People in Season (24 page)

Her arm is hooked with his as she guides him into the revamped newsroom.

‘It’s very bright,’ he says, stopping to look at the carpet, so red in the tense sunlight. Regarding the journalists, he grows concerned that the garish colour might make their work environment that much harder to operate in, like they’re knee deep in a pool of blood, ignoring it as best they can as they wade through the swamp it makes.

‘I thought it was green when I approved it.’

‘Green?’

‘I’m colour blind, Dylan,’ she takes some perverse joy in telling him this.

‘But you used to be a fashion writer, didn’t you?’

‘That’s right,’ she says. ‘My deepest, most darkest secret. Now you know. I had to bluff about colour for years. There were a few people I could talk to about it, have them run my articles by so they were publishable. It doesn’t matter now.’

‘Now that you’re at the top,’ he says.

As he wanders away from her, Ava watches as he falls into a huddle of staff members. The man is caught in a state of fight or flight.

He asks himself, Is this actually an office? Or is it a movie set? Is that coffee one man drinks or a brown stand-in liquid? If Dylan read their screens would he find a collection of gibberish made to look like news? It all feels so real. Confused at first, the journalists about the detective follow his line of sight, then land on an understanding – they see their editor and recognise the anomaly which has the man so paralysed. Ava, she returns the gathering’s skittish look, and steeling herself against the accusation they represent, dares any of them to let her know what’s on their minds. Of course, none of them do, and with a coy flick of her hair, she shows them her back and closes the door.

Arriving at the spread of gravel, ground stones that make up the oblong driveway crunch under the wheels of Dylan’s car as it comes to a stop. The last thing he remembers on leaving ChatterFive’s building is getting into the driver’s seat. Now, the engine runs expectantly and a notification hums to announce its arrival at the keyed in destination. Dylan might have slept the entire way. Just another vehicle carrying its passenger from one lane to the next. He can only hope that the car didn’t bring him anywhere unexpected during his apparent blackout, had him driving on the wrong side of the road, knocking over pedestrians, or performing frantic drug runs. Though he doesn’t remember setting it to automatic, the fact of the matter is evident – he’s home. The hum stops after a final warning and the engine shuts off. He’s supposed to get up now. He’s supposed to go into his house. Obeying the custom, his legs move as mindlessly as the car drove. Above, the sky is a pale sheet. In the distance, outside the walled estate, traffic on the N7 rushes in a torrential wind which, as Dylan finds himself in his hallway, is replaced by the obnoxious blare of cartoons. Admiring his son, whose face rests an inch from the blinking screen, he ruffles the mesmerised head. He’d been left in this position almost a day ago and Dylan is nonplussed to find he has not been uprooted from the spot. Draped around the room are the half hun
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paraphernalia of party decorations. In the kitchen go the voices of his wife and her sister, chattering happily in overlapping chirps. His son laughs at a senseless animation on the screen. Dylan can’t remember the last time he felt joy as freely as that. To become a shrivelled old man, able to count on his left hand the amount of times in his adult life he lost control of himself in a fit of giggles, is not a future he desires. Watching the ludicrous animals annihilate each other in a race to reach some ever moving goalpost, he tries for one, but his throat clogs and he falls into a coughing fit instead.

‘Dad!’

Dylan slaps the boy a high-five.

‘It’s my birthday,’ his son informs him. ‘You’re supposed to help us decorate.’

‘I know, I know.’

Balloons waiting to be inflated droop over the coffee table. Taking one, he blows and knots it, and bats it away before reaching for the next. Two minutes pass this way until his wife, clenching a buttered piece of toast between her teeth and holding a steaming mug of tea in her hand, enters the room

‘Look who it is,’ she mumbles over the toast.

Splayed on the couch, Dylan is about ready to pour out of his policeman clothes and into a puddle on the floor. ‘I’m home,’ he says, and raises a hand in the air.

His sister-in-law is pacing in the kitchen, arguing with somebody on the phone. Flustered, his wife looks for somewhere to put her mug and toast without sprinkling crumbs on the ground, eventually deciding to place the toast on top of the mug and the mug on top of a dog-eared magazine. When her lips are free, she tells their son to get his auntie to make Daddy a cup of tea, and perching beside Dylan, her legs cross toward him. ‘Where have you been?’

Dylan waves her away, ‘Work stuff.’

‘You look wrecked,’ she says. ‘You’re supposed to be the party planner, remember?’

‘I need to lie down for a bit. I want to help. Really, I do. Just let me get changed,’ he leans forward, and takes another breath, mentally preparing himself for the climb upstairs. Like a man at the foot of Everest, he imagines each step he’ll have to mount. Before long, his son stands at attention and holds out a cup of tea. Dylan takes a token sip to satisfy the boy.

‘Thanks Robbie.’ And to his wife he also says, ‘Thank you, Cheryl.’

As he stands, he lets his coat fall from his arms, loosens his tie, drops it to the ground, and is about to unbuckle his belt when he remembers his sister-in-law is present. Along the way his wife travels behind him, picking up the offensive items. She’s cleaning away his policeman life from sight. Sitting on the side of their bed, Dylan watches as she unbuttons his shirt and obeys as she tells him to pull off his trousers, tugging them in two jerks, then hands them over to be stuffed into a wicker basket on the other side of the room. At the open door, his son worries a spot on the frame, looking on with a novice mask, trying to measure the mood between his parents. Dylan winks at the boy to coax a charitable smirk.

‘You can’t keep doing this,’ his wife says, little menace in her voice. She is only describing the state of their marriage. ‘Coming and going as you please. I know it’s work. I trust you on that. But it’s no excuse.’

Not having the energy to appease her, Dylan merely watches as she empties his coat pockets of the job’s remaining evidence. His phone is laid out, his ID, a handful of sticky copper change is dropped into an ashtray and receipts are scrunched up, thrown into a dustbin by the closet. Almost as an afterthought, her hand slips into his pocket one more time and comes out with something unexpected, a card, which she examines quizzically and looks at her husband, who she never took for a gambler.

‘And after me saying I trust you,’ she says.

‘What is it?’ he manages to ask, though at this stage he doesn’t really care.

She flips it around for him to see.

It’s the queen of hearts.

‘Where did it come from?’ she asks.

Shocked, Dylan considers reaching out for the card, but the weak effort is barely noticed. His fingers hover mindlessly. He’s not sure that he wants the thing. With it comes a responsibility he doesn’t know he can bare. The years it would take off his life, if not the remaining bulk of them in a misjudged step. His hand falls, then with a cracked smile on his face, he bursts into a spasm of laughter, a fit of giggles he can’t stop. It’s about to die away when he sees the look of dread on his wife’s face, who must think he’s hallucinating when it bursts out again and it erupts to the surface until his chest aches from the reels of it.

There’s a problem Dylan could spend his life digging to the bottom of. Systematically, he could unearth all the desecrated truths he saw buried in the trial of Joanne Victoria, madly hoping all the while he wouldn’t be entombed along with them. If Ava placed that card in his pocket, there’s more than a murder to uncover. There’s corruption in a service designed to rid the world of it, a social agent who said that red was green and a woman who doesn’t know the difference between the two, lecturing all on the matter through ChatterFive and having the audience nod along in dull agreement. The queen of hearts and all it stands for, gloats. The masses Dylan would work to protect are asking that he do one thing – Investigate – while telling him to do just the opposite – Let us be at peace. Shocked he is, only at the arrogance of Ava. The card is but a confirmation of what he already knew. The role he had been asked to play in the events he examined was that of an accomplice, and two of the people asking it of him are those steadfast by his side.

Their son, dangling on his wife’s leg, paws at her until she absentmindedly hands him the card, and forgets it as the boy disappears around a corner of the landing. If only Dylan could let go so easy. The grubby hands will soon have wiped away any fingerprints that might be on the thing, but he can’t muster the strength to ask for it back. His wife lies down beside him, running her hand over his hedgehog crop of hair. Faced with the option of chasing the boy or laying here to let the world revolve around him, he admits,  ‘I don’t want to sleep on the couch anymore.’

‘Well,’ his wife offers, not sure if now is the time to discuss the matter, ‘I don’t want you to either.’

What she means to say is that nothing changes unless you do, Detective Wong. No more late shifts and disappearing on long walks. No more reading case files over breakfast and making promises that can’t be kept. There’s a bubble to maintain and you need to start doing your share of the work.

‘I’ll get that paperwork pushed through. I mean it. It’s you or the job and the job doesn’t make life any better. Not for us. You guys are all that matter. I promise. I don’t care about the card,’ he tries to tell himself. ‘I’m getting out. It doesn’t change anything. She knew it wouldn’t. But I don’t know how. I don’t know how to forget.’

‘Just close your eyes,’ his wife instructs, ignoring his delirium to impart the advice like a spoonful of honeyed medicine. ‘Just close your eyes and everything will be better.’

On the one hand, Dylan is faced with the task of righting a wrong, on the other, renewing the life he has built with his wife and child. Pursuing the crime and the enormous collaboration from all involved would be perilous for his family. Remember the children. The slogan had once sounded to him a reminder of obligations. Now it seemed like a threat. Though it crushes him, it is a thing of beauty that he can choose his family at all. There are bonds between them, woven into the fabric of their reality. Love exists, that much Dylan knows now, but so long as every bit of it he has is to be for these two people, and not a stitch for those outside their home, the untouched, hollow as their joy may be, will prosper.

‘It’s so hard,’ he whispers.

His wife hushes him. ‘Never mind that. Just enjoy today.’

With this, she takes his hand, and leading him downstairs, she will gently direct he set a table with jellies and other assorted treats, the bowls to be laid atop a cloth, spangled and glittering for the celebration. At place mats, noise makers will be left. Dylan was supposed to have a prepared a treasure hunt, with clues and a clever map, but they’ll make do by hiding tiny prizes in nooks for the children to stumble across. Together, with her sister and the boy, they’ll sing along to silly tunes, hang streamers and prepare the sitting room floor for dancing toddlers and their blundering parents. Goodie bags will be packed, pink for the girls, blue for the boys, and later, a tantrum will be thrown by the girl who wants blue but finds that none remain. Eventually, sweets will make all of the children hyper, so there’s a healthy supply of alcohol and Disprin in the kitchen for the parents who’ll suffer the fallout. The games and giddiness will subside and a child will fall asleep in an armchair. Others will get grumpy. A fight or two will happen among them, over a toy or a game, and the parents will begin to trickle off, sensing the end of festivities by the sad quiet that gathers. Dylan and his wife will put their boy to bed, sighing in relief – another day survived. And sitting up with a glass of wine, they’ll guardedly discuss their future, what department Dylan might go to, and the bounty of things to come, when this time next year their boy will be yet a year older and their marriage at a new stage, all dependant on Dylan being able to forget a card. Enjoy today, she says, go along with it all, live in this plastic dollhouse with us, make-believe the figures in white coats are there to help and that there’s a system, impossible to subvert, of suits and badges and judge’s wigs to make certain that they do. Dylan is sure that he can join her. He need only check there are no fingerprints so that, finally, he can resign. Trying to tell his wife this, he finds the lilt of her voice too soothing, and the thought remains bottled, oscillating frantically within.

‘Smile,’ she says.

Her sister has met them by the stairs and has nudged their son into frame. Her camera takes them in its grasp and it won’t let go until they comply with her demand. If he doesn’t do what he’s told, the picture will be ruined.

‘Smile,’ his wife sings it again, playfully scooping their boy into her arms and embracing Dylan, whose mouth, caught on two fish hooks, contorts his cheeks, almost splitting the skin of his face as he tries the grin. Just smile, they instruct, say cheese, and let the bulb go flash. Through the multicoloured spots the light leaves in his eyes, for a moment, Dylan sees that out there, at the centre of it all, is a singularity, which relentless in its consumption of the intangible qualities that exist between persons, grows nothingness in return. Francis Mullen had dared himself close and was killed in the venture.
Tipped into the centre where he was torn apart and spaghettified, it had been called murder, but Dylan knows it for what it was. Francis Mullen is one of the sacrificed, his death a concession so folk by the outskirts can go on existing where the cost of living is cheap, and all they have to pay are mouthed words of condolence. So, here he is among them, Dylan Wong, trapped on the event horizon, offering his apology and tending a memory of the extinguished, when over there, is Ava O’Dwyer, flitting about like gravity doesn’t exist.