The Fortress
Lucy Sussex
Inner city dawn, grey shadows in an old back lane. An urban fox, its plumy tail mangy, has found an interesting scent. Yum, carrion. It tracks, stopping at the squat plastic of a jumbo waste bin, upright, closed. The only bin in the lane, and the source of the smell.
One thing the fox has learnt – and it is clever – is that bins can tip, the lid flipping open. It knows a hidey-hole nearby, where rotting fence wood leads to the under-floor of a rickety garage. There it settles, waiting, nostrils on alert even while snoozing.
The sun rises, heating the black plastic. Flies collect, but can't enter. Not so a steady stream of black ants. The fox's paws twitch in its sleep. Midafternoon, kids are released from primary school, and take forbidden short cuts home. Pelting down the lane comes a cutesy little girl, pink animal slides in her curls. A boy her age follows full-tilt.
‘Give it here!'
‘Shan't!' but he's catching up. She glances back … and collides with the bin. It goes flying, and the fox wakes with a jerk. The girl, sitting up, wails. The boy, skidding to a stop, wrestles for the mobile phone she holds. And then they both shriek.
The bin has fallen on its side, revealing: a young man, his eyes open, unseeing, dried blood dyeing his shirt front rust-red.
A fox knows when it's beaten. It heads for a nearby house, where overfed cats are easily monstered for their leftovers.
* * *
Detective Sergeant Phillips glares at his teenage nephew.
‘Get out of the car!'
‘No way!' says Ben Yakov. ‘You agreed to be the subject of my creative writing assignment. You said I could follow you for two days, recording whatever happens. So far it's been making coffee and fetching takeaways. Gimme a break.'
‘You can't attend a crime scene.'
‘C'mon, I've never seen a dead body before.'
‘All right! But you stay in the car. And when I say, you go home.'
The unmarked police car dodges through the inner city streets. It enters the network of laneways, bumping over cobbles. Up an incline, a squad car blocks the way, with constables reeling out crime scene tape.
Phillips gets out; Ben winds the window down to catch the cop-talk.
‘… call came in from a mobile, coupla little kids …'
‘… our lot thought it was a hoax …'
‘… then this woman rang, said her daughter came home screaming blue murder about a body …'
Ben can't see much beyond the bulk of the cops, except the wheelie bin, and a still, pale arm, outstretched. People are gathering uphill behind the tape, sticky-beaking. He sticky-beaks back, then ducks down when he sees a mop of red hair with a green streak. Surely not Nina, from school?
* * *
Kate Farrelly might be ex-police, but she still walks as if she has a gun on her hip, a swinging stride, eyeballing passers-by for possible trouble. Even in her security guard's uniform, people step aside for her.
‘Should we be here?' Nina Bates asks. ‘I mean, if there's a body?'
‘You're doing a creative writing assignment,' Kate says. ‘And writing needs excitement.' She waves at the nearest cop. ‘Besides it's on my patch, and I know these guys. GIDDAY PIPSY!'
Nina winces – as does Detective Phillips. Kate might be her mum's oldest, bestest friend, but she's still scary. Kate hangs back as the pair talk brief shop. Phillips nods and Kate swings one long leg over the tape. She joins the group by the bin.
One look, and Kate returns to Nina, looking grim. ‘Back to the Fortress!'
Which is what Kate calls the gated community in the next street, where she does security for rich people.
‘What's happened?'
‘The body's Daniel Nowak, the boss's son.'
‘In the wheelie bin?' Nina makes a face. ‘The guy you said was cute but trouble?'
‘Not any more.'
As they near the big iron gates of the Fortress, they see a thin, gangly figure waiting at the bus stop. Nina stares. Isn't that Ben Yakov, who was bragging about doing his assignment on his uncle the detective?
Their gaze meets, and Ben winces. Just like his uncle.
‘Er, hi Nina …'
* * *
Kate and Detective Phillips sit in the control room of the Fortress, among the flickering screens of the security cameras. Nina's next door, Kate's office, listening by the open door. Nobody told her not to, right? It's fascinating, how an informal police interview becomes two crime pros comparing notes.
‘When's rubbish night, Kate?'
‘Varies around here. For that street – Wednesday, I think.'
‘That's when the neighbours said the Minhs went on holiday. And left their bin out.'
‘Only a few hundred metres from the Fortress,' says Kate.
‘A message? Nowak Senior has enemies?' asks the detective.
‘So did Daniel.'
‘Bad company?'
‘And chemicals. Nowak stood it until he found son and heir was thieving from him. Instant expulsion and entry verboten ever since.'
The security screen shows the unmarked police car in the visitor's car park, then a vista of the gate.
‘Nowak's overseas, you said. Can you inform him?'
‘Of course,' – with a sigh.
A knock on the control room door.
‘YES?' yells Kate, and it opens. Nina can only see a sliver of a person, a cleaner's uniform, bright aqua against skin dark-plum purple.
Kate speaks again, slowly and deliberately. ‘Sorry Acai, come back later, dear.'
The door closes.
‘The new maid, keeping house while Nowak honeymoons with the latest Missus Sudanese refugee, from some PR charity scheme. Does ESL lessons, cleans tirelessly, never smiles.'
‘That's a knife scar,' says Phillips. ‘Just missed her eye.'
Kate sighs again. ‘Fair dinkum refugee, poor kid.'
Curious, Nina leans out the office window overlooking the plush gardens, the big houses of the complex. Walking away is the shrieking aqua, a tall thin girl, her hair close-cropped. A refugee, Nina thinks. Ideal for a creative writing project.
As if aware of being watched, Acai turns, and gazes full at Nina. The refugee has an oval face, the weal that stretches from one eye diagonally across the high cheekbone. The look says: don't pity me! Just leave me alone!
And Nina knows she had best stick to the nice, juicy murder.
Night, at the end of a long day. Television news shows shots of the laneway, police spokesman Phillips asking the public for assistance. Archival footage of Nowak Senior, successful businessman, is followed by photos of Daniel, cute, smiling, alive. Found stabbed in a wheelie bin, a few hundred metres from his father's gated community. ‘We can only speculate why,' says the reporter, an invitation to the watchers. And they do. Others don't speculate at all. A small child wakes in a nightmare of falling wheelie bins. Daniel lies still and cold in a mortuary drawer. And a fox goes hunting again, for anything better than ant-riddled cat food.
Next day, Ben sits in his uncle's car, on sufferance. It is parked just outside Daniel Nowak's ramshackle squat, an inner city worker's cottage built onto the street. The other squatters, all beanies, tatters and tatts, are clumped on the opposite sidewalk. They sit smoking, waiting for the police to finish searching Daniel's room. One has already been arrested on an outstanding warrant. The rest don't seem to care – nor about Daniel either.
Ben shifts, avoiding a shaft of sun. Can't something please happen? he thinks … and it does. That Kate woman, Nina's subject, comes barrelling down the street in her Subaru.
‘PIPSY!'
The squatters giggle, Phillips sticks his head out of Daniel's front window.
‘Kate, what are you doing here?'
‘Boss says I'm to check for any stolen property. His.'
‘Is that all he cares about?'
‘Yes,' softly and venomously.
‘Easy. Daniel lived like a church mouse on chrome. These are the only things not cheap or crap. Take ’em.’
Through the window three books are exchanged, in old, gilded, leather bindings.
‘The bookplate says John Winston Nowak, but would he read these? Cranford by Mrs Gaskell. James Hogg, Collected Prose v. 3. Andrew Forrester Jr, The Female Detective.'
‘Daniel read. Nowak doesn't. He just collects: antique weapons, rare books in fancy bindings, silver dinnerware …'
Ben meets Kate's amused, quizzical glance. It says: Are-you-thinking-what-I'm-thinking?
‘Mission accomplished, ta,' she says. ‘I'll be off now.'
On her way back to the Subaru, she winks at Ben. ‘Need a lift outta here, kid? You look bored stiff.'
‘Thank you,' says Ben. ‘Thank you.'
‘Thank god for that,' says Phillips, through the window.
In her car, Kate eyes Ben in the rear-view mirror. ‘Well, Sherlock Junior, what do you think?'
Nina, in the passenger front seat, bridles. ‘I'm Sherlock, too.'
‘And I'm The Female Detective, that was,' says Kate. ‘I was better than Pipsy, too. See these books, Nina? They're money, if you live on the edge. And no sentimental value either. So why did young Daniel keep them?'
‘Maybe we'd better read them and see,' says Ben.
‘Not the boss's precious copies. I won't have you – or me – for that matter, using sandwiches as bookmarks.'
Ben sees a thin strip of purple silk, attached to the spine of The Female Detective. It marks a place, and he opens it. The title at the top of the page reads ‘The Unknown Weapon'.
‘It's clean. Daniel wasn't using sandwiches as bookmarks.'
Kate shrugs. ‘Find your own copies. These go back to the Nowak library.'
At Ben's request, she drops him near the uni colleges.
‘His sister,' Nina explains. ‘And her uni library card, I guess.'
‘He really is Sherlock Junior.'
Nina leans forward. ‘So am I. When you return the library books, can I go with you?'
‘Need you ask?'
* * *
Ben, back at home with his sister's copy of Cranford and the University Library's Hogg, sits watching the news. The Female Detective is a very rare book, not held in Australia, the librarian on duty had said.
The murder of Daniel Nowak has lost priority, slipping down to a sound bite, no new information. And his uncle has clammed up. On the other hand, from the way Kate talks she has police contacts. Better be nice to Nina, then.
He picks up Cranford again. Weird, it just seems to be about a bunch of old ladies living in the country. Why would Daniel bother with it?
Using the family Internet connection, Ben accesses ‘Bibliographia Mysteriosa' and tries a site devoted to Victorian-era crime fiction. He finds an entry for The Female Detective, starts reading.
* * *
The Nowak home is state of the art new, except for what is old-valuable. Nina goggles: at the tiger skin rugs in the hallway; the Warhol prints; and Acai, in jeans and halter top, doing her ESL homework at the kitchen table. Or at least she tries not to goggle at Acai, who still looks forbidding.
‘Just returning these, dear!' Kate says, in her ESL voice, holding out the books.
‘Kate!' Nina hisses, as they dodge tiger heads down the hall. ‘She's not a dear. Don't patronise her.'
‘I feel sorry for her, okay? And I don't know how much she understands.'
A strong smell of bleach, as they pass a bathroom, all gleaming chrome and marble. Then they are in the library, the rows of shelves to the ceiling offset by a display of antique weaponry on the facing wall. There is a gap in the row of books, which Kate fills.
‘Guided tour?'
Nina goggles again, at the formal dining room with its glass cabinets of silverware; the living room, an antique showcase; upstairs a theatrette, with velvety armchairs and a huge plasma-screen TV; the master bedroom, with emperor-size bed and real fur coverlet. Excess writ large, everywhere.
‘An enemy to good taste,' Kate muses, coming downstairs.
‘And who else?'
‘Precisely. The boy didn't die in the bin, no blood – and that was a heart wound, my mate in forensics said. He was dumped there … that suggests premeditation, hate. The sins of the father visited on the son. But it's just a little too easy for me. And I can't say why …'
At the foot of the steps Acai waits, expressionless as a robot.
‘Good night, dear. Study well.'
* * *
Next morning, when Nina arrives at the Fortress, she finds Kate shouting at one of the junior security guards.
‘I don't care, when Detective Sergeant Phillips requests our external CCTV for the night of the murder, we don't tell him why bother, it doesn't cover the laneway. We find the wretched tapes before he turns up with a warrant, okay?'
‘But I can't!'
‘Oh, let me look! Go off and … do something useful. Hi, Nina. Can you give me a hand? I need someone to look at tapes with me.'
‘On The Bill looking at CCTV's really boring.'
‘That's … realism.'
She's right, Nina decides. They sit in the office, eating lollies and feeling their eyes turn into pickled onions with the tedium.
‘Okay, I take it back,' Kate mutters. ‘I really can't find the relevant footage. Only the previous afternoon's.'
She fast forwards, as a generic delivery van draws up to the gate. IDs are checked, and the van enters.
‘What's that?'
‘Two guys delivering Nowak an antique harmonium. News to me he's collecting musical instruments.'
‘Harmonium?'
‘Mini pedal-organ. Gran had one.'
Nina tries not to breathe in hard.
‘Is there any footage of it being unloaded?'
Kate looks puzzled, but finds footage of the outside of the Nowak home. Acai in her uniform holds the door open as two men carry a large box inside. Kate fast forwards, they exit, the van heads for the gate again.
‘Kate, we looked in every room of that house.'
‘Except Acai's little bedroom.'
‘And nowhere was there a harmonium, with or without a box.'
The security buzzer sounds for the gate. They dash into the control room, to see Ben outside, jigging up and down as if crawling with ants. Kate presses the entry button, and minutes later Ben bursts in, almost too excited to speak. From his school bag he removes a paperback Cranford, the uni library's Hogg, and Internet printout.
‘It's in the books! They've all got one thing in common, they tell an old tale, of a man burgling a big secure house, by hiding in a peddler's pack, and being left there, or being delivered inside a big box, to hide until it's dark, then breaking out.'
* * *
No answer at the Nowak house, so Kate uses her master key.
‘A big, heavy box, and they weren't in there long. So they must have left it on the ground floor. Which means: the hall, the downstairs bathroom, the kitchen, the living room, the formal dining room, or the library.'
In none is the big wooden box seen on the CCTV. They scurry upstairs, ending up in the last resort: Acai's painfully neat and tiny bedroom. No box.
‘When's hard rubbish night here?' Ben says.
Silence, then Kate whistles.
‘Not hard, but every day. We had a collection the night before the body was found. Everybody wheels their bins down in the evening, there's a corral just outside the gates. Acai brought the Nowak bin down very late, at the end of my shift. I was doing paperwork in the office, she saw me. There was nobody watching the CCTVs, and I was dog-tired. I wouldn't have noticed if she took longer than usual … say to wheel the bin across the street to the laneway and empty it. A perfect short-term hiding place, with no prying cameras, no freaked-out garbos in the morning.'
‘And the external CCTV for that night's missing, which would prove she took the bin over the road.'
‘But why would Acai kill Daniel?'
‘You'll have to read “The Unknown Weapon”,' Ben says smugly, waving the printout. ‘There's a housekeeper, alone in this big country house …'
Nina snatches it, plumps down on the bed to read – and squeaks.
‘Ow! It's hard. And since when did maids get double beds?' She pulls the candlewick bedspread back …
To reveal, on its side, pressed against the narrow single bed, a wooden box, with a splintered hole, halfway up, tinged rusty red.
‘Oh!' and Kate sits down beside Nina. ‘My forensics mate said there were wood splinters in the wound.'
Ben feels faint. He clutches at something – the topmost handle on the Ikea chest of drawers. It opens, to show not girly stuff, but emptiness. He pulls out drawer after drawer, also empty.
‘She's gone, poor dear,' says Kate.
* * *
Acai, in her narrow bed, wakes sweaty and shaking from a dream of refugee camps, the Janjaweed militias come raiding.
And relaxes for a moment, secure behind the walls of this safe place, this fortress Australia.
Until the sound recurs, and she knows what woke her: a faint scraping from below. She pulls on tracksuit bottoms and top, pads noiselessly downstairs. Nobody's going to scar her again.
In the library, she pins down the sound to the box those men delivered today. They'd looked at her oddly, as if they'd never seen anybody black before. She tiptoes closer, and as she does, the box starts to open.
The reaction is instant, automatic. She reaches back, to the display of weapons she dusted today. The bayonet is sharp, she has the bandaid to prove it. One lunge, and she pierces through the concealed airhole, and into the soft flesh beyond.
Sticky, gurgling sounds, as lungs fill with heart blood. The only other sound is her hard, hysterical breathing.
She's a maid, she knows how to tidy up. Stealing the CC tape is no harder than letting the body drain in the marble bath, then binning it out of the complex and into the laneway. She takes the short cuts, she knew there'd be a hiding place somewhere. No. 13's bin, which won't be cleared for another week, not like the Fortress's rubbish. Back to the complex with the now empty bin. The box she merely hides. And waits for a moment when nobody is looking at her.
A refugee knows exactly when to flee. Carrying everything she has in a backpack, she slips down the laneways in the grey pre-dawn, the only witness an urban fox …
* * *
Afterword
The crime fiction genre is distinct for its content, and plot structure: it begins with a crime and reconstructs events, the whodunit. This form derives from real-life newspaper reports, as a body was discovered, the investigation, the arrest, the trial, etc. One of the best early detective crime writers was Andrew Forrester Jr., who used an existing tale (the Peddler's pack) to create ‘The Unknown Weapon', in The Female Detective, an 1864 collection of short stories. I wanted to see if I could modernise the story, if it would still work today.
Curiously, nobody knows who Forrester was, but from the story he reads as if he were female, writing under a male name.