Blood Men: A Thriller

After the funeral we all drive to Jodie’s parents’ house. I look at the streets and the people and I want to leave this city and wish I’d done it years ago. The Christmas traffic slows us down—even at four o’clock on a Monday afternoon. Soccer mums are driving their kids around the city in SUVs and heading to the malls.

There are about thirty cars parked in my in-laws’ street, and only two media vans. I have to park two blocks away. The distraction thing happens while I drive—I’ll see a car getting ready to run a red light and I’ll brake, I’ll avoid him, the moment passes, and then Jodie hits my thoughts with such brutality I almost burst into tears. My days are made up like that—the memory of her loss impacting on me over and over, trying to break me. Or maybe no longer trying—maybe succeeding.

The weird food/funeral thing is taking place. It’s another of the traditions. It was the same when my mum and sister died, my grandparents cooking a thousand sausage rolls for the guests, cracking open bottles of lemonade and grape juice, swallowing down food and sorrow and sharing stories. The house is almost standing room only with the amount of people here, but they part for me and Sam, and I lead her through the living room and out onto the porch into the sun. I tell her to go and play in her playhouse but she doesn’t want to. She wants to keep holding my hand, and that’s okay with me. On and off during the afternoon she’ll smile at me like she’s in on some secret that I don’t know about. She thinks her mum is returning.

“Mummy’s a ghost,” she said as Jodie hid under the sheets from her on the day she died.

One by one the guests fade away. I’m given handshakes and hugs and words of condolence, and none of them help. I’d put any one of these people into the ground if it would bring Jodie back.

In the end there’s only family—and none of it is mine, except my daughter. It’s Jodie’s family, and as much as I want to leave and never see them again, I can’t. None of this is their fault. None of it is my fault. I guess it’s just one of those things. That’s what murder is these days—just one of those things that happens, get used to it, deal with it, move on.

Sam is finally out in the playhouse Nat built for her a couple of years ago. Nat spent twenty years as a builder and the last ten years running a hardware shop. I’m sitting out on the porch watching her when he comes out and hands me a beer. His suit jacket is gone, his sleeves are rolled up, and his tie is askew. He has big forearms with long white hairs, and big hands that he uses to pry the top off his beer. I suddenly realize for the first time that as hard as it is for me, it’s perhaps even harder for him.

“Hell of a day,” he says, and he sits next to me at the outdoor table he built.

“Yeah.”

“Hell of a service. They did . . . a great job,” he says, maybe recognizing how hollow his words sound. “Notice how people came out of there saying the service was nice? I don’t know what the hell they mean by that,” he says. “I mean, I think I know what they mean, and I’ve probably said the same thing at other funerals. But the word doesn’t fit. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah.”

“I figure there’s no alternative, right? I mean, what the hell else are people going to come out saying? That it was a bloody awful service? That they had a bad time? That they had a great time? I guess it’s all you can say.”

“I guess it is.”

He lifts the bottle up to his lips and takes a long swallow. “They’re going to catch those bastards,” he says. “I wish to hell they’d put me in a room with them one at a time. I wish . . . ah hell,” he says, and then, “I keep thinking I’m dreaming.”

“I know.”

Sam waves at us, then goes back to her world, talking to her teddy bears, maybe telling them about how nice the service was. Mummy’s a ghost. Yeah, maybe she’s talking to Jodie too.

“You have to feel the same way, right? If you could get your hands on those people?”

I’d love it. The words don’t come out, thankfully, and they’re not even my words. I’m not sure whose they are. “I’d kill them,” I say, knowing that’s what he wants to hear, wondering if it’s actually something he thinks I’m capable of. Maybe he’s hoping I am.

“It’s going to be hard, taking care of her yourself.”

“I know.”

“But you’re a good kid,” he says. “You’ll do great. I know it. And, well, we’re always here for you.”

I open up my beer and take a long sip so I don’t have to speak.

“I know that you’ve always thought we didn’t think much of you. And I know why you think that. And I admit, in the beginning, it worried me when Jodie told us she was dating you and who your dad was. Shit, don’t think for a moment that we didn’t know it was unfair to think like that, I mean, we’re good people, we don’t have prejudices against anybody. Doesn’t matter who you are, you’re good to us, we like you. Could be anybody—hell, even gay people. But, well, you don’t imagine your daughter growing up and being with somebody whose father is a serial killer. And before you judge me on—”