Hindsight (3 page)

‘From the beginning then,’ she whispered. ‘But just for you.’

Mira took off her shades to wipe them clean using the cotton hem of her sundress, clenching her eyes shut against the morning glare, which she could still detect to some extent through the thin, sensitive skin of her eyelids. Then as she opened her eyes without the filtering benefits of the glasses, the sky aged from vivid violet to pale blue, as did everything else around her.

Everything blue.

The bridge vanished, along with the dead body and the irreverent seagull. She could still
feel
the concrete path beneath her feet, although her shoes and the rest of her body remained invisible just as if she was dreaming. More like sleep walking through a blue fog. However, the trail seemed much narrower now and reduced to dirt; little more than a wallaby trail that disappeared into a thicket of darker blue reeds at the water’s edge. To her right, the trail looked to be rutted at cross-angles by a wider road, also dirt, but trampled into shape by the passing of much busier oxen and horse-drawn carriages. The derelict tram bridge came alive too with ghostly blue boxcars. Blue-skinned loadmasters shouted silent orders to chain gangs of blue convicts, who unloaded blue hemp and sugar cane under the watchful glares of their ghostly blue guards from Likiba Isle. In the distance, across on the isle itself, the overgrowth of wetland forests shrank away and drained to reveal the earlier clearings for crops, cells and guard barracks. On the hill, atop the longest roof, she could also make out the movements of workmen replacing shingles that failed to weather an even earlier renovation from quarantine station to gaol.

Turning around, she took one step too far and bumped into Ben; felt the shape of the sling that supported his arm. Like her, he seemed invisible against the ghostly blue haze of yester-century, as with everything else in the picnic area and car park — part of which now served as a holding yard for blue bullocks, while everywhere else around her the small dead port bustled with the blue ghosts of sailing ships, steamers and row-boat loads of sailors ashore, all going about their business.

To her left, a grotty, shaggy-haired boy picked the pocket of a burly man who wore the hat and coat of a sea captain. Then the boy bolted off through Mira and disappeared along the scrubby dune towards the inlet that was choked — back then — with stunted mangroves. The victim bolted towards her then too, cursing hotly enough after the boy to make Mira stand aside to let him pass. She couldn’t hear him — couldn’t hear any of the ghostly spectres — but she could read their lips.

A blind girl who could read lips.
Mira shook her head.

‘Earth to Mira,’ Ben said. ‘A little louder please?’

‘Sorry, I just needed a minute.’ Distancing herself in time first seemed to help settle her nerves a little. She returned her attention to the beach which appeared wider and less threatening, since the only dead body in sight then belonged to a pelican — sprawled in much the same spot as the woman, despite the shifting of so much sand and time.

Sliding her sunshades back up her nose made the blue fog of yester-century disappear, replaced in the same instant by the violet haze of yester-fortnight. Still, she couldn’t see Ben, but with her glasses repositioned the purple bridge reappeared, the beach eroded to a slimmer crescent, mangroves thinned out and the inlet shifted a little further south away from the dead woman with the seagull. It hurt more to see them now. Faster light always hurt more for Mira to process, and changing shades without closing her eyes first often exacerbated the pain until she refocused.

‘Does it hurt too much?’ Ben asked.

‘My own fault.’ She rubbed circles against her temples until the pain subsided. ‘Can’t help testing my limits, sorry.’

‘You
want
me to give the lecture today?’

She waved him off, knowing that one by heart already. ‘Take it easy. Take my time,’ she recited. ‘But it’s not just the pain, Ben. This was a crime scene.’ Her stomach soured more at the thought of describing it. ‘A nasty one.’

‘Anyone … get hurt?’

She heard him gulp.

‘Nobody we know this time, so relax. There’s no way I’d put your life at risk again by blabbing about it.’

‘Your life too,’ he reminded her. ‘There’s a trio of fishermen behind us on the old tram bridge. If they’ve noticed us poking around down here …’

‘It’s a public park, isn’t it?’

‘Sure, but hardly anybody ever comes here. Fishermen and a few local glue sniffers.’

‘It’s still public. We have every right to be here. Besides, nobody else was involved — at least not as far back as I can see.’

‘Is ten days not enough?’

Mira shrugged. ‘I missed the worst bit — but I’m
not
sorry. It’s bad enough just looking at the aftermath.’

‘So it’s possible there was someone else involved?’

‘Doesn’t matter. It’s history now. Doesn’t affect us.’

‘If you missed the worst bit, how can you be so sure? Please, Mira, I need to know if there’s anything here that can affect us.’

‘What else can I say? What’s done is done. It’s not like I can change anything. Seeing back through time isn’t nearly as useful as going back in it.’

‘No, but it can be
more dangerous
here and now.’ He lowered his voice, muttering a curse for losing his patience. ‘Sorry, I can only imagine how hard it must be for you, living in the past as you have to, but you know the risks. There are too many people out there who’d kill to get you on their slab as a lab rat! If anyone could ever replicate what you do, there’d be no secrets safe from them. We need to be better prepared from now on and that means I need to know as much about the dangers around us as you do, okay? There’s no good can come from trying to shield me — especially when it’s me who’s meant to be the guardian, for all intents and purposes.’

‘But it’s just a dead girl on a beach.’

‘Just a dead girl on a beach? Oh, yeah. That’s very helpful and reassuring.’

She sighed and gave in. ‘Come here, then.’ She led him down the path to a rack of timber boards which held the sand together loosely in the shape of steps.

‘It happened there …’ She pointed to the woman’s body, but now that she was much nearer to the scuffled patch of sand, her eyes followed the rumpled trail of boot prints to a second lifeless shape in the murkier shadows under the bridge. Unlike the woman, his ghostly corpse was face down between the pylons with a fishing knife still embedded in his back and one arm twisted around as if he’d died while struggling to pull it out himself.

‘An open and shut case,’ she declared, as the past continued to play out around her. She saw the first ghostly tour bus of the day head over the bridge to Serenity and recalled how festive that day had begun before turning to near tragedy for Ben. Then to her left, she noticed the helmet of a ghostly police officer as he pulled into the car park on a fat patrol bike, but Mira didn’t need to watch him to know that he’d soon read the rest of the crime story from the sand, just as she had.

‘Open and shut,’ Ben echoed. ‘I thought the same thing right before I was framed and locked away for six years.’

‘Hardly the same, Ben. This victim was a beach jogger with nothing worth robbing.’

‘And the killer?’

‘He’s a fisher … okay, so maybe he hung out with the trio on the tram bridge, but it hardly matters now. He’s dead too. They killed each other.’

‘If you didn’t see it happen, how can you tell who killed who? Or that a third person wasn’t involved like I said before?’

‘It’s obvious from their positions, their footprints, the murder weapons and everything else that’s here. I’d really rather not go into the gorier details if you don’t mind.’

‘It’s the details that matter most, Mira.’

‘It’s the details that make me
sick
!’ Queasy in a way she hadn’t felt since the first time she’d seen a ghostly guard molesting a male convict, while torturing him to death with a knife and branding iron. At the ‘old’ gaol, violence like that, and worse, was a regular occurrence. She gulped and realised Ben was still waiting. ‘Look, it’s simple. He attacked her, she stabbed him, he shot her. Case closed.’

‘A fisherman with a gun? Do you mean a
spear
gun?’

‘No, a normal handgun. I can’t see the specific make or model from here but it’s too big for a pocket, plenty small enough to conceal in his fishing sack. Obviously, he waited for her. He’d had time enough to catch four whiting and a flathead.’

‘The knife was his, too?’

‘Yeah, probably. Not many pockets in a bikini. And it does look like a fishing knife — as much as I can see sticking out of him anyway. Big handle, like the ones with serrated blades on one side for scraping off scales.’

‘Okay, that’s good. Try again with these now instead.’ He tapped her shoulder with something that felt cool, like the metal arm of his own sunglasses. ‘They’re darker but if I remember right, they let you see back only about a week.’

‘Here’s hoping with less carnage.’

‘Yes, here’s hoping.’

She sighed, and closed her eyes for the swap. ‘Crime really does happen in waves, like light and water, you know. I’ve seen it for centuries, and I’m beginning to think that my knack is for glimpsing the worst of it.’

Opening her eyes again, she saw purple sand washed over with a muddier shade of violet. The cop disappeared along with both bodies, replaced in the same instant by four teenaged boys who were playing beach ball over a tattered strand of crime-scene tape.

‘Oh, yes. Now here’s my kind of crime … just kids bending rules in a ball game.’ She noticed that the sun had also leapt a few hours higher. ‘But the faster light hurts more.’ Closing her eyes again, she returned the glasses. ‘Can we go now, please? I just want this day to be over and done with.’

‘Me too.’ He waited until she headed back up, then fell into step behind her, making the sand squeak under his shoes. ‘Hey, did I mention I bought a few other shades from the hospital canteen? Only ten bucks a pair, so I grabbed every colour they had. We can try them later today; see how many new dates you can see — if you’re up to it?’

‘Sure, when we’re far from here.’ She reached the sandy steps and the path, wondering why she didn’t feel any better to be on her way to his car, unimpeded finally. ‘I spent my monthly allowance on extra glasses last week too, but I left them in my room when I went for a shower and someone crept in and smashed them.’ She didn’t need to say who she suspected.

‘What about the first pair I gave you, and the ones that let you see yesterday? At least with those you could glimpse your own body occasionally.’

‘Smashed too. Damn doors that only lock from the hallway. If I hadn’t been wearing these in the shower to help me see the water, I’d be stuck in last century again.’ With her naked eyes, that was all she could manage.

He overtook her on the path, then she heard the familiar clunk of the passenger door opening. Her stomach growled in reply, but it wasn’t just her revulsion at returning to Serenity in time for breakfast.

‘I feel sick,’ she confessed as he helped her to find the invisible seat. ‘What if the matron changes her mind about letting me leave?’

‘She won’t. It was partly her idea.’ He stretched out her seatbelt and wrapped it around her, his hands so large as they brushed her arm and yet so gentle.

‘But what if the review board overrules her? She’s only one psychologist against many.’

‘She’s the one who knows you best.’

‘And they know me the least. That’s my point! This could be my last trip to the mainland. As far as they’re concerned, I’m still psychologically unstable, and let’s face it, Ben; this is only your first year out of gaol.’

‘None of that matters now.’ He leaned across, unavoidably close to her, and fastened the buckle with a metallic click. ‘We’re both special cases, you and me, or else we wouldn’t be alone together now, would we?’ He adjusted her seatbelt a little tighter. ‘Today we start a new life together. Purely platonic. No strings attached. So forget the past. Forget everything that’s ever happened. It’s all down to you, me and the next steps that we take together.’

She gulped and hoped it would be as easy as that. ‘Tomorrow starts today,’ she said, reciting another of his regular lectures, but repeating it aloud did nothing to quell the growing queasiness in her stomach. Not just nerves any more. More like a swelling sense of dread that grew more intense as Ben closed her door and jogged around to take his place behind the wheel. He slammed his own door twice to close it as if the old car was also feeling reluctant. Then the engine chugged twice and finally cut out on him.

‘Hold this,’ he said, dumping his slim elastic sling in her lap. ‘It’s more of a pain
on
while I’m driving.’

Wringing her fingers in her lap, Mira worried what kind of last-minute hurdles and tests awaited her, while Ben cranked the engine.

‘Come on, baby,’ he said cranking it again. ‘No sulking.’

Mira screwed up her nose. ‘I’m not sulking!’

‘I was talking to the car.’ He cranked it again and the engine responded with a splutter and purr. ‘Now that you mention it, you only do that with your hands when you’re sulking or scared. So which is it now?’

Flexing her fingers, she splayed them flatter against her thigh, trying to convince herself he was wrong for once. ‘Would you believe
hope
?’ She tried to brighten to prove it, but her deepest fear rose, washing another frown over her face. ‘I’m hoping I won’t have to face
him.
’

‘I knew there was something else eating you! Okay, now tell Papa Benny bear all about it.’

‘Papa Benny bear?’ She grinned, realising he didn’t need a backhoe after all. ‘Is that so?’

‘I might as well be your father after today.’

‘You’re barely ten years older than me.’

‘Big brother then. Quit dodging the subject. Enough’s enough.’

With a huff, she folded her arms. ‘What’s the point? In facing him, I mean. A final test, I don’t need. If I’m really being allowed to leave today, I’ll never have to deal with him again.’