Inconsolable (12 page)

The Beeton house was the first home ever built on the coastal strip. It was constructed in 1922 for Archibald Beeton on a point of the cliff face that provided expansive views up and down the coast. Beeton was an entrepreneur, but Foley pegged him for a crook, a local gangster who made his money from racehorses and dodgy property deals. Archie had boasted his house, Sereno, which meant Clear Skies in Latin, would never be built out, never have its views compromised, and he was right. For generations Sereno stayed in the Beeton family with little changing, except the addition of modern services, a wrought-iron fence and plants in the garden.

Meanwhile, every available scrap of land around the house was built on and rebuilt on until the small strip of a dozen homes fronting the sea became the city's most valuable real estate. Each home was a design showpiece worth many millions.

Sereno still had its prime position but was no longer isolated and no longer handsome. It'd been empty for nearly ten years. It was in a hellish limbo stuck between the council imposed heritage order and the desires of the trust that'd taken ownership of it after the last Beeton popped off.

Council wanted the house repaired and maintained with its original facade as a place of historical significance. The trust simply wanted to sell the house and land and to pass the money on to charity. They'd hired a slick real estate agent who wore sunglasses inside, who had competing buyers for the land, but not a single buyer interested in the house. The agent lobbied council to have the heritage order lifted, so whoever bought the house could pull it down and start again, building a modern steel and glass structure like the neighbours.

But the Beeton house was genuinely a beautiful home—a unique, yet classic, example of Federation architecture, graceful and quietly grand, and a significant part of the area's history—so council was sticking to the plan to save it.

The trust, however, had every reason to let it rot. If it became structurally unsound it would void the heritage order and the new owner could pull it down. And without regular maintenance, the sea, the wind, the sun and random acts of vandalism were destroying Sereno, because despite issuing the heritage order, council had no funds for maintenance.

The whole mess got shuffled around until it landed on Hugh's desk and Foley picked it up. She loved that house. Even derelict it was grand. She'd been prepared to bribe local tradesmen to do minor jobs on Sereno but the trust had barred her efforts, insisting it would be trespassing on private property. Even then she'd snuck her dad in to board up a few windows to make it harder for the vandals. And one time she and Hugh broke in to repair a hole in the slate roof.

She couldn't keep doing that though, and a month ago someone had lit a fire in the overgrown garden. It might've taken the whole house but for the quick action of a neighbour.

It was hard to know if the fire had been kids, an accident, or deliberately started. The police had been called and fire investigators hadn't been able to reach a particular conclusion.

Foley looked at the latest letter from the agent. It said the same as all the other letters, just with the words shuffled about. The house was in a serious state of disrepair, was a blight on the property values, a danger to residents and council was remiss in their duties not to remove the heritage order and allow a sale of the land to take place.

She wanted to save Sereno and save Drum, but one needed to stay and one needed to go. She replied to the latest correspondence, with the same words shuffled about she'd used to reply every other time. It was no solution. And the longer this went on, the more the house fell apart and the closer the trust got to making their millions, and once Sereno was gone, it was gone forever.

She was the last to leave the department. She drove to the beach and parked. She walked along the cliff path to the Beeton house and stood outside the cyclone fence council had insisted on erecting around it. The garden was a charred wasteland, all the windows were broken. A piece of the guttering had detached from the roof and lay across the wide veranda like a lopsided smile. There was an enormous wasps' nest attached to the front door, and one of the chimneys had dive-bombed off the roof, scattering bricks around the side of the house.

Apart from the charred garden, was it any worse than last time she looked? She snapped off a few photos for the file and then walked back the way she'd come to the bent tree to meet Drum.

If she couldn't save Sereno, she needed to save him.

He wasn't there. She stood about feeling out of place in her work clothes as joggers and dog walkers did their thing around her. Over the next four days the spot she was standing on would be transformed into the centre of an outdoor sculpture gallery.

She should've told Hugh what'd happened yesterday. How threatened she'd felt, how out of control Drum had been, but she knew he'd want Drum detained and hospitalised or at least insist she never meet him alone again. She would've told him, but then the whole astroturfing thing had blown up and Hugh was already furious and it seemed smarter, in the light of Gabriella's insistence she'd failed, to simply get on with not failing.

But right now, cooling her high heels, she was almost grateful Drum had done a runner. It wasn't smart to meet him again alone. She had a sleepless night to reinforce the insanity of that. He'd scared her witless with his rage then turned her inside out with that stunt on the cliff edge, right when she'd started to believe the only thing wrong with him was garden variety eccentricity.

It was so bad, she could smell fear on herself when she finally faked enough calm to tell Drum about the petition. And when she made it back to her car, she'd sat shaking for a good ten minutes before she felt okay to drive.

Still, Drum not showing was making her anxious. She wanted to see his big body, his shaggy hair, get a wave, any kind of expression that passed for alive and unharmed, and she could go home and drown this awful day in pasta, wine, and too many potato chips.

She glanced at her watch. He didn't have one, after all, so she'd give him five more minutes. When she looked up he was standing in front of her.

“I didn't think you were coming.” That came out cranky, dripping in disapproval.

“I thought you might show up with the cops,” he said.

“You were watching me?” As if that wasn't creepy.

He nodded, pushed hair out of his face. “There were people on the walkway above the cave for most of the day. I could hear them talking, looking for me, they had cameras, but no one came under the railing.”

Tomorrow they might come under the railing. Drum wasn't meeting her eyes. He was standing stiffly, as if braced for an attack, and in truth he was being attacked. He looked so unhappy, her resolve to be angry with him frittered away. She was left with the fear. He was a powerful man, and he was unstable, and though there were a dozen people in the park, he could hit her before anyone had a chance to intervene, even assuming they would.

She felt gut sick to remember she'd had him in her car and he knew where she lived.

The thought stapled her jaw closed. The words she'd been rehearsing to say to convince him to leave the cave died in her throat.

He hung his head. It drooped off his massive shoulders so all she could see was the swirls of sun turned colour in his hair. “What I did yesterday to you. I'm embarrassed. I'm appalled.” His words ground out like broken glass and sprinkled on the grass at their feet in cutting fragments. “I would never intentionally hurt you, Foley, but I know I did.” He wouldn't look up, but she wanted him to, needed to see his face. “There's something wrong with me and I can't fix it.”

She said his name; to comfort him or to steady herself, who knew?

He lifted his chin and met her eyes. “I'll do whatever you tell me to do.”

“You will?”

“I saw the paper.” He shook his head. “It can't be that way.”

It was an unexpected victory, but defeat was written in every muscle of his body and Foley's fear became sympathy, empathy, she wasn't sure what to call the feeling he stirred, but she ached for him. She wrapped her arms around her middle. “Can I take you to a shelter tonight?”

“You shouldn't be alone with me. I told you it wasn't safe.”

“My mother was right, I never listen.”

She hoped he might smile at that, but he nodded slowly, and the sadness on his lips, in his eyes, was an awful thing to see.

“I can have someone come and get you. Or I can call and—”

“I have a place I can go. It's safe. No one will find me.”

She'd touched his hand before she realised it was a stupid thing to do, the briefest contact, and he took a step back as if it'd burned him, his eyes widening, his breath catching in his throat with a glottal thump. But his last sentence scared her. She didn't want him lost forever. She was hopelessly bound to him in some way she couldn't shake off, more than duty, more than beating Gabriella; his madness had stormed inside her heart and lodged there.

“Tell me where you're going.”

He looked back out to sea. “You don't need to know. I'll be gone from here until this nonsense stops and I can come back.”

“Is your new place … is it …? Drum, tell me about your new place.” She didn't like to think of him as just out there somewhere, unnoticed, unattended, unloved. His face was turned away. “If it's safe, you should stay there, not come back.”

His head whipped around, his expression anguished.

She pressed the only advantage she had. “You said you'd do whatever I told you. I'm telling you not to come back.”

He pushed hair away from his face. “You don't understand. I need to be here.”

She sighed. Drum's need to be at the cave had to be a symptom of his sickness. She needed professional help with this now. Her amateur hour caretaking, her protection of him as her own project, had gone on too long. He wasn't an item on a to do list, his removal from the cave wasn't a triple point score against Gabriella. But for now, one day at a time was a reasonable outcome.

She raised her hand and as quickly lowered it, in case he thought she intended to touch him again. “All right, all right. Just for now, until after the sculpture walk, you'll stay away from the cave.”

He shook his head, not a no gesture, more a shiver of displeasure. And she could see how much making that promise cost him in the way his body gave up the fight. He shrank in on himself, like that first day they'd met.

“Will you be okay? Can I do anything for you?” Another head shake. He turned to walk away. “Drum.”

She wanted something from him; she wasn't sure what, but not this defeat. She'd liked him better when he was alight with fury, because he was strong with it. She had to hope this was the last time she saw him. She stuck out her hand, a clear signal, business not social, a convention not an intimate contact.

He half turned and saw her hand, his eyes coming up to her face. In that held contact was a world of indecision, misunderstanding and confusion. He said, “Goodbye, Foley,” and he walked away.

She watched him go, across the park, away from the cave, but he kept looking towards it as if he couldn't quite believe he was leaving. She watched him until she couldn't see him anymore and he never once looked back at her.

When she got home Nat was channel surfing, but quit flicking when Foley entered the room. “How much do you hate me?” Nat said.

“For putting a spotlight on a homeless man? You're out of the will.”

“I stopped them running a photo. It could've been worse. He's an easy mark with an ultra long-range lens. When he's in the cave you can see him from the beach.”

Foley gasped. She'd been worried about dog walkers with their phone cameras catching him. She hadn't stopped to think about what Nat could do.

She dumped her bag and jacket. “It doesn't matter anymore, he's gone.”

“On the record gone?”

She shrugged and kicked her shoes off. Why not? It's what everyone wanted. He was gone, and if all the forces stacked against him believed it, things could go back to normal. “Yep. Just waved him off.”

“For real?”

“What do you want, a written guarantee? I watched him walk away, in the opposite direction to the cave. He told me he had a safe place to go.”

“Did he tell you where that was?”

“Nat.”

“Look, I know you hate this so I'm trying to balance it out.”

“No. Absolutely no profile on him.”

Nat turned the TV off. “Not that.”

She was barefoot but still in her work clothes. She had red toenail polish on one foot and the toes of the other foot were bare, as if she'd gotten distracted halfway through and never bothered to finish, which was probably precisely what happened. Still only one earring.

“Not anything. It's all over. Everyone can stand down. No sculpture walker, park user, coastal birdwatcher, ever need worry about a man they never knew was there and now isn't.” She closed her eyes. She'd reduced a man to nothing but a nuisance.

“It's just that there are two sides to every story.”

“There are a million sides and you know it, but what are you getting at?”

“We might've started another petition.”

“Who's we?”

It wasn't till right this minute Foley remembered she was supposed to be sussing Nat out about any links to council from the resident action group. With Drum gone, there was no need for Hugh to meet the group, for the group to even exist. She needed to call Hugh and give him an update. That should've made her feel triumphant. Drum safe, the council's reputation unsullied, Hugh sleeping tonight.

She felt like crap, like drowning herself in the bath was a good option. She kept seeing Drum's distress at having to leave the cave and she was suddenly furious the one person with absolutely nothing to lose had lost the one thing that mattered to him, and she'd done nothing to stop it.