My Brother's Keeper

Chapter 24



THURSDAY 29 NOVEMBER 2012

I’d agreed to hear Ned out without interruption. My back pressed against the wall, arms crossed over my chest, I sat on the floor and did just that.

‘When Dad died two years ago he left everything to Norma,’ he began. ‘I admit I wasn’t happy about it at the time. A good share of the inheritance had come down from my ma’s side of the family. It’s true Dad and Norma had been together a while, but still, Norma knew the money should rightfully have gone to me.’

The thing about listening to someone but not engaging in the conversation is that you get to study the speaker’s body language in more detail. The casual lean of Ned’s shoulder against the wall, his louche and seemingly relaxed pose — I wasn’t convinced by any of it. I told myself I should shut up more often.

‘We had a bit of a chat about it, Norma and I, and she admitted she wasn’t comfortable with Arthur leaving everything to her.’ He pushed himself off the wall. ‘Norma offered, as a sort of compromise, I suppose, that she’d name me sole benefactor of her will. Karen was her only child and after what she did to the children, Norma wanted nothing to do with her at all. Nor Sunny, like I told you. Well, it wasn’t ideal but I accepted it. It meant that eventually I’d get the money that was rightfully mine, even if it wasn’t until after she died. Norma wasn’t a big spender. She’d invested the capital carefully. Like I told you, Norma and I got on just fine and I didn’t begrudge her use of the money while she was alive. And to be perfectly frank, I didn’t think I’d have too long to wait. Her health hadn’t been grand for some years. Norma was a fun person to be around but she wasn’t exactly a walking advertisement for longevity.’ He grinned at me. ‘Often those two things go together, don’t you think?’

He waited to see if I was going to respond and when I remained silent, he dropped the smile and began to pace up and down like a court lawyer preparing to deliver final arguments to the jury. He may have been rehearsing for the real thing to come.

‘So, Norma died. God rest her,’ he added by rote. ‘It must be nearly three months ago now. And then, lo and behold, the time comes for her will to be read and I learn that some time back she’d gone and changed it and left the whole caboodle to Karen — a convicted junkie who, just by the way, had murdered her five-year-old son and done her best to murder her little girl!’ His head swung back and forth in disbelief. ‘Oh sure, there were a couple of little personal things belonging to my da she’d left to me,’ he waved a dismissive hand in my direction, ‘but not the inheritance. Well, as you can imagine, I was not beamingly happy about it.’

He paused, looking to me again for the usual conversational prods, like a smile or a nod. I gave him nothing and eventually he looked away from me. My silence seemed to unnerve him.

‘Anyway, I went to the prison to see Karen. I thought I’d have a bit of a fight on my hands, to tell you the truth, but she proved me wrong. Karen says to me she was as surprised by what Norma did as I was. She and her mother had made peace with each other and that was all that mattered to her. She tells me she doesn’t want the inheritance; she’s going to some commune where they’re not allowed money anyway. She asked if I’d agree to her putting aside a sum in a trust for the little girl, for Sunny, that is, but that I could have the rest of it.’

My disbelief forced a barked response. ‘Oh, come on! Are you seriously trying to tell me Karen was going to just hand the bulk of her inheritance over to you?’ Too late, I clamped my mouth shut again, regretting my outburst.

‘It was my inheritance and she knew it.’ His indignation was real enough. ‘Norma had next to nothing when she and my da got together. By rights he should have left it to me when he died.’ He took some deep breaths, calming himself. This was an argument he’d had in his own head many times. ‘But I could understand he wanted to make sure Norma was comfortable,’ he said, forcing his tone back to reasonable. ‘But the deal was that Norma would leave the money to me when she died. She had no right to change her mind and alter the will so that her daughter got everything, and to do it without even having the decency of talking to me about it. Karen knew it was wrong.’

He waited, willing me to engage. When I didn’t, he sighed and picked it up again where he’d left off.

‘So Karen was going to keep enough money to get herself to the commune and I was in total agreement with her putting some funds in a trust for Sunny, and that’s the truth. I’m not a greedy man.’ He threw a glance in my direction, hoping for confirmation of that statement, I think. He gave up pretty quickly when I didn’t respond. ‘But I’d waited a long time for my inheritance. Dad died over two years ago and I’m coming up to thirty-five, for heaven’s sake. Norma was dead. I wanted what was rightfully mine. Karen accepted that. It was all very …’ He hunted for the right word. ‘It was all very civilised,’ he concluded.

‘Until you killed her, that is. That wasn’t terribly civilised.’

He stared out the window at the mottled rain clouds threatening to drop their load. He looked at them for a long time without answering. He seemed tired now, bored with having to explain himself. He transferred his look to me. I stared right back at him. Finally he spoke.

‘It wasn’t like that,’ he said. ‘I trusted Karen would do as she promised and gift the bulk of the inheritance to me. That’s why I waited until she got out of prison. I wanted to give her a chance to sort out her affairs. I believed her. She was a born-again Christian, for f*ck’s sake. That’s why I was so shocked when she suddenly up and changed her mind. Just like her mother did.’

The first pellets of rain skittered against the window like gravel. We both startled. It reminded me that Sunny and Neo were due to return. The sudden rainstorm would hurry them back. I didn’t want them walking in on Ned’s confession. Ned was following his own thoughts.

‘Karen told me she’d hired you. She was wanting to get things sorted with Sunny before she left the country.’ His tone was flat. ‘That was all fine. It was nothing to do with me.’

‘What was Karen afraid of? For Sunny, I mean. Did she tell you?’ It was worth breaking my silence if he could answer this.

Ned’s shoulder’s relaxed, relieved that I’d spoken. I’m sure that, in his mind, my question made this more like a two-way conversation and less like a confession.

‘Well, it’s pretty obvious now, isn’t it?’ he said, amiably. ‘Justin was the danger. I had no idea about any of that, and that’s the honest to God truth. Maybe he did something to Sunny when she was a wee girl. Or maybe Karen had caught him with some other young girl when they were together. I don’t know. I never liked the man at all, to tell you the truth, but God help me, I had no idea he was like that.’

His answer was plausible, but I still wasn’t convinced Justin was the danger Karen had been so concerned about. ‘So Karen gets out of prison,’ I said, pulling him back to his story. I wanted it over with now. Wanted to be somewhere clean and fresh and clear. Somewhere away from him.

‘So Karen gets out of prison,’ he repeated. ‘She’s sticking to the plan of selling everything up, cashing it all in before she goes away. That was what we’d agreed on and that’s all I cared about.’ He was quite animated now, pacing up and down, confident, I think, of his ability to convince me. ‘I never doubted Karen would do as she promised and once she’d got everything settled, I’d get my money. But then things went to shite. Suddenly she’s decided to keep the inheritance. I couldn’t believe it! That money was mine. I’d trusted Norma and she screwed me. Then I trusted Karen and she was about to screw me too! And now here she is saying she’s going to take Sunny to the commune with her but that they might not stay there. She was thinking that they might even go away to Europe to live, travel around a bit and see the world. She’s going on about what a great life they’re going to have together, so I was pretty angry. I’ve got myself up to my neck with all kinds of financial commitments. I’ve been counting on that money. And here she is rambling on to me about her and Sunny swanning around Europe together, for f*ck’s sake. And this from the woman who had tried to kill her!’ He’d worked himself up during this rant, spit flying, hands gesticulating. He quietened now, letting go of some of the self-righteousness. ‘So, yeah, things got heated.’

‘When?’ I asked.

He shut his eyes, realising he’d gone too far to pull back now.

‘When did things get heated between you and Karen?’

His chest deflated as he let out a deep breath. ‘Saturday morning.’ He seemed relieved to finally admit the truth. ‘I flew down to see Karen early on Saturday morning.’

A memory flashed as bright as a neon: Ned’s jacket hanging casually on his bedroom door handle. When I’d passed it on my way out to meet Karen and Sunny that morning, I’d made the stupid assumption he was still in his room.

‘You were Karen’s visitor,’ I said, the realisation only now dawning. ‘The one we heard on the phone message. That was you arriving.’ No wonder he was so shaken by Karen’s phone call to me on the landline. Another piece clunked into place. ‘You wiped the phone message from Karen, didn’t you?’

He shrugged helplessly. ‘What else could I do? With you determined to take the phone to Wellington and hand it over to the police and all.’

‘You flew down to Wellington to kill her?’

‘It wasn’t something I planned,’ he said indignantly. ‘I’m not a cold-blooded killer. You know me better than that.’

He was wrong. I didn’t know him at all.

‘I went down to reason with her,’ he said. ‘That’s all. It started off just fine. I told her how I felt, she said she understood.’ He paused to moisten his lips with the tip of his tongue. I hadn’t noticed before how red and plump his lips were; it was the mouth of an indulged thumb-sucker.

‘I was trying to get her to listen to me, but she wouldn’t. She was like a little girl getting herself all dressed up for the meeting with Sunny, trying things on and then changing her mind. I had no time for any of it. She wasn’t paying any attention to what I was saying. Then she says to me that she’s too excited about meeting her daughter to talk to me about the money right now. She wants me to wait and talk about it another time. Well, I’d done with the waiting. I’d been waiting for years. And I’d flown down there to talk to her. Well, like I said, I was angry. Justifiably. But things got more heated than I’d meant them to be. I admit that. You have to understand, I was about to lose everything.’ He hunkered down with his back against the wall opposite me. His hands open in front of him in a plaintive gesture, strangely reminiscent of Karen’s beseeching hands open in her lap. For one awful moment I thought he was going to reach those long elegant fingers out to touch me. ‘She fell, Diane, that’s all,’ he said quietly. ‘She fell down the stairs, awkwardly. Her head must have banged on the step or the banister or something on the way down. I don’t know exactly what happened, to tell you the truth. It’s all a bit of a blur. All I know is that in the heat of it, she fell. Badly. I was pretty shocked by what had happened and no doubt I wasn’t thinking straight when I just up and left her. But she was alive when I left the house. I swear it.’

I looked at his hands, his eyes, his whole body language. I had been attracted to this man. Now I was repelled by him. ‘I don’t believe you,’ I said. ‘I think you killed her.’

His knees clicked as he straightened again. He was calm, accepting my accusation seemingly without rancour. ‘Well, I can see you’ve made up your mind about me and no doubt there’s nothing I can say that will change your mind.’ He stretched his back. Story finished.

‘Why then?’

He rolled his shoulder muscle. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Why did you go to see Karen then? Why Saturday morning? You couldn’t have known until you got there that she had changed her mind about the money.’

A flicker of something crossed his face. I couldn’t read it. ‘You told me,’ he said. ‘The night before, when we were at the restaurant. After your phone call with Karen, you told me she was going to sell the house. I sensed something wasn’t right.’ He was lying. That wasn’t the catalyst for his sudden flight down to see her. There was more to it. He saw my suspicion and cut back to the main point, determined to have one more try at convincing me. ‘It was an accident, Diane.’

I struggled to my feet, flinching from the pain of my lacerated knee. ‘Yeah, well you can explain all that to the cops.’

‘I can’t let you tell them,’ he said, staring down placidly at the rain-drenched streets.

‘What are you going to do?’ I scoffed. ‘Stop me?’

No sooner had I said it than I realised what a really stupid question it was. Stopping me was precisely what he intended to do. He looked at me with sympathy, then his arm swung out wide. The lights went out then flickered back on again like an old black and white movie caught in a sprocket. Somewhere a loud church bell tolled. A tsunami of nausea rocked me. As the sound receded I realised there was no church bell, it was in my head — Ned had punched me in the temple. The right side of my brain felt like a painfully expanding balloon in some weird 1950s scientific experiment. At some point it would reach the limit of its expansion and would burst. There was only one thought in my head but it was clear and lucid and terrifying: this is what Ned had done to Karen. My legs gave way and I slumped to the ground, instinctively throwing my hand out for support on the way down. My arm hit against the back of his knees. They folded, unbalancing him and he toppled towards me. My hands flew up to protect myself from his fall. The munted mobile phone was still in my hand. I’d forgotten it was there until it smashed into his cheekbone. The already fractured glass shattered on impact.

Ned screamed. ‘My eyes! F*ck! My f*cking eyes!’

He was on his knees using both hands to hold his eyelids open, screaming and howling in pain and fear. I pulled myself clear of him and crouched in the corner, clasping my big balloon head between my hands to try and stop it expanding.

Salena was in the doorway. That was odd. My befuddled head couldn’t compute what the hell she was doing here.

She dropped to her knees in front of Ned. ‘What the f*ck? Ned!’ Her arm around his shoulder, she crooned reassurances as she helped him crawl along the floor towards the bathroom. Her phone skidded to a halt beside me. ‘Call an ambulance,’ she yelled. She must have mistaken me for someone who cared if Ned went blind.

He was whimpering. ‘F*ck, f*ck, f*ck …’

While I waited for the phone to be answered, I watched Salena gently brush the shattered glass from Ned’s face. Emergencies create a special kind of closeness between people. But it was obviously more than an accidental closeness with these two. There was familiarity, physical familiarity. I’d even go so far as to call it intimacy. Finally, through the expanding universe of the organ that I had once so casually taken for granted as my working brain, the truth became clear: Ned and Salena were lovers.

Once he knew the ambulance was on its way, Ned’s panic subsided enough for him to let Salena pluck the bigger pieces of glass out of his eyes with a pair of tweezers. He ignored me completely. It was as if after delivering that deadly blow to my temple, as far as he was concerned I no longer existed. I think this was probably how Ned dealt with most things that got in his way; if the charm didn’t work, he switched seamlessly to violence. In contrast, having taken on the role of nurse, Salena became downright chatty and happily babbled on while I leaned my head against the cool tiled wall and focused on keeping the nausea at bay.

‘Justin comes home and tells me Karen has decided to use her mother’s money to take Sunny away to Europe with her. I know this money is Ned’s money. It is the money we have been waiting for. I ring Ned and I tell him: that bitch isn’t going to give you your money. I say to him, what are we going to do? And Ned says not to worry, he’ll sort it.’

Well, he’d certainly done that. It occurred to me that if I’d slept with Ned that Friday night, as I’d been sorely tempted to, he’d never have taken the phone call from Salena; he wouldn’t have flown to Wellington first thing the next morning to confront Karen; he wouldn’t have killed her. On a bad day I could feel I was responsible for Karen’s death. On a good day … well, I hadn’t had one of those for a while, so I’d just have to wait and see.

‘Why did Justin agree Karen could take Sunny away with her?’ My voice echoed around the room but I couldn’t tell if it was a symptom of the blow to the head or impressive bathroom acoustics. ‘Why did he agree to that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Salena said. ‘That’s the truth!’ she added, as if it was a rarity that surprised even her. She spoke to my disbelieving look in the mirror. ‘It must have been something big Karen had on him because he would never even let her name be spoken in the house. He didn’t want Sunny to have anything to do with her. I don’t know what she said to change his mind.’

We all turned at the sound of a siren. The ambulance was only minutes away. I had it all figured out now anyway, but I wanted confirmation. I was hoping this was the last time I’d ever have to see them.

‘So Ned caught the red-eye to Wellington on Saturday morning and stuffed up your plans by killing Karen,’ I said.

Salena did that European turned-down mouth thing that indicated agreement. ‘He said it was an accident,’ she said, not even trying to make it sound convincing. She kept her focus on Ned.

‘Karen dead meant all the money would go to Sunny,’ I continued. ‘The only way you two could get your hands on it then was if Justin was out of the way leaving Salena as Sunny’s guardian.’ I looked from one to the other. ‘So which of you two took the photos of Sunny?’

For the first time since he’d hit me Ned acknowledged my existence. ‘What do you take me for?’ he said. I was pretty sure he already knew the answer to that without me having to spell it out for him.

Salena looked away from us both, caught her image in the mirror and adjusted her hair.