The Broken Ones (46 page)

They made loose arrangements to catch up for a drink.

Oscar fetched the push mower. As the sun warmed his back, the mower clattered and sprayed showers of green. He had to run over each patch of ground twice to clear the stubble. He assumed there was a will. Vedetta had a sister somewhere in Melbourne. He supposed the house could go to her. But if the house went to him, he could sell it. Or he could move there, sell this house, and pay for a live-in caregiver for Megan. Maybe Zoe would agree to move in.

The mower wheel caught.

Oscar stopped. He knelt and parted the tall fronds.

It was roughly cylindrical, about as long as a large eggplant; a twisted mass of gray fur and white bone. It smelled leathery and faintly acidic. Oscar tilted the huge pellet with his shoe, and little white grubs crawled away from the light. At one end, he could just make out a blank white eye socket, and a jawbone with sharp, feline teeth.

Sissy.

A wild panic overtook him, and he checked the sky. He suddenly wanted to be indoors. He quickly buried the wadded remains, and hurried into the house.

The afternoon brought clouds, and rain. The bedroom became dark, and Oscar curled naked in bed, half listening as the drops hit the roof and rattled down the pipes. He felt light, so light that he might rise
through the sheets, through the ceiling, and drift away, so he gripped the sheets and listened. The room was silent. He kept thinking of wings and claws.

I’m going mad, he thought.

In the house, he heard something shift. A tiny, careful rustle. He felt under the pillow for the service pistol that wasn’t there; Zoe still had it. Another rustle. A click of something hard bumping the tabletop.

He had the sudden, childlike desire to pull the sheets over his head and curl tighter. Instead, he quietly stepped out of bed. His foot touched cold steel, and he was surprised to see McAuliffe’s shotgun on the floor. He quietly picked it up and stepped on bare feet into the hall.

Rustle. Click
. Something was just around the corner.

He stepped in, raised the shotgun to his shoulder.

Zoe flinched at the sight of the weapon, then frowned at Oscar’s nakedness. On the table, she’d placed plastic bags containing her belongings from the house she’d fled: shampoos, clothes, a few books. He could see that the skin around her neck had darkened in a bruised band.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

He nodded, lowered the gun, and padded back to the bedroom to dress.

It was dark, and they drank tea, dressed warmly against the cold. Rain drummed overhead and dribbled down the window glass. She said that after she’d gone home to get her things she’d gone to Elverly.

“They’re going to shut it down,” she said. “Distribute the kids around the city.”

He nodded slowly. “When?”

“No one knows.”

The silences between words were strange and delicate. He wanted to stand and light a lantern, but he was afraid that if he moved she would, too. She might go and not come back.

“Maybe I could bring Megan back here,” he said quietly.

She watched him.

“Maybe,” she said. “Yeah.”

“You don’t think it’s a good idea?” he asked.

“I think it’s a great idea,” she replied. “It’s just weird hearing it come from you.”

He stood, finally, and lit a candle. As the yellow flame squirmed alive, something pale shifted at the side of the room. The dead boy stood beside the curtains. He gave Oscar a small smile.

Oscar turned back and saw that Zoe was watching him.

“Who is it?” she asked quietly. “Your ghost?”

Oscar hesitated.

“A boy,” he said. “I don’t know who he is.”

“You don’t know him?” She frowned a little. “Have you never tried to find out?”

Oscar returned to the table and sat opposite her. He felt the dead boy’s stare on his back and was sure he was listening. “I did. I checked the deaths registry, and Missing Persons. I didn’t find him.”

“You’re a detective,” she said. There was admonishment in her voice.

Oscar spoke carefully. “When he appeared, the first time, he was in the middle of the road. I was driving. I swerved to miss him. I hit Megan.”

Zoe said nothing for a long time. “And you think that was his fault?” Oscar opened his mouth to protest, but there was no energy in him for it.

“No,” he said. “Not anymore.”

She watched him for a long moment, then stood and walked around to him. Her frown deepened and her lips parted, but she didn’t speak. She reached down and took the hem of his sweater and lifted it off him. Cold air pressed against his arms. He watched her. She lifted his T-shirt. He braced for more cold, but heat came from inside him. Her green eyes followed her fingers as they swept back his coppery hair, stroked down his neck, to a dusting of russet hairs across his sternum. She placed one palm across his chest and felt his heart. It beat quickly.

As he reached up, she took his hands, curling his fingers in hers.

“Cold,” she whispered, and lifted his hands under her own jumper onto the skin of her belly and slowly up to her breasts. Her nipples hardened when his cold fingers touched them. He saw her mouth open just a little wider.

He slid one hand around her back and pulled her closer. Her pupils were large, her lips were warm, her breath was hot and clean. Her tongue found his, and then he was on his feet. His hands moved down and unbuttoned her jeans; they pooled around her ankles, and he placed her on the table. He went to his knees, and she pulled his face in toward her. She was wet skin, warm silk. She took a handful of his hair and raised his head, lifting him with one hand, unzipping his pants with the other. He pulled her to the edge of the table and entered her. She watched his eyes and nodded.

“Good,” she whispered, and wrapped herself tightly around him.

In bed, she nestled behind him. He felt her breasts beneath his shoulder blades. Her hands on his ribs felt as delicate as small birds, ready to fly. There was no light in the room.

He thought she was asleep until she said softly, “I’m sorry about your father.”

Outside, the rain was easing. They listened to the drops slowing. “Who is yours?” he asked.

He felt her narrow chin lift against the flesh of his shoulder. “Mine?”

“Your ghost.”

“Oh,” she said. “A boy, too.” She fell quiet for so long that he thought she’d drifted off to sleep. But then she spoke again. “I was sixteen. And he was five weeks old. I hadn’t hardly slept since he was born, not more than two hours at a stretch. Mum had married a—” She went silent again for a moment. “Home was no good, so I lived underneath a friend’s house, with Will. Little Will.”

Raindrops rolled off the awning and dripped softly on the grass below.

“I was so tired,” she continued. “He rolled. Or I rolled, I don’t know. I must have rolled in my sleep, and I woke up and he was all still.” Her hand on his ribs had gone hard. Angry. “They kept asking if I resented him. If I missed my old life. Saying I was only sixteen and I must have missed being single and carefree. Police.”

Oscar said nothing. He hardly breathed.

She seemed poised like a tightrope walker.

“He was little,” she said. “And I was young. But I loved him.”

Oscar heard her roll away.

She whispered, “But why did he have to come back?”

He woke. The rain had stopped. Water dripped in the downpipe outside, a slow and mournful tocking like a distant, broken bell. Deeper in the house something moved.

Zoe was not in bed. He rose. The air was cold.

She sat at the kitchen table, her pale face painted orange by a single candle’s light. The cotton bag Gelareh had given him was folded on the kitchen table, and Zoe was staring at the reconstructed altar. She didn’t look up as he approached. The idol seemed to watch her with those wide-set, strangely sentient eyes and to reach for her breasts with its ugly, doubly split beak. He had the sudden urge to shout a warning, smash the thing again, and wrench her away. But her stillness stopped him.

“What’s this?” she asked, not looking up.

He told her. He told her about the dog’s head in his garage and the creature that had crushed the idol there, Sisyphus dead in the backyard. He told her about Albert Naville, his arrest by Sandro thirty years ago for defiling and murdering a girl; his escape by fire, and his destruction by flames of the occultist he employed to make this profane idol and its twin. He told her about the writing on the totem, its ancient symbols and its sister glyphs carved into Penny Roth’s abdomen before her uterus was cut out and fed into the obscene, flaming brazier.

Zoe stared at the clay thing’s malformed face.

“It’s because they’re virgins,” Zoe said quietly. “Virgins make the best sacrifices.”

Of course, Oscar thought. Adolescent girls, away from their parents, untouched because of their afflictions.

Zoe turned to look at Oscar. In the candlelight, her green eyes were black. “What are they trying to raise?”

“The Queen of the Dead,” he replied.

The room fell silent.

Oscar’s telephone rang and they both jumped. He looked at the screen. The number was blocked. Zoe watched him carefully.

“Mariani,” he answered.

“Detective.” The voice at the other end was smooth; apologetic without sounding the least bit sorry. “I realize it’s late. Commiserations about your father.”

Oscar put a face to the voice.

“Thank you, Karl. What can I do for you?”

“I was wondering if you had a moment.”

Chapter
34

O
scar stepped onto the porch and drew the front door closed with a loud click.

Across the street was Chaume’s long, gull-gray Bentley Karl stood inspecting the street with the repose of a man admiring a well-executed landscape painting. He didn’t seem to notice the drips of rain that fell from trees and beaded on his tailored wool suit. As Oscar crossed the road, he unhurriedly opened the car’s rear door.

The deep leather seats were empty.

“Where is Ms. Chaume?”

“Not far,” Karl replied. “Inspecting a property.”