A shout. She’d been spotted.
Grace darted behind the trampoline. It was rectangular, black mesh mounted to thick galvanised legs and frame. In daytime it would offer no concealment at all. Grace was relying on the confounding shadows it would throw if a torch swept over it at night.
As she crouched there, a farmhouse porch light came on, the front door opened and a man and a woman stepped out. They wore pyjamas and the man, clutching at his drooping waistband, said, ‘What’s going on?’
‘And you are?’ said one of the cops, a heavy man, bristling with belligerence.
‘We live here. What’s going on? Who are you?’
‘My name is Constable Tankard and I’d like you to step back inside please,’ the cop said.
‘But what’s going on?’
‘An intruder. Have you seen anyone running past here anytime in the last few minutes?’
‘We’ve been asleep.’
‘Please, both of you, go back inside. This person could be dangerous.’
‘Dangerous?’
‘Please, go inside, lock all your doors and windows.’
‘But what if he’s in there?’
Grace heard rather than sensed the frustration, and watched the man named Tankard approach the house. He banged heavily past the occupants, into the house. Then he came out again. ‘All clear.’
‘You sure?’ said the husband.
Tankard ignored the couple. He began to shout and eventually some order settled on the milling uniforms. Grace heard them call reassurances to each other as they began to split up. She started to back away.
An elderly woman came wheezing in from the road by torchlight. A constable who’d been left with the cars shouted, ‘Police. Stop right there.’
The old woman jumped. Her torch jerked, the light finding the trampoline. Grace ran.
‘Oi!’
Grace zigzagged, darting feints left and right, into the lee of a pump shed, then a garden shed, a fowl house, a farm ute, a thicket of oleander bushes. She reached the fruit trees and then the dam as the police converged on the officer who had spotted her. Still carrying her bag of spare clothing, she slipped into the water and submerged herself among the reeds at the water’s edge. She waited.
Before long, her teeth rattled, her limbs shook, iciness reaching deep into her core. She felt for the pocketknife and clamped the plastic handle between her jaws and continued to shake. The police were shouting, five men and one woman. They were excited, jumpy. One remained standing near the trampoline, the others split up to circle the dam. Grace peeked: they were keeping hard to the edge, shining their torches into the tangled reeds. Scooping mud from beneath her, she pasted it over the paleness of her face and hands. Now she was a black shape among a mess of shapes-indistinguishable, surely.
It was Grace’s experience that humans possess a kind of sixth sense, a residue of instinct for one another’s proximity, and so she averted her gaze and emptied herself of thoughts, or personality. She was nothing, a featureless blob of matter. She didn’t gasp or move when a heavy black shoe stood on her leg, squelching it deeper into the muddy reed bed. The torchlight fingered the reeds and then the pressure let up and the man moved a short distance away, to step into the mud again and poke around with his torchlight.
‘Waste of time,’ said the woman cop some time later.
‘Yeah.’
Grace stayed where she was through the long hours. It was possible that the police had packed it in and gone home, equally possible that they’d left a couple of officers to watch for her.
At dawn on Thursday there was stirring in the farmhouse. A woman’s voice called, ‘You two must be miserable, how about a cooked breakfast?’
‘Coffee would be good,’ the man named Tankard said.
‘Yeah, coffee.’
‘Don’t be silly, you need more than that,’ the woman said.
‘Catch the guy?’ her husband asked.
‘He’s long gone,’ Tankard said, disgust and resignation in his voice.
Grace waited. The woman brought coffee, toast, eggs and bacon to the sentry cops, and now the air was filled with cheery commiserations and bragging. Grace slithered out of the dam. She crawled on her belly and through a fence into a paddock of unmown spring grass. Still she crawled. Later, the vines. Here she got to her feet. She ran.
The running warmed and loosened her, even as the water sloshed in her shoes and the wet clothing chafed her skin. After three kilometres she came to the township, and, crouching behind a line of bushes, watched her car for several minutes. Nothing, and no action at the house, only a kind of poleaxed stillness that said no one would rise before noon.
Checking that she was unobserved, Grace stripped off her wet clothes. She used the shirt and knickers to wipe off the bulk of the mud, then washed the rest away with her drinking water. Then she dressed in the clothes from the waterproof bag-underwear, a white satin blouse, tailored black pants and strappy sandals, finally finger combing her short hair. There was still mud in the roots of her hair, her fingernails, even her ears, but at a distance she’d pass for a brisk young woman off to her office job. She got into the Camry and drove away.
Thursday was rubbish collection day in Waterloo, bins waiting outside every front gate. Grace dumped the soiled clothes into a side street bin. Then she drove to the motel in Berwick, checked out, checked into another in Dandenong. Here she showered and slept fitfully, still shivering a little, a residual chill from the muddy water in which she’d spent the night.
Late afternoon she bought a small digital camera powered by AAA batteries and replaced its memory card with the one she’d pocketed after the break-in at the Niekirks’. She scrolled through her photographs. They were sharp and clear.
She collapsed on the thin bed cover and stared at the marks on the ceiling. The icon was a part of her heart and her bones, and now she was falling in love with the Klee. Otherwise she’d walk away this minute, leave them both to rot in the culvert.
Unless there was a flash flood, they’d be safe until the morning.
38
In Waterloo, Challis was pouring coffee and thinking about his date with Ellen on Skype last night. He’d logged on and there was her left breast watching him. The left, not the right. To his mind, both were perfect, but she considered the left better than the right. Then she’d had a fit of the giggles and covered up and they’d tried to talk sensibly. Sensibly with desire palpable in the air. He grinned and thought he’d better get working.
First the overnight log.
The usual bar fights, car thefts and break-ins-but one of the latter, on Goddard Road, Constable John Tankard attending, had occurred at the home of Mara and Warren Niekirk. According to Tankard: Intruder spotted leaving the house carrying a bag.
Given that he’d met Mara Niekirk, Challis was mildly curious. There was no answer when he called their home and business numbers. Meanwhile, Tank would be off-duty and asleep, so he called the witness who had reported the intruder.
Audrey Tremaine’s voice was elderly, but clear and forceful. ‘Young, old, man, woman-it was too dark, Inspector.’
‘I’m surprised that Mr and Mrs Niekirk didn’t report it.’
‘Been in Sydney all week. I called them last night and they said they’d catch the first flight back this morning.’
Challis rang off, ordered a crime-scene van to attend, then went looking for Pam Murphy. ‘Feel like checking out a break-in?’
‘I don’t know-after a serial rapist the excitement might be too much for me.’