Surrender (2 page)

So I
had
been right. Snow had killed Niki and now he was dead. I would never have the satisfaction of spitting in his face. Was that what I would have done — spat in his face? Something was nagging at me. An insistent feeling I was missing something.

‘McFay was worried you’d go after Snow if you found out he’d confessed.’ Sean was keeping his voice neutral. ‘He embargoed the whole thing. That’s why Gemma hasn’t been around here for a while. She didn’t think she could face you without spilling.’

He picked up that damn cigarette packet and began tapping it on the table again. Wolf clambered to his feet, banging his head on the underside of the table. Normally that would have made me laugh.

‘Do you think I could have one of those?’

‘I thought you’d given up. These things can kill, you know.’

And suddenly that nagging question illuminated like one of those little light bulbs above a cartoon character’s head when they
have a great idea. I didn’t have a great idea but I had a pretty good question.

‘How did Snow die?’

Sean lifted his head to look directly at me. His gaze was a lot steadier than my hands. ‘He was stabbed.’

‘Any chance it was suicide?’

‘Not unless he stabbed himself in the back. Snow was a tricky bastard, but not that tricky.’

I was sorting all this through. Niki died twelve months ago, stabbed in the back. Snow had finally admitted killing Niki. Now Snow was dead. Sean was watching me as I ran this through the old minus-two-megabyte soft drive called my brain. When I’d got to that point, he answered the question before I had a chance to ask it.

‘It looks like Snow was stabbed between the shoulder blades with a seven-inch boning knife.’

I
wound down both back windows of the car so Wolf could hang his head out one side and his tail out the other. I could hear the percussive flapping of his tongue against the glass, punctuated by little yelps of pleasure. That’s one of the great things about dogs — they remind you how simple happiness can be.

As I waited for the lights to change, I thought about the last time I’d seen Niki. Not that time in the coffin. That wasn’t Niki any more. The last time Niki and I had talked, we’d argued. Well, actually, I’d argued and she’d gone quiet. She’d done that since she was a little girl whenever she was upset or frightened: she’d just pull into herself and go very still and silent. Inaccessible. It used to drive me mad. I hated the way she could remove herself so totally like that, and it just made me yell at her even more. Twelve months ago she was removed for good. No amount of yelling was going to change that.

I slid the car through the intersection and up Pirie Street. Wolf whimpered with desire as he breathed in the aroma of greasy fried chicken from the KFC. It’s never had that effect on me, but then
Wolf has a similar response to week-old possum carcasses so maybe that says something about the Colonel’s secret ingredient.

Niki and I had argued about her working at the club. When she’d first told me she was occasionally dancing at a strip club for extra money, I’d given her the lecture about how women who sold their bodies undid all the good work of women before them. How women had fought to be treated as equals, not property to be bought, sold and discarded. How it was soul destroying to sell your body for money. I might even have mentioned slippery slopes and thin edges of wedges.

Yeah, exactly. I’d never learned to keep my mouth shut or my opinion to myself, despite that being suggested to me on a regular basis by a number of people in my life. Niki wouldn’t remember what our mother had sounded like because she’d died when Niki was born, but I was six years older than my baby sister and I remembered. When I did that slippery slopes speech I suspect I sounded just like her. By default, when our mother died I’d taken on the role of Niki’s surrogate mum. I don’t know which of us hated that more.

When my lecture ran out of steam, Niki peered at me in what I suspect was a mirror image of my own squint, and told me that actually she found dancing ‘empowering’. I guess she’d heard me use the word and was using it right back at me for effect, but maybe not. Maybe dancing around a pole while a whole bunch of men drooled into their laps did empower her. What did I know? She’d invited me to come along and watch her some night. She said she was ‘a really hot dancer’ and guys loved her.

At barely twenty with a girl-next-door face and a gorgeous, sexy body, it was no surprise to me that the guys loved her. Or that she was a hot dancer. What did surprise me was how much I hated her doing it. I’m far from being a prude and I had plenty of girlfriends
who’d stripped and danced ‘exotically’, though I’d be hard-pressed to explain exactly what made sliding up and down a pole ‘exotic’. I’d always been cool when friends did it, but for some reason I hated that my little sister did.

I pulled into a park outside Gemma’s place and wound the back windows up enough so Wolf could still stick his nose out and sniff the breeze. He gave a whine of displeasure when he realised he wasn’t coming with me but then settled down for a nap. Wolf is much better at waiting than I am.

Gemma lives alone in a two-storeyed wooden house, squeezed between two impressive turn-of-the-century villas perched on the slopes of Mt Victoria. The way Gemma’s place has been built, just forward of and on a rise above the houses either side, makes it appear to be leaning into the wind like the prow of a ship. An assortment of men’s work and tramping boots lay scattered in the porch at the front door. Either Gemma was making the most of her suspension and having a lot of fun at home this morning or she’d put the boots there to ward off would-be burglars. Although I hoped for her sake it was the former, I was pretty confident it was the latter.

Gemma opened the door on the first ring. She looked untidy, weary, bad tempered and emotionally bruised. That was fine. She’s looked like that all the time I’ve known her. When she saw it was me, her mouth contorted into a great big toothpaste commercial of a smile, only on Gemma it looked more like a photo from a medical text of facial deformities.

‘It’s okay. Sean’s told me everything,’ I said quickly.

The smile was replaced by her normal scowl.

‘Thank Christ for that. Come in,’ she said, turning her back on me and heading into the house.

I followed her through the hall to the back, picking my way
through a maze of stacked magazines, odd pieces of discarded furniture, and what looked like a pile of broken toys. The toys were a strange addition because not only does Gemma not have kids, but I’d known her to recoil from them.

I’d ask about the toys some other time. It was unlikely I’d get a satisfactory answer from her anyway. Despite, or maybe because of, her slender frame and delicate features, Gemma comes from the ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ school of women. She’s one of the guys. It’s pretty hard to be anything else if you’re a female cop.

I manoeuvred the jug around a sink full of dirty dishes, filled it and plugged it in. Gemma never offers coffee so I knew this was the only way I’d get one. She’d wedged herself between two piles of books on her sofa and was studying me.

‘So does it lay any ghosts? Make you feel better knowing you were right?’

I ran a couple of cups under the tap before answering. I knew there wouldn’t be any clean ones in the cupboard. I’ve known Gem for about five years but there are still things about her I can’t reconcile. She has one of the most disciplined, ordered minds I’ve ever known, yet she lives in total domestic chaos.

I thought about her question — in fact I’d been thinking of pretty much nothing else since Sean’s visit.

‘No. It doesn’t lay anything at all,’ I said. ‘Certainly not the ghosts.’

Gem wouldn’t lie to me, but she wouldn’t necessarily tell me all the truth either.

‘Snow did it, Diane. You can trust me on that,’ she said, giving me that direct, eye-contact look they teach new recruits to use on juries but which in Gem’s case comes naturally.

I sat at the table on the one chair not piled with junk. It put me
at an odd angle to her and I had to twist my neck around to meet her gaze. It made me feel at a disadvantage. She didn’t seem to notice, but with Gem it’s always hard to tell.

‘Any idea why he did it?’ I asked.

She walked to the steaming jug, keeping her back to me. I saw her shoulders shrug, the delicate blades like the promise of wings beneath her thin cotton shirt.

‘I gave up years ago trying to figure out why scumbags do things. As they say, that way lies madness. Why do they burn little kids’ legs with cigarettes? Beat the crap out of some poor kid delivering pizzas for a living? Rape little old ladies? Who knows why they do anything. Who the fuck wants to know?’ She poured water on to the instant coffee, spilling a fair bit on the bench and ignoring it.

‘He didn’t give you any reason? He just killed Niki for the hell of it — because he could?’

Gemma put a cup on the table in front of me, pushed a pile of books on to the floor and sat on a chair opposite. For the first time I saw the faint sketching of fine lines around her eyes. The signs of ageing in friends always bring out the best in me but that’s probably just me making some kind of unholy pact with the future.

Gem nodded at my mug as if daring me to drink. ‘How are you these days, babe?’ she asked, and peered at me through her coffee steam.

‘Great,’ I lied. ‘Really great in fact,’ I elaborated. I took a sip of the coffee, giving Gem time. I knew she was watching me, checking me out. For the first three months after Niki died I’d totally lost the plot, then three months after that I’d lost Sean, though in a very different way. Actually, I thought, maybe not so different. Separation is a kind of death, as any dog watching its
owner leave the house would tell you if they could. Since Niki’s death my behaviour had been pretty ropey and Gemma knew it. Plus she’d witnessed my uncontrolled showdown with McFay that had lost me my police work.

It wasn’t that I’d now come to terms with Niki’s death or anything as mature as that, but I’d learnt how to keep my reactions hidden from everyone. Even my friends. I made a point of taking another casual sip of the ghastly coffee. Real nonchalant. It’s unlikely I fooled Gem but she let me play it out.

Gemma flicked through some CDs in a drawer beneath the stereo and then slid one across the table to me. I looked at the label:
Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass
. My heart was thumping and not because I have a liking for ’50s swing. In fact I hate it. That girl from Ipanema could just keep walking as far as I was concerned.

‘You made a copy?’

Gemma looked away and shrugged. ‘No way. McFay would hound me off the job for good if I’d done that.’

I grinned at her as I dropped the disc into my jacket pocket. ‘I’ll borrow old Herb if you don’t mind.’

‘Be my guest. I hate swing,’ she said, dropping one eyelid in what I hoped was a wink. Or else she’d just had a little stroke. Either way, it would be bad mannered of me to draw attention to it.

We chatted about inconsequential things while we finished our coffee but neither of us is good at small talk and we were drying up long before the coffee did. The CD was burning a hole in my pocket, and there were the unspoken thanks I owed her for risking her job to get a confession out of Snow. Risking her life too.

I tried a hug and murmured thanks as I was leaving, but Gem
gave me a pat on the arm that I’m likely to carry the bruise of for some time to come, and assured me she didn’t need to be thanked. We stood companionably shuffling and avoiding eye contact for some time until I finally made the move and headed back to the car. Christ — and they say men aren’t good at showing emotions. Still, I hoped she knew how grateful I felt. I owed her big time.

I drove the remaining fifty metres up Pirie and parked beside the Mt Victoria bowling club. From the shrieks of laughter I could hear coming from the green it was obvious the old silverbacks were having themselves a whale of a time. I let Wolf out and whistled him quickly through the kids’ playground, ignoring the glares from protective mothers who wanted so badly to lecture me about dog leads and the use of them on the dog rather than looped over my own neck. Wolf zigzagged ahead of me up into the first set of pines. I filled my lungs with the balmy, pollen-filled, late-afternoon northerly, and followed Wolf who, head up into the breeze, was being reeled in by an invisible line of scents.

I kept my hands deep in my pockets as I walked. My left hand scratched at the fluff accumulated in the seam; my right tapped at the casing of the CD — not the
Tijuana Brass
as the label warned, but a recording of Snow telling Gemma how he killed my little sister. It made me sick just thinking about it but I knew I had to listen to it — had to know the ghastly details of how she died. Surely the reality couldn’t be worse than my nightmares, I told myself, knowing that was bullshit.

As I watched Wolf lumber up the slope in search of a pine cone to chase, I remembered a film I’d seen about a guy killed and eaten by bears he’d been filming. His camera had been running at the time of the attack but the lens was pointed in the other
direction so no images were caught on film. But the microphone had picked up every last yell and scream as he tried to fight off the attack, and then every last bone crunch, lip smack and slobber as the bear consumed him. The tape recording had ended up in the possession of the dead guy’s girlfriend but she’d never been able to bring herself to listen to it. In the film I saw, the director listens to the tape and then tells the girlfriend she must never,
ever
play the tape. It’s just too horrible. And in the film, the girlfriend agrees to lock the recording away, unheard.

I ran my thumb along the edge of the disc. I guess that girlfriend and I are just different.

H
eaps of people go missing. Some do it deliberately and don’t want to be found. Others go missing for the prime purpose of being found: they want the reunion. They want to hear that all is forgotten or forgiven. My job is to locate the missing people and find out to which of those two groups they belong. The deal is that once I’ve located them I get to decide if I hand over the details of their whereabouts to the client paying me, or not. Either way I keep the deposit and my integrity. I take on jobs for individuals, for PI firms, for lawyers looking for witnesses to crimes, insurance companies, television companies, all sorts really.

Until my showdown with McFay the police service had been a good source of work. I guess being married to a cop for five years inevitably meant I’d end up doing work for them. The police jobs were not usually about finding a missing person, but about finding the people who should be missing them. When bodies or sometimes bits of bodies turned up on beaches or were unearthed in pine forests, I got the enviable task of trying to find out who the corpse might once have been.

Mostly they were suicides and it was a matter of going back, sometimes as far as fifty-odd years, through police archives, to try to match the remains. Often there was nothing more than the record of a phone call to police to say someone had gone missing. Sometimes not even that. They’re the saddest ones. Those poor buggers unnoticed in life and unmissed in death.

The police work, which until recently was my staple, means I’ve ended up with office folders packed with photos of corpses in various states of decomposition. Yeah, I know, nice work if you can get it. But decaying bodies have never really bothered me. Well, not dead ones anyway. Still, I’ve learnt from experience that it’s best for me to view work material during daylight hours. I’ve also learnt not to leave photos of corpses lying around on the kitchen table where Girl Guides can see them and go complaining to their parents who then pay me ‘a serious visit’. After that particular sobering little event I made two vows: one, to keep all the ugly work stuff in my office, and two: never to open the door to Girl Guides.

I decided to approach Snow’s confession as if it was just part of my job. Ugly work stuff. I didn’t want him invading the rest of my home, and anyway I reckoned he was in good company with the rotting corpses. So, early morning, still in my pyjamas and dressing gown and clutching my small percolator of coffee — okay, Sean’s percolator of coffee — I checked my emails and then, as if it was a routine job, I opened the plastic CD case, dropped the disc Gemma had given me into my laptop and clicked on play.

I squashed in beside Wolf, who was curled like a shell on the small sofa, ready to spend the morning contentedly sniffing his own farts. For at least thirty seconds the only sounds were the whirr of the CD drive and the thump of my heart. I was about to get up and check the player when Gemma’s voice filled the room.

‘So how will I know when you’ve done it? Will you contact me?’

Wolf lifted his head long enough to check Gemma wasn’t in the room and then continued with his previous preoccupation. He needed to get out more. Obviously Gemma had given me an edited version of the original recording and for that I was grateful, but there was going to be no gentle lead-in and I readied myself for the hard stuff.

‘You’ll know because he’ll be dead.’

I recognised Snow’s voice immediately. For a big man he had a surprisingly whiny, high-pitched voice. Gemma’s next question suggested she was thinking the same thing.

‘How do I know you’ve got the balls to do it?’

Wolf’s head shot up optimistically at the word ‘balls’. Despite the nausea I was feeling I couldn’t help but smile. I’d have let Wolf chase Snow’s balls any time he wanted. In fact, I’d have paid good money to watch.

‘Lady, your husband won’t be my first, you know what I mean? Knocking over hubby with a car will be like eating peanuts. The last one I did was up real close and personal. I watched her eyes roll back when I stuck the knife in. They were pretty eyes, but they went real flat-looking once she was dead. So don’t talk to me about balls because I got them all right. Nice big ones.’

There was a rustling sound that no doubt was Snow grabbing Gemma’s hand and shoving it in his crotch. Nice. Knowing Gemma, it would have taken real restraint for her not to use the opportunity to twist them right off.

‘Okay, I’m sorry. I’m just a bit nervous. It’s not like I’ve hired a hit man before. That’s the correct term, is it? Hit man?’ Gemma laughed, a bit unconvincingly, but like Sean said, no one ever accused Snow of being smart. I could hear Snow shifting in his seat, readjusting himself no doubt.

‘You can call me whatever you like. It’s not like we’re in a long-term relationship or something. You pay me cash, I do the job, and we never see each other again. That’s the deal. I’ll be like an enforcer.’ Snow chuckled as if that was real funny.

Gemma’s voice cut in. ‘If you don’t mind my asking, was that a job, too? The one you just mentioned, I mean. Were you hired to do that? It’s just that, I imagine, being hired to …
remove
someone is quite a different thing from, well, a personal killing.’

Gemma had adopted a breathless ‘posh lady enjoying a bit of rough’ tone that seemed to be working on Snow. She was inviting him to brag.

‘What is this — the
This is Your Life
show or something?’

Snow’s question was wary but it didn’t sound like he was on to Gemma. Not yet, anyway. Gemma giggled — something I’d never known her do in real life. I heard the plastic seat covers creak, then Snow, languid now, enjoying himself.

‘I don’t do personal and I don’t do freebies. Like that guy with the funny hair says, it was just business. She was a whore. Dumb too. Thought she could walk away when she felt like it. “
I don’t want to do it any more
”,’ he mimicked in a girly voice. ‘Well, it doesn’t work like that. But, you know, up-market nice-looking lady like you, I might be prepared to consider a discount.’

I was pretty sure this wasn’t a threat. He even sounded a tad begrudging.

Gemma spoke up quickly. ‘Listen, money’s not a problem. I’ve got it here.’ I could hear rustling. She must have had the cash ready in a paper bag. ‘There’s five thousand dollars here, all in ten and twenty dollar notes like you said. And I’ll give you the other half when you’ve done the job. That seems fair. Because I don’t have any proof that you can actually see this through. I mean, despite what you say, I don’t really know you’ve killed anyone before. You
could drive away with my five thousand and that’s the last I’ll hear from you. You could have read about that girl, the prostitute, in the papers and then gone around telling people you did it, so as to — well, I don’t know, to impress them.’

Gemma’s voice had gone up an octave as she searched for a convincingly aggrieved, indignant tone. She was pushing her luck and she would have known it. I imagined I could hear the faint, fast beat of her heart, but it could have been my own pulse racing.

I imagined Sean listening to all this from the car nearby. Tense, alert, hand on the door handle. Ready to respond as soon as she gave the signal. I bet he was swearing at Gemma under his breath, at the risk she was taking in pushing Snow that hard, and maybe regretting he’d agreed to be part of this. I’d heard him mumble and swear like that often enough when he was frustrated with me. The memory made me smile.

‘Well, I’ll tell you what wasn’t in the papers.’ Snow’s voice boomed out as he moved his lips so close to the microphone I could hear the sibilant click and pop of spit against his teeth. Gemma’s wire would have been attached near her collar. I could picture Snow’s lips and teeth, feel his breath hot and moist on her neck. ‘I stuck that bitch with a knife right between the shoulder blades. I thought she’d die pretty much straight away but it took eight minutes. Eight fucking minutes. I timed it. Jesus, there was enough time for an ad break! I thought about sticking her again, get it over with, but it was kind of interesting to watch. She fought it. That chick really did not want to die.’

My hands were shaking so badly the coffee was spilling. I placed my mug on the floor. The room was retreating and expanding like lungs. There was just Snow’s voice. Nothing but his voice. Bile rose in my throat.

‘And you know what? I thought of doing her in those eight
minutes. I got her dress hitched up, and I was all good to go, but she was wearing these panties — like kids’ panties with fucking puppies and balloons or something on them. Well, I may be some things, but I’m not a pervert. Those little kids’ panties put me right off.’

Wolf yelped in pain. I was clutching the roll at the back of his neck so hard I’d hurt him. I didn’t want to hear any more. I tried to stand but my legs wouldn’t support me. Snow hadn’t finished. He laughed. A thin, unlikely laugh for such a huge man.

‘By the time I’d ripped them off her and was ready to go again, she was dead. I thought about doing her anyway but …’ Snow was still laughing as I staggered across the room and slammed down the laptop lid, shutting him up.

The room had retreated entirely, leaving me in a black void. There was a roaring in my head and I was pretty sure it wasn’t the beating of angels’ wings the nuns used to talk about. I took deep breaths, willing myself not to pass out. That film director had been right: the bear-man’s girlfriend should never,
ever
listen to the sound of her loved one being mauled.

Rabbits. On her underwear. When Niki was five she went through a phase of what’s now called obsessive compulsive disorder, shorthanded by the familiar to OCD. Dad had yet another new live-in girlfriend who found his youngest child ‘difficult’ and there were murmurings that perhaps Niki should spend some time getting ‘the kind of help she deserves’. In other words, Dad’s girlfriend thought life would be a lot more fun without this creepy kid hanging around touching everything three times and counting her footsteps and generally being a pain in the arse and an embarrassment at dinner parties. Even I could see that unless Niki stopped doing that shit she was going to be locked up and therapied to hell.

She’d become obsessed with the idea of luck. Good luck, bad luck, how arbitrarily it was handed out. Not that she talked about
it like that at five years old, but it’s how I later came to think about it. Back then, at eleven, all I knew was that I had to stop her walking three times one way, then three times the other way around every lamp post between home and school. If I let her, by the time we got to school it was time to turn back around and come home again. That happened a couple of times, which led to the live-in girlfriend suggesting Dad get Niki ‘twenty-four hour
quality
care’.

I knew that meant ‘lock her up and throw away the key’ so I used every trick I could think of to keep Niki from circling lamp posts. I’d hold her hand all the way from home to school to stop her crossing her fingers over each other, which she did once for twenty-four hours, crippling her hands so badly she couldn’t hold a pencil or her knife and fork for a fortnight. And I worked hard at distracting her from her compulsion to touch every piece of wood between our home and the school gates, to go in search of black cats, cross her eyes, walk backwards, you name it.

I figured she wasn’t so much trying to attract good luck as warding off the bad. If I worked at it and stayed attentive, Niki was pretty much okay with me, but as soon as I went to my own classroom or left her alone in the house for more than five minutes, she reverted to those maddening, obsessive-compulsive behaviours.

Things were looking bad for Niki and I was losing ground with her. Then one day as I admired a blue sparkly nail polish in the $2 Shop, I spotted a ‘Good Luck Specials’ bin full of tubes of nylon panties. The panties were emblazoned with rabbits holding bunches of balloons that read
Good Luk!
With only the briefest glance of regret towards the nail polish, I used all my pocket money to buy them. I told Niki they were magical good-luck knickers but that they would only work if she kept them secret and stopped doing all that other weird shit. I told her all those other things
would reverse the good-luck charm. I did a good job on her and she bought it. Yeah, okay, I admit it’s pretty easy to bullshit a five year old, but I was only eleven.

Niki secretly wore the good-luck panties and stopped all the weird crap, and after a couple of months she seemed to have forgotten about the whole thing. I’d forgotten about it anyway until just over a year ago. Last year, I spotted the same knickers in the $2 Shop. Bizarrely, they had SW size complete with bunnies holding
Good Luk!
balloons. I gave them to Niki for Christmas. I thought she’d laugh and either throw them at me or spend the rest of the day wearing them on her head — a party favourite with both of us. When she first unwrapped them, she grinned at me, maybe expecting them to explode or something, but then her face changed as the memories began to surface.

And then to my horror I realised she was crying. I told her I was sorry, it was just a joke, something I thought she’d remember and laugh about. She did laugh then, but it was strained and fake and made me feel like shit. I tried again to apologise, suggested we swap presents because hers to me was actually very cool — a six-inch-tall ‘Dolly Surprise’ with waist-length hair that retracted into a hole in her head when you cranked her arm like a windmill — but Niki wouldn’t swap. She plunged those stupid damn knickers into her purse. She said she was keeping them. She said she was sure they’d bring her luck. Maybe even
luk
!

Two weeks later she was murdered.

My legs gave up the effort to keep me standing. I slumped to the floor, wrapping my arms around my knees. I heard great howling sobs come out of me, sobs that must have been lodged somewhere deep in my stomach ever since I’d been told Niki was dead. So, that’s where the grief had been hiding for the last twelve months.
It was a relief to let it go. Warm, comforting and awful, like wetting the bed when you’re a kid.