Jill Jackson - 04 - Watch the World Burn (6 page)

‘So, what’s up with the case?’ asked Jill, perched on the edge of the bath, wrapped in a towel.

‘Which one?’ asked Scotty, trying to manoeuvre her showerhead so it didn’t spray straight into his face. ‘Fuck, why do they always make these things so low?’

‘It’s the perfect height for human beings,’ she said. ‘And what do you mean, which case? The mysterious case of the spontaneously combusting woman.’

‘Do you believe in that shit?’ asked Scotty, giving up on the showerhead and turning around.

‘Do I believe that people can just burst into flames for no reason?’ she asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, everything I’ve read says spontaneous combustion is bullshit,’ she said. ‘But I don’t know.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Anyway, this case won’t be the one to prove the doubters wrong. You said she had accelerant on her.’

‘Two types,’ said Scotty.

‘It’s completely bizarre,’ said Jill. ‘Where are you going with it today?’

‘I’m going to talk to Mrs Caine’s granddaughter and then go out to a community group she was part of – apparently she used to go out with them once a week. We’ll look into whether she’d been talking about being worried about anyone or anything.’

‘And the suicide angle?’

‘It’s still a possibility,’ said Scotty, ‘but it’s gotta be unlikely. If she did this to herself, how did she ignite the fire? Why is there no evidence of it?’

‘Very strange. You want some breakfast?’ Jill asked, standing, and walking towards the door.

‘Yes, I’m starving,’ said Scotty, opening the shower and pulling her in, towel and all.

‘Would you cut it out!’ Troy heard Lucy yell from her bedroom.

He walked to her doorway. Laughed. A beach ball-sized lump rolled around under a half-tucked sheet on Lucy’s bed.

‘It takes me half a day to make my bed,’ she complained.

‘I keep my door closed when I’m making mine.’

‘Shrek, get out of there, you idiot!’ Lucy tried to push-roll the lump to the edge of the bed. A fat paw swiped from under the sheet and the lump contorted again. Shrek made his happy noise while at war with the sheet monster.

‘I’m going for a run, Luce,’ said Troy. ‘I’ll be back around lunchtime. Will you be here?’

‘Yep.’

‘Studying?’

‘Yep.’

‘I’ll bring back some ham and rolls.’

‘Shrek!’

The pavement on Botany Road was not the most picturesque place to jog, but Troy wasn’t interested in scenery. He had so much shit going through his head that he wouldn’t have noticed if he was running through the Botanical Gardens. He couldn’t sit still while his thoughts were churning. He kept re playing the scene at Incendie. Moving through the restaurant as he always did, watching customers, directing staff to a table when a diner was trying to signal for attention. He’d been right next to Miriam Caine when she screamed, but he’d been facing the view rather than her table. The customers closest to the windows were usually regulars, VIPs or groups, all of whom were worth more money than the customers closest to the centre of the restaurant.

Miriam Caine. Standing, arms flailing. Face and chest on fire. Troy drove his legs harder, trying to outrun the image. He could still feel her body writhing underneath him as he smothered the flames. For the last two days the sensation had plagued him periodically, usually morphing into Jonno’s body in his lap, Jonno’s warm blood saturating his crotch, his pulverised hand a useless lump impeding his attempts to stop the blood draining from the exit wound in Jonno’s gut.

Troy’s missing fingers burned and ached as he ran.

He understood what had happened that day with Jonno. He didn’t like it, he didn’t know why it had to happen that way, he wished it all could have run differently. But it made sense – from start to finish, what had happened was explainable. It could be told as a series of events, spoken as a story, written out.

But what had happened to the Caine woman at Incendie – that didn’t make a story. There was no introduction, no main body, just a horrible conclusion.

The video replay about the day Jonno died kicked in, and he knew better by now than to try to stop it. Fucking thing would play, no matter what he did. He and Jonno responding to a mid-morning call about someone talking to himself in Prince Alfred Park. If you got all the poor bastards together who talked to themselves in Prince Alfred Park, he knew there’d have been enough for a good-sized party, especially if all the hallucinated friends and foes were also invited. So the call-out had been standard, and they probably wouldn’t have responded at all, except that the caller had said that the language being used was particularly profane.

They’d pulled up in a bus zone and a white-faced woman near the kiosk had pointed them towards the toilet block. Troy had wondered ever since that day whether she’d seen the gun – and if she had, why she hadn’t warned them. He saw her face again now – she’d disappeared after the shooting, but he’d never forget her. Why hadn’t they asked her what she’d seen? Why hadn’t they paid more attention to how pale and frightened she was? Instead, he and Jonno hadn’t even stopped their detailed analysis of the last Rabbitohs game; they’d just wandered over to the brick toilet block and circled the small building, announcing that they were police.

Troy stumbled, negotiating a gutter crossing McEvoy Street. He righted himself, kept running, still trapped in his memories. What had emerged from that dark, dank doorway was a slow-motion nightmare he’d had most nights since. But back then it was real.

A two-metre monster in a full-length duffle coat stepped out, the parts of his face not hidden by a wild beard distorted by insanity. But the shotgun he held seemed the biggest thing in the space, and the only thing Troy wanted to do was to get the fuck away from there. Spinning simultaneously with Jonno, left hand scrabbling for his firearm, the other in the middle of Jonno’s back, pushing him faster, Troy and his partner had gone flying with the force of the blast. The blast that ripped right through two fingers of his hand, and then through Jonno’s thoracic spine.

Troy gripped his right hand with his left as he ran, flat-out now, trying to stop the burning. He didn’t notice a woman yank her son off the pavement and out of his path when she saw him coming.

He remembered rolling on the grass in the park, coming up with his gun. The monster in black standing over them. Firing madly, single-handed, into its face, knowing he’d miss, knowing he was dead. And then the monster’s hair had flown off, and it had swayed, crashed to the ground.

This part of the tape usually stopped here, thank Christ. Troy thought of that section as the horror movie. Later, he’d get the sob story show, followed by the bitter and twisted drama. The screening order was never predictable, but the basic program and session times remained the same.

But now he had a new addition to the library. Miriam Caine. His memories of her death were more frustrating than frightening. As Troy wound his way up Wyndham Street, he slowed to a jog, his breathing ragged. Why was she killed? How was she killed? He knew what had killed her, but he had no fucking clue how it was done. He tried again to remember the couple as they entered the restaurant. Dominique must have seated them. When was accelerant put onto her clothing? Who lit her up?

How on earth did this happen? And why?

‘Good girl, back you go. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Jill hefted her favourite new thing – her shiny blue Dyson vacuum cleaner – into the cupboard in the hall. ‘Well, maybe not tomorrow,’ she muttered, padding back to the kitchen. She told herself she’d been a bit slack with the cleaning lately. Well, hardly slack, she realised. Dusting, vacuuming and mopping every day was not ‘normal’, according to ‘people’. ‘But I’ve been a bit more normal with cleaning,’ she said aloud. ‘Yessiree, Jackson. Walking around naked, talking to yourself ... You are so normal.’

She stuck her head in the fridge, rifled around, trying to salvage something for lunch from her Scotty-plundered kitchen. God, it’s good to be home, she thought, immediately noting the absence of the cask of wine, as she did every time she opened the fridge door. Undercover, three months ago in a rundown housing-commission flat, she’d had to have the wine waiting when her neighbours came to call, or they’d have thought her some kind of freak. Either that or a born-again Christian. Either way, that meant victim out there. The cask had seemed to squat there, malevolently, blighting everything else. And it had mocked her, taunted her, called to her at night.
Come and get pissed. I’m in here – might as well drink me. Who’s gonna know? You know you want to.

She grabbed a heavy head of iceberg lettuce from the crisper and what was left of the block of tasty cheese she’d bought on Monday. How he isn’t fat, I’ll never know, she thought, shaking her head and kicking the door closed. She opened the freezer to get some bread.

‘No way,’ she said, rummaging around. He’d eaten the whole loaf!

Laughing, Jill made a cheese sandwich with lettuce leaves instead of bread, smearing mustard straight onto the cheese. She remembered Scotty going backwards and forwards this morning for more toast, but she hadn’t exactly been counting. She’d been kind of distracted by that bare back, those brown shoulders when he walked to the kitchen in his boxers. And then that chest when he walked back to join her on the lounge. A trill of pleasure fluted through her stomach, hurting.

Still smiling as she bit into her ‘sandwich’, she walked into her bedroom and pulled on shorts and a T-shirt. She then took her lunch out to the balcony.

Jill wondered whether there’d ever been a more beautiful day. Across the street, across the park, across the snowy sand and a smattering of sea-smoothed rocks, glowed the ocean. With every shade of blue and most of green, today the sea’s opalescence was lit from beneath. The motes of sunlight skipping across its facets seemed as though they’d exploded from the waves. Billions of pinpricks of energy, bursting free to dance in the sun.

Shielding her eyes, Jill watched the gulls in the park. Every morning, a local baker dropped off the previous day’s leftovers. When jogging this morning, she’d seen a riot of birds feasting on broken meat pies, donuts and custard slices. The Maroubra seagulls and pigeons had to have higher cholesterol counts than the regulars who waited each morning for the pub doors to open down the street.

Suddenly, a piece of blackness broke away from the birds on the grass and soared into the sky. The massive black crow caught an air current in line with her balcony, and she watched it, transfixed, as it hovered and surfed right in front of her, like a hole rent in the daylight, allowing a bird-shaped slice of midnight into midday Maroubra.

Jill’s mobile rang and she picked it up. ‘Jackson,’ she said.

A throat cleared. Male.

‘Hello,’ she said.

‘Ah, yes. Ah, Jill. This is Bert.’

Bert? Captain Andreessen? ‘Bert?’ she said.

‘Yeah, Andreessen,’ he said. ‘I, ah–’

The phone became the world – there was suddenly nothing else. Jill’s former boss never called her. He’d never used his first name in her presence. And now he was talking to her like a civilian. No – like a civilian about to be told something fucked.

‘There’s been an incident,’ he said.

No no no no no no no. ‘What?’ she said.

Cassie, Mum, Dad, oh God, Lilly, Avery–

‘What?’ she said.

‘It’s, ah, Scotty.’

Andreessen always calls him Hutchinson, she thought. Jill pulled her knees up onto the chair and into her chest, freezing now.

‘Where is he?’ she said.

‘We’re at RPA, Jill.’

‘I’ll be there in twenty.’

‘You want me to send someone to pick you up?’

‘No.’ Why? ‘It’s faster if I come now.’

‘Just drive safely, Jill.’

He calls me Jackson, she thought. She dropped the phone and the shivering began.

Jill kept the bullshit up all the way to the hospital. He’s going to be all right; he’ll be all right. Whenever she stopped the mantra, the other thought rolled in, like a huge breaker, smashing her down: Andreessen used his informing-the-family voice.

When she reached the front of the hospital, she ripped up the handbrake in a police bay and wrenched the car door open. Almost screaming in frustration, she tried to get past a man pushing a woman in a wheelchair up to the hospital.

She saw them before they saw her. Waiting out the front. Andreessen, Emma Gibson. Jill understood everything from the way they stood there, scanning the heads for her. They wanted to tell her before she got in there.

Scotty’s dead.

Andreessen found her eyes. He nodded.

She dropped.

Troy put the phone down. His boss, Caesar O’Brien, was taking things pretty well, considering. When Caesar had told him that his restaurant would be a crime scene for another few days, Troy had nearly crapped himself. He knew how much capital was tied up in Incendie; he knew how much it cost for the finest, freshest food they stocked each week; he knew what the staff were being paid; he knew the rent Caesar was paying in the hotel, and the amount he’d spent marketing the restaurant. Caesar did not like his money wasted. But his boss was seeing an upside.

‘The name of my restaurant has been on the TV ten times a day for the past two days,’ Caesar had said. ‘Every news bulletin, on every channel, they’re updating the case. They’re all talking about the irony of the name. Incendie, Incendie. The fine dining restaurant Incendie. They keep saying the name.’

‘You’re not worried about the fact that the name is now linked with a death?’ Troy felt he had to ask. It was worrying the shit out of him.

‘Not a death, Troy, my boy,’ said Caesar. ‘A murder.’

‘I know.’ Troy winced.

‘No, it’s good,’ said Caesar. ‘I mean, it’s not good for Mrs Caine, poor bloody woman. And it’s pretty terrible for her family, but it’ll be good for business in the long run, you’ll see.’

‘How do you figure that?’ asked Troy. Are you fucking crazy?

‘Listen, a place has to have an edge these days. It’s gotta have something else. They’re going to catch the murderer, it’ll be all over the news again, and then there’s gonna be this curiosity factor. People are gonna want to come see where it all happened. And when that dies down, the restaurant will still stay in people’s minds, and there’ll be an edge of danger, of mystery. People love that shit! Crime in this country is the new celebrity.’ Caesar laughed.

Troy shook his head. He knew he should be laughing with his boss at that point, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. ‘Have you been in touch with the Caine family?’ he asked.

‘Oh, we’re sweet there too,’ said Caesar. ‘My legals tell me that they won’t be able to come after us. They can’t sue – it’s a criminal matter, and the restaurant had nothing to do with it.’

‘Okay,’ said Troy. That’s not what I asked. ‘Have you contacted David Caine?’

‘I wanted to get the legal aspect covered first,’ said Caesar. ‘Can’t go making apologies if your arse ain’t covered – it can be used against you, believe me. But now we should let them know we feel for them. Would you take care of that, Troy? I’m flying to Melbourne tomorrow. Got some shit to take care of. I’ll be back in time for the reopening, don’t worry.’

‘I think we should offer to pay for the funeral,’ said Troy. ‘Let them know how sorry we are this happened.’

‘Great, good. Make sure there are a lot of flowers. See if you can’t get some kind of wreath with our name on it. In case the cameras show up at the funeral.’

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ said Troy.

‘Tacky?’

‘Tacky.’

‘Well, I trust you, son. You’ve handled this shit well from the get-go. Keep me posted with things.’

‘So, I’ll let the staff know they’re not needed for a couple of days at least?’ asked Troy.

‘Yep. Nothing else we can do with them. Don’t pay the casuals, of course.’

‘Well, we might not get them back when we need them. We’re going to need all hands on deck if we want to be open in time for Chief Superintendent Norris’s retirement party.’ Troy’s gut clenched at the thought. Half the cops in Sydney. In his restaurant. He almost prayed they wouldn’t be back on deck by then.

‘Oh, don’t worry about that, Troy. We’ll be open. You think the investigation team is going to risk stuffing up the send-off for the Chief? Hardly. They’ll get the job done, pronto. And don’t worry about getting the staff back either. They’ll be back. Everyone needs money.’

Troy took a walk around the apartment, thinking about what to say to David Caine. He decided he’d better call him immediately or it would be too late to help with funeral arrangements. He wondered whether the police had updated Caine any further about the case. He guessed they wouldn’t have told him much. They would have to have Caine on the radar as a potential suspect, even though he wasn’t anywhere near his mother until she was on fire. What the fuck had happened in there? Every couple of hours, the same question pecked at him.

In the kitchen, Lucy sat at the table, a textbook in front of her. ‘Was that your boss?’ she asked.

‘Yep,’ he said.

‘Did I hear you say you’ve got tonight off?’

‘Uh huh.’

‘Well, if you don’t have to go to work tonight, could you run me over to Mona’s?’

‘Mona Caine? You hanging out with her again?’

Lucy shrugged. ‘She just texted. Wants to know if I’ll study with her this arvo.’

‘She must be a tough little bugger,’ said Troy. ‘I’d imagine she’d be able to get out of her exams easily, with what’s just happened to her.’

‘I guess,’ said Lucy. ‘People deal with grief in different ways. She probably just wants to focus on something else.’

‘Yeah, well, I was just going to phone her father. See if there’s anything the restaurant can do to help. I’ll see if I can speak to him in person. I’m ready when you are.’

Troy left without checking in on Chris. He’d bawled him out all the way back from the copshop last night and told him he couldn’t go out tonight. But Troy would bet his arse he’d come home to an empty flat this afternoon. ‘Are you coming in?’ Lucy stood by the driver’s window looking down at Troy, her backpack in hand.

‘Do you think it’s rude for me to just show up like this?’ Troy asked his sister. ‘Maybe I’m the last person this guy wants to see.’

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Maybe not. Maybe he’s not home. Maybe I’m going to grow old and die here, waiting for you to decide whether you’re coming in.’

Troy stepped out of the car and walked with Lucy through the gate of the single-storey seventies-era home. With the brickwork rendered and newly painted grey, the little house should have stood proudly amongst its tired counterparts in this side street of working-class Rosebery. Instead, it seemed to absorb the bright sunlight around it, taking the shine off the summery Saturday.

David Caine answered the door. It turned out Troy needn’t have worried about showing up like this. Caine seemed pleased to see him and waved him right in. When he’d offered a beer straight up, Troy took it. Habit. After Caine directed Lucy to Mona’s room, he gestured Troy to a dining table just off a small kitchen. It seemed the renovation had ended at the front door. All the indoor surfaces shone with polish, but the paintwork looked original and the furniture was well worn, to say the least.

Caine accepted Troy’s offer to pay for the funeral gratefully. He hadn’t made plans yet; his mother’s body hadn’t been released from the coroner.

‘It’s strange here without her,’ he said. ‘Much quieter. Mona’s a mouse, but I’m willing to bet that my mother talked straight through the day, even when Mona and I were out.’

‘Sounds like she had a lot to say,’ said Troy.

‘A lot of bitching and moaning. Mostly the same stuff. You know how it is with women.’

Troy took a deep sip of his beer to hide his surprise. Caine seemed to be recovering from his grief pretty quickly.

‘I shouldn’t speak about her like that,’ said Caine. ‘Not now.’ He sighed and leaned back in the wooden dining chair, running a hand through the remnants of his hair. ‘It’s just that my mother was a difficult woman. I loved her, God knows, but ... My parents were both Holocaust survivors. You ever met one, Troy?’

Troy shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Well, they’re very paranoid people. They don’t trust anyone, especially the government. My mother got worse as she got older.’

‘I guess you would have trouble trusting anyone after that,’ said Troy.

‘She thought everyone was after her in the end. She was always saying that the government was going to kill her one day, that people were monitoring our conversations, that they were saying our name over the radio. Sounds crazy, right?’

Troy considered another sip but saw that Caine’s beer was still three-quarters full, and he just had a mouthful left. ‘Well, I guess it does,’ he said. ‘But then this happened, so your mother was right that someone wanted to hurt her.’

‘I can’t believe this could be murder,’ said Caine. ‘How are they going to prove that? No one saw anyone set her on fire. You were the closest person to her, and you didn’t see anything like that, right?’

‘Well, I wasn’t looking at your mum,’ said Troy. ‘I turned when she screamed.’

‘It has to have been some kind of accident.’ Caine took a sip of his beer. He stared at Troy through narrowed eyes. ‘Have you heard of spontaneous human com bustion?’ he asked.

‘I’ve heard it’s a crock of ... I’ve heard it’s not real.’

‘Well, whatever happened, the police won’t be able to figure it out. Bunch of imbeciles.’

Troy coughed. ‘Ah, I should tell you that I used to be a cop.’

‘Well, sorry, mate. I shouldn’t have said that, but at least you had the sense to quit. Why’d you get out?’

‘Well, let’s just say that when it comes to the people at the top of the police hierarchy, I don’t exactly disagree with your last statement.’

‘I’ll drink to that.’ Caine stood. ‘Get you another?’ he asked, on his way to the fridge.

‘Better not,’ said Troy. ‘I’ve got to drive.’

‘You’re allowed two. You should know that, being an ex-cop.’ He slid a fresh bottle across the table. ‘The government says you’re allowed three middies in an hour. They’re supposed to know everything.’

Troy cracked it open. Habit.

‘So, you married, Troy?’ Caine asked.

‘Nah. I was engaged but it didn’t work out.’

‘You’re lucky. My bitch wife walked out on me and Mona when Mona was just four.’

‘Yeah?’ said Troy. ‘My mum sort of let us kids down too.’

‘Mona told me you’ve looked after your brother and sister for years. Not easy on your own, is it, mate?’

‘You could say that,’ said Troy. He found himself telling Caine about Christopher and his feelings of helplessness in keeping his brother out of trouble.

‘I’m sure he’ll be all right,’ said Caine. ‘Most boys have these periods, don’t they? Didn’t you go through a wild phase?’

Troy laughed. ‘Definitely, but it was pretty brief. I had to look after the kids.’

‘Cop any charges?’ asked Caine.

‘Just juvie.’ Now Troy wanted to get out of this conversation. He really didn’t want to hear the next question.

‘What for?’ Caine asked.

‘It was a long time ago,’ said Troy. ‘I’d rather not get into it. I probably should get going.’

‘Don’t be a baby,’ said Caine. ‘It can’t have been too bad or else they wouldn’t have let you join the force.’

‘Juvenile records don’t count. You can get around it.’

‘So what did you do?’ Caine was still nursing his first beer.

Oh, for fuck’s sake. Troy cursed himself for coming here. He could be at home watching cricket with his own beer and his hand down his pants. ‘I set a fire in a school,’ he said, and waited for the fallout.

Which wasn’t what he’d expected.

Caine laughed. ‘Well, isn’t that priceless,’ he said. ‘Charged for fire-setting as a child, you run a restaurant named Incendie, and you’re closest to my mother when she burns to death. The police are going to stick a microscope up your arse.’

Troy stood, swaying a little. What a fucking thing to say. And to laugh! This guy felt off. This house felt off. He wanted to get out of there, and he wanted his sister with him.

‘Troy, Troy, I’m sorry,’ Caine stood too. ‘I’m not myself. It’s just that the whole idea that my mother was murdered is so ridiculous to me, and I guess I’m not taking that angle of things seriously. I haven’t really slept or eaten since this happened, and the beer has made me a bit stupid. Please, mate, sit down. Don’t go like this. I’d feel terrible.’

Troy pulled at his lip. He still wanted to go, but he didn’t want bad blood with this guy. He still had Caesar to answer to. Besides, the poor prick probably just wasn’t thinking straight. Troy didn’t think Caine was ever going to be his kind of guy, but he’d just lost his mother in a fucked-up way.

He took his seat again, smiled, uncomfortable. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Touchy subject. And what happened with your mum has shaken me up a lot too.’

‘So, we’re good then?’ said Caine, offering his hand.

Troy took it, waiting for the next question he wouldn’t want to answer.

Lucy appeared in the kitchen. ‘I didn’t think you’d left,’ she said, frowning at the bottles on the table. ‘I could hear you out here.’

‘Everything all right, Lucy?’ asked Caine. ‘You girls want something to eat?’

‘Mona’s not feeling too good,’ said Lucy. Troy stood again. Lucy’s voice was tight.

‘Everything okay, Luce?’ he asked.

‘Yeah. I think so. I think Mona just needs more time. I’m ready to go if you are.’

Oh, thank God. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Okay.’

‘Is this going to become a habit?’ asked Lucy, first thing after strapping on the seatbelt.

He met her eyes, raised an eyebrow.

‘The
beer?’
she said.

‘I had two,’ he said. ‘I’m legal.’

She sighed and put her feet up on the dash.

‘You sounded a bit, um, funny in there,’ he said, pulling out. ‘Is Mona all right?’

His sister didn’t answer.

‘Luce?’

‘I’m just considering the question,’ she said. She faced the window. ‘Mona’s ... well, she’s a little disconnected at the best of times. I mean, I don’t know her that well, but she’s always been a little ... ah, fringe.’

‘Does she take drugs?’

‘I don’t know!’ Lucy shot out the words with a whip of her head in his direction. She turned back to the window. ‘Why is that the first thing you always think of? It’s not that, anyway,’ she said. ‘Mona’s just kind of alternative, I guess. She’d better not be like this next week – she’s asked me to study with her each afternoon until the exams and today she didn’t want to work. I mean, I don’t mind if she wants the company but she didn’t want to talk either.’