Rochelle’s heels clattered through the kitchen and I looked around wildly for a weapon or a way out but all I could see was an energy efficient front loader washer, laundry basin, folded-up ironing board and tubs of fermenting soybeans.
I glanced into the bathroom. More barred windows, a flimsy lock and natural products that hadn’t been tested on animals.
Useless.
In desperation I kicked over one of the tofu tubs, water and white gloop sluicing across the tiled floor. My shoulders strained as I lifted another and when Rochelle skidded around the corner I hauled the bucket back and swung it forward, splattering the contents in her face. Her expensive heels aqua-planed across the tiles and as she fell back I heard another crack, then a metallic clank as a bullet pierced the washing machine.
Her arms cartwheeled and I didn’t wait for her to hit the ground, just barrelled straight into her, grabbing at the gun. We struck the tiles with a wet slap, Rochelle breaking my fall and letting out a winded ‘Oooff.’
I lay on top of her and tried to pry the gun from her hand, but she gripped the weapon so tightly her knuckles almost burst out of her leathery skin. With her free hand she swiped at my hands and face, clawing flesh. One long nail broke off and stuck straight out of my forearm, like a thorn.
I got both hands on her wrist and bent it back.
‘Stop! You’re breaking my arm! I have osteoporosis!’
‘Should have eaten your dairy products, bitch.’
A burning pain tore across my cheekbone as one of her nails narrowly missed my eye. I ignored the sting, turned my head and applied more pressure until her wrist cracked like a dried out twig. Her shriek was inhuman, like a demon doused in holy water, so shrill my ears popped. I yanked the gun from her fingers, straddled her inflated chest and stuck the barrel in the socket of her left eye. I’d been so helpless when she’d shot my mother. Now molten energy surged through my veins.
‘How’s it feel, Rochelle?’ I pushed harder, feeling gelatinous tissue tremble beneath the steel.
‘Please.’ She choked, writhing desperately beneath me.
‘Don’t kill me. You don’t want to do this.’
‘Why not? You deserve it and my karma’s already shot to hell.’
I was going to pull the trigger and watch her skull explode and brains slop out over the tiles. Blood rushed in my ears, my vision tunnelled and my heart hammered like I’d just OD’d on speed. Sirens wailed in the distance. My trigger finger twitched and a sharp ammonia smell hit my nostrils. Rochelle had pissed herself.
‘Bye, babe.’
I tried to press the trigger but I couldn’t get my finger to move. At first I thought there was something wrong with the gun but it wasn’t that. My body wouldn’t obey the instructions from my brain. Pull the trigger, I screamed at myself. Shoot the bitch. Fucking shoot her. My finger wouldn’t move. My hand started to shake. My chest spasmed, breath coming out in convulsive gasps. Hot tears streamed down my face, the salt water stinging the scratches.
When Rochelle realised what was happening she let out a mocking, incredulous laugh. ‘You’ve got no balls. You can’t do it. You can’t fucking do it.’
She was right. I pulled the barrel away from her eye. The lid had turned purple and was almost swollen shut. Then I drew the gun back and smashed it across her temple. That, I could do.
Two days later, in the middle of the day, I lay on the couch in striped flannelette pyjamas, a doona wrapped around my body like a cocoon. Hot air blasted from the wall heater’s shuttered vents, but I couldn’t seem to get warm.
Outside, low lying clouds scraped skeletal branches and every now and then brilliant shafts of sunlight burst through, illuminating dust motes and the general shabbiness of my flat: grimy bookshelves; smudged fingerprints on the doors and light switches; the posters’ torn and curling edges. The Russ Meyer chicks didn’t seem so cool and cheeky anymore, just tacky, like my whole damn life.
Chloe clattered away in the kitchen cooking up some sort of Polish comfort food and I smelled paprika, onions and frying meat. In front of me the coffee table held a glass of red, a packet of sedatives, cigarettes and an ashtray, and on the television Dr. Phil berated a clean cut American couple, telling them to get their shit together and take responsibility for their miserable lives. The TV had been on for the last twenty-four hours, numbing me more effectively than the Xanax. I kept my attention on the screen whenever I was awake, because every time I looked away the memories flooded back, and the pain twisted like a knife in my guts.
Dealing with the police had been a blur. They’d arrived not long after I’d knocked out Rochelle, seen me holding the gun and tackled me to the floor. I’d spent the night in the lock-up, trying to explain what had happened in between bouts of hyperventilating and hysteria, no one able to tell me what had happened to my mum. Apparently Alex’s unit and Duval from Homicide had vouched for me, in a fashion, and Sam backed up my story when he awoke from surgery, finally convincing them I wasn’t responsible for the bloodbath.
When I was released Joy took me back to her place for a shower and a change of clothes—cords and an oversized burgundy shirt—then we’d driven to RPA hospital in Camperdown, to see if we could find out what was going on.
In the car, an old red station wagon, she explained some things about Mum. How she’d worked at the Love Tunnel, quit when she got pregnant with me, then gone back when my dad pissed off. It was around that time she’d answered an ad of Joy’s for a flatmate, the two of them sharing babysitting duties and Joy turning my mum on to women’s lib.
‘But why did Rochelle want to kill her?’ I asked. ‘Why did Sam kidnap me? It was something to do with Melody, wasn’t it?’
Joy nodded. ‘After Peta was fired from the club she found a part time job at a shelter for battered women. That’s where Melody ended up, after she got bashed.’
‘Bashed?’
‘Uh-huh. She was walking home from work and some thug dragged her into a lane, started beating her up and said he’d been sent by Sam. Melody reckoned the guy would have killed her if a prostitute and her john hadn’t come upon them and scared him off.’
‘But why?’
‘She had something on Rochelle and Sam. Your mother knew, but she wouldn’t give me the details. Said the less I knew the safer I was. I suspected it was information about Edwin’s death. Pretty suss how Rochelle married him and less than six months later he was dead. Then bam, Sam’s back together with her and they’re developing the property with Don Davison.
They weren’t allowed to knock down the original building, but they got away with putting up that ugly apartment block out the back. Ended up making a lot of money from the deal. If Melody had proof they’d knocked off Edwin, it could have put a major spanner in the works. Your mother told Melody she had to get out of town, disappear, and she did, but while she was getting better she stayed with us for a little while and with other women we knew.’
‘Did you know Sam kidnapped me?’
She nodded. ‘It was the most hideous moment of my life. I was looking after you and Andi while Peta was at work, left you playing in the back yard and the next time I looked you were gone. The phone rang and a man, Sam, told me to get Peta home, and that if either of us called the police, you were dead. I did as he said. Christ, your mum was beside herself.
‘We waited by that fucking phone for what seemed like forever. He didn’t call back until three am. Peta spoke to him, left the house and came back with you half an hour later, bundled up, asleep and unharmed, thank god. I said we should go to the police, dob him in, but she said he was in with half the cops in the Cross and she was going to do what he’d told her to. Take you and move away. We decided on New Zealand because I had relatives you could stay with and it was such a long way away. So now you know why we always hated him so much.’
‘Yeah, but Rochelle wanted Mum dead. By kidnapping me Sam was saving her life.’
Joy had snorted.
Inside the hospital a young female surgeon with dark liquid eyes and a plait of long black hair took us into her office to break the news and we sat on padded vinyl chairs, Joy gripping one of my hands in both of hers. I hadn’t slept, but instead of blurring, everything in the room, from the table edge to the shelf full of medical texts, stood out in sharp relief.
‘I have good news and bad news,’ she said, and my body tensed, a boxer anticipating a body blow. ‘Your mother, Peta, is going to be fine.’
I breathed out and my muscles went limp so suddenly I almost slid out of my chair. Joy let out a victory whoop. The doctor told us the bullet had lodged in Mum’s skull, damaging a lot of blood vessels but missing her brain, and they’d managed to remove it without too much trouble. I started laughing and crying at the same time and felt an effervescent fizzing expand through my chest like I’d won the lottery or fallen in love, until she said: ‘Stephen Merrick, I believe he’s her partner? He didn’t make it.’
Joy and I stopped dead.
‘What?’ I said.
‘He suffered a heart attack when he was assaulted. The paramedics revived him at the scene, kept him stable in the ambulance, but when he reached the hospital he flatlined. We tried everything, but …’
‘Does Peta know?’ Joy voiced the question looming in my head.
‘She’s only just regained consciousness and is undergoing some tests. I’m planning to tell her soon and I’d like it if you could both be there to provide emotional support.’ She shuffled through her notes and told us that everyone else had survived.
Rochelle had concussion, Perry was being monitored for a suspected spinal injury, and although Sam had needed a length of bowel removed, he was expected to make a full recovery.
I hardly heard her. Ten years Mum had been with Steve and he’d been good to her, not like some of the losers she’d lived with in the past. My life partner, she’d called him, and I’d always rolled my eyes at the politically correct phrase. Ten years, and I’d never even hugged the bloke. They’d planned to grow old together eating organic tofu, tending their native plants and quietly smoking joints on the back porch. I wanted to throw myself on the linoleum floor and howl like a little kid. Instead I took a deep breath and held it together, just.
‘What about Alex?’ I asked. ‘Can I talk to him?’
She clicked her pen against her teeth and looked at me.
‘Were you close to Officer Christakos?’
Why was she asking that? ‘You said everyone else was alive.’
‘The assault against him was severe and the swelling required us to drill a hole in his skull to relieve the pressure. An MRI scan has indicated he’s sustained lesions on the frontal lobe area. At present he’s in intensive care in a medically induced coma and is requiring a respirator to breathe.’
‘But he’ll be okay …?’
‘Brain injuries are tricky. Even if he does recover there may be extensive damage. It’s too early to say.’
My heart clenched and tears ran down my face.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Now, do you want to see your mother?’
She took us into a lift and down a maze of green painted corridors to Mum. She was propped up in bed, a drip trailing from her arm, head bandaged like a soldier in a war movie.
I rushed over, hugged her gently and tried to hold back the tears.
‘Simone,’ she smiled. ‘You’re alright.’ Her eyes searched the room. ‘Where’s Steve?’
My stomach flipped. The doctor came forward and I moved back as she sat on the edge of the bed and spoke to her in low tones. Looking at Mum’s face was like watching a cloud pass over the sun. Her lips trembled, her mouth turned down and when she tried to speak no sound came out. She turned her head to stare at the wall. The doctor stood up and I took her place, stroked Mum’s forearm.
‘It’s gonna be okay. I’ll stay with you and we’ll get through this. Joy’s called Jasper and he’ll come over and—’
Mum pulled her arm away, tucked it around her waist.
‘I think you should go now,’ she whispered.
‘Sure, okay. Should we come back in a couple of hours?’
I glanced at Joy, and back to Mum.
‘No. I think you should go back to Melbourne. I don’t want to see you right now.’
‘But—’
Her voice got louder. ‘If you’d gone to Melbourne when I first asked then Steve … then none of this would have happened.’
‘I’m sorry, I—’
‘Please. Just leave.’ Her voice broke.
I backed out of the room, hit the corridor, ran until I found the toilets and busted through the door. Locking myself in the first cubicle I vomited into the bowl, sat back on my heels, flushed it away. She was right. I could justify it till the cows came home but if I’d done what she’d said then Steve would still be alive and Alex wouldn’t be in a coma. It was my fault.
The door squealed as someone entered the bathroom and I remained crouched on the tiles, waiting for them to enter a cubicle so I could make a break for it. It didn’t happen and instead I heard a sound like the screw cap of a bottle cracking open. I waited for a bit and when it didn’t look like they were going anywhere in a hurry I got up and unlocked the stall door.
Too bad if they saw my tear stained face, I had to get out of there, find a pub, have a goddamn drink myself.
The door opened and I stepped out and saw a woman leaning back against a sink, skolling the last finger from a hip flask of Johnny Walker. It was Suzy, Alex’s fiancée.
Suzy looked surprised but quickly recovered and tossed the empty bottle into a wastebasket full of crumpled paper towels.
She was dressed in jeans, a chunky knit cardigan belted at the waist, and her blonde hair was tied back in a messy ponytail.
Her eyes were red rimmed and puffy, just like mine.
‘Simone fucking Kirsch.’ She pronounced every syllable separately, slowly. ‘You happy now?’
I opened my mouth to apologise but she jumped in before I could get the words out.
‘It’s not enough that you try to steal him away from me, you have to kill him as well? If you can’t have him then no one can?’