Vodka Doesn't Freeze (15 page)

S
COTTY INSISTED THAT
J
ILL
stay out with her parents at Camden for a couple of days, and she was not up to objecting. She found it difficult to believe that two men had physically attacked her in forty-eight hours. Since she'd started investigating David Carter's murder, her carefully ordered life seemed to be unravelling.

At the moment, however, this thought was suppressed. Reclining on a sun lounge by the side of her parents' pool, her knees bent up – this position eased the pressure on her ribs – her hand shielded her eyes, blocking some of the late afternoon sun from her face. The cicadas chiming in the semi-rural neighbourhood nearly drowned out the sounds of her niece and nephew chortling in the pool.

'Girls, you should have a hit of tennis before dinner.' Robert Jackson stood at the barbecue, poking at the smouldering coals, beer in hand.

'Or, you could get me another white wine, Dad.' Cassie was on a lounge next to Jill, painting her nails. Their sister-in-law, Robyn, was in the shallows with Lily, Jill's niece and Robyn's three-year-old daughter. Avery, Jill's six-year-old nephew, was calling for his father's attention every minute or so. Tim, the children's father – Jill and Cassie's older brother – was touring the rose garden behind the pool with their mother, Frances. 'Robert, don't be silly,' called Frances, secateurs in hand, 'How is Jill supposed to play tennis with broken ribs?' 'And since when have
I
played tennis?' Cassie wanted to know.

Jill gave up trying to keep her eyes half-open and let the waning sunlight soak into her skin. She buried her hand in the silky fur of the cat pressed against her side. Fisher, her mum's blue-point Siamese, stretched full-length, upside down, drunk on the sun and Jill's attention. His purring chest moved against her own.

As usual when she was at home, she could feel herself healing. Here, in the scented afternoon light, she was suspended above her life, safe from the sharks snapping below.

Jill opened her eyes half an hour later to the clink of ice near her ear.

'Mango juice,' her mum said quietly. 'Sorry to wake you, darling. Dinner's almost ready.'

Jill stretched, and then winced; she'd caught herself before any real pain bit through her side. She opened and closed her mouth, rubbing her hand over her face. Her skin felt tight from the sun. I should've applied more sunblock, she thought. Cassie was just emerging from the pool in front of her, looking just as glamorous and skinny as she did in the magazines.

I can't talk, thought Jill, looking down at her own concave stomach. Gotta eat more while I'm here. She felt surprise that she had an appetite as she made her way up the stairs to the deck that surrounded the back of her parents' sprawling house. The cicadas were even louder now, if possible, and the smells of newly mown grass and orange-blossom filled the early evening air.

Lily wouldn't eat until Aunty Jill was sitting next to her, so Jill took her seat overlooking the pool and the ten acres of her parents' backyard. As the sun set over the horse paddocks, she wolfed down king prawns and lemon-crusted barbecued lamb cutlets, potato salad and roasted beetroot salad. She was certain that she wouldn't be able to fit in any of the tropical fruit salad and ice-cream, but over coffee she even managed a piece of Robyn's famous frozen Mars Bar slice.

She pushed her seat back from the table. Used to her silence, her family carried on their conversation around her, and she allowed their familiar noise to wash over her as she breathed in the hot, scented air. Funny that she forgot stars even existed when she was in the city – there were too many streetlights to notice them. Here, a billion tiny bubbles of brightness burst and reformed in the endless black sky above her parents' property.

Robyn lightly tapped her daughter's hand for the tenth time as Lily reached to touch one of the flickering candles that softly illuminated the table. Jill had watched the scenario, smiling each time Lily's face registered surprise when her mother or another family member tapped her hand. She was hypnotised by the dancing tea lights in the glass jars, the tiny flames reflected in her huge blue eyes. Rather than remove the candles and use artificial lighting, the family almost unconsciously attended to Lily's wandering fingertips, and she was beginning to learn to avoid the danger.

Tonight, the characteristic defensiveness of her brother's conversations did not disturb Jill. The elder by four years, he'd been sixteen when she was kidnapped, and she figured he'd taken on the same guilt as her father for being unable to protect her. She remembered her brother as open and boisterous; his teasing fun-loving and fond prior to her disappearance. Now it seemed he spoke to her as little as possible, with her own inability to initiate conversation compounding the problem. She had never discussed her ordeal with her father or brother, and the incident lay like an impassable swamp between them, the horror of the experience silently revived every time they met. Each of these men was overly sensitive to perceived criticism, quick to make cynical remarks about others' inadequacies, and could often grind family conversations into uncomfortable silences with their disparaging sarcasm or critical wit.

Tonight, perhaps the laden table, the soporific night air or the several empty bottles had soothed the men in her family. No-one had even told Cassie she'd had too much to drink. Jill watched her brother's hand on the back of his wife's chair, absently curling tendrils of her hair around his fingers. Together they watched their son swapping unopened Christmas crackers with his grandparents, trying to cheat to ensure he won each time.

She looked up and caught her mother smiling at her. She smiled back sleepily; her face taut from sun and chlorine, her eyes grainy, like she'd been crying for hours. Fisher snaked around her ankles, angling for scraps.

Scotty's right, she thought. I'll stay another day.

Birds, rather than a nightmare, woke her. Nice change, she thought. She padded downstairs to the kitchen.

At 5.30, she thought there'd be no-one about yet, but through the kitchen windows she could see her mother standing barefoot on the deck outside, sipping a coffee. Jill poured some water from a jug in the fridge and joined her. Fisher was up on the table, sniffing the morning.

'Sleep okay, sweetheart?'

'Mmm, great. What'd you put in my food?'

'You just needed the sleep.' Her mum put an arm around her. 'So what have you planned for the day?'

'Thought I might hang around here actually. I'm still too sore to go back to work. What about you?'

'I've promised to help your Aunt Ro with food for Alyssa's engagement party. I'm going to do some cooking here.'

Alyssa was Jill's nineteen-year-old cousin; Aunt Rosalie her mother's sister. Jill's mother's side of the family was Italian – the wedding was to be a Big Thing.

'I know you don't usually come to these gatherings, Jill,' her mother began cautiously, 'but since you're down here, maybe you could stay for the engagement party tomorrow night. It's not going to be too big.'

'Yeah, right,' Jill laughed and gave her mother a careful hug. 'There'll be doves and smoke machines and shit, won't there?'

'I don't know, Jill, but you might enjoy a family get-together now. It's been a long time.'

After the kidnapping, large family parties had caused Jill to suffer panic attacks. Crowds of people who knew what had happened to her and stared at her with sympathy or curiosity was her idea of a nightmare. Still, it had been a few years since she'd seen her cousins. And what other plans did she have for this weekend?

'Well, we'll see, Ma, but in the meantime I wouldn't mind helping with the cooking.'

A big smile on her face, Frances Jackson began bustling around the deck, picking up the remnants of last night's gathering – mostly Avery's and Lily's toys.

'Great! Shall we have some breakfast now?' she said. 'Then I've got to go out to the fruit market. They're open at seven.'

Jill and her mum went back into the kitchen and plundered the fridge, bringing back to the deck bits and pieces of whatever they felt like. The morning was already hot, and Jill decided she'd make iced coffee for everyone. She poured a few shots of espresso, thick with sugar syrup, into a tall glass jug, splashed in a litre of cold milk, and added chunks of crushed ice and a slurp of vanilla extract at the end. When she carried it and some glasses out to the deck, she found her mother had arranged a platter of prosciutto and melon, ricotta and strawberries, and half a wheel of brie, already beginning to ooze as the sun rose behind the house. The toaster was set up in the middle of the circular jarrah table and thick slabs of homemade bread waited in a basket under a tea towel. Her parents had stocked up big time on food, knowing the family was coming down for the weekend.

Jill made some toast and slathered it with honey and ricotta. She poured the iced coffee, tucked her legs under her, and started munching.

'Jill, I know you said you didn't want to talk about it,' her mum began cautiously, 'but I'm worried about you.'

Jill brushed crumbs off her singlet.

'You've lost some weight, hon,' her mother tried again, 'and that usually happens when you're not coping.'

Jill sighed. Opening up about her feelings felt like trying to pry open an oyster shell barehanded, but she'd learned over the years that she usually felt better after she'd spoken to someone.

'It's a case, Mum,' Jill said, putting the toast down onto her plate and picking up her glass of iced coffee. She became aware of her body posture – she had squashed her knees up against her chest and she held the glass like a shield between herself and her mother. She forced herself to uncoil a little. 'It's brought the memories up a bit.'

Her mother took a sip of her drink, waited.

'The case itself is pretty rough,' Jill continued, 'but I don't know . . . it feels like more than that. I feel like something bad's going to happen.'

'Like getting your ribs broken,' said her mother dryly.

'My ribs are okay, Mum. Just a training accident. I told you.' Jill lied again. She stretched her neck from side to side, and looked at the marmalade sky ahead of her. The birds were a concert-hall choir. 'It's just that there are kids involved in the case. You know those jobs are harder for me, but they're also why I joined up.'

'I'm very proud of what you do, Jill, but it's hard on you getting these reminders all the time.'

'I keep getting the nightmare of the girl with the white eyes. It's like she's calling me, or warning me, or something.'

'Have you thought about having a bit more counselling? Who was that woman you saw through work a couple of years ago? You said that really helped.'

Jill gave a wry smile; her mother was suggesting that Mercy Merris help her deal with this case. Jill felt Mercy's help with the case would not be through providing counselling for her.

'You wouldn't believe it, Mum. I've seen that doctor recently, and she looks like she could use more help than me.'

'Oh dear. That's another difficult job,' her mother sighed. 'Good morning, darling,' she called, as little Lily came through the kitchen doorway, rubbing her eyes. 'Looks like the troops are going to start arriving,' she said to Jill. 'We can talk more while we're cooking. I'm so glad you're staying.'

W
AYNE
C
RABBE LEFT THE CLUB
about 1 a.m. and let himself into his half of the townhouse in Leichhardt. He couldn't wait to spend some time with the files he'd just traded. The boy in the last one looked about six. He slid his hand up the wall to flick on the light switch.

'Fuck.' A frenetic blur in the doorway near him. A punch slammed into his gut. He felt slow, strangely disconnected from everything.

Wayne's hand missed the light switch again as he slipped on something wet on the floor. What the fuck was going on here? Suddenly he was looking up. Someone's shoe filled the right of his peripheral vision. He felt, rather than saw, a person standing over him, everything blurry.

'Let me get up. I'll get money for you,' he said.

Wayne Crabbe screamed for the first time since he was ten when a boot kicked in most of his front teeth. Punches rained down into his body and he curled, like a slug doused in lemon juice.

Fuck, he thought, trying to stand, slipping again in the wet stuff.

'Stop,' he managed around broken teeth, and heard his attacker laughing, or maybe crying.

The blows continued onto his back, neck. He felt the weight behind them, but little pain. He raised a hand limply to try to defend himself, and felt a knife slice through the web of his thumb. When blood rushed up from his stomach and filled his lungs, mouth and nose, it occurred to him that he was being stabbed, not punched.

This wasn't how tonight was supposed to go, he thought, as he drowned in his own blood in the front hall.