Beneath the Blonde (27 page)

Then Siobhan is moaning, there is blood on her face and on her silk dressing-gown. The dressing-gown is red and her blood must be red too, but it splashes darker, blacker than the dyed silk. Siobhan is holding her cheek, redness seeps between her fingers. There is another gash below her collarbone. The knife is bloody. I am skipping time.

Siobhan is flailing in this semi-dark room, this house. She has forgotten that we came in through the back door, or maybe she does not know where it is, she is a moth throwing herself against the windows in the lounge, she can see the sunlight as it filters in, still lazy and hot, warm sunlight, dust motes held like the single note of a lawnmower on a Sunday afternoon. She smashes the one window unsmashed but cannot push against the wood nailed from outside. Now she has cut her arms on the glass, there are splinters in her hands, her eyes are wide, pupils extended to their farthest diameter to allow in the light, to let her see what there is to be seen. She is quite bloody. It is hard to know where the cuts start and the flesh ends. The dressing-gown sticks to her now, dark stained patches where the real red is stronger than the silk. I tell her again to calm down, we can sort this out, talk about it, she does not need to keep trying to run away from me, from this house, she is safe here. I tell her she should stop screaming, stop screaming that name, I cannot stand to hear that name.

She is making a mess of Ruby’s home. I wish she wouldn’t. I wish she would stay still. Talk to me. I try to make her stay still, to pin her down. But when I move towards her she is screaming for Greg. Greg cannot help her. There is no Greg. I go right up to her, tell her to hush, to be quiet. I am close to her eyes, see the bright in them. Then she stops screaming. She lies at my feet. She moves her mouth but
there are no words. I think she is still breathing, there is a gurgling sound, I hear her heart pummelling in her chest. Maybe I can see her heart pummelling in her chest. She stops. There is no sound now. There is a small hole at her throat, just above the cavity where the collarbones almost meet. The cavity where a diamond droplet might sit. Her mouth twitches but she is not screaming now.

Perhaps she should have been calling for Gaelene. Perhaps I would have heard that.

Greg pulled Saz into Pat’s old station wagon, toppling his mother out of the front seat as he tried to force them faster to Ruby’s house. To the bearer of the message left for him: “Dear Gaelene, Siobhan and I are at Ruby’s place. See you there. Shona.”

Greg drove as fast as he could, faster than the old car wanted to go. He’d been to Ruby’s new house many times the year he left New Zealand. When the old lady already knew she was about to start the process of dying. It was her new house Greg drove them to, the one much closer to town. The new house Hone had bought for her when he had just started to earn money. At university and putting all his spare money into making some comfort for the woman who had been so much a part of his childhood, who he now wanted to hold soft in his adult life. Greg had visited Ruby before he left New Zealand, told her what he was going to do. Then Ruby in turn told Hone, shared the story with her own boy. But no one else knew. Greg had visited Hone quietly the one time he came home. Just the two of them to talk about Ruby’s passing and have a quiet beer. None of the sisters, none of the grandkids, none of the cousins. It was cool. Ordinary. Like two men having a drink together. Normal. But this wasn’t, not normal, not cool and not right. Greg screeched the car to a learner-driver stop and threw himself out, up the driveway, pounding on the front door. Hone opened it. Tall, dark, broad body pushing against the constraints of his suit and tie, he looked confused and then
surprised when he realized Greg was standing in front of him, “Greg?”

Greg didn’t bother greeting his childhood friend, “Where is she? Where the fuck is she?”

“Who? There’s just me here. What are you talking about?” He looked out to Saz in the car. “Calm down, bring your lady inside. It’s only a couple of hours till lunch, I’m working in town tomorrow, that’s why I’m down from Auckland, but we could have lunch, right? Or dinner?”

Greg shook his head. “No. It’s Siobhan. My girlfriend.” Greg corrected himself, “My wife. Shona’s got her. Got Siobhan. She said they were here.”

Hone’s smile vanished. “Shona? That mad bitch? Jesus, mate, she went crazy. Used to come round here all the time wanting to talk to Ruby. And that was years after she died. Nah, she’s not here. We haven’t seen Shona for ages.”

“But she left this note, said she’d gone to Ruby’s house.”

“Sure. But no one calls this place Ruby’s house. It’s the old house she means. She’ll be at the old house.”

Hone came with them this time, Saz in the back seat. She introduced herself as Greg drove them off again, screaming tires out to the coast road and then south. Five minutes later they rounded the corner to the derelict houses down by the estuary, out where the little town had first been settled, from where most people had long since migrated to the suburban comfort of more easily manicured lawns, less exposed to the salt air elements. Greg parked the car as close as he could, still several hundred yards run from where Hone pointed out Ruby’s house. In a row of boarded-up houses, it was the green and white painted place at the end, paint peeling and facing out, away from the others, one side bordered by the estuary, the other by what was now an overgrown path through the high dunes down to the sea.

Saz sprinted down to the house, leaving the unfit lawyer and the panicking Greg in her wake. She almost ran right past before she realized that while everything else was boarded up, the back door was open. She ran through the house, six small connecting rooms, the nearly mid-heaven sun now meaning that there was no angled light to slant though the boarded windows, she fumbled through the semidarkness, waiting for her eyes to accustom themselves to the dim, heavy light.

She stumbled over Siobhan before she saw her, stumbled and then fell headlong into a naked mess of bared flesh and blood. Saz knew she should apply pressure to the wound, hold in the blood, but the wounds were so many and the light so dim, she couldn’t hold it in, didn’t know where to start. She tried to roll Siobhan over, listen to her heart, feel for a pulse, check her eyes, but the body kept slipping from her shaking hands. Then Greg was there with Hone, standing before them both and screaming, pushing Saz away. Greg picked Siobhan up in one move, holding her to him and screaming. The sound that came from him was not words but a deep moan, a lowing that started as a fierce rip inside his chest and came out in a choking eruption of meaningless sound. For a minute they stood, Saz and Greg, holding Siobhan up between them, standing her between their two bodies and holding her in an embrace that squeezed the limpness out and tried to force life back into her. Hone took one look at Siobhan and the dark room and, leaving Saz hanging on to Greg, ran out to call the police from the payphone back on the main road.

Saz heard the movement from the corner before she saw what it was.

Greg’s face buried in Siobhan’s neck, Saz with her arms holding them both, twisted as she heard the sudden beat from the corner, saw Shona come at them with the knife. She let go of Greg and he fell backwards with Siobhan just as Shona lunged at the two of them. Saz doubled down as the knife whizzed past her face, its already sticky wet blade catching her on the shoulder. She heard the thin material of her shirt rip, felt a hot shock of pain and then stopped thinking about herself completely. She saw herself touching Siobhan. Remembered the first time Siobhan had opened the door to her. Felt Siobhan warm lying beside her, heart rhythms matched by their on-the-breath kisses.

Then Shona was coming for her again, screaming at her, “Leave us alone. I need to talk to her. Me and Gaelene, leave us alone.”

Saz dodged the knife, knocking Shona back against the wall as she turned to avoid the blade, kicking out at the taller woman. Scrabbling to her feet and out of Shona’s reach, Saz slipped on a slick of Siobhan’s blood, took two uncertain steps and then fell heavily against the window, smashing her already cut shoulder into the broken glass, a thick splintered shard edging its way through her shirt and into the earlier wound. She slid down the wall in the shock of the pain and winced again as she bashed her knee on the edge of a board of wood. Groping in the semi-darkness, the board came away easily in her hand. The searing pain in her shoulder stopped her getting a very good grip on it, but when Shona flew at her again she held the board in her right hand and smacked it clean across Shona’s face. She heard the crunch of wood against Shona’s nose, saw the blood begin to flow and, in a detached and surprised way, noted the exhilaration she felt when Shona cried out in pain.

The fourth time, Saz was ready for her. Greg was still moaning, Shona screaming to be allowed to talk to Gaelene, the sirens wailing outside keeping time with the blood throbbing
in her temples. Shona flew at Saz with the knife and Saz knocked it out of her hand, smashing at Shona’s knuckles with the lump of wood. In a single curved movement Saz dived for the knife and then turned back to stand in front of Shona. She grabbed Shona’s hair with her left hand, her shoulder wrenching in pain and screamed into her face, “Did you kill her?”

Shona looked at Saz in surprise, “Kill her? Gaelene’s here! She came in with you. I saw her, she ran in with you!”

“Did you kill Siobhan?”

“Who?”

“Siobhan! The woman! Did you fucking kill her?”

For a moment Shona almost knew what she meant, why it mattered. Shona looked right at Saz, spoke quietly, calmly. “Yes. I expect so.”

Saz heard Hone calling from outside, heard the door slams of the police cars, heard their shouts, looked first at Shona and then at Greg and Siobhan. For a second she held Shona and the knife really very close. And then she let go of them both.

When Shona died, she fell on her own knife.

Siobhan wasn’t dead. She was badly scarred, her vocal chords severed and unlikely ever to heal properly, but she wasn’t dead.

It took one long statement from Saz and little police work to acknowledge that Shona had done the damage. The knife she had picked up from Pat’s kitchen bench, the knife she had used to persuade Siobhan to go with her, had a blade which perfectly matched the cuts gouged into Siobhan’s body.

Saz explained her version of events to the helpful policewoman. Then the same version of events to a less helpful more senior policeman and then the whole lot again to another man who would be able to pass the information on to those working on Alex’s murder and Steve’s drowning. “And Ms Martin, it didn’t occur to you that these two deaths were in any way linked?”

“Of course it did.”

“But you said nothing?”

“I had nothing to say. My client didn’t want me to make a fuss and it could hardly have escaped anyone’s attention that Steve and Alex died within weeks of each other. I didn’t exactly have to point that out.”

“The letters, the flowers?”

Saz’s answer was always the same. “I couldn’t. My client didn’t want me to make a fuss.”

When he finally left her to get back to the matter in hand with the nice helpful policewoman, the older man shook his
head as he said goodbye to Saz, “I’d choose more amenable clients in future if I were you, Ms Martin. ‘Bye now. You take care.”

Saz didn’t like him much but she could certainly see his point.

Shona’s funeral was very quiet. Just Shona’s mother—not her new father or her stepbrother—Pat and Dennis, and Greg, with Saz and Dan to sit beside him. After the funeral Greg went to talk to Shona’s mother, told her his story and put in his request. She didn’t take much convincing. Didn’t want much to do with Shona now. Two days later they went to collect Shona’s ashes and Saz and Dan sat silently on the beach when Greg and Hone walked into the bush to take the ashes to Gaelene and Shona’s rest area. When they came back Greg was crying and white, Hone crying too, holding Greg close.

Hone told Saz, “There’s a new tree there, in the bush. Shona must have planted it. We planted her ashes with that tree.”

Saz visited Siobhan in the hospital the morning before she flew back to England with Dan. Greg was staying behind for a while to give the British tabloids a chance to calm down after all the revelations—including the story of how Gaelene had become Greg—even Cal had finally accepted Greg’s reasoning that it was better for him to come out himself than for someone else to do it for him. Speculation was rife as to what career each of the remaining band members could continue with now, but as neither Dan nor Greg really cared and Siobhan hadn’t had a chance to think about it, speculation was about as far as it would get.

Saz sat quietly waiting for Siobhan to wake up. Eventually
the long black eyelashes fluttered against cheeks that were now bruised and swollen, lined with purple scars and bloody tissue. Siobhan smiled a tight, strained greeting, wincing at the pain and then closed her eyes when even the wincing brought pain of its own.

Saz began her speech, the semi-rehearsed words faltering as she forced them out. “I’m so sorry. I should have been with you, stopped this happening.”

Siobhan shook her head and mouthed, “You did.”

“No. I wasn’t there. My job was to take care of you. And she still did this to you. Fuck, Siobhan, I’m so sorry.”

Greg had come into the hospital room behind Saz, stood by the door and watched her as she leant forward to kiss Siobhan.

“Don’t, Saz,” he said sharply, coming round to the other side of the bed. “You can’t kiss her.”

Realizing what he’d said, he stepped back a little, “I didn’t mean it like that … I mean, you can’t kiss her. One can’t. Anyone. It hurts her. Doesn’t it, babe?”

Siobhan nodded at Greg and looked back to Saz.

Greg stroked her free hand. “I know, hon.”

He turned his attention from his wife to Saz, “Siobhan isn’t pissed off with you. Neither of us are. At least, I’m certainly not. You did get there in time. You got there before me. You found out who it was. Perhaps if I hadn’t been so bloody caught up in all the secrecy I might have figured it out sooner. We’re both to blame too—we should have told you what was really going on.”