Skeletal (23 page)

I couldn’t have been out for long. The light outside was still strong. The smell of the rain was still fresh. The papers were still out on the floor, but there was no way I was putting them back down under the house tonight. I retrieved my backpack and stuck them in. I felt the vial to make sure it was still okay, still whole.

And then I got to my feet and slowly started to walk the long trek home. My exhaustion was overwhelming, but there was no other option.

There was a build-up of traffic as I joined the rush of suburbia again. I’d taken so long that my uniform melded back into the flow; the last bell of classes had rung just before I swept past the school.

I didn’t want to go home. I hoped that the Grey Man would catch up with me at some point, but he was staying away. Keeping me out of the spotlight, maybe. Certainly keeping his distance.

With no particular place in mind I found myself turning in the direction of Vila’s house. She’d be on her way home. She’d be pissed off at me, no doubt, but if I could catch up with her I could try to issue her with a warning too. Make sure her Dad got it from both sides.

The cars were piled back to the roundabout, and then further back to the traffic lights.

Some careless dude inched his way across just as the lights turned, and discovered that he couldn’t pull his car far enough forward to get out of the cross road.

Horns tooted and someone with their window down clearly swore at him, but there was nothing he could do. Traffic stalled in two directions.

There were lights flashing on the road in front of me. Red and Blue. My first thought was construction: they were digging up the street for some reason and backing up the traffic because they had no sense of appropriate timing. But as I drew closer I recognised the familiar boxy shape of an ambulance. Off to one side was a police car. Their presence reduced the traffic to a single lane, marked out with cones and their own parked vehicles.

The dread and panic that had been my companions for the past two days compacted into a single pulsating beam. It was here. Whatever I feared, it was here.

My body tensed up, and I started to move more quickly along the footpath. A police officer was talking with a couple of people standing at the side of the road. Taking notes. Another officer had a roll of tape which he was using to mark out two vehicles.

There had been a car crash. One vehicle had pole-axed the other broadside. The hairs raised along the back of my neck. The first car was a large black saloon. Its license plate was the same as the one that’d parked outside the school. The one that stuck out like a sore thumb.

I turned quickly to look in all directions. The men who had been inside it, whom I presumed were also the men from the half-house, were nowhere in sight. The cars doors were open. The airbags inside looked like grotesque balloons. Both had inflated. There had been a driver and a passenger in the car. Now empty.

As I walked closer I recognised the second car as well. It was the one that had been parked in Vila’s driveway the day before. The one that her father drove.

I continued to walk forward on legs that felt like jelly. A hum started up in the back of my mind, and my chest started to have to work to get air.

This car was empty too. But its occupant was easily located. Strapped to a gurney being loaded into the back of the ambulance. There’s a manner that people have when they’re working hard to save somebody. A rush of activity, but the speed is focused and productive.

The paramedics weren’t rushing. They pushed the gurney into the back. No one jumped up to assist with a smooth journey. No one jumped up to keep airways open or pressure applied. Two paramedics slammed the door shut and then walked around to the front of the vehicle.

The ambulance turned its lights off as it pulled away from the crash scene.

I’d seen dead people before. But not anyone I knew. Not anybody who mattered to people I knew. Not anyone that I felt responsibility towards.

I continued to walk. Past the crash scene. Past Vila’s house.

I stopped in the park nearby. Sat on a bench. Stared at the ground in front of me.

The papers felt heavy in my backpack. I could feel the movement of the liquid in the glass tube the way I could feel my blood pulsing through my bloodstream.

I was surprised when a couple walked by with their dog running joyously ahead, and didn’t cast a second look in my direction. Surely there were beams of light shining out of my bag. Surely there was a sign notating guilt that pointed directly at me.

When the sun started to cast longer shadows, and my arms started to shake from the cold of the late afternoon, the Grey Man joined me in the park. He sat on the bench next to me. He faced forward. His expression set cold and hard.

‘Run,’ he said.

Coroner’s Court 2014

With Vila finished, the whole thing is winding down. Look at all this evidence. Look how neatly it all ties together. Guilty.

Christine and my mother exchange long whispered conversations together in the courtroom. Their heads tilt in towards each other, and sometimes one of them will issue an inappropriate giggle.

Thick as thieves.

My Grey Man is now a constant companion. He doesn’t talk to me though, he’s too interested in his own thoughts on the matter. I can feel them pulsing at me as each sentence is spoken aloud in the room. I ignore them to form my own.

Erik Smith is hovering. This’ll be interesting. Someone’s “lost” something. Something important. The coroner is not happy. DSS Smith is not happy. Someone in his department looks like they might be careless. Or they might be on the take. Either way, not strong qualities in a serving member of the police force.

That’s okay by me, though.

There’s a whispered conference going on at the front of the room now. The coroner breaks off the conversation, and his little minion scurries away. She was ordered to recall someone yesterday and she’s just told him they’re back.

On with the show.

The forensic pathologist takes the stand again. She’s not happy either. Had to break a date with a mouldering corpse that was dragged out of the Avon river. Dragged out with a car for a coffin intact. With a very old license plate.

Even this many years after the earthquake spewed up its bounty the river still holds a few secrets. There are still a few deep pockets left unexplored. New surprises.

But instead, she’s been called back to finish a duty she was told was finished once already.

Introverts are funny to look at. Their faces are blank half the time, one quarter they’re deliberately animated with the expressions they think they should have. And the last quarter is reserved for the expression they can’t keep off them. Expressions like,
I’m seriously pissed off because I’ve better things to do.
There’s no one in this courtroom who doesn’t know what
this
witness is feeling.

The coroner doesn’t bother with the offer that he made to my mother last time. He already knows that she doesn’t want to leave the room. She was the one that put forth this request. Christine prompted her to do so; whether that’s just because it upsets DSS Smith I can’t quite tell, even in my exalted state.

She’s still sworn in from last time so the coroner just starts.‘You talked last time of how the body of Daina Harrow appeared when you first arrived at the scene.’

The witness nods, and then clears her throat. ‘Yes.’

‘You mentioned that there were papers found with the body, and a small vial of liquid.’ He’s looking back through his papers, but I’m not the only one who can tell that’s more to do with avoiding eye contact with the glare coming his way, than to actually reference the information.

‘Yes.’

‘Did you get a good look at the contents of either of these?’

‘No.’

Ouch. It’s like pulling teeth, Without anaesthetic.

The coroner sits back in his chair. ‘Did you see anything of the contents?’

The pathologist relents a little bit. No one’s off the hook, but she wants to get out of here more than she wants to make everybody pay for her inconvenience.

‘I skimmed through a few of the papers. I don’t know anything about the liquid, except it was amber coloured and partially opaque.’

‘If you can remember, what were the papers dealing with?’

‘They were concerned with research into the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes,’ she turned to the courtroom, the lecturer within her awakened, ‘These are the genes that have been identified as having strong ties to familial breast, ovarian, prostrate and lung cancer. If you have a mutation of these genes, then your body doesn’t produce a protein that offers protection against some cancers forming. Because of this you’re far more likely to contract cancer.’

There’s another pause, while the pathologist scans her audience to assess understanding.

‘It’s the reason Angelina Jolie had her breasts removed,’ she tries. There are a few more nods of recognition at that one.

The coroner frowns. ‘These were test results?’

‘No. They were just research papers. I didn’t see very much of them, but they were referencing a study that Dr Atlas had performed last decade. It’s been widely discredited.’

I look carefully at my mother while she’s saying this, but there’s no reaction to see. She’s looking at a pad that Christine has made notes on, but I don’t really understand why she thinks that a summary of schizoaffective disorder is more important than what’s happening up on the stand.

‘Dr Atlas?’

The pathologist actually sighs. Well, if there weren’t know-it-all pedants in the world how would the rest of us cope?

‘He was a research scientist from Tennessee. He specialised in breast cancer. There was a period he worked closely with Marie-Claire King, and he’d continued on with research on how to use the genes they’d found to devise a cure.’

‘For breast cancer?’

She shook her head. ‘For the protein deficiency. Where the BRCA1 and BRCA2 don’t produce the anti-cancer proteins that are usually produced. He claimed to have simulated a protein that acted in the same capacity. It would basically have reduced the risk of cancer in patients with the mutated genes back to normal levels.’

There was a pause in the room, but the pathologist spoke again to break it. ‘It was a load of nonsense of course. They found that out after his death. He’d fabricated the whole thing, the test results, the compounds. It was a smokescreen he was using to generate donations and grant money.’

‘And the papers you saw were referencing this,’ the coroner waved his right hand, trying to find the right word. ‘This research?’

‘Yes. I didn’t get a very good look of course. I didn’t realise it would be important.’

She directed a glare straight at DSS Smith, who just looked away.

‘I’m sorry to press you on this, but in the absence of the actual documents…’

She closed her eyes and sat back in the chair. She didn’t open them as she continued to talk. ‘There were results that
I think
were reproducing the original test scope. Or what the test scope should have been and wasn’t. But I just didn’t look very far through them.’

She opened her eyes again, and shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, but I just can’t tell you any more.’

The coroner nodded. ‘This doctor, you said he’d died?’

‘Yes,’ the pathologist said offhand as she stood from the chair. ‘He died in a plane crash. In New Zealand, oddly enough. The West Coast.’

***

Daina 2004

I ran.

I cut through Nunweek Park and emerged onto the street. I kept running until I was outside the fire station. All of four minutes. I slowed to a walk to try to catch my breath. There were pinpoint flashes of light in my vision. After a few minutes’ walk they began to fade.

I couldn’t see anybody following me. I couldn’t see any suspicious vehicles in the road. But I doubted that Mr Fa’aemoa had either. At least if I pretended that someone was hot on my trail and they weren’t it wouldn’t matter. The other way…

There was a steady stream of traffic as the cars ferrying kids home from school melded into the cars ferrying adults home from work. I walked until I met the corner of Memorial Avenue and Greers Road. If I’d been thinking straight I could’ve walked through to Northlands Mall and been safe in the throng of people.

There was a rattle in the front of my backpack. Where I’d stored the test tube safely away from harm. I pulled it open as I walked along. My actions interrupted by a glance here, a glance there. A movement out of the corner of my eye and I spun, but there was just an elderly gent trying to walk with the aid of a walking stick and a dog. I don’t know which impeded his progress more.

Loose change was tinkling against the glass. I fished it out, some sticking in the corners as though now it had drawn my attention to its existence it was playing hard to get.

There was $1.50 in total. I walked to the closest bus stop and sat down to wait. I could get into the central city, or I could catch the Orbiter and get to Westfield mall in Riccarton. Either way there would be crowds, and crowds should be safety.

‘Child’s fare, thanks,’ I said as I tipped my handful into the change scoop.

The driver looked me up and down. A wave of exhaustion ran up my spine, making my legs feel close to collapse. If he didn’t accept me at a reduced fare, I couldn’t afford to travel at all.

He pursed his lips and shook his head, weighing up my school uniform against my height, but a ticket span out of the machine. I ripped it off and moved down the length of the bus quickly. Before he could reassess.

There was a double seat in the raised area at the back. I nearly fell as the bus took off, the jolt of motion almost overbalancing me. But I fell into a seat instead. I pulled on the headrest in front to support me as I levered into the seat closest to the window. There were two men running. Along the footpath behind me.

My blood ran cold then hot. Hot then cold. They were both wearing suits. One was limping as he ran, favouring his left foot over his right. Like he’d recently been hurt. Like he’d been in an accident.

They did not look like the type of men to run for a bus.

They fell away behind me as the bus ran the length of its route down Memorial Avenue, and then turned off towards Canterbury University. A group of students, fresh from a lecture, spilled into the grounds and began to toss around a Frisbee.

The bus filled up as we grew closer to Riccarton Mall. There were a rag-bag of pupils and students, but mostly workers trying to navigate public transport on their way home or to errands.

I joined the mass exodus when the bus stopped at Riccarton. Moving as quickly as I could, I crossed the road, weaving between stalled traffic, and entered the mall through a café that smelled of coffee and cinnamon.

My mouth watered as my stomach clenched in pain. Not that it mattered, I had no money left.

I sat on a bench in the central mall and watched the crowds of people around me. No one stood out. No one didn’t belong. I started to relax.

And then a hand clamped down hard on my shoulder.

***

Mrs Harrow 2014

It was nearly Rachael’s turn to take the stand. It would be hard, but perhaps not as hard as listening to everyone else had been. Her life had been lonely since Daina had disappeared. For long periods of time Rachael had almost managed to convince herself that maybe she really had run away, run to somewhere good, could almost see her daughter living the great life that she’d built without her.

After the disappearance, Graham had been useless to her. But then he’d always been a bit of cleavage on a bull. When Davy had died, drowned in a puddle while they each thought the other was looking out for him, she’d expected they would lean on each other to get through. It wasn’t even three months past his funeral when Graham decided that grief was best got through by fucking another woman. A woman who didn’t have half the features of his dead child to look away from.

Rachael had always thought of herself as too clever to make the mistakes everyone else made. Genius level IQ, always knowing the answer. It left her unprepared to face the fact that she was as inept at living as everyone she’d poured scorn upon. Hard to use intelligence to combat grief, to combat abandonment.

Daina was always there to be looked after. A younger version of her darling little Davy. Too many questions, too many demands. When Rachael started to drink heavily at least it’d taught her self-reliance.

She shifted on the hard bench. It bit into the backs of her thighs, and caused her lower legs to fall asleep and her upper legs to grumble they were doing all the work.

The plane crash had scared the shit out of her. She’d been full of threats and retaliation on the day, spitting into the face of the man who’d put fear of the loss of a child back in her heart. One child already taken, how dare you? How dare you?

For a while Rachael had been still with indecision; report everything and face danger head on, or just leave it alone and let it fade away. Time was making the decision for her. And then the picture arrived. No stamp, hand delivered.

It was a photo of Daina walking home alone from school. They were only a few blocks from the Primary School, and after Rachael had held her hand to lead her there and back for a week, Daina had been delighted to make her own way instead.

Walking home. Alone.

I can get her. I can still get her.

She made her decision.

***

Coroner’s Court 2014

When my mother takes the stand there’s a lull in the noise levels of the room. Not respect, exactly, but care. Due to her position in relation to me.

There’s little she can add to my final days. Not seeing me for days on end isn’t exactly an informative stance. I stick around for a while, but it’s going nowhere. I wander away.