Thank you for all your lovely holiday wishes. I hope you all had a great break over Christmas and New Year.
Phryne wanted to stay clinging to Jack all night. Both of them had suffered terribly and they needed each other's support but with two dead bodies just outside the door, someone needed to go to the police and Jack was in no state to do anything. She took a deep breath and slowly sat up. Her head was still hurting but not nearly as much as when she first regained consciousness. Her shoulder was throbbing with pain but she had more movement in her arm now and was confident that she would be able to drive.
She looked at his swollen and battered face and wondered if his nose was broken. She ran her hand through his hair, her nails gently caressing his scalp. He blinked slowly at her touch but didn't look at her. He was exhausted and no doubt in pain but as far as she could tell he had not sustained any serious injuries so she wasn't too worried about his wounds, as hard as it was to see him this way. What concerned her now was his emotional state; he hadn't said anything since they came inside and although he seemed to relax a little, his breathing was still rapid and shallow and he had been staring vacantly at the fireplace since he lay on the couch.
She looked at him lying there; what had he gone through? She was desperate to know what had happened when she was unconscious and racked her brain, which was still a bit fuzzy, to try and remember the sequence of events before she hit her head. She remembered Percy telling Frankie to shoot him. She heard the gunshot and then laughter. Memories of the panic she felt when she thought they had killed him brought tears to her eyes and she fought back a sob. It must have been terrifying for him. She knew from his injuries that there had been a struggle and he had ended up in the rose bush, or he had been pushed in there as a form of torture. She grimaced at the thought of it. She remembered aiming the shotgun at Frankie. She fired and then nothing. What had happened to Frankie? Did she shoot him? Did she kill him? She shuddered at the thought of it but knew that discussion would have to wait until he had come out of his shock and was feeling stronger.
She thought back to when she regained consciousness. She remembered waking in his arms as he gripped her tightly. He was rigid with shock and was sobbing because he thought she was dead. He was so unresponsive, so unlike him and it had shocked her to see him like that.
She closed her eyes as she sat pressed against him. Phryne had seen men like this as a nurse during the war. They came to the hospital with relatively minor injuries, some self-inflicted, and sat staring, blinking slowly. They were shell shocked and exhausted but were too frightened to get much-needed sleep, terrified of reliving the war in their dreams. When they finally fell asleep, if she wasn't too busy, she would sit with them, mopping their brow and holding their hand as their twisted and gruesome memories caused them to cry out in horror. It was this aspect of the war she found the hardest to cope with: the dead were dead but the living sometimes wanted to be; anything to shut out those images. Her heart ached for those men, some of whom were still boys. They were patched up and told to man up so they could be sent back to the front and thrown back into the bloody and terrifying chaos of the fields and the trenches. Their wounds may have healed but their spirits were broken: they were terrified and confused and all she could do was focus on the next batch of wounded and try not to think about their inevitable deaths.
Her hand had stilled in his hair and she opened her eyes and closed them again to shut out her own horrors of the war and looked again at Jack. Was he one of those men who had suffered so terribly? Is this what he alluded to when he spoke of being deeply affected by the war?
Phryne got up slowly and walked to the bathroom to put out the fire in the water heater and returned to sit beside him. They could bathe later. She took in a deep breath to steel herself for the drive into town.
"Jack," she said softly, putting her hand on his shoulder and leaning in close, "I am going to go and get help now. Will you be all right?"
He looked at her and nodded. That was a good sign. She stood slowly and moved through the house locking all windows and doors, unsure if anyone else would come after them. She placed her gun in her purse and retrieved Jack's gun from his bedroom and placed it on the table before him. She sat beside him and saw his eyes move to look at it.
"I won't be long, Jack. Try and get some sleep while I'm gone. I think we may be in for a late night."
She leant in and kissed him on the forehead and stood up to leave when he reached out to grab her wrist. She looked down and saw him grimace at the pain in his bloody and swollen hand. She leant closer and looked at him expectantly.
"Don't tell them anything." He spoke softly and slowly, his voice was hoarse. He looked at her for the first time in a while. "Let me do the talking."
Phryne frowned in confusion. He seemed more lucid than she thought he would be. "But, Jack, how will I explain …"
"Don't try and explain anything. Just tell them there were intruders on the property, that you are here with me and that there have been fatalities. Two dead."
"But I don't know what ..."
"Just do as I say!" he barked.
Phryne jumped slightly and straightened. She was shocked and confused at the anger in his voice and gently extracted her wrist from his grip. She stood there, trying to decide what to do. Her instinct was to refuse, and since he seemed perfectly capable of talking she could ask him what had happened.
"I need to know what happened, Jack."
He closed his eyes and sighed. "Not now, Phryne. Just go," he whispered. "Please. I need the time to pull myself together. You have to let me handle this. I will sort it out when they get here. You'll know soon enough."
Phryne was still feeling fragile and fought back tears as she looked at him, not knowing what to do. She eventually nodded. He was a senior police officer and it would be better coming from him. She didn't know why he couldn't tell her what happened, but assumed he was still reeling from the events and wasn't feeling strong enough yet to talk about it. He looked away from her and back to the fireplace, letting her know the conversation was over. She walked slowly to the door, fetched his keys from the hall table and walked out of the house.
Despite her agonisingly sore shoulder and hands, Phryne managed to manoeuvre Jack's car around Percy's body and squeeze it past his car on the drive. She was thankful she didn't have to move it to get past; the last thing she wanted to do was rummage in the pockets of dead men for keys.
She stopped the car at the end of the drive and let out a breath. She sat there for a while in the darkness to prepare herself for the task ahead but she thought about Jack. The last few days with him had been close to perfect. Being alone in this beautiful place had allowed them to be blissfully happy together, as lovers. Her long-held belief that she could not give herself to one man, which she had clung to since her terrible time with René, had weakened the moment she set foot on the property. What was it about this place? This was a house of love, and one that clearly meant so much to Jack, and was somewhere he could truly be himself. She felt tears run down her face. It was bad enough that he had suffered so terribly at the hands of Percy and Frankie, but that it happened here, at his refuge, was unspeakably cruel. His wounds would heal but Ulumbarra had changed forever.
Phryne blinked back her tears and sniffed loudly. What if he couldn't move on from this? She sighed and placed her forehead on the back of her gloved hands that were lightly gripping the wheel, just like Jack did after he left her house to pack for their journey. She had watched him in his car from the window of her darkened parlour and could just make out his silhouette slumped at the wheel. She could see he was troubled and she held her breath as she expected him to return to her house to tell her that he had changed his mind and that she should go to a safehouse as planned. But that never happened and here they were now. She huffed out a breath. What had she done? None of this would have happened if she had done what he asked of her and gone to a safe house. She straightened and tried to focus on the task ahead to avoid succumbing to that crippling emotion that she had learnt to repress, but she failed; she felt the full weight of guilt and she wept for him.
Phryne eventually stopped crying and focused on the low rumble of the engine and the soothing vibrations of the idling car. She needed to get going. She released the handbrake lever and focused on turning the car out of the drive with her one good arm but once on the road into town her mind drifted back to the events of the evening and she again wondered if she had killed Frankie. She tried hard to focus on driving one handed but her mind had other ideas. She knew a shotgun at short range would inflict terrible damage, but she was unsure that she hit him. If she did shoot him, how did he die? Slowly and painfully or instantly?
She loathed them for what they had done, and she was glad they were dead but she just couldn't fathom the idea that she may have killed someone. She didn't want to be a killer, she couldn't be. She had inflicted wounds, always in self-defence, but she had never killed anyone. Even when she had pointed her gun at the man she hated most in the world, the one who took Janey from her, she still couldn't bring herself to pull the trigger.
She felt a tear slide down her cheek again. Not knowing was eating away at her. She slowed to a stop and twisted her body to wind down the window with her good arm. She was starting to feel breathless and wanted air, wanted the sensation of the cool evening blowing over her.
She continued the drive towards town as she went over the events of the evening that she could remember. She felt uncharacteristically panicky as she thought again about what she would tell the police. Would they know who she was? She knew she had a reputation for being meddlesome and she had managed to annoy many police officers in her short time as a private detective, including those of high rank that she had recently exposed as patrons of bordellos. Would they see this as a way to punish her, as a way to shut her down? In truth, she was worried and was feeling apprehensive. She shook her head. Stop it, she thought, they had walked uninvited and armed onto the property, and no-one could possibly find her guilty of anything but acting in self-defence. She racked her brain for another memory that would allow her to think that she didn't shoot Frankie. Maybe she slipped before the gun went off, missing him entirely. That was also a possibility and the one that she clung to as she drove into town.
Jack heard Phryne lock the door behind her as she left to inform the police. He was achingly tired and he still couldn't quite believe they had both survived. He let out a breath and sat up slowly and looked at his gun that she had left on the table. A fat lot of good that was now. He took in as deep a breath as his sore ribs would allow and tried to stretch out his muscles. He was glad she was gone. He was starting to feel suffocated and claustrophobic pressed up against her like that. He had desperately wanted to be alone back at the homestead, away from her, so he could come to terms with what had just happened but her soft sobs had eventually gotten to him. He had never liked seeing her upset and he had used the little strength he had left to pull her to him, to comfort her despite his almost desperate need for solitude.
The pain of the stretch brought him back to the present. He was sore, really sore, but he was starting to feel more rational and knew that he had been in shock. He had seen this in others many times: as a policeman he had informed people of the loss of a loved one and watched helplessly as they collapsed dazed and distraught into a blithering mess. He knew to keep them warm and perhaps give them sweet tea if possible but he didn't really understand what they were going through, until now.
He took another deep breath and breathed out slowly, trying to slow the beat of his heart. His shock was lifting but he was losing himself to another feeling he knew all too well. He felt jittery and jumpy and was acutely aware of every little noise. He felt like the room around him had retreated and everything was out of reach. When he closed his eyes he felt like he was shrinking, being drawn away from the horrors of reality.
He opened his eyes but knew it was no use fighting it and gave in freely to the feeling of heaviness that had pervaded his body. He felt like he was being crushed by the enormity of what had just happened; the sounds and the smells and the feeling of flesh under his knuckles, the sickening sound of bone being crushed by a stone. And then there was Frankie. He squeezed his eyes shut again, trying to force the image of that mess out of his head. Why was he so affected by this? He had seen death and carnage before many times, and much worse than this, but as a policeman it was never so personal. This happened here, to him, at Ulumbarra, his special retreat and sanctuary away from the horrors of his job and he had to fight not just for his life but for hers too, and that is what crippled him.
He thought about how panicked he felt when she left him, when they were threatening to hurt her and when they had pretended to shoot him; he had frozen, unable to think clearly and was terrified. His memory of the terror he felt at the hands of Percy mortified him. He was better than that. By the time he had discovered her twisted body he had already started to fall apart but seeing her crumpled and lifeless on the ground had broken him and rendered him useless. He shut his eyes and let the shame wash over him. For Christ's sake, he thought, I didn't even check for a pulse.
He forced himself to stop thinking about what had just happened and he slowly stood up, grimacing from the pain and stiffness. He had a job to do and needed to get going. He looked at his watch: he had about an hour, plenty of time. He was still shaky and trembling so he gathered a glass and the whiskey and took it back to the table. He poured himself a large slug to steady his nerves, feeling better when his throat burned from the drink. He had tried not to think about it but his mind jumped from image to image and he started to sweat. He saw Phryne's twisted body on the ground again and his heart beat a little faster. He relived the panic that he felt when he discovered she had left him to run to the house, and instead of fear and shock he felt anger. He was angry with her for not trusting him, not waiting for him to discuss what to do, like partners would do, like lovers would do. He was angry with her for making him feel this way but mostly he angry with himself: for dissolving into a teary mess, for loving her and for giving himself so completely to her, for bringing her here to his now defiled sanctuary and allowing himself to be dragged once again into her mess. He didn't fight the anger; it was better than how he was feeling before and he let it take over him.
He looked towards the door, steeling himself for this unpleasant job. As angry as he was with her, he knew he had to do it. He could feel his heart beating strongly in his chest and he wiped the sweat from his brow with his arm, feeling the sting of the salt in his scratches. He looked at his feet and took a deep breath. I am fine, he told himself. I can do this and have done this many times, this is just another of these times. He sat back down to steady himself and poured himself another whiskey, throwing it back and gulping it down, exhaling sharply from the burn of it and enjoying the heat that spread through his body. That's better, he thought, he was starting to feel numb. Feel numb. He briefly pondered the absurdity of that expression to distract him from what he had to do. He was not shaking so much anymore and he felt stronger, more in control but still angry.
He stood again and went to find a lantern and matches. He located the spare key and unlocked the door with painful and swollen fingers. When it was opened, he paused and stared into the darkness. He was starting to tremble again but he took a deep breath and walked back into hell.