‘Who?’
‘Linda,’ he said. ‘Linda Special. She was an accident.’
I couldn’t speak.
‘I’d dropped over there to the station at Wisemans from my station at Maroota.’ It was all just falling out of his mouth now. The door busted down. ‘My boss had lent me. Just for the day. The Wisemans Ferry boys needed help clearing out their basement. Evidence stockpile. At lunch time, Herman said, “Why don’t we go for a drive?” because he had to see some woman at Redbelly Crossing, and they had nice food at the pub back then.’
I listened, barely breathing.
‘Linda was at home alone for a month because hubby had taken a job at an oil rig,’ Dad said. ‘The idea was that he’d make enough money to come back and pay the house off entirely. With the new baby, they needed the financial footing. But she was scared, being home alone like that every night. It was a remote property. Well out of town. Bushy. And she was young. She was twenty-five, I think.’
I tried to keep up. To accept what I was hearing.
‘She’d called the cops because her chickens were disappearing, and she had the idea that a prowler or a neighbour was stealing them,’ Dad continued. ‘She was a fool. There was a hole in the coop as round as your head. Fox tracks in the dirt. She might have justwanted a cop to put an eye on the place and maybe fix the hole in the coop without her having to pay for it.’
‘And you did? You and Grey?’
‘We fixed the hole and we gave her home security advice.’ Dad waved his cigarette. ‘Get a lock on that window there. Put curtains over this bit so no one can see in. Cut down some dowels, put them in the window tracks. I left a hole for myself for later, through the laundry window. In case she didn’t accept what I told her at the door to and let me inside. I told her the window was too small to worry about.’
I waited, shivering, telling myself not to throw up. It didn’t work. Before my father could start speaking again, I went into the bathroom off the spare room, crouched and vomited into the toilet.
‘Jesus.’ He shook his head when I returned and fell into my spot on the couch. ‘The dramatics.’
‘You knew that you were going to come back and … and … kill her?’ I asked.
‘You’re not real bright, are you, Evan?’ Arthur snapped. The fury was always right there, just below the surface. ‘I told you it was an accident, what happened to her.’
‘But you knew you were going to come back, though. You said it yourself, just now: you left a hole for yourself so you could come back later. Because you knew you would. You were determined to get in whether she let you in or not.’
‘Things would have been a lot different if she’d played along. That’s all I’m saying.’
‘Played along with what?’ I asked.
My father just stared at me.
‘Oh my god, Dad.’ I put my face in my hands. The sobs came, hard and painful: deep ones that ratcheted through my chest, seemed to hammer against the inside of my ribcage. ‘Oh my god, Dad. Oh my god.’
‘Oh my godwhat, Evan, you hysterical waste of space?’
‘Whatareyou?’ I dropped my hands. ‘Are you … Are you … Are you arapist, Dad? Is that what you’re saying to me? You’re acold-blooded killer?’
‘It would be just like you to think of me that way.’ Arthur nodded, smiling. He looked me over, head to foot. ‘You always saw the worst in me.’
I almost laughed. I was so sick, so sad, so unsure if I wanted to go and vomit again or just sit here crying. Arthur went on, ‘You have no idea how you got where you are in your life, do you, Evan? You think everything you have was just—just—bestowedupon you by god. You think the house, the wife, the son, the career, all these things just came to you out of thin air.’
Arthur waved his cigarette around, his hands raised to the ceiling. Smoke made a coil, whispered away.
‘I raised you to be who you are,’ Dad sneered. ‘I made youhard. Me. Nobody else. Your mother bailed out on us all. Her parents left us with nothing. You and Russell, you were like boulders chained to my legs. And what credit do I get for it all?Everything you have in your life is because of me, Evan.’
I just shook my head.
‘I’m sitting here telling you my deepest, darkest secrets.’ He tapped his chest. ‘Terrible mistakes that I have made. And your response is to call me the worst of all possible names.’
‘Dad—’
‘I’m a good man who made a couple of errors of judgement. I’m agood man, who raised his sons well. But you forget all that. You learn this one thing about me, and you’ve just decided I’m a monster.’ Arthur tutted hard. ‘How long did it take you, just then, to decide it? That I’m unredeemable. Three seconds. You didn’t even take a minute to think about it.’
‘Did you rape that girl in Womerah?’
