The Silent Inheritance (13 page)

Is that you Martin?

It’s Emma, Danni’s friend. We live down the road from your father’s place. What do you mean missing?

She didn’t come home from school. I think she’s with her father. Do you know where he is?

He lives on a boat somewhere in Queensland.

He could have flown Danni up there by now. Once they got out to sea, no one would find them. And where were the police? The woman had said someone would be with her shortly. What did shortly mean?

Still stuffy inside, she walked out into the night, and that dog ran at her, and if it came one step nearer, she’d use it as a football.

‘Snow! Here, boy.’ A voice came from the dark. ‘Nice to feel a breath of cool air,’ he said.

Barbara had opened her mouth to complain about his yapping dog when her landline phone rang. She opened the screen door, but before she could step inside, the dog darted between her feet and got to the phone before her, and the yapping fool attacked it, knocked it down on the floor, and whether it was the police or not, she wasn’t fighting a dog for it.

‘Get him out!’ she demanded.

‘I’m so sorry,’ the male said. ‘Snow. Here, boy.’ Having killed the phone, or silenced its ring, the dog ran out to jump up to the crippled woman’s lap and lick her face.

‘He’s been housebound for days,’ the male explained, then offered his hand. ‘Jake, Jake Murray, and my wife, Joan.’

‘Barbara,’ she said, and she had to touch the hand his wife flung at her.

They didn’t leave. A second couple walked up from the bottom end of that enclave of townhouses to join them, and Barbara had to be introduced to Annie and Luke.

She asked them if they’d seen her daughter today. They saw little, Jake said. ‘We knew someone had moved in up here, but from where we are, we don’t see a lot of the front neighbours,’ Annie said. The two couples lived side by side and appeared to know each other well.

Barbara’s mobile, on the charger inside, saved her. It beeped, and she got away from her neighbours.
Tried to call. Will call in the morning.

From David. In Echuca, or on his way there, with his wife and kids, and where was Echuca? Barbara didn’t know. She didn’t know if David had lied about his in-laws’ anniversary either. As men had always eyed her, women eyed him, and when they did he preened.

The police came, two officers, a male and a female. The dog barked at them, the neighbours stared until she got the police inside and closed the door.

She was sifting through her mobile photographs for a recent shot of Danni when her landline rang. The caller identified himself as Detective Senior Sergeant Ross Hunter.

‘Two constables are here,’ she said, then pushed that dog spit-defiled phone at the female, and searched on until she found a photograph taken in Sydney a few weeks before they’d left. She hadn’t taken one since they’d been down here. That kid had been so rotten to her, she hadn’t felt like taking one.

F
rederick Adam-Jones owned three televisions sets, the largest of them fixed to his sitting room wall. He paid a fortune each month for Foxtel, could have watched horse, dog, car racing, football, baseball or ping-pong, but since childhood, Freddy had avoided all sports.

He had access to movie channels, to documentary channels, or with a flick of the remote could switch to umpteen free-to-air channels where a few of the commercials were more interesting than the replays of cooking shows, celebrity shows, hilariously un-funny comedy shows on the ABC, or movies he’d seen so many times if they’d played them backward he’d recognise them.

He paid a fortune for multi-gigabyte broadband, had access to computers, an iPad, and three mobiles that doubled as computers. No one was downloading gigabytes tonight. Freddy was home alone, downloading a bottle of ten-year-old malt whisky.

He wasn’t a big drinker, not during the week. He could polish off a bottle of red with a meal but hadn’t eaten yet tonight. No wife here to make and serve his dinner, he’d opened his last bottle of liquid gold and had been serving himself since, and gone through the last of the ice.

He was not fond of his own company, nor lately was his wife. She’d gone to Bali – or Thailand – with her girlfriends, who were no longer girls. She’d known them since they were. A keeper, Cheryl Adam-Jones, she kept her friends, had kept her looks and figure, and, to date, him.

He’d had a good day until three o’clock. He’d had the jury eating out of his hand, had walked away from the courthouse smiling for the cameras. His voicemail wiped that smile away, or the message from Rolland’s principal had, and that message sent at one o’clock, stating that it was imperative that Mr and Mrs Adam-Jones present themselves at the principal’s office at their earliest convenience.

Freddy had presented himself at four and wished he hadn’t bothered. His almost seventeen-year-old son, his pride and joy, had been caught red-handed, selling marijuana to three year nine students. The evidence was on the principal’s desk, in Rolland Adam-Jones’s computer bag, in seven small snap-seal bags that Freddy recognised. Cheryl had a box full of them in her kitchen drawer.

The police hadn’t been called, and thank Christ for that much. The three year nine students had been suspended for a week. Rolland had been suspended more permanently.

‘Year eleven is an important year,’ Freddy had said. ‘A youthful mistake …’

For half an hour he’d argued his case for the accused, then the principal had dismissed him.

His only son and heir, kicked out of Freddy’s old school, mid-term. Expelled. It was a dirty word. Freddy hadn’t been expelled. Freddy had excelled – academically. His son hadn’t. His son had gone into the drug-dealing business – and gone missing too, so Freddy poured another splash of liquid gold and picked up his mobile, then put it down. That shit of a kid who hadn’t replied to Freddy’s six messages was unlikely to reply to a seventh.

Flicked the remote again, allowing the screen to settle on Kirk Douglas wearing a Roman skirt. He didn’t have the legs for skirts. Flicked, caught a prepaid funeral advertisement. Gave it the flick and wondered what time it was in Bali – or Thailand.

Cheryl needed to be told what her son had got up to while she was gadding about with her girlfriends. If she’d been at home, she would have taken the principal’s call, would have sat in his office and taken the punishment, and maybe done a better job of defending Rolland.

She loved that boy, had wanted to replicate him half a dozen times. One had been enough for Freddy, who’d thanked Christ his first had taken after his mother and not after him. Should have given her more kids. She might have been at home cooking dinner for them instead of running around with her girlfriends.

And his gut rolled. It needed feeding. He’d intended to eat with Rolland when he came in. He hadn’t come in.

Freddy did another circuit with the remote, stilling his hand a moment on the daily news. Nothing on it he hadn’t seen or heard fifty times before. After a while viewers became desensitised to rape, murder and terrorism. Maybe that was what had gone wrong with the kids of today. They got desensitised early, saw the death and roadkill as one more video game where people died violently but not permanently.

He flicked to a deadbeat mother, mouthing off about her son. He could relate to her. Might have watched that had he been able to stand her voice. Couldn’t. It reminded him of his mother’s voice. Hit her mid-sentence with the
off
button, picked up his glass and walked out to the kitchen, to the freezer, well stocked with frozen meals and meat pies. Rolland liked meat pies and tomato sauce.

They used to heat up pies for Saturday’s lunch when Rolland had spent his Saturdays at home, at home in Vermont. He hadn’t wanted to move. He’d grown up there with his rat-pack mates. Cheryl hadn’t wanted to move. He’d moved them. He’d needed that better address, the bigger house, its large dining room. He’d seen his wife playing the toff at his side in that dining room. She wasn’t into toffs. He wasn’t into frozen meals.

Rejected beef in red wine. He’d tried one of those yesterday, and the representation on the packet hadn’t mirrored the contents. His rolling gut wanted chicken, stuffed and roasted with baked potatoes and gravy. It settled for a packet of curried chicken with rice.

It took time for chubby, inept hands to break into that packet, but he slid the plastic container free, pitched the box towards the garbage bag he’d placed in the corner. It held more than the under-sink kitchen tidy – wasn’t as tidy. He slid his dinner into the microwave, typed in 7.30, then stood watching the countdown until the microwave beeped.

Everything beeped these days. Ovens, microwaves, mobiles, washing machines, dryers, cars too. They beeped until you plugged in your seatbelt. His Ferrari beeped when he backed past shrubs. Maybe it would beep if a neighbour’s kid ran out from behind a shrub. Maybe he’d stop. Maybe he’d think it was beeping at a shrub and he’d run that kid down. After a time a man learned to ignore life’s beeps.

He didn’t ignore the microwave’s. The instruction on the pack told him to let the meal sit for thirty seconds. He nuked it for those thirty seconds, the microwave a more reliable counter of seconds than he.

Cheryl had warned him to keep a close eye on Rolland. What had she known that he hadn’t? She’d suggested he take him out to dinner, take him for a drive in the Ferrari.

He’d hit him where it hurt, that’s what he’d do. He’d cancel his bank card, get him a job at McDonald’s, or pack him off to one of those bush camps that specialise in sorting out teenage kids.

Expelled.

He removed the clear film sealing his pre-packaged dinner, then poked around in it with a fork, looking for the chicken. There were three slim slices of something in it, which didn’t look like chicken.

As a kid he’d eaten roasted free-range chicken, not much of it. One chook had to stretch a long way, but he’d eaten his portion often enough to become a chicken connoisseur, and if those slices had been cut from a chook, he’d eat his hat.

He ate his meal while mentally adding its manufacturer’s name to the long list of companies he planned to sue when he retired, most of which were food manufacturers. Five more days before he got a decent meal. Five since he’d had one.

The kitchen was a dog’s breakfast. Freddy knew how to use the dishwasher, or maybe he knew. Their cleaner would know. She’d be here on Wednesday. And his gut didn’t like that curry. It wanted roast chicken, and he was out of ice, and Cheryl was not here to make him more.

He knew where he could buy ice and a chook, and where he might find Rolland. He and his rat pack had spent a lot of the last two years hanging around the Forest Hill centre, a short bus ride from Vermont.

His Ferrari was unaccustomed to the hurly-burly of the centre’s car park, but Cheryl’s car wasn’t. He picked up her keys, and five minutes later he hit the road in the old white Commodore she refused to part with.

That centre never failed him. He got a space close to the entrance. Shops changed hands regularly, but the escalators never changed. He rode one down to Coles, not too crowded at this time of night, and that supermarket didn’t fail him. Half a dozen steps inside the store and there was his chicken, pre-bagged, hot – and reduced for a quick sale.

The bags of ice were at the other end of the store. He helped himself from the freezer cabinet then walked down to queue for service, the chicken becoming hotter, the ice growing colder. Minutes later, swinging two plastic bags, just for old times’ sake he decided to have a look in their grog shop – and was pleased he had. He picked up three bottles of his particular poison for not a lot more than the price of two – or for what he’d paid for the last two in Camberwell. He added a packet of salted peanuts and two of salt and vinegar chips to his order then paid for the lot with his card.

Back at the escalators, bottles clinking in one bag, chips and peanuts rustling in another, the scent of chicken wafting from the third, the ice weighing heavy in the fourth, he remembered the other reason he’d come out here. Timezone. Rolland and his rat pack used to love that place.

It was on the top level and Rolland wasn’t in it. Freddy glanced towards Vegas, the centre’s hotel, the petty gamblers’ happy place. The rat pack, having graduated to marijuana, might have graduated from video games to the pokies. Freddy was no gambler, but he walked in, ordered a whisky on ice then looked around. No sign of that kid or any kid in there. Plenty of older players at those singing machines.

And his shopping bags cutting off the circulation to his fingers, he placed the bags down in front of a machine displaying green frogs, placed his glass down on a conveniently positioned shelf, took out his wallet and dug for a coin to feed the frogs.

‘Jump, Freddo,’ he said, and hit a button. The frogs disappeared into a lily patch, so he hit it again, again, whittling that dollar down five cents at a time.

And they started jumping. They doubled his initial investment. Sipped his drink, made himself comfortable on the stool provided and hit that button again. And the machine started singing and spinning, running his investment up to triple figures – no doubt in cents. He was playing a five-cent machine, which had stopped, but two more prods at that button and off it went again to play alone.

‘You’ve got a goer there,’ the woman at his side said.

‘It requires little help from me,’ Freddy said, knowing why that woman came here. Old or young, male or female, rich or poor, folk didn’t feel lonely when sitting beside another player.

He had a goer all right. It ran his dollar investment up to forty-two dollars – so his new friend informed him.

‘Should I … hit
collect
?’

‘I wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘The way it’s going, you might get the jackpot.’

He emptied his glass, considered a refill, but the machine had stopped playing alone, so he hit its button, expecting it to take off. It didn’t. His frogs had stopped jumping and started gulping down his dollars. He played it down to thirty dollars before it gave back two, but the frogs had been kicking their last. He played his total down to twenty dollars, then claimed his winnings, and would have forgotten his melting ice and cooling chicken if not for his new friend.