‘Y’reckon?’
‘I know. I’ve been waiting for this to happen. Ever since she planted that bastard thirty years ago.’ He raised his voice. ‘I told her not to. Not there. I said, why don’t you plant it in the middle? Wouldn’t listen.’
‘Dad, ssh.’
‘Won’t bloody ssh.’ He called louder. ‘Now who’s gotta pay three hundred dollars for a plumber?’ And he quietened. ‘Old cow.’
They stood together in the warm morning sun, Moy noticing the iron pulling away from the rotten fence posts. ‘That’ll need doing soon,’ he said, indicating.
George looked at it. ‘That’s your problem, when I’m gone. Good luck getting any money out of her.’
Moy knew who ‘her’ was: Thea Miller, ex-nurse, widow and treasurer of the Guilderton Country Women’s. She kept to herself, had a man in to do her garden and lawns, double-pegged her tunics, raked the gravel around her succulents and twice monthly vacuumed the carpet in her 1978 Premier. She generally ignored anyone she hadn’t met prior to her fortieth birthday.
George shook his head. ‘Only one thing for it.’
Five minutes later Moy was in the shed, wiping away spider webs as he moved through a jumble of old furniture, boxes and half-made cabinets George had lost interest in. He found the corner where the paints and chemicals were stored, lifted each tin and blew the dust from it.
‘Bingo.’
He made his way back to George who in the meantime had used a stick to take the lid off the sewer access.
‘There you go,’ said Moy. ‘Caustic soda.’
‘Bung it in.’
Moy pulled back the lid and looked at his father. ‘You want me to do it?’
‘That’s what you come home for, wasn’t it? To help your old man?’
‘Yes, that was the idea.’
‘Well, off you go. That stuff eats anything. You wanna murder someone, that’s what you use to get rid of the evidence.’
‘I know, Dad.’ He started emptying the powder into the hole.
‘Fella in East Hay did that.’ George sat down on a planter, remembering. ‘His wife…and I think there was a kiddy. He thought she’d been on with another fella. You heard of that one, son?’
‘No, Dad.’ He emptied the last of the powder and replaced the lid.
‘This fella at the pub had been bragging to his mates—I’ve had so-and-so’s wife. But he never had. He was just a big mouth. So one of these blokes at the pub tells the husband and the stupid bugger believes him.’
Moy sat beside his father. ‘I don’t think that’s gonna solve the problem,’ he said, indicating the empty container.
‘He strangled them. East Hay, yes. 1949…then, they say’—and he turned to his son again, smiling, as if he’d reached the punchline—‘he sawed them into small pieces, so they’d dissolve quicker. You ever heard of anything like that, son?’
‘Yes, there was a case—’
George wasn’t interested. ‘There was a bathtub in the back shed and when they found it, it was full of jelly.’
‘What about the bones and hair?’ Moy asked.
‘Some things persist.’ George closed his eyes and smiled.
‘Should we call a plumber?’ Moy said.
‘Suppose so,’ came the whispered reply.
13
MOY DROVE TO Dempsey’s Takeaway and bought three dim sims, bleeding oil into a bag that boasted Proud Sponsors of the Guilderton Maulers. As he ate he cruised along Creek Street, holding one of the dim sims with his fingertips. Minced meat emerging from what looked like an old war wound.
The radio nagged in his ear—slide guitar, nasal drone—and then the news update. It was the same voice that reported the fodder store specials, the demise of the Methodist tennis team and a fire at the impregnation plant, as if all these things could go together. Service times—Uniting, Anglican and Catholic, and then: ‘Police media have just released details of a body washed up at Mangrove Point, south of Port Louis.’ Moy held the dim sim between his teeth as he turned up the volume. ‘The body, a tall, solidly built fella in his thirties, hasn’t been identified. But, I suppose he will be…when someone misses him.’
These words rang in Moy’s ears. When someone misses him. As if ultimately, everyone belonged somewhere. When, he knew very well, some people were never missed at all.
The low voice moved on to the more important business of lost rams.
Moy wondered what a dead body was doing in a swamp at Port Louis. The town was twice the size of Guilderton but half as interesting. Neat streets, all finished with diosma, leading down to a kelpy beach that kept going out for two hundred metres. Everyone agreed: not worth the drive. A Catholic town with seven churches, three Freemason halls and a 1950s feel. It had a Community Prayer Week every year when the locals shut up shop early to pray for the welfare of the town and its people.