Life Before Read online

  Carmel Reilly is a Melbourne-based writer for children and adults. She is the author of over 300 educational titles of fiction and non-fiction and has been published in Australia and internationally. She won first prize in the Queen of Crime short story competition in 2011, and in 2016 was the recipient of a Varuna Residential Fellowship for Life Before, which is her first novel.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First published in 2019

  Copyright © Carmel Reilly 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76052 931 4

  eISBN 978 1 76087 123 9

  Set by Bookhouse, Sydney

  Cover design: Christabella Designs

  Cover images: Shutterstock and iStockphoto

  Contents

  July 1993

  April 2016

  March 1993

  April 1993

  April 2016

  May 1993

  April 2016

  July 1993

  April 2016

  July 1993

  July 1993

  April 2016

  July 1993

  April 2016

  August 1993

  September 1993

  April 2016

  October 1993

  November 1993

  April 2016

  November 1993

  April 2016

  July 1993

  Acknowledgements

  July 1993

  Northam

  It was four-thirty in the morning when Senior Sergeant Des Robinson emerged from the Northam police station on Grant Street and made his way across the road to where his car was parked in a gravel lay-by overlooking the town. He stood for a moment in the no-man’s-land somewhere between the driver’s door and the low crash barrier that rimmed the edge, hugging his jacket close against the cold. The sky was black as pitch. No moon. No stars. Only the streetlights below creating an abstract map, an ethereal representation of the place, drew his eye as he fumbled in his pockets and found his cigarettes and lighter.

  It was quiet, too, he noted. No hum from the highway on the far side of town. Not this morning. This morning the air was cool and still and there was a heaviness to it, a metallic scent that told him it was about to rain. He felt a passing gratitude that it had held off, that they’d had time to do their work and clear the scene without having to grapple with the weather. The only thing worse than having to deal with fatals was having to deal with them in the wet.

  He took a cigarette from the packet and lit it, taking the smoke deep into his lungs, feeling the rough sensation on the back of his throat. What was it, this need? A conditioned response, half reward, half punishment. Probably mostly punishment if he was ever to analyse the situation. The pointless waste of life was something he always found hard to take; even after all these years he hadn’t found a way to make any sense of it. It wasn’t so much death itself. He’d become used enough to that and could largely cope with its physical reality. It was something deeper that affected him. The sense of futility, of some unfulfilled promise. What might have been and would now never be. An existential chasm that yawned before him and left him wondering why he, now looking fifty in the eye, was still here while golden youths with everything in front of them did not live to see their twentieth birthdays.

  He ground the cigarette out in the gravel and got into his car. There was an opened bottle of water on the passenger side. He rinsed his mouth then took a peppermint from the compartment between the seats as he started up the engine. From the station he drove along the ridge and down towards Main Street, looking up to his own house as he went. He noted the lights were off and was glad of it. Mary had stirred when he had been called out and he’d hoped she’d settle back.

  ‘Where’re you going?’ she’d murmured.

  ‘Don’t know yet, love,’ he’d said softly, even though he did know, had been told by the dispatcher that there’d been a single car accident out on Allens Road, twenty minutes out of town. Telling Mary might spill her out of sleep, leave her wakeful and wondering until he got home. It was like that in a small town. An accident out on the highway could just as easily be a visitor passing through. An accident on one of the back roads meant a local, likely someone known.

  He turned right at the bottom of the hill. The town centre lay directly in front of him. Main Street, still and ghostly under spare electric light, looked like a disused film set. A light rain was starting to fall now and the droplets formed a misty white curtain across his line of sight. He turned right again into Longmuir, noting the first stirrings of the day. Life going on. A truck was backing into the loading dock at the supermarket. On the other side of the road there were lights on at the bakery.

  He drove on, down Longmuir Street towards the bridge. Here the houses were newer and more compact than those on the hill. In the dark they were barely visible, but he knew them, could see them in his mind’s eye, their blank 1960s weatherboard exteriors, plain front fences, overgrown, neglected gardens or patches of dirt. Much of his daily police work centred on the streets that ran either side of this stretch. The Flat they called it colloquially. He’d been summoned here more times than he could remember to deal with domestic disputes, noisy drunken parties, firearm offences and, increasingly these days, drugs. But the early hours were a great democratiser. At this time of the day the Flat was as peaceful as anywhere else in Northam and he had no need to stop here. This morning his business lay further out in the new part of town, across the river.

  The estate was the town’s answer to a rising population and growing affluence. It was not middle class, not rural establishment like the Hill, but there was a certain air of prosperity. Large houses with even larger garages, V8 sedans, utes and trail bikes littering the driveways. The garages themselves held the prizes: hot rods, vintage vehicles, works in progress, even the occasional boat, despite being so far from a good body of water. At the end of a cul-de-sac he pulled up next to a long, low cream-brick veneer, not unlike most of its neighbours. Neat as a pin. A concrete driveway led up to the double garage from the street and another narrower parallel path ran up to its front door.

  He turned off the engine and sat for a moment in the darkness. It was one thing to attend accidents but another to take the news to the family. Mary had been on at him for a while to give up what they called the death messages. If he was on duty, and often even if he wasn’t, he invariably delivered them, despite the fact he could have given the job to one of the constables, especially now that there were more personnel. There was nothing about doing it that he liked, yet he believed it was the part of his work that needed the greatest care. He felt obligated to take responsibility, he’d told her. He knew what these people were going through, how they needed to be treated. She’d replied that his real obligation now was to
pass on his skills, his understanding of people, to younger officers. And she was right, of course, as she was always right. Still, this time, he thought he had made the correct decision. This time, given what he knew about this particular family, it was best for it to be him.

  Thunder rumbled behind the hills and the rain began to beat down. He cursed and leaned across to the glove box, hoping to find an umbrella, a plastic file, something to hold over his head, but there was nothing useful that he could see. When he straightened in his seat again sheet lightning lit up the street, and it was in that second of illumination that he saw a figure. Someone standing on the driveway, directly in front of the double garage doors, rain-drenched, dripping, staring at the car. At him. Des couldn’t clearly recognise who it was through the streaming window, but he knew anyway and felt a thrill of adrenaline run through him, a grab of apprehension. Had he been there the whole time? Had he watched him pull up?

  Splinters of frozen rain fired at him as he opened the door, causing him to pause for a moment, shocked by the assault. In the dull glow of the interior light, with his arm outstretched to the handle, he noticed something dark on his sleeve. Smears of blood across the cuff of his shirt. How had he failed to see this before? But of course it didn’t matter now. Couldn’t matter. Like everything else, it was too late to do anything about it. In seconds he was out of the car, running up the drive, thinking only of what needed to be done next.

  April 2016

  Melbourne

  She was closing the front door behind her when the white and blue squad car drove past. She noted it slow, turn into a driveway up the street and circle back as she herded the kids down the path and out the front gate.

  ‘Look, Mum. The police,’ said Cody, who at five was highly skilled at stating the obvious.

  ‘Yep,’ she said. ‘No time to gawk, bubs. We need to get a move on.’

  By then the car was crawling along almost opposite them, the two officers—a man in the passenger seat, a woman behind the wheel—clearly observing her, checking the house. She paused for a split second by the gate as the kids ran on down the street, saw the female officer register them, and felt something flutter inside her, that residual fear, sense of guilt. There was something about cops, the way they had of looking at you, wary and observant as though they had X-ray vision and could see what was in your head. Or worse still, what was in your heart. Would they be able to tell there was a distinct possibility of law-breaking this morning? Speeding in a forty zone. Running a red light. They usually walked, she and the kids, but this morning she’d overslept and the kids had been groggy and slow to wake. Now they were going to have to drive, and even then they might not make it on time.

  She followed her children along the footpath towards their car, glancing back only fleetingly at the police, who had now stopped a little further up on the other side of the street, perhaps scrutinising something or someone else. Without as much as a traffic ticket to her name so far, the likelihood they were looking for her was low. Her attention shifted instead to Sophie, who had run across the grass verge to their ageing Toyota and was yanking at the back doorhandle. When it failed to yield she turned sharply and gave her mother the look, the one that spoke of thinly veiled impatience in the face of adult incompetency. They were in a hurry (hadn’t she been harassing Sophie for the last twenty minutes to get a move on?) and now the car wasn’t even unlocked. Sophie hopped from one foot to the other as though the ground was too hot to stand on, her body suddenly, annoyingly, alight with childish energy.

  ‘Hold on,’ she said, dropping Cody’s backpack on the ground and patting her jeans pockets for the keys, before finally retrieving them and pointing the remote control at the door. The locks clunked open, but Sophie had turned and was now frozen in position, her arm bent back gymnastically against the door, her attention taken with something over her mother’s shoulder down the street. Sophie lifted her hand and pointed. ‘Mum.’

  She turned to see one of the cops, the woman, striding towards her, wisps of hair escaping from under her cap, seemingly eager to waylay her before she got into the car.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she called. A few more steps and the woman was upon them, police training clearly having kicked in. ‘Off to school, are we?’ she said in a tone that approximated friendly but still held an interrogatory edge.

  ‘Yes, running a bit late. We have to be—’

  The cop nodded as she cut her off. ‘Sorry, but we’re looking for someone. You might be able to help. Someone who we believe lives at number fifteen? A Loren … ah … Green?’

  ‘Green!’ piped Cody, appearing suddenly beside his mother and looking up at the stranger in uniform. ‘She’s not green.’ He issued a sharp little I-cracked-a-joke laugh, and the officer glanced down at him and smiled, momentarily indulgent.

  In those few seconds when she’d seen the cop striding towards her she’d thought the worst. That something had happened to Jason at work. There was always a fear at the back of her mind that he could have an accident. His job might not be high risk, but his workplace was. All that machinery. The chances of walls collapsing, cranes toppling sideways, a girder swinging loose just as he crossed the site. A thousand possible catastrophes. But, in the way the woman had addressed her, she had realised quickly it was not about him. If it had been, they would have known what her name was now; there would have been a different, more solicitous set to the woman’s face. Still, the wave of quiet dread didn’t quite abate, old reflexes remained. Cops never came bearing good news.

  ‘Hop in the car with Sophie, sweetheart,’ she said, reaching down and angling Cody’s head in the direction of the Toyota.

  ‘Sophie’s not in the car,’ he countered, pointing towards his sister who was still standing next to the open back door, looking expectantly at her mother.

  ‘She’s getting in, aren’t you, Soph?’ she said in a louder voice, then quieter again, but more sternly to Cody. ‘I want you in there too. Now, please.’ She turned back to the woman. ‘I was Loren Green, before I got married. I’m Loren—Lori—Spyker now. What’s this about?’

  The woman glanced briefly at the children as Sophie opened the car door. ‘Mrs Spyker, I’m Constable Leonard. We’re here about your brother, Scott Michael Green?’

  Scott.

  Of all the small inchoate notions that sat at the edge of her consciousness, none of them involved her brother. She looked at the woman then, searching her face for a trace of recognition (what did she know?). There didn’t seem to be anything behind her query other than the obvious, the current circumstances, whatever they were. ‘Are you sure? I mean, it’s a common name. There must be hundreds of Scott Greens.’

  By now, the other officer had parked the car and was coming towards them. He nodded to her in acknowledgement, mumbled something that her mind was too busy whirring to catch. ‘We found your name and address,’ Constable Leonard said, her eyes searching Lori’s face. ‘We—’

  Lori held up her hand. ‘Sorry. Hold on.’ Behind her she could hear the kids’ voices. She swivelled around to check them. They were in the car, but the door was wide open. She took a step closer to the police, reducing her volume to almost a whisper. She wasn’t sure where to start. Questions queued haphazardly. ‘Look, I haven’t seen him for a long time. Years. Has he done something? What’s happened?’

  ‘I’m afraid your brother has been injured in an accident,’ Constable Leonard replied.

  ‘What?’ She could see the officers looking at her, noting her reaction. That ingrained observation. ‘How? I mean …’

  ‘Perhaps we should go inside?’ the man suggested.

  ‘I really need to get the kids to school, we …’ She looked from one to the other, unsure of what to say, what she could say. Did she sound odd? Heartless? Perhaps they would put it down to shock. Well, it was a shock. Definitely a shock.

  ‘I think it might be a good idea for you to sit down for a few minutes,’ the policeman said.

  ‘Mu-um.’ Sophie’s vo
ice rang out behind her. ‘We’re going to be late.’

  The policewoman took the initiative, walked over to Sophie, now half out of the car, and crouched down. ‘We’re all going to go back inside for a minute or two. We need to talk to Mum for a while. School won’t mind, promise.’

  Sophie nodded, overwhelmed by the uniform and the moment. She took an uncertain step forward, skirting the woman. ‘Mummy?’

  Lori put out a hand, and Sophie lunged at her, wrapping her arms around her mother’s thighs. ‘It’s all right, hon. Don’t worry. This won’t take long.’

  Lori felt Sophie’s head move against her leg, nodding in acquiescence. She wasn’t about to protest in front of the police. Even at her age she understood the power of authority. But her fingers dug into her mother’s flesh in mute protestation. Lori stroked her shoulder as they hobbled back to the house, Sophie attached limpet-like to her leg, Cody following, unnervingly quiet.

  Inside, Lori sat with the constables at the wooden table at one end of the L-shape that was their kitchen-dining-living area. She had parked the kids in front of the TV and glanced over at them as they sat motionless on the carpet, staring at actors wearing aprons and pretending to bake a cake. It was stuff for younger children, preschoolers, but they could still be enticed into watching. They leaned close into each other, unconscious of their ease, happy enough to be at home for the time being, perhaps even hoping there might be a reprieve from classes for the day.

  Constable Leonard, sitting directly opposite, leaned forward and spoke quietly. ‘Look, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Scott was knocked from his bike by a car at about eight last night. It looks like a hit and run. At this point we have few leads, but obviously we’re working on that. He was unconscious and taken to St James’s, where he is now in critical care.’

  Lori shook her head, finding it difficult to take in their words; feeling only a strange hollowness, a sense of disbelief that she was sitting here with these people, uniformed strangers, having this conversation at all. ‘Is it bad?’ she managed at last. ‘Will he be all right?’