She Walks the Line (7 page)

2017

From a high point in the communications control room, James and Thomas watched the cell with their revolving cameras at certain times. Victor Byron Marshall was due for release in 2018 and had given no trouble in his long haul since 2009. His brother Mark was slotted in there six years later and occupied the adjoining cell. They were left, as much as the guards could let them, to their own devices.

Tonight was the night, however, a night for James and Thomas to watch a bizarre live session which provided a fair bit of amusement to the two honest guards who would never think they were voyeurs.

‘Now watch, Thomas.'

James zoomed the camera onto Victor Marshall, who was stripped naked. He lay on the top of his companion, stroking the red hair, nibbling at the ear and sliding his fingers gently on the neck, the breasts and the rib cage.

‘Good foreplay, James.'

‘Shush' was the reply. ‘The major event's about to start.'

Victor arched his back and thrust his pelvis up and down for a few minutes and then sagged. He looked up and waved at the camera and stood up. Victor bent down and released the deflate button and watched it descend with the lookalike of his mother with the red wig flattening out. Just before it was completely flat, he jumped on the toy, grabbed the neck and squeezed out the
rest of the air. The guards knew what he was doing. They were witnessing a strangulation. He stowed the sex toy under his bunk and dressed.

‘And they're going to let this nut case out soon, James.' Thomas shook his head and thought, I don't think I want to watch any more now that he knows. It's only encouraging him, I reckon. And the camera was switched off.

Victor banged on his brother's cell door.

‘OK, Bro' was the tired response.

‘Grub's up. Come on, get up, up, up,' and Mark did because he always obeyed his brother, even when Victor sat alongside the mysterious Bill, a former bomb explosive man in the army.

‘So, Bill, you can make one for me next year when I'm out?'

Mark was sick of the queries.

‘So, Mark, let's go over the instructions again with Bill and me. We both have to get it right.'

Weeks of practice had honed Victor's fingers into careful manipulation of wires. Mark was there all the way.

‘Bro, if it goes wrong and I die, remember I've got the big C. You've got to keep it on the boil till you're out. 2025, isn't it?'

Mark nodded sleepily. He was tired due to his constant masturbation at night and furtive smoking which his brother did not approve of.

‘Stay alert, Mark. My enemies have to die. Now tell me the address once again. What are their names? Come on, tell me –get with it and stop that bloody smoking. I won't tell you again. Nicotine is disgusting.'

‘Martin MacRae and Suzie Smith. OK OK OK.' It was getting monotonous, he thought.

‘Good, Bro. Do you want to borrow her tonight?'

Mark shook his head. ‘She smiles like Mum, Victor.'

Victor belted Mark across the back of his head, just like Gibbs in
NCIS
, which they were allowed to watch. He shouted at his young brother again. ‘And stop wanking, Mark. It'll make you blind.'

Victor loved his great dream that night and remembered he was laughing. Laughing about the headlines and the telly when Martin and Suzie were dragged through the press a while back. It was so funny. He was in a good mood when he woke in the night. He reached under the bed and started to blow up the lookalike of his mother who didn't die in the night like she ought to have, he always thought, and let her mongrel husband get away with his bashings.

13

2018

Martin heard a noise outside in the driveway where he had parked his car the night before, behind Suzie's. He switched on the outside light and looked for a moment but saw nothing. He was sleepy and returned to the bed, snuggling into the fine back of his wife.

A huge noise which shook the entire spacious three-bedroom flat caused a photo of his mother and his sister to fall shattering on the floor. Martin smelt smoke and burning petrol. He ran to the front door and watched while the giant flames engulfed his car.

Suzie stood alongside holding him, in her dressing gown. ‘I never saw this coming, love. Did you?'

Martin was too preoccupied with the police to give her an answer. A roasted figure of a man sat in the front seat and appeared to be dead. The sirens were coming up fast getting louder and louder. Firemen sprang from their truck dousing foam all over the burning vehicle which still smouldered. Two city detectives walked carefully up the driveway watching their footwork, not wishing to destroy any evidence. The introduced themselves. A CSI vehicle prowled into the driveway.

The next two days were a blur of paper signing and insurance stuff because part of the flat had been burnt.

Two days later

Martin and Suzie went to the CSI office in response to a phone call. The two detectives were there with beaming faces and immediately opened up the dialogue.

‘Do you know this guy, Martin? Was he in the marines in ‘68?'

Martin stared for a second. The motive gradually dawned on him as the recognition came into his mind.

‘I do, I do. It's Victor Marshall. Went down in 2009 for a lot of stuff. A drug dealer bad cop.'

‘We've ID'd him from dental stuff. Have you got a clue why he would want to kill you both?'

Martin's mind went back to '68 and the gossip about Marshall. ‘I need to to think about it.'

‘Well, he certainly stuffed it up. Crossed the wrong wires, so the bomb people say. Do you think it was meant for your wife? ‘Cos from the old file she dobbed him in for bashing her friend Joan Oliver.'

Suzie interjected. ‘He did threaten us three when he was sentenced in court. Quite an outburst really.'

Martin spoke out and asked them to be patient while he recalled 1968. ‘Possible, but I reckon it goes back to our marine days. I can't think what but I will try.'

They called into the Two Dogs bar and had a few drinks with the many staffers gathered there who were also shocked at the gravity of the act.

Martin sat up at four a.m. feeling that something or other had spoken to him. Suzie was on her computer typing away to Rosemary in Canberra and then to her dad, who was unwell again.

‘I think I've got it, love.'

Suzie swung round after saving her text.

‘Before I was shot, it actually went well till we were ordered up for the attack. Victor was trembling. He always did. He was very scared from the time we landed. He feigned sickness when his time for night patrol came up and all of us were sick of him. I called in to see him later in hospital but I was called out for another patrol and that's when I copped it. I heard Victor got a bullet wound – only a crease on the head. The guys reckoned it was self-inflicted.'

Suzie waited for Martin to speak again. She knew that he had found the truth.

He agreed. ‘Bloody hell, all those years. If he'd told someone, they would've shoved him back into some paperwork job.'

‘Maybe his ego couldn't stand the thought. He bragged a lot when he was with Joan. Showed us his Purple Heart as well.'

Martin swung round with anger welling up in his face. ‘You didn't tell me that, Suzie.'

Suzie saw that he was owed an explanation. ‘It wasn't of any consequence to me. He didn't mention you so I didn't mention him. Look, Martin, it's all over. That's the end of it.'

Which they both believed.

Bill the bomb maker sat in his cell and could hardly suppress his laughter when he heard about the explosion which all went wrong and blew Victor Byron Marshall, instead of the intended victims, Martin MacRae and Suzie Marshall, into little burnt bits. Bill sat musing on how Victor thought he could have it all. The drug ring inside and outside the prison. He imagined the thoughts of the bomber when he pushed the wrong wires together. The gleaming red eyes and the broken teeth. He thought he could go round as a cop standing over people and bashing women, women who were sick or without support. There had been a succession of them to judge from the way he used to brag. And he also bragged that he'd drowned his father and his two dogs. Bill didn't much care for fathers but he did for dogs. Dogs loved him and he loved his sister dearly. His beloved older sister. The great musician in Suzie's band. The great writer who sang like Joan Baez. The great sister who had signed over one of her houses for her younger brother when he got out of gaol. The great lady who had been bashed senseless by Victor. The great lady who died of breast cancer and maybe of the stress caused by the mongrel Victor.

‘Rest in peace, Joan. And you, Victor: rest in pieces, as we
used to say in the engineers till I was caught peddling the weed. I promise, dear Joan, to go straight from now on.'

14

Suzie

2024

I woke from my long sleep and looked at my bedside clock and realised I'd slept for twelve hours. The dream needed to be analysed but that was for later.

Now it was the other ritual, which was the church, and a prayer and maybe a talk with Martin's spirit. Not that he had much to say. It was just a smile, a nod and whispers which I could not decipher. The ritual was a comfort after his massive brain tumour took hold with the sudden vomits. The anger. The sparks appearing in the corner of his eyes. The loss of his freedom with the car licence and worst of all the motorised chair which propelled him around for a while. Was it all the high drama which finally undid the happy vigorous man? However, the priest had no answer.

The usual military funeral on a cold bleak December day just before Christmas 2022 and just past his Capricorn birthday. They fired the customary shots, said many words, gave me a flag and we watched when what was left of his mortal remains sank in the earth.

The end of his seventy-two-year reign. I thought my grieving was almost gone because I had mourned, was bitter, was in denial, ranting, raving, kicking chairs about when he was sitting with the morphine pump on his chest. He wished to die in the last stages and I agreed with him. If there had been a firearm in the house he would have taken his head off.

Once the ritual was done, I made my way to the Two Dogs bar and had a few beers with friends, who all said how much they
missed him and what a shame it was, and (in the next breath) asked, ‘Are you still singing?' just like they were putting up a closure to their own mortality. So it goes. I stayed away for a while till they recovered from Martin's death.

Dad was ill before the tumour came on Martin and I lost him in 2020 from a sudden heart attack. It was the very last trip back to Australia for the both of us. A repeat performance with Martin two years later. And how I missed Dad and his wisdom. But he's gone and that is that, so I'm told. I must get on with my life. What's left of it.

Perhaps I was thinking about the deaths of my two men and perhaps it sparked the evocative dream which I recall so vividly I can still see the very bright colours of the spectrum. But there's more. I was like an observer just watching in my Australia. And there they were, Dave and Joan my mum, having a good old Q and A.

But they must have seen me in the dream because Joan said, ‘Did you see that look, Dave? Just like yours, squinting eyes and scratching the top of her head? OK, what? She's planning something. Another cupboard somewhere to sit and talk to us.'

Then Dad spoke. ‘Perhaps that's a good thing, Joan.'

‘You didn't tell me the whole truth, though, Dave, from your cupboard.'

Dad spoke. ‘I know, but it seemed to be the right thing to do then.'

‘Got you into gaol, though, didn't it? Got you raped in gaol as well.'

‘I wish you wouldn't bring that up, Joan.'

‘I'll tell you what I think she's going to do. She's going to clear the pantry and sit there. Maybe writing music, I hope.'

I thought about what she said in the dream and cleared the pantry. There were smells of camphor left over from Mum and
surprisingly some Metsal cream which must have travelled back from Oz when I took some of Dad's shoes. He had a small foot and his joggers fitted me.

A lectern and two stools were soon in place inside the large pantry. My guitar and music and Martin's harmonica sat on the other stool. It occurred to me he might come back one night and play it. Well, it happened. He came back another night. It wasn't music but garlic, which he munched right through his illness. The garlic smell came into my senses when I put on Dad's shoes and started walking again. Martin was with me but I didn't look around. He was with me in the Two Dogs bar with his garlic smell about but George the barman didn't say anything. George looked at me, though, when I spoke to the open space.

‘Have you seen your parents, Martin?' I smiled as well and thought that George would think I've lost it, but I knew I'd get a positive answer because that's Martin – always in the affirmative. And I listened with interest to what he said.

‘Sometimes, though they're not together now, but I speak to your mum Joan at times. She's a good sort. Gives me lots of advice. Like how to watch over you.'

I turned round on the stool and I thought I'd speak to George. His eyes were stary.

‘How's the wife, George?' (knowing she had cancer).

‘Good days, bad days. Bad days getting to beat the good ones.' He paused and said, ‘Jeez, I miss him and your songs, Suzie.' He would not have known that Martin was with me on the other bar stool.

15

Washington DC

2025

In the three-bedroom flat, the large man wearing the balaclava lay dead with his head twisted at an awkward angle. The owner of the flat, Suzie Smith, was busy at her fridge cutting up small goods and glanced furtively at the detectives.

The detectives already had a statement from the neighbour who raised the first alarm and advised them, ‘Not much use trying to get anything from her. She's gone gaga.'