The Silent Inheritance (26 page)

The
Herald Sun
had printed a photograph of a Kingswood, cleaner, in better condition than his, but otherwise identical, and every man and his dog in Victoria would recognise it if they passed it on the road. He’d sprayed cars before. Yesterday he’d bought a dozen spray packs of black enamel from half a dozen two-dollar shops. That paint dried in fifteen or twenty minutes. It could be done. Given time every problem was surmountable.

He’d bought petrol, twenty litres of it in plastic containers. He’d be making no stops for fuel tonight.

Made a mistake in buying his little Yank a sweater at a small womenswear shop. It was pink and it had beading on the front, and he’d wanted it for this one. The woman who’d served him was probably phoning Crime Stoppers this morning. He’d gone through the self-service at Kmart when he’d bought the sneakers – and was probably on one of their cameras.

The note was done and folded ready in his wallet. He’d taken its wording near verbatim from the Bible, and as he pushed his loaded barrow across to the house, he mouthed the words silently.

‘Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but my deeds shall not pass away. Watch ye therefore and pray always that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that come to pass.’

It was a good note to end on.

About to drop the first bag of firewood onto the hearth, he noticed a pool of water there and looked up. The roof leaked over the sitting room, but to date the rest of the house had been dry. The kitchen ceiling looked dry.

He lifted a carton of kindling and newspapers away from the pool. The carton lifted. Its saturated base dropped its load, and he kicked it, cursed it, then noticed the trickle escaping from beneath the firebox. That treacherous bastard of a stove had sprung a leak in its boiler tank, or in the pipes feeding in and out.

The tank fed water via gravity to the house. There should be a stop tap on its pipes. If he could turn it off, he’d stop that leak, and with that thought in mind, he returned to the shed for a stepladder.

He found the stop tap, had to hit it with the heel of his hand to move it, bruised his hand before it moved, but it turned and he ran inside to watch that trickle slow, then stop.

Lack of water to that boiler wouldn’t affect the stove’s function. No hot water tonight could affect him.

‘Phone a plumber,’ he sneered. ‘Or put a match to the bloody place and burn it to the ground. Plenty of petrol and those aerosol cans would go off like bombs.’ And he could no more bring the fire department racing out here than he could a plumber.

He stood staring at the stove, knowing a plumber would find a way to repair it – or replace the boiler or pipes – or would have done fifty years ago, back when household items had been reparable. Nothing was repaired these days. A three-year-old video player was a throw-away item.

He lifted the large hotplate and peered in, opened the firebox, got his penlight torch and guided its beam around the internal surfaces. The sodden ash towards the front suggested the leak’s likely position, suggested it may not be the pipes. They’d be on the far side. He swung the beam around that maw, which he’d never considered more than a wood-guzzling space, then, placing the torch down, he removed the two small hotplates and the twin metal plates supporting them. A noisy, filthy occupation, but with the wider area exposed, he could see the boiler tank and he fetched a knife to scrape off the build-up of carbon.

He found a leak, a bead of water at the front top corner where a joint must have given way, or rusted away from within.

There were products available these days guaranteed to repair metal. He’d seen them advertised in junk mail. You could buy anything if you knew the right place to go. A few days ago, he’d bought himself a computer power supply adapter from a place in Ringwood. It plugged into the cigarette lighter of his car and charged the computer battery – so they claimed. He hadn’t tested it yet.

‘Bunnings,’ he said, and went to the sink to wash his hands, turned on a tap, and when it failed to give up its water, he cursed it and took his bar of soap out to the tank to wash.

Lost too much of that morning. Everything took time. The opening and closing of the gate, the finding of an epoxy adhesive at Bunnings, a two-phase product guaranteed resistant to alkalis, solvents, acids and heat – and not cheap – nor was the bottle of heavy-duty hand-cleaning liquid he found there. He bought a hose that was cheap. If his stove repair failed, he couldn’t see himself bucketing water from tank to bathroom – and cold water wasn’t an option anyway.

Wasted fifty minutes with his shopping. Lost another twenty in scraping fifty years of built-up carbon from the boiler’s corner and wherever else he could reach with his kitchen knife. He lost ten more minutes in wiping the boiler tank clean, but the instructions on the epoxy packet demanded a clean surface, free of grease.

Remove caps. Pierce seals with rear of caps.

He pierced both.

Squeeze equal amounts of resin and hardener onto clean disposable surface and mix thoroughly.

He emptied both tubes onto a party plate, mixed them well with his kitchen knife, then, with the same knife, plastered that paste heavily around the front top corner of the boiler where he’d seen that bead of water, then anywhere else his knife would reach. By the time he was done, he’d lost most of his morning, but the epoxy left on the plate and knife was setting. It might work.

According to the manufacturer, it took an hour to cure and twelve more to reach full strength. He didn’t have twelve hours, but could find something to do for an hour. Keys in his hand, newspapers under his arm, masking tape worn like a bracelet on his wrist, he went out to the garage and unlocked the side door to make a start on masking the Kingswood for its paint job.

He’d once loved the silence, the perfect peace of this land. No perfect peace today. The arty one’s dog was barking, and he kept it up for the hour it took to cover the windows, to fiddle newspaper around the chromed bumper bars, around the van’s grille.

His back killing him, he walked across to the house to stretch it and to check his repair.

It wasn’t pretty, and a touch with his finger told him it was barely touch dry. He’d plastered it too heavily around that corner, and he cursed his plastering and the hands of his watch, and no boiling water for a coffee as he returned to the Kingswood.

He was easing a length of masking tape along the chrome door strips when the light entering in through the side door altered and he stopped what he was doing to turn.

That big yellow mongrel was filling the narrow doorway.

‘Get!’ he warned, standing, his eyes seeking a weapon. Spray cans close by, scissors, masking tape. He chose a spray can. ‘Get, you ugly bastard,’ he roared and belted with the can on the galvanised wall.

It backed off. He continued yelling and belting that wall until the mongrel turned tail and loped towards the house. He’d left the doors open for light, had left the screen door propped open.

He picked up a second can, got both lids off, then, his fingers on the triggers, he followed the dog.

And she was screaming and if the arty one had followed her dog, he was a dead man. He ran to his back door, and her scream was loud and the dog’s bark louder. Unaware if it was inside or out, he stayed out, but hammered on the wall, on the window with a can, and it scrabbled out from beneath the house to face him, and the bastard was showing his teeth. It appeared to be a labrador-boxer crossbreed, with something larger in its genealogy.

‘Get, you ugly bastard,’ he bellowed, and shot a spray of black mist towards it.

It didn’t like that. It shook its head, licked its nose, backed up, so he gave it a second dose, stepping back while that can sprayed, kicking the barrow out of his way. He got inside and closed the screen door, his eyes never leaving that mongrel, who was too big to tangle with. His guest now hammering on the floor, that bloody dog went back beneath the house.

He had to shut her up! The spray pack placed down on the sink, he reached for the tap, then remembered – and he wasn’t going out there to wash his hands. He locked the door, pulled the blind, opened a can of beans, pitched its lid at the stove then popping three pills from their bubble wrap, he crushed then stirred them into the beans. Positioning the penlight between his teeth, he picked up the beans and a bottle of water and let himself into the pantry.

Once a place of shelves, of baking pans and oversized pots, of sugar, flour and the scent of all things good. The stink of his guest’s latrine greeted him today. He placed the bottle of water down, shook the beans into her bowl, then, his hands free, he took the torch from between his teeth and played the beam into her eyes.

‘If you’re going to murder me like you did those other girls, what are you waiting for, you cowardly sicko?’ she said. ‘I wish that dog had eaten you alive.’

She wouldn’t tame, not this one. He let himself out and closed the door.

‘People can’t live on fucking baked beans!’ she yelled.

He heard her. Her appearance suggested that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Appearances lied. She was a rarity he wished he’d found sooner.

‘Other things come in cans,’ she yelled. ‘Fruit comes in cans.’

He felt his epoxy repair again, and where he’d plastered less heavily, it had solidified. He ate a sandwich at the window, drank water from a bottle, his guest now silent.

He gave her twenty minutes before opening the door. She’d eaten half of her beans, and now lay with her face turned to the wall and something other than straw beneath her neck – a strip of his foam lining. He moved his light around the bars, found the place where she’d removed a fifty-centimetre strip of his soundproofing. With her fingernails? It wasn’t easy to cut with a knife, and well he knew it. His torch beam returned to play a moment on his sleeping beauty.

She would have made his eighty-three days, all he’d asked of the first of them. She’d brought her own killer with her, had been coughing her lungs out on the second day. Now this one had to leave early.

DO YOU KNOW THIS MAN

It had to be done. He had to get the Kingswood well away from this land, park it within walking distance of a railway station—

His light in her face roused her. She flung an arm in its direction. The chill of cold water could have her flinging more than an arm.

Lack of options led to haste. Haste led to mistakes. Was he making his greatest mistake? Having shaken the undergrowth to flush him out, his hunters would be patrolling every freeway. Was he planning to do exactly what they expected him to do, to run blind, run scared?

He’d stay off the freeways, as he had when delivering the gutter’s refuse—

His initial response that day had been flight.

DO YOU KNOW THIS MAN

Few looked twice at him, and those who did wouldn’t relate him to the Freeway Killer. And he was running out of time to paint the Kingswood—

‘Bloody dog.’

He allowed the torch beam to play on her foam pillow.

‘You’ve just been given a reprieve, Miss Piggy,’ he whispered. ‘I believe we need to wait until the hunters stop shaking the undergrowth.’

He’d bought a bag of grapes to eat during his planned night drive. Beautiful grapes, large and seedless, their skins crisp. He popped one into his mouth, then began reconstructing the stove.

He gave her two more bottles of water before he left, and two more cans of baked beans, then, as an apology for those ‘fucking beans’, he broke off a bunch of grapes and placed them into the bowl with her leftovers.

A
t seven o’clock on Easter Sunday morning, Ross rapped on the front door of a Forest Hill commission house, rapped twice more before the door was opened by a chocolate-coated four year old, who, when asked to get Mummy, pointed a portion of chocolate egg towards the east, then returned to his/her chocolate-coated companions on the floor, within touching distance of a large flat-screen television.

A second member of the group, a definite male of six or seven, scuttled up a passage towards the east, then scuttled back, unwilling to miss the televised action.

He came then, Shane Lourie, not wearing his Nike cap, not wearing much.

‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing knocking on my door at this time of day?’

‘I’m on my way home from a bit of a reunion, Shane, me and a few of the old Hawthorn boys. We got talking about you,’ Ross said as the girlfriend came, clad in a purple towelling dressing-gown and half of her hanging out of it.

She knew who he was, or what he was. ‘Are you got a warrant?’

‘I can come back with one and frighten the children, Mrs Lourie, or we can call this a social visit. I knew your husband in primary school.’

‘What do you want with him?’

‘We believe Shane has information which may assist us in a current investigation,’ Ross replied and stepped back as she pushed the screen door wide to look for the
we.

‘What’s he supposed to know?’ Shane’s mouthpiece asked while he attempted to shoo kids back to their television. He’d got himself a herd of kids – or inherited them from his predecessors. Their televised show unable to compete with the live action at the door, three of them got by their mother. A crawler was currently pulling himself to his feet on one of Mummy’s tree-stump legs. She swung him up to straddle the bulge where her hip should have been.

‘What’s he supposed to know, I asked you?’

‘We can have him home before breakfast, Mrs Lourie. If I have to come back and do it the official way, it could take a while longer.’

‘Have you done anything, Shane?’

‘I don’t bloody go anywhere to do anything, and I know nothing about nothing,’ Shane said.

‘Go with him then. The kids don’t need to see you dragged out of here in handcuffs,’ she said, still looking for the
we.

It was obvious who wore the trousers in that house, but two minutes later, Shane came out wearing shapeless jeans, worn-out sneakers, and his Nike cap.