The Butcherbird (25 page)

Jack waited for an hour, watching. It reminded him of the life he’d grown up with and the relaxed easiness of it all came back to him in a drift of nostalgia. He remembered riding his bike down streets like this, arms in the air, just balancing with the sway of his body, not a care in the world. His cell phone rang and rang out. He switched it off. The street was quiet now. Dinner was being served. Homework books were being discovered under unwashed tracksuits next to half-eaten apples.

Television was siphoning off minds into unreality. The lights went on in the workshop.

Still he lingered. He was reluctant to go in. He placed both hands on the steering wheel, expecting them to be shaking with the irregular rhythm of his breathing, but they rested calmly on the yellowy leather. It was time.

He eased open the door then closed it gently behind him, as if it were important to be quiet. Clandestine meetings that everyone knew about still required respect for the conventions. He trod carefully on the soft covering of leaf litter. There was no wind to rustle the birches tonight, no moon to silver the trunks. A possum hissed and leapt in the branches above. He hesitated on the stone path when he could see the lighted window above the workbench, and listened to the whirring of the lathe. Sometimes it screamed and yowled as it tore at the wood, but tonight it was a steady, mechanical whirr. He knocked on the heavy, ribbed door.

There was no response. The lathe whirred, the birches stood guard. He rapped with a closed fist and the door rattled against the jamb. Nothing. Normally, all sounds would cease at his first knocking and then he would hear only the soft pad of slippers on the wide boards. He reached for the forged hasp, its manufacture previously described to him in loving detail, and the door swung open. He could see the dense bulk of the old lawyer hunched over the workbench, intent on the machine before him. He called out a greeting, but there was no response. And then he knew.

He was frozen. He couldn’t approach the workbench. He had to move, but his systems wouldn’t obey. He gulped great lungfuls of air. And then, in a rush, he was at the bench and his hands were on the shoulders and the body fell forward, face down on the rough wood.

He cried out as the lathe continued its scream, dangerously close to the gnarled face. Why was it still operating? The foot pedal. He sank to his knees and grasped the ankle in the thick wool sock and pushed, hard, but the foot wouldn’t shift off the ugly contraption. It was wedged somehow, the weight of the body twisted onto it. He tried to lift the leg, to free the man from the machine, to stop the appalling noise that was now screaming into his brain. If only he could stop the noise everything would be all right.

He knelt higher, sweating under the bench, frantic, panicked, grasping at the legs and the trunk to shift the weight. He lifted and pushed simultaneously and suddenly the foot was free and the scream was stifled. He fell back in relief and sat, panting like an exhausted hound.

And then, before he could prevent it, the body began to slide, crashing to the floor in a swirl of sawdust and shavings. Now it wasn’t a body anymore, but a man. The face was compressed into a grimace by the neck forcing it onto the floorboards, but it was the face he’d come to trust, to admire, maybe more.

He crawled to the man and held the face in his hands and wiped the shavings away. Should he be forcing the mouth open, breathing his breath into these lungs, pounding this old heart, running, ringing, someone, somewhere? But he knew he was holding only the body, not the life. He gently turned the face away from the floor and straightened the bent legs and flayed arms. The old lawyer was sleeping now, at peace in the detritus of his life’s work, ready for the rituals of the world he’d left behind.

Jack slumped into the chair by the stove. He was shaking, shivering, still gulping air to no purpose and then, without warning or knowledge, he began to howl.

The long, haunting wail rose into the beams and rang off the iron roof and seemed never to stop.

That was how she found him, in her husband’s chair, keening over his body. She’d lost a son, and part of a husband, long ago; she knew the living had more need of her. She knelt before the chair and wrapped his head in her and gradually the howling subsided into sobbing until finally his whole body relaxed into her, and it was over.

It was late, Louise would be worried. He’d rung no one. He felt he’d never switch on the phone again. They would retreat somewhere, the four of them, cocoon themselves in a safe haven. Run away, start anew. Tasmania, perhaps. Yes, Tasmania, Louise loved it there; the great forests, the wild rivers, the cleanest air on earth, the cleanest water. That was what they needed—to be washed clean of the grime of falsity and fakery.

It was finished now. There was only the old lawyer’s funeral to come. The rest of it was buried already. He could leave any time he liked. He owed no one anything. He’d tried; it was more than most people bothered with. It was good enough.

But then there was Louise. Would she let go now? She’d have to see there was no chance without the old lawyer, have to realise their hopes lay in the sawdust on that concrete floor. She didn’t have to know about his own failure. She could keep believing he was a hero defeated by circumstance. The truth wasn’t always a necessity.

The house was ablaze with light when he drove up Alice Street. She was standing in the doorway, waiting, and ran to meet him on the path. She enveloped him and almost carried him into the house, and he was sobbing again before they reached the door.

‘How did you know?’

‘She rang. His wife. She said you needed looking after. What a remarkable woman.’

Sarah and Shane were waiting inside and the four of them held one another, wrapped together in a knot of limbs, not speaking. Finally, exhausted, they all found bed, if not sleep. He wanted to talk now, to tell her everything, even the failure, even the frailty, even his guilt. He’d killed an old man with his arrogance. He’d been warned, asked to stop, begged for compassion. But no, he’d known what was right, what was wrong, what was black and what was white. Well what did he know now? The sour taste of bile in the mouth, the rank odour of defeat and death.

She was patient with him, but pragmatic. Overdramatisation was dismissed, though gently. She would have nothing of the guilt, nothing of the failure, but when he said he wanted to walk away, she didn’t oppose it.

‘We’ll see. You’ve all your other friends helping you. The Pope or whatever his name is, and the others in the group. Talk to them. Seek their advice. That document is still in the safe, don’t forget that. Yes, it’s a tragedy this man has died. I think you loved him in some way. But be sorry for him, and his wife, not for yourself. And maybe we can make his death worth something. And if it doesn’t all resolve itself, a stone cottage by a river in Tasmania with lupins in the paddocks and salmon in the oven sounds fine to me.’

When sleep came, it was the deep, still sleep of spent emotion from which waking is the only dream.

He was being shaken, he could feel it, but he was still in the half-dream. And then the voice, the soft voice of his daughter who had never woken before him in sixteen years. ‘Dad. Dad! There are men downstairs. They want you. You have to come.’

He almost fell from the bed, but gestured for her to be silent as he saw the deep breathing of his wife under a sheet pulled half over her face. He was in the foyer before he knew it, with a robe pulled across a pair of striped boxer shorts and his feet bare on the stone floor. There were three of them, already in the house, waiting, in business suits. He looked at his watch. It was six a.m.

‘Mr Beaumont, we represent the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. We hold a duly executed warrant to search these premises. We also wish to ask you questions pertaining to a current investigation. We will now commence the search.’

He didn’t protest; what was there to protest about? He turned to Sarah and said, ‘Go back to bed, darling. It’s all right. It’s just a business thing, just routine. Don’t worry.’

But she came to him, clung to him. ‘What’s happening, Dad? Why is all this happening? I want everything to be like it used to be.’

‘I know, darling. It will be. I just have to help these people and then we can go back to our old life. I promise.’

Still she held him and he could feel the shaking.

‘They’re not after me. I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m trying to help them. You don’t have to worry.’ Finally she released him and he pushed her gently away down the corridor, though he could see her glancing back doubtfully as she turned the corner to her bedroom.

He sat in the breakfast room with coffee. He’d offered the remaining ASIC man a cup, but the offer had been politely refused. The man just sat there, not speaking—waiting, he supposed, to ensure no calls were made. That had been the instruction. He didn’t need an instruction. He couldn’t think of anyone to call.

The sun fell into the room in patterns on the floor just the way he’d designed it to fall. He’d stood on this site, with the model in his hand and watched the light strike the roofline and lifted the roof to imagine the shafts falling through the skylights. And now here they were, here he was, here was the ASIC man.

One of the others entered the room. ‘There’s a safe in a room out here, Brian.’

The seated man turned to Jack. ‘Would you come and open the safe please, Mr Beaumont?’

He followed tamely and dialled the combination. He sat in a deep chair and tried not to see the body fall again, tried not to see the puff of sawdust as it hit the floor, tried not to hear the dull thud.

‘What is this, Mr Beaumont?’ He looked up. There was a pile of Louise’s jewellery boxes on the table and the man was holding a paper. ‘I’m sorry, what? I didn’t hear you.’

The man handed him the paper. It was the Global Re side letter, the smoking gun, which might never fire now.

‘Why is this company document in your private safe?’ Exhaustion overcame him again. Sleep had restored no energy or, if it had, it had dissipated with his daughter’s hand. ‘It’s a long story. It’s the story you’re searching for, I think, but I’d like to tell it some other time.’

‘We’d like to hear it now, Mr Beaumont. In fact, we insist.’ They both pulled chairs towards him and the spokesman placed a small tape recorder on the arm of one. How could he explain the saga? Where to start? Was there a finish? ‘It’s very complicated. We were about to turn over a whole pile of documents to you, a whole case really. This is one of them.’

‘Who is we? Mr Beaumont?’

Jack pressed one hand to the top of his head, pressed down hard as if to prevent pain from spreading, dug his fingers into the scalp. ‘Can’t we do this some other time?

I’m trying to help you people. I’m the one who started all this, started digging into all this dirt. But I need a little time to put my thoughts in order.’

The man sat impassively and removed a small notebook from his breast pocket. ‘What “dirt” are you referring to?’

Jack sighed. ‘Look, I don’t want to have to call lawyers and all that nonsense. I’m on your side. Just give me some time. It’s been a rough period.’

‘You referred to “we” in your previous comments. Who is we?’ And so it began. He tried to outline the process, his initial concerns, his meeting with Hedley Stimson, their peculiar arrangement, his search for documents. As he sketched the lines, it sounded complex, even to him. The chief executive of a major company ferrying documents to a retired lawyer buried in the suburbs. He left out the group’s involvement; that was too hard to explain.

‘And we were nearly there. We felt we’d just about pieced it all together.’

The man stared at him. ‘I see. That’s what we normally do, Mr Beaumont, piece it all together. That’s what the Australian Government has charged us with doing. It’s not normally, or ever, the role of private citizens. Whoever they may be.’ He turned a page in the notebook. ‘Please give me the phone number and address of Mr Stimson.’

Jack hunched his shoulders up into the base of his neck and arched his head back. The tension in his skull was unbearable. He wanted to be out of this room, away from these people, running with his dog, riding bikes with his kids, away.

‘He’s dead.’

The pen remained poised over the notebook. ‘I’m sorry, your meaning is unclear. Who is dead?’

‘Hedley Stimson. The lawyer. He died last night.’ Still the pen didn’t move. ‘But you’ve told us you were going to speak to him yesterday. That you were taking this document to him.’

‘That’s right. But when I got there he was dead.’ He was starting to shake now. He could feel the tremors coursing through him. The body was falling again, slowly, so slowly. Why hadn’t he stopped it, caught it before it hit the floor? He should’ve moved, should’ve held it to him, taken the weight and lowered it gently, with love. It was a shameful thing, the worst failure, to allow that fall, to hear that thud.

‘So you replaced the document in the safe?’ He was shivering uncontrollably. The sun was on him and he was as cold as he’d ever been. ‘I killed him. I killed him with all this.’

‘That’s enough.’ It was Louise’s voice, calm, in control. ‘He’s not answering any more questions without a lawyer. We’re prepared to cooperate with you, but in a proper environment with lawyers present.’ She came down the stairs and stood behind Jack with both hands on his neck. ‘I can confirm everything he says and am happy to give evidence, but in due course. Not in an atmosphere of tension and intimidation, and I repeat, not without our lawyer.’

The ASIC man switched off the tape. ‘We have the right to ask questions wherever we wish, and in any manner we wish, Mrs Beaumont. It is Mrs Beaumont, I take it?’

She didn’t flinch. ‘It is. And we have the right to refuse. And we do so.’

‘You have no such rights, Mrs Beaumont. But your refusal is noted.’

The floor was terrazzo, the walls panelled in dark wood, the tables clothed in white linen covered by paper, the waiters in long aprons. She might have been back in Rome, where she’d lived for a year after university, scratching a living as a part-time research assistant for an American professor, except the atmosphere was Sydney cool, not Italian buzz. She’d arrived early, nervous, still shattered by the events of the previous days and the effort of holding Jack, and the children, together. The day her father had left the house forever kept flashing into her mind. Her mother had run after him into the garden, into the street, clutching at him, trying to draw him back, when only minutes before she’d seemed set on driving him away. She’d always felt her mother was wrong. She should’ve forgiven him whatever the fault. What did it matter? They could have been together with forgiveness, they could have been a family. Instead there were all those years of a mother and a daughter pretending they preferred life alone.