White Throat Page 9

  He said it with a snarl and Clem’s suspicion grew. It was a long shot, little more than a possibility. But it got a head of steam up and ran away like a freight train in her head: had the Hyphen offered Helen a bribe? Which she had then refused? This man with a reputation for corruption and a truck-sized drive to win, a big-punter high-stakes edge-of-the-envelope risk-taker? Had Helen refused to play ball? Had she threatened to expose him and his crude offer?

  ‘Yeah, only met her once but she struck me as a bit of a wowser,’ said Clem, chumming it up.

  ‘So, you got anything riding on the game?’ he asked.

  He saw her as a player. Good.

  ‘Shit yeah,’ she lied. ‘Not in the same league as you, but I’ve got fifty bucks on the win and twenty for Starc as man of the match.’

  ‘Nice odds for Starc?’

  ‘Yeah. Ten to one. Mortgage could do with a boost,’ she grinned. Yes, Scottie, I’m poor.

  He looked at her carefully. ‘Like the horseys?’

  ‘Used to. Had a system on short-priced favourites for a place. Didn’t do too bad, built up a kitty over a few years. It’s a numbers game, though…I wouldn’t know a pony from a platypus.’ Her father had bet in accordance with a strict set of rules every weekend, until her mum had put a stop to it and made him cash out. Clem knew the details; she could recite how it worked if she had to, make up a story to go with it.

  ‘Ha! A system. That’s nice. Wanna share?’

  She recounted the rules, described the slow grind of big punts for small gains. ‘Took me three years to make two cents,’ she laughed.

  ‘Gave it away, though?’ He was testing her, she could feel it, checking to see if she could be trusted. Not that there was anything at stake—there were no witnesses here.

  ‘Yeah, had to—lost my kitty, all of it, in a moment of stupidity. Got drunk one night at the casino and put it all on red. Took me years to get to that point, years, and I lost the heart for it after that. Bloody hell, I could use that dough now, though,’ she said shaking her head ruefully. Hint number two, Scottie-boy.

  ‘So whaddya do for a crust?’

  ‘This is it,’ she said, palms up, holding air for a moment, down again on the table. ‘The turtles.’

  ‘Geez, that wouldn’t pay much.’

  Come clean, Clementine—he’ll look you up as soon as you leave here; let him in, let him in. She exhaled a long breath through pursed lips, clenched her teeth tight—the whole performance for this guy…Only it wasn’t a performance, and the idea of talking about it here, to this man—it made her feel nauseous.

  ‘Well, I used to be a lawyer but there was another drunken misadventure.’ She lowered her eyes, then lifted them back to his face—he was intrigued, intent. ‘Killed a woman on the road. Nobody’s all that interested in taking me on anymore.’ She gave a sour grin. ‘Bit of a stench about me.’

  ‘Shiiiit. Criminal lawyer?’

  ‘No, commercial—business clients, contracts, whatever.’ She avoided the word ‘corporate’, it made her sound too sharp.

  The Hyphen drummed his fingers on the table in an even gallop. They were big, fat and, like his feet, out of proportion for a man who wasn’t that overweight.

  ‘You seem to know about cricket. Fuck the law, you could bloody get on the fucken commentary team for Channel 9. They’re looking for females these days,’ then he laughed, like it was the greatest joke—that a woman might be paid to speak about sport.

  Clem laughed along, tedious as it was. He’d really cracked himself up with his own wit.

  ‘Listen, Jones…’

  ‘Call me Clementine.’

  ‘Clementine then,’ he said, nodding. ‘I like you. You’re a good sort.’

  ‘Thanks Scott.’ First-name basis now, and suck, suck, sucking for all she was worth—the only way to go with an ego this size.

  ‘So, what say we cut the crap?’

  ‘I should talk to you about the turtles, though,’ she said weakly, trying not to give up too easily but so, so hot for cutting the crap.

  ‘Yeah, yeah. I know all about the bloody turtle with an arsehole for a mouth—I’ve done my homework,’ he said, waving a hand dismissively. ‘But why so serious? More to life, yeah?’ He leaned in closer, staring intensely at Clementine, weighing up the odds, deciding, about to make his move. ‘I’ve got this gelding, see—Meat the Magic. He’s doing well. How about I cut you a share?’

  She smiled tentatively, attempting something cautiously gleeful. ‘Did you just offer me a share in your racehorse?’

  ‘Well, a share in some of his winnings—and you’re in luck, he just happened to score last weekend—I can cut you in. Might help you get through until you can get back into some money.’

  ‘But…’ she shook her head, a look of awe and appreciation towards the great man. ‘I don’t understand…that’s just… ridiculously generous.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Cos you can scratch my back too, if you get my drift.’

  Clem nodded, every muscle of her body signifying to the Hyphen that she understood the game, the way the ball swung in the air, seamed off the pitch, spun past the bat…smacked into the keeper’s gloves. ‘Right. So you want the road humps smoothed? For the mine, the port and all the rest of it?’

  He nodded.

  ‘You want the turtle stuff to go quiet?

  He kept nodding.

  She leaned back in the chair. ‘This is sounding too easy. What’s the catch?’

  ‘No catch.’

  ‘So why the hell didn’t Helen go for this?’ she said, looking bewildered but feeling sick—she didn’t want to sound like she was fishing, but she had to know more. ‘What the fuck was wrong with her?’

  ‘Like I said, fucked if I know. Silly bitch wouldn’t know her arse from her elbow.’ Clem felt a flush of heat rising in her cheeks. ‘But you know, it’s like so many people,’ he said, his face sliding into philosopher mode. ‘Virtuous people, self-righteous, stuck-up people: so far from the action they’re not even in the game, right?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Just…irrelevant. Like a moth in the headlights—next thing they know they’re up against the windscreen with their arse through their brain.’

  The image was shocking, breathtakingly shocking. Had he been there when Helen died? Watched the killer do the deed? Done it himself? Was he getting a sick thrill out of playing around with the visual?

  She forced the image of Helen at the base of the quarry out of her mind, swallowed hard—finish this Jones, and get the hell out of here. ‘So, maybe we run out of money to pay the lawyers, drop the legal proceedings…sneak in some doubt about the science, leak it to the media? For authenticity, nothing too high profile,’ she offered. He was slow-nodding, a smile growing wider. ‘A gaffe to a journo to make us look silly…that sort of thing?’

  He sniggered. ‘Now that’—he waved a finger at her, grinning—‘that would be a fucking man of the match performance.’

  The four-wheel drive was facing towards the street, already hooked up to the boat trailer. In the dash to hide underneath it on Friday night, she’d lost her house keys. She scanned the concrete driveway, the grass alongside. Nothing.

  Shit. He must have found them.

  Ralph appeared at the front door in navy Stubbies and a white terry-towelling bucket hat. He swayed down the stairs with his stiff, heavy gait. Arthritic knees or hips or something, big brown sandals with slabs of rubber underneath. He reminded Clem of her grandfather, although Ralph was a much bigger man. Big enough even in his seventies to overpower a sixty-year-old woman, she thought.

  ‘Good day for it,’ she said from the front yard.

  ‘Yes, she’s turned out quite nice and the moon’s right too. Fish’ll be biting like puppies on a shoe I’d reckon.’

  The moon. Was this an oblique reference to Friday night?

  ‘You didn’t happen to find a set of house keys did you? I’ve lost mine. Thought I mig
ht have left them here when we met the other day.’

  ‘Nah, didn’t notice any,’ he said, pulling up in the exact place he’d relieved himself the other night, looking concerned. ‘Let’s have a look.’

  He bent down, leaning on the trailer, scouring under the boat, making quite a show of it.

  ‘Ah well, looks like I’ve left them somewhere else,’ she said.

  ‘Bloody nuisance, losing your keys,’ he said.

  An hour later and they were bobbing about on a turquoise stripe in the Great Sandy Straits. With the gentle breeze the sea tilted and peaked, making a playful chinking noise against the sides of Ralph’s tinny.

  ‘Now,’ said Ralph, ‘when you feel a nibble, like a pecking action’—he demonstrated with his hands—‘could be a nice whiting or bream or flathead or something, then you straight away give it a hoik.’ Ralph jagged his fishing rod up aggressively. ‘And don’t let any slack on your line, just start winding before you drop that rod tip. If ya give the fish any slack that’s their chance to throw the hook.’

  Clementine nodded, practising the jab action.

  Ralph caught three fish before Clem finally managed to hook one. She’d had several bites with nothing to show for it but this time, as she jerked the rod in the air, she felt with a sudden thrill the added weight, the full-bodied tug on the line.

  ‘Yep. That’s it, you got him, wind it in,’ Ralph cried.

  Reeling in fast, feeling the unmistakeable flap and urgency of the fish battling in the depths below.

  ‘Ease up!’ said Ralph. ‘You’ll rip the bloody hook out of its mouth.’

  The first sight of it in the deep: a flash of white, darting and jerking against the line, then the frantic flip of its tail splashing against the surface.

  She swung up, the rod flexing, the fish swinging through the air in an arc, arriving with a plonk in the bottom of the boat, writhing and jumping at her feet, glimmering pink on silver, flanks glistening in the sunlight.

  ‘Nice little bream,’ said Ralph, reaching for the line and manoeuvring the fish into the bucket.

  With a rush of hope she asked, ‘Is it big enough to keep?’

  ‘Oh yes, he’s well over thirty centimetres, see,’ he said, holding a ruler close to the fish. Its little mouth was grabbing at the air, gills desperately cracking open and shut, eyes wide with shock. She felt a pang of regret—that this plucky little creature’s struggle to live would end now—but alongside it, the thrill of the catch, something primitive and satisfying, a feeling of connection with the natural world and the cycle of life—a long way from the chilled aisles of a supermarket.

  They fished for an hour and she pulled in another one: a whiting this time, without the fight of the bream but slender and elegant, yellow strips highlighting its tubular shape. And they spoke a little, every now and then, Ralph mostly about Selma and how much she used to love fishing.

  ‘But doesn’t she love eatin’ them though, a nice whiting fried in butter!’ He smacked his lips and grinned, a sparkle in his eyes that Clem imagined had been more frequent when he was a younger man.

  ‘Nothing better,’ said Clem, trying to sound like she knew all about it. ‘Don’t know how anyone could be a vegan. Seems to be all the rage, though.’ Hanging out the bait, hoping to bring the conversation around to Helen.

  ‘Hmph, bloody vegans. Them and the safety freaks, ruining the country. Kid can’t even climb a tree these days without a rubber carpet underneath. In my day…’ Ralph launched forth on riding free in the backs of utes, billy carts hurtling down hilly streets, his brother breaking his wrist after colliding with a parked tree. ‘Never done ’im any harm. Soft, kids of today, soft.’

  By the time they headed back, she’d gained very little by way of information pertinent to Helen’s death but had made great strides in building a relationship with Ralph.

  Standing there with the water rippling around her ankles as he winched the dinghy up onto the trailer, she watched another boat about fifty metres away, two men aboard. It stopped at a white buoy and the man in the bow began hauling on a green rope, pulling up a rusty brown cage from the shallow waters. A crab pot, she guessed.

  ‘Ever do any crabbing, Ralph?’ She’d love a mud crab; maybe Ralph would sling one her way now they’d become mates. It might pay off somehow in other ways, too, she thought.

  That was partly why she was so shocked by the story he told next. The implied violence of it.

  ‘Oh yeah. Mad not to here. Got some decent bait now, too, with these fish heads,’ he nodded in the direction of the bucket. ‘Mind you, I did hear a story once about crab bait.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  He continued strapping down the boat on the trailer, speaking from underneath his terry-towelling hat.

  ‘Well, there was a fella, Crabpot Kiernan they called him, old bloke lived up north somewhere in a little shed. I believe it was somewhere near Topper’s Inlet but no one ever really knew exactly where—old Crabpot kept the location pretty tight. Had solar panels up there, a generator, chest freezer and not much else, so they reckon.’

  Ralph stood with one elbow on the side of the dinghy now, looking dreamily out onto the water.

  ‘Not surprising really. He had a few skeletons best kept in the closet, so to speak. Been inside for a bit from what I heard.’ He nodded for emphasis. ‘Well, he was a magician with crabs, see. Used to sell ’em to the locals. Turn up with half a dozen. Get twenty bucks each for ’em.’

  Clementine was wondering where the story was going when Ralph swivelled his eyes towards her. She noticed the red veins and the way they protruded—a little like a lizard. He had both elbows on the gunwale now, leaning forward and locking onto her.

  ‘He used what he had in the freezer, eh.’

  ‘For bait?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What, mullet or something?’

  ‘Nah,’ said Ralph, evidently enjoying himself now, ‘human flesh.’

  Like a punch to the diaphragm, she felt the air going out and nothing coming back in.

  He grinned an ugly smirk and cackled, watching her, wanting to see her revulsion, feeding on it.

  ‘Yeah, good one,’ she managed, half-heartedly.

  ‘Nah. Fair dinkum,’ he said, holding her gaze for an uncomfortable moment.

  Suddenly the afternoon sun was burning her face, heat coming up from the boat ramp into her rubber thongs. It was a deliberate scare campaign. He’d planned on telling the story all along, the bastard.

  They drove back to his place in silence and she helped him hose the boat down, thanking him for her first fishing experience. Ralph was unnaturally chirpy, having had his little victory.

  As she walked towards her car, Ralph followed. She was opening the driver’s door to get into the cab when he gripped the edge in his big, meaty hand and leaned into the shaded interior, pulling something from the pocket of his faded Stubbies.

  Keys. Her keys.

  He held them up between thumb and forefinger, dangling in front of her face.

  ‘Don’t forget these, Ms Jones.’

  A big lump of anger formed like a fur ball in her throat. She reached up to take the keys and the moment her fingers clasped around them, he swung his other hand up, grabbing hers, pulling her close. Strong. Definitely strong enough to shove a woman over a cliff.

  Centimetres from her face, eyes flashing, he growled, ‘Don’t ever come creeping around my yard again, girl. Don’t even think about it. Or mark my words, I’ll do more than just piss on ya.’

  CHAPTER 8

  Clem threw off the sheet, lay there naked on the rickety old bed under the rusted ceiling fan churning and clunking above. The sun had only been up an hour and the sweat was already forming a film across her forehead. Her eyes were drawn to the gap in the grimy curtains. A hook had come off one end and the folds hung down forlornly, letting a shaft of light fall over the old dresser in the corner. So many questions still, not enough light.

  Ralph’s vindictiveness had
infected her mind and she’d barely slept. Was it all just empty threats, or was Ralph Bennett indeed a violent man, incensed enough by the humiliation that had befallen him to throw a woman off a cliff? The menace in the big man’s posture at her car door came back to her, the hot spray of his breath on her face. And Crabpot Kiernan—what was all that about, other than to warn her off something Ralph wanted to hide? A shiver ran across her as the fan cooled her skin.

  Then there was Stanton-Green. Helen must have been repulsed by him and his crude attempt to buy her off. Perhaps he needed to keep her quiet. Steve Smith had gone on to score one hundred and sixty-four taking the Aussies to a convincing win. The Hyphen would have cashed in his thousand-dollar bet. He said he’d be in touch, through a third party, to get Meat the Magic’s winnings to her.

  And then, the mayor. Clem needed to know more about him, dig deeper. She’d called in to see Sergeant Wiseman but she was out, so Clem asked the young officer at the front desk, Constable Griffin, how the investigation was going and received a blank look in reply. He said he was pretty sure there were no further steps being taken—suicide, case closed. So Fullerton had done nothing, it appeared. Perhaps she’d gone too easy on him. Maybe it was time to up the ante.

  Or maybe it was none of them. Maybe she was wrong about Helen. She forced herself to see the facts through the police’s eyes: Helen, on her own, no family, running a lonely and unpopular campaign, taking the blows from powerful people and the community and, perhaps, what hurt the most, battling some dark and potent internal demon that Clementine hadn’t taken the time to notice. Was it to do with the years of failed IVF treatments? Perhaps being on her own, without Jim, brought the pain close again? It all gets too much and eventually she walks up to the cliff and ends it. It happens. In fact it was probably commonplace and Clem, of all people, should have been able to spot the signs.

  With her self-loathing primed she got up, pulled on a T-shirt, washed her face in the bathroom and went into the sunroom to check her emails. Another one from Burns Crowther, the Melbourne law firm. Their first written offer. She sat there, one finger tapping on her teeth. The offer was right in the zone and she couldn’t deny how good it felt to see her worth quantified by such a healthy number. It was a blessed distraction from everything going on in Piama. She let the idea roll through her head. She could hide in Melbourne, get away from everyone, everything. Disappear in the crowds.