The Killing Hour (19 page)

The car slows to a crawl. I start steering into the left lane.

‘Pull over off the right lane.’

I do just that. A moment later I bring the car to a complete stop. Jo’s maybe half a minute away. I twist in my seat, ready to unclip my seatbelt and fight for survival, and I’m just in time to see his big hairy fist coming at me. My head rocks back but the seatbelt stops me from going anywhere. Everything goes dark; the colours flare behind my eyes for maybe the hundredth time this week and I’m left to wonder if those colours will ever go away. When they dissolve I start looking for Cyris. He’s already outside, slamming the passenger door closed. I go to open my door and my right arm stops painfully short. Handcuffs hold me to the steering wheel.

Landry’s cuffs.

Christ. I’m living in a world of déjà vu.

Cyris taps on the window with the barrel of his gun. I look out and see him waving my car keys at me. His scraggly beard moves as he grins. I swear at the windscreen spraying a fine mist of obscenities across the glass. At the same time I tug on the handcuffs, going through the same motions I went through earlier tonight and getting the same results. My wrist is already swelling.

I unclip the seatbelt and reach for the door handle with my left arm, pulling on it, then push the door with my foot. I turn my body so I can stand. My right arm stays inside the car, the handcuffs stopping me from standing straight. Cyris is moving off the opposite side of the road just as Jo comes around the bend. Past the shoulder is some long grass that he ducks behind. I stand as tall as I can, the handcuffs pulling my skin and hurting the bone, and I wave erratically at her so she knows there’s trouble. But she’s thinking maybe flat-tyre trouble, or engine trouble. Just not Cyris trouble. Because she pulls over and stops. She can’t hear my yelling over her idling car and the falling rain. She unbuckles her seatbelt and climbs out.

‘Go!’ I shout, waving at her with my left arm. ‘Get out of here!’

She’s facing me and there’s enough light from our two cars for me to see her face. Puzzlement turns to horror because she suddenly knows what’s happening. Horror turns to indecision because she doesn’t want to leave me here, but nor does she want to face Cyris. She takes a small pace forward but not enough to commit herself to running over and helping. Any further decision she could make is taken away from her as Cyris explodes from the long grass behind her.

‘Looks like we’re having ourselves a reunion,’ he shouts. He moves slowly towards us, then stops between the headlights of Jo’s car. ‘Your boyfriend here owes me money,’ he says. ‘Forty grand to be specific. He said I could look after you until he can get it. It’s like layby.’ He takes a few steps towards me. ‘Isn’t that right?’

‘Fuck you.’

He says nothing, just turns towards Jo with the barrel of Landry’s shotgun pointing at her face. She doesn’t look scared or intimidated but I don’t doubt that she is.

‘The plan’s simple,’ he says. ‘You give me the money and she gets to live. You take too long with the funds, I teach her about suffering. You get my point?’

I want to kill him so badly that it hurts. I grit my teeth and my eyes are burning and I see a shade of red that can only be blood. I want to take the gun from his hands and use it to club his head into the motorway. I want to run over his twitching corpse.

‘For forty grand,’ Cyris continues, ‘you can have her back. It’s the money you owe me, partner, for screwing me the other night.’

‘I’ll get it, okay? You can let her go and take me instead. We can go to the bank in the morning and I can get you the cash.’

‘No can do, partner. She comes with me.’

‘You don’t need her.’

‘Oh, but I do, I do, yeah. I get lonely during the day.’

‘I can get the money first thing! Please! By ten o’clock everything can be settled.’

‘Sorry. I’ll be sleeping like a baby.’

‘What about in the afternoon? Come on, give me a break here.’

‘Don’t sound so desperate, little Charlie, little, little. The day’s no good for me. The night’s no good for me either. I’ve got plans.’

I don’t want him alone with Jo for two whole days. I don’t want that at all. ‘No deal.’

He reaches out and shoves Jo against the car, then points the gun at her. ‘Pick a limb, partner.’

I raise my free hand. ‘I can get you the money. But two days? Jesus, surely you can see my problem with this.’

‘And that’s just it. It’s your problem, not mine, not yours, but, well, yours.’ He laughs. ‘Partner, if you’re unhappy we can cancel the whole transaction. Is that how you want it?’

I shake my head. I’ve seen how he cancels transactions.

‘Good. I’ll ring you at home at nine o’clock tonight. Be there.’

‘If you touch her …‘

‘You’ll what? Huh? Kill me? Don’t worry, partner. I don’t damage my investments.’

He pushes her into the driver’s seat and slams the door. Clutching his stomach, he moves around to the passenger side. I stare through the side window at Jo. She stares back and attempts a smile that says, ‘Don’t worry, things will be fine.’ I attempt the same smile, but who are we kidding?

I meet Cyris’s eyes. I want them to be dead, reflecting only a vacant mind, but they’re alive and brimming with ideas. Half a minute goes by, then Jo puts the car into gear and slowly pulls away. She goes only ten metres before the brake lights come on. Her arm appears out the window and she tosses out the handcuff key and my car keys. They land in the middle of the road. Then the red brake lights die and the car rolls forward.

By trying to be a hero on Monday I’ve signed Jo’s life away. I rest my head against the door. The headache is back. I can taste failure in the back of my throat. I could have driven into a tree. I could have fought Cyris while he was behind me in the car. I look down the road. The tail lights are two distant red specks riding towards infinity. They look like eyes – demon eyes. They disappear around a distant bend.

They disappear and I am alone.

34

The rain cannot wash away the rage or the fear that leaves me standing motionless next to my car. Hope and despair have both reached out for me but hope couldn’t get a grip. And why would it? My clothes are soaked and I’m shivering. My feet are ice cold because I took my shoes off in the car. My mind has recognised defeat and is slowly shutting down. Jo is dead even though she’s behind the wheel of her car and speeding towards the city.

I lean into the car and release the handbrake. I grab my shoes and tug them onto my feet but I can’t do them up. I push against the doorframe with my left arm, my right beneath my left armpit because of the handcuffs. My legs try to tangle as I gain more speed, and when my left leg clips the edge of the car I lose my balance. My hand slips from the doorframe and I fall, my right knee hitting the asphalt, and I wonder why I’m even bothering. I pull myself into a sitting position and get onto my feet. I can feel air on my knee and know I’ve torn my jeans and grazed my leg.

I tighten my grip on the car and start over. The car builds speed once again, and when I can tell momentum will take me to the keys, I limbo into the car and put both hands on the wheel. I can’t steer because the steering wheel has locked, but I pull the handbrake when I reach the keys. I twist my body and lean out. The keys are closer to the other side of the car, out of reach. I look for something to help and find it when I look up and see my aerial. I pull it upwards and when it’s at its longest I bend it back and forth until it snaps off. I lean down and start fishing. It only takes a few moments to hook my keys, which have the handcuff key attached to them. I undo the cuffs and drop them onto the passenger seat.

Racing towards the city, I search for the tail lights of Jo’s Mazda but can’t find them. When I enter the city I drive aimlessly around but it’s pointless. They’re gone. And there’s nothing I can do until I pay to get her back.

I head home. Last time I saw it the cardboard box had been taped closed. Now the sides have been hooked beneath each other. I don’t look inside. Kathy deserves to be buried in one piece but I can’t return whatever is in the box. I can’t walk into the crime scene and place it on her bed. Can’t take it to the morgue. Can’t put a stamp on it and mail it in.

These thoughts disgust me, but what can I do? Kathy is dead and for her to rest in peace her death needs to be avenged. That’s all. It doesn’t matter where her body ends up. I find a plastic bag and put the box inside. I drop the bag with my bloody shorts in there too. Then, turning the lights off, I stumble through the house and into the garage. I find a shovel.

My house is on the corner of a cul-de-sac. My backyard borders another house but behind that are huge paddocks. To get there I have to walk into the street and to a dirt driveway angled up between two homes. It’s nearly five o’clock in the morning, but I still pause to scan the neighbourhood. No people. No lights. Nobody to care what’s happening to me. I head up the driveway. The wet ground sucks at my shoes.

The paddock is broken up into sections, different vegetables growing in each. Wire fences run between them as if the owners are worried the cabbages are going to get up and mingle with the potatoes. Long dirt roads trail off into the distance. Dozens of irrigation pipes create a maze that leads to the nearby river. Iron sheds with spots of rust on them house farm equipment. The puddles in ruts I’m walking over are deep, but there’s enough light for me to avoid them.

I decide not to bury the box anywhere in the paddock. The dirt is turned over all the time. Crops are planted then reaped. Tractors dragging large ploughs bite into the ground. One day it’s pulling up carrots. The next it’s decomposing flesh.

The dirt road I’m following keeps the paddocks to my right. To my left the land is bordered by a long ditch with a small creek running through it. A dozen or so trees space out the distance. I walk for ten minutes, the rain no longer feeling cold against my skin. I’m numb inside but not because of the weather. I pass more trees, and I wonder what could be buried beneath them. Just before the creek sweeps into the river, where the road turns right to move along the top end of the paddock, there’s a small bank. I climb down and stand a metre from the creek. I figure this is as good a place as any.

I start digging. My cold fingers send slivers of pain up my arms, but I like the pain – I deserve it. I try to concentrate as the hole starts to grow. I dig down half a metre before taking a break, standing in the hole up to my knees, leaning on the spade, sweating and shivering. The rain is becoming heavier again. I carry on digging as a brown swimming pool appears at my feet. I try shovelling faster.

A shaft of lightning hums across the sky. It lights up the hole and the creek and the plastic bag beside me, and it lights up my body. I’m covered in dirt and I’m digging a grave. I must be insane. I’ve come into the night only an hour or two before dawn, carrying a body part and a tool with which to hide it.

I lean on the shovel and look into the creek as the following thunder chases the lightning. I suddenly realise that I’m not alone. I can sense her watching, but she says nothing as I slowly push back off my shovel and continue to dig. I last less than a minute before I sit down on the edge of the hole, close to tears.

‘I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.’

‘What are you doing, Charlie?’ Kathy asks.

‘I’ve no idea. Things have got out of hand. I’m even seeing ghosts.’

‘Is that what I am?’

I shake the water from my hair and wipe a muddy palm back through it. ‘I don’t know. Are you?’

‘Don’t bury me, Charlie. Go to the police.’

I stand up again and dig some more. All I’m doing is throwing mud to one side while more mud runs back in.

‘Charlie?’

More lightning, more thunder, and it sounds like I have angered some vengeful god. As the sound rolls across the paddock the walls to my hole – and my sanity – start to cave in. At a metre, my arm muscles exhausted, I decide the hole is deep enough. I struggle out. Kathy takes a step back as I pick up the bag.

‘Is this really the way to go?’ she asks.

‘You’re not really here,’ I say, and she isn’t. She’s only in my decaying mind. Ghosts aren’t real, they don’t exist, and I don’t need Kathy to deny this. In this moment, in the Real World, I’m suddenly unsure of what is real. God, life, death, misery – does any of it matter? Of course it does. Sometimes it’s just difficult to see how.

Tears dissolve on my face like acid rain. I wipe them away with muddy fingers, then turn my face to the hole and throw the plastic bag in.

‘Why did you let us die?’

‘You don’t believe that,’ I say.

‘What do you believe, Charlie?’

‘I believe that bad things happen for no reason. I really tried to save you.’

‘It’s hard to believe anything when you’re dead.’

I close my eyes and grab hold of the moment on Monday morning when I drove past the paddock and found Cyris’s van missing. I knew he had to be heading to a hospital or a morgue. Both would ask questions so maybe he would head straight home. I told myself this over and over but I knew I was lying because I put my foot down. I was lucky because there were few cars on the roads. Yeah, Monday was all about luck. It must have been, because in the end I found the missing van. The only problem was where I found it. It was parked outside Luciana’s house.

‘Don’t do this, Charlie.’

I start filling in the hole.

‘I have no choice,’ I say, and when the hole is filled in I turn back and find Kathy has gone. I climb up the bank, dragging my shovel behind me.

No more lightning now. No more thunder. I stop at the top of the bank and look down to her resting place. Was this the right thing to have done? Of course not. Not for her. Her ghost told me that. I don’t know any prayers, only apologies, and I offer them to her.

I turn my back and start walking. Dawn is approaching, bringing the killing hour along with it. The sky lightens, turning purple, but the purple hours of my life have brought only death to me over the last few days. I break into a jog, eager to be away from here, eager to escape the hell this light will show me. The trees, the grass, the muddy banks, they all reflect this dark Evil who has entered my life.