The Silent Inheritance (39 page)

‘It’s very little, my dear,’ he said.

‘We call you our angel,’ Marni said.

‘Never an angel, Marni,’ he said, then he took the hand she offered and like a fat old knight from a movie, he kissed it. ‘A few phone calls should put the matter of that land to rest,’ and he went on his way.

He may not have had wings or a halo, but he looked like a pink, chubby-cheeked cherub, and as far as Marni and Sarah were concerned, the little hand he raised in salute had performed miracles.

He’d got rid of over a million of their dollars; had paid for the house and car and stamp duty, donated two hundred thousand dollars as a reward for information leading to the arrest of the Freeway Killer, and he’d posted four cheques.

*

Ten seconds after Jackie came into work, everyone in the office knew about her windfall, and when Shane arrived, and they compared amounts, Rena confessed to having received twenty thousand.

Bob had received the same amount. He mentioned it that evening in the car, then he asked if Sarah had received a similar windfall.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Who’d be giving away that amount of money?’

‘Bonus from David Crow …’ Sarah said.

‘I thought it might have been Maureen, celebrating getting rid of the bastard. You know he’s living with Barbara Lane in a posh harbourside unit.’

‘When he is bankrupt I have a party.’

‘I’ll supply the champagne. When are you and Marni moving in?’

‘I buying Mrs Vaughn’s house, Bob.’

‘What?’

Sarah shrugged. ‘I buying her house and car.’

‘How much was your cheque?’

‘Too much,’ Sarah said. Almost told him about TattsLotto, but he’d tell his mother and she’d tell her daughters—

‘You’ll be paying it off when you’re sixty!’ he said.

‘I want something that belong to me, something that don’t move so Marni will have one place, her place forever.’

‘She could have it with me. I love that kid.’

‘She like you too, very, very much. You are a very good, nice man, Bob—’

‘But you don’t want to move in with me.’

‘I don’t … don’t want … very close. I am not very true person, Bob.’

‘What do you mean, not true?’

‘I am not Mrs Carter. I am not marry Marni’s father.’

‘As if I care—’

A row of cars braked in front, Bob braked, but the car behind him didn’t, or not fast enough. It altered the conversation. The damage was minimal, a scratch, a small dent, a bank-up of cars while Bob got the driver’s details. They were late home, and there was a stranger leaving the yard when Bob drove in. One of the plumbers or the painter Marni had called – or a robber – or the Freeway Killer. He didn’t wait to introduce himself.

Bob got out of the car to walk behind Sarah while she checked the front door and windows. There’d been no break-in.

‘You’ve bought a wreck,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ Sarah admitted, and looked where he was looking, at the guttering. It had grass – or trees – growing in it, and was more rust than metal. The wrought-iron railing around the front porch may not have seen paint since it had been installed in the sixties.

But they didn’t have to move in with Bob and his mother; they didn’t have to move ever again, and even if they couldn’t find workers to make their house beautiful, they could find someone to pull it down and build a new house, because the land it stood on was their own, and to Gramp, holding on to his last few acres had been everything.

‘How much did you pay for it?’

‘Six hundred and fifty.’

‘The land is worth that much,’ he admitted.

O
n Wednesday, Marni found a painter opposite the school gate. He was loading a ladder onto a paint-spattered wagon, and she nicked across the road to ask him if he had time to paint a very messy old house.

‘Where do you live?’ he asked.

‘Not far around the next corner,’ she said, and gave him their address. He didn’t write it down, but half an hour later his spattered wagon was in their driveway and he was pressing Mrs Vaughn’s doorbell.

Marni ran around to the front yard. ‘Mum’s not home from work yet,’ she said. ‘I can let you in to have a look.’

‘Inherited it, did she?’

‘Yeah,’ Marni said, because it was easier.

‘How bad is she inside?’

‘Worse than outside.’ Which looked pretty bad today. April was over and the Magic Faraway Tree was losing its leaves and making a mess about doing it, and without its green to hide behind that poor old house looked worse. She retrieved the key from beneath the pot, and, not feeling good with him standing behind her, she handed him the key then stepped back to wait on the porch steps. He was tall as well as heavy, and close up he looked … rough … and she’d found him on the street, didn’t know his name, or phone number, and shouldn’t have invited him here.

But she liked the way he’d called that poor old house
she
, like it was a living thing, old and unlived in, unloved and pink with embarrassment because no one had ever loved it enough to give it a bit of care.

Mrs Vaughn’s ghost didn’t scare him out as fast as it had scared out the last painter they’d got inside. She was beginning to think he’d moved in when she heard him coming back up the passage. She held her ground on the steps and looked at him expectantly. He didn’t shake his head. He shook the wrought-iron railing, gave it a kick with his paint-splattered boot where it joined onto the house. He rapped around the corner window frame with huge knuckles, then stepped back, rubbed his chin, and said, ‘Your mum’s got herself a good solid old house. You don’t get rooms that size these days, or those ceilings. She’s got big problems, though. That spouting, for one.’

‘Spouting?’ Marni asked, and he pointed up at the rusted-out guttering. ‘Oh, yes. She’s waiting on a quote to fix that. Will you be able to do the painting?’

‘It’s not going to be cheap,’ he said.

‘She can pay you. She’s got a good job … in the city.’

He was going. She cleared the steps to let him go. He didn’t go far.

‘I’ve got a few small jobs on right now,’ he said, and Marni waited for what came next, but he didn’t say he was too busy, only asked for Mum’s phone number. Marni gave him her own and he said he’d get back to her.

On Saturday morning they drove their car to a place in Vermont to have its scratches checked out, and the man who checked them didn’t believe the nearly eight thousand and sixty kilometres on the speedo.

‘Only driven to church on Sundays,’ he said.

‘To doctors and funerals and into a fence,’ Marni said, and when he told them how much it would cost, Marni told him they’d get back to him.

The painter didn’t get back to them, not that week.

They were sorting through old clothing on Sunday night, deciding what to keep and what to toss, when a current affairs program started and they saw their policeman on it, Ross, from the plane to Perth. He was speaking about their two hundred thousand dollar reward – offered anonymously by a wellwisher.

‘Robert De Niro,’ Sarah said.

‘Robert De Niro is old.’

‘I mean before, when he is young,’ Sarah said.

‘You liked him.’

‘You talk rubbish,’ Sarah said.

‘I meant the actor, Mum.’

‘Oh,’ Sarah said.

Their policeman spoke about Danni, missing since the fifteenth of March. He spoke of Monica, who had survived for two months and two days. The woman interviewer asked if he had reason to believe that Danni Lane was still alive, and his reply gave Marni goose bumps.

‘
She’s alive, but time is running out for her
,’ he said.

‘Do you think she’s still alive, Mum?’

‘I don’t know,’ Sarah said.

‘
Is it possible that Danni died within days of her abduction, as with Lisa Simms?
’ the interviewer said.

The man they knew as Ross didn’t reply for a moment. The camera stayed on his face, then he looked right at it and spoke directly to Marni.

‘
Other than the mark of bondage on the ankle of Nancy Yang, the killer has not marked his victims. As stated in earlier interviews, Lisa’s injuries were consistent with those of a hit-and-run victim.’

‘
Do you have any new leads?
’

‘
The short answer is no. An abduction/murder, where there is no relationship between the offender and the victim, is always the most difficult. We have no crime scene, no obvious motive.’

‘
During the early weeks of the investigation into Danni’s abduction I believe Crime Stoppers received hundreds of calls. Are all calls followed up?
’

‘
We’ve received thousands of calls. The public is our eyes and our ears, and to answer your question, yes, every call is investigated.
’

‘
Is it realistic to believe that Danni is alive?
’

‘
The taking of those girls is a game of the killer’s own devising. He made the rules with his first abduction and to this point he has not deviated. We believe that he will deliver Danni’s body to a place where it will be easily found. She hasn’t been found, so she is alive.
’

The woman spoke of the other victims, of Danni’s parents. Ross kept his replies brief. She mentioned the FBI profiler then the channel cut to a commercial and Sarah and Marni returned to their sorting until Ross returned and spoke of the killer’s cars. They showed pictures, and one of the cars was a metallic dusky blue Hyundai hatchback, and it was Mrs Vaughn’s car – their car.

‘He’s Raymond Vaughn, Mum,’ Marni wailed. ‘We’ve bought the murder car!’

‘Stop!’ Sarah said.

‘He used to drive it all the time. He used to take it for whole weekends to charge up its battery. It’s him, and I’m going to call Crime Stoppers.’

‘You call nobody,’ Sarah said. ‘They make thousand of the same car, same blue.’

‘Ross said we’re his eyes and ears, and Raymond’s got murderer’s eyes and he probably poisoned his mother too, or suffocated her with one of her pillows – which is why he had to buy new pillows and stuff for her bed.’

‘Move,’ Sarah said. Marni was standing in front of the screen. She moved and turned to look Ross in the eye, and he looked at her eyes, and he spoke to her.

‘
We are few. Our resources are stretched to the limit. You are many. Don’t forget Danni Lane. Help us find her before her time runs out.
’

Then gone, to be replaced by a smiling man wanting to sell them funeral insurance, no medical test necessary. He got muted.

‘How do you know that Raymond Vaughn hasn’t got Danni hidden out – out where he lives?’

‘Because he married, and you stop now, or you watch no more these things.’ She held up a pair of tattered denim shorts. ‘You want these?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think I fight them off you for washing last summer.’

‘I wasn’t a millionaire then.’

H
e seemed to live here now or to be somewhere around here for most of every day. He emptied her bucket every day. She heard water running outside but never heard a toilet flush.

He taped her hands and mouth when he went away for hours at a time, but he never left her taped up at night and his kitchen stove never went out so his kitchen never got freezing cold. He still gave her cold baked beans and spaghetti, which she refused to eat unless she opened the tins, but he also gave her other things, a fried egg sandwich one day, and today he’d come back from wherever he’d been with fish and chips.

She’d smelt them when he’d carried the parcel inside, smelt them more when he’d unwrapped the paper, and had almost choked on saliva behind his grey sticky tape.

He used big scissors to cut that tape from her wrists, then left her to peel off what he’d put over her mouth while he served half of the fish and chips to a party plate then tossed her what was left in the paper. There was a huge slab of fish and a pile of chips in it, and a slice of lemon. She’d eaten the lot, even the slice of lemon.

He always took his laptop computer with him when he went out, probably to charge the battery somewhere. He spent a lot of time on his laptop and drank a lot of red wine from a plastic glass. If he was on the internet, he must have had one of those flash drive wireless things. There were no cords in this room for broadband, no cords at all.

He had an old-fashioned power point near the sink and a light globe, but no power. People had their power cut off if they didn’t pay their bills, but he didn’t look poverty stricken.

It was like her whole world was this room and she knew it well now. Outside was outer space, and like the scientists, she could only make an educated guess at what was out there. Her father and grandfather would still be out there searching for her.

Animals that got caught in traps gnawed their feet off to get free. A man in America who’d got his arm trapped by a rock had cut it off with a pocketknife. If she’d had a knife, she would have cut her foot off. If she’d had a knife, she wouldn’t need to cut her foot off. She’d cut that collar off. If she’d had a screwdriver, she would have unscrewed the chain from the wall. She didn’t have anything. He wouldn’t even give her a spoon to get the beans out of the can.

She’d tried using the edge of the padlock as a screwdriver. It was too long, too fat, and her foot kept getting in the way of it. She’d tried rubbing the chain against the chimney bricks, which had marked the bricks but not the chain.

She’d felt like his dog, but he knew she wasn’t, because all she had to do was point to the bucket, and he’d go outside or up the passage and give her time to use it, which meant that he had to be totally mad. He’d taken her clothes off and put the other ones on her, but he left the room so she could squat on that bucket. Nothing about him made sense.

When she’d been in the cage, he’d never emptied that bucket. Out here, he washed it every morning and poured disinfectant into it. Probably didn’t like its stink in his kitchen.

She stank. Her hair stank. She washed her face and hands some nights, with water from her bottle. She’d asked him for paper towels a couple of times but hadn’t got any. She’d asked him for something to tie back her hair. Hadn’t got that either. It was like he didn’t hear her, like she’d stopped hearing that dog barking.