Already Dead (22 page)

Jax had been to the cafe with Tilda on the visit to Newcastle before she sold the house. The barista knew her aunt by name and made a great cappuccino and the aroma from the muffin baking had made Jax want to move in there. It was on a busy corner with huge windows that looked out to both streets and, back then, it'd seemed sunny, busy and trendy. Now, after being chased by two men, possibly the same men who'd broken into Tilda's house, it felt more like a fishbowl. Taking a table in the rear, glancing uneasily at the expanse of glass, Jax wished she'd known the name of a smaller, more private cafe when she'd talked to Hugh Talbotson this morning.

They were fifteen minutes early – enough time for Jax to cool down, settle Zoe and her dolls, and work up some anxiety. Hugh hadn't called her, which she hoped was because he planned to meet her, not some passive-aggressive payback to inconvenience her. Brendan had been Hugh's friend and Jax was with him at the end; she'd been left with a gun and Hugh with a distraught Kate Walsh. This conversation could go any number of ways and not all of them good.

She watched Zoe talking to her dolls, impressed and grateful for her daughter's capacity to entertain herself this week. It'd been a big five days in six-year-old terms – new house, new food, new people, late nights. The excitement had probably helped to sustain Zoe this far but it was hot and humid and she was tired. Probably tired of being dragged around today. Maybe bringing her here wasn't a great idea. Maybe Hugh wouldn't want to talk. Maybe Russell had a point: what the hell
was
she doing?

‘Miranda?'

‘Hugh.' She got to her feet, held out her hand. ‘Thanks for coming.'

He was tall, muscular and clean-cut. It would be difficult to mistake him for anything but military. She'd seen him earlier under a harsh midday sun and in a dim hallway. He'd looked robust, hard. Here in the gentler light of the cafe, she saw a shadow of fatigue under his lower eyelashes, a hint of grey in his pallor, and thought the tiredness made him seem more human, a little vulnerable. Someone better for Kate to lean on.

They busied themselves with the small talk of ordering, Jax gabbling a little, thrown by his stern composure. She ordered and paid at the counter, found Zoe setting up doll school on the table when she got back, Hugh watching in arm-folded silence.

‘How about you use a chair for the classroom, baby?' Jax pulled a seat from another table and set it next to Zoe.

‘But they're already at their desks.' Something slightly whiny had arrived in Zoe's voice.

‘We need the table for the drinks.'

‘But,
Mu-um
, my dollies need to go to school.' Foreboding fluttered in Jax's gut. Zoe was too old for a terrible
twos-style, hit-the-floor-and-scream tantrum, but she was six and she could whine and interrupt and lose her temper and cause a fuss, and like any mother with a tired child, Jax knew she was on borrowed time.

Willing Zoe not to lose it yet, she tried to inject a hang-in-there vibe into her tone. ‘Well, table-school is closed for the holidays but if the students transfer to chair-school, the teacher gets a smoothie. And look, here it is.' She took the glass from the waitress and held it out of Zoe's reach. ‘Better get those girls to class.'

While Zoe rearranged the dolls, Jax turned to Hugh, worried he might be having second thoughts. ‘Sorry about this.'

He shook his head. ‘It's fine.'

‘Have you got kids?'

‘No, but I'm Uncle Hugh to about twenty of them.' He took a mock surreptitious glance around. ‘If you've got another one lurking, you might need a school principal.'

She laughed a little – relieved and surprised at his joke. She thought he was shaping up as a hard arse. ‘No, it's just Zoe.'

‘Ready,' Zoe called.

Jax handed her the glass, turned back to Hugh, wanting to get started while Zoe was occupied, cautious of jumping right in with intimate questions about dead friends. ‘How's Kate?'

‘Her neighbour gave her something to help her sleep. She took it at one-thirty and was asleep when I left. Scotty is playing next door for two hours.'

An official report – this process could be difficult for more reasons than she thought. ‘They seem like good neighbours.'

‘Yes, but I'm biased. Jock was a navy man. Not army but a close enough relative.'

Nodding as though she had some clue about military camaraderie, she said, ‘Is that how it was with Brendan? He was family?'

‘Something like that.' Hugh's gaze slipped away from her as the waitress headed back with their order, and Jax wondered if her question was too sentimental or if he needed more coaxing to talk about his friend.

As his long black and her peppermint tea were settled on the table, Jax glanced at Zoe, decided the direct approach might suit them all. ‘Can you tell me what Brendan was like?'

He didn't right away. He tore the top off a sachet of sugar, let the contents slide into his cup and stirred. Jax wanted to reach across the table, grab him by the shirt front and shout,
Talk, goddamn it!
But she poured her tea, telling herself that just because he was here didn't mean it would be easy – or that he wouldn't change his mind.

He didn't. He laid the spoon on the saucer, folded his arms on the table and lifted his eyes. He seemed different now, as though in the seconds he'd stirred, the muscles in his face had been rearranged, softening the mouth, relaxing the stern angles. There was resolution there, too: reluctant, sad, possibly dutiful, but no misgiving in it.

‘Brendan was a likeable bloke,' he said. ‘Popular with the guys, a lot of fun sometimes. But …' His head dipped to one side, as though he was disappointed to have to say the rest. ‘He could be a bit loose around the edges.'

Jax sipped tea with no clue what that meant. ‘How so?'

Another tip of his head. ‘Brendan wasn't the steadiest of blokes. He was a good soldier, but he could be up and down. Loose, you know. Unpredictable.'

She'd seen unpredictable, didn't think Hugh was referring to a tendency for carjackings. ‘What kind of unpredictable?'

‘He was moody. Sometimes his decisions were questionable. He didn't always make good choices about who he got friendly with.' A checklist, maybe Hugh's criteria for assessment: attitude, decision-making, associates.

‘Do you mean when he was in the army or recently?'

‘Both.'

Jax listened to Zoe making noises with her straw, fingered the handle on her teacup. She'd liked Kate's version of Brendan better. ‘It was generous of you to help him find work.'

‘I've made some useful civilian contacts over the years. Sometimes they come to me for personnel, sometimes it's ex-ADF looking for jobs. I've been able to help out a few.'

‘Which way was it with Brendan?'

‘He came to a reunion, told a few of the blokes he was trying to get work, and one of them suggested he talk to me.'

‘Did you know about his PTSD?'

‘Yeah. He said he was over it and I wanted to help him get his shit together.'

Kate had said the PTSD made Brendan feel less of a man. It couldn't have been easy for him to ask this tough guy for help.

‘Mummy?'

Jax turned, found Zoe standing beside her. ‘Yes, baby?'

‘How long are we going to be here?' Her voice was more plaintive than grisly – Jax figured she could hold out a while longer.

‘Just for a little bit. I brought some of your books. Why don't you get one out?' While Zoe peered into her bag, Jax turned back to Hugh. ‘You weren't worried about Brendan being unpredictable in a job you put him in?'

He held up a hand. ‘Don't get me wrong, he was a solid soldier. So long as he had clear boundaries to work within, he was fine. I figured he'd be okay with the kind of soft jobs he'd get.'

She frowned. ‘Brendan was doing private security work, right? Being a bodyguard, transporting money, debt collection. It can't be that soft.'

‘It's Australia, not Afghanistan.'

Right. Movie stars and jewellery, not insurgents and bombs. ‘But he
did
have problems with it?'

‘No, he did the job fine, like I expected him to.'

‘Except for the PTSD.'

He made a doubtful, downward turn of his lips. ‘There have always been soldiers with PTSD. If you want the job, you better have a cup of cement and harden up.'

She fought to keep the distaste from her face, and fought the urge to debate his macho attitude. ‘Is that your advice?'

‘Plenty of them learn to live with it. A few nightmares don't stop them doing their jobs.'

It was the other side of the military mental health coin. Jax had read about the warrior culture that taught soldiers they were weak if they talked about their feelings, and encouraged them to put up with the symptoms. ‘Is that what you do? Live with it?'

One side of his mouth turned up. ‘I don't have PTSD.'

He didn't have a lot of compassion, either. ‘But Brendan did.'

‘Yeah, I saw it.'

‘Mummy, can I play with your phone?'

‘Sure.' Jax pulled it from her bag, passed it to Zoe with barely a glance. ‘How was his PTSD showing?'

Hugh rubbed a hand across his short-cropped hair, changed the subject. ‘After he moved to Sydney, we kept in touch a bit. I came up here for a weekend once. Kate asked me to keep an eye on him. It was said in front of Brendan, kind of a wife-joke – but afterwards he told me not to tell her anything.'

‘About what?'

‘How he was, what he was doing.'

‘What didn't he want her to know?'

The reluctant tilt of the head again. ‘He said he wasn't sleeping. I could see for myself he was wound up, knew he'd been drinking a fair bit. I figured he didn't want her nagging him, which was fair enough. And the other stuff, well, it wasn't the kind of thing you want a wife to know.'

‘What stuff?'

‘He was making friends and picking up.'

Picking up drugs? Something illegal? Something that might make people chase him? ‘What was he picking up?'

Hugh paused a beat. ‘Women. One-night stands. Some of them he paid for.'

Oh, right. She made a face. So Brendan
was
a bad guy. Another kind of bad guy. Maybe Aiden had been right about an affair.

‘Mummy?'

‘Yes, baby.'

‘What else can I do?'

‘Here.' Jax pulled the canister of sugar sachets closer. ‘Build a house with these. Did Kate follow up? Ask you how he was doing?'

Hugh watched the sugar-house construction as he answered. ‘Yeah, she called a couple of times but I wasn't going to tell her. Not after he asked me not to.'

‘What did you say?'

‘I lied. I said he was doing great.' There was a regretful twist of his lips. ‘I like Kate, she was still holding out for him. Not all the wives do that. So I felt … accountable. I tried to talk Brendan around. Told him to get his arse home more regularly. But like I said, he didn't always make good choices.'

Yeah, like cheating on Kate. ‘Who was he making friends with?'

‘Some guys at a gym.'

‘What was your issue with them?'

‘They're civilian.' His smile was more scoff than humour.

‘Not part of the family?'

‘Something like that.'

‘Is it possible Brendan got involved in something with them? Something that might make him frightened of them.'

‘I think it's more likely they did his head in.'

Had they wanted to know about Afghanistan? Maybe they'd made him remember what it was like. ‘In what way?'

A quick upward flick of Hugh's eyebrows. ‘I read in the paper he held a gun to your head. That should tell you something.'

Her body stiffened at the memory of cold metal against her temple. Did Hugh think that was what civilians did? Irresponsible use of weapons as opposed to the organised use of weapons. ‘Brendan thought people were after him. Do you think it's possible it could've been those guys?'

‘He was always a bit of a conspiracy theorist. A lot of soldiers were after the green-on-blue incidents started. Do I think there were people after him?' A skeptical shake of his head. ‘I doubt it.'

‘Mummy, I'm bored.'

‘I know, baby. I'm sorry. Just a little longer.'
Please
. Jax dug around in the bottom of her bag, found a pen, pulled out her notebook and turned to a fresh page. ‘How about practising your name some more?'

Zoe heaved a protest sigh but took the pen, her tongue poking from the side of her mouth as she started. When Jax looked back at Hugh, he reached across the table, the tips of his fingers stopping just short of where hers rested around the saucer of her teacup. ‘Look, what happened is sad,' he said, ‘really sad, but it's not a complete surprise. He had PTSD. Have you seen the suicide rates?'

She'd searched but there weren't any clear statistics. PTSD among current and former military personnel was significantly higher than in the general population, and suicidal behaviour in serving ranks was more than double that in the community, but the number of veterans who took their own life – PTSD sufferers or not – was
apparently hard to determine. She understood what Hugh was getting at, though. He thought PTSD and suicide went hand-in-hand.

Jax eyed the powerful forearm stretched across the table, wondered if Hugh's ‘cup of cement' had already rationalised Brendan's death as a statistic. ‘Kate didn't see it coming,' she said.

‘No, she wouldn't have. She thought he was doing okay.'

Did he feel good or bad about that? ‘What have you told her now?'

He paused, a kinder tone in his voice when he spoke again. ‘That Brendan loved her, that he talked about her all the time, that he was working in Sydney because he wanted to look after her and Scotty. I don't think she needs to know the rest. Do you?'

After all the ‘harden-up' chitchat, Jax was surprised by his sudden compassion. She'd expected him to suggest Kate grow some balls and get over it. But his message was the same one Jax had wanted to deliver in that first visit with Kate – and considering the rest, his question had merit. Kate was already struggling with difficult memories, did she need to add to them?

Jax had posed the same question to herself. Before Nick's death, she'd assumed she would have known if something was up with him – they lived and worked together, their daily life was interwoven. But he was mown down forty minutes from home and she had no idea why he'd crossed the Harbour Bridge in late peak hour, driven to a residential neighbourhood, parked in a side street and went for a run in a suburb with no park, no track, not even a footpath. She'd thought plenty about the half-dialled
number on his mobile, questioned whether the person he'd tried to call in his last moments was a woman. Someone he loved – someone he loved more than Jax – whose voice he wanted in his ear as he died.

If it was, did she want to know? If Nick was cheating or concealing something? If he was losing his mind? If he was a serial killer and leaving a trail of dead bodies?

If it explained why he was dead – yes, yes, yes and yes. She wanted the truth. She wanted it to be noble or just dumb luck, but even if it was ugly and humiliating, she wanted it. Because the truth was better than never really knowing.

But that was her choice. ‘I wouldn't want to make that decision for Kate.'

Hugh smiled a little, edged his fingers forward, stroked the back of her hand with a knuckle. It seemed like reassurance that she was doing the right thing, but the intimacy of it suddenly made the proceedings feel less Q&A and more the kind of meeting she wasn't ready for.

Tucking her fingers away, fumbling for her teapot, she told herself that men and women met this way sometimes, sharing empathy. She had a friend who'd married a man she met at a funeral. But shit, Jax wasn't ready. Not even close. And she didn't know how to play this game. What was the appropriate way to say,
Thanks, but I need to finish asking my questions and about six months to evaluate my life
?

She spoke quickly, wanting to cover her discomfort. ‘Brendan was trying to get to Kate and Scotty when he ran in front of that bus.' Across the table, Hugh straightened, his smile dropping. ‘I'm sorry. Maybe
you
didn't want to know that.'

‘No, it's fine.' His jaw tightened as he ran a hand across his stubble – it looked like both strain and fortification. Taking a moment to sip on the cement, she thought.

‘Can you write something, Mummy?'

Jax took the pen from Zoe, wrote
Mummy, Daddy, Aunty Tilda
, doubting there was any chance she could be interested in a man who thought being hard was a positive character trait.

When she'd handed the notebook back to Zoe, Hugh said, ‘So Brendan thought someone was after him because he hadn't gone home for a while?'

Could it have happened like that? Could Brendan have got it into his head that Kate and Scotty weren't safe because he hadn't been home?

Across the table, Hugh read her silence as confirmation. ‘Jesus, did I do that? I told him I'd come after him if he didn't do the right thing by Kate.'

‘Not unless you threatened him with guns and missiles.'

‘That's what he thought?'

She nodded. ‘He wouldn't let me pull over because he thought we'd be …' she curled fingers in the air ‘… “picked off”.'

He watched her a moment, his eyelids tightening as it sank in. ‘Tough day for you.'

‘Yeah.' She laughed a little at his gruff sympathy, taking some comfort that it came from someone who knew worse kinds of tough days. ‘By the end, I thought there really was someone after us.'

‘Us? He thought they were after you too?'

‘Only because we were in the same car. And that was only because Brendan got in mine and pointed the gun at me.'

‘How did you respond to that?'

Did he think she'd employed a tactical manoeuvre? ‘Well, I froze, then I did what I was told and tried to ignore the yelling and the gun in my face.'

‘Sounds like you handled yourself well.'

‘For a civilian?'

He cocked his head. ‘You ended up with the gun. You must have done something useful.'

It hadn't felt like that. ‘I talked to him. It seemed to calm him down.'

‘Did he talk back?'

‘Eventually. Most of what he said didn't make sense. It was just disconnected thoughts – crazy, emotional stuff.' She stopped, assuming Hugh wouldn't want to hear about the ramblings of an ex-soldier who hadn't been ‘hard' enough. But he watched her as though waiting for the rest. ‘He said he'd been lied to,' she went on. ‘He thought he had something breeding in his head, he freaked out when he saw my phone. Told me the people who were after him were trained and wouldn't stop, that they had guns and knives and missiles.'

As she talked, Hugh's face morphed back to the flat sternness he'd arrived with, making Jax wonder if it was his default expression. Perhaps he was naturally walled off and had to dig for compassion. Or had he trained himself to keep a mask over his emotions, choosing the moments he was prepared to reveal what was underneath? What she wanted now, though, was his reaction to her description of what had happened in the car.

What she got made her wonder about her own hold on reality.