Bridie was furiously sending texts, her head mended and bandaged. We were waiting to hear the results of her CT scan. Dodge was trying to get the lay of the land, appearing at the end of the room now and then and watching me from the hall while he talked on the phone and paced and chewed his nails.
When Georgia came in, I felt a wave of pre-embarrassment in anticipation of being slapped in front of room full of people. I rose from my plastic chair and prepared to accept my fate. Because I probably would have slapped me, if I was her, for all of this. She wasleaner and harder and more sculpted than the last time I’d seen her, still wearing the Inner West detective’s usual garb of immaculately tailored grey slacks and black collared shirt, sleeves rolled back over her forearms. She ran in and brushed right past me, swept Bridie’s face into her hands, started kissing her.
‘Oh my god, my honey. My little honey!’
‘I’m okay.’ Bridie let her phone drop into her lap and she closed her eyes for the assault of kisses. ‘I really am, Mum.’
I wandered away and left them to talk. Didn’t go too far. Because I knew the longer I delayed the slap or the kick in the nuts or whatever I was about to get, the worse it would seem. Anticipation is half the pain. I found a spot and leant against the wall beside a big poster about domestic violence towards men, and waited. Georgia came over before long, and I was surprised that she didn’t go right in for the blow.
In fact, she said, ‘Are you okay?’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you, Russell.’ She looked at my eyes. ‘I’ve been speaking to your partner Dodge for the past ten minutes. He called me on the ride here. Gave me an overview.’
I looked down the room towards Dodge, who was still on the phone. It hadn’t occurred to me that he’d been debriefing my ex-wife before her arrival, maybe hoping to soften her perspective towards me, while he paced back there and talked. It was such an unspeakably nice thing to do that for a moment I just stood there, dumbstruck, wondering how the hell he’d even got her number. Georgia was still watching me with her keen brown eyes, and I shrugged. ‘Ah, I’m … I’m sort of numb.’
‘Do you think it’s real?’ Georgia asked. ‘I mean … yeah, your dad’s a psycho. Butthis, Rus?’
I fell into thinking. I kept doing that, unable to pull myself out, knowing people wanted answers from me but being powerless to give them. The memories were thick, dragging, like sludge. I saw Evan and me in an old car we’d done up on the sly. A Chevrolet, maybe. Two girls. Dad busting us, telling the girls he wanted to watch.
There were other memories. Him arriving home in the wee hours, washing his hands in the tap outside by the water tank. Selling the main family car suddenly, for dirt cheap, having spent far too long cleaning it. Disappearing for weeks or months at a time, or having unexplainable scratches on his face.
‘Rus?’
‘We could know for sure, in a few hours,’ I said. ‘The samples got to the lab. Gail got some of her ground crew to take them the rest of the way.’
‘But what do you think?’
‘I don’t know what I think,’ I said. ‘I’m … I’m not as desperate to know if Dad would rape and murder young women as I am to know if Evan would cover it up. Because if that’s the case, I’ve got two monsters on my hands, not just one.’
‘There’s a Keep A Look Out For order on Evan,’ Georgia said.
‘Is there?’
‘Yeah.’
The world was upside down. I took out my phone and called him.
‘He won’t answer,’ Georgia said, looking at my screen.
‘Maybe not to them, but he’ll answer to me.’
‘No, I mean, he doesn’t have his phone.’ Georgia put a hand on my arm. ‘They found it in the car that hit Bridie.’
I felt my jaw tighten. I looked at my ex-wife and she must have seen the blackness in my eyes, because she took a step back.
‘Bridie said it was Evan who hit her,’ I said. ‘But I thought she was crazy. Shaken up from the crash. She dove back down to the sunken car for that fucking possum.’
Georgia didn’t say anything. I remembered the last time I’d spoken to Evan.
You, um. You’re going to take the ’Stang?
‘He’d tried to get me to leave her there,’ I said, almost to myself.
‘Who?’
‘Evan.’ I was trembling with rage now. ‘Evan told me to leave Bridie in Redbelly. He asked if I was taking the Mustang. He was trying to figure out what car I’d be driving. I told him when I’d be leaving, and that I was going to be ferrying evidence back.’
