Jill Jackson - 04 - Watch the World Burn (8 page)

Troy had a bad feeling, and it was more than just the hangover. It was also more than just the memories of Miriam Caine on fire in his restaurant; more than the investigators who’d eyeballed him too closely at the scene. It wasn’t helped by his brother being out until fuck knows when last night, but it was more than that too.

Why would David Caine lie about his wife?

Not just lie about the fact that she’d died – that, he could understand; maybe he just didn’t want to talk about it. But why would he speak so viciously about her supposedly ‘leaving’ him and Mona if she’d actually died in an accident?

Driving through Mascot, Troy turned left on Hatfield Street, sticking to the speed limit. The library opened at ten, and he wanted to know more about this guy. Only two other cars in the council carpark. Good – he’d have the library to himself, then. There were still five minutes before the doors opened, so he debated waiting in the car and catching the news or crossing the road for a coffee. He got out of the car.

Fifteen minutes later, brushing custard tart crumbs from his T-shirt, Troy stepped into the silence and smells that seem to be reserved only for libraries. He took a deep sniff; he’d always loved the smell. But he could have saved himself the trip if he’d kept up with how to use the bloody internet properly.

First thing this morning he’d tried a Google search on Caine. There were so many hits that he abandoned the idea quickly. He decided to search the newspaper websites for stories about women electrocuted around twelve years ago, when Mona would have been about four. On one of these sites he found a tab marked ‘Archives’, and, relatively quickly, up popped the link to an article entitled ‘Husband Urges Households to Install Safety Switches after Electrocution Death of Wife’. It was dated 14 June 1998, which seemed about right. Pleased with himself, he’d clicked the link. A box flashed up, informing him that he could view the article if he logged in or registered.

That’s when the fun had started. He could not figure out how to log in to retrieve the article, and when his outdated laptop froze for the third time, he gave up in disgust. He wrote down the details of the article, grabbed his keys and got out of there. Now, with the familiar microfiche system in front of him, he trawled quickly until he found the article.

Troy printed the article and leaned back in his chair, absently rubbing at the stubble on his chin. What does this prove? he asked himself. Well, it showed that Caine had once lived in Queensland. And one more thing. It showed that he was right about David Caine. The guy was off.

‘I don’t want to take it, Mum,’ Jill said. She sat propped against the headboard of her bed, knees tucked up to her chest.

‘It’s only a Valium, Jill,’ said Frances Jackson. ‘I spoke to Dr Raj. He said it’ll help you right now. You’ve got to get some sleep, honey.’

‘Will it stop the rain?’

Frances Jackson sighed deeply and perched carefully on her daughter’s double bed, reaching out a hand towards her. ‘It’s not raining, baby,’ she said.

‘It sounds like it,’ said Jill. It was all she could hear clearly. Her mum’s voice was muffled, distorted.

The doorbell sounded. Frances Jackson stood.

‘No!’ said Jill. ‘Don’t let anyone in here, Mum.’

‘It’s okay, Jill. It’s just Gabriel. I sent him out to pick up the script, remember?’

‘I don’t want to see him today.’

Frances paused in the doorway, her smile gentle, her eyes terrified. ‘Jill, honey. He’s only been gone ten minutes.’

‘He was here today? Why?’ I wish the goddamn rain would stop.

The doorbell sounded again. Frances spoke over her shoulder as she moved to answer it. ‘He brought you home from work, darling. After the meeting ... about Scotty.’

Images flashed into Jill’s mind: Andreessen, Lawrence Last, Elvis, Emma. The briefing. The bus. Scotty on fire. Under the desk, screaming. She scanned through the pictures quickly. She couldn’t remember coming home. She couldn’t remember seeing Gabriel today. She couldn’t feel the fresh tears wet upon her face.

‘Hey, Jackson. Got your chill pills.’ Gabriel Delahunt walked into her bedroom. He tossed a paper bag onto the bed.

‘I don’t want them,’ she said.

He shrugged, dropped down onto the end of her bed. Bounced up and down a couple of times. ‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘It’s not latex, though.’

She stared at him through the hills of her knees. He wore a grey T-shirt and cargo pants. No cap for once. His dark curls hung in his eyes. She was sure she hadn’t seen him today.

‘You should get a latex bed,’ he said. ‘It retains your slumber signature.’

She blinked.

‘You done any packing yet?’ he asked.

Frances Jackson appeared in the doorway, holding a tall glass of water.

‘We haven’t talked about that since you left, Gabriel,’ Frances said, walking around him towards Jill. ‘Have we, honey?’ She placed the glass on the sideboard and picked up the package from the bed. She opened the box and popped a small blue pill from its blister pack. ‘They’re so tiny,’ she said. ‘Look, Jill. It’s nothing at all.’

Jill took the pill from her mother, suddenly so exhausted she felt she would pass out. She took a sip of water and swallowed.

‘We’d better get some of your stuff together before that hits you,’ said Gabriel.

‘What stuff?’ said Jill. The rain sounded more like static from a TV test pattern now. She was missing every second word Gabriel said.

‘For the psych hospital,’ he said.

Jill knew she didn’t hear
that
right. She waited for Gabriel to say something else so she could understand his real message. She felt her mother watching her worriedly, but she kept her eyes on Gabriel’s mouth.

‘It doesn’t get too hot down there,’ he said. ‘It’s set in a kind of forest. You probably want to bring some jumpers and shit, ’cause it can get cold at night.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘We’ve been through this, Jill,’ he said. ‘Me and your mum told you we’ve arranged for you to go to Bendigo for a week to get some help coping with Scotty’s death. You flipped out, screamed and shouted, and told us you’re not fucking going.’

The conversation returned. She remembered. ‘I’m not fucking going,’ she said.

Frances Jackson winced.

‘Yeah, we moved past that bit,’ Gabriel said. ‘Try to keep up, Jackson. I told you what you did back at the station, and that you’re now officially on sick report. They want you to get counselling up here, but I told them I’d handle it. Then you started crying.’

Jill started crying. ‘I don’t want to go,’ she said.

‘Jill, honey. We’ve got to get you some help,’ said Frances. ‘This place is supposed to be beautiful. It’s only for a week.’

‘I can’t go to a psych hospital, please, Mum,’ Jill pleaded. ‘I’ll be okay!’

Frances Jackson smoothed her hand over Jill’s hair.

Jill tried Gabriel. ‘I can’t go anywhere,’ she said. ‘I have to find out who killed–’ Her voice fractured.

‘No one will let you near the case now, Jill. Not after what happened today,’ he said. ‘They wanted you off this thing altogether, but I got Last to promise me that he’d let you back on if you have a week of intensive treatment. That’s if we haven’t caught the prick first, of course.’

‘I can’t go, Gabe,’ she said, her voice tiny. ‘Every cop in New South Wales will think I’ve gone mad. No one will work with me again.’

‘That’s why you won’t be in New South Wales,’ he said. ‘I said the place is in Bendigo, remember? In Victoria. It’s not gonna affect your career.’

‘Well, what if I just take a week away from work. I can stay here,’ she said.

‘No, you can’t, because you’re going mental,’ he said.

Frances Jackson made a choking sound.

A lead blanket of fatigue pushed Jill’s head back against the headboard, pressing her eyes closed.

‘How will I get there, then?’ she asked.

‘I’ve got a flight booked for early tomorrow morning, Jill,’ said Frances. ‘I’m coming down with you.’

Jill snapped her eyes open and shot bolt upright. ‘I can’t get on a fucking plane like this!’ she yelled. ‘I’ll have a panic attack in midair. I can’t! I can’t!’

‘Shh, Jill. Okay, okay.’ Frances pulled Jill into her arms.

‘You can take a Valium,’ said Gabriel. ‘You’ll sleep the whole way down.’

Jill pulled herself from her mother’s grasp, boring her eyes into his. The memory of last night, being hunted and raped by those panic attacks, gave her voice a cracked edge. ‘You’ll have to shoot me to get me on a plane, Delahunt.’

‘Shh, it’s okay, honey,’ said Frances. ‘We’ll think of something.’

‘Callie, please, honey – would you hurry? We’re going to be late again!’ Erin Hart stood in the hallway of her renovated terrace house in Glebe and took a deep breath. Her voice had become louder and shriller with every word she’d called up the stairs.

Erin opened the door to the cupboard under the stairs and groaned. She began picking up the jumble of shoes on the floor, hurling them one by one at the shelves at the back that were designed to hold them neatly. She couldn’t scream at the kids for this one. A good half of the shoes were hers. Tangled in with the pile was a pair of rollerblades, a backpack, a remote control for a toy car that had gone missing months ago, and a string of indoor fairy lights. She would never have listed ‘good housekeeper’ on her résumé, and most of the time she was proud of the deficit. She earned enough as the local member for Balmain to pay for a cleaner, but she didn’t expect the woman to clean her cupboards.

She found a pair of pumps that were not what she’d been looking for, but which would do. Several other repositories for shoes and useless refuse existed in her home, but Erin had no time to search them now. She went back to the kitchen and messed up her twelve-year-old son’s hair.

‘What if I’d just brushed it?’ he said.

‘I’d have noticed and fainted,’ she said.

Reece kept his eyes on his laptop. It sat where his breakfast should have been. His plate, containing toast and a boiled egg, was pushed to the side.

Erin grabbed the All-Bran from the cupboard and the scales from next to the toaster, then measured out thirty grams of the cereal. She added skim milk and a chopped banana and sat down next to her son.

‘What would it cost me to get you to eat your breakfast and brush your hair every morning without me asking?’ she asked.

‘A hundred bucks a week would do it,’ Reece said, typing.

‘A hundred, huh?’ she said. ‘And what about your sister? How much would I have to pay Callie to be down here by seven-thirty each morning?’

‘The money wouldn’t work with her,’ Reece said. ‘I mean, she’d take your cash, but she’d still sleep in.’

‘What would you recommend?’ Erin asked, chewing.

‘Another fifty for me,’ he said. ‘I’d tip her out of bed every morning at seven.’

‘You’d do that for me?’

‘For a hundred and fifty, you can have all that.’

‘You’re a good child,’ she said, and yawned.

Callie appeared in the doorway, fresh-faced, fifteen, uniform pressed, big frown.

‘All-Bran?’ asked Erin.

‘Very funny,’ said Callie.

Callie dropped a slice of bread into the toaster and depressed the lever. Erin scooped up the last of her cereal and held the bowl up to her mouth, draining the milk. She took her bowl and spoon over to the sink.

‘Cook you an egg?’ she asked, smoothing her hand over her daughter’s golden hair, which was pulled back neatly in a low ponytail.

‘Ew,’ said Callie.

‘Can I cook you an egg, and eat it myself?’ Erin said. ‘I think that might be a loophole in my diet.’

Callie smiled at the toaster.

‘There’s my girl,’ said Erin. ‘I remember you. Gorgeous smiley thing, running around the house telling me how much she loves me.’

‘I was five.’

‘Well, what business did you have getting any older than that?’

Callie shot her the stare that all girls in Years Eight through Twelve had perfected. It could make a Year Ten boy run, and a substitute teacher cry.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Erin.

‘I don’t want to go to Dad’s tonight,’ said Callie.

Erin sighed and crossed the kitchen floor. ‘Eat your breakfast,’ she said to Reece. ‘I told you, Callie, I have a meeting after work. It’s going to run late.’

‘Well, I shouldn’t be punished for that,’ said Callie.

‘Yeah, can’t we come home?’ said Reece, dipping his toast in the egg.

‘Don’t you two want to see your father?’ asked Erin.

‘It’s a big hassle going there after school,’ said Callie. ‘All our stuff’s here.’

‘Yeah,’ said Reece. ‘He’s the one who left us. He should go out of his way to see us, not the other way around. He can come here and look after us while you’re out.’

‘I don’t need looking after!’ said Callie, banging her knife down on the bench.

‘Let’s not do this today, guys,’ said Erin, tiredly. ‘If you don’t want to go to your father’s this afternoon you can come home. But straight home, no friends over and don’t open the door for any reason.’ Erin grabbed her handbag from the lounge. ‘And you can both call your father in your lunchbreak. I’m not telling him you don’t love him anymore.’

‘Oh, you’re very funny, Mum,’ said Erin.

‘Don’t say that,’ said Reece.

‘Sorry, baby, just joking. Now, bring whatever you haven’t eaten out to the car. I’ve set the alarm. You’ve got two minutes.’

‘Mum!’ A chorus.

After dropping the kids at school, Erin parked her Prius underground at the Broadway Shopping Centre carpark. She walked back through the centre, ignoring the gorgeous coffee smells from what seemed like every second shop. The coffee was diet-legal, but the food pornography on display alongside it was too much to resist right now.

‘I love the sound of my stomach grumbling,’ she muttered quietly to herself. I could slaughter some cannoli. She shook the thought away. The scales had shown a three-kilo drop this morning. She’d soon be able to wear more than ten per cent of her wardrobe again if she kept this up.

‘Morning,’ Erin said, walking in through the door of her office shopfront on Parramatta Road. The blow-up photo of her face on the front window was eight years old, and taken before she was even elected, but she wouldn’t let go of it easily. In it she looked streamlined and taut, her eyes happy and secure in the knowledge that she had the best family in the world and a great career ahead of her. Those eyes knew her husband found her fuckable. In all the photos she appeared in now, her smile was too bright, and her eyes told everyone she was forty-five and unfuckable. Her eyes in photos now grieved, betraying her every time.

‘Hi, Mrs Hart,’ said Hamish from behind the front counter. His jet-black hair hung across his eyes, and she was certain he’d used a straightener on it. When paying at the hairdresser last week, she’d remarked at the micro size of a hair-straightener on sale at the counter. ‘Who’d want one so tiny?’ she’d wanted to know. It’d take you all day to do your hair. ‘They’re for guys,’ the girl at the register had told her.

‘Hi, Hamish,’ she said. ‘Remember I said to call me Erin?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘So, call me Erin,’ she said.

‘Yes, Mrs Hart,’ he said and smiled.

Oh, for fuck’s sake. Erin smiled back, and Hamish thought the smile was for him. Actually, she’d smiled because she’d been thinking in text-speak lately. ‘For fuck’s sake’ was being abbreviated in her mind to ‘FFS’. She’d found herself thinking ‘LOL’ when she was watching telly last night. She’d have to ask Callie whether kids actually used these words verbally. If
she
was thinking this way, she’d bet they did.

Erin put her lunch in the bar fridge in the kitchen, then swung her bag onto a chair in her office, sending a file skidding. She stuck her tongue out at the file and dropped into the seat behind the desk. She logged on to her computer and opened her diary before surfing all her usual junk sites. Great. First goal met for the day. She took a look at her nine o’clock appointment, groaned, closed the diary and opened Yahoo. She followed her ritual surfing pattern, beginning with her horoscope.

By lunchtime, Erin had met with a man who came in to see her almost every week to complain – about the lack of flashing lights around school zones, the need for speed humps in his street, people who park in the bus zones on Glebe Point Road. Today, it was a faulty electronic speed sign at a roadworks site. He’d been doing forty, he told her, that vein throbbing on his forehead, and the sign flashed up that he was doing fifty and told him to slow down! She’d also met with a single mother who was being told by Centrelink that she had to prove she was trying to find a job when she had two kids with ADHD, a mother with dementia, and an ex-husband who still thought he could come over once a fortnight and smack her around.

Her next meeting had been with a Sri Lankan girl who’d met the government’s refugee criteria, but whose family was still waiting. The Tamil Tigers had seized her parents’ home, she told Erin. Her parents and little sister now lived in a refugee camp; her father had cancer and her sister was being lined up to service the visiting guerrillas. A complaint about the screeching of a neighbour’s cockatoo was next, and then a man had wanted her to inform the people in the flat below his that they could not smoke on their balcony because it was poisoning his lungs and preventing him from being able to open any of his windows.

Now, with thirty minutes free, Erin thought about lunch. A hamburger with the lot could have made that morning a little less hideous. For a chicken schnitzel and melted Swiss cheese focaccia, she’d do it all again. Right now, she’d give a massage to the man with the vein on his temple if someone would feed her a plate of lasagne and garlic bread. Instead, she walked to the kitchen and nuked her Lean Cuisine. She ate it standing by the sink, staring vacantly at the biscuit jar.

She poured yet another glass of water to fill her stomach – who the hell came up with bullshit like that? – and stuck her head through the doorway to the office.

‘Who’s confirmed for the meeting tonight, Hamish?’ she called.

He read out the list and she thanked him, her shoulders dropping with the missing name. Everyone would be there – except Sheila McIntyre, and she’d never be there again. Erin walked back to the office, shaking her head. What a waste for Sheila to die in such a senseless accident. Missing her footing whilst being jostled, waiting for a train.

The guilt left Erin longing for a biscuit. If she hadn’t asked Sheila to be involved in the CCTV committee she would still be alive. Erin always wanted to eat when she felt guilty. And when she felt sad. And angry, embarrassed, excited, happy or hung-over. Oh, and when she was drunk.

In the afternoon she tried to concentrate on her paperwork, but she found herself more often lost in thought. She hated when that happened – sitting at her desk, in front of the computer, unfinished reports and files everywhere, and she couldn’t focus. The problem was that she felt just as tired at the end of the think-session as if she had actually ploughed through the real work. And what was worse, most of the thoughts were about Shane, as usual. Why he’d had to be so clichéd as to go and have an actual midlife crisis, she would never understand. It was very Shane, though, to follow every rule set by pretty much all of his peers: go to uni and get an economics degree; marry a doctor’s daughter; have two children – a girl and a boy; renovate a period terrace house; climb the ladder in the bank to senior management; buy sports car; get fit; get a tattoo; fuck a new graduate on the rise in the bank; rent a city pad and dump his wife.

FFS, didn’t he have enough? His kids – bright, healthy, considerate – they loved him; great home; great friends; holidays; her. Oh no, not more tears. Erin tiredly pulled out a tissue. It was a wonder she didn’t have RSI from that movement. Her. That was the problem. She hadn’t been enough. Or maybe she’d been too much: too much bottom, too many chins, too many laugh-lines concertinaed around her eyes. When he’d first come out with his ridiculous, embarrassing, heart-shredding news, she’d put it all on him. Of course this was all about his own inadequacies: he wouldn’t grow up and face his mortality. It was an existential crisis. It was pure vanity. His dick was too small. He was so shallow and materialistic that he couldn’t see that true value existed in relationships forged over years. But as the calendar had clicked over and his changes and revelations had continued, Erin’s doubts about herself had festered in her gut, bubbles of them rising up and bursting as reflux in her throat at night. She’d wake choking on the acid of her insecurities.

Erin stood from her chair and stretched her arms above her head. Her blouse pulled free of her skirt, exposing her soft white belly. She tucked her shirt back in. The worst thing about these kinds of thoughts was that she knew they were wrong. Her first thoughts about Shane’s actions were the correct ones. But while she understood in her head that they were the facts, she still believed in her heart that it was all about her. The acid had corroded, eaten away at her self-esteem, and she was now just a mother in a suit with a good job. She’d lost Erin.

Four-fifty. ‘I might as well have gone for a swim,’ she said to Hamish, who was packing up at his desk. She stared across the peak-hour Parramatta Road to the park and the Olympic-size pool within it.

‘How come?’ asked Hamish.

‘Oh, I just didn’t get a lot done this afternoon, Hamish.’

‘It’s hot out there,’ said Hamish. ‘You could still go swimming later tonight.’

‘You know, I think I’m going to do that tomorrow – swim after work,’ Erin said, the thought cheering her. She hadn’t been swimming in three years. There was no room for a pool in her backyard, and she’d been too embarrassed to put on her swimsuit at the beach when she’d taken the kids. Even on holidays, she’d stayed in a sarong. Next year, she’d always promised herself. I’ll lose weight, and I’ll go in next year. Well, fuck it, she thought now. I love swimming, and I’m sick of worrying what people think.

‘What are you doing tonight, Hamish?’ she asked.

‘I met someone last night,’ he said, smiling, angling his face to hide behind the curtain of his hair. ‘We’re having a drink.’

‘Ooh, lucky you,’ she said. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Michael,’ he said, standing and shrugging under the strap of his shoulder satchel. ‘I think he’s the one.’

Erin threw her head back and laughed. ‘Oh my God, Hamish. You’re hilarious. Still, I hope he is. See you tomorrow.’

‘Have a good meeting, Mrs Hart.’

Erin locked up the minute Hamish stepped out the door. First thing on the agenda for the CCTV committee meeting tonight was a discussion of the threats they’d been receiving recently. She had to get some more information out to the press about the benefits of their plan. It’d never stop the threats from the loonies, but Erin wanted public opinion on her side. She’d have the committee okay some funds for the spin-doctors.