The Silent Inheritance (47 page)

She’d told him he had a good mind and an interesting way of putting words on paper. She’d told him that he was still young enough to live a useful life. She’d spoken for him at his parole hearing, and when they’d let him out, she’d given him a job, as her gardener, had given him a room behind her garage, fed him at her own table, bought him a suit so she could take her new charity case to church, to theatres. She’d introduced him to another world and he’d been appreciative, so appreciative one night he’d expressed his gratitude in her bed. She’d moved him into her house that night.

A big horse-faced woman, close to fifty, she had never bred and should have been too old to do it. When she’d started doing it, she’d put her symptoms down to menopause and bloat. She was six weeks away from popping that kid before she’d seen her doctor.

He couldn’t take off. No car, no licence, no money and if he’d had all three, the cops would have brought him back to serve the rest of his time, and living with her had been better than jail, so he’d stayed, expecting what he’d planted in her to come out dead, with two heads or worse. There was a bad gene in his mother’s family. Her infant was three days old before he looked at it. It had one head and two pink feet. He’d known it wouldn’t hear when he’d clapped his hands over its crib, but that pale, bald little worm had replied to his clap with that new infant reflex flinch.

Angela, she’d called her, her angel sent from God. She’d taken six months off to nurse her, then gone back to her previous life, and he’d taken over the raising of his perfect creation. Angie had rehabilitated him. She’d been two years old, and already talking the leg off of an iron pot when he’d learnt that his father was dead.

He was the firstborn son. He’d seen his father’s will, seen his name written there.
My land I leave to my firstborn, Joseph Jacob …

Joe Jones had owned nothing. Joan had been his cash cow. She’d paid for the clothes on his back, the food on his plate. He’d wanted that land, had wanted to own something to leave to Angie.

It was Bill who’d told him that the old man had altered his will, that he’d left his all to Jillian. He’d contacted the Clarks. They’d lost touch with her. The solicitor handling the estate told Joan that all reasonable attempts had been made to locate Jillian Sarah Jones, but to that date had failed.

The law is what it is, and those who work within its system are slow devious bastards. Joan hired a solicitor to put in a claim, in Angie’s name. The old man’s will having made it very clear that Joseph Jacob wouldn’t get a red cent. Three of his brothers had made claims but Angie was the missing Jillian’s half-sister, and after Joe, Jillian’s next of kin.

Before he’d been free to leave Perth, Angie was close to four years old so Joan had taken a twelve-month leave of absence, put renters into her house and bought a caravan and a Ford to pull it. They’d driven across to Victoria and parked the van on this land, had paid the back taxes, put notices in the newspapers of six states, asking for information on Jillian Sarah Jones.

Solicitors cost money. John gave up first, then Clarry. Gordon, more desperate than they for money, had clung in there, as had Joan. She’d wanted to build a retirement cottage out here, had wanted it enough to take work in Melbourne and sell her house in Perth. They’d rented a place in Chadstone, close to Angie’s school, and every weekend they’d spent in the caravan, Angie and her yapping little mutt running wild here.

Then Gordon’s wife died and left him with six kids and bigger problems to worry about than land. Joan bought him off with a cheque for twenty thousand.

Only a matter of time then before the title was transferred. Only a matter of waiting the necessary amount of years before the missing Jillian could be declared dead.

They were on their way home from the farm that Sunday evening, on the Monash Freeway, a kilometre before their turn-off when along came a Chinaman who couldn’t read that
WRONG WAY. GO BACK
sign
.

A mash of metal, and they’d been in the middle of it, hit front, side and rear. The Ford had been fitted with airbags to protect the front seat passengers. Angie, strapped into the back seat, no airbags to protect her, had bumped her head, bruised her shoulder.

Newspapers are hard pushed to report a road death. Bumps and bruises and buggered cars barely warrant a mention. They’d been lucky. The car was a write-off, but Joan’s insurance company paid up fast and they’d bought the Hyundai, because of its six airbags.

It was six months old the day he was called to the school. Angie had taken a fit in the playground. She was fine by the time he got here.

They’d seen her next fit, and for month they’d sat in doctors’ surgeries, telling their tale of the accident, the bump on the head. The doctors weren’t interested in old bumps. They diagnosed epilepsy, an inborn fault in the wiring of the brain, a genetic thing.

She’d failed to wake up for school one morning. Seven years old, as beautiful as they came.

Could still hear himself, screaming at the phone for an ambulance.

The doctors failed to wake her. Brain dead, they’d said. He’d made them keep her alive. For eighty-three days they’d given her a semblance of life with their machines, and he’d sat for those eighty-three days listening to their beeping bastard machines.

Joan gave up on her. She told them to pull the plug. He’d sat watching perfection leak away while that charitable bitch had been out there signing papers to donate his Angie’s organs.

Then, at the funeral, the parson preaching of that better place, right there, in the front-row pew of God’s house, charitable Professor Murray had been reduced to a flung arm, to a twisted mouth fighting for her every garbled word.

She’d never married him. He’d considered hooking up that caravan and going, but the Hyundai wouldn’t pull it – and she’d given him power of attorney.

He’d sold the van and zipped the cash into his computer bag.

She’d had a will of iron and top hospital insurance. They’d moved her to a rehabilitation hospital at Forest Hill so he’d rented a house nearby, in her name, bought a wheelchair, and when they’d let her come home for a day, he’d wheeled her home.

The car was registered in her name, so he’d taken her name in Forest Hill, had called himself Jacob Murray – Jake, the caring husband with the crippled wife, who he’d got rid of at weekends to respite care when he’d stockpile more notes in his computer bag and search for Henry Yang, the Chinaman who couldn’t read English.

Found him behind a counter, selling milk and bread and newspapers. That’s when he’d stopped stockpiling money for his great escape. That’s when he’d found a more satisfying escape, when he’d started making his own headlines – which, if not for old Nelly’s plaid skirt and wig, he might have continued making.

‘You,’ her twisted mouth had drooled, while her flung hand pointed at him. ‘You,’ her eyes had accused. ‘You.’

She’d known him young and old, known him as Indiana in his prison uniform, known him in a dark suit and tie, in a sweater. Known him too well.

He’d had no other option than to do what he’d done. He’d done it gently. He’d got her into her nightclothes, got her into bed, given her a sleeping pill, wiped her mouth, kissed her goodbye, then rolled her over so her face was in the pillow. It did the rest while he watched a television show.

And how many times had she begged him to do what he’d done?

H-E-L-P M-E E-N-D I-T, she used to pick out on her alphabet board. D-O-N-T M-A-K-E M-E L-I-V-E L-I-K-E T-H-I-S. L-E-T M-E G-O T-O A-N-G-I-E.

Her doctor had been sympathetic, as had the neighbours. Annie and Luke had offered to look after Snow. Half a dozen of the neighbours had gone to the funeral to support him.

To the end he’d done what Joan would have wanted. He’d collected her ashes and spread them beside Angie’s grave, then driven out here expecting to find the little Yank dead.

He’d thought she was dead when the beam of his torch found her curled up in the corner, when he’d smelt her stench. He was cleaning her up for delivery when she’d opened her eyes.

Didn’t know why he hadn’t finished it that night. Had enough of death, maybe? Felt like Jesus when he’d raised Lazarus? Or was too dog-tired and drunk to get out on those roads again?

Once upon a time, twice, there’d been a man who’d cradled the fruit of his loins in his arms and seen rainbows in his girl child’s eyes. Twice he’d lived to see those rainbows turn to dust, and such is life.

Poor old Ned Kelly said that before they hanged him. They didn’t hang these days. They caged, but not before they gave their killer his day in court. He wanted his day in court. He wanted to accuse that brainless bastard Chinaman who couldn’t read English, to accuse the useless bastards who’d given him a licence to drive and to kill.

Once upon a time there was a big bad wolf, quite charming and disarming.

Born of a dog and a holy hog, he had appetites alarming.

A mutant seed, he feeds his greed.

On pretty toes and button nose and doggies’ tails …’Knock knock, Daddy.’

‘Who’s there, Angie?’

‘Lettuce.’

‘Lettuce who?’

‘Let us get some fish and chips for dinner.’

‘Daddy, what do you call a deer that’s got no eyes?’

‘What do you call it, Angie?’

‘No idea. Hey, what do you call a deer with no eyes and no legs?’

‘You tell me.’

‘Still no idea. Knock knock, Daddy.’

‘Who’s there?’

‘Kingswood.’

‘Kingswood who?’

‘Kings would pay a man to make that old bomb go so we could drive in it.’

She’d been dead before he’d made the old Kingswood go, and because she hadn’t got to ride in it, others had. She would have turned twelve this year.

The last time he’d seen the deaf one, she’d been twelve. He’d known who she was when he’d heard her voice – and when he’d seen her. She’d turned out the image of Steph.

If he’d closed that gate, she and her fighting little bitch wouldn’t have driven in. If he’d remembered to buy duct tape when he’d gone out to charge his laptop’s battery, that gate would have been locked.

Ifs and buts don’t count for much.

The house was swarming with cops. They wouldn’t find much, other than his fifty-odd thousand dollars of escape money in the laptop’s bag. If they didn’t divvy it up, he’d get some of it to Annie and Luke. Snow might live for another five years. They’d taken his laptop. Wouldn’t find much of interest on it. He’d written no exposé on the life style of the serial killer. They’d find a few grim tales from his childhood, and photographs, most of them of Angie – and he’d need to tell them his password or they’d bugger it up getting into it.

They might give it back. Crims were allowed to have laptops in their cells – if they behaved themselves. He was too old now to do much else but behave himself, and his hearing was failing. His little Yank had heard that car drive in before he’d heard it, and her scream still rang in his ears.

He’d had to silence it. Fools rush in where wise men never go. He’d never been wise. Had moved too fast and she’d been ready. She’d overbalanced him. He didn’t know how, but somehow he’d landed flat out, on his face with that chain wound around his throat.

If not for that car, would she have made her move? Without outside interference, would he have gained the upper hand, or would she have choked the life out of him only to rot with him on that mattress, padlocked to the chain.

Not that one. She would have smashed her foot to pulp to free it. No fragile butterfly, his little Yank. He’d caught himself a stinging wasp.

His hands were dead. They’d trussed him up like a chicken for the oven. Any attempt to move, tightened the chain around his throat. His head throbbing, his back and shoulders killing him, he was eager for his hunters’ handcuffs – and for his day in court.

Joy Dettman was born in country Victoria and spent her early years in towns on either side of the Murray River. She is an award-winning writer of short stories, the complete collection of which,
Diamonds in the Mud
, was published in 2007, as well as the highly acclaimed novels
Mallawindy
,
Jacaranda Blue
,
Goose Girl
,
Yesterday’s Dust
,
The Seventh Day
,
Henry’s Daughter
,
One Sunday
,
Pearl in a Cage
,
Thorn on the Rose
,
Moth to the Flame
,
Wind in the Wires
,
Ripples on a Pond
and
The Tying of Threads
.

Mallawindy

Jacaranda Blue

Goose Girl

Yesterday’s Dust

The Seventh Day

Henry’s Daughter

One Sunday

Diamonds in the Mud

Woody Creek series

Pearl in a Cage

Thorn on the Rose

Moth to the Flame

Wind in the Wires

Ripples on a Pond

The Tying of Threads

First published 2016 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

1 Market Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2000

Copyright © Joy Dettman 2016

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

This ebook may not include illustrations and/or photographs that may have been in the print edition.

Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available

from the National Library of Australia

http://catalogue.nla.gov.au

EPUB format: 9781743540145

Typeset by Midland Typesetters

Cover design: Debra Billson
Cover images: Dylan Kitchener/Trevillion Images
Brandon Sawaya/Getty images