The Astrologer's Daughter (12 page)

Fucking psychos. Something like this draws them all out, like writhing worms disgorged
from the earth after a rain.

On my bed, I construct an unsteady fort out of piles of Mum’s threadbare almanacs
and sit in the middle of it, pulling Don Sturt’s list of four names, birthdates and
birthplaces towards me.

For a long time, I just eat and stare, afraid to begin. Mostly I think I am afraid
that, despite my best efforts, I might be
becoming
her. Finally, setting aside the
bowl, on a blank page of a jotter pad I write:

Mallory Fielder Bloch, Shanghai, China.
9 September 1946. 9.47pm.

On the next I write:

Geoffrey Andrew Kidston, Melbourne, Australia.
17 July 1965. 7.21pm.

Then I headline the following two pages with:

Lewis Griffinn Boardman, Sydney, Australia.
5 December 1957. 7.21pm.

Christopher John Ferwerder, Edinburgh, Scotland. 29 May 1927. 5.06am.

And I begin to chart, bearing in mind the specific question received and understood
by me at precisely 5.56pm today:

Did you, on 9 July 1984, between the hours of 9.30pm and 11.59pm, rape and murder
Fleur Lucille Bawden?

Hours later, my mobile gives off a muffled
ping
and I look up to see it is 4.13 in
the morning. Out of instinct, I check to see whether anyone’s played me a word. Vicki’s
still stuck on
sluts
, because I never played anything back. She hates waiting and
is going to be supremely pissed, but I have no appropriate comeback handy at this
juncture. I’m so tired that I am devoid of meaningful language, only symbol.

I see that
Changeling_ 29
has intersected the
t
of his last word,
qat
, with a new
word:
death
. I tell myself sternly that it is
not
a sign; that it means nothing and
is merely the coming together of a randomly thrown-up, system-generated conglomeration
of letters.

I look at the last game, the game with Mum. It takes
me a whole, consciousness-altering
second to work out that it’s my turn.
My
turn.

Appalled, barely able to locate the word on the teeming electronic gameboard, I see
there really
is
a new word waiting for me. I’m not deceiving myself. Mere wishing
has not made it so.

There’s no accompanying message, nothing to say if it’s really from her. Just the
word. It was played on Saturday, at 12.24 in the morning. With a pang, tears streaming
down my face, I see that the word is:
always
.

13

I call Wurbik before it’s decently light, trying to tell him about the word—
My God,
she played me a word!
But he tells me to
hold that thought
, saying he’ll meet me
outside Collegiate High at home time with updates. ‘Because you’re going to school
today,’ he says. ‘You don’t put your education on hold for anything.’

‘Even homicide?’ I query, fear and curiosity piqued. ‘Does it mean she’s still alive
if she’s playing words?’

‘
Go to school
,’ Wurbik insists. ‘If I had a kid I would be telling her the same thing.’

Before I can say anything else, he hangs up.

Next I make a call to Don Sturt’s mobile and go straight to his message bank, which
is only mildly annoying because
there’s something about the man that gives me the
willies. The way he can’t look me in the eye.

I had spent hours on the charts before I’d noticed the anomaly—my heart sinking because
the first two were almost done. ‘Are you absolutely sure,’ I say now, slowly and
loudly into the dead air of Don’s voicemail, ‘that the two Australian-born suspects
were born at exactly the same time? There are
a lot
of minutes in a day. I mean,
it seems a bit weird, but not entirely out of the question. Call me back, okay?’

In my ear, as I’m pulling on my clothes in the bathroom, I hear Mum murmur:
Every
minute counts, Avi
. And I feel a spurt of acid in my heart that she could honestly
believe that all that separates the psychopaths from the rest of us are mere minutes,
mere revolutions. But here I am, doing it, following in her footsteps: giving comfort
to the desperate and gullible and deranged.

The morning is icy, but sunny. Unwilling to face another packed tram of bald-faced,
staring people, I pull my beanie down low over my ears and unbound hair, beginning
the long uphill walk to school against a slicing wind.

On autopilot, I almost trudge past Little La Trobe Street. But somehow I find myself
turning in, already looking out for numbers.

Specifically, 232A. A part of me is actually expecting to see a giant wooden boat
marooned somewhere in the
middle of the street by the right hand of God, but of course
there isn’t one. Instead I come across a dim, Victorian-era shopfront.

On the windows, outlined in faded gilt, I read:

Behind the grubby glass, there are mysterious-looking brass scientific instruments
on display; a full-sized human skeleton on a stand wearing a feathered, tricorn hat;
stuffed birds and animals under bell jars; shells; corals; weirdly shaped pieces
of tusk and horn; lumps of rock; found objects; liver-spotted nature lithographs
in dusty, unmatched frames.

I wrinkle my nose, thinking,
Ugly junk
, unable to imagine what more Mum could possibly
have wanted to add to our already festering collection. The place looks neglected,
but eccentric. Expensive, too.

But then I remember the $40,000 sitting in our bank account and crowd closer to the
window. There’s a crooked
Closed
sign hanging in the top glass pane of the locked
front door. I’m about to turn away when I see a flash of movement behind the dirty
glass.

The shop is unlit. But I get an impression of long silver hair trailing down over
a black-clad shoulder; a high forehead and stern, straight nose. Someone is leaning
over the countertop at the far end of the shop, studying something on the white blotter
pad before him. Most of his face is hidden, just the palely gleaming crown of his
head, but it’s a man, I’m sure of it: tall and broad-shouldered, almost blending
in with the overflowing case of antiquarian books behind him.

It is hours before the official opening time. But he’s here, and I’m here, so I tap
on the door, peering around the sign, but the man doesn’t look up from what he’s
doing. I tap some more, sure he can hear me, sure that he’s just being phenomenally
rude, but he still doesn’t look up. His gaze is intent. As if he’s memorising something
out of the thing that’s open before him.

Pressing my nose right up to the glass I see that it’s a thick book, bound in black,
as black as his clothes. The man’s long-fingered hands are marble-white against the
covers. He looks up, suddenly, straightening behind the counter, still holding the
book open, a frown pleating his brow. And I see that his eyes are sharp on me, as
blue as the daytime sky. Despite the fall of silver hair over the man’s shoulders,
his face is young, sharply planed. It’s possibly the most arresting face I have ever
seen.

I look above the lintel at the name edged in faded gold,
surprised that someone as
ordinary-sounding as
R. Preston, prop.
could have a face like that.

He’s a giant of a man, I’m guessing even taller than Simon. As we stare at each other
across the crowded, dusty expanse of the shop, I see a look of recognition, or maybe
consternation, cross the man’s face.

His gaze on me never wavers as I now pound on the door in earnest. He doesn’t look
away or make a move forward. He just continues to hold the large, open book in his
hands, weighing me up steadily through the dirty glass as if I’m a particularly noisome
bug.

‘Please!’ I yell, pushing on the fixed handle of the front door, which I see with
a jolt of revulsion is shaped like a long human femur, cast into unyielding bronze.
‘What do you know?’ I cry, shouldering the door. ‘What do you know about my mother?
Please!
’

I’m sure he can hear me, because the man shakes his head sharply, closing then placing
his book down on the countertop. With a suddenness that shocks me, he turns and vanishes
through a door set into a gap in the back wall that I hadn’t known was there.

He doesn’t return, though I wait and wait until I’m sure I’ll miss the first bell
at school, even if I sprint the whole way to get there.

‘Everyone’s talking about it,’ Vicki confides from the corner of her mouth with relish.
‘They’re just too afraid to bring it up. Honestly, it’s like you’ve got actual leprosy.’

All morning, the personal forcefield we Crowes carry around with us has been up,
sizzling away; Vicki the only person proof to it. Even the school principal and the
school counsellor couldn’t get at me with their long, sad faces and offers of help
because, as Wurbik himself had said resignedly: ‘You can’t
make
a person do something
they don’t wanna do, right?’

I’m aware of the
awareness
about me. Everywhere I go, spaces open up; people draw
together in groups of two and three, the air filling with sibilant waves of:
That’s
her, there she is, she’s the one
.

I overhear Glenn Tippett confidently telling Miranda Cornish as I pass right by that:
She sure got hit with the ugly stick, hey?
I turn on him immediately and he actually
shrinks back—all pimply, flaky-skinned, sandy-hued, six feet of him—even though he
meant for me to hear.

‘Hey, double consonant,’ I snarl. ‘Glen with two
n
s. Where’s Simo? You know,
Lucky-as
.
Where
is
he? Seen him?’ I don’t know why I’m asking, but I am. And from Vicki’s startled
body language, I can see she isn’t sure why, either.

Glenn, recovering himself and standing up straighter, shakes his head, tight-lipped.
I turn on Miranda with
her size-six ballerina’s body, doe eyes and long caramel hair.
‘
You
know?’ Miranda looks at me with something approaching hatred and pulls Glenn
away by the sleeve.

Vicki murmurs, ‘And she scores, with another delicious instance of foot-in-mouth.
Rumour has it that Simon Thorn dropped the divine Miss M last week because she couldn’t
spell
, can you believe it? I give them three weeks, max. Glenn always takes Simon’s
slops, and it
always
ends badly. The parties concerned should all know better.’

Vicki takes me by the arm and steers me in the direction of Maths Methods, through
a sea of rounded eyes and mouths. ‘If Thorny stays away long enough, will you split
the Tichborne with me?’ she says, laughing.

But I think of cups of just-add-water instant noodles, towels gone grey and frayed
from the repeat ministrations of coin-operated tumble dryers, and I don’t reply.

After school, plenty of people see me getting into the bright blue unmarked police
car (that screams
police car
) with the grim-faced, grey-haired man at the wheel.
They point and stare. A few hold up their mobiles and take pictures. Mum has been
everywhere. Every news concession stand I pass, every newsbreak, features that heartbreaking
photo of my big-eyed, grinning mother in
which my tanned right arm makes a cameo.

‘Let’s give them something to go with, hey?’ Wurbik says under his breath as he fires
up the red-and-blue flashers on the dashboard and the siren, giving it a few more
loud
whoops
until we reach Royal Parade and turn right into city-bound traffic, before
switching it off. ‘People can be
shits
,’ he says into the sudden impression of silence.
‘Just hold your head up, the way you’re doing. She would be proud.’

My skin prickles because he’s using the past tense again, but maybe I’m just being
too goddamned sensitive. ‘So, “updates”?’ I say, trying to sound upbeat, chatty.

‘First things first,’ Wurbik says, letting the siren have its head again until we
cut up through Elizabeth Street into La Trobe. ‘Need you to make sense of something
for me.’

I recall
R. Preston, prop
. ‘Did you speak with him?’ I say eagerly as Wurbik
turns into Little La Trobe Street: a stub-end more than a thoroughfare, really, of
crouching, mismatched buildings.

Wurbik nods, braking. ‘A very helpful man. He’s agreed to stay open just to speak
with you.’

I frown in the act of getting out of the car. ‘But he wouldn’t even let me in this
morning!’ I grumble. ‘And we were both right here. I was throwing myself at the door
like a lemming. Could have saved himself the trouble.’

Wurbik shrugs as he points his key at the car. There’s
a
deet
,
deet
and blink of
headlights. ‘Mr Preston has been very sick, still is. Doing us a favour, from what
I can see.’

The
Closed
sign is still up on the door, but Wurbik curls his fingers confidently
around the femur-shaped door handle and gives it a push. The lights are on this time:
three dim pendant lights—beautiful, antique Moroccan lamps in shades of rose and
emerald green and old gold—and I look for the tall man with the long, silver hair
and blue, blue eyes. But I’m confused when a small, elderly man in a white shirt
and gold-framed glasses greets me from the back of the shop with a raised hand.

I stop dead before I’ve even taken three more steps. There’s a Mariner’s Compass
set into the centre of the marble floor, in veined shades of variegated blues and
reds, outlined in thin bands of gold. Its outlines are interrupted by stacks of old
newspapers and protruding bookcases set at weird angles, but for a moment I feel
like the ground’s pulling away from me.