Kill your brother, p.11
Kill Your Brother, page 11
He tried to run. To save himself, leaving Thatcher to face the music. Bloody typical. Every time she thinks she has him figured out, he finds a new level to sink to. As Moon would have said, he’s just the worst.
Stephanie puts her hands on her hips, trying to figure out how to get her captives back into the septic tank. They’ll be incapacitated for somewhere between five and sixty minutes. She can’t carry both of them at the same time without her wheelbarrow. If she carries one, the other might escape. And if she goes to get the wheelbarrow, they both might. It’s like that old riddle with the wolf, the goat and the cabbage.
Luckily, she has her handcuffs. She bought them online—they were the number-one-ranked brand for ‘reliability and sexiness’. They’re covered in fuzzy red fabric, but they have a steel core, and she’s superglued the quick-release mechanism in place. She drags Callum back to the private investigator and cuffs his wrist to her ankle. Now neither of them is going anywhere in a hurry, conscious or not.
The septic tank is a long way away, but the pit is close. Stephanie could just cave both their heads in with a rock, then push them in on top of Zach’s corpse.
But the private investigator, Thatcher, hasn’t done anything wrong. Stephanie can’t kill a woman who’s just doing her job. Therefore she can’t kill Callum, either, because Thatcher needs to do it. Otherwise Stephanie can’t let her go. Jesus, what a mess. She jogs up the driveway to the garage, where the wheelbarrow is.
She heaves the door open with a rattle and a screech. The night vision goggles illuminate Thatcher’s Suzuki and the rest of the garage in grainy grey. There are plenty of tools, mostly gathering dust. When she first moved here, she struggled to predict which things she would need to take with her—and, she now realises, what she would need them for. The wheelbarrow, the shovel and the pitchfork have all been unexpectedly useful lately.
The barrow has a ball at the front instead of a wheel. Better for rolling across the soft dirt with a heavy load. She bought it just after Vic left. With his broad shoulders and thick arms, it hadn’t mattered what kind of wheelbarrow they owned. Once he was gone, everything seemed harder.
There’s just enough room to manoeuvre the barrow past Thatcher’s Suzuki. Stephanie lifts the rubber handles, does a three-point turn and is suddenly blinded.
She rips off the goggles and finds herself staring into a pair of headlights. A spike of fear impales her heart. She hadn’t even heard the car coming up the driveway behind her.
There have been no visitors in months. It can only be the police. She reaches for the tranquilliser gun on her back—
But then hesitates. It’s a tan ute, not a police car. An old man steps out of the driver’s seat, wearing a red raincoat and a matching beanie, rubbing his hands against the cold.
‘Stephanie?’ he says. ‘Herbert Conway from next door.’
It takes her a moment to find her voice. ‘We’ve met.’
Next door is almost a kilometre away, and she’d thought the occupants were long gone. Why is Herbert here—and how much did he see on his way up the drive?
As he approaches, he takes in the wheelbarrow, the night vision goggles, the rifle. ‘What are you up to?’ he asks cautiously.
‘Shot a feral goat,’ Stephanie says. ‘Not before it ate half my garden, mind. Now I have to get rid of it.’
She’s talking too fast, too loud. She’s not sure if Herbert can tell.
‘Ah,’ he says. ‘Would you like a hand?’
‘No. Thank you. I thought you moved to Wagga?’
‘We did. But the estate agent is having trouble selling the property. She thought it might help if we cleaned the house up a bit. I’d have thought that was her job, but apparently not.’ He harrumphs, the way old men do when the world doesn’t bend over backwards for them.
‘Real estate agents,’ Stephanie says. ‘Don’t get me started. Anyway, thanks for stopping by.’
Thatcher or Callum could wake up and start screaming at any moment. Stephanie has to get Herbert out of here.
‘I spent all day scrubbing windows,’ Herbert continues, as if he hasn’t heard. Maybe he hasn’t—there’s a flesh-coloured hearing aid in his ear. ‘All done now, though. I’m driving home in the morning. But I wanted to ask, do you know anything about a car parked in front of my fence?’
‘Car?’ Stephanie says, as though she’s only familiar with horses. She resists the urge to glance at Thatcher’s Suzuki, which is right next to her.
‘The agent spotted it. Said it looked like someone had abandoned it there, maybe.’
‘Sounds about right. You want me to help you get rid of it?’
‘It’s gone now.’
‘Oh, good! Problem solved. Now if you’ll excuse me, Herb, I have a goat to bury.’
‘Just seems strange.’ He coughs into his fist. ‘To dump a car way out here. And where did it go? Did the owners come back for it, or did someone steal it, or what?’
‘I guess we’ll never know.’ Stephanie starts rolling the wheelbarrow towards Herbert, slowly herding him out of her garage.
He takes the hint. He glances at his wrist and realises he’s not wearing a watch. ‘Well, I’d better get going.’
‘No worries. Have a nice evening.’
He opens his car door, goes to get in, then stops. ‘I wanted to say I’m sorry. For your loss.’
Stephanie just looks at him.
‘Vic showed me some pictures,’ he continues. ‘She was a beautiful girl.’
And there’s the anger, burning hotter and hotter in her chest. Tectonic plates shifting, ready to release the lava. She has the sudden urge to shoot Herb and throw him into the septic tank, even though he has nothing to do with anything.
‘It’s a terrible thing,’ he says.
She keeps staring at him until, clearly embarrassed, he gets in the car and starts the engine. He reverses down the driveway, fast enough that the wheels slide on the gravel when he reaches the open gate.
Stephanie watches the headlights swing to the right, not the left. He must be staying at the motel in town rather than the cold, empty house. She’s alone again. She rolls the barrow out of the garage and down the hill into the trees.
By the time she gets back to the two prisoners, Thatcher is stirring slowly, like a spider sprayed with Mortein. Stephanie doesn’t want to use a tranquilliser dart—the dosage is calibrated for Callum’s weight. Thatcher is lucky the last one didn’t kill her. Reluctantly, Stephanie blasts her with the cattle prod again. Both prisoners shudder, the current apparently reaching Callum through the metal in the cuffs.
Why didn’t Thatcher just kill him? She has no other way out—can’t she see that?
It’s possible that Stephanie will have to tell her what Callum did. What he is.
But she really doesn’t want to dig all that up again.
When her captives stop twitching, she unlocks the handcuffs. She pushes one arm under Callum’s knees and the other under his neck. She hates touching him, but there’s no way around it. Gritting her teeth, she hauls him up. Even thin from hunger, he’s heavy. She’s relieved to drop him into the barrow. His head thunks against the steel.
She carries Thatcher more carefully, trying to avoid touching her injured elbow. But when she lowers her onto Callum, the barrow is too heavy. Stephanie will have to take the prisoners one at a time.
Annoyed, she pulls Thatcher back out and handcuffs her to a tree root, then starts pushing the barrow back through the forest towards the septic tank, Callum’s body bouncing around inside. The ball gets stuck on a rock, and she has to push harder to get over it.
‘You fucker,’ she mutters. She only ever swears when she’s alone. ‘You piece of shit. Look what you’ve done to me.’
She can’t wait to be rid of him.
CHAPTER 20
The sun beat down on the running track, reflecting the heat back up into Elise’s face as she doubled over, clutching her abdomen. Everything hurt, from her toes to her scalp. Each thump of her heart sent ripples through her vision. She could barely see her shoes, or her bare legs.
It felt like that flu she’d caught when she was nine—trembling agony all over, her brain throbbing like it wanted to explode inside her skull. She had begged to go to hospital, but Dad had prodded her glands with a rough hand and said, ‘You’ll be right.’ The fear that he was wrong was almost worse than the fever. But after Dad went to bed, Callum snuck upstairs and brought her water and Panadol. She was pathetically grateful. Without him, she might have died—or so she had believed, at the time.
Now, dry-heaving beside the finish line, she wished her brother had come with her to Canberra. He would put a hand on her forehead and tell her not to worry, that she was going to be okay. Essentially the same thing that Dad had said, but somehow more comforting.
Mr Panagoulis had been right. It was different, racing the best of the best. She’d barely placed at the nationals, and it had taken everything she had. Now she and twenty other young women were training at the Australian Institute of Sport, and Elise’s times were never in the top ten, no matter how hard she pushed. This was killing her.
The other athletes were stretching and laughing. A few were circling the stadium again, slower, to cool down. Some of them wore full makeup, apparently immune to sweat. The coaches—mostly men, with sagging bellies and thinning hair—were muttering, making emphatic gestures or massaging calf muscles. A couple of mysterious strangers in suits watched from the otherwise empty stands. Sponsorship brokers, maybe.
Elise peered through the blur of exhaustion at one of the runners, who was doing sumo squats. She didn’t even look sweaty.
Maybe she’s a robot, Elise thought dizzily. Maybe they all are. It’s some crazy reality show, where the producers surrounded me with machines to see if—
‘Hey.’
Elise spun around, too fast. The world spun with her, and she nearly collapsed.
‘Whoa!’ Someone caught her. Strong arms. White teeth. That was all she could make out.
‘Easy, tiger,’ a voice said. ‘You okay? You barely made that last hurdle.’
The woman sounded friendly, and a bit rough. Someone from the country, like her. Not like all these posh girls from private schools in Brisbane and Melbourne.
Elise found the ground beneath her feet and slipped out of the woman’s grip. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’ A sly smile at the corner of the woman’s mouth. Sweat beaded her angled brows and upturned nose. Her cheeks were pink from the run. A long brown ponytail dangled over the straps of her sports bra. A thin gold chain hung just under her throat.
Her name came to Elise. ‘Narelle, right? I’ve seen you.’
‘I’ve seen you, too.’ Narelle’s smile grew wider. ‘That was quite a run—near miss aside.’
Elise looked away. ‘I was pretty slow.’
‘Faster than last time, though. And that time was faster than the time before that.’
‘I suppose.’ Elise was surprised that Narelle had been paying such close attention.
‘You might be a bit behind right now, but you’re improving faster than any of us. Three months, and you’ll be leading the pack. Maybe—’ Narelle broke off. ‘Sorry. I’m not your coach. You probably don’t want a pep talk from me.’
‘It’s okay.’ Elise did feel a bit better.
Narelle looked around. ‘Where is your coach?’
‘Smoko.’
Narelle laughed. Elise would have joined her if she could breathe.
Elise’s coach, Jim McConnell, was a thirty-year-old man with a soul patch and a sports science degree. He’d cornered her after a race in Sydney, and promised to be the wind beneath her wings—he’d literally said those words. Elise had laughed, but had also been disarmed by his earnestness. He’d turned out to be a decent coach, when he bothered to show up.
‘Mine told me he needed to organise some logistics,’ Narelle said. ‘I took that to mean he was going to stuff his face at Macca’s. Why do they do that?’
‘Eat fast food?’
‘No—hide their bad habits. I’m not expecting him to run a race. He can eat whatever he wants.’
‘Maybe he’s ashamed. Seeing you, being all—’ Elise almost said beautiful ‘—fit. He can’t bear to eat rubbish in front of you.’
‘Maybe. Pretty inconvenient time for him to go AWOL, though. Help me stretch?’
‘Sure.’
Narelle put her ankle on Elise’s shoulder. The extra weight nearly flattened her. But she kept her footing and pushed up Narelle’s leg, gently.
The angle left her looking past Narelle at the other athletes, still running around in circles like soldiers training for an invasion. None of them had said more than a few words to Elise since she arrived. It was high school all over again—she was insignificant, and found herself on the outside of every conversation, peering in.
‘They don’t even look tired,’ she said, marvelling.
‘Yeah, well.’ Narelle sounded like she knew something Elise didn’t.
‘What?’
‘Don’t worry.’ Narelle switched legs, leaning her other ankle on Elise’s shoulder. ‘You’ll get there, okay?’
Elise doubted this. She was already eating exact portions at precise times. Running the right distances on the right days. Tracking her weight, how long she slept, how much she urinated. What more could she do?
‘Trust me.’ Narelle lowered her leg. ‘You have more potential than you think.’
Elise didn’t want potential. She wanted to go home. But she couldn’t. She was the pride and joy of Warrigal. No one else from that little town had ever done anything of note.
She pictured herself begging Rafa for her old job. Telling her parents she’d failed, after they’d made sacrifices.
‘Hey. You okay?’ Narelle squeezed Elise’s arm.
She didn’t usually like being touched. She liked running because you got your own lane, that no one else could enter. But this time it felt nice.
She just nodded.
‘I’m sneaking out tonight,’ Narelle said. ‘For a proper meal, not this protein shake bullshit. Come with me?’
Canberra was an inland city, but Narelle had somehow found a waterfront restaurant. Lights sparkled across the lake, and a tea candle burned on the table. A handsome waiter set down pre-warmed plates, and soon came back with a small metal bucket of lentil curry.
‘I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten out of a bucket,’ Elise said.
Narelle was already scooping it onto her plate. ‘Welcome to the big smoke.’
Elise spooned some curry onto her garlic naan, and nibbled. ‘Wow.’
‘Right? I think it’s ninety-nine per cent cream.’
‘Coach would kill me if he knew I was eating this.’
‘I can keep a secret.’ The candlelight sparkled in Narelle’s eyes, her lipstick gleaming.
Sitting opposite her, Elise felt an excited fluttering in the pit of her stomach, one she’d felt before—with a girl in her maths class, and with a couple of her brother’s girlfriends. Elise had never felt it when talking to a boy. She’d always tried to ignore it.
‘Tell me about yourself,’ she heard herself say.
‘Well, I’m from Melbourne.’ Narelle sipped a mango lassi. ‘Grew up in a flat in Elsternwick. Mum and Dad are accountants, and they both really loved sport, so they got me on to little athletics when I was basically a foetus. Lucky they did, too. I can’t throw a ball through a hoop, or hit one over a net, or kick one between two goalposts. But running in a straight line? I can do the hell out of that.’ She didn’t sound like a city girl. ‘You can jump, too,’ Elise said.
Narelle laughed, sparking a warm glow all over Elise’s body. ‘So can you.’
Her smile was beautiful. Elise watched it for a while, then realised she should probably say something. At least make an encouraging noise to keep the conversation going. But which noise? Her brain was frozen.
Narelle rescued her. ‘Anyway, I placed at the regionals, and now I’m here on a state scholarship. How about you?’
‘No scholarship for me.’ Elise tried to make it sound like this was no big deal. ‘But Mum and Dad are supporting me.’
Narelle seemed to detect the tension. ‘For how long?’
It was a blunt question, so Elise gave it a blunt answer. ‘Until I win a gold medal, or until their money runs out.’
‘That’s a lot of pressure.’
‘No pressure, no diamonds.’
Narelle cracked a poppadom in half. ‘Ooh, I like that.’
Elise didn’t want to admit she was quoting her coach. ‘Thanks.’
A boat glided past, people leaning against the railing on the top deck, champagne flutes in hand. Narelle gave them a cheery wave. Someone waved back.
‘Do you know them?’ Elise asked.
Narelle laughed again. ‘No! There’s just something about boats. I wouldn’t wave at a stranger in a car, or on a bike, but if they’re on a boat? Sure. Or if they’re in a hot air balloon—that’s worth a wave.’ She shrugged. ‘Doesn’t make much sense, when I say it out loud.’
‘Maybe it’s because they can’t come over and talk to you. You’re willing to wave because you know that’ll be the end of it. You’re not going to get stuck making small talk with them.’
‘They’re the ones who’d be stuck. I love talking to people.’ Narelle pulled some lipstick out of her handbag and scribbled a phone number on a napkin. Elise took it, feeling tingly.
‘It’s for a doctor,’ Narelle said. ‘All the other girls go to him. He can make sure you’re getting the best out of your body.’
Disappointed, Elise looked down at the napkin, and the blood-red digits on it.
Narelle reached across the table and squeezed her hand. ‘Don’t worry. We’re going to win you that gold.’
CHAPTER 21
‘Where are you?’ The Scottish accent made McConnell sound more annoyed than he probably was.
Elise was standing in front of a narrow, two-storey stucco building, preparing to meet Narelle’s doctor. But if she told her coach that, he’d want to know why she hadn’t told him earlier.
