Through a Camel's Eye (13 page)

And Chris's father?'

‘“The sea took him”, his widow used to say. You'd bump into her in the street and she'd come out with it. Couldn't get her to say anything else. Went funny in the head.'

‘Where was Chris?'

‘When his father drowned? In Melbourne. He came back here to be with his Mum. I don't think he meant to stay. But then his Mum got sick.'

They were almost at the farmhouse. Frank asked Anthea, in a voice that was unexpectedly gentle, if she'd be all right.

She was about to react with a brisk, ‘I'll be fine', except that Frank's voice might have come from a different person, not one who always seemed to be enjoying a private joke at her expense.

‘Why don't you come in for a cuppa?'

‘Okay then.' Anthea smiled. ‘A quick one. Thanks.'

A kettle was on the stove, steam coming out the top. Knowing nothing about farmhouses except for the little she had read in children's books, Anthea supposed that a kettle might always be ready on the stove in a farmhouse kitchen.

Frank asked how she took her tea, and she told him, ‘White. No sugar,' thanking him again and sighing, wanting suddenly, with a kind of desperation, to go home to her flat and shut the door. What if Chris would resent her staying in his house? He hadn't asked her to. He might bitterly resent it.

‘Might as well make yourself comfortable if you've got to stay there overnight,' Frank said with neutral practicality. ‘We've got a mattress you can have. Easy enough to pop it in the ute and drive it over. How about we do that once you've had your cuppa?'

Anthea's flat looked strange to her, like a place she'd never lived in. She found herself moving from room to room with her eyes down, almost as though she was an intruder, as though she might surprise the real tenant, who might reply with a cry of ‘Halt!'

She shook her head and told herself not to be stupid. While Frank waited in the ute, she hurriedly packed an overnight bag with pyjamas and a change of underwear, a clean shirt to put on under her uniform. She threw in a towel, toothbrush and paste, her phone charger. Chris had good coffee and plenty of breakfast food, but he was nearly out of milk. She took hers out of the fridge and put it in a plastic bag, after a moment's hesitation adding a tub of yoghurt as well.

Chris's neighbour had left a note on the kitchen bench saying that he hadn't woken. Frank helped Anthea carry the mattress into what she assumed had been Chris's mother's room, now empty of furniture. After Frank left, Anthea stood at the window, feeling the cool air on her face. The room had recently been vacuumed and dusted. In the linoleum were marks where a bed and chest of drawers had been.

Anthea walked quietly down the corridor to where Chris was sleeping. She bent over and touched his hand, which was hot and dry. She managed to take his temperature without waking him, or perhaps he was so sunk in unconsciousness that it would take a great deal more than a small plastic tube under his tongue to make him wake up. His temperature was 39. She thought of getting Frank back, or asking for the neighbour's help to drive Chris to the hospital. If she mistrusted the doctor's judgement, that's what she ought to do.

But what if they spent hours waiting in casualty, and the only result was that Chris was sent home again? A few weeks ago a woman had miscarried in the emergency room toilets. She'd been waiting for three hours to see a doctor. It had made the headlines, of course; but Anthea doubted that the publicity had resulted in more beds, or staff. Chris was probably better off staying where he was. Though a world of doubt might hang on that ‘probably', it was where she decided to leave him.

The kitchen was clean and well stocked, the stove and fridge relatively new. Anthea took a tin of tomatoes from a cupboard, found spaghetti in a jar, olives and chilli sauce and parmesan cheese in the fridge. She made what had been one of her and Graeme's favourite scratch meals, thrown together in ten minutes. It gave her a small start to realise that these meals had always been cooked at her flat, that she'd been the one with ingredients on hand. When they'd met at Graeme's place after work, they'd gone out to eat. But those times at her flat had been good times. They'd laughed over their bubbling sauce, and salted water bubbling, ready for the pasta.

To say that Graeme had broken up with her - not that she'd actually said the words to a living soul - would give their separation a formality she shrank from accepting. On the one hand, Graeme might prefer to disappear without any more words being exchanged between them; but, on the other, he might be deliberately leaving his options open, leaving open a crack which he could push wider if and when he chose, confident that she would be waiting.

When had Graeme started to withdraw? Had it been when she moved to Queenscliff, or weeks earlier, when she received her appointment? Anthea remembered one evening, a dinner - there'd been others present, eight or six - she couldn't remember the number now, or any of their faces. Dinner at a restaurant, with Graeme playing host. It hadn't been the time for any kind of personal discussion, but it had suddenly dawned on Graeme, the result of a chance remark made by one of the others, that Anthea was about to graduate, and that meant she would be working out of a police station. She couldn't imagine what he had been thinking - that her training had been undertaken somehow for its own sake, a hobby, or a way of passing time?

On another evening - it couldn't have been too long after the restaurant dinner - she had challenged him. Could he conceive of studying architecture for five years, and then not
working
as an architect?

Graeme's response to this had been swift. There was no comparison.

There was a time, about eighteen months ago, when she'd believed Graeme was going to ask her to marry him. She would have said yes like a shot. She would have given up her training once she was Graeme's wife, though she was not at all sure what would have taken its place. Something bland - a secretarial course of some kind.

Anthea wondered what would have happened if her weekend with Graeme had not been spoilt. The glow would have carried her, buoyed her up for weeks, but then anxiety would have crept up once again. For she knew, deep down, that Graeme would not soon have repeated his visit. She would have been left to wait, and eventually to worry that the glow had been all of her own making. She told herself that it might not have happened this way, that Graeme might have invited her to Melbourne; but deep down she knew.

What joy there was in the lift of a dark eyebrow, what delight the shine of pale olive skin and a brightening smile. They had delighted in each other once. She had not imagined that.

Lost in her memories, Anthea almost didn't hear a knock on the front door.

It was Chris's neighbour, who, this time, introduced herself as Doreen. Doreen Ramsey was a slight woman, though the muscles in her arms looked tough. The two women glanced at one another, conscious of an unspoken reluctance when it came to certain of the sick man's needs.

When Doreen said, ‘Mike, that's my husband, he'll drop by in an hour or so', Anthea thanked her warmly.

The sauce was burning on the bottom of the saucepan, but Anthea didn't care. She put the saucepan in the sink to soak, and ate at the small kitchen table, scalding her tongue and adding grated parmesan by the handful. She recalled how Chris had gobbled, that night she'd invited him to eat her lover's share of the meal she'd pictured in advance. But of course Chris hadn't known this. She thought of the phrase ‘fell on his food', how it summed up a certain kind of man. But not her boss, who evidently looked after himself in the food department, or had the makings and equipment to do so. His utensils were good quality, his pans heavy-based and strong, his olive oil thick and greenish-gold.

Anthea looked in on Chris again after she'd washed her few dishes and tidied up the kitchen. It was said that murder destroyed privacy - murder investigation, not only the act of it. People caught up in a homicide case were asked to reveal all sorts of secrets about themselves and their lives. But illness destroyed privacy as well, she thought, looking down at Chris's sleeping face. Unless the sick person had a special nurse to guard this privacy, or family members prepared to work around the clock. Those less fortunate dealt with the emergency as best they could. Complaints could be kept for afterwards, when the mind was active, the body well again.

Anthea was thinking about Camilla Renfrew when Mike knocked at the promised time. Gently and without fuss, he woke the patient and helped him use the lavatory.

TWENTY-THREE

Anthea woke with the sun on her face. Thin curtains were covered with a floral pattern faded almost past recognition. Whoever had made them - Anthea assumed it had been Chris's mother - had skimped on material. The curtains were unlined, did not meet in the middle, and were useless as any kind of insulation.

She found that she was smiling at the sun's warmth, the feeling of being well rested. She hadn't woken at all during the night. So much for being on call. Frank's mattress had been surprisingly comfortable and she'd been exhausted by the time she finally undressed and lay down.

Deliberately making a noise as she entered Chris's room, Anthea was pleased to see him lift his head and smile.

She smiled back and said good morning, poured water and helped Chris to drink. Looking embarrassed, he gestured towards the doorway. She helped him to stand up, but then he indicated that he could manage by himself. Anthea waited outside the bathroom door, feeling both foolish and relieved.

Ten minutes later, she was arranging breakfast in bed, balancing the tray, saying, ‘Well sir, I hope you've got an appetite.'

Chris made a face in which the necessity of acknowledging weakness, gratitude and annoyance with himself all fought for expression. He avoided his assistant's eye, concentrating on nibbling a piece of toast.

But then he looked up, and surprised Anthea by speaking in a strong, decided voice. ‘I don't know what kind of fool I've made of myself. I don't suppose I need to, not right now. I can remember waking up yesterday - was it yesterday? - and feeling absolutely lousy.'

‘Do you remember being taken to the doctor's?'

‘Was I? Well, of course I was, if you say so.'

Anthea became aware that she was wearing only a cotton dressing down over her pyjamas. ‘You've got glandular fever,' she said.

‘Good Lord. I suppose I'm contagious.'

‘Very.'

‘What are you doing here, then?'

‘Someone - ‘ Anthea began defensively, then saw that he was teasing her. She laughed.

What had Frank Erwin called it? The kissing disease. She'd been careful not to use any of Chris's kitchen utensils without first washing them thoroughly, and he was most unlikely to kiss her.

Chris ate slowly, as though eating was a duty he was required to perform, watching Anthea with a guarded, half-admiring expression. Perhaps the best thing would be to dress quickly, then leave, she thought. She excused herself and went to have a shower. When she came back, Chris's face was flushed and he was panting slightly. An unnatural brightness in his eyes warned her that he wouldn't welcome any more questions about his state of health.

He coughed, then asked, ‘What's Frank been up to?'

‘He saw a man crossing his paddock. The one with the dam. From the beach side to the road.'

Chris listened while Anthea went over her conversation with the farmer, surprised at how easily the words came back to her. She'd admired Chris for his ability to recall interviews word for word, and did not think she'd shared it.

‘Frank called out, but the man just kept going.'

Anthea recalled the story of the drowning then, and bit her lip.

She went on with her account, how she'd tried to trace the Bentons' movements after they'd left Queenscliff, and had found a van park in Apollo Bay where the manager said Jack had rung him wanting to make a booking.

She looked from Chris's tense hands to his over-bright eyes. ‘They could have stayed in Geelong or Melbourne.'

Chris agreed that it was a possibility.

‘But if they didn't, if they went straight back, and Jack's story about Margaret going to the supermarket is a lie because she was already dead, then why the extra days? Why not say they drove back on New Year's Day?'

‘He had to get rid of the body. Perhaps he drove to Swan Hill late at night. That way, although the Landcruiser might be seen, it would be impossible to know how many people were inside it.'

‘But there's nothing in the Landcruiser that - '

Chris nodded and then coughed again.

Anthea poured more water. Chris's hand shook so much that she had to help him drink it. His condition seemed to have deteriorated in the last few minutes, and again she was in a quandary as to what was the best thing to do.

She suspected that it was more than glandular fever. There'd been an instability in her boss long before. Underneath his calm demeanour - keeper of the peace, everybody's friend - there was a more turbulent person, one whose demons might rise up to get the better of him when they sensed a crack.

Anthea wished she'd found out about Chris's father earlier. Did he believe she'd known all this time, and had deliberately said nothing? He hadn't asked about her family. Was this because he'd looked up her file? She couldn't guess what it might mean to him if he did know. She wondered if it would shock him to learn that she hardly ever thought about her parents. She'd been too young. All she could remember was walking down a path between tall trees, hand in hand with two people who must have been her mother and father. She could not recall their faces, just that they were large and she was tiny, and that the three of them were walking in step, so they must have slowed their pace to hers.

The path had been dense with shade. Before her grandmother died, Anthea had asked her about this memory, and her grandmother had confirmed that yes, there had been such a path beside the house. Anthea felt sure that it had been warm, the trees in summer foliage, which might make it just a few weeks before the accident.

She'd grown up with the certainty that, if her grandmother hadn't been looking after her while her parents had a night out, she would have been killed as well. She'd often felt that she was alive owing to a lucky chance, that her continuing to live was some sort of mistake or oversight. She wondered if Julie felt like that as well. But she did not share Julie's guilt. Her grandparents had been kind and loving. They'd never made her feel unwanted, or a burden. As a child, she'd often wished for a sister or a brother, but this desire had faded.

‘I need to go to Swan Hill,' Chris said, his jaw clenched and shoulders braced as though to combat a physical attack.

Anthea stood up and took the breakfast tray, in order to have something to do with her hands. Chris clearly wasn't asking her opinion. But how did he think he could just take off? He could barely walk. She could put his ‘need' down to the fever, or that other, deeper malaise of which she'd just caught a glimpse. She decided that she would go ahead and pursue the course of action she considered best. She hoped that Chris would spend the morning resting, but knew that nothing she said or did could persuade him to do this if he decided otherwise.

She was saved from having to speak by a knock on the front door.

It was Doreen Ramsey. Anthea welcomed her in.

They chatted for a few moments, then Anthea excused herself to tidy the room she'd slept in and collect her overnight bag. She left the mattress on the floor, not knowing what else to do with it. She supposed that Frank would be happy enough to pick it up eventually. As for tonight, she'd cross that bridge when she came to it.

Chris's neighbour offered to do a bit of shopping, dealing with the invalid by jollying him along and mothering him discreetly. Chris agreed to stay in bed, but asked Anthea to fetch his file on the Bentons. Anthea had been planning to go through the file again herself, but of course she didn't say this. She picked up the file from the station and left it with him. She didn't think it would matter if she went home for a short while.