The Ottoman Motel (14 page)

Madaline hadn't always hated hospitals. Her childhood self had been intrigued by the secret world of healing. She had been
fascinated by X-rays, how you could see inside someone, transforming them to ghostly tracings, seeking out a broken bone or the dark evil of illness. She blamed the handsome doctors of her mother's guilty afternoon soap operas, somehow even more
glamorous than the privileged heiresses and boat-hopping playboys. They were the ones who put things right. Hospitals, in those impossible lens-softened worlds, were the noble purveyors of justice and rightness.

That was before afternoons in a television's glow were replaced by after-school trips to waiting rooms; lounge-room lace curtains replaced by thick hospice blinds. That repeating pattern of brown bare trees she still saw sometimes when she closed her eyes. Her father, looking lost in his own body.

Madaline locked her legs out straight in the plastic chair and had unconsciously hooked her thumbs over the top of her belt, a classic police pose. They'd taken Ned through to Emergency straight away because of her uniform, although once the triage nurse looked at his head, the injury was enough.

‘He was hit by a stone.' It did sound unlikely, but there was nothing Madaline could do about the nurse's sceptical look except set her mouth in a grim line and hand Ned over. The bandage she'd wrapped around his head was already sodden with blood, and he slipped in and out of consciousness.

She'd sped all the way from Reception, hurling them seventy kilometres up the highway, all the while talking manic rubbish to Ned. Now he was in safe hands, and all she could do was wait. Thinking, he could have died, could have disappeared from the world so easily.

Audrey and Gin sat beside her. Audrey had not said a word the whole way. She'd sat with Ned in the back seat, cradling his head in a towel, looking desperately sad. Madaline had had to prise her hand away from Ned's as they wheeled him away.

‘Do you know the Green Lantern?' Gin swung his legs on the waiting room chair.

Madaline looked at him. ‘Do
I
?'

‘Yes,' said Gin. ‘Do you know why he's the Green Lantern?'

‘To fight crime? To do good?'

‘No,' Gin's mouth twisted up in thought, ‘do you know, um,
how
he's the Green Lantern?'

‘Oh,' she said, ‘how he became Green Lantern. No, I don't.'

‘He made a ring from a meteor,' said Gin, ‘that fell from the sky.'

‘I see.' Madaline remembered Gin when she first met him: a little ball of energy. Wouldn't stop running. He seemed devoid of colour, now. Immersed too deeply in his own fantasies. His eyes lost somehow in his face.

Madaline heard a metallic chime, and it took her some moments to identify her own ringtone. All her messages coming through. Every time you left town, all your calls would catch up with you. She unclipped the leather pocket and took out her phone. Ancient police issue, a brick of a thing. All the messages were from her mother, of course. Same time each day, six-thirty in the evening. Madaline pictured her mother sitting in her perfectly rustic kitchen, leaning back on the old church pew, third or fourth glass of wine in hand. Always the same wine, a blistering local red, a roundhouse of tannins. Those kohl-rimmed eyes fixed on a point on the wall as Madaline's phone rang and rang.

It was another form of avoidance, Madaline knew. Something else to ignore, hoping it would disappear. Then: what if something happened to her mother—an accident, like Ned? Who would rush her to the hospital? Who would notice if she choked alone in the kitchen or keeled over in the garden? Who would care if she slipped into the bath with a pair of fabric scissors?

Madaline realised she was bleeding. She'd been scratching her arms, a pattern of midge bites that machine-gunned up her arm. She turned to the kids. ‘I'll be back in a sec, okay?'

Gin nodded his head. Audrey said nothing.

Madaline got up and looked across the waiting room. Yes, there was a public phone, the large metallic box propped up on
a table, the token plastic shield protecting it from God knows what. She dug a hand into her pocket. If there was nothing there she wouldn't call. She fumbled out a two-dollar coin; shit. She put it in the slot and dialled her mother's number. She kept her finger poised above the phone's cradle as the line burred over
and over. She hardly needed a reason to press it.

‘Hello?'

‘Hi, Mum.'

‘Madaline. Mads. Darling. How
are
you?' Her mother's voice seemed rushed. Madaline pictured her in patchwork overalls, in her gardening shoes, hands covered with black northern soil, the phone wedged between cheek and shoulder. ‘What's wrong? You're not calling from home?'

‘I'm fine,' said Madaline. ‘I'm…calling from a hospital.'

‘A hospital? What's the matter?'

Madaline enjoyed the panic in her mother's tone. ‘I'm fine,' she said. ‘Just a work thing.'

‘Oh good. Just a sec though, I'm covered in dirt.'

The line went to hold. Gentle piano music. Madaline tapped her fingers on her holstered gun while her mother made her wait.

‘There we are. Now, Mads, how does it take you this long to call your mother back?'

‘You know,' said Madaline, ‘work.'

‘Oh, surely not. That little town can't have that much crime. It's not exactly
Midsomer Murders
, is it?' She laughed, a melodious chuckle that Madaline had no doubt she'd practised. There was silence for a few moments, then, inevitably, ‘Why don't you come home, sweetie? I've got this whole house, and it's like you've forgotten—'

‘God, Mum, you wonder why I don't call you.'

‘Oh, I know. Fighting your battles.'

‘I've been here four years. Fighting my battles? What does that mean?'

‘I worry about you down there. Especially after that poor lady, the horribleness—haven't you had enough?'

Madaline ground a palm into her eye. The horribleness. Her mother's shorthand for anything that needed forgetting. Her husband's death. Her former career. Stephanie Gale's disappearance: a time in Madaline's life she regretted, every day, involving her mother in.

‘Everyone asks after you. They want to know how you are, Mads, and I can't tell them anything.'

‘Everyone?' said Madaline. ‘All those friends I've never met? Is it pottery classes still, or dream-weaving this week?'

Her mother sighed down the phone. ‘I'm trying to move on with my life, Madaline. It would just be nice to see you do the same.'

‘Oh for fuck's sake, Mum. You want me to move on by coming back home? Become a good farmer's wife, child on each hip, dinner on the table?'

‘There's no need to swear. And I still see Will down the street sometimes. You did a—'

Madaline slammed the phone down, her chest heaving with angry breath. She looked around and realised people were staring at her, Audrey and Gin regarding her with a mix of suspicion and wonder. She tried to remember why she had cared whether her mother was alive or dead. It didn't really matter either way.

Through the car window Simon could see Iris waiting. She was swathed in a bright orange dress, her eyes ringed in black makeup and her hair pulled back. It made her eyes appear larger, her cheeks shovel-sharp. Simon could not remember his grandmother looking like this.

‘Iris will look after you here,' Tarden mumbled. He had the corner of his little finger clamped in his teeth. ‘I've got to get back to the Magpie, okay?'

Simon nodded. He undid his seatbelt and opened the door. Iris came towards him, her body held in the shape of a hug. ‘Come here,' she said. ‘Come inside.'

Simon felt himself move towards her embrace; he wanted to let himself collapse into his grandmother's arms. But he stood still, remembering she was a stranger now. Another part of this town he wished had never existed. Iris let him go and ushered him inside.

‘I'm cooking,' she said. ‘Come into the kitchen and I'll make you some tea.' The kitchen. Simon tasted banana and bacon on his tongue, his body remembering.

He followed Iris down the hall. From below the saloon doors, he could see Pony's legs tangled under one of the chairs. Iris pushed open the doors and ushered Simon in.

Pony looked up briefly; he was running a spoon distractedly around the rim of a cereal bowl—whatever had been in it was long gone.

‘Simon Sawyer,' he said, as if reciting Simon's name off a list. Simon felt the weight of stones in his pockets and a shiver went through him.

‘Sit down.' Iris busied herself at the counter. The folds of her orange sheet made wispy sounds as she moved. She put a kettle on the stove and lit the gas with a whoosh.

Simon sat down opposite Pony. ‘Are you having more breakfast?'

Pony shrugged. ‘I like cereal.'

‘Do you have sugar, Simon?' said Iris.

‘Two please.'

‘Sugar's bad for you,' said Pony.

‘Everything's fine in moderation,' said Iris.

Pony made a face. ‘What are you doing today, Simon Sawyer?'

‘I don't know,' said Simon. ‘Staying here I guess.' He dreaded the moment when Audrey, Gin and Ned came back. Or maybe Ned wouldn't come back.

‘I'm going into town,' said Pony. ‘I fixed up my bike so it only takes me a few minutes.'

Simon looked out the window above the kitchen bench. Above the plumes of herbs, the sky had darkened. ‘It's going to rain again.'

‘I don't care about rain,' said Pony, staring into his empty bowl, as if it might magically refill itself. ‘I've ridden my bike in floods before. In monsoons.'

The kettle squealed and Iris turned off the heat. ‘I doubt that very much,' she said. ‘I've seen army tanks washed away in monsoon floods. I don't think a young man on his bike would stand much of a chance.'

For a moment, Pony seemed genuinely chastened—not a state Simon had thought possible—but then he shoved himself angrily from the table.

‘You haven't even seen my bike now I've fixed it,' he said. ‘You don't know what it's like.'

Iris poured hot water from the kettle into two mugs. ‘That's true, Miles, but I can't imagine it's any heavier than a tank.'

Simon was confused. What were
true miles
? Was that how you were supposed to measure a bike ride?

‘I don't want to know what
you
imagine!' Pony shouted. ‘You're just dirty and everybody knows it!'

He grabbed the spoon from his bowl and bunched it into his fist like a dagger. He opened his mouth, about to say something more, but instead plunged the spoon into his pocket and stalked out of the kitchen.

‘Miles,' Iris called after him. ‘Don't be like that.'

She meant the
name
Miles, Simon realised. Was that Pony?

‘He's a strange boy,' said Iris. ‘But then you would be, I suppose.' She looked at Simon, conspiratorial, as if they'd talked this way together every morning for years. ‘Hasn't had an easy time.'

Simon stared at his hands.

‘Simon?'

‘Hmm?'

‘Are you okay?'

‘Hmm.'

‘Listen,' said Iris. ‘What happened was an accident. You shouldn't feel bad about it.'

‘But what if he—' Simon again saw Ned's body, crumpled. ‘What if he—'

Iris put her arm around Simon. ‘He'll be fine,' she said. ‘He'll just be in shock. Trust me. People have survived much worse.'

Simon burrowed his head into the soft fabric of her clothes. ‘I feel so bad.'

‘They'll all be okay. Ned, and Audrey, and Gin. Everything will be okay. Once your mum and dad turn up, everything will be fine.'

‘My mum and dad—'

‘They'll turn up,' said Iris. ‘They have to.'

Tarden screwed up his eyes, banishing a repeated memory. He shook his head and he was back where he was supposed to be. Chipped sideboard, zigzag carpet, grandfather clock. His sister's painting looking down at him from the opposite wall: still the same mournful mountain, a sky clenched with Newcastle blue. He heard his voice, shimmering into clarity, saying, ‘It wasn't an easy time.'

‘I can imagine.' Madaline McKinley sat under the painting, in the uniform she had started wearing again. Tarden wasn't quite sure how he had got here. It was his house, he knew that. But what was
she
doing here, a copper, for crying out loud. Something else tugged at his mind.

‘There's no—' Madaline was talking again. ‘I mean, it's never going to be easy, is it.'

Tarden tried to regain his composure. He wasn't drunk, or high. He just got this way sometimes: unsure, disorientated. He wondered at Madaline, if she knew more than she was letting on. He had never known her to lock anyone up, but the amount of paperwork cluttering up her house—she'd have something on nearly everyone in the town.

She looked at him, smiling. That left eye that wasn't quite straight, it bothered him. The cops he'd known were all symmetrical. Not good looking, but always in tedious proportion. Madaline was attractive enough, but she had this accumulation of imperfections. She didn't look entirely regular. So far, she hadn't touched the busted-up exercise book in her lap.

‘It's only that you know the lake, Jack. Better than most. And we just need to keep at it.' She stressed her words with the tap of a pen.

He wondered if she already knew about the inlet. ‘I thought we'd take a break,' said Tarden. ‘After—'

‘Ned's fine,' she said. ‘Concussion, a deep cut—a few stitches and some Panadol.'

Tarden bent his jaw. ‘Not as bad as it looked.'

‘Exactly. And it shouldn't mean we give up on the Sawyers. Imagine how that poor kid's feeling now.'

Tarden tried not to think about Simon. Just wasn't worth it. ‘Way I see it, if they haven't turned up by now I reckon they must have done a runner.'

Madaline shifted in her seat. ‘And nothing turned up after I left with Ned?'

‘Nothing,' Tarden said. ‘We kept up for another hour or so. No sign. Who gets lost out there, anyway? There's a giant landmark right in front of you.'

‘That's just it, Jack. They didn't know the area at all. Might seem strange to you, but these people don't have any sense of the place.'

Tarden thought of train tracks, burning tyres.

Madaline said, ‘Was it you who suggested they visit the lake, Jack?'

‘Who told you that?'

‘But you did tell them about the Magpie, when they arrived in town?'

‘I talked with them, yeah, but you can ask anyone at the Ottoman—I was only there a few minutes.'

‘Simon seemed to think you gave his parents directions to Magpie Lake.'

‘Well I did, but I—' Tarden knew he had lost his touch. Used to be he could run rings around these people. ‘I was the one raised the alarm,' he said. ‘You saying it's our fault they got lost?'

‘
Our
fault?' Madaline pulled the cap off her pen.

Tarden's mouth was dry. ‘My fault. 'Cause I told them where Magpie was.'

‘I'm not accusing you of anything,' said Madaline. ‘It's just that you were the last person to talk to the Sawyers. Means I need to talk to you.'

‘Then why're you asking me about all this other stuff? The old stuff…doesn't even—you can't think I'm still like that?'

Madaline drew her notepad up in front of her to screen her moving pen.

Tarden knew he was fucking things up. He'd answered the door to Madaline only twenty minutes before, and his head had been perfectly clear. When did Robbie get back? Where
was
Robbie?

‘This is all just normal procedure,' she said. ‘I just want to get the facts right in my mind.'

Tarden watched her eyes move around the room. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He cursed himself for letting Madaline in so easily, so amiably. She'd become such a part of the landscape, he'd almost forgotten what her job was. Stupid. There was a way of dealing with cops—giving them what they wanted without telling them anything at all—but that skill had left him, it seemed.

She looked at him. ‘You go out to Magpie Lake quite often, don't you.'

‘I'm there sometimes,' he said, wary. ‘Got some yabby traps there.'

Madaline nodded, without any noise of agreement. ‘And Kuiper—Robert—does he ever go out there with you?'

‘Sometimes. Depends on how busy he is.'

‘Sometimes? Meaning…a couple of days a week? Every second day?'

‘I don't know—couple of days each week I guess. When he feels like it.'

‘Did you both go out there yesterday? Did you go out there last night?'

Tarden reached his hand down to the floor and felt around for his cup of tea. He leaned his head over the armrest: the mug wasn't there.

‘Jack?'

‘What?' He was sure he'd made tea.

‘Did you go out to Magpie Lake last night?'

Tarden felt the rising sting of bile in his throat. ‘He just—I don't—'

A throat cleared. ‘Jack was at the pub. Anyone'll tell you. I was at home.' Kuiper stood in the doorway, half hidden by the darkness of the unlit hall. He lit a cigarette with a snap of his hands. He smiled at Madaline then looked over at Tarden. ‘Jack,' he said, ‘I wish you'd woken me up. I didn't realise we had a guest. Could have saved us all some time and bother.' He turned, blew smoke into the shadows.

Tarden wondered how much Robbie had heard. How long he'd been waiting to make an entrance.

‘Hi Robert,' said Madaline, not looking at all surprised to see him. ‘I was just finishing up with Jack here. Just having a chat to tie up some details.' She tapped the pen: de-tails.

‘So I see,' Kuiper said. ‘I'm just glad we're all here to help out the young lad.' He smiled.

Madaline closed her notebook. ‘As I say, just finishing up.'
She stood abruptly, compelling Tarden to do the same. ‘Thanks for your hospitality, Jack.' She handed him an empty mug. Tarden eyed it suspiciously, as if she'd conjured it from thin air. ‘Anyway,' she set it down on the arm of the chair, ‘I'm sure I'll see you soon. Have a nice day, both of you.' She pushed past Kuiper, who made no effort to move. The front door opened
and closed.

Kuiper curled smoke from his nostrils. ‘So nice to have guests, isn't it?'

Tarden sat back down. ‘She just…came in. I didn't think it was anything serious, but she kept at me. Like an interview.'

Kuiper reached out and rested a palm on one side of his face. ‘Jack,' he said softly, ‘it's one thing to let a copper into your house—but to start blabbing about your bloody murder trial?'

‘I didn't mean to,' said Tarden. Had he? Robbie must have been listening the whole time. ‘I just…I forgot who I was talking to.'

Kuiper stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on the sideboard. ‘Didn't the fucking uniform give it away?' He clamped his hands down on the chair Madaline had been using. ‘Didn't that give you a fucking clue?'

Tarden felt a headache pressing at his skull. He wished he was out in the boat, not stuck in this airless house. A thorn of annoyance suddenly jagged. ‘You could have come in earlier,' he said, ‘instead of just waiting out in the hall. I mean if we're in this together, we're—'

Kuiper narrowed his eyes. His hair had fallen down over one eye: the other, Tarden noticed, was ringed red. He said, ‘I get the impression, Jack, that you don't understand quite what's at stake.' He sighed, pushing his breath out too quickly. ‘I
chose
this place because it's quiet. Because nothing ever happens.' He took a step closer. ‘This isn't just another dumb-fuck small town joke, something that'll blow over in the morning—'

Tarden realised too late. Robbie wasn't just bent; he was at that stage where your mind teetered on a cliff of reality, desperately trying to claw its way back from the horrifying edge. Tarden remembered what it felt like, what it made you do. The rush from dead calm to crashing rage. ‘Robbie, I know.' He kept his voice low. ‘We just have to—'

‘You think it'll be o-fucking-kay if we just give it time, Jack? Well, that's not how it is. There's just so much money…it's not going to just…this is so serious,
FOR FUCK'S SAKE!
'

Kuiper's fist hit the painting but the noise seemed to trail far behind, cracking out eventually in a splinter-sound too sharp to be real. A thick rag of glass hung, pinned under Kuiper's knuckles, blood leaching into the cracks. The rest of the sheet sprawled in awkward shards on the sideboard. The painting remained steady in its frame. Above the brush-stroke of the mountains, the sky stung with a new blue. It appeared to Tarden more real than ever: a sky he'd first looked on, decades before, with guiltless, childhood eyes.