with husbands they could do without. It was similar taste in books that brought us together; she would go in when Ted went to the bank and I’d be there most days reading in a quiet corner. We both dreamed of worlds outside of our farms, outside of our husbands. We wrote each other, planned our meet-ups at the library, talked about the books we loved, and soon we were imagining a different kind of life. One full of travel, one where we had each other for company and support, but it was never romantic. So when he arrived at my door, searching for Charlie, I knew exactly who he was. I wanted to scream at him, ‘I am Charlie.’
When I saw the article in the newspaper part of me died like a frost-bitten limb full of phantom pain of a life I would never have and a friend I truly loved. Her letters had stopped. Right when we were making our plans to escape. It had to be him. She wouldn’t just wander off without me. I started coming to the farm, observing him, watching the way the guilt bent him towards that hole, where he’d sit and talk. He’d apologize. No one else could have her, that’s what he would say. She made him do it, she had to push him. Sometimes he was speaking right at it and I just knew. No farmer can resist a mystery. Ted was always going to find what was happening to his lambs, he was always going to end up down there with them, with her. I did it for Marg.
SUNDOWN
SHEENA KAMAL
I’ve left Vancouver and come to America, not for the first time. I don’t particularly care for it, but it is what it is. There’s a vague idea taking root in my mind, of driving all the way down to Mexico, assuming a new identity and living on a beach for the rest of my days, surviving on tacos, virgin margaritas and that surf life.
I’m not a person that such glorious fortunes generally happen to, but there’s always hope. I can learn to surf, I tell myself, as I stop at a small-town gas station in Washington state. There’s a first time for everything. My dog Whisper is in the front seat of the Corolla even though I’ve told her time and again it’s safer in the back. But she has attitude, and a will stronger than mine.
So she’s up front when a stranger appears at my window. She’s barking, and all but leaps into my lap to protect me. My heart fills with joy at this evidence that she cares about me and the meals I provide. This is what my life has come to, but it’s not nothing to have the love of a finicky bitch like her, and I know how lucky I am.
The stranger has doubts about us both. He backs away from the car with his hands up. It’s an unconscious reaction, I suppose, but it doesn’t sit right to see a Black man who’s done nothing wrong acting like I’m the police. Which is why I roll down the window an inch to ask what he wants instead of just ignoring him like I usually would. If it’s a blowjob in the cab of his semi parked to the side over there, I’ll have to politely decline.
At my age, nothing in the world could tempt me in that direction.
But no, it’s not a blowjob in a truck. Turns out it’s something quite different. ‘You just driving through?’ he asks. He looks a bit older than me. Maybe in his late forties, with a little patchy beard and kind eyes.
‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘Maybe not.’ Doesn’t matter how nice his eyes are. I’m not in the habit of explaining anything to men, so why start now?
‘What you do is your business, lady, I’m not interested in the particulars. Was just about to get back on the road myself and I saw you pull up. Saw you got that brown sugar, and thought I’d give you the same warning someone gave me first time I drove this route. Don’t stay here tonight. This here’s a sundown town.’
He tips his cap like a cowboy and gets into the truck. I watch him drive away, headed for the highway. Then I pump my gas and go inside to pay. There’s a cop lingering by the energy drinks. A soccer mom in a candy pink sweatsuit emerges from the restroom in the back. When I ask the cashier for the code to get in, he tells me it’s out of service.
Now, I could argue and say soccer mom just used it, but of course I know what he means. It’s out of service for me. The same brown sugar that compelled the trucker to offer a warning is what’s closed the washroom for me. I’m part native, part middle eastern. Just like with the trucker, in white America I’m something other. Something unwelcome.
