The Summertime Dead Page 6

  Easier said than done when she didn’t want to admit to having a problem, Cole thought as he heard guests arriving, and Nancy rushing to the door to welcome them.

  He hadn’t been able to persuade their children to come up from Melbourne to join them either. They were too grown up, he thought. There was too much going on and too much to do in the Big Smoke. It would have been good having Vicky here, if only to have her keep an eye on her mother inside. But teacher’s college was a handful for her when she’d been a battler at school, and she claimed she couldn’t afford the time, although he suspected Melbourne’s attractions were as much the reason. And maybe she was going out with someone, but she denied it when they asked. And Alan. He would’ve been fine company for the other men, if not much use in helping out with waiting on their guests.

  ‘Look who’s here?’ Nancy announced as she led Terry and Audrey Holloway through the back door. ‘And don’t you look stunning?’ she said to Audrey, who was wearing an above the knee, sleeveless lime-green dress that showed off her trim figure.

  Audrey laughed happily, modestly, her straight fair hair pinned back behind her ears, her arms brown and her smile broad. Beside her, her husband appeared faintly annoyed as he glanced about.

  ‘You’re first cab off the rank, Terry,’ Cole said to his colleague. ‘Couldn’t wait to get here, hey?’

  ‘I thought it started at five-thirty,’ Holloway mumbled apologetically.

  ‘No, six, but we’re happy to see you any time. Here, give me those and I’ll put them on the ice,’ he said, unburdening his colleague of the bottles he’d brought with him. ‘How did you get on with Peter Quade’s situation?’

  ‘Fine. I found out a few things.’

  ‘Great, but tell me Monday. We shouldn’t talk shop tonight.’

  The front door bell rang again and the two women skipped inside.

  ‘Probably have to leave about eight-thirty,’ Holloway said to Cole as they huddled by the barbecue. ‘Got some things to do early in the morning.’

  ‘Make the most of it while you’re here then,’ Cole said. ‘There’s enough food here to feed an army. You sure you don’t want to put on your cricket whites again tomorrow?’

  ‘Thanks, but maybe another time.’

  A steady stream of guests trailed through the house and into the back yard over the next half hour. Cole filled a tray with cooked sausages and lamb chops for keeping warm inside.

  Everyone working at the station had been invited and most came with wives and girlfriends, Janice arriving to help out in the kitchen. The three detectives arrived still in their suits, taking off their jackets and hanging them over the backs of kitchen chairs in a concession to the heat.

  ‘The three Mouseketeers eh?’ someone from the station muttered as the detectives sauntered into the yard.

  In the few days since their arrival, a whiff of resentment had been growing toward the detectives for the way they came and left the station without acknowledging the station personnel.

  Gene Fielder lit up a Craven A and the men soon fell into talking about the Faraday-Quade murders, even when Cole tried steering the conversation elsewhere. The detectives had interviewed Lee Furnell for the first time and found his answers to their questions consistent with those he’d given previously.

  ‘Could be a tough nut to crack?’ one of the constables suggested.

  ‘Not if we use a bigger hammer,’ Fielder answered and they all laughed, releasing the feeling of awkwardness among the group.

  Fielder quickly became the centre of attention and as he kept talking Cole observed the group of men warming to him, Fielder smoking all the while as the fragrance of his reminiscences blew around them like a drug. His two lieutenants stuck close by him, both unconsciously drawing out cigarettes every time their superior did. With his flattened nose and pug ears, Quattrochi looked as if he had been in more than one scrap over the years.

  The conversation turned to the local Italian criminal element – the Mafia, Constable Whittaker opined confidently – already supposed to be operating in the Goulburn Valley.

  ‘How do you see it?’ Fielder asked Cole when he had completed his cooking duties.

  ‘They say they’re thick in the fruit markets in Melbourne,’ Cole said. ‘Sicilians. Calabrians. So you’d be naïve to think they weren’t here at the source too, in the orchards and cool stores. We don’t see it directly, I have to say, but now and then an Italian goes missing and no one knows where he’s gone to.’

  ‘Except the big boss upstairs if he turns up at the pearly gates,’ Fielder said.

  ‘Assuming the Calabrians haven’t already taken charge there, too. Then he probably cops it again, ’ Cole said.

  ‘And they never turn up?’ Detective Quattrochi asked incredulously.

  ‘Never. Maybe we ought to get you undercover in the orchards, detective. It could be the only way we ever find out anything.’

  ‘And if they sniff out poor Marco here he never gets to enjoy Christmas with his Nonna again,’ Fielder said.

  ‘I think I’ll stick with the boss,’ Quattrochi decided, grinning.

  Fielder noticed Holloway standing off to the side.

  ‘What’s that you’re drinking, sergeant?’ he asked, annoyed at the way Holloway always seemed to be hovering at the margins of a conversation.

  Holloway looked down into his glass, swirling it around. ‘Sarsaparilla.’

  ‘Is that the stuff that tastes like tar?’

  ‘It’s an acquired taste,’ Cole said.

  ‘You don’t drink the hard stuff?’

  ‘No detective, I don’t,’ Holloway answered.

  ‘Ever touched it?’

  But Holloway didn’t know what to answer.

  ‘A lot of people around here drink what he’s drinking,’ Cole said. ‘It’s almost a local custom. That and ginger beer in summer.’

  ‘And you don’t drink either?’ Fielder asked Cole, astonished.

  Cole answered, ‘No, but don’t worry. There’s more than enough in town to make up for me and Terry.’

  ‘To each his own then,’ Fielder said, raising his glass.

  With a contemptuous look toward Holloway, it seemed to the sergeant.

  As nightfall came and the guests finished eating the party adjourned inside. With several hours drinking working away inside them an easy familiarity fell over the gathering, men and women beginning to chink glasses and mingle. It was here that Fielder found himself talking to a clique that included Audrey Holloway, her husband part of a nearby huddle that consisted entirely of station personnel. Nancy Cole was among Fielder’s group, keen to keep the party sparking along.

  ‘How long do you expect to be here, detective?’ she asked.

  ‘That depends on whether you have a bed for me or not,’ Fielder said and Nancy blushed.

  ‘I meant in the town,’ she said, pretending to be severe with him.

  ‘I’m sorry. That was a bad joke and impolite to such a gracious hostess. And please call me Gene. I’m not sure about our stay here though. It’ll depend on how quickly we can run the evidence to ground. A double murder is no laughing matter, not to mention it’s not in anyone’s best interest to have a killer running around among them.’

  A ripple of agreement passed through his listeners.

  ‘Do you think it could be someone from the town then?’ Audrey asked and was surprised herself that she was asking it.

  Fielder looked about him, blowing smoke in the direction of the ceiling.

  ‘It could be someone in this room,’ he said.

  ‘Oh no Gene,’ Nancy protested. ‘You can’t be serious.’

  Fielder stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray stand beside him.

  ‘If not in this room, then certainly in this town. Most murders are committed by people who know their victims.’

 
‘Well Gene, I’ll certainly be looking at my fellow townspeople in a different light from now on,’ Nancy joked.

  Audrey asked, ‘Do you think there could be any link to the girl that went missing about four years ago?’

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘Why, it was young Amy Bridges, wasn’t it?’ she asked the others. ‘Yes, Amy. She disappeared into thin air, just like that.’

  ‘She ran off,’ Nancy chastised her. ‘That was probably all it was. There was trouble at home and Lloyd and the others looked into it, your Terry too, and they couldn’t find any other explanation other than she’d run away.’

  ‘How old was she?’ Fielder asked Audrey, who watched his long, slim fingers draw another cigarette from his packet.

  ‘Oh. Fifteen or sixteen,’ she answered, looking up. ‘Fifteen?’

  ‘And she was never found?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well then …’ Fielder said thoughtfully, putting the cigarette to his lips and lighting it.

  ‘And what about all these other goings-on?’ someone else said. ‘People stalking about and stealing things from clotheslines.’

  ‘Underwear,’ another joined in.

  ‘Yes, stolen in the night and even houses broken into. You wouldn’t dream of it would you? It gives me the creeps just thinking about it.’

  And Nancy grew unhappy that things had suddenly become sullied, that this talk of thefts, murders and disappearances was ruining the atmosphere of her party so she took Fielder’s glass and refreshed it, offering cheese and crackers from a plate on her return.

  The talk then turned to where Fielder was staying, about the Casablanca and notables who had stayed there before him, but outside of the state Premier and the footballer John Peck, the group was hard pressed to think of anyone else and the talk soon drifted in other directions.

  Fielder’s eyes wandered over the group as he spoke, settling on Audrey with a peculiar intensity that made her uneasy. He would look away, talk, laugh, look at someone else, and then turn his attention back to her as if it was inevitable that he would, as if he was scrutinising her hair, her clothes, the very way she moved and talked.

  She guessed he noticed her nervousness at being some place that made her awkward, guessed he knew she wasn’t used to being away from her husband the way she kept glancing back at him. But Fielder’s wasn’t the usual look a man gave a woman either, and she wondered if he knew how apart she and Terry were, how things had caved in between them. What did she know of what they talked about at the station anyway? Men gossiped as much as women did, if not more.

  But, she thought, it wasn’t just her nervousness about being out with other people. Fielder’s presence unsettled her too. That he was tall, dark and handsome there was no doubt, but why did he have to keep looking back at her how he did, with that sparkle in his eyes? Was this a game for him, or just his way of flirting as he probably did with scores of women?

  She took a deep breath, noticed that her drink was finished and was just about to wander to the kitchen when Fielder reached out for her glass and took it, the smallest brush of their hands as he did.

  ‘What are you having?’

  ‘Sherry. Dry sherry,’ she managed to say.

  He smiled and disappeared into the kitchen, returning as quickly as he’d gone and she felt her heart beating, her hand trembling as she accepted her glass. Nancy had left, the other members of their group also heading to the kitchen to investigate what was being served for dessert.

  ‘Your husband,’ Fielder said, nodding over to where Holloway stood with his back to them. ‘He doesn’t have much to say for himself, does he? A strange bird, but a decent policeman from what I hear. How long have you been married?’

  Audrey shrugged as if she didn’t really know, when she knew exactly how long they’d been married.

  ‘Maybe fifteen years?’ she offered.

  ‘Fifteen years is a long time in a town like this.’

  ‘We haven’t been here all that time. And Mitchell has its good points.’

  ‘For a man maybe. Sport and games. But what does a woman do?’

  ‘A woman here can do what she’d do in any other place. Settle down, raise a family, involve herself in the community.’

  ‘But what does someone do for excitement in this town?’

  ‘Not everything has to be an entertainment, Mr Fielder. We don’t all go around chasing thieves and murderers.’

  ‘No you don’t. But there are simpler pleasures to be had, too,’ he said, regarding her over the rim of his glass as he drank from it.

  ‘I’m sure there are,’ she said, reddening.

  ‘That some people might not be capable of providing for other people.’

  She tried to laugh him off, but it was a stifled laugh that came.

  ‘Really Mr Fielder. I’m not sure what you’re getting at.’

  ‘Oh, I think you do know,’ he returned, still staring at her. ‘You know, I have a particular talent, a talent for discerning when a man isn’t giving a woman the attention she deserves.’ He leant in closer, a trace of a smile across his lips. ‘And in you, Audrey, I see someone who could do with a little attention.’

  This time she did laugh openly, and it made Terry Holloway spin around to see his wife talking alone with Fielder.

  ‘It’s time for us to head off,’ he came over and said.

  ‘The night is but a pup, Holloway,’ Fielder told him.

  ‘Audrey, fetch your purse. We’re going.’

  ‘I haven’t even had dessert yet,’ she objected.

  ‘Another time,’ he said.

  ‘No Terry, I want to stay a little longer.’

  ‘Audrey.’

  But she wouldn’t budge.

  ‘Why don’t you go and I’ll follow soon?’ she suggested.

  Fielder stared at Holloway as he lit a cigarette, blowing smoke casually in his direction. Holloway threw his wife a disapproving look, but knew this was the beginning of a scene and walked away.

  ‘He’ll be alright,’ Fielder told Audrey. ‘It’s just the sarsaparilla in him talking.’

  She glanced to the door, but her husband had already left. She realised she was tipsy and that he’d be angry when she got home, and that his anger might mean he would cut back on her weekly allowance or – more likely – that there would be nothing but stony silence from him until he got over it.

  ‘I really should go home, anyway,’ she said, wondering where she’d left her handbag.

  ‘I wish you’d stay here with me a little longer,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘What would you want to talk to me for? There are lots of other people to talk to.’

  ‘But they’re not you. And I want to get to know you better,’ he said. ‘Much better.’

  She gazed into her drink.

  ‘I can’t do that. I should go.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To begin with, I’m married.’

  ‘And there are a lot of married people in this room. Some of them miserably married.’

  ‘Who says I’m miserable?’

  ‘No one. They don’t need to. I can see it for myself. The way you clasp your hands like you’re afraid to let go. The way you’re coiled up inside like a cat wanting to spring away.’

  ‘Like a cat. I like that one.’

  ‘I’m just telling you what’s right in front of my eyes. Trust me, you’d be like a kitten all curled up with me.’

  ‘Thanks for your kind invitation, Mr Fielder, but I really must be going.’

  She gathered her handbag from an occasional table, but as she crossed the room to say her farewells to the Coles she couldn’t help but turn a glance to Fielder, a glance he caught, and in that moment he knew for certain that his first impression of Audrey Holloway had been correct. He watched her kiss th
e other women in the room in saying goodbye.

  As she passed by him again on her way out she nodded with affected politeness and said, ‘Goodnight, Gene.’

  He tipped his glass back at her. ‘Night, Audrey.’

  Chapter 11

  His cricket team was playing an away game and Cole was up early the next morning rubbing white polish into his cricket boots. The last of their visitors hadn’t left until midnight after which he’d gathered empty bottles from the back yard and brought all the dirty crockery and cutlery he could find into the kitchen, washing load after load of dishes. At one point he’d noticed Nancy missing and found her fully dressed and sprawled across their bed. He hadn’t tried waking her.

  He was feeling the lack of sleep now. At least Nance hadn’t suffered one of her attacks – fainting spells – last night, if that was what they were calling them.

  His drowsiness gradually subsided after he wolfed down fried bacon and eggs. He poached an egg for Nance when she finally rose.

  ‘Are you playing today?’ she asked.

  She was bleary-eyed. The pallor in her face, the way she picked at her egg, told him she was suffering.

  ‘Just cleaned the boots.’ He paused before adding, ‘Why don’t you go back to bed for a spell?’

  She studied her fingernails, and then answered, ‘I might’, looking up at him a moment before she left the table.

  ‘Can I get something for you up the street?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ she answered. ‘You don’t need to worry.’

  Though he did. As he watched her retreat to the bedroom, anything else he might have said choked in his throat. When they should have been celebrating the good time everyone had last night, there was instead this unspoken tension. The times they did discuss Nancy’s problem, it was strained, even painful between them. How did people talk about something like this, he wondered?

  Cole cleared the table and gathered his cricket things.

  His Fire Brigade Cricket Club team had no connection at all to the actual fire brigade but must have once, he knew. Over the years he’d filled myriad positions within the team, starting as a top order batsman when he was just out of high school, turning his hand now and then to tweaking a few leg-spinners when real bowling talent became thin on the ground. In his late twenties he’d been captain-coach for several seasons, and over the ensuing years became club secretary, treasurer, president, coach again, scorer, and then president again, sometimes filling several of those roles at once. It had felt like a hole in his life the year they couldn’t field a team at all.