Perfections (40 page)

His flat deserted but passably neat. No perishables left in the fridge, appliances all switched off. Enough gaps in his wardrobe and drawers to fill a small suitcase, and no personal effects of any real value left behind. The alert issued on his car is yet to bear fruit, but perhaps more significant is the large amount of cash he withdrew from an ATM in the city only yesterday. Not enough to keep anyone in steak dinners for long, but the transaction all but emptied his account. And provided a very nice mugshot courtesy of the inbuilt security camera.

Her sister’s holding her hand so tightly now, Lina is afraid something might snap. ‘So he’s just vanished? You don’t know where he is?’

‘This was clearly planned in advance,’ the female detective says. ‘But at this stage, we don’t know whether he’s on the run or whether he might have gone to ground somewhere. Perhaps nearby. Frankly, I worry this isn’t over.’

‘You said before he was dangerous.’

‘He’s meticulous and thorough, and you’ve already stated that you’ve had cause to be scared of him in the past. I’d call that dangerous.’ She leans across. Looks Ant straight in the eye. ‘Honey, whatever relationship you might have had with this guy, you don’t owe him anything anymore. Certainly not your protection.’

Ant’s lower lip trembles. ‘I don’t
know
.’

‘We’re being straight with you,’ Lina tells them. ‘I have no idea where Paul is, but I would give him up in a heartbeat if I did.’

‘Okay.’ The male detective flips a page in his notebook. ‘Just one last thing you might be able to help us with. There’s a supposed friend of his, seems to have gone missing as well. German girl by the name of Greta Baum, or Bauer? Hasn’t been around for a few weeks.’

‘
Baum
,’ Ant whispers. ‘I heard she . . . went home.’

‘Back to Germany? That’s what a couple people have told us.’ He scribbles a note then flips the cover shut. ‘Not our case, really. Not anyone’s case unless she gets herself reported as actually missing.’ He shrugs. ‘Just for a moment there, looked like we might have had a Bonnie and Clyde pyro-thing happening.’

His partner looks less than amused.

After the detectives have left, Lina herds her sister into the shower. Puts some pasta on to boil for dinner. She doesn’t want to think about Loki, or Paul. Doesn’t want any of those images filling her brain. Lighter fluid squirting from a can. Flames consuming canvas faster than flight. Masterpieces twisting to charcoal and ash.

And, rising phoenix above it all: Loki,
her Loki
, mouth roaring open with laughter and pride.

I’d call that dangerous.

Lina picks up the phone, as she’s done every night this past week. Calls the house where Sally Paige used to live. The house where she died. Holds the handset to her ear and listens to the endless hollow echo of its ring.

Except tonight, unlike every other night, someone picks up. Says nothing. Simply breathes and beckons and waits.

‘Loki?’ Lina whispers. ‘Is that you? Are you there?’

And just before he hangs up, she hears something else. A sound which may be chuckling, which may be static, which may be her name choked soft in his throat–

–and Lina’s heart skips, and beats faster, and bleeds.

— 26 —

The rain drizzles to a
desultory close as they turn onto the winding mountain road. Sharon switches off the wipers. Glances in the rear-view mirror. Lina, riding shotgun, takes her thumbnail from her mouth. ‘She’ll be fine. Don’t worry.’

‘I don’t like this, Lina. We should take her to a doctor.’

‘I told you, it’s not a doctor she needs.’

Lina twists around. Smiles at her sister sitting right behind her. Ant stares out of the window. Her eyes are glazed and motionless. They track nothing. Not the whiplash of passing trees. Not the wave of Lina’s hand. She hasn’t spoken since yesterday evening. Since the detectives left with their notebooks and evident frustration. Has done little more than stand or sit or lie passively down, not moving from whichever spot it is that Lina leaves her. Not a mouthful of food has passed her lips. And only a small glass of water. Another half of apple juice. Ingested with slow, robotic sips at her sister’s anxious behest.

Bringing her up here can only help. Must help.

I feel better.

Those words whispered in the back of the taxi, Seventh Circle’s charred remains still smoking the air outside. Ant scanning the dwindling crowd and Lina too distracted, too busy with the driver to follow her sister’s gaze. But he must have been there. Been close. And
close
is what Ant seems to need.

As they mount the crest of the driveway, Lina feels the tightness in her chest unlock. The Commodore is back in the carport again. Parked too close to the centre, so Sharon pulls up on the gravel behind it.

‘Thanks for bringing us up here.’ Lina gets out of the car. Opens the back door and reaches in to unbuckle her sister’s seatbelt.

The driver’s-side door slams. Sharon crunches around to the rear of the car and pops the boot. ‘I’m not about to take off, if that’s what you’re thinking.’ She yanks out the suitcase Lina hurriedly packed together. ‘Not with Ant like that.’

Lina guides her sister from the vehicle, one hand on her head so that she doesn’t crack her skull on the roof. Ant is pliant, malleable. She unfolds like a paper doll. Squints as the sun slips out from behind a cloud. Lina glances at the Commodore hulking in the carport. Sharon only knows about the fire, not about Paul. Though it’s bound to come out sooner or later and the woman is far from stupid. If she meets Loki now, then later hears that Paul is a suspect – a
missing
suspect – she would most certainly put two and two together.

‘Ant needs to rest,’ Lina tells her. ‘I’m not sure you should stay.’

‘I’m not sure I asked your permission,’ Sharon says.

The house is unlocked, but empty. Lina settles her sister down on the couch in the living room. Tucks a couple of stray curls back behind her ears. Ant stares straight ahead. Her mouth twitches open but she doesn’t speak. Lina pushes her jaw gently closed again. ‘Are you thirsty? I’ll get you some water.’

First, she checks the rest of the house. Loki isn’t here, but he has been. The bed in Lina’s old room has been slept in, the covers left rumpled. A handful of dishes are drying on the rack and there’s fresh milk in the fridge. An empty pizza box leans beside the kitchen bin.

‘Who’s living here?’ Sharon asks.

‘Loki.’

‘Your new boyfriend?’

‘My . . .’ Lina frowns. ‘Just Loki.’ She peers out the window at the sodden, unkempt backyard. Perhaps he’s walked down to pay his respects to Charlie. Perhaps . . . she thinks of the little shed, of its pushbolt and padlock. Then she pushes the rest of that thought to one side.

‘You made me drive all the way up here so you could see your
boyfriend
?’ Sharon sounds incredulous. Furious. ‘Ant’s turning into a bloody vegetable and all you can think about is getting your end in?’

Lina glares at her. ‘It’s somewhat more complicated than that.’

Gradually, the Loki-stone settles. That fretful, frightful weight relaxes, still very much present but no longer pulling with such frenetic demand, and Antoinette loosens, finds a small crack and slips, not free, never free, but slightly apart. Loki is close now, Loki and Jacqueline both, for the first time in what seems like forever and this strengthens her, returns to her a shard of the self she has given them. Not a lot, not nearly as much as she would like, but maybe enough for what she needs.

Somewhere in the house, her sister and Sharon are arguing. Voices raised and tense, and she doesn’t need to understand the words to know they are arguing about her. Antoinette gathers herself. Everything that she is and was and ever might be, gathers it all. Shapes it, crafts it with such care and precision, this work more delicate than the balancing of angels on pinheads, this act which may be her last. When she is done, Antoinette takes her creation and tips it into the world. Sends it on its tentative, timorous way, then allows herself to fall. But even falling, even sinking down exhausted and spent, she finds cause to wonder.

And to marvel, that grief and hope can taste so much the same.

Sharon trails away mid-sentence. Her eyes widen, mouth gapes. She points at something over Lina’s right shoulder and so Lina turns, a greeting for Loki forming on her lips. But it’s not Loki who stands there.

The little girl is perhaps six or seven years old. Brown eyes and olive skin, coffee-coloured curls bobbing around her shoulders. She is wearing a short blue dress with a mermaid on the bodice. A school of them swim around the hem. Lina remembers that dress. Shopping with Sally Paige a week out from Ant’s birthday.
It’s
your
present for
your
sister, you can choose whatever you like
. The mermaid dress the only one without any pink whatsoever, merely greens and yellows amid an ocean of blue. Even the mermaid’s skin was a subtle, tantalising turquoise.

Sally Paige hadn’t cared for it, but Ant wore the thing to rags.

‘She . . . she just
appeared
,’ Sharon is saying. ‘She was just
there
.’

‘Hello,’ Lina says cautiously. ‘What’s your name?’

The little girl wrinkles her nose and shrugs. A huge, theatrical heave of those skinny shoulders. She holds out the skirt of her dress like a ballet tutu. Executes a wobbly, one-legged twirl.

‘Where did she come from?’ Sharon whispers.

Lina ignores her. ‘Are you Antoinette? Is
that
your name?’

‘Silly,’ the girl giggles. ‘I’m not
her
.’

‘But you’re a . . . perfection, right? She made you?’

‘I’m a whimsy!’ Another twirl. ‘Do you like my dress?’

‘It’s very pretty.’

‘It has mermaids! I want to be a mermaid!’

‘But mermaids need to live in the sea. If you were a mermaid, you wouldn’t be able to be here with
us
.’

The girl stops twirling. ‘Yes,’ she says, unsmiling now. ‘I know.’

Sharon tugs on Lina’s sleeve. ‘
What
is she?’

‘I’ll explain later,’ Lina promises. The little girl is sitting now, cross-legged in a way that would have given Sally Paige conniptions. Her underpants are yellow with bright pink spots. Lina smiles and kneels down. ‘Did you want to tell me something? Did my sister want you to tell me something?’

‘It hurts her.’ The girl’s face is grave. ‘It makes her tired and sad all the time, and it gets worse every day. She’s worried that soon she won’t be able to play with anyone anymore ever.’

‘Is she talking about Ant?’ Sharon asks.

‘Shhh, let her speak. This is important.’

‘
You
make her feel bad,’ the little girl continues. ‘You and
him
. It’s too hard. She can’t play with both of you at the same time. She thinks she’ll have to go away soon. And she’s frightened. She’s
so frightened
.’ Tears slip down her cheeks. Down Lina’s cheeks as well. ‘You have to make him go away, Jacqueline. She can’t play with him anymore. She only wants to play with you.’

Lina swallows. ‘How do I do that? How do I make him go away?’

The girl’s eyes are dark and lethal. ‘You know how.’

‘Can’t she just . . . let go of him somehow?’

‘She isn’t allowed. Someone else needs to stop him playing.’

‘What if—what if I can’t do that?’

The girl shakes her head, those brown curls bouncing prettily. Lina feels a sharp, yearning throb deep inside. ‘You have to do it soon,’ the girl says. ‘She doesn’t know how long she can stay here. And once she goes away, she doesn’t think she’ll ever be allowed to come back.’

‘How—how soon?’

‘Very.’

‘What if it’s already too late?’

The girl shakes her head again. She scrambles to her feet and takes a shy, hesitant step forward. ‘I have to go soon, too. Do you think it will be dark?’

‘I really don’t know,’ Lina says.

‘There are monsters in the dark.’

‘Come here, sweetheart.’ She opens her arms, a cry catching in her throat as the girl falls into her embrace. Small hands steal around her back, pluck at the ends of her hair. She hugs that small, miraculous body as tight as she dares.

‘She knows what she’s asking you to do,’ the girl whispers into her ear. ‘She
knows
and it makes her really sad. But she says there isn’t any other way to fix it. And she’s really,
really
sorry. She wishes she could do it herself. She wishes she
had
done it herself. She wants you to know that.’

Lina swallows a sob.

‘Don’t trust him,’ the girl says. ‘There’s nothing he wouldn’t do.’

And then she jumps, startled, as the back door screeches open. Booted feet stomp through the adjacent laundry and the girl twists around in Lina’s arms, slippery as fishtails. Her eyes narrow – distinctly, disturbingly
un
childlike now – as Loki strides into the kitchen and stops dead, surprise wrestling fury for possession of his face.

‘Who is
she
?’ he demands.

Before Lina can answer, the little girl leans in and kisses her on the cheek. ‘Be careful, Jacqueline,’ she whispers and then she–

–isn’t there.

Loki looks stunned. ‘She was . . .’

‘Another fendly. A whimsy, whatever you want to call them.’ Lina’s arms drop empty to her sides. The smell of the little girl’s scalp lingers with her. A clean smell, warm and sweet.

‘Antoinette’s here?’ The jeans Loki is wearing are splattered with mud. His hands as well. ‘You brought her with you?’

‘Of course I brought her with me,’ Lina says, getting to her feet. Behind her, Sharon makes a quiet mewling sound. She has almost forgotten about Sharon. ‘It’s all right,’ she tells the woman.

‘That’s not
Paul
,’ Sharon says. ‘I don’t know what he is, or what that
girl
was, but he’s not . . .’ She steps back, bumps into the sink. ‘All that stuff Ant was raving about on Monday is true, isn’t it?’

Loki glowers. Specks of dirt fall to the floor as he flexes his hands.

‘Sharon . . .’ Lina puts herself between them.

‘I thought she was delirious. Strung out or something after her Mum died – but fuck.
Fuck
. She can actually
make
people? She made another Paul? Jacqueline, she made
you
?’