Treading Air (27 page)

He breaks away and stands beside her on the top step, his hand to his forehead. ‘Where were you the other night? I stayed so long.'

She shakes her head. ‘Joe, he followed me.' She can't speak properly.

They hear him in the hallway, then he emerges with his boots on. ‘C'mon, mate, let's go.' He kisses Lizzie before they leave. His lips are slimed.

As she turns back to the house, she hears Joe ask McWilliams who it is. His answer: ‘Some chow in Hermit Park. Owes Bea from fan-tan.' From her bedroom window, Lizzie watches the two men walk away, McWilliams unsteady. He glances back, his hands to his face. Joe has something in his hand, the jimmy? He swings it as he walks, his strides wide. She can't look at the two of them together for long.

A gecko chitters above her head, shimmies down the wall. She still has mud on her boot where she stood in a puddle at the beach. Bangs it against the floor, unable to stand the sight of it.

She's not sure why, but McWilliams' words to Joe, ‘Some chow in Hermit Park,' niggle at her.

A moth clings to the ceiling. She saw it the night before and wonders if it's dead, its body still clinging to the slats. Wishes she had something to throw at it so she could check. She lies on the bed but her body is thrumming, can't keep still. Pain grabs her between the shoulderblades, pulls.

Something moves across her face. She swipes her hand over it, finds her fingers coated in the dust of the moth, released from the roof and plummeted down. Yellow ooze has burst from the moth and smeared on her palm. She flaps her hands, feeling that gunk on her skin, wanting it off. One-handed, she opens the chest of drawers, gets one of Joe's hankies, scrubs at her hands. The moth's wings are still flapping, but she can't bring herself to squash its head. Bundling it up in the hanky, she feels its fluttering against the cloth. She wonders how it can get any air – the cloth must be porous enough for the breath of moths.

Something clicks in her mind then: Lee. They're going after Lee. She remembers what Joe's said about the man. Traces the arc of the jimmy in his hand as he left the garden. She's sure then. She has to stop him.

The moon is held by a mountain. She comes at Lee's shop from the front. Standing outside, peering through the glass front, she thinks she must have been wrong. The lights are off. She calls Joe's name. No one answers.

She presses her face to the glass. Can't make out the details of the shop, her vision too blurred, everything in shadow. A bicycle leans against the unlocked door. The seat is slick with something. It's not until her face is right up close to it that she realises it's blood. She almost puts her foot on a cigarette holder, a smoked butt inside. Glass under her shoes. The lights are smashed.

She isn't ready for the body, the heavy, lumped shape of it, with its arms uplifted and the trail of blood where it's been dragged. The head so smashed and bloody, she can't make it out. She thinks for a moment it's McWilliams, but the body is too small, the shape's not right. Lee.

His feet point towards the storeroom. His trouser pockets billow at his hips. A belt snakes the ground near him, its money pouch opened and empty.

Her mind stretches out, frenzied, as though a child has flicked a skipping rope to make it ripple, sending waves of pain through her body. She's shivering, clamps down on it, finds that clenching her jaw makes her teeth chatter more. Where're Joe and McWilliams? She bolts, her thoughts speckled. Somewhere on Roberts Street she vomits, then keeps running home.

The night draws together and forms two figures, one pregnant with a load in his arms. Joe and McWilliams materialise, grainy and blurred. She calls out but her voice is empty, travels nowhere. The houses around are silent. She can hear both men breathing. ‘Joe?' She tries again. He looks up at where she's crouched on the top step. ‘I saw the shop. Lee. Oh, Jesus.'

Joe dumps the load he's carrying, and it clatters on the cement pathway. ‘Fuck.'

‘Careful.' McWilliams, sharp and frightened.

‘Have to hide these things.'

McWilliams says, ‘Need a shovel.' Joe moves under the house, leaving the bundle lumped in the middle of the pavement. McWilliams takes the stairs two at a time to Lizzie, his steps wobbly. The weight of his hand on her shoulder, shaking. He smells of booze.

He says, ‘Love, don't cry so loud.' She quietens. Doesn't think she can move.

She hears them beneath the house, shuffling around. Joe comes out with an axe in his hand. Sweat drips down her front. He disappears round the side of the house, McWilliams behind him. Chips into the ground, swears, cuts the words short at their loudness. The blade in the earth again, somewhere else, softer maybe, hollow. They're at it for what seems like hours. She doesn't want to look at the bundle on the pathway, the rags and paper, what's wrapped inside. She presses her hands to her face. Their footsteps on the stairs. The railing shudders. She lifts her head. In the kitchen, the scraping of the iron on the stove, newspaper ruched, the fire lit.

‘Fill this up.' Joe's voice. The bang of the copper kettle against the tank. He comes down the hallway in his socks towards Lizzie, wraps his hands around her shoulders. ‘Hell you doing there at the shop?'

Hard to make the words come. ‘Couldn't find you.'

‘Christ, when will you trust me?'

‘He's dead. His face all smashed in.'

‘You shouldn't have seen that.'

Joe's breathing roughly. Makes her sick. She doesn't want to taste the same air as him. Her own breath rattles shallowly in her throat.

The kettle whistles. Joe turns and runs down the hallway. It cuts out. She follows him to the kitchen. Her legs shake. She has to lean against the doorframe, slides to the ground and tucks her legs up to her. She can't properly make sense of what's going on around her, the movements of the men. Joe tugs the old metal tub off the wall, clangs its bottom against the floor. The hot water tumbles, and the tin expands, popping in the heat. Lizzie tries to rise. Joe says, ‘Just stay sitting, peach, it'll be better.' She falls back as if he pushed her.

The men slop water around. They wash themselves and submerge their boots in the dirty water. Joe comes to her shirtless and lifts her up. He carries her to the bedroom, tumbles her onto the bed. ‘We're leaving, Lizzie. First thing. Just need to get some sleep. Pack up all your stuff.'

‘Joe –'

‘Don't ask me nothin'. I'm not talking about it no more. It's over, that part of our lives. We'll start again, away from this fucking place. You don't need to tell me anything, peach. It's all forgotten.'

‘Don't understand you.'

‘Just be quiet for a bit, let me sleep. Pack anything you want in a bag you can carry by yourself.'

‘I don't want to go.'

He's yelling now. ‘I've been so good to you! Most men'd just fucking kill you. 'Cause I love you, peach. So don't you bloody say you're not leaving with me. Don't say another word.' She scrambles away from him. He flops on the bed, rolls over to his side, tucks his legs up, pillows his head and passes out. She can't stay in the room with him, can't make sense of what he's saying. Outside, the soil is dug up around the dunny as though some animal has been there. She thinks of horror stories about creatures that emerge from the soil at night under the power of voodoo.

Out front, McWilliams sits on the bed, shirtless, his arms tucked around his legs. When she sits beside him, the bedsprings dip wildly. He's too blotto to have had a hand in Lee's death, she's sure of it. The rust of the bed on him, mingling with the odour of drink. She puts her hand against the curve of his back. ‘Hell's going on?' she asks.

McWilliams holds his own hands in a monkey grip. ‘Oh god, I'm sick.'

‘Never mind your bloody head. What happened?' Her voice choked with tears.

‘I was sloshed when I left, more'n I thought. On the road, Joe said Dolly had seen you with a bloke out the back of the house. I thought he was going to kill me then, I really did. But he said he thought it was this chow we were going to see. He was going to mess him up so he couldn't touch you again. I said, “I don't reckon Lizzie'd do that.” But Joe went inside anyway, shouted out to the stupid bugger to give us the cash, then Joe was knocking everything off the shelves – flour everywhere, bottles broken. The Chinaman tried to stop him. Joe hit him with that jimmy. He made a real funny sound when it came down on him. Fucking blood everywhere. Joe with his hand in the till.' McWilliams shivers. He lets out a groan, covers his mouth, kicks his heel against the bedsprings. ‘Fuck, fuck.' The smell of rust rises with his heel.

Lizzie can hear ringing somewhere. She gets up, forgets why and sits back down. McWilliams pulls her into him. His breath on her neck, and his eyelashes. Her neck is wet. He won't stop shivering. Teeth against her skin like those wind-up toys that clatter along the floorboards. ‘I'm sorry, Betty,' and she wonders why he uses her night-time name when the sun is already rising.

They close the verandah shutters against the dawn and lock the front door. Lizzie makes up the bed.

‘Make it look like we've run already,' McWilliams tells her. ‘And we will, after I get some sleep. Can't think straight right now, can't stand, too blotto. You'll come with me, not Joe. I'll take us away.'

She lies with him, her body around his back, her hand on his chest, her ear against his spine. This is the first time she's slept with anyone other than Joe for the night.

She wakes up to thumping. She shudders, electricity passing through her. She opens the shutters, sees three men, one in a copper's uniform, arrow insignia on the forearms, and the other a black man, probably a tracker. O'Sullivan with them. She runs to McWilliams, shakes him. He opens one pink eye.

‘Get up, get up.' She chucks the first shoes she can put her hand to at him – Joe's boots. Puts her eye to the window again, sees the copper haul himself up on the house stump and peer into the kitchen. He calls down to O'Sullivan, who points two fingers at the door. She doesn't know what else to do, dives back into bed with McWilliams, lies still. Maybe they'll go away if no one answers.

The front door splinters, and the men are in the house, on the verandah. O'Sullivan rips their sheet off, a magician revealing a trick. ‘Why didn't you answer when we knocked?'

Lizzie wriggles to the bedhead, sits on the pillow.

‘Didn't bloody well hear you,' says McWilliams, sitting up. He's wearing his tweed trousers, pulled them on so they could cuddle together in the night without sweating over each other's knees.

‘I saw someone put their head up, pull the blankets over.'

‘What do you bloody well want, anyway?' McWilliams stands, holds himself away from the coppers.

O'Sullivan says, ‘I want to question you about the dead Chinaman at the grocery opposite the Rising Sun Hotel. Was told that you and O'Dea have been over that way. So you should know that anything you say might be given in evidence against you later on. Where's O'Dea?'

McWilliams shrugs. The other copper leaves to look around the house. He calls out in their bedroom, ‘Got him.'

Lizzie scrambles out of bed when the cop brings Joe in, her back against the wall. He doesn't look at her.

‘Where were you both last night?' O'Sullivan asks the men. He has the manner of a man who's stood in dog shit; he can't believe he's the one who has to deal with this.

McWilliams says, ‘O'Dea and I walked home last night together. I don't know what time. Too drunk.'

‘Did anyone see you?'

‘No.'

‘Why'd you walk?'

‘Don't take the bus when I'm drunk. Everyone looks at me leg. I got paid on Wednesday. Been drinking since then. Can't remember nothing.'

‘Put a shirt on.'

McWilliams grabs his shirt from the floor, pulls it over his head, and O'Sullivan grabs the hem, holding it out for the copper and the tracker to inspect. They all agree that the stains on its tails are blood. ‘Charlie,' O'Sullivan says to the tracker, ‘go have a look around.' The man leaves.

‘That's not blood,' Lizzie says.

O'Sullivan looks at her for the first time. ‘What is it then, Mrs O'Dea? Seems like blood to me.'

‘Not a man's blood. From the meatworks.'

‘Really?' O'Sullivan asks, then says to McWilliams, ‘Put on your coat.'

His gabardine coat hangs on the end of the bed. He hooks his finger under the collar, draws it to him, shrugs his shoulders into it, the check lining visible at the armpits. O'Sullivan takes his hands, turns up the sleeves. He finds a dark stain and shoves McWilliams' hand towards Lizzie, to the other cops, to Joe, standing there in his creased shirt. ‘And this? What's this?'

‘Everything's bloodstains with you,' Lizzie says.

‘Doesn't look like a jacket you'd wear to work. The squirts of blood on here, they look like the blood I seen at the Chinaman's shop. How come you got your cheese talking for you, McWilliams?'

Joe brings his head up at this, seems about to say something. Lizzie stares, but he still won't look at her.

O'Sullivan takes McWilliams' felt hat from the bedside table. ‘Here's something else. Complete your outfit, McWilliams. But look at this.' He displays the hat to Lizzie like he's a shop woman showing her the latest fashions. ‘Blood?'

‘You're bloody well silly with your blood.'

O'Sullivan holds the hat out to McWilliams. ‘This yours? You speak, not her.'

‘Looks like it.'

O'Sullivan picks up the boots at McWilliams' feet. ‘Whose are these?'

‘O'Dea's.'

‘Why are you putting on O'Dea's shoes?'

McWilliams shrugs. ‘First up, first dressed.'

‘S'pose you got these stains from the works too?'