Eight Pieces on Prostitution (14 page)

She knew by heart the sound of Bernie's ring. She did not hurry to open the door. Instead she let him ring again, picturing a disappointed Bernie, disappointed and then angry.

‘I know Laura killed that guy,' Bernie said comfortably. ‘The cops think so too.'

Then why hasn't Laura been arrested, Sue wanted to ask. She dug her fingernails into her palm in order not to say anything that might provoke him. She swallowed hard and said, ‘Supposing, just supposing
I
had killed a man. I haven't, but suppose. Wouldn't you be nervous, in here alone with me? Wouldn't you be afraid
that you might be next
?'

Bernie smiled and said, ‘I saw you put the body in the car.'

‘You're making that up. You never saw it because it never happened.'

‘I saw his car in the carpark. There was no one in it, so he must have been up here.'

‘Next thing you'll be telling me you talked to him. Next you'll be telling me his mother-in-law's name.'

Bernie curled his lip back in response to this. ‘You can't hold a conversation with a dead man.'

But Sue wasn't sure about that; she wasn't sure at all.

She noted Bernie's stubborn satisfaction. Each time he baited her, he raised the bar a little higher. This was what excited him.

She felt that, if she
had
killed someone, either deliberately or accidentally, she wouldn't go to pieces. She wouldn't hide behind others, or let them stand accused instead of her. She'd face up to what was coming. That would be her choice and her decision. She thought of the hard, swift beat of rain on paddocks. Where would the camels shelter? There were hardly any trees. There could be a sheen off camel hide, as off brown, supple skin.

Laura came to work dressed all in red; red shorts and halter top, or tight red T-shirt. Knowing her clothes made a statement, Laura lifted her chin in Sue's direction as Sue walked through the door. From humble, Laura became defiant, and Sue sought in vain for the cross-over point.

Laura's smile was that of a person lying on a water bed. Sue thought it was odd that a man had died without shedding any blood at all. It was a kind of double thing, this experience of the ordinary while knowing nothing was.

Having Camilla in her flat, on her home ground, made Sue feel both bolder and more desperate.

They travelled up to the first floor in the lift, Sue feeling proud that it was working, that she lived in a building with a working lift. She flexed her ankles, picturing them attached to long slim legs.

She stood in front of her windows and lit a cigarette. ‘It's a nice view isn't it?'

Camilla shrugged. So-so, her expression said.

‘What do you think, Cam? What do you
really
think?'

‘It was an accident,' Camilla said, as a single shout rose from the street. Someone young and masculine was trying out his voice.

‘Is that what you thought that night?'

‘I know you're down on me for what we did. But we had to get him out of there. I don't see that we had any choice.'

Sue turned and faced Camilla squarely. It hadn't been easy to get Camilla to agree to come to her flat. Camilla had made excuses and said it might look bad, if the cops were watching them.

Sue had thought this an odd remark, but hadn't said so.

‘You're frightened of the cops,' she said now.

‘Aren't you?'

‘I didn't used to be. I don't know. I'm more frightened of Bernie.'

‘Oh, Bernie.' Camilla shrugged again. ‘We can handle him.'

‘I'm not sure we can.'

‘We just need to be firm with him, and then to ride it out, be patient. The cops haven't got enough for an arrest, or else they'd've arrested us by now.'

‘What if Bernie goes to them?'

‘And kill the goose that's laying golden eggs? Not bloody likely.'

Surprised, Sue turned and studied Camilla, whose dark hair was held back off her face by combs. Camilla looked neat and tidy, cool. She made Sue feel hot and frumpy, stuffed with nicotine.

‘I just need you to do your share,' Camilla said, impatiently this time, as though Sue had asked to be relieved of the responsibility for Bernie.

‘You've never complained.'

Camilla said, ‘What would be the good of that?'

‘D'you think Laura realizes how hard it is?'

‘I don't know. Do you?'

Sue didn't answer straight away. She pictured patience as something solid that could be lost and found again. Finally, she said, ‘It wasn't an accident. Laura knew what she was doing and she's fooled us both.'

Sue watched Bernie walk across the carpark from his place of work to hers.

When he'd had his fill, when he was saying goodbye, Bernie said, ‘You know, compared to what you girls have done, it isn't much to ask.'

Sue told herself that Bernie had no conscience, and that was what made him different to her. But at the moment of thinking this, she could not say what use her conscience was, if it had any use at all. They had forfeited their right to fair play, natural justice, in Bernie's view of things. Did this make him more despicable, or less?

It was an interesting question, and Sue sat there playing with it, after she had closed the door behind him, considering and stretching out the different possibilities, in the twilight, while she watched the light go on in Bernie's office. Did this man with his hold over them consider what he was doing in the nature of revenge, a man's revenge against women, in particular his wife?

Soon the stars would shine, cancelling out the small city and all of its concerns. It would be a good night for hunting.

Sue sat quite still at the window, looking out over the carpark, knowing every centimetre of it, yet knowing also that, at the time she had most needed them, her powers of observation had failed her.

She sat there probing Bernie's weaknesses, savouring the quiet. First among them was that he appeared to be getting hooked. Why else would he be turning up more often? Of course, Bernie believed that he could get away with it, but was that really sufficient explanation? Was this weakness something they could use? Second was that he was becoming more insistent on seeing Laura. They might find a way to use that, bargain with him over it.

Bernie didn't like the word blackmail; what blackmailer did? Words were more slippery than intentions, more slippery still than the execution of them. Not that Sue was about to expose Laura to Bernie. In that, her resolve stayed firm.

The police had not made public the cause of death: why not? Because it was strangulation and they were still preparing their evidence? Because it wasn't strangulation and they didn't have enough of a case?

Sue had looked up death by strangulation. The victim's eyes were red and bulgy; Kafer's hadn't been. Sue could not remember their expression, if they'd had any. She wondered what else she'd forgotten from that night. It seemed to her that she'd forgotten nothing; but there must be details. They might come back under interrogation; there was always that possibility.

Laura had said he'd spasmed. Her voice had been shocked, but Sue was coming more and more to the view that Laura had been playing herself and Camilla on a line, just as she'd played Josef and then watched him die.

This is why I need you, Cam, Sue said under her breath; why I wanted you to come to my place, somewhere private we could talk.

Camilla had not spoken of her doubts and fears when Sue had given her the chance. She'd reacted to Sue's pronouncement with an angry glance and closed, stubborn lips. Camilla's expression had said that it was time for Sue to stop complaining, that if only they could hold out, it would all come right, in the end.

But complaining had not been Sue's intention, so much as just to
talk
, to talk away from Grimwade Street and the girls' room, from Bernie next door bending over his mowers, wondering when they'd next hear his knock on the door. Sue had wanted the opportunity to say, ‘I can't keep it up much longer,' and for Camilla to understand.

She should have said that Kafer's ghost was in the building, that his shadow climbed the walls, seen what Camilla made of
that
.

‘I have to go,' Camilla had said.

‘But you just got here.'

‘Doesn't matter,' Camilla had replied. ‘It doesn't feel right. And I don't like leaving Laura on her own.'

A man came to the door. He was small, dark, nervous. ‘Hello,' he said, in a voice with a European accent, an expression on his face that showed he was looking for something out of the ordinary, was willing to be surprised, and more.

The small dark man hesitated, as though momentarily blinded by the walls. He carried the summer they were missing out on in his smile.

Sue made love to him; there was no other way to put it. She

licked his pale skin and delighted in the unexpected sweetness of it.

She rolled the condom on, while the small, dark man lay on his back and watched her, untroubled, yet with a serious expression. His urgency was not that of the sunburnt, hefty men, arriving full tilt from their holidays, jumping from their four-wheel drives. The expression in his eyes made her feel better, calmer; she was grateful for that, and smiled back, thinking of all that he would never know.

A man came to the door. The rain beat on the roof, and a man stood blinking in the doorway. Sue knew immediately that this one was a policeman. He ducked his curly head and grinned, a boy caught out but not expecting punishment.

‘How's business? Pretty quiet?'

‘A flood to usher in the new millennium,' Sue said.

The policeman was matter-of-fact and efficient, taking what he considered his due, while Sue kept her eyes fixed on the tissue box, jostling for space on the table top with lamp, cigarettes and condoms – oh but they were small and neat! – the clock radio, whose numbered face, in certain moods, she turned towards the wall.

As he was bending over to lace up his shoes, a few drops of rain fell from the policeman's springy hair onto the floor. Sue braced herself for the questions that he did not ask.

She thought about the word tongue-tied. The payment that this man exacted was so much less than Bernie's that she almost didn't mind. Yet she stuck the nails of one hand into the palm of another to stop herself from crying out with the injustice of it.

Bernie said, ‘Your name's not really Sue.'

‘As a matter of fact, it is.'

Bernie took the rebuff in good spirit. He smiled and said, ‘I prefer an interesting name myself.'

‘Such as?'

‘Josef Kafer,' Bernie said casually, with another smile.

Sue cursed herself for encouraging him; she concentrated on the pressure of her fingernails.

Sue left work early, without explanation, intending to go home. She changed her mind and took a different turn, heading for the camel paddock. She expected it to be the same - the road, fences, fat yellow grass heads - above them the outlines of beasts behind barbed wire. But she felt a rising excitement when she saw that the camels were still there; she'd feared they might have been shipped out already, that the paddock would be empty.

Sue pulled off the road, onto a bit of grass and gravel. It was a beautiful evening to be out. The rain made everything smell fresh. Lilac shaded into dark blue, in oblique and slanting lines that looked as though they had stepped out of a watercolour painting of the city, a plan so delicately shaded, so light on its feet, that to step down to earth would distort it shamefully. Just step down, the lines said, and we'll be gone for good.

Sue was conscious that her tongue felt swollen, raw. Her hands shook when she realized how close to the edge she was, how close Bernie had brought her. She might not be so strong next time.

The camels waited behind fences, soon to have their throats cut, to be cooked and eaten. Sue could not imagine it. She could sooner imagine Bernie's change of heart than that, sooner imagine that no Josef Kafer had ever come knocking on their door.

The three of them, herself, Laura and Camilla, were not imprisoned behind fences. They could pick up their heels and run, run until they were out of danger. Sue saw it all, suddenly and completely, like a whole meal placed before her in one gulp. Why hadn't she thought of running away before? Why hadn't Camilla?

Camilla's plan had been to wait, and Sue had given in to it, just as she'd given in to Camilla's decision to carry Josef Kafer down the fire stairs and run his car into a fence. Oh, the stupidity of it!

Into this period of waiting, which she'd accepted as necessary, Sue said aloud to the camels, Bernie Shapcott had stepped. Bernie had seen his window of opportunity and he'd pushed it wide open.

Sue experienced again the hollowing out of her insides that Bernie always left her with, how she sat smoking in the girls' room, each time a little bit emptier, a little less alive.

Against this, and against the horror of continuing to wait for the ring that would be Bernie's, the three of them would take flight. As soon as she got back, she would sit down with Camilla; they would work it out.

The police had not told them that they had to stay in Canberra. They would move Laura somewhere safe. They would disguise themselves. It would not be hard. Laura would relish a disguise; she would flounce and pirouette. Laura would become her old, laughing self, a child again, with a child's capacity to delight in the present moment.

Sue was sorry that she could not take the camels with her and she told them so. For a second, she pictured the three of them riding away down the gravel road, the colourful disguise, the camels' harness jingling in the wind.

They would take Laura to a city. Cities were better to hide in than the country. Bernie would not know where to start.

Sue pictured Bernie's anger like fist beating on a drum, the drum skin a membrane that stretched across her hollowed-out insides. Bernie would beat with his fists until the membrane broke. Other men might be satisfied with that, but he would not be. Bernie would reason that three sex-workers on the run should not be hard to find.