Darkwater (15 page)

‘You shouldn't be scared of facing him,' I told her. ‘He's the one who should be too embarrassed to show himself. But it's okay.'

I suggested going back to her place. ‘I want you to write him a letter,' I said. ‘An angry letter that tells him what he did was wrong. And then I'll deliver it to him. Personally.'

An hour later, we came back to the same block of flats. I had Cassie's letter clutched in my hand. She walked with me as far as the entrance and then said she couldn't come up. I left her on the low cement fence that bordered the road from a parched garden of succulents and gravel, and promised her I wouldn't be long.

‘I just want to give it to him, make sure he reads it and then go.' How I intended to do the second of these things and ensure that he actually looked at the letter wasn't something I'd worked out yet.

I'd lain on Cassie's bed, listening to her favourite Sherbet record while she wrote. She'd only asked for help once, and I'd refused.

‘It has to be your words, otherwise there's no point.'

She'd made several attempts, angrily crossing out paragraphs and then crumpling up sheets of paper, before she felt she had the letter she wanted.

I didn't read it. She just folded it up, put it in an envelope and gave it to me.

On the landing to the fourth floor, I was dismayed to find there were no numbers on the doors. I had to run down a flight and check the layout of the third floor, before running back up.

My heart was thumping as I knocked, and then I reminded myself: there was no reason to feel scared. He was the one in the wrong. There was music coming from inside, a loud, thumping bass that meant I had to knock again. It wasn't until the third time that the door finally opened. A little girl in pale pink pyjamas stood in front of me, her teddy bear clutched under her arm.

‘Grant,' she called out, when I asked for him, her voice much louder than her size would have indicated was possible. ‘GRANT.'

When he came to the door, she didn't move. She just stood there, sucking her thumb and watching as he leant against the doorframe, looked me up and down and waited for me to speak.

I opened my mouth, only able to utter the word ‘wanker' before Cassie appeared, and gave me such a shock as she took the letter from my hand, that I jumped, the little girl smirking as she watched.

‘I was going to deliver this to you.' She held the letter up and her voice was loud and clear, as she stood in front of me, facing Grant directly. ‘But then I thought, I wanted to tell you myself.'

I was so surprised and delighted that it was hard to stop myself from giggling.

‘You are a prize arsehole. You will never have a girlfriend. And you and your pathetic friends deserve each other. This is my delivery.' She held one finger up in his face. ‘Don't you ever dare think you can treat me, or anyone else, like that again.'

We ran down those stairs, leaping them two at a time, the sound of the little girl's laughter, followed by the slam of the front door, punctuating the slap of our soles on the concrete steps.

‘You were brilliant,' I told her when we finally reached the bottom, both of us doubled over. ‘The look on his face.'

She grinned at me. ‘You know, I really didn't think I'd do it, and then I was sitting down here, waiting for you, and I suddenly thought: “Stuff it.” I hate him.' She raised her hand high in the air and I slapped it. ‘I hate him.' Her face was bright red now and she switched, suddenly, to tears.

I looked at her, alarmed.

‘It's all right,' she told me. ‘It's not because I'm upset. It's just, you know,' and then she laughed again, ‘everything.'

I took her arm in mine and we rounded the corner, both of us standing on the street at the side of the block of flats. It was then that I looked up. I don't know why I did it, but I glanced up into the brilliant blue sky and then down to the other block of flats in front of me, and I saw him, Lyndon, out on the balcony of an apartment on the fifth floor.

Fact: I don't know what made me decide to cross the road and go up there.

There was no one reason I acted in the way I did. It was partly the rush of having just given Grant Benson all that he deserved. I was also tired of feeling scared. I wanted to face Lyndon, and I wanted to believe he wouldn't hurt me. I also wanted to believe he wasn't responsible for the murder of someone he had known since kindergarten, someone who had been his friend and, if the rumours were true, someone who had become his girlfriend.

I suppose I presumed I would be able to help him. I would warn him that Cassie had gone home to call the police, and that it would be better if he called them himself, now, voluntarily. Even if he refused (which I knew was likely), I hoped he would wait until they arrived, prepared at least to face them, rather than being surprised and doing something stupid that would only make it look worse for himself.

In retrospect, I guess that was my plan, although at the time everything seemed to happen so quickly that I don't think I really had any clear idea of why I was trying to persuade Cassie to do as I asked.

She argued with me. She told me he could be dangerous. But I insisted I'd be fine.

I ran across the road as soon as the lights changed, jumping over the low cement wall that bordered Lyndon's block of flats. The layout of the two buildings was almost identical, but I had to pause for a moment to try and remember which floor he had been on and where the entrance would be for that particular flat.

I ran up the stairs, the sole of my thong almost catching on a torn piece of carpet. I lurched forward, holding my hands out to stop myself from hitting the steps. At the top, I stopped, wanting to get my bearings and my breath.

There were four apartments on each floor. Lyndon's had been to the left. I looked at both the doors, uncertain as to which I should knock on. I approached the first, leaning my ear in close to see whether I could hear anything. I then turned to the second. It wasn't closed properly.

It was only as I pushed it cautiously, that I realised I was afraid. My palms were sweaty and my breath was caught high in my chest. I stepped inside, the hallway was dim, and there, in the lounge room at the end, was Lyndon, clearly visible in the light from the window. He was staring directly at me, an open bag of clothes at his feet.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?'

I know I opened my mouth to utter some kind of sound but I am fairly certain nothing came out. We just looked at each other, both of us tense.

When Lyndon used to stay at our house, he always looked anxious. It was only after a few hours that he would relax, the guard slowly dropping, the smile appearing. Right then, as we both stood in his flat, he looked like the boy he had once been, the kid waiting to see whether everything was okay, not giving an inch until he knew that he was safe.

‘I saw you,' I eventually said, my voice quavering, ‘from down on the street.'

He glanced behind him for a second, to the open sliding glass door that led out onto the balcony. The pale netting curtains lifted in the breeze from the open front door and then fell again.

The flat was almost bare. There was only an old green lounge chair, half vinyl and half striped wool, and in front of it a chipped coffee table. To the right was the kitchen. The cupboard above the bench that separated it from the living space was empty, apart from a brown coffee cup and a beer schooner.

‘Are you moving out?' I asked.

He didn't answer.

‘Where's your brother?'

He shrugged. ‘He went over a year ago.'

I hadn't known.

‘So you've been living on your own?'

Again, he simply shrugged. And then he shook his head. ‘What's it to you?'

I couldn't imagine how he'd survived, what he'd done for money or food and then, as though he could read my thoughts, he said he'd coped. ‘My brother sends me what he can. It's enough.'

He stood up straight now, staring at me, as he pointed to the still open front door. ‘Out.'

I didn't move.

‘I never asked you in, so get the hell out.'

My hands gripped the side of my jeans and I didn't take my eyes from him. ‘You know the police have been looking for you?'

I had assumed he'd realised and I was surprised when he shook his head.

‘I went north to see my grandma. She's dying.'

I glanced down to the bag at his feet, realising then that he had been unpacking, not getting clothes to take away as I had at first thought.

He was panicked now, scratching at his elbow as he paced across the living room. ‘It's Amanda, isn't it?'

I nodded.

‘Why?' As he leant right up close to me, I saw the red veins in the whites of his eyes and the pale stubble across his chin. ‘Why me?' He had his hands on my shoulders as he demanded an answer.

I knew Cassie was at home calling the police. They would be here soon. If I told him that now I ran the risk of him running.

‘Tell me.' He shook me.

I tried to explain about Cherry saying she had witnessed him going to meet Amanda on the afternoon she died.

‘It's not true.' It was all he said, at first. He walked to the sliding door, lifting the net curtain to try to see down below to the street.

‘Why would she say that?'

I could see the agitation building now, and I didn't know how to answer him.

‘Why?' He demanded a response.

‘I don't know.'

‘It's not true.' He was staring straight at me, challenging me to argue. ‘It's a lie.'

‘Then you should tell the police,' I urged him. ‘If you go to them and explain that you weren't there, it'll be all right.'

He was stuffing his clothes back in his bag, and ignoring me.

‘If you run away then they're going to think you did it.'

His look when he zipped up the bag was one of complete scorn. ‘That's what you all think, anyway. Don't you? You reckon I killed her.'

I was shaking my head.

‘You really think I could go to the police and they'd believe me over her?'

He had his bag slung over his shoulder now. How I had thought I would be capable of stopping him was beyond me.

‘Get real.' His sneer was harsh. ‘I've got a dad in jail and a brother who's been wanted for armed robbery. Of course they're going to pin it on me.'

We must have both heard the siren at the same time because I saw the panic in his eyes as the harsh wail was abruptly silenced, the car coming to a halt on the street below his balcony.

‘Don't do it,' I urged him, as he lunged for the front door.

He brushed me aside.

‘There's no point in even trying to run now. They'll catch you.' I was crying, the tears hot on my face, as I held on to him. ‘Please. If you stay calm, you have a chance. I'll go down to the station with you.'

I felt the change in him. The tension loosening in his forearm as he heard them coming up the stairs, their footsteps loud on the concrete.

‘Just call out.' I pointed to the open front door. ‘Tell them you're here and you want to talk.'

His voice was cracked as he tried to utter the words.

I called with him.

‘It's okay,' I told the policeman who'd emerged in the doorway, aware that I was still crying. ‘He wants to talk to you.'

Lyndon was on the floor, knees drawn to his chest, nodding.

‘He didn't do it,' I told the policeman.

But he ignored me, and I watched as he hauled Lyndon up, forcing his hands behind his back, before walking him to the stairs, and the police car waiting down below.

I do not believe Lyndon Hayes is guilty.

I woke in the middle of the night and wrote the words by torchlight, a thin beam of white illuminating the lined pages of my journal. It was quiet, and outside my window, nearly all the houses were in darkness, with only the pale shine of the streetlights to break up the low-slung night sky.

I had slept fitfully, waking every half-hour or so, until eventually I had given up, taking my diary out of its hiding place at the back of my wardrobe. I had read through each of the entries I had written since Amanda's death, aware of how little I knew. Nothing could really be called fact. Everything had been told to me by someone else, or overheard, or guessed at, and I could only wonder at how anything was ever regarded as truth, crystalline, sharp and uncontested.

But, despite not using the word, this last entry came close. At that moment, I did not believe in his guilt. And my own beliefs were all that I could know for certain.

The police brought me home that afternoon. Dee was on the phone in the kitchen when Tom opened the door to find me, standing small next to the officer. He was alarmed.

‘What's happened?'

He held me close and I kept right on crying.

Sitting in the sunken lounge, I picked bread crumbs and dog hairs out of the shag pile carpet while the story was told. Dee had come in by then, and I could see she too had been crying, but whatever had upset her had occurred before my return, so I knew it had nothing to do with me.

‘She was very brave,' the policeman eventually said, glancing in my direction.

I just looked down at the ground.

‘Or very foolish,' Tom replied. ‘What were you thinking going there on your own?'

I tried to explain. ‘I wanted to warn him.'

The policeman looked at me sharply, and I knew I had only muddied the situation.

‘I wanted to tell him to give himself up.' I glanced straight at Tom. ‘I don't think he did it. I thought it would be better for him if he went in, rather than being taken in.'

‘Why don't you think he did it?' It was the officer who asked me the question. His eyes were iron grey, flat and hard, and I looked away.

‘He said he didn't.'

‘Lots of people lie when they're in trouble.'

‘Is there something you know?' This time it was Dee. ‘Something you're not telling us?'

I shook my head. I could feel them all looking at me and I wanted to articulate why I believed in his innocence, but it wasn't easy. ‘Sometimes I don't like him all that much, but it doesn't mean he's a murderer. To be a murderer–'

I broke off for an instant, swallowing before I spoke.

‘That's a huge thing,' I eventually finished.

Dee held my hand in her own and squeezed it gently.

When the policeman left, she made me a sweet, milky cup of tea and told me she wanted me to stay in for the rest of the day. I'd had a shock, she explained.

I lay on the couch and pretended to watch television, but really I was listening to her and Tom talking in the kitchen. She wanted him to go down to the station. ‘He doesn't have anyone,' she kept saying. ‘He's going to need an adult to make sure that he's okay. He needs a lawyer.'

I got up.

In the bright light of the afternoon sun, the kitchen was washed out, white in the glare. I sat at the table and picked Sammy up, holding her, warm and soft, in my lap. I was all right, I told them. I didn't think he was ever going to actually hurt me. ‘Please,' I asked Tom. ‘Just check on him.'

Tom shook his head. ‘You're as mad as your mother.' But he found his keys and headed out the door.

Dee ran her hands through my hair. ‘I'd take that as a compliment, if I were you.'

The phone rang and she picked it up, and as I listened to her telling a friend about Ray, and the visit to the hospital that morning, I remembered how upset she'd been. When she hung up, I asked her how he was.

The news wasn't good.

‘What happened?'

She sat down opposite me and held my hand.

‘No one knows, but it looks like one of those bastards bashed him.'

‘What bastards?'

She tried to explain. Since the union had agreed not to work on the Greenwood Bush site, there'd been trouble.

‘Atkinson's company had a lot of money invested in building their luxury flats. They're not going to give up. First of all they tried to bring in people who didn't belong to the union. They wanted them to start work on the site. But the second they did that, all the union builders refused to work on any of the other Atkinson developments. They put down their tools and walked off the job. It's like war.

‘Since then, Atkinson has been trying to scare our guys, and to get the union to give up on the ban and order their builders back to work. Some of the top men in the union have been getting threats. They've been harassed and intimidated. One had his car written off. Another had his house trashed.

‘Now it's got worse.' She paused for a moment. ‘It's complicated. Are you sure you want me to continue?'

It wasn't like Dee to treat me like a child. She must have been worried about me. I just nodded.

‘Well, the big developers like Atkinson are also in with government. They donate money to the political parties in the hope it will help them get their developments approved. And the political parties want to keep the developers happy because they want their money.

‘Recently, our guys have been afraid that their union will be shut down because they've been causing trouble. There's another builders' union and they think the developers and people in power have been giving money to this other union in exchange for getting the officials that they want elected. Members of this new union have been harassing them and spreading rumours – that they're corrupt and that they've been stealing members' money and that refusing to work on sites that are bad for the environment is irresponsible and does builders out of work. And the thugs that Len Atkinson and others like him have been hiring to frighten them have been told to get tougher. Ray's wife is convinced that he was bashed by someone hired by Len.'

‘Isn't there something they can do?'

Dee looked out the window. ‘Sometimes I wish we'd never begun all this,' she eventually said. ‘When I saw Ray today, his face was barely recognisable. They'd bashed him senseless.' Her eyes filled with tears and she bit on her bottom lip as she stared up at the ceiling. ‘You know, when someone gets that hurt, you wonder whether it's worth it.'

I'd never seen my mother doubt her convictions and it surprised me.

‘Is he going to be in hospital for long?' I asked.

She shook her head. ‘They don't even know if he'll come out of the coma.'

It was a couple of hours before Tom came back. Joe was home by then and we had told him the news about Lyndon. He was surprised at my certainty that he was innocent, and I was disappointed by his willingness to doubt.

‘Cherry saw him go down to meet Amanda. She told Kate, she told me and she told the police.'

‘Well, he says he didn't.'

‘Of course he'd say that,' Joe scoffed.

I was angry now. ‘He was your friend,' I told him. ‘And even if he did go down there to meet her, even if he did lie about that, it doesn't necessarily make him a murderer. That's a giant leap.'

I could see my words had some impact. He looked at the floor.

Tom said Lyndon had continued to deny everything in the police station. ‘He did confess that he'd been seeing Amanda, but he said he never went down to meet her that day and he didn't kill her.'

Lyndon hadn't called a lawyer despite Tom urging him. He said he couldn't afford one. Tom told him about legal aid, he even offered to pay, and in the end he just stayed with him during the interview. The police said Amanda had been found with a black eye and her arm was broken. She had fallen into the river from one of the rock ledges, her foot getting wedged and her arm almost certainly in excruciating pain. She had been unable to extricate herself and she had drowned. She was, as Cassie had guessed, pregnant.

The police had asked Lyndon whether the child was his.

Tom said Lyndon had looked horrified and then he'd cried.

The police believed Amanda had asked Lyndon to meet her down there so that she could tell him about the pregnancy. He had freaked out and the conversation had escalated into an argument. He had hit her and then run off. She had fallen in the water and drowned.

As Tom relayed the story, he looked worn out. ‘I don't want either of you repeating any of this to anyone,' he said.

I asked him where Lyndon was now and he told me that he had been charged and was being held in custody until a committal hearing. ‘It's likely he'll continue to be held as he doesn't have anyone to put up bail for him, or anywhere to go. I've convinced him to get a lawyer and not to say any more until one arrives.'

He took my hand. ‘He wanted me to tell you he was sorry if he scared you.'

I was surprised.

Tom made us promise again that we wouldn't repeat what he had said, and then he gave me a hug. ‘You were very brave,' he told me. ‘And you did the right thing in sticking up for him, although not in putting yourself at risk like that. You should have just called the police.'

I nodded.

‘I'm sorry it looks like he might have done it after all, although I certainly don't think he intended to kill her.'

I didn't know what to say. As we left the room, Joe shook his head.

‘You know, I feel sorry for him,' he said.

I looked at him.

‘I know I presumed he was guilty. I know all that. And it's far worse for Amanda's family, but the poor bastard. He obviously didn't mean it, and now his life's ruined.'

We were just outside the kitchen door, and it was still half-open, enough for me to hear Dee and Tom continue talking.

‘Do you think he did it?' Dee asked.

Tom was silent for a moment. ‘It looks like it,' he eventually said. ‘But you know, when they told him Amanda was pregnant, he looked so surprised. Genuinely so.'

As I lay on my bed looking through my journal, it was those words that kept running round my head, feeding my faded belief in Lyndon's innocence. It wasn't what it seemed, I kept thinking. It was wrong. I flicked back through the pages, looking at it all, events I had recorded, many to do with Amanda's death, but also many others, until I eventually wrote the one true fact:
I do not believe Lyndon Hayes is guilty,
the words in bright blue ink on the white page.

And it was then, as I realised how sure my conviction was, that I remembered. There was some one who might know if Cherry was lying, some one who could have seen it all – someone whom no one would have thought to ask.