An Isolated Incident (18 page)

I turned the key in the ignition and ‘Love Her Madly' floated out of the radio. Bella and her classic hits, another thing we'd bag her about, her middle-aged taste in music. At least the police hadn't changed the station. I jerked the seat as far back as it would go, closed my eyes.

A knocking startled me and I slammed my elbow into the door.

Lisa peered in at me, an apologetic smile on her face.

I wound down the window.

‘Sorry, honey, didn't mean to scare you, I just wanted to check you were okay.'

‘Yep, fine.'

‘Good, good, it's just . . .' She gave a weird little shrug. ‘You've been out here quite a while and I worried that . . . Oh, I don't know. Must be quite emotional for you, the car and . . .'

I noticed then that it was almost dark. The dashboard clock said 18.46. ‘Shit. Must've drifted off.'

‘Haven't been sleeping well, honey?'

I brushed her question away with one hand, turned off the ignition, climbed out, checked the door was locked. ‘Lucky you came out, Lis. I'm late for work.'

‘Maybe you should –'

I shook my head, ran inside. I didn't feel rested, not at all. My phone flashed at me from the kitchen bench. Old Grey chasing me up, no doubt. I thought about calling in sick but then I saw the black garbage bag of Bella's personal effects. If I stayed home from work I'd have to go through it and I didn't feel ready for that.

Best wait until you're feeling stronger,
Bella said.
Maybe even ask Nate to do it with you.

It was good advice. I rushed to get dressed for work.

I called Nate during my break. Voicemail. I left a brief message telling him I'd got Bella's stuff back, would like his help going through it before he left town. I suggested he come around either late tonight or tomorrow morning before he hit the road.

Near closing time I started thinking about that bag sitting there and then the clarity of Bella's voice in my head telling me to leave it. I got the shivers real bad then. It wasn't so much that I'd heard her, but that I'd responded like it was normal. I didn't know if I was going nuts or just spending too much time alone or what.

I tried Nate again, still voicemail. It was a quiet night, none of my regular sleepover pals around. There was one bloke who'd propositioned me a few times over the years but I'd not much liked the look of him and so I'd put him off until he stopped asking. Lingering with my Chux wipe near where he was playing pool I confirmed that I still didn't much like the look of him. I'm not talking about whether he was hot or not; to be honest he was in better nick than most of the blokes who come through here. But there was something sneaky about him. A way of smiling that made you think he was covering something up. A way of flicking his gaze away just at the moment of connection.

On the other hand, he was, as I said, in pretty good nick and the closer it got to home time, the more I thought about the garbage bag and the voice telling me not to go through it yet, the less and less I minded the look of him after all.

I didn't ask him outright; that's not my way. But I did make it as clear as I could that I was looking at him anew, that I found him worth undoing an extra button for. He read me loud and clear, pointed out the likelihood of rain, offered me a lift home. So I got what I wanted, yeah.

Look, I'll say this much: my intuition is bloody unreal. If you ever see me about to go against it again, slap some sense into me, will ya? The sex was fine the first time. The problem was I'd planned for it to be the
only
time. In my mind the deal was simple: I'd give him a good screw and a comfy bed; he'd give me a warm, strong body to shield my back from I don't know what, and living breath – snores and all – to silence any voices. Most of all, he'd give me a reason not to go looking through that damn bag.

Couldn't tell him all that though, could I? So not his fault, you know. Misunderstanding. He'd emptied his wallet of a good stack of twenties before he even got into my bed so I suppose he thought that was his end of things taken care of.

Not that he forced me. Not saying that at all. You know how it is though, sometimes easier to let a man do his thing than go through the trouble of explaining why not, of kicking him out, of having a big scene. So, yeah.

When he finally went to sleep I couldn't get away from him fast enough. I showered, rugged up in my ugly flannelette PJs and settled myself down on the lounge. Tried to settle myself. Every snore from my bedroom was a razor nicking my nerve endings.

Around 4 am, exhausted from trying to sleep, I grabbed the bag and in one move, before I could talk myself out of it, emptied it on the living room floor. Stared at the pile for a bit; couldn't see anything to be frightened of. I picked up her grey leather Guess duffel, revealed as a fake by the flaking on the handles. Inside, her wallet, emptied of cash but still containing all her cards and a picture of Mum and me. Clear lip gloss in a little tub. A straw-coloured hair band. Hand sanitiser. Tissues. Half-empty pack of tampons.
Who
magazine, dated the day of her death. Her phone, the screen smashed, the back caved in.

In a separate, smaller plastic sleeve was the gold ring I gave her for her twenty-first. It looked like it'd been buried for fifty years. I tipped it into my hand and the smell of old blood, the gritty texture, made me retch. I remembered her hands in the morgue, all . . . Jesus. Sorry. It's just the ring, her hands . . . It's impossible not to imagine her trying to fight them off, you know? Trying and trying until her hands, her ring . . .

The bag did not contain her clothes; I don't know what happened to them.

At some point I fell asleep. When I woke there was a pillow under my head, a blanket over my legs. I guess the man might've done it before he left. He did have some tenderness in him, I suppose.

Nate called. He was ropeable about me leaving messages for him the night before. Said that him being there for me when I needed would only work if I respected his boundaries and didn't call for every little thing. I tried to explain that it wasn't just a little thing, that it was Bella's stuff, but he cut me off with this stab of a sound and I understood he wasn't really angry, just frightened and sad and that he couldn't cope with it all anymore and stay sober. I told him I was sorry for bothering him and I meant it.

I saw that for everybody else – even people who loved her, like Nate – Bella's death was a thing to get over, to move on from. But Bella couldn't move on from it and so how could I? As had happened so often in our childhood, Bella and I had been abandoned in our suffering by all those claiming to care. But now as then we would be alright. I knew we would because we were strong and we had so much love and we were together.

M
ay was in Sydney for twelve hours, her thoughts cycling between the pictures of Bella Michaels and the proximity of Craig the whole time. Spending the night at home would be asking for trouble on both counts so she headed back to Strathdee immediately after the march. For the first hour and a half she couldn't unclench her jaw or stop herself checking the rear-view mirror every ten seconds. Then JJJ split into static and she noticed it had been ages since she'd seen a shop or service station and she began to relax. Nobody knows where I am right now, she thought. She poked at the stereo buttons without looking until an eighties pop song came through, turned the volume up all the way, opened the windows, felt alone and safe and more okay than she had in days.

Just after the Gunning exit her headlight beams bounced over a lifeless joey and May shuddered. No more than a hundred metres on, another, and then right away one more. Twelve dead bodies – joeys, wallabies, roos – in ten minutes and then she stopped counting. They seemed too intact to have been mowed down by the road trains that thundered past every half hour or so. It was as though the slowly turning arms of the wind turbines on the nearby hills had struck a single heavy blow on each tiny skull. A few were stiff, their paws and pointy faces jabbing towards the sky, but most appeared soft, fresh. The blood on the hands of whoever had dragged them to the edge would still be wet.

Earlier that evening at her brother's house, a friend of his, Ollie, listened to her talking about Bella and said, ‘Whoever did that needs to be strung up and gutted.'

‘Eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,' Max said in a singsong voice.

‘Mate, tell me that if someone did that to your sister you wouldn't want him torn to pieces.'

‘I wouldn't,' Max said quietly. ‘More violence wouldn't be –'

‘Of course, but it's not logical, is it? It's human nature. Someone does a thing like that to your sister, your blood, you can't help but –'

‘I'm with Ollie,' May said. ‘If someone did that to you, Max, I'd kill him.'

‘You wouldn't.' Max topped up her wineglass. ‘You might feel like it, but you wouldn't.'

‘Women don't, generally, do they? Kill, I mean. Revenge or otherwise,' Ollie said, calm, interested. ‘I used to think it was culture, socialisation, but the older I get, the more I think it's biological. I know we're not meant to say that, but, seriously. More and more I think there's something in it. Men are just more . . .' He took a small sip of his wine, waved his hand. ‘I don't know. What do you think, May?'

‘I have no fucking idea,' she said. She remembered being twelve and hearing in the canteen line that some kids in Max's year had wrenched off his shirt and tie and drawn tits on his little sparrow chest. She didn't hesitate. Went straight to the boys' toilets, where she'd been told they were boasting of their feat, while Max cowered in a stall crying. She ignored the gasps and jeering when she entered that stinking little domain. The boy with Max's tie wrapped around his head got a hard punch in the stomach. His mate, stunned, his pinched face turning red, let out a high-pitched ‘No!' when she grabbed his hair and bashed his forehead into the toilet door. The boys ran away and she rescued her weeping brother, took him up to the office, where he was given a replacement shirt and a private place to sit until their mum could come and get him.

The boys were suspended. So was May. Grounded, too. ‘I know they were shits, but they were
little
shits,' her mum said. ‘You can't bash people smaller than you.' May felt shame. Or talked herself into a feeling like that, anyway. Now, all she remembered was the pleasure of it. The thrill of feeling that boy's stomach squish in around her fist, the satisfying clunk vibrating through her arm when skull met wood.

Was that what the truckies felt when their bumpers met a roo mid-bounce? A clunk both deeply satisfying and easily shaken off? A joey would dent her shit-box, a full-grown roo write it off, kill her even, if it hit the windscreen. If only she had a truck, a bus, a goddamn tank. No. That wouldn't do it. A vehicle, a gun – it wouldn't be the same, would it? All gore and no connection.

Is that all it is? she wondered. You realise it feels good to sink your finger pads into a neck, your elbows into a spine, your cock into a resisting hole? You realise it feels good and that, barring unfortunate timing or poor choice of victim, you realise you
can
?

Right before Strathdee she swerved to miss a giant crow devouring the innards of a split-open roo in the middle of the road. If there'd been oncoming traffic, she would've had to drive right over it. The bird, she was sure, wouldn't have seen her coming, so absorbed was it in its fresh feast.

Thursday, 16 April

AustraliaToday.com

What happened to Bella?

May Norman

16 April 2015

For the past few years, Sarah Loome started almost every work day with a cuppa and a chat with her colleague Bella Michaels in the staff tearoom at Strathdee Haven, a private aged-care facility in the NSW Riverina town of Strathdee. The two women, both aged 25, both single, both Strathdee born and bred, would look out over the small enclosed courtyard not yet crowded with residents getting some air. Sarah would sip extra-strong Nescafé, Bella a herbal tea as they talked over the sounds of the night shift packing up and preparing to hand over.

Today, Sarah's small, freckled hands shake as she prepares a coffee for herself and taps her fingers on the variety box of tea that Bella Michaels will never again riffle through looking for the perfect blend for that day's challenges. On a noticeboard above Sarah's head, in the centre of the usual workplace notices about keeping the kitchen clean and remembering to fill out a timesheet each Wednesday, is an A4 sheet of paper. Across its top in bold print: WHAT HAPPENED TO BELLA? Underneath that, a photo.

She is in front of a Christmas tree hung messily with bright, chain-store baubles. A pair of these same baubles hang from her ears, peeking out cheekily from within her frizzy blonde hair. Her face is free of make-up. The glint in her eyes and open mouth suggest she's on the edge of laughter. She's wearing her pale blue nursing uniform, the top slightly too snug, drawing attention to her small, high breasts and finely muscled biceps. She's strong, but feminine. Pretty but not glamorous. Everyone's stereotype of a typical young nurse.

Underneath, the same bold print, but smaller:
Taken from us Friday 3 April.
This is followed by a simple plea for information and a phone number.

‘She was beautiful, wasn't she?' Sarah asks, running her fingers over the photo. ‘I think that's why no one believes she didn't have a boyfriend. She didn't though. I'd have known. We talked all the time about our sad single lives.' She laughs then to make it clear neither of them was sad at all, not before.

It's true that many refuse to believe Bella didn't have a lover, that her death wasn't the result of an affair gone wrong. It may be, as Sarah suggests, that Bella's attractiveness leads people to believe she couldn't possibly have been single. It may be that the blend of sexiness and innocence evident in the photo on the poster is exactly the kind we imagine driving a man to extremes. Or it may be that most of the time when a woman is murdered, it's at the hands of a partner or ex.

But Sarah, as well as others close to Bella Michaels, are adamant that there was no boyfriend. As for rumours she was involved with a married colleague, Sarah thumps the tabletop. ‘Absolute crap. For one thing, this is a small, gossipy little place. We'd all know if anyone was sneaking around with anyone else. And for another, I knew Bella. She was the most moral person you could imagine. No way in the world she'd mess around with a married man. No way.'

Sit long enough in any of Strathdee's four cafes, six restaurants, two hotel lobbies or four pubs and you'll hear about the unidentified married man along with any number of darker rumours. In the last few days, there's been talk of satanic rituals and racist gangs, of a hidden pregnancy and an illegal prostitution ring. To Bella's friends, these would be laughable if they weren't so offensive. More importantly, they are each without a single scrap of evidence. All seem to have bubbled up fully formed from the black hole that opened in this town the moment Bella's naked, violated body was found beside the road a few kilometres outside of town on 6 April. Each day that passes without an arrest, the rumours get wilder and the atmosphere in town thickens with menace and unfocused suspicion.

Local police claim they have no suspects, but sources confirm that they have repeatedly interviewed Nate Cartwright, the former husband of Bella's sister Chris Rogers, a local barmaid twelve years Bella's senior. ‘I feel for Chris, I really do,' Sarah says. ‘They were closer than any sisters I've ever known. They'd talk every day. I don't know anything about this ex-husband, but if he's supporting Chris through all this, then that's good.'

Cartwright, 40, was sentenced to twelve months' jail for the violent assault of a woman in 2001. Now of Sydney, and reportedly in a new relationship, he works as a driver and tour guide for a major coach company whose tours regularly pass through Strathdee. While no charges have been laid and there's no evidence that Cartwright had anything to do with his former sister-in-law's death, his constant presence at Ms Rogers' side since the murder, and the interest with which police seem to be treating him, are notable.

Indeed, a striking photo taken immediately after Bella's funeral shows him in an intimate moment with his ex-wife; in the background several police officers can be seen looking on. According to witnesses, moments after this photograph was taken Cartwright reportedly struck out at photographers and had to be restrained by police. ‘He was like a rabid dog,' one witness says. ‘And he's a big fella, too. He could've snapped that photographer in two with one hand, I reckon.'

The sight of Cartwright entering Strathdee police station earlier in the week showed a different side, however. He is indeed a large man with dark shaggy hair and a long, unkempt beard. On this day he wore tight, faded black jeans, a black heavy-metal t-shirt and scuffed black boots, looking for all the world like a member of a biker gang. But those big hands the witness imagined snapping a photographer in two were being used to gently steer the comparatively tiny Chris Rogers into the station. At one point, Ms Rogers hesitated, appearing to lose her composure, and Cartwright stroked her face with the gentleness of a small child patting a baby rabbit. Ms Rogers responded by squeezing her ex-husband's hand and flashing him a smile. Arms linked, the two entered the station. Whatever else may be true in this terrible, dark mystery, the bond between these two can be in no doubt.

Meanwhile, at the Haven, Sarah and her colleagues get on with their work, pausing every now and then to glance at Bella's picture. ‘I don't like the wording on that poster,' a nursing aide tells me as she passes through the tearoom. ‘I mean, I get that they had to keep it simple, but it's the wrong question, isn't it? We know what happened to her. We need to know who.'

‘And why,' Sarah adds. ‘Just, God, why?'

Anyone with information related to the murder of Bella Michaels should contact Crime Stoppers or the Strathdee police.

May knew that leaving the TV on all night was a bad habit, but listening to the twenty-four-hour world news channel seemed to be the only way she could avoid crying herself to sleep and waking up with a red-raw throat and punched-closed eyes. Late-night comedy and infomercials weren't strong enough to stop her mind flashing up a slideshow of Bella Michaels' body in between thoughts, sometimes accompanied by the sound of Chris Rogers' roar. And by the third or fourth repeated loop of news stories, the wording and order became familiar and she could drift off.

Still, waking to voices in the room discussing bomb blasts in Syria or a massacre in Kenya was not the most pleasant way to start the day. Almost as awful as being jolted into consciousness by her damn phone.

‘Andrew. Hi.' She checked the bedside clock: 6.28. Christ. ‘What's up?'

‘This piece you filed overnight? Not your best work.'

May reached for the remote, muted the TV, swallowed her panic. ‘Can you be more specific?'

‘Tabloid as fuck, not to mention clearly milking a dead cow, at this stage. But look, I've been outvoted on this one so we're going to stick it up this morning. Simone's putting together a package with an interactive map of Strathdee, a rundown of the events so far, slide show of pics and all that jazz.'

‘Great. Thank you.'

‘And that
will
conclude our coverage of Bella Michaels. If they catch someone, if there's another body, you go back. But save that, the story's done.'

‘It really isn't. You have to trust me –'

‘No, it really is. Even if something new did happen there – which it won't – we just got a tip-off that a woman's been found raped and strangled right here in Sydney. Jim's on his way out there now to get the prelims, but this is your beat. So see you here at eight, right?'

‘Andrew, come on. It's a five-hour drive and I did it in both directions yesterday. I'm knackered.'

‘Christ, May. I told you to pack up and come home on Tuesday. I assumed you'd filed this from up here. Jesus.' He huffed. ‘Alright, get a move on and I'll see you here around one. Okay?'

‘Yeah,' May said. And then, after a pause just long enough to allow the Bella Michaels photos to flash behind her eyes, ‘No. Actually, no. I stay on the Strathdee beat or I quit.'

‘There is no Strathdee beat. There was a story and now it's run its course. More than run its course.'

‘I know it seems like –'

‘Jesus, Norman. You got yourself a boyfriend there or something?'

‘Yeah, so, okay, I quit.'

‘Don't be stupid.'

‘I'll email my letter of resignation and my final expense claims this afternoon.'

‘You're fucking nuts.'

She hung up, heart racing. She was fucking nuts. Shit. She dialled her brother.

‘Max, I've done something, um, dramatic.'

‘Oh? Sounds exciting.'

‘I quit my job.'

‘That is not exciting. That is .
. .
Why? I thought it was your dream job?'

‘It was. But .
. .
It's not like I thought it would be.'

‘In what way?'

‘I don't know, I guess I had delusions of heroism or something. I thought I'd be able to look at all the ugliness and write something beautiful about it and that people would
. . .
I don't know. But as it happens, looking at the ugliness is sending me mad and my writing about it is kind of shit.'

‘Your writing is not shit.'

‘ “Tabloid as fuck” is the totally fair review my latest effort received.'

‘Yeah, well, tough story in a shithouse locale where everything's a cliché. It'll be better when you get back to Sydney.'

‘No, that's the thing. My editor wanted me to come back and I said I wanted to stay here and keep reporting this story and that's when I quit.'

‘Wait. Did you quit because you don't like being a crime reporter or because you want to do more crime reporting but only from that specific town?'

‘I don't know. Neither. Both.'

‘You do realise you're not making any sense, right?'

‘I know .
. .
It's like, okay, don't laugh or roll your eyes or whatever, because I know how this sounds, but I feel kind of traumatised by something that happened. Something that happened and something I saw. I can't get it out of my head, pictures flashing up when I close my eyes and all that.'

‘Why would I laugh at that? That sounds horrible. Sounds like another good reason to come home, but.'

‘No, listen: it's like the way I'm feeling is why I know I'm not cut out to be a crime reporter. But now that I've seen and heard what I have, I can't just leave. I need to follow through until the end. Make it right somehow.'

‘May, I don't want to be harsh, because you're obviously in a lot of pain but –'

‘No, be harsh. That's why I call you, to tell me how it is.'

‘You can't make it right. No one can. That's why it's so awful.'

‘But the fear, the injustice. If I write stuff that helps catch the killers, then those things will be made better. And if I can write about Bella properly, like really write about her life and who she was, not just what happened to her, then that's something, isn't it? It's leaving something for her to be remembered by rather than .
. .'
May saw the photos again.

‘If the police think you writing about it all will help catch whoever did it, then, yeah, I can see the value. But all that other stuff? Honestly? I think you're equal parts naive and egotistical if you think anything you write will make a difference to people who've lost someone they love in this way. If it were you, there's not a writer alive who could make even the tiniest smidge of a difference to how I felt. Not a smidge.'

‘You're right, I know.'

‘But?'

‘I need to see this through.'

‘May, hon, some cases never get solved.'

‘So I need to work really hard to make sure this isn't one of them.'

‘It might be beyond your control.'

‘And it might not. Look, thanks. You've helped. I feel much clearer now. I'm going to go and make some calls, get things happening.'

‘Would you consider doing any of that from Sydney?'

‘No, but I'll be back soon. The police will find who did this and I'll be here to report it and then I'll be home gloating about how wrong you were.'

He sighed. ‘Do you at least have someone to hang out with there? Someone to do non-murder-investigation related stuff with?'

‘No, but then I don't in Sydney either so –'

‘Nice to know I'm chopped liver.'

‘You know what I mean.' She felt tears coming. ‘Hey, listen, I need to go. Freelance hustling to start. Thanks though. You always make me feel better.'

‘You know what would make me feel better? You coming home.'

‘I know. Soon. Promise.'

She called Chas, told him she'd be in all day. He came in his lunch break, high-vis shirt and thick navy work pants covered in concrete dust. He only had half an hour and was starving, he said. They fucked quickly and then walked across to the pub, where Chas ordered two steak pies to take away, eating one of them in three bites while May sipped her beer and smoked on the verandah.