Starlight Peninsula (12 page)

‘So if there was something to find out …’

‘I wonder why the police
told
you about Arthur ringing Lampton. They’re usually so cagey.’

‘It’s a closed file, all explained. They don’t care. Maybe they assumed I knew.’

‘Or, they did it on purpose because they don’t mind stirring things up again.’ Carina stood up. ‘I think you should come and stay with us. You’re making yourself anxious. Ghost stories.’

Eloise looked out over the estuary. ‘I’ve tried to understand what Arthur was doing. He wanted to write a screenplay, something fictional, but the people he was making notes about are real. I suppose he was going to research them — he talked about getting into their world — and then fictionalise them. Base fiction on them.’

‘He did sort of mix up truth and fiction, if you think of that play he wrote. The comic satirical one. Wasn’t there a real politician in it?’

Eloise sat up. ‘There’s something else. It says in his notes that Roza Hallwright is a recovered alcoholic and drug user.’

‘How did he know that?’

‘Maybe the housekeeper told him.’

‘I suppose it could be true …’

All the wine seemed to be gone. Eloise looked at her empty glass and said, ‘Layers of the world have been hidden from me.’

‘What? You’re getting drunk again. Let’s go inside. I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

Eloise looked up at her. ‘Can we do one thing? Can we hide Arthur’s file somewhere else?’

‘It’s fine at my house.’

‘But you’re my sister. It’s an obvious place to look.’

‘Who’s looking? Come on. I’ll make you a coffee.’

‘Carina, wait. I think someone’s been getting into this house.’

‘Have you been burgled?’

‘No. Someone’s been getting in, looking around.’

‘Then you have to ring the cops. And you’re definitely coming to our place.’

‘I’ve got Silvio.’

‘But that’s temporary. You can’t have him. Much as I’d love it, the Sparkler won’t allow it.’

‘Can’t you just hide Arthur’s file somewhere no one will look? Please. You’re right, I have made myself anxious. I shouldn’t have gone to the police.’

‘Why not?’

‘What if someone hears I’ve been asking?’

‘Why would it matter?’

‘I’d come over and move it myself, but someone might see me doing it.’

‘Someone might see you? Come on. You
definitely
need to sober up.’

‘We’re making a programme on Kurt Hartmann. Scott says we might be under surveillance.’

‘Oh, rubbish.’

She allowed herself to be hustled inside by Carina, who now turned off the television, quelled the Sparkler’s protests, put on the kettle and inspected Eloise’s kitchen.

She turned, hands on hips. ‘There’s no food!’

‘I bought bread and cheese,’ Eloise said vaguely. Although, when was that? Last week?

‘Right. I’ll make you a sandwich.’

‘Just another thimble of wine would be fine,’ Eloise said. She rested her hand on Silvio’s hot head.

Carina moved swiftly around the kitchen. ‘Here, eat this. And no more wine.’

Eloise looked at the sandwich without enthusiasm.

Carina said, ‘Do you insist on staying here tonight?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then eat the sandwich and don’t drink any more, or I’m not leaving Silvio with you. I’m not having you minding him if you’re off your face.’

‘Okay. Sorry.’

Eloise started eating, and found it good. Silvio leapt up and settled himself on her legs. Carina brought her a cup of tea.

She sighed. ‘This is nice. How about you two stay the night? Or move in. Bring Giles, bring Silvio.’

The Sparkler had her face pressed to the ranch slider. ‘I saw Nick down there,’ she said.

They looked out at the dark, listening.

Carina glanced at Eloise, who said quietly, after a pause, ‘Please. Move the thing?’

‘All
right
,’ Carina said. She looked down at Eloise, thinking. ‘When we go, you won’t go out will you? Lock up and go to bed.’

‘I will,’ Eloise lied.

She stood at the back door, airing Silvio. The darkness had not made it any cooler. Above the door the lamp was crawling with insects. Silvio drank from his water bowl and snuffled his way out to the edge of the light. She would station him in his bed before locking him in and crossing the lawn to Nick’s.

Silvio went still, sniffing in the direction of the dog park. He hurled himself forward, his barks lifting him off his front feet.

After the barking, silence. The spears of the flax bushes clacked and sighed in the hot wind.

‘What are you barking at? What are you raving on about? Good boy.’

She pulled him inside, and led him to his tartan bean bag at the
bottom of the stairs. To her relief he turned a few times and settled down without complaint.

Eloise contemplated the dog, curled peacefully in his bed. She looked out at the dark beyond the glass. Carina’s words:
You’re tired. Don’t drink any more. Just go to bed
.

Which version of the night was preferable? It made her dizzy and hot and thirsty all at once, trying to decide.

‘Planes,’ Klaudia said. ‘I’ve been hearing too much about planes. This one crashing, that one plunging to the earth.’ She grimaced.

‘Oh?’ Eloise waited.

‘A colleague has been researching pilots who deliberately crash. I said to him, Don’t forget, it’s not just suicide, it’s mass murder.’

Eloise thought about it. She said politely, ‘I suppose some are political, where they shout God is Great and point the thing at the ground, and others are just, as it were, going postal. A way of getting back at their employer. Since it ruins business for the airline.’

‘It’s certainly a form of workplace violence,’ Klaudia said.

Silence.

Klaudia shook her head. ‘They’re trained to look after their
passengers, and then they turn around and kill them. It’s like these men who decide to kill themselves in front of their partners. Then they get the idea, why should I be the only one to suffer, and they kill the partner, too.’

Eloise looked at her, nervous. Was she angry? There was another silence. Klaudia looked as if she were waiting for comment.

To fill the silence Eloise said, ‘The pilots. They’re stressed but they can’t complain about it, in case they get fired. Um, maybe they’re sick of all those patients they’re saddled with. Having to look after their safety while no one’s looking after
them
.’

‘Patients, Eloise?’

‘Sorry, I meant passengers!’

Klaudia smiled.

‘Anyway, Eloise. How have you been?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’

Klaudia’s gaze seemed to harden. ‘You don’t know?’

Eloise quailed slightly. ‘Sorry. Sometimes I wish I’d got pregnant.’

‘Even though your husband has now gone?’

‘Especially now. He could have left me with something.’

‘You have the house.’

‘But I have to move out. Soon. Once he’s got himself organised, I’ll be served with papers.’

‘Is he delaying sorting out your affairs?’

‘No.’

‘Are you?’

‘I’m just going from day to day.’

‘Do you wish for reconciliation with him?’

‘I don’t think that’s likely.’

‘But you have been thinking about children,’ Klaudia said coolly.

‘Anita O’Keefe doesn’t think she needs a man.’

‘Ah, the cabinet minister?’

‘She’s just gone ahead and done it.’

‘Indeed.’

‘I think the PM’s the father.’

‘Really. How does that make you feel?’

‘Not sure. Should we applaud his virility? Sympathise with his plight? Did he think she’d go through with the pregnancy? Does his wife suspect? How are they going to play it when the baby’s born? Will it look like a tiny Satan? Should they just come clean and make an announcement?’

‘What makes you think it is Mr Dance’s child?’

‘Facebook and Twitter. For a long time he and O’Keefe were following each other round the country. And the way he used to look at her, and now doesn’t.’

‘Not very strong evidence.’

‘Well, everyone’s playing the same guessing game.’

Silence. The image of Prime Minister Dance and O’Keefe together. She with her glossy hair and white teeth, he with his sports jackets, his chinos, his smooth, ageing skin.

‘But back to you …’

Eloise frowned. ‘I was in the supermarket car park yesterday and I saw it again. The wolf. It’s huge and shaggy and it sits in the back of the SUV and howls.’

‘You have mentioned this wolf before. Interesting. But to return to earlier issues. We should focus …’

‘Sorry, Klaudia. I’m having trouble focusing.’

Eloise’s eyes were on the summer garden, shafts of light angling through the leaves. Klaudia’s French doors stood open and the gardener was moving along the fenceline, using a spray on the plants. The fine mist whirled in the air, creating a rainbow.

‘You mentioned you went to your neighbour’s house at night?’

‘He’d left a bit abruptly, earlier in the evening. I wanted … I went
onto his deck but his house was dark. I knocked and there was no answer. I was going to leave …’

Eloise paused to decide how honest she was going to be.

‘I discovered … It became obvious that … Well, I somehow found that the glass door was unlocked. I opened it and called. I heard a sound in the kitchen and there was a light back there, so I called out again, and went into the room …’

‘Go on.’

‘I was standing in the dark. A voice said my name. Eloise.’

Klaudia tapped her pen on the pad.

‘A voice?’

‘It wasn’t Nick.’

‘Oh?’

‘I ran back to the house and locked myself in. I sat downstairs with the dog for a long time. I had a few drinks then I went to bed.’

‘It wasn’t your neighbour. Whose voice was it?’

‘A man’s. I couldn’t see. It was dark. All I know is it wasn’t Nick.’

‘Was it someone else who lives in the house?’

‘Nick lives alone. I met him the next morning on the way to the bus stop. He was walking back from the shops. I didn’t want to admit I’d gone inside his house. I said I’d knocked on the door but it was all dark and there was no answer. He said …’

Klaudia was writing on her pad, nodding.

‘He said he’d gone to bed early, that he was asleep in bed, upstairs.’

‘So … whose voice?’

‘I don’t know.’

Klaudia paused. Her smile was gentle. ‘Perhaps a friend of his, staying.’

‘Who knew my name.’

‘Nick may have pointed you out, from a distance.’

‘I suppose.’

Klaudia allowed another pause to play out. ‘Or, do you think this voice was in your head?’

‘No.’

‘You had been drinking.’

Eloise’s mouth was dry. ‘Drinking doesn’t make you hear voices.’

Klaudia shuffled some pages, checked. ‘You’ve had migraines recently. With visual distortions.’

‘I never heard of a migraine making you hear things.’

Klaudia folded her arms. ‘It’s rare, but it’s possible.’

‘Really?’

‘Sure.’

‘But I didn’t have a migraine that night.’ Eloise stared at the photo of the soulful brown dog on Klaudia’s desk. ‘Or did I? I was so tired.’

‘Tired and a bit drunk, perhaps?’

‘But no migraine.’

In the garden the cicadas made their bright wall of sound. The sound shook the air, it was silver, a waterfall — and what lay behind the falling curtain of noise? A migraine made brightness and then the shimmer parted and you saw the blackness that lay beyond.

Eloise said, ‘It was Arthur’s voice.’

‘Your partner who died? You heard him speak to you?’

Klaudia turned her head on one side, her smile distant, as if she were trying to hear something curious and quaint, from a long way off.

‘No. Only joking.’

‘How did this voice make you feel?’ Klaudia said.

Arthur’s back deck, the view across the mountainside, the dry paddock sloping up to the crater of the volcanic cone. A summer morning, iron light, bees in the grass, sun shining on a silver water bowl left for the cat. Arthur, crossing the deck, kicks the bowl and the surface shimmers and the light breaks and splinters. Standing at the door is a figure, and Arthur follows, into the cool, dark interior of the flat, and
into nothingness; Arthur will be seen again but nothing of Arthur will remain, only the vulnerable head slicked with blood, the broken triangle of skull, the hand with fingers lightly curled, the thin ankle and loose, boyish sock.

‘Klaudia, do you believe in ESP?’

‘Psychic stuff? No.’

‘If I told you I was walking towards a walled bus shelter — no view of who was inside it — and before I got to it the information came to me: The girl in the bus stop is crying. When I reached it, there
was
a girl in there, and she was crying. What would you say? ESP?’

Klaudia’s gaze was steady, bright, sharp. After a moment she said, ‘I would guess you had seen or heard something prior to reaching the bus shelter that gave you a clue.’

‘So it’s not ESP. It’s that you’ve read the signs.’

‘Sure. Picked something up. Maybe subconsciously.’

Towing the suitcase up the hot street. Something is wrong. There are people with bulky notebooks tucked under their arms; a little way off a man, wearing a white boiler suit and a shower cap, stands at the edge of the retaining wall, talking to someone below. A woman with odd eyes stands at Arthur’s door and speaks strange words: ‘A man has been found dead.’

They walk down a concrete staircase, past a lemon tree and a back door. He looks thin and young lying there, surrounded by the living. Look at the trouble he’s got himself into, the heat he’s brought down. Tough cops, the intent forensic team, the busy photographer.
Look what you’ve gone and done
. Should she admit it’s really him? This is a question she considers for a moment in the stalled silence, as if it’s possible that Arthur could get away with this, could quietly rise from the concrete and stealthily slip away, leaving the puzzle of his body behind. Can I help him escape? If we play this right …

Arthur’s flat that morning. A rectangle of sunlight on the kitchen
bench, light seething on the curved flank of the kettle, a fly braining itself against the glass, dying for the unreachable blue beyond. The policewoman, who is full of authority despite her girl combat boots and her unruly teenage hair, orders Eloise to sit down, but Eloise goes to the back door and walks out onto the concrete deck. There are men and women on the hillside, searching in the grass. Colours have turned candyish and surreal; seams have opened in the sky which is not blue any more but ‘blue’, just as Arthur is not himself any more but has suffered a violent change. He is not somebody. He is ‘the body’.
Where are you? Come back
. She remembers: a circular line of purple shading the delicate skin below his eye. She remembers: a gash in his cheek, in the shape of a Y.

Look what you’ve gone and done
. She let on, down there at the bottom of the retaining wall. She cracked, grassed, admitted it straight away. It’s him. Yes, that’s Arthur Weeks.

If the very air turned toy-coloured and surreal …

If the morning coloured everything it touched …

‘Why do you mention ESP?’ Klaudia said.

Eloise watched the spray falling onto the shining grass. ‘Layers of the world have been hidden from me.’

‘Can you explain?’

The bees, the hot paddock, the mountainside. Arthur crossed the deck and entered the cool dark hall.

If that morning coloured everything it touched, if it splashed an indelible stain … Was there someone else it touched?

Eloise was on a flight from Sydney when it happened. So how could the information come to her?

There was someone in the flat with Arthur on the morning he died.