The Silent Inheritance (31 page)

He saw a group of Islander youths – and he had a flashback to his carjacking, or to the pair of carjackers he’d been called in to have a look at. He’d damn near identified the larger of the two. He’d had tattoos down one arm. Could have. Should have.

Freddy sipped, his eyes turned to a television screen on the far wall. No sound coming from it. Nothing was allowed to disturb the song of the pokies.

Couldn’t believe he’d done what he’d done but knew why he’d done it. He’d seen everything he’d worked his guts out to achieve disappearing into a sinkhole. It was disappearing anyway. Cheryl spent her life disappearing, as did her son. He’d done it for them – and for himself. He’d been the best and it had taken him a bloody long time to climb to the top of the pile.

You can’t make silk purses out of a sow’s ear
, his father used to say.
Leave the lads alone and let them be lads.

One way or another, his mother hadn’t done much of a job of raising sons. Bill had taken off at sixteen. Clarry might have taken off younger. John had hung around long enough to get an education. Joe had stuck it out for years. Bert hadn’t. He’d gone overseas and never returned. Gordon was up in New South Wales with a buggered back. He’d phoned Freddy a while ago wanting to sue someone but couldn’t afford to pay a solicitor.

You’re my brother, for Christ’s sake, Freddy.

His brother who hadn’t gone near him. Frederick Adam-Jones was a self-serving bastard.

Should have identified that tattooed Islander and got him off the street. He’d threatened a young mother with a knife and would kill someone with it one day – and Frederick Adam-Jones would end up defending him – if the price was right.

Who’ll defend you, Freddy?

A group of three approached with their drinks. Freddy watched them sit at the table to his right.

Had Ross Hunter put a tail on him? Did they know more than he thought they knew? He looked at his glass. They could get his DNA from that glass. They could get it off this table, from a hair fallen from his head, a skin cell.

He’d turned that corner, seen that flash of yellow movement. Then
THUMP
, and he’d been blind. He’d killed her. He’d buried her, but he hadn’t gone back and dug her up, and that’s what was giving him palpitations, the knowing that whoever had dug her up and tied her into those garbage bags had taken Danni Lane. He had to tell someone.

He knew who’d inherited that land, back in 2002. He could find out who she’d sold it to—

He could, but he couldn’t. Chasing up property owners left a paper trail, or a computer trail and he couldn’t take the risk of it leading back to him, which one way or another it would.

The voices of the trio to his right were loud. ‘The family need closure,’ one of them said.

Closure
, the word of the moment, and Freddy wanted some of it. He sipped, and as the whisky settled soft and warm in the swamp of his gut, he lifted his bad foot up to a vacant chair.

He’d had trouble with his feet since his boyhood and his walk that night had done for the big toe on his left foot. It needed his podiatrist, but he couldn’t shed his nail clippings there. He needed to see his GP about the palpitations, but the last time he’d seen him he’d demanded blood tests for cholesterol, diabetes and Christ knew what, and no phial of Frederick Adam-Jones’s blood was getting out to the public arena.

‘They’ve got an interview on with the family of that Rowan girl next Sunday night,’ one of the trio said. ‘We saw a commercial for it and the mother looked fifty. Back when it happened I remember her being a good-looking bird.’

‘You’d age too if you went through something like that,’ a second replied.

‘How the fuck could a kid ever get over something like that? I mean, if they found young Danni alive now, she’d never be the same again.’

Freddy eyed them, wondering if they were cops attempting not to sound like cops. They were succeeding – and two of them looked like brothers.

Freddy looked like a couple of his brothers. At their mother’s funeral, Cheryl had walked straight up to Bill. She hadn’t picked John, who, like Freddy, had done what he could to disassociate himself from the family. John the Baptist, they’d called him. He’d done the funeral service. Freddy had paid for it.

The trio at the next table was discussing Lady Cynthia Swan’s face, and if Cheryl had been at Freddy’s side, she might have joined in that conversation. She’d had her own words about Lady Cynthia the last time they’d seen her on the box. ‘Silly old bugger,’ she’d said. ‘She’d look better with wrinkles than with her mouth pinned up behind her ears.’

At thirteen, Freddy had wanted that silly old bugger to be his mother. He was eighteen and driving his own car the day he tried to turn his mother into Lady Cynthia. He’d bought her a fancy outfit for her birthday and taken her to one of those photographic studios where a makeup artist turned clients into something they were not. Paid dearly for that session, but when he’d picked up those photographs he hadn’t resented the bill.

He’d bought her a second outfit and paid another artist to work her magic before introducing her to Cheryl and her parents, at a restaurant. He’d introduced her to his son at a restaurant. She might have shown more interest had Rolland been a granddaughter. She might have been in the early stages of Alzheimer’s too.

The trio’s conversation had turned to parolees, released early to murder or maim. ‘It costs the taxpayer hundreds of dollars a day to keep a crim in jail. That’s why they let them out,’ one said.

‘You can buy a couple of metres of rope for a few dollars. Bring back public hangings, I say. String the bastards up at the MCG and charge fifty bucks a head to watch the show. I can think of a few who’d draw a bigger crowd than the Boxing Day cricket.’

‘Good for tourism,’ one said, and they laughed, and their laughter was loud and Freddy flinched from it and sipped his whisky – and listed a few candidates likely to pull a crowd. Cheryl would pay a scalper’s price for a front-row seat to watch Michael Swan swing. The bastard who’d killed Lisa Simms would pull a crowd—

His foot back on the floor, and Freddy stood staring at his empty glass, almost seeing his DNA crawling all over it.

He did it fast, his bulk guarding his action – dropped the glass into his pocket and walked, one hand disguising the bulge.

H
er bath was filling, but slowly. He’d turned on only the hot water tap. It wasn’t hot. The stove had been burning now for two hours and the water in the reservoir was barely lukewarm, but he could wait no longer. He’d fed her. Onto her habit of leaving half of her meals, he’d doubled the dose of Valium. His week had been too bloody hard. He needed easy tonight. He was waiting now, counting down the minutes, giving those pills time to work.

The refuse in the gully had been a warning he’d misread. The leaking stove, the artist and her dog moving in; all were warnings he hadn’t heeded.

Too late now. He’d set the ball rolling and he had to roll with it.

‘You.’ That pointed finger. The disbelief. ‘You.’ She’d seen the photographs of the cars and the mock-up of him. ‘You.’

He’d got rid of her. To date there’d been no repercussions and he wasn’t expecting any. He had to get finished out here, deliver the gazelle tonight, get rid of the Kingswood and be home by one thirty tomorrow for the funeral.

The hurricane lantern shed little light to his kitchen, barely enough to allow him to see the hands of his watch. The kettle was boiling, and when his watch told him he’d waited long enough, he took the kettle up the passage to the bathroom and emptied it into the less than half-full tub. That hot tap was too slow. Everything was too slow tonight. He wanted it done.

The kettle refilled, he pushed a lump of wood into the stove’s maw. His epoxy repair was the one thing that had gone right since he’d taken that little Yank; his repair and the rain. His water tank was full.

Opened the pantry door then, guided the narrow beam of torchlight to her bowl. Empty? She’d been hungry tonight. All to the good. He swung the beam up to her face, hidden by her mat of hair. She didn’t move. He used the torch to prod her elbow, and not a flinch out of her – and with twenty milligrams of Valium in her, she wasn’t likely to flinch.

Got the padlock off, looped its clasp over the top bar, eased the side down to the floor, then gently moved her out. A long lightweight, this one, and limp in his arms as he carried her into the bathroom, where he eased her slowly down to the water.

They usually responded to water. She didn’t move. Nor did she slide deeper. Too much length in her and insufficient depth of water. He stood watching her long hair, floating like pale seaweed in an ocean current as the water crept up to her chin, up to her mouth, when he spoke the words he’d spoken to each of them.

‘Time to pull the plug, angel. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.’

Turned on his heel then and left her. He never watched their final puny fights for life. An amazing thing, the human body, and its will to live. The third of them had fought for minutes.

In the kitchen her outfit lay ready on the table. Angie would have loved that pink sweater with its beading. She’d loved sparkly things. The denim skirt, left too long folded, had deep creases. He gave it a shake, a slap, then placed it down. White briefs, white socks, pink and white sneakers joined by an elastic thread. He snipped it, studied one of them. Made in China and sold at Kmart for twelve dollars.

Listened for her fight. He could hear water running but no sound of splashing.

His preparations were familiar: the plastic raincoat, the latex gloves, the rubber bands. Not the plastic shower cap. He pulled that on as an added precaution. He had more hair now to shed, longer hair, and the hunters had got his DNA from the gully’s refuse. He knew he’d bled there, had sucked blood from his wound and spat it. The shock of what he’d uncovered had made him fling natural caution to the wind.

One mistake after another, after another. There’d be no more.

‘You.’

He couldn’t shake the expression in her eyes, the disgust and disbelief.

He’d get rid of the Kingswood tonight, get a train back to the city, hop on a tram and be home in plenty of time.

He’d walked here tonight, or walked the last kilometres across country and over the hill. His neighbour hadn’t seen him. He’d burn this place tonight, spread that hay around and be long gone before anyone saw the flames – and he had to get on with it.

He picked up a roll of paper towels, the shampoo and was walking towards the passage when he noticed that no light was escaping from the bathroom. He’d left a candle burning in there, and he turned and picked up his lantern.

Looked for her. The tub was near full and she wasn’t in it. He turned the tap off and lifted the lantern higher. She had to be in it. She had twenty milligrams of Valium in her system. Five milligrams was enough to knock him out. He dropped the shampoo and paper towels to reach into the water, feeling for her, creating waves that slopped to the floor, to his shoes, his trousers.

Feeling around in a tub of water wasn’t going to alter the fact that she wasn’t in that tub. The window was small, high, and sealed. He looked behind the free-standing bath, behind the door, then ran back to the kitchen to check his back door. He’d sealed the front door with screws, sealed every window. She hadn’t got out.

Saw her trail of water then, and followed it to the eastern end of the house and into the room where he stored his bales of hay. Found her standing on one, attempting to open the top window.

She heard him, turned, then sprang down from that bale and ran at him. Had to drop the lantern to grab her, but he got her, held her until she hooked a foot behind his knee and threw him off balance. He went down hard. Hit the wall, hit the floor, hit the lantern, but took her down with him.

Lantern on its side, flame flaring high, eager to taste spilled hay, playing shadows on the ceiling as she ripped the shower cap from his head. He swiped at her with a wet glove, but the fighting bitch slammed her closed fist into his new glasses, driving their plastic bridge into the side of his nose and momentarily blinding him with pain.

He never marked those girls. He’d had cause to, but he’d kept his hands off them. He was fighting for his life in a house that would go up like matchwood, and that bloody lantern had a bowl full of kerosene and looked ready to blow. He hit her with a closed fist to her jaw.

It killed her fight long enough for him to get a grip on her hair, long enough for him to right that flaring lantern. Its glass shade had cracked, but there was no time to worry about it. Her scream was bloodcurdling, shrill and unending.

She screamed down the dark passage, screamed when he dragged her by the hair into the pantry, where he attempted to manhandle her into the cage. She got a grip on the bars and fought him with her feet, and one of them got him in the throat. Already breathless, he fought then for the air in that stinking hole, and that fighting bitch slammed the door, and screamed her victory.

Priorities alter when a door closes, when there is no light. His penlight torch was in his pocket, his pocket was beneath the raincoat. He was digging for it when she floored him with something harder, heavier than her puny fist or foot. It mashed into his ear, and he heard his own roar of pain, and while he roared, she hit him again and he was down, on his backside, ripping plastic to get at his torch.

Saw her in that first sweep of light. Saw what she’d hit him with. Saw it disappearing down the hole in that floorboard.

He’d known that hole was there. He’d broken the bloody board when he’d been ripping out the shelving, when one of the supports had come away with a section of rotting floorboard attached. On his knees, gripping that torch, he sucked stinking air in through his open mouth while staring in disbelief.

And she kicked the torch from his hand, and the light died and she was out that door.

He moved then. He got out before she could lock him in, disbelieving the strength of her. They’d all weakened in that cage. She’d been in it for weeks and there was nothing of her. He’d weakened, and if she got hold of his scissors or a knife, she’d kill him.